Rootsie.com - Weblog

Thursday, September 30th

Where is the World? Jeanne: Compare Florida to Haiti

by Alan Farago
...Hurricane Jeanne hit Haiti hard before it did that loop the loop and aimed right where Frances had gone before. The double blow bent the knees of the most hardened residents of Florida's Treasure Coast, already weakened by calamitous, toxic outflows from Lake Okeechobee.

The death toll in Haiti, first reported at 500, quickly mounted to more than 1,000 and is likely to double. More than 250,000 are homeless. The storm hit in the middle of the night in Gonaives, where most deaths occurred, without forewarning -- no Weather Channel, no TV reporters with goggles leaning into the blistering wind.

When a hurricane aims for the United States, millions of people mobilize in synchronicity. The storm's passing sets the stage for federal emergency managers, power crews clearing trees fallen from roads or on roofs, transformers shipped by the bushel in flatbed trailers, plywood stacked in perfect bundles, gasoline stations resupplied and rallying the troops.

Every response of our government to disaster reinforces the large-scale systems that provide comfort to people who can afford them, even when the viability of those systems is shaken by the power of nature.

But in Haiti -- the poorest place in our hemisphere -- every disaster only reinforces the vacuum of power and absence of organization to protect people from survival of the fittest.

...Our own comforts obscure how difficult it is to rearrange poverty that people experience as a humiliating stigma they did nothing to deserve. And although we seem to recognize that in a world of globalization we are not an island unto ourselves, too often our relations with the undeveloped world are poisoned by the attitude that if they would just learn to do business like we do, or if they can't, let us do business for them, then everything would be swell.

Full Article:counterpunch.org

It is discouraging on a website that claims to challenge the status quo to see an article like this. What are the historical roots of this "poverty that people experience"? It's not about US isolationism, being "an island unto ourselves," but aggressive interventionism, in Haiti's case for 200 years. Why doesn't anybody want to talk about why poor countries are poor? About why over 200 people in Haiti last week were simply left to die? This article suggests that the US should be ashamed of its lack of charity. That is just obscene. It was President Aristide's demand for reparations that caused 50 American marines to storm his palace this winter and remove him. Poor countries don't need charity. They need justice.
rootsie on 09.30.04 @ 09:02 PM CST [link]

UN plea for more troops in Congo

by Rory Connell
The UN is under pressure to expand its peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the prospect of renewed fighting has prompted tens of thousands of refugees to flee.

Tomorrow the security council is to debate the secretary general Kofi Annan's plea to renew the force's mandate and more than double its number to 23,900, making Congo one of the UN's more expensive missions at $1.4bn (£800m) a year.

The US and other council members say the force, known as Monuc, is inept but do not contest the need for a sizeable presence.

There has been a recent surge of refugees, underlining the continued volatility of the areas bordering Rwanda and Burundi. Troops loyal to the transitional government in Kinshasa have deployed around Goma to flush out rebels allegedly backed by Rwanda.

No fighting has been reported but the refugees, survivors of five year of war which killed 3 million, do not trust the deal last year aimed at ending the hostilities.

Oxfam says 20,000 villagers from Kalehe, South Kivu, are camping in the hills 40 miles north of Goma with little shelter.

Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.30.04 @ 08:31 PM CST [link]

Judge Rules Against Patriot Act Provision

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Part of the Patriot Act, a central plank of the Bush Administration's war on terror, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the power the FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorism investigations.

The ruling was the latest blow to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held in places like Guantanamo Bay can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement. That ruling was a defeat for the president's assertion of sweeping powers to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The ACLU sued the Department of Justice, arguing that part of the Patriot legislation violated the constitution because it authorizes the FBI to force disclosure of sensitive information without adequate safeguards.

The judge agreed, stating that the provision "effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge."

Under the provision, the FBI did not have to show a judge a compelling need for the records and it did not have to specify any process that would allow a recipient to fight the demand for confidential information.

myway.com
rootsie on 09.30.04 @ 08:26 PM CST [link]

Ten Ways to Beat George W. Bush

by Ralph Nader
The Kerry/Edwards campaign is failing to distinguish itself enough from Bush/Cheney. They are not putting forward explicit solutions that meet the daily needs of the American people, not putting forward an effective foreign policy alternative to the pre-emptive Bush war doctrine, and not crisply challenging Bush on his failed record.

1. The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush Shows he is a Compassionless Conservative

On the home front and around the world, President Bush has failed the United States. His economic record is one of record deficits, loss of jobs, creation of low-wage jobs. He has failed to create a budget that puts people's needs before corporate greed. He has made us less safe at home, turned allies into adversaries, and trapped us in an impeachable, illegal quagmire. The four-year record of George W. Bush shows his rhetoric of 2000 is not consistent with the impact of his presidency-more poverty; lower paying jobs; more people without health care; less protection from pollution, disease, and job hazards; and more military and civilian casualties.

2. Bush is Not Telling the Whole Story on Casualties in Iraq and the Likely Return of the Draft or Facing Up to the Challenge of Peace in Israel-Palestine

Full Article:counterpunch.org
rootsie on 09.30.04 @ 08:23 PM CST [link]

Wednesday, September 29th

Iraq Study Sees Rebels' Attacks as Widespread

By JAMES GLANZ and THOM SHANKER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 28 - Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.

The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin Provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets described by Iraqi government officials.

The type of attacks ran the gamut: car bombs, time bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, small-arms fire, mortar attacks and land mines.

"If you look at incident data and you put incident data on the map, it's not a few provinces, " said Adam Collins, a security expert and the chief intelligence official in Iraq for Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc., a private security company based in Las Vegas that compiles and analyzes the data as a regular part of its operations in Iraq.

The number of attacks has risen and fallen over the months. Mr. Collins said the highest numbers were in April, when there was major fighting in Falluja, with attacks averaging 120 a day. The average is now about 80 a day, he said.

But it is a measure of both the fog of war and the fact that different analysts can look at the same numbers and come to opposite conclusions, that others see a nation in which most people are perfectly safe and elections can be held with clear legitimacy.

Full Article:NY Times
rootsie on 09.29.04 @ 11:34 AM CST [link]

Tuesday, September 28th

Of Human Bondage

by Robin Blackburn

Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
by Laurent Dubois

A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804
by Laurent Dubois

In the sequence of revolutions that remade the Atlantic world between 1776 and 1825, the Haitian Revolution is rarely given its due, yet without it the progressive credentials of the others would be far weaker. The revolutions--American, French, Haitian and Spanish-American--should be seen as a chain, each helping to radicalize the next. The American Revolution launched an idea of popular sovereignty that helped to destroy the French monarchy. The French Revolution, dramatic as its impact on the Old World was, also became a fundamental event in the New--curiously, a more important catalyst than the revolt of the thirteen English colonies of North America, since it undermined empire and slavery throughout the hemisphere. Revolutionary struggles in Haiti, the richest slave colony of the Americas, set the scene for a massive slave uprising in August 1791 and prompted the National Convention's decree of 16 Pluviôse An II (February 4, 1794), which abolished slavery throughout the French colonies. The Convention was spurred to action by delegates from Haiti (then known as Saint Domingue) who argued that, faced with a British invasion and the defection of many royalist planters, only such a radical step could save the Republic by rallying more black insurgents to its side.

The French Revolutionary offensive struck down slave property at a time when the pressure of the sans-culottes on the Convention was at its height. Perhaps only the Jacobins at their most radical could have inaugurated the policy, but, following Robespierre's overthrow in Thermidor, it was to be sustained by the Directory down to the end of the 1790s. Slave insurrections were fostered in the Spanish colonies and English islands. Guadeloupe was liberated by the French revolutionary Victor Hugues, the "Robespierre of the Antilles," with the help of a newly recruited légion de la liberté, comprising "colored" men (free men of mixed race) and former slaves. Among those sent packing was Benedict Arnold, who had joined the British expedition as a war contractor. In Saint Domingue the black army led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, a former slave, deserted its Spanish patron and joined the republican ranks. With matériel sent from France, L'Ouverture created a well-armed and disciplined force, which drove the Spanish and the British from the colony by 1798. Overall, the British, who had to fight hard to regain Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenada, lost 90,000 soldiers in the Caribbean as a whole, a higher total than in Europe.

Toussaint L'Ouverture insisted that Saint Domingue remain French, but he dealt with Britain and the United States like a sovereign power. His army included white and colored, as well as black, commanders. He invited émigré planters to return. In 1802 Napoleon sought to reassert metropolitan power and to re-establish slavery. L'Ouverture was captured, and died in France, but the expeditionary force, commanded by Napoleon's brother-in-law, Gen. Charles Leclerc, was defeated, with a loss of 50,000 men, including Leclerc himself. In 1804 the black generals declared the new Republic of Haiti, with a constitution that outlawed slavery and declared that all citizens were legally black. The name of the new state, a homage to the island's precolonial inhabitants, signaled the break with empire.

In 1816 Haiti's president, Alexandre Pétion, helped Simón Bolívar mount the invasion that was ultimately to defeat the Spanish empire in the Americas. In return, Bolívar promised to free his own slaves and adopt measures to extinguish slavery in the lands he was to free. Many South Americans no doubt recalled this historic act when Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, offered asylum to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the recently ousted president of Haiti.

Full Article:thenation.com
rootsie on 09.28.04 @ 09:17 PM CST [link]

Monday, September 27th

Rolling Haiti Back to Colonialism

Charles Boylan of Vancouver Co-op Radio interviews Kevin Pina
by Kevin Pina and Charles Boylan; September 21, 2004

Charles Boylan: I saw an e-mail yesterday and it said that the Haitian Army is re-establishing itself. I want you to tell us what you know about these facts, and to tell us a little bit about what this army is and its history.

Pina: Well it's the Forces, d'army Haiti Fad'h, which was the army created by the US back during the first occupation of Haiti, which lasted nineteen years, from 1915 to 1934. The army, traditionally, was a tool of the ruling class of Haiti. It could be bought; it was responsible for more than thirty-three coup d'etats in Haiti's history. During the 1990's, after the coup d'etat against the first government of President Aristide, the army became very deeply involved in drug trafficking. Certainly it's an army that has never had to be used to defend Haiti's sovereignty against any outside force. It's traditionally been a tool of repression for Haitians inside Haiti.

As far as its resurgence [goes], what we know is that members of the former military, as well as members of the former CIA trained paramilitary death squad FRAPH, as well as officers such as Guy Philippe [formerly] of the Haitian police, were given safe harbour by certain segments of the Dominican government and certain segments of the Dominican military. After the year 2000 we know that they began several series' of incursions into Haiti, which led to the assassination of several members of Aristide's Lavalas Party . They would make armed incursions into Haiti and they would then return to their "safe haven" in the Dominican Republic. There have been charges that there's no way that this could have been done without U.S. complicity and the U.S. knowing exactly what was going on.

Certainly, I was reporting about [this]…about two, two and a half years ago. So, certainly if I had that information, it had to be available to the United States government, certainly the U.S. embassy in the Dominican Republic. And, the former military along with these other forces I described, used Dominican territory to launch an attack into Haiti; a larger attack into Haiti in early February [2004], which led to the coup d'etat of the constitutionally elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of the country on February 29th of this year.

africaspeaks.com
rootsie on 09.27.04 @ 10:13 PM CST [more..]

Sunday, September 26th

Powell acknowledges problems in holding January elections in Iraq

US Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that organizing elections throughout Iraq in January could be difficult because of the unrest that has rocked the country.

"There will be polling stations that are shot at. There will be insurgents who will still be out there who will try to keep people from voting," Powell told CNN television's "Late Edition" program.

Still, he said, "I think what we have to keep shooting for, and what is achievable, is to give everybody the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election, to make the election fully credible, and something that will stand the test of the international community's examination."

He told the "Fox News Sunday" television program that the goal of the United States and the Iraqi government was to hold elections throughout Iraq.

"It is premature to judge that we cannot have full, free elections throughout the country," he said.

"I think it has to be throughout the country. It doesn't mean that everybody's got to vote on that particular day," he said.

"We don't need a 100 percent turnout of every single citizen."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a congressional committee Thursday that unrest might prevent elections from being held in parts of Iraq.

"Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country, but some places you couldn't, because the violence was too great," he said.

"Well, so be it," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "You have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet."
yahoo.com

Dozens killed in Iraq violence as Egypt, Britain seek to free hostages yahoo.com
"...Intelligence sources indicated that approximately 10 terrorists were meeting at this location to plan operations targeting innocent Iraqi civilians and multinational forces," the US military said.

Two hospitals in the city reported receiving eight dead and 22 wounded, including women and children, while residents said many victims remained under the rubble.

At least two homes in the area were destroyed while others suffered significant damage.

An earlier US air strike on another alleged hideout of the militants killed seven Iraqis and wounded 11, again including women and children, according to medics.

Following the air strikes, twin car bombings struck US and Iraqi security forces west of Fallujah, causing casualties of both nationalities, a US commander said...

2700 attacks in August. Over 700 Iraqis killed. 1100 US wounded. 'Insurgents' have launched more than 100 attacks a day so far in September. Let's have an election! So what if it's not 'perfect'?
rootsie on 09.26.04 @ 03:32 PM CST [link]

Nigerian Rebels to Widen Conflict, Target Agip

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian rebels battling troops in Africa's top oil exporter declared on Sunday they would extend their uprising across the whole of the country's oil-producing southern delta.

A rebel leader told Reuters the conflict, currently focused in the eastern part of the delta, was to force political reforms or gain sovereignty for the impoverished region, adding that his militia would attack Italian oil installations and personnel.

Mujahid Dokubo-Asari accused the Italian oil company Agip, a unit of ENI, of lending helicopters to the military to spy on rebel positions. The company denied it.

Companies fear a repeat of last year's uprising by members of the Ijaw tribe, which forced them temporarily to shut 40 percent of the country's 2.5 million barrel per day output.

Oil production has not yet been affected by the latest surge in violence, but multinational Royal Dutch/Shell evacuated 235 staff from two oilfields on Thursday.

``We have decided to declare Operation Locust Feast which will cover the whole Niger delta. It is going to be an all-out war against the Nigerian state. Now the whole Ijaw nation will be fighting against the Nigerian state,'' Asari told Reuters by satellite phone.

About half of Nigerian oil production comes from the eastern side of the delta, a vast area of creeks and mangrove swamps, while the other half comes from the west, also inhabited predominantly by Ijaws and scene of last year's rebellion.

...``We were forced into Nigeria by the British colonialists. We are not Nigerians -- there is no such nation as Nigeria,'' Asari said. ``Until there is a Sovereign National Conference to decide these issues, we have no choice but to fight until sovereignty is in our hands.''

Asari says he is fighting to improve the lot of the Niger delta people, most of whom live in abject poverty despite having all the nation's oil reserves. The government calls him a gangster fighting for control of smuggling routes used by oil thieves.

Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 09.26.04 @ 03:16 PM CST [link]

Britain Offering to Pay Off 10% of Third World Debt

by Alan Cowell
LONDON, Sept. 25 - Britain is planning a new effort to help poor countries reduce their huge debts by offering to pay off 10 percent of the total owed to international agencies and challenging other nations to follow suit, said Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer.

In an address on Sunday to an advocacy group called the Trade Justice Movement, Mr. Brown also plans to repeat an earlier proposal that the International Monetary Fund should revalue its vast gold reserves, currently priced at a tenth of their market value, and use the proceeds to cancel some third world debt, according to a text of his remarks published Saturday in The Guardian and later confirmed by the Treasury.

The issue is rising once more on the international agenda because a previous mechanism for debt relief, set up in 1996 by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, is to be renewed in December for two years. James D. Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, said Friday in Washington that the White House had devised a plan to cancel some third world debt, Reuters reported. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential challenger, has also promised to lead efforts to cancel the debts of impoverished countries if he is elected.

Mr. Brown's proposal is significant because it comes just days before the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington. The finance ministers of the Group of 7 major industrial nations, including Mr. Brown, are also to meet just before those gatherings.

Full Article: NY Times

'Third world debt:' Well the Brits are offering to pay 10% of what they owe. In their delusion they consider this charitable.
rootsie on 09.26.04 @ 03:10 PM CST [link]

A Continuing Shame

Native Americans came in great numbers to Washington last week, partly to celebrate, partly to correct a historic injustice. The occasion was the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall - a vivid reminder of the profound cultural and symbolic legacy of America's indigenous peoples. In the background, however, was a continuing lawsuit, whose purpose is to restore to the Indians assets and revenues that are rightfully theirs.

Specifically, the suit seeks a proper accounting of a huge trust established more than a century ago when Congress broke up reservation lands into individual allotments. The trust was intended to manage the revenues owed to individual Indians from oil leases, timber leases and other activities. Yet a century of disarray and dishonesty by the federal government, particularly the Interior Department, whose job it is to administer the trust, has shortchanged generations of Indians and threatens to shortchange some half million more - the present beneficiaries of the trust.

Many of the beneficiaries hold minutely fractionated interests in land that has been passed down from generation to generation. But no one really grasps the true dimensions of the trust because the value of those leases and royalties is unclear, and because there has never been a real accounting of the money paid into or out of it. What has become clear is that Indians were often paid far less for leases on their property than whites were for comparable property.

Those who examine the trust - including members of Congress - come away stunned by how badly and how fraudulently it has been handled.

Full Article: NY Times

Well it's American Indian week. The mess this article describes has existed for many years. 'Historical reckoning'? Speaking of a continuing shame, when is Black week?
rootsie on 09.26.04 @ 03:01 PM CST [link]

Saturday, September 25th

African Hunter - Gatherers Bring Land Fight to U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - African hunter-gatherers who the Botswana government has ousted from their traditional lands brought their cause to Washington on Friday, seeking support in a battle they say revolves around diamond wealth.

Bushman elder Roy Sesana, wearing a headdress of beads and antelope horns, told a news conference the Botswana government had forced his people from their territory in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve because it wanted to make the land available for diamond mining.

``I was told this by three ministers. They told me we have to move because we cannot stay where there are mines,'' Sesana said through an interpreter. ``I said, 'The diamonds are the remains of our ancestors.'''

An official of the Botswana Embassy in Washington, John Moreti, who was in the audience, took issue with Sesana. ``There are certainly no plans to do a diamond mine in the area,'' he said.

``My question is, how many Basarwa (Bushmen) does Roy represent? I think he represents 1 percent.''

``I represent all the Bushmen,'' Sesana replied.

The Gaborone government has relocated about 2,500 Bushmen over the past 18 months from the desert game reserve, which is about the size of Switzerland, into resettlement camps where it says they can be better integrated into mainstream society.

The Bushmen are descended from the earliest inhabitants of southern Africa but have been driven from most of their original territory by black pastoral tribes -- like the present rulers of Botswana -- and white settlers.

Full Article: Reuters

These are the descendents of us all.
rootsie on 09.25.04 @ 10:19 AM CST [link]

Twisting Dr. Nuke's Arm

by Nicholas Kristof
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — President Bush has been searching vainly for Osama bin Laden for three years now, so I've decided to help him out. I'm traveling through Pakistan and Afghanistan to see whether I can find Osama, bring him back in my luggage and claim that $25 million reward.

So for the last few days, I've been peering into mosques and down village wells, even under mullahs' couches. No luck so far, but I did find something almost as interesting.

I'm talking about the arrangement under which the U.S. cuts Pakistan some slack on nuclear proliferation, in exchange for President Pervez Musharraf's joining aggressively in the hunt for Osama - in the hope of catching him by Nov. 2.

