Osama, finally blessed with a donated kidney from a Pakistani religious student (the transplant was performed in one of his better equipped caves in Afghanistan), has launched an internet news show entitled “the Voice of the Caliphate,” featuring an anchorman wearing a black ski mask and an ammunition belt.
I’m not making this up. Well, I made up the part about the donated kidney (although Pakistani religious students have offered to donate their kidneys to their hero Osama), but the business about the internet show and the anchorman is true, if we can believe the Washington Post.

“The anchorman, who said the report would appear once a week, presented news about the Gaza Strip and Iraq and expressed happiness about recent hurricanes in the United States. A copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was placed by his right hand and a rifle affixed to a tripod was pointed at the camera.”

Note all the pedestrian al-Qaeda stereotypes here—a prominent copy of the Koran, a rifle, the ski mask (brought back into vogue after Black September by that nimble—for a guy with one leg—Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), and of course expressions of joy over the death and misery of Americans, especially by way of natural disaster attributable to the will of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him.

“The lead segment recounted Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which the narrator proclaimed as a ‘great victory,’ while showing Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia walking and talking among celebrating compatriots,” reports Daniel Williams for the Post. “That was followed by a repeat of a pledge on Sept. 14 by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, to wage all-out war on Iraq’s Shiite Muslims. An image of Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Sunni Muslim, remained on the screen for about half the broadcast.”

In other words, al-Qaeda wants to reaffirm its support for the Palestinians (and these people want their own state) and al-Zarqawi is the leader and Osama is the titular head of al-Qaeda, if that. It is interesting this video or program would appear so close to the airing of a 60 Minutes “Osama who?” episode. “If he (bin Laden) is hiding in a hole, neither the electronic nor the human intelligence can find him. Is it all that important to find him? If he’s taken out tomorrow, his ideology is not going to come to an end. I don’t think that it’s important … if he is captured,” Gen. Safdar Hussain, a top army commander supposedly responsible for anti-terrorism operations in northwestern Pakistan, told 60 Minutes. The Pakistani military and intelligence should know something about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda—hell, with a lot of money and TLC from the CIA, they made Osama into what he is today (or was before he died of kidney disease) and turned a handful of cantankerous Islamic fanatics and goat herders into a formidable world-class terrorist organization.

It makes absolutely no sense and is completely counterproductive for al-Zarqawi to “wage all-out war on Iraq’s Shiite Muslims,” but then, recall, we are assured the guy is none too bright, even if he is billed as a logistical mastermind. If al-Qaeda “in Iraq” is busy killing Shi’ites—and thus perpetuating the age-old Islamic schism—there will be less time and effort put into killing American and British occupation troops. Obviously, al-Qaeda needs a couple net meetings to hammer out its mission statement. I mean, it is rather muddled and impulsive to take on the Great Satan and millions and millions of Shi’ites at the same time.

“The masked announcer also reported that a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed to have launched chemical-armed rockets at American forces in Baghdad,” the Post continues. “A video clip showed five rockets fired in succession from behind a sand berm as an off-screen voice yelled ‘God is great’ in Arabic. The Islamic Army asserted responsibility last year for the killing of Enzo Baldoni, an Italian journalist who had been kidnapped in Iraq.”

“According to Atmane Tazaghart and Roland Jacquard, in the French Figaro magazine, [the Islamic Army in Iraq was] founded by Abu Abdallah Hassan Ben Mahmoud on the 29th of September 2003, and is composed by internationalist salafist islamists, former baasists and also former militants of the Palestine Liberation Front of Abu Abbas,” notes Wikipedia.

Of course, it makes perfect sense the Palestine Liberation Front would fire chemical weapons at Americans. Bush told us as much about these evil-doers. Abu Abbas was responsible for tossing the wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer off the Achille Lauro and into the sea (after shooting him) back in 1985. It is said Abbas died in American captivity in Iraq—and none too soon, since it was claimed by Ari Ben-Menashe, a salesman for the Israel Defense Forces’ armaments business, that the Achille Lauro hijacking was a Mossad operation designed to make Palestinians look like brutal killers and cutthroats. It appears “internationalist salafist islamists” and Palestinians will do whatever it takes to build their rep as scurrilous terrorists and thus conform to our worst nightmares, possibly with a little help from Mossad and the CIA. Even Italian journalists are not safe these days.

