Judges Behaving Badly

"Eloge" des juges sans scrupules dans la societe americaine, ou le judiciaire n'est pas du tout exemplaire a comparer d'autres pays (le RU):


Judges Behaving Badly
The Economist

Thursday 28 June 2007

Low pay and partisan elections are threatening judicial integrity.

A $54m lawsuit over a pair of pinstriped trousers that went missing from a Washington, DC, cleaners was thrown out by a judge this week. It had attracted worldwide ridicule. The fact that the case was brought, not by a random loony, but by a former judge has added to the sense that something is wrong not just with America's litigation laws, but with the kind of men and women Americans choose to sit in judgment over them.

A whole series of judicial misdemeanours, ranging from the titillating to the outrageous, has emerged over the past year. Take the Florida state judge, John Sloop, who was ousted after complaints about his "rude and abusive" behaviour. This included an order to strip-search and jail 11 defendants for arriving late in traffic court after being misdirected. Or the Californian judge, José Velasquez, sacked in April for a plethora of misconduct, including extending the sentences of defendants who dared question his rulings.

Then there was the Albany city judge, William Carter, in New York, censored for his "utterly inexcusable" conduct after jumping down from the bench during a trial, shedding his robes and apparently challenging a defendant to a fist-fight. Another time, he suggested that the police "thump the shit out" of an allegedly disrespectful defendant. Mr Carter wasn't carrying a gun; many judges now do. In Florida, Charles Greene, chief criminal judge in Broward County, had to step down after describing a trial for attempted murder involving minority defendants and witnesses as "NHI" (No Humans Involved). Then there are the sexual peccadilloes. In Colorado, a (male) judge resigned after admitting having sex with a (female) prosecutor in his chambers. In California, a former judge was jailed for 27 months for downloading child pornography. And in Oklahoma Donald Thompson, a judge for more than 20 years, was jailed for four years for indecent exposure and using a "penis pump" to masturbate during trials.

More serious are the cases of corruption. On June 5th Gerald Garson, a former judge in Brooklyn, New York, was jailed for taking bribes to rig divorce cases. Another judge was convicted of accepting money to refer clients to a particular lawyer. Rumours of buying and selling of judgeships in the district abound. At one time, one in ten Brooklyn judges were said to be under investigation for sleaze.

"To distrust the judiciary," said Honoré de Balzac, "marks the beginning of the end of society." In Britain, judges are one of the most respected groups. But in America they tend to be held in low esteem, particularly at state level. For this many people blame low pay and the fact that judges are elected. In 39 states, some or all judges are elected for fixed terms. Federal judges, usually held in much higher esteem, are appointed on merit for life-as in Britain.

Most states allow judicial candidates to raise campaign funds. Huge sums are often involved, leading to inevitable suspicions that, once on the bench, judges will pass judgments that favour their benefactors. In 2004 the two candidates in one Illinois district (with a population of just 1.3m) raised a staggering $9.4m between them. Some of the states with the highest levels of campaign spending-Texas, Louisiana and Alabama-are also those whose judges are most criticised.

In the past, judicial candidates were banned from discussing controversial legal or political issues on the campaign trail. But in 2002 the Supreme Court ruled such bans to be unconstitutional, leading candidates to advertise freely their views on abortion and suchlike. Personal attacks have also become more common. Indeed, Sandra Day O'Connor, a former Supreme Court justice, fears that judicial elections have turned into "political prize-fights, where partisans and special interests seek to install judges who will answer to them instead of the law and the constitution."

The meagre salaries of judges, whether at state or federal level, do not help raise standards either. Federal judges have not had a real pay rise for 17 years; a district court judge earns $165,000 a year, about the same as a first-year associate in a top law firm. John Roberts, chief justice of the Supreme Court, earns just $212,000-half the salary of England's top judge and one-fifth of the average income of a partner in the majority of America's 100 top-grossing law firms. Around 40 judges have left the federal bench over the past five years.

In his annual report to Congress in January, Mr Roberts said that the issue of judges' pay had reached "the level of a constitutional crisis". It was threatening the judiciary's strength and independence. In February, Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, promised legislation to fix it within the current session. The judges are still waiting. Meanwhile, state judges in New York are preparing to sue the state for their first pay rise since 1999. The battle is joined.

Palestinian Pundit: One of the Immediate Challenges to Hamas

Palestinian Pundit: One of the Immediate Challenges to Hamas

Court allows student's anti-Bush T-shirt

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Putting its recent ruling on student speech into practice, the Supreme Court on Friday rejected a school district's appeal of a ruling that it violated a student's rights by censoring his anti-Bush T-shirt.

A seventh-grader from Vermont was suspended for wearing a shirt that bore images of cocaine and a martini glass - but also had messages calling President Bush a lying drunk driver who abused cocaine and marijuana, and the "chicken-hawk-in-chief" who was engaged in a "world domination tour."

After his suspension, Zachary Guiles returned to school with duct tape covering the offending images.

Williamstown Middle School Principal Kathleen Morris-Kortz said the images violated the school dress code, which prohibits clothing that promotes the use of drugs or alcohol.

An appeals court said the school had no right to censor any part of the shirt.

On Monday, the court said schools could regulate student expression if it advocated illegal drug use. Justice Samuel Alito cautioned that schools could not censor political speech.

The case is Marineau v. Guiles, 06-757.

Prince Bandar and 9/11

On commence a en savoir un peu plus sur cette affaire du 11 septembre. En fait il est tres probable que les detracteurs de cette attaque terrorsite avaient des liens avec la fraternite musulmane (Muslim Brotherhood), et le pire c'est que l'ami de Bush, qui s'appelle Bandar (avant les elections ils avaient organise des rendez-vous secrets au Texas pour parler de geopolitique, ce fut confirme par le Washington Post) aurait organise le rapatriement de la famille de Ben Laden en Arabie Saoudite. On a bombarde l'Afghanistan et l'Irak pour quoi alors? Lisez le reste en anglais, c'est choquant.

Between April 1998 and May 2002, some $51-73,000 in checks and cashier's checks were provided by the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and his wife to two families in southern California, who in turn bankrolled at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. The story was investigated by the 9/11 Commission, but never fully resolved, and remains, to this day, one of the key unanswered questions concerning the backing for the worst terrorist attack ever to occur on U.S. soil.

According to numerous news accounts and the records of the 9/11 Commission, in April 1998, a Saudi national named Osama Basnan wrote to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., seeking help for his wife, Majeda Dweikat, who needed surgery for a thyroid condition. Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador, wrote a check for $15,000 to Basnan. Beginning in December 1999, Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar, began sending regular monthly cashier checks to Majeda Dweikat, in amounts ranging from $2,000 to $3,500. Many of these checks were signed over to Manal Bajadr, the wife of Omar al-Bayoumi, another Saudi living in the San Diego area.

Around New Year's Day 2000, two other Saudi nationals, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, where they were greeted by al-Bayoumi, provided with cash, and outfitted with an apartment, Social Security ID cards, and other financial assistance. Al-Bayoumi helped the two Saudi men to enrolled in flight schools in Florida. Two months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, al-Bayoumi moved to England, and shortly after that, he disappeared altogether. But before his disappearance, and within days of the 9/11 attacks, agents of New Scotland Yard, working in conjunction with the FBI, raided his apartment in England and found papers hidden beneath the floorboards, according to Newsweek magazine, that had the phone numbers of several officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Al-Bayoumi was suspected by the Arab community in the San Diego area of being an agent of Saudi intelligence, which kept tabs on Saudi residents in the area, particularly Saudi students attending college in southern California.

Sources have told EIR researchers that Basnan was also long suspected of being an agent for Saudi Arabia's foreign intelligence service. According to the sources, Basnan was arrested for drug possession in southern California and the Saudi government intervened to get the charges dropped; Basnan also befriended Alhazmi and Almihdhar prior to their deaths on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. At one point, the Basnans, the al-Bayoumis, and the two 9/11 hijackers all lived at the Parkwood Apartments in San Diego.

Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa denied they played any role in financing the 9/11 hijackers, and claimed that they were merely providing charitable assistance to the Saudi community in the United States. The two co-chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, Robert Graham (D-Fla.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), accused the FBI of failing to fully pursue this "9/11 money trail." Sources told EIR that the FBI refused to allow the committee to interview the FBI investigators who had probed the Basnan and al-Bayoumi links.

While Congressional and law enforcement sources insist to EIR investigators that all available leads were pursued and no compelling evidence of Saudi involvement in 9/11 was established, other U.S. intelligence sources maintain that many fruitful areas of investigation simply reached dead-ends before any final conclusions could be drawn. And these sources report that some of the Al-Yamamah funds, including some funds that passed through the Riggs Bank accounts in Washington, financed a migration of Muslim Brotherhood members to the United States, throughout the 1980s and 1990s. That hardly constitutes a smoking gun, these sources emphasize, but raises serious unanswered questions, particularly in light of the fact that the official staff reports of the 9/11 Commission featured a detailed debriefing of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who admitted that he had been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood since he was 16 years old.

Cost Of Cheney’s Executive Office: $4.75 Million

Au temps des Rois:

Reacting to the Office of the Vice President’s assertion that it is not an “entity within the executive branch,” Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) will introduce an amendment this week to cut off funding to Cheney’s office. Last night on MSNBC, he was asked how much money is spent on Vice President Cheney for an executive office he claims he’s not apart of:

MATTHEWS: Do you know, Congressman, how much money — how much money is spent by the taxpayer to give this guy a huge operations staff, a huge policy staff? He’s got travel all over the world. Do you know how big a budget he has right now?

EMANUEL: He has a residence. He has an entire operation that supports him as vice president. And then he also has, as you said, the travel. I mean, it’s in the millions of dollars.

Now we have a number. Roll Call reports today that President Bush has requested $4.75 million in fiscal 2008 to fund the Vice President’s operations (parts of which are housed, notably, in the Executive Office Building.)

In related news, Emanuel’s proposal is gaining steam in the Senate. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), who chairs the subcommittee that funds the vice president’s budget, yesterday warned Cheney that “his office would risk losing its budget” unless the vice president agrees to follow the executive order. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) also said he would “seriously consider” legislation to defund Cheney’s office, calling it “one of the only resorts we have.”

UPDATE: The White House budget request is HERE.

L'homme et la connaissance

Petit essai philosophique qui vaut ce qui vaut. La philosophie c'est bien, c'est beau, c'est la vibration de l'esprit, mais chaque fois que je rentre dans un probleme, je me retrouve dans un autre probleme. Accrochez vos ceintures.

Si nous devons serieusement examiner l’issue qu’il est possible de demontrer 2 theories qui s’opposent, alors nous devons prendre un peu de temps pour parler de ce qu’il y a savoir sous toute sorte de circonstances. C’est la ou nous devons examiner la nature de la connaissance ou si vous preferez la condition necessaire de la connaissance. Quelles sont les conditions qui doivent etre rencontrees, le minimum de connaissance afin que l’on puisse justifier et donner dans un contexte que l’on connait X, Y ou Z.

En guise de preface, je vous propose d’examiner les conditions necessaires de la connaissance avec une admission: il y a des philosophes et il y a eu des philosophes a travers l’histoire qui ont conclu qu’il n’est pas possible pour nous de savoir quelque-chose, et on appelle ces gens-la des sceptiques radicaux. Et ces gens-la sont rellement convaincus, bien qu’ils ne peuvent dire qu’ils savent cela parce-que ce serait inconsistent, mais il sont vraiment convaincus et puisamment convaincus que pour une raison ou une autre, les gens ne sont jamais dans une position de reclamer la connaissance sur n’importe quel critere. Un tel philosophe sceptique radical dans nos jours presents est Peter Unger.

Ma admission est que je ne traiterai pas de ce sujet-la, les issues qui englobent la philosophie du scepticisme radical et si on connait vraiment quelque-chose sur n’importe quel sujet sont suffisament complexes qu’elles auraient vraiment besoin de lier le traitement incomplique dans leur propre droit. Alors je vais pretendre, mais vous allez devoir reconnaitre que c’est une pretention du haut de l’avant, que de temps a autre, au moins deux jours par semaine, lorsque le vent est dans la bonne la direction, alors il y a certainement des choses que nous savons en comparaison a plusieurs choses que nous ne savons pas. A titre d’exemple 75% des decisions d’un etre humain sont d’ordre irrationnel. Et ce que je veux prendre en consideration pour aujourd’hui c’est de regarder quelles sont les caracteristiques de ces choses que nous pourrions identifier en tant que connaissances confortables et acceptables dans un esprit cartesien journalier (sens commun). D’ou partons-nous lorsque nous devons faire la distinction entre un opinion mirroire et une bonne et solide connaissance dans nos affaires de tous les jours. Et je garderai la clause conditionnelle suspendu dans l’air que peut-etre nous ne savons rien du tout, peut-etre sommes-nous condemnes en ignorance totale et complete pour tout le temps de l’eternite. Vous ne pouvez prouver que le scepticisme radical est faux parce-que pour construire une preuve et de demontrer que quelque-chose pour etre connu sur base et une rangee de certaines evidences. Et si la question a ete mise sur la table pour savoir si quelque-chose peut etre connu ou pas, alors le radical sceptique ne peut pas etre dans une position d’accepter des arguments qui sont presentables puisque le sceptisme radical est dans ce sens accompli individuellement par soi-meme. C’est irrefutable parce-qu’il fait appel au procede des arguments et de la demonstration elle-meme en question. Bertrand Russel a dit une fois qu’il n’y a aucun argument sur n’importe quoi et n’importe ou qui n’avaient jamais ete articules dans des termes que nous pourrions desaprouver les radicaux sceptiques, et il ajouta meme que nous ne devons pas nous en inquieter parce-qu’il n’y a aucune raison sur la terre de savoir que c’est vrai. Nous ne pouvons le desapprouver, mais c’est pragmatiquement et pratiquement bizarre d’entretenir cette notion, parce-que tout chose que nous faisons dans la vie de tous les jours est affirme sur la distinction simple et basique entre “savoir quelque-chose” et “avoir un opinion ou une croyance. C’est la distinction entre ces 2 elements que je veux explorer pour un petit moment et je vais essayer de l’approcher a la limite d’un niveau pratique en regardant a certaines choses que nous disons que nous connaissons, et d’autres choses que nous croyons meme si nous ne voulons pas dire que nous les connaissons, et d’autres choses dont je crois bien que d’autres gens n’y croient pas, et si je ne les crois pas alors surement je ne vais pas admettre que ces gens-la connaissent ces choses-la, peut-etre meme je peux y croire et meme admettre qu’ils ont tort.

Pour expliquer cette confusion, nous devons partir de la condition necessaire d’avoir un opinion mirroite pour aller au niveau du dessus que l’on appelle connaissance. Maintenant parmis les choses dont je suis en mesure de dire que je connais et la plupart des gens seront d’accord avec moi, sont des sujets de faits, ou des faits divers. Par exemple je suis parfaitement capable de dire en ce moment a l’heure ou j’ecris ces lignes qu’il y a des gens qui meurent dans ce monde, et je sais cela en regardant les informations ou bien en ouvrant le journal. Donc je suis bien confiant de pouvoir dire qu’il y a de gens qui meurent dans ce monde, par les medias ou bien en regardant autour de moi. Je suis aussi tres confortable de dire que les cygnes sont de couleur blanche et bien de couleur noire. Maintenant la facon don’t je sais cela est tres differente de la facon don’t je sais qu’il y a des gens qui meurent sur la terre, et je dois vous dire pourtant qu’a un temps de ma vie, j’aurais parfaitement ete capable de dire que les cygnes dans ce monde sont blancs, et j’avais tort, j’avais fait un erreur de jugement. Je me souviens la premiere fois ou j’avais vu un cygne noir, il nageait dans les lacs, au bord d’une Universite americaine ou j’enseignais. Et ce jour-la j’etais effraye et stupefait, donc j’ouvris un livre et je commenca a regarder ces majestueuses beautes se mouvant sur l’eau, et je decouvris que ces especes proviennent du Japon. Donc je continua ma recherche, et je me demandais si il y avait plusieurs couleurs, et j’appris qu’il y avait d’autres couleur que le noir, donc je suis en mesure de dire que je sais parfaitement cela, et que les cygnes existent avec des couleurs multiples. Ce qui est frappant, c’est que nous apportons des conclusions dans la vie de tous les jours, base sur un nombre d’evidences limites, et pourtant nous le faisons tous les jours et dans un ordre spontane et nous le faisons habituellement et de facon certaine.

Certaines choses que nous voulons reconnaitre sont basees sur des sujets de fait ou bien des faits formels comme les mathematiques formels: je suis parfaitement en mesure de dire en me prononcant sur des bases arithmetiques que le chiffre cinq est plus grand que le chiffre trois, et il n’y a aucune maniere que vous puissiez comprendre les tables arithmetiques sans parvenir a cette meme conclusion. De meme je suis en mesure de dire que la negation d’une conjunction est la meme que deux negations d’une disjunction. Plus dangereusement maintenant certaines choses que je suis en mesure de dire sont normatives. Et ce n’est pas evident de dire cela dans un monde moderne, car ca manque d’elegance, et pourtant je le fais. Bon maintenant normative ne veut pas dire “moral”, et pourtant je suis en mesure de dire que instruire dans des petites classes et plus riche que d’instruire dans des grandes classes. J’ai essaye differentes classes, des colloques, des seminaires, des travaux diriges, et je prefere les petites classes et je base ce jugement par mon experience. Bien sur il prendrait une longue analyse d’argumenter ce que je veux dire par “les petites classes sont mieux que les grandes classes” mais c’est un jugement de valeur et je n’en demordrai pas. Il y a d’autres choses aussi dont je ne demordrai pas meme si certains gens pensent le contraire. Par exemple la torture est malefique. Vous pouvez me dire que la torture doit etre utilisee pour extraire de l’information, et pourtant je ne me sentirai pas convaincu, il n’y a aucune excuse, il n’y a pas de rationnel, il n’y a pas de justification, il n’y a rien de positif qui excuserait cette pensee dans un contexte: la torture est malsaine. C’est un exemple ou l’homme obeit ou devrait obeir a des normes morales. Ce sont quelques exemples, et maintenant par contraste il faudrait se concentrer sur des exemples que nous croyons mais que nous ne savons rien sur eux, parce-que si nous sommes capable de dire quelle est la difference entre ceci et cela, alors nous sommes capable d’affirmer sur quoi reposent les conditions necessaires de savoir. Par exemple, je peux assumer que le Soudan se situe dans le nord de l’Equateur mais je ne suis pas certain de mon affirmation. Donc je ne peux pas dire que je suis certain, mais je suis pas relativement certain. Maintenant je peux dire que les quantums de mecaniques de Eisenberg ne contredisent pas les mecaniques newtoniennes et je crois cela; par contre je ne connais pas cela d’un autre cote parce-qu’il n’y a pas d’evidence encore. Il y aura probablement beaucoup de choses a faire pour extraire la theorie dure de la theorie du chaos avant que l’on soit capable de se prononcer sur l’indeterminance de la mechanique quantique va dans le meme sens que la voix de Newton. Je ne pense pas que cela sera capable d’etre prouve, ultimement cela risque d’etre un cas special, mais je ne connais pas cela, c’est simplement un fait base sur des croyances. Par exemple je ne crois pas en l’adultere et le sexe en dehors du marriage, et avant que je pose mes affirmations la-dessus, dans une societe normative, mon esprit est immediatement assailli par certains standards de qualification. Et pourtant nous avons tous entendu parler dans une autre civilisation plus differente de la notre qu’une jeune femme mariee fut condamee a mort pour avoir ete violee; et ca me gene enormement. Donc quand je parle des relations sexuelles dans le marriage uniquement, je ne peux pas englober completement cette affirmation d’une maniere generale, donc je dois considerer au moins les possibilites qu’il y a des circonstances attenuantes dans lesquelles mes convictions morales doivent etre prise de cote.

Ne vous fiez pas aux apparences

J'ai trouve cela sur un autre blog. Non desole ce n'est pas une mercedes mais c'etait une suzuki originellement, et il parait que c'est typique des scenes journalieres en Russie ou la contrefacon est rampante dans ce pays.

Cliquez sur le lien, le blog est interessant.

Un petit air de paradis

Une piscine privee a Las Vegas

La peine de mort sur le sort d'un detenu americain

Dans un pays ou l'on pratique la peine de mort car il n'y a pas de repentance dans le messianisme juridique americain, les opposants contre la peine de mort s'interrogent sur l'ethique du sort du prisonnier Jimmy Dale Bland dont ses jours sont comptes suite a un cancer generalise en phase terminale. En d'autres mots, on ne s'interroge plus directement sur la peine de mort mais sur l'ethique generale d'un prisonnier malade face a la peine de mort. Il y a tout un tas de questions que les Americains sont en droit de se poser:

- Est-ce-qu'un malade en phase terminale merite t'il la peine de mort, puisqu'il va mourir?

- Que faire de la clemence de la justice?

- Est-ce-que les medicaments de son traitement chimiotherapeutique ne vont pas interagir avec l'injection fatale d'agents chimiques? Si oui, ne va t'on pas compliquer ses souffrances au lieu d'y mettre fin?

Bref les questions sont posees, et l'oeil de la justice est tres clair sur cette affaire: les conditions medicales latentes ne peuvent pas annuler une condamnation a mort, et les parents de la victime estiment que ce prisonnier ne merite pas de mourir de cause naturelle. Finalement voila qu'une peine de mort pour une fois annulera la souffrance cancereuse d'un patient. Sur une note personnelle, je suis contre la peine de mort en general, c'est un acte barbare, et en plus la justice n'est pas toujours raison, il arrive parfois que la justice envoie des innocents sur l'echaffaut de la peine de mort.

Cliquez sur le lien comme d'habitude.

The Bases are loaded

Cliquez sur le lien pour regarder la video en anglais: les Americains ne quitteront jamais l'Irak.

Telecharger la video.

CNN n'est pas capable de situer l'Afghanistan sur une carte geographique

L'Afghanistan se situe dans la Syrie chez eux. Et ce n'est rien, et ce n'est meme pas etonnant que le terme "Al Qaeda" a completement perdu sa clarte aupres des commentateurs americains. D'ailleurs je vais ecrire un billet sur ce sujet tres bientot, par contre le billet sera en anglais.