If a nuclear weapon destroys the U.S. Capitol in coming years, it will probably be based in part on Pakistani technology. The biggest challenge to civilization in recent years came not from Osama or Saddam Hussein but from Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Dr. Khan definitely sold nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya, and, officials believe, to several more nations as well.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.25.04 @ 10:11 AM CST [link]

The Persecuted, in Chains

In jails and prisons across the United States, thousands of people are detained who have never been accused of crimes. The guards treat them like criminals, and the criminals they bunk with often abuse them. They are held for months, sometimes even years, but unlike the criminals, they do not know when their sentences will end. They receive this treatment because they are foreigners who arrived in the United States saying that they were fleeing persecution at home.

The United States did not always lock up the huddled masses. Until 1997, when security concerns began to rise, asylum seekers could live like normal people while awaiting their hearings. Today, thousands wait in detention. Some go to immigration centers that greatly resemble prisons, but more than half are sent to actual jails and prisons.

The Homeland Security Department, which took over immigration matters from the Immigration and Naturalization Service 18 months ago, says it detains only those who pose a security threat or who intend to disappear. But there are countless cases of asylum seekers who are detained even when they clearly pose no risk, have friends or relatives in America who will post bond, and are unlikely to skip out on their asylum hearings. They include Tibetan nuns, religious minorities from Africa, an Afghan woman persecuted by the Taliban for running a girls' school, Ukrainian grass-roots activists and others. These people are often the most noble in their society. They come here chasing America's promised liberty, and they end up in chains.

The rules have become harsher since Sept. 11.

...In addition, the United States seems to be using harsh detention to discourage people from fleeing to America. In the case of Haitians, this is an explicit policy. Attorney General John Ashcroft ruled that all people arriving by boat - a vast majority of them Haitians - should be detained because freeing them would encourage others to come. An exception is made for the Cubans who arrive by boat. They get parole and a green card, by law.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.25.04 @ 10:06 AM CST [link]

Hepatitis Outbreak Laid to Water and Sewage Failures

by James Glanz
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 24 - A virulent form of hepatitis that is especially lethal for pregnant women has broken out in two of Iraq's most troubled districts, Iraqi Health Ministry officials said in interviews here this week, and they warned that a collapse of water and sewage systems in the continuing violence in the country is probably at the root of the outbreak. The disease, called hepatitis E, is caused by a virus that is often spread by sewage-contaminated drinking water. The officials said they had equipment to test only a limited number of people showing symptoms, suggesting that only a fraction of the actual cases have been firmly diagnosed. In Sadr City, a Baghdad slum that for months has been convulsed by gun battles between a local militia and American troops, the officials said as many as 155 cases had turned up.

The second outbreak is in Mahmudiya, a town 35 miles south of Baghdad that is known for its kidnappings and shootings as well as for its poverty, where there are an estimated 60 cases. At least nine pregnant women are believed to have been infected, and one has died. Five deaths have been reported over all.

"We are saying that the real number is greatly more than this, because the area is greatly underreported," said Dr. Atta-alla Mekhlif Al-Salmani, leader of the viral hepatitis section at Health Ministry's Center of Disease Control.

The World Health Organization is rushing hepatitis E testing kits, water purification tablets, informational brochures and other materials to Iraq, said Dr. Naeema Al-Gasseer, the W.H.O. representative for Iraq, who is now based in Amman, Jordan.

But viral hepatitis comes in many forms, and another ominous set of statistics suggests that the quality of water supplies around the country has deteriorated since the American-led war began last year, Dr. Salmani said. In 2003, 70 percent more cases of hepatitis of all types were reported across Iraq than in the year before, he said. During the first six months of 2004, as many cases were reported as in all of 2002.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.25.04 @ 10:00 AM CST [link]

Friday, September 24th

Poor, Black, and Left Behind

by Mike Davis
The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Ivan looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.

New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had ten thousand body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city's poorest or most infirm residents. The day before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast, New Orlean's daily, the Times-Picayune, ran an alarming story about the "large group…mostly concentrated in poorer neighborhoods" who wanted to evacuate but couldn't.

Only at the last moment, with winds churning Lake Pontchartrain, did Mayor Ray Nagin reluctantly open the Louisiana Superdome and a few schools to desperate residents. He was reportedly worried that lower-class refugees might damage or graffiti the Superdome.

In the event, Ivan the Terrible spared New Orleans, but official callousness toward poor Black folk endures.

Over the last generation, City Hall and its entourage of powerful developers have relentlessly attempted to push the poorest segment of the population -- blamed for the city's high crime rates -- across the Mississippi river. Historic Black public-housing projects have been razed to make room for upper-income townhouses and a Wal-Mart. In other housing projects, residents are routinely evicted for offenses as trivial as their children's curfew violations. The ultimate goal seems to be a tourist theme-park New Orleans -- one big Garden District -- with chronic poverty hidden away in bayous, trailer parks and prisons outside the city limits.

But New Orleans isn't the only the case-study in what Nixonians once called "the politics of benign neglect." In Los Angeles, county supervisors have just announced the closure of the trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital near Watts. The hospital, located in the epicenter of LA's gang wars, is one of the nation's busiest centers for the treatment of gunshot wounds. The loss of its ER, according to paramedics, could "add as much as 30 minutes in transport time to other facilities."

The result, almost certainly, will be a spate of avoidable deaths. But then again the victims will be Black or Brown and poor.

Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 09.24.04 @ 08:51 PM CST [more..]

Developing countries' crippling debt hits women hardest. And the policies of the IMF and World Bank make matters worse

by Noreena Hertz
At the International Monetary Fund, only one in nine senior employees are women. At the World Bank, less than 1% of the staff work on issues relating to gender. In the world of international finance it is men in grey suits who manage world debt. But on the ground, in the world's poorest countries, it is women who shoulder the developing world's debt burden. Make no mistake, debt is a feminist issue.

To be eligible for loans from the World Bank and the IMF in order to repay their debts, impoverished countries are made to follow these two institutions' narrow set of macroeconomic policies. These policies seem reasonable to the men who insist on them: the privatisation of state-owned enterprises and public utilities; a tight rein on public expenditure; the opening up of markets to foreign investors. But a compelling body of research now shows that these policies exacerbate poverty in poor countries, and harm girls and women the most.

Take the capping of public expenditure. One of the first things that governments don't do in order to meet this particular requirement is invest in infrastructure development like water and sanitation. This disproportionately affects women because it is women in developing countries who, as a result, walk up to 15km each day to collect water; it is women who on these journeys risk their own security. The Sudanese militia, for example, has been reported to prey on the women in Darfur who have to walk long distances to find water. It is girls who become "prisoners of daylight" because of a lack of toilet facilities, fearful to go for a pee until it is dark.

The reining in of public expenditure hurts girls in other ways, too. In order to meet this requirement, almost all developing countries have adopted a policy of charging for healthcare and school fees. And when parents faced with school fees have to choose between spending their money on sending their daughters or sons to learn, guess who gets to go to school? When the state doesn't provide healthcare, it is daughters not sons who are taken out of school to become care-givers; it is girls who become the unpaid nurses.

Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.24.04 @ 08:46 PM CST [more..]

Shell Evacuates Staff from Nigerian Delta Conflict

LAGOS (Reuters) - Multinational oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell has evacuated non-essential staff from two oilfields in Nigeria where troops are fighting a major offensive against rebel militia, a spokesman said.

The decision to withdraw 235 workers was taken as a precaution after the company noted troop movements Thursday around the Soku and Ekulama fields, about 30 miles west of the southern city of Port Harcourt, he added. Oil production was not affected.

...Companies are on a heightened state of alert after a commander of the rebel Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) told Reuters Thursday that they would attack oil installations unless the military halted a two-week-old operation to flush out what it calls armed bandits from their river hideouts in the remote area of mangrove swamps and creeks.

Nigerian troops fired on an NDPVF camp using helicopter gunships last week, killing several militants.

An army spokesman said troops raided a village near the Shell oilfields, but met no resistance from suspected militants hiding there.

``Soldiers went in to continue their cordon and search operations to track down the gangsters,'' the spokesman said.

``Our people recovered communications gadgets, but when the gangsters spotted the soldiers they ran away.''

Companies fear a repeat of last year's uprising in the nearby Delta state by members of the Ijaw tribe, who are in majority in the region, which forced companies to shut 40 percent of Nigeria's production.

GUARD KILLED

So far, the delta militants have not targeted oil facilities in Africa's top oil producer, although a security guard at one Shell flow station was killed last month in crossfire.

``The troops are not there to protect our facilities. They are going after militants,'' the Shell spokesman said.

Nigeria is the world's seventh largest oil exporter and the fifth most important supplier to the United States. About half the nation's 2.5 million barrels per day comes from the eastern delta around Port Harcourt.

The NDPVF has been fighting rival militias in Rivers state since last year, a conflict that observers say is linked to broader political rivalries in the state.

The army announced earlier this month that it was taking over security in Rivers state from the police to ``cleanse the state of all forms of armed banditry.'' Hundreds of extra troops have been moved to places that have seen regular violence.

Amnesty International estimated up to 500 people were killed in fighting in the three weeks to mid-September, but the government says the number is much smaller.

NDPVF leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari says he is fighting for self-determination for the Niger delta, where most people live in abject poverty despite having all the nation's oil. The government describes him as a bandit fighting for control of smuggling routes used by oil thieves.

Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 09.24.04 @ 08:40 PM CST [link]

RNC Says It Sent Mail Warning Bible Ban

by Douglass K. Daniel
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican National Committee acknowledged this week that it distributed campaign literature in West Virginia and Arkansas warning voters that liberals want to ban the Bible.

When reporters asked about the mailings on Sept. 17, RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie said he wasn't aware of the material and did not confirm that it was distributed by the GOP. However, Gillespie said it ``could be the work'' of the party.

Contacted Friday by The Associated Press, party spokeswoman Christine Iverson said the GOP had already acknowledged it was the source of the mass mailings.

The literature claims that ``the liberal agenda includes removing 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance'' and shows a Bible with the word ``BANNED'' across it. It also shows a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word ``ALLOWED,'' a reference to same-sex marriage.

The mailing tells people to ``vote Republican to protect our families'' and defeat the ``liberal agenda.''

Full Article:Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.24.04 @ 08:30 PM CST [link]

Panel Calls U.S. Troop Size Insufficient for Demands

by Thom Shanker
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - A Pentagon-appointed panel of outside experts has concluded in a new study that the American military does not have sufficient forces to sustain current and anticipated stability operations, like the festering conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and other missions that might arise.

Portions of the study, which has not been officially released, were read into the public record on Thursday by Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a leader of Democrats who want to expand the size of the military. During testimony by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his top commanders, Senator Reed said he found the study "provocative and startling."

Mr. Rumsfeld said the report was an "excellent piece of work," and that he had ordered briefings on its findings for senior military and civilian officials.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.24.04 @ 08:22 PM CST [link]

Allawi safety claims 'out of touch with reality' say Iraqis

by Patrick Cockburn
Iraqis reacted with astonishment and derision yesterday to a claim made by the interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, before the US Congress that 14 or 15 out of Iraq's 18 provinces "are completely safe."

"The truth is exactly the reverse," said a lorry driver, Abu Akil, as he queued for diesel yesterday. "There are 15 provinces which are dangerous and only the three Kurdish provinces in the north are OK. This speech was designed to be heard Americans and not by Iraqis."

The lorry drivers, desperate to feed their families, take great risks but they admit that many roads are now too dangerous. "The speech was ridiculous," said Maithan Maki. "When Allawi became Prime Minister I was in favour of him but things have got worse and worse." Mr Allawi's visit to the US may be doing him lasting damage in Iraq, reinforcing the impression that he is a pawn and out of touch with real events. Iraqis were aware when the US appointed him interim Prime Minister that he had long been financed by the CIA and MI6, but were prepared to forgive this if he could restore security.

Full Article: Independent UK
rootsie on 09.24.04 @ 08:18 PM CST [link]

Top Bush Officials Clash Over Iraq Election

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's elections should be nationwide, a top Bush administration official said on Friday, clashing publicly with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's suggestion that voting might not take place in the most violent areas.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said the elections scheduled for January will not be perfect, but they should encompass the entire country.

Rumsfeld also appeared to back away from his outspoken remarks on Thursday that while the elections will take place on time, they might not be held in places where security could not be guaranteed.

Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 09.24.04 @ 08:12 PM CST [link]

Thursday, September 23rd

Haiti Flood Death Toll Could Reach 2,000

by Amy Bracken
GONAIVES, Haiti (AP) - Workers used dump trucks to empty more than 100 bodies into a 14-foot-deep hole on Wednesday - the first mass grave for the more than 1,070 flood victims of Tropical Storm Jeanne. Bystanders shrieked, held their noses against the stench and demanded that officials collect bodies in waterlogged fields. The government late Wednesday said up to 1,250 people were still missing and that the death toll could rise to 2,000 people.

Meteorologists, meanwhile, said Jeanne could strike the United States by this weekend. It was too soon to tell where, but the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned people in the northwest and central Bahamas and along the southeast U.S. coast to beware of dangerous surf and rip currents kicked up by Jeanne in the coming days.

At 5 p.m., Jeanne was centered about 500 miles east of the Bahamian island of Great Abaco. It was moving west-southwest and was expected to strengthen and turn toward the west in the next 24 hours. Hurricane-force winds extended 45 miles and tropical-storm force winds another 140 miles.

In Gonaives, U.N. peacekeepers fired into the air to keep a hungry crowd at bay as aid workers handed out the first food in days for some in this city devastated by the floods. Residents were growing impatient because of decaying bodies and a lack of food and drinking water.

"We're demanding they come and take the bodies from our fields. Dogs are eating them," said Jean Lebrun, a 35-year-old farmer. "We can only drink the water people died in."

Dieufort Deslorges of the government's civil protection agency said 1,013 bodies had been recovered in Gonaives and 58 elsewhere. He said some of the missing likely died and that their bodies washed out to sea.

In Gonaives, rescuers pulled bodies from mud and rubble - some still under water five days after Jeanne lashed the area with torrential rains for some 30 hours - then added them to the pile in body bags that lay in mud and grime in front of three morgues.

Full Article: myway.com
rootsie on 09.23.04 @ 10:06 AM CST [link]

Wednesday, September 22nd

Al Qaeda seen planning for 'spectacular' attack

by Bill Gertz
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded recently that al Qaeda -- fearing its credibility is on the line -- is moving ahead with plans for a major, "spectacular" attack, despite disruptions of some operations by recent arrests in Britain and Pakistan.

    Officials said recent intelligence assessments of the group, which is blamed for the September 11 attacks, state that an attack is coming and that the danger will remain high until the Nov. 2 elections and last until Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

    "They [al Qaeda] think their credibility is on the line because there hasn't been a major attack since 9/11," said one official familiar with intelligence reports on the group.

    A second official said: "There isn't reason to believe that the recent arrests have disrupted their plans."

    Authorities in Pakistan and Britain recently arrested key al Qaeda leaders, but the group uses tight "compartmentation" of its operations. The process, used by intelligence services, keeps information about operations within small "cells" of terrorists to protect secrecy.

    Thus, details of the possible attack remain murky, but analysts say it is planned to be bigger and deadlier than the September 11 attacks, which killed 3,000 people.

    Potential targets include the White House, Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and congressional buildings, as well as landmarks and business centers in New York, the officials said. The officials said that there is no specific information about targets.

Full Article: Washington Times

Bigger and deadlier, fireworks celebrating the re-election of George W. Bush. Boom.
rootsie on 09.22.04 @ 08:11 PM CST [link]

Depleted Uranium, weapons of war - the Pandora's box

The US is the largest single user of depleted uranium (DU) in weaponry. It is also the largest seller and exporter of depleted uranium weapon technology.

DU is used in smart bombs, bunker busters, anti-tank weapons, and the tow missiles. All very highly effective. As we saw in Gulf War I, the US bunker buster bombs tipped with DU were penetrating concrete shielding up to 10 feet thick.

The bunker buster"s effectiveness is that it can penetrate and then explode - raising the destructiveness and a higher body count than convention bombs. Cruise missiles can penetrate deeper before the explosion happens. As an anti-tank weapon, rounds tipped with DU can penetrate the tank"s hull and then do its dirty deed.

Deplete Uranium is actually a misnomer. It is uranium, incredibly hard and a very dense metal, yes. But it is still very much radioactive. The US is quick to defend the use of DUs and scorns all scientific finds that indicate there might be serious lingering problems. Weapons using DU can be rightfully called a "dirty bomb". The US classifies a "dirty bomb" as an explosive device that permeates the surrounding area with radioactive/biological/chemical material. Such is the fears of the US homeland Security. The bomb itself is not the object of fear; it is the spread of the radioactive/biological/chemical material that encases the bomb that brings Homeland Security the night sweats.

In the mechanics of DU tipped weapons when the device explodes, the force of the blast breaks the DU tip into a cloud of dust that coats everything within the target, and as with all explosions, there is the dust and debris that is jettisoned outward - this includes the dust from the DU. As the dust settles, the contaminated material also settles to earth or becomes airborne and drifts to other parts of that country. Now we have radioactive material spreading over a large area.

The US has moved away from the term DU, and has come up with a more polite term of "dense metal" - but it is still DU and still a dirty bomb.

Full Article: Pravda
rootsie on 09.22.04 @ 08:02 PM CST [link]

The Rapture racket

by Bill Berkowitz
“The rapture is a racket,” writes Barbara R. Rossing in the first sentence of her recently published book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (Westview Press, 2004). Rossing, a New Testament scholar and an associate professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, maintains that the Rapture is a fraud of monumental proportions, as well as a disturbing way to instill fear in people.

“Whether prescribing a violent script for Israel or survivalism in the United States, this theology distorts God's vision for the world,” Rossing writes. “In place of healing, the Rapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus' blessing of peacemaking, the Rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war. [...] This theology is not biblical. We are not Raptured off the earth, nor is God. No, God has come to live in the world through Jesus. God created the world, God loves the world, and God will never leave the world behind!”

What if the Book of Revelation doesn’t spell doom and gloom? What if it doesn’t mandate the death, destruction and annihilation of all but true believers? What will Rapture-mongers do?

The Rev. Tim LaHaye and his co-author Jerry Jenkins are as responsible as anyone for taking The Rapture mainstream. Their Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels, published by Tyndale House, have sold nearly 60 million copies and for several years have been regular staples on the fiction best seller lists across the country. The final volume in the 12-volume series, Glorious Appearing, was released this spring and it quickly found its way onto the best seller lists.

The Rev. LaHaye -- a longtime, high-profile religious right political leader who co-founded The Moral Majority with Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1979 -- does the novels’ imagining, while Jenkins, the author of more than 100 books including Out of the Blue with former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Orel Hershiser and Just As I Am, the Rev. Billy Graham's memoir, does the writing.

Their message is a variation of President Bush’s “Either you’re with us, or you’re with them” war against terrorism mantra: Either you accept Jesus Christ as your savior or, the Rev. LaHaye told CNN’s Larry King, you will be left behind.

Full Article: workingforchange.com
rootsie on 09.22.04 @ 07:57 PM CST [link]

Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster

WASHINGTON - Glaciers once held up by a floating ice shelf off Antarctica are now sliding off into the sea -- and they are going fast, scientists said on Tuesday.

Two separate studies from climate researchers and the space agency NASA show the glaciers are flowing into Antarctica's Weddell Sea, freed by the 2002 breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers said their satellite measurements suggest climate warming can lead to rapid sea level rise.

The teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said the findings also prove that ice shelves hold back glaciers.

Many teams of researchers are keeping a close eye on parts of Antarctica that are steadily melting.

Large ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula disintegrated in 1995 and 2002 as a result of climate warming. But these floating ice shelves did not affect sea level as they melted.

Glaciers, however, are another story. They rest on land and when they slide off into the water they instantly affect sea level.

It was not clear how the loss of the Larsen B ice shelf would affect nearby glaciers.

