Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) — U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

“When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God,” said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that.”

“I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while,” Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by U.S.VETS, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. “One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets,” he said.

In Iraq, shrapnel nearly severed his left thumb. He still has trouble moving it and shrapnel “still comes out once in a while,” Arellano said. He is left handed.

Arellano said he felt pushed out of the military too quickly after getting back from Iraq without medical attention he needed for his hand — and as he would later learn, his mind.

“It was more of a rush. They put us in a warehouse for a while. They treated us like cattle,” Arellano said about how the military treated him on his return to the United States.

“It is all about numbers. Instead of getting quality care, they were trying to get everybody demobilized during a certain time frame. If you had a problem, they said, ‘Let the (Department of Veterans Affairs) take care of it.'”

Full Article: washingtontimes.com

As Muslim Populations Increase, ‘Islamophobia’ Rises in Europe

 It was not what she said, but the way she looked and her manner of dress that had the crowd hooting and jeering as she addressed a conference in Paris last year.

When Salma Yaqoob, a 32-year-old British Muslim activist, took the stand at the November 2003 European Social Forum, she was taken aback by the ruckus.

Is Islam Endangering ‘Europeanness?’

As chairwoman of the Stop the War Coalition in Birmingham, England, Yaqoob was in Paris to talk about the backlash against British Muslims sparked off by the war on terror during a session titled “Dimensions of Islam.” But it was her veil, or hijab, that turned into the subject of an acrimonious dispute.

This was months before France passed a controversial law banning head scarves in public schools, and Yaqoob, a psychotherapist who took up community service shortly after the 9/11 attacks, says she was rattled by the audience hostility.

“I was genuinely shocked how people reacted just because I happened to be wearing a hijab,” Yaqoob recalled in a phone interview. “It was actually a very upsetting experience. It was shocking to see people so passionate and, in my view, so ignorant of basic things, basic things like etiquette. [They] felt they had a right to behave that way in the name of what they thought was freedom and liberation.”

In the Netherlands — a country famed for its relaxed attitude to everything from pot smoking to prostitution — at least 14 Muslim buildings and schools were attacked in the troubled days following the killing of a Dutch filmmaker by a suspected Islamist extremist. Postings in online chat rooms showed a rising anti-Muslim feeling. “Today is the day I became a racist,” read one typical message.

And when a TV contest recently asked viewers to name the “greatest Dutchman ever,” they chose Pim Fortuyn — a self-avowed anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant politician who was killed by a white animal rights activist in 2002.

In neighboring Belgium, the country’s highest court recently ruled the far-right Vlaams Blok party racist and stripped it of its funding and TV access rights, forcing it to disband. Party leaders say they plan to reconstitute under a new name.

In Denmark, an Islamophobic party came in third in the 2001 elections, foreshadowing Jean-Marie Le Pen’s right-wing party’s stunningly strong showing in the French elections the next year.

“There is definitely a rise in Islamophobia across Europe,” said Liz Fekete, deputy director of the London-based Institute of Race Relations. “Muslims collectively are being blamed for the attacks on the World Trade Center, and there is a general punitive climate toward Muslims. This has manifested itself in a variety of ways. On the ground, there has been a rise in racial violence on Muslim targets across Europe. And the biggest problem is that the scale of the problem has not been acknowledged,” Fekete said

‘Europeanness’ Under Fire?

Since the end of World War II, Western Europe has been widely viewed as a bastion of internationalism, moderation and social progressiveness — a haven of affluent, eco-conscious citizens in stark contrast to the perceived unilateralism and parochialism of the United States.

But across Western Europe, immigrant and civil rights experts say a xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim wave appears to be gripping a region once famed for its tolerance.
Full Article:abcnews.com

The Social Forum is a big left-wing event. Just goes to show, whatever their political persuasion, Europeans easily fall into their racist, imperialist ways. See how quick the ‘liberal humanist’ veneer peels off.
Less than 100 years ago, these people occupied, directly or indirectly, 85% of the earth. The women’s movement in Europe has never been
anti-imperialist. Below is another example. It’s all well and good to condemn female circumcision, but the motives behind this sudden interest stink. If anyone was interested in collecting data on it, all they would have to do is consult doctors who treat women and deliver babies. As it is, its easy to speculate wildly on how prevalent the practice is.

Genital Mutilation ‘On the Increase in Europe’

Young girls born in Europe to immigrant families from Africa are being subjected to ritual genital mutilation, and authorities are doing little to discourage it, a leading women’s rights activist warned.

