The release of Yaser Hamdi: legal manipulation of "enemy combatant" cases

The release of Yaser Hamdi: legal manipulation of "enemy combatant" cases "After spending almost three years imprisoned incommunicado by the United States military following his November 2001 capture in Afghanistan, Yaser Esam Hamdi is being taken by US military aircraft to Saudi Arabia, where he will be reunited with his family. In exchange for his release, he has agreed to renounce his US citizenship and restrict his travel. Hamdi was the subject of the June 28 Supreme Court decision that allows the US military to incarcerate people, including US citizens, as ?enemy combatants,? a classification concocted by the Bush administration to avoid both criminal procedures and the provisions of the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war. At the same time, according to the ?controlling? opinion by Associate Justice Sandra Day O?Connor ?none of the opinions received the necessary five votes to become binding precedent?Hamdi is entitled to some form of ?due process,? including access to an attorney and a tribunal, to challenge his continued incarceration. Hamdi?s release has been widely viewed by legal commentators as ?damage control? by the Bush administration, which got as much mileage as it could from the case and wanted to avoid a potentially embarrassing courtroom showdown. Department of Justice spokesperson Mark Corallo announced the release on September 22: ?As we have repeatedly stated, the United States has no interest in detaining enemy combatants beyond the point that they pose a threat to the US and our allies.? This is all the Bush administration has to say about the release of a man alleged to be too dangerous to be permitted to consult an attorney. Hamdi?s principal lawyer, federal public defender Frank Dunham Jr., expressed relief that his client?s ordeal is finally ending. ?I am gratified at the prospect that Mr. Hamdi?s return to Saudi Arabia and his family is now only days away,? Dunham said in a prepared statement last week. If the case were to proceed to a hearing, the Bush administration would have to explain publicly the basis on which it declared Hamdi an ?enemy combatant? but not a ?prisoner of war? entitled to the full panoply of protections provided by the Geneva Conventions. POWs are required to be housed together and given access to the Red Cross or Red Crescent. They cannot be interrogated beyond basic identifying information, and must be released upon the cessation of hostilities. The Bush administration has ignored all such obligations in regard to Hamdi and all of the Guantánamo prisoners. Hamdi, who turned 24 on Sunday, was born of Saudi parents while his father was working in the Louisiana oil industry."

Citizen of the world: a brief survey of the life and times of Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Citizen of the world: a brief survey of the life and times of Thomas Paine (1737-1809) "Working by candle light late into the night at the Angel Inn, Islington, he was putting the finishing touches to the Rights of Man, the book that would answer Edmund Burke?s Reflections on the French Revolution?the book in which Burke had condemned the French revolution, social equality and the universal rights of man. These two books redefined the shape of politics in Britain and beyond. Edmund Burke was a personal friend; he had been among the Whig worthies that had made their way to Masborough to see work on the bridge in progress. But their conceptions of the French revolution were entirely at odds. ... Paine?s life story reflects the experience of a new social type: self-educated men from poor backgrounds who were making their way in industry, science and, in Paine?s case, politics. He was the most brilliant example of this new phenomenon. ... Briefly, Paine worked as a stay maker in London, but the following year he joined the crew of another privateer?The King of Prussia?and this time his father did not stop him from sailing. This was the period of the Seven Years War with France. After six months, Paine was back on shore with about £30 in his pocket. Rather than making a second voyage, he used what must have been to him a vast fortune to acquire an education in science and philosophy at public lectures in London. At a time when large sections of society were excluded from a university education, this was the form that higher education took for many. ... But Paine still had to earn a living and soon settled as a stay maker in Kent. ... he made a living teaching for less than a labourer?s pay. His stay in London allowed him to mix in scientific circles again. Among those he met was Benjamin Franklin. ... In 1774, approaching middle age, with no settled employment, he did what many others had done before him, and many were to do after him?he sailed to America. He arrived better equipped than many emigrants, however, since he had in his pocket a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. ... Americans thought of themselves as British. They objected to their treatment at the hands of the colonial authorities because they thought their rights as Englishmen were being infringed. All this changed on April 19, 1775, when Major John Pitcairn ordered British troops to open fire on a group of American militiamen outside the Lexington meeting house. ... many Americans still thought a settlement was possible and did not openly speak of independence. It was Paine who dared put the thought into words in his pamphlet Common Sense, which appeared in January 1776. The first edition sold out in two weeks and pirate editions appeared. It caught the mood not only in America but all over Europe. Editions were even published in Russia. ... He ridiculed the very idea of monarchy and turned the political debate in a decisively republican direction. Until Paine wrote Common Sense, no one had really thought that it was possible to maintain a republican form of government on a large scale. Until then, republics had been restricted to city-states like Venice or, at the largest, the cantons of Switzerland. ... ?The cause of America is the cause of mankind,? he wrote. He identified it with the struggle against colonial oppression in Asia and Africa and against domestic tyranny in Europe. ... In a series of pamphlets called the American Crisis, he was instrumental in raising the political consciousness of ordinary soldiers in a way that had never been attempted since the English Civil War. ... He saw science as a universal civilising force that was capable of creating a prosperous, peaceful world. Settled in New York, he began to develop a scheme for bridging the Harlem River. ... Edmund Burke was a Whig politician and political propagandist. He was a personal friend of Paine?s. Paine had often dined with him and wrote to him enthusiastically while on a brief trip to France. Burke had spent most of his political life on what would be thought of, in modern terms, as the left of politics. If he had died at 60, history would have remembered him as a radical who supported enfranchising Catholics and dissenters, wanted home rule for Ireland, opposed slavery, impeached Warren Hastings for plundering India, favoured Parliamentary reform, attacked governmental corruption, tried to curb the power of the monarchy, and backed the American Revolution. But in the course of his 61st year, Burke wrote Reflections on the French Revolution, the book on which his reputation rests, and in which he denounced every principle of the revolution and the Enlightenment, especially social equality. He particularly feared its internationalism. He would, he said, ?abandon his best friends and join with his worst enemies,? to prevent the contagion of French ideas spreading to Britain. And this was exactly what he did. He split the Whigs... Burke recognised that Whig politics as it had grown out of resistance to the Stuarts in the seventeenth century was at an end. From the English Civil War onwards, it had been possible to maintain an alliance between artisans and labourers on the one hand and landed aristocrats, City oligarchs and, later, industrialists on the other. ... The French Revolution, and perhaps more fundamentally, the Industrial Revolution, brought that period to a close because the Industrial Revolution had created a working class and the French Revolution had shown what the urban masses could do. It is Burke?s distinction to have been first to recognise this political shift. With Burke?s Reflections, we are on the threshold of modern British class politics. ... This turn of events was the more remarkable since there was not a single person of talent and enlightenment who did not sympathise with the revolution. ... Burke?s Reflections sold 19,000 copies, but The Rights of Man, Paine?s reply to it, sold 200,000. No pamphlet war like it had been seen since the 1640s. ... Burke stood for a set of historically defined political rights that were specific to a certain group of people, but the Declaration of Independence had set out an entirely different perspective?the universal rights of man?liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. The two perspectives were incompatible, but that was not immediately evident. It only became evident to Burke under the impact of the French Revolution and the emergence of the working class in Britain. To Burke, the working people who set up political societies modeled on the Jacobins were ?the swinish multitude? or the ?unwashed masses.? They responded in kind. When 5,000 workers marched through Sheffield to celebrate the victory of the French army at Valmy in November 1792, they carried an effigy of Burke riding on a pig. ... Burke?s lobbying set in motion a sequence of repression?newspapers were banned, meetings outlawed, organisations proscribed, political activists arrested, deported and executed?that culminated in the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819. ... Washington, wary of embroiling his new country in a war that might provoke conservative elements at home, remained neutral despite Jefferson?s advice to support France. ... The experience tilted the historical scales towards the war profiteers and the army?s most successful commander?Napoleon Bonaparte. It is easy with hindsight to underestimate how close Britain was to revolution, especially in the near-famine conditions of 1795. ... The Rights of Man represents an entirely new form of political writing for a mass audience. It is in a highly colloquial style. It was directed at precisely the sort of people Burke wanted excluded from politics?men of Paine?s own background?ordinary artisans and labouring people. Like Common Sense, it became an international best-seller. The British government, however, took a very dim view of the book. They put Paine on trial for seditious libel. A jury packed against him found Paine guilty. He was now in France. Nevertheless, crowds of supporters greeted his lawyer as he emerged from the court after the verdict and pulled his carriage through the streets of London. Across the Channel, Paine himself was feted as a hero, granted citizenship and made a representative to the National Convention. ... Paine was probably wrong, but he never diverged from his republican principles or his opposition to monarchy. In the summer of 1793, the Girondin deputies were arrested. By the end of the year, Paine himself was in prison. He nearly died of fever and only escaped execution by chance. With the fall of Robespierre in July [Thermidor] 1794, Paine was released. James Monroe, the American ambassador, and later president, took Paine to his house to recover his health. Yet even at this low point, Paine?s intellectual faculties did not desert him. His theoretical understanding remained as sharp and as challenging as ever. The Age of Reason, written at this time, was one of Paine?s last great works. It became a best seller in France, the US, Germany and Britain. It contributed to the rise of the Spinozist critique of religion and materialism in the course of the nineteenth century. He finished the first part shortly before he was imprisoned. The dedication to ?My fellow citizens of the United States? was written from the Luxemburg Prison, and the second part was written as he was recovering at the Monroes? house. ... It is a personal testimony of a faith in science and the human ability to understand the structure of the universe by means of reason. ?I do not believe,? he wrote, ?in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.? ... ?From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea,? he writes, ?and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was, but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the Church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son when he could not revenge himself in any other way, and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had anything in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.? ... With the coup d?état of the 18th Brumaire 1799, which brought Bonaparte to power, Paine was again under suspicion. The revolution, Napoleon declared, was over. By 1802, Paine was back in America where he was to die seven years later. ... The fortune that might have been his as a bridge builder did not materialise. He made almost nothing from his books, donating his earnings to revolutionary causes. Even politically his achievements seemed to have been eclipsed. As he lay dying, he was harassed by Christian ministers trying to get him to recant his deism."