But soon after its collapse, researchers saw nearby glaciers flowing up to eight times faster than before.

"If anyone was waiting to find out whether Antarctica would respond quickly to climate warming, I think the answer is yes," said Theodore Scambos, a University of Colorado glacier expert who worked on one study.

"We've seen 150 miles of coastline change drastically in just 15 years."

Full Article: commondreams.com
rootsie on 09.22.04 @ 06:59 PM CST [link]

Masai, Whites and Wildlife: No Peaceable Kingdom

by Marc Lacey
LAIKIPIA, Kenya - The view from above explains why this rugged area of Kenya has a problem on its hands.

As far as the eye can see there is wilderness: trees and scrub and, roaming between thickets, elephants, antelope and giraffes, not to speak of endangered species like the black rhino. But then, interrupting the National Geographic vistas, one spots a fence, a long straight one that goes on for miles and miles.

On the other side of the fence, the landscape changes abruptly. Much of the vegetation is gone. Wild animals are nowhere to be found, although one can spot herds of cows, goats and sheep roaming about. Their heads point constantly to the dry earth, as they scrounge for nourishment.

The herds belong to Masai tribesmen, and they are far too large for the land available. One result is a barren landscape, overgrazed and unhealthy, and certainly no place of refuge for Africa's endangered species. Recently, though, herders have begun cutting the fences that crisscross central Kenya's Laikipia district and marching their livestock onto the private land inside.

On the other side of those fences is another form of endangered species, the white settler. One settler is Kuki Gallman, an Italian by birth who moved to Kenya 30 years ago with her husband and later became a Kenyan citizen. She has chronicled her life in a series of books, including "I Dreamed of Africa,'' which became a movie featuring Kim Basinger as Ms. Gallman.

Ms. Gallman is one of several dozen white ranchers in Laikipia with combined holdings that stretch far and wide. Her ranch, Ol Ari Nyiro, sprawls over 100,000 acres just north of the equator, and boasts the largest population of black rhinos outside a national park.

Conservationists at Ms. Gallman's ranch and at others across Laikipia are hard at work trying to preserve the rhino and the other animal rarities of the area, like the Grevy's zebra and the reticulated giraffe. But the Masai are intent on moving them to a different habitat, which could threaten the animals' survival.

The Masai say Laikipia was stolen from their ancestors a century ago in a colonial-era treaty between a Masai leader and the British that transferred the land from the Masai to the whites. They say that the document is now out of date and that the vast ranches of Laikipia owned by whites are now officially a part of Masailand.

Inside the ranch houses there is anger at the destruction of the private lands and fear that the conflict could sharpen. But there is also some sympathy for the plight of the Masai and a bit of resignation that this wonderful way of life might not last as long as their leases, some of which extend in excess of 900 years.

"I'm sympathetic to them,'' said Laria Grant, 32, whose father bought a 14,000-acre cattle ranch known as El Karama around the time of independence in 1963. "I know how it would feel if I were them, even 100 years later. To me, it's not the exact details of the lease that's the issue. It's about land and their feelings toward it. They're poor and can see our huge acreage of beautiful grass across the fence. But we feel as strongly about this land as they do.''

The Masai refer to the settlers as "mzungus,'' the Swahili term for white people or foreigners. But most of the white landholders are Kenyan citizens, albeit not with ties to the country that stretch back as long as those of the Masai.

"I'm as much a Kenyan as they are,'' said Martin Evans, a white rancher who has cattle, sheep, goats and camels on his 30,000 acres. "My dad was born here and I was born here and my sons were born here, too. I'm as Kenyan as anyone else.''

...Ms. Gallman and other landholders say they contribute much to Kenya as well as to the local population. There are the salaries they pay their staff, which in Ms. Gallman's case numbers about 200. There are the community outreach programs they have begun, like the scholarship program set up by a rancher, Michael Dyer, for Masai youth and the Masai-run tourist lodge. And there is the conservation they engage in, the landholders say, by fencing their property or just by keeping it pristine.

"I'm a curator of a living museum,'' said Ms. Gallman, who brings schoolchildren from around the world to her property. "Nature here is so majestic. The world will need places like this more and more in the future. They are impossible to reconstruct once they're gone. My dream for the future is just that this place will remain whole.''

Full Article: New York Times

How hideous. "A living museum"?? What are the Masai, a picturesque backdrop? And who are these white settlers but the children and grandchildren of invaders? By ignoring history, it is possible for a white then to say "I'm as Kenyan as anyone else," and "we feel as strongly about this land as they do." I doubt that very much. And the reporter presents a situation which he feels to be morally complex, what with the wildlife and the toursists and all, while it is actually very simple: whites stole the land from the Masai, and the Masai are claiming it back.

rootsie on 09.22.04 @ 05:52 PM CST [link]

Tuesday, September 21st

Haiti Flood Death Toll Nears 700, Likely to Rise

By Joseph Guyler Delva
GONAIVES, Haiti (Reuters) - Survivors of devastating flooding in Haiti wandered mud-clogged streets in search of food on Tuesday and officials said the death toll could rise about 660.

Tropical Storm Jeanne swept north of Haiti during the weekend, drenching the impoverished Caribbean nation of 8 million, inundating cities and sending deadly mudslides through towns and villages.

The government put the death toll at 662 and expected it to rise as relief workers recovered bodies and reached areas isolated by the now receding water.

The known toll included 550 deaths in Gonaives, 65 in Haiti's Northwest province and 47 in other towns.

Elie Cantave, the top government official for the province of Artibonite, Haiti's most fertile agricultural area, said the toll could rise as around 400 people were missing in Gonaives and surrounding towns.

Relief supplies were starting to reach the worst-hit areas, but the pace was slowed by waterlogged roads and worries about security in a country that is still unstable after an armed revolt ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February.

In Gonaives, a coastal city of 200,000 where large areas were inundated at the weekend, officials said 550 people died, many more were missing and half the population needed immediate assistance with food, water and shelter.

Full Article: netscapenews.com

Privilege even softens the effects of 'natural disasters.' Seems like there's no such thing as natural disasters anymore...The hundreds dead in Gonaives is as much an effect of 500 years of racism as any other colonial atrocity.
rootsie on 09.21.04 @ 09:01 PM CST [link]

Annan condemns US abuses in Iraq

Adam Jay
Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, today cited the torture of Iraqi prisoners by US forces as an example of how fundamental laws were being "shamelessly disregarded".

Speaking shortly before George Bush delivered a speech in which he insisted the world was a better place since US action in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr Annan called on member countries to uphold the rule of law at home and abroad, at a time he described as a "fork in the road".

He said the laws being ignored included "those that ordain respect for civilians, for the vulnerable - especially children" and proceeded to implicitly criticise the US by mentioning the "disgraceful abuse" of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail.

Mr Annan also referred to hostage taking and the "cold-blooded massacre" of civilians in Iraq, as well as the school siege in Beslan and population displacement and rape in Darfur. He condemned the actions of Palestinian suicide bombers and "Israel's excessive use of force... in Palestine [where] we see homes destroyed, lands seized, and needless civilian casualties".

...Republicans' attitude towards the organisation is unlikely to soften following Mr Annan's assertion that: "Every nation that proclaims the rule of law at home must respect it abroad; and every nation that insists on it abroad must enforce it at home... At times even the necessary fight against terrorism is allowed to encroach unnecessarily on civil liberties."

Mr Annan, who last week called the US-led invasion of Iraq illegal, was speaking on the opening day of a two-week session of the UN General Assembly. He accepted some criticism of the organisation, conceding that the legal framework put in place by the UN was "riddled with gaps and weaknesses".

"Too often it is applied selectively, and enforced arbitrarily," he continued. "It lacks the teeth that turn a body of laws into an effective legal system... Rule of law as a mere concept is not enough. Laws must be put into practice, and permeate their fabrics of our lives."

And with Mr Bush about to get to his feet to deliver his own definition of freedom, Mr Annan concluded his speech with the words: "Each generation has its part to play in the age-long struggle to strengthen the rule of law for all - which alone can guarantee freedom for all. Let our generation not be found wanting."

Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.21.04 @ 08:46 PM CST [link]

Eyeing Iran Reactors, Israel Seeks U.S. Bunker Bombs

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States plans to sell Israel $319 million worth of air-launched bombs, including 500 ``bunker busters'' that could be effective against Iran's underground nuclear facilities, Israeli security sources said on Tuesday.

The Pentagon said in June it was considering the sale to Israel of 500 BLU-109 warheads, which can penetrate 15 feet of fortifications, in a package meant to ``contribute significantly to U.S. strategic and tactical objectives.'' U.S. and Israeli officials had no immediate comment.

Israeli security sources said the procurement would go through. ``This is not the sort of ordnance needed for the Palestinian front. Bunker busters could serve Israel against Iran, or possibly Syria,'' an Israeli source said.

Haaretz daily, citing Israeli government sources, said the sale would take place after the U.S. elections in November.

Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 09.21.04 @ 08:40 PM CST [link]

Of course Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons - and has the legal entitlement to do so

by George Monbiot

Poor Mr Baradei,
His mission is a parody:
He tells the states (with some aplomb)
They can and cannot have the bomb

Here is the world's most nonsensical job description. Your duty is to work tirelessly to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And to work tirelessly to encourage the proliferation of the means of building them. This is the task of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei.

He is an able diplomat, and as bold as his predecessor, Hans Blix, in standing up to the global powers. But what he is obliged to take away with one hand, he is obliged to give with the other. His message to the non-nuclear powers is this: you are not allowed to develop the bomb, but we will give you the materials and expertise with which you can build one. It is this mortal contradiction which permitted the government of Iran this weekend to tell him to bog off.

His agency's motto - "Atoms for Peace" - wasn't always a lie. In 1953, when Eisenhower founded it with his famous speech to the United Nations, people really seemed to believe that nuclear fission could solve the world's problems. An article in the Herald Tribune, for example, promised that atomic power would create "an earthly paradise... Our automobiles eventually will have atomic energy units built into them at the factory so that we will never have to refuel them... In a relatively short time we will cease to mine coal."

Eisenhower seemed convinced that the nuclear sword could be beaten into the nuclear ploughshare. "It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace." The nuclear powers, he said, "should... make joint contributions from their stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials" which should then be given to "the power-starved areas of the world", "to provide abundant electrical energy". This would give them, he argued, the necessary incentive to forswear the use of nuclear weapons.

The IAEA, its statute says, should assist "the supplying of materials, equipment, or facilities" to non-nuclear states. It should train nuclear scientists and "foster the exchange of scientific and technical information". Its mission, in other words, is to prevent the development of nuclear weapons, while spreading nuclear technology to as many countries as possible. It is also responsible for enforcing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which has the same dual purpose.

Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.21.04 @ 08:36 PM CST [link]

Global Warming May Spawn More Super-Storms

by Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada - Hurricane Ivan, the incredibly powerful storm that killed at least 120 people in the Caribbean and southern United States, may be a harbinger of the Earth's hotter future, say experts.

"As the world warms, we expect more and more intense tropical hurricanes and cyclones," said James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University.

Despite the recent destructive series of hurricanes and tornadoes, global warming is off the radar screen of the U.S. presidential election campaign.

Large parts of the world's oceans are approaching 27 degrees C or warmer during the summer, greatly increasing the odds of major storms, McCarthy told IPS.

When water reaches such temperatures, more of it evaporates, priming hurricane or cyclone formation. Once born, a hurricane needs only warm water to build and maintain its strength and intensity.

Over the last 100 years, the Earth has warmed by about .6 degrees C, according to the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body that studies the relationship between human activity and global warming.

The IPCC report was based on research by more than 2,500 scientists from about 100 countries who determined that emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide act as a blanket that prevents much of the sun's energy from dissipating into space.

Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 09.21.04 @ 08:30 PM CST [link]

Monday, September 20th

The Lynching of Dan Rather

by Greg Palast
"It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions," the aging American journalist told the British television audience.

In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old, defeated, making a confession he dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship -- and self-censorship -- which had seized US newsrooms. After September 11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who stepped out of line, he said, would be professionally lynched as un-American.

"It's an obscene comparison," he said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here. You will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck." No US reporter who values his neck or career will "bore in on the tough questions."

Dan said all these things to a British audience. However, back in the USA, he smothered his conscience and told his TV audience: "George Bush is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just tell me where."

During the war in Vietnam, Dan's predecessor at CBS, Walter Cronkite, asked some pretty hard questions about Nixon's handling of the war in Vietnam. Today, our sons and daughters are dying in Bush wars. But, unlike Cronkite, Dan could not, would not, question George Bush, Top Gun Fighter Pilot, Our Maximum Beloved Leader in the war on terror.

On the British broadcast, without his network minders snooping, you could see Dan seething and deeply unhappy with himself for playing the game.

"What is going on," he said, "I'm sorry to say, is a belief that the public doesn't need to know -- limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war. It's extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted, and I'm sorry to say that up to and including this moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in that."

Full Article: commondreams.com
rootsie on 09.20.04 @ 09:32 PM CST [link]

The U.S. weighs the price of a pre-emptive strike

By John Barry and Dan Ephron
Unprepared as anyone is for a showdown with Iran, the threat seems to keep growing. Many defense experts in Israel, the United States and elsewhere believe that Tehran has been taking advantage of loopholes in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is now within a year of mastering key weapons-production technology. They can't prove it, of course, and Iran's leaders deny any intention of developing the bomb. Nevertheless, last week U.S. and Israeli officials were talking of possible military action—even though some believe it's already too late to keep Iran from going nuclear (if it chooses). "We have to start accepting that Iran will probably have the bomb," says one senior Israeli source. There's only one solution, he says: "Look at ways to make sure it's not the mullahs who have their finger on the trigger."

After the Iraq debacle, calls for regime change without substantial evidence of weapons of mass destruction are not likely to gain a lot of traction. But if the allegations are correct, Iran is only one of the countries whose secret nuclear programs hummed along while America waged a single-minded hunt for WMD in Iraq. Another is North Korea, which hasn't stopped claiming that it's turning a stockpile of spent fuel rods into a doomsday arsenal. And arms-control specialists are increasingly alarmed by Brazil's efforts to do precisely what Iran is doing: use centrifuge cascades to enrich uranium—with a couple of key differences. Unlike Iran, Brazil has never signed the NPT's Additional Protocol, which gives expanded inspection rights to the International Atomic Energy Agency. And unlike Iran, Brazil is not letting the IAEA examine its centrifuges. If the Brazilians go through with their program, it's likely to wreck the landmark 1967 treaty that made South America a nuclear-free zone. But the White House has shown scant concern about the risk.

The Iran crisis is more immediate in the eyes of the Bush administration, in part because Iran is among the president's "Axis of Evil." Israel, which has long regarded Iran as a more dire threat than Iraq, is making thinly veiled threats of a unilateral pre-emptive attack, like its 1981 airstrike against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. "If the state decides that a military solution is required, then the military has to provide a solution," said Israel's new Air Force chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, in a newspaper interview last week. "For obvious reasons," he added, "we aren't going to speak of specifics." U.S. defense experts doubt that Israel can pull it off. Iran's facilities (which it insists are for peaceful purposes) are at the far edge of combat range for Israel's aircraft; They're also widely dispersed and, in many cases, deep underground.

But America certainly could do it—and has given the idea some serious thought. "The U.S. capability to make a mess of Iran's nuclear infrastructure is formidable," says veteran Mideast analyst Geoffrey Kemp. "The question is, what then?" NEWSWEEK has learned that the CIA and DIA have war-gamed the likely consequences of a U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. No one liked the outcome. As an Air Force source tells it, "The war games were unsuccessful at preventing the conflict from escalating."

Instead, administration hawks are pinning their hopes on regime change in Tehran—by covert means, preferably, but by force of arms if necessary.

Full Article:msn.com
rootsie on 09.20.04 @ 09:19 PM CST [link]

Greed in a time of cholera

by Kate Holt and Sarah Hughes
To survive, the people of eastern Congo have a choice: either to risk deadly diseases mining minerals for rebel soldiers, or flee into the jungle... An entire population has been enslaved - and abandoned by the West.

The planes swoop down, sometimes as many as 15 a day. Most are battered and rusty. They land on the makeshift airstrip, a dusty road 23km from Walikale in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

By the road is a group of young soldiers wearing a motley collection of camouflage uniforms, multicoloured hats and white wellington boots. They lean on their Kalashnikovs, smoking and watching another group of men trudging to and from the planes under the hot sun, carrying heavy white sacks filled with a valuable cargo.

Under the soldiers' watchful eyes, the men load the planes. No one speaks, partly from fear, partly because this is hard, desperate work. Each bag weighs 50kg. For these ordinary-looking sacks contain cassiterite - the expensive mineral ore from which tin is extracted.

The story of Walikale is a story of greed, violence and death. It is the tale of a country rich in minerals and resources, and of the gunmen who seized those resources to fund their conflict; of an international community that appears unable or unwilling to commit troops to an area where little seems likely to improve; of aid agencies forced out, taking their medical knowledge and supplies with them; of the people left abandoned, working in inhuman conditions for minimal pay; and of the wealthy countries thousands of miles away who trade in tin and never question what the consequences might be.

The story of Walikale is the story of the Congo: ravaged by war, plundered by prospectors, abandoned by those who said they would protect it, and ruled by the gun.

Independent UK
rootsie on 09.20.04 @ 09:03 PM CST [link]

Quick exit from Iraq is likely

by Robert Novak
Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go.

This prospective policy is based on Iraq's national elections in late January, but not predicated on ending the insurgency or reaching a national political settlement. Getting out of Iraq would end the neoconservative dream of building democracy in the Arab world. The United States would be content having saved the world from Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass destruction.

The reality of hard decisions ahead is obscured by blather on both sides in a presidential campaign. Six weeks before the election, Bush cannot be expected to admit even the possibility of a quick withdrawal. Sen. John Kerry's political aides, still languishing in fantastic speculation about European troops to the rescue, do not even ponder a quick exit. But Kerry supporters with foreign policy experience speculate that if elected, their candidate would take the same escape route.

Whether Bush or Kerry is elected, the president or president-elect will have to sit down immediately with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military will tell the election winner there are insufficient U.S. forces in Iraq to wage effective war. That leaves three realistic options: Increase overall U.S. military strength to reinforce Iraq, stay with the present strength to continue the war, or get out.

Well-placed sources in the administration are confident Bush's decision will be to get out. They believe that is the recommendation of his national security team and would be the recommendation of second-term officials. An informed guess might have Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz as defense secretary and Stephen Hadley as national security adviser. According to my sources, all would opt for a withdrawal.

Getting out now would not end expensive U.S. reconstruction of Iraq, and certainly would not stop the fighting. Without U.S. troops, the civil war cited as the worst-case outcome by the recently leaked National Intelligence Estimate would be a reality. It would then take a resolute president to stand aside while Iraqis battle it out.

The end product would be an imperfect Iraq, probably dominated by Shia Muslims seeking revenge over long oppression by the Sunni-controlled Baathist Party. The Kurds would remain in their current semi-autonomous state. Iraq would not be divided, reassuring neighboring countries -- especially Turkey -- that are apprehensive about ethnically divided nations.

Full Article:Chicago Sun Times

What a bunch of election crap. If there is a speck of truth to this story, it means that after they injected maximum chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are ready to move on---to Iran and Syria? I firmly believe that the long-term strategy is about proving that the 'Arabs' are incompatible with 'us' and thus extreme measures will be justified. The more terrorism the better. The 'neocons' are right where they want to be. How long will it take people to become appalled?
rootsie on 09.20.04 @ 08:56 PM CST [link]

Sunday, September 19th

Britain to cut troop levels in Iraq

by Jason Burke
The British Army is to start pulling troops out of Iraq next month despite the deteriorating security situation in much of the country, The Observer has learnt.