Arming Iraq: A Chronology of U.S. Involvement

By: John King, March 2003

What follows is an accurate chronology of United States involvement in the arming of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war 1980-88. It is a powerful indictment of the president Bush administration attempt to sell war as a component of his war on terrorism. It reveals US ambitions in Iraq to be just another chapter in the attempt to regain a foothold in the Mideast following the fall of the Shah of Iran.

rming Iraq and the Path to War
A crisis always has a history, and the current crisis with Iraq is no exception. Below are some relevant dates.

September, 1980. Iraq invades Iran. The beginning of the Iraq-Iran war. [8]

February, 1982. Despite objections from congress, President Reagan removes Iraq from its list of known terrorist countries. [1]

December, 1982. Hughes Aircraft ships 60 Defender helicopters to Iraq. [9]

1982-1988. Defense Intelligence Agency provides detailed information for Iraq on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb damage assessments. [4]

November, 1983. A National Security Directive states that the U.S would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran. [1] & [15]

November, 1983. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy and its Branch in Atlanta begin to funnel $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. [14]

October, 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act. [16]

November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians. [1]

Donald Rumsfeld -Reagan's Envoy- provided Iraq with chemical & biological weapons

December 20, 1983. Donald Rumsfeld , then a civilian and now Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support. [1] & [15]

July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. [19]

January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of "dual-use" export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application. [2]

March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. [10]

May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. [3]

May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq. [7]

March, 1987. President Reagan bows to the findings of the Tower Commission admitting the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Oliver North uses the profits from the sale to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. [17]

Late 1987. The Iraqi Air Force begins using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq. [1]

February, 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages. [8]

April, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas. [7]

August, 1988. Four major battles were fought from April to August 1988, in which the Iraqis massively and effectively used chemical weapons to defeat the Iranians. Nerve gas and blister agents such as mustard gas are used. By this time the US Defense Intelligence Agency is heavily involved with Saddam Hussein in battle plan assistance, intelligence gathering and post battle debriefing. In the last major battle with of the war, 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas. Use of chemical weapons in war is in violation of the Geneva accords of 1925. [6] & [13]

August, 1988. Iraq and Iran declare a cease fire. [8]

August, 1988. Five days after the cease fire Saddam Hussein sends his planes and helicopters to northern Iraq to begin massive chemical attacks against the Kurds. [8]

September, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq. [7]

September, 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: "The US-Iraqi relationship is... important to our long-term political and economic objectives." [15]

December, 1988. Dow chemical sells $1.5 million in pesticides to Iraq despite knowledge that these would be used in chemical weapons. [1]

July 25, 1990. US Ambassador to Baghdad meets with Hussein to assure him that President Bush "wanted better and deeper relations". Many believe this visit was a trap set for Hussein. A month later Hussein invaded Kuwait thinking the US would not respond. [12]

August, 1990 Iraq invades Kuwait. The precursor to the Gulf War. [8]

July, 1991 The Financial Times of London reveals that a Florida chemical company had produced and shipped cyanide to Iraq during the 80's using a special CIA courier. Cyanide was used extensively against the Iranians. [11]

August, 1991. Christopher Droguol of Atlanta's branch of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro is arrested for his role in supplying loans to Iraq for the purchase of military supplies. He is charged with 347 counts of felony. Droguol is found guilty, but US officials plead innocent of any knowledge of his crime. [14]

June, 1992. Ted Kopple of ABC Nightline reports: "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush Sr., operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980's, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into [an aggressive power]." [5]

July, 1992. "The Bush administration deliberately, not inadvertently, helped to arm Iraq by allowing U.S. technology to be shipped to Iraqi military and to Iraqi defense factories... Throughout the course of the Bush administration, U.S. and foreign firms were granted export licenses to ship U.S. technology directly to Iraqi weapons facilities despite ample evidence showing that these factories were producing weapons." Representative Henry Gonzalez, Texas, testimony before the House. [18]

February, 1994. Senator Riegle from Michigan, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, testifies before the senate revealing large US shipments of dual-use biological and chemical agents to Iraq that may have been used against US troops in the Gulf War and probably was the cause of the illness known as Gulf War Syndrome. [7]

August, 2002. "The use of gas [during the Iran-Iraq war] on the battle field by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern... We were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose". Colonel Walter Lang, former senior US Defense Intelligence officer tells the New York Times. [4]

This chronology of the United States' sordid involvement in the arming of Iraq can be summarized in this way: The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was know that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked UN censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.

References:

1. Washingtonpost.com. December 30, 2002
2. Jonathan Broder. Nuclear times, Winter 1990-91
3. Kurt Nimno. AlterNet. September 23, 2002
4. Newyorktimes.com. August 29, 2002
5. ABC Nightline. June9, 1992
6. Counter Punch, October 10, 2002
7. Riegle Report: Dual Use Exports. Senate Committee on Banking. May 25, 1994
8. Timeline: A walk Through Iraq's History. U.S. Department of State
9. Doing Business: The Arming of Iraq. Daniel Robichear
10. Glen Rangwala. Labor Left Briefing, 16 September, 2002
11. Financial Times of London. July 3, 1991
12. Elson E. Boles. Counter Punch. October 10, 2002
13. Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988. Iranchamber.com
14. Columbia Journalism Review. March/April 1993. Iraqgate
15. Times Online. December 31, 2002. How U.S. Helped Iraq Build Deadly Arsenal
16. Bush's Secret Mission. The New Yorker Magazine. November 2, 1992
17. Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia: Iran-Contra Affair
18. Congressional Record. July 27, 1992. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez
19. Bob Woodward. CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War. Washington Post. 15 December, 1986
20. Case Study: The Anfal Campaign. www.gendercide.com

Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

Chemical Warfare In The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

The Iran-Iraq War: Serving American Interests

The United States and Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

Pictures of Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

Interviews with Leuren Moret and Alfred Webre on International 9/11 Citizen’s War Crimes Tribunal

Wealth is never created by destroying things. This is extreme capitalism killing itself."

~ Leuren Moret, June 20, 2007

An unprecedented event is scheduled to take place Sunday, June 24, 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, at the Vancouver 9/11 Truth Conference. At this 9/11 Conference, Independent Scientist and world-renowned Uranium Weapons radiation expert, Leuren Moret, and International Lawyer Alfred Webre, J.D., M.Ed., will be calling publicly for the establishment of an International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal.

The only disappointing aspect about this event is that 300 Million Americans will not be around to watch - and celebrate - this historical announcement, as it will be taking place in Canada. One certainly hopes that somebody remembers to bring a video camera.

Almost six years have passed since the horrific crimes which have permanently etched graphic, disturbing images into the world’s collective memory. September 11, 2001 was a day filled with tragedies of incalculable devastation and loss in which countless homes, lives, and dreams were obliterated in not much more than the blink of an eye.

But this is not just an American deal. Sure, the lives of 3,000 Americans and those who loved them were shattered that day; but for millions of Middle Easterners daily existence has been forever contaminated with the lingering, cumulative effects of radioactive, infinitesimal, invisible Uranium aerosols of war that the self-proclaimed deliverers of "democracy"-American-style, continue to spew, forever poisoning the air, water, soil and food supply.

In addition to the massive Uranium poisoning effectively conducted with the occupying military’s weapons of war, the events of September 11 forever obliterated any sense of "normal" life, as we in the United States used to know it, beginning the very moment the massive heinous killing spree was first reported.

One could say that America has become the land of the walking zombie – with citizens controlled by fear and a rapidly growing, alarming cognizance that our government, once looked upon as a benign entity that functioned as caretaker, dedicated to looking after its populace’s needs, health, and pursuit of happiness, is nothing more than a brutal police state heavily entrenched in fascist ideology; it is seen to be hiding behind a cross and a flag while single-mindedly hell-bent on imperialistic crusades in search of ever more resources, power, and control – but only for those who pull the strings, naturally … and their wealthy friends.

When I first heard about the upcoming announcement of the International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal, I realized that if Leuren Moret, arguably the nation’s most ardent, knowledgeable, and passionate anti-Uranium weapons voice was involved, that this must be the "real thing". I was also familiar with Alfred Webre, J.D., M.Ed., who had, to his tremendous credit, initiated The September 11 Treason Independent Prosecutor Act.

Still, I admit to being more than a bit curious to discover the driving force behind the pursuit of justice for the False Flag war crimes of 9/11, when the entire US government had long ago washed its hands of the matter. In short, while my heart pounded wildly at the words "International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal", I could not help but think, as righteous as this effort might sound: would it – could it – possibly, really, actually work?

To find out what was driving this action, I first approached Leuren Moret. She has earned a M.A. degree with completed coursework for a Ph.D., and is an independent geo-scientist and environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, California. She has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions, including the Tokyo International Tribunal for War Crimes in Afghanistan, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Conference, the World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and a Public Hearing for the ICTA in Manila, Philippines. Moret also serves on the organizing committees of the World Committee on Radiation Risk and International Criminal Tribunal for Iraq and has written volumes on the topic of Uranium weapons of war.

I asked Moret what made her want to become involved with calling for a Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal. She replied, "I don't think there is any choice. Someone has to stop it, and hold the perpetrators accountable."

I should have figured that this would be her reply, as Moret had previously written about tracking radiation from Depleted Uranium at the Pentagon. It was obvious that she did not believe the pre-packaged caveman story either.

Wondering what outcome did she think - or hope - this might have, Moret replied encouragingly: "People are beginning to act, and to think, and to get in touch with their anger. That becomes the power to fight back and to feel empowered. If we are able to reach our spiritual energy and our real potential, the perpetrators will soon be chased down the street, caught, and hanging from the gallows."

In complete candor, the visual that phrase conjured up was one I had never before so graphically contemplated. Admittedly, as loathe as one might be to admit out loud to such gruesome thinking, the image of the war-making civilian-killers from Washington, in their designer suits and star-emblazoned, military-green uniforms, lifelessly dangling from the tallest old oak trees inside Lafayette Park, holds a certain fascinating - while undoubtedly macabre – appeal.

Well, if you stop to think about it for a moment, what punishment, would be just, proper, and fitting for such beasts-in-human-form-only who have, quite literally, knowingly, and radioactively contaminated not "only" several nations, but an entire planet for all eternity?

Moret continued, "It's a process. Getting people into the process is the most important step. After that, it takes on its own path and dynamic and we just need to be there engaged in the process. I know. That's how it happened to me ... Suddenly you look around and say, 'How did I get here?’, and realize you are doing the most important work you have ever done ... and you feel nothing but the incredible lightness of being. And you realize that all these other light beings are swarming around you helping ... and that is exactly what is happening. It is not hierarchical or structured, it is more like insects swarming ... a global diffuse and very powerful movement that cannot be attacked or defeated."

Further elaborating with the sense of an individual who had given intense contemplation on her purpose in this mission, Moret explained, "It's beautiful, it's effortless, and it's done with the greatest sense of joy and love in the world... and we are all working side by side.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself. Toss it away, dismiss it, give it no thought or power. Just start doing..."

After these words, I was both inspired and encouraged. Moret’s heart was clearly into this - but deeply - and knowing her personal history as that of a determined, courageous, and dedicated humanitarian activist, my hopes and optimism for the International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal only continued to rise.

Hoping to get more legal background on what grounds such a tribunal would be based, I spoke next with Alfred Webre. An international attorney and dual citizen of the United States and Canada, Alfred Webre, J.D., M.Ed., is a member of the Bar in the District of Columbia in Washington, DC. Weber was born at a US Naval base during World War II in Pensecola, Florida, and has "multiple connections" in both Canada and the US.

No stranger to exposing crime, Webre shared, "Since 1975, I worked closely with Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, the Chairman of the House Banking Committee in the US House of Representatives, who established the House Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy and Malcolm X … He invited me down to Washington and in 1975 we agreed to start a congressional investigation. And several months later, because of our joint efforts, it was started. So I’ve been in this business a long time and many of the same principals who were involved in the assassination on John F. Kennedy as a False Flag Operation were involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 False Flag Operation."

With experience in seeking legal justice for international war crimes as well, Webre had been named as a Judge for the War Crimes Tribunal for the Kuala Lumpur Peace Conference in Malaysia. I next asked what had gotten them initially thinking about establishing a Tribunal for the War Crimes of September 11?

Webre began by explaining that in the United States, people have been groping for a solution and for accountability since shortly after 9/11 first occurred. He stressed that the 9/11 Commission, established by the Executive Branch of government, was, in fact, void of any accountability and responsibility under the law.

In addition, Webre added that "Two of the principle suspects, President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney, had been questioned, not under oath … in a room in which no one could take notes, and a number of the principle members of the Commission were absent … The entire political class just absented itself. It seemed that there was a total failure of any sort of leadership. And the frauds, the outright fraud of the 9/11 Commission has been documented in a number of books and articles.

At the same time," continued Webre, "there was a very powerful movement for impeachment. Now, impeachment is a political solution under the Constitution, meaning that although there’s a Bill of Impeachment brought in the house under Article 2 of the Constitution and then a trial in the Senate, these are primarily political issues, because it depends on the votes in the House … and the votes in the Senate. And so, therefore, it deals with, what are really issues of criminal responsibility and mens rea - intent to commit a crime - and criminal investigation in a political atmosphere. So, it’s an inappropriate remedy.

"So, the correct remedy for the False Flag Operation of 9/11 seemed to us to be tailor-made under Article 3 of the United States Constitution, which provides that treason against these United States shall consist solely of an attack against these United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies.

"By the evidence, the attack against the Pentagon and against the World Trade Center would consist of an armed attack against the United States. So it would fall squarely within the meaning of the statute, within the meaning of the Constitution, and that the Independent Prosecutor, ironically, was on September 11, 1998 … that Kenneth Starr reported out to the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress a memorandum that would lead to a Bill of Impeachment in the House against Bill Clinton. So the Independent Prosecutor that would be able to convene a grand jury and start a criminal investigation with investigators would be the appropriate way to proceed.

"About eighteen months ago we started on this journey", Webre continued. "One of the principles in law is that you exhaust all of your remedies. We had exhausted remedies with the Executive [branch] in the sense that the 9/11 Commission convened by the Executive [branch] was a total fraud - and that’s been demonstrated a fraud in which all of the Commissioners knowingly participated. It’s something of historic proportions. It’s like the Warren Commission … It’s a statement of a corrupt regime … There’s nothing left there. It’s a corrupted regime.

"We exhausted remedies with the Executive [branch] and so then we said, 'Let’s go to the United States Congress.’ We drafted the September 11 Independent Prosecutor Act and began moving that forward into the body politic. And following the Democratic victory on Nov 7, 2006 in which the Democrats regained control of both Houses of Congress – both the House of Representatives and the Senate - by one vote. Then we arranged a meeting with senior staff of the incoming Chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee - that would be the committee that would have oversight over this bill, and that would have hearings on the bill, and bring it to the floor of the House for a vote.

"And we had been speaking to the counsel to that committee … We met with senior staff, she got multiple copies of the memorandum which listed George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, and Donald H. Rumsfeld as Defendants and also … we had a second meeting ... She stated that these materials showed a very powerful interest and she was taking it over the Thanksgiving, 2006 break to meet with Representative John Conyers, who was in Detroit at the time. Representative John Conyers had the opportunity to review the Act, to review the memorandum, the Executive Summary, to review the issues with his senior staff.

"Representative John Conyers chose not to go forward. So we feel that we received a review there. And, as I understand, on September 11, 2005, the 911 Truth organization had demanded of the International Criminal Court that it review the crimes of 9/11. Of course, the International Criminal Court has chosen not to go forward.

"In fact, the International Criminal Court had, as of February, 2007, received over 240 complaints for war crimes in Iraq and has not acted on any of these. And at the administrative level [the ICC] has just totally written them off. And so, because we had then exhausted remedies at the United States government, at the Executive level with the 911 Commission, at the United States Congress with the Legislative level, with the House Judiciary Committee, and presumably with the International Criminal Court, then that brings into being the role of Citizen’s War Crimes justice Tribunal – convened under the jurisdiction of natural law …

"In this case, this War Crimes Tribunal, because I have the privilege of being a judge on the world’s permanent Citizen’s War Crimes Tribunal - which is the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, which was established in February, 2007 by the Perdana Global Peace Organization which is chaired by Tun Dr. Mahthir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minster of Malaysia. The infrastructure and statute of that court is established such that then, the Citizens 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal will come in as part of that infrastructure.

"With regard to the act of 9/11 itself, at the time I was the editor of "Ecology News" and, like everyone else, my Co-Director at the Institute for Cooperation in Space called me and said, 'Turn on the television!’ I turned on the television just as CNN was covering it. And within 15 minutes of that we were, "Ecology News", was on the Internet broadcasting the first news item which was a report, a phone call from a sailor on a US carrier, saying that that this was an inside job. So I’d known within minutes of the first strike on the first tower that there’s a report from the inside from a US sailor on a US carrier that this was an inside job because they’d picked up a cell phone call from him to a family member of his. So with that we opened up what we called the 9/11 Strategic Deception Desk."

Curious where this Tribunal might eventually lead (and to the point, would the perpetrators in positions of power one day rightfully receive their "just rewards") I asked Webre if the Tribunals were to have the outcome that he and Moret would hope for, what did he think could come out of the International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunals?

"This is where Citizen’s War Crimes Tribunals have a particular function. They’re convened under the jurisdiction of natural law. Natural law is the force of justice … natural law is as much a part of the natural order as is time and space, as are the laws of physics. Justice is just as present as it is in the moon or on Alpha Centauri. It’s inherent in the nature of the universe. So, wherever there is injustice in the world, people can band together to seek justice if, in fact, that is not being carried out.

"So, Citizen’s War Crimes Tribunals can come together and - provided that they are acting according to the highest stands of legal process and international law procedure - they have been recognized as an established part of international law. So, in the first instance, the Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunal would identify, would have an investigatory phase, with a War Crimes Commission and prosecuting attorneys that would investigate the issue in which indictments would be issued. And then the matter would come to trial and then judgments would be issued.

"Now, here is where several principles of law come into effect. One is the principle of what we call restorative justice. And that is, that if you just lop off somebody’s head or put them to death or put them in a cell or in a country club prison for the rest of their life, it doesn’t really restore the damage done to the ecology and to human societies- and all of the damage done everywhere in the world because of the attacks of 9/11. It’s led to a 'War on terror’, it’s led to a reign of terror, and they continue to try to implement their plans.

"Nine-eleven, as we’ve said…. had multiple reasons for it.

"It was to provide the pretext for a genocidal and ecocidal invasion using low-level nuclear war, using Depleted Uranium against central Asia - in other words, Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and other areas. It provided the pretext to impose a terror-driven national security state… in North America, Europe, Asia and all throughout the world.

"The Canadian no-fly list just went into effect on Monday, June 18, 2007 as part of the implementation of what they call the 'North American Union’ … they’re trying to implement the 9/11 National Security State in Canada now with the NSPD. The National Security Presidential Directive 51, in which George W. Bush becomes the leader of the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches of government. On the basis of a "national catastrophe", that could occur anywhere in the world, in other words, another False Flag Operation on some pretext.

"So those plans are continuing, so, clearly we have to resist them. And their principle technology is the False Flag Operation, as well. All of this has been triggered by 9/11 so that was the second function of 9/11 - to trigger this anti-constitutional regime and anti- civil liberties regime.

"And finally, it’s to trigger the final stages of a depopulation plan which has been in effect since at least 1954 - if not earlier in 1945 – and, with the development of nuclear weaponry and Depleted Uranium and Agent Orange, and that is, to depopulate the world by at least 2 billion - if not 4 billion people- and come into a two-tier system, of an appointed elite with concentrated wealth upwards and a second class tier of serfs of limited potential who do whatever manual labor is left after machines have taken over somebody’s bad dream.

"So those were the purposes of 9/11. They are purely a political land grab… a grab for power in the classical sense by the world bankers, by the David Rockefellers, by an international war crimes racketeering organization whose composition we can identify as having three major components."

I asked if the land grab has something to do with the desired acquisitions of the resources of Uranium, gas, and oil?

"Exactly. Nine-eleven was targeted at Afghanistan. All of the patsies or phony setup was to have the Taliban … that the Taliban were giving cover to Al-Qaeda so they could invade Afghanistan, which is now being shown to have vast Uranium deposits and, not only that … was a center for the opium and hence, the heroin trade.

"And oil, drugs, and arms are at the top of the agenda for the international war crimes racketeering organization, and have been since 1832… just before the dawn of the petroleum age with the founding of the Brotherhood of Death at Yale University’s Skull and Bones. These are networks that have been in operation for a good 150 years."

I asked if we need to seek justice by the proper legal means for the perpetrators – the three individuals named (i.e., Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld) and the others, the Jane & John Does … but also, to expose the entire international war racketeering "business"?

"We are approaching this as though it’s a racketeering lawsuit and that is, that you’re not only going after the front people like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, but you’re going back into the network of banking interests that really have a great deal to gain - that set up this entire operation and you’re assigning criminal culpability to them. Now all of that would come out in the final judgment. And you could say, What’s that?

"First of all, that operates under natural law and natural law is: there’s a force to justice. Some of the world’s great spiritual traditions or, you can call them science traditions, have another word for natural law. They call it 'karma’. So everybody in the world will know that individuals A, B, C and D did this. And that may precipitate others to act accordingly …

"The Citizen’s Tribunals then have another course of action, because as part of the 104 nations that have signed up for the International Criminal Court, when they sign the Rome Statute and became members of it, they themselves had to give universal jurisdiction laws to their national courts. And what that means is that their national courts are now empowered to prosecute war crimes wherever they occurred.

"So, the 9/11 Criminal War Crimes Tribunals can take its judgment and go to a national court in any progressive nation - be it Venezuela, be it Spain, Chile - that has a track record of pursuing war crimes and say, Look! You have this judgment. Go after these Defendants! And they can make life very uncomfortable for them. Even if George W. Bush is holed up in his in Paraguay 98,000 acre ranch… ya know, the law has a long arm and a long reach …

"We are implacable. We will not rest! We’re implacable! And you know what they say about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, right?"

I replied that no, I did not. I asked Alfred Webre to tell me.

"We always get our man".

