NYTr Digest, Vol 35, Issue 7
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NYTr Digest, Vol 35, Issue 7
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Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Today's Topics:
1. Guatemala, NY Times Slam Bush's Corn-based Ethanol
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
2. Ethanol is not the only issue (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
3. Brit Intruders, Released by Iran, Return to UK
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
4. Five US, 4 British troops killed in Iraq
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
5. US helicopter shot down in Iraq (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
6. US backs terrorists operating in Iran
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
7. Talks on Iran's nuclear program resume
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
8. Bombs, gunmen kill 18 Iraqi and foreign troops
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
9. Now Rice Wants Talks with Iran abut Iraq
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
10. IRAQ: "My Name Used to Be 200343" (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
11. House Speaker Pelosi visits Saudi Arabia
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
12. Bush: Texas Chainsaw Management (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
13. Bush Again Ignores Senate to Name Crony Ambassador
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
14. So-called "American Taliban" seeks reduced sentence
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
15. Krugman: Distract and Disenfranchise (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
16. Guantanamo Gulag: conditions worsening
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
17. Court Sides with "Conscientious Objector"
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
18. US Plutocracy: Income Inequality at pre-Depression Levels
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
19. Landau: Comparing Padillas, Homosexuality and Murder
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
20. Anti-Cuba Terrorist Posada Again Denied Bail
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
21. A Decade Later, Where is Commitment to Reduce Hunger?
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
22. Gonzales Prepares to Fight for His Job in Testimony
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
23. Booming Economy: Attack of the Mortgage Vultures
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
24. Env: Supreme Court Puts the Pressure On
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
25. Iraq: A Monstrous War Crime (Lancet study, again)
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
26. Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
27. Scientists Study Politicians' Memory Loss
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
28. Peanut butter contaminated with salmonella
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
29. Latest on Pet Food Poisoning: Dog Biscuits
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
30. US-born Americans Fleeing Cities (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
31. Landau: Whining Imperialists (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
32. Twisting Slowly in the Wind: The Robert Ferro Case
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
33. US Funding Cuts Undermine "Terror War"
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
34. America's Own Worst Enemy (Bk Rvw) (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:14:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Guatemala, NY Times Slam Bush's Corn-based Ethanol
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052014....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com
US Daily Knocks Corn-based Ethanol
New York, Apr 5 (Prensa Latina) In its Thursday edition the influential New
York Times criticized the unprecedented rise in US corn crops to produce
ethanol, to ultimately replace only a small fraction of the fuel the
country consumes.
The editorial "Consequences of Corn" comments on farmers excessive interest
in devoting land to corn to obtain short-term profits.
The sudden turn to corn production derives from President George W. Bush s
policy favoring biofuels, even at the risk of upsetting the country s
agricultural balance, with soybean acres down by more than 10 percent, and
similar decreases for wheat and cotton.
The New York Times reveals that farmers will plant some 90.5 million acres
of corn this year, 12 million more than last year and the most since 1944.
However, corn ethanol will replace only a small fraction of the petroleum
the country uses, and if that is done through a new agricultural land rush,
losses in conservation will be much greater than profits in energy
independence, the article sustained.
The NYT also highlighted Cuban President Fidel Castro s criticism of Bush s
plans to increase the use of food like corn and soy to produce ethanol.
hr ccs dig ln PL-23
***
The New York Times - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/opinion/05thu3.html
Editorial:
The Consequences of Corn
By now most farmers know what they?ll be planting this spring. And all
across the country the answer is the same: corn, corn, corn. The numbers are
surprising. Farmers will plant some 90.5 million acres of corn this year ?
12 million more than last year and the most since 1944. Soybean acres are
down by more than 10 percent, and there are similar decreases in wheat and
cotton. The reason for this enormous shift is, of course, the ethanol boom
and the corn rush it has created.
If it were just a matter of shifting the balance in already planted acreage
? more corn, less wheat ? a point of economic equilibrium might be found
soon enough. The real trouble comes at the edges. This corn boom puts
pressure on land that has been set aside as part of the United States
Department of Agriculture?s Conservation Reserve Program. Since the
mid-1980s, farmers have enrolled some 37 million acres of farmland in the
program. This is land that has been returned to nature, and it is part of
what Americans pay for through the farm bill. Much of it is unsuitable for
crops ? too hilly, too wet, too valuable as wildlife habitat ? but when corn
prices are this high, the idea of suitable changes swiftly.
Agricultural interest groups have begun to call on the Department of
Agriculture to release some of this land from the reserve so that farmers
can put it into corn production. The U.S.D.A. has temporarily halted new
enrollments in the program, and though it will probably not release land
this year, the pressure to do so will only increase.
Much as we like the idea of ethanol production ? and especially the
potential of cellulosic ethanol, from sources other than corn ? it would be
a tragic mistake to jettison two decades of farm-based conservation for
short-term profit. Corn ethanol will replace only a small fraction of the
petroleum we use, and if it does so at the cost of a new agricultural land
rush, then we will have lost much more in conservation than we gained in
energy independence.
***
Prensa Latina, Havana
http://www.plenglish.com
Guatemala Rejects US Ethanol Plan
Guatemala, Apr 5 (Prensa Latina) The US-promoted plan of using agricultural
products to produce ethanol would bring a world food catastrophe, Guatemala
s popular leaders and farmers stated on Thursday.
Orlando Blanco, leader of the Social Organizations Group (COS), told Prensa
Latina that to use great quantity of corn and other cereals to extract a
gallon of ethanol is really an offense to people who are starving.
"In the case of Guatemala," said Blanco, "this project would cause a
devastating crisis because it would wipe out production of basic grains in
a country where 50 percent of population live on agriculture."
He warned that since the Free Trade Agreement with United States came into
force, there is a latent risk here on the idea of sowing transgenic corn,
sugarcane and African palm to produce fuel.
Blanco denounced that the US does not use its own territory for this
purpose, but it tries to impose these technologies on Latin America to turn
it into a captive market.
This policy was condemned in a recent world forum on food sovereignty held
in Mali, because it could generate more hunger and poverty, stated Aparicio
Perez, from the National Rural Organizations Coordinator.
sus iff car mf
PL-10
- ------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:15:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Ethanol is not the only issue
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052015....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Progreso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Eduardo_Dimas&otherweek=1175749200
Ethanol is not the only issue
About the meeting between W. Bush and Lula at Camp David
By Eduardo Dimas
On Saturday, March 31, President George W. Bush and his Brazilian
counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, met at Camp David, Md., the weekend
retreat of U.S. presidents. It was the first time since 1991 that a Latin
American president had been invited to that mountain home and the second
meeting between the two presidents in less than one month.
According to the press, the central topics of the meeting were an increase
in the production of ethanol and the Doha Summit, long paralyzed because of
the refusal of the developed countries to eliminate or reduce the subsidies
they pay agricultural producers.
At the press conference held afterward by both leaders, W. Bush said he was
"willing to reduce our agricultural subsidies in a substantial way," so as
to guarantee an accord by the World Trade Organization. That has been one
of the main aspirations expressed by Lula and other presidents from the
so-called Third World.
Dan Fisk, a well-known neoconservative, the National Security Council's
director for Latin America, said that other international themes would be
discussed, "probably" Cuba and Venezuela.
Actually, nothing has emerged from Camp David about that latter subject, if
indeed it was a topic of discussion. Apparently, the main theme was
ethanol, which has become a sort of Trojan Horse of the United States
government in its policy toward Latin America.
A bit of background. On Wednesday, March 28, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.)
announced a project to formalize the cooperation between the U.S. and
Brazil in the energy field. According to The Associated Press, the project
refers "specifically to cooperation for the energy security of the Western
Hemisphere, the production of biofuels, research on cellulosic ethanol, and
infrastructure improvements."
It is obvious that when Lugar speaks of "energy security" he refers to the
United States' security, not the security of Latin America.
Lugar specified that "our efforts to promote alternative fuels and reduce
dependence on oil will have maximum benefit through vigorous partnership
abroad." And he added that his project would "create a thriving Western
Hemisphere biofuels marketplace that would alleviate poverty, create jobs
and increase income, improve energy security, strengthen nations'
independence, and protect the environment."
Concretely, the pact proposed by Lugar (which, of course, he didn't create
all by himself) for the U.S. and Brazil is the following:
1. Establish a regional energy forum as a standing but flexible mechanism
to advance energy issues and an emergency cooperation mechanism "to deter
political manipulation of oil trade." (sic)
In reality, that forum already exists. It is the Inter-American Commission
on Ethanol, presided by Jeb Bush, W's brother, and Roberto Rodrigues,
president of the Industrial Farmers Association of Sao Paulo and Minister
of Agriculture during Lula's first term.
2. Undertake feasibility studies to assess each Latin American country's
biofuel needs and biomass production potential, with particular emphasis on
helping the poorest countries in the region. (Seeing the outlook for good
business, several nations already have taken steps to produce ethanol,
among them Honduras, Peru, Uruguay and Guatemala.)
3. Establish a grant program for advanced biofuels research collaboration.
(The proposed funding is $59 million.)
4. Increase international extension services for energy crops and
conservation. (If, when you read this proposal, you think about single
crops -- something that already happens in several countries, among them
Argentina, specifically in Santa Fe province with soy; and in the pampa,
where transnational corporations and big U.S. companies have already bought
30 percent of that vast territory -- you won't be far from reality.)
5. Promote a carbon trading system to encourage preservation of tropical
rain forests in the face of growing demand for energy crops. (This proposal
also has thorns, because mineral coal is a worse pollutant than crude oil.)
AND WATCH OUT:
6. Seek ways to help optimize Mexican oil output, which is lagging to the
detriment of the region, and encourage South America to exploit fully its
natural gas supplies. (I suggest you read my article in Progreso Semanal
for March 29, 2007, about the privatization of PEMEX. That's what Lugar
means when he stresses the "optimization" of Mexican oil output.)
For his part, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, speaking to the
press just before leaving for Washington, said that "we need a
Mercosur-U.S. accord on the basis of bilateral accords, using ethanol as a
model."
In other words, one way or another, the production of ethanol and other
fuels with an agricultural origin is, de facto, something already agreed
upon. It is just necessary to give it shape and establish the rules of the
game. The Inter-American Commission on Ethanol will no doubt be the agency
in charge of taking those steps.
Although it would be premature to speak about the death of the "spirit of
Mar del Plata," the November 2005 meeting when the five Mercosur member
nations refused to accept the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
promoted by the White House -- a spirit that promoted a greater regional
integration and the development of independent policies for the benefit of
the people of Latin America -- it is unquestionable that any cooperation on
the manufacture of ethanol and other farm fuels such as biomass opens the
door to many questions about the future, not only of Mercosur but also the
entire process of integration in Latin America.
As Brazilian sociologist Luis Fernando Novoa, a member of ATTAC, writes in
Correio da Cidadanía, "any bilateral accord with the United States
reproduces, to proper scale, the same contents of the FTAA -- hemispheric
security and free trade." Novoa is right. The outlook is, therefore, that
the carrot (ethanol) will become the starting point for an FTAA disguised
as "energy security" to the detriment of the food supply of the poorest
sectors of the population, as has happened in Mexico.
[Translator's note: ATTAC stands for Association pour la Taxation des
Transactions pour l'Aide aux Citoyens, a worldwide organization.]
Let me give you an example. Soy oil sells for approximately US$450 a ton,
while soy biodiesel sells for about US$650 a ton. The producers of soy oil
in the Argentine province of Santa Fe are setting up plants for the
manufacture of biodiesel that are extremely automated, so the creation of
jobs is practically nil. The creation of jobs Richard Lugar talks about is,
at least in the industry, an absolute lie.
Needless to say, to the same degree that basic grains for human and animal
consumption are used in the production of biofuels, the price of grains
will go up and their acquisition will become more difficult for low-income
people, who constitute the majority of the population of Latin America and
the rest of the Third World.
Following the same example, in Mexico the price of the corn tortilla, a
staple, has risen almost by 100 percent. It is not unreasonable to think,
therefore, that in order to maintain the high standard of living of
developed countries and the waste of energy, now extracted from farm
products intended for human and animal consumption, three billion people
will see their chances for survival greatly limited.
According to United Nations statistics, 852 million human beings already
live in hunger.
I will give you another terrible, though not unique, example: This year,
the United States will set aside 53 million tons of corn for the production
of ethanol, which will supply only 3 percent of the country's fuel needs
for automotive vehicles.
How many of those 852 million hungry people could be fed with 53 million
tons of corn? The example is valid not only for the U.S. but also for other
developed countries. According to studies, the amount of corn used to
produce the fuel for one automobile tankload could feed one person for an
entire year.
It is obvious that we are looking at a big business that will benefit the
large cereal-distributing corporations, such as Cargill, ADM and Bunge, in
addition to the automobile manufacturers, especially U.S. car makers, who
are going through a serious crisis.
Above all, this business will permit the leading producers of transgenic
seeds (Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont, BASF, BSF, and Dow) to impose
their products almost in an obligatory fashion, because of their high
yield. However, because the seeds are genetically modified, they could harm
human and animal health and cause changes in the reproductive capacity of
the earth. This has happened in Canada, where Monsanto has been sued by
several farmers associations.
Transgenic seeds are hybrid, that is, corn and soy cannot be saved for
planting during the next season. Instead, fresh seeds and pesticides must
be purchased anew from the manufacturer.
This establishes the farmer's total dependency on the company that produces
the transgenics. This is already happening in some regions of Mexico,
Argentina, Peru, Brazil, India, Iraq, and several African countries that
produce cotton -- to mention only the best-known cases.
The stated objective of the transnational corporations that manufacture
transgenics is to control world food, which would give them an enormous
power over mankind. They would almost become gods.
Researcher Silvia Ribeiro, in her article "Agrofuels vs. Alimentary
Sovereignty," published in ALAI-AMLATINA's Web site, states that ethanol is
"clearly a geopolitical project of the United States" aimed at Latin
America.
"Agrofuels constitute [...] a project of imperial recolonization," she
adds. Their production "is a new assault by transnational industries on
farm economies and alimentary sovereignty."
A better description would be the definitive attempt of the world's power
elite (not only the U.S.) to dominate the rest of the planet. Let us hope
that Lula, Tabaré Vázquez and all others who may agree to produce biofuels
will understand what the objective is: to control, divide and dominate.
I invite you to meditate.
- ------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:28:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Brit Intruders, Released by Iran, Return to UK
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052028....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
The New York Times - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/world/middleeast/05cnd-iran.html
Captives Freed by Iran Arrive in Britain
By SARAH LYALL
LONDON, April 5 ? The 15 British marines and sailors held captive for nearly
two weeks in Iran flew back to Britain on a commercial jet today, landing at
Heathrow airport before being transferred by naval helicopter to their base
in Devon.
Having discarded the outfits issued to them by the Iranian regime ?
ill-fitting business suits for the men, and a headscarf-and-trouser ensemble
for the lone woman, Leading Seaman Faye Turney ? the seven marines and eight
sailors were dressed once more in military uniforms that had been flown out
from Britain. They did not answer questions, though the news media were
allowed to take photographs.
The sailors and marines were then flown by helicopter to a military base in
Devon, where they were reunited with their overjoyed families and friends.
They could be seen in videotape of the reunions hugging family members and
kissing sweethearts, and talking on cell phones.
On Wednesday ? after Iran said it would free the detainees, but before it
actually did so ? Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke respectfully of the
Iranian people and emphasized the diplomacy that led to the decision to
release the Britons. On Thursday, his tone suddenly turned harsh, almost
threatening.
Referring to the announcement on Thursday that four British soldiers had
been killed in Basra, Iraq, when a roadside bomb struck their armored
personnel carrier, Mr. Blair said he would not accuse Iran of being
responsible. But he repeated charges that Iran has been linked to terrorism
inside Iraq.
?It is far too early to say the particular terrorist act that killed our
forces is an act committed by terrorists who were backed by any elements of
the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular
incident,? Mr. Blair told reporters outside Downing Street. ?But the general
picture, as I said before, is that there are elements, at least, of the
Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, supporting terrorism in
Iraq.?
Mr. Blair repeated the government?s assertion that Britain had exchanged
nothing in return for the detainees? freedom. They were released, he said,
?without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of
any nature whatsoever.?
The British captives were seized on March 23 as they conducted what the
British described as a routine operation in waters near the mouth of the
disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway at the northern end of the Persian Gulf.
Britain said the sailors and marines were sailing in Iraqi waters on United
Nations-mandated business. Iran contended that they were trespassing in
Iranian waters; some of the captives were shown on Iranian television
confessing to having done so.
Their release has been surrounded by strange scenes. There was the sudden
announcement that they would be released, made by the Iranian president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the midst of a long, rambling press conference on
Wednesday. There were video images of the male captives in their nearly
identical Iranian-issued gray suits, waiting in line to shake hands and
exchange pleasantries with Mr. Ahmadinejad.
On Thursday, more video images broadcast on Iranian state television showed
the Britons thanking Iran for setting them free and receiving parting gift
packages containing candy and, in at least one case, a vase, as if they were
children taking home goodie bags from a birthday party.
?The treatment has been great,? Leading Seaman Turney told an Iranian
reporter today before laving Iran, in a scene broadcast on state television.
?Thank you for letting us go. We apologize for our actions.?
Now that the sailors and marines are safely back in Britain, questions are
being raised about how they came to be captured in the first place and about
their conduct while in Iran.
Christopher Dandeker, a professor of military sociology at University
College London, said that the episode raised worrying issues.
?I know many military people are concerned about the overly loquacious and
positive statements made by the service personnel,? he wrote in an e-mail
message. ?But as yet we don?t know what kinds of coercion were present
before the ?hostages? made their TV statements.?
More troubling, Professor Dandeker wrote, was ?how the Royal Navy got itself
into this position in the first place, by not having proper deterrent and
force protection measures in place at the time of the incident.?
Several members of the military said in interviews today that the captured
Britons were young and inexperienced, and probably had not received a great
deal of training in how to behave if taken hostage.
?I?d be surprised if they?d had a lot of in-depth training,? said an army
officer, speaking on the condition that his name and rank not be published
because he had not cleared the interview with his commanding officer.
Before serving in Iraq, the officer said in a telephone interview, ?we had
about half an hour briefing by some bored guy with slides, and he certainly
wasn?t envisaging the type of situation that they got into.?
