CIA Acknowledges It Has More Than 7000 Documents Relating To Secret Detention Program, Rendition & Torture

Dandelion Salad

www.amnestyusa.org
For Immediate Release
April 23, 2008
Contact:
Sharon Singh, AIUSA, 202 544 0200 x 289, ssingh@aiusa.org
Jen Nessel, CCR, 212 614 6449, jnessel@ccrjustice.org
Veerle Opgenhaffen, NYU IHRC/CHRGJ, 212 992 8186, opgenhaffen@juris.law.nyu.edu

Human Right Groups Charge Documents Reveal CIA Stonewalled Congressional Oversight Committees; CIA Says Many Documents too Sensitive to Release

(New York and Washington, DC)—The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) must stop stonewalling congressional oversight committees and release vital documents related to the program of secret detentions, renditions, and torture, three prominent human rights groups said today. Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law (NYU IHRC) reiterated their call for information, following the CIA’s filing of a summary judgment motion this week to end a lawsuit and avoid turning over more than 7000 documents related to its secret “ghost” detention and extraordinary rendition program. This motion is in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed in federal court last June by these groups. The organizations will file their response brief next month.

Among other assertions, the CIA claimed that it did not have to release the documents because many consist of correspondence with the White House or top Bush administration officials, or because they are between parties seeking legal advice on the programs, including guidance on the legality of certain interrogation procedures. The CIA confirmed that it requested—and received—legal advice from attorneys at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel concerning these procedures.

“For the first time, the CIA has acknowledged that extensive records exist relating to its use of enforced disappearances and secret prisons,” said Curt Goering, AIUSA senior deputy executive director. “Given what we already know about documents written by Bush administration officials trying to justify torture and other human rights crimes, one does not need a fertile imagination to conclude that the real reason for refusing to disclose these documents has more to do with avoiding disclosure of criminal activity than national security.”

The CIA’s admission that it possesses at least 7000 documents relating to rendition, secret detention and torture generated renewed calls by the human rights groups for transparency and accountability from the government.

“The Freedom of Information Act is one of the major checks on government criminality in this country,” said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren. “The CIA has acknowledged that it has well over 7000 documents that relate to the torture and disappearance of men. These include some of our clients, like Majid Khan, who were known to be in the program. The public needs to know what crimes were committed in our name and how they were justified. This has been the most secretive, least transparent administration in history, and it is well past time for accountability.”

AIUSA, CCR, and NYU IHRC have filed FOIA requests with several U.S. government agencies, including the CIA. These FOIA requests sought information about individuals who are—or have been—held by the U.S. government or detained with U.S. involvement, and about whom there is no public record. The requests also sought information about the government’s legal justifications for its secret detention and extraordinary rendition program. Comprehensive information about the identities and locations of prisoners in CIA custody—as well as the conditions of their detention and the specific interrogation methods used against them— has never been publicly revealed. This lack of transparency continues to prevent scrutiny by the public or the courts and leaves detainees vulnerable to abuse and torture.

Although the CIA did release a paltry number of documents in response to the FOIA request, most were already in the public domain, such as newspaper articles and a single copy of the Fourth Geneva Convention which governs the treatment of civilians in times of war. The limited relevant documents that were released were documents pertaining to briefings demanded by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees regarding various aspects of the overseas detention and interrogation program.

Documents released to plaintiffs by the CIA demonstrate that many within the government itself have been unable to obtain accurate information from the CIA. These documents, which include letters from Members of Congress to the CIA, demonstrate a pattern of withholding information from Congress. In a pointed bipartisan letter on October 16, 2003, then-Chair and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence requested that CIA Director George Tenet provide senior level briefings on the treatment of, and information obtained by, three men known to be held in secret CIA detention, admonishing the CIA by stating that the committee was “frustrated with the quality of the information” provided in past briefings.

The CIA appears to have avoided answering detailed requests for specific information, responding instead with form letters and references to briefings. These practices led to a forceful letter from Senator Carl Levin, Current Chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, (then the Ranking Member) who was attempting to investigate CIA involvement in detainee deaths. In a letter dated Oct. 24, 2005, Senator Levin noted that “[t]he lack of CIA cooperation with the investigations to date has left significant omissions in the record.” The CIA’s failure to cooperate with members of Congress demonstrates the need for public scrutiny of the secret detention and extraordinary rendition program under FOIA.

“The CIA has employed illegal techniques such as torture, enforced disappearances, and extraordinary rendition,” said Meg Satterthwaite, Director of the NYU IHRC. “It cannot use FOIA exemptions as a shield to hide its violations of U.S. and international law.”

In its legal filings, the CIA acknowledged that this program “will continue.” Some prisoners have been transferred to prisons in other countries for proxy detention where they face the risk of torture and where they continue to be held secretly, without charge or trial. Human rights reports indicate that the fate and whereabouts of at least 30 people believed to have been held in secret U.S. custody remain unknown.

In September 2006, President Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons. At the same time, 14 detainees from these facilities were transferred to Guantánamo and several more have arrived since. The administration has admitted to using so-called “alternative interrogation procedures” on those held in the CIA program, including waterboarding. The international community and the United States, in other contexts, have unequivocally deemed these techniques torture.

For more information or copies of the CIA’s legal filings and released documents, please contact ssingh@aiusa.org, jnessel@ccrjustice.org or opgenhaffen@juris.law.nyu.edu.

For more information about the organizations involved, please see their websites: http://www.amnestyusa.org, http://www.ccrjustice.org, or http://www.chrgj.org. To see the most recent documents from this CIA filing, go to http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/cia-foia-documents.

h/t: CLG

9/11 Contradictions: When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker?

Dandelion Salad

by David Ray Griffin
Global Research, April 24, 2008
The Canadian

With regard to the morning of 9/11, everyone agrees that at some time after 9:03 (when the South Tower of the World Trade Center was struck) and before 10:00, Vice President Dick Cheney went down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), sometimes simply called the “bunker,” under the east wing of the White House. Everyone also agrees that, once there, Cheney was in charge—that he was either making decisions or relaying decisions from President Bush. But there is enormous disagreement as to exactly when Cheney entered the PEOC.

According to The 9/11 Commission Report, Cheney arrived “shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58” (The 9/11 Commission Report [henceforth 9/11CR], 40). This official time, however, contradicts almost all previous reports, some of which had him there before 9:20. This difference is important because, if the 9/11 Commission’s time is correct, Cheney was not in charge in the PEOC when the Pentagon was struck, or for most of the period during which United Flight 93 was approaching Washington. But if the reports that have him there by 9:20 are correct, he was in charge in the PEOC all that time.

Mineta’s Report of Cheney’s Early Arrival

The most well-known statement contradicting the 9/11 Commission was made by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta during his public testimony to the 9/11 Commission on May 23, 2003. Saying that he “arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 AM,” Mineta reported that he then overheard part of an ongoing conversation, which had obviously begun before he arrived, between a young man and Vice President Cheney. This conversation was about a plane coming toward Washington and ended with Cheney confirming that “the orders still stand.” When Commissioner Timothy Roemer later asked Mineta how long after his arrival he overheard this conversation about whether the orders still stood, Mineta replied: “Probably about five or six minutes.” This would mean, Roemer pointed out, “about 9:25 or 9:26.”

This is a remarkable contradiction. Given the fact that Cheney, according to Mineta, had been engaged in an ongoing exchange, he must have been in the PEOC for several minutes before Mineta’s 9:20 arrival. If Cheney had been there since 9:15, there would be a 43-minute contradiction between Mineta’s testimony and The 9/11 Commission Report. Why would such an enormous contradiction exist?

One possible explanation would be that Mineta was wrong. His story, however, is in line with that of many other witnesses.

Other Reports Supporting Cheney’s Early Arrival

Richard Clarke reported that he, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice had a brief meeting shortly after 9:03, following which the Secret Service wanted Cheney and Rice to go down to the PEOC. Rice, however, first went with Clarke to the White House’s Video Teleconferencing Center, where Clarke was to set up a video conference, which began at about 9:10. After spending a few minutes there, Rice said, according to Clarke: “You’re going to need some decisions quickly. I’m going to the PEOC to be with the Vice President. Tell us what you need.” At about 9:15, Norman Mineta arrived and Clarke “suggested he join the Vice President” (Against All Enemies, 2-5). Clarke thereby implied that Cheney was in the PEOC several minutes prior to 9:15.

In an ABC News program on the first anniversary of 9/11, Cheney’s White House photographer David Bohrer reported that, shortly after 9:00, some Secret Service agents came into Cheney’s office and said, “Sir, you have to come with us.” During this same program, Rice said: “As I was trying to find all of the principals, the Secret Service came in and said, ‘You have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President’s already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House.’” ABC’s Charles Gibson then said: “In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta” (“9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,” ABC News, September 11, 2002).

The 9/11 Commission’s Late-Arrival Claim

The 9/11 Commission agreed that the vice president was hustled down to the PEOC after word was received that a plane was headed towards the White House. It claimed, however, that this word was not received until 9:33. But even then, according to the Commission, the Secret Service agents immediately received another message, telling them that the aircraft had turned away, so “[n]o move was made to evacuate the Vice President at this time.” It was not until “just before 9:36” that the Secret Service ordered Cheney to go below (9/11CR 39). But even after he entered the underground corridor at 9:37, Cheney did not immediately go to the PEOC. Rather:

Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and he saw television coverage of the smoke coming from the building. (9/11CR 40)

Next, after Lynne Cheney “joined her husband in the tunnel,” the Commission claimed, “Mrs. Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room” after the call ended, which was not until after 9:55. As for Rice, the Commission added, she “entered the conference room shortly after the Vice President” (9/11CR 40).