Another round of US airstrikes on Fallujah

Another round of US airstrikes on Fallujah "The bombing began late on Friday night when US aircraft attacked ?an offensive obstacle belt? composed of concrete and earthen barriers. The warplanes returned later when a US base on the outskirts of the city was fired on by ?insurgents? using fired rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. At least six houses were demolished in what were described as ?precision raids?. A US military spokesman declared that seven ?insurgents? had been killed in the attacks and that there were ?no noncombatant injuries or deaths?. No information was provided as to how the targets had been selected. Nor did the military explain how, in the dead of night, it had been able to count the dead and determine whether they were hostile fighters. Dr Abdalrahman Mohammed of Fallujah Hospital contradicted the US claims, stating that at least eight people had died in the raids, among them two women, three children and an elderly man. Reuters TV showed images of an injured baby being taken out of the rubble of a bombed house and a woman covered in blood, who was alive, after being pulled out. An Associated Press report put the number of casualties higher?at 15 dead and more than 30 wounded. The repeated discrepancies between official US statements on these ?precision strikes? and the casualty figures released by hospitals have become so glaring that the US military has felt the need to respond. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times over the weekend, a senior US military official condemned ?reports of civilian deaths in Fallujah [as] ?propaganda? and suggested that local hospitals have been infiltrated by insurgent forces.? He brushed aside video images of the injured declaring ?we can?t authenticate that the individuals in the hospital are in the hospital because of [a US] attack that day.? ... The absurdity of these self-serving claims is highlighted by the double standards applied. Hospital officials struggling to cope with the daily toll of dead and wounded are accused of manufacturing ?propaganda? for ?insurgent forces?. But those responsible for the indiscriminate killings offer no justification for their claims whatsoever and are not challenged by the media. Fallujah has now been pounded from the air for weeks. On Sunday, Air Force Brigadier General Erv Lessel boasted to the media that more than 100 ?insurgents? from the Tawhid and Jihad network run by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed. ?We?re confident that, through these airstrikes, we have been able to thwart many large-scale attacks and suicide bombings that were in the planning process.? But Al-Zarqawi and his followers, if they are present in Fallujah at all, have simply become the pretext... As a face-saving device, control was handed to the ?Fallujah Protection Brigade?, led by a former Baathist officer, but this force has all but disappeared. Neither US nor Iraqi troops have been able to enter the city for months. The US is now preparing a major military offensive to retake the city, along with other ?no-go? areas of Iraq including Ramadi, Samarra and Sadr City, the impoverished Shiite suburb of Baghdad. ... Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi echoed Powell?s comments on Monday, warning that a ?decisive military solution? could be carried out if a political one was not reached. ... there is no reason to believe that stage-managed elections in January will stem the opposition to the US occupation any more the installation of the US puppet Allawi did. ...The methods used by the US in Iraq are no different from the Nazi occupiers during World War II or the colonial powers of the 19th century: their aim is not to win over the Iraqi people, but to cow them into submission. In a sign of the mood in US ruling circles, a comment in the Washington Post entitled ?From Jenin to Fallujah?? on Monday argued for the application of Israeli methods to Iraq. After noting that suicide bombings in Israel have declined following Sharon?s ?relentless warfare? including the flattening of the Jenin refugee camp... In the early hours of Monday morning, US warplanes fired rockets into the city. A US military spokesman claimed that only ?illumination rounds? had been used. But Dr Walid Thamer of the Fallujah General Hospital insisted that at least three people had been killed and nine wounded in that attack. According to hospital officials, another three people died and six were injured in air raids on Tuesday. Sadr City has been added to the list of targets with successive air strikes on Monday and Tuesday. According to the US military, ?precision strikes? were carried out on ?positively identified? militant hideouts. Residents told the media that the pre-dawn air raids on Monday lasted for hours. Dr Qaddem Saddam at the Imam Ali hospital said that at least five people were killed and 40 wounded, including 15 women and five children."

British forces involved in Abu Ghraib torture prison

British forces involved in Abu Ghraib torture prison "Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram admitted that two intelligence officers, Colonel Chris Terrington and Colonel Campbell James, were ?embedded within? the US unit responsible for interrogations of Iraqi prisoners. Colonel Terrington is said to have joined the intelligence chain of command at Abu Ghraib in November 2003, when many of the most serious abuses occurred. ... When Colonel Jordan was asked about his ?supervisory chain?, he replied: ?Initially, sir, it was to Colonel Steve Bolts ... and then to General Fast and eventually it changed over to a new deputy, a British colonel, Chris Terrington.? ... However, despite these disclosures Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon deny any direct responsibility for supervising US personnel at Abu Ghraib, claiming that British officers were only involved at the prison after the torture was exposed. ... This is the second time that the Blair Labour government has been caught out lying about their knowledge of abuses at the infamous prison. The government claim that they were informed in late April after the notorious photographs of prisoners being sexually and physically abused by US guards were released. But Hoon was later forced to admit that British diplomats in Baghdad found out about the abuses in February... In every aspect relating to the occupation of Iraq the British government continues to act like a bunch of criminals caught red handed and trying to lie their way out of any responsibility."

The Balkans continues to fracture Part 1

The Balkans continues to fracture "The US-backed Radio Free Europe has warned that more observers are now saying that Kosovo, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina and maybe some of their neighbours could become failed states or ?black holes?. However, this disaster is treated as though there is no connection to the support given by US and European powers to separatists and capitalist free market advocates in the break up of the former Yugoslavia. Instead of the promised prosperity and freedom, the region is at the mercy of the banks and financial institutions of the major imperialist powers and is run in an essentially colonialist manner. Where matters are not decided openly by western-imposed proconsuls, the threat of exclusion from the European Union (EU) and NATO are wielded to ensure governments implement policies of privatisation and welfare reforms with sufficient rigour. The social crisis in the region has intensified. Unemployment is 40 to 70 percent and wages average just $100 to $200 a month. ... Following the putsch that removed the Milosevic government, the western powers were no longer so willing to tolerate demands for Montenegrin independence as a political counterweight to Belgrade?s new pro-western regime. ... A sign of the reactionary character of the Kostunica government and the influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church is the banning of English lessons in schools by Education Minister Ljiljana Colic. Colic, a founding member of Kostunica?s DSS, also wanted to ban Darwin?s theory of evolution because it was ?full of voids?, but reversed her decision after a public outcry. She has since resigned. ... There have been years of economic hardship made worse by NATO?s bombing in 1999. In the course of 35,000 sorties, several thousand people were killed and a vast portion of the industrial and social infrastructure of the country shattered, leaving several hundred thousand workers without jobs. ... A disproportionate number of Serbs have since been indicted at The Hague war crimes tribunal... For a period Kostunica could sideline the SRS by presenting himself as the saviour of the Serb nation and a dedicated nationalist who was opposed to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. However, his nationalist rhetoric could not hide the full consequences of the western dictated economic programme he has championed and the catastrophic results it has had for the broad mass of the Serbian population."