The main British combat force in Iraq, about 5,000-strong, will be reduced by around a third by the end of October during a routine rotation of units.

The news came amid another day of mayhem in Iraq, which saw a suicide bomber kill at least 23 people and injure 53 in the northern city of Kirkuk. The victims were queueing to join Iraq's National Guard.

Full Article: Guardian UK

Thousands of UK troops may be sent to Afghanistan next year
by Nick Meo and Robert Fox
Britain and the US are both set to step up their troop presence in Afghanistan, which faces a presidential election next month and a fraught parliamentary election early next year, that could see a confrontation with the country's powerful warlords.

The US has confirmed it will send up to 1,100 extra troops in time for the 9 October presidential vote, amid increasingly urgent pleas by the interim President, Hamid Karzai, for greater security and a warning by the American ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, of a possible "Tet offensive" by militants in Afghan cities, echoing the uprising that hastened the departure of American forces from Vietnam.

A far bigger British deployment is being mooted, meanwhile, to take place early in 2005, a critical time when a series of dangerous security problems are expected to converge. The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson, says plans have been made to send a headquarters staff and a brigade-sized force of around 8,000 peacekeeping soldiers to Afghanistan
Independent UK
rootsie on 09.19.04 @ 12:12 PM CST [link]

U.S. Plans Year-End Drive to Take Iraqi Rebel Areas

by Dexter Filkins
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 18 - Faced with a growing insurgency and a January deadline for national elections, American commanders in Iraq say they are preparing operations to open up rebel-held areas, especially Falluja, the restive city west of Baghdad now under control of insurgents and Islamist groups.

A senior American commander said the military intended to take back Falluja and other rebel areas by year's end. The commander did not set a date for an offensive but said that much would depend on the availability of Iraqi military and police units, which would be sent to occupy the city once the Americans took it.

The American commander suggested that operations in Falluja could begin as early as November or December, the deadline the Americans have given themselves for restoring Iraqi government control across the country.

"We need to make a decision on when the cancer of Falluja is going to be cut out," the American commander said. "We would like to end December at local control across the country."

"Falluja will be tough," he said.

At a minimum, the American commander said, local conditions would have to be secure for voting to take place in the country's 18 provincial capitals for the election to be considered legitimate. American forces have lost control over at least one provincial capital, Ramadi, in Al Anbar Province, and have only a tenuous grip over a second, Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad. Other large cities in the region, like Samarra, are largely in the hands of insurgents.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.19.04 @ 11:36 AM CST [link]

Ready or Not (and Maybe Not), Electronic Voting Goes National

by Tom Zeller Jr.
Just over six weeks before the nation holds the first general election in which touch-screen voting will play a major role, specialists agree that whatever the remaining questions about the technology's readiness, it is now too late to make any significant changes.

Whether or not the machines are ready for the election - or the electorate ready for the machines - there is no turning back. In what may turn out to be one of the most scrutinized general elections in the country's history, nearly one-third of the more than 150 million registered voters in the United States will be asked to cast their ballots on machines whose accuracy and security against fraud have yet to be tested on such a grand scale.

Because of the uncertainties, experts say there is potential for post-election challenges in any precincts where the machines may malfunction, or where the margin of victory is thin. Sorting out such disputes could prove difficult.

"The possibility for erroneous votes or malicious programming is not as great as critics would have you believe," said Doug Chapin, the director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan group tracking election reform. "But it's more than defenders of the technology want to admit. The truth lies somewhere in between."

Since the 2000 presidential election and its contentious aftermath, voting systems that record votes directly on a computer - as opposed to those that use mechanical levers or optically scanned paper ballots - have quickly moved to the center of a rancorous debate. The disagreement pits those who see them as unacceptably vulnerable to vote manipulation and fraud against those who see them as an antidote to the wretched hanging chad.

Even in the final run-up to November's elections, the issue remains in flux. In California, the machines have been certified, decertified and recertified again. In Ohio, a closely contested state, an electronic upgrade to the state's predominantly punch-card system was halted in July by the secretary of state there, who cited unresolved security concerns.

All the while, a vocal mixture of computer scientists, local voting-rights groups and freelance civic gadflies have relentlessly cited security flaws in many of the machines, with some going so far as to say that the flaws could be intentional and accusing the major companies of having ties to conservative political causes.

Full Article: NY Times

The Times is so very fond of damning divergent points of views with its use of language.
rootsie on 09.19.04 @ 11:28 AM CST [link]

Bolivian peasants turn to lynch law

by Reed Lindsay
The blood has been washed away but the blackened concrete below a broken lamppost in this sluggish town's main plaza is an inescapable reminder of the grisly lynching that took place here this summer.

The mayor of Ayo Ayo, Benjamín Altamirano, was hanged from the lamppost and set ablaze. The post mortem suggested he had been severely beaten.

Apart from his family, no one mourns for Altamirano in Ayo Ayo, a poor rural municipality an hour's drive from La Paz on the windswept Altiplano plain, homeland of the Aymara people. In fact, most people in the town approve of the killing. No one has claimed responsibility, but the authorities have arrested at least 10 suspects.

'Altamirano was corrupt, just like the rest of the politicians,' said 59-year-old tailor Emilio Mamani as he walked through the plaza. 'We told him if he did not keep his promises we would take more drastic measures. We told him very clearly. But he would not listen.'

The lynching came less than two months after Aymara people in a village in neighbouring Peru lynched a mayor also accused of corruption. And it won't be the last, warn Aymara leaders. Fed up with corrupt, unresponsive government institutions long controlled by a white and mestizo elite in La Paz, the people of the Altiplano are taking justice into their own hands.

Residents of Ayo Ayo defend the killing of Altamirano as the rightful exercise of communal justice, a homegrown legal system practised semi-clandestinely in the region since the time of the Incas. Critics say the killing is little more than savagery.

What is certain is that, less than a year after thousands of Aymara peasants and urban slum dwellers staged massive road-blocking protests that drove Bolivia's President from power, the harsh Altiplano remains a redoubt of fierce anti-government defiance and, some analysts say, the most tangible threat to the precarious administration of interim President Carlos Mesa.

At various times in recent years, Aymara peasants have expelled police, judges and prosecutors from Ayo Ayo and other towns. Some are demanding self-rule.

'We Aymara carry rebellion in our blood,' said Ramón Coba, who heads the leading Ayo Ayo peasant organisation. 'Bolivia is totally corrupt, not just the mayor. All of them should be finished in the same way, if not burnt then drowned or strangled or pulled apart by four tractors... It's the only way they are going to learn.'

Ayo Ayo is steeped in revolt. The municipality is the birthplace of Tupaj Katari, a legendary warrior who led an uprising of thou sands of Aymara peasants against Spanish colonialists in 1781 before he was captured and executed. The lamppost where Altamirano was hanged stands in the shadow of a towering bronze statue of Katari.

Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.19.04 @ 11:18 AM CST [link]

Saturday, September 18th

Suicide Bomber Targets Iraqi Nat'l Guard

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb near a crowd of people waiting to apply for jobs with the Iraqi National Guard in the northern city of Kirkuk on Saturday, killing at least 20 people and wounding 16, officials said.

Full Article:cnn.com

rootsie on 09.18.04 @ 10:58 AM CST [link]

Seven Die in Ambush on Venezuela - Colombia Border

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Six Venezuelan soldiers and an oil engineer were killed when an armed group attacked a military patrol and state oil company employees near the border with Colombia, Venezuela's defense minister said.

Gen. Jorge Garcia Carneiro did not identify the attackers but Venezuela's armed forces have clashed in the past with Colombian left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries entering from the neighboring country.

Friday's attack was one of the most serious incidents reported recently on the volatile border between the two Andean countries. Another soldier and a civilian engineer were injured in the clash, which took place near the border village of La Victoria, 25 miles from Guasdualito in the southwest state of Apure.

Venezuela rushed troops and armed helicopters to the area to try to capture the attackers, whom Garcia called ``terrorists.''

``We are doing everything possible to ensure that these events do not go unpunished,'' the defense minister told state television late Friday.

Military officials said the group of Venezuelan soldiers and employees of the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, were ambushed as they were inspecting the Guafita oil field.

They said the civilian engineer killed was 23-year-old Ana Laura Carrasco.

Relations between Venezuela and Colombia have been strained in the past by border incidents.

Colombia's government and military have in the past accused left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of sympathizing with, and even collaborating with, Colombian Marxist guerrillas fighting a four-decade war.

Full Article:Reuters
rootsie on 09.18.04 @ 10:54 AM CST [link]

The Chechens' American friends

The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own

by John Laughland
An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger", "Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin" have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme brutality.

On closer inspection, it turns out that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market reforms which so devastated the Russian economy under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities. The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and al-Qaida.

These people peddle essentially the same line as that expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past.

By the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). The list of the self-styled "distinguished Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".

They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.

The ACPC heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo - implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US administration.

Although the White House issued a condemnation of the Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely rejects elsewhere.

Allegations are even being made in Russia that the west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of the Caucasus. The fact that the Chechens are believed to use as a base the Pankisi gorge in neighbouring Georgia - a country which aspires to join Nato, has an extremely pro-American government, and where the US already has a significant military presence - only encourages such speculation. Putin himself even seemed to lend credence to the idea in his interview with foreign journalists on Monday.

Proof of any such western involvement would be difficult to obtain, but is it any wonder Russians are asking themselves such questions when the same people in Washington who demand the deployment of overwhelming military force against the US's so-called terrorist enemies also insist that Russia capitulate to hers?

Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.18.04 @ 10:48 AM CST [link]

In Stricter Study, U.S. Scales Back Claim on Cuba Arms

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - The Bush administration, using stringent standards adopted after the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq, has conducted a new assessment of Cuba's biological weapons capacity and concluded that it is no longer clear that Cuba has an active, offensive bio-weapons program, according to administration officials.

The latest assessment contradicts a 1999 National Intelligence Estimate and past statements by top administration officials, some of whom have warned that Cuba may be sharing its weapons capacity with "rogue states" or with terrorists.

It is the latest indication that in the wake of the Iraq intelligence failures, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies are taking a closer look at earlier threat assessments and finding fault with some of the conclusions and the way the reports were prepared.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.18.04 @ 10:39 AM CST [link]

Friday, September 17th

One man's opinion: Evidence indicates that Wellstone crash was no accident

Posted on Thu, Nov. 20, 2003
by Jim Fetzer
...Whatever caused the crash was not the plane, the pilots or the weather. In spite of what you may have heard, the plane was exceptional, the pilots well-qualified and the weather posed no significant problems. Even the National Transportation Safety Board's own simulations of the plane, the pilots and the weather were unable to bring the plane down.

This means we have to consider other, less palatable, alternatives, such as small bombs, gas canisters or electromagnetic pulse, radio frequency or High Energy Radio Frequency weapons designed to overwhelm electrical circuitry with an intense electromagnetic field. An abrupt cessation of communication between the plane and the tower took place at about 10:18 a.m., the same time an odd cell phone phenomenon occurred with a driver in the immediate vicinity. This suggests to me the most likely explanation is that one of our new electromagnetic weapons was employed.

The politics of the situation were astonishing. The senator was pulling away from the hand-picked candidate of the Bush machine. Its opportunity to seize control of the U.S. Senate was slipping from its grasp. Its vaunted "invincibility" was being challenged by an outspoken critic of its most basic values. Targeted for elimination, he was going to survive. Here's one man's opinion: Under such conditions, the temptation to take him out may have been irresistible.

Among the striking indications that something was wrong with the NTSB in its inquiry into the causes of the crash is that Carol Carmody, a former employee with the CIA, the head of the team, announced the day after that the FBI had found no indications of terrorist involvement. Yet it is the responsibility of the NTSB to ascertain the cause of the crash, which has yet to be determined to this very day.

So how could the FBI possibly know?

Duluth News Tribune

Also it should be remembered that there had been an assassination attempt in Colombia shortly before. The runway where Wellstone's plane was to land had been wired, and local people discovered and removed the explosives just in time. Wellstone asked the US Embassy in Colombia to investigate. They refused. Also, being me, I don't think it was coincidence that Ted Kennedy went to Minneapolis to meet with Wellstone and was there at the time of the crash. 'They' like to spook Ted anew every now and then. Keeps him drinking.
rootsie on 09.17.04 @ 09:46 PM CST [more..]

Into the abyss: The week Iraq's dream of peace fell apart

by Patrick Cockburn
Where freedom was promised, chaos and carnage now reign. A suicide bomber in a car blows himself up in the heart of Baghdad killing 13 people. Air raids by US near the city of Fallujah kill scores more. And so ends one of the bleakest weeks in Iraq's grim recent history.

Between them, suicide bombers targeting Iraqi police and US air strikes aimed at rebels have killed some 300 Iraqis since last Saturday - many of them were civilians. The escalating violence throws into doubt the elections planned for January and the ability of the US and interim Iraqi government to control the country.

The repeated suicide-bomb attacks and kidnappings in the centre of Baghdad are eroding whatever remaining optimism there might be about the success of the government of Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, in restoring order in an increasingly fragmented country.

Violence and abductions are ensuring that even tentative efforts at economic reconstruction have ground to a halt. Earlier in the week, the US diverted $3.4bn (£2bn) of funds intended for water and electricity projects to security and the oil industry. Many Iraqi businessmen and doctors have fled to Amman and Damascus because of fear of being taken hostage. The abduction of one British and two American contractors this week will make it very difficult for any foreigners to live in Baghdad outside fortified enclaves.

Yesterday, a car packed with explosives blew up near a row of police cars blocking off a bridge in the centre of the Baghdad. Police tried to get the bomber to stop but he drove on into the middle of the parked cars. "I saw human flesh and blood in the street, then I fled," said Mouayed Shehab.

Full Article: Independent UK
rootsie on 09.17.04 @ 09:28 PM CST [link]

UN: Disasters on the rise

Hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters hit a growing number of people worldwide and are on the increase due partly to global warming, the United Nations' disaster reduction agency said on Friday.

More than 254 million people were affected by natural hazards last year, a near three-fold jump from 1990, according to data released by the inter-agency secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR).

The random nature of disasters renders mapping their impact more difficult as droughts in 2002 pushed the figure of people affected above 734 million.

But the long-term trend over the past decade shows a steady rise in victims, according to the statistics from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disaters at the University of Louvain in Belgium.

"Not only is the world globally facing more potential disasters, but increasing numbers of people are becoming vulnerable to hazards," the UN/ISDR said in a statement.

Hazards, ranging from storms, earthquakes and volcanoes to wild fires, droughts and landslides killed some 83,000 people in 2003 compared with about 53,000 deaths 13 years earlier, it noted.

A lack of facilities such as schools, jobs and hospitals in rural communities is forcing more and more people to live in urban areas where they stand a greater risk of being affected, said UN/ISDR director Salvano Briceno.

"Urban migrants settle in exposed stretches of land either on seismic faults, flooding plains or on landslide prone slopes," he said in a statement.

In addition, cyclones and freak temperatures appear to be on the rise with 337 natural disasters reported in 2003 up from 261 in 1990, the agency said.

"The urban concentration, the effects of climate change and the environmental degredation are greaty increasing vulnerability," said Briceno.

"Alarmingly, this is getting worse," he warned.

An onslaught of deadly hurricanes that have battered the southern United States supported theories that such storms were occurring more frequently, said John Harding, a programme officer at the UN/ISDR.

"Look at the number of hurricanes this year, it is hard to keep up with all the names," he told AFP.

"The scientific community tells us that the intensity and frequency of disasters are very likely to increase in the medium-term due to climate change and that increase may well be occurring at this stage," he said.

drudgereport.com
rootsie on 09.17.04 @ 09:23 PM CST [link]

Murderers target Guatemala's young women

by Dan Glaister
More than 350 women have been murdered in Guatemala this year, placing the central American state at the centre of alarm over so-called femicide.

Most of the Guatemalan killings have taken place in poor areas of the capital, Guatemala City, but there have also been clusters of deaths in the east and south of the country.

The victims are primarily aged between 16 and 35, most are poor, and many are members of the country's indigenous population.

While the government has sought to blame the murders on youth gang violence, local human rights campaigners argue that the scale and methods suggest otherwise.

"Violence against women today has reached an extreme level," said José Flores, a spokesman for Guatemala's human rights commission. "Many of the methods involved in the killings - torture, coups de grace to the back of the neck, all the techniques of extra-judicial executions - stem from the practices of recent years," he said, in a reference to the murders that characterised the country's protracted civil war between 1960 and 1996. A truth commission reported that about 200,000 civilians, mainly Mayan Indians, were killed during that time.

Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.17.04 @ 09:19 PM CST [link]

44 Dead As US Pounds Fallujah

At least 13 people were killed in a central Baghdad car bomb attack this morning just hours after US strikes on militant targets in the city of Falluja killed 44 people and injured 27.
A suicide car bomber struck near a major police checkpoint in central Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding 20, according to the health ministry, which is expecting many casualties from the explosion.

The bomb went off at around 12.45pm (0945 BST). Witnesses reported seeing thick plumes of smoke in the air.

Earlier today at least 44 people were killed and 27 were injured in a wave of US attacks on the alleged hideouts of an al-Qaida-linked group in and around the town of Falluja, the Iraqi health ministry said.

According to a statement by the US military, the strikes, which began last night, targeted a compound in Fazat Shnetir, about 12 miles south of the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, where militants loyal to the Jordanian-born al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were gathering to plot attacks on US-led forces in Iraq.

Militants who survived the strikes later sought refuge in nearby villages, but US forces quickly broke off an offensive to hunt them down in an effort to avoid civilian casualties, the statement said.

"The number of foreign fighters killed during the strike is estimated at approximately 60. The terrorists targeted in this strike were believed to be associated with recent bombing attacks and other terrorist activities throughout Iraq," the US military said.

But a health ministry spokesman, Saad al-Amili, said at least 17 children and two women were among the wounded. Hospital officials in Falluja said women and children were also among the dead, but exact figures were not immediately available.

Residents of Fazat Shnetir were seen digging graves today and burying the dead in groups of four.

Full Article: Guardian UK

rootsie on 09.17.04 @ 09:04 AM CST [link]

U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD

WASHINGTON (AP) - Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.

Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.

As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.

After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction - its chief argument for going to war and overthrowing the regime.

An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so Thursday on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.

Full Article:AP News
rootsie on 09.17.04 @ 08:58 AM CST [link]

Thursday, September 16th

Four Million Children Might be News

by Greg Moses
The morning after Texas district judge John Dietz ruled that the state's school system fails to satisfy criteria set forth in the Texas constitution, I'm browsing some of the "top headline" sources on the internet to see how the fate of 4 million Texas schoolchildren rates on the national news scale.

...Maybe we can find the headline at CNN US? Nope. But if you look under local news from the US Southwest you will find this number one headline: "Former anchorman out of prison." Or this headline, ranked second: "Henna tattoos cause family pain." The Education page leads with a story about college affordability.

As the school buses pass my window here in Texas, taking kids to their unconstitutional destinations, I'm reading parts of the US Supreme Court decision in 1973 that set the precedent for not putting Texas education on the national agenda. The Rodriguez case, which was the first of the "Edgewood" cases to be filed--way back in the summer of '68--set the Supremes to fidgeting over the prospects of "wealth equalization." They said they could handle a lawsuit where folks were completely deprived of some good because of poverty, but the if the High Court started getting involved in cases where relatively poorer people were only relatively deprived of such things as education, well you know, the great black-robed scions might have to stop taking summer breaks!

Full Article:counterpunch.org
rootsie on 09.16.04 @ 07:32 PM CST [more..]

