Canadian oil giant EnCana is considering bringing in Chinese companies to construct and operate drilling rigs in the Colorado Rockies, as the region struggles to keep up with demand and rising energy prices.
EnCana, a major player in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado, said Chinese labor is cheap and the workers are well-educated. The move would be scrutinized in Washington, where politicians are uneasy about allowing Chinese workers to acquire access to U.S.-based oil and gas facilities.

“I am totally against the Chinese government running the jobs in our country,” said Rep. John Salazar, Colorado Democrat, whose district is most affected by drilling. “With the Chinese government getting involved, it’s not even a competitive business model.”

Mr. Salazar and other U.S. lawmakers already are concerned about the China National Offshore Oil Corp.’s interest in buying the U.S. oil and gas conglomerate Unocal Corp.

The House voted June 30 to block China’s cash bid of $18.5 billion. The 398-15 vote came hours after China cited U.S. “political interference” in what it called a purely commercial matter.

“Outsourcing has already claimed millions of jobs,” Mr. Salazar said. “We cannot allow that to happen within our own borders. Rural communities have been hit hard enough. We need to keep American jobs in America.”

EnCana is deciding whether to construct the drilling rigs in China and import them with Chinese workers to the United States.
Full: washtimes.com

Downing Street has rejected a call by Michael Howard yesterday for a full inquiry into possible security failures before the London bombings.
In a television interview, the Conservative leader said: “Let’s look again at our arrangements, let’s have an inquiry into what happened and whether anything more could have been done.”

Tony Blair will today make his first statement to parliament since the attacks, focusing on the hunt for the terrorists, the continuing search for bodies and the arrangements being led by the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, to provide advice and help for bereaved families.

In a separate development, the Guardian has learned that MI5 is to conduct an internal investigation into the bombings to try to establish how the terrorists avoided detection.
Security and intelligence officials said yesterday they had “absolutely nothing to hide” and described MI5, the domestic security service, as a “self-critical organisation”.

They added: “[MI5] wants to find out how this got through”.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Tony Blair, the prime minister, today told parliament there was “no intelligence specific enough” to have prevented the London bombings, but promised the government would not rest until the perpetrators were brought to justice.

The capital returned to work today amid unconfirmed reports that the possibility of further attacks has put Britain on its highest ever state of terrorist alert. Mr Blair said an investigation – “among the most vigorous and intensive this country has seen” – was under way to find those responsible.

Speaking outside King’s Cross station, where one of the bombs exploded, Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan police chief, said the attack was one of the biggest crimes in English history and said the investigation would take time.

The prime minister said it was “probable that the attack was carried out by Islamist extremist terrorists” but insisted anger should not be directed at Muslim communities in Britain. He told British Muslims: “We were proud of your contribution before Thursday, we are proud of it today.

“We are united in our determination that our country will not be defeated by such terror, but will defeat it and emerge from this horror with our values, our way of life, our tolerance and respect for others undiminished.”

The death toll today rose to 52 but could increase further as it was revealed police liasion officers are now working with 74 families. The first two victims of the bomb attack were today named: Susan Levy of Cuffley, Hetfordshire, and Gladys Wundowa of Chadwell Heath, Essex.

Mr Blair said intelligence services and police had worked hard over the last few years to guard Britain against such an attack.

“By their very nature, people callous enough to kill completely innocent civilians in this way are hard to stop,” the prime minister, who has resisted Tory calls for an inquiry, told MPs.

“But our services and police do a heroic job for our country day in day out and I can say that over the past years, as this particular type of new and awful terrorist threat has grown, they have done their utmost to keep this country and its people safe.”

The US president, George Bush, speaking at the same time in West Virginia, vowed to “take the fight” to the terrorists behind the London bomb attacks.

“These kind of people who blow up subways and buses are not people you can negotiate with or reason with or appease. In the face of such adversaries there is only one course of action.

“We will continue to take this fight to the enemy and we will fight until this enemy is defeated.”

Intelligence officials have privately conceded that they received little information in the crucial 48 hours following the bombings.

A meeting on Saturday between top British, US and European intelligence chiefs admitted that there had been few breaks, few leads and no suspects, today’s New York Times reported.

Christophe Chaboud, a French anti-terrorist official present at the meeting, told today’s Le Monde the apparent use of military explosives was “very worrying”.

“We’re more used to cells making homemade explosives with chemicals. How did they get them? Either by trafficking, for example, in the Balkans, or they had someone on the inside who enabled them to get them out of a military establishment,” he said.
Full: guardian.co.uk

The defence secretary, John Reid, today said British forces would remain in Iraq “for as long as is needed,” after a leaked report detailed plans to cut the number of British troops from 8,500 to 3,000.
The document – entitled Options for Future UK Force Posture in Iraq and marked “Secret – UK eyes only”, was leaked to the Mail on Sunday.

It said the US was planning to cut its troop numbers from 176,000 to 66,000 as several provinces were handed over to control by Iraqi forces.

