A senior White House official accused of doctoring government reports on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming has taken a job with ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company.
Philip Cooney, who resigned as chief of staff of the White House council on environment quality at the weekend, will begin work at the oil giant in the autumn.
Full: guardian.co.uk
by Greg Palast
gregpalast.com
Greg Palast, unable to attend hearings in Washington Thursday, has submitted the following testimony:
Chairman Conyers, It’s official: The Downing Street memos, a snooty New York Times “News Analysis” informs us, “are not the Dead Sea Scrolls.” You are warned, Congressman, to ignore the clear evidence of official mendacity and bald-faced fibbing by our two nations’ leaders because the cry for investigation came from the dark and dangerous world of “blogs” and “opponents” of Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush.
On May 5, “blog” site Buzzflash.com carried my story, IMPEACHMENT TIME: “FACTS WERE FIXED,” bringing the London Times report of the Downing Street memo to US media which seemed to be suffering at the time from an attack of NADD — “news attention deficit disorder.”
The memo, which contains the ill-making admission that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed” to match the Iraq-crazed fantasies of our President, is sufficient basis for a hearing toward impeachment of the Chief Executive. But to that we must add the other evidence and secret memos and documents still hidden from the American public.
Other foreign-based journalists could doubtless add more, including the disclosure that the key inspector of Iraq’s biological weapons, the late Dr. David Kelly, found the Bush-Blair analysis of his intelligence was indeed “fixed,” as the Downing Street memo puts it, around the war-hawk policy.
Here is a small timeline of confidential skullduggery dug up and broadcast by my own team for BBC Television and Harper’s on the secret plans to seize Iraq’s assets and oil.
Full: zmag.org
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by John Hilary
British trade officials admit that the ‘development agenda’ has little relevance to their real work. Responding to a strong steer from lobby groups such as the Confederation of British Industry, the driving impulse is to achieve new market access for British business through the increased liberalisation of the manufacturing, industrial and services sectors of the developing world. The UK has by its own admission been at the forefront of the campaign to open up developing country markets in these sectors. The Labour Party’s manifesto statement that “We do not believe poor countries should be forced to liberalise” rings hollow in the face of this reality.
The UK is by no means alone in dancing to a corporate tune. All other G8 countries base their policies on the wishes of their corporate lobby groups, many of which also band together in international federations such as the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue and International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), not to mention regional groupings such as the European Services Forum and UNICE, the EU employers’ federation. In addition to their regular lobbying of G8 country representatives, the ICC has the special privilege of making a formal presentation to every G8 summit. Lest there be any doubt, it has identified the WTO trade negotiations as its top priority for the coming year.
The G8’s paramount concern is control of the global economy for the benefit of its corporate sponsors. This control is maintained on a day-to-day basis through the institutions listed above, but ultimately it rests on military domination and the demonisation of opposition forces. The so-called ‘war against terror’ was explicitly linked to the G8’s economic agenda following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when delegates attending the WTO’s Doha Ministerial Conference were told that opposition to a new round of trade liberalisation would be interpreted as support for terrorism. The security cordon thrown round Gleneagles is no more than a symbol of the military power which sustains the capitalist adventure worldwide.
Full: counterpunch.org
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A U.S. general on Thursday blamed Iraq’s recent spike in bloodshed on a terrorist leader condoning the killing of fellow Muslims, while a suicide car bomber rammed into a truck in Baghdad, killing at least eight police officers and wounding 25 others.
The U.S. military also reported that five Marines and a sailor were killed Wednesday near the volatile western city of Ramadi.
Separately, Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez was charged with murder Wednesday in the deaths last week of two Army officers at a base north of Baghdad, the military said Thursday.
The military initially attributed the June 7 killings of the officers – Capt. Phillip T. Esposito 30, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34, of Milford, Pa. – to an insurgent mortar attack near Tikrit but said further investigation showed the blast pattern was inconsistent with such an attack.
Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi’s hope to provoke sectarian war suffered a setback Thursday when the Shiite-led parliament and leaders of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which is thought to provide the backbone of the insurgency, agreed on a process for drafting Iraq’s constitution.
Elsewhere, dozens of hooded insurgents surrounded a downtown mosque in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, to prevent a meeting of local politicians and tribal leaders on the country’s new charter and reconciliation efforts.
“We told them to leave Iraq’s issues for us, we are the only ones who can liberate Iraq by fighting infidels and not by holding conferences. And instead of spending money for this conference, they have to give it to us to buy weapons to help our fighting against the Americans,” a masked man told Iraqi reporters outside the empty mosque.
U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston took aim at al-Zarqawi, saying the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq is most responsible for the nearly 1,100 violent deaths since the Shiite-led government took office seven weeks ago.
“With Zarqawi’s push recently, we certainly see the fantastic rise in the number of civilians killed, given that he has proclaimed that taking out civilians is an acceptable thing,” said Alston, spokesman for the U.S.-led international military force in Iraq.
Last month, an audiotape said to be from al-Zarqawi denounced the country’s majority Shiites as collaborators with the Americans and said it was justified for Muslims to kill such people even if they are Muslims.
Alston’s focus on al-Zarqawi, whose small group is blamed for many of the bloodiest attacks and hostage takings in Iraq, apparently was aimed at reinforcing growing dissatisfaction among Iraqis over insurgents targeting civilians. He said that anger has brought an increase in calls to tip lines.
“We are getting reports that cells in his network are concerned about the consequences of this behavior and a consequence of what it has done to the Iraqi people,” Alston said. “The Iraqi people are increasingly exposing the insurgency. This is not a popular insurgency.”
Full: guardian.co.uk
Gee Zarqawi is doing the Americans so much good he ought to be working for them. O wait…he probably is.
There have been dinners with Brad and Jennifer and drinks with Tom Hanks and Cameron Diaz. So far, so routine for a rock star on a mission.
But the sharpest advice Bono received on how to win American hearts and minds around to his crusade on Africa came from an altogether less expected source: the legendary stock market investor Warren Buffett.
The Irish rock star, who has arguably done more than any other to ensure that the cause of Africa gets on to the agenda of the US administration, has stepped up his lobbying while on U2’s Vertigo tour in the US over the last two months to increase the pressure in the run-up to the G8 summit next month in Gleneagles.
Earlier this week he told the Guardian in Cologne how advice from Buffett, reportedly the second richest man in America, had shaped his strategy: “Warren Buffett told me, ‘Don’t appeal to the conscience of America, appeal to its greatness, and I think you’ll get the job done’.”
Others enlisted in Bono’s crusade have included the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the former Republican senator Jesse Helms, and figures on the religious right such as Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. The rock star described in his only newspaper interview before next month’s G8 summit how he has shared a laugh with President Bush, whom he describes as “very funny”.
He has not been afraid to use his Christian faith to appeal to the American religious right, dining with Billy Graham and his son Franklin, and quoting Gospel verses to Jesse Helms, which reduced the 83-year-old Republican to tears.
Full: guardian.co.uk
WASHINGTON, June 15 – Celeste Zappala, whose son died in Iraq, visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday to demand “a very quick exit strategy.” Her timing was perfect.
With opinion polls showing a drop in support for the war, and a British memo asserting that the Bush administration had intended to go to war as early as the summer of 2002, the words “exit strategy” are being uttered by both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The flurry began over the weekend, when Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, a conservative Republican, called for the Bush administration to set specific goals for leaving Iraq. That came from the man who was once so upset about French opposition to the war that he insisted that House cafeterias change the name “French fries” to “freedom fries.”
But it does not end there.
Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, has introduced in the Senate a measure similar to the nonbinding resolution that Mr. Jones is offering. In the House, the International Relations Committee last week voted overwhelmingly, 32 to 9, to call on the White House to develop and submit a plan to Congress for establishing a stable government and military in Iraq that would “permit a decreased U.S. presence” there.