Toronto International Film Festival 2004--Part 2 The problem of producing great works ... and today's best works

Toronto International Film Festival 2004: The problem of producing great works ... and today's best works "Great works of art cannot be drawn out of a hat. They depend, in the widest sense, on fertile subsoil prepared by complex and often protracted social and cultural processes. Extraordinary films or novels or paintings crystallize decisive human experiences, deeply felt and lived, worked up in the form of images. As the heightened expression of definite moods and feelings, this imagery adds new grains to the sum of objective truth about humanity?s social and psychological makeup. Such works cannot simply be willed into existence. In the final analysis, they come into being as the result of impulses that originate outside art. To develop genuinely enduring work, the artist must, at some level, establish contact with strong historical currents. In one fashion or other, the work must speak to the critical conflicts and dilemmas of the epoch. When those conflicts are largely concealed from the artist, when secondary and tertiary matters instead absorb him or her, problems arise. A confused and stagnant atmosphere, dominated by the self-importance of relatively privileged layers, does not assist the artist in grasping the essence of his or her time. ... The social revolution or the keen anticipation of such a revolution, holding out the possibility of humanity freeing itself from all forms of oppression and consciously reconstructing life on this planet, has consistently provided the strongest impulses to art. What would art look like in the modern era largely deprived of such a vision? Look around you... Objectively, the crisis of the capitalist order is quite advanced. Art, however, lags badly behind. ... Land of Plenty, directed by veteran German filmmaker Wim Wenders, is a case in point. To its credit, the film is perhaps the most serious look yet taken at post-September 11 America. No US filmmaker has even come close to this. ... there are ?more homeless and hungry in L.A. than anywhere in the US.? He continues, ?the last thing they?re talking about in the West Wing [of the White House] is poverty in America.? ... Wenders? own liberal, Christian outlook blinds him to many critical connections, precisely, for example, between the outburst of American belligerence and the growth of social antagonisms at home, with all their revolutionary implications. It is telling that the director has created as Paul?s ideological opposite, not a conscious opponent of the social order, but a sweet and naive follower of Christ. ... Jia?s newest film [The World] takes place almost entirely inside a 114-acre theme park, World Park, on the outskirts of Beijing. The park contains kitsch replicas of internationally renowned buildings and sites, including the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, London Bridge, etc. The film follows the lives of park employees, focusing on the relationship between Tao (Zhao Tao), a lead dancer in the park?s musical spectacular, and Taisheng (Cheng Tai-sheng), a security guard, who makes shady money on the side. Other couples and individuals also come into view: a young dancer who sleeps with the boss to advance her career; Tao?s quarrelsome, sulky brother; ?Little Sister,? a freshfaced kid from the provinces working in the construction trade; a ferociously jealous young man and his coquettish girl-friend; the local lowlifes for whom Taisheng provides fake ID cards; the woman, who earns a living making copies of foreign fashions, with whom he conducts a brief affair. ?See the world without ever leaving Beijing,? proclaims the park?s propaganda. ... The employees live in crowded dormitories or hang out in dismal hotel rooms. A group of Russian performers also works at the park. The women?s passports are taken away by their ?manager.? One fears the worst, and is rewarded. Later, at a company-sponsored party where Tao is propositioned by a thuggish businessman, she meets one of the Russian women, now a prostitute. The painful historical irony of the encounter between the Russian and Chinese low-paid workers, toiling away in the ?World Park,? obliged to speak English at one point in order to communicate, should not be lost on any spectator. ... the elliptical style, the deliberate fracturing of so many works into many small and apparently discrete dramatic units?cinematic non sequiturs, so to speak?may reflect in part this absence of an overall perspective. The filmmakers see individual fragments and moments of life in the region with astonishing clarity and even brilliance, but developing a comprehensive picture is more challenging. Hence the somewhat contrived ending to The World. Unable to connect the various elements together in an entirely organic manner, Jia is obliged to force the issue, bringing the story to a close by quasi-artificial means. One does not feel as moved as one should. By this time the series of incidents has threatened to become tedious. ... While they never explicitly spell out their anti-war views, the filmmakers [of Gunner Place] (German-born Petra Epperlein is co-director) effectively juxtapose the comments and claims of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Armed Forces Radio to the realities of life and war in Adhamiya, a largely Sunni section of northern Baghdad. The film begins by noting that Bush declared ?major combat? over in May 2003; a soldier sardonically notes, ?This is minor combat.? The documentary makes the case that the soldiers sent to Iraq come from a ?forgotten America,? many of them fresh out of high school in small towns without economic prospects. They come across neither as monsters nor heroes, but as basically decent young people caught up in world events for which they are in no way prepared. Nonetheless, they are obliged to carry out criminal activities, and some of them become criminals as a result. ... ?I can see it turning bad very soon,? one black soldier says in February 2004. Another describes how demonstrators threw rocks, sticks and chairs, ?Anything they could pick up,? at the US forces. Disaster clearly looms. ... ?How many people can say they?re combat veterans? I?m nineteen years old and I fought in a war.? He?s already seen more than any 19-year-old should have to have seen. One of his fellow soldiers recounts how he killed his first. ?It tore me up.? But he ?learned to live with it.? ... ?I don?t feel that I?m defending my country any more.? ... The last two comments in the film are revealing. One member of the Gunners tells Tucker?s camera that he doesn?t believe violence ever led to anything in history; the last remarks that there is ?no way to rationalize the death of someone?s family member.? And this is the army with which the US imperialists plan to conquer the world. They have certain difficulties on their hands."