“A commercial break of sorts followed, which previewed a movie, ‘Total Jihad,’ directed by Mousslim Mouwaheed. The ad was in English, suggesting that the target audience might be Muslims living in Britain and the United States.”

More likely, the “target audience” consists of Americans and Brits, regardless of religious persuasion. The ad—in fact, the entire program—sure the heck is not intended for average Muslims in the Middle East because most of them don’t have computers or broadband internet connections (many of them, especially Iraqis, are lucky to have consistent electricity and clean drinking water). It’s also curious how much “Total Jihad” sounds like one of those late night infomercials. Instead of exercising equipment or vegetable preparation tools, the al-Qaeda infomercial sells death to infidels.

“The final segment was about Hurricane Katrina. ‘The whole Muslim world was filled with joy’ at the disaster, the anchorman said. He went on to say that President Bush was ‘completely humiliated by his obvious incapacity to face the wrath of God, who battered New Orleans, city of homosexuals.’ Hurricane Ophelia’s brush with North Carolina was also mentioned.”

In short, all Muslims are sadistic and want every last American to suffer and suffocate in toxic sludge. No wonder we declared war on them. As for the homosexual comment, it would seem the producers of the al-Zarqawi Hour consulted with Jerry Falwell and the Christian Zionists, many who believe the same thing about Katrina—it was an act of God in response to our wickedness and our inability or unwillingness to ferret out gay people and stone them to death, as mandated in the Old Testament.
informationclearinghouse.info

09/28/05 “ICH” — — Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS special forces men “rescued” from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British military authorities in Iraq put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison?

According to the head of Basra’s Governing Council, which has co-operated with the British, five civilians were killed by British soldiers. A judge says nine. How much is an Iraqi life worth? Is there to be no honest accounting in Britain for this sinister event, or do we simply accept Defence Secretary John Reid’s customary arrogance? “Iraqi law is very clear,? he said. ?British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process.” He omitted to say that this fake immunity was invented by Iraq?s occupiers.

Watching “embedded” journalists in Iraq and London, attempting to protect the British line was like watching a satire of the whole atrocity in Iraq. First, there was feigned shock that the Iraqi regime’s “writ” did not run outside its American fortifications in Baghdad and the “British trained” police in Basra might be “infiltrated”. An outraged Jeremy Paxman wanted to know how two of our boys – in fact, highly suspicious foreigners dressed as Arabs and carrying a small armoury – could possibly be arrested by police in a “democratic” society. “Aren’t they supposed to be on our side?” he demanded.

Although reported initially by the Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in the SAS men’s unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. Instead, the story was the danger the men faced if they were handed over to the militia run by the “radical” cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. “Radical” is a gratuitous embedded term; al-Sadr has actually co-operated with the British. What did he have to say about the “rescue”? Quite a lot, none of which was reported in this country. His spokesman, Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani, said the SAS men, disguised as al-Sadr’s followers, were planning an attack on Basra ahead of an important religious festival. “When the police tried to stop them,” he said, “[they] opened fire on the police and passers-by. After a car chase, they were arrested. What our police found in the car was very disturbing – weapons, explosives and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists.”

The episode illuminates the most enduring lie of the Anglo-American adventure. This says the “coalition” is not to blame for the bloodbath in Iraq – which it is, overwhelmingly – and that foreign terrorists orchestrated by al-Qaeda are the real culprits. The conductor of the orchestra, goes this line, is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. The demonry of Al-Zarqawi is central to the Pentagon’s “Strategic Information Program” set up to shape news coverage of the occupation. It has been the Americans’ single unqualified success. Turn on any news in the US and Britain, and the embedded reporter standing inside an American (or British) fortress will repeat unsubstantiated claims about al-Zarqawi.

Two impressions are the result: that Iraqis’ right to resist an illegal invasion – a right enshrined in international law – has been usurped and de-legitimised by callous foreign terrorists, and that a civil war is under way between the Shi’ites and the Sunni. A member of the Iraqi National Assembly, Fatah al-Sheikh said this week, “There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupiers to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people and spread rumours in order to scare the one from the other… The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will start an internal Shi’ite incitement.”
informationclearinghouse.info

ISTANBUL, Sept. 28 – Under Secretary of State Karen P. Hughes, seeking common ground with leading women’s rights advocates in Turkey, was confronted instead on Wednesday with anguished denunciations of the war in Iraq and what the women said were American efforts to export democracy by force.

