…
If Powell’s address merited front-page treatment, the American media had never chosen to give the same attention to the men driving Bush to war, most of whom were former or still active pro-Israeli lobbyists. For years they had advocated destroying the most powerful Arab nation. Richard Perle, one of Bush’s most influential advisers, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld were all campaigning for the overthrow of Iraq long before George W Bush was elected US president. And they weren’t doing so for the benefit of Americans or Britons. A 1996 report, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, called for war on Iraq. It was written not for the US but for the incoming Israeli Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and produced by a group headed by Perle. The destruction of Iraq would, of course, protect Israel’s monopoly of nuclear weapons – always supposing Saddam also possessed them – and allow it to defeat the Palestinians and impose whatever colonial settlement Sharon had in store for them.

Although Bush and Blair dared not discuss this aspect of the coming war – a conflict for Israel was not going to have Americans or Britons lining up at recruiting offices – Jewish-American leaders talked about the advantages of an Iraqi war with enthusiasm. Indeed, those very courageous Jewish-American groups who opposed this madness were the first to point out how pro-Israeli organisations foresaw Iraq not only as a new source of oil but of water, too; why should canals not link the Tigris river to the parched Levant? No wonder, then, that any discussion of this topic had to be censored, as Professor Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University tried to do in The Wall Street Journal the day after Powell’s UN speech. Cohen suggested that European nations’ objections to the war might – yet again – be ascribed to ” anti-Semitism of a type long thought dead in the West, a loathing that ascribes to Jews a malignant intent”. This nonsense was opposed by many Israeli intellectuals who, like Uri Avnery, argued that an Iraq war would leave Israel with even more Arab enemies.

The slur of “anti-Semitism” also lay behind Rumsfeld’s insulting remarks about “old Europe”. He was talking about the “old” Germany of Nazism and the “old” France of collaboration. But the France and Germany that opposed this war were the “new” Europe, the continent that refused, ever again, to slaughter the innocent. It was Rumsfeld and Bush who represented the “old” America; not the ” new” America of freedom, the America of F D Roosevelt.

Rumsfeld and Bush symbolised the old America that killed its native inhabitants and embarked on imperial adventures. It was “old” America we were being asked to fight for – linked to a new form of colonialism – an America that first threatened the United Nations with irrelevancy and then did the same to Nato. This was not the last chance for the UN, nor for Nato. But it might well have been the last chance for America to be taken seriously by her friends as well as her enemies.

Israeli and US ambitions in the region were now entwined, almost synonymous. This war, about oil and regional control, was being cheer-led by a president who was treacherously telling us that this was part of an eternal war against “terror”. The British and most Europeans didn’t believe him. It’s not that Britons wouldn’t fight for America. They just didn’t want to fight for Bush or his friends. And if that included the prime minister, they didn’t want to fight for Blair either. Still less did they wish to embark on endless wars with a Texas governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil buddies, was now sending America’s poor to destroy a Muslim nation that had nothing at all to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001.
informationclearinghouse.info

Iran’s official warns against Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities
Visiting Iranian parliament Speaker Haddad Adel warned in Damascus Sunday that if Israel ventured to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities it would incur severe retaliation.

“If Israel takes such crazy actions as attacking our nuclear facilities, we will give it an unforgettable lesson,” Adel told a press conference after meeting with his Syrian counterpart Mahmoud Abrash.

AMMAN (AFP) – Iraq’s interior minister delivered a scathing attack on neighbouring Saudi Arabia, saying his country would not be lectured by “a bedouin on a camel” about human rights and democracy.

“We do not accept a bedouin on a camel teaching us about human rights and democracy. In Iraq, we are proud of our civilisation,” Bayan Baqer Sulagh told a press conference in Amman after talks on boosting border security.

The Shiite minister said the oil-rich Sunni-ruled kingdom had several problems of its own to take care of.

“Saudis should first allow women to drive, as is the case in Iraq,” he said Sunday, adding that “four million Shiites live like second-class citizens in the Saudi kingdom.”

He was responding to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal’s accusations that Iran was seeking to spread its influence in Iraq and that sectarian divisions were threatening to break up the country.
news.yahoo.com

Iraq’s President Calls for PM to Step Down
KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) – Iraq’s Kurdish president called on the country’s Shiite prime minister to step down, the spokesman for the president’s party said Sunday, escalating a political split between the two factions that make up the government.

Sunni Arab leaders, meanwhile, were angered after the Shiite-dominated parliament passed a new ruling on a key Oct. 15 that makes it more difficult for Sunnis to defeat the draft constitution that they oppose.

The political wrangling deepened the splits between Iraq’s three main communities amid a constitutional process that was aimed at bringing them together to build a democratic nation. Kurds complained that Shiites were monopolizing the government, while Sunnis – who have made up the backbone of the violent insurgency – accused Shiites of stacking the deck against them in the political process.