The contradiction could not be clearer. According to the Commission, Cheney, far from entering the PEOC before 9:20, as Mineta and others said, did not arrive there until about 9:58, 20 minutes after the 9:38 strike on the Pentagon, about which he had learned in the corridor.

Cheney’s Account on Meet the Press

The 9/11 Commission’s account even contradicted that given by Cheney himself in a well-known interview. Speaking to Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press only five days after 9/11, Cheney said: “[A]fter I talked to the president, . . . I went down into . . . the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. . . . [W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon’s been hit.” Cheney himself, therefore, indicated that he had entered the PEOC prior to the (9:38) strike on the Pentagon, not 20 minutes after it, as the Commission would later claim.

Dealing with the Contradictions

How did the 9/11 Commission deal with the fact that its claim about the time of Cheney’s arrival in the PEOC had been contradicted by Bohrer, Clarke, Mineta, Rice, several news reports, and even Cheney himself? It simply omitted any mention of these contradictory reports.

Of these omissions, the most important was the Commission’s failure to mention Norman Mineta’s testimony, even though it was given to the Commission in an open hearing—as can be seen by reading the transcript of that session (May 23, 2003). This portion of Mineta’s testimony was also deleted from the official version of the video record of the 9/11 Commission hearings in the 9/11 Commission archives. (It can, however, be viewed on the Internet.)

During an interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006, Hamilton was asked what “Mineta told the Commission about where Dick Cheney was prior to 10 AM.” Hamilton replied: “I do not recall” (“9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy: Interview: Lee Hamilton,” CBC News, 21 August 2006). It was surprising that Hamilton could not recall, because he had been the one doing the questioning when Mineta told the story of the young man’s conversation with Cheney. Hamilton, moreover, had begun his questioning by saying to Mineta: “You were there [in the PEOC] for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the Vice President.” And Mineta’s exchange with Timothy Roemer, during which it was established that Mineta had arrived at about 9:20, came immediately after Hamilton’s interrogation. And yet Hamilton, not being able to recall any of this, simply said, “we think that Vice President Cheney entered the bunker shortly before 10 o’clock.”

Obliterating Mineta’s Problematic Testimony

To see possible motives for the 9/11 Commission’s efforts to obliterate Mineta’s story from the public record, we need to look at the conversation he reported to the Commission. He said:

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

Mineta’s story had dangerous implications with regard to the strike on the Pentagon, which occurred at 9:38. According to the 9/11 Commission, the military did not know that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon until 9:36, so that it “had at most one or two minutes to react to the unidentified plane approaching Washington” (9/11CR 34). That claim was essential for explaining, among other things, why the Pentagon had not been evacuated before it was struck—a fact that resulted in 125 deaths. A spokesperson for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, when asked why this evacuation had not occurred, said: “The Pentagon was simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way” (Newsday, Sept. 23, 2001). Mineta’s testimony implied, by contrast, that Cheney and others knew that an aircraft was approaching Washington about 12 minutes before that strike.

Even more problematic was the question of the nature of “the orders.” Mineta assumed, he said, that they were orders to have the plane shot down. But the aircraft was not shot down. Also, the expected orders, especially on a day when two hijacked airliners had already crashed into buildings in New York, would have been to shoot down any nonmilitary aircraft entering the “prohibited” airspace over Washington, in which “civilian flying is prohibited at all times” (“Pilots Notified of Restricted Airspace; Violators Face Military Action,” FAA Press Release, September 28, 2001). If those orders had been given, there would have been no reason to ask if they still stood. The question made sense only if the orders were to do something unusual—not to shoot the aircraft down. It appeared, accordingly, that Mineta had inadvertently reported Cheney’s confirmation of stand-down orders.

That Mineta’s report was regarded as dangerous is suggested by the fact that the 9/11 Commission, besides deleting Mineta’s testimony and delaying Cheney’s entrance to the bunker by approximately 45 minutes, also replaced Mineta’s story with a new story about an incoming aircraft. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, here is what really happened:

At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft. . . . At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft. . . . The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane. . . . The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and 10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage. The Vice President again said yes. (9/11CR 41)

The 9/11 Commission thereby presented the incoming aircraft story as one that ended with an order for a shoot down, not a stand down. And by having it occur after 10:10, the Commission not only disassociated it from the Pentagon strike but also ruled out the possibility that Cheney’s shootdown authorization might have led to the downing of United Flight 93 (which crashed, according to the Commission, at 10:03).

Given the fact that the 9/11 Commission’s account of Cheney’s descent to the bunker contradicted the testimony of not only Norman Mineta but also many other witnesses, including Cheney himself, Congress and the press need to launch investigations to determine what really happened.

About the writer:

This essay is an abbreviated version of Chapters 2 and 3 of Dr. Griffin’s 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, March, 2008).

© Copyright David Ray Griffin, The Canadian, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8788

see

Ted Olson’s Report of Phone Calls from Barbara Olson on 9/11: Three Official Denials by David Ray Griffin

Griffin Takes Powerful New Approach to 9/11 Truth

Latin America: the attack on democracy By John Pilger

Dandelion Salad

By John Pilger
04/24/08 “ICH”

John Pilger argues that an unreported war is being waged by the US to restore power to the privileged classes at the expense of the poor

Beyond the sound and fury of its conquest of Iraq and campaign against Iran, the world’s dominant power is waging a largely unreported war on another continent – Latin America. Using proxies, Washington aims to restore and reinforce the political control of a privileged group calling itself middle-class, to shift the responsibility for massacres and drug trafficking away from the psychotic regime in Colombia and its mafiosi, and to extinguish hopes raised among Latin America’s impoverished majority by the reform governments of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

In Colombia, the main battleground, the class nature of the war is distorted by the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the Farc, whose own resort to kidnapping and the drugs trade has provided an instrument with which to smear those who have distinguished Latin America’s epic history of rebellion by opposing the proto-fascism of George W Bush’s regime. “You don’t fight terror with terror,” said President Hugo Chávez as US warplanes bombed to death thousands of civilians in Afghanistan following the 11 September 2001 attacks. Thereafter, he was a marked man. Yet, as every poll has shown, he spoke for the great majority of human beings who have grasped that the “war on terror” is a crusade of domination. Almost alone among national leaders standing up to Bush, Chávez was declared an enemy and his plans for a functioning social democracy independent of the United States a threat to Washington’s grip on Latin America. “Even worse,” wrote the Latin America specialist James Petras, “Chávez’s nationalist policies represented an alternative in Latin America at a time (2000-2003) when mass insurrections, popular uprisings and the collapse of pro-US client rulers (Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia) were constant front-page news.”

It is impossible to underestimate the threat of this alternative as perceived by the “middle classes” in countries which have an abundance of privilege and poverty. In Venezuela, their “grotesque fantasies of being ruled by a ‘brutal communist dictator’”, to quote Petras, are reminiscent of the paranoia of the white population that backed South Africa’s apartheid regime. Like in South Africa, racism in Venezuela is rampant, with the poor ignored, despised or patronised, and a Caracas shock jock allowed casually to dismiss Chávez, who is of mixed race, as a “monkey”. This fatuous venom has come not only from the super-rich behind their walls in suburbs called Country Club, but from the pretenders to their ranks in middle-level management, journalism, public relations, the arts, education and the other professions, who identify vicariously with all things American. Journalists in broadcasting and the press have played a crucial role – acknowledged by one of the generals and bankers who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Chávez in 2002. “We couldn’t have done it without them,” he said. “The media were our secret weapon.”

Many of these people regard themselves as liberals, and have the ear of foreign journalists who like to describe themselves as being “on the left”. This is not surprising. When Chávez was first elected in 1998, Venezuela was not an archetypical Latin American tyranny, but a liberal democracy with certain freedoms, run by and for its elite, which had plundered the oil revenue and let crumbs fall to the invisible millions in the barrios. A pact between the two main parties, known as puntofijismo, resembled the convergence of new Labour and the Tories in Britain and Republicans and Democrats in the US. For them, the idea of popular sovereignty was anathema, and still is.

Take higher education. At the taxpayer-funded elite “public” Venezuelan Central University, more than 90 per cent of the students come from the upper and “middle” classes. These and other elite students have been infiltrated by CIA-linked groups and, in defending their privilege, have been lauded by foreign liberals.

With Colombia as its front line, the war on democracy in Latin America has Chávez as its main target. It is not difficult to understand why. One of Chávez’s first acts was to revitalise the oil producers’ organisation Opec and force the oil price to record levels. At the same time he reduced the price of oil for the poorest countries in the Caribbean region and central America, and used Venezuela’s new wealth to pay off debt, notably Argentina’s, and, in effect, expelled the International Monetary Fund from a continent over which it once ruled. He has cut poverty by half – while GDP has risen dramatically. Above all, he gave poor people the confidence to believe that their lives would improve.

The irony is that, unlike Fidel Castro in Cuba, he presented no real threat to the well-off, who have grown richer under his presidency. What he has demonstrated is that a social democracy can prosper and reach out to its poor with genuine welfare, and without the extremes of “neo liberalism” – a decidedly unradical notion once embraced by the British Labour Party. Those ordinary Venezuelans who abstained during last year’s constitutional referendum were protesting that a “moderate” social democracy was not enough while the bureaucrats remained corrupt and the sewers overflowed.