The Caucasus powder keg: Russia threatens military interventions

The Caucasus powder keg: Russia threatens military interventions "The reaction of the Russian government to the Beslan hostage crisis increasingly recalls that of the American government to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The horrifying events in Beslan, which shocked and angered millions of people all over the world, are being used by the regime of President Vladimir Putin as a pretext for a domestic offensive against basic democratic rights and the implementation of a foreign policy agenda that will inevitably lead to new wars. While the background to the events in Beslan remains obscure due to the official policy of secrecy, reinforced by Putin?s rejection of an independent inquiry, the Moscow regime has already drawn far-reaching conclusions from the hostage disaster. ...There is now talk of a ?strong state with an iron fist,? and parallels have been drawn to the Stalin era. ... Yuri Baluievski threatened that Russia ?would undertake all measures to liquidate the terrorist bases in any part of the world.? Many commentators interpreted this comment as a translation of the Bush doctrine of ?pre-emptive war? from American into Russian. ... Russia is an economic dwarf, whose productive capacity is comparable to that of Holland. Its army is decrepit, and even if it wished to do so, it would be unable to attack distant countries, as did the US in the cases of Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia does, however, possess an arsenal of nuclear weapons that it inherited from the Soviet era. In his recent comments, Baluievski excluded the use of such weapons?at least for the present. Nevertheless, the threat to world peace posed by Baluievski?s announcement should not be underestimated. On the one hand, he has declared that Russia is prepared to violate international laws which formerly provided at least a certain deterrent to direct military action. According to a spokesman for the Carnegie Institute in Moscow: ?What the Americans have shown us now constitutes the standard for Russia. The Chinese and the Indians will also follow suit.? Even more significant is the emergence of a global development which ever more clearly points to a military confrontation between imperialist powers or power blocs, and is heading towards a Third World War. In this respect, the regions of Central Asia and the Caucasus play a role similar to that of the Balkans on the eve of the First World War. ... Together with the neighbouring Middle East, this region constitutes the so-called ?strategic ellipse,? housing the most extensive reserves of world energy resources. ... In the final analysis, the war resulted from the fact that in the epoch of world economy, the nation state was no longer viable. In particular, the ruling elite in Germany had come to the conclusion that this contradiction could be resolved only through the violent reorganisation of Europe under its domination. It wanted the war. It was no accident that the spark that exploded the powder keg came in the Balkans. This was the site where rival interests of the imperialist powers and power blocs directly intersected. ... The Caucasus and Central Asia are not merely the focal point of the conflicting interests of Russia and the US; the future of the entire region is of fundamental significance for Europe and, in particular, Germany. The same applies to rapidly growing China and India. Also involved are Iran and Turkey, which want to be involved in a new edition of the ?Great Game? in Central Asia. Two things are at stake in this ?game??geo-strategic power and access to oil and gas, which assume ever-increasing importance as world reserves shrink in the twenty-first century. ... An indication of growing tensions is the divergent reactions by Washington and Berlin to the Beslan hostage drama... The German government expressly refused to solidarise itself with Washington?s criticism. ... Already prior to the events in Beslan, Schröder had welcomed the recent Moscow-rigged presidential elections in Chechnya. For its part, Washington had criticised the conduct of the elections. ... Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has deliberately and systematically penetrated the former territory of the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence. This was one of the principal purposes of the US-led war against Yugoslavia, as well as the eastward expansion of NATO and the occupation of Afghanistan. ... Georgia is not only of great strategic importance because of its immediate proximity to the crisis-ridden Caucasus region, it also controls the passage from the Caspian Basin to the Black Sea, i.e., the most important corridor for the export of gas and oil from Central Asia to the West. In addition, the country forms a bridge between southern Russia and Asia Minor. ... Putin has continually sought to present the Chechen separatists as a component of ?international terrorism? in order to wave off international criticism of the brutal activities of the Russian army in the region. It is apparent, however, that Moscow feels increasingly under pressure from the US. In his first public television appearance following the Beslan massacre, Putin declared that he was dealing ?with (the) direct intervention of international terrorism against Russia,? and indicated that foreign powers were behind the terror action?without, however, naming names. He said Russia was being targeted by terrorists because ?as one of the world?s major nuclear powers, Russia still poses a threat to someone, and this threat must be removed.? One day later, he held an unusually long and open briefing with selected foreign journalists and Russia specialists at his country residence, Novo Ogarjevo. Here he was even clearer in his comments: ?I didn?t say Western countries were initiating terrorism, and I didn?t say it was policy. But we?ve observed incidents. It?s a replay of the mentality of the cold war. There are certain people who want us to be focused on internal problems and they pull strings here so that we don?t raise our heads internationally.? Once again, Putin refrained from giving any names and expressly praised US President Bush, whom he described as a ?reliable partner.? He even indicated that he would prefer to see a victory for Bush in the November elections. Putin went on to openly criticise the US?s closest European ally, Great Britain. He attacked London for giving political asylum to Achmed Sakajev, the European representative of Chechen separatist leader Aslan Machadov. The Russian foreign ministry has officially demanded his extradition. ... A further disintegration of Russian territory to the south could very well lead to the complete collapse of the country?there are sufficient centrifugal forces at work. There would be nothing progressive arising from such a development. It would lead to a wave of expulsions, ethnic cleansing and regional conflicts. The new states that arose would be neither self-determining nor democratic. Instead, they would be dependent on the intrigues of the great powers and rival, semi-criminal cliques. The series of events that led to the devastation of Yugoslavia in the 1990s would be repeated?this time on an even larger scale. The suspicion that Western circles would deliberately encourage such a development has not been plucked from thin air. While Washington has officially refrained from interfering in Putin?s Chechen policy in order to secure Russian support for the US war in Iraq, the so-called neo-conservatives who play a leading role in US foreign policy are openly propagating the Chechen cause. The same people who played significant roles in the propaganda preparation for the Iraq war occupy prominent posts in the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), a pro-Chechen lobby group. In a contribution to the British Guardian, John Laughland, a member of the British Helsinki Committee, gave the following names: ?They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be ?a cakewalk?; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the right-wing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on NATO; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R. James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush?s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.? (Guardian, September 8, 2004). Laughland concluded: ?Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.? ... Under Putin?s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who proclaimed the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991, this plundering was chaotic and disorganised. Billions were transferred abroad, and state-owned companies, in particular the lucrative energy sector, were ?denationalized? in a semi-criminal manner. Corruption and criminality flowered. The Russian state threatened to disintegrate and become a toy in the hands of the Western great powers. ... Putin, who could look back over a long career in the Soviet secret service, the KGB, filled key political and administrative offices with secret service veterans. The KGB, which served the Stalinist regime as a kind praetorian guard, was suited to this task because it had been imbued with Great Russian chauvinism by Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s. ... The energy sector plays a key role in Putin?s great power plans. It constitutes 40 percent of national tax receipts, 55 percent of export profits, and 20 percent of the Russian economy. In the Ukraine, in Georgia and in Kazakhstan, Russian firms close to the Kremlin are buying up gas and oil companies. ... Putin does not want to renationalise the oil companies that were denationalised in the 1990s, they will have ?to fit in with the Kremlin?s rules of play, otherwise they will share the same fate that befell ?Yukos,? which has been made an example of.? ... On these two key questions?control of the immense energy reserves of Russia and Central Asia, and supremacy over the states of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia ? interests collide that cannot be reconciled peacefully in the long term. They are not only cause for constant tensions between Russia on the one hand and the US and Europe on the other; the strategic aims of America, the European powers and, in the long term, China, clash irreconcilably here as well. That makes Central Asia and the Caucasus a powder keg of future confrontations. ... Putin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac have met regularly, with the last such gathering taking place in Sochi on the Black Sea just before the Beslan hostage crisis. ... Germany possesses no energy reserves apart from its own enormously expensive coal stockpiles, and consequently depends to a high degree on Russian gas and oil. This becomes all the more critical since supplies of North Sea oil, which previously covered a third of German needs, will be exhausted in the near future. Russia is already providing 35 percent of German natural gas requirements. This is expected to grow to over 50 percent over the next 20 years. German energy companies, which maintain close personnel contacts with the chancellor?s office, are involved in Russian enterprises with close state connections, and are investing billions in the development of the new Siberian gas fields. A new gas pipeline between Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea is also being planned. During the recent crisis in the Caucasus, the German government stood demonstratively behind Putin. ... Close relations between Berlin and Moscow still produce nightmares in Warsaw. If there are differences of opinion between Washington and Russia, these states almost automatically side with the US. ... Germany, France and Russia are collaborating closely in what is probably the most explosive question in the region at present?Iran?s nuclear programme. Iran was a central topic at the last tri-partite summit in Sochi. Schröder, Chirac and Putin agreed to exert joint pressure on Teheran to stop the production of enriched uranium. They want to forestall any escalation of the conflict between Iran and the US. ... ?A reelected president Bush will hardly hesitate to threaten military blows? ... A preventive strike by Israel, which bombed an Iraqi atomic reactor in 1981, is also considered possible. The US has just agreed to supply to Israel 500 so-called ?bunker busters,? which could be used against Iran or possibly Syria... The regime in Baghdad was pressed by Europe to accede to American demands for disarmament in order to forestall a war. Baghdad gave way and destroyed its weapons and rockets, but the US attacked nevertheless. ... There can be no doubt that American imperialism is today the most dangerous and aggressive factor in world politics. A change in the US presidency would not alter this. However, the Iraq war has already demonstrated the complete inability of the European governments to counter this danger. Even those countries that rejected the war did so half-heartedly, and later sanctioned Iraq?s occupation. They studiously avoid resting on the powerful movement against the Iraq war that developed worldwide?including in the US itself. In the end, their ?rejection? of the Iraq war was motivated by their own imperialist interests in the region. They reacted to the war by strengthening their own military apparatuses to be able to carry out international interventions, at the same time intensifying attacks on the social and democratic achievements of their own populations, so as to stake their claims in the global fight for economic and strategic power. There is an inseparable connection between growing militarism on the one hand, and the attacks on social and democratic rights on the other. The same applies to Russia, where the working class is paying for Putin?s great power pretensions with pauperization and the loss of democratic rights."

An open letter to Michael Moore

An open letter to Michael Moore: "I must say, Mr. Moore, your open campaigning for John Kerry comes as a disappointment to many of us who greeted with appreciation the production of Fahrenheit 9/11. ... You demonstrate that the war is being waged in the interests of corporations and the ruling elite. You demonstrate that the devastating consequences of the war are borne not only by the Iraqi people, who continue to face daily bombings, horrible living conditions and the brutality of a foreign occupation, but also by ordinary working class Americans, who are forced to kill and be killed in the name of an unjust and illegal act of aggression. You end the film with a quote from George Orwell that amounts to an indictment of social inequality and the capitalist system: ?The hierarchy of society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance...The war is waged by a ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory...but to keep the very structure of society intact.? ... a viable and effective opposition to the war requires the building a movement opposed to ?the structure of society,? that is, the structure of the capitalist system which is responsible for war. The conclusion flows logically from the premise. How, then, does this resolve itself into calling for a vote for John Kerry? ... The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is a party of big business and a defender of social inequality. It does not speak for ordinary working people and youth. It is by no means an anti-war party, as the record of the Clinton administration and Kerry?s own positions make clear. ... Kerry, like Bush, refers to the legitimate resistance of the Iraqi people to US military occupation as ?the enemy? and labels the insurgents as ?terrorists.? To the extent that Kerry has suggested he might withdraw some American troops within four years time, he has made such suggestions conditional on securing an adequate number of forces from other countries to take the place of Americans in repressing the Iraqi population. Kerry has said nothing about the ongoing brutal bombardment of Iraqi cities and has not come out in opposition to the preparations under way for a massive campaign to retake cities such as Falluja. He has said nothing because he is not opposed to this policy, and has continually emphasized that his administration will seek to build ?stability? in Iraq. This can only mean the mass slaughter of thousands of Iraqis in order to secure American domination of the country. ... Thousands of working people, poor people and youth who signed petitions to place SEP candidates on the ballot because they wanted an alternative to the two major parties have been disenfranchised by election authorities, who discarded their signatures in order to keep a socialist anti-war candidate off the ballot. By giving your support to John Kerry and the Democratic Party, you are compromising both your principles and your own conscience. It is not true that the greatest danger facing the American people is four more years of the Bush Administration. No, the greatest danger facing the American people is the failure to build a real opposition to the present social system, of which the Bush administration is merely one of the most malignant expressions. Every election one hears the same refrain: it is necessary to support the Democratic Party in order to defeat the Republicans. And every time the task of building an independent party of the working class is put off. The consequence is entirely predictable: we are left with no alternative to the domination of the political system by the ruling elite. There are no easy solutions, Mr. Moore. Easy solutions arise from easy problems, and, as you are well aware, the problems we face are exceedingly difficult. Through your serious work, you have justifiably earned a mass audience that looks to you for political guidance. This places on you a great responsibility to raise the level of political debate."

