by Paul Craig Roberts
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith is the neocon Likudnik who was tasked with cooking up the false “intelligence” that President Bush used to deceive the US public into supporting an illegal invasion of Iraq. With the US military now trapped in the Iraqi quagmire, Feith wants the US to attack Iran.

President Bush falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq was linked to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and that Iraq would give weapons of mass destruction to anti-American terrorists. Senior members of the Bush administration terrified the US public with prospects of mushroom clouds going up over US cities.

Having been proved 100% wrong about Iraq, the Bush administration now claims that the nonexistent WMD are in Iran, or maybe Syria. During recent weeks the Bush administration worked overtime to terrify the US public into believing that Iran is building nuclear weapons and missiles with which to destroy American cities.

To ward off yet another gratuitous and illegal US attack on a Muslim country, Europe, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and US experts such as Gordon Prather have exposed the Bush administration’s false claims. But the Bush administration ignores factual truth. Bush has his own “truth,” a delusional “truth” independent of all evidence.

Israel’s rightwing Likud Party regards Feith as one of its own. The Jerusalem Post described Feith as “a staunch supporter of Israel” (Dec. 12). In an exclusive interview Feith told that paper that despite the intercession of Britain, France, Germany and the IAEA against a US attack on Iran, the Bush administration has not ruled out taking military action against Iran.

In other words, the neocon Bush administration has already decided to attack Iran and Syria. The only question is what kind of lie can Bush use to get away with it.

But first Bush has to take over the IAEA, which has steadfastly refused to go along with Bush’s propaganda against Iran. According to the Washington Post (Dec. 12), the Bush administration has been tapping the telephones of the head of the IAEA, M. ElBaradei, hoping to find damaging information with which to frame, blackmail, or taint him as an Iranian ally.

Unable to find or to manufacture any evidence against ElBaradei, the Bush administration is using an orchestrated campaign of anonymous accusations in an effort to oust the IAEA director and to replace him with a US puppet. The problem is that ElBaradei is more highly regarded than any member of the tainted Bush administration, including President Bush himself. So far Bush cannot find anyone anywhere in the world, including our British puppet, who is willing to be associated with the Bush administration’s disgraceful intentions.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

WASHINGTON (AP) – Weeks before President Bush announced a plan to protect African babies from AIDS, top U.S. health officials were warned that research on the key drug was flawed and may have underreported thousands of severe reactions including deaths, government documents show.

The 2002 warnings about the drug, nevirapine, were serious enough to suspend testing for more than a year, let Uganda’s government know of the dangers and prompt the drug’s maker to pull its request for permission to use the medicine to protect newborns in the United States.

But the National Institutes of Health, the government’s premiere health research agency, chose not to inform the White House as it scrambled to keep its experts’ concerns from scuttling the use of nevirapine in Africa as a cheap solution, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

“Everyone recognized the enormity that this decision could have on the worldwide use of nevirapine to interrupt mother-baby transmission,” NIH’s AIDS research chief, Dr. Edmund C. Tramont, reported March 14, 2002, to his boss, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The documents show Tramont and other NIH officials dismissed the problems with the nevirapine research in Uganda as overblown and were slow to report safety concerns to the Food and Drug Administration.

NIH’s nevirapine research in Uganda was so riddled with sloppy record keeping that NIH investigators couldn’t be sure from patient records which mothers got the drug. Instead, they had to use blood samples to confirm doses, the documents show.

Less than a month after Bush announced a $500 million plan to push nevirapine across Africa to slow the AIDS epidemic, the Health and Human Services Department sent a nine-page letter to Ugandan officials identifying violations of federal patient protection rules by NIH’s research.

The NIH research “may have represented a failure to minimize risk to the subjects,” the Office of Human Research Protections told Ugandan authorities in summer 2002.
Full Article: apnews.myway.com

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 – For nearly a year, the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies have been developing what they regard as the most comprehensive security plan ever devised for the inauguration of an American president.

From the swearing-in ceremony for President Bush at the Capitol on Jan. 20 to the presidential parade review at the White House to the evening galas, the inaugural events will be the first in decades to be held in wartime and the first since the terrorist attacks of 2001. They will take place at buildings that symbolize American democracy, and hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend, including the highest-ranking government officials, other prominent Americans and dignitaries from around the world. It is hard to imagine, say security experts, a bigger target for terrorists.

“This is a very, very serious event,” said James J. Varey, a retired Secret Service officer and former chief of the United States Capitol Police who worked on security plans for every inauguration from 1973 to 2001. “The public has every right to be concerned if we’ve done enough and covered all of our bases.”