Across the border in Colombia, the US has made Venezuela’s neighbour the Israel of Latin America. Under “Plan Colombia”, more than $6bn in arms, planes, special forces, mercenaries and logistics have been showered on some of the most murderous people on earth: the inheritors of Pinochet’s Chile and the other juntas that terrorised Latin America for a generation, their various gestapos trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia. “We not only taught them how to torture,” a former American trainer told me, “we taught them how to kill, murder, eliminate.” That remains true of Colombia, where government-inspired mass terror has been documented by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and many others. In a study of 31,656 extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances between 1996 and 2006, the Colombian Commission of Jurists found that 46 per cent had been murdered by right-wing death squads and 14 percent by Farc guerrillas. The para militaries were responsible for most of the three million victims of internal displacement. This misery is a product of Plan Colombia’s pseudo “war on drugs”, whose real purpose has been to eliminate the Farc. To that goal has now been added a war of attrition on the new popular democracies, especially Venezuela.

US special forces “advise” the Colombian military to cross the border into Venezuela and murder and kidnap its citizens and infiltrate paramilitaries, and so test the loyalty of the Venezuelan armed forces. The model is the CIA-run Contra campaign in Honduras in the 1980s that brought down the reformist government in Nicaragua. The defeat of the Farc is now seen as a prelude to an all-out attack on Venezuela if the Vene zuelan elite – reinvigorated by its narrow referendum victory last year – broadens its base in state and local government elections in November.

America’s man and Colombia’s Pinochet is President Álvaro Uribe. In 1991, a declassified report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency revealed the then Senator Uribe as having “worked for the Medellín Cartel” as a “close personal friend” of the cartel’s drugs baron, Pablo Escobar. To date, 62 of his political allies have been investigated for close collaboration with paramilitaries. A feature of his rule has been the fate of journalists who have illuminated his shadows. Last year, four leading journalists received death threats after criticising Uribe. Since 2002, at least 31 journalists have been assassinated in Colombia. Uribe’s other habit is smearing trade unions and human rights workers as “collaborators with the Farc”. This marks them. Colombia’s death squads, wrote Jenny Pearce, author of the acclaimed Under the Eagle: US Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean (1982), “are increasingly active, confident that the president has been so successful in rallying the country against the Farc that little attention will shift to their atrocities”.

Uribe was personally championed by Tony Blair, reflecting Britain’s long-standing, mostly secret role in Latin America. “Counter-insurgency assistance” to the Colombian military, up to its neck in death-squad alliances, includes training by the SAS of units such as the High Mountain Battalions, condemned repeatedly for atrocities. On 8 March, Colombian officers were invited by the Foreign Office to a “counter-insurgency seminar” at the Wilton Park conference centre in southern England. Rarely has the Foreign Office so brazenly paraded the killers it mentors.

The western media’s role follows earlier models, such as the campaigns that cleared the way for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the credibility given to lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The softening-up for an attack on Venezuela is well under way, with the repetition of similar lies and smears.

Cocaine trail

On 3 February, the Observer devoted two pages to claims that Chávez was colluding in the Colombian drugs trade. Similarly to the paper’s notorious bogus scares linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, the Observer’s headline read, “Revealed: Chávez role in cocaine trail to Europe”. Allegations were unsubstantiated; hearsay uncorroborated. No source was identified. Indeed, the reporter, clearly trying to cover himself, wrote: “No source I spoke to accused Chávez himself of having a direct role in Colombia’s giant drug trafficking business.”

In fact, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has reported that Venezuela is fully participating in international anti-drugs programmes and in 2005 seized the third-highest amount of cocaine in the world. Even the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has referred to “Venezuela’s tre mendous co-operation”.

The drugs smear has recently been reinforced with reports that Chávez has an “increasingly public alliance [with] the Farc” (see “Dangerous liaisons”, New Statesman, 14 April). Again, there is “no evidence”, says the secretary general of the Organisation of American States. At Uribe’s request, and backed by the French government, Chávez played a mediating role in seeking the release of hostages held by the Farc. On 1 March, the negotiations were betrayed by Uribe who, with US logistical assistance, fired missiles at a camp in Ecuador, killing Raú Reyes, the Farc’s highest-level negotiator. An “email” recovered from Reyes’s laptop is said by the Colombian military to show that the Farc has received $300m from Chávez. The allegation is fake. The actual document refers only to Chávez in relation to the hostage exchange. And on 14 April, Chávez angrily criticised the Farc. “If I were a guerrilla,” he said, “I wouldn’t have the need to hold a woman, a man who aren’t soldiers. Free the civilians!”

However, these fantasies have lethal purpose. On 10 March, the Bush administration announced that it had begun the process of placing Venezuela’s popular democracy on a list of “terrorist states”, along with North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Sudan and Iran, the last of which is currently awaiting attack by the world’s leading terrorist state.

This article was first published by the New Statesman

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In change of plans, Jenna Bush to wed Saudi Prince, Barbara to marry Chinese General (satire)

Robert

by R J Shulman
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Robert’s blog post
April 24, 2008

WASHINGTON – Just months after the White House confirmed that Jenna Bush would marry Henry Hagar, the 29 year old son of former Virginia Lieutenant governor John Hagar, President Bush announced that Jenna will be marrying 58 year old Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. “When the Prince came to me and told me he wanted to marry Jenna,” the President said, “I said, ‘done deal,’ just like on Deal or no Deal that show that I cameo appeared on.” When asked about this sudden change of engagement from Hagar, a man that George W. Bush had called Jenna’s “soulmate,” Bush said, “the Prince is more soulmatey than Henry,” who was promised a job with Blackwater in Iraq. His royal highness Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz had recently been appointed Secretary General of the National Security Council by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah of Suadi Arabia. Jenna, who recently entered a clinic for an unknown ailment was unavailable for comment.

In a related story, Jenna’s twin sister Barbara announced her engagement to General Zhu Chenghu, a top Chinese General. General Zhu had become known in world circles for his comments that he would not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against the United States if there was ever a skirmish over Taiwan. “If I have to for the good of the country,” Barbara said, before she was taken to the hospital for an apparent case of alcohol poisoning, “I’ll marry the wrinkled yellow bastard.”

“My granddaughters were headed for disastrous marriages to weak individuals,” said Barabara Bush, the President’s mother, “so these sudden marriages should work out well for them.” “It will work out for the US,” said Harold Winnokur, a senior researcher at Rand Institute, “as now Saudi Arabia won’t call in the US debt and China will hold off on their long range nuclear missiles, the ones aimed at the US.”

“Georgie is going to have the two sons he always wished he had,” said Laura Bush, who seemed to be moved to tears.” “I am pleased at these arrangements,” said Dick Cheney, “because if those two spoiled brats didn’t choose to marry those fine gentlemen, we would be hit again and hit hard.”

Subsidizing Corporate Crime & Rewarding Constitutional Abuses

Dandelion Salad

By Shahid Buttar
ICH
04/24/08 “Huffington Post“

Government handouts to corporations might seem untenable at a time when more and more Americans suffer every day from the impacts of a mounting economic crisis. Yet efforts to bolster the economy have largely taken the form of corporate welfare — much like an appalling effort, in the closing days of the Bush administration, to subsidize corporate violations of the rule of law and individual liberties.

After the Federal Reserve’s $30 billion bailout for investment bank Bear Stearns last month came the Senate’s recent decision to set aside $25 billion in tax breaks for corporate homebuilders, and then last week’s revelation of “a historic collapse in audits” of major corporations by the IRS. All three stories prompted outrage from observers noting the implications for American workers.

But even these insults pale next to another round of corporate welfare currently considered by Congress for the telecom industry — a handout that, despite a smaller price tag, even more thoroughly degrades the public interest by both undermining national security and offending our nation’s fundamental interests in transparency and the rule of law.

Subsidy Via Amnesty

Both houses of Congress recently authorized a constitutionally suspect domestic spying program that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The Senate also approved, although the House patriotically rejected, a further give-away to telecom companies.

Unlike loan guarantees for Bear Stearns or tax subsidies for condo developers, the Senate’s handout to telecom companies including AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon takes the form of an amnesty: retroactive immunity from nearly 40 pending lawsuits alleging that their participation in the Administration’s surveillance activities illegally (and possibly unconstitutionally) invaded the privacy of millions of law-abiding Americans.

Given the pervasive secrecy surrounding government surveillance, concerned citizens across the country initiated the litigation largely to learn more about the government’s activities. But even the limited information known to the public suggests that the Senate bill effectively subsidizes corporate crime, encourages secrecy, denigrates transparency, offends the rule of law, rewards constitutional subversion — and also undermines national security.

Secret Government and Censorship

First and foremost, the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” (TSP) is the mere tip of an iceberg that remains mostly secret.

Enacted over the dramatic objections of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, the TSP is the only domestic surveillance program confirmed by government sources. Other programs — for which potential challenges could loom in the future — continue to operate in secret, including a data-mining scheme run by the National Security Agency (NSA) that reportedly duplicates the “Total Information Awareness” program affirmatively rejected by Congress.

In late 2005, The New York Times exposed the TSP in an investigative report that the White House stonewalled for over a year and attempted to censor. Like the revelation of the Nixon administration’s (far less ambitious) surveillance operations, the story deeply shook the Washington establishment. However, in sharp contrast to the Watergate era, the contemporary abuses have only grown worse since their revelation.