Ex-general wins Indonesian presidential election

Ex-general wins Indonesian presidential election "The result was even more significant considering that Yudhoyono only launched his bid for the presidency in March when he quit as coordinating security and political affairs minister in Megawati?s cabinet. He had no independent political base and had to form his own Democratic Party from scratch. By contrast, Megawati was not only the incumbent but also secured the support of Golkar, the political arm of the former Suharto dictatorship, and several other parties. ... In comments to the Australian Financial Review, Meri, a 41-year-old foodstall owner, declared that Megawati had ?betrayed the people?. ?Everything is so expensive now we cannot afford it. I believe that SYB will change that.? Her neighbour Titi, a 35-year-old housewife, said that their lives had become more difficult. ?At least SYB has promised us a better future with cheap education and cheaper rice.? Yudhoyono cashed in on this dissatisfaction by parading an ?independent??a man of the people who would fix their problems. His pledges, however, are just as vague as Megawati?s and, while he has not spelled out his program, he is committed to continuing the same program of economic restructuring as the previous regime. ... Corporate leaders have been desperate to boost lagging foreign investment, which fell by one third to $3.3 billion for the seven months to the end of July, compared to the same period last year. Demands include not only legal and tax reforms but further savage cuts to living standards, including to wage rates and fuel subsidies. The media has attempted to paint Yudhoyono as a ?moderate? and a ?reformer?. But the former general is above all a product of the Suharto dictatorship which he loyally served from 1973, when he was commissioned, to its collapse in 1998. He served several tours of duty in East Timor during the military?s decades-long repression of the island?s independence movement and was chief of staff in the Jakarta region in 1996 during the army?s crackdown on Megawati and the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI). In 1998, Yudhoyono held the powerful post of head of the military?s head of political and social affairs and was no doubt involved in the efforts to crush the rising anti-Suharto movement. Like many others, he rapidly switched sides when he saw the writing on the wall and proclaimed his ?reform? credentials following Suharto?s resignation. But he was deeply implicated in the military-organised militia violence in East Timor in 1999 and played the central role in launching last year?s bloody offensive against GAM separatists in Aceh last year. As coordinating security minister under Megawati, Yudhoyono was directly responsible for the flagrant breaches of democratic rights in Aceh and West Papua. A Human Rights Watch report released yesterday found that hundreds of prisoners had been systematically tortured in Aceh to obtain forced confessions... Just six years after a mass movement of students, workers and the middle class brought down the Suharto dictatorship, one of Suharto?s former generals will be installed as the new president on October 20. The political responsibility for this situation rests with the so-called reformers?above all Megawati?who shut down the protests and blocked popular demands for genuine democratic rights. ...Far from championing these demands, Megawati, Wahid and Rais cut a deal with the Suharto-era legislators to allow limited changes and an election in 1999. The agreement effectively gave the green light to the military and gangs of armed thugs to crack down on the protest, resulting in the deaths of at least seven demonstrators. ...Wahid timidly mooted democratic reforms, at one point even floating the idea of lifting the 30-year ban on the Indonesian Communist Party. He also made token concessions to separatist sentiment in Papua and Aceh, and in doing so fell foul of the military and its allies. Wahid was finally removed from office in July 2001 through a protracted impeachment process on trumped-up corruption charges. The military played the crucial role in Wahid?s ousting?refusing to obey his order to impose a state of national emergency and thus allowing the parliament to push through the final impeachment vote. Megawati, who had been the vice-president, was installed as president, now with the backing of the military and Golkar. From the outset, Megawati was beholden to the military. She reversed Wahid?s policies on Aceh and Papua, giving the go-head for stepped up repression. After the Bali terrorist bombings of October 2002, under the banner of the fight against terrorism, Megawati reintroduced Suharto-style laws providing for detention without trial. Last year, she imposed a state of emergency in Aceh, allowing for a full-scale invasion involving more than 50,000 troops and paramilitary police. The reformers have played the crucial role in rehabilitating the military, which was widely despised for its three decades of brutal rule. ... Neither Suharto nor any of his generals have been found guilty for their crimes. The failure of Wahid and Megawati to implement democratic rights and improve living standards has only emboldened the military to take a more assertive stance. The election of Yudhoyono is being widely hailed inside Indonesia and internationally as ?step toward democracy?. The US State Department declared that the vote ?set a strong example for the region and emerging democracies everywhere.? But while the poll was less restrictively managed than the ?elections? that were held under Suharto, the vote was nevertheless carefully stage-managed. ... Any party advocating socialism was automatically ruled out. ... he first round in July was limited to five right-wing candidates, all of whom are part of the political establishment. ... He is also likely to seek closer political and military relations with Washington. He already has close ties to the US military, having twice travelled to the US to undergo military training and study for a master?s degree in business management. ... Washington officials made it clear that they believed that the general had a better grasp of how to control Jemaah Islamiyah, the radical Islamic group held responsible? for the terrorist attacks in Indonesia. The Bush administration has for some time been seeking to circumvent a Congressional ban on ties between the US and Indonesian militaries. The ?war on terrorism? has proven a convenient device to build close intelligence and other forms of cooperation. ... Such a move will only heighten anti-US resentment which has already been fuelled by the heavy-handed IMF intervention in Indonesia during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Far from inaugurating a period of stability in Indonesia, the installation of Yudhoyono as president is likely to lead to further political unrest as hopes for a better economic future are rapidly dashed, further inroads are made into democratic rights and opposition grows to US aggression."

Democrats back fourth Bush tax cut for wealthy, business

Democrats back fourth Bush tax cut for wealthy, business "Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and vice presidential candidate John Edwards did not leave their campaigns to return to Washington for the vote, but both indicated they would have voted for the bill. Kerry issued a statement that tried simultaneously to criticize Bush and endorse the fiction that Bush?s tax cut would aid working people, declaring: ?Millions of American families are being squeezed by the weak Bush economy, falling incomes and rising health costs, and we should extend middle-class tax breaks to help them.? Like the three previous tax bills pushed through by the Bush administration and the Republican congressional leadership?in 2001, 2002 and 2003?the latest legislation uses modest cuts for working class and middle-class families as a smokescreen for far more generous benefits lavished on the wealthy and on favored business interests. ... tax breaks were adopted as part of Bush?s original 2001 package, and were deliberately scheduled to expire at the end of 2004 to provide a vehicle for new tax breaks for the wealthy on the eve of the next presidential election. Among the tax breaks piggy-backed on this extension of ?middle-class? tax benefits are $13 billion in business tax breaks... if Kerry wins the election and succeeds Bush in the White House, he will face a federal budget with an enormous built-in deficit that will be a fixture throughout his entire first term in office. Kerry?s endorsement of the bill thus amounts to an acknowledgment in advance that the Democratic candidate?s promise of a major health care initiative will be scrapped soon after he takes office. ...Households in the top 20 percent will receive 68 percent of the additional income, while households in the middle 20 percent of households will receive only 10 percent of the total. As the CBPP noted ironically, this is ?a peculiar outcome for a ?middle-class? tax-cut bill.? This distribution of the tax cuts is a deliberate policy choice. In the case of the $22.6 billion from a one-year postponement of the alternative minimum tax, 96 percent will go to the top one fifth of households. The tax break for two-income married couples will extend 72 percent of its benefits to the same top fifth. ...The benefits for middle-income families come mainly from the extension of the child tax credit. An effort to make this credit available to low-income families who do not pay income taxes?essentially the bottom third of the income spectrum?was defeated by adamant Republican opposition. Although the cost was trifling in terms of the overall size of the bill, between $4 billion and $7 billion over 10 years, right-wing congressmen and senators insisted that such a provision would amount to reestablishment of welfare payments to the poor. Meanwhile, ?welfare payments? to corporate America continue to skyrocket. ...Some 82 of the 275 companies, all members of the Fortune 500, paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one of Bush?s three years in the White House. Twenty-eight of these companies paid zero or less for the entire three-year period, during which they raked in profits of $45 billion. ... General Electric was the biggest winner, netting $9.5 billion in tax breaks since Bush took office. It was followed by SBC Communications with $9 billion, Citigroup, IBM, Microsoft and AT&T, with $4.6 billion each, ExxonMobil at $4.5 billion and Verizon at $4.2 billion. Despite the claim that such tax breaks would encourage investment and ?grow the economy,? the 25 companies that collected the lion?s share of the subsidies actually reduced their total investments by 27 percent from 2001 to 2003?a much bigger reduction than that carried out by companies which did not profit from such large tax breaks. The industry that recorded the lowest effective tax rate was aerospace and defense?which has also profited enormously from lucrative new defense contracts fueled by the Bush administration?s ?war on terror.? The weapons industry paid only 1.6 percent of its profits in federal income taxes over the last three years."

Forbes 400 list of richest Americans: snapshot of a financial oligarchy

Forbes 400 list of richest Americans: snapshot of a financial oligarchy "Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office projected a record budget deficit for the United States in 2004 of $422 billion?an unprecedented sum, but still less than half of the wealth of America?s most fortunate sons and daughters. One trillion dollars is approximately the amount spent on the military throughout the world, about half of which is spent in the United States. The Forbes list provides a snapshot of what can only be called an economic oligarchy. Such staggering sums of wealth concentrated in the hands of a tiny percentage of the population coincides with growing poverty for tens of millions of Americans, declining living standards and worsening economic insecurity for tens of millions more, an intensified assault on social services, and an ongoing decline in the basic infrastructure of the country. The Census Bureau released figures last month reporting that poverty rose for the third straight year in 2003. ... ?Eighty-two of the 275 companies, almost a third of the total, paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2001 to 2003. In the years they paid no income tax, these companies reported $102 billion in pretax US profits.? Instead of paying taxes, they received tax rebates of a combined $12.6 billion. ... ?corporate income taxes in fiscal 2002 and 2003 fell to their lowest sustained share of the economy since World War II. (Only a single year during the early Reagan administration was lower.) ... The economic position of American capitalism grows increasingly precarious, with a burgeoning debt and intensifying internal social contradictions. The response will be a continued attack on working people. Already, nearly all of the major airlines are demanding massive pay and benefits cuts while continuing to slash jobs. The November election will do nothing to address these issues. Politicians of all stripes repeat the refrain that ?there is no money? to seriously deal with the crisis in medical care, education, housing and employment. But as the Fortune 400 list shows, there are abundant resources. They are, however, systematically diverted into the coffers of a tiny elite. ... Kerry?s campaign proposals for health care and other social services hardly rise to the level of token reforms, and even these would be quickly shelved in a Kerry administration. The main plank of the Democratic Party on domestic issues is ?fiscal conservatism,? which means the further gutting of social services in order to place the burden of deficit reduction on the working class. ... The Democratic Party long ago abandoned any suggestion of wealth redistribution or economic equality."