And if confidence, knowledge of the law, a combined 120 years of wisdom, (more or less) and an apparent limitless desire to ensure that justice is served is any indication of whether Leuren Moret and Alfred Webre will succeed in establishing the International Citizen’s 9/11 War Crimes Tribunals, one is inclined to believe that Moret and Webre will go down in history as being the team responsible for being able to "get their man".

In addition to the quiet confidence of knowing they will be able to "get their man", or rather, three men in particular, one suspects also that Moret and Weber will be known forevermore as the dynamic duo who exposed the entire clandestine black army of criminals responsible for 9/11 in this unthinkably brutal, unfathomably lawless, and unquestionably most "corrupt regime" in all world history.

Who - save the very perpetrators of these grievous crimes against humanity - could help but concur with Leuren Moret’s heartfelt sentiment regarding this endeavor? In Moret’s own words, "It's beautiful, it's effortless, and it's done with the greatest sense of joy and love in the world... and we are all working side by side."

With Moret and Webre working to ensure that justice is done with regard to the crimes of treason and mass murder committed not just in New York and Washington, DC but for the unconscionable acts of nearly six years of genocidal, ecocidal, and heinous war crimes committed called ominicide … against humanity itself... what, after all, could be more beautiful than that?

In the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government." Undoubtedly, if Jefferson were alive today, he would be working in partnership right alongside Moret and Webre.

Let the International 9/11 Citizen’s War Crimes Tribunals begin.

CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry

La CIA va declassifier des documents des annees 50 a 70. Le passe de la CIA n'est pas rose du tout, et il continue a l'etre jusqu'a nos jours: assassinations sous Ronald Reagan dans les annees 80, assassinats contre-espionnage dans les annees 90, falsifications de documents avant la guerre en Irak, utilisation de la CIA en Europe pour deporter les gens, la liste est trop longue.
Pour les annees 50 a 70, toute correspondance entre l'Union Sovietique et les USA etaient ouvertes, ainsi que la Chine dans les annees 70, et on ne parle juste que de la CIA pour certains cas, les journalistes n'ont pas mentionne le FBI qui prenait souvent le relai de la CIA dans des affaires domestiques.

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 22, 2007; Page A01

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.

In anticipation of the CIA's release, the National Security Archive at George Washington University yesterday published a separate set of documents from January 1975 detailing internal government discussions of the abuses. Those documents portray a rising sense of panic within the administration of President Gerald R. Ford that what then-CIA Director William E. Colby called "skeletons" in the CIA's closet had begun to be revealed in news accounts.

A New York Times article by reporter Seymour Hersh about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published in December 1974, was "just the tip of the iceberg," then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned Ford, according to a Jan. 3 memorandum of their conversation.

Kissinger warned that if other operations were divulged, "blood will flow," saying, "For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro." Kennedy was the attorney general from 1961 to 1964.

Worried that the disclosures could lead to criminal prosecutions, Kissinger added that "when the FBI has a hunting license into the CIA, this could end up worse for the country than Watergate," the scandal that led to the fall of the Nixon administration the previous year.

In a meeting at which Colby detailed the worst abuses -- after telling the president "we have a 25-year old institution which has done some things it shouldn't have" -- Ford said he would appoint a presidential commission to look into the matter. "We don't want to destroy but to preserve the CIA. But we want to make sure that illegal operations and those outside the [CIA] charter don't happen," Ford said.

Most of the major incidents and operations in the reports to be released next week were revealed in varying detail during congressional investigations that led to widespread intelligence reforms and increased oversight. But the treasure-trove of CIA documents, generated as the Vietnam War wound down and agency involvement in Nixon's "dirty tricks" political campaign began to be revealed, is expected to provide far more comprehensive accounts, written by the agency itself.

The reports, known collectively by historians and CIA officials as the "family jewels," were initially produced in response to a 1973 request by then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger. Alarmed by press accounts of CIA involvement in Watergate under his predecessor, Schlesinger asked the agency's employees to inform him of all operations that were "outside" the agency's legal charter.

This process was unprecedented at the agency, where only a few officials had previously been privy to the scope of its illegal activities. Schlesinger collected the reports, some of which dated to the 1950s, in a folder that was inherited by his successor, Colby, in September of that year.

But it was not until Hersh's article that Colby took the file to the White House. The National Security Archive release included a six-page summary of a conversation on Jan. 3, 1975, in which Colby briefed the Justice Department for the first time on the extent of the "skeletons."

Operations listed in the report began in 1953, when the CIA's counterintelligence staff started a 20-year program to screen and in some cases open mail between the United States and the Soviet Union passing through a New York airport. A similar program in San Francisco intercepted mail to and from China from 1969 to 1972. Under its charter, the CIA is prohibited from domestic operations.

Colby told Ford that the program had collected four letters to actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda and said the entire effort was "illegal, and we stopped it in 1973."

Among several new details, the summary document reveals a 1969 program about CIA efforts against "the international activities of radicals and black militants." Undercover CIA agents were placed inside U.S. peace groups and sent abroad as credentialed members to identify any foreign contacts. This came at a time when the Soviet Union was suspected of financing and influencing U.S. domestic organizations.

The program included "information on the domestic activities" of the organizations and led to the accumulation of 10,000 American names, which Colby told Silberman were retained "as a result of the tendency of bureaucrats to retain paper whether they needed it or acted on it or not," according to the summary memo.

CIA surveillance of Michael Getler, then The Washington Post's national security reporter, was conducted between October 1971 and April 1972 under direct authorization by then-Director Richard Helms, the memo said. Getler had written a story published on Oct. 18, 1971, sparked by what Colby called "an obvious intelligence leak," headlined "Soviet Subs Are Reported Cuba-Bound."

Getler, who is now the ombudsman for the Public Broadcasting Service, said yesterday that he learned of the surveillance in 1975, when The Post published an article based on a secret report by congressional investigators. The story said that the CIA used physical surveillance against "five Americans" and listed Getler, the late columnist Jack Anderson and Victor Marchetti, a former CIA employee who had just written a book critical of the agency.

"I never knew about it at the time, although it was a full 24 hours a day with teams of people following me, looking for my sources," Getler said. He said he went to see Colby afterward, with Washington lawyer Joseph Califano. Getler recalled, "Colby said it happened under Helms and apologized and said it wouldn't happen again."

Personal surveillance was conducted on Anderson and three of his staff members, including Brit Hume, now with Fox News, for two months in 1972 after Anderson wrote of the administration's "tilt toward Pakistan." The 1972 surveillance of Marchetti was carried out "to determine contacts with CIA employees," the summary said.

CIA monitoring and infiltration of antiwar dissident groups took place between 1967 and 1971 at a time when the public was turning against the Vietnam War. Agency officials "covertly monitored" groups in the Washington area "who were considered to pose a threat to CIA installations." Some of the information "might have been distributed to the FBI," the summary said. Other "skeletons" listed in the summary included:

· The confinement by the CIA of a Russian defector, suspected by the CIA as a possible "fake," in Maryland and Virginia safe houses for two years, beginning in 1964. Colby speculated that this might be "a violation of the kidnapping laws."

· The "very productive" 1963 wiretapping of two columnists -- Robert Allen and Paul Scott -- whose conversations included talks with 12 senators and six congressmen.

· Break-ins by the CIA's office of security at the homes of one current and one former CIA official suspected of retaining classified documents.

· CIA-funded testing of American citizens, "including reactions to certain drugs."

The CIA documents scheduled for release next week, Hayden said yesterday, "provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."

Barred by secrecy restrictions from correcting "misinformation," he said, the CIA is at the mercy of the press. "Unfortunately, there seems to be an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room," Hayden said.

Hayden's speech and some questions that followed evoked more recent criticism of the intelligence community, which has been accused of illegal wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and torturing of terrorism suspects.

"It's surely part of [Hayden's] program now to draw a bright line with the past," said National Security Archive Director Thomas S. Blanton. "But it's uncanny how the government keeps dipping into the black bag." Newly revealed details of ancient CIA operations, Blanton said, "are pretty resonant today."

Iraq forced to pay $10 billion per year for WMD search

Le gouvernement irakien a ete force de payer 10 milliards de dollars par an a l'equipe qui avait dirige les recherches sur les ADM en Irak. Bande de voleurs et de magouilleurs.

Iraq has been forced to pay US$10 billion a year to the US-led team searching for weapon's of mass destruction, even after it emerged that such stockpiles did not exist, a US Congressional report has found.

The Iraq: Post-Saddam Governance and Security report by the Congressional Report Service notes that The formal US-led WMD search ended December 2004 but the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is still formally active.

A draft resolution was only circulated this month to end UNMOVIC's work, which costs US $10 billion per year drawn from Iraqi revenues.

The report notes that The primary theme in the Bush Administration’s public case for the need to confront Iraq was that Iraq posted a “grave and gathering” threat that should be blunted before the threat became urgent.

President Bush in an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, asserted that Iraq had worked to rebuild its WMD programs in the nearly four years since UN weapons inspectors left Iraq and had failed to comply with 16 UN previous resolutions that demanded complete elimination of all of Iraq’s WMD programs.

He also stated that that Iraq could transfer its WMD to terrorists, particularly Al Qaeda, for use in potentially catastrophic attacks in the United States.

Bush disregarded the critics who noted that, under the US threat of retaliation, Iraq did not use WMD against US troops in the 1991 Gulf war.

A “comprehensive” September 2004 report of the Iraq Survey Group, known as the “Duelfer report,”13 found no WMD stockpiles or production but said that there was evidence that the regime retained the intention to reconstitute WMD programs in the future.

Une riviere de sang

Sur la riviere du Tigre on attrappe plus de cadavres que de poissons, et les lois islamiques interdisent de manger dorenavant le poisson de cette riviere:


For centuries the Tigris River has provided Baghdadis with a rare delicacy: the famous Iraqi Samak mazkouf, a grilled fish.

The Tigris was the main source of the fish, kept alive in a tank and you only needed to pick one for the restaurant owners to grill it for you on open fire.

But a recent fatwa, or religious decree, issued by Muslim scholars in the city, forbids eating fish from the Tigris River. It is not because of pollution as the Tigris was, before the 2003 U.S. invasion, one of the cleanest rivers in the world.

The decaying human corpses dumped into the river, according to the Fatwa, make eating its fish inhuman, unethical and anti-religious.

Thanks to U.S. invasion, the Tigris River has turned into a cemetery of floating bodies. The murderous militias and death squads – which the invaders brought with them and nurtured – see the depths of the Tigris as a perfect place to hide their sectarian killings of innocent Iraqis by dumping the bodies of their victims there.

Fishermen say their nets and hooks sometimes catch more corpses than fish. The former regime, in a bid to purge the river of any garbage, had erected a steel mesh close to the town of Suwaira. The mesh was cleaned every week.

But instead of unwanted materials which the mesh used to catch, it began seizing floating corpses. Scores of families visit the area regularly in the hope of collecting the corpses of loved ones who had gun missing without a trace.

Since 2006, at least 800 bodies have been picked up only at Suwaira, according to Abdulwahid Azzam of the Interior Ministry.

Many of the bodies bore traces of torture, and some were so decayed that it was difficult to recognize their identity.

People of different ages are victims of the sectarian madness which was unknown before the coming of U.S. invaders. Hayder, a fisherman, who would only give his first name for security reasons, said he once snatched a body of a 12-year old boy.

The Euphrates, the other great Mesopotamian river, is no exception. Most bodies there are picked up by farmers downstream.

Police sources say that in the area of Baghdad only they come across an average of 10 corpses a day.

If a body dumped in the river is not found within a few days, it decays and may be lost for ever. Ahmad, another fisherman, says if he comes across a dead body it means that the Almighty "would like me to give the dead person a proper burial."

Our constitutional rights

FBI's 9/11 Saudi Flight Documents Released

Apres les attaques du 11 Septembre, le FBI suspecte que l'avion pour rapatrier la famille de Ben Laden en Arabie Saoudite aurait pu etre ordonne par Ben Laden lui-meme. Ce n'est pas une theorie du complot, c'est un doute qui s'installe dans le FBI, doute reel documente par un rapport officiel de plus de 240 pages. Si un jour la verite eclate....... Aux USA il est possible de declassifier des documents dans le cadre du "Freedom of Information Act" mais ca risque de prendre un certain temps, sinon un temps certain. Toujours est-il que cette nouvelle revelation va ajouter plein de nouvelles theories sur Ben Laden.


By Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report

Friday 22 June 2007

Newly released documents reveal the FBI suspected that a plane hired to transport members of the bin Laden family from the United States back to Saudi Arabia might have been chartered by Osama bin Laden himself. The documents raise new questions about the FBI investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

Truthout reviewed the 224 pages of newly released documents over the past two days.

A heavily redacted FBI report on the incident begins by describing a private jet that was hired to pick up members of the bin Laden family that were in the US eight days after the 9/11 attacks. "The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian Royal Family or Osama bin Laden," according to the declassified pages of the FBI investigation titled PENTTBOMB (page 3).

Subsequent references to the chartered flight in the released documents state that it was "chartered by the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, DC" (page 106). The possibility that the flight was arranged or paid for by Osama bin Laden was not addressed again in the subsequent 221 pages released by the FBI.

The FBI report was prepared in response to an October 2003 Vanity Fair magazine article by Craig Unger which raised questions about the FBI procedures after 9/11 that allowed six planes of Middle Eastern nationals to fly out of the United States. Most of the people on these planes were members of the Saudi Royal family, the wealthy rulers of Saudi Arabia, who have high-level contacts with the Bush administration. One plane, Ryan International Flight 441, made four stops around the country on September 19, 2001 to pick up members of the bin Laden family. According to the FBI, these individuals were half-siblings or the children of half-siblings of Osama bin Laden with no connections to the international terrorist. Critics accuse the FBI and possibly the White House of being complicit in allowing individuals with direct connections to Osama bin Laden to flee the country after the attacks. The FBI maintains that their interviews, conducted primarily at airports right before the nationals were to board planes, were sufficient and did not garner any actionable intelligence or warrant the detention of any of the nationals.

A set of documents compiled by the FBI in 2003 sheds some light on the procedures the FBI followed prior to allowing the bin Laden family members and other Saudi nationals to leave the country in the weeks following 9/11. The documents also raise new questions.

An internal FBI email described the effort to collect and compile all of the information about the Saudi nationals. "The point of this mess is a sort of damage assessment of those people leaving the US" (page 136).

The documents were obtained by the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act. These documents had previously been released but all mention of Osama bin Laden and the bin Laden family were blacked-out by the FBI. After a protracted legal fight, these FBI redactions and their accompanying explanations were ruled unacceptable by a Washington, DC District Court judge, who ordered the FBI to reassess the redactions and re-release the report.

Judicial Watch made the re-released report public on Wednesday, with many of the blacked-out sections restored. All mention of Osama bin Laden or the bin Laden family were made readable, revealing the sentence stating that Osama bin Laden may have chartered the flight that collected members of the bin Laden family in the days following the attacks.

FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko responded to the renewed questions regarding the bin Laden family flight by saying, "There is no new information here. Osama bin Laden did not charter a flight out of the US." Kolko continued, "This is just an inflammatory headline by Judicial Watch to catch people's attention. This was thoroughly investigated by the FBI."

In a statement, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was highly critical of the FBI handling of the Saudi nationals after 9/11: "Eight days after the worst terrorist attack in US history, Osama bin Laden possibly charters a flight to whisk his family out of the country, and it's not worth more than a luggage search and a few brief interviews?" Fitton was referring to the screening procedures and short interviews of members of the bin Laden family conducted by the FBI prior to their flight back to Saudi Arabia.

According to the executive summary of the FBI report, the FBI "conducted interviews, database checks and security sweeps prior to allowing any of the flights to depart the US. Before departure, all passengers' identities were confirmed and compared against watch lists. Investigators verified that there were no unauthorized passengers aboard any flights, and swept the aircraft and luggage for prohibited items. Further investigation was conducted following departure where it was determined to be necessary. No information of investigative value was learned from the interviews or following the departure of these individuals" (page 28).

Fitton claims that an examination of the report calls these conclusions into question. According to Fitton, "These documents prove the FBI conducted a slapdash investigation of these Saudi flights. We'll never know how many investigative leads were lost due to the FBI's lack of diligence."

An examination of the previously blacked-out names and sentences revealed new information. According to FBI agents who interviewed a member of the bin Laden family, when the family "disowned" Osama in 1994, they did not take away his share of the massive construction company owned and controlled by the bin Laden family. A female member of the bin Laden family indicated to investigators that "when [Osama bin Laden] was disowned by the family, he was given a percentage of the family business" (page 110). Previously blacked-out, this sentence is not further addressed in the FBI report.

The report points out that the FBI did not have records for at least one Saudi national who was listed on the flight manifests. A passenger, whose name was redacted in the report, was listed on the official flight documentation but she was never interviewed by the FBI. "If [redacted] was interviewed, it is unknown as to why no record of that interview can be found ... It is possible that [redacted] did not board the aircraft at all" (page 170).

Another reference to a missing passenger raised questions for an FBI agent who was tasked with reviewing the draft of the report. On page 171, the draft report states: "We assess that [redacted] did not travel on 09/19/2001 despite being listed on the passenger manifest. Her name does not appear in any FBI records regarding this flight." This sentence appeared inaccurate to a reviewer who identified this as a typo. On page 174 the reviewer questioned the assertion that this missing passenger was a woman. The reviewer wrote "Page 16 2nd paragraph, '... passenger manifest. Her[??] name does not appear ..." (emphasis original).

The FBI admitted that individuals who might have been useful for their investigation could easily have left the US in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks. The report concluded that "although the FBI took all possible steps to prevent any individuals who were involved in or had knowledge of the 09/11/2001 attacks from leaving the US before they could be interviewed, it is not possible to state conclusively that no such individuals left the US without FBI knowledge. Upon lifting of flight restrictions on 9/14/2001, any individual with a valid passport and sufficient funds to purchase flight tickets or charter an aircraft could leave the US" (page 156).

Bush's Mafia Whacks the Republic

Dans cet article Bush est compare a la mafia et la constitution americaine aura dure a peine 230 annees:

By Robert Parry
Consortium News

Wednesday 20 June 2007

In years to come, historians may look back on U.S. press coverage of George W. Bush's presidency and wonder why there was not a single front-page story announcing one of the most monumental events of mankind's modern era - the death of the American Republic and the elimination of the "unalienable rights" pledged to "posterity" by the Founders.

The historians will, of course, find stories about elements of this extraordinary event - Bush's denial of habeas corpus rights to a fair trial, his secret prisons, his tolerance of torture, his violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches, his "signing statements" overriding laws, the erosion of constitutional checks and balances.

But the historians will scroll through front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post and every other major newspaper - as well as scan the national network news and the 24-hour cable channels - and find not a single story connecting the dots, explaining the larger picture: the end of a remarkable democratic experiment which started in 1776 and which was phased out sometime in the early 21st century.

How, these historians may ask, did the U.S. press corps miss one of history's most important developments? Was it a case like the proverbial frog that would have jumped to safety if tossed into boiling water but was slowly cooked to death when the water was brought to a slow boil?

Or was it that journalists and politicians intuitively knew that identifying too clearly what was happening in the United States would have compelled them to action, and that action would have meant losing their jobs and livelihoods? Perhaps, too, they understood that there was little they could do to change the larger reality, so why bother?

As for the broader public, did the fear and anger generated by the 9/11 attacks so overwhelm the judgment of Americans that they didn't care that President Bush had offered them a deal with the devil, he would promise them a tad more safety in exchange for their liberties?

And what happened to the brave souls who did challenge Bush's establishment of an authoritarian state? Why, the historians may wonder, did the American people and their representatives not rise up as Bush systematically removed honorable public servants who did their best to uphold the nation's laws and principles?

One could go down a long list of government officials who were purged or punished for speaking up, the likes of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

The Taguba Purge

Yet possibly the most troubling case was revealed in mid-June by The New Yorker's investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, the case of Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who investigated the abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and issued a tough report that prevented the scandal from being swept entirely under the rug.

Rather than thank Taguba for upholding the honor of the U.S. military, the Bush administration singled out this hard-working, low-key general for ridicule, retribution and forced retirement in early 2007.

In an interview with Hersh, Taguba described a chilling conversation he had with Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, a few weeks after Taguba's report became public in 2004. Sitting in the back of Abizaid's Mercedes sedan in Kuwait, Abizaid quietly told Taguba, "You and your report will be investigated."

"I'd been in the Army 32 years by then," Taguba told Hersh, "and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia."

It was also an early indication that Taguba's military career was nearing its end. In January 2006, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's Vice-Chief of Staff, called Taguba and without pleasantries or explanation told Taguba, "I need you to retire by January 2007."

So, the general who had violated the omerta code of silence was banished from Bush's Mafia.

Hersh wrote that the sensitivity over Taguba's report went beyond its graphic account of physical and sexual abuse of Iraqis detained at Abu Ghraib; it also brought unwanted attention to a wider pattern of criminal acts committed with the approval of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"The administration feared that the publicity would expose more secret operations and practices," including a special military task forces or Special Access Programs set up to roam the world and assassinate suspected terrorists, Hersh wrote.

Hersh quoted a recently retired CIA officer as saying the task-force teams "had full authority to whack - to go in and conduct 'executive action,'" a phrase meaning assassination.

"It was surrealistic what these guys were doing," the ex-officer told Hersh. "They were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the [CIA] chief of station." [New Yorker, June 25, 2007, edition]

In other words, President Bush not only had arrogated to himself the right to snatch people off the street and lock them up indefinitely without trial but he had dispatched assassins around the world to eliminate alleged "bad guys."

The bigger picture - the stark and grim image of what had transpired over the past half dozen years in the name of the American people - was that the United States could no longer claim to be a nation of laws and liberties. It had become a country governed by a criminal mob deploying an unsavory collection of capos, consiglieres and hit men.

In this view, George W. Bush was no longer President of a Republic but Godfather of the world's most intimidating crime syndicate. But that was a reality that the U.S. news media could not afford to acknowledge in real time, though it might become the unavoidable conclusion of future historians.

---------

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy 7 Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press 7 'Project Truth.'