In a statement today, Mr Reid said: “We have made it absolutely plain that we will stay in Iraq for as long as is needed.

“No decisions on the future force posture of UK forces have been taken. But we have always said that it is our intention to hand over the lead in fighting terrorists to Iraqi security forces as their capability increases. We therefore continually produce papers outlining possible options and contingencies.
Full: guardian.co.uk

Israel’s separation barrier in Jerusalem will cut off 55,000 Palestinian residents from the rest of the city, Israeli officials acknowledged Sunday. Palestinians responded sharply, saying they will face daily complications in reaching jobs, schools and hospitals.

It was the first time the government had said how many tens of thousands of Jerusalem residents would be outside the fence.

Israel’s cabinet called for the swift completion of the partly built barrier in Jerusalem, which has been hit by more Palestinian suicide bombings than any other city. The cabinet endorsed a series of measures intended to minimize disruptions, including building a dozen crossing points that would permit Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to move back and forth.

Palestinians demanded that Israel stop building the barrier and said its route divided Palestinian neighborhoods from one another.

“When the Palestinian people see the construction of the wall, the isolation of Jerusalem and the building of more Jewish settlements, how can Palestinians believe there is a promising future,” said Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian foreign minister.

The Israeli announcement came a year and a day after the International Court of Justice at The Hague handed down an advisory ruling that said building the separation barrier inside the West Bank violated international law.
Full: nytimes.com

EATONVILLE — About 500 people rose to their feet in a standing ovation worthy of a rock star as U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., hit the stage Saturday at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church.

The charismatic black politician from Chicago, who at 43 has achieved almost icon status since his wildly popular speech at last year’s Democratic convention, was in town to bolster the upcoming Senate campaign of his colleague U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

…I see a Democratic Party afraid to say they’re Democrats, who voted for the war in Iraq and voted for tax cuts for the wealthy,” said Glenn Anderson of Orlando. “Why should I remain a Democrat?”

It was a tough question. But Nelson and Obama tried to answer it.

“The Democrats at times have lost their way,” conceded Obama. “We are trying to decide what our core values are.”
The criterion for judging the party isn’t whether it’s to the left or right, “but are we true to our core values,” he said. Nobody defined core values.

Balance, Nelson answered, is necessary for government to work. His example: “I call ’em as I see ’em. When I disagree with the president, I vote against him. When I agree with the president, I vote with him.”

Obama gave another example: “I was opposed to the war [in Iraq] when it was launched. But once we’re in, we have an obligation to make it work, to honor those who lost their lives and bring a semblance of democracy to the region.”

Both politicians pushed emotional buttons close to voters’ hearts.
Full: orlando sentinel.com

Oh, ‘core values’….right…. If I happen to run into them I’ll be sure to let the Senator know. Like I said the Democratic Party is dead.

TEN years ago this week, Serbian forces slaughtered more than 7,000 Muslim men in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Despite the efforts of a dedicated few in Serbia, and despite the war crimes prosecutions at The Hague, Serbia is no closer today than it was a decade ago to reckoning with its war guilt.

For years Belgrade has denied involvement by its citizens in Srebrenica and other massacres of the 1990s. The recent broadcast of a graphic video that showed Serbian paramilitary police executing six young men from Srebrenica should have made it very hard to sustain that revisionism. Amazing as it seems, however, the video was not enough to shatter what Serbian human rights activist Sonja Biserko has described as the country’s “state of collective denial.”

Fewer than half of Serbs polled last spring believed the Srebrenica massacre took place. And while much has been made of the video’s effects on a shocked Serbian public, it remains to be seen where that public will stand once the furor recedes. The Radical Party, which won 27 percent of the popular vote in the last national elections, making it the largest party in Parliament, has already criticized what it sees as the anti-Serb hysteria that “wishes at all costs to put the burden of all crimes on Serbia.” Graffiti has appeared in several cities praising the “liberation” of Srebrenica. Rumors circulate that the video was doctored, or that the men committing the crimes were acting independently.

Instead of coming to terms with its past, Serbia has circumvented the issue with the narrative skills befitting a psychopath.
Full: nytimes.com

Well Serbia isn’t the only one. I would say the “colonialism was good” talk floating around these days is psychopathic. Jack Straw calls Serbia “a scar on Europe,” Africa ” a scar on the conscience of the world.” A pity these Blairs and Bushes and Chiracs are so oblivious to the scars they leave, and the new wounds they inflict every day.

The Patriot Act already gives government too much power to spy on ordinary Americans, but things could get far worse. Congress is considering adding a broad new investigative power, known as the administrative subpoena, that would allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to gain access to anyone’s financial, medical, employment and even library records without approval from a judge and even without the target knowing about it. Members of Congress should block this disturbing provision from becoming law.

The Senate is at work on a bill to reauthorize parts of the Patriot Act that are scheduled to expire later this year. In addition to extending those provisions, the Senate Intelligence Committee is proposing to add an array of new “investigative tools.” The administrative subpoena is not the only one of the new provisions of the current bill that would endanger civil liberties, but it is the worst.