TIME.com: Securing The Elections -- Oct. 04, 2004

TIME.com: Securing The Elections -- Oct. 04, 2004: "'Nobody can give you date, time or place, but everyone is absolutely convinced we're going to get hit,' says a top counterterrorism hand. So the FBI is putting together an aggressive plan that includes rousting people suspected of supporting violent extremists. Federal lawmen may jail some who have committed minor crimes or immigration violations and question or tail others"

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power: "Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election. ...During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. ... Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921. In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman ...August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.

By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. ... There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. ... in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany. ... Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power. The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz. ... Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest. ... "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors.' ... 'SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939' ...The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war. ...The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented." The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director. ... "You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said."

TBRNews.org

TBRNews.org "September 19, 2004: ?This afternoon, while schmoozing a minor aide, I saw a copy of a Pentagon memo concerning the forthcoming draft. I could not copy this and it took me about twenty minutes, in brief segments, to read it through. The White House and the Pentagon have worked out a plan to call up all reservists and National Guard units if and when Bush is reelected. The moment that the election results are poured in concrete, orders, now drawn up and waiting, will be issued throughout the United States. I am not speaking of a few units but all US Guard and Reserve units. On the same subject, the pending Universal Draft is also a done deal. Everything is place awaiting the President?s signature. This is planned for June of 2005 and contains some real shockers. Women will be called up as well as men. There will be absolutely no deferments of any kind permitted. Persons with medical problems such as diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, chronic asthma, physical deformities such as a club foot or hunch back, vision problems, etc. will be called up! If a draftee has a medical problem but can move around, they are subject to the draft but will be assigned to non-military positions such as clerk-typists, maintenance positions and so on. There will be absolutely no deferments for someone with a family to support or who is enrolled in any kind of a school. Students may be permitted to complete their semester and will then be compelled to report at once to their nearest enlistment center. For example, as I read it, an 18 year old girl with two children and no husband to support her will be subject to the draft. There was a discussion about what to do with the children and if the family cannot raise them during the draftee?s tour of duty, then some kind of Federal Child Care center will have to suffice. The nominal ages covered are from 18 through 26 but a special exception is now in the orders for anyone with what the Army calls ?technical skills? such as proficiency in computers, foreign language skills and so on. These poor jerks are subject to the draft until they are 35! Again, no deferments will be allowed unless the subject is already working for a government agency and is certified by his superiors as ?vital? to whatever ?war effort? the Army deems important. These orders, note, came from the desk of George W. Bush to Rumsfeld but Bush will cite a vague ?national crisis? to cover his useless ass. The top brass at the Pentagon are having fits about this. Why? Because for decades they have been downsizing, closing bases and so on. I have been told by Pentagon people that they would have no place to put the anticipated great flood of draftees if and when the draft is activated. One said to me, ?Where the fuck do these dimbulbs expect us to house them? In local hotels?'? Comment: Because the subject of a universal draft is Bush?s political Achilles Heel, the Administration and various governmental agencies have gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal it from the public. Nevertheless, anyone with a computer and basic skills can locate information on the upcoming draft by looking at dozens of official government sites. Admittedly, these sites are so buried in the official underbrush as to be difficult to locate, nevertheless, they are there. We have included an anti-draft article in this posting. If America?s cannon fodder do not want end up dead or mangled for life, it would be to their advantage to read these sites, organize and in November, vote en bloc against the man who would cheerfully dump them into the Imperial sausage grinder. Because Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld all went to great pains to avoid any kind of military service during the Vietnamese war, their present macho militancy stinks and shines like a dead mackerel in the moonlight."

Once again (see below), voting Democrat will save you from the draft. After all, Kerry and Edwards both categorically denied it as an option. But there is no way that Kerry is otherwise going to get any money for child care services otherwise, and it's not up to him, in fact, whether we invade Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan, and Somalia. Those decisions are made by the same power elite that chose him as the sole challenger to Bush. Now that they have succeeded in putting Iran into a defensive combat posture, they can't afford to back down and admit that they used up their troops in the stupidity in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article concludes implicitly with the Democrat nonsense that Kerry's credentials as not shirking his duty to kill peasants in their houses in Vietnam for capitalism makes a vote for him a vote for peace.

Military Draft Alert!

Military Draft Alert! "In May, the Seattle Post Intelligencer published an article about a document they received through the Freedom of Information Act. It was revealed that the SSS is currently ?designing procedures? for the implementation of a ?Skills Draft? and had held a top-level meeting on it with Deputy Undersecretaries at the Defense Department. This draft would change the essential mission of the Selective Service and require ?virtually every young American,? male and female ages 18?34, to register for the Skills Draft and list all the occupations they are proficient in to fill labor shortages throughout nearly the entire government. ... Family Circle reported in its July 13 issue that Karl Rove had polled GOP members of Congress in September 2002 to see if they would support the President if he requests reinstatement. The Republicans said they would vote for the draft. They would likely support the new legislation needed to create the Skills Draft. While Bush and the Republicans are of course keeping the return of the draft and the new skills draft as quiet as possible, many anti-draft organizations have recently begun warning of a ?Coming New Draft. ? ... given the current manpower shortages for certain skills and nurses, if Bush gets back in, expect all the options outlined in the Issue Paper to be implemented by the end of December of this year, and at the least a non-combat skills and medical draft to start next year, if not the male combat draft, ages 18 ?25. Despite Rumsfeld saying the draft is not needed, this is the same neo-con administration that has repeatedly lied to and misled the American people. Draft-age youth and their families are left looking at a ?long, hard slog? in Iraq (Rumsfeld secret memo), the neo-con plans to invade still more nations, and then having to take Rumsfeld and Cheney?s word not to worry about the draft, that they ?are not considering it at this time.? Although official word is that this secret list of options is not being implemented?the Issue Paper options have NOT been rejected and the 6-page proposal is rather sitting in the Pentagon, waiting. In addition, the SSS itself has said that it is ?designing procedures? (Seattle PI, May 1, 2004) to implement the skills draft, meaning designing the compliance cards and the data fields needed to keep track of ?virtually every young American? and their skills. Acting Director of the SSS Brodsky has also said the Skills Draft is the ?top priority? of the Selective Service for 2004. ... . The Issue Paper options include:

* Change the very mission of the SSS to become a massive conscription service in the War on Terror for the entire government.
* Conscript men and women in a critical skills non-combat draft up to age 34 with no deferments of any kind, except ?essential community service? (like the Medical Draft).
* Allow a non-combat draft for shortages in critical skills, without calling a combat draft.
* Fill labor shortages of all kinds throughout not only DoD but the whole government, especially high-paying professionals like computer networking specialist or linguist.
* Create a massive database of ?virtually every young American? ages 18 to 34. This database would be used to draft in war and to recruit in peacetime. State and even local governments would be given access to the names for recruitment and help in emergencies.
* Create a single-point, all-inclusive database, in which every young person would be forced to send in a ?self-declaration? of all of their critical skills, chosen from a long list of occupations like the Armed Forces Specialty Code. The self-declaration is similar to IRS compliance and the filling out and signing of your tax forms. All young people would be required to keep the government updated if they acquired a new skill. SSS Compliance forms will be available at every Post Office. The usual penalties of imprisonment and/or a $250,000 fine would apply to all non-registrants.
* A draft or recruitment could be for any one of the skills you self- declare on the compliance form, not your current or primary skill. This greatly increases your chance of being drafted if you are 18?34.
* Bring the Medical Draft (HCPDS) up to speed and fully test it through readiness exercises.
* Reduce induction time from being able to deliver all inductees in 193 days down to just 90 days for skills inductees.
...
For obvious political reasons, the decision was made by Bush, Cheney and Rove to sit on this 6-page proposal until after the election in November. Yet the SSS was told to go ahead and begin ?designing procedures? for the Skills Draft in 2004 and make it their ?top priority.? It can be expected that if Bush gets back in, and the DoD and SSS are still asking for the Skills Draft, the ?Next Steps? part of the document will be put into action and the most expansive option to change the SSS mission will be rapidly legislated. In the secret planning meeting document, the next steps strongly recommended by SSS Acting Director Brodsky were:
1. ?Promptly? redefine the SSS Mission to draft men and women up to age 34 for skills, and deliver them within 90 days or sooner to the Department of Defense. Program a massive database to be ready to enter millions of names of those registering their critical skills.
2. Expand mission to deliver personnel in skills draft to the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, including FEMA, NSC, Border Patrol, INS, Customs, Corporation for National Service, Public Health Service and other federal, state and local government agencies.
3. Form interagency task force to provide Administration with recommendation on this skills draft for the entire DHS and the rest of the government.
4. Obtain White House Statement of Administration Policy on the future of the SSS.
5. Be prepared to market the skills draft, raising the non-combat age to 34 and the drafting of women to the Armed Services and Appropriations Committee.
...
But what about the Combat Draft? Selective Service has been registering young men for over twenty years and at any moment the President can go to Congress and ask them to reauthorize conscription for the male combat draft for ages 18?25. It doesn?t take much to imagine a re-elected Bush going to Congress and saying ?We cannot cut and run from Iraq or the War on Terror. I need you to reauthorize conscription.? And they would not have to pass a whole new draft law to do it. All that is needed is a ?trigger resolution,? which could be passed in the dead of night?and bingo! No debate, no regular bill, just a short resolution passed quickly and the draft for men 18 to 25 is back. That is why the Democratic draft resolution being offered by Rangel and Hollings is totally irrelevant. These are known protest bills and actually propose drafting women for the combat draft, just to make sure they will never see the light of day. Rangel and Hollings offered them to raise the issue and confront Bush. Hollings even said he wouldn?t vote for his own bill! They are not needed?and the press and the Republicans will bring them up as red herrings to distract everyone from what is really going on: the Republicans, and the SSS are quietly, behind the scenes, oiling up the draft machinery?getting ready to reinstate for the Spring of 2005. ... the draft boards themselves have become 80% vacant over the decades. In the current 5-year cycle of exercises, however, the SSS is clearly ramping up the draft machinery to an unprecedented level. "Strategic Objective 1.2: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 56 State Headquarters, 442 Area Offices and 1,980 Local Boards are operational within 75 days of an authorized return to conscription.? Tie that to this objective:
An annual report providing the results of the implementation of these performance measures will be submitted by March 31, 2005.
75 days from March 31, 2005 is about June 15, 2005. According to the 2004 plan, the draft boards will be ?operational? then... the SSS says in one paragraph of the Performance Plan that budgets will be ?adjusted? to cover the additional cost for 2004:
Strategic Goal 1: Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the Manpower Delivery Systems (Projected allocation for FY 2004: $7,942,000)
Strategic Goal 2: Improve overall Registration Compliance and Service to the Public (Projected allocation FY 2004: $8,769,000)
Strategic Goal 3: Enhance external and internal customer service (Projected allocation for FY 2004: $10 ,624,000)
Strategic Goal 4: Enhance the system which guarantees that each conscientious objector is properly classified, placed, and monitored. (Projected allocation for FY 2004: $955,000)
...
Goal number 1 in particular brings the combat induction process up to 95% operational readiness, going so far as to actually hold a mock lottery drawing this year... Goal number four is particularly ominous:
Strategic Objective 4.1: Ensure a mobilization infrastructure of 48 Alternative Service Offices and 48 Civilian Review Boards are operational within 96 days after notification of a return to induction.
Strategic Objective 4.2: Develop a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the Alternative Service Employer Network to specifically identify organizations and associations who can, by law, participate in the Alternative Service Program. ... In sharp contrast to all this preparation for a Spring 2005 draft by Bush, Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry has proposed a military plan that rejects any draft, by adding 20,000 active duty combat soldiers and 20,000 active ?reconstruction specialists.? At a Wisconsin high school, Kerry pledged in June, 2004, that the draft would be ?absolutely unnecessary.? When asked in April by 130 college editors in a conference call as to whether he would support a draft, John Kerry said unequivocally: ?No. No draft? and he has criticized the use of the Guard and Reserve and now the Individual Ready Reserve as a ?back-door draft.? Kerry plans to spend an additional $7 billion to strengthen the Volunteer Army in what is essentially a ?No-Draft Plan,? Moreover, Kerry is strongly opposed to the neo-con plan revealed in Wes Clark?s book, in which Clark was told by a senior Pentagon official that invasions of Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan and Somalia are still to come over the next three years."

Again it seems those who recognize the inevitability of a draft under a reelected Bush think Kerry will have any alternative. They hopefully point to his "plan" to pursue the war for four more years with volunteers, considering it irrelevant that the current wave of cannon fodder joined up in peace time, long before Michael Moore brought the Bush lies to the shopping mall cineplexes and Kofi Annan declared the war illegal. Even if this articles bizarre explanation for Rangel's bizarre explanation for his draft bill (that forcing people to go kill and die for Halliburton is more democratic than leaving it up to them), there's a flaw in his reasoning. The fine for failing to register is only $250,000.

U.S. Sees Chances of Saddam Trial in 2004 'Remote'

U.S. Sees Chances of Saddam Trial in 2004 'Remote': "BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The chances of trying former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2004 are remote, a U.S. official said Friday, casting doubt on remarks by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi who said the trial could begin as early as October."

Imperialist war crimes and terrorist trials are not going well. The "terrorists" arrested for involvement in 9/11 and other attacks have almost all been released: in Germany, in Indonesia, in Britain, and in the US. They just let Hamdi out of Gitmo who was supposed to have the airtight evidence on 9/11 against the German defendents. On the other side of transnational corporate/fascist law enforcement, Milosevic's trial is so embarrassing that they're hinting he might have the Pinochet virus and isn't up to being prosecuted. But I'm sure when the prosecution finally finishes constructing its case against Zacarias Moussaoui, we'll have a big public Michael Jacksonesque show trial so the few remaining skeptics about the facts uncovered by the 9/11 commission can eat their words.

Iran Says It Has Tested Strategic Missile

Iran Says It Has Tested Strategic Missile: "The United States - which once labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea and prewar Iraq - and other nations suspect Iran is developing atomic weapons. ... Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Iran was a worldwide threat whose missiles can reach London, Paris and southern Russia. ... Earlier this month, Israel said it was buying from the United States about 5,000 smart bombs, including 500 1-ton bunker-busters that can destroy 6-foot-thick concrete walls. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi has warned that Tehran would react "most severely" to any Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities. ... Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards staged military maneuvers earlier this month near the Iraqi border, with top military officials saying the exercise was designed to reinforce Iran's resolve to defend itself against 'big powers.' ... The development of the Shahab, whose name means "shooting star" in Persian, has raised fears in Israel about possible attack by the Iranian government, which strongly opposes the Jewish state's existence."

So the hyper orthodox Moslems in Iran are secretly planning to vaporize the Holy Land for Allah, and to make sure they get away with it, they're going to nuke London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow simultaneously, while we here in the US sit on our hands and fret about the niceties of international law.

House Republicans Unveil Sweeping Sept. 11 Bill

House Republicans Unveil Sweeping Sept. 11 Bill: "'We wrote this bill to make sure that we have the best interests of the American people and the security of the American people at heart,' he added. 'We want to do the things that we must do to catch terrorists and keep terrorists from attacking the American people.' Among dozens of provisions of the House bill is a measure that would make it easier for government agents to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects who operate with no clear connection to foreign groups. ... 'Instead of acting in a bipartisan manner, the Republican leadership is introducing a bill, written behind closed doors, that attempts to score partisan points and goes far outside the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission'"

Hastert seems to be the face of Fascist Republican credibility du jour (at least while Colin is busy protecting the downtrodden in Sudan). He's dropped the "the terrorists" bogey and now just uses "terrorists" like an intelligent adult, only these "terrorists" might have no affiliation to any group and be merely suspected of thinking about shooting a Republican senator.

Men, Women More Different Than Thought

Men, Women More Different Than Thought: "It turns out that major illnesses like heart disease and lung cancer are influenced by gender and that perhaps treatments for women ought to be slightly different from the approach used for men.
_Heart attacks in women frequently don't involve chest pain and may involve more vague, flu-like symptoms.
_Women who don't smoke appear to be more susceptible to lung cancer than nonsmoking men. Women also tend to get lung cancer at younger ages than men, and they appear to metabolize cancer-causing substances differently than men.
_Women are less likely than men to get oral cancer.
_Women are more prone to autoimmune diseases, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, in which disease-fighting mechanisms mistakenly attack the body's own tissues.
_Some AIDS-fighting medicines appear to metabolize more quickly in men than in women, who may require gender-specific doses.
_Women's symptoms for ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease - debilitating intestinal diseases that affect men and women - vary considerably each month, requiring frequent medication adjustments."

Women are also dumber than men.

My Way News

My Way News: "The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on President Bush's National Guard service. The Guard story was discredited because it relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were apparently fake. CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered inappropriate."

Dan I'd Rather not be necklaced plays "the media busts itself" just like the BBC did with its dodgy attacks on Blair's integrity last year.