Fringe Science Yields 'Gay Bombs' and Psychic Teleportation

The Pent goes SCI-FI:

Creating armor that renders a soldier invisible. Stimulating the brain to suppress sleep for days. Arming sharks with chemical implants and cameras to work as spies. This year the Pentagon will spend $78 billion — about half of all government research and development dollars — on a variety of projects, according to the American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS).

Where's superman when we need him?

GALLUP: Only 29% Say U.S. Winning War on Terrorism -- Lowest Number Since 9/11

By E&P Staff

Published: June 22, 2007 10:55 AM ET
NEW YORK A new Gallup Poll reveals that fewer than 3 in 10 Americans saying the United States is winning the war on terror -- the lowest figure since the 9/11 attacks.

Further, while most Americans consider the war in Afghanistan part of the war on terror, more than half reject the idea that the war in Iraq is.

Results of the June 11-14 national survey of 1,007 adults find that that 29% of Americans say the United States is winning, while 20% say the terrorists are winning and 50% say neither side. Independents and Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to doubt U.S. progress, but even so only 53% of Republicans feel we have the upper hand.

Concerning Iraq, 43% say it is part of war on terrorism but 53% reject this notion.

Forty-four percent of Americans say they are "very" (12%) or "somewhat" (32%) worried that they or someone in their family will become a victim of terrorism, figures that haven't shifted much recently.
**
RELATED: E&P Editor Greg Mitchell's column on another civilian casualty in Iraq-- which only came to light because he happened to be the son of a Los Angeles Times staffer. The disturbing full story can be found here

Hacker Penetrates Pentagon E-Mail System

Ne jamais hacker le Pentagon, meme en-dehors des USA, car ils peuvent faire une demande d'extradition (cyberterrorisme). Tout systeme sur internet est vulnerable, meme a la defense.

A hacker penetrated an unclassified Pentagon e-mail system, prompting authorities to take as many 1,500 accounts offline, defense officials said June 21.

“Elements of the OSD unclassified e-mail system were taken offline yesterday afternoon due to a detected penetration,” US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, using an acronym for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

“A variety of precautionary measures are being taken. We expect the system to be online again very soon,” Gates said.

Between 1,000 and 1,500 users of the system were taken offline, a defense official said.

On Wednesday, a congressional panel disclosed that hackers also have succeeded in penetrating computers at the Department of Homeland Security, the lead government agency in providing security against cyber attack.

“What does this mean? It means terrorists or nation states could be hacking Department of Homeland Security databases, changing or altering names to allow them access to this country, and we wouldn’t even know they were doing it,” said Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I.

The Pentagon e-mail system carries “routine e-mail” involving administrative matters but not classified information related to military operations, Col. Gary Keck, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

Gates said the Defense Department computers are under constant attack, but he could not say why this attack unlike others forced authorities to take down part of the system.

Pentagon officials would not comment on the source of the attack, or whether the hacker was able to read e-mail sent over the system.

“We obviously have redundant systems in place, and there’s no anticipated adverse impact on ongoing operations,” Gates said. “There will be some administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences.”

“It will come as no surprise that we aggressively monitor intrusions and have appropriate procedures to address events of this kind. But, as I say, we get perhaps hundreds of attacks a day,” he said.

Paranoid French say goodbye to le Blackberry

Mais non, ils ne sont pas parano, les US pratiquent trop d'espionnage en France, c'est tout.

FRENCH counter-espionage chiefs have upset hundreds of ministerial staff by banning BlackBerry mobile devices for fear the Americans may be spying on their emails.

Staff recruited to serve ministers in the Sarkozy administration are especially bothered by the attempt to enforce a two-year-old decree against such devices for state business.

Economic intelligence chief Alain Juillet told them BlackBerry communications were not secure because the system channelled emails through servers in the US and Britain. "The risk of interception is real. It's economic war," said Mr Juillet, according to Le Monde.

Quand l'information n'est pas a la portee du langage

Voila un exemple de desinformation de cette video qui soutient que le Hamas torture des Palestiniens. En fait, c'est tout a fait le contraire, ce sont des Palestiniens (le Fatah) qui torturent le Hamas puisqu'a la fin ils sont forces de chanter "Hamas Shias, Hamas Shias". Il ne faut pas deconner quand meme il n'y a pas que des Shias dans le Hamas, loin de la. De plus sur le Tshirt de gens sont armes, sur un maillot il est ecri en arabe "force executive" qui est l'embleme des forces du Fatah. Voila, en esperant que l'information aura ete bien remise a sa place.

Bon maintenant c'est vrai, on peut argumenter sur le fond de ce probleme, mais sur la forme, oui ce sont des Palestiniens torturant d'autres Palestiniens, c'est vrai, et c'est bien triste.

The New Globalization: How the U.S. and the U.K. May Hide Behind the United Nations When Violating Their Own Citizens' Rights In Iraq

Superbe demonstration de cet auteur, j'en suis encore abasourdi. L'auteur demontre que le fait de deplacer des issues legales et de nature nationale dans un contexte international, gardees par des organismes internationaux, est en fait une evasion des droits humains.

By AZIZ HUQ

Though it is plain that legal practice is becoming increasingly globalized, lawyers and scholars -- especially in the field of public law -- have been slow to catch up with globalization's emerging problems. In the U.S., for example, attorneys have remained largely entangled in rather parochial disputes about when and how the citation of non-U.S. law in U.S. courts is permissible.

While such disputes do matter - for instance, in death penalty jurisprudence, there is an important legal issue that this narrow focus leaves out - one with profound implications for constitutional and human rights. This issue concerns the push to displace claims of constitutional right from domestic courts into international forums--even where those forums can provide no satisfactory remedy. With the increasing emergence of transnational regulatory regimes, this issue is becoming all the more crucial, and is currently being litigated with respect to the detentions in Iraq of both U.S. and U.K. citizens.

Displacement of Local Legal Regimes by International Treaties and Agreements

Treaties creating the United Nations and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for example, displace both law-making and adjudicative authority, moving it out of national, domestic bodies and into international forums. NAFTA, for example, allows supranational review of U.S. judgments.

As Professor Henry Monaghan observes in a recent article about NAFTA and the International Court of Justice, some displacement to such supranational bodies can be justified by looking to the historical usage of international arbitration panels. But as Monaghan observes, many of these cases can be assimilated into the "public rights" doctrine, which only applies in a limited category of cases. In other contexts where individual liberty is at issue, such as in criminal trials, the Supreme Court has given supranational forums only "respectful consideration."

Cases Relating to the Detention of Iraqis Raise The Issue of Substituting International Forums for Domestic Forums

Unfortunately, the potential for the displacement of local courts' jurisdiction arises in situations where the elementary basic human right of liberty from unlawful detention is at stake. And governments--even America's present, UN-phobic Bush Administration--have not hesitated to use international entanglements as a back-door way to evade local judicial supervision.

Recent cases in American and British courts, concerning the detention of U.S. and U.K. citizens in Iraq by their respective countries' militaries, present this issue in sharp relief. (Full disclosure: I am counsel in two of the U.S. cases.) These cases raise the question of when, and whether, a government can escape its domestic human rights obligations by invoking an international façade. They also illustrate the extent to which international bodies such as the U.N. may act not as a force for promoting human rights, but as an actual hindrance to human rights enforcement.

Even in cases of battlefield detention, domestic law on due process protection raises particularly important questions. We generally assume that battlefield conduct, including the handling of prisoners, is regulated by international law--most famously, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1907 Hague Regulations. But the fourth Geneva Convention, which governs the protection of civilians, stipulates that citizens of the capturing state (or of a state with which the capturing state has diplomatic relations) do not benefit from the protections set in the Convention.

Therefore, for citizens of the U.S. who are held by the U.S., but are not POWs, Geneva makes domestic law the principal guide to prisoner treatment.

The British Case Regarding a U.K. Citizen Detained in Iraq

Within America, domestic courts are still struggling with what it means to shelter citizens swept up in a battlefield detention. Meanwhile, governments are focusing on the multinational nature of most current military operations to support their arguments that domestic forums are not the place for adjudication of citizens' rights.

This has been true both in the U.K. and the U.S. Consider first the British case, al-Jedda v. Secretary of State for Defense. Al-Jedda is a British citizen of Iraqi descent who has been detained in Basra, Iraq, by British forces. Through his U.K. lawyers, al-Jedda filed a petition for judicial review and a habeas corpus petition challenging his detention. Both are still winding their way through the British courts. Yet already, the U.K. government's defensive strategy is clear--and revealing.

Al-Jedda has argued that he had a right to a hearing in a British court. In support of his claim, he cites both Article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights' protection of due process, as incorporated into British law by the 1998 Human Rights Act, and the common law right to a hearing regarding the grounds of one's detention.

Against these claims, the British Secretary of State argued that the U.N. Security Council resolutions beginning in October 2003 displaced both the European human rights and the common law protections of bodily liberty. The British Government focused on Article 103 of the U.N. Charter, which states that in a conflict between a treaty and the Charter, "obligations under the … Charter shall prevail."

Reasoning that the U.K.'s military operations in Iraq were an exercise of such an "obligation," the intermediate appeals court in the U.K. accepted the Secretary of State's argument for displacement, and rejected al-Jedda's request for judicial review.

Two U.S. Federal Cases Regarding U.S. Citizens Detained in Iraq

Two cases arising in U.S. federal court -- Omar v. Geren and Munaf v. Geren -- raise similar issues. Both concern U.S. citizens detained by U.S. forces in Iraq. In both cases, the government argues that the multinational character of the detention precludes any federal court jurisdiction.

But the U.S. government's argument has differed from the U.K. government's theory. At stake in the U.S. cases are domestic constitutional rights, rather than human rights under a transnational treaty such as the European Convention. Article 103 of the U.N. Convention, therefore, has less traction in the U.S. cases than in the U.K. case. Rather, the U.S. government argued from first principles in the U.S. cases that federal courts cannot exercise supervision over the actions of U.S. troops acting as parts of a multinational operation.

In support of this rather surprising proposition, the government relied on an obscure 1949 Supreme Court per curiam decision, Hirota v. MacArthur. In Hirota, the Court dismissed a petition for collateral review of an international war crimes tribunal's final criminal judgment. The petition had been filed by Japan's former prime minister and foreign minister.

Although the U.S. government relies on a quite different theory of jurisdiction-ousting than the U.K. government, the nub of the two arguments is the same: The U.N. Security Council has authorized the domestic government's actions. Therefore, no domestic court can scrutinize what we do.

The Risk of the "International Immunity" Principle Leading to Serious Abuses - and Not Just With Respect to Detainees

Whether or not this argument succeeds, it raises the specter of international law becoming a scrim behind which all kind of human rights abuses can happen unhindered.

There is, of course, no reason that this principle of international immunity should be limited to a military context. Take, for example, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373, which requires all members of that body, among other things, to enact new counter-terrorism laws.

As superlative recent work by Professor Kim Lane Scheppele demonstrates, Resolution 1373 has had a remarkably high compliance rate: Countries are falling all over themselves to enact new and harsher anti-terrorism laws. And because governments can claim that these laws are required by the U.N., they have a potent shield against accusation of human rights violations that happen as a result of the enforcement of these laws.

The Answer Is Not Isolationism - But Rather An Emphasis on Preserving Domestic Constitutional Rights

To be clear, these cases, and the difficult issues they raise, do not counsel in favor of isolationism. America will be part of (and, I hope, a leader in) international organizations that press for the global rule of law for the foreseeable future.

But these cases do counsel in favor of renewed vigilance. Many have seen international rights protections as simply another level of protection, superadded on top of domestic rights protections. Yet now, supranational bodies such as the U.N. Security Council - rather than acting to preserve rights - are licensing new military and police responses to transnational threats such as terrorism, and thus potentially imperiling rights. At the same time, they are imperiling the traditional domestic judicial forums that we have relied on for generations to protect human rights.

These forums are no less - and perhaps even more - crucial today than they were in the past. In all of the cases I have discussed in this column, for example, there simply is no international venue to pass on the serious liberty claims at stake in each case. Thus, if rights are to be vindicated at all, it must happen in a domestic court. Citizens of the U.K. and U.S., as well as other nations, deserve to have their claims that their own governments have violated their basic rights adjudicated under the laws, and in the courts, of their own countries.

Les Americains prise d'otage economique

La plupart des Americains (75%) qui ont un emprunt sur leur maison n'ont pas de taux fixe (on les appelle les ARM en anglais). Les faillites immobilieres ont commence cette annee et vont se poursuivre dans les 2 prochaines annees consecutives car le paiement mensuel sur une maison va augmenter de facon vertigineuse. On ne peut pas encore parler de recession economique, mais les symptomes sont la et ce sont des millions de gens qui vont se retrouver a la rue. A titre d'exemple a Las Vegas le prix des loyers n'augmente plus, il aurait meme tendance a flechir de l'ordre de 10%, et le prix des maisons risque de devaluer de 60% sur 2 ans. Quand on sait que les Americains revendent leur maison avec une plus-value, le marche de l'immobilier a Las Vegas va s'ecrouler. Et quand les Americains vont s'apercevoir de cette escroquerie, que leur paiement aura double, voire triple dans certains cas, ils ne resteront plus dans leur maison.

Cliquez sur le lien.

Clinton Assails Bush to Win Liberals

Tentative journalistique du "Huffington post" pour convaincre les liberaux qu'Hilary Clinton est un bon choix et qu'elle saura respecter la constitution americaine. Et pourtant Hilary Clinton ne sait plus improviser, elle suit juste les sillons d'Obama et quant a moi je voterai pour le President qui fera la promesse d'enlever les troupes en Irak. Cliquez sur le lien d'en-haut comme d'habitude.

Judge gives go-ahead to lawsuit against Bush's bank transfer spying program

Un exemple ou la cooperation internationale dans le "terrorisme" rentre en parfaite contradiction sur la vie privee des gens: une banque belge aurait partage ses informations bancaires avec les USA. Quelle honte!


A federal judge in Chicago last week rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against a Belgium-based bank transfer clearinghouse that collaborated with an anti-terrorism spying program led by the US Department of Treasury. The judge's decision will allow two plaintiffs to press their case that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) violated the Fourth Amendment and financial privacy rights of bank customers throughout the United States when it collaborated with president George W. Bush's so-called 'Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.'

"I don't think any corporate entity should be given a blank check to spy on Americans whether it's their telephone conversations or their financial transactions," said Steven Schwarz, the lead attorney for the case's two plaintiffs, in a Tuesday morning phone call with RAW STORY. "Maybe that's how they do it in other countries, but we have one set of rules, and nobody gets carte blanche to shred the Constitution."

SWIFT facilitates $6 trillion a day in financial transactions among thousands of banks in hundreds of countries. In June 26, 2006, articles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal, SWIFT was revealed by the media to have turned over considerable information its database to the US Department of Treasury. Schwarz alleged that the government initially had filed a more limited subpoena for information.

(Note: Counterterrorism expert Victor Comras wrote just after the revelation that the US government's monitoring of SWIFT transactions first was noted in 2002 in United Nations publications.)

Schwarz explained to RAW STORY why the action undertaken by SWIFT in assisting the government's program allowed an alarming fishing expedition to take place.

"You can think of SWIFT as gatekeeper, like if they have the keys to a warehouse," he said. "The government wants to get in and take a lot of specific items in there. SWIFT says 'Sorry, it's too hard to show you around, and give you this or that, why don't you just take a look around and take whatever you want.'"

James F. Holderman, the Chief Judge in the Federal Court for the Northern District of Illinois, agreed with Schwarz's argument that SWIFT appeared to have carried out an overbroad surrender of information to the US government.

"Unfettered government access to the bank records of private citizens [is] constitutionally problematic," the judge wrote in his decision, in which he allowed two of the four complaints to continue to be considered.

The banking cooperative defended itself in a statement released to Bloomberg News last week.

"SWIFT complies with lawful obligations in the countries where it operates and will vigorously defend itself against the plaintiffs' remaining allegations," said a spokesman in the article written by Andrew Harris.

Another attorney working on the case, Carl Mayer, warned that the banking consortium has great deal at stake in the case.

"SWIFT faces billions in damages after this week’s ruling," he said in a statement released to the press by the plaintiffs. "Federal bank privacy laws provide for $100 in damages for each illegal disclosure of customer records."

While agreeing that the government's financial spying program was most alarming to large, offshore institutional investors, Schwarz argued that his plaintiffs were not billionaires and all Americans should be worried about the financial privacy implications of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.

"Our plaintiffs are average Americans with checking accounts and credit cards," he said of Ian Walker and Stephen Kruse, who were named in the suit. "We're alleging that basic routine transactions were vacuumed up in a big data mining program. Some people may be fine with it because they think it may help catch a terrorist, but I think just as many people are uncomfortable with having their records sifted through in that manner."

Judge Holderman approved a 'change of venue' request by SWIFT to move the case to the federal district court in Virginia. If Schwarz's case holds up in the new district court, which is known for being more conservative and pro-government in its orientation, he said he'll begin his discovery process about three months from now.

Les allocations chomage aux USA

Le chomage aux USA (unemployement benefits) ne dure pas comme les impots, et son taux est different d'un Etat a un autre. Pour la region du Nevada, puisque je suis au chomage, le maximum est de $362 dollars par semaine, soit un peu plus de $1400 par mois. Avec $1400, ce qui est extrement faible, et sa duree n'est que de 6 mois pour l'Etat du Nevada, ce qui explique que beaucoup de gens ne veulent pas rester au chomage et essaient de trouver un boulot aussi vite que possible. Pour ma part, vu que mes depenses en factures representent un montant superieur par rapport aux allocations chomage, je ferai comme la plupart des Americains, c'est a dire trouver un job aussi vite que possible.

Le travail ne manque pas aux USA, surtout si vous etes qualifies, avec des diplomes et
de l'experience sur le terrain. Aux USA l'experience sur le terrain compterait meme plus que les diplomes. Je vais quand meme me prendre 1 mois de vacances avant de reprendre d'arrache-pieds le travail, histoire de me reposer, de faire le bilan et de trouver un job qui correspond a mes qualifications professionnelles. Pour ma part, je ne retournerai plus dans le monde du developpement des nouvelles technologies, c'est un monde trop stressant, trop instable et leur survie est souvent liee a des magouilles financieres: le crash des dotcoms dans les annees 90 vient du fait que leur valeur financiere etait surevaluee.

Reviewing Michel Chossudovsky's "America's War on Terrorism"

Il y a quelques mois j'avais ecri un article geopolitique sur les pipelines dans le Moyen-Orient et l'Asie du Sud-Est mais je ne l'ai jamais publie pour raisons "personnelles": quand on essaie d'expliquer des evenements geopolitiques, loin de nos valeurs humanistes, apres maintes observations en Afghanistan et en Irak, il y a plein de faits qui ne collent pas. Je compare souvent la geopolitique a un puzzle car pour bien la comprendre, il faut etudier avant toutes les pieces de ce puzzle. Le cas de l'Afghanistan, Pakistan, Inde, et Iran sont convoitees par des forces exceptionnelles sur les ressources energetiques qui dirigent le marche. En geopolitique, etant donne la situation geographique du Moyen-Orient et de l'Asie du Sud-Est, bien des projets de pipelines ne peuvent etre accomplis sans l'Iran que ce soit pour alimenter l'Europe ou bien l'Asie. L'Afghanistan etant sous le couvert des USA dorenavant, les projets de construction devraient faciliter a alimenter la dependance energetique de l'Europe, mais ce choix ne peut etre concretise sans l'approbation de l'Iran.
De plus il y a quelques annes de cela, les medias francais ont denonce que les USA voulaient envahir l'Irak avant l'Afghanistan, et pourtant geopolitiquement l'Afghanistan vue de sa situation geographique etait logiquement parlant le pays a envahir en premier, bien avant l'Irak. Sans tomber dans les theories du complot, en analysant la situation de l'Asie du Sud-Est geopolitiquement, ne sommes-nous pas plutot les victimes des medias ou l'ancien ordre mondial pose ses pieds dans des regions pour entacher sa soif de ressources energetiques? C'est ce que texte vous proposera, en donnant des reperes geopolitiques depuis le 11 septembre, et vous verrez alors que geopolitiquement rien n'a change depuis le 11 septembre, avec cette nouvelle dimension d'esprit et illegale de la "guerre contre la terreur". Bonne lecture.


By Stephen Lendman

June 18, 2007

Michel Chossudovsky is a noted academic, author, activist and relentless researcher concentrating on America's imperial crusade to control planet earth for its markets, resources and cheap exploitable labor. He's a Canadian economist by profession having taught at the University of Ottawa as well as at academic institutions in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. In addition, he's been an economic adviser to developing countries' governments and a consultant for many international organizations, including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organization (ILO), and World Health Organization (WHO). He's also the editor of the Centre for Research on Globalization and its web site, Global Research.ca.

"America's War on Terrorism" - An Overview

Chossudovsky's book is a greatly expanded version of his 2002 book titled, "War and Globalization: The Truth behind September 11." The current newly titled 2005 edition (post-9/11 and the 2003 Iraq invasion and occupation) includes 12 new chapters with those in the original edition updated. The author states the book's purpose is "to refute the official narrative and reveal - using detailed evidence and documentation (not speculation based on opinion alone)" - the true nature of America's "war on terrorism," that's as relevant now as when the book was first published.

Chossudovsky calls it a complete fabrication "based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden (from a cave in Afghanistan and hospital bed in Pakistan) outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus." He calls it, instead, what, in fact, it is - a pretext for permanent "New World Order" wars of conquest serving the interests of Wall Street and the financial community, the US military-industrial complex, Big Oil, and all other corporate interests profiting hugely from a massive scheme harming the public interest, in the name of protecting it, and potentially all humanity unless it's stopped in time.

On the morning of 9/11, the Bush administration didn't miss a beat telling the world Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon meaning Osama bin Laden was the main culprit - case closed without even the benefit of a forensic and intelligence analysis piecing together all potential helpful information. There was no need to because, as Chossudovsky explained, "That same (9/11) evening at 9:30 pm, a 'War Cabinet' was formed integrated by a select number of top intelligence and military advisors. At 11:00PM, at the end of that historic (White House) meeting, the 'War on Terrorism' was officially launched," and the rest is history.