Somalia-born supermodel and best-selling author Waris Dirie, who has campaigned to end the disfiguring practice she suffered at age five in her homeland, said yesterday that she estimates one in every three African families living in Europe is secretly carrying out the ritual on their daughters. No official figures exist.

The procedure – illegal in most European countries – is especially prevalent in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in Austria, where an estimated 8,000 girls born into immigrant families have been affected, Dirie said.

“We don’t know who’s doing it and where,” because there are few initiatives to prevent it or to encourage doctors, nurses, social workers, teachers and others to report suspected cases, Dirie said. An exception is France, where there is strong awareness and education, she said.

“What good is a law if no one is paying attention?” Dirie told reporters in Austria, where she was being honoured yesterday by a Roman Catholic men’s movement for her efforts to stop the practice.

Islamic religious leaders are telling Europe’s Muslim Africans that the prophets recommend the ancient ritual, which involves the removal of the clitoris, often with a dull blade and no anaesthesia, Dirie said.
Full Article: news.scotsman.com

Pentagon report reveals catalogue of failure
By Neil Mackay
Sunday Herald (Scotland)
THE Pentagon has admitted that the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq have increased support for al-Qaeda, made ordinary Muslims hate the US and caused a global backlash against America because of the “self-serving hypocrisy” of George W Bush’s administration over the Middle East.

The mea culpa is contained in a shockingly frank “strategic communications” report, written this autumn by the Defence Science Board for Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld.

On “the war of ideas or the struggle for hearts and minds”, the report says, “American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended”.

“American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of, and support for, radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single digits in some Arab societies.”

Referring to the repeated mantra from the White House that those who oppose the US in the Middle East “hate our freedoms”, the report says: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms’, but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing support, for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.

“Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypo crisy. Moreover, saying that ‘freedom is the future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronising … in the eyes of Muslims, the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. US actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.”

The way America has handled itself since September 11 has played straight into the hands of al-Qaeda, the report adds. “American actions have elevated the authority of the jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.” The result is that al-Qaeda has gone from being a marginal movement to having support across the entire Muslim world.

“Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic,” the report goes on, adding that to the Arab world the war is “no more than an extension of American domestic politics”. The US has zero credibility among Muslims which means that “whatever Americans do and say only serves … the enemy”.

The report says that the US is now engaged in a “global and generational struggle of ideas” which it is rapidly losing. In order to reverse the trend, the US must make “strategic communication” – which includes the dissemination of propaganda and the running of military psychological operations – an integral part of national security. The document says that “Presidential leadership” is needed in this “ideas war” and warns against “arrogance, opportunism and double standards”.

“We face a war on terrorism,” the report says, “intensified conflict with Islam, and insurgency in Iraq. Worldwide anger and discontent are directed at America’s tarnished credibility and ways the US pursues its goals. There is a consensus that America’s power to persuade is in a state of crisis.” More than 90% of the populations of some Muslims countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are opposed to US policies.

“The war has increased mistrust of America in Europe,” the report adds, “weakened support for the war on terrorism and undermined US credibility worldwide.” This, in turn, poses an increased threat to US national security.

America’s “image problem”, the report authors suggest, is “linked to perceptions of the US as arrogant, hypocritical and self-indulgent”. The White House “has paid little attention” to the problems.

The report calls for a huge boost in spending on propaganda efforts as war policies “will not succeed unless they are communicated to global domestic audiences in ways that are credible”.

American rhetoric which equates the war on terror as a cold-war-style battle against “totalitarian evil” is also slapped down by the report. Muslims see what is happening as a “history-shaking movement of Islamic restoration … a renewal of the Muslim world …(which) has taken form through many variant movements, both moderate and militant, with many millions of adherents – of which radical fighters are only a small part”.

Rather than supporting tyranny, most Muslim want to overthrow tyrannical regimes like Saudi Arabia. “The US finds itself in the strategically awkward – and potentially dangerous – situation of being the long-standing prop and alliance partner of these authoritarian regimes. Without the US, these regimes could not survive,” the report says.

“Thus the US has strongly taken sides in a desperate struggle … US policies and actions are increasingly seen by the overwhelming majority of Muslims as a threat to the survival of Islam itself … Americans have inserted themselves into this intra-Islamic struggle in ways that have made us an enemy to most Muslims.

“There is no yearning-to- be-liberated-by-the-US groundswell among Muslim societies … The perception of intimate US support of tyr-annies in the Muslim world is perhaps the critical vulnerability in American strategy. It strongly undercuts our message, while strongly promoting that of the enemy.”