The officer said that the captives? first priority was, undoubtedly, getting
back home. ?I?m sure there will be lots of old people back home who will
criticize,? he said, ?but most currently serving soldiers would probably
say, do what you need to get out.?
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense said that soldiers, sailors, marines
and airmen were offered ?basic captive training,? but would not elaborate.
?We?re not releasing the details of the training any of the services go
through under those conditions, because if we do that, then it would make it
easier to interrogate them? should they be taken captive, the spokesman
said, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with British
government policy.
Writing in The Daily Mail, a popular right-leaning British newspaper, the
columnist Steven Glover compared the captives? behavior unfavorably with
predecessors in earlier conflicts.
?I do not blame the hostages for their apparent willingness to confess and
apologize,? Mr. Glover wrote. ?But we had better be honest with ourselves.
In no previous era ? not during World War II or Korea or Suez or the
Falklands ? would British servicemen have behaved in such a manner.?
Des Browne, the defense secretary, said the freed marines and sailors would
be debriefed in the next few days. In an interview with the B.B.C., he
defended their conduct.
?You have seen for yourself these are very young people,? Mr. Browne said.
?I think they have acted with immense courage and dignity during the time
that they have been detained, and indeed, presented before the media of the
world.?
[David Rampe contributed reporting from Paris and Jon Elsen from New York.]
***
Granma Daily - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art95.html
Iran Releases Intruding British Marines
TEHRAN, April 4.-- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bid farewell to
each of the 15 British Marines released Wednesday after their detention for
illegally entering Iranian territorial waters on March 23.
BBC television broadcast images of the Iranian president shaking hands with
the Marines, who were dressed in civilian clothes. Ahmadinejad asked about
their health and wished them a good return trip to London on Thursday,
reported DPA.
The British government promised not to repeat the violation of Iranian
territory, said President Ahmadinejad in a press conference. He requested
that British Prime Minister Anthony Blair refrain from punishing the
soldiers for having publicly admitted that they had violated Iranian
territory.
Ahmadinejad said that London had sent a letter to Iran in which it promised
to respect his country's sovereignty.
***
AP via Yahoo - Apr 5, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070405/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_britain
British navy crew leaves Iran for London
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
TEHRAN, Iran - Fifteen British sailors and marines held captive for nearly
two weeks left Iran early Thursday aboard a commercial flight bound for
London, ending a standoff a day after Iran's president announced their
surprise release.
The British crew sat in business class on the British Airways flight that
departed Mehrabad International Airport around 8:30 a.m. local time (1 a.m.
EDT), an Associated Press reporter at the scene reported.
They arrived at the airport in a convoy of black sedans about an hour
earlier escorted by the elite Revolutionary Guards. British ambassador to
Iran, Geoffrey Adams, who was at the airport, declined to comment.
Before boarding, the sailors received gifts given to them on Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's behalf, Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA,
reported.
The hardline president's announcement of their release Wednesday defused a
growing confrontation between the two countries. In London, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair expressed "profound relief" over the peaceful end to the
13-day crisis, telling the Iranian people that "we bear you no ill will."
The crisis had raised oil prices and fears of military conflict in the
volatile region. The move to release the sailors suggested that Iran's
hardline leadership decided it had shown its strength but did not want to
push the standoff too far.
Iran did not get the main thing it sought -- a public apology for entering
Iranian waters. Britain, which said its crew was in Iraqi waters when
seized, insists it never offered a quid pro quo, either, instead relying on
quiet diplomacy.
Syria, Iran's close ally, said it played a role in winning the release.
"Syria exercised a sort of quiet diplomacy to solve this problem and
encourage dialogue between the two parties," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid
al-Moallem said in Damascus.
The announcement of the release came hours after U.S. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) met with President Bashar Assad in
Damascus, trying to show that a U.S. dialogue with Syria -- rejected by the
Bush administration -- could bring benefits for the Middle East. The British
sailors were not part of their talks, and it was not clear if the release
was timed to coincide with her visit.
Several British newspapers credited Blair's foreign policy adviser Nigel
Sheinwald and Iranian chief negotiator Ali Larijani with laying the
groundwork for an agreement during telephone contacts that began Tuesday
night. Larijani had gone on British TV on Monday and signaled that Tehran
was looking for a diplomatic solution.
British officials were told to pay close attention to Ahmadinejad's press
conference but were unsure the release would come until they heard his
words, The Independent newspaper said.
Ahmadinejad timed the announcement so as to make a dramatic splash,
springing it halfway through a two-hour news conference.
The president first gave a medal of honor to the commander of the Iranian
coast guards who captured the Britons, and admonished London for sending a
mother, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, on such a dangerous mission in the
Persian Gulf.
He said the British government was "not brave enough" to admit the crew had
been in Iranian waters when it was captured.
Ahmadinejad then declared that even though Iran had the right to put the
Britons on trial, he had "pardoned" them to mark the March 30 birthday of
the Prophet Muhammad and the coming Easter holiday.
"This pardon is a gift to the British people," he said.
After the news conference, Iranian television showed a beaming Ahmadinejad
on the steps of the presidential palace shaking hands with the Britons --
some towering over him. The men were decked out in business suits and Turney
wore an Islamic head scarf.
"Your people have been really kind to us, and we appreciate it very much,"
one of the British men told Ahmadinejad in English. Another male service
member said: "We are grateful for your forgiveness."
Ahmadinejad responded in Farsi, "You are welcome."
Three members of the crew were later interviewed on Iranian state-run
television, apologizing for the alleged incursion into Iran's waters and
again thanking Ahmadinejad for their release.
"I can understand why you're insulted by the intrusion into the waters,"
said Lt. Felix Carman, shown seated on a couch.
"Thank you for letting us go and we apologize for our actions, but many
thanks for having it in your hearts to let us go free," Turney said.
The breakthrough caught the British government by surprise. On Tuesday,
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett cautioned reporters not to expect a quick
end to the standoff.
The U.S. cautiously welcomed Iran's announcement, though Vice President Dick
Cheney said "it was unfortunate that they were ever taken in the first
place."
During the standoff, Iran broadcast footage of Turney and some other crew
members "confessing" they had entered Iranian waters. An infuriated Britain
froze most bilateral contacts, prompting Tehran to roll back on a pledge to
free Turney.
Wednesday's announcement led some analysts to conclude that Iran's supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decided the crisis had gone on long enough
at a time when Tehran faces mounting pressure over its nuclear program. A
day after the British were seized, the U.N. Security Council imposed new
sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment.
During Ahmadinejad's news conference, the hardline president said Britain
had sent a letter to the Iranian Foreign Ministry pledging that entering
Iranian waters "will not happen again." Tehran had demanded an apology for
the alleged entry into its waters.
Britain's Foreign Office would not give details about the letter but said
its position was clear that the detained crew had been in Iraqi waters.
Regardless of the territorial issue, the standoff showed that Tehran has
ways to push back after the U.S. and Britain beefed up their military
presence in the Persian Gulf this year.
The U.S. has accused Iran of sending weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq.
That led to speculation that the Iranians seized the Britons in retaliation
for the detention of five Iranians by U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi city
of Irbil in January. Iran denied any connection.
Shortly before the announcement, Iranian state media reported that an
Iranian envoy would be allowed to meet the five Iranians. A U.S. military
spokesman in Baghdad said American authorities were considering the request,
although an international Red Cross team, including one Iranian, had visited
the prisoners.
Another Iranian diplomat, separately seized two months ago by uniformed
gunmen in Iraq, was released and returned Tuesday to Tehran. Iran accused
the Americans of abducting him, a charge the U.S. denied.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- ------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:32:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Five US, 4 British troops killed in Iraq
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052032....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
CNN - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/05/iraq.main/index.html?eref=rss_world
Five U.S., 4 British troops killed in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Nine coalition troops were killed in Iraq over
the last two days, four of them in the deadliest attack on British
troops since November, the U.S. and British militaries said Thursday.
The four British troops and a civilian translator were ambushed early
Thursday as they returned from a mission west of the southern city of
Basra, British military spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Stratford-Wright said.
Insurgents wielding small arms and rocket-propelled grenades attacked
the troops' armored Humvee about 340 miles (547 kilometers) southeast
of Baghdad, said Stratford-Wright. A roadside bomb also was employed in
the attack, he said.
The soldiers fired back and "one or more of the attackers were killed,"
the spokesman said.
A British soldier was hospitalized after being seriously wounded in the
fray.
The troops were attacked earlier in the night as well, but they escaped
the first incursion without casualties, Stratford-Wright said.
The second ambush was the deadliest assault on British troops since
insurgents killed four servicemen in an attack on their patrol boat in
a Basra waterway.
Basra is the command headquarters for British forces in Iraq.
The number of British troop deaths in the war stands at 140.
The U.S. military also announced Thursday that five of its troops were
killed Wednesday in a string of attacks around Baghdad. (Watch Sen.
John McCain as he says Americans aren't getting the full story on
Baghdad Video)
Two soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb detonated north of the
capital, the military said. One soldier was wounded in the attack.
Two more soldiers were killed and three were wounded when a roadside
bomb exploded south of the capital, and another soldier was killed in
eastern Baghdad during a firefight with insurgents wielding small arms,
the military said.
The number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq war is 3,259. Seven
civilian contractors also have been killed. TV manager killed in assault
Insurgents attacked a television station aligned with a Sunni political
party Thursday, killing an assistant manager and wounding 12 staffers,
according to the Iraqi Islamic Party, which owns the station. (Watch a
GOP presidential hopeful claim, "We can't make Iraqis get along" Video)
The attackers detonated a car bomb before attacking Baghdad TV with
machine guns, said the party, the most powerful Sunni Arab bloc in Iraq.
"The channel committed since the first day to moderate national
attitude, it defended Iraqi citizens regardless the religion and sect
that made the channel distinguishable among other channels in Iraq,"
the party said.
The Iraqi Islamic Party condemned the strike as a "cowardly criminal
attack" and called it a "hopeless attempt to shut down the voice of the
true." Arrests made in brutal bombings
Iraqi security forces raided a home Tuesday in Nineveh province and
arrested two suspects in connection with a March 27 twin truck bombings
that killed 152 people in Tal Afar, the U.S. military said Wednesday.
The Tal Afar bombings was the single deadliest single attack since the
start of the Iraq war in 2003, according to a high-ranking Iraqi
Interior Ministry official.
The blasts erupted in Shiite districts of the predominantly Turkmen
city and set off a wave of reprisal killings in which 70 people were
killed in one of the city's Sunni neighborhoods.
Nineteen other suspects were arrested during the Tuesday raids, but it
wasn't clear if they were connected to the Tal Afar attacks.
On Friday, Iraqi security forces arrested 18 police officers in Nineveh
province in connection with the reprisal killings in Tal Afar, said
Gen. Wathiq Abdul Qadir al-Hamadani, head of Nineveh police.
The 18 are accused of working with a Shiite militia to kill people in
the Wahad Sunni district. The suspects were identified by members of
targeted Sunni families, said al-Hamadani, who would not divulge the
branch with which the police were affiliated. Four injured in U.S. Army
chopper downing
A U.S. Army helicopter went down Thursday south of Baghdad, injuring
four of the nine passengers and crew on board, the U.S. military said.
The chopper appeared to be damaged by small-arms fire, a military
official said. It wasn't clear whether the gunfire downed the aircraft.
The pilot may have decided to land when he realized the helicopter was
hit, the official said.
Since January 20, eight U.S. helicopters -- six of them military, two
belonging to security contractors -- have been shot down or forced to
make hard landings.
Twenty-eight people have died in those incidents.
Other developments
# Ten Iraqi soldiers were shot dead Thursday near the northern city of
Mosul, an Iraqi army official said. At least 30 attackers in cars used
rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns in an assault on an army
post , the official said. One soldier was wounded in the attack in
Badoosh, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Mosul.
# President Bush and Democrats blamed each other Wednesday for failing
to pass a $100 billion emergency spending bill devoted largely to
funding the war in Iraq. Bush accused Democrats of politicizing the
bill, while Democrats say they are obeying the will of most Americans,
whom they say want U.S. soldiers out of Iraq. (Watch Bush say the
Democrats' bill undermines troops Video)
# A week after admitting it made myriad errors in the friendly fire
death of former NFL star Pat Tillman, the Army said Wednesday that two
soldiers killed in February also may have been killed by their
comrades, according to The Associated Press. The Army said it is
investigating the deaths of Pvt. Matthew Zeimer, 18, of Glendive,
Montana, and Spc. Alan E. McPeek, 20, of Tucson, Arizona, who were
killed in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the AP reported. (Full story)
CNN's Jennifer Deaton, Barbara Starr and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed
to this report.
Copyright 2007 CNN.
***
AP - Apr 5, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=WABEL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Ambush Kills 4 British Troops in Iraq
By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD (AP) -- Four British soldiers were killed Thursday in an
ambush in southern Iraq, and Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tehran's
support for Iraqi militants could lead Britain "to reflect on our
relationship with Iran."
The U.S. military reported the deaths of five soldiers around Baghdad.
And a U.S. Army helicopter went down south of the capital, but all nine
aboard survived, officials said.
The four British deaths - the biggest loss of life for British forces
in more than four months - came as 15 British sailors and marines
arrived home 13 days after they were seized by Iran off the Iraqi coast
and held captive.
"Just as we rejoice at the return of our 15 service personnel, so today
we are also grieving and mourning for the loss of our soldiers in
Basra," Blair said.
"It is far too early to say that the particular terrorist act that
killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists that were backed
by any elements of the Iranian regime," he said. "But the general
picture, as I said before, is that there are elements at least of the
Iranian regime that backing, financing, arming, supporting terrorism in
Iraq."
The British patrol struck a roadside bomb and was hit by small-arms
fire about 2 a.m. in the Hayaniyah district in western Basra, 340 miles
southeast of Baghdad, British military spokeswoman Capt. Katie Brown
said.
A Kuwaiti civilian interpreter was also killed and a British soldier
was seriously wounded, Brown said.
The explosion left a crater three feet deep. Hours after the attack,
the helmet of a British soldier lay in the street alongside dozens of
spent shells.
Police said the British patrol was en route from detaining 1st Lt.
Haidar al-Jazaeri of the Interior Ministry's Major Crimes unit. The
police would not say why al-Jazaeri had been detained.
The deaths raised to 140 the number of British forces who have died in
Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, with 109 killed in combat.
Four British forces were killed Nov. 12 in an attack on a Multinational
Forces boat patrol on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway in Basra, Iraq's
second-largest city. Ten Britons died in the Jan. 30, 2006, crash of a
Hercules transport plane north of Baghdad.
Blair has announced that Britain will withdraw about 1,600 troops in
the next few months and hopes to make other cuts to its 7,100-strong
contingent by late summer.
The U.S. helicopter was the ninth to go down in Iraq this year, raising
concern among the military that insurgents are using more sophisticated
weapons or have figured out how to use the old arms in new and
effective ways.
The U.S. military issued only a brief statement saying the helicopter
went down and that the incident was under investigation.
An Iraqi army official said it was a Black Hawk that had gone down
after it came under fire about 7:30 a.m. near the Sunni insurgent
stronghold of Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad.
The Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of
security concerns, said U.S. forces had cordoned off the site, which
was in a rural area. He said the militants apparently were using
anti-aircraft heavy machine guns.
Latifiyah is part of the area dubbed the "Triangle of Death" because of
frequent insurgent attacks.
The last helicopter incident occurred on March 1, when an OH-58 Kiowa
made a hard landing in northern Iraq, leaving its two crew members
wounded. A week earlier, ground fire forced down a Black Hawk north of
Baghdad. Black Hawks are commonly used by the military for
transportation in Iraq to avoid the dangers of roadside bombs and
ambushes.
The U.S. military said its five soldiers were killed in three separate
attacks in the Baghdad area, where thousands of American forces have
taken to the streets with their Iraqi counterparts as part of the
operation to quell sectarian violence in the city of 6 million.
A roadside bomb Wednesday killed two soldiers and wounded three others
in southern Baghdad, while another blast north of the capital killed
two soldiers and wounded one, the military said. The fifth soldier was
killed Tuesday by small-arms fire while on patrol in a predominantly
Shiite part of eastern Baghdad, the military said.
U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell has expressed
disappointment at the high level of violence in Iraq despite a drop in
the overall death toll in Baghdad during the U.S.-Iraqi security sweep,
now in its eighth week. The Iraqi government said it was extending the
operation to confront spreading violence elsewhere.
In other violence, gunmen ambushed a prison checkpoint southwest of the
northern city of, killing 10 policemen, the officials said.
The Iraqi government said Wednesday that it was extending the security
crackdown to Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. Government
spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said parts of the city were completely under
the control of militants.
A car bomb also struck a Sunni Muslim television station in Baghdad,
killing its assistant director and wounding 12 others, according to the
Iraqi Islamic Party, which owns the station.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but members of the Sunni
Iraqi Islamic Party have been targeted before by suspected insurgents
because they have joined the U.S.-backed political process.
Shortly after the blast, the station went off the air, although a photo
of a mosque with readings from the Quran appeared after a while.
Police said the bomb was in a small truck used to collect garbage.
In Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, police reported finding the
bullet-riddled bodies of 20 men who were abducted at a checkpoint
Wednesday, apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
© 2007 The Associated Press.
- ------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:32:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] US helicopter shot down in Iraq
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052032....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
BBC - Apr 5, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6528953.stm
US helicopter 'shot down' in Iraq
A US helicopter has come down in southern Iraq after apparently coming
under heavy fire from insurgents, according to reports by witnesses.
They said the helicopter came under attack near Latifiya, 40km (25
miles) south of the capital, Baghdad.
The US military confirmed a helicopter had gone down with four people
injured. But it did not specify the cause.
The US has lost more than 50 military helicopters in Iraq since the
invasion with the loss of a number of soldiers.
A major security operation in Baghdad has resulted in a decrease in the
number of attacks on coalition troops there, the US military says.
However, the deaths of eight coalition soldiers were announced on
Thursday - four British and four American - as well as of at least 10
Iraqi soldiers.
The Iraqis died when about 40 gunmen attacked a checkpoint north-west
of the northern city of Mosul, setting the soldiers' vehicles on fire
and seizing their weapons.
The British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack on the
western edge of Basra city in southern Iraq.