Since President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, in 1985, nearly four years after he was shot in an assassination attempt, security efforts have steadily intensified.

In January 2001, when the country was divided over a disputed presidential election, the newest development was security checkpoints along the parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the White House, to minimize the ability of protesters to disrupt the procession. None did, although several people threw eggs and debris at Mr. Bush’s limousine as it left the Capitol grounds.

But Mr. Bush’s second inauguration is vastly different from his first, with many Americans fearful of another terrorist attack. The atmosphere has prompted officials to devise a detailed security plan that they are reluctant to discuss. Security personnel involved with planning the events, in agencies like the Secret Service, the F.B.I. and the Joint Forces Headquarters for the National Capital Region, declined to disclose any details.
Full Article: nytimes.com

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 – The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say.

Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations.

Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon’s credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say – a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.

The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches – whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public – and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations.

The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.

The military has faced these tough issues before. Nearly three years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Influence, a short-lived operation to provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.

Now, critics say, some of the proposals of that discredited office are quietly being resurrected elsewhere in the military and in the Pentagon.

Pentagon and military officials directly involved in the debate say that such a secret propaganda program, for example, could include planting news stories in the foreign press or creating false documents and Web sites translated into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that preach anti-American principles.
Full Article: nytimes.com

Now here’s some bold cutting-edge journalism. Ha.

WASHINGTON — Billionaire Marc Rich has emerged as a central figure in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and is under investigation for brokering deals in which scores of international politicians and businessmen cashed in on sweetheart oil deals with Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned.

Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney’s office in New York and by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said.

“We think he was a major player in this — a central figure,” a senior law-enforcement official told The Post.

Investigators are looking into a series of deals that took place in the months after his pardon from Clinton. If criminal wrongdoing is established in these deals, he could be subject to prosecution.

Investigators say they have received information that Rich and Ben Pollner, a New York-based oil trader who heads Taurus Oil, set up a series of companies in Liechtenstein and other countries that they used to put together deals between Saddam and his international supporters in the controversial oil-voucher scheme — which the dictator designed to win international support against U.S. sanctions at the United Nations.

Under the scam, hundreds of international political and financial figures from France, Russia and other countries were awarded middleman vouchers allowing them to purchase set quantities of Iraqi oil at discount rates.

These so-called “non-end users” could then resell the oil on the open market and make profits of up to 50 cents a barrel. Benon Sevan, who headed the U.N. oil-for-food program, is among those listed in Iraqi Oil Ministry documents as having been a recipient of the vouchers.
Full Article: nypost.com

The Bush administration has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei’s phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to three U.S. government officials.

But the diplomatic offensive will not be easy. The administration has failed to come up with a candidate willing to oppose ElBaradei, who has run the agency since 1997, and there is disagreement among some senior officials over how hard to push for his removal, and what the diplomatic costs of a public campaign against him could be.

Although eavesdropping, even on allies, is considered a well-worn tool of national security and diplomacy, the efforts against ElBaradei demonstrate the lengths some within the administration are willing to go to replace a top international diplomat who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq and is now taking a cautious approach on Iran.
Full Article: washingtonpost.com

A near-lethal dose of dioxin, possibly slipped into a bowl of soup, was the cause of the mysterious illness suffered by Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, doctors said yesterday.

Austrian doctors who have been treating the presidential candidate said blood and tissue tests revealed concentrations of the chemical 1,000 times above normal levels.
Full Article: telegraph.co.uk

How’s this for an ‘orange revolution?’ When it comes to dirty tricksters, there really is no such thing as coincidence…

by Anuradha Mittal
December 10, 2004 marks the 56th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which established universal standards and aspirations for human dignity. Inspired by the belief that human dignity requires freedom of expression and freedom from poverty and hunger, the UDHR proclaimed the interdependence and indivisibility of civil-political and economic-social human rights. Regrettably, 56 years later, original commitment to human rights interdependence remains in rhetoric only. The U.S. is no different.

Today, as the U.S. integrates the language of “human rights” into international diplomacy and politics, it continues to spurn social and economic human rights guaranteed by the UDHR. The United States faces a hidden epidemic. It is striking Americans of every age group and ethnicity, whether they live in cities or rural areas. And despite the diversity of targets, those suffering in this silent epidemic have two things in common: they are poor or low-income, and they are increasingly going without enough food.