On Thursday, Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, will convene a forum on the so-called Downing Street Memo, a leaked document that appeared to suggest the White House had made a decision to go to war in the summer of 2002. Next week, Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat, is planning to read on the House floor the names of approximately 1,700 Americans who have died in the war.
Full: nytimes.com
It is far too late to be talking ‘exit strategy.’
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, took the Senate floor yesterday and likened American servicemen to Nazis:
“When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]–I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime–Pol Pot or others–that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”
We are fighting an enemy that murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil 3 1/2 years ago and would murder millions more if given the chance–and according to Dick Durbin, our soldiers are the Nazis.
Full: wall street journal
No, the soldiers are taking orders from the Nazis.
WASHINGTON, June 15 – Celeste Zappala, whose son died in Iraq, visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday to demand “a very quick exit strategy.” Her timing was perfect.
With opinion polls showing a drop in support for the war, and a British memo asserting that the Bush administration had intended to go to war as early as the summer of 2002, the words “exit strategy” are being uttered by both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The flurry began over the weekend, when Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, a conservative Republican, called for the Bush administration to set specific goals for leaving Iraq. That came from the man who was once so upset about French opposition to the war that he insisted that House cafeterias change the name “French fries” to “freedom fries.”
But it does not end there.
Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, has introduced in the Senate a measure similar to the nonbinding resolution that Mr. Jones is offering. In the House, the International Relations Committee last week voted overwhelmingly, 32 to 9, to call on the White House to develop and submit a plan to Congress for establishing a stable government and military in Iraq that would “permit a decreased U.S. presence” there.
On Thursday, Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, will convene a forum on the so-called Downing Street Memo, a leaked document that appeared to suggest the White House had made a decision to go to war in the summer of 2002. Next week, Representative Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois Democrat, is planning to read on the House floor the names of approximately 1,700 Americans who have died in the war.
Though most Republicans are steering clear of the exit strategy discussion, a handful are joining in. One, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a longtime opponent of the war, has signed onto Mr. Jones’s resolution and will join him in meeting reporters on Thursday. Another, Representative Howard Coble of North Carolina, is considering it.
Full: nytimes.com
LONDON – The G7 finance ministers agreed Saturday to write off the debt of 18 of the poorest countries, but firm prescriptions of privatization hovered over the debt relief offer.
Finance ministers from the Group of Seven of the world’s leading industrialized nations — United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy (the G8, minus Russia) — agreed to write off 100 percent of the debt of 18 of the poorest countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. That will amount to debt cancellation of about two billion dollars a year.
Campaigners focusing on debt relief welcomed the move. But the finance ministers’ agreement contains a provision on privatization that has the potential to deliver to them more money than they wrote off.
The ministers reaffirmed in a statement at the end of their two-day meeting Saturday that “in order to make progress on social and economic development, it is essential that developing countries put in place the policies for economic growth.” Among these, they must “boost private sector development, and attract investment,” and ensure “the elimination of impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign.”
Full: commondreams.org
But of course. This is the devil’s bargain.
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The committee probing the U.N. oil-for-food program announced Tuesday it will again investigate Secretary-General Kofi Annan after an e-mail suggested he may have known more than he claimed about a multimillion-dollar U.N. contract awarded to the company that employed his son.
The e-mail describes a brief encounter in which officials from the Swiss company Cotecna Inspections S.A. discussed its bid for the contract during a summit in Paris in late 1998. Through his spokesman, Annan said he had no recollection of such a meeting.
If accurate, the e-mailed memo would contradict a major finding the Independent Inquiry Committee made in March – that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that Annan knew about efforts by Cotecna, which employed his son Kojo, to win the Iraq oil-for-food contract.
In a statement, the Independent Inquiry Committee said it was “urgently reviewing” the memo.
“Does this raise a question? Sure,” said Reid Morden, executive director of the probe.
Full: daileycomet.com
Well the Independent Inquiry Committee said it so it must be true. Are these the same guys who tried to sandbag Galloway? There is a very funny and damning picture that accompanies this article, showing Annan and Chirac in a conspiratorial tete-a-tete.