A civilian interpreter was also killed - his nationality has not been
confirmed.
And the US troops died in two separate incidents in Baghdad on
Wednesday.
Pattern study?
At the site of the helicopter crash, witnesses described hearing
weapons fire from the ground.
"I saw a helicopter in the sky, then I heard heavy gunfire," said one
witness, quoted by Reuters news agency.
"I saw the helicopter move right and left before landing hard. It did
not explode."
An unnamed Iraqi official said the militants were apparently using an
anti-aircraft machine gun.
At least nine US helicopters have crashed or been brought down by
insurgent attacks in Iraq this year alone.
The attacks have raised fears that insurgents may be studying flight
patterns or may have acquired more advanced weapons.
© BBC MMVII
- ------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:34:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] US backs terrorists operating in Iran
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052034....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Reuters via MSNBC - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17966604/
Iranian speaker: U.S. backs 'terrorists'
Claim comes amid disputed report that Pakistan is launching attacks in Iran
Reuters
ISLAMABAD - The United States is putting pressure on Iran by supporting
anti-Iranian militants operating from the Pakistani border region, the
speaker of Iran’s parliament, Gholamali Haddadadel, said on Thursday.
But Haddadadel, speaking to reporters after talks with Pakistani
leaders, said Pakistan was not involved in helping the militants.
“There is no doubt in our minds that the United States spares no effort
to put pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran,†Haddadadel said,
speaking through an interpreter.
“The best indication of United States’ support to a particular
terrorist group is that one of the leaders of this terrorist group was
given the opportunity to speak on VoA after committing the crime,†he
said, referring to a Voice of America radio broadcast after an
unspecified attack.
Pakistan conducting raids inside Iran?
The U.S. channel ABC News reported on Tuesday the United States had
been secretly advising and encouraging a Pakistani militant group that
had carried out a series of guerrilla raids inside Iran.
ABC, citing U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources, said the raids had
resulted in the deaths or capture of Iranian soldiers and officials.
The group, called Jundullah and made up of members of the Baluchi
ethnic group, who live in both Pakistan and Iran, operated from
Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on the border with Iran, ABC said.
The group took responsibility for an attack in February that killed at
least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on a bus in the
Iranian city of Zehedan, ABC said.
Pakistan calls report ‘absurd and sinister’
ABC cited Pakistani government sources as saying the secret campaign
against Iran was on the agenda when U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney met
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as †tendentious.â€
It said the suggestion Pakistan was involved in a secret war against
Iran was “an absurd and sinister insinuation.â€
Haddadadel said Iran had to step up cooperation with Pakistan on the
border.
“Some of the militants, the rebel forces are active in our border areas
and we should work with Pakistan in order to increase security
cooperation,†he said.
“There is no news, no evidence, and we don’t have any reason to believe
that the military establishment in Pakistan is also supporting such
militants groups,†he said.
Asked if he thought the United States would attack Iran over its
nuclear program, he said: “I think it is highly unlikely. We do not see
any reason for military action against Iran and we do not do anything
to encourage military action.â€
He also said he hoped work on a gas pipeline, from Iran, through
Pakistan to energy-hungry India, would begin in July. The United States
opposes the pipeline.
“The pipeline has political messages that there is security in the
region and the three countries - Iran, Pakistan and India - decide on
their own without foreign, external influence.â€
Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.
- ------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:35:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Talks on Iran's nuclear program resume
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052035....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
AP via Yahoo - Apr 5, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070405/ap_on_re_eu/iran_nuclear
Talks on Iran's nuclear program resume
By RAF CASERT
Associated Press Writer
BRUSSELS, Belgium -Iran and the major powers seeking to halt its nuclear
program resumed discussions almost immediately after Iran announced that it
was releasing a British navy crew, an EU official said Thursday.
Talks on the nuclear issue were put on hold during the standoff over the
seized sailors and marines. But hours after Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad announced the crew's release, top Iranian negotiator Ali
Larijani spoke by telephone with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who
negotiates on behalf of permanent U.N. Security Council members the United
States, France, Britain, Russia and China, plus Germany, an EU official
said.
"We hope we can get back to the negotiating table," the official said on
condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, adding that
the crew's release, "can only improve the context in which the nuclear file
can be discussed."
Solana and Larijani talked about both the seized crew members and the
possibilities of progress on the international nuclear standoff, the
official said.
The United Nations last month toughened sanctions on Iran over its failure
to comply with the demand that it freeze enrichment of uranium, which can be
used to make nuclear weapons as well as generate energy. Tehran has
steadfastly denied it wants to produce weapons.
The 27 EU nations had planned to discuss Iran's nuclear program during a
special meeting over the weekend but were sidetracked by the seizure of the
British crew.
The world powers insist that Tehran must freeze its enrichment work before
any talks can begin on a package of economic and other incentives,
including assistance for its nuclear power generation program.
Iran has announced a partial suspension of cooperation with the
International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, by revoking a
pledge to inform it of any plans to build new nuclear facilities.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- ------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:36:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Bombs, gunmen kill 18 Iraqi and foreign troops
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052036....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Reuters - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSPAR34073020070405?feedType=RSS
Bombs, gunmen kill 18 Iraqi and foreign troops
By Dean Yates and Ross Colvin
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Roadside bombs killed eight British and American
soldiers and gunmen shot dead 10 Iraqi troops in one of the bloodiest
24 hours in Iraq for coalition and Iraqi security forces in recent
months.
Four British soldiers and an interpreter were killed by a roadside bomb
that destroyed their armored fighting vehicle when they were ambushed
on the outskirts of Basra, said British military spokesman
Lieutenant-Colonel Kevin Stratford-Wright.
"The unit was involved in an operation elsewhere. As they were on their
way back from the operation it was targeted by a roadside bomb in
conjunction with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades," he
said from Basra.
The nationality of the interpreter was not clear, he said.
The British military denied accusations by Iraqi police that British
troops had stormed a police checkpoint close to the scene of the attack
shortly afterwards and beaten some police.
Six British soldiers have been killed in Iraq this week, making it one
of the deadliest for British forces to date.
At least 140 British soldiers have been killed since the U.S.-led
invasion in March 2003. More than 3,260 U.S. soldiers have been killed.
Gunmen also killed 10 Iraqi soldiers and wounded one in an attack on
Thursday on their checkpoint near Mosul, an army source said.
The source said at least 40 gunmen attacked the checkpoint at dawn
northwest of Mosul, setting vehicles on fire and seizing the soldiers'
weapons.
"Apparently the soldiers were asleep when the attack happened. They
were taken by surprise and did not have a chance to respond," said the
army source, who declined to be named.
Separately, four American soldiers were killed by two roadside bombs in
and around Baghdad on Wednesday, the U.S. military said.
Those attacks followed a relatively quiet period in Baghdad, where U.S.
and Iraqi forces have deployed thousands more troops to enforce a
security crackdown regarded as a last-ditch attempt to stop the country
tearing itself apart.
Sectarian violence between Sunni Arabs and majority Shi'ite Muslims has
escalated since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine a year ago. Since the
U.S. invasion in March 2003, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been
killed and millions displaced.
BIG CRATER
The attack in Basra tempered jubilation among British troops in Iraq
after Iran sent home 15 British military personnel it had held for two
weeks after seizing them in the northern Gulf.
"We heard two explosions that shook the house. I went out and saw one
armored vehicle that was completely destroyed and another with less
damage," said one resident.
Prime Minister Tony Blair said in February Britain would begin
withdrawing a quarter of its 7,000 troops, who are stationed mainly in
the Basra area, in coming months so Iraqis could eventually take full
control of Basra province.
Iraq's government announced on Wednesday that Iraqi forces would assume
control of southern Maysan province from British troops later in April.
British forces have already handed back two other southern provinces.
The U.S. military also said an army helicopter with nine people on
board went down south of Baghdad. Four were injured.
A statement did not give the cause of the incident or any other
details. Witnesses reported seeing heavy gunfire force the aircraft
down in an insurgent stronghold south of the capital.
(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Yara Bayoumy and Mariam Karouny in
Baghdad)
© Reuters 2006.
- ------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:38:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Now Rice Wants Talks with Iran abut Iraq
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052038....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
[Now Rice wants DIRECT talks with Iran about Iraq. Has it finally dawned
on the half-wit in the White House and his regime that they've lost their
big crusade against Iraq? -NY Transfer]
Reuters - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0519365520070405?feedType=RSS
Rice open to bilateral talks with Iran at meeting
By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is open to
direct talks with Iran over its role in Iraq when she attends a meeting
of Iraq's neighbors and world powers, the State Department said on
Thursday.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice did not rule out
bilateral talks with the Iranians at the ministerial-level meeting,
which Iraq's government says is likely early next month at an as-yet
undisclosed location.
"We will not exclude any particular diplomatic interaction. There was
one at the envoys level ... and the same would hold true for the
secretary," McCormack told reporters.
At a meeting in Baghdad last month of Iraq's neighbors, then U.S.
ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, had brief encounters with both
Iranian and Syrian delegates at the talks and McCormack said it was
possible Rice could do the same.
The United States accuses Iran of destabilizing Iraq and McCormack said
Rice could raise this with Tehran at the Iraq conference, which is
expected to be attended by Iraq's neighbors as well as world powers.
He reiterated the U.S. position that when it came to discussing Iran's
nuclear program, Washington would only meet with Tehran once it had
suspended its sensitive uranium enrichment work.
Iran strongly denies it is meddling in Iraq. The United States has
since January been holding five Iranians whom Washington accuses of
being linked to attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.
FIVE DETAINEES
McCormack said the United States was considering a request from Iran to
grant consular access to the five, who he said were classified as
"security detainees" and were being held under Iraqi law and according
to U.N. Security Council resolutions.
"That is being taken under advisement," he said of the Iranian request,
adding that the International Committee of the Red Cross had already
been granted visits to the detainees.
McCormack said consular access had been allowed on previous occasions
to such detainees on a "case by case" basis but a decision had not yet
been taken on the five.
"As long as they continue to pose a threat to (U.S.) forces they are
not going to be released," he said.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe also gave no indication the
United States planned to release the five and instead said U.S.
officials would work with their Iraqi counterparts on "what course of
justice should be carried out to deal" with them.
The United States has welcomed Iran's decision to free 15 British
sailors seized last month and who returned home on Thursday.
In Crawford, Texas, President George W. Bush held an hour-long video
conference call with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during which
Bush commended the British "on their resolve in bringing the situation
to a peaceful resolution," said Johndroe.
"We are pleased that there was a successful outcome to this situation,"
he said, but said the real issue is "Iran and Iran's behavior."
Johndroe said the hope now is that Iran will move forward with
complying with U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at stopping
uranium enrichment.
McCormack also said he hoped Iran's release of the British sailors
would lead to a "change of heart" on behalf of Tehran on other issues,
including their nuclear program.
The United States and others accuse Iran of try to build a nuclear bomb
but Tehran says their program is for peaceful power purposes.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland)
© Reuters 2006.
- ------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:39:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] IRAQ: "My Name Used to Be 200343"
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052039....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Inter Press Service - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37227
IRAQ: "My Name Used to Be 200343"
by David Phinney
WASHINGTON, Apr 5 (IPS) - A year ago, Donald Vance learned what its
like to be falsely accused by the U.S. military of aiding terrorists.
He was held without charge for more than three months in a
high-security prison in Iraq, and interrogated daily after sleepless
nights without legal counsel or even a phone call to his family.
On Wednesday, the former private security contractor was honoured for
his ordeal in Washington and for speaking out against the incident. At
a luncheon at the National Press Club, Vance received the Ridenhour
Prize for Truth-Telling, an award named in memory of Army helicopter
gunner Ron Ridenhour who struggled to bring the horrific mass murders
at My Lai to the attention of Congress and the Pentagon during the
Vietnam War.
Vance was joined by former president Jimmy Carter, who won a lifetime
achievement award, and journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The
Washington Post who was recognised for his recent book, "Emerald City:
Inside Iraq's Green Zone".
As hundreds at the luncheon finished their lobster salad, Vance, a
two-time George W. Bush voter and Navy veteran, recounted the events of
his imprisonment and the grief of his fiancé and family. They did not
know if he was alive or dead, he said. They were already making
inquiries to the U.S. State Department on how to ship his body home.
He then drew a wider circle around his ordeal to include the countless
others who have been held falsely without charge and denied normal
legal constitutional protections under law. "My name used to be
200343," Vance said recalling his prisoner ID. "If they can do this to
a former Navy man and an American, what is happening to people in
facilities all over the world run by the American government?"
Vance's nightmare began last year on Apr. 15 when he and co-worker
Nathan Ertel barricaded themselves in a Baghdad office after their
employer, an Iraqi private security firm, took away their ID tags. They
feared for their lives because they suspected the company was involved
in selling unauthorised guns on the black market and other nefarious
activity. A U.S. military squad freed them from the red zone in Baghdad
after a friend at the U.S. embassy advised him to call for help.
Once they reached the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, government officials
took them inside the embassy, listened to their individual accounts and
then sent them to a trailer outside for sleep. Two or three hours
later, before the crack of dawn, U.S. military personnel woke them.
This time, however, Vance and Ertel, Shield Security's contract
manager, were under arrest. Soldiers bound their wrists with zip ties
and covered their eyes with goggles blacked out with duct tape.
The two were then escorted to a humvee and driven first to possibly
Camp Prosperity and then to Camp Cropper, a high-security prison near
the Baghdad airport where Saddam Hussein was once kept. Vance says he
was denied the usual body armour and helmet while traveling through the
perilous Baghdad streets outside the safety of the Green Zone or a U.S.
military installation.
It was not the way the tall 29-year-old with an easy charm and keen
mind had expected to be treated. Vance claims that during the months
leading up to his arrest, he worked as an unpaid informant for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes twice a day, he would share
information with an agent in Chicago about the Iraqi-owned Shield Group
Security, whose principals and managers appeared to be involved in
weapons deals and violence against Iraqi civilians. One company
employee regularly bartered alcohol with U.S. military personnel in
exchange for ammunition they delivered, Vance said.
"He called it the bullets for beer programme," Vance claimed while
relating the incident during an interview this week at a cigar bar just
walking distance from the White House.
But his interrogators at Camp Cropper weren't impressed. Instead, his
jailers insisted that Vance and Ertel had been detained and imprisoned
because the two worked for Shield Group Security where large caches of
weapons have been found -- weapons that may have been intended for
possible distribution to insurgents and terrorist groups, Vance said.
In a lawsuit now pending against former Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and "other unidentified agents," Vance and Ertel accuse their
U.S. government captors of subjecting them to psychological torture day
and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They
endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on
concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice
and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and
water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears
for hours on end, their legal complaint alleges.
They lived through "conditions of confinement and interrogation
tantamount to torture", says the lawsuit filed in northern Illinois
U.S. District Court. "Their interrogators utilised the types of
physically and mentally coercive tactics that are supposedly reserved
for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."
Rumsfeld is singled out as the key defendant because he played a
critical role in establishing a policy of "unlawful detention and
torment" that Vance, Ertel and countless others in the "war on terror"
have endured, the lawsuit asserts, noting that the former defence
secretary and other high-level military commanders acting at his
direction developed and authorised a policy that allows government
officials unilateral discretion to designate possible enemies of the
United States.
Because the incident and allegations are now in litigation, the
Pentagon has no comment, spokesman Army Lieut. Col. Mark Ballesteros
said. He referred all inquires to the U.S. Justice Department, which
also had no comment for similar reasons.
But darker allegations are included in the complaint over false
imprisonment. Because he worked with the FBI, Vance contends, U.S.
government officials in Iraq decided to retaliate against him and
Ertel. He believes these officials conspired to jail the two not
because they worked for a security company suspected of selling weapons
to insurgents, but because they were sharing information with law
enforcement agents outside the control of U.S. officials in Baghdad.
"In other words," claims the lawsuit, "United States officials in Iraq
were concerned and wanted to find out about what intelligence agents in
the United States knew about their territory and their operations. The
unconstitutional policies that Rumsfeld and other unidentified agents
had implemented for 'enemies' provided ample cover to detain plaintiffs
and interrogate them toward that end."
It may take some time to sort out the allegations as the legal process
grinds forward, but, in the meantime, Vance is raising new questions
about his detention. He still wonders why his jailers didn't just call
the FBI and have him cleared. They had access to his computer and cell
phone to determine if his claims were true.
"When I told them to do that, they just got angry and told me to stop
answering questions I wasn't being asked," Vance said. "I think they
were butting heads with the State Department. I just snitched on the
wrong people. I took the bull by the horns and got the horn."
And why weren't managers with the Shield Group held and interrogated?
Interrogators were certainly interested in these other individuals,
according to the lawsuit. They wanted to know about the company's
structure, its political contacts, and its owners -- most of whom are
related to a long-established Iraqi family who fled Iraq during the
years the country was ruled by Saddam Hussein, Vance said.
More startling even now is that the company has reformed. At the time
they left, Shield Security held U.S.-funded contracts with the Iraqi
government, Iraqi companies, NGOs and U.S. contractors. As far as Vance
knows, the company still does -- but under a different name: National
Shield Security.
"I built the original web site for Shield Security. All they did was
change the name," he said. "And they are still being awarded millions
of dollars in contracts."
[David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC,
whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on
ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinne...@yahoo.com. ]
(END/2007)
- ------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:41:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] House Speaker Pelosi visits Saudi Arabia
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052041....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
AP via Yahoo - Apr 6, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070405/ap_on_re_mi_ea/mideast_pelosi
House Speaker Pelosi visits Saudi Arabia
By DONNA ABU-NASR
Associated Press Writer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting
record) said Thursday that she raised the issue of Saudi Arabia's lack of
female politicians with Saudi government officials on the last stop of her
Mideast tour.
Pelosi, the first woman House speaker, said she had not discussed King
Abdullah's recent criticism of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, focusing instead
on praise for the king's Mideast peace initiative, and efforts to quell
conflicts in Somalia and Darfur.
She met with the king Wednesday and with several members of the Shura
Council, an unelected advisory assembly named by the king, on Thursday.
Asked if she had discussed the lack of women on the council, she told
reporters, "The issue has been brought up in our discussions with the
Saudis on this trip."