Although politicians talk about “poverty in America”, decision-makers avoid specifically mentioning the growing, and often deadly problem of hunger. George McGovern said in 1972, “To admit the existence of hunger in America is to confess that we have failed in meeting the most sensitive and painful of human needs. To admit the existence of widespread hunger is to cast doubt on the efficacy of our whole system.” Three decades later, evidence indicates that the existing system is failing a vast number of Americans.

A look at the United States reveals a wide gap between the goal of universal access to adequate nutrition, and the reality of hunger that plagues millions in this country alone. The number of hungry people in the United States is greater now than it was when international leaders set hunger-cutting goals at the 1996 World Food Summit. The pledges by United States government leaders to cut the number of Americans living in hunger-from 30.4 million to 15.2 million by 2010- are lagging behind. An estimated 35 million Americans are food insecure with food insecurity and the necessity of food stamps being experienced by at least 4 in 10 Americans between the ages of 20 and 65. That’s 50% of Americans!
Full Article: commondreams.org

The Commission on Africa is just balm for Blair’s bad conscience

by Yao Graham, Guardian UK

I have few expectations of Tony Blair’s Commission on Africa. We do not need another commission to look at Africa’s problems.

The archives of the United Nations, African institutions and many other bodies are bulging with reports and proposals on how to resolve the world’s north-south divide. There are many international agreements that have been frustrated by western governments and corporations. And, more importantly, African governments have come up with many demands, in forums such as the World Trade Organisation, which have been blocked by western governments, including the UK under Blair.

Many well-meaning people in the UK have been aroused by the opportunity they see in 2005, when Blair will host the G8 summit and hold the EU presidency. Expressions of concern for Africa’s poor have been a Tony Blair constant, with the strongest expressions made when the spin value could be maximised. In the traditions of British imperialism, illegal war and occupation sit easily alongside expressions of concern for those at the sharp end of the empire.

The reality is that Africa is a good balm for Mr Blair’s conscience, especially at this time when his credibility has been badly damaged by the Iraq debacle. Poverty in Africa has long been an easy touch for western politicians who want to show they care. Since the 2002 G8 meeting in Kananaskis, Canada, which coincided with the launch of the controversial New Partnership for Africa’s Development, Africa has been elevated to a G8 headline-grabber with the now institutionalised appearance of a select band of African leaders for a shared photo opportunity with the world’s most powerful politicians. Each though has yielded little for Africa’s peoples.

I live in a country that Blair has enthusiastically endorsed as offering an example for Africa. For the past 20 years, Ghana has faithfully subordinated itself to the dictates of the World Bank, the IMF and donors such as DfID. The result? Economic growth with a growing gap between rich and poor and widespread unemployment. Foreign businesses are favoured over local ones. The economy has failed to attain self-sustaining growth, and the country is ever more dependent on aid and therefore more beholden to the west. Across Africa there is growing frustration with this economic model promoted by alliances of international institutions, western leaders and compliant African governments.

Currently Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries are faced with yet another case of oppressive demands from the west in the form of the EU’s pressure to negotiate reciprocal free-trade agreements by 2008. These will open up Africa’s markets to the destructive force of western companies, into areas that African countries resisted at last year’s WTO talks. Britain is an active part of this EU stance. Perhaps Mr Blair could give his commission a shot of credibility by raising his voice alongside the many in the ACP countries and Europe who are calling for a stop to these iniquitous agreements.

Source: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Yasser Arafat’s nephew on Saturday handed a medical report to a Palestinian committee investigating the cause of the Palestinian leader’s death at a French hospital on Nov. 11.

Nasser al-Kidwa, who is also the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, said the French doctors who treated Arafat in his final days had failed to discover a definitive cause of death for Arafat in their 557-page report.

He said he hoped a Palestinian committee would shed more light on Arafat’s cause of death. The committee, which would include Tunisian, Jordanian and Egyptian doctors who treated Arafat, was due to begin consultations on Saturday.

“We are not in a position to reach a final conclusion in the near future on the cause of death,” al-Kidwa told reporters at a news conference after presenting the French medical dossier to acting Palestinian President Rawhi Fattouh.

French officials have rejected rumors that Arafat, who died at the age of 75, had been poisoned.

They have declined to comment further on his case, citing French privacy rules. But they gave copies of Arafat’s medical records to his next of kin, including al-Kidwa.

Israel has vehemently denied being responsible for Arafat’s deterioration in health before his death or for poisoning him.

Officials say that he had access to medical treatment, food, water and medication during the two years he spent in his battered compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which was besieged by Israeli troops for months in 2002.
Full Article:nytimes.com/reuters