U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future

by Douglas Jehl
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

"There's a significant amount of pessimism," said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts' conclusions - included in the document.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.16.04 @ 07:23 PM CST [link]

9/11 Plus Three - The Trail Grows Cold While the War Heats Up

by Mark Dunlea
...The daily pain has receded after three years. The anger has not.

Much of my anger comes from the manipulation of 9/11 by politicians and the media while both groups refuse to seek the truth to 9/11.

I am mad the 9/11 became an excuse to unleash American military forces in pursuit of a global American empire in support of corporate globalization, rather than as an opportunity to strengthen the rule of international law and promote a different vision of the world, one dedicated to peace and justice.

I am mad that the dark forces within the Bush administration used 9/11 to increase their power while the Democrats stood and cheered.

I am mad that so little effort has been made to hold accountable those who helped kill so many innocent people on 9/11.

A poll released by Zogby International last week found that half of New York City resident - and more than 40% statewide - believed that the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 terrorist threats beforehand but failed to take action to prevent it.

The real question is not whether the Bush administration allowed 9/11 to happen, but why? Was it criminal negligence? Stupidity?

Full Article:commondreams.org
rootsie on 09.16.04 @ 07:19 PM CST [link]

17,000 GIs not listed as casualties

Mark Benjamin
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. The Pentagon said most don't fit the definition of casualties, but a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted.

In addition to those evacuations, 32,684 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan now out of the military sought medical attention from the Department of Veterans Affairs by July 22, according to VA reports obtained by UPI. The number of those visits to VA doctors that were related to war is unknown.

The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Full Article:UPI
rootsie on 09.16.04 @ 07:15 PM CST [link]

Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan

Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.

Mr Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN security council or in accordance with the UN's founding charter. In an interview with the BBC World Service broadcast last night, he was asked outright if the war was illegal. He replied: "Yes, if you wish."

He then added unequivocally: "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal."

Mr Annan has until now kept a tactful silence and his intervention at this point undermines the argument pushed by Tony Blair that the war was legitimised by security council resolutions.

Mr Annan also questioned whether it will be feasible on security grounds to go ahead with the first planned election in Iraq scheduled for January. "You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now," he said.

Full Article:Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.16.04 @ 07:09 PM CST [link]

Tuesday, September 14th

Saboteurs Blow Up Pipeline Junction in Northern Iraq

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) - Saboteurs blew up a junction where multiple oil pipelines cross the Tigris River in northern Iraq on Tuesday, setting off a chain reaction in power generation systems that left the entire country without power, officials said.

Firefighters struggled to put out the blaze after the attack near Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad. Crude oil cascaded down the hillside into the river. Fire burned atop the water, fueled by the gushing oil.

In Vienna, Iraqi Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadhban said the country would try to keep up its production of more than 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, 2 million of which is exported daily, but he didn't say how.

"I'm confident security will be improved," al-Ghadhban said ahead of an OPEC meeting here Wednesday.

Full Article: AP News
rootsie on 09.14.04 @ 08:41 PM CST [link]

Iraqi rebuilding fund to be spent on security

by Rupert Cornwell
The Bush administration asked Congress yesterday to shift $3.5bn (£1.94bn) of funds earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction into short-term spending.

The aim is to bolster security and help oil production ahead of the Iraqi elections which, despite the continuing violence, the White House insists will take place in January.

The move came on the day that at least 59 people were killed in attacks by insurgents in Baghdad and the nearby town of Baquba. It is seen by critics as a change in US strategy and an admission that efforts to rebuild the country have failed.

Under the scheme, $1.8bn allocated for longer-term infrastructure projects will be redirected into an emergency effort to train and equip Iraqi police and security forces; $450m will go to help the oil industry; and $360m to meet the budgetary costs of forgiving virtually all Iraq's outstanding $4bn pre-war debt to the US.

The shift reflects the belief in Washington that the insurgents who have turned some cities, especially north and west of Baghdad, into no-go areas are likely to keep up the attacks at least until the US elections - and maybe longer in an attempt to disrupt the Iraqi elections. Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said the change was "a de facto recognition that the neoconservatives' goals for restructuring Iraq can never be achieved", and amounted to the "Vietnamisation" of US military strategy. As Washington rushed in funds to create an Iraqi force capable of replacing US and British troops, American commanders had shifted to holding actions and surgical strikes.

Full Article: Independent UK
rootsie on 09.14.04 @ 08:19 PM CST [link]

THE BUSH RECORD : New Priorities in Environment

by Felicity Berringer
Every fall, after raising their young near Teshekpuk Lake and the Colville River, tens of thousands of geese and tundra swans leave the North Slope of Alaska for more southerly shores. Some end their journey at the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the flatlands of North Carolina.

Both habitats could be transformed if current Bush administration initiatives come to pass. The birds would have oil rigs as neighbors in Alaska and be greeted by Navy jets simulating carrier takeoffs and landings in North Carolina.

That such projects could bracket the birds' path is not surprising in light of the priorities of the administration. Over the last three and a half years, federal officials have accelerated resource development on public lands. They have also pushed to eliminate regulatory hurdles for military and industrial projects.

From the start, Bush officials challenged the status quo and revised the traditional public-policy calculus on environmental decisions. They put an instant hold on many Clinton administration regulations, and the debates over those issues and others are intensely polarized.

The administration has sought to increase the harvesting of energy and other resources on public lands, to seek cooperative ways to reduce pollution, to free the military from environmental restrictions and to streamline - opponents say gut - regulatory and enforcement processes.

In a recent interview, Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, summed up the Bush administration's philosophy. "There is no environmental progress without economic prosperity," Mr. Leavitt said. "Once our competitiveness erodes, our capacity to make environmental gains is gone. There is nothing that promotes pollution like poverty."

The administration's approach has provoked a passionate response. Asked about his expectations in the event of President Bush's re-election, Senator James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent who is the ranking minority member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, wrote in an e-mail message: "I expect the Bush administration to continue their assault on regulations designed to protect public health and the environment. I expect the Bush administration to continue underfunding compliance and enforcement activities."

Mr. Jeffords concluded, "I expect the Bush administration will go down in history as the greatest disaster for public health and the environment in the history of the United States."

Full Article: NY Times

rootsie on 09.14.04 @ 03:46 PM CST [link]

U.S. Offers Guarded Critique of Putin's Plans

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell reacted with guarded criticism of President Vladimir V. Putin's new steps to consolidate his power over Russia's political system, warning that the fight against terrorism should not become an excuse to move away from "democratic reforms of the democratic process."

Full Article: NY Times

Ah please now don't make me laugh...
rootsie on 09.14.04 @ 03:40 PM CST [link]

Raising the Pressure in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 13 - With four months to go before nationwide elections in Iraq, the insurgency has grown more brazen and sophisticated, prompting American commanders to begin a series of military operations to regain control over large sections of the country lost in recent months
But as the Americans and their allies raise the pressure on the insurgents, they are rapidly finding themselves in the classic dilemma faced by governments battling guerrilla movements: ease up, and the insurgency may grow; crack down, and risk losing the support of the population. The additional quandary facing the Americans is the need to break the deadlock before January, the self-imposed deadline for elections.

On Sunday, insurgents struck the Americans and their allies in the Iraqi government in manifold ways: with suicide bombings, mortars and rockets, many of them showing a careful aim. Some of those attacks seemed intended not just to hurt the Americans but to provoke them into overreacting and alienating ordinary Iraqis.

How long the Americans can stick to their newly aggressive strategy is open to question: last April, as marines moved on Falluja, and Iraqi casualties soared into the hundreds, the Americans called off the attack and let a gang of insurgents take over.

Even now, the get-tough approach is showing signs of backfiring. On Sunday, when a suicide bomber crippled an American personnel carrier, a gun battle broke out, followed by an airstrike by two American helicopters. At least 15 Iraqis died and 50 were wounded, including a 12-year-old-girl and a television journalist. Inside the grim and chaotic wards of Baghdad's hospitals on Sunday, the Americans seemed to have made more enemies than friends.

On Monday, the scene repeated itself in another corner of Baghdad. When three insurgents opened fire on an American sport utility vehicle, American soldiers sprayed the area with gunfire, destroying three cars and killing at least one Iraqi civilian and wounding three others.

"When the Americans fire back, they don't hit the people who are attacking them, only the civilians," said Osama Ali, a 24-year-old Iraqi who witnessed the attack. "This is why Iraqis hate the Americans so much. This is why we love the mujahedeen."
Full Article: NY Times

rootsie on 09.14.04 @ 03:35 PM CST [link]

Car Bomb Near Baghdad Police Headquarters Kills 47

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A huge car bomb ripped through a crowded market near a Baghdad police headquarters Tuesday, killing 47 people and wounding more than 110 in the deadliest single attack in Iraq's capital in six months.

In Baquba northeast of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a police minibus, killing 12 people, and 10 Iraqis were killed in clashes between U.S. forces and guerrillas in the restive town of Ramadi, Health Ministry officials and witnesses said.

An Internet statement in the name of the Tawhid and Jihad group led by Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the Baghdad blast, which it said was carried out by a suicide attacker. The group also claimed responsibility for the attack on the police minibus.

Fighting has surged in Iraq over the last few days after U.S.-led forces launched fierce offensives in a bid to retake pockets of the country that have fallen under guerrilla control and present problems in staging planned elections in January.

Gunmen opened fire on a U.S. patrol near Mosul, killing one soldier and wounding five, the U.S. military said.
Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.14.04 @ 03:30 PM CST [link]

Monday, September 13th

Ambulance torn apart in Fallujah as US launches 'precision' strikes

by Patrick Cockburn
A plume of grey smoke billowed above Fallujah yesterday as the US military claimed they were making precision air strikes against insurgents in the city and local doctors said that civilians were being killed and wounded.

The US army said its warplanes had bombed houses because it had intelligence about the presence of fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom the US sees as the guiding hand behind many attacks on its forces.

Dr Adel Khamis of the Fallujah General Hospital said at least 16 people were killed, including women and children, and 12 others were wounded. Video film showed a Red Crescent ambulance torn apart by an explosion. A hospital official said the driver, a paramedic and five patients had been killed by the blast.

"The conditions here are miserable - an ambulance was bombed, three houses destroyed and men and women killed," said Rafayi Hayad al-Esawi, the director of the hospital. "The American army has no morals."

Full Article: Independent UK
rootsie on 09.13.04 @ 10:34 PM CST [link]

Children of Laos tribe 'butchered by soldiers'

by Kim Sengupta
Laotian forces have been accused of raping, disembowelling and murdering children belonging to the minority Hmong tribe in a campaign of state-sponsored terror.

The human rights group Amnesty International says that the attacks, allegedly carried out three months ago, constituted war crimes and violations of international humanitarian laws by the Laos government.

The group says it has credible evidence that "scores of civilians, mainly children" were killed by troops or later died from their injuries, lack of medical aid and starvation.

In one incident, up to 40 Laotian soldiers were said to have been responsible for mutilating and killing five children aged from 13 to 16. Four of the victims, who were girls, were "apparently raped before being killed".

The soldiers are said to have found the children, belonging to a community which supposedly supported rebels fighting the country's Marxist government, foraging for food in the jungle. Others in the group managed to escape, but some were wounded by shots fired by troops

Full Article: Independent UK
rootsie on 09.13.04 @ 10:29 PM CST [link]

Highjacking Catastrophe: a Review

Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11
by Robert Jensen

I'm a former full-time journalist turned journalism professor. I continue to commit occasional acts of journalism, and I retain a deep affection for, and commitment to, the craft and its ideals. That's why it pains me to say this: The performance of the U.S. corporate commercial news media after 9/11 has been the most profound and dangerous failure of journalism in my lifetime.

That's the bad news. The good news is that the void is being filled by other institutions, including the Media Education Foundation with its new documentary, "Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire."

That performance of journalists in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was so abysmal that the country's top two daily newspapers, the Washington Post and New York Times, eventually were forced to engage in a bit of self-criticism, albeit shallow and inadequate. The U.S. news media's willingness to serve as a largely uncritical conduit for the lies, half-truths, and distortions the Bush administration used to create the pretext for war showed how easily journalists can become de facto agents of a state propaganda campaign, which in this case mobilized public support for an illegal war.

But the lies that led to the Iraq War are only part of a bigger story, the most important story of the past three years: The Bush administration's manipulation of the tragedy of 9/11 to extend and intensify the longstanding U.S. project of empire building (and the complicity of most Democrats in that endeavor).

No publication or network in the mainstream of U.S. journalism has offered an independent, critical analysis of that project. Only a few journalists, mostly on the margins, have even dared to take a crack at it. The best consistent work has been in the foreign press or the alternative media in the United States.

Full Article:counterpunch.org

hijackingcatastrophe.org
rootsie on 09.13.04 @ 08:06 PM CST [link]

Experts Say Terrorists Regroup, See Lengthy War

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - The international war on terror will prove a long drawn-out battle as militants reorganize themselves into smaller groups, Asian defense experts said Monday.

``Al Qaeda has broken its organization into smaller units of elements, making a network in third world nations,'' Wan Usman, head of strategic studies at the University of Jakarta in Indonesia told a seminar on the changing global security environment.

The network had penetrated institutions, and managed to fan destructive radical anti-Western teachings in some Muslim schools in the region, he said.

Pakistan, a key ally of the United States in the war on terror, organized the seminar as part of an international defense exhibition that formally opens in Karachi Tuesday.

Full Article: Reuters

How helpful that our key ally Pakistan is organizing international seminars, expert that it is on the subject of terrorists, housing so many of them, maybe even, who knows, Osama himself. But the US can't go invading Pakistan and Saudi now, can they? Those countries actually have armed forces, and Pakistan has nukes.
rootsie on 09.13.04 @ 07:23 PM CST [link]

Scores Are Dead After Violence Spreads in Iraq

by Sabrina Tavernise
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 12 - In a series of tightly sequenced attacks, at least 25 Iraqis were killed by suicide car bombings and a barrage of missile and mortar fire in several neighborhoods across Baghdad on Sunday.

The attacks were the most widespread in months, seeming to demonstrate the growing power of the insurgency and heightening the sense of uncertainty and chaos in the capital at a time when American forces have already ceded control to insurgents in a number of cities outside of Baghdad.

The Associated Press reported that the total death toll throughout the country for the day reached 59, citing the Health Ministry and local authorities. Nearly 200 people were wounded, more than half of those in Baghdad.

Four suicide car bombings struck targets in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib, with two of them detonating nearly simultaneously and one hitting just outside the gates of the Abu Ghraib prison.

In Baghdad, American military helicopters fired at Iraqis who were scaling a burning American armored vehicle. It was unclear how many Iraqis were killed in the airstrike. At least one television journalist was confirmed dead, and photographs immediately after the strike showed a group of four men severely wounded or dead at the site. American military commanders said the helicopters were returning fire aimed at them from the ground.

American forces appear to be facing a guerrilla insurgency that is more sophisticated and more widespread than ever before. Last month, attacks on American forces reached their highest level since the war began, an average of 87 per day.
Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.13.04 @ 07:14 PM CST [link]

New Warnings Sought on Anti-Depressants

When the Food and Drug Administration opens an advisory committee hearing tomorrow into the safety of antidepressants, several committee members will push for tougher warnings saying that a child or teenager given the drugs can become suicidal in the first weeks of therapy, they said in interviews.

"I want the warning strengthened," said Dr. Richard Gorman, a member of the committee and a pediatrician from Ellicott City, Md. "I would also like the pharmaceutical companies to send out letters to doctors saying that, in kids, this stuff doesn't work."

Dr. James McGough, another committee member and a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, also said he wanted stronger warnings.

For more than a year, agency officials have struggled to find the appropriate balance between warning patients about the possible suicide risk of antidepressants and reassuring those patients that drug therapy can be an effective and safe remedy.

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.13.04 @ 07:09 PM CST [link]

Turkey Reacts with Fury to Massive US Assault on Northern Iraqi City

by Patrick Cockburn
The US military assault on Tal Afar, an ethnically Turkmen city in northern Iraq, has provoked a furious reaction from the Turkish government which is demanding the US call off the attack.

American and Iraqi government forces last week sealed off Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul belonging to Iraq's embattled Turkmen minority. The US said it killed 67 insurgents while a Turkmen leader claims 60 civilians were killed and 100 wounded. The massive and indiscriminate use of US firepower in built-up areas, leading to heavy civilian casualties in cities like Tal Afar, Fallujah and Najaf, is coming under increasing criticism in Iraq. The US "came into Iraq like an elephant astride its war machine," said Ibrahim Jaafari, the influential Iraqi Vice President.

The Americans claim that Tal Afar is a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms into Iraq from nearby Syria. Turkish officials make clear in private they believe that the Kurds, the main ally of the US in northern Iraq, have managed to get US troops involved on their side in the simmering ethnic conflict between Kurds and Turkmen.

"The Iraqi government forces with the Americans are mainly Kurdish," complained one Turkmen source. A Turkish official simply referred to the Iraqi military units involved in the attack on Tal Afar as "peshmerga", the name traditionally given to Kurdish fighters.

The US army account of its aims in besieging Tal Afar is largely at odds with that given by Turkmen and may indicate that its officers are at sea in the complex ethnic mosaic of Iraq. The US says that in recent weeks the city was taken over by anti-American militants who repeatedly attacked US and Iraqi government forces.

"Tal Afar is a tribal city and its people were not patient with the presence of American forces," said Farouq Abdullah Abdul Rahman, the president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, in Baghdad yesterday. He agreed that there was friction with US forces but denied that anything justified the siege, with many Turkmen close to the front line fleeing into the countryside. "More than 60 people have been killed, including women and children, and 100 wounded."

There has been tension, sometimes boiling over into gun battles, between the Kurds and the Turkmens since last year. As Saddam Hussein's regime fell apart Kurdish troops, aided by the US air force, advanced to take Kirkuk and Mosul. The Kurds felt they at last had a chance to reverse 40 years of ethnic cleansing which had seen their people massacred or driven from their homes.

Full Article: commondreams.org

Turkey Threatens to End U.S. Cooperation Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.13.04 @ 07:02 PM CST [link]

Sunday, September 12th

'Democracy Matters': Plenty of Blame to Go Around

Ah well another stupid hatchet-job on Cornel West. We loved him better when he was more 'middle of the road,' when he didn't speak with pain about Israel, when he limited 'nihilism' to blacks...The only 'whining' here is that of the author of this dreadful review.

by Caleb Crain
Of democratic ideals, Cornel West asks rhapsodically ''how can we not fall in love with them if and when we are exposed to them?''

Actually, I can imagine resistance. Democracy is unpleasant and hard work. It isn't enough to hold the right opinion. You have to speak to those who hold what you believe to be the wrong opinion in such a way as to convince them. Who wants to convince a horde of greedy, fearful, television-watching philistines they ought to give up their fantasies of strength and righteousness? Who volunteers to take the lamb carcass from the hyena? Let's just go back inside and whine about how terrible hyenas are. Unfortunately, whining about the hyenas is, for the most part, what occupies West in ''Democracy Matters.'' I agree with his sense that ''we have reached a rare fork in the road in American history.'' But I am not sure this book will be much help.

In this it is unlike his 1993 best seller, ''Race Matters.'' There he appealingly combined the style of a radical intellectual with a message that was middle-of-the-road. Writing in the aftermath of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles triggered by the Rodney King verdict, West was concerned about what he called black nihilism -- ''the profound sense of psychological depression, personal worthlessness and social despair so widespread in black America.'' He felt that the psychology of despair was a better way of explaining the black predicament than either ''liberal structuralism'' (i.e., blame socioeconomic conditions) or ''conservative behaviorism'' (i.e., blame lapses in morals). West's language had a Marxian flavor, but his answer was predominantly Christian: he proposed a ''politics of conversion.'' And he seemed uninterested in playing the race card. He made a point of disowning misogynist and anti-Semitic strains in black political culture, unsqueamishly contemplated black and black-and-white sexuality and criticized what he called the ''closing-ranks mentality'' threatening to homogenize black political thought.