Pelosi arrived in Saudi Arabia from Syria, where she defied the White
House's Middle East policy by meeting with President Bashar Assad and saying
"the road to Damascus is a road to peace." The Bush administration has
rejected direct talks with Damascus and criticized Pelosi for her visit.
In an interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney said Assad has
"been isolated and cut off because of his bad behavior, and the unfortunate
thing about the speaker's visit is it sort of breaks down that barrier."
Pelosi was met at the Riyadh airport by officials including Abdul-Rahman
al-Zamel, the head of the Saudi-American friendship committee at the Shura
Council. He described the speaker's visit as a "breakthrough" and praised
the inclusion of the first Muslim member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Keith
Ellison (news, bio, voting record), D-Minn., in her delegation.
Pelosi wore a lavender pantsuit instead of the long black robe, called an
abaya, that women, Saudi and non-Saudi, have to wear in the kingdom.
Visiting women dignitaries are not expected to wear the robe, and other
female U.S. government officials who have visited Saudi Arabia in the past
few years, such as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, did not wear
abayas when they met with Saudi officials.
Ihsan Abu-Holeiqa, a member of the council, said the meeting with Pelosi
Thursday included discussion of the new difficulties Saudis have in getting
U.S. visas, with some waiting four to five months. The lengthy process
followed the Sept. 11 attacks carried out by 19 hijackers, 15 of them
Saudis.
"We told her there should be some movement on the visa issue because, while
we understand the security needs, the situation is unacceptable," said
Abu-Holeiqa.
Al-Zamel also praised Pelosi's visit to Syria, saying Syria "is part of
this Arab world, part of the issues to be resolved, and to ignore people
gets you nowhere."
Pelosi was the highest-ranking American politician to visit Syria since
relations began to deteriorate in 2003. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell went to Damascus in May 2003.
Washington accuses Syria of backing Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups it
deems terrorist organizations, and fueling Iraq's violence by allowing
Sunni insurgents to operate from its territory.
Pelosi's visit heightened tensions between the Bush administration and
congressional Democrats, who have stepped up their push for change in U.S.
policy in the Mideast and the Iraq war.
But Democrats -- and some Republicans -- said the lack of dialogue had
closed doors to possible progress in resolving Mideast crises.
Pelosi said she expressed to Assad "our concern about Syria's connections
to Hezbollah and Hamas" and militant fighters slipping across the Syrian
border into Iraq.
"We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a
road to peace," said Pelosi, who met for three hours with Assad.
Assad has repeatedly said over the past year that Damascus is willing to
negotiate with Israel, insisting the talks must lead to the return of the
Golan Heights, seized by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War.
"He's ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel," Pelosi said
of the Syrian leader.
[AP correspondent Zeina Karam in Damascus, Syria contributed to this
report.]
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- ------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:43:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Bush: Texas Chainsaw Management
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052043....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Vanityfair - May, 2007 (posted Apr 5, 2007)
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/revolvingdoor200705?printable=true¤tPage=all
The Bush Administration
Texas Chainsaw Management
Spinning the revolving door between government and business as never
before, the White House has handed more than 100 top environmental
posts to representatives of polluting industries. The author provides a
biographical sampler–and describes a devastating rollback of three
decades of progress.
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The verdict of history sometimes takes centuries. The verdict on George
W. Bush as the nation's environmental steward has already been written
in stone. No president has mounted a more sustained and deliberate
assault on the nation's environment. No president has acted with more
solicitude toward polluting industries. Assaulting the environment
across a broad front, the Bush administration has promoted and
implemented more than 400 measures that eviscerate 30 years of
environmental policy. After years of denial, the president recently
acknowledged the potentially catastrophic threat of global warming, but
the words have no more meaning than the promise to rebuild New Orleans
"better than ever."
Most insidiously, the president has put representatives of polluting
industries or environmental skeptics in charge of virtually all the
agencies responsible for protecting America from pollution. Some
egregious officials are now gone, often returning to the private sector
whose interests they served. But the administrators who remain in place
continue to carry the torch—people such as Mark Rey, a timber-industry
lobbyist appointed to oversee the U.S. Forest Service; Rejane "Johnnie"
Burton, at Interior, a former oil-and-gas-company executive in Wyoming,
who has failed to collect billions on leases from oil companies active
in the Gulf of Mexico; and Elizabeth Stolpe, a former lobbyist for one
of the nation's worst polluters, Koch Industries, who is an associate
director (for toxics and environmental protection) at the White House
Council on Environmental Quality.
This trend is consistent across all of the departments of government
that pertain to the environment: the Department of Commerce (which
regulates fisheries); the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and the
Interior; the E.P.A.; and even the relevant divisions of the Justice
Department. More than 100 representatives from polluting industries
occupy key spots at the federal agencies that regulate environmental
quality. The revolving door between business and government—turning the
regulated into the regulators—has never before spun so fast. And as a
consequence environmental protection has been advancing backward on a
broad front.
Consider Jeffrey Holmstead, who for four years was a top official in
the E.P.A.'s Office of Air and Radiation. Before going to the E.P.A.,
Holmstead had worked for the law firm Latham & Watkins and represented
one of the nation's largest plywood producers, seeking to diminish
pollution controls. In 2004, Holmstead ushered through new regulations
exempting wood-products manufacturers from air-pollution rules
governing formaldehyde. According to the Los Angeles Times, Holmstead's
new rule "relied on a risk assessment generated by a chemical
industry-funded think tank, and a novel legal approach recommended by a
timber industry lawyer."
Or consider the career of Camden Toohey, who in 2001 was appointed to
be the special assistant for Alaska by Gale Norton, the secretary of
the interior from 2001 to 2006. Toohey, who was previously the
executive director of Arctic Power, the chief lobbying group in the
campaign to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
oversaw Interior's Alaska operations until resigning, in January of
2006, to take a job at Shell, where Norton now serves as senior legal
adviser.
And then there is Charles Lambert, a former lobbyist for the beef
industry, now a deputy undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture
responsible for marketing and regulatory programs. In June 2004, The
Denver Post reported on an exchange between Lambert and Representative
Joe Baca, a California Democrat, at a hearing on the issue of mad-cow
disease:
"Is there a possibility that [the disease] could get through?" …
Lambert answered, "No, sir."
"None at all?," Baca asked.
"No," Lambert replied.
"You would bet your life on it—your job on it, right?"
Lambert answered, "Yes, sir."
The disease was discovered in the U.S. six months later.
Reports in The New York Times and on 60 Minutes have highlighted the
case of Phillip Cooney, who was the chief of staff for the White House
Council on Environmental Quality. His job was to advise the president
on the environmental implications of decisions that he makes. Cooney's
previous job had been as the chief lobbyist for the American Petroleum
Institute. His preoccupation during his four-year White House stint,
according to news accounts, was combing scientific documents issued by
the various federal agencies in order to remove damaging statements
about the oil industry and the coal industry. He suppressed or altered
several major studies on global warming in order to protect the
interests of his former clients. After the Times revealed the
alterations, in 2005, Cooney left his job and went to work for
ExxonMobil.
It can be a fine thing to have businesspeople in government, when the
objective is to recruit competence and expertise. But high-ranking
officials such as the ones cited here, and scores of others, have
entered government service not to serve the public interest but rather
to subvert the very laws they are charged with enforcing.
Under the Bush administration, the big polluters, as the author and
activist Jim Hightower has pointed out, have eliminated the middleman.
"The corporations don't have to lobby the government any more. They are
the government." The Top 12
Ann Klee (2001–6), general counsel, E.P.A.; counselor to Interior
secretary Gale Norton Prior to her government appointments, Klee was a
partner at Preston Gates & Ellis, where she worked for clients from the
transportation, mining, timber, and waste-management industries on
cases involving the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and
Superfund.
J. Steven Griles (2001–4), deputy secretary, Department of the Interior
While employed at Interior, Griles, a former lobbyist for coal, oil,
and gas interests, negotiated payments of over $1 million from National
Environmental Strategies, a lobbying firm in which he had had a
principal interest. Griles's tenure was described by an inspector
general as an "ethical quagmire."
Lynn Scarlett (2001–present), assistant secretary, then deputy
secretary, Department of the Interior Scarlett was previously president
of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank. In a 1997 article
she wrote, "Environmentalism is a coherent ideology that rivals Marxism
in its challenge to the classical liberal view of government as
protector of individual rights."
Gale Norton (2001–6), secretary, Department of the Interior
Norton served two terms as Colorado attorney general before joining a
Denver law firm, where she represented numerous developers and lobbied
for NL Industries, a paint manufacturer which has been the target of a
dozen lawsuits alleging lead poisoning and has been a defendant in
lawsuits involving 75 toxic-waste sites.
Richard Stickler (2006–present), assistant secretary, Mine Safety and
Health Administration As reported by The Charleston Gazette, Stickler
"worked for BethEnergy Mines of Pennsylvania for 30 years, worked
briefly for Massey and then headed Pennsylvania's Bureau of Deep Mine
Safety from 1997 to 2003, when he retired. Stickler's mines had
accident rates twice the national average."
William Wehrum (2005–present), acting assistant administrator, E.P.A.
Wehrum is a former Latham & Watkins lobbyist specializing in Clean Air
Act issues. He was involved in crafting lenient rules for power-plant
mercury pollution in which a dozen paragraphs were taken from a Latham
& Watkins memo.
James Connaughton (2001–present), chairman, Council on Environmental
Quality Previously a partner at Sidley & Austin, Connaughton
represented General Electric and arco in their Superfund toxic-waste
fights with the E.P.A.
Jeffrey D. Jarrett (2006–7), assistant secretary, Department of Energy
Prior to his work in government, Jarrett spent 13 years in the
coal-mining industry. In March, he returned to the private sector when
the Coal Based Generation Stakeholders Group hired him as its executive
director.
Francis S. Blake (2001–2), deputy secretary, Department of Energy
Blake played a key role in formulating Bush's controversial Clear Skies
legislation, meeting with dozens of energy-industry lobbyists in
closed-door sessions. Blake has since been named chairman and C.E.O. of
Home Depot.
William Gerry Myers III (2001–3), solicitor, Department of the Interior
Myers has compared federal land-use regulation to "the tyrannical
actions of King George." After leaving Interior, Myers rejoined Holland
& Hart, where he represents several extractive-industries clients.
Rebecca W. Watson (2001–5), assistant secretary, Department of the
Interior Watson had a lengthy legal career helping mining- and
timber-industry clients. She has ties to the anti-environmental groups
Defenders of Property Rights and the Mountain States Legal Foundation.
Thomas Sansonetti (2001–5), assistant attorney general, Department of
Justice In previous stints at Interior, Sansonetti was involved in the
Exxon Valdez settlement and the infamous spotted-owl litigation. He has
worked as a lobbyist on behalf of mining and energy interests.
[Additional reporting by Brendan DeMelle.]
[Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is president of the Waterkeeper
Alliance, a non-governmental organization that promotes clean water
throughout the world.]
- ------------------------------
Message: 13
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:45:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Bush Again Ignores Senate to Name Crony Ambassador
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052045....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
AP via Yahoo - Apr 5, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070405/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_outflanking_congress
Bush bypasses Senate to name ambassador
By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON--President Bush named Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as U.S.
ambassador to Belgium on Wednesday, using a maneuver that allowed him to
bypass Congress, where Democrats had derailed Fox's nomination.
The appointment, made while lawmakers were out of town on spring break,
prompted angry rebukes from Democrats, who said Bush's action may even be
illegal.
Democrats had denounced Fox for his donation to the Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign. The group's TV ads, which
claimed that Sen. John Kerry exaggerated his military record in Vietnam,
were viewed as a major factor in the Massachusetts Democrat's election loss.
Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation in the
Foreign Relations Committee, Bush withdrew the nomination last week. On
Wednesday, with the Senate on a one-week break, the president used his power
to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate
confirmation.
This means Fox can remain ambassador until the end of the next session of
Congress, effectively through the end of the Bush presidency.
"It's sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of
the presidency to reward a donor over the objections of the Senate," Kerry
said in a statement.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said
he plans to ask the Government Accountability Office to issue an opinion on
whether the recess appointment is legal.
Recess appointments are intended to give the president flexibility if
Congress is out for a lengthy period of time, such as the four-week
adjournment in summer. But Dodd said the law was not intended to circumvent
lawmakers' approval.
"This is really now taking the recess appointment vehicle and abusing this
beyond anyone's imagination," said Dodd, a candidate for the 2008 Democratic
presidential nomination. "This is a travesty."
Bush also used his recess appointment authority to make Andrew Biggs deputy
director of Social Security. The president's earlier nomination of Biggs, an
outspoken advocate of partially privatizing the government's retirement
program, was rejected by Senate Democrats in February.
Presidents since George Washington have made appointments during
congressional recesses to fill positions in the executive and judicial
branches. Bush has used the authority more frequently than some -- but not
all -- of his most recent predecessors, making 171 so far, compared with 140
for President Clinton over two terms, 77 by his father in one term and 243
by President Reagan during two terms.
Some of Bush's more notable recess appointments include John Bolton as U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton arrived at the U.N. in August 2005
after being appointed during a congressional recess because he twice failed
to be confirmed by the Senate. Still unable to get Senate backing, he
stepped down in December.
Others include include William Pryor and Charles Pickering (news, bio,
voting record) as federal appeals court judges, in 2004, and Otto Reich as
an assistant secretary of state, in 2002.
Fox, a 77-year-old St. Louis businessman, gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat
group. He is national chairman of the Jewish Republican Coalition and was
dubbed a "ranger" by Bush's 2004 campaign for raising at least $200,000. He
is founder and chairman of the Clayton, Mo.-based Harbour Group, which
specializes in the takeover of manufacturing companies.
Fox has donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates and causes
since the 1990s.
In answer to questions about the Swift Boat donation, Fox has said he gives
when asked, insisting he was not involved with the writing of the ad scripts
and never saw them before they aired but had been aware of the general
thrust of the group.
Fox issued a statement saying he is "delighted and honored" to accept the
ambassadorial appointment.
"As the son of a man who fled Europe to find freedom and a better life, I am
especially humbled by the opportunity to return to that continent as this
nation's representative," he said.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- ------------------------------
Message: 14
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:47:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] So-called "American Taliban" seeks reduced sentence
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052047....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
AP via Yahoo - Apr 5, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070405/ap_on_re_us/american_taliban
American Taliban seeks reduced sentence
By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - The lawyer and parents of American-born Taliban soldier John
Walker Lindh asked President Bush on Wednesday to commute his 20-year prison
term, citing the case of an Australian man who was sentenced to less than a
year for aiding terrorism.
Lindh, 26, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 by American forces
sent to topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He was
charged with conspiring to kill Americans and support terrorists but pleaded
guilty to lesser offenses, including carrying weapons against U.S. forces.
Lindh's lawyer and father said the lighter sentence given to Australian
David Hicks should be reflected in Lindh's case.
"It is a question of proportionality. It is a question of fairness, and it
is a question of the religious experience John Walker Lindh had," attorney
James Brosnahan said. "And it was not in any way directed at the United
States."
Lindh converted to Islam and went to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban
against the Northern Alliance, which received U.S. backing.
On Saturday, Hicks pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism and acknowledged
aiding al-Qaida during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. He was
sentenced to nine months in prison. After spending five years at the U.S.
naval base in Cuba, the 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner is likely to be
transferred to a prison in Australia within weeks.
Brosnahan brokered Lindh's plea deal and said it was the best he could do in
the political climate immediately after the 2001 attacks.
"In the atmosphere of the time, the best John could get was a plea bargain
and a 20-year sentence," said Lindh's father, Frank Lindh. "We love our son
very much. He was wrongly accused when he was found in Afghanistan."
The White House referred telephone calls to the Justice Department, which
declined to comment because it had not received Lindh's petition.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
- ------------------------------
Message: 15
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:48:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Krugman: Distract and Disenfranchise
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052048....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
sent by Ed Pearl
The New York Times - Apr 2, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/02/opinion/02krugman.html
Distract and Disenfranchise
By PAUL KRUGMAN
I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now,
finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising
income inequality.
Let me explain.
In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed
to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class
nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social
injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its
appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to
convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were
being taxed to provide social programs for other people.
Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society.
Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the
richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the
rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the
political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking
shape.
And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income
distribution tables, but they do know that today's rich are building
themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not
read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren't going anywhere:
according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that
it's harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue
when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that "some of our
citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working
people behind."
But today's Republicans can't respond in any meaningful way to rising
inequality, because their activists won't let them. You could see the
dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P.
presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club
for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and
privatization.
The Republican Party's adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big
problems. It can't offer domestic policies that respond to the public's real
needs. So how can it win elections?
The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and
disenfranchisement.
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential
distraction; until then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn't the
moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy
with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further
distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could
denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based
on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004
Democratic National Convention?
But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was
disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for
the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the
voting booth.
Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida "felon
purge," which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in
the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what
much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.
Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue
allegations of voter fraud - a phrase that has become almost synonymous with
"voting while black." Former staff members of the Justice Department's civil
rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected
to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia's voter ID law to Tom DeLay's
Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise
African-American voters.
The good news is that all the G.O.P.'s abuses of power weren't enough to win
the 2006 elections. And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because
the Democrats - who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich
people and corporations that they weren't really populists - seem to be
realizing that times have changed.
A week before the Republican candidates trooped to Palm Beach to declare
their allegiance to tax cuts, the Democrats met to declare their commitment
to universal health care. And it's hard to see what the G.O.P. can offer in
response.
- ------------------------------
Message: 16
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:52:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Guantanamo Gulag: conditions worsening
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052052....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
BBC - Apr 4, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6526589.stm
Guantanamo conditions 'worsening'
Conditions for detainees at the US military jail at Guantanamo Bay are
deteriorating, with the majority held in solitary confinement, a report
says.
Amnesty International said the often harsh and inhumane conditions at
the camp were "pushing people to the edge".
It called for the facility to be closed and for plans for "unfair"
military commission trials to be abandoned.
Many of the 385 inmates have been held for five years or more, unable
to mount a legal challenge to their detention.
"While the United States has an obligation to protect its citizens...
that does not relieve the United States from its responsibilities to
comply with human rights," the report said.
"Statements by the Bush administration that these men are 'enemy
combatants,' 'terrorists' or 'very bad people' do not justify the
complete lack of due process rights," the group said.