The Watergate scandal led to the formation of the Church Committee, the FISA statute (for whose violations telecom companies now seek a public subsidy), and the threatened impeachment and resignation of the President. In contrast, the revelation of today’s domestic spying scandal culminated in congressional permission for previously illegal acts committed by executive officials.

Even before evading accountability for secret programs violating the rights of millions of Americans, Administration officials threatened to prosecute the journalists who exposed their abuses to the public. The reporters pursued both ends and means at the core of the First Amendment, and even delayed publication of their story for over a year based on objections fabricated by the administration. Yet they were framed as criminals, rather than guardians of the public interest.

Transparency and Checks & Balances

Among the principles protected by the Constitution, few compare with the transparency sought by the First Amendment. The reason is simple: government secrecy impedes democracy.

Controversial government programs are theoretically restrained by checks and balances, like legislative oversight and judicial review. But neither Congress nor the courts have a way to check a secret program.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) faced this problem when reviewing the TSP in a closed 2003 briefing. After the meeting, he wrote to Vice President Dick Cheney to “reiterate [his] concerns,” noting that “the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues,” but that, because he is “neither a technician nor an attorney,” his “inability to consult staff or counsel on [his] own” rendered him “unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities.”

Nor is Congress the only branch stymied by secrecy. Domestic spying faced no legal challenges in court until 2006 only because, until then, the TSP had been secret. And the Senate’s bill effectively forces courts to dismiss the numerous suits filed after the program was revealed.

As Sixth Circuit Judge Damon Keith wrote in another context, it is because “[d]emocracies die behind closed doors….[that] the Framers of the First Amendment….protected the people against secret government.” But secrecy pervades the TSP’s history, animates the Administration’s threat to prosecute the journalists who courageously exposed it, and continues to hide from scrutiny the government’s other unconfirmed — but ongoing — surveillance programs.

Each obstruction violates bedrock democratic principles by denying the opportunity for either a legislative or judicial check. Put another way, executive secrecy leaves the President unrestrained by precluding other branches of government, as well as civil society, from pursuing checks and balances.

Secret programs recall those of former Soviet bloc countries during the era of totalitarian rule. The Constitution — and our Republic — has been turned on its head.

Executive Aggrandizement vs. The Rule of Law

Setting aside how secrecy offends democracy, domestic spying also assaults the rule of law on multiple fronts and aggrandizes executive power.

At the outset, the Senate’s immunity provision effectively declares the FISA law void — but only after the fact of violation, and only as it pertains to specific violators. Such procedural arbitrariness makes a mockery of the Rule of Law, even setting aside the substantive illegitimacy of rewarding criminal behavior.

In addition, the TSP shares the same legal pedigree as the infamous “torture memo” recently repudiated by Attorney General Mukasey. Its concoction roiled the executive branch, inspired resistance culminating in threats by senior officials to resign, and bears the fingerprints of the same arch-conservatives whose view of executive power bears no limit. The program embodies a deeply controversial theory attacked from across the ideological spectrum.

The only court to publicly examine the program on its merits declared the TSP unconstitutional, and a separate ruling by a secret court struck down portions of the program, although its precise contours remain unknown. A conservative appellate court dismissed the first ruling on a legal technicality, and since the Supreme Court rejected a petition to appeal the case, the TSP has been effectively insulated from judicial review despite grave concerns about its legal basis.

The TSP stood on thin legal ice — until Congress lay itself (and the American people) at the President’s feet.

Thus, a scheme invading the privacy of millions of law-abiding Americans continues unchecked, despite the constitutional abuses implicit in warrantless surveillance. Private suits pending against the program’s telecom enablers present the only remaining opportunity through which to check the administration’s surveillance activities, especially now that Congress has authorized them to continue.

Moreover, unless suits against the telecom companies are allowed to proceed, the full scope of warrantless surveillance — and the extent to which it may have been abused by an administration already known for politicizing various institutions, including the Justice Department and even the Centers for Disease Control — may never be known.

Finally, the Bush administration’s other surveillance programs stand effectively immune from judicial review or congressional oversight as long as they, too, remain secret. Regarding unconfirmed secret data-mining by the NSA, Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden (D-OR) recently argued, “There’s not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be.”

Especially given this lack of oversight, private interests should be discouraged from compromising individual liberty interests. The Senate bill instead invites them to disregard their customers’ privacy with impunity.

Immunizing telecom companies for enabling the TSP thus sends the wrong message to other companies that, through other secret programs, continue to help authorities spy on Americans — as well as those, like Qwest, that tried to protect their customers from prying government eyes.

Dragnets vs. Real Security

Transparency, democratic checks & balances, and the rule of law are not the only values undermined by domestic spying. The TSP also hinders counterterrorism efforts. Put simply, sweeping domestic surveillance undermines security by inundating analysts with false leads.

Throughout the debate about re-authorizing FISA, Administration apologists have falsely claimed that domestic spying is necessary to protect the country from a future terrorist attack. Intelligence analysts have repeatedly rejected such red herrings.

Earlier this month, senior counter-terrorism officials and intelligence analysts from agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center hosted a briefing on their assessments of domestic terrorism. One analyst captured a point of consensus by explaining that “having too much data is as much a problem as having too little.”

According to The Washington Post, “Even with 38,000 employees, the NSA is incapable of translating, transcribing and analyzing more than a fraction of the conversations it intercepts.” The New York Times confirms that, in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, “F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the [NSA], which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans’ international communications and conducting computer searches…that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators.”

Domestic surveillance not only violates several constitutional principles and tears at the very fabric of our constitutional Republic, but also fails to achieve its purported ends.

Government Handouts to Repeat Recipients

By granting immunity for participating in this ineffective and potentially illegal scheme, the Senate offered the telecom industry — which is no stranger to government largess — yet another corporate handout.

In 2004, Philadelphia announced a municipal wireless plan enabling wi-fi service for its residents at a fraction of the retail cost. The plan enhances efficiency by leveraging economies of scale and encouraging economic development, while also seeking equality by diminishing the digital divide.

But, lobbied by telecom companies, the Pennsylvania state legislature banned other cities from following Philadelphia’s lead. The ensuing state-by-state march against municipal wireless began shortly after Congress passed the 2003 Medicare legislation, which similarly maximized health care costs by prohibiting collective bargaining by government purchasers. Each measure represented an enormous — though politically covert — give-away to corporate interests.

The TSP itself entails corporate handouts to telecom companies. As security analysts monitor, review and track the telephone calls of millions of Americans, they incur millions of dollars in fees. Beyond those charges known to the rogue authorities who oversee the program, companies also have at least sometimes overcharged the government, and some law enforcement authorities have embezzled funds.

Congressional Co-optation

After enabling the most secret and intrusive government program since COINTELPRO, running roughshod over the Fourth Amendment, expanding Presidential power without congressional or judicial authorization, and reaping immense profits while doing so, telecom companies now demand immunity from law-abiding Americans seeking to vindicate their rights.

And instead of responding assertively to defend the Constitution — or even simply maintaining the statutory protections erected by the Watergate-era Church Committee — Congress instead perversely debates whether retroactive immunity is necessary to encourage such corporate crime and constitutional subversion in the future.

Corporate welfare may be offensive in the abstract, but it is even more galling when supporting chronic recipients, and downright odious when used to reward constitutional subversion.

The House bill is the lesser of two evils. Like its Senate counterpart, it abdicates Congress’ responsibility to check the executive and sacrifices constitutional liberties violated by warrantless surveillance. But by allowing in camera (i.e., sealed) judicial review of classified evidence, it at least leaves the courthouse doors open, while allowing corporate defendants to challenge their accusers without violating the Administration’s secrecy.

Policymakers have already abandoned the freedom sought by the framers of the First Amendment, and their successors who passed FISA, by authorizing domestic surveillance in the first instance. But the suits against telecom companies enabling surveillance should proceed. With corporate welfare having already richly padded the telecom industry’s pockets, it should not receive from Congress yet another subsidy for abusing Americans and the Constitution.

Shahid Buttar is a civil rights lawyer, hip-hop MC, independent columnist, grassroots community organizer, singer and poet. Professionally, he directs a program combating racial & religious profiling at a non-profit legal advocacy and educational organization representing the American Muslim community. He also leads a U.S.-based organization supporting the Pakistani lawyers movement in its struggle to defend the Rule of Law.

Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

see

Bailout Bonanza by Ralph Nader

Interview: Ralph Nader Says We’re Living Under Corporate Fascism (link)

Michael Franti: Love Me Unique (music video)

Dandelion Salad

Originally posted: April 22, 2008

Updated: April 24, 2008

FrantiV

April 24, 2008
Michael Franti’s Love Me Unique music video from the album ‘Love Kamikaze’ of unreleased material written over a span of 10 years about love and sex that Franti felt didn’t belong on his politically themed albums.

Added: April 22, 2008 (video removed)
Music Video of Michael Franti’s ‘Love Me Unique’ from the album Love Kamikaze, directed by Carla Swanson of Stay Human Films

US claims North Korean link to Israeli bombing of Syria (+ vids)

Dandelion Salad

by Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk
Thursday April 24 2008

The mystery over the Israeli bombing of Syria took a new twist today when US intelligence agencies showed a video claiming that the target had been a nuclear plant being built with North Korean help.

After seven months of silence and evasion from the Bush administration, the CIA director, Michael Hayden, briefed members of the Senate and House armed services, intelligence and foreign affairs committees, saying his weapons specialists found the evidence compelling.