It was the second day in a row that Ms. Hughes found herself at odds with groups of women on her “public diplomacy” tour, aimed at improving the American image in the Middle East. On Tuesday, she told Saudi Arabian women she would support efforts to raise their status but was taken aback when some of them responded that Americans misunderstand their embrace of traditions.

She met Wednesday with about 20 Turkish feminist leaders in Ankara, the capital. She introduced herself, as she has done on this trip, as “a working mom” and said she was there to emphasize the many things Turkey and the United States had in common. The women welcomed her but had a different emphasis.

“You are very angry with Turkey, I know,” said Hidayet Tuskal, a director of the Capital City Women’s Platform, referring to what she characterized as United States reaction to opposition in Turkey to the Iraq war, which she said was a feminist issue because women and children were dying daily. “I’m feeling myself wounded,” Ms. Tuskal added. “I’m feeling myself insulted here.”

Fatma Nevin Vargun, identifying herself as a Kurdish rights advocate, said she was “ashamed” of the war and added that the United States bore responsibility. Referring to the arrest of a war protester at the White House on Monday, she added, “This was a pity for us as well.”

With her brow furrowed, Ms. Hughes replied: “I can appreciate your concern about war. No one likes war.” She went on to say that “my friend President Bush” did all he could to avoid a war in Iraq, but then asserted about Iraq: “It is impossible to say that the rights of women were better under Saddam Hussein than they are today.” She said that women had been tortured, raped and killed under the leadership ousted by American troops.
nytimes.com

1. Why did the floodwalls along the 17th Street Canal only break on the New Orleans (majority Black) side and not on the Metairie (largely white) side? Was this the result of neglect and poor maintenance by New Orleans authorities?

2. Who owned the huge barge that was catapulted through the wall of the Industrial Canal, killing hundreds in the Lower Ninth Ward — the most deadly hit-and-run accident in U.S. history?

3. All of New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish east of the Industrial Canal were drowned, except for the Almonaster-Michoud Industrial District along Chef Menteur Highway. Why was industrial land apparently protected by stronger levees than nearby residential neighborhoods?

4. Why did Mayor Ray Nagin, in defiance of his own official disaster plan, delay twelve to twenty-four hours in ordering a mandatory evacuation of the city?

5. Why did Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff not declare Katrina an “Incident of National Significance” until August 31 — thus preventing the full deployment of urgently needed federal resources?

6. Why wasn’t the nearby U.S.S. Bataan immediately sent to the aid of New Orleans? The huge amphibious-landing ship had a state-of-the-art, 600-bed hospital, water and power plants, helicopters, food supplies, and 1,200 sailors eager to join the rescue effort.

7. Similarly, why wasn’t the Baltimore-based hospital ship USS Comfort ordered to sea until August 31, or the 82nd Airborne Division deployed in New Orleans until September 5?

8. Why does Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld balk at making public his “severe weather execution order” that established the ground rules for the military response to Katrina? Did the Pentagon, as a recent report by the Congressional Research Service suggests, fail to take initiatives within already authorized powers, then attempt to transfer the blame to state and local governments?

9. Why were the more than 350 buses of the New Orleans Regional Transportation Authority — eventually flooded where they were parked — not mobilized to evacuate infirm, poor, and car-less residents?

10. What significance attaches to the fact that the chair of the Transportation Authority, appointed by Mayor Nagin, is Jimmy Reiss, the wealthy leader of the New Orleans Business Council which has long advocated a thorough redevelopment of (and cleanup of crime in) the city?

11. Under what authority did Mayor Nagin meet confidentially in Dallas with the “forty thieves” — white business leaders led by Reiss — reportedly to discuss the triaging of poorer Black areas and a corporate-led master plan for rebuilding the city?

12. Everyone knows about a famous train called “the City of New Orleans.” Why was there no evacuation by rail? Was Amtrak part of the disaster planning? If not, why not?

13. Why were patients at private hospitals like Tulane evacuated by helicopter while their counterparts at the Charity Hospital were left to suffer and die?

14. Was the failure to adequately stock food, water, potable toilets, cots, and medicine at the Louisiana Superdome a deliberate decision — as many believe — to force poorer residents to leave the city?