Amnesty reiterated its call for detainees at the prison camp in Cuba -
many of whom are suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters - to be
released or charged and sent to trial.
'Already in despair'
The report, published on Thursday, said about 300 detainees are now
being held at a new facility - known as Camp 5, Camp 6 and Camp Echo -
comparable to "super-max" high security units in the US.
The group said the facility had "created even harsher and apparently
more permanent conditions of extreme isolation and sensory deprivation".
It said the detainees were reportedly confined to windowless cells for
22 hours a day, only allowed to exercise at night and could go for days
without seeing daylight.
The organisation's UK director, Kate Allen, described the process at
Guantanamo as "a travesty of justice".
"With many prisoners already in despair at being held in indefinite
detention... some are dangerously close to full-blown mental and
physical breakdown.
"The US authorities should immediately stop pushing people to the edge
with extreme isolation techniques and allow proper access for
independent medical experts and human rights groups."
'Serving justice'
The provision that stripped detainees of their right to mount a legal
challenge to their confinement was upheld by a US federal appeals court
in Washington in February.
Pushing the anti-terror legislation through Congress last year, Mr Bush
said he needed the new law to bring terror suspects to justice.
It allows for the indefinite detention of people as "enemy combatants".
The US has said it plans to use the military tribunal system to
prosecute about 80 of 385 prisoners remaining at the camp.
© BBC MMVII
- ------------------------------
Message: 17
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:53:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Court Sides with "Conscientious Objector"
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052053....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
InterPress Service - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37233
Court Sides with "Conscientious Objector"
by Aaron Glantz
SAN FRANCISCO, Apr 5 (IPS) - University of California Santa Cruz
student Robert Zabala joined the Marine Corps thinking it would be a
"place where he could find security" after the death of his grandmother
in 2003.
But when he began boot camp in June 2003, Zabala said he had an ethical
awakening that would not allow him to kill other people. He was
particularly appalled by the boot camp's attempts to desensitise the
recruits to violence.
"The response that all the recruits are supposed to say is 'kill,'" he
told San Francisco's KGO-TV. "So in unison you have maybe 400 recruits
chanting 'kill, kill, kill,' and after a while that word becomes almost
nothing to you. What does it mean? You say it so often you really don't
think of the consequences of what it means to say 'kill' over and over
again as you're performing this deadly technique, a knife to the
throat."
When Zabala realised he couldn't kill another human being, he submitted
an application for conscientious objector status to the Marine Corps
reserves. He saw two chaplains and a clinical psychologist, who all
agreed his moral objections were legitimate and that he should be
discharged from the military. Hundreds of such applications have been
granted in recent years.
But his platoon commander, Major R.D. Doherty, called Zabala
"insincere" because he did not request discharge as a conscientious
objector until nearly a year after basic training.
"What did you think you were joining, the Peace Corps?" court documents
quote Major Doherty as saying. "I don't know how anyone who joins the
Marine Corps cannot know that it involves killing."
Zabala sued and on Mar. 29, a federal judge in Northern California
overruled the military justice system, ordering the Marine Corps to
discharge Zabala as a conscientious objector within 15 days.
In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware noted Zabala's
experiences with his first commander Captain Sanchez. During basic
training, Sanchez repeatedly gave speeches about "blowing s*** up" or
"kicking some f***ing ass." In 2003, when a fellow recruit committed
suicide on the shooting range, Sanchez commented in front of the
recruits, "f*** him, f*** his parents for raising him, and f*** the
girl who dumped him."
Another boot camp instructor showed recruits a "motivational clip"
displaying Iraqi corpses, explosions, gun fights and rockets set to a
heavy metal song that included the lyrics, "Let the bodies hit the
floor," the petition said. Zabala said he cried, while other recruits
nodded their heads in time with the beat. In court, Zabala he abhorred
the blood-lust his drill instructors seemed to possess.
Aaron Hughes served six years in the Illinois National Guard, including
one tour as a military truck driver in occupied Iraq. He says Robert
Zabala's experiences are typical of basic training.
"It's a lot of competition and a lot of learning how to not be like
yourself as a person or see others as human beings," he told IPS.
"You're a piece of property that should respond to commands. It's a
real simple lifestyle when you're under complete orders."
Hughes said at the time he believed basic training helped foster a
sense of manhood he felt he lacked after being raised by his mother.
But after being sent to Iraq, he changed his mind. An artist by trade,
Hughes went back over the photos he took while deployed in Iraq and
altered them in an "attempt to interpret the posture assumed as a
soldier/tourist in the surreal space of Iraq." Hughes' work is
currently on display at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in
Chicago.
"I think it's wrong, looking back at it," he said. "How can you not
perceive it as a step away from your humanity? They automatically start
isolating you. They tell you your girlfriend or your husband is not
going to be there. They tell you not to trust anyone but the military
and they really start fostering that as your sole relationship in life."
It's extremely rare for civilian courts to overrule military courts
but, but Zabala's attorney says it's at least the second time this has
happened during the Iraq war.
Geoff Millard, the Washington representative for Iraq Veterans Against
the War, says Judge's James Ware's decision to force the military to
discharge Zabala will encourage other soldiers who are "sitting back
and thinking about CO (conscientious objection) who are really very
sincere and they're not sure that their claim will make it."
Millard noted that the military is having difficulty reaching its
recruiting goals to continue fighting the Iraq war and as a result has
been more cautious than usual in releasing people who say they have
moral objections to war.
Zabala's lawyer, Steve Collier, told IPS, "It's a good case because the
armed services will have to think twice about denying to conscientious
objectors a discharge simply to meet their retention troop standards."
The Marine Corps has yet say whether it will appeal Judge Ware's
decision.
(END/2007)
- ------------------------------
Message: 18
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:54:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] US Plutocracy: Income Inequality at pre-Depression
Levels
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052054....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Progreso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Max_Castro&otherweek=1175749200
Becoming a plutocracy:
Income inequality soars to pre-Depression levels
By Max J. Castro
When he was running for President, George W. Bush said he would pay more
attention to Latin America than his predecessor did, a promise he
definitely has not fulfilled. One thing Bush has done, however, is emulate
the worst aspect of Latin American societies: their breathtaking level of
economic inequality.
Inequality in the United States has been rising since 1980 and the advent
of Ronald Reagan's rightist revolution. Bill Clinton's eight-year rule,
marked by major concessions to conservative ideology, merely slowed the
trend toward income concentration. For the last six years, George W. Bush
has carried out a ferocious class war on behalf of the rich and the very
rich, groups the President has called "my base."
The result of more than twenty-five years of social polices favoring the
very wealthy is that we are back to the income distribution that existed
before the Depression, the New Deal and the Great Society. In 2005, the
last year for which data is available, income inequality in the United
States reached its highest level since 1928.
The data, reported in The New York Times based on research by Professor
Emmanuel Saez of the University of California and Professor Thomas Piketty
of the Paris School of Economics, speak for themselves. Total income in the
United States rose by a healthy 9 percent in 2005. Yet, that year, the
overwhelming majority of Americans were economic losers. In fact, the 90
percent of the population not in the top one tenth of earners saw their
income drop by an average of $172, or 0.6 percent.
In contrast to the fate of nine out of ten in this country, the top 1
percent of income earners made $139,000 more in 2005 than in 2004, a
healthy 14 percent increase. An even more exclusive group, the richest
300,000 Americans, who represent one-tenth of one percent of the total
population, was an even bigger beneficiary of the bounty of the U.S.
economy. Collectively, this group made more money in 2005 than the 150
million Americans in the bottom half of the income pyramid. In 2005, the
income of this well-heeled crowd increased by $908,000 (19 percent) to an
average of $5.6 million.
But the really big winners were those in the top one-hundredth of one
percent. Those in this tiny group gained an average of $4.4 million (21
percent) in a single year, bringing their average income to a cool $25.7
million.
In George W. Bush's America, "the rich get richer" is no mere cliché. It is
the literal truth. Yet the President has the temerity to lecture Latin
Americans about social justice!
The stunning increase in economic inequality in the United States is no
accident. It can be traced to the ascendancy of the ideology of unfettered
capitalism since the 1970s and the policies instituted in pursuit of that
ideology ever since. The chronology makes that clear. In the late 1970s,
before the right-wing Republican revolution, the top 10 percent received
about 33 percent, or a third, of total income; in 2005 that elite group got
almost half (48.5 percent). The top 1 percent recorded an even bigger gain
during the same period, more than doubling their share of income between
1980 and 2005.
How is it possible that, in a country with a rapidly expanding economy and
a supposedly democratic political system, 90 percent of the people can be
economic losers while those at the top reap all of the rewards? The answer
is that the United States is perilously close to becoming a plutocracy if
it is not already there.
- ------------------------------
Message: 19
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:58:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Landau: Comparing Padillas, Homosexuality and Murder
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052058....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Progreso Weekly - Mar 29, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Landau_ant&otherweek=1175749200
Comparing Padillas, Homosexuality and Murder
By Saul Landau
Bush behavior - practicing torture, violating human rights and wrapping
itself in secrecy while preaching the opposite - has given deceit a bad
name. W didn't begin the double speak and double standards patter, however.
In 1971, U.S. troops and bombers routinely massacred Vietnamese, Laotians
and Cambodians. In that same year, Cuban police arrested a poet, Heberto
Padilla, without charging him. Hundreds of U.S. and European intellectuals
and academics who had opposed against the U.S. wars reserved a special kind
of outrage when unsubstantiated rumors spread that Padilla had undergone
brutal torture. Petitions circulated demanding that Cuba stop torturing
this great poet, although no one had seen or heard any direct evidence of
such mistreatment.
After 38 days, Cuba's state security cops sprung Padilla, who then
delivered his notorious speech (1930s Stalin purge style imitation
confession) to writers and artists, condemning his "bourgeois" and
"counterrevolutionary behavior", and naming other writers as also
responsible for their misguided comportment. It didn't matter whether he
invented the speech as a kind of literary ruse to mock state security or
the cops had pressured him to deliver this mea culpa. Padilla became an
instant pariah - a fink and coward -- in Cuban intellectual circles.
His book of poems, Fuera del Juego (Out of the Game), won the UNEAC
(Artists and Writers Union) poetry prize in 1968. Cuba published the book
with a foreword by UNEAC reprimanding Padilla for his behavior.
Over the ensuing months and years after his arrest, I talked with Padilla
who laughed at the campaign to stop his supposed torture. He had suffered a
severe nervous reaction to getting arrested, he recounted The cops panicked
over his stomach pains and they rushed him to a seaside resort, fed him
yogurt and provided on-call doctors.
Throughout the 1970s, Cuban intellectuals would cross the street when they
saw Padilla. A few felt sorry for him and his reputation-blanching mistake:
making the mea culpa statement. Padilla admitted to me that the security
people had behaved considerately. But we agreed they had no right to arrest
him - just because he had written and spoken dissenting words in brilliant
poems and bad mouthed Fidel and the revolution to foreign visitors. His
arrest correctly provoked leading world intellectuals to respond in
outrage. Cuba deserved condemnation for having arrested Padilla, but not
for torturing him since he wasn't tortured or threatened with torture.
Padilla lived quietly in Havana for several years afterwards, receiving a
good salary from the state. In 1980, he moved to the United States where he
taught at Princeton and then at Auburn University. He died of a heart
attack in 2000, a lonely man.
Another Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Jose of Puerto Rican descent, holds no
claim to the intellectual spotlight. Intellectuals have not rallied to the
cause of this former street gang member who converted to Islam. In
February, in a Miami courtroom, the world public learned - those few who
read about it - that after September 11 U.S. interrogators used "unusual"
methods to "break" prisoners.
Unlike Cuban state security who fed Heberto yogurt, the U.S. torturers
offered Jose sleep interruption, sound blasting and mind altering drugs.
They broke Padilla, but not exactly in the way they wanted. The Bushies had
planned to try him as an international terrorist, but his lawyers argued
that the long years of torture while in captivity had left him insane and
therefore not fit to stand trial. The judge disagreed, but the gruesome
details are starting to emerge.
In May 2002 U.S. agents grabbed Padilla at Chicago's O'Hare airport,
classified him "enemy combatant," and threw him into a tiny, windowless
cell in a Navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina. They shackled
Padilla, covered his eyes with goggles and his ears with headphones -- for
more than 3 years. His interrogators forbade him contact with lawyers or
family members, but they did keep bright lights turned on him and blasted
his auditory nerves with loud sounds. Padilla claims they injected him
"truth serum," or, perhaps as his lawyers believe LSD or PCP.
Two professionals examined him and determined he had been physically
destroyed, and thus unable to assist in his own defense. He thinks of his
lawyers as interrogators, not as defenders. As Naomi Klein wrote (The
Nation, March 12, 2007), in order to prove that "the extended torture
visited upon Mr. Padilla has left him damaged," his lawyers want to tell
the court what happened during those years in the Navy brig. The government
strenuously objects, maintaining that "Padilla is competent," that the
treatment he received is irrelevant.
Compare the intellectual outrage in Heberto Padilla's case with the
relatively muted response by leading intellectuals and artists to Jose
Padilla's treatment. The outcry of human rights violations around the Cuban
poet was literally deafening; the silence on Jose Padilla rings louder
still. His case drags on as torture claims from U.S. prisons multiply.
In 1971, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Susan Sontag, led a list
of distinguished writers. They held Fidel Castro responsible for directing
Heberto's torture. Do intellectuals not get aroused by what appears as yet
one more George W. Bush peccadillo? Is it because most cultured people no
longer hold the assumption that the United States holds the eternal torch
for human rights and civilized behavior?
Indeed, when U.S. officials use moral hyperbole it seems to mocks the facts
of U.S. behavior. In early March, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly likened homosexuality to adultery. The
General vibrated his moral outrage over the prospect of having gay soldiers
serving alongside straight soldiers. Yich!!!
The military, he declared, "should not condone it by allowing gays to serve
openly in the armed forces." In 1994, President Clinton instituted his
enigmatic "don't ask, don't tell" policy on sexuality - which he ironically
did not use himself when he got caught in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Pace, the law abiding officer, claimed he of course supported this
standard, which prohibits commanders from asking about a person's sexual
orientation.
But, Pace personally believed that "homosexual acts between two individuals
are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts." Pace told a
reporter: "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy
that says it is OK to be immoral in any way." Speaking "as an individual,
I would not want (acceptance of gay behavior) to be our policy, just like I
would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that
so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look
the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral
behavior," he said. (Pauline Jelinek, AP, March 13, 2007
Wow, I said to myself, it's a good thing the reporter didn't ask Pace how
he compared his moral standards on homosexual behavior with the morality of
killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians - or indeed, if such
killing by the U.S. heterosexual military was immoral. Imagine an army that
took seriously the Sixth Commandment - You Shall Not Murder!
Given the raging fundamentalism that is sweeping across the United States
and the armed forces, it becomes puzzling to see this Commandment become an
exception. When it comes to the unborn (abortion) or brain dead -- remember
Terri Schiavo? -- the fundamentalists reach their pinnacle of moral
indignation.
Somewhere in their Bible it must say something about how angry God gets
when He sees two guys getting it on. This obviously means more to Him than
the act of slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq,
which was the U.S. army's job. Is there no Commandment that says: "Thou
shalt not bugger the neighbor"? There's one about not "coveting your
neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything
that belongs to your neighbor." But when U.S. soldiers stole from and
raped Iraqis wholesale after they invaded in March 2003, Pace expressed no
moral indignation.
In the 1970s, Cuba mistakenly arrested Heberto Padilla, an act that
symbolized the restriction of creativity. Subsequently, the government
reversed those policies. In the last two decades, Cuban music, literature
and especially cinema has offered profound critiques of its social order.
Tomas Gutierrez Alea's "Strawberry and Chocolate" and "Guantanamera"
ridicule Party line thinking and bureaucracy.
Bush and company have not taken responsibility for the injustice done to
Jose Padilla and thousands more held without charges, many of them
tortured. "Mistakes were made!" Bush chants this mantra when his murderous
errors in Iraq are revealed.
The Heberto Padilla case still resonates with the notion of censorship, but
it no longer represents Cuba cultural policy. The Jose Padilla case stands
as the insignia of current U.S. justice standards.
[Landau's new book is A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD. His new film, WE DON'T PLAY
GOLF HERE is available on dvd from roundwo...@gmail.com]
- ------------------------------
Message: 20
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:00:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Anti-Cuba Terrorist Posada Again Denied Bail
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052100....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Juventud Rebelde - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/international/2007-04-05/bail-denied-to-anti-cuba-terrorist-posada-carriles/
Bail Denied to Anti-Cuba Terrorist Posada Carriles
Posada will wait in jail for his trial set for May 11 since he failed to
guarantee that he would comply with house arrest
EL PASO -- International terrorist Luis Posada Carriles will have no option
but to wait in jail for his trial set to take place on May 11, 2007.
US Judge Kathleen Cardone finally denied him the bail, arguing that there
were no guarantees that he would comply with house arrest, taking into
account the risk that he posed to evade justice in order to avoid returning
to prison.
The verdict ended an expectation raised 24 hours earlier when Judge Cardone
left in suspense her decision about Posada's bail, reported the EFE news
agency
In a hearing on Tuesday, the judge of the West Texas District Court in El
Paso heard arguments from the defence, which again attempted to present
Posada as a «harmless old men», despite prosecution attorneys' evidence of
him as being «a peril to the community. »
Posada has remained bars accused of lying to the US authorities about his
illegal entry into that country, while the court continues to ignore his
crimes of terrorism - which back up a pending request for extradition
presented by Venezuela.
Nonetheless, the peril poised by the former CIA operative was recalled in
the Tuesday hearing by Federal Attorney Paul Ahern, who pointed out that
American authorities have no jurisdiction to try him for the bombing of a
Cuban commercial airplane in 1976, though this does not mean that Posada
was innocent of that crime.
Also fruitless were all offers made by individuals close to Posada to
pledge assets as bail to secure his release. Commercial property owned by
one Judith Garcia, valued at $2 million, as well as several thousand
dollars collected in Miami were offered as a proof of the «popularity» of
the criminal.
Equally fruitless were efforts of the defence to refute Posada's
dangerousness when saying that the terrorist --the mastermind of other
crimes, such as attacks to Cuban hotels in 1997-- «suffers from cancer,
heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis. »
The hearing was held under strict security and with the attendance of
members of at least 30 anti-Cuban organizations from California and Miami.