US officials said today the Bush administration was putting the information out in order to clear the decks before doing a deal with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programme.

A US official who had seen the video said: “We cannot move forward (on a deal with North Korea) unless you acknowledge we are doing this with our eyes wide open. And we are going ahead with our eyes wide open.”

…continued

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BREAKING! CNN: SYRIA NUCLEAR STUNNER!

VOTERSTHINKdotORG

April 24, 2008
CNN Wolf Blitzer

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

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White House Press Briefing, April 24, 2008

Veracifier

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Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha

VOTERSTHINKdotORG

April 24, 2008
CNN Wolf Blitzer

see

Syrian ambassador rejects US nuclear charges (video)

A Strike in the Dark – What did Israel bomb in Syria? by Seymour M. Hersh

Seymour Hersh: What did Israel bomb in Syria? (video)

Strong Doubts Israeli Air Strike On Syria Hit Nuclear Complex By Sherwood Ross

Report: IAF knocked out Syria radar during Sept. 6 strike By Yossi Melman

Israel’s Syrian Airstrike Was Aimed at Iran by Gareth Porter

US intelligence does not show Syrian nuclear weapons program, officials say by Larisa Alexandrovna

US Bombed Syria: Report

Why did Israel attack Syria? by Jonathan Cook

Mosaic News – 4/23/08: World News from the Middle East

Dandelion Salad

Warning

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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

linktv

For more:
http://linktv.org/originalseries

“19 Killed in US Shelling in Sadr City,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Somali Army Frees an UAE Ship,” Dubai TV, UAE
“New Wave of Violence Erupts in Somalia,” Al-Alam TV, Iran
“UN is Manipulating Darfur Figures,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“US Arrests Israeli Spy,” New TV, Lebanon
“Who Leaked the Israeli Spy Case?,” IBA TV, Israel
“Abbas: Not a Single Palestinian Refugee Will Remian in Lebanon,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Hamas: Meeting with Carter is a Blow to Fatah,” Al Aqsa, Gaza
“Ahmadinejad: The Iranian Nation Will Regain All Its Rights,” IRIB2 TV, Iran
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

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Tavis Smiley Interviews Don Siegelman (videos)

Dandelion Salad

riphotpotatomash

April 22, 2008

h/t: Hot Potato Mash

see

Siegelman-Don

Crisis in Food Prices Threatens Worldwide Starvation: Is it Genocide?

Dandelion Salad

by Richard C. Cook
Global Research, April 24, 2008

Rising worldwide food prices are resulting in shortages, riots and protests, promises by governments to expand food aid, expressions of concern by international bodies like the World Bank, and stress on household budgets even in developed countries like the U.S. Did this just “happen” or is there a plan?

Plenty of commentators think they have it figured out and blame such factors as greater demand for high-end protein menus by the increasingly upscale populations of China and India, weather factors relating to global warming such as drought in Australia, and the diversion of animal feed crops such as corn and soybeans to ethanol production. L.H. Teslik of the Council on Foreign Relations speaks of “bubbling inflation and rising oil prices.”

There is also the question of whether a role is being played by commodity speculation. The idea is that faced with the global financial crisis,and the collapse of mortgage-based securities, investors are flocking to resource-based tangibles as a hedge against recession and the decline of the U.S. dollar. Hence gold is at record levels with oil keeping the same pace. How else to explain, for instance, the doubling of the price of rice in Asian markets in less than two months? Standard Chartered Bank food commodities analyst Abah Ofon says, “Fund money flowing into agriculture has boosted prices. It’s fashionable. This is the year of agricultural commodities.”

But the idea that speculation is at fault is disputed by no less than New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, one of the world’s leading monetary economists, who writes:

“My problem with the speculative stories is that they all depend on something that holds production — or at least potential production — off the market. The key point is that the spot price equalizes the demand and supply of a commodity; speculation can drive up the futures price, but the spot price will only follow if the higher futures prices somehow reduce the quantity available for final consumers. The usual channel for this is an increase in inventories, as investors hoard the stuff in expectation of a higher price down the road. If this doesn’t happen — if the spot price doesn’t follow the futures price — then futures will presumably come down, as it turns out that buying futures produces losses.”

Solid data in this area is hard to come by. Probably the chief common denominator among commentators, especially those advocating a supply and demand or global warming perspective, is that they have so little solid information. Thus it is refreshing to find a study that contains meaningful statistics such as one appearing on the Executive Intelligence Report website entitled, “To Defeat Famine: Kill the WTO” by Marcia Merry Baker. One particularly telling item is that after global food supplies were boosted through the Green Revolution and related programs lasting into the 1970s, more recently, world food production has actually declined.

Baker writes, “World per-capita output of grains of all kinds (rice, wheat, corn, and others) has been falling for twenty years. Whereas in 1986 it was 338 kilograms per person, it went down to 303 by 2006. This decline in no way has been made up for by increasing amounts of other staple foodstuffs—tubers, legumes, or oil crops, which likewise are in insufficient supply.”

Further, “In twelve of the last twenty years, less grain has been produced than utilized that year (for all purposes—direct human consumption, livestock feed, industrial and energy uses, and reserves). Accordingly, the amount of carryover stocks of grain from year to year has been declining to extreme danger levels. The diversion of food crops into biofuels is the nail in the coffin. The latest estimate is that worldwide stockpiles of cereal crops of all kinds are expected to fall to a twenty-five-year low of 405 million tons in 2008. That is down twenty-one million tons, or five percent, from their already reduced level in 2007.”

Further, an increasing proportion of food crops is being produced by large multinational corporations whose power and reach has ballooned under the World Trade Organization and spin-offs like NAFTA even as small family-run farms have lost the protection of parity pricing and been priced out of business. But the data suggest that a) the output of agribusiness has failed to match the older, more diversified systems of farming; and b) as nations lose their ability to feed themselves, agricultural pricing becomes more subject to monopolization.

The loss of agricultural self-sufficiency has been exacerbated in much of the developing world by International Monetary Fund lending policies. Under the “ Washington consensus,” entire nations have been forced to give up agricultural self-sufficiency and convert farmland to export commodities while displaced rural populations migrate to the slums of large cities such as Lagos, Nigeria. Today those populations are the ones most grievously threatened with starvation.

Then what is really going on?

First of all, let’s get rid of the idea that we are seeing “impersonal market forces” at work. “Supply and demand” is not a “law”—it’s a policy. If a seller has an article in demand it’s a matter of choice whether he charges a premium when he offers it for sale. If he’s a decent, honest soul, maybe he won’t necessarily charge all the market will bear, particularly if the item is a necessity of life, such as food. Or maybe there will be a responsible public authority around that will prohibit price gouging or else subsidize the purchaser, as often happens in credit markets. Of course public spirited action like this is itself a declining commodity in a world afflicted with the kind of market fundamentalism and rampant privatization that has been the rage since the 1980s Reagan Revolution.

Second, let’s ask the question which any competent investigator should pose when starting out on the trail of a possible crime: “Who benefits?” Indeed we may be speaking of a crime on the scale of genocide if the events in question are a) avoidable; in which case the crime is one of negligent homicide; or b) planned, where we obviously have a conspiracy among the contributing parties.

Those who benefit are obviously the ones who finance agricultural operations, those who are charging monopoly prices for the commodities in demand, the various middlemen who bring the products to market after they leave the farm, and the owners or mortgagees of the land, retail space, and other assets required to conduct the production/consumption cycle.

In other words, it’s the financial elite of the world who have gained complete control of the most basic necessity of life. This includes not only the international financiers who provide capitalization, including the leveraging of trading in commodity futures up to the 97 percent level, but even organized crime groups which the U.S. Department of Justice says have penetrated world materials markets.

And is all this part of a long-term strategy by international finance to starve much of the world’s population in order to seize their land, control their natural resources, and enslave the rest who fear a similar fate? Already millions of people are losing their homes to housing inflation and foreclosure. Is actual or threatened physical starvation the next part of the scenario?

And where are the governmental authorities whose job it is to protect the public welfare both at the national and international levels? These authorities long ago allowed a situation to develop, including in developed nations like the U.S., where people in localities no longer have the simple ability to feed themselves, even in emergencies. And not one of the candidates remaining in the U.S. presidential election—John McCain, Hillary Clinton, nor Barack Obama—has addressed the food pricing issue. Indeed, all three are part of a government that has gone so far as to exclude much of the rising cost of food from measurements of inflation, an innovation that took place on Bill Clinton’s watch.

It is now April. Already food has run out in some parts of the world. In a few months winter will come, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. What will happen then? Are you certain food will be on your table?

And suppose you wanted to make a contribution to your own well-being and to that of your family and community by going into farming. In most parts of North America you can look around and see plenty of underutilized land.

But could you do it? Could you buy or lease land and pay taxes on it after the galloping inflation of the real estate bubble? Could you get bank loans for equipment and operating expenses under today’s constrained credit conditions? Could you afford fuel for your equipment when petroleum costs over $115 a barrel? Is water readily available from developed supplies and is electricity available at regulated prices? Could you purchase anything other than genetically-modified seed? Would local supermarkets buy your produce when your prices are undercut by massive corporate distributorships importing food from abroad? Does the system even exist in your home town for marketing of local farm products?

And does anyone in power even care?

Well, whether they do or not, “We the People” should care. One of the worst aspects of the consumer society is the separation between the individual and the products of the earth we utilize. We always assume that whatever we need will be there so long as we have money in our bank account or the ability to charge on a credit card and pay later.