Chossudovsky continued "The decision was announced (straightaway) to wage war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in retribution for the 9/11 attacks" with news headlines the next day asserting, with certainty, "state sponsorship" responsibility for the attacks connected to them. The dominant media, in lockstep, called for military retaliation against Afghanistan even though no evidence proved the Taliban government responsible, because, in fact, it was not and we knew it.

Four weeks later on October 7, a long-planned war of illegal aggression began, Afghanistan was bombed and then invaded by US forces working in partnership with their new allies - the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan or so-called Northern Alliance "warlords." Their earlier repressive rule was so extreme, it gave rise to the Taliban in the first place and has now made them resurgent.

Chossudovsky further explained that the public doesn't "realize that a large scale theater war is never planned and executed in a matter of weeks." This one, like all others, was months in the making needing only what former CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks called a "terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event" to arouse enough public anger for the Bush administration to launch it after declaring their "war on terrorism." Chossudovsky, through thorough and exhausting research, exposed it as a fraud.

He's been on top of the story ever since uncovering the "myth of an 'outside enemy' and the threat of 'Islamic terrorists' (that became) the cornerstone (and core justification) of the Bush administration's military doctrine." It allowed Washington to wage permanent aggressive wars beginning with Afghanistan and Iraq, to ignore international law, and to "repeal civil liberties and constitutional government" through repression laws like the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts. A key objective throughout has, and continues to be, Washington's quest to control the world's energy supplies, primarily oil, starting in the Middle East where two-thirds of known reserves are located.
Toward that end, the Bush administration created a fictitious "outside enemy" threat without which no "war on terrorism" could exist, and no foreign wars could be waged. Chossudovsky exposed the linchpin of the whole scheme. He uncovered evidence that Al Queda "was a creation of the CIA going back to the Soviet-Afghan war" era, and that in the 1990s Washington "consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at the same time placing him on the FBI's 'most wanted list' as the World's foremost terrorist." He explained that the CIA (since the 1980s and earlier) actively supports international terrorism covertly, and that on September 10, 2001 "Enemy Number One" bin Laden was in a Rawalpindi, Pakistan military hospital confirmed on CBS News by Dan Rather. He easily could have been arrested but wasn't because we had a "better purpose" in mind for "America's best known fugitive (to) give a (public) face to the 'war on terrorism' " that meant keeping bin Laden free to play the role . If he didn't exist, we'd have had to invent him, but that could have been arranged as well.

The Bush administration's national security doctrine needs enemies, the way all empires on the march do. Today "Enemy Number One" rests on the fiction of bin Laden-led Islamic terrorists threatening the survival of western civilization. In fact, however, Washington uses Islamic organizations like Islamic Jihad as a "key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union" while, at the same time, blaming them for the 9/11 attacks calling them "a threat to America."

"America's War on Terrorism" - In-Depth

The book is in four parts, each discussed enough below to convey the essence and flavor of the heavily documented power-packed amount of information in the volume's 365 pages - a healthy serving for each day of the year.

Part I - September 11

September 11, 2001 is a day that will live in infamy, but not for how official accounts portray it. It wasn't the first September 11 of note and may not be the last. Chileans remember theirs in 1973 when General Augusto Pinochet, aided by CIA, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, ousted and murdered democratically elected President Salvador Allende by military coup d'etat. It ended the most vibrant democracy in the Americas ushering in a 16 year fascist reign of terror Chileans are still healing from 18 years later. Now it's our turn with Bush administration officials using the myth of an "outside enemy" to hide the real threat we face from within from real enemies in our own government. They're waging war on the world, destroying our civil liberties, and shredding our social state paying for it.

It began long before 9/11, but that day plans became policy, then hardened, expanded and now threatening all humanity. Chossudovsky spells in out stating straightaway "The world is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history (having) embarked upon a military adventure" threatening everyone unless exposed and stopped.

He begins with vital heavily documented background information about 9/11 already covered above. It explained we needed cover for our "war on terrorism." Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda provided it as "Enemy Number One" and his network, hiding the fact he and thousands of Mujahideen fighters were recruited for the largest ever CIA operation in the 1980s. They were organized, financed and sent to "destabili(ze) the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan, but (more importantly) destroy...the Soviet Union." CIA's Milton Beardman once explained "If Osama bin Laden did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."
In fact, we did, using Pakistan's Military Intelligence ISI as intermediary, so bin Laden and Mujahideen fighters weren't aware who their real paymaster was or why they were recruited. ISI played a crucial role for Washington in the 1980s. Then, from the end of the Cold War to the present, it's been "the launch pad for CIA covert operations in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Balkans" turning Bosnia into a "militant Islamic base" and later Kosovo with help from NATO and Washington. This isn't speculation. It's fact. The ISI-Osama-Al Queda-Taliban nexus is a matter of public record, but the "American people have been consciously and deliberately deceived (about it) by their government."

They have no knowledge the Taliban gained power in 1996 the same covert way - helped by US military aid funneled through Pakistan's ISI. Janes Defense Weekly confirmed "half of Taliban manpower and equipment originate(d) in Pakistan under the ISI." Just like today, our hidden agenda was "oil" with Taliban officials "whisked off to Houston" to meet with US oil company giant, Unocal, "regarding the construction of the strategic trans-Afghan pipeline." Afghanistan is strategically located "at the hub of five nuclear powers: Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Kazakhstan." It also borders Russia, China and Iran. It's why Washington wants a permanent military presence in the country run by a puppet client government masquerading as a democratically elected one, and why we're at war so that status won't ever change.

Chossudovsky explains behind the scenes, "military planners in the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA call the shots on foreign policy." They're in league with NATO, the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization (all US-dominated organizations). The real powers controlling everything are "the global banks and financial institutions, the military-industrial complex, the oil and energy giants, the biotech and pharmaceutical conglomerates," other corporate giants and the dominant media, or de facto ministry of state information and propaganda, disseminating deception while suppressing the truth.
The result is catastrophic. The rule of law has been suspended, the Republic hangs by a thread, and "the foundations of an authoritarian state apparatus have emerged" that, in an emergency, could become as harsh as in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia at its worst under Stalin. It's no understatement. Its early disturbing signs are already present and recognized.
The entire scheme is based on the myth of an "Islamic Jihad" being a "threat to America" when, in fact, CIA and the US intelligence community has close ties to the "Islamic Militant Network." CIA even admits bin Laden was an "intelligent asset" (as distinct from an "agent") during the Cold War, but that information's long gone down "the memory hole" and forgotten. He was used by four presidents beginning with Ronald Reagan, then GHW Bush, Bill Clinton, and now GW Bush writ large today as "Enemy Number One" in the phony "war on terrorism."

Part II - War and Globalization

Washington's "hidden agenda" involves waging preventive wars to "extend...the global market system (and) open...up new 'economic frontiers' for US corporate capital....in close liaison with Britain." US-British ties in areas of banking, oil and defense industries drive our joint military operations in the Middle East, Central Asia and most anywhere else from this marriage wreaking hell on earth wherever it marauds.

"America's New War" post-9/11 was "in the 'pipeline' for at least three years prior to....September 11." Beginning with the Clinton administration's illegal war of aggression against Yugoslavia, NATO was enlarged to include Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Inclusion of former Soviet satellites took aim directly at Yugoslavia as the West's next target with Russia designated a future one. With that in mind, GUUAM was formed in 1999 comprised of four post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. It's a Western financed regional military alliance, under US-controlled NATO, "strategically at the hub of the Caspian oil and gas wealth with Moldova and Ukraine offering (pipeline) export routes to the West." A key immediate aim of this alliance is to fracture CIS, exclude Russia from Caspian resources Washington wants to control, and politically isolate Moscow combined in one strategic blow.

"Militarization of the Eurasian Corridor" was the plan to do it with Congress adopting the Silk Road Strategy Act (SRS) in March, 1999. It was a framework to develop "America's business empire along an extensive geographical corridor" as well as undermine and destabilize Russia, China and Iran. It was also planned as a first step toward incorporating all former Soviet republics into "America's business empire" and sphere of influence, further isolating Russia and China. The area involved is vast, extending from the Black Sea to the Chinese border in a strategically vital part of the world rich in energy resources a new "Great Game" is being waged for.

As already explained, Afghanistan lies "at the strategic crossroads of the Eurasian oil pipeline and transport routes." Under US control, it's part of making SRS work that requires the "militarization of the Eurasian corridor (for) control over extensive oil and gas reserves (and for protecting) pipeline routes (planned by) Anglo-American oil companies" like BP-Amoco and others.

SRS also aims to prevent "former Soviet republics from developing economic, political and defense ties with China, Iran, Turkey and Iraq (and to) cut the Russians off altogether from the Caspian oil and gas fields." What's planned is a number of pipeline routes (transiting west, south and east) from the Caspian through countries controlled by the Western military alliance. The whole scheme aims to benefit the US-Anglo alliance, cut off Russia, China and Iran, and "weaken competing European oil interests in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia."
When George Bush took office, negotiations with the Taliban were resumed on behalf of Unocal, after the Clinton administration first tried and then broke them off in 1999. The talks failed a few months before 9/11 leading to the Afghan war a scant four weeks later on October 7. It ended after five weeks on November 12 when the Taliban fled Kabul allowing US-recruited and financed Northern Alliance forces to enter the city the next day.

Life in Afghanistan's been surreal ever since. In parts of Kabul, an opulent elite emerged grown rich from rampant corruption and drugs trafficking discussed further below. This opulent Potemkin facade hides the harsh, dangerous, desperate conditions for the vast majority of 26 million Afghans made worse by a US-led war and occupation allowing Northern Alliance warlords back in power. It reinstated their repressive rule that helped bring Taliban to power in the first place over two-thirds of the country including the capital, Kabul. Today it's de jeva vu all over again with Afghans fed up with occupation and Northern Alliance brutality. That's allowed Taliban forces to capitalize on the turmoil and reemerge reclaiming most Southern parts of the country. It's why war rages on with no resolution in site and likely will be as unwinnable as the lost cause in Iraq already acknowledged in US high circles.

The Taliban was ousted in 2001 for various reasons. Among them was its near-eradication of opium production now flourishing again under Northern Alliance-occupation forces rule. Drugs trafficking is big business writ large with Chossudovsky explaining it's "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade" annually grossing up to $500 billion according to a UN estimate. That's more than double the revenue generated by legal prescription drugs Big Pharma reported in 2005.
A well-hidden Afghan war objective was reinstating opium production that was achieved writ large post-2001. UN anti-drug chief, Antonio Maria Costa, said it was at a record 6100 tons in 2006 (enough for 610 tons of heroin) or 92% of total world supply and 30% more than the amount consumed globally.
Chossudovsky explained narcotics are a major source of wealth, not just for organized crime, but also for the "US intelligence apparatus" representing powerful "spheres of finance and banking." Intelligence agencies and legal business syndicates are allied with criminal enterprises blurring the lines between them, at times indistinguishable. Included are Western international and other banks and their offshore affiliates in tax havens. Multi-billions from illicit drugs trafficking pour into them making this revenue source a huge profit center. None of this is secret, but it remains unreported below the radar. So is how the money is laundered and recycled into legal enterprises in real estate, manufacturing, other businesses as well as used for transactions in stocks, bonds, and other speculative investments.

It's also well documented that CIA trafficked in drugs (directly or indirectly) throughout its 60 year existence and especially since the 1980s when it used cocaine revenues funding the Contra wars in Nicaragua. Today, CIA is partnered with Afghan "warlords" and criminal syndicates in the huge business of heroin trafficking. Along with its other illicit drug dealings, it guarantees the intelligence agency billions in revenue supplementing its annual budget Mary Margaret Graham, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection, disclosed at $44 billion in 2005.

This year it's likely higher with rogue operations ongoing almost anywhere and CIA able to get whatever it wants just for the asking. This is how a rogue agency operates Chalmers Johnson calls a global Mafia-style hit squad in his new book, "Nemesis." It's a "personal, secret, unaccountable army of the president" with mischievous covert illegal operations its main function. They include overthrowing democratically elected governments, assassinating foreign heads of state and key officials, recruiting and training secret paramilitary armies, propping up friendly dictators, and snatching targeted individuals for "extraordinary rendition" to secret torture-prison hellholes from which they may never emerge.

Under George Bush, CIA is more active than ever with double the number of covert operatives. Johnson explains "CIA's bag of dirty tricks....is a defining characteristic of the imperial presidency. It is a source of unchecked power" gravely threatening the nation and shortening the life of the Republic and democratic rule he believes won't survive unless the agency is disbanded.
Along with CIA and Homeland Security, Chossudovsky highlights "America's War Machine" and the major buildup in it begun after 1999. The aim: "to achieve (an unchallengeable) position of global military hegemony....through the largest military buildup since the Vietnam war" with large annual increases planned in future years and no end to this in sight. For FY 2006, the Pentagon's reported budget was $499.4 billion (excluding multi-billions off-the-book for Iraq and Afghanistan). For fiscal 2007, it increased to over $583 billion.
Astonishingly, Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, Robert Higgs, says high numbers mask the total annual amount spent on defense in all forms, at home and abroad, that's almost double the budgeted amounts. For FY 2006, his total is $934.9 billion broken down as follows in billions:
-- Department of Defense: $499.4.
-- Department of Energy: $16.6
-- Department of State: $25.3
-- Department of Veterans Affairs: $69.8
-- Department of Homeland Security: $69.1
-- Department of Justice (one-third of FBI): $1.9
-- Department of the Treasury (for Military Retirement Fund: $38.5.
-- NASA: $7.6
-- Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays: $206.7.
Using published budgeted numbers alone, the US now spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. In 2005, China spent around $30 billion, today it's surely higher but even if $50 billion it's around 8.6% of our FY 2007 defense budget and about 5% of it with all other expenditures Higgs includes. Hyping China's threat to the US, however, Department of Defense (DOD) claimed Beijing spent $65 billion in 2005, $90 billion in 2006 and $120 budgeted for 2007.

Note, Higgs US defense spending numbers exclude secret budgets for CIA, NSA, and other off-the-books intelligence operations. It also excludes smaller budgets for the Selective Service System, the National Defense Stockpile Center, and the Treasury's program blocking financial flows to "terrorists." Nonetheless, in total, the numbers are huge, growing, and already out-of-control with Higgs estimating FY 2007 numbers an astonishing $1.028 trillion.

What is it buying us and at what cost? Chossudovsky explains it's for plenty including refurbishing our nuclear arsenal with the latest technology targeting Russia and China. There's also a new generation of "tactical nuclear weapons" or so-called "mini-nukes" including "bunker buster" earth penetrating bombs targeting underground facilities. They're designed to explode deep below ground destroying their targets while containing toxic radioactive fallout. It's already known the latter objective fails based on observed tests so far. The information, however, is suppressed and won't deter the Pentagon from using these weapons even knowing they spread harmful radiation.
Billions are also being spent developing advanced weapons systems including the hugely expensive F22 Raptor fighter plane, Joint Fighter (JF) program and controversial Strategic Defense Initiative "National Missile Defense Shield" intended for offense, not defense. It's now caused a public row with Russia over its planned deployment in Eastern European states close enough to raise justifiable alarm in the Kremlin. Then there's the ultimate imperial project in space under the doctrine of "Full Spectrum Dominance" assuring land, sea, air and space supremacy. It's outlined in the 1998 US Space Command document titled "Vision for 2020" with the cost to achieve this likely to run into trillions of dollars.

Even worse is the danger post-9/11 since the Bush administration scrapped the notion of "nuclear deterrence." A secret report leaked to the Los Angeles Times state three conditions under which nuclear weapons may be used henceforth:
-- "against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack;
-- in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or
-- in the event of surprising military developments" meaning anything the administration or Pentagon cook up as justification.

The administration cites "rogue states" as potential targets, but clearly new policy has Russia, China and Iran in mind and maybe North Korea.
China and Russia aren't ignoring the threat adding to the arms race along with other countries, like Iran, fearful of a US attack. In 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a new "National Security Doctrine" marking "a critical shift in East-West relations." It's further intensified today with Interfax recently reporting Putin saying Washington is turning Europe into a "powder keg" referring to it's missile shield deployment plans.
Putin also used harsh rhetoric ahead of the June G-8 summit accusing the Bush administration of imperialism and starting a new arms race. At a lengthy well-attended news conference, he had plenty to say that was suppressed in the West because of his candor. He voiced the concern of many in the Kremlim that Washington is targeting Russia by surrounding it with military bases, installing missiles on its borders, and allying with CIS states to isolate the country in preparation for regime change.

He emphasized Russia didn't start confrontation and isn't threatening to attack anyone. However, the nation is preparing for the worst and in late May test-fired a sophisticated new intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple warheads and new cruise missiles Russian generals claim will assure the country's security for the next 40 years. With Washington intent on destabilizing their country, Russia isn't ignoring the threat and will act responsibly to defend itself. That includes targeting US and European sites with "ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or some completely new systems" according to Putin. Earlier, Russia also confirmed it wouldn't exclude "a first-strike use" of nuclear warheads "if attacked even by purely conventional means," having only one country in mind as a potential aggressor - the US.
Former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, also aimed sharp comments against Washington and Britain for its support in an early June BBC interview. He said Russia is trying to be constructive, but America is squeezing them out of global diplomacy (and is responsible) for the current state of relations between his country and the West. He also said the Iraq War undermined Tony Blair's credibility and accused America of "empire-building." He added Blair has "himself in the embrace of a military monster (and lost) his credibility in the world and in Europe."

Chossudovsky further deconstructs Washington's agenda post-9/11 saying "the world is at an important crossroads in its history." The US "campaign against terrorism" is a "war of conquest" for empire, threatening future humanity with devastating consequences. "America's New War" isn't confined to the Middle East and Central Asia. It's aimed everywhere by militarizing "vast regions of the world, leading to the consolidation of what is best described as the "American Empire." The "war on terrorism" is cover to "re-colonize not only China (and) the former Soviet bloc, but also Iran, Iraq and the Indian (subcontinent)." Chossudovsky stresses "war and globalization" are bedfellows umbilically linked. They benefit Wall Street and the banking community, Big Anglo-American Oil, US-UK defense contractors and other corporate giants backing this process to extend "the frontiers of the global market system" giving them total control everywhere.

The dominant media claim "free trade" and "free market" reforms will bring the benefits of western civilization to everyone. Unmentioned is how it's being done - through imperial wars of conquest as the method of choice, bringing with them massive death and destruction, extreme exploitation, devastating poverty, totalitarian control, and, in Iraq, the end of the "Cradle of Civilization" dating back thousands of years. Washington's rampaging military juggernaut turned a modern prosperous nation into a surreal lawless armed wasteland with few essential services like electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel and most everything else needed for sustenance and survival including safe streets, homes, schools and all public places. It also contaminated vast areas of Iraq with deadly depleted uranium and other hazardous chemicals and pollutants making the country the most toxic environment on earth and unsafe to live in.
So much for the benefits of Western civilization and "free market" reforms. They champion deregulation and privatizing everything to steal a country's wealth for corporate predators, taking it from the people it belongs to. They get nothing back but misery and persecution if they complain. This is democracy American-style that's all illusion and no reality, and it's coming soon to a neighborhood near you unless resisted and stopped.

Chossudovsky also deconstructs the language as Orwell would do. He justifiably calls the "war on terrorism" a cruel hoax. "Realities," he says, "have been turned upside down."
-- "Acts of war are heralded as 'humanitarian intervention' (to restore) democracy.
-- Military occupation and (killing civilians are called) 'peacekeeping operations.'
-- The derogation of civilities (through totalitarian 'anti-terror' legislation is called) providing 'domestic security' and upholding civil liberties.
-- ....expenditures on health and education (and most other essential social services) are curtailed to finance the military-industrial complex and police state."
-- Mass human poverty is created worldwide through conquest, colonization and countries "transformed into open territories" for savage exploitation.
-- "US protectorates are installed with the blessing of the 'international community.'
-- 'Interim (or illusory democratically elected) governments are formed" run by designated political puppets selling out their nations' sovereignty to the lord and master of the universe for a sliver of the spoils.

Sum it up - this is what "New World Order" rule looks like those now under it can explain better than any writer. It's tyranny masquerading as humanitarian intervention, liberation and democracy. Here's how Orwell once described it: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." Today, it's sustained by the illusion of a phony "war on terrorism" publicly supported through fear of nonexistent enemies, ignoring instead a real one that does - our own government destroying our freedoms in the name of protecting them.

Chossudovsky stresses what's vitally needed now to fight back in our own self-defense - "an unprecedented degree of solidarity (to build) meaningful mass movements" for real change (restoring) the balance of power within society...." He explains "militarization....enforces the capitalist market system....Military bases must be shut down; the war machine....must be dismantled....The 'structures of ownership' must be transformed disempowering banks, financial institutions and transnational corporations (plus instituting) a radical overhaul of the state apparatus." A key priority is "stall(ing) the privatization of collective assets, infrastructure, public utilities (including water and power), state institutions (like hospitals, schools and law enforcement including prisons), communal lands" and all else in the commons.
Further, an illegitimate tyrannical system must end by removing and prosecuting criminal politicians and bureaucrats. The corrupted judiciary must be replaced by one upholding domestic and international law. Our system of checks and balances must be restored, and the Constitution again respected and obeyed, not discarded to the rule of law by what the chief executive says it is, meaning none at all. The "New World Order" must end, consigned to the dustbin of history, lest we end up there or wish we did rather than endure endless misery and abuse.