Among them there were former mercenaries of Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion who
were members of Brigade 2506, now united in the Association of Veterans of
the Bay of Pigs.
Defence attorney Arturo Hernandez even proposed that Posada be granted
domiciliary arrest and be monitored with an electronic device, to prevent
him from going undetected to any airport or bus station. Hernandez also
committed that the former prison escapee would report to the penal
authorities everyday by phone and would agree to any other security
measures deemed reasonable by the court.
Nonetheless, the judge responded angrily saying, «How can you convince me
that a private home is more secure than a jail in Venezuela? »
Prosecutor Ahern did not consider Posada's release from jail reasonable and
said there was no guarantee that he would obey his domiciliary arrest, as
he had once escaped from a Venezuelan prison. In addition, Ahern pointed
out that Posada had previously travelled using false passports --one of the
crimes for which he has been charged by US authorities-- implying that the
defendant has the resources to escape once again.
Immediately, Posada's lawyer reminded the court that that the terrorist's
possession of those passports was «facilitated by the US government, which
was at least knowledgeable of their existence when he was a CIA informer. »
Posada is accused of seven charges for migratory fraud and of making a
false testimony. Many consider that his links to the CIA and the services
that he has rendered to various US administrations has turned his case into
a «hot potato» for American authorities.
© Copyright Juventud Rebelde
- ------------------------------
Message: 21
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:01:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] A Decade Later, Where is Commitment to Reduce Hunger?
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704052101....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Granma Daily - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art94.html
No Commitment on Reducing Hunger
Ten years after political leaders agreed to reduce the hunger that plagues
some 854 million people worldwide, the hungry of the planet continue today
with empty stomachs.
The failure to attack the problem became even more apparent in recent weeks
after the United States expressed its desire to promote a new economic
policy that would sacrifice food production for fuel, a scheme strongly
criticized by Cuban President Fidel Castro and other leaders, diplomats and
scientists.
At the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome organized by the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO), participating countries set the goal of
reducing hunger by half before 2015. The FAO noted recently that the
problem of hunger actually worsened in 2006.
- ------------------------------
Message: 22
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:02:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Gonzales Prepares to Fight for His Job in Testimony
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The Washington Post - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040402614_pf.html
Gonzales Prepares to Fight for His Job in Testimony
By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has retreated from public view
this week in an intensive effort to save his job, spending hours
practicing testimony and phoning lawmakers for support in preparation
for pivotal appearances in the Senate this month, according to
administration officials.
After struggling for weeks to explain the extent of his involvement in
the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, Gonzales and his aides are viewing
the Senate testimony on April 12 and April 17 as seriously as if it
were a confirmation proceeding for a Supreme Court or a Cabinet
appointment, officials said.
Ed Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, and
Timothy E. Flanigan, who worked for Gonzales at the White House, have
met with the attorney general to plot strategy. The department has
scheduled three days of rigorous mock testimony sessions next week and
Gonzales has placed phone calls to more than a dozen GOP lawmakers
seeking support, officials said.
Gonzales is seeking to convince skeptical lawmakers that he can be
trusted to command the Justice Department after the prosecutor firings,
which he initially described as an "overblown personnel matter."
Subsequent documents and testimony from his former chief of staff have
shown that Gonzales was regularly briefed on the process, revelations
that have led to calls for his resignation.
Justice officials and outside experts said the effort is further
hampered by legal conflicts among Gonzales and his senior aides. Top
Democrats have also accused department officials of misleading Congress
in previous testimony, leading Justice lawyers to insist on limiting
contact between key players to avoid allegations of obstructing a
congressional investigation, officials said.
As a result, Gonzales and senior Justice lawyers have so far received
little assistance from the White House and cannot consult with some of
his closest aides, including Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty,
officials said.
"We are hampered because some senior officials are not able to discuss
the facts as they know them in the same room, for fears of additional
accusations of misleading Congress," said one Justice official, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
issue.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent
a letter to Gonzales on Tuesday, asking for "appropriate firewalls"
between potential witnesses involved in the firings.
"Our question to you is: Who do we talk to at the Department of
Justice?" Leahy and Whitehouse wrote. "The office of the Attorney
General appears to be hopelessly conflicted."
Several central players in the prosecutor saga are out of the Justice
Department building altogether. They include Gonzales's former chief of
staff, D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned last month, and senior counselor
Monica M. Goodling, who is on indefinite leave and who yesterday
reiterated her refusal to answer questions from Congress. Michael J.
Elston, McNulty's chief of staff, also began a scheduled personal leave
this week after submitting to six hours of congressional interviews
last Friday, officials said.
"In a sense, this is even more difficult than a confirmation hearing,
because you are defending a record that has been assailed publicly and
it involves other members of Justice who are also going to be called,"
said former senator Daniel R. Coats (R-Ind.), who led confirmation
preparations for Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and former
White House counsel Harriet E. Miers.
"It just compounds the difficulty facing any witness in this
situation," Coats said. "You don't have the ability to coordinate with
other organizations or individuals that are going to be testifying, and
there will be a lot of people looking for inconsistencies. It is no
small challenge for the attorney general."
Gonzales is getting little support from Republicans in Congress,
according to several GOP aides. Gonzales is scheduled to testify next
Thursday before the Senate Appropriations Committee on budget matters,
and then on April 17 at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on
the prosecutor firings.
Aides said the tenor has been set on the GOP side by Sen. Arlen Specter
(Pa.), the ranking Republican on the judiciary panel. Specter has told
Gonzales in private that he should consider beginning his testimony
with an apology.
In previous confirmation hearings -- including those for Gonzales in
January 2005 and Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. since then
- -- the White House, the Justice Department and Judiciary Committee
Republicans closely coordinated their efforts.
In the case of Roberts, Specter's chief counsel, Michael O'Neill,
attended one of the mock testimony sessions known as "murder boards,"
according to a former GOP committee staffer, who requested anonymity to
speak freely about internal panel activities. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham
(R-S.C.) was in attendance to watch a similar session with Alito.
Gillespie, now head of the Virginia GOP, and Flanigan, who pulled out
of contention in 2005 as Gonzales's pick for deputy attorney general,
did not return telephone calls seeking comment on their recent
discussions with him.
After traveling around the country much of last week in an attempt to
shore up fractured relations with U.S. attorneys, Gonzales has spent
this week sequestered in his fifth-floor office suite, poring over
thousands of pages of documents related to his upcoming testimony. He
canceled tentative plans for a family vacation this week to focus on
the hearings, officials said.
"The attorney general is very focused and is spending extensive time
preparing this week to testify before Congress," spokesman Brian
Roehrkasse said.
Top Democrats have focused in recent days on escalating their demands
for testimony from Goodling, Gonzales's senior counselor and White
House liaison. She has told Congress that she will assert her Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer
questions about the firings.
Leahy and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee, have questioned whether Goodling is attempting to
hide criminal activity by refusing to answer questions.
Goodling's attorneys, John M. Dowd and Jeffrey King, responded in a
letter yesterday that such allegations "are unfortunately reminiscent
of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who infamously labeled those who asserted
their constitutional right to remain silent before his committee 'Fifth
Amendment Communists.' "
© 2007 The Washington Post
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Message: 23
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:03:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Booming Economy: Attack of the Mortgage Vultures
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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The Progressive via Alternet - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50120/
Attack of the Mortgage Vultures
By Matthew Rothschild
George Bush likes to boast about the high rates of homeownership. But
today in America, millions of homeowners are at risk of seeing their
prized possession taken right out from under them.
Over the last decade, we have been witnessing some of the most brazen
acts of mortgage entrapment ever to hit the American housing market.
Subprime lenders have coaxed eager consumers to buy or refinance their
homes often with no money down, and at seemingly low interest rates.
But now millions of homeowners are paying way more than they can afford.
Their dream of homeownership has quickly turned into a nightmare of
foreclosure.
And this nightmare is beginning to rattle the economy as a whole.
All the while, the government has stood idly by.
Buying or refinancing a home is not what it used to be. Traditionally,
you’d get your mortgage through a savings and loan. The banker there
would inspect your income and credit history to see if you could pay
back the loan, and you needed to come up with 20 percent of the loan as
a down payment. The loan would have a fixed interest rate over fifteen
or thirty years. The homeowner would have to set aside money for
property taxes and homeowners’ insurance. And the mortgage would stay
in the originating bank.
Things are different now, thanks to the so-called subprime mortgage
market, which accounts for almost one out of every four home loans
currently being written. Today, mortgage brokers barrage consumers with
offers of no-money-down loans, and last year, “more than 37 percent of
subprime loans were made without verification of borrowers’ incomes,â€
The New York Times notes. Nor do such lenders typically require
borrowers to escrow money for property taxes and homeowners’ insurance.
The terms of the loans are also much different. Adjustable rate
mortgages have proliferated, with consumers getting seduced by offers
of low interest rates the first two years of the loan only to be
slapped with steeply escalating rates in subsequent years.
And the original lending institution now often sells the mortgage on
the financial markets rather than hold onto it. When times get tough,
faraway investors are even less open to renegotiating terms than local
savings and loans were.
The boom in this industry has been extraordinary. “From 1994 to 2005,
the subprime loan market grew from $35 billion to $665 billion,†the
Center for Responsible Lending notes in a report entitled “Losing
Ground: Foreclosures in the Subprime Market and Their Cost to
Homeowners.â€
But so has the bust. “We estimate that one-third of families who
received a subprime loan in 2005 and 2006 will ultimately lose their
homes,†the report predicts.
While opening up the possibility of homeownership to people with lesser
means or spottier credit is something that progressives have advocated
for a long time, the way the private sector has done this has been
criminal. “Because the subprime market is designed to serve borrowers
who have credit problems, one might expect the industry to offer
subprime loan products that do not magnify the risk of loan failure,â€
the report says. “In fact, the opposite is true.â€
First of all, adjustable rate mortgages are inherently duplicitous.
They play upon the attractiveness of low interest rates up front, and
they exploit ignorance of higher rates later on.
Second, many who get subprime loans could easily have received safer,
less expensive mortgages in the prime market but were steered into the
subprime loan by a mortgage broker.
Third, these brokers sometimes get a cash bonus from the lender for
getting the consumer to agree to a higher interest rate than the lender
was expecting. And the broker’s incentive is not to ascertain
creditworthiness but to clinch the deal. The broker bears no financial
cost if the consumer ends up foreclosing.
Fourth, subprime mortgages often limit repayment of the loan’s
principal, so that for many years the homeowner is just paying back
interest and not accumulating equity.
Fifth, some subprime mortgages actually penalize the homeowner for
paying off the loan ahead of time. This is especially pernicious, since
if the consumer can’t make the payments and has to sell the home
prematurely, the lender imposes a huge extra fee at closing, draining
whatever equity the homeowner may have acquired.
African Americans and Latinos take subprime loans at astonishing rates.
More than 50 percent of the home loans to African Americans are
subprime. For Latinos, it’s 40 percent, the report says. “If current
trends continue, it is quite possible that subprime mortgages could
cause the largest loss of African American wealth in American history,â€
testified Martin Eakes, CEO of the Center for Responsible Lending on
February 7 to the Senate banking committee.
Some mortgage executives are absolutely unapologetic. “People are
adults and made choices in their lives because they wanted to own a
home of their own,†Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo told
Bloomberg news service on March 22. “America’s great because people can
make those decisions for themselves.†Countrywide Financial is the
nation’s biggest mortgage lender.
Given the reprehensible tactics in the industry, and given the softness
in the housing market, foreclosures are going through the roof. They
were 43 percent higher in the third quarter of 2006 than the third
quarter of 2005.
“Foreclosure rates will increase significantly in many markets as
housing appreciation slows or reverses,†the Center for Responsible
Lending says. “As a result, we project that 2.2 million borrowers will
lose their homes and up to $164 billion of wealth in the process.â€
Such a loss constitutes a threat to the overall economy. Several
leftwing economists, most notably Dean Baker, have been warning for
years about the danger of the housing bubble bursting. Now that it has
begun to pop, even the Federal Reserve has taken note, though it has
tried to put a happy face on the situation. In testimony before
Congress on March 28, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said, “The impact on
the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the
subprime markets seems likely to be contained.†But he added that the
Fed needs “flexibility†in case the problem spreads.
Ironically, the Fed all along could have done something about the
predatory practices in the subprime market. In 1994, Congress passed
the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act. It gives the Fed the
authority to “prohibit acts or practices in connection with—(A)
mortgage loans that the Board finds to be unfair, deceptive, or
designed to evade the provisions of this section; and (B) refinancing
of mortgage loans that the Board finds to be associated with abusive
lending practices, or that are otherwise not in the interest of the
borrower.â€
But the beatified former Fed chief Alan Greenspan was not all that
concerned about the interest of the borrower. His interest lay with the
financiers, so he hailed subprime lending as the “democratization of
credit.†In fact, as Senator Christopher Dodd noted at a recent
hearing, the Fed actually “seemed to encourage the development and useâ€
of adjustable rate mortgages “that today are defaulting and going into
foreclosure at record rates.â€
Congress may finally be rising to its responsibilities. Representative
Barney Frank and Senator Chuck Schumer both say they expect to
introduce legislation that would crack down on the unscrupulous lending
in the subprime market before the year is out.
But what’s the wait?
We can’t allow these vulture-like lenders to keep circling over the
heads of vulnerable consumers. It is the proper role of government to
defend the consumer against just such predatory behavior and to make
the dream of homeownership something people can afford and enjoy, not
something they get haunted by.
[Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.]
© 2007 Independent Media Institute.
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Message: 24
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:04:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Env: Supreme Court Puts the Pressure On
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Grist Magazine via Alternet - Apr 4, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50152/
Supreme Court Puts the Pressure On
By Bill McKibben
Everyone's getting into the act!
The news this week that the Supreme Court has decided global warming is
a problem, and the U.S. EPA can't just ignore it, is significant for
two reasons. One, it's the law of the land. And two, just as
importantly, it's one more sign that the tide has finally begun to turn.
Official Washington has spent two decades pretending that the laws of
physics and chemistry don't apply inside the Beltway. But now Congress
is taking it seriously, and so is the Supreme Court. The White House is
the last bunker, and even there people must be turning a bit pale at
reports from the front.
That's why it's more important than ever that those of us who know
enough and care enough to take action ratchet up the pressure. The oil
companies and the coal barons read the newspapers too -- they know that
their days of a free ride are coming to a close, and the only question
now is how high the fare is going to be.
But the answer to that question will decide the climatic future. You
can be sure that they're preparing to sign on to the weakest deal
possible -- and announce it as a triumph, the first step forward. CEOs
will pose with congressfolk, editorialists will delight. But if the
deal stinks -- if it falls short of the targets scientists now tell us
are necessary -- than the celebration will be short-lived. Instead of a
solution, it will mean only that the lid's been knocked off the pot and
the pressure dissipated.
This moment won't arrive again for a few years (it's been 15 years
since health-care reform disappeared from the congressional agenda) and
by the time it finally does, the deepest kind of damage will be done.
The White House is in a bunker, but there's another bunker to fall back
to, and that's what's so perilous about the politics of the moment.
Which is why 80 percent by 2050 as a rallying cry is more important
than ever. We need to remind both our opponents and our allies that
compromise on the essentials simply isn't going to do the trick. It's
not a political problem -- it's a problem of chemistry, and chemical
reactions don't bargain.
We will pass the 1,200 rally mark today at Step It Up '07. In every
corner of the country, people are demanding real action. And they're
starting to be heard.
[Bill McKibben is the author of "The End of Nature" and "Enough: Staying
Human in an Engineered Age." ]
© 2007 Independent Media Institute.
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Message: 25
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:07:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Iraq: A Monstrous War Crime (Lancet study, again)
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The Guardian - Mar 28, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2044345,00.html
A monstrous war crime
With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq,
our government must take responsibility for its lies
By Richard Horton
Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word.
This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised
ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was
accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the
reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last
October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the
American and British led invasion in March 2003.
Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said
that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near
accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet
figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't
consider it a credible report".
Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought
differently. They concluded that the study's methods were "tried and
tested". Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an
"underestimation of mortality".
The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the research was
"robust", close to "best practice", and "balanced". He recommended "caution
in publicly criticising the study".
When these recommendations went to the prime minister's advisers, they were
horrified. One person briefing Tony Blair wrote: "Are we really sure that
the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies?"
A Foreign and Commonwealth Office official was forced to conclude that the
government "should not be rubbishing the Lancet".
The prime minister's adviser finally gave in. He wrote: "The survey
methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of
measuring mortality in conflict zones".
How would the government respond? Would it welcome the Johns Hopkins study
as an important contribution to understanding the military threat to Iraqi
civilians? Would it ask for urgent independent verification? Would it invite
the Iraqi government to upgrade civilian security?
Of course, our government did none of these things. Tony Blair was advised
to say: "The overriding message is that there are no accurate or reliable
figures of deaths in Iraq".
His official spokesman went further and rejected the Johns Hopkins report
entirely. It was a shameful and cowardly dissembling by a Labour - yes, by a
Labour - prime minister.
Indeed, it was even contrary to the US's own Iraq Study Group report, which
concluded last year that "there is significant underreporting of the
violence in Iraq".
This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony
Blair, is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions. Yet our political
consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is
paralysed by its own indifference.
At a time when we are celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200
years ago, we are continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses
of human rights of the past half-century. It is inexplicable how we allowed
this to happen. It is inexplicable why we are not demanding this
government's mass resignation.
Two hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned as the moment when
Britain violated its delicate democratic constitution and joined the ranks
of nations that use extreme pre-emptive killing as a tactic of foreign
policy. Some anniversary that will be.
[Richard Horton is a doctor and the editor of the Lancet]
- ------------------------------
Message: 26
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:09:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden
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InterPress Service via Alternet - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50156/
The Evidence Is There: It's Time for Congress to Investigate
the Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden
By Lucy Komisar
The following chapter, "The BCCI Game: Banking on America, Banking on
Jihad," appears in investigative journalist Lucy Komisar's new book "A
Game as Old as Empire," just published by Berrett-Koehler (San
Francisco).
Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President
George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into
one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a
link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and
Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator
and the jihadist -- it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all
the way to George W. Bush and his father.