Such assumptions are losing their validity. Back in the 1960s people who were starting to understand these things began a modest “back to the land” movement. Today it is time to start one again. Except this time we need to do it right by demanding government policies that support it. This means low-cost credit, price supports, affordable utilities, favorable tax policies, and decisions by government and businesses to “buy local.” Food production cannot safely be left in the hands of agribusiness and international finance capitalism any longer.

Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared on numerous websites. His book on monetary reform entitled We Hold These Truths: The Promise of Monetary Reform is in preparation. He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, “the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years.” His website is at www.richardccook.com.

The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Richard C. Cook, Global Research, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8778

US student held in solitary confinement on terrorism charges

Dandelion Salad

By Tom Eley
http://www.wsws.org
24 April 2008

In a chilling example of the expanding prosecution of individuals on trumped-up charges of “terrorism,” Syed Hashmi, a 27-year-old US citizen and former student at Brooklyn College in New York City and at London Metropolitan University, is being held in solitary confinement in a federal prison on trumped-up charges of providing material support to Al Qaida. He could face as much as 70 years in prison.

…

The evidence against Hashmi is based on the plea bargain of Mohammed Junaid Babar, another US citizen arrested on five counts of aiding Al Qaida. In exchange for testimony against Hashmi and other cases pending in Canada and the UK, Babar stands to receive a substantially reduced sentence.

According to Babar, he stayed at Hashmi’s London apartment in 2004 en route to Pakistan to deliver items such as raincoats and waterproof socks to an Al Qaida representative. He claimed that Hashmi served as a conduit in this alleged pipeline of non-lethal material, by virtue of the fact that Babar kept the items in the student’s apartment. Hashmi is also accused of allowing Babar to use his cellular phone.

…continued

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Breaking the Silence – Israeli Soldiers Speak by Stephen Lendman

Dandelion Salad

by Stephen Lendman
Global Research, April 24, 2008
They’re called “Refuseniks” but not for refusing to serve. They’ve done it proudly and courageously, and here’s how “Courage to Refuse” members state their position:

“We, reserve officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)….have always served in the front lines….were first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, (and we did it) to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.

We….served….long weeks every year, in spite of dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country (but were only given to perpetuate) our control over the Palestinian people. We(‘ve)….seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.

….the commands issued to us in the Territories (have) destroy(ed) all the values (we learned) growing up in this country.

….the (way) the Occupation (undermines the) IDF’s human character and (exposes) the corruption of the entire Israeli society.

We….know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.

We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

We hereby declare that we shall continue serving the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.

The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.”

These are courageous men and some women, hundreds of them. Their “Courage to Refuse – Combatant’s Letter” web site lists 550 by name. There are hundreds more as well. Their numbers are growing, and their resistance is firm. There are five separate refusenik groups. They’re listed below. Courage to Refuse is one of them.

Yesh Gvul (There is A Limit)

Yesh Gvul combats the “misuse of the IDF for unworthy ends” that includes the occupation of Palestine. It was established during Israel’s 1982 Lebanon invasion that they denounced as a “naked (act of) aggression in which they wanted no part.” It supports imprisoned members and their families, holds vigils where they’re held, informs the public of their status, and embraces a peace agenda. They state that “as responsible citizens (they) declare that (they) will take no part in the continued oppression of the Palestinian people (nor will they) participate in policing actions or in guarding the settlements.”

They further say that as “an Israeli peace group” they oppose the occupation and support soldiers who refuse to be part of it. They call the Israeli army’s role “brutal” and “subjugating.” It places servicemen “in a grave and moral and political dilemma (because it requires them) to enforce policies they deem illegal, immoral and ultimately harmful to Israeli interests.” Many of their members are combat officers, they’ve served with distinction, and they rank from sergeant to major. They hold different political views, support peace but no one specific program, and they back a “two-state” solution they believe is “key to (peacefully resolving) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The Shministim

The Shministim is made up of high school seniors approaching age 18 after which Jewish and Druze men and women face mandatory military service, except for exemptions on religious, health and other accepted grounds. The organization no longer maintains a web site.

Courage to Refuse (The Combatants Letter)

The organization was founded in 2002 by a group of 50 combat officers and soldiers after its members realized that their missions had nothing to do with defending Israel. They’re to colonize Palestine and oppress its people. They further believe that many commands issued them harm Israel’s strategic interests and they refuse to obey them.

They’ve served their country and support it, but they determined that “fighting in Gaza and….West Bank (was counterproductive): by obeying orders they would not be protecting the lives of their dear ones.” They believe “the Occupation poses a threat to the security of Israel.” They stated their beliefs openly in “The Combatant’s Letter.” Hundreds of IDF members signed it and joined “Courage to Refuse.” New members join weekly, and Yaffee Center for Strategic Studies surveys show that over 25% of Israelis sympathize with their struggle.

They continue to perform reserve duty, but won’t serve in the Occupied Territories. Over 280 of them have been court-martialed and jailed for up to 35 days. Yet they’ve “won a warm place for the movement in the hearts of many Israelis” who support their self-sacrifice and willingness to be imprisoned for their beliefs.

Hundreds of Israeli professors signed petitions for them. Sami Michael is acting chairman of the Israeli Association for Human Rights. He said that refusing the occupation is not just a moral act, it’s the purest form of patriotism in Israel today. Their reasons for not serving are stated above.

The Pilots Group

The Pilots Group maintains a web site in Hebrew only, so it can’t be monitored by non-Hebrew readers. In September 2003, 27 of their members (including reserve Brigadier General Yiftah Spector) published their statement for the first time. It declared they would no longer fly missions against West Bank and Gaza civilians, that doing so is illegal and immoral, and they denounced targeted assassinations.

On Israeli television, one pilot said: “We veteran pilots and active pilots alike….are opposed to carrying out illegal and immoral attacks, of the type carried out by Israel in the Territories. We….love the State of Israel (but) refuse to take part in air force attacks in civilian populations centers. We refuse to continue harming innocent civilians.”

They knew they could be punished for their stance and for their “illegitimate” and “forbidden” statement, according to Israel’s chief of army staff, Moshe Ya’alon. Israeli Air Force (IAF) chief Dan Halutz downplayed their action, said announcing it on national television was “inappropriate,” and called it “the mother of all dangers to our people.”

Because of it, they were expelled from the IAF, denounced as traitors, and went public again two months later to explain further. One captain’s comment was typical: “In the beginning, we were pilots who believed our country would do all it could to achieve peace. We believed in the purity of our arms and that we did all we could to protect unnecessary loss of life. Somewhere in the last few years it became harder and harder to believe that is the case.”

A single incident changed them. It was the bombing of Hamas military leader Salah Shehade’s home that killed him and 14 members of his family, nine of whom were children. One pilot called it “murder,” another “state terrorism,” still another “vengeance,” and all agreed they could no longer perform these missions.

Lt. Colonel Avner Raanan was one of them. He’s one of Israel’s most respected and decorated pilots. He signed the letter and stated: “If you look at the past three years, you see that, if we had a suicide bombing, the Israeli air force made a big operation in which civilians were killed, and that looks to innocent eyes like revenge. You hear it in the streets of Israel; people want revenge. But we should not behave like that. We are not a mafia.”

Referring to an attack on Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, another pilot added: “Is it legitimate to take F-15s and helicopters designed to destroy enemy tanks, and use them against cars and houses in one of the most heavily populated places in the world….we have become blinded by the blood on our own faces. We cannot see that on the other side….is a whole nation of innocent people.”

The pilots’ action and statements shook Israeli society. Their superiors condemned them, but over 500 supportive letters disagreed, including one from a holocaust survivor and others from fellow pilots. In addition, former left wing cabinet ministers also praised their courage.

Sayeret Matkal

This is an elite IDF commando unit that maintains no web site. In December 2003, 13 of its reservists and officers (including one major) wrote the Prime Minister declaring their refusal to serve henceforth in the Territories. Their statement read: “We say to you today, we will no longer give our hands to the oppressive reign in the territories and the denial of human rights to millions of Palestinians, and we will no longer serve as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise.”

Members of this commando group carried out the 1976 Entebbe, Uganda airport raid that rescued 100 hostages on an Air France hijacked plane. They rarely serve in the Territories, but their announcement was significant because of the group’s standing in Israeli society. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak once commanded them and led a raid against a 1972 hijacked Sabena plane at Tel Aviv airport. He asked the signers to reconsider, called their letter a grave mistake, and said “it’s not too late to correct it….” Other officials also condemned them, but Meretz Knesset Member (MK) Roman Bronfman believed they acted bravely, and Labor MK Ophir Pines said it requires that serious discussion be held.

In May 2004, Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy was supportive. He urged more soldiers to speak out, discuss their actions in the Territories, and ask why they serve there “to protect groups of delusional settlers (and) what their systematic abuse of the Palestinians has to do with security….how many innocent people (have) they killed and (keep on) killing.”

He noted that Israelis don’t know what goes on in the Territories, so it’s up to soldiers to “lift this screen….The Palestinians aren’t believed, the Israeli press (keeps) its distance from the Territories and the international press is perceived as hostile. Only the soldiers can break the vicious circle….No one (can) deny their accounts….it’s time (for them) to stand up and speak out….how they killed and jailed and humiliated for no good reason.”

Excerpts From Soldiers Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika) dedicates itself to two purposes:

– exposing IDF oppression in occupied Palestine; and

– providing discharged Israeli soldiers and reservists a platform to explain what they were ordered to do on the ground.