15. The French Quarter has one of the highest densities of restaurants in the nation. Once the acute shortages of food and water at the Superdome and the Convention Center were known, why didn’t officials requisition supplies from hotels and restaurants located just a few blocks away? (As it happened, vast quantities of food were simply left to spoil.)

16. City Hall’s emergency command center had to be abandoned early in the crisis because its generator supposedly ran out of diesel fuel. Likewise many critical-care patients died from heat or equipment failure after hospital backup generators failed. Why were supplies of diesel fuel so inadequate? Why were so many hospital generators located in basements that would obviously flood?

17. Why didn’t the Navy or Coast Guard immediately airdrop life preservers and rubber rafts in flooded districts? Why wasn’t such life-saving equipment stocked in schools and hospitals?

18. Why weren’t evacuee centers established in Audubon Park and other unflooded parts of Uptown, where locals could be employed as cleanup crews?

19. Is the Justice Department investigating the Jim Crow-like response of the suburban Gretna police who turned back hundreds of desperate New Orleans citizens trying to walk across the Mississippi River bridge — an image reminiscent of Selma in 1965? New Orleans, meanwhile, abounds in eyewitness accounts of police looting and illegal shootings: Will any of this ever be investigated?

20. Who is responsible for the suspicious fires that have swept the city? Why have so many fires occurred in blue-collar areas that have long been targets of proposed gentrification, such as the Section 8 homes on Constance Street in the Lower Garden District or the wharfs along the river in Bywater?

21. Where were FEMA’s several dozen vaunted urban search-and-rescue teams? Aside from some courageous work by Coast Guard helicopter crews, the early rescue effort was largely mounted by volunteers who towed their own boats into the city after hearing an appeal on television.

22. We found a massive Red Cross presence in Baton Rouge but none in some of the smaller Louisiana towns that have mounted the most impressive relief efforts. The poor Cajun community of Ville Platte, for instance, has at one time or another fed and housed more than 5,000 evacuees; but the Red Cross, along with FEMA, has refused almost daily appeals by local volunteers to send professional personnel and aid. Why then give money to the Red Cross?

23. Why isn’t FEMA scrambling to create a central registry of everyone evacuated from the greater New Orleans region? Will evacuees receive absentee ballots and be allowed to vote in the crucial February municipal elections that will partly decide the fate of the city?

24. As politicians talk about “disaster czars” and elite-appointed reconstruction commissions, and as architects and developers advance utopian designs for an ethnically cleansed “new urbanism” in New Orleans, where is any plan for the substantive participation of the city’s ordinary citizens in their own future?

25. Indeed, on the fortieth anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, what has happened to democracy?
commondreams.org

Tony Blair and John Reid, the defence secretary, have been holding secret talks with Saudi Arabia in pursuit of a huge arms deal worth up to £40bn, according to diplomatic sources.

Mr Blair went to Riyadh on July 2, en route to Singapore, where Britain was bidding for the 2012 Olympics. Three weeks later, Mr Reid made a two-day visit, when he sought to persuade Prince Sultan, the crown prince, to re-equip his air force with the Typhoon, the European fighter plane of which the British arms company BAE has the lion’s share of manufacturing.

Defence, diplomatic and legal sources say negotiations are stalling because the Saudis are demanding three favours. These are that Britain should expel two anti-Saudi dissidents, Saad al-Faqih and Mohammed al-Masari; that British Airways should resume flights to Riyadh, currently cancelled through terrorism fears; and that a corruption investigation implicating the Saudi ruling family and BAE should be dropped. Crown prince Sultan’s son-in-law, Prince Turki bin Nasr, is at the centre of a “slush fund” investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
guardian.co.uk

John Perkins’ book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” explains American foreign policy better than any of the academic tomes you might read on the subject.

In a nutshell, the game is played this way: People like Perkins work for consulting firms, and their job is to entice a foreign head of state to go deeply in debt. They do this by greatly exaggerating the economic returns on big projects such as dams and electrification systems.

The payoff comes in two ways. The foreign country hires American contractors to build the systems, and they make big profits. Then, mired in debt, the head of state will do what the United States government tells him to do. If he proves too independent or too honest to accept bribes, then he will be removed from power, either in a coup or in an accident.

Yes, I know that sounds more like the Mafia than the great and good government of the United States, which wants only to spread peace, prosperity and democracy around the world. Read the book and decide for yourself. The publisher is Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.