Part III - The Disinformation Campaign

It's an age-old trick that always works. It's why it's used so often even after being exposed as phony time and again but quickly forgotten in what Gore Vidal calls "the United States of amnesia." It's creating a climate of fear through fictional enemies made to seem real by the pursuasive power of the dominant media. Wars and propaganda are partnered at a time truth is the first casualty. Chossudovsky explains "the main objective of war propaganda (to convince the public war is justified) is to fabricate an enemy (by) drown(ing) out truth."
The war is waged "from the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA" and other parts of the government using the dominant media to instill fear through disinformation and lies justifying anything in self-defense. Logic and reality are manipulated and twisted to create a phony enemy made to look real. An illusion is created that homeland security is threatened and under attack justifying wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are pure acts of illegal aggression for conquest and colonization. Preventive wars are justified even though common sense and any knowledge of international law says they never are for any reason.
Chossudovsky explains how propaganda campaigns follow "a consistent pattern." They need "to instill credibility and legitimacy" based on claimed "reliable" information sources. The dominant media then transmit them through endless repetitions of warnings of the following kinds of information:

-- References to "reliable sources (and a) growing body of evidence" from government, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
-- Claimed evidence linking terrorist groups to bin Laden, Al Queda or sympathetic to them.
-- Threats of imminent terrorist attacks "sooner or later."
-- Vulnerability of "soft targets" likely causing civilian casualties.
-- Possible terror attacks in "allied countries" like Britain, France or Germany where public opinion opposes the US "war on terrorism."
-- "Confirm the need...preventive actions" are justified against "terrorist organizations and/or foreign governments which harbor" them.
-- Claim "terrorist groups" likely have WMDs and are linked to "rogue states" like Iran or Syria.
-- Cite warnings with frightening color-coded alerts based on uncovered information (later proved phony) of impending "attacks on US soil (and/or) in Western cities."
-- Cite law enforcement efforts "to apprehend alleged terrorists."
-- Feature headlined news stories of suspects arrested, nearly always Muslims/Arabs, that usually turn out to be fabricated hoaxes using innocent victims to hype fear.
-- Stressing Homeland Security repressive legislation (like Patriot Acts I and II and the Military Commissions Act) is justified as well as "ethnic profiling" and mass sweeps and arrests.

All this is done to convince the public harsh "emergency measures" and preventive wars are in the public interest even though that turns reality on its head endangering everyone. It works, however, by giving the enemy a face with Osama bin Laden in the lead role. He's still got it, but so did Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi up to the time of his reported death in June, 2006. Al-Zarqawi was called "the new terrorist mastermind" even overshadowing "Enemy Number One" bin Laden. Unmentioned in the media was that Al-Zarqawi, like bin Laden, was recruited by CIA, through Pakistan's ISI, to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and that US intelligence maintained links to the "Islamic militant network" ever since.

While Al-Zarqawi was reigning top threat, he was linked to Ansar Al-Islam, an "obscure Islamist group, based in Northern Iraq." He was also called Al Qaeda's "chief biochemical engineer" and was blamed for "the suspicious white powder found in a letter sent to (former) Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist," also containing deadly ricin poison. In January, 2003, a ricin terror alert was issued signaling Al-Zarqawi responsible, later proved phony by British police. As already stressed, the US needs a face on terror to justify illegal wars purportedly against it. While he was alive, Al-Zarqawi provided it along with bin Laden before and since. If neither of these men existed, others would be invented for their leading roles as "Enemy Number One" with still more designees in supporting roles. Without them, there's no justification for the "war on terrorism," and without media disinformation they'd be no way to get the public to go along.

Part IV - The New World Order

This "new world" flaunts the law, wages illegal wars on the world against nonexistent threats, and condemns its own people to state repression in the name of protecting national security it's endangering by its actions everywhere. One of its most outrageous acts is condoning and practicing torture as official state policy. Chossudovsky explains what's now widely known and accepted - that orders to torture Iraqi, Afghan and Guantanamo prisoners came from the highest government levels. Thus, prison guards and military and CIA interrogators followed "precise guidelines" from command directives. A secret FBI email, dated May 22, 2004, confirmed George Bush "personally signed off on certain interrogation techniques in an executive order (authorizing) sleep deprivation, stress positions, use of military dogs, sensory deprivation" using hoods, and who knows what else so far not made public.

What is known is that CIA and the Pentagon have considerable knowledge how damaging these acts are to human beings forced to endure them for extended periods. The current Army field manual states this about sensory deprivation alone: (It) "may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and anti-social behavior (and) significant psychological distress." Now try imagining how worse it is on victims undergoing physical abuse and intimidation daily combined with the damaging effects of sensory deprivation, never knowing when or if it will end. George Bush, his Justice Department, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates and others at the highest levels of the Pentagon and CIA ordered these tortures. It's not because they work, but because they effectively destroy human beings, control those who survive it, and intimidate everyone thinking they may be next. It doesn't matter to officials in charge that most of their victims are innocent of any crime.

Unreported is who these prisoners are being tortured. Seton Hall University Law School professors, including Mark Denebeaux, analyzed unclassified government data obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Their report was based on evidentiary summaries from 2004 military hearings on whether 517 Guantanamo "detainees" were "enemy combatants." They learned the majority of Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo weren't accused of hostile acts, but more shockingly, that 95% were seized by Afghan bounty hunters and sold to US forces for $5000 per claimed Taliban and $25,000 for supposed Al Queda members. In addition, at least 20 detainees were children, some as young as 13.
Chossudovsky calls such actions: "reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition" in brazenness "when there was no need to conceal acts of torture." According to administration twisted logic and indifference to international law and norms, "torture is public policy with a humanitarian mandate (because) democracy and freedom are....upheld by 'going after terrorists.' " The 400 year ruling feudal order Inquisition aimed to "maintain and sustain those in authority," and that end justified any means doing it. Today, the Pentagon, Homeland Security and CIA are similar to yesteryear's "great Inquisitor" dispensing justice through a network of religious courts for political and social control. It's mandate was: destroy the heretics, and those charged were guilty by accusation given only a choice to repent and be strangled to death or stay silent and be burned alive.
It's hard calling those times "the good old days," but it's no better today, just more sophisticated. Through years of experimenting, we've become expert inflicing maximum pain making victims endure it the longest time possible before expiring or going insane. Chossudovsky cites this as one example on our "road towards a police state" we're well advanced toward already, or maybe now there. We have outrageous laws in place, Nazis and Stalin would have been proud of, but now can do what Orwell imagined 58 years ago in his 1984 "Big Brother" society controlling everyone. Technology allows near-unlimited surveillance and abusive spying to watch, categorize, tag, and label us through information from our most personal records and behavior. Only the recesses of our hearts, minds and souls remain unpenetrated - so far.

Nothing will change at this "critical juncture in our history" unless we "break the Inquisition." Doing it means "breaking the consensus (and) disabl(ing) its propaganda" campaign of fear and intimidation. That entails "unseat(ing) the Inquisitors" and prosecuting those in high office guilty of crimes of war and against humanity. Without this, they'll be no justice or an end to "New World Order" tyranny safe in the hands of a carefully chosen new "Grand Inquisitor" elected in 2008 picking up where the old one leaves off. He (or she) will follow ruling order policy assuring Congress and the courts are as much in lockstep as today with "the military-intelligence establishment calling the shots on US foreign policy." Benefitting hugely at our expense will be predatory corporate giants licking their chops for more gains ahead from continuing "militarization of (our) civilian institutions" fast disappearing under military/police state control.

Chossudovsky raises the issue of administration foreknowledge of 9/11. He notes the Pentagon conducted a test simulation of a passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon in October, 2000. Ironically, the CIA held a similar (quickly hushed up for a year) test at its Chantilly, Virginia Reconnaissance Office on the morning of 9/11. Both tests refute administration lies they could not predict events they were preparing for.

In addition, Washington had numerous "intelligence warnings" and that senior administration officials lied under oath to the 9/11 Commission they had no foreknowledge or forewarning. They had plenty. "Carefully documented research" also reveals:
-- The US Air Force got stand-down orders on 9/11 not to intervene.
-- A cover-up of World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon investigations occurred.
-- WTC rubble was hastily removed and disposed of before it could be examined.
-- Plane debris at the Pentagon was unaccounted for.
-- Huge financial gains were made through insider trading in the days prior to 9/11.
-- WTC Building 7 either mysteriously collapsed or was "pulled" the afternoon of 9/11.
-- Critics accuse the White House of "criminal negligence" for disregarding crucial intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attack. These critics contend "they knew (in advance) but failed to act" preventively.

Chussodovsky rebukes this line of reasoning saying revealing Bush administration lies regarding foreknowledge contributes to reinforcing the 9/11 cover-up. Foreknowledge then "becomes part of the disinformation campaign (serving) to present Al Queda as a threat (to American security), when, in fact, Al Queda is a creation of the US intelligence apparatus" and is still being used by it. Pinning responsibility on Islamic terrorists justifies the "war on terrorism" and against Iraq and Afghanistan. It also provides cover for repressive police state legislation shredding our civil liberties and dismantling our social state to pay for militarizing it.

While debate centers around "incompetence" or "an intelligence failure," Al Queda and "Enemy Number One" are blamed," and the beat goes on allowing the administration to get away with (mass) murder literally. Explained above, this is Washington's strategy. Without Al Queda to blame and a gullible public believing it, the Bush house of cards collapses, there's "no war on terrorism" nor all it spawned at home and abroad.

The 9/11 (whitewash) Commission was part of the scheme. It revealed Bush administration officials lied under oath, then did nothing about it. "Yet nobody had begged the key question," Chossudovsky asserts: "What is the significance of these 'warnings' emanating from the intelligence apparatus, knowing that the CIA is the creator of Al Queda and that Al Queda is an 'intelligence asset' (as distinct from an agent)." Were Bush administration officials deliberately lying to the 9/11 Commission to cover up a bigger lie no one's been held accountable for?

Chossudovsky debunks another 9/11 lie asking "On the Morning of 9/11: What Happened on the Planes?" Events in their cabins were based on supposedly "corroborating evidence" from cell and air phone conversations to family members or others. Only one cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was recovered - from UAL 93. The 9/11 Commission gave the impression cell phone communications to and from the planes were of good quality. It was never mentioned prevailing technology made it near impossible to place a wireless cell call from an aircraft travelling at high speed above 8000 feet. Installed air phones, in contrast, provide clear communications.

The Commission's timeline suggests the planes were at higher altitudes so claimed cell phone conversations reported were dubious at best and likely contrived, exaggerated or plain lies. Reports of these calls on the day of the attack were crucial "to sustain the illusion" America was under attack. It was "part of the disinformation campaign....dispel(ling) the historical role played by US intelligence in supporting the development of the (Al Queda) terror network."

Heightening the level of fear and conditioning the public for what may lie ahead, we're now warned about a "Second 9/11." Former CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks did it in an interview in December, 2003 saying "another mass, casualty-producing event" would result in the Constitution being suspended and martial law declared - in other words, the end of the Republic officially replaced by tyranny. Chossudovsky stresses Franks' comment wasn't opinion. It was "consistent with the dominant viewpoint....in the Pentagon....and Homeland Security....in case of a national emergency." Further, the "war on terrorism" is the cornerstone of Bush's National Security doctrine providing "justification for repealing the Rule of Law" in the event of a significant external threat or event.

Should this happen, it will amount to the "Criminalization of the State, the repeal of democracy," and the end of America as we know it - officially. From all available evidence, it appears this is planned using a fabricated terrorist threat and second 9/11 to pull it off with public consent believing it's for our own security, henceforth compromised and lost.

Chossudovsky discusses the major Pentagon 2005 document outlining what's planned ahead for global military dominance along with police state control at home. It's called "The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (NDS). It extends the "contours of Washington's global military agenda (envisaging possible) military intervention against countries (not constituting) a threat to the US homeland." This goes beyond preventive war to a more "proactive" strategy against declared enemies to "preserve peace (and) defend America." This is insanity, yet four major threats are considered:
-- "Traditional challenges" from recognized military powers.
-- "Irregular threats" from forces using "unconventional" means.
-- "The catastrophic challenge" from WMDs.
-- "Disruptive challenges" from "potential adversaries" using new technologies against us.

NDS listed 25 countries "deemed unstable and, thus, candidates for (military) intervention." Those named remain secret, but some have been identified including Venezuela, Nepal, Haiti, Algeria, Peru, Bolivia, Sudan, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire. It's hard imagining Iran, Syria and Lebanon aren't targets as well with others qualified for membership by failing to place our sovereignty above their own. Helping them "stabilize" is used as the pretext for any planned military intervention. That means any nation opting out of our "free market" model can expect the Marines to show up to return them to the fold. It's called democracy American-style.

At home, as already explained, creating fear is the method of choice keeping the public on board supporting the phony "war on terrorism." That's what color-coded terror alerts are all about. They're seen daily on TV, and raised to "high risk" Code Orange at strategic moments when elevated fear levels are needed to get legislation passed, divert attention from administration embarrassments, diffuse anti-war protests, or simply re-stoke public angst about terror threats so people don't forget them. Never mind, as Chossudovsky documents, these threats, headlining for days at times, are nearly always based on "fabricated intelligence."

So in the run-up to the March, 2003 Iraq war, a disinformation campaign was waged about WMDs and linking Saddam with Al Queda and 9/11. It was to build public support for the war and weaken anti-war protests against it that were unprecendented in size worldwide before it began. Once the truth on both counts came out, it was too late, and it was on to the next scare scam.
Chossudovsky cites the Air France Christmas, 2003 stand down orders based on phony evidence Al Queda and Taliban operatives were on Flight 68. It was a lie, but it kept Los Angeles International Airport on "maximum deployment" throughout the holiday period and FBI officials working around the clock - for nothing because of "fake intelligence" to heighten fear. The nation was on "high risk" Code Orange alert, six heavy-traffic Air France flights paid the price, and so did the public getting scammed.

Whenever a strategic moment arises or Washington thinks public fear is ebbing, get ready for more headlined news of terror plots and arrests made or suspects being hunted down. It happened in early June with hyped stories of a plot to blow up JFK Airport's jet fuel tanks and supply lines some reports claimed would be "more devastating than 9/11." This nonsense keeps being used because people believe it.

This time, four men were charged even though no crime was committed, the suspects had no apparent means to carry out the supposed plot, and the only so-called "evidence" comes from conversations recorded between "the source" (identified as an unnamed drug trafficker) and defendants. We're told the informant agreed to infiltrate the "terror cell" in return for leniency on his pending sentence, guaranteeing he'd say anything to get himself off.
This plot gets thicker, but the point is once again hyped accounts have again been used to stoke public fear. And once again, Muslims are vicimized as "terrorists." Sadly, even though likely innocent, these men may end up convicted and imprisoned just like other high-profile targets Sami Al-Arian and Rafil Dhafir. They're both innocent men now serving hard time victimized by Washington's "war on terrorism."

Chossudovsky explains we live in a "Big Brother, Homeland Security State." A July, 2004 Homeland Security Council (HSC) report refers to a "Universal Adversary" (UA) defined as four categories of "conspirators:"
-- "foreign (Islamic) terrorists;"
-- "domestic (anti-war, civil and human rights) groups;"
-- "state-sponsored adversaries" ("Rogue States, unstable or failed states"); and
-- "disgruntled employees" (labor and union activists).

Chossudovsky explains the notion of a "Universal Adversary" is being used to prepare the public for a "real life emergency situation" under which no political or social dissent will be tolerated. If it happens, it will trigger a Code Red Alert signaling the highest threat level of severe or imminent terrorist attack preparing the public for imposition of martial law and suspension of the Constitution. Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, anti-terrorist "drills" were held in major cities to build "a broad consensus among 'top officials,' within federal, State and municipal bodies, as well as within the business community and civil society organizations that the outside enemy exists and that 'the threat is real.' " Chossudovsky calls it "a world of fiction (that) becomes fact."

In the event of an emergency, the military will be involved that was forbidden under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, never enforced, and now repealed since October 17, 2006. That was when George Bush signed the Military Commissions (torture authorization) Act and National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2007 containing a provision annulling the 1807 Insurrection Act. Now the president can (legally) deploy federal or National Guard troops on the nation's streets for whatever he calls public disorder, including peaceful anti-war protests. These laws, along with Patriot Acts I and II (violating our most personal privacy rights) have set the table for martial law imposition whenever the chief executive orders it.

Chossudovsky explains media disinformation is preparing the public "for the unthinkable" likely to be police state rule under the facade of a "functioning democracy." Its parameters have already been defined:
-- "the Big Brother surveillance apparatus, through....consolidated data banks on citizens;
-- the militarization of justice and law enforcement;
-- the disinformation and propaganda network;
-- the covert support to terrorist organizations;
-- political assassinations, torture manuals, and (homeland) concentration camps (being built); and
-- extensive war crimes and the blatant violation of international law."

Conclusions

Chossudovsky wrote an important book in 2002 titled "War and Globalization." This volume, "America's War on Terrorism," updated it with voluminous, heavily documented new information on the state of America today under both parties and the threat that poses for the Republic, hanging by a thread. Though published in 2005, it's as fresh now as when it first appeared, and his conclusion is essentially the same as what Chalmers Johnson wrote in his 2006 book, "Nemesis - The Last Days of the American Republic." Johnson explained our well-entrenched militarism and single-minded pursuit of empire saying we have a choice. We can keep on this path and lose our democracy, but history is clear: we can't have both.

Chossudovsky and Johnson both agree - the signs are ominous, and conclusive evidence post-9/11 proves it, amply spelled out in "America's War on Terrorism." That doesn't mean we're doomed or change can't come. It can, but never from the top down. The lessons of history are clear. Mass-action grassroots efforts can achieve what governments won't do willingly. Scare tactics to bring us in line won't work if we don't let them. But it will take millions mobilized to resist to do it. Is saving the Republic incentive enough to try? We better hope so.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached
at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

South Carolina treasurer indicted on cocaine charges

Finalement un bon exemple que les hommes politiques americains ne sont pas au-dessus des lois avec le traffic et la vente de stupefiants. Cliquez sur le lien comme d'habitude.

U.S. makes mockery of Afghan democracy-ousted MP

Les droits de la femme en Afghanistan n'ont rien change sous la Presidence d'Ahmid Karzai, certaines personnes comme Joya pensent meme que la situation est pire que sous le Taleban:

Despite death threats, Joya vowed to fight on for her people and to stand in the next election.NEW YORK, June 18 (Reuters) - The United States is making a mockery of democracy and the war on terrorism by supporting corrupt Afghan lawmakers who are criminals and warlords, said an outspoken female Afghan politician, who was removed from parliament. Malalai Joya, 29, was effectively expelled last month when the lower house of parliament voted to suspend her for the remaining 3 1/2 years of her term after she described the legislative body as "worse than a stable" during an interview. Washington "supports the same enemies, who are mentally like the Taliban. ... They brought them back into power," soft-spoken Joya told Reuters in an interview during a visit to the United States. "This is the wrong policy. Do not support fundamentalist warlords," she said. "Every day for the people of Afghanistan is Sept. 11. Please pressure your government to change this policy, it is a mockery of democracy, it is a mockery of the war on terror." The United States invaded Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington to oust the Taliban government after if failed to surrender Osama bin Laden, leader of the Islamist al Qaeda network. Afghanistan has been fractured by rival warlords since the Soviet Union pulled out in 1989 and its lower house of parliament, elected in 2005, is full of ex-warlords and former militia leaders along with suspected drug dealers.

'RAPE HER' Dressed in a gray pinstriped suit with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and sitting in the New York offices of Human Rights Watch, Joya said the parliament had kicked her out so she could no longer oppose and expose their actions. "Many, many times they insulted me, even inside of the parliament they threw water at me and they threatened me with death, and one of them shouted, 'Take her and rape her,'" she said. "They turned off my microphone. "This is a completely non-democratic parliament, they stand up against the constitution and they do non-democratic acts," she said ahead of the screening of a documentary about her 2005 election campaign at the Human Rights Watch film festival. One such act was a proposal in the lower house of parliament for a blanket amnesty for those who committed war crimes over nearly 30 years of conflict. She asked, "How can criminals forgive themselves?" Joya said the Afghan people had been hopeful the U.S.-led invasion "would bring democracy for them and security for them and many more things like that, but unfortunately we are looking at a worse situation than the Taliban period." Last year was the bloodiest in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion and, while a threatened spring offensive by insurgents has not materialized, violence has continued through suicide bombings and other attacks. "I will continue more and more with my struggle because most of my people are with me," she said.

La diversity aux USA

En psychosociologie comme toute discipline rien n'est acquis: aux USA la diversite ne se manifeste pas a l'interieur d'un groupe ou en dehors d'un groupe, elle serait plutot issue par anomie ou bien par isolation sociale. C'est la face cachee de l'individualisme qui a eu tant d'eloges aux USA.
Definition de l'anomie: au sens large c'est l'absence de loi, regle, principe ou ordre. Dans le contexte social c'est l'absence de valeur ou de standards moraux, on emploie souvent ce terme sans trop le savoir en essayant de capter sa consequence dans la "volatisation de la societe".
Apres avoir lu ce texte, vous realiserez peut-etre que la construction sociale du modele francais n'est pas si mal que cela par rapport au modele americain.

For decades, students of American society have offered dueling theories about how encountering racial and ethnic diversity affects the way we live. One says that simple contact…is likely to nourish tolerance and trust. Familiarity, in this view, trumps insularity. Others argue that…when diversity increases,…people tend to stick to their own groups and distrust those who are different from them.

But what if diversity had an even more complex and pervasive effect?… What if it made people withdraw into themselves, form fewer close
friendships, feel unhappy and powerless and stay home watching television in the evening instead of attending a neighborhood barbecue or joining a community project? This is the unsettling picture that emerges from a huge nationwide
telephone survey by the famed Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his colleagues. “Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation,” Putnam writes in the June issue of the journal Scandinavian Political
Studies. “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to `hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

In highly diverse cities and towns like Los Angeles, Houston and Yakima, Wash., the survey found, the residents were about half as likely to trust people of other races as in homogenous places like Fremont, Mich., or rural South Dakota, where, Putnam noted, “diversity means inviting a few Norwegians to the annual Swedish picnic.”

More significant, they were also half as likely to trust people of their own race. They claimed fewer close friends. They were more apt to agree that “television is my most important form of
entertainment.” They had less confidence in local government and less confidence in their own ability to exert political influence…

But the diversity finding was so surprising that Putnam said his first thought was that maybe something was wrong with the data. He and his research team spent five years testing other explanations…But the effect did not go away. When colleagues who heard about the results protested, “I bet you haven’t thought about X” — a frequent occurrence, Putnam said — the researchers went back and looked at X.

Still, in Putnam’s view, the findings are neither cause for despair nor a brief against diversity. If this country’s history is any
guide, what people perceive as unfamiliar and disturbing — what they see as “other” — can and does change over time. Seemingly intractable
group divisions can give way to a larger, overarching identity. When he was in high school in the 1950s, Putnam notes, he knew the religion of almost every one of the 150 students in his class. At the time, religious intermarriage was uncommon, and knowing whether a potential mate was a Methodist, a Catholic or a Jew was crucial
information. Half a century later, for most Americans, the importance of religion as a mating test has dwindled to near irrelevance, “hardly more important than left- or right-handedness to romance.”