Cote d'Ivoire : deux années d'occupation par la France et par les Nations Unies

Cote d'Ivoire : deux années d'occupation par la France et par les Nations Unies:"Les 25 et 26 mars, des dizaines de milliers de personnes se sont rassemblees dans les quartiers ouvriers d' Abidjan pour manifester contre Gbagbo. On leur a interdit de quitter leurs quartiers et plus de 120 personnes ont été tuées au cours d'attaques de la milice et des forces de sécurité. Une enquéte du Haut Commissariat aux Droits de l'Homme des Nations Unies a conclu que l'attaque avait été soigneusement 'planifiée et menée par les forces de sécurité...et par les prétendues forces paralléles sous la direction ou sous la responsabilité des plus hautes sphéres de l'état'. ... Début aoút, une équipe d'enquéteurs des Nations Unies a découvert trois fosses communes contenant les corps de plus de 100 personnes. Certains avaient été fusillés. D'autres, d'aprés certains témoins oculaires, sont morts asphyxiés. Un survivant raconte avoir été enfermé avec d'autres personnes dans un container avec peu d'air et sans nourriture ni eau. Quand le container a été ouvert, on a trouvé 75 cadavres. Soro s'était heurté avec le dirigeant rebelle rival Ibrahim Coulibaly (connu sous les initiales de 'IB') détenu l'année derniére en France aprés avoir essayé de lever une force mercenaire afin de s'emparer de toute la Céte d'Ivoire. De nombreux partisans survivants d'IB se sont enfuis dans les pays voisins et il n'est pas exclu qu'ils se regroupent avec la France qui a autorisé IB é quitter le pays. ... La sécurité en Côte d'Ivoire, dont le risque d'être entraîné dans un conflit plus large en Afrique de l'ouest, est sans cesse menacée du fait de l'existence de diverses milices à l'ouest du pays, aux confins du Libéria et de Guinée. Certaines de ces milices ont une base ethnique, d'autres sont du Libéria ou du Burkina Faso. En juin, le gouvernement de Gbagbo se trouva dans l'incapacité de payer les 20 millions de Dollars US dus aux pays occidentaux, et la Banque Mondiale a été contrainte de suspendre son soutien financier. ... Suite à des élections truquées, où les principaux opposants, conduits par Outarra ont été exclus, ce n'est qu'avec le soutien de la France que Gbagbo a pu accéder à la présidence, soutien dont il dépend encore. Ce qu'il cherche surtout c'est à renforcer sa position et celle de sa clique dans un traité de partage du pouvoir orchestré par la France. ... Il faudrait être vraiment très naïf pour considérer qu'un quelconque bénéfice à long terme pour l'ensemble de la population ivoirienne puisse résulter de l'occupation militaire de la Côte d'Ivoire par la France et par les Nations Unies."

Australian Labor's militarist plans for South-East Asia

Australian Labor's militarist plans for South-East Asia " "[T]he political meaning of the 'war on terror' has become increasingly clear. It has nothing to do with protecting ordinary people, but, rather, is a propaganda slogan used by the most powerful capitalist nations to prosecute their interests against their competitors. the chief factor in the Howard government's support for the US-led war on Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq was not concern over terror?the Saddam Hussein regime never constituted a 'terrorist' threat, but recognition that US support would be needed to pursue Australian interests against potential rivals in the Asia-Pacific region. This was the lesson drawn by Canberra out of the experience of East Timor, where it undertook the biggest deployment of Australian military forces since the end of the Vietnam War. The Howard government was only able to place troops on the ground there, and strengthen its position against Portugal, the former colonial power, with the support of the Clinton administration, which threatened to bankrupt the Indonesian government unless it agreed. ...Just three months after the invasion of Iraq, the Howard government launched its police-military intervention in the Solomons. Since then, it has been in continuous discussion over what measures to take in Papua New Guinea. ...Howard argues that the closest possible alliance with the US?even to the extent of functioning as its 'deputy sheriff,' as he once put it--is the best way to strengthen the position of Australian imperialism... Latham?s opposition to Australian involvement in the war on Iraq was not based on the fact that it constituted illegal aggression, or that it was grounded on lies. It was merely a 'mistake' because it 'diverted from the real task' which, Latham argued, for Australia, lay 'in our part of the world.' ... Asked whether he still stuck by his pledge to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq by Christmas, Latham simply ignored the question. Instead, he set out Labor's plans for military intervention in South-East Asia to prosecute the 'war on terror' and wipe out Jemaah Islamiya (JI). ... The greatest challenge was to break up the JI networks and, to that end, Australia had to be involved in 'maritime strategies to prevent JI operatives travelling to and from their bases in the Southern Philippines.' ... Not surprisingly, in view of these remarks, one journalist then asked Latham whether he would support sending in Australian troops to 'hit' a 'terror training camp' in Indonesia or the Southern Philippines. Latham said that he would not get into 'hypotheticals' ... the importance of this task was underlined by the fact that earlier this year, an American move to begin patrols in the region was rejected by the Indonesian and Malaysian governments. ... If Labor is returned to government then the few hundred remaining troops in Iraq could be withdrawn. But this may well be just the prelude to an eruption of Australian militarism within the Asia-Pacific region, under the umbrella, yet again, of the 'war on terror.'"

Sudan: why Powell calls Darfur violence "genocide"

Sudan: why Powell calls Darfur violence "genocide" "The plight of the people of Darfur plays no role in shaping the response of the Bush administration to the criminal activities of the Sudanese government. Like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the regime in Khartoum is being targeted because of geopolitical and not moral considerations. Once again, it is about who controls vital oil supplies. Powell is a past master at covering up America?s real motives with a mountain of lies and moral effluvia. ... He will go down in history for his infamous speech at the United Nations that provided the justification for the US intervention in Iraq. ...But like the earlier comparisons between Saddam Hussein and Hitler, or the demonisation of Slobodan Milosevic and Serbia, exaggeration and hyperbole play an essential role in popularising the demand that ?something must be done? immediately and in dulling critical sensibilities regarding precisely what that something must be. Thus we are brought once more to the point of an imperialist inspired military intervention carried out in the name of humanitarianism. No attempt should be made to minimise the barbarous actions of the Sudanese government, but no one should allow their horror at such outrages to be manipulated by Washington. An estimated one million people have been displaced in Darfur and 50,000 killed, which constitutes a human catastrophe. But there is still no justifiable comparison with the events that took place in Rwanda in 1994 that are now repeatedly cited as proof of the need to use the term genocide and justify Western intervention. ... The Sudanese government has regularly used this technique to deal with its opponents and did so with impunity in the oilfield regions during the last few years. But despite appeals from human rights organisations, the US was quite prepared to turn a blind eye and continue peace negotiations with the Sudan government and the southern rebels. ... The US has now decided to step up pressure on Sudan primarily as a weapon against its international rivals. Washington?s demand at the United Nations is that sanctions be applied to Sudan?s oil output?currently 320,000 barrels of oil per day. This would hit China and Pakistan given that they are two of Sudan?s largest oil customers, both of whom are Security Council members and who have so far opposed the proposal. It must also be stressed that since oil is Sudan?s main income, such sanctions would have a devastating effect on a country that is already desperately poor?just as they did in Iraq. ... ?We?ll help them [i.e., the Sudan government] with the African Union peacekeepers. There are some American military personnel in there working with the monitors.? He did not elaborate on the nature or role of these personnel, presumably involved in ?special forces? operations. Powell has been able to pose as a humanitarian liberator in Sudan, despite the realities of the criminal US occupation of Iraq, largely because of the uncritical and slavish support given in the media. Almost daily editorials and op-eds are dedicated to moral hand- wringing over the plight of Darfur?s population, pious criticism of the United Nations? inability to mount an intervention force, and urging the US to take more action. Not even passing consideration is being given to the deaths that have resulted and continue to result from actions of the US government in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, besides which the Sudanese government?s killing operations pale into insignificance. No discussion is taking place on the interest of American oil corporations in Sudan, the principal motivation behind the US?s negotiations with the Sudanese government over the last four years. The Washington Post, for example, on September 13 stated that Powell should be ?commended for his honesty?... Speaking to the National Baptist Convention, John Kerry said the US should ?ensure the immediate deployment of an effective international force? and that if he were president he would ?act now? and ?not sit idly by. ... the EU cannot even agree on placing sanctions on Sudan?s oil?with Britain, Germany and, albeit reluctantly, France in favour but Spain, Italy and Greece rumoured to be opposed. ?The Sudanese case offers more evidence of the EU?s inability to craft a coherent, common foreign policy,? comment Stratfor, pointing to the wide divergences among the now 25 member states. ... The most damning evidence against the US and Western powers? humanitarian pretensions is the continuing lack of adequate aid and medical assistance being given to the one million or so refugees in the Darfur region. On the same day as the editorial cited above, the Washington Post carried a piece claiming that whilst security had not been improved, the media attention had ?helped persuade governments to feed the starving.? The attention of politicians and the media ?has stimulated government responses that have had the perverse effect of defusing the political pressure to stop the killings and return the refugees home,? the article claimed. This alleged over-generosity of Western governments is a complete myth. Even though only a relatively small amount of money would be required to finance adequate aid to the displaced population, such humanitarian support has not been forthcoming. ... ?Thousands, including thousands of children under five, are dying every month from diseases which can be easily prevented and treated,? explains WHO?s director-general. Questioned by reporters on whether the report?s mortality statistics were due to ?genocide,? David Nabarro, a WHO official, refused to go along with the hyperbole. ?We cannot say that this is due to any kind of systematic violence,? he said. Naturally, such issues of fact will not influence the approach of the US media which will continue to focus on the need for ?humanitarian? military intervention.'?