I believe Perkins is telling the truth, because I have observed through the years that the United States hates any honest nationalist leader. Let some guy try to benefit his own people instead of catering to multinational corporations, and the U.S. government and the propaganda machine will crank up and paint him as a villain. After the American people have been sufficiently indoctrinated, the poor guy won’t be around much longer.

We did that to Mohammed Mossadegh, a democratically elected nationalist who thought Iran’s oil should benefit Iranians. We painted him as a communist, and the CIA engineered a coup that replaced him with the Shah. In case you’re curious, that’s why so many Iranians hate us. We did it to a Guatemalan patriot, Jacobo Arbenz, when he tried to implement land reform and thus ran afoul of the United Fruit Co., which orchestrated the campaign that led to his overthrow by the U.S. Omar Torrijos, a Panamanian reformer, and Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador who locked horns with big oil companies, both died in planes that exploded.
informationclearinghouse.info

The Independent on Sunday, 25 September 2005, asks: So what were two undercover British soldiers up to in Basra?

The paper reports:

1. an Iraqi judge has issued arrest warrants for the two ‘British’ soldiers recently snatched from a police station in Basra.

2. “Judge Mudhafar says he is not convinced the two men are British – possibly because one of them was said to have been carrying a Canadian-made weapon – and they may not be entitled to immunity. This has added yet another layer of mystery to what is already an extremely murky affair…

3. “The picture the British public has been allowed to gain of our occupation of southern Iraq – one of relative tranquillity and co-operation compared to the bloody mayhem further north – is at best misleading, at worst deliberately distorted…

4. “It is not impossible that one or both of the men are not British. Special forces from Australia and New Zealand, for example, often work closely with the SAS. They could even be “civilian contractors” of the kind hired by the CIA, usually ex-special forces.

‘The so-called “insurgent” bombings are really being carried out by UK and US operatives’; the role of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.

5. “Subversion from nearby Iran has been blamed for a recent increase in attacks on British forces in southern Iraq… Initial assumptions that the undercover pair were working to combat such influence have been contradicted by military and other sources…

6. “Initial attempts by British military spokesmen to minimise what happened merely heightened confusion and suspicion. Claims that the crowd was small and the violence minor were quickly belied by photographs of a soldier leaping from the turret of his Warrior armoured vehicle, his uniform burning from a petrol bomb. British troops were said to have emerged largely unscathed, only for it to emerge later that one was flown home in a serious condition.
Not only did it appear that lethal force had to be used to suppress the riot, causing an unknown number of Iraqi deaths, it was also claimed that the two undercover men had opened fire when they were stopped at a police roadblock, killing at least one policeman. There were also sharply conflicting accounts of why troops crashed into the station: to determine where the pair were, according to one version, or to rescue a negotiating team, according to another. The surveillance team had been handed over to militants and were found at a house in the district, the military said, but Iraqis denied this, saying the building was within the compound.”

7. “Conspiracy theories, always rife in Iraq, have been fuelled dramatically by last week’s events, according to Mazin Younis of the Iraqi League, an alliance of Iraqi exiles based in Britain. He has close contacts with Basra. ‘Everyone you talk to [thinks the two undercover men] were up to something very bad… to kill somebody or destroy a building, and let us battle against each other,’ he said.”
prisonplanet.com

Remarks at the Anti-war Rally, Washington, DC, September 24, 2005

If we didn’t know it before, we certainly know it now.

A cruel wind blows across America. Starting in Texas and Montana, and sweeping across America’s heartland, it’s settled here in Washington, DC. And despite our presence today, it continues to buffet and batter the American people.

This cruel wind blew disenfranchisement into Florida and Ohio.

It blew hardheartedness into the Capitol.

Division across our land. And wretchedness in high places.

The American people have been forced to endure fraud in the elections of 2000 and 2004, criminal neglect on September 11th, a war started on deliberately-faked evidence, the outing of a CIA agent to cover up the truth, and now criminal incompetence in providing our security.

When hurricane survivors had lost everything, and it was there for all America to see, sybaritic men, wrapped in self-righteousness, worked to save their jobs instead of the people.

As dead bodies lay strewn about the New Orleans Superdome, military recruiters blew into Houston’s Astrodome to reap the harvest.

This ill wind that engulfs our country is also global in its impact. It dipped into the Caribbean hitting Haiti and Cuba; it reached into Latin America to slap Venezuela; it swept death, greed, and destruction across Africa into Eastern Congo; and it breathes occupation onto the peoples of Iraq and Palestine.