BCCI was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a dirty
offshore bank that then-President Ronald Reagan's Central Intelligence
Agency used to run guns to Hussein, finance Osama bin Laden, move money
in the illegal Iran-Contra operation and carry out other "agency" black
ops. The Bushes also benefited privately; one of the bank's largest
Saudi investors helped bail out George W. Bush's troubled oil
investments.
BCCI was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani banker, Agha Hasan Abedi, with
the support of Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi and
head of the United Arab Emirates. Its corporate strategy was money
laundering. It became the banker for drug and arms traffickers, corrupt
officials, financial fraudsters, dictators and terrorists.
The CIA used BCCI Islamabad and other branches in Pakistan to funnel
some of the $2 billion that Washington sent to Osama bin Laden's
Mujahadeen to help fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. It moved the cash
the Pakistani military and government officials skimmed from U.S. aid
to the Mujahadeen. It also moved money as required by the Saudi
intelligence services.
The BCCI operation gave Osama bin Laden an education in offshore black
finance, which he would put to use when he organized the jihad against
the United States. He would move money through the Al-Taqwa Bank,
operating in offshore Nassau and Switzerland with two Osama siblings as
shareholders.
At the same time, BCCI helped Saddam Hussein, funneling millions of
dollars to the Atlanta branch of the Italian government-owned Banca
Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), Baghdad's U.S. banker, so that from 1985 to
1989 it could make $4 billion in secret loans to Iraq to help it buy
arms.
U.S. congressman Henry Gonzalez held a hearing on BNL in 1992 during
which he quoted from a confidential CIA document that said the agency
had long been aware that the bank's headquarters was involved in the
U.S. branch's Iraqi loans.
Kickbacks from 15 percent commissions on BNL-sponsored loans were
channeled into bank accounts held for Iraqi leaders via BCCI offices in
the Caymans as well as in offshore Luxembourg and Switzerland. BNL was
a client of Kissinger Associates, and Henry Kissinger was on the bank's
international advisory board, along with Brent Scowcroft, who would
become George Bush Sr.'s national security advisor. That connection
makes the Bush administration's surprise and indignation at "oil for
food" payoffs in Iraq seem disingenuous.
Important Saudis were influential in the bank. Sheik Kamal Adham,
brother-in-law of the late Saudi King Faisal, head of Saudi
intelligence from 1963 to 1979, and the CIA's liaison in the area,
became one of BCCI's largest shareholders. George Bush Sr. knew Adham
from his time running the CIA in 1975.
Another investor was Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, who succeeded
Adham as Saudi intelligence chief. The family of Khalid Salem bin
Mahfouz, owner of the National Commercial Bank, the largest bank in
Saudi Arabia, banker to King Fahd and other members of the ruling
family, bought 20 percent to 30 percent of the stock for nearly $1
billion. Bin Mahfouz was put on the board of directors.
The Arabs' interest in the bank was more than financial. A classified
CIA memo on BCCI in the mid-1980s said that "its principal shareholders
are among the power elite of the Middle East, including the rulers of
Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and several influential Saudi
Arabians. They are less interested in profitability than in promoting
the Muslim cause."
The Bushes' private links to the bank passed to Bin Mahfouz through
Texas businessman James R. Bath, who invested money in the United
States on behalf of the Saudi regime. In 1976, when Bush was the head
of the CIA, the agency sold some of the planes of Air America, a secret
"proprietary" airline it used during the Vietnam War, to Skyway, a
company owned by Bath and Bin Mahfouz. Bath then helped finance George
W. Bush's oil company, Arbusto Energy Inc., in 1979 and 1980.
When Harken Energy Corp., which had absorbed Arbusto (by then merged
with Spectrum 7 Energy), got into financial trouble in 1987, Jackson
Stephens of the powerful, politically connected Arkansas investment
firm helped it secure $25 million in financing from the Union Bank of
Switzerland. As part of that deal, a place on the board was given to
Harken shareholder Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, whose chief banker was
BCCI shareholder Bin Mahfouz.
Then, in 1988, George Bush Sr. was elected president. Harken benefited
by getting some new investors, including Salem bin Laden, Osama bin
Laden's father, and Khalid bin Mahfouz. Osama bin Laden himself was
busy elsewhere at the time -- organizing al Qaeda.
The money BCCI stole before it was shut down in 1991 -- somewhere
between $9.5 billion and $15 billion -- made its 20-year heist the
biggest bank fraud in history. Most of it was never recovered.
International banks' complicity in the offshore secrecy system
effectively covered up the money trail.
But in the years after the collapse of BCCI, Khalid bin Mahfouz was
still flush with cash. In 1992, he established the Muwafaq ("blessed
relief") Foundation in the offshore Channel Islands. The U.S. Treasury
Department called it "an al Qaeda front that receives funding from
wealthy Saudi businessmen."
When the BCCI scandal began to break in the late 1980s, the Sr. Bush
administration did what it could to sit on it. The Justice Department
went after the culprits -- was virtually forced to -- only after New
York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau did. But evidence about BCCI's
broader links exist in numerous U.S. and international investigations.
Now could be a good time to take another look at the
BCCI-Osama-Saddam-Saudi-Bush connection.
[Lucy Komisar is a New York-based journalist and author of "A Game as
Old as Empire," published by Berrett-Koehler (San Francisco). ]
© 2007 Independent Media Institute.
- ------------------------------
Message: 27
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:10:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Scientists Study Politicians' Memory Loss
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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Newsweek - Apr 4, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17951684/site/newsweek/?from=rss
Scientists Study Politicians' Memory Loss
Scientists say near-amnesia is reaching epidemic proportions among U.S.
politicians.
By Andy Borowitz
Special to Newsweek
April 4, 2007 - An “unprecedented epidemic of memory loss†is
afflicting America’s politicians, making it virtually impossible for
them to remember key phone conversations, meetings and memos, a
spokesman for the world’s leading brain scientists said today.
The spokesman, Dr. Hiroshi Kyosuke of the University of Tokyo, is one
of over 400 eminent brain scientists who have gathered in Oslo, Norway,
this week for a high-level research conference to probe the recent
phenomenon of memory loss that has plagued the U.S. politicians. “The
question at hand is this: why are politicians so good at remembering
contributors’ names and phone numbers but so bad at remembering
everything else?†Dr. Kyosuke said.
Over the course of the conference, brain scientists have presented
research papers on a variety of subjects related to memory loss, such
as former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s inability to remember a
briefing he received about former police commissioner Bernard Kerik’s
possible ties to organized crime.
“That seems like the sort of thing that a normal human brain would have
no difficulty remembering,†Dr. Kyosuke said. “What we are learning at
this conference is that when it comes to politicians’ brains, we have
so much more to learn.â€
On Monday, a full day of the conference was devoted to a paper
entitled, “The Neuroscience of Scooter Libby,†followed by a keynote
address given by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
While many attendees considered Gonzales’s speech a highpoint of the
conference, the attorney general offered a different assessment: “I
have no recollection of it.â€
Elsewhere, President Bush said he would devote the remainder of his
term to fighting global warming, adding, “April Fools!â€
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
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Message: 28
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:11:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Peanut butter contaminated with salmonella
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AP via USA Today - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-05-peanut-butter-contamination_N.htm
Peanut butter contamination pinned on moisture
By Josh Funk, AP business writer
OMAHA — ConAgra Foods said Thursday that moisture from a leaky roof and
faulty sprinkler was the source of the salmonella bacteria that
contaminated peanut butter at its Georgia plant last year, sickening
more than 400 people nationwide.
The Omaha-based company conducted a nearly two-month investigation into
the contamination and pledged to ensure that Peter Pan peanut butter is
safe when it returns to stores in mid-July.
"Consumer safety and health is our top priority," ConAgra spokeswoman
Stephanie Childs said. "We plan to do our best to regain consumer trust
once Peter Pan returns to stores."
Childs said the company traced the salmonella outbreak to three
problems at its Sylvester, Ga., plant last August.
The plant's roof leaked during a rainstorm, and the sprinkler system
went off twice because of a faulty sprinkler, which was repaired.
The moisture from those three events mixed with dormant salmonella
bacteria in the plant that Childs said likely came from raw peanuts and
peanut dust.
She said the plant was cleaned thoroughly after the roof leak and
sprinkler problem, but the salmonella remained and somehow came in
contact with peanut butter before it was packaged.
ConAgra recalled all its peanut butter in February after federal health
officials linked it to cases of salmonella infection. At least 425
people in 44 states were sickened, and numerous lawsuits have been
filed against the company.
The recall covered all Peter Pan peanut butter and all Great Value
peanut butter made at the Sylvester plant since October 2004. That
plant is ConAgra's only peanut butter plant.
Peanuts grow underground and salmonella is present in the dirt, but
generally any bacteria are killed when raw peanuts are roasted.
When making peanut butter, the nuts are again heated — above the
salmonella-killing temperature of 165 degrees — as they are ground into
a paste and mixed with other ingredients before being squirted into
jars and quickly sealed.
Experts had speculated that salmonella would be most likely to
contaminate the peanut butter as it cools and is placed in jars. At
most plants, those steps take just minutes.
The company plans to redesign the plant to provide greater separation
between raw peanuts and the finished product, Childs said. The plant
will also receive a new roof.
ConAgra plans to reopen the plant in early August.
While renovations are being done, Peter Pan would be made at another
company's plant. Childs declined to identify that manufacturing partner
and said ConAgra had not decided whether that plant will continue
making Peter Pan after its Sylvester factory reopens.
Since the recall shut down production, the Sylvester plant's roughly
100 workers have been paid to do maintenance work. Childs said it's not
yet clear how the renovations will affect those employees.
Before the recall, ConAgra sold $150 million worth of peanut butter
each year, Childs said.
In addition to peanut butter, the company has other brand names, such
as Healthy Choice, Chef Boyardee and Orville Redenbacher.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
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Message: 29
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:15:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Latest on Pet Food Poisoning: Dog Biscuits
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AP via USA Today - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-05-dog-treats-recall_N.htm
Wal-Mart dog treats join pet food recall
WASHINGTON (AP) — The recall of pet foods and treats contaminated with
an industrial chemical expanded Thursday to include dog biscuits made
by an Alabama company and sold by Wal-Mart under the Ol'Roy brand.
The Food and Drug Administration said the manufacturer, Sunshine Mills
Inc., is recalling dog biscuits made with imported Chinese wheat
gluten. Testing has revealed the wheat gluten, a protein source, was
contaminated with melamine, used to make plastics and other industrial
products.
Also Thursday, Menu Foods, a major manufacturer of brand- and
private-label wet pet foods expanded its original recall to include a
broader range of dates and varieties. Menu Foods was the first of at
least six companies to recall the now more than 100 brands of pet foods
and treats made with the contaminated ingredient.
The recall now covers "cuts and gravy"-style products made between Nov.
8 and March 6, Menu Foods said. Previously, it only applied to products
made beginning Dec. 3. In addition, Menu Foods said it was expanding
the recall to include more varieties, but no new brands.
The FDA knows of no other pet product companies planning recalls,
agency officials told reporters.
"Other than that, I think, you know, the public should feel secure in
purchasing pet foods that are not subject to the recall," Stephen
Sundlof, director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, told
reporters.
Sunshine, of Red Bay, Ala., sells pet foods and treats under its own
brands as well as private labels sold by grocery, mass merchant and
dollar stores, according to its website. The recall included some of
the products made for sale under five private labels, including Ol'Roy
biscuits, sold by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and Stater Bros. large
biscuits, sold by Stater Bros. Markets. It also covered a portion of
Sunshine's own Nurture, Lassie and Pet Life dog biscuit brands.
Previously, Menu Foods had recalled some wet-style dog foods it made
for sale under the Stater Bros. and Ol'Roy brands as well.
Sunshine said there have been no reports of dog illnesses or deaths in
connection with the recalled dog biscuits, which contain one% or less
wheat gluten by weight.
The FDA continues to focus on melamine as the suspected contaminant of
the pet products, though Sundlof said it could be a marker for the
presence of another, yet-unknown substance. Melamine previously was not
believed to be toxic.
The recall is one of the largest pet food recalls in history, Sundlof
said. The FDA has received more than 12,000 complaints but has
confirmed only about 15 pet deaths. Anecdotal reports suggest the tally
is in the hundreds or low thousands.
Sunshine Mills said it would post a complete list of the recalled dog
biscuits on its website, http://www.sunshinemills.com/.
The FDA last week blocked wheat gluten imports from the Xuzhou Anying
Biologic Technology Development Co. in the eastern city of Xuzhou,
saying they contained melamine. A Las Vegas importer, ChemNutra Inc.,
recalled this week all wheat gluten it had purchased from the supplier
and in turn distributed to pet food manufacturers.
Xuzhou Anying has said it is investigating the claims.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
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Message: 30
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:17:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] US-born Americans Fleeing Cities
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AP via MSNBC - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17954186/
Native-born Americans flee cities
Native-born Americans moving out of cities of all sizes, Census Bureau says
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Without immigrants pouring into the nation’s big metro
areas, places such as New York, Los Angeles and Boston would be
shrinking as native-born Americans move farther out.
Many smaller areas, including Battle Creek, Mich., Ames, Iowa, and
Corvallis, Ore., would shrink as well, according to population
estimates to be released Thursday by the Census Bureau.
“Immigrants are filling the void as domestic migrants are seeking
opportunities in other places,†said Mark Mather, a demographer at the
Population Reference Bureau, a private research organization.
Immigrants long have flocked to major metropolitan areas and helped
them grow. But increasingly, native-born Americans are moving from
those areas and leaving immigrants to provide the only source of growth.
The New York metro area, which includes the suburbs, added 1 million
immigrants from 2000 to 2006. Without those immigrants, the region
would have lost nearly 600,000 people.
Without immigration, the Los Angeles metro area would have lost more
than 200,000, the San Francisco area would have lost 188,000 and the
Boston area would have lost 101,000.
The Census Bureau estimates annual population totals as of July 1,
using local records of births and deaths, Internal Revenue Service
records of people moving within the United States and census statistics
on immigrants. The estimates released Thursday were for metropolitan
areas, which generally include cities and their surrounding suburbs.
Among the findings:
# Atlanta added more people than any other metro area from 2000 to
2006. The Atlanta area, which includes Sandy Springs and Marietta, Ga.,
added 890,000 people, putting its population at about 5.1 million.
Gaining the most after Atlanta were Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Phoenix
and Riverside, Calif. # On a percentage basis, St. George in southwest
Utah was the fastest growing metro area from 2000 to 2006. St. George’s
population jumped by 40 percent, to 126,000. The next highest
percentage increases were in Greeley, Colo., Cape Coral, Fla., Bend,
Ore., and Las Vegas. # The New Orleans area, still recovering from
Hurricane Katrina, lost nearly 290,000 people from 2005 to 2006,
reducing its population to just over 1 million. The Gulfport-Biloxi
area in Mississippi, also hit hard by Katrina, lost nearly 27,000
people and dropping its population to 227,900. # Parts of the Rust Belt
also had large declines. The Pittsburgh metro area led the way, losing
60,000 people from 2000 to 2006. Its population loss was followed by
declines in Cleveland, Buffalo, N.Y., Youngstown, Ohio, and Scranton,
Pa. # Houston edged past Miami to become the sixth largest metro area,
with about 5.5 million people. Miami slipped to seventh.
There are about 36 million immigrants in the U.S. About one-third are
in the country illegally. The Census Bureau, however, does not
distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.
The White House floated a plan last month that would grant work visas
to illegal immigrants, but they would have to return home and pay hefty
fines to become legal U.S. residents.
Lawmakers were unable to reach an agreement last year on how best to
stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Immigration was a contentious
issue in many congressional races in November.
Link with economy?
Many demographers associate shrinking populations with economic
problems, typically poor job markets or prohibitive housing prices.
“A lot of cities rely on immigration to prop up their housing market
and prop up their economies,†said William Frey, a demographer at the
Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Advocates for stricter immigration laws question whether a stable, or
even a shrinking population, is bad.
“Don’t we have concerns about congestion and sprawl and pollution?â€
asked Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for
Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration policies.
“Maybe those metro areas should think about what it would take to make
Americans want to live there,†Camarota said.
© 2007 The Associated Press.
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Message: 31
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:19:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Landau: Whining Imperialists
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Progreso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Landau&otherweek=1175749200
Whining imperialists
By Saul Landau
Two kinds of imperial whining have come to pervade foreign policy
discussion. One relates to Bush's overextending the military so they cannot
deploy to other places desperately needing their lethal capacity.
Others fixate on "American credibility." If we withdraw, an October 22,
2006 Washington Post editorial declared, we forego our "moral obligation."
After all the U.S. military and Iraqi sacrifices, the U.S. must not allow a
collapse, which would occur "without the prop of 140,000 [now 170,000] U.S.
troops."
By leaving, this argument posits, we open the door to greater horror in
this poor land. Bush might have made a mistake to invade and occupy, but we
as a nation owe it to the Iraqis to keep our troops there until the Iraqis
themselves can assume security responsibilities.
Some moralist-realists admit that as many as 650,000 Iraqi civilians have
died since the March 2003 US invasion. (Lancet, October 11, 2006) Nor do
they dispute claims by Caritas Internationalis and Caritas Iraq (a
confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development, and social service
organizations), showing that malnutrition rates have risen in Iraq from 19
percent before the U.S.-led invasion to a national average of 28 percent
four years later. (March 16, 2007) Caritas also claims that the causes of
rising hunger relate to high levels of insecurity, collapsed healthcare and
other infrastructure, increased polarization between different sects and
tribes, and rising poverty.
They report that over 11 percent of Iraqi babies are born underweight,
compared with a figure of 4 percent in 2003. Before March 2003, Iraq
already had significant infant mortality due to malnutrition because of the
13 years of UN -- pushed by Washington -- sanctions. In addition to the
hundreds of thousands of dead, wounded and displaced, approximately one of
every eight Iraqis has fled to Syria, Jordan, Iran and nearby states.
Given these brutal facts of life in Iraq under U.S. occupation, moral
responsibility somehow translates into U.S. soldiers continuing to wreak
even more havoc. Don't these pious moralists know some liberal equivalent
of the old Rev. Billy Graham to pose the question: What the Hell does moral
obligation mean for a nation that has destroyed another nation? When does
such obligation end so that the remaining Iraqis can begin to deal with
their issues without an armed and belligerent occupying force? In
non-religious and indeed practical terms, Bush has used the U.S. military
as his moral tool. To bring democracy to Iraq, they destroyed the country.