In their own words, hundreds of their testimonies tell shocking stories – the ordeal they faced, its moral price, and the corrupting erosion it had on their values. They focus on orders gotten, rules of engagement and operational procedures that include frequent illegal commands:

– firing at civilians posing no risk;

– revenge operations for collective punishment; and

– intentionally attacking Palestinian rescue forces, including ambulances.

Their accounts are disturbing. They portray institutionalized moral corruption, universal contempt for Arabs, and how it affects everyone from new recruits to commanders. Rules of engagement are unrestrained, government oversight is non-existent, so reporting abuse is urgent. They want it stopped and demand an independent body to do it.

It goes on everywhere in occupied Palestine with Hebron a prominent example because it’s the only Palestinian city with an Israeli settlement in its center. Sixty-four soldiers from the Nachal brigade spoke out, they were there during the Second Intifada, and their testimonies recount horrors on the ground they were ordered to commit.

They call their experiences “shocking” with photos for confirming evidence. Their collective statement says: “In coping daily with the madness of Hebron, we couldn’t remain the same people beneath our uniforms. We saw our buddies and ourselves slowly changing….

We were exposed to the ugly face of terror….an innocent family killed while at the Sabbath table. Countless engagements, bereaved families, innocent civilians injured, chase and arrests.

The settlers….rioted, occupied houses, and confronted the police and army….The constant curfew made Hebron into a ghost town….The school in Jebl Ju’ar has been an army post….We asked ourselves why an army platoon prevents children from going to school. We found no answers.

We decided to speak out….to tell….Hebron isn’t in outer space….But it’s light years away from Tel Aviv….Come, see, hear and understand what’s happening there.”

Here are more paraphrased comments:

We man checkpoints, stop people from going somewhere, humiliate them, but “I’m doing my duty (and) inflicting pain on people, harming them unnecessarily.” It affects your mind, your sleep the longer you serve there. Jews do as they please. There are no laws. Anything goes, breaking into shops, occupying Palestinian homes. Your judgment gets impaired when everyday your enemy is an Arab. You don’t look at them as people. But they’re not dogs, not animals, not inferior, yet they simply don’t count, and since they’re your enemy you can kill them.

At checkpoints, our job was don’t let them pass. It was absurd, there were old ladies who had to get through to go home. Why was it forbidden to pass? It was collective punishment. “You’re not allowed to pass because you’re not allowed to pass.” Then there are the curfews. “I’m certain that 80% of the time there was a curfew.” We closed all the stores and sent everyone home.

I’m ashamed of myself because I realized I enjoy the feeling of power. I’m the Law. It’s a mighty feeling. It’s because you have a weapon, because you’re a soldier, it’s addictive. You can do whatever you want, unsupervised, enter people’s homes, conduct random searches. Tell them what you want and they’ll do it because they’re afraid. Palestinians feel you don’t let them walk in the streets, work, live or breathe.

I have a machine gun, it’s loaded, the safety catch is off. I can shoot you any time, for any reason, split your head open with the gun butt and my commander will pat me on the back and say good job. It’s crazy, I’m just a kid, but Hebron hardens you. I say to myself I’m doing something I don’t believe in, and I’m putting myself in a position where someone wants to kill me because of it. You see things that couldn’t possibly happen in your own home and shouldn’t happen. But here everything is different.

Any time of day or night, whenever we feel like it, we pick a house, any house, and we go in. We move all the men into one room, the women in another, and place them under guard. We can do whatever we want. There’s no justification for it. It shouldn’t be happening.

Then there are the settlers. They run wild. There’s no law. They do what they please. So they burn another shop, trash another home, occupy another one, no big deal, happens all the time. We just watch and do nothing.

If someone is sick and needs to go to the hospital, I ask my commander if I can let her pass. No way if there’s a curfew. She’s not going anywhere no matter how sick. All these stories are my daily routine for over six months. When it ended, I questioned whether I protected myself or my country. I began watching out for myself because I didn’t believe in the ideology.

Serving in Hebron made me feel there’s something different about being a Jew. I can’t explain it. I’m supposed to guard the settlers who don’t have the kind of morality I was raised to believe. I reached a point where I didn’t know who the enemy was anymore, Jews or Arabs. Maybe I need to protect the Arabs, not the Jews who attack them. I feel emotionally injured. If someone’s caught breaking curfew, we can let them have it aggressively. Hold them, make them wait eight hours with no water, sit and wait. “Why? Because he walked outside. Because he dared go buy something. Because he dared send his kid to school.” We can even shoot them.

Selected Israeli Organizations Supporting Refuseniks

Several important ones are covered below:

New Profile

New Profile is a pluralistic feminist organization that includes men and women. It’s goal is to transform Israel from a militaristic to a civil society. It opposes occupation and supports all conscientious objectors – from pacifists opposed to war to refuseniks who won’t serve in occupied Palestine. Its charter states that “Israel is capable of a determined peace politics. It need not be a militarized society.” It understands that “the words ‘national security’ have often masked calculated decisions to choose military action for the achievement of political goals.”

It no longer is “willing to take part in such choices. We are no longer willing to go on being mobilized, raising our children for mobilization….while those in charge of the country go on deploying the army easily, rather than building other solutions.”

It’s “hard to express this type opinion in Israel today….An attitude that dares question the fundamental principle of willing enlistment is almost incomprehensible in a soldiers’ state.” We reject perpetuating war. We prioritize and protect life.

“We oppose the use of the army, police, (and) security forces in the ongoing oppression and discrimination of the Palestinian citizens of Israel (and in the Occupied Territories),” in demolishing their homes, “denying them building and development rights, (and) using violence” against them. Thousands of young Israelis are opting out and refuse to serve. They reject military service in Israel today. The IDF states that only one-third of reserve forces in fact serve actively.

Israeli law doesn’t recognize conscientious objection. “We regard Israeli conscription law as discriminatory and non-democratic, and call for” recognizing every person’s right to act according to his or her conscience. They should have the right to fulfill their social commitment by alternative civic or community means, including through non-governmental, voluntary organizations.

The Refuser Solidarity Network (RSN)

It was founded in 2002 to support Israel’s growing “Refuser Movement.” RSN supports Courage to Refuse, Combatants for Peace, Yesh G’vul, the Shiministim, New Profile and other Israeli organizations advocating peaceful conflict resolution in Occupied Palestine.

Its original 2002 “Call to Action” declaration said: “The time has come” to act against growing violence. Increasing numbers of Israeli soldiers reject serving in Occupied Palestine. They’ve seen what goes on, it has nothing to do with security, and its sole purpose is “perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people.” They now declare they no longer will help “dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.”

The time has come “to listen to our consciences,” summon our courage, and publicly support them. Israel can never have peace and security unless it withdraws from Occupied Palestine. This is a “crucial moment, a potential turning point.” Their campaign was initiated from Chicago, but it resonates across the country as a “portal” in support of the Refuser Movement in Israel.

Combatants for Peace

Former Palestinian and Israeli cycle of violence participants are the founders – IDF soldiers and Palestinian resistance fighters. They believe their actions were futile, decided another way is crucial, and now work together for peace. Henceforth, they “refuse to take part (in further) bloodletting.” They will only act non-violently through dialogue and reconciliation and work together cooperatively to understand each other’s aspirations.

Their goal – end the occupation, halt the settlement project, and establish a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem alongside the State of Israel. They want to raise consciousness, educate both sides, and create political pressure to establish a constructive dialogue for resolution.

They hold meetings, conduct educational lectures and public forums, undertake joint projects, have bi-national media teams to get out their message, and participate in non-violent demonstrations against the occupation. It’s motto reads: “Only by joining forces, will we be able to end the cycle of violence.”

Israeli Laws Affecting Conscientious Objection and Refuseniks

Conscription existed since Israel became a state in 1948. Today, its legal basis comes under the country’s 1986 National Defence Service Law. It requires all Israeli citizens and permanent residents (men and women) to serve. However, the Ministry of Defence has discretion under Article 36 to exempt all non-Jews, except the Druze. Israeli Arabs may volunteer, but they’re not encouraged, and very few do it. Reserve service is also required up to age 51 for men and 24 for women.

Exemptions are possible for reasons of:

– educational requirements,

– religion (orthodox Jews are exempted),

– health,

– family considerations,

– married or pregnant women or those with children,

– persons convicted of crimes,

– the undereducated (until they complete at least eight years of school), and

– other considerations at the Ministry of Defence’s discretion.

Israeli law rejects conscientious objection rights for men and only partly accepts them for women on the basis of religion. Those who cite it and refuse to serve are in trouble. They’re subjected to unfair procedures and hearings that may, and most often do, recommend prosecution and imprisonment.

Israel signed the United Nations Charter and must, under its provisions, comply with the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Its Article 18 guarantees everyone “the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” So does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under Article 18 where it repeats that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion…” By denying refuseniks this right, Israel violates international law and a fundamental human right afforded everyone under it.

No official figures exist, but refusenik numbers have grown since the Second Intifada began in September 2000. Most opt out in the Territories, and estimates of their numbers range from 1100 well-documented cases to as many as double that number. Here’s what they face.

Article 35 (a) (2) of the National Defence Service Law states that:

– failure to fulfill a duty under the law is punishable by up to two years imprisonment;

– evading military service is subject to five years in prison;

– refusing to perform reserve duties calls for up to a 56 day sentence that’s renewable if the objector refuses repeatedly;

– helping someone avoid military service is punishable by a fine and up to two years in prison;

– disobeying call-up orders means facing up to five years imprisonment, although most often sentences rarely exceed 12 months.