When the F.B.I. wants access to private records about an individual, it ordinarily needs to get the approval of a judge or a grand jury. The proposed new administrative subpoena power would allow the F.B.I. to call people in and force them to produce records on its own authority, without approval from the judicial branch. This kind of secret, compelled evidence not tied to any court is incompatible with basic American principles of justice. It would also make it far easier for the F.B.I. to go off on fishing expeditions.

The bill would allow the F.B.I. to order that the subpoenas be kept secret. That means record holders, like banks or employers, would not be able to inform the person whose private information was being handed over. It would also make it difficult for Congress, and the public, to know whether the F.B.I. was abusing its enormous new powers.
Full:nytimes.com

by rootsie

The Innocence that Kills

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
U.S. Declaration of Independence

“No one can condone acts of violence aimed at working people going about their daily lives. They have not been a party to, nor are they responsible for, the decisions of their government. They are entirely innocent and we condemn those who have killed or injured them.
The loss of innocent lives, whether in this country or Iraq, is precisely the result of a world that has become a less safe and peaceful place in recent years.”
George Galloway, MP, June 7, 2005

The Declaration clearly states that the one and only purpose of any government is to safeguard the unalienable rights of its people, and that the only powers a government should have are the ones these people give it. This is the definition of democracy. In return, it is the people’s responsibility to keep a vigilant eye out to ensure that their government does not veer from this purpose.

What variety of ‘innocence’ is acceptable in a democracy? If its people are not ultimately responsible for the decisions of their government, then how can it be said that that government is democratic?

One of the most monstrous aspects of governments careening out of control is that they murder any possibility of innocence. If these governments are engaged in various heinous crimes across the globe, every citizen is fair game when retribution time comes. You can’t have it all ways, trumpeting the virtues of your democracy, enjoying the privileges bought off ‘the other’s’ back, and then protesting your innocence when the rubber hits the road. This is true even if it is deranged elements of your own government that have hideously attacked you.

“But we didn’t know!” That’s what the townspeople said at Auschwitz as the human ashes rained down on their heads.

On 9-11 I was sickened by that question, “Why do ‘they’ hate us?” I felt in that moment the gravity of this sin of ‘innocence.’ People in a democracy are supposed to know what their government is doing. A million Iraqi children dead and we ‘didn’t know.’ I realized in that moment that we’d lost it, lost any semblance of control over our government. The President smugly replied, “They hate us because we love freedom.” All I can say is tell it to Fallujah, where a captive population shuffles through checkpoints with optical scans. Tell it in the face of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and all the other gulags.

Of course, it can reasonably be argued that we in the West do not live in democracies and never have, that ‘democracy’ from the first has actually been about plutocracy, ‘democracy’ merely a rhetoric-laden vehicle used by vested interests to put the lockdown on the planet and its wealth. They bestowed relative privilege on some (largely white) as a great pacifier, while they raped the rest. The thing is, they gave us the words for humane governance, and not only the words but the ideas behind them. Young people have been manipulated by those words and into thinking it’s an ok idea to sacrifice their lives in service to a beast. Talk about suicide bombers.

I saw an article today about a conference being held in Washington to train teachers to teach about the Holocaust. Where are the conferences about the Holocaust of imperialism, about the Palestinian Holocaust, about the Congo Holocaust?

The Israeli government was ‘informed’ about the impending bombings in London; the police on the ground were not. The safety of Benjamin Netanyahu was deemed more important than the lives of thousands of Londoners.

Who benefits most from these bombings? That’s a question that could lead to something productive.

50 people blown to smears and pieces anywhere is a terrible thing. But innocence does not live here. I am a mother and a grandmother, and the pain it gives me to say this is great.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

…The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

from “The Second Coming”, W.B.Yeats, 1921

France and other European countries are claiming, either officially or through historians, that colonialism was a positive thing.

In a law passed on Feb. 23, the French parliament, dominated by President Jacques Chirac’s right-leaning Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), demanded that teachers at schools all over the country and textbooks emphasise “the positive role (played by) France overseas, especially in the Maghreb region” in North Africa.

This move sparked debate among French historians, politicians, teachers, and representatives of former colonies, especially Algeria.

At first, the Algerian government considered calling a special joint session of the two chambers of parliament to discuss the issue and formulate a response to the French claims.

But President Abdelaziz Bouteflika decided against the special session. Instead, the two chambers will review the issue separately and adopt a resolution condemning “the crimes of colonisation.”

While this official reaction comes against a backdrop of Algerian efforts to normalise relations with the former colonial power and a plan to sign a special co-operation agreement with Paris, Algeria’s response to France’s attempt to rewrite history shows that the wounds provoked by colonialism in the Maghreb are still sore.
Full:allafrica.com

As can be seen by the responses to the London bombings, with raw power comes the presumption of the right to tell the story.