In ''Democracy Matters,'' which he calls a sequel, West worries that nihilism has now spread to Americans of all races. ''Many have given up even being heard,'' he writes, and have succumbed to ''sour cynicism, political apathy and cultural escapism.'' West's political insights tend to come in threes. American democracy, he feels, is threatened by ''free-market fundamentalism,'' ''aggressive militarism'' and ''escalating authoritarianism.'' It will be saved, if it can be, by recourse to ''the Socratic commitment to questioning,'' ''the prophetic commitment to justice'' and ''tragicomic hope.'' West believes that in the fight against imperialism, the black experience may be a crucial resource, because blacks relied on tragicomic hope in their struggle for freedom, and it remains legible in their history and audible in black music, from the blues to hip-hop.

New York Times Book Review
rootsie on 09.12.04 @ 09:16 PM CST [more..]

Colin Powell in four-letter neo-con 'crazies' row

by Martin Bright
A furious row has broken out over claims in a new book by BBC broadcaster James Naughtie that US Secretary of State Colin Powell described neo-conservatives in the Bush administration as 'fucking crazies' during the build-up to war in Iraq.

Powell's extraordinary outburst is alleged to have taken place during a telephone conversation with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. The two became close friends during the intense negotiations in the summer of 2002 to build an international coalition for intervention via the United Nations. The 'crazies' are said to be Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.

Last week, the offices of Powell and Straw contacted Public Affairs, the US publishers of Naughtie's book, to say they would vigorously deny the claims if publication went ahead. But as no legal action was threatened, the US launch of the book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, will proceed as planned this week.

Naughtie stands by his claims and is said to be privately delighted that Powell and Straw have reacted so violently to the suggestion that the former US general had fallen out with the 'neo-cons'.

Provocatively, the phrase 'fucking crazies' will be quoted on the jacket of the book, according to a source at the publisher. 'We were surprised to receive calls from the offices of Jack Straw and Colin Powell within 24 hours of each other,' the source said.

Full Article:Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.12.04 @ 08:06 PM CST [link]

Space probes feel cosmic tug of bizarre forces

by Robin McKie
Something strange is tugging at America's oldest spacecraft. As the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes head towards distant stars, scientists have discovered that the craft - launched more than 30 years ago - appear to be in the grip of a mysterious force that is holding them back as they sweep out of the solar system.

Some researchers say unseen 'dark matter' may permeate the universe and that this is affecting the Pioneers' passage. Others say flaws in our understanding of the laws of gravity best explain the crafts' wayward behaviour.

As a result, scientists are to press a European Space Agency (Esa) meeting, called Cosmic Visions, in Paris this week for backing for a mission that would follow the Pioneers and pinpoint the cause of their erratic movements.

The strange behaviour of the Pioneers - which swept by Jupiter and Saturn in the Eighties - was discovered by John Anderson and Slava Turyshev of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Michael Martin Neito of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

They had been tracking the probes using the giant dishes of Nasa's Deep Space Network. By the time the two spaceships had swept beyond Pluto, they noted there were persistent anomalies in their trajectories. Every time they looked the Pioneers were in the wrong place. The effect was not large, but it was significant. Something more than the Sun's gravity appeared to have a grip on the craft.

The reasons for the anomaly have caused a rift among physicists, however. Some believe the effect may simply be flaws with the probes. Gas from fuel tanks may be leaking from them, slowing their passages, say some astronomers. 'Unless there is really good evidence to the contrary, we should stick to simple ideas like these and not go around blaming strange new types of particle or flaws in general relativity,' said Professor Martin Barstow, of Leicester University.

But this view has been rejected by Anderson. 'It's hard to imagine such a leak happening on both probes at the same time in such a way as to produce an identical acceleration,' he said.

And most scientists back him. 'The effect is real,' said Bernard Haisch of the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.

One proposal put forward is that Newton's idea that the force of gravity weakens as distance increases may be incorrect over very large spaces, and may drop off over very long distances.

'It is time to settle the Pioneer issue with a new deep-space mission that will test for, and decide on, the anomaly,' Anderson, Turyshev and Nieto state in Physics World .

By fitting a Pioneer follow-up probe with new measuring equipment, navigational device and communications gear, it should be possible to discover if the probes are in the grip of a new force of nature.

Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.12.04 @ 08:01 PM CST [link]

Saturday, September 11th

Taliban Say Attack Shows They Can Strike at Will

KABUL (Reuters) - A rocket attack aimed at Kabul's international airport showed the Taliban have the ability to target anywhere in Afghanistan, the group said on Friday, warning the Americans the country would become their ``burial ground.''

Although the four rockets fell well short or wide of their target, Mullah Dadullah Akhund -- the Taliban's military commander and a member of its 10-member ruling council -- said U.S.-led forces in the country were pinned down in their bases.

He was speaking a day after the Arabic satellite TV channel al Jazeera broadcast a video of Osama bin Laden's Egyptian-born deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, claiming that mujahideen fighters had U.S. forces pinned down in Afghanistan and Iraq.

``The enemy are limited to their capitals,'' al-Zawahri said in the tape, broadcast two days before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Washington quickly blamed al Qaeda and sent troops to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban.

``The Americans are hiding in their trenches and refuse to come out to face the mujahideen, as the mujahideen shell and fire on them, and cut roads off around them. Their defense is only to bomb by air, wasting U.S. money as they kick up dust.''

Full Article: NY Times
rootsie on 09.11.04 @ 12:00 AM CST [link]

Friday, September 10th

Sebastião Salgado: Be fruitful, and replenish the earth

Sebastião Salgado introduces his journey to the untouched corners of the planet

"...Thus, for all the damage already caused to the environment, a world of purity, even innocence, can still be found in these wilderness areas. As an attempt to reconnect our species with our planet, I now intend to explore this world in order to record the unblemished faces of nature and humanity: how nature looked without men and women; and how humanity and nature long coexisted in what today we now call ecological balance.

This project is designed to reconnect us to how the world was before humanity altered it almost beyond recognition. It is a project that follows on from the long photographic research that led to my books and exhibitions, Other Americas, Sahel: L'Homme en Détresse, Workers and Migrations. In these early undertakings, I did not focus specifically on the environment, but I was constantly confronted by dismaying evidence of the dramatic deterioration of humanity's relationship with nature. All too often, extreme poverty and migration were both a cause and a result of the degradation and pollution of nature's resources..."

Full Article and photos: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.10.04 @ 11:18 PM CST [link]

The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future

by Pete Bohmer
Understanding Cuban society objectively is incredibly difficult, given 45 years of unremitting US propaganda against Fidel Castro, the Cuban government and Cuban society. Even for those individuals critical of the U.S. mainstream media, constantly hearing the Cuban government called a dictatorship that has failed its people, influences our perceptions. So do interviews or discussions with Cubans who have immigrated to the United States, most of whom are very critical of the Cuban system. I urge the reader to be open to the following article which presents a viewpoint at variance with the mainstream one of Cuba. This positive, but not uncritical analysis of Cuba, is based on in-depth study of Cuba for more than 35 years, two visits to Cuba in the early 1990’s, living there for four months in 2001, and the recent trip I made with 23 students in April and May, 2004.

To understand Cuban society, we have to place the political economy of Cuba today, its successes and real problems, in the context of the following:

1. 400 years of Spanish colonialism. This began with genocidal attacks against the indigenous people of Cuba, followed by an economy organized around sugar plantations, where most of the labor force were enslaved and super-exploited Africans. Slavery ended in 1886, but extreme racism and economic segregation of blacks continued until 1959.

2. U.S. domination and aggression. During the 1895-1898 Cuban war for independence, the U.S. intervened militarily, claiming to support independence for Cuba, but then dominated Cuba economically and politically until 1959. As a condition for the U.S. ending its military occupation of Cuba, Cuba had to sign the Platt Amendment, which was the basis for establishing the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Today in Guantanamo, prisoners from around the world are being held indefinitely with no rights and subject to brutal treatment by the U.S. military. In addition, the U.S. and Cuban elites dominated Cuba from 1902 to 1959, with the U.S. sending troops and supporting Cuban governments who were favorable to U.S. investors and undermining those who weren’t.

Full Article: zmag.org
rootsie on 09.10.04 @ 10:46 PM CST [link]

Nader Says Kerry 'Blew It,' Ensuring Bush Will Win Race

by Miles Benson
WASHINGTON -- Democrat John Kerry has already lost the 2004 presidential race and the country should get ready for another four years of President Bush's leadership, Ralph Nader said Thursday.

"Bush is mocking him, he's taunting him," Nader said. "There's no strategy by the Democrats."

Nader, battling to get on ballots as an independent presidential candidate, predicted Bush would win by a margin so large that his own candidacy would not be seen as a factor in the outcome. Democratic leaders blamed Nader for former Vice President Al Gore's loss to Bush in 2000.

"The telltale sign" of looming defeat is the Democrats' failure to register 9 million black voters, Nader told reporters.

"They're going to lose it because John Kerry has surrounded himself with corporate consultants who represent some of the seediest and most craven companies and industries, and they are not letting him think for himself," said Nader, whose fight against corporate influence over government and politics is his own rationale for running.

Kerry "blew it," Nader said, by neglecting the Democratic Party's historic roots.

"The biggest winning strategy for the Kerry campaign is the living wage. One of every three workers doesn't make a living wage. That is what the Democratic Party used to stand for."

With just under eight weeks remaining before Election Day, Nader said Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., have "lost the clarity of being an alternative to Bush and Cheney, even though this is the most vulnerable administration in many years."

Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 09.10.04 @ 10:29 PM CST [link]

Warming Trend Will Decimate Arctic Peoples, Report Warns

by Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada - Climate change will soon make the Arctic regions of the world nearly unrecognisable, dramatically disrupting traditional Inuit and other northern native peoples' way of life, according to a new report that has yet to be publicly released.

The dire predictions are just some of the findings by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), an unprecedented four-year scientific investigation into the current and future impact of climate change in the region.

"This assessment projects the end of the Inuit as a hunting culture," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the group that represents about 155,000 Inuit in the Arctic regions of Canada, Russia, Greenland, and the United States.

The report predicts the depletion of summer sea ice, which will push marine mammals like polar bears, walrus and some seal species into extinction by the middle of this century, Watt-Cloutier told IPS.

The assessment was commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental body involving the eight Arctic nations -- Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and the United States.

The Inuit and other Arctic peoples also participate in the Council and contributed to the ACIA report, along with over 600 hundred scientists from around the world. Although complete, it will not be made public or presented to governments until after the U.S. presidential elections at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, Nov. 9-12.

The impacts of climate change are already widely felt in the Arctic. Thawing permafrost -- the normally perpetually frozen layer of earth -- has collapsed roads and buildings. Unexpectedly thinner sea ice and small streams that have become raging rivers has led to several drownings in recent years, according to Watt-Cloutier.

"Our traditional wisdom on how to survive and thrive on the land is becoming useless because everything is changing and changing fast."

Alaska experienced its warmest and driest summer ever this year, Patricia Anderson of the ACIA Secretariat University of Alaska said in an interview. Temperatures soared 10 degrees C. above normal and millions of hectares of forest burned in the worst wildfires ever recorded, following several recent years with major fires.

Full Article:commondreams.org
rootsie on 09.10.04 @ 10:22 PM CST [link]

Group Honors Curricula that Explore 9/11's 'Root Cause'

MILWAUKEE, WI - Call it the Chips Ahoy! School of International Studies: Fifth-graders at Fratney Street School in Milwaukee learn about causes of terrorism with a small bag of cookies and a large map of the world.

Bob Peterson teaches students that overpopulation and poverty help make it easier to recruit terrorists for attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.

Schools have been teaching about Sept. 11 since that morning nearly three years ago, but this year, Families of September 11, founded by victims' relatives, is honoring Peterson and three others for curricula on terrorism's root causes. At a Smithsonian Institution conference today, the group will issue guidelines for educators.

In one of Peterson's lessons, students stand, arranged by population, on a huge world map. Peterson hands out cookies according to gross national products: The 16 students in Asia each get one cookie, and the three in Africa split half a cookie among them. In North America, one student enjoys eight cookies.

Though he doesn't “blame America” for the attacks, Peterson says, even children “can be encouraged to ask deep questions” about the causes of terrorism.

Opponents say that runs the risk of creating empathy for terrorists. Teachers must ensure “that students aren't taking away an overly simplistic view of why terrorism happens,” says Kathleen Porter-Magee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a think tank that has pushed for more rigorous history curricula. Though students might understand its causes, she says, terrorism is irrational.

Full Article: commondreams.org

This is the sorry state of the terrorism discourse in the United States. 'Poverty' and 'overpopulation' are why 'they' hate us. And why are they poor? Colonial/imperial piracy and pillage. I can guarantee that's not in the 'enlightened' curriculum. And the one advocating the 'more rigorous history curriculum' thinks that children should be taught that terrorism has no cause at all. Poor kids.
rootsie on 09.10.04 @ 10:18 PM CST [link]

Rebels Begin to Control More Areas in Iraq

by Peyman Pejman
BAGHDAD - Armed groups and foreign terrorists have established new camps in central Iraq as government forces attack rebels in the north and south, officials say.

The reports follow an admission by U.S. central command chief Gen. John Abizaid that there are more areas in Iraq under rebel control today than there were last year.

The revelations could be damning for the government of U.S. appointed interim prime minister Iyad Allawi who has promised to uproot armed opposition to the nascent government.

New camps have been reported in the 'Sunni triangle' zone that includes Falluja and Ramadi. Iraqi and western sources say the camps have been established recently and fortified in the past couple of months.

Reports are coming in of new armed groups organising themselves in parts of the country earlier thought safe, as fighting escalates in other parts of Iraq. Over the past few days fighting has erupted again in many parts of the country including Falluja and Mosul in the north and Sadr City in Baghdad.

Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 09.10.04 @ 10:06 PM CST [link]

Thursday, September 9th

Healing the Africa within us

"Africa has been waiting to be discovered with the eyes of a lover." Ben Okri declares his love to Africa.

by Ben Okri
Heart-shaped Africa is the feeling centre of the world. Continents are metaphors as much as they are places. And a people are spiritual states of humanity as distinguishable in what they represent as lilies and roses and daffodils.

Have we forgotten what Africa is? Africa is our dreamland, is our spiritual homeland. There is a realm inside every human being that is Africa. We all have an Africa within us. And so when the Africa outside is sick with troubles, the Africa inside us makes us ill with neuroses. The sheer quantity of neuroses, of anorexia, of inexplicable psychic illness in the world is possibly indirectly due to the illness, the troubles in Africa. We have to heal the Africa in us if we are going to be whole again. We have to heal the Africa outside us if the human race is going to be at peace again in a new dynamic way. There is a relationship between the troubles in a people and the troubles in the world, in the atmosphere. The troubles of Africa contribute immensely to the sheer weight and size of world suffering. And this world suffering affects everyone on this planet, affects children and their health, affects our sleep, our anxiety, our unknown suffering; for it is possible to suffer without knowing it.

And so we have to heal our Africa within. We have to re-discover the true Africa, the Africa of laughter, of joy, of originality, of improvisation, the Africa of legend, of story-telling, of playfulness, the Africa of brilliant colours, the Africa of generosity, of hospitality and kindness to strangers, the Africa of immense compassion, the Africa of wisdom, of proverbs, of divination, of paradox, the Africa of ingenuity, and surprise, the Africa of a four-dimensional attitude to time, the Africa of magic, of faith, of patience, of endurance, of a profound knowledge of nature’s ways and the secret cycles of destiny.

Full Article:odemagazine.com
rootsie on 09.09.04 @ 10:13 PM CST [link]

Illiteracy shockingly high in L.A.

By Rachel Uranga
Staff Writer

Continued immigration and a stubborn high school dropout rate have stymied efforts to improve literacy in Los Angeles County, where more than half the working-age population can't read a simple form, a report released Wednesday found.
Alarmingly, only one in every 10 workers deemed functionally illiterate is enrolled in literacy classes and half of them drop out within three weeks, said the study by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

"It's an emergency situation," said Mayor James Hahn, adding that poor literacy rates could jeopardize the region's economy by driving out high-tech businesses and other industries that pay well.

In the Los Angeles region, 53 percent of workers ages 16 and older were deemed functionally illiterate, the study said.

That percentage dropped to 44 percent in the greater San Fernando Valley -- which includes Agoura Hills and Santa Clarita -- but soared to 85 percent in some pockets of the Valley.

The study measured levels of literacy across the region using data from the 2000 Census, the U.S. Department of Education and a survey of literacy programs taken from last September to January.

It classified 3.8 million Los Angeles County residents as "low-literate," meaning they could not write a note explaining a billing error, use a bus schedule or locate an intersection on a street map.

And despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent in public schools over the past decade to boost literacy rates, functional illiteracy levels have remained flat because of a steady influx of non-English-speaking immigrants and a 30 percent high school dropout rate, authors of the report said.

The last available national study was conducted in 1992 by the National Adult Literacy Survey, which found that 48 percent of the nation's working-age population was functionally illiterate.

LA Daily News
rootsie on 09.09.04 @ 09:11 AM CST [more..]

Wednesday, September 8th

Americans worry about their image in the world

by Rupert Cornwell

Seven out of 10 Americans are worried about the worsening of their country's image around the world, suggesting that global dislike of George Bush and his foreign policies could have an impact, albeit indirect, on the outcome of the presidential election.

That is the most striking finding of a new set of polls released yesterday by the Globscan group and the University of Maryland. Of Americans polled, 40 per cent said that foreign antipathy to the US was a big problem, and 30 per cent "somewhat of a problem." Although almost three-quarters said world opinion would have no impact on their vote. But 18 per cent said they would be more likely to vote for the candidate preferred by most people in the world - who in 2004 is overwhelmingly the Democratic challenger John Kerry.

According to a separate Globescan survey of public opinion in 35 countries, in 30 of them a majority wanted Mr Kerry to win, on average by a more than two to one margin. Only in Poland, Nigeria and the Philippines among countries surveyed was Mr Bush preferred. In two others, India and Thailand, opinion was more or less split.

Everywhere else however, from Europe and Latin America to Asia and Africa, Mr Kerry is the desired winner, by far. Support for him is particularly strong among traditional US allies, even those who joined the Bush coalition in Iraq.

Full Article: Independent UK

rootsie on 09.08.04 @ 09:23 PM CST [link]

Rastas call for slavery reparations

A coalition of Rastafarian groups in Jamaica said yesterday that it wanted to go to the UN to persuade Europe to pay billions of dollars to the followers of the faith in reparation for slavery.

The Rastafarian Nation in Jamaica said European countries once involved in the slave trade, especially Britain, should pay $129bn (£72.5bn) to resettle 500,000 Jamaican Rastafarians in Africa.

"It's a matter of human rights and justice for a crime that was committed 300 years ago and whose repercussions are still being felt today," said Barbara Makeda Blake-Hannah, a member of the group.

More than 90% of the former British colony's 2.6 million people are descended from African slaves. The coalition, made up of six Rastafarian "houses", presented the reparations figure at a conference in Kingston, Jamaica, at the weekend.

Full Article:Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.08.04 @ 09:19 PM CST [link]

Thousands of Iraqis Estimated Killed

by Bassem Mroul

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - At Sheik Omar Clinic, a big book records 10,363 violent deaths in Baghdad and nearby towns since the war began last year - deaths caused by car bombs, clashes between Iraqis and coalition forces, mortar attacks, revenge killings and robberies.