The report says that, in terms of the “information war”, “at this moment it is the enemy that has the advantage”. The US propaganda drive has to focus on “separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical- militant Islamist-Jihadist”.

According to the report, “the official take on the target audience [the Muslim world] has been gloriously simple” and divided the Middle East into “good” and “bad Muslims”.

“Americans are convinced that the US is a benevolent ‘superpower’ that elevates values emphasising freedom … deep down we assume that everyone should naturally support our policies. Yet the world of Islam – by overwhelming majorities at this time – sees things differently. Muslims see American policies as inimical to their values, American rhetoric about freedom and democracy as hypocritical and American actions as deeply threatening.

“In two years the jihadi message – that strongly attacks American values – is being accepted by more moderate and non-violent Muslims. This in turn implies that negative opinion of the US has not yet bottomed out

Equally important, the report says, is “to renew European attitudes towards America” which have also been severely damaged since September 11, 2001. As “al-Qaeda constantly outflanks the US in the war of information”, American has to adopt more sophisticated propaganda techniques, such as targeting secularists in the Muslim world – including writers, artists and singers – and getting US private sector media and marketing professionals involved in disseminating messages to Muslims with a pro-US “brand”.

The Pentagon report also calls for the establishment of a national security adviser for strategic communications, and a massive boost in funding for the “information war” to boost US government TV and radio stations broadcasting in the Middle East.

The importance of the need to quickly establish a propaganda advantage is underscored by a document attached to the Pentagon report from Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, dated May.

It says: “Our military expeditions to Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to be the last such excursion in the global war on terrorism.”
sundayherald.com

by Geoffrey Lean
George Bush’s new administration, and its supporters controlling Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US environmental protection.

In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country’s most important environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas drilling, and reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures – which, ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally established by the Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford – even though Mr Bush went out of his way to avoid emphasising his environmental plans during his campaign.

“The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda,” said Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that over a third of the agency’s staff will become eligible for retirement over the President’s four-year term, enabling him to fill it with people lenient to polluters.

The administration’s first priority is the controversial plan to open up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the Senate defeated plans to exploit the refuge – home to caribou, polar bears , musk oxen and millions of migratory birds – by 52 votes to 48.

But with the election of four Republican senators in favour of the drilling, and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the administration now has the votes forvictory.

It plans to follow with an energy bill – also defeated in the last Congress – which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation for oil and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power stations, halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is to help push through the energy bill, has also announced a comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act, one of the world’s most successful environmental laws.

Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut air pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30 years. Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the Endangered Species Act, for the protection of wildlife. The law has been the main obstacle to the felling of much of the US’s remaining endangered rain forest. And in a third assault, Congressional leaders have also announced an attack on the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires details of the environmental effects of major developments before they proceed.

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last week that the previous Bush administration had largely contented itself with weakening environmental legislation, but the new one intended to go much further. He added: “We will now see an assault on the law which will set the US in the direction of becoming a Third World country in terms of environmental protection.”

The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green majority.

They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law – headed by the former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s – which caused such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green legislation.
independent.co.uk

Doing God’s Work or Washington’s?

By Anna Ioakimedes
Less than a week after the de facto February 29 coup d’état that overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Brazilian government let it be known that it would send 1,100 troops to lead and provide the core units for MINUSTAH, the UN’s international peacekeeping force in Haiti. Brazilian troops arrived and assumed command of the force in June, relieving a U.S.-led multilateral force of 2,500 already in the country. On November 29, the UN Security Council announced that the MINUSTAH forces would extend their stay in Haiti until June 2006, with Brazil continuing to lead the force. Brazil’s stated mission for its presence in Haiti is to support the decisions of the UN Security Council and aid the Haitian people. “It is natural for Brazil to be in Haiti,” said a source within the Brazilian embassy. “There was no alternative to involvement [there].” However, a number of independent observers have been quick to claim that Lula da Silva’s reasons for his country’s presence are more self-centered than just maintaining regional peace or helping the Haitians, and more accurately stem from Brazil’s desire to advance its position on the world stage, a project for which U.S. goodwill is essential.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

Iran has launched what officials termed its largest military exercise ever.

Officials said the Iran Army began the exercise on Dec. 3 in western Iran near the border with Iraq. They said the aim of the exercise was to demonstrate ground force capabilities and weaponry in an effort to deter any attack from the United States.

