WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s newest counterterrorism agency, charged with protecting military facilities and personnel wherever they are, is carrying out intelligence collection, analysis and operations within the United States and abroad, according to a Pentagon fact sheet on the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, provided to The Washington Post.

CIFA is a three-year-old agency whose size and budget remain secret. It has grown from an agency that coordinated policy and oversaw the counterintelligence activities of units within the military services and Pentagon agencies, to an analytic and operational organization with nine directorates and ever-widening authority.

Its Directorate of Field Activities (DX) “assists in preserving the most critical defense assets, disrupting adversaries and helping control the intelligence domain,” the fact sheet said. Those roles can range from running roving patrols around military bases and facilities to surveillance of potentially threatening people or organizations inside the United States. The DX also provides “on-site, real time … support in hostile areas worldwide to protect both U.S. and host nation personnel from a variety of threats,” the fact sheet said.

This is just one illustration of the quiet growth of Pentagon activities inside the United States and abroad as part of the war on terror. Last week, news accounts revealed that President Bush authorized secret eavesdropping on Americans with suspected ties to terrorist groups.

Another CIFA directorate, the Counterintelligence and Law Enforcement Center “identifies and assesses threats” to Defense personnel, operations and infrastructure from “insider threats, foreign intelligence services, terrorists, and other clandestine or covert entities,” according to the Pentagon.
post-gazette.com

Johannesburg, December 19: Africans reacted with dismay on Monday to a World Trade Organisation compromise deal on global trade, saying the world’s poorest continent would pay the price for the intransigence of rich nations.

“The developed countries once again failed to extend a hand of solidarity to the poor,” South Africa’s powerful COSATU labour federation said in a statement, calling Sunday’s last-minute WTO agreement in Hong Kong an ‘abysmal failure’.

“The situation will remain that it would be better to be a cow in Japan, subsidised for $7 per day, than to be a human being living in Africa,” he said.
expressindia.com

Wolfowitz Has Moved on From Iraq
Paul Wolfowitz — one of the chief architects at the Pentagon of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — is a lucky man.
He doesn’t have to worry any more about whether his past hawkish Pentagon policies were right or wrong or worth the human sacrifice.

Wolfowitz has moved on to become president of the World Bank, where his job is giving multibillion-dollar loans to underdeveloped countries.

In a formal speech at the National Press Club on Dec. 7, Wolfowitz wanted to speak about global poverty, not Iraq.

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. House adjourned for the year after approving a $453 billion Department of Defense budget for fiscal 2006 and $39.7 billion in spending cuts over five years to benefit programs such as Medicaid and student loans.
bloomberg.com

Congressional Perks: How the Trappings of Office Trap Taxpayers
Since the founding of the Republic, Americans have had a healthy skepticism of the concentration of power. The Framers of the Constitution established a system they hoped would prevent not only the disproportionate accumulation of influence in one branch of government, but also the disproportionate accumulation of privilege.

Today, Members of the United States Congress enjoy a vast web of perquisites that benefit them personally as well as professionally, including:

Comfortable salaries that are often determined through legislative sleight-of-hand. Contrary to the arguments of many Washington “insiders,” the cost of living has rarely eroded the historical value of lawmakers’ pay, which on a constant-dollar basis is hovering near the postwar high.

Pension benefits that are two to three times more generous than those offered in the private sector for similarly-salaried executives. Taxpayers directly cover at least 80 percent of this costly plan. Congressional pensions are also inflation-protected, a feature that fewer than 1 in 10 private plans offer.

Health and life insurance, approximately 3/4 and 1/3 of whose costs, respectively, are subsidized by taxpayers.

Wheeled perks, including limousines for senior Members, prized parking spaces on Capitol Hill, and choice spots at Washington’s two major airports.

Travel to far-flung destinations as well as to home states and districts. Despite recent attempts to toughen gift and travel rules, “junkets” are still readily available prerogatives for many Members.

A wide range of smaller perks that have defied reform efforts, from cut-rate health clubs to fine furnishings.

…It is a brutal fact of modern media and politics that honesty and sincerity are not rewarded, but instead heavily punished, by powerful interests with plenty at stake. It does not matter how often the likes of Pinter, Le Carré, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger are shown to be right. It does not matter how often the likes of Bush and Blair are shown to have lied in the cause of power and profits. The job of mainstream journalism is to learn nothing from the past, to treat rare individuals motivated by compassion as rare fools deserving contempt.