The Kurdish-Shiite split hits the core of the coalition that has made up the transitional government. President Jalal Talabani has made veiled threats to pull the Kurds out of the coalition if their demands are not met, a step that could bring the government’s collapse.

Talabani has accused the Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which holds the majority in parliament, of failing to fairly distribute government positions to Kurds, neglecting ministries run by Kurdish officials and refusing to move ahead on the resettlement of Kurds in the northern city of Kirkuk.

August Wilson, who chronicled the African-American experience in the 20th century in a series of plays that will stand as a landmark in the history of black culture, of American literature and of Broadway theater, died yesterday at a hospital in Seattle. He was 60 and lived in Seattle.

…In his work, Mr. Wilson depicted the struggles of black Americans with uncommon lyrical richness, theatrical density and emotional heft, in plays that gave vivid voices to people on the frayed margins of life: cabdrivers and maids, garbagemen and side men and petty criminals. In bringing to the popular American stage the gritty specifics of the lives of his poor, trouble-plagued and sometimes powerfully embittered black characters, Mr. Wilson also described universal truths about the struggle for dignity, love, security and happiness in the face of often overwhelming obstacles.

…In dialogue that married the complexity of jazz to the emotional power of the blues, he also argued eloquently for the importance of black Americans’ honoring the pain and passion in their history, not burying it to smooth the road to assimilation. For Mr. Wilson, it was imperative for black Americans to draw upon the moral and spiritual nobility of their ancestors’ struggles to inspire their own ongoing fight against the legacies of white racism.
nytimes.com

The 4-page accolade goes on and on and begs the question: what is relationship between art and life? Why is it such a simple thing for whites to celebrate the artistic achievement of blacks while maintaining such a deafening silence about the real people on whose Mr. Wilson’s characters were based?

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) – Iraq angrily rejected Saudi Arabian allegations of increasing Iranian involvement in Iraq, as Arab foreign ministers gathered on Sunday to discuss a pan-Arab strategy to help restore stability to the war-torn country.

Top American diplomats, meanwhile, have stepped up efforts with Arab officials to involve them with endeavors to convince Iraqi Sunni Arabs to accept Iraq’s contentious constitution.

In a sign of rising tensions, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a powerful member of the Shiite-led government, disputed Saudi accusations that Iran now dominates Iraq, instead accusing the Saudis of being “tyrants” who discriminate against their own Shiites.

Iraq’s Sunni-dominated neighbors, chiefly Saudi Arabia and Jordan, have expressed concern that too much influence from Iran could empower Iraq’s majority Shiites and cause a political shift in the region, including a possible split of the country into a Kurdish north, a Sunni center and a Shiite south.
guardian.co.uk

Florida’s Riviera Beach is a poor, predominantly black, coastal community that intends to revitalize its economy by using eminent domain, if necessary, to displace about 6,000 local residents and build a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex.
“This is a community that’s in dire need of jobs, which has a median income of less than $19,000 a year,” said Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown.
He defends the use of eminent domain by saying the city is “using tools that have been available to governments for years to bring communities like ours out of the economic doldrums and the trauma centers.”
washtimes.com

Sounds like Gaza.

Nearly 100,000 California 12th graders — or about 20% of this year’s senior class — have failed the state’s graduation exam, potentially jeopardizing their chances of earning diplomas, according to the most definitive report on the mandatory test, released Friday.

Students in the class of 2006, the first group to face the graduation requirement, must pass both the English and math sections of the test by June.

The exit exam — which has come under criticism by some educators, legislators and civil rights advocates — is geared to an eighth-grade level in math and to ninth- and 10th-grade levels in English.

But the report by the Virginia-based Human Resources Research Organization showed that tens of thousands of students, particularly those in special education and others who speak English as a second language, may fail the test by the end of their senior year despite remedial classes, after-school tutoring and other academic help.

Teachers, according to the report, said that many students arrive unprepared and unmotivated for their high school courses and that their grades often reflect poor attendance and low parental involvement.

The group reviewed the test results as part of a report ordered by the Legislature when it instituted the exit exam several years ago.

Among its findings: 63% of African Americans and 68% of Latinos in the class of 2006 have passed both parts of the exam.

By comparison, 89% of Asians and 90% of whites have passed. The report recommended that the state keep the exam but consider several alternatives for students who can’t pass.
latimes.com

Yeah and guess the educational status of the majority of jail inmates.

Locked Away Forever After Crimes as Teenagers
About 9,700 American prisoners are serving life sentences for crimes they committed before they could vote, serve on a jury or gamble in a casino – in short, before they turned 18. More than a fifth have no chance for parole.