U.S. officials said the administration wants to increase defense and security cooperation with Saudi Arabia which is regarded as the key to the U.S.-led war against Al Qaida and the containment of Iran in the region, according to the current edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com.

The exercise tested a range of indigenous missiles, rockets, armored personnel carriers, main battle tanks and unmanned aerial vehicles developed over the last decade. Officials said many of these weapons and platforms were introduced into service over the last two years, Middle East Newsline reported

Officials said the exercise included 10 infantry divisions as well as artillery, missile and electronic warfare units. They said the air force was providing support for ground units as part of a demonstration of the interoperability between the services.

The exercise also contained seven brigades and three air transport units. Four artillery units also participated in the exercise, which covered an area of 100,000 square kilometers in the provinces of Islam, Hamadan, Kermanshah, Khozstan and Lorestan.

During the live fire exercise, Iranian infantry troops fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades in an effort to block a mock ground invasion from Iraq. The air force was said to have transported equipment as well as carried out attacks in support of the ground forces.

In Manama, Iran and its Gulf Cooperation Council neighbors discussed a new regional security regime. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi told a Gulf security conference in the Bahraini capital on Sunday that what he termed “a collective security project” would ban its members from “signing unilateral agreements with outside powers that may threaten, directly or indirectly the security of other countries.”

“The new regional organization would combat all sorts of terrorism and violence,” Kharazi said in a message read at the conference.
worldtribune.com

Hundreds of unarmed Nigerian villagers, including women and children, seized three oil platforms operated by Shell and ChevronTexaco yesterday, shutting 90,000 barrels a day of production in a jobs dispute.
Members of the Kula community in the southeastern Rivers state occupied the platforms without causing any injuries and had yet to make any demands, company spokesmen said.

“Youths from the Kula community attacked some of our facilities today and forcefully shut them down,” a Shell spokesman said, adding that it had shut 70,000 barrels per day, or bpd, at the Ekulama I and II flow stations.

“Reports indicate that there were 300 people, including men, women and children,” a ChevronTexaco spokesman added. The US-based company shut 20,000 bpd at Robertkiri.

…Millions of impoverished inhabitants of the Niger Delta, largely abandoned by their government, feel they should benefit more from the huge wealth being pumped from their tribal lands.

“The people were not armed. They just came in large numbers. We still have to find out if they have a genuine grievance,” said a senior Nigerian oil industry source.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

And what might a ‘genuine grievance’ be?

GOMA, Congo (Reuters) — Thousands of civilians have fled their homes after clashes in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said on Friday, but it was unclear who was behind the violence.

The United States expressed concern about the situation in eastern Congo, particularly reports of Rwandan troops operating in the area, and said it would press all sides to abide by peace agreements.

Diplomats in the Great Lakes region said Rwandan troops pushed briefly into the vast Central African country early this week to hunt down Hutu rebels, some of whom took part in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

“Instability in the area means we don’t have an exact number but one (non-governmental organisation) estimates 46,000 people are hiding in the forests of Pinga and Walikale,” Jahal de Meritens, head of the U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Congo (OCHA), said in a statement
Full Article: cnn.com

The message has been consistent: Israel believes the US-backed road-map is the way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It has been repeated by Ariel Sharon and by ministers, yet now government papers suggest that Israel intends to bypass the peace plan, creating a Palestinian state of enclaves, surrounded by walls and linked by tunnels and special roads.

Israel has released plans for the upgrade of roads and construction of 16 tunnels which would create an ‘apartheid’ road network for Palestinians in the West Bank.

Existing roads would be reserved for Jews, linking their settlements to each other and to Israel. The plans came to light when Giora Eiland, Israel’s director of national security, requested international funding for the project. At a meeting with World Bank officials, he told them the roads would maximise freedom of movement for Palestinians without compromising security for Jewish settlers.

Eiland asked for an estimated £110 million, which would come from taxpayers in Europe, the US and Japan. The international community unanimously rejected the request, stating they could not finance a project not supported by the Palestinian Authority.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

raq’s security forces are unable to handle the challenge presented by the first elections since the fall of Saddam, even with extra American soldiers being deployed to help them, according to one of the US military’s most senior officers.

The comments from General John Abizaid, head of US Central Command, follows months of statements by senior officials – from George Bush downwards – talking up Iraq’s new police and national guard forces.

It comes as UN election adviser Lakhdar Brahimi cast fresh doubt on whether elections could take place in the present circumstances.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

It is darkly funny to listen to the flurry of politicians and pundits insisting that this election must take place on schedule, even if it is ‘imperfect.’