The benefits are clear enough: if even high-profile dissidents can be painted as wretched, sickly fools, then which reader or viewer would want to be associated with dissent? Then ‘normal’ – conforming, consuming, looking after ‘number one’ – can be made to seem healthy, balanced, sensible and sane. Historian Howard Zinn made the point well:

“Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often led to accept, without much questioning, someone else’s version of what that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be sceptical of someone else’s description of reality.” (The Zinn Reader, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.338)

The great task of propaganda is to make dissent seem unrealistic, embarrassing, and absurd.
medialens.org

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Violent demonstrations broke out across Iraq and the oil minister threatened to resign Monday after the government raised the prices of gasoline and cooking fuel by up to nine times.

The Cabinet raised the prices of gasoline, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas on Sunday to curb a growing black market, Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.

The price of a liter of imported and super gasoline was raised to 17 cents, which is a fivefold increase from previous prices. There are about 3.8 liters in a gallon, meaning the new price is about 65 cents a gallon.

The price of locally produced gasoline was raised about sevenfold to about 12 cents per liter, or about 46 cents a gallon.

In Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad, police fired into the air to disperse hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the provincial government headquarters.
seattlepi.nwsource.com

When a sitting president declares that the constitution is just “A God damned piece of paper,” it reveals much about his inner character; or lack thereof. It reveals dangerous illusions of omnipotence, contempt for the law, and scorn for the people. It was George Bush who uttered those tortured words to Whitehouse aides last week. Easily misled by false idols intoxicated with power and driven by insatiable greed, we are witnessing nothing less astonishing than the demise of the American experiment. Dreams of democracy, justice, peace and hope are receding into the dim recesses of ever more distant memory. We see them morphing into an Orwellian nightmare of monstrous proportions that promises to pursue us to our graves. If we continue on this course of ethical decline, in another decade we will not even be able to recall the forms and texture of those dreams that once held so much promise.
informationclearimghouse.info

There is a dreadful disconnect between the American conversation on Iraq, and the opinions of Iraqis and most people in the world. We know that more than 80 percent of Iraqis want the U.S. troops to get out of their country. This figure is so high, it reflects a consensus among all three major groups: Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and Kurds. If Americans respected Iraqi opinion – their true democratic aspirations – there would be no question that the U.S. would leave. But instead, the corporate U.S. media pretends that America has brought democracy to Iraq, while disregarding Iraqi opinion. Only American opinion counts.

But it gets crazier, because a majority of Americans also want the U.S. to get out of Iraq, forthwith. So it appears that American public opinion doesn’t count for much, either. Americans want out of Iraq, and Iraqis want them out, but the two war parties, Democrats and Republicans, operate in a different reality zone. They continue to speak of the “necessity” of an American presence in Iraq for an unknown time frame. Senator Barack Obama, who many of us invested great hopes in, sings the same nonsensical song. Nancy Pelosi, a former leader of the Progressive Congressional Caucus and now leader of House Democrats, exerts her powers to muzzle the majority of her party that is anti-war. Eighty-five percent of Democrats want out of Iraq, quickly. But Obama and Pelosi are listening to other voices. None of this has anything to do with democracy, either for Iraqis or for Americans.

Worst of all, the Congressional Black Caucus has been neutered, as a body. Ninety-five percent of African Americans want out of the war, according to polls. All but two of the 42 Black members of the U.S. House of Representatives depend on these Black voters for their political existence. Yet the Black Caucus effectively takes its marching orders from Nancy Pelosi, disregarding overwhelming Black anti-war opinion. There is no semblance of democracy in the air.
blackcommentator.com

A “DEAD zone” devoid of life has been discovered at the epicentre of last year’s tsunami four kilometres beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.

Scientists taking part in a worldwide marine survey made an 11-hour dive at the site five months after the disaster.

They were shocked to find no sign of life around the epicentre, which opened up a 1000-metre chasm on the ocean floor.

Instead, there was nothing but eerie emptiness. The powerful lights of the scientists’ submersible vehicle, piercing through the darkness, showed no trace of anything living.