…The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does that. Life without parole, the most severe form of life sentence, is theoretically available for juvenile criminals in about a dozen countries. But a report to be issued on Oct. 12 by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found juveniles serving such sentences in only three others. Israel has seven, South Africa has four and Tanzania has one.

…Juvenile lifers are overwhelmingly male and mostly black. Ninety-five percent of those admitted in 2001 were male and 55 percent were black.

The brush-covered landscape of buttes and desert just west of the Rockies, already dotted with oil and gas rigs, could be in store for another resource boom as the energy industry turns a fresh eye toward developing oil shale.

A reserve estimated at nearly 1 trillion barrels of oil buried deep in rock formations stretching from western Colorado into northeastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming may be a way to ease U.S. dependence on shrinking foreign oil supplies. The newly enacted energy bill was written to help open the way for research programs and commercial leasing of federal land containing oil shale.

Yet shale isn’t a quick panacea to the nation’s energy woes. This is oil that is locked up in rock, not deposits of liquid crude that are relatively easy to tap.

Companies have spent years researching how to melt oil out of rock, but it could be 2010 before any decide whether shale mining is commercially and environmentally feasible. It takes a large amount of water to recover the oil and the process can take months.
guardian.co.uk

A Quest for Oil Collides With Nature in Alaska

…But current and former officials say Goss does face problems stemming from the agency’s reliance on a robust private contracting market for skilled intelligence and security workers that has grown more lucrative since the September 11, 2001, attacks and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“Goss realizes he has a major problem in the (clandestine service) because he’s having major bailouts among the old guard and also retention problems all the way down the ranks,” said a former clandestine officer.

Experienced spies have been surrendering their blue staff badges and leaving the CIA in droves, often to return the next day as better paid, green-badged private contractors, current and former officials say.
breitbart.com

Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb:

Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions.

This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to “get to the bottom of it.” As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable.
thinkprogress.org

Video

It seems there’s no stopping Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. He’s already curbing the power of the big oil companies operating in Venezuela. Now he’s stepping up a program of expropriation that could bedevil a number of businesses, both locally owned and foreign. The moves come just as Chávez seems prepared to further consolidate his power at legislative elections in December. The pro-Chávez coalition hopes to increase its majority in the 167-member National Assembly by more than 20 seats, to around 110. “It’s going to be a battle for us,” concedes Gerardo Blyde, a legislator from the opposition First Justice Party.

The opposition has pledged to join forces for the elections, but remains discredited after last year’s defeat in a referendum that attempted to oust Chávez from office. If voters reward Chávez with a big win, as expected, the way will be clear for sweeping new moves in his Bolivarian revolution — his populist effort to tap Venezuela’s oil wealth to impose socialism in the country. “Chávez is dead set on his revolution; there’s no turning back,” says Aníbal Romero, a political scientist at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas. “The question is how fast and how far.”

Food fight
Chávez is moving quickly. He has been boosting spending on health and education since coming to power in 1999, but he is now increasing government control of the economy, to investors’ dismay. Oil companies with operating contracts in Venezuela, such as Chevron (CVX ) and BP PLC. (BP ), have been ordered to set up joint ventures controlled by state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), and royalties have been hiked from 16.7% to 30%. Chávez now has targeted more than 700 plants, particularly in the food industry, that are idle or not operating at capacity for possible expropriation. On Sept. 26 the state seized control of a plant operated by Alimentos Polar, the country’s No. 1 private food manufacturer. “This is an unfair and arbitrary expropriation,” Polar President Lorenzo Mendoza told reporters, adding that the facility was operational. The move followed the seizure of a shuttered H.J. Heinz Co. (HNZ ) tomato processing facility. The company is negotiating to sell the plant to the state. Chavez defends the moves. “We will only expropriate what is necessary,” he said in a recent speech.

The President is also going after rich landowners. Authorities recently began taking control of 21 large ranches spread over hundreds of thousands of acres. Chávez has threatened to hand part of the land to poor Venezuelans unless owners legally document their ownership and show that their spreads are being productively used. In another shock to investors, Chávez disclosed plans to review — and possibly revoke — mining concessions and create a national mining company. The news caused shares in Canada’s Crystallex International Corp., (KRY ) which has operations in Venezuela, to plunge 52% from Sept. 19 to Sept. 28. “What happens here in Venezuela will undoubtedly have some impact on the commercial decisions of companies, not just from the U.S. but from all over the world,” U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield told reporters in Caracas. “Nationalization is a step backward,” adds a State Dept. official in Washington.
businessweek.com

Well then, he must be stopped. The ironic problem facing Bush’s corporate oil buddies is that unless oil goes down $20 a barrel, Chavez will have plenty of money to transform his country. Chavez points the way for every country with resources the Yankees want.