The rising marriage rates across racial and ethnic lines in a younger generation, raised in a more diverse world, suggest the current markers of difference can also fade in salience. In some places, they already have: soldiers have more interracial friendships than civilians, Putnam’s research finds, and evangelical churches in the South show high rates of racial integration. “If you’re asking me if, in the long run, I’m optimistic,” Putnam says, “the answer is yes.”

Les bombes a defragmentation - cluster bombs

Les USA sont prets a negocier des accords internationaux sur les bombes a defragmentation uniquement dans le sens de leur ambition geopolitique: "on a besoin de ces bombes, laissez-nous le temps d'ameliorer leur efficacite". Au pays des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois, jugez plutot pour vous meme:


But the United States still rejects a proposed global ban on the weapon, which 46 countries began negotiating in Oslo in February, officials said. Instead, Washington wants to negotiate a treaty that doesn't go as far within the framework of the 1980 UN Convention on Conventional Weapons.
...

The United States said in November there are sufficient controls on the weapon in existing treaties. And it has said cluster bombs, used carefully, have important military uses, such as attacking artillery positions, armoured columns and missile installations.

The United States still insists on the military use of cluster bombs but wants to limit the impact they have on civilians and improve their accuracy.

Colombia shaken as paramilitary leaders testify

Une histoire qui ne paraitra pas dans les medias americains et pour cause: le gouvernement colombien finance par Bush dans "sa guerre contre la drogue" est implique dans une affaire d'extorcation financiere et des meurtres en serie. Une armee illegale de plus de 1,500 soldats (en uniformes) operaient ainsi sous la complicite du gouvernement colombien. Pourvu que le congres americain coupe l'aide financiere a la Colombie!
Cliquez sur le lien pour decouvrir l'abominable confession de Fredy Rendon.

Gulf Arabs Won’t be Base for Attack on Iran: Saudi

RIYADH - Gulf Arab countries will not be used as a launch pad for any military attack on Iran, a powerful Saudi royal was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz said Iran had no interest in striking its oil-producing Arab neighbors if it comes under attack from the United States.

“I think the brothers in Iran are totally aware that … Iran will not be a source of harm for their neighbors and brothers … These countries (Arab neighbors) will not be a source of harm for Iran,” he said in remarks late on Saturday carried by state news agency SPA.

“Respect and consideration are mutual. I speak for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (relations) with Iran and for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),” he added, referring to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Nayef urged Iran to hand over militants suspected of plotting against the kingdom.

Iran extradited a number of Saudi suspects to the kingdom in the past. Some of the suspects have been released after being cleared.

He also called on Tehran not to meddle in Iraqi affairs.

Sunni Saudi Arabia had accused Iran of backing Shi’ite death squads killing Sunnis in Iraq, and of backing an opposition front led by Hezbollah in efforts to bring down the Sunni-backed government in Lebanon.

“Creed does not justify intervention in Iraqi affairs,” he said.

Pakistan Minister Says Rushdie Award Justifies Attacks, AP Says

Le gouvernement pakistanais, ami de Bush et sa "guerre contre la terreur" a declare officiellement qu'il supportait les "suicide attacks":

By Robin Stringer

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan's religious affairs minister said the U.K.'s award of a Knighthood to author Salman Rushdie justified suicide attacks, the Associated Press reported.

``The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone explodes a bomb on his body, he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the `sir' title,'' AP quoted Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq as saying today in Pakistan's parliament.

The award is an occasion for the world's ``1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision,'' AP quoted the minister as saying.

The U.K. announced the award of a knighthood for the author of ``The Satanic Verses'' in an honors list on June 16. Rushdie, 59, went into hiding after Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a 1989 fatwa calling for Muslims to kill the author for allegedly insulting Islam in the book.

White House press corps evacuated

La "guerre contre la terreur" est devenue une realite omnipresente dans la nomenclature de l'aparatchik americain.

Members of the press were told to vacate their temporary filing centre which is around the corner from the Blair House, where visiting dignitaries often stay.

Security was already at a heightened level around the White House complex because of the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Mr Olmert is staying at Blair House in advance of a meeting tomorrow with President George W. Bush.

A police officer on the scene said a bomb-sniffing dog smelled something on a vehicle and they were investigating.

Secret Service and White House officials had no immediate comment.

Les troupes US pourraient rester en Irak pendant plus de 10 ans

Les troupes americaines ne se retireront jamais d'Irak. Les Americains s'appuyant sur l'exemple francais de la guerre d'Algerie pour contrer les insurgents, la situation risque de devenir completement explosive en Irak au fils des annees.
Cliquez sur le lien comme d'hab.

L'immunite diplomatique

Les lois n'arretent pas de changer aux Etats-Unis. Les pays membres des Nations-Unies furent exempts autrefois de payer des taxes sur la propriete, cependant les choses sont vues differemment par la Court Supreme puisque 7 votes sur 2 ont decide que maintenant seulement les Embassades peuvent jouir de ce statut d'immunite.
2 pays ont oublie de payer: l'Inde avec plus de 16 millions de dollars et la Mongolie avec 2.1 millions de dollars.

On peut d'ores et deja entrevoir la position des Etats-Unis: ils sont fatigues de financer les Nations-Unies a leur siege de New-York. Il serait peut-etre temps de trouver un autre siege en dehors du territoire americain.

Shiites, Sunnis and George Bush

Il est toujours bon de se rememoriser historiquement les differences entre les Chiites et les Sunnites. L'Iran autrefois connu sous le nom de la Perse etait le plus grand empire de tous les temps, plus grand que l'empire romain puisque ce fut le premier pays a s'etirer de l'Asie jusqu'aux portes de l'Europe avec la Grece.


by Abbas Sadeghian

In dealing with the current problems of the Middle East, obviously it is quite important to understand the differences between Shiites and Sunnies. Furthermore, with the addition of the American presence, this situation has become more complicated. Unfortunately, there is very little in-depth analysis of this topic, leaving the impression that these are just a bunch of primitive people who just like to fight.

The conflicts and problems between Shiites and Sunnies are so deep, and the history is so long, that one can write volumes on the topic and only scratch the surface. This article is an attempt to give a historical overview of the problem itself, as well as, to discuss the additional complication caused by the United States presence in this region, and their decisions on how to conduct the war. My hope is that the reader would realize that the Sunni Shiite division is not a problem like Catholic Vs Protestant.

Racial Differences:

Some time about 2000-3000 B.C. a series of tribes of people called Aryans immigrated down the caucuses and poured throughout the world. They divided into three main groups: one group went to northern India and mixed with the local natives of India. The second group went down to Iran (the term Iran means Aryan). The third group went to Europe and mixed in with their local tribes.

The conflict between the Iranian Aryans and the Semitic people of the rest of the Middle East is the root of all these problems. Wars, religions, and invasions have modified the problem throughout history, but the deep divide has never been resolved.

From the beginning of the arrival of Aryans up to 500 B.C., the Semitic tribes were mostly dominant and would keep the Aryans out of their territory. The battlefields were mostly in the area which is now the border between Iran and Iraq. The main Semitic empire was the Assyrian empire and their harsh rule made them very successful. The most famous story left from those times is the story of the captivity of Jews in Mesopotamia under the Assyrians.

2500 years ago things changed, as an Iranian ruler, called Cyrus the Great cut through the Assyrian and Babylon defenses and conquered the entire known world - from Egypt on his left, to India on his right, from Russia at his north and Yemen to his south. He created the world's first super power. He is admired for writing the first bill of rights (currently in the British museum). His grandson Dariush I is credited for creating the first gold coin, first postal system, first intercontinental highway and digging the first route of the Suez Canal. The next 1000 years is mostly known for the wars between Iranians, Greeks and Romans, until the beginning of Islam in 670A.D.

Rise of Islam and division of Shiite and Sunnies:

The rise of Islam was so swift that it is probably considered the biggest aberration in history. Countries conquering each other are common in history, but Islam expanded from Saudi Arabia to China and North Africa, until they were stopped 150 miles from Paris in about fifty years.

They did not just conquer those countries, but changed everyone's religion as well. The cause of this rapid expansion is not the subject of this article, however. In my book, "Sword and Seizure: Muhammad's Epilepsy and Creation of Islam," I have explained some of the causes. What we need to know are a few relatively unknown facts of history.

The first division of Shiites and Sunnis began with Muhammad's death. By the time he was 63, he had conquered most of Arabia and was making preparation for the invasion of other countries. A few days before he died, the disagreement over his succession started.

One group was of the opinion that the leadership should stay in the prophet's family, and since he did not have a son, his cousin and son- in- law, Ali, should be the ruler. Ali had two sons, Hasan and Housein, who were very dear to the prophet. Ali was famous for his battles for Islam, but he was only thirty years old. And in tribal society where elders make the decisions, this did not go over well.

The second group wanted the traditional way in which people would shake hands with an elder who was respected, pious and from an important clan. Muhammad knew problems were coming up and was sad over the division. He chose the second group and asked an elder who was his best friend with the name of Abu Baker to lead the prayers which gave the stamp of approval that the second group needed.

Once the prophet was dead the problems arose. The ones who were supporting Ali were called Shiite (Arabic for follower), and the ones who sided with Abu Baker were called Sunni (Arabic for traditionalist).

In the beginning this division was not too serious, and Ali made peace with Abu Baker, and his successors Omar and Othman. Eventually, and later on in life, he was chosen the leader.

Meanwhile, Islam expanded rapidly, the Persian Empire collapsed, and with that came the treasure and manpower of the strongest country on the planet. Arabs conquered Egypt, North Africa, Northern India and Spain. At this point the Islamic empire was taken over by a tribe who were Muhammad's most bitter enemy but they had converted to Islam. So a rebellion started in the Islamic world which still exists, and that was the rebellion of Shiites. Muhammad's grandson Housein rebelled against these newcomers and was brutally butchered by Sunnis.

This blood feud was so grave that people still fight over it today. Killing the prophet's grandson in the desert, along with his young children, was not something to be forgiven. Hussein's sons, for the following ten generations, were considered true religious leaders of the Islamic world by Shiites. Yet they had no power, and one way or another, every one of the sons was killed by Sunnies.

The twelfth one disappeared mysteriously, and it became a popular belief that he was the messiah and that he had gone to the skies to come back some day to take revenge for his father, to kill all evil people, and put the kingdom of god on earth. The idea was far fetched, was not mentioned in the Quran, and sounded like blasphemy to Sunnis.

The new feud of Arabs and Iranians:

Iranians had become Moslem by force. They lived under Arab rule for two hundred years. During the first year of the invasion, more than 100,000 people were taken as slaves, but they did not totally lose their identity, unlike countries of North Africa, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. They were able to hold on to their own language and local governments and eventually throw the Arabs out of their territory. However, they remained Moslem, with about one third of the population being Shiite.

About 700 years ago problems flared up again. The brutal invasion of the Mongols destroyed all existing governments. It took another 200 years until the Ottoman Empire took over Turkey and Arabic countries, and the Safavid dynasty took over Iran.

The Ottoman Empire was Sunni and wanted to expand to the east and to the west, which meant rolling over the Iranian government. Iran was being hit from the east by Sunni Uzbeks and Afghans while being hammered from the west by the Ottoman Empire. At this time, only about one third of Iran was Shiite. So, Shah Ismail Safavi, a devoted Shiite, came up with the solution, "Let's turn the entire country to Shiite." It was an effective idea and was achieved by the sword. One would become Shiite - or he was dead.

This change brought a new identity for the country; a mixture of old Persian ideas mixed with Islam, creating such a difference that it would make it impossible to ever get along. One hundred years of battles ensued and the borders of the two countries were sealed.

The rivalry between the two countries was extremely serious. They brutally killed one another, and in large numbers. The Sunnies massacred the Shiites in Turkey and branded them on their foreheads, while the Shiites invaded Iraq and burned the Sunni shrines. A small group of Shiites migrated to Lebanon and took refuge in the mountains .They had much better relationship with Christians than the Sunnies.

Meanwhile, a renaissance was taking place in Europe. Secular governments took away much of the power of the church. Advances in science, the discovery of America, and many more changes on the continent, awoke Europe from the sleep of the Middle Ages.

Simultaneously, in Islamic countries, a gradual deep sleep took over with religious leaders dominating all aspects of life. Both the Ottoman Empire and Iran began to rot from the core. Gradually, both countries weakened and eventually, the fighting subsided and old battles turned to local skirmishes. The old savagery was mostly gone until the First World War.

First World War:

If we assume that the cold war was the continuation of WWII, and WWII was a continuation of WWI, then we can conclude that World War I in Europe did not really finish until 1984 when Russians pulled their troops out of Europe.

Unfortunately, the First World War in the Middle East is not over yet. The Arab-Israeli conflict started in 1917, and the division of the Ottoman Empire happened about the same time. General Edmund Allenby randomly divided the Ottoman Empire into heterogeneous pieces among Arabs, Jews, Kurds and Persians. The goal was to divide the area so badly and drastically, that it would never become a problem for Europeans.

These events coincided with the discovery of oil in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In 1914, the British Empire decided to change the fuel of the British navy to oil rather than coal. With this change, the most hated European companies showed up in the Middle East. Probably the most famous one is BP, British Petroleum (new name for the old Anglo Persian Oil Company) which plundered Iran and Iraq for decades.

According to the contracts that the British had made with their puppet governments of Iran and Iraq, the British would dig out the oil, sell it at 97 cents a barrel and would give16% of the profits in the form of credit to Iran to buy armaments from England.

Post-war chaos, local corruption, and colonialism were the stories of the day. For a few years, the British ruled the world and they had one main obsession - keep the socialist movement contained in the USSR so they could hold onto their colonies in India, the Middle East and Africa.

Second World War:

WWII changed all equations. The Soviet Union and the United States divided the world to two camps, while the British Empire turned into an international nuisance hated in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Americans ruled the Middle East with their puppet governments in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bahrain, and Kuwait. The pre- world war conflicts intensified, leading to pan Arabism and clashes of Shiite and Sunnies in Iraq and Lebanon, and the Arab Israeli wars.

Iraq was never an independent country, it was a part of the Ottoman Empire and the conflicts between Shiites and Sunnies had been going on for more than a thousand years. The Shiites lived on the east side of the river Tigress. The same ghetto recently renamed Sadder City. The Shiia majority was brutally run by Sunni minority.

With the rise of Saddam Hussein to power, coupled with the Iranian revolution, things got worse. Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shiites in order to stay in power. His now infamous words are well known:

"God in his creation made three errors Jews, Iranians, and the fly."

Then there were the Gulf Wars I and II. Although Gulf War I was conducted with success, the Shiites were left alone yet again and then were massacred by Saddam. Naturally, during the second war they sided with Americans but this time, developed their own militia in case they were abandoned one more time.

George Bush and the War:

I think we all can accept that we are a by-product of our past and unfortunately, this rule applies to the president as well. During the Vietnam War the president was able to get himself into the pilot school with the help of his father. He scored at 25th percentile which is the lowest grade acceptable to this program. One would assume that if a person is able to become a pilot, or a lawyer or a doctor, that he would be eager to practice what he has been trained for. However, Bush chose to go and work on other people's political campaigns, leaving us with the assumption that becoming a pilot was just a way of competing with the father who was a real war hero.

After 9/11, he had the opportunity to compete with his father again. The problem was that Bush Jr. did not have the abilities that the father had; he was poorly educated with very limited knowledge of international affairs. His style of running the war was like a MBA running a corporation - and very different to his father's who knew every player personally. The differences in character make-up of the father and son is so pronounced that it will take years and many books to analyze the differences. Perhaps Bush's mother put it the best. When she was told that her son was going to run for president, she said:

"No, not him, he is like me - he is the family clown."

It is a rule in psychology that most of the time in relationships between two people, the more intelligent figure becomes the dominant one. We can observe this phenomenon when the president simply gave up the rule of the country to Dick Cheney, and other people around him, as long as they were completely loyal to him. Consequently, when real problems like 9/11 and Katrina came around there was not an intelligent, knowledgeable president to make the decisions. The only thing he was superior in was taking vacations.

Political and military errors

I must confess that when Bush began to talk about invading Iraq, I shared his illusion. Being an Iranian American, I thought the U.S would roll over Iraq and that would give us the platform to go after the Ayatollahs in Iran. But, I was mistaken; within a few months it was obvious that Americans had miscalculated the entire thing. The differences between the first Gulf War and the second one are too vast and varied to mention them all. Here are a few:

(1) The commander of the first war Norman Schwarzkopf, was born and raised in Iran. His father was the American military attaché to Iran and knew the Middle East upside down. Schwarzkopf's IQ was estimated as170. The commander of the second war was AbuZaid who was a paper tiger, and never asked for more troops until Rumsfeld resigned.

(2) The first war included Arab countries like Syria. The second war had a token number of soldiers from different countries.

(3) The total number of American soldiers of the first war was 500,000. The total for the second war was about 150,000.

(4) The total number of American tanks for liberating Kuwait was more than 2000, while the total number of tanks for occupation of the country (which logically should be higher) was only 200.

The only thing that was the same was the presence of the British, which meant to Iraqis, that their forces were there to stay and steal the oil. With people like Chalabi leading the way and Halliburton getting the contracts, it was natural that every Iraqi would be suspicious of Americans.

At that moment in time, there was a need for Bush to rise to the occasion and travel from capital to capital to make peace with Iran and Syria. Yet, he deepened the divide, causing the coalition of American friends and allies to shrink, and the rest of the world to unify against Americans.

The moderate government of Ayatollah Khatami in Iran was replaced by the government of Ahmadinegad, Sunni governments giving support to insurgents who target Americans, and an Iranian government electing a puppet government in Iraq.
Bush's flip flops:

When Ahmadi Negad got into office a joke began to circulate around Tehran: "Now, the world has two Bushes, the one in Iran is the crap, the one inWashington is the stench."

Ironically, they managed to live up to their reputation. Ahmadi Negad's rhetoric is famous and there is no need to repeat it. However, G W Bush's flip flopping is simply too crazy to ignore.

From the beginning of his administration, most people familiar with Iranian politics were advising him to try to mend the fences and start the process of normalizing relationships with Iran. The Swiss ambassador to Iran drafted a letter outlining the process of normalizing the relationship. The letter included Iran's offer to recognize Israel. The letter was authorized by Iran and was sent to the U.S state department, without a signature, to leave room for denial.

Anybody familiar with Middle Eastern politics would have jumped at the opportunity, but the Bush and Cheney team did not respond, and although after 9/11 Iran helped the U.S in toppling the Taliban, they called Iran a part of Axis of Evil and talked about regime change. The response from Tehran was the shift of power to hard liners, revolutionary guards, and acceleration of the plan for the bomb.

These days, Bush's posture towards Iran changes like a babies diaper. Bush has lost his credibility and popularity. He is totally confused in dealing with Iraq .The new Congress does not want a war with Iran, so he ends up sending every ship in the navy to the Persian Gulf, and then offers direct negotiation. The Shiites of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are more powerful than before. The Sunnies of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and UAE are frightened of their own unpopular government, and even Tony Blair looses his office for being Bush's friend.

Let's finish the article with these two little stories showing the difference between those who win wars and those who loose.

1) When Alexander had conquered Persia and India and was returning to Persepolice in a desert called Mokran, two-thirds of his army died of thirst, yet a few soldiers managed to climb a mountain and get snow to bring back. They gave the ice cold water to Alexander to drink; he poured the water on the ground and said he would not drink until there was enough water for everybody to drink.

(2) George Bush has been to Baghdad twice; the first time was the Thanksgiving before 2004 election-- a photo-op in the middle of the night for two hours. The next year, after he had won the election and he did not go to Baghdad, reporters asked him how come he was not going there. He said, "They are doing well. They do not need me"

The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

John Stewart of The Daily Show talks about how crazy it is that we are now arming Sunnis insurgents--our former enemies--to fight al Qaida.

La nature du langage contre la pratique enseignee

C'est un billet que j'avais noirci sur un autre blog, et je reprends donc les lignes toujours dans le theme des croyances face a la realite via les mots. Je reproche souvent que toute education d'une civilisation n'est jamais au point, elle a souvent des lacunes et des contre-verites.

S'exprimer par le langage prend de la patience et certains mots employes dans une civilisation ont un sens bien different dans une autre pays. C’est comme “caliente” qui veut dire chaud, mais si on le dit a une femme, alors on peut confondre avec le sex appeal. Des mots pleinement utilises dans une civilisation peuvent avoir une toute autre signification dans un autre pays.
“Desculpa no queria embarazarla” par exemple, ca veut dire en espagnol, excusez-moi je suis un peu confus, et au Bresil ca veut dire “je n’avais pas l’intention de la mettre enceinte”.
En espagnol, il existe d’enormes differences entre le Mexique, la Colombie et le Venezuela, et certains mots employes couramment dans une culture peuvent n’avoir aucun sens dans une autre culture, mais c’est plus valable dans la culture argotique et le franc-parler. J’ai quelques exemples en tete mais c’est du vocabulaire un petit peu derisoire au gout de l’audience de ce blog, je crois.
Plus pres de chez nous, on a les memes problemes de mots dans la culture francophone entre les Francais, les Belges, les Quebecois, les Suisses. Une pele en francais s’appelle un “ramassoir” en suisse. Ou bien “Aller se faire masser” n’a pas le meme sens entre les Francais et les Suisses. Ce qui est universel a toutes les langues, c’est que differents mots sont employes, et lorsqu’on emploie les memes mots, il y aura toujours un petit contexte sexuel d’une culture a une autre. Ce qui predeterminerait l’homme face a sa pensee dans un sens freudien ou tout est question de pulsions: le cerveau du bas est souvent commande par le cerveau du haut (c’est une blague americaine qui n’a p-e pas trop de sens en francais).