While America mourns the deaths of more than 1,000 of its sons and daughters in the Iraq campaign, the U.S. toll is far less than the Iraqi. No official, reliable figures exist for the whole country, but private estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 killed since the United States invaded in March 2003.

The violent deaths recorded in the leather ledger at the Sheik Omar Clinic come from only one of Iraq's 18 provinces and do not cover people who died in such flashpoint cities as Najaf, Karbala, Fallujah, Tikrit and Ramadi.

Iraqi dead include not only insurgents, police and soldiers but also civilian men, women and children caught in crossfire, blown apart by explosives or shot by mistake - both by fellow Iraqis or by American soldiers and their multinational allies. And they include the victims of crime that has surged in the instability that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Full Article: myway.com
rootsie on 09.08.04 @ 09:15 PM CST [link]

U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq

By Eric Schmitt and Steven R. Weisman
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 - As American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas.

As of late Tuesday night, the Pentagon's accounting showed that 998 service members and three Defense Department civilians had been killed in Iraq operations.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that the American strategy in retaking rebel-held strongholds hinged on training and equipping Iraqi forces to take the lead.

Mr. Rumsfeld said Iraqi officials understood they must regain control of the insurgent safe havens. "They get it, and will find a way over time to deal with it,'' he said.

But General Myers said the Iraqi forces would probably not be ready to confront insurgents in those areas until the end of this year.

Their comments, which came after a two-day spike in violence in Iraq led to a surge in American military deaths, represented an acknowledgment that the Americans had failed to end an increasingly sophisticated insurgency in important Sunni-dominated areas and in certain Shiite enclaves. Fighting raged on Tuesday in Sadr City, in Baghdad, as Shiite militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr ended a self-declared cease-fire. [Page A14.]

The officials' assessment also underscored the difficulty of pacifying Iraq in time for elections scheduled for January. The cities of greatest rebel control are Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so-called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have gathered strength.

Full Article:New York Times
rootsie on 09.08.04 @ 02:44 PM CST [link]

African Leaders Meet to Draw Up Poverty Battle Plan

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (Reuters) - More than a dozen leaders from across Africa met Wednesday hoping to draw up a battle plan to fight poverty and create jobs in the poorest continent.

Leaders from Africa's biggest and some of its smallest economies hope to succeed where previous efforts have failed and break the twin scourges of poverty and unemployment.

``The peace and stability of our states will be built on the victories won in the field of employment,'' Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore told delegates at the opening ceremony.

Leaders from Algeria in the north to South Africa in the south, from Ethiopia in the east to Sierra Leone in the west of the continent converged on Compaore's poor, landlocked country for the summit, called by the African Union (AU).

Alpha Oumar Konare, former president of neighboring Mali and now chairman of the AU Commission, painted a grim picture of a continent gripped by HIV/AIDS, malaria and malnutrition and let down by donors who failed to live up to their pledges.

``This is an embarrassing score card for a continent so richly endowed,'' said Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who currently chairs the AU.

``The adoption of an investment-led poverty reducing employment strategy has become therefore a necessity,'' he said.

Rodrigo Rato, on his second trip to Africa since becoming International Monetary Fund managing director three months ago, said Africa needed higher, sustainable economic growth in order to beat unemployment and poverty.

He said developed countries must help Africa by opening up their markets to African produce and contributing more development aid, but stressed that African countries themselves must act to promote private enterprise and trade.

``Trade barriers in and among developing countries themselves remain too high,'' he said.

Callisto Madavo, the World Bank's vice president for Africa, picked up the private sector baton, insisting African countries must invest in infrastructure to increase access to services, accelerate regional integration and make it easier to do business.

``It is not enough to provide workers with the skills to compete if the regulatory environment drives investors overseas.'' he said.

African nations are the least friendly places to do business, the World Bank said in a report out Wednesday.

Full Article:Reuters

Yeah right. As if the 'regulatory environment' impeded the Europeans in 500 years of pillage. Now the IMF comes in with the stench of brimstone to finish the job.
rootsie on 09.08.04 @ 02:38 PM CST [link]

Spurred by Illness, Indonesians Lash Out at U.S. Mining Giant

By Jane Perlez and Evelyn Rusli

BUYAT BAY BEACH, Indonesia - First the fish began to disappear. Then villagers began developing strange rashes and bumps. Finally in January, Masna Stirman, aided by a $1.50 wet nurse, gave birth to a tiny, shriveled girl with small lumps and wrinkled skin.

"The nurse said: 'Ma'am, the baby has deformities,' " Mrs. Stirman, 39, recalled in an interview. Unable to get any meaningful medical help in this remote fishing village of about 300 people, she watched as her fourth child suffered for months and then died in July.

The infant's death came after years of complaints by local fishermen about waste dumped in the ocean by the owner of a nearby gold mine, the Newmont Mining Corporation, the world's biggest gold producer, based in Denver. It also kicked up a political brawl pitting Indonesia's feisty environmental groups against the American mining giant, which has been trailed by allegations of pollution on four continents.

Full Article: New York Times
rootsie on 09.08.04 @ 02:31 PM CST [link]

Tuesday, September 7th

On the Road in Gringolandia: The Politics of Darkness: North / South

by John Ross
The ambiance inside the Garden was as toxic as an Al Qaeda bioterrorist Jihad. In the spotlight, a smugly chortling Bush lip-synched doom to 20,000 beardless Caucasian conventioneers. "This will not happen on my watch" the President pandered from the podium while the Twin Towers crumbled on the big screen behind him, apparently so brain-damaged that he did not remember that it had already happened. The Caucasians zeig heiled appropriately. "Four more years!" they regurgitated.

"Four more wars!" I screamed hoarsely and my colleagues in the press corps backed off to avoid contamination by my alarming lack of journalistic objectivity. An agitated gnome in an elephant's head hat two rows in front of me who had been haranguing the sky boxes where Al Franken and Michael Moore were quarantined to prevent a public lynching, lunged at me menacingly when I refused to stand up and cheer the bilious Bush.

Shamelessly harping on the nearly 3000 souls toasted on 9/11, the third anniversary of whose incineration would be mourned the very next week, Bushwa pumped up the paranoia as the lynch mob swooned in the aisles. Although the President often mumbles in a patois only his fellow Texans can decipher, his intentions were crystal clear. Filling the hearts and minds of the American electorate with fear and loathing is his most ballistic missile, and the malignant exploitation of national tragedy his hole card in the battle to retain the White House.

I longed for an overripe tomato to toss at this dangerous bozo strutting around down below on the circular stage but the sentries at the Garden gates, perhaps remembering an earlier Eden, had proscribed all round fruit from being carried onto the premises.

The craven spectacle that profaned the hallowed home court of the Knicks and countless classic championship slugfests, was my first stop on a campaign trail I will cover for the next months as I wend my way across the country from right coast to left, reminding my fellow Americans of their true his and herstory as depicted in my latest instant cult classic, "Murdered By Capitalism", a personal memoir of life and death on the U.S. Left.

Indeed, I had just touched down at LaGuardia en route from tropical Chiapas where I had been celebrating the first anniversary of the Zapatista "caracoles" (political/cultural centers) and the "Juntas de Buen Gobierno" (JBGs or Good Government Commissions) that now administer the five autonomous regions and 29 autonomous municipalities in the highlands and jungle of Mexico's southernmost state. The anniversary week had been filled with many cumbia dances and basketball tournaments and earnest evaluations of the JBG's first year of work. They still made a lot of mistakes, the members of the Juntas confessed but 50 rebel schools had been built in the autonomous zones in recent seasons and they were learning each day how to apply the Zapatista ethos of "mandar obedeciendo" or "governing by obeying the will of the people", a concept so foreign to Bushite brains that the rebels might as well be discoursing in Martian. Above all, the Zapatistas spoke from their hearts, an organ which Bush and his boys, despite their claims of "compassionate conservatism", have never been able to locate. The contrast between the toxic megalomania at the Garden and the unselfish, heroic resistance of the Indians was as stark as a sudden plunge into Dante's Inferno.

The Zapatistas, and for that matter the legions of oppressed who take up most of the space on this lonely planet, were in fact keeping close tabs on the blasphemy in the Garden. Much as protestors proclaimed in Chicago 1968 during another party's perverted presidential convention, the whole world was watching. They know that what happens here in the north from now until November could very well prove to be a life and death decision for them.

Full Article: counterpunch.org

I just read a good book by John Ross called War Against Oblivion, a history of the Zapatistas. The indigenous people of America have a firm hold on democratic principles: they have not been still in the face of this 500-year conquest, not for a single day.
rootsie on 09.07.04 @ 10:07 PM CST [link]

Cheney Warns Against Vote for Kerry

By Amy Lorentzen

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign immediately rejected those comments as "scare tactics" that crossed the line.

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.

If Kerry were elected, Cheney said the nation risks falling back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that terrorist attacks are criminal acts that require a reactive approach. Instead, he said Bush's offensive approach works to root out terrorists where they plan and train, and pressure countries that harbor terrorists.

Cheney pointed to Afghanistan as a success story in pursuing terrorists although the Sept. 11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden, remains at large. In Iraq, the vice president said, the United States has taken out a leader who used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and harbored other terrorists.

"Saddam Hussein today is in jail, which is exactly where he belongs," Cheney said.

Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards issued a statement, saying, "Dick Cheney's scare tactics crossed the line today, showing once again that he and George Bush will do anything and say anything to save their jobs. Protecting America from vicious terrorists is not a Democratic or Republican issue and Dick Cheney and George Bush should know that."

Edwards added that he and Kerry "will keep American safe, and we will not divide the American people to do it."

The candidates are campaigning hard for Iowa's seven electoral votes. Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the state in 2000. Bush has campaigned in the state five times in the last month, and Cheney has made three stops.

Hours before Cheney spoke, the Congressional Budget Office said this year's federal deficit will hit a record $422 billion. Cheney, in praising Bush's tax cuts, noted that the CBO said this year's projected deficit will be smaller than analysts had expected.

Full Article: myway.com
rootsie on 09.07.04 @ 09:48 PM CST [link]

U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Pass 1,000

By Hamza Hendawi
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign passed the 1,000 milestone Tuesday, with more than 800 of them during the stubborn insurgency that flared after the Americans brought down Saddam Hussein and President Bush declared major combat over.

A spike in fighting with Sunni and Shiite insurgents killed seven Americans in the Baghdad area on Tuesday, pushing the count to 1,002. That number includes 999 U.S. troops and three civilians, two working for the U.S. Army and one for the Air Force. The tally was compiled by The Associated Press based on Pentagon records and AP reporting from Iraq.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited progress on multiple fronts in the Bush administration's global war on terrorism and said U.S. enemies should not underestimate the willingness of the American people and its coalition allies to suffer casualties in Iraq and elsewhere.

"The progress has prompted a backlash, in effect, from those who hope that at some point we might conclude that the pain and the cost of this fight isn't worth it," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. "Well, our enemies have underestimated our country, our coalition. They have failed to understand the character of our people. And they certainly misread our commander in chief."

Full Article: myway.com
rootsie on 09.07.04 @ 09:30 PM CST [link]

Eskimos Fret as Climate Shifts and Wildlife Changes

PANGNIRTUNG, Nunavut - At age 85, Inusiq Nasalik has seen some changes in his day.

Born in an old whaling settlement, he lived in igloos and sod houses as a child and drove a dog team to hunt on the tundra through much of his life. Now he lives in a comfortable house with a plush sofa in his living room, a Westinghouse range and microwave oven in his modern kitchen and a big stereo to play his favorite old Eskimo songs.

Life is good for him, he says, but he is worried about the changes he sees in the wildlife that surrounds this hamlet on the shores of an icy glacier fiord just below the Arctic circle.

He says the caribou are skinny, and so are the ringed seals, whose fur has become thin and patchy. The Arctic char that swim in local streams are covered with scratches, apparently from sharp rocks in waters that are becoming shallower because of climactic shifts. The beluga whales and seals do not come around Pangnirtung fiord as much anymore, perhaps because increased motorboat traffic is making too much noise.

"Maybe this is just the way it is supposed to be, but the animals are changing and I cannot tell you why," Mr. Nasalik said, between bites of raw caribou from an animal he had just caught. "Young people now prefer to eat young seals because they think the older seals are more contaminated."

Scientists say the problems Mr. Nasalik observes result from climate change and the gradual increase in contaminants like pesticides and industrial compounds like mercury and PCB's that are transported by wind and currents from the industrialized south and accumulate in the fatty tissues of Arctic animals. The people who eat such animals are also affected, and high levels of contaminants have been found in the breast milk of Eskimo women.

Full Article: New York Times

Yeah those silly 'Eskimos', always 'fretting' about some little thing or other...

rootsie on 09.07.04 @ 11:56 AM CST [more..]

Monday, September 6th

Israel seeks funds for separate Arab roads

by Chris McGreal

Israel is pressing foreign donors to finance the construction of a web of roads through the occupied territories - made necessary by the building of the vast "security" barrier and Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The Israeli government seeks foreign funding to upgrade the back roads that Palestinians are forced to use - after being banned from routes used by Jewish settlers.
It also wants funding to build new roads which take account of the barrier and its settlements. The plan envisages roads that would run parallel to each other - one for Jews, the other for Arabs.

European donors have recoiled from the proposal, in part because they are concerned that funding the new roads will breach July's International Court of Justice ruling against support for construction of the barrier. The court said it should be torn down because it breaches the Geneva conventions.

But diplomats say the US may be more willing to pay...

Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.06.04 @ 12:51 PM CST [link]

Falluja bomb kills 7 U.S. troops

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. military command in Baghdad has confirmed that seven Marines and three Iraqi guardsmen were killed in a car bomb in Falluja.

The attack occurred late Monday morning on the outskirts of the city.

The explosions sent the engine from the car used in the bombing "a good distance" from the site, AP quoted a military official as saying on condition of anonymity.

Two Humvees were destroyed in the attack, AP reported witnesses as saying.

U.S. forces have not patrolled inside Fallujah since April, when U.S. Marines ended a three-week siege, AP said. The city has since fallen into the hands of insurgents who have used it as a base to manufacture car bombs and launch attacks on U.S. and Iraqi government forces.

Full Article: cnn.com
rootsie on 09.06.04 @ 12:39 PM CST [link]

Spy Case Renews Debate Over Pro-Israel Lobby's Ties to Pentagon

by James Risen and David Johnston
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 - It began like most national security investigations, with a squad of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents surreptitiously tailing two men, noting where they went and whom they met. What was different about this case was that the surveillance subjects were lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and one of their contacts turned out to be a policy analyst at the Pentagon.

The ensuing criminal investigation into whether Aipac officials passed classified information from the Pentagon official to Israel has become one of the most byzantine counterintelligence stories in recent memory. So far, the Justice Department has not accused anyone of wrongdoing and no one has been arrested.

Aipac has dismissed the accusations as baseless, and Israel has denied conducting espionage operations in the United States.

Behind the scenes, however, the case has reignited a furious and long-running debate about the close relationship between Aipac, the pro-Israel lobbying organization, and a conservative group of Republican civilian officials at the defense department, who are in charge of the office that employs Lawrence A. Franklin, the Pentagon analyst.

Their hard-line policy views on Iraq, Iran and the rest of the Middle East have been controversial and influential within the Bush administration.

"They have no case,'' said Michael Ledeen, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a friend of Mr. Franklin. "If they have a case, why hasn't anybody been arrested or indicted?''

Nearly a dozen officials who have been briefed on the investigation said in interviews last week that the F.B.I. began the inquiry as a national security matter based on specific accusations that Aipac employees had been a conduit for secrets between Israel and the Pentagon. These officials said that the F.B.I., in consultation with the Justice Department, had established the necessary legal foundation required under the law before beginning the investigation.

A half dozen people sympathetic to Aipac and the civilian group at the defense department said they viewed the investigation in different terms, as a politically motivated attempt to discredit Aipac and the Pentagon group. Supporters of Aipac have said the organization is being dragged into an intelligence controversy largely because of its close ties to a Republican administration and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Friends and associates of the civilian group at the Pentagon believe they are under assault by adversaries from within the intelligence community who have opposed them since before the war in Iraq. The Pentagon civilians, led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, and Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary for policy, were among the first in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks to urge military action to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, an approach favored by Aipac and Israel.

Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Feith were part of a larger network of policy experts inside and out of the Bush administration who forcefully made the case that the war with Iraq was part of the larger fight against terrorism.

The Pentagon group circulated its own intelligence assessments, which have since been discredited by the Central Intelligence Agency and by the independent Sept. 11 commission, arguing that there was a terrorist alliance between the Hussein regime and Al Qaeda.

The group has also advocated that the Bush administration adopt a more aggressive policy toward Iran, and some of its members have quietly begun to argue for regime change in Tehran. The administration has not yet adopted that stance, however, and the Pentagon conservatives have been engaged in a debate with officials at the State Department and other agencies urging a more moderate approach to Iran.

Full Article: New York Times

It's hard to figure out what's going on here, but it seems like there are whistleblowers who are willing to take Wolfowitz, Ledeen, et al, on. The issue is not about feeding intel to Israel, that's for sure. The CFR is strongly against taking Iran on militarily, at least for now. I keep saying this, but Bush might really get Watergated after his re-election.
rootsie on 09.06.04 @ 12:36 PM CST [link]

Sunday, September 5th

Halliburton Natural Gas Bribery Scandal in Nigeria

by Mike Oduniyi and Ahamefula Ogbu
Following continued investigations on the alleged $180 million (about N25.2billion) bribery scandal over the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Project, Halliburton yesterday submitted documents listing the names of Nigeria government officials involved in the scandal to a French judge in Paris.

But in Abuja, the House of Representatives yesterday resolved that all companies linked with TSKJ and Halliburton in Nigeria should be excluded from new contracts pending conclusion of investigations on the matter.

In a bid to absolve itself of any criminal liability, Halliburton has submitted documents listing the names of Federal Government officials involved in the scandal to the French Judge presiding over the investigation in Paris yesterday.

The documents that are in the form of hand written notes are bound to cause a lot of discomfort for both present and past government officials, as it details out the precise amounts set aside for each government functionary with the intent to bribe.

Sources disclosed that the documents were submitted by executives of Halliburton to the French magistrate, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke at 5 p.m. in Paris as part of efforts by the US oil service firm to cooperate with authorities investigating the bribery scandal.

Halliburton has insisted on its innocence since investigations began last year by both the Securities and Exchange Commission of the US and French authorities, and has maintained that the alleged bribing of Nigerian officials occurred before its acquisition of Kellog Brown & Root (KBR). Halliburton has also instructed its representatives in Nigeria to submit the same documents to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFFC), which waded into the investigation in Nigeria last month.

Full Article: allafrica.com

rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 08:29 PM CST [link]

US: Food Waste and Hunger Exist Side by Side

by Haider Rizvi
NEW YORK - ''Do you want these? They are so fresh,'' says Catherine, holding up a bunch of grapes she just pulled out from one of the trash bags piled up on the sidewalk. ''Take this, man. It's good too,'' adds her friend Morlan, holding out a loaf of bread.

Though happy to have found something for dinner, both Catherine, 21, and Morlan, 19, wonder why some edible food is thrown out as garbage in New York City

''They only sell this food to the rich,'' says Catherine pointing to the upscale grocery store that put out the bags.

Inside the store, the manager is visibly upset with Catherine and other young people who are stuffing their backpacks with fruits and vegetables from the trash bags. ''They are picking up garbage,'' says the manager. ''I don't know why they are doing this.''

''I have zero cash right now, and no place to stay,'' Morlan told Tierramérica. ''What do you expect me to do?''

Such scenes are becoming increasingly commonplace on the streets of U.S. cities, despite the enormous quantity of food that the world's most affluent nation produces every year.