Now, according to the President and his "morally responsible" albeit
reluctant backers, U.S. forces must train Iraqi military and police who
will then take responsibility for security.
The "logical" catch emerges when we learn that U.S. training means Iraqi
police and military learn improved methods for using U.S. provided firearms
and explosives, so as to better kill their religious and ethnic rivals and
U.S. troops. Some security!
Despite such staggering statistics of destruction and despair, Peter W.
Galbraith declares that "except for a relatively small number of Saddam
Hussein's fellow Sunni Arabs who worked for his regime, the peoples of Iraq
are much better off today than they were under Saddam Hussein." (New York
Review of Books, May 13, 2004)
For some who follow the imperial road, the Iraq miasma engenders a
different kind of anxiety. Not only do the elite watch the U.S. reputation
and treasury being wasted, but as a March 18 Washington Post headline
expressed, a more serious imperial complaint has arisen: "Military is
Ill-Prepared for Other Conflicts." This banner headline should have brought
forth the sound of alarm bells ringing in elite national security and
transnational corporate boardrooms.
The questions in Washington's privileged clubs have become: "Has this fool
in the White House exposed the weakness of the world's greatest empire with
his idiotic adventures in Iraq? Since "shock and awe" didn't subdue Iraqi
resistance, nor did the four subsequent years of brutal military
occupation, isn't it time to withdraw?"
The media has reported that troops have begun to display signs of
demoralization. Suicide rates have grown as have numbers of desertions.
(Independent August 19, 2006) Articles featured Col. Ted Westhusing, a West
Point scholar, who left a suicide note for his Iraqi commanders, including
Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the current surge. "Reevaluate yourselves,"
he wrote. "You are not what you think you are and I know it." Westhusing
warned of widely spread corruption and profiteering by American contractors
in Iraq. He said he had also seen contractors killing Iraqis. (LA Times
Dec 4, 2005)
The suicidal Colonel's desperation was reflected in the report of Ret. U.S.
General Barry McCaffrey. "The [Iraqi] population is in despair," concluded
the former U.S. drug czar. (Washington Post March 27) McCaffrey had made
multiple visits to Iraq and conversed with the U.S. military brass there.
The active brass shared his concern. They see Iraq as draining U.S.
military potential. The Army no longer has a brigade left "to deploy within
hours to an overseas hot spot," reported Joint Chiefs boss General Peter
Pace. He mentioned Iran, North Korea, or some newly disobedient place like
Venezuela. Indeed, Colombia could erupt as could half a dozen unstable
states in the Middle East and Africa. Or was Pace implying that "deploying"
to China might one day also become an "option"? (Washington Post, March 18)
After raising doubts, Pace reassured Congress that the armed forces could
deal with major contingencies. No one asked what distinguished a major
contingency from Bush's decision to invade Iraq. But the military
establishment had seen enough. On December 16, 2005, John Murtha (D-PA)
made an impassioned anti Iraq war speech on the House floor. This former
and very hawkish marine officer demanded that Bush withdraw U.S. forces
from Iraq. One reason he offered was that the un-winnable war was depleting
military resources.
Heavens, a fearful citizen might ask, if the expert military command
worries and they already have budgets that exceed $650 billion dollars,
plus mammoth arsenals and the latest in lethal technology, what will become
of us? After all, the United States only has 2.5 million members of its
U.S. armed forces, stationed at almost 800 bases in 130 countries around
the world. Since the thousands of nuclear and conventional missiles of all
sizes could pulverize any attacker, one must inquire: what exactly is the
source of Pace's being "not comfortable" with military readiness?
"Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela,
Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, back around to
Pakistan, and
I probably missed a few," he intoned to Congress. "There's no dearth of
challenges out there for our armed forces."
No Member asked Pace if he thought that any of the nations he mentioned
might launch a serious attack against the United States or threaten our
security. Indeed, such a notion would have sounded like a joke. So, why
should a republic possess such a mammoth armed force, one in a constant
state of readiness to deploy anywhere -- or to several places at once?
U.S. bases, as Chalmers Johnson assures us in Nemesis: The Last Days of the
American Republic (2007), are platforms for attacks on every other nation.
That thought should make us all feel very secure in our fight against
terrorism. But what use are bases or advanced weapons in fighting an enemy
that will not invade or send over its air force? As we recall, the 9/11
enemy warriors used our own commercial fleet to change our lives.
The amassed armory failed to stop communism in two Asian wars; nor did the
Pentagon use the weapons against the biggest and baddest commies, the USSR
and China. So why do we keep amassing endless enemies? Ask those who
profit?
Johnson, once an ardent Cold Warrior, now despairs over what he once saw as
defense and now understands as naked imperialism. "History tells us there's
no more unstable, critical configuration than the combination of domestic
democracy and foreign empire. You can be one or the other. You can be a
democratic country, as we have claimed in the past to be, based on our
Constitution. Or you can be an empire. But you can't be both...The
causative issue is militarism. Imperialism, by definition, requires
military force. It requires huge standing armies. It requires a large
military-industrial complex. It requires the willingness to use force
regularly. Imperialism is a pure form of tyranny. It never rules through
consent, any more than we do in Iraq today."
(http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/03/int04013)
The irony of an empire without an imperial charter reveals itself in the
whining and moaning of the powerful, those who pray and talk of moral
obligations. This concern for "doing the right thing for the Iraqi people"
expresses itself by hand wringing. The practical result of such moralizing
is that Members of Congress continue to back Bush's occupation of Iraq.
Time to pour their imperial whine into their empty bottles and uncork the
republican vintage?
[Landau's new book, A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD, was just published. His new
film, WE DON'T PLAY GOLF HERE AND OTHER STORIES OF GLOBALIZATION, is
available on dvd through roundwo...@gmail.com ]
- ------------------------------
Message: 32
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:21:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Twisting Slowly in the Wind: The Robert Ferro Case
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Progreso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Emilio_Paz&otherweek=1175749200
Twisting slowly in the wind
The Ferro case updated
By Emilio Paz
Robert Ferro finds himself in a precarious situation. In folk parlance, he
could be described as "Hanging from the paint brush," "Holding the bag," or
"Up the creek without a paddle."
Ferro, you may recall, is the 62-year-old Cuban-American who was arrested
April 2006 in California after police found more than 1,500 firearms in his
home in Upland, a suburb of Los Angeles.
The arsenal -- the largest ever impounded from a civilian -- included 35
machine guns, 130 silencers, three short-barreled rifles, a live hand
grenade, a rocket-launcher tube and 89,000 rounds of ammunition. At the
U.S. District Court in Riverside, Ferro pleaded not guilty to five charges
(yes, only 5) of illegal weapons possession.
At first, Ferro claimed that he had bought the weapons with money supplied
by the anti-Castro group Alpha 66, for the purpose of overthrowing the
Cuban government in the course of a U.S.-supported invasion. From Miami,
Alpha 66 denied the claim.
Then, Ferro claimed that he was a Central Intelligence Agency operative and
that the agency had permitted him to buy and hide the guns, in preparation
for the invasion. The CIA had documents to that effect, Ferro told the
judge, and should make them public.
Last week, the agency reported that it had combed through its records
looking for any ties to Ferro but had come up empty-handed.
"Diligent searches failed to disclose any record that CIA ever employed Mr.
Ferro, contracted with him or otherwise used his services, or that Mr.
Ferro ever rendered services, as a covert operative or otherwise, for CIA,"
David I. Miller, assistant general counsel for the CIA, said in a letter to
the prosecutors.
"It appears the defendant's claim of participation in clandestine
activities on behalf of the United States are false," Ferro's prosecutor,
Deputy Attorney General Dennise Willett, told the court last week.
So, as things stand today, the institutions that (according to Ferro)
encouraged him to buy the weapons and paid for them, claim not even to know
the man. And he is left, as we said earlier, "holding the bag."
Who is telling the truth? The value of the weapons represents a huge
investment. Who paid for them? Could an ordinary civilian like Ferro afford
to buy them?
And why haven't the federal prosecutors charged him with attempted
terrorism or, at least, suspicion of terrorism? Surely an arsenal like the
one Ferro amassed was not intended for duck hunting. The mass extermination
of humans was more likely the purpose.
This case is becoming -- as Alice said in Wonderland -- "curiouser and
curiouser." And we shall continue to follow it.
[Emilio Paz is a Miami-based writer.]
- ------------------------------
Message: 33
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:21:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] US Funding Cuts Undermine "Terror War"
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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InterPress Service - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37218
U.S. Funding Cuts Undermine Terror War
by Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 4 (IPS) - A proposed 25-percent cut in U.S.
international assistance for population in the upcoming 2008 budget
threatens to undermine the war against terrorism, a Washington-based
non-governmental organisation warned Wednesday.
Lawrence Smith Jr., president of the Population Institute, points out
that intelligence and security experts -- including the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) -- "have repeatedly warned that countries at
the bottom of the development ladder, with high fertility rates and
very large youth populations, are ripe for terrorist recruitment."
"Why would there not be funding for services that clearly address one
of the key factors contributing to the existence, increased number and
relative lack of progress in improving conditions in the world's
fragile states?" he asked.
"It is clear that prevention is more cost-effective and we need to
restore funding to this field," Smith told IPS.
"This is another perplexing point coming from a president (George W.
Bush) who is fighting a global war on terror," he said.
Smith said that Bush had called for reducing U.S. population funding in
fiscal year 2008, beginning next October, by 116 million dollars, to
325 million dollars, compared with 434 million dollars in 2007.
The comparable figures for 2005 was 437 million and for 2006 about 436
million dollars.
Citing World Bank statistics, Smith said that in nine of the 10
countries classified as "severely fragile", youths under 15 years of
age comprise 40 percent or more of the population.
The nine countries are Angola, Central African Republic and Liberia (47
percent each); Somalia and Afghanistan (45 percent); Sudan (44
percent); Haiti (42 percent); Zimbabwe (41 percent); and Solomon
Islands (40 percent).
The only country among the top 10 with less than 40 percent of the
population under 15 years of age is Burma, or Myanmar (32 percent).
Testifying before a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on
Appropriations panel on foreign operations last week, Smith said not
every young person in a less developed country is a likely candidate
for strapping on a suicide bomb.
"But many more than we might think are willing to follow charismatic
but misguided political and religious leaders who point them toward a
path of disruption, chaos, violence and even armed conflict," he argued.
A U.N. report, to be discussed at an upcoming meeting of the U.N.
Commission on Population and Development Apr. 9-13, points out that all
countries are experiencing some change in their age structures.
However, since countries are at different stages of demographic
transition and experience different social and economic conditions, the
change is more pronounced in some countries than in others.
"Developing countries continue to be characterised by higher levels of
fertility and smaller numbers of older persons," the study said.
Africa has the youngest age distribution, with 41 percent of the
population under age 15 and about five percent aged 60 years and over.
On the other hand, developed countries have a much older population,
with 17 percent under age 15 and 20 percent aged 60 years and over.
The proportion of people over the age of 60 is increasing rapidly in
Western Europe, Northern America and Japan.
"The legacy of past high fertility is the current rapid increase in
population and the largest-ever generation of young people," the report
noted.
In developing countries, young people account for 29 percent of the
population, where they number 1.5 million.
In the developed world, there are over 238 million young people,
representing 20 percent of the population.
"The changing age structure of populations has significant social and
economic implications at the individual, family, community and societal
levels. It also has important implications for a country's
development," the study points out.
Smith said rapid population growth is among the key factors
contributing to the very existence of fragile states, their increasing
numbers and relative lack of progress toward development.
Women in seven of the 10 most fragile states give birth to an average
of four or more children during their reproductive lifetime. In four of
these states -- Afghanistan, Angola, Liberia and Somalia -- women are
averaging nearly seven children.
Smith said that the United Nations reports that 137 million women in
the world lack access to modern, medically approved contraceptives and
another 64 million women use traditional methods of family planning
that are less reliable than modern methods.
It is somewhat bewildering, Smith told IPS, that President Bush, "who
has issued a statement noting that one of the best ways to prevent
abortion is by providing quality voluntary family planning services,"
would not then make these services available to the 137 million women
who would like to prevent or delay pregnancy but are not using any
method of family planning.
According to the World Health Organisation, the number of individuals
and couples who want to avoid a birth or delay their next pregnancy
exceeds the number of contraceptive users by a factor of two or more.
"The need for family planning assistance definitely exists," Smith
said. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of fragile states have, as a
matter of official policy, declared their birth rates to be too high.
"What remains to be answered is the question of whether or not we have
the political will to fulfill this unmet need," he added.
(END/2007)
- ------------------------------
Message: 34
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:26:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] America's Own Worst Enemy (Bk Rvw)
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Progreso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Engler&otherweek=1175749200
America's own worst enemy
"Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic"
by Chalmers Johnson
Review by Mark Engler
In March 1999, President Clinton toured several Latin American countries,
surveying areas devastated by Hurricane Mitch and meeting with governmental
delegations to promote his vision of globalized trade and cooperative
regional diplomacy. In each country, he received a warm welcome. When
Clinton spoke before the National Assembly of El Salvador, members of the
leftist FMLN party, former guerilla leaders who had become elected
representatives, responded with a standing ovation.
Given that the United States had worked diligently throughout the 1980s to
destroy the rebel movement, this was an astonishing sight. Yet, in spite of
the United States' long interventionist history, Bill Clinton was popular
in Latin America. He had a way of charming would-be critics. Gabriel García
Márquez shared dinner with Clinton, listened to the president spontaneously
recite long passages of Faulkner, and subsequently wrote an admiring
profile.
These days, the world's Nobel Laureates are more likely to turn acid pens
against the White House. The Bush administration has succeeded in shocking
the international community with its aggressive militarism, its belief in
unitary executive power, its use of torture, and its good-versus-evil
understanding of global affairs.
These same troubling traits have commanded the attention of Chalmers
Johnson, who believes they have brought us to the "last days of the
American republic." Johnson, a retired professor of Asian Studies at the
University of California, San Diego, and current president of the Japan
Policy Research Institute, popularized the CIA-originated term "blowback"
with his 2000 book of that title. That volume warned that America's covert
interventions abroad would come back to haunt us, and it became a
bestseller after the attacks of 9/11 seemed to fulfill the author's
prophesy.
Since then, according to Johnson, our country's predicament has only
worsened. His new book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic,
takes its name from the Greek "goddess of retribution and vengeance's
punisher of pride and hubris." Put secularly, Johnson is arguing that the
United States is its own worst enemy. Sooner rather than later, he
contends, U.S. arrogance will be its downfall.
Johnson's book is made up of largely autonomous chapters on a range of
loosely-related subjects: how the Bush administration's executive power
grab undermines the U.S. Constitution as well as international law; how the
CIA functions as the president's private army; the extent to which
America's extensive global network of military bases provides an
infrastructure for imperial power projection; why space may be the final
frontier for military expansion; and what lessons might be learned from the
defunct British and Roman empires. Linking these topics is the idea that
together they point to the end: "The time to head off financial and moral
bankruptcy is short," Johnson writes. Later he concludes, "We are on the
cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire."
Johnson's writing is often described as "polemic," but that doesn't capture
the heartfelt concern that underlies his distress about our country.
Whereas many of us have grown numb to White House outrages, Johnson's
indignation at the administration -- its torture memos, its contempt for
the freedom of public information, its defacing of established treaties --
is vivid. This might be due to his conservative background: a Navy
lieutenant in the early '50s, a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973,
and a long-time defender of the Vietnam War, Johnson became horrified at
American militarism and interventionism only later in life. He now writes
like he is making up for lost time.
Johnson's most distinctive contribution to the debate about U.S. empire is
his documentation of America's vast network of overseas military bases, a
project he began in his 2004 book The Sorrows of Empire. "Once upon a time,
you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies," he
writes in Nemesis. "America's version of the colony is the military base."
The United States officially maintains 737 bases worldwide, worth more than
$127 billion and covering at least 687,347 acres in some 130 foreign
countries. For local populations exposed to the pollution, bar fights, and
brothels that surround such encampments, they are wounds that fester daily.
At home, Johnson argues, Americans suffer from the bloated military budgets
required to maintain this "baseworld."
Each of Johnson's erudite chapters both enlightens and disturbs. But his
underlying jeremiad about democracy's death lacks analytical force. Johnson
looks incredulously upon "those who believe that the structure of
government in Washington today bears some resemblance to that outlined in
the Constitution of 1787." And it seems that there is no going back: "[T]he
legislative branch of our government is broken," he writes, "and it is hard
to imagine how it could repair itself, given the massive interests that
feed off it." Likewise, a grassroots movement to reclaim democracy "is
unlikely given the conglomerate control of the mass media and the
difficulties of mobilizing." Johnson has essentially thrown up his hands.
Such pessimism feels overblown. The republic has survived Richard Nixon and
J. Edgar Hoover, and democracy, however battered, will outlast Bush as
well. The president has lost his deferential Congress; his approval ratings
have sunk to all-time lows. Bush today is less an omnipotent tyrant than a
lame duck.
In terms of geopolitics, the Bush legacy is also ambiguous. Nemesis is a
book about hard power. Likening America's far-flung bases to Rome's
garrisons, Johnson posits that not much has changed since the days of
Caesar and Octavian. But, with nuclear weapons scattered amongst major and
minor global powers, military might goes only so far as mutual destruction.
Hard power has its limits.
To judge the strength of a nation, then, one must also gauge its talent for
softer persuasion. And here the Bush administration militarists have indeed
become their own worst enemies. Acting out visions of global dominance,
they have inflamed a world of resentment and spawned ever more challenges
to American power. Our troops are embattled. Bush's state visits attract
street protests. Discourteous politicians hover at every podium. It all
makes you wonder: How much more dangerous was it when our president was
both commanding and esteemed, lauded by laureates, touring our imperial
backyard to standing ovations?
[Mark Engler, an analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, is author of the
forthcoming How to Rule the World: The New Politics of Fighting Empire in
the Post-Bush Era (Nation Books, Fall 2007). He can be reached via the web
site http://www.DemocracyUprising.com. Research assistance provided by Sean
Nortz. This article was first published in In These Times and appears with
permission of the author.]
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