Refuseniks are generally sentenced on one of the following charges:

– refusing to obey an order;

– absence without leave;

– desertion; or

– refusing to be mobilized.

Where exemption applications are denied, individuals are ordered to perform military or reserve duty. Continued refusal can mean discipline or court-martial, and repeat offenders face re-imprisonment in violation of Article 14, paragraph 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It states: “No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he (or she) has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.”

Summary Comments

Peace activists, people of conscience and most notably Israeli refuseniks are in the front lines of a valiant struggle:

– to free Palestinians from 41 illegal occupation years,

– end decades of abuse,

– achieve a just and lasting peace, and

– protect everyone’s fundamental human rights and freedoms that are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for “all members of the human family….”

Israel must no longer be exempted from international law, from being allowed to flaunt it brazenly, from ignoring over five dozen UN Resolutions going back decades. Peace activists and refuseniks condemn the Jewish state for its actions, deplore it for committing them, and demand, call on and insist Israeli governments end them. Its lawlessness must end, and collective resistance can achieve it. It’s no longer an option. It’s an obligation to assure that everyone has equal dignity and the right to life, liberty, security and freedom under universal international law.

May 14 is the 60th anniversary of Israel’s founding. Commemorations there and in the West will celebrate it. People of conscience won’t participate. Refuseniks may not either. Use this time to demand an illegal occupation end and that Israel no longer be allowed a pass on the international law it disdains.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG) based in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM – 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions on world and national topics with distinguished guests.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8065

© Copyright Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2008
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8777

see

http://www.newprofile.org/default.asp?language=en
h/t: Meike

Our Reign Of Terror (Israeli soldiers speak out)

Petraeus Hid Maliki Resistance to US Troops in Basra

Dandelion Salad

by Gareth Porter
Global Research, April 23, 2008

WASHINGTON, Apr 17 (IPS) – In testimony before Congressional committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus portrayed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s late March offensive in Basra as a poorly planned effort that departed from what U.S. officials had expected.

What Petraeus did not reveal is that al-Maliki was deliberately upsetting a Petraeus plan to put U.S. and British forces into Basra for a months-long operation to eliminate the Mahdi Army from the city.

Petraeus referred to a plan for an operation to be carried out in Basra that he and his staff had developed with the head of the Basra Operational Command, Gen. Mohan al-Furayji. But Petraeus carefully dodged a question from Sen. Hillary Clinton about what resources he was planning to deploy to Basra and over what length of time.

Clinton evidently suspected that the plan envisioned the deployment of U.S. troops on a large scale in the Shiite south, despite the fact that the Iraqi government is supposed to be responsible for security there. Petraeus responded vaguely that it was “a phased plan over the course of a number of months during which different actions were going to be pursued.”

Reports in the British press indicated, however, that the campaign plan was based on the assumption that British and U.S. troops would play the central role in an effort to roll up the Mahdi Army in Basra. The Independent reported Mar. 21 that Gen. Furayji had publicly declared there would be a “final battle” in Basra, probably during the summer, and that Britain had already promised to provide military forces for the campaign. It quoted “senior government sources” as saying that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s earlier pledge to cut the number of British troops in the south from 4,100 to 2,500 would “almost certainly be postponed until at least the end of the year”.

Two days later, the Sunday Mirror quoted a “senior U.S. military source” as saying that the “coalition” would turn its attention to Basra once the “huge operation” in Mosul against al Qaeda and nationalist Sunni insurgents was completed, and that the U.S. was prepared to redeploy “thousands” of U.S. marines to Basra, if necessary.

This plan for a major foreign troop deployment to the south for the first time since the U.S. battles against the Mahdi Army in April 2004 did not sit well with al-Maliki. In 2006 and 2007, he had repeatedly blocked U.S. proposals that U.S. and Iraqi forces target Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Baghdad as well as in the south.

When Vice President Dick Cheney, who had previously played the “bad cop” in the George W. Bush administration’s relations with al-Maliki, visited Baghdad in mid-March, one of his objectives was to get al-Maliki to go along with the Petraeus plan to eliminate the commanding position of Sadr’s forces in Basra. Al-Maliki has told Iraqi officials that Cheney put pressure on him to go along with the Basra operation, according one Iraqi source.

After Cheney met briefly with al-Maliki Mar. 17, he discussed the “security situation” with Sadr’s Shiite rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which has been pushing for the destruction of the Mahdi Army. Cheney lavished praise on Hakim, whom he ostentatiously called “my friend”, for “working so hard with the United States and with Iraq’s other leaders to advance the cause of Iraq’s freedom and democracy.” The signal of the Bush administration’s intentions toward Sadr could hardly have been clearer.

The Cheney visit apparently mobilised al-Maliki, but not in the way Cheney had intended.

Four days later, when Petraeus met with al-Maliki’s national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie to talk about the U.S. campaign plan for Basra, al-Rubaie warned Petraeus that al-Maliki had a different plan. Petraeus was apparently told that the operation would last from a week to 10 days — not the several months envisioned in the Petraeus plan.

The main point of al-Maliki’s operation, however, was that it would exclude U.S. troops. As al-Maliki explained in an interview with CNN correspondent Nic Robertson Apr. 7, he had demanded that U.S. and British troops stay out of Basra, “because that would give an excuse to some militant groups to say that this is a foreign force attacking us.”

al-Maliki thus feared that a confrontation between thousands of U.S. and British troops and the Mahdi Army would further inflame the feelings of Shiites in the south about the occupation, with which his own regime has been so tightly linked.

The Shiite south has become the most anti-occupation region in the country. The British polling firm ORB, which has been doing opinion surveys in Iraq since 2005, found in March that 69 percent of respondents in the south believed security would improve if foreign troops were withdrawn, and only 10 percent believed it would get worse.

When al-Maliki met with Petraeus the following morning, according to Petraeus’s spokesman, Petraeus warned against sending “a couple of brigades” into the city, suggesting that he did not consider the scale of the operation to be large enough. Nevertheless, when al-Maliki told him the decision to launch an operation in Basra had already been made and that it would begin in three days, Petraeus agreed to support it.

When the Basra operation became an obvious disaster, however, Washington officials began to question al-Maliki’s motives. On the third day of the operation, as Bush administration officials were reassessing what they described as “a rapidly deteriorating situation in southern Iraq”, one official told the Washington Post’s Peter Baker they were comparing conspiracy theories about why al-Maliki had acted so precipitously.

Although that comment was not explained, it clearly implied that al-Maliki was deliberately undermining the U.S. objective of eliminating the Mahdi Army by using U.S. and British troops.

Bush administration suspicions of al-Maliki’s intentions could not have been eased by the fact that a delegation of pro-government parties traveled to Iran to ask the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to negotiate a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army. That ploy move, which did result in a tenuous ceasefire, raised the possibility that al-Maliki intended from the beginning that the outcome of the Basra operation would be a new agreement that would prevent the deployment of U.S. and British troops to fight the Mahdi Army during the summer.

Bush administration officials have been asserting that the most important thing about the Basra operation is that al-Maliki is now convinced that Iran is really an enemy rather than a friend. But al-Maliki’s Apr. 7 interview with CNN’s Robertson made it clear that he has not budged from his position that his government’s interests lie in an accord between Iran and the United States — not in taking sides against Iran.

“We will always reject the idea of any side using Iraq as a launching pad for its attack on others,” said al-Maliki. “We reject Iran using Iraq to attack the U.S., and at the same time we reject the idea of the U.S. using Iraq to attack Iran…”

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author’s copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com

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© Copyright Gareth Porter, Global Research, 2008
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Confessions of a Renegade Christian

Dandelion Salad

by Case Wagenvoord
Smirking Chimp
April 22, 2008

Two points must be understood before we begin. First, as the title states, I am a renegade Christian. Like Barack Obama and Bill Moyers, I belong to the United Church of Christ (UCC), a delightfully non-creedal church that is quite tolerant of my heresies.

The second point is that, with a few exceptions, Christianity and organized religion are as oil is to water. Historically, Christianity has so much blood on its hands, it is impossible to tell where the fingers ends and the nails begin. All of this violence surfaces as soon as the church gains political power. When Church and State wed, Hell pays for the reception because the child of the union is Death.

The truth is that organized religion chokes on the teachings of Jesus. Early Christians referred to their faith at The Way. For them, the essence of this faith was internalizing Jesus’ teachings and actually living them. The Way included little annoyances like loving your enemies and turning the other cheek. (The Religious Right would have us believe that what Jesus actually said was turn the other’s cheek, with a fistful of knuckles.)

Living the Beatitudes is a pain in the ass, so it is easier for organized religion to get its knickers in a knot over evolution and same-sex marriage.

…continued

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Will the CIA Kill or Oust Ecuador’s President?

Dandelion Salad

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Hornberger’s Blog
FFF
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa may not be long for this world, both in a political sense and in genuine life-or-death sense. He recently fired his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, and commanders of the army, air force, and joint chiefs.

Why might those firings cost Correa his job or even his life? Because the reason he fired them was that Ecuador’s intelligence systems were “totally infiltrated and subjugated to the CIA.” As other rulers around the world, including democratically elected ones, have learned the hard way, bucking the CIA is a real no-no that sometimes leads to coups and assassinations.

…continued

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.