Official surveys indicate that every year more than 350 billion pounds (160 billion kg) of edible food is available for human consumption in the United States. Of that total, nearly 100 billion pounds (45 billion kg) -- including fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, and grain products -- are lost to waste by retailers, restaurants, and consumers.

By contrast, the amount of food required to meet the needs of the hungry is only four billion pounds, according to Food Not Bombs, an advocacy group, which estimates that every year more than 30 million people in the United States are going hungry on regular basis.

Full Article: commondreams.org
rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 08:22 PM CST [link]

Time to play the Osama card...

U.S. Near Seizing bin Laden, Official Says
By Matthew Pennington

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - The United States and its allies have moved closer to capturing Osama bin Laden in the last two months, a top U.S. counterterrorism official said in a television interview broadcast Saturday.

"If he has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking. He will be caught," Joseph Cofer Black, the U.S. State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, told private Geo television network.

Asked if concrete progress had been made during the last two months - when Pakistan has arrested dozens of terror suspects including some key al-Qaida operatives - Black said, "Yes, I would say this."

Black, who briefed a group of Pakistani journalists after talks with officials here Friday, said he could not predict exactly when bin Laden and other top al-Qaida fugitives would be nabbed.

"What I tell people, I would be surprised but not necessarily shocked if we wake up tomorrow and he's been caught along with all his lieutenants. That can happen because of the programs and infrastructure in place," he told Geo.

Bin Laden and his top associate, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding some place along the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Officials have divulged no solid intelligence about bin Laden's precise whereabouts, and it's not clear if they have any.
Full Article: myway.com
rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 12:20 PM CST [link]

The Bush Neo-Cons and Israel

by Stephen Green
[Editors' Note: This is a slightly updated version of a ground-breaking essay exposing the relationship of the neo-cons embedded in the Bush administration with the government of Israel.]

Since 9-11, a small group of "neo-conservatives" in the Administration have effectively gutted--they would say reformed--traditional American foreign and security policy. Notable features of the new Bush doctrine include the pre-emptive use of unilateral force, and the undermining of the United Nations and the principle instruments and institutions of international law....all in the cause of fighting terrorism and promoting homeland security.

Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons' past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration's new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con campaign against the other two countries which constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli military hegemony in the region--Iran and Syria.

Have the neo-conservatives--many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President--had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies?

A review of the internal security backgrounds of some of the best known among them strongly suggests the answer.

Full Article: counterpunch.org

This is a good survey of the Wolfowitz. Perle et al rogues' gallery. Pat Buchanan was on Meet the Press this morning and asked why on earth the neo-cons who led Bush and us into this disaster are not kicked out of office, why people can't see that the terrorists are not fighting American principles, but American policy, including rabid support for Sharon and ones to his right like Netanyahu. He said he doubts Osama got a hold of the Declaration of Independence and had a temper tantrum. Weird times. When Pat Buchanan speaks to the opinions of ones like me.
rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 10:33 AM CST [link]

U.S. Troops in Iraq See Highest Injury Toll Yet-1100 in August

BAGHDAD, Sept. 4 -- About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas.

U.S. medical commanders say the sharp rise in battlefield injuries reflects more than three weeks of fighting by two Army and one Marine battalion in the southern city of Najaf. At the same time, U.S. units frequently faced combat in a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in Baghdad and in the Sunni cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, all of which remain under the control of insurgents two months after the transfer of political authority.

"They were doing battlefield urban operations in four places at one time," said Lt. Col. Albert Maas, operations officer for the 2nd Medical Brigade, which oversees U.S. combat hospitals in Iraq. "It's like working in downtown Detroit. You're going literally building to building."

...There were also indications that troops might have suffered more severe wounds in August than in previous months.

At the Baghdad hospital, staff members are accustomed to seeing the most severely injured soldiers and Marines. The hospital, the only one in Iraq where the military's brain and eye surgeons work, handles the worst head wounds. Normally, perhaps half the patients who come to the emergency room qualify as "acute" cases, a term that indicates severity and urgency.

In August, however, the rate of acute cases jumped to three of four ER patients.

"It was intense," said Lt. Col. Greg Kidwell, who oversees the emergency room at the hospital.

Full Article: Washington Post
rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 10:18 AM CST [link]

Iraq's Sadr Group Says Sunni Extremists a Threat

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Prominent members of rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement have become the latest targets in a shadowy insurgency gripping Iraq, raising fears of more unrest in a country plagued by violence.

Sadr's followers say they believe the attacks are part of a wider campaign to target Iraq's Shi'ite majority, destined for power in a democratic Iraq having been sidelined for decades by Sunni Arab rulers.

Last Tuesday, members of Sadr's movement heading to Najaf were attacked by gunmen on a road notorious for drive-by shootings and kidnappings near Latifiya, south of Baghdad.

The attack, which killed three, including a political leader in the group, Basheer al-Jazairi, came a day after another member of the group, Ali al-Mohammadawi, was shot dead outside his home in southern Baghdad.

Full Article:Reuters

A 'shadowy insurgency'? Come on. Baathists and fundamentalists. 'Sunni triangle.' They control the entire western part of the country and a lot north of Bagdhad. This mystification is deliberate. Otherwise they would have to admit to the magnitude of the disaster.
rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 10:11 AM CST [link]

Parties to Injustice: Democrats Will Do Anything To Keep Me Off the Ballot

by Ralph Nader
This summer, swarms of Democratic Party lawyers, propagandists, harassers and assorted operatives have been conducting an unsavory war against my campaign's effort to secure a spot on the presidential ballots in various states. It is not enough that both major parties, in state after state, have used the legislatures to erect huge barriers, unique among Western democracies, to third party and independent candidacies. Now they are engaging in what can only be called dirty tricks and frivolous lawsuits to keep me and my running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo, off the ballot while draining precious dollars from our campaign chest.

This contemptuous drive is fueled with large amounts of unregulated money, much of it funneled through the National Progress Fund, an ostensibly independent group led by Toby Moffett, a former Democratic congressman who is currently a partner in a largely Republican lobbying firm called the Livingston Group. By contrast, to defend ourselves from the assault, we have to draw on funds that are limited and regulated by the Federal Election Commission.
Full Article: Washington Post
rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 09:56 AM CST [link]

Marked for death, the tattoo gang kids: Rebel youths pay a terrible price under zero tolerance, Honduras-style

For the street children of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, escape comes in two ways. The first is by way of a solvent-based glue called Resistol which they inhale to induce a four-hour long high.

But there is a more final exit that the street children dread - murder at the hands of the city's so-called 'death cars' and dumped in skips, dustbins and ditches.

It is not just the street children, who beg and sell their bodies on the streets of Honduras, who are victims. Other youths too are victims of a social cleansing that is sanctioned by a large proportion of the country's society.

They are Honduras's tattooed gang members with affiliations to the Los Angeles gangland. They are the number one enemy of the country's literate classes, denounced by politicians and in the media, and exterminated by police and private death squads.

Some 700 children have died in the last two years, according to Amnesty International which has been running a campaign against child murder in Honduras.

And some of these killings have been on a large scale. The latest took place on 17 May when 105 prisoners, largely young gang members with the Mara Salvatrucha gang, were locked into the El Porvenir prison in the textile-producing city of San Pedro Sula and burned alive.

It follows a similar mass killing at La Ceiba in northern Honduras last year when 51 members of the 18th Street gang were summarily shot, and their wing set on fire.

But while it has been the prison fires that have drawn the most attention, it is the constant attrition against the country's youth that is still alarming Amnesty.
Full Article:Guardian UK

"Rebel" youths? I guess it's revolutionary to try to survive.
rootsie on 09.05.04 @ 09:49 AM CST [link]

Friday, September 3rd

An African Foul-Up, With an Intriguing Cast of Britons

by Michael Wines
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 2 - They say the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Alas, the same appears not to be true of coups in Equatorial Guinea.

A week ago, South African prosecutors tied the patrician son of Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, to an improbable, botched coup in Equatorial Guinea, a minuscule, humid, African dictatorship. Now others in England's political and boarding-school elite are being dragged, over furious denials, into what is becoming a black eye for the British, whose colonialist image in Africa has been waning.

The would-be coup's ever more byzantine story, redolent of greed, stupidity, code names like Smelly and Scratcher, and "a large splodge of wonga" - apparently an Etonism for money - is providing a field day for South Africa's splashy press and its British mentors.

Full Article: New York Times
rootsie on 09.03.04 @ 10:07 PM CST [more..]

Outraged Kerry takes the gloves off at last after Republican jibes

by Julian Borger

John Kerry launched a stinging and personal counter-attack against George Bush's administration, singling out Dick Cheney, the vice-president, for having "refused to serve" in Vietnam.

The ferocity of the Democratic party's presidential challenger at the midnight rally of supporters in Ohio marked a sharp change in his campaign tactics. A few hours earlier, at the Republican party convention in New York, President Bush had joined in Mr Cheney's derision of Senator Kerry as a vacillating liberal.

The president repeated those charges yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania, lampooning Mr Kerry for voting to go to war in Iraq and then opposing a funding request in the Senate for the occupation.

"He said he was proud of his vote, and then he just said the whole thing was a complicated matter. His words," Mr Bush said. "Here are my words: There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat."

The charge that Mr Kerry was "unfit for command" was a main theme of the Republican convention, provoking outrage from the senator. He said: "I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have, and by those who misled the nation into Iraq."

Mr Kerry's seemed to be using his speech to release months of pent-up anger.

In the face of a campaign by rightwing Vietnam war veterans to question whether he merited his five combat medals, the senator had until yesterday refrained from referring directly to the actions of Mr Bush or Mr Cheney during the Vietnam era.

Both men avoided combat, while the young Lieutenant Kerry was fighting in the Mekong Delta. Mr Bush signed up with the Texas air national guard as a pilot; Mr Cheney was granted five deferments from the draft for attending college, then graduate school and finally for having a child.

The new gloves-off strategy begins after a week of debate and unease within the Kerry camp over the wisdom of restraint. It coincided with the hiring of Joe Lockhart, a former spokesman for Bill Clinton with a combative reputation.

In yesterday's speech Mr Kerry made it clear he was aiming his accusations principally at the vice-president, who had used his Wednesday night speech to portray the Democratic candidate as unfit to be commander in chief.

Mr Kerry responded: "I'll leave it up to the voters to decide whether five deferments makes someone more qualified to defend this nation than two tours of duty."

Full Article: Guardian UK

Is Kerry insane? This is the stupidest campaign strategy. Whose cojones are bigger than whose? Ick. Was the last time Kerry was proud of anything he did 1970? Here we are in a mess that could leave Vietnam in the dust, and Kerry doesn't even see fit to recall to our minds the John Kerry of 1971 who spoke out on the horror of that war. Instead he, like Bush, is determined to continue the folly.
rootsie on 09.03.04 @ 09:41 PM CST [link]

Al-Sadr Says U.S. Can't Defeat Militia

By Abdul Hussein Al-Obeidi
KUFA, Iraq (AP) - Rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr declared U.S. forces can never defeat his Mahdi militia in a defiant speech read out to 2,000 supporters during the first Friday prayers since the end of a brutal three-week standoff with American troops.

Al-Sadr aides said the cleric initially planned to deliver the sermon himself from a makeshift pulpit on the street outside the Kufa mosque, which was closed last week after militants pulled out under the peace accord. But he abandoned the idea amid fears it could raise tensions.

Iraqi security forces sealed off roads and fired warning shots near the city in an effort to keep the jostling crowds in check.

``Many, but not all, think that the American army is invincible. But now it's appeared only truth is invincible,'' Sheik Jaber al-Khafaji, said in a statement read on al-Sadr's behalf. ``America claims to control the world through globalization, but it couldn't do the same with the Mahdi Army.''

Last week's accord that ended three weeks of fighting between U.S. forces and al-Sadr militiamen in Kufa's twin city of Najaf gave the interim government control of that city. It also disentangled U.S. forces from bitter street fighting while allowing al-Sadr and his militants to walk away free - and keep their guns.

But al-Sadr portrayed the American withdrawal from Najaf's devastated Old City as a sign of U.S. military weakness. ``We should keep in mind the lessons of what happened in Najaf,'' the cleric's statement said.

The remarks appeared intended to rally al-Sadr's forces. It was not clear whether they signaled a retreat from al-Sadr's commitment to talks between his envoys and the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to stop weeks of clashes in the militant stronghold of Sadr City, a sprawling east Baghdad slum.

Full Article: Guardian UK
rootsie on 09.03.04 @ 08:43 PM CST [link]

Maid who won suit against Sony executive decries slavery

LOS ANGELES - A Filipino woman who won $825,000 in a lawsuit claiming a Hollywood executive and his wife enslaved her said the case should be a warning to others.

Nena Ruiz, 60, is a former schoolteacher from the Philippines who worked as a domestic servant for James Jackson and his wife, Elizabeth.

Jackson is vice president of legal affairs for Sony Pictures Entertainment.

In a lawsuit filed last year, Ruiz claimed the Jacksons took away her passport and paid her $300 for a year's work at the couple's Culver City condominium. She said Elizabeth Jackson also slapped her and pulled her hair repeatedly.

The couple have denied the allegations, and their lawyer said they are considering appealing.

Ruiz said she often worked 18 hours a day and was forced to do strange household chores such as heating chicken nuggets and cutting up bananas or pears for the couple's two dogs while she was fed leftovers and slept in a dog bed.

Full Article: sacbee.com
rootsie on 09.03.04 @ 07:56 PM CST [link]

Thursday, September 2nd

Tactics by Police Mute the Protesters, and Their Messages

By Michael Slackman
As the Republican National Convention approached its final evening tonight, nearly 1,800 protesters had been arrested on the streets, two-thirds of them on Tuesday night alone. But for all the anger of the demonstrations, they have barely interrupted the convention narrative, and have drawn relatively little national news coverage.

Using large orange nets to divide and conquer, and a near-zero tolerance policy for activities that even suggest the prospect of disorder, the New York Police Department has developed what amounts to a pre-emptive strike policy, cutting off demonstrations before they grow large enough, loud enough, or unruly enough to affect the convention.

The demonstrations, too, have thus far been more restrained than many recent protests elsewhere; five years ago in Seattle, for example, there was widespread arson and window-smashing, none of which has occurred here. Lacking bloody scenes of billy-club-wielding police or billowing clouds of tear gas, the cameras - and the public's attention - have focused elsewhere.

"It is almost easier to explain what you are not getting here," said Ted Koppel, anchor and managing editor of ABC's "Nightline," when he was asked why news organizations have given little time to the protests. "What you are not getting here is a replay of 1968 in Chicago."

Full Article: New York Times
rootsie on 09.02.04 @ 07:44 PM CST [link]

Cleric Says It's Right to Fight U.S. Civilians in Iraq

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian cleric based in Qatar and often described as a moderate has ruled that it is a religious duty for Muslims to fight Americans in Iraq, including U.S. civilians, his office director said Thursday.

But Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi said that two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq should be freed immediately.

Qaradawi gave his opinion at a meeting Tuesday evening at the Egyptian journalists' syndicate in Cairo.

``All of them (U.S. military personnel and civilians) are invaders who came from their country to invade our country and fighting them is a duty,'' said his office director Essam Talima, quoting a fatwa or ruling on religious law by Qaradawi.

Qaradawi is revered in much of the Muslim world for his intellectual rigor and ability to adapt the fundamental tenets of Islam to the modern world.

Full Article: Reuters
rootsie on 09.02.04 @ 07:39 PM CST [link]

Bush Reloaded

by Satya Sagar
...In fact given George Bush Jr’s brilliant record in doing permanent damage to the very political, economic and cultural foundations on which the US Super-turned Hyper-turned Imperial Power rests I would happily paraphrase ‘43’ and say ‘bring him on’ once again. Far from weeping I would actually rejoice if Bush remains as President and finishes his historical mission of dismantling, brick by brick, base by base, every outpost of the global US Empire.

Sure, I agree in the short run a new Bush Presidency could see more wars and misery than what we already have. He might go on to attack Iran next and then Syria and then North Korea. In another four years time he will come back to invade Afghanistan and Iraq once more because by then they would have surely slipped out of US control. So there we would go beating around the Bush all over again.

But despite these dire possibilities of Bush Reloaded we also need to consider the fact that US Democrats have an equally bad record of sending US troops abroad and so there is no real guarantee that America will not be at war in future under some ‘noble’ pretext or the other. After all the Democrats were the ones who were responsible for the Korean and Vietnam Wars, not to mention the bombing of Serbia- all in the service of the same military-financial-corporate complex that Bush Jr. serves. Already we know for example that Bush’s main opponent at the polls, John Kerry, objects not to the invasion of Iraq but only to the ‘way it was sold’ to the world.

So on balance, as far as many in the Third World are concerned, I think there is nothing much to really choose between the main contestants of the next US election. They are all going to bomb us anyway and to mangle the English language a bit ‘A Known Devil in the Bush is surely worth two Unknown in the Curry, er, I mean Kerry’...

Full Article: zmag.org
rootsie on 09.02.04 @ 07:34 PM CST [link]

Wednesday, September 1st

Nobody But Bush

by Rootsie

It seems like everybody woke up today and realized John Kerry is going to lose. Badly. Weirdly enough, Arnold's speech at the RNC last night ripped it.

It was the night of the post-modern Republican. Against a spartan and tasteful backdrop (where the guady red, white, and blue banners and balloons and cavorting elephants?), and the pixillated split screens, first Schwartzenegger and the MTV Bush twins, crackin wise on Gammy Barbara and uncool (and yet cool) mom Laura...where were the Republicans?

Where Jerry Falwell? Where the blue-haired ladies from Texas? Instead of Pat Boone, the Harlem Boys' Choir. Instead of 'family values,' sexy talk and sculpted macho brawn. The camera pans to wife Maria Shriver, looking sleek and horsey and o so Kennedy (for all that she didn't know what to do with her hands-clap as her hubby led the crowd in chanting 'four more years'?). Iraq war as action-hero-land.

All to be said is 'brilliant.' If this was Rove's show, you have to hand it to him. The trap is sprung, and Kerry and Company stepped right in. The script was flipped-this time it was the Democrats with the busy suffocating decor, the sentimental slop, the painting of their candidate as super-patriot, the paeans to God and country. The Republicans look young and hip, tanned GW on the jumbo-tron in cornflower-blue shirt and blue jeans, smiling indulgently as his daughters roast him. Very GQ. Wife Laura delivered a low-key answer to Teresa Heinz's speech, celebrating the girls in Afghanistan who now can go to school, the females in the crowd waving "'W' Stands for Women" signs.

Nary a peep about the war at the Democrats' convention-the Republicans on the other hand never stopped talking about it, about the peace-loving president forced by history into the role of war-time leader. The reluctant, conflicted post-modern hero.

This election comes down to the 'undecideds,' and the Republicans did not need a media spectacle highlighting their apocalyptic Christian power base. No talking about aborted fetuses and the sanctity of hetero marriage. No. They needed to portray a Republican party embracing diversity, celebrating divergent opinions, welcoming the poor lost sheep in from the cold. They succeeded. A lot of those young Republicans in the crowd in their tailored suits look positively metro.

And Kerry made it so easy. By wrapping himself in the flag and trying to embue Vietnam in a golden glow a la WWII, he showed that the Democrats are hopelessly out of their league when it comes to the propoganda and pageantry of this new media age. They are the old fogies reminiscing in their wheelchairs while the Republicans carry it forward.

Few in that enormous march on Sunday carried signs for Kerry. 'Anyone But Bush' has backfired. Duh. Anybody but Bush has turned out to be nobody.

Remember Wavy Gravy in the 70's and his 'Nobody for President?' Because Nobody loves you when you're down and out. And Nobody cares.
rootsie on 09.01.04 @ 09:10 PM CST [link]

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5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30