But just as sure as an ill wind now blows, it doesn’t always have to be so.

The people, united, can stop wars.

We can stop injustice; and we can stop indifference. The people, united, can tear down the mightiest walls of oppression.

These ill winds have brought us high crimes and more than misdemeanors. But they’ve also brought us together: one answer, united for peace and for justice.

Let’s stay together. Because we have to get rid of these ill winds and breathe fresh breath into a new jet stream of life.

We can do it, ya’ll, because they can’t fool us anymore.

Cynthia McKinney is the US representative from Georgia’s fourth congressional district.
counterpunch.org

Democrats Flee Peace Protests
I have been thinking for a while now that the Democrats really should sit down and consider changing their mascot from a donkey to a marmot. A rodent really is more emblematic or their provincial habits than a donkey could ever be. Think about it. Just this past weekend antiwar rallies were held across the country and the Democratic leadership was nowhere in sight. They had high-tailed it out there. They hid in their holes and were afraid to be seen.

In all fairness, a few elected Democrats did show face, mainly two: Reps. John Conyers and Cynthia McKinney. But I wouldn’t constitute either as party leaders. The better-known Democrats, like Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, two likely candidates for 2008, were nowhere to be seen. Even more striking were the absences of DNC Chairman Howard Dean, Russell Feingold and Ted Kennedy — all occasional critics of the Iraq war.

Of course the Democrat’s collective criticism only goes so far. They certainly don’t want to be photographed with any militant protestors. By God, that would taint their reputations! They’ve got campaign contributions to worry about here. No, the Democrats aren’t about to take to the streets. They’d rather sit back and project the illusion that they care.

On her way out to Washington, the anti-war movement’s leading lady Cindy Sheehan offered a tepid excuse for Senator Clinton’s refusal to attend the protest, “She knows that the war is a lie, but she is waiting for the right time to say it. You say it and you risk losing your job.”

Well, sorry, but I think the time to speak out against the war is right now and if it means Clinton could lose her job (even though that’s highly unlikely, given that almost half of all Americans, according to a recent Pew research poll, think we should end the occupation and come home), so-be-it.

This isn’t to say that the Democratic grassroots don’t oppose the war. The majority does–but then so do nearly half of all Republicans. So this begs the question: why are anti-war activists so loyal to a Democratic Party that supported Bush’s war and still refuses to oppose it?

Much of the Democrat’s cognitive dissonance has to do with the success of Howard Dean at the DNC. He’s been able to corral anti-war Democrats into the fold, making sure they don’t flee en masse over the war issue even though they should. Many still see Dean as a sign of future hope, where party leadership stays in touch with the grassroots. Plus, Dean’s early criticisms of the Iraq war earned him significant street-cred with party advocates.

It was un-deserved. Dean, like the rest of the Democratic leadership, is pro-war and pro-occupation, and it couldn’t be more damaging for the peace movement to continue putting faith into this futile party. If Democratic activists really want to make some change — the best thing they could do would be to get up and leave their party. Only then will Democratic leaders start to think twice about the monstrous policies they endorse.

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on the weekend that he was going to open the taps on subsidized heating oil for poor folks in the United States, many assumed it was a drive-by comment aimed at raising the ire of his frequent critics in Washington.

But, as it turns out, Mr. Chavez is a man of his word.

Officials at Citgo Petroleum Corp. — the Houston-based company that is wholly owned by Venezuela’s state-owned energy company — say they are scrambling to put the fine points on Mr. Chavez’s promise to supply some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the United States with cheap heating oil this winter.

“The idea is to work with communities in need, with schools, and we’ll have to work through not-for-profit organizations that will serve as intermediaries,” public affairs manager Fernando Garay said.

“The very specific details, we don’t have yet.”

The Venezuelan leader’s program is scheduled to begin next month in the Mexican-American community in Chicago, followed by the South Bronx, and then Boston.

Analysts say that Mr. Chavez’s bold use of a state-owned company in a foreign country to so openly pursue his ideological aims is highly unusual.

“It’s the first time I’ve heard that a foreign leader is basically giving away his country’s natural resources,” said Nikolas Kozloff, a senior research fellow at the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
zmag.org

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government’s marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.
observor.guardian.co.uk