A scientist working on the Census of Marine Life project, Ron O’Dor, of Dalhousie University in Canada, said: “You’d expect a site like this to be quickly recolonised, but that hasn’t happened. It’s unprecedented.”
gnn.tv

If people know anything at all about the star-crossed Neil Bush, it likely relates to either his role in the failed Silverado Savings and Loan scandal during the 1980s, which cost taxpayers more than one billion dollars, or, more recently, the lurid details of his divorce from his wife of 23 years.

After a brief hiatus from the public spotlight, Neil Bush is back. Within a three-month period, Bush has shown up in Latvia, Ukraine and Georgia with Russian fugitive Boris Berezovsky, and has appeared at the side of the Unification Church’s Rev. Sun Myung Moon in Taiwan and the Philippines.

…Bush, along with other “peace leaders”, joined with Moon in meeting with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The president “praised Moon for his global peace efforts and God-centered, family-centered economic and social initiatives in various parts of the world, including projects in a number of Philippine cities”, the Manila paper reported.

Moon’s Philippines trip, one stop on a 100-day tour that is taking him to 100 cities in 67 nations and covering nearly 100,000 miles, was aimed at building momentum for his idea of developing a faith-based path to peace by revamping the United Nations.

Veteran investigative reporter John Gorenfeld told IPS that, “Moon speaks in parables from the Book of Genesis. He says the U.N. is like Cain, but he wants to build a second entity that is like Abel. Ideally his ‘Abel U.N.’ — a body fusing all religions — would be embraced by the U.N. But if not, he wants to set up his own alternative diplomatic machine to outshine the U.N.”

During a May 2003 meeting with President Bush at the White House, Philippines President Arroyo suggested that the United States might consider co-sponsoring the proposal, the conservative online news magazine, NewsMax.com reported. According to that report, the president “expressed deep interest and asked his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to study the matter”.

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia – Peasant leader Evo Morales, who has harshly criticized U.S. policies in Latin America, won a major victory Sunday in the race for this fractured country’s presidency, adding to a rising wave of leftist governments in the region.

According to a survey of 1,250 polling places conducted by a group of Bolivian media, Morales had won 51 percent of the vote, with former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga coming in second with 30 percent. Businessman Samuel Doria Medina won 8 percent of the vote.

Quiroga conceded defeat.

Morales, a 46-year-old Aymara Indian who will be Bolivia’s first indigenous president, has made international headlines with his bold attacks on Washington-backed policies such as free trade agreements and the eradication of coca leaf, the main ingredient in cocaine.

His election marked a significant setback for U.S. interests in Latin America. U.S. diplomats had remained studiously silent during the campaign to avoid the appearance of interfering in the election and tipping public opinion toward the strongly anti-U.S. candidate.
mercurynews.com

Bolivia’s hero vows to break US shackles
On a barren landing strip in Bolivia’s mining heartland of Oruro, hundreds of people, including miners carrying dynamite charges, stir at the sight of an approaching small plane. It’s a stampede by the time it lands, as the crowds rush down the slope to greet an emerging heavy-built man. He is Evo Morales, a 46-year-old Aymara Indian, leading candidate in today’s presidential elections and leader of a left-wing revolution that may soon engulf most of South America.
Morales is on the verge of becoming the first wholly Indian leader in Latin America.

…Morales is riding a wave of anger from Bolivia’s impoverished Indian majority who have not seen any benefits from years of free-market policies and the sale of the country’s natural resources by a mostly white elite to huge multinationals.

In few places is the country’s ingrained injustice as visible as in the arid region of Oruro, birthplace of the Bolivian trade union movement, whose tin mines have maintained the state for decades, while its inhabitants live in miserable mud huts. Morales was born there, before being forced by drought to move to the region of Chapare, where he later emerged as the leader of the coca farmers, launching his political career.

Morales’s first stop in Oruro is Uncía. Jumping on a tractor and trundling slowly towards the main town square, he is followed by a long caravan of vehicles and by dynamite explosions in substitution for fireworks. Some 3,000 Indians listen intently and in a combative mood. ‘We’re determined to wrest control over our resources and our lives after the efforts to eliminate the Indians from the period of the Spanish colony. We will bury American imperialism!’ declares Morales amid shouts of ‘El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!’ (The people united will never be defeated!)

NY Times headline:Bolivia Elects a President Who Supports Coca Farming