Une langue ca s’elabore, mais il y a des choses que je n’ai jamais compris. Par exemple le mot “maman” est le seul mot ou toutes les langues du monde l’utilise avec differentes intonations. Je n’ai jamais su pourquoi d’ailleurs, c’etait peut-etre un mot et le seul mot unique qui est venu naturellement dans tous nos langages apres la naissance d’un etre.
Exemple:
1) Mom en anglais
2) Mahdar en farsi
3) Mahddi en Hindou (je crois)
4) Mutter en allemand
5) Madre en espagnol et en italien
6) mae en portugais
7) Mor en suedois
8) Moeder en neerlandais
… etc
Il y a l’influence des langues disparues sur les langues actuelles (latin, greek and so on), toutefois il y a des exceptions meme au niveau d’un langage frontalier comme dans la Scandinavie, en particulier la Finlande qui ne partage pas des mots entre la Norvege et la Suede, en effet maman chez eux se dit “Aiti”. Ce langage en fait s’apparenterait plus au langage Baltique (l’Estonien) meme si geographiquement, et bien la Finlande fait partie de la Scandinavie d’un point de vue de l’Europe “latine”. Encore une betise issue d’apres la 2ieme guerre mondiale lorsqu’on a du redecouper geographiquement les pays et les classifier. On ne savait pas trop quoi faire de la Finlande alors on l’a jette parfois dans le camp des Scandinaviens en raison de sa proximite geographique. La Finlande devrait se situer dans le camp des peninsules de la mer Baltique. Il serait peut-etre temps de refaire la classification issue de la 2ieme guerre mondiale, je crois. Encore un probleme culturel qui en surface a bien ete ancre dans l’esprit des gens apres la 2ieme guerre mondiale, or lorsqu’on regarde en profondeur, la realite est bien differente depuis la 2ieme guerre mondiale.

Un son (mah) qui peut venir naturel a la bouche d’un enfant, peut etre deforme par l’enseignement d’une langue. Mais j’ai besoin de trouver plus d’exemples dans le reste du monde sur le son “maman”, en dehors de l’Europe, pour soutenir cette sorte de these entre des faits que l’on appelle “verite admise” qui “pourraient” sembler d’ordre naturel et qui sont deformees par l’enseignement (le cas de la Finlande). Peut-etre que je trouverai ma reponse dans la maternologie (c’est une nouvelle discipline encore inconnue).

Hier j’avais ecrit un petit billet sur un autre blog qui englobe ce sujet-la:

Dans cette thread, puisqu’on parlait des mathematiques et de la philosophie, on a oublie un autre champs, en enlevant l’aspect religieux, et c’est la croyance. Vous savez que le fait de croire en quelque-chose est l’affirmation de la verite, verite individuelle, parfois meme verite ancree dans la societe ou personne ne peut le renier, donc si personne ne peut le renier c’est que c’est forcement vrai. Et pourtant … certaines verites meme au niveau d’une civilisation sont fausses. J’ai plein d’exemples pratiques. L’un des exemples le plus connu est “la crise de foie” dans la societe francaise. Si vous recherchez a traduire l’equivalent de ce mot en anglais et bien vous ne le retrouverez pas. Car dans le monde anglo-saxon une crise de foie est plutot une manifestation de l’estomac et son indigestion. Et pourtant, on ne peut renier que lorsqu’on a une crise de foie, et bien on a mal au foie. Or et c’est la toute la supercherie, dans notre enseignement franco-francais, le fait de penser que l’on a une crise de foie nous donne mal au foie. Dans le monde anglais, une crise de foie, mot qui ne se traduit pas, ne donnera pas les memes symptomes que dans la culture francaise.
Qu’est ce que ca veut dire alors? Et bien le fait de penser dans ce que l’on pourrait appeler une conformisme delimite par une culture est completement obstrue par un conditionnement enseigne de generation en generation. C’est ce que superfrenchie voulait dire je pense en ecrivant “critical thinking” dans le sens d’une discipline. Pour moi ma vision de l’enseignement ne s’acheve pas simplement a telle ou telle discipline, je lui considere un domaine beaucoup plus vaste, et je lui prefererai le sens, l’ardeur de “social skills” car tout naturellement avant de demontrer un probleme, il faut d’abord l’enseigner. C’est pour cela que j’ai pose la question Pensez-vous que le champs d’action de la pensee anglosaxonne est plus restreint que la pensee francaise, ou bien l’inverse?
Dans cette thread j’ai lu quelque-part dans les premiers posts que le fait de ne pas ouvrir l’esprit a l’education aux USA rend les gens ignorant. Je dirai “oui et non”, je ne peux pas savoir, ca fait des annees que je bosse sur ce sujet. On n’a pas la meme perception et vision des choses entre la France et les USA, ce sont 2 mondes bien differents, meme si les historiens persistent et signent depuis la 2ieme guerre mondiale.
D’ailleurs aux USA le fait d’etre patriotique suppose dans certains esprits que l’on se reserve le droit d’attaquer un autre pays. En France, etre patriotique c’est avant tout aimer son pays. Qui des deux auraient donc ete conditionnes?

Meme a un niveau de civilisation nos ideaux n’ont pas le meme sens et la meme valeur. J’ai plein d’exemples comme cela, exemples grossiers et affines. J’ai meme trouve des exemples dans la Bible qui sont faux (Adam et Eve) et pourtant on les accepte. C’est interessant de voir que des croyances acceptees par une societe peuvent soulever une contre-verite, et pourtant on les accepte par conformisme. “Verite en deca des Pyrenees, mensonge au-dela” (Pascal).

C’etait Platon, disciple de Socrates, maitre d’Aristote, qui etait convaincu que chaque mot avait une definition essentielle, c’est a dire qu’il y avait une essence, un noyau dur dans lequel un terme est defini si bien que l’utilisation d’un mot, sans prendre le contexte en consequence, que chaque utilisation de ces memes mots utiliseraient ce meme noyau dur. Sa tache etait donc de decouvrir l’essence, donc l’essentielle definition d’un nombre relative d’idees et de concepts: quelle est l’essence de la verite? Quelle est l’essence de la bonte? Quelle est l’essence de la beaute? Quelle est l’essence de la justice?
Le probleme avec cela, aussi ambitieux que cela puisse paraitre, est qu’un regard realiste suggere qu’il n’y a pas de stricte essentielle definition qui va capturer l’essence d’un terme.
Il y a bien sur des similitudes dans un terme, puisqu’ils visent a quelque-chose (definition operationnelle) mais il y a d’enormes variations (abstractions) d’une civilisation a une autre: la religion en Iran n’a pas la meme essence que la religion en Europe. Le mot “liberte” n’a pas la meme essence en Europe et aux USA, les Irakiens liberes se sentent oppresses … etc … etc

J’essaie de decrypter tout cela dans un cadre “croyances” au niveau d’une civilisation face a la realite d’un evenement, car ce sont justement ces “croyances” (ideaux) qui precipitent des catastrophes un peu partout dans le monde.

U.S.: 60 Pct of Baghdad Not Controlled

BAGHDAD — Security forces in Baghdad have full control in only 40 percent of the city five months into the pacification campaign, a top American general said Saturday as U.S. troops began an offensive against two al-Qaida strongholds on the capital's southern outskirts.

The military, meanwhile, reported that paratroopers had found the ID cards of two missing U.S. soldiers at an al-Qaida safe house 75 miles north of where they were captured last month, but there was no sign of the men. The house contained computers, video equipment and weapons.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said American troops launched the offensive in Baghdad's Arab Jabour and Salman Pac neighborhoods Friday night. It was the first time in three years that U.S. soldiers entered those areas, where al-Qaida militants build car bombs and launch Katyusha rockets at American bases and Shiite Muslim neighborhoods.

The overall commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said during a news conference with visiting Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the operation would put troops into key al-Qaida-held areas surrounding Baghdad.

Incroyable mais vrai

Dans une meme communaute, entre le peuple blanc et les afro-americains, il y a des ecarts sur le prix du loyer. A Las Vegas pour un loyer F2 j'ai trouve quelques chiffres:
- Un blanc paiera $845 par mois
- Un africain-americain vivant au-dessus du blanc paiera $1285 par mois

Si le systeme n'est pas raciste, je n'y comprends plus rien.

Amazon river 'longer than Nile'

Il faudra reviser les livres de geographie aussi: la riviere Amazone est plus longue que le Nile car ils ont trouve un nouveau point ou elle prend sa source exactement. Encore un exemple ou une "verite" n'est jamais acquise, et dans ce 21ieme siecle, d'autres "verites" ressurgiront.

Le chiffre du jour

3.520 mort americaines depuis la guerre en Irak. On arrive a comptabiliser les Americains encore, les pertes irakiennes helas, ne sont jamais precisees.

IRAQ: Report Calls on U.N. to End "Complicity of Silence"

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 (IPS) - The U.S. Coalition is the principal cause of Iraq's current woes, charges a report released Wednesday by the Global Policy Forum (GPF), a New York-based watchdog group.

Since the March 2003 invasion, the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq has "utterly failed to bring peace, prosperity and democracy, as originally advertised," says the report, entitled "War and Occupation in Iraq".

"The United Nations and the international community must end the complicity of silence and they must vigorously address the Iraq crisis," it says.

Produced by GPF and 29 international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the report was released to coincide with U.N. Security Council consultations on the Iraq problem. The 117-page report assesses conditions in the country, especially the responsibility of the U.S.-led Coalition, for violations of international law and concludes with recommendations for action, including a speedy withdrawal of Coalition forces.

It covers areas such as destruction of cultural heritage, unlawful detention, killing and torture of civilians, displacement, corruption and fraud, attacks on cities and long-term military bases.

"This is ongoing, is not under control, and is something the Coalition is saying it is doing under mandate of the U.N. Security Council," James Paul, GPF's executive director, told reporters Wednesday.

"It's time for a new approach," Paul stressed. "The Security Council has done virtually nothing on this subject; [it] has to take its head out of the sand."

GPF has shared the report with all the members of the Council.

"Many members took interest in the report," Celine Nahory, GPF's Security Council programme coordinator, told IPS.

Several delegations have complained that data on Iraq must be compiled from numerous sources to get a clear picture of the situation on the ground, Nahory explained, and the report condenses much of that information in one place.

Asked if GPF had received any feedback from Security Council members, Nahory said that several former ambassadors had spoken privately about the difficulty of raising the issue of Iraq in the Council.

"One ambassador was told quite bluntly that the U.S. has the lead on this issue," Nahory said.

U.S. President George W. Bush delivered his "mission accomplished" speech on May 2, 2003, yet the conflict has continued for more than four years.

Thousands of innocent people are now dead and wounded, millions are displaced, several of Iraq's cities lie in ruins, and enormous resources have been squandered, according to the report.

The increasing bloodshed and sectarian division among Iraqis is abhorrent, the report emphasises, but whatever responsibility Iraqis themselves bear for the present impasse within the country, the primary responsibility lies with the U.S. and its Coalition, whose military occupation gave rise to these groups and whose policies have failed to protect the Iraqi people.

The U.S. and its allies ignored the warnings of NGOs and scholars concerning the protection of Iraq's cultural heritage, including museums, libraries, archaeological sites and other repositories, and as a result arsonists badly burned the National Library and looters pillaged the National Museum, according to the report's chapter on destruction of cultural heritage.

The chapter on detention details the U.S. Coalition and its Iraqi government partners' practice of holding large numbers of Iraqi citizens in "security detention" without charge or trial, in direct violation of international law.

"More than 40,000 Iraqis are being held," Paul stressed.

Detainees lack fundamental rights and they are kept in deplorable physical conditions, many for long periods, according to the GPF report, which tallies with recent reports published by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Torture and secret interrogations increasingly take place in Iraqi prisons, apparently with U.S. awareness and complicity, according to the report.

It also addresses U.S. Coalition forces' attacks on Iraqi cities on the grounds that they were "insurgent strongholds". Besides the well-publicised case of Falluja, there have been assaults on a dozen other cities, including al-Qaim, Tal Afar, Samarra, Haditha, and Ramadi. The attacks include intensive air and ground bombardment and cutting off electricity, water, food and medicines, according to the report.

The attacks have left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and in displacement camps, according to U.N. figures.

A 2006 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study conducted together with the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad estimates that there have been 654,965 "excess" deaths in Iraq since 2003. Deaths from all causes -- violent and non-violent -- are far greater than the estimated 143,000 deaths per year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion.

"If these numbers are projected forward, there have now been close to one million Iraqi deaths as a result of the general environment," Paul said.

"Four million Iraqis are displaced, 50,000 leave their homes every month and more than half the population lives on less than one dollar a day, yet the Security Council has never addressed the humanitarian crisis in Iraq," Nahory said, stressing that the "numbers in Iraq are more than double those in [Darfur] Sudan."

The report also recounts how under the control or influence of U.S. authorities, public funds in Iraq have been drained by massive corruption and stolen oil, leaving the country unable to provide basic services and incapable of rebuilding.

Billions of dollars have disappeared, the report stresses.

To avoid accountability, the U.S. and Britain undercut the U.N.-mandated International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), according to GPF.

"The IAMB hasn't discovered a single instance of fraud or malfeasance," Paul said, emphasising that the Security Council "hasn't taken a single step to strengthen the IAMB."

Iraq has suffered from stolen cash, padded contracts, cronyism, bribes and kickbacks, waste and incompetence, as well as shoddy and inadequate contract performance, the report alleges. Major contractors, mostly politically-connected U.S. firms, have made billions in profits.

An analysis of contracts was conducted by Iraq Revenue Watch, a project of the New York-based Open Society Institute (OSI), in recognition that lack of proper stewardship over oil resources has resulted in corruption, the continued impoverishment of populations, and abuses of political power

The OSI study shows that 74 percent of the total contracts worth 1.5 billion dollars -- paid with Iraqi funds -- were awarded to U.S. firms.

British and U.S. companies received 85 percent of the value of all such contracts. Iraqi firms, by contrast, received just 2 percent of the value of contracts. Sixty percent of the value of all contracts paid with Iraqi funds went to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). These contracts were not put out for bid.

The responsibility of the U.S. Coalition is especially grave because the U.N. Security Council gave it a mandate, according to GPF.

Though the Council had refused to authorise the war, just a few months later it mandated the Coalition as a "multinational force."

Council members at the time hoped that the U.N. would assume a "vital role" in Iraq, leading the way back to peace and international legality. But this did not happen.

GPF urges the Security Council to assume its responsibilities and examine alternatives for the future.

"The Security Council could reconsider the mandate right away," Nahory noted.

The U.S. Mission to the U.N. did not respond to an IPS request for comment on the findings and recommendations of the GPF report. (END/2007)

WATCH-DOGS BITE TIMEX TALE

Encore un mensonge, tout petit cette fois-ci.

By CHARLES HURT

June 14, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - President Bush tried unwinding rumors yesterday that his watch got lifted while greeting jubilant well-wishers in Albania earlier this week.

"I have never seen such a ludicrous story," he told reporters gathered in the Oval Office for a photo shoot yesterday.

As proof, Bush modeled a gold watch with black leather band on his wrist that looks very much like the custom-made watch that supposedly disappeared while he was working the rope line in Albania.

"That is, in fact, the watch he was wearing in Albania," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

Enduring Alliances Empower America's Long-War Strategy

Les USA demandent a l'Europe de les aider dans leur "long war". C'est un appel en detresse ou les Etat's-Unis via le site web www.heritage.org admettent certaines erreurs mais par contraste ils sont incapables de remettre en question leurs ideaux et leurs visions du monde.

The threats of the new century are international in character and indeterminable in length, and they require an international response. Alone, the United States cannot win the long war against transnational terrorism, nor can it respond effectively to the other emerging national security concerns of the 21st century. America needs allies. America's greatest strength is strength in numbers: the number of free nations that share its commitment to peace, justice, security, and--above all--freedom.

Building strong alliances requires a proactive strategy that reinforces rather than undermines the sovereignty of the state and at the same time strengthens the bonds of trust and confidence between free peoples, enabling them to act in their common interest. The focus of this strategy should be on building enduring alliances, not just "coalitions of the willing." As part of a comprehensive alliance-building strategy, the Administration and Congress should undertake initiatives to establish international partnerships that more closely resemble those with America's traditional long-standing allies during the Cold War.

American Alliances in History

George Washington was America's first great strategist. He understood well how to deal with the complex challenge of balancing ends (the goals of a strategy), ways (how the goals will be accomplished), and means (the resources that will be used to support the strategy). For that reason, Americans rightly took seriously his cautious approach to global alliances. "It is our true policy," Washington declared in his farewell presidential address, "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."[1]

Washington recognized that while America attempted to build a fledgling democracy, it would be unwise to become deeply embroiled in the conflicts between European states that had little interest in seeing the American experiment succeed.[2] However, he did not intend to declare an immutable principle of statecraft. As a strategist, he knew that, as global conditions changed, America's strategy for engagement with the rest of the world would need to change with it.

The Framers also recognized that the United States required the capacity to undertake formal joint actions with other nations when they included the Treaty Clause in the Constitution: "The President shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties...."[3] They understood that the ability to form alliances was an essential element of statecraft, but they wanted to ensure that America did so only when it was clearly in American interests. Specifically:

The Framers believed that treaties should be strictly honored...because the United States could not afford to give the great powers any cause for war....

The fear of disadvantageous treaties also underlay the Framers' insistence on approval [of treaties] by two-thirds of the Senate. In particular, the Framers worried that one region or interest within the nation, constituting a bare majority, would make a treaty advantageous to it but prejudicial to other parts of the country and to the national interest.[4]

Thus, the Constitution envisioned a strong executive responsible for guiding foreign relations with appropriate checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches.

Even at the dawn of the 20th century, American policymakers remained skeptical of the value of alliances. One of the lessons that many took from the outbreak of the First World War was that Europe's rigid alliance structure had contributed significantly to the rapid escalation of the conflict.[5] These concerns contributed to America's rejection of the League of Nations and return to pre-war isolationist policies.

America's alliance strategy evolved considerably after the United States emerged as a true global power after the Second World War. During the Cold War, formal alliances became an important element of blocking the expansion of Soviet power. In particular, NATO served as the cornerstone of efforts to ensure peace, prosperity, and security in Western Europe and uphold wider U.S. strategic global interests. At the same time, U.S. bilateral relations with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea proved vital in protecting the interests of America and its allies in Asia.[6]

The need for enduring alliances came under intense security after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. As Paul Kennedy has argued, the post-Cold War world had become a "multipolar" place where nations would be less dependant on U.S. power and less interested in aligning with the United States.[7]

Nor were many analysts confident that alliances like NATO would endure only on the basis of providing collective security to their members. "Collective security," Henry Kissinger wrote, "defines no particular threat, guarantees no individual nation, and discriminates against none."[8] They endure only if the participating nations share nearly identical views and are committed to using force based only on the merits of the case, regardless of the impact on national interests--conditions that were unlikely to prevail after the collapse of the Soviet menace.

Many thought that "coalitions of the willing" (groupings of states to deal with particular problems) would become far more commonplace.[9] The first Gulf War, in which the United States successfully fought with an ad hoc alliance, appeared to validate the utility of employing temporary coalitions.[10] The 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States made specific reference to the growing importance of coalitions of the willing.[11] Such coalitions were to be the coin of the realm for international relations in the 21st century whereby the problem would determine the coalition.

Alliances in the Long War

The experience of the past decade, however, argues the opposite. The most concerted efforts to promote stability in the post-Cold War world and combat transnational terrorism have been by the United States and its traditional Cold War allies. America's strongest military partners in Iraq have been its longest-standing military allies, Great Britain and Australia. Meanwhile, in Northeast Asia, South Korea and Japan have remained steadfast U.S. partners. Even Canada and European nations, which have differed significantly from the United States in their policies toward Iraq and how the war on terrorism should be fought, in practice have offered significant cooperation in combating transnational terrorism and supporting operations in Afghanistan.

Some analysts have tried to depict U.S. and Canadian-European policies as contrasting poles, describing U.S. efforts as unilateral, preemptive, and utopian and European measures as multilateral, consensual, and realistic.[12] In practice, however, the ends, ways, and means employed by the United States and its traditional allies are marked by many more similarities than differences.[13]

Not only have America's traditional allies been more important than ever, but so have other countries that have worked more closely with the United States in recent years. India and Poland have demonstrated greater interest in developing deep political, economic, social, and cultural ties rather than just participating in casual military and security cooperation. In short, they have shown an inclination to be more partners in an enduring alliance than participants in an ad hoc coalition.

That traditional alliances have re-emerged as an important element of statecraft should come as no surprise. "Alliances always presume a specific adversary," wrote Kissinger, unlike collective security, which "defends international law in the abstract." Unlike coalitions of the willing, an alliance produces an "obligation more predictable and precise than an analysis of national interest."[14]

In other words, when facing real dangers, nations turn to other nations with which they share trust, confidence, and a common view of what needs to done. The dangers of transnational terrorism, nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, and the emergence of potential regional hegemons that demonstrate a propensity to take power by force have served as catalysts for renewed interest in establishing enduring alliances as a hedge against the emerging threats of the 21st century.

Shortfalls in Alliance-Building

Since most national security threats today are international in character, U.S. alliance-building skills are more important than ever. Yet the talents and instruments used to build enduring alliances during the Cold War have become rusty at best. In part, this has happened because of efforts to thwart U.S. policies by attempting to undermine America's legitimate efforts to exercise sovereignty and act in its own interests as it sees fit.

Some analysts call this "lawfare," misusing or reinterpreting laws to make American actions appear illegitimate in the eyes of the world.[15] In some cases, America's difficulty in sustaining traditional allies and nurturing new alliances reflects failures of public diplomacy that poorly articulate and defend U.S. goals and actions.[16] In large part, however, America has been without a serious, deliberate strategy that employs all the elements of national power to build enduring alliances.

Building alliances is not about gaining consensus in international action or allowing U.S. sovereignty to be overseen by multinational institutions. Indeed, abrogating the state's responsibility for national security is the surest way to undermine a nation's capacity to secure the safety, prosperity, and freedom of its citizens over the long term.[17] Rather, building enduring alliances requires proactive initiatives that build common interests between states by developing deep cultural, economic, social, and military ties between established free-market democracies.

Learning from the Special Relationship

America has found its strongest, most enduring alliance in its Special Relationship with Great Britain. This relationship has been defined by consistent and recurring cooperation, systematic engagement, and enduring bilateral relations that emerged from common values and obvious interests. Mutual recognition of the value of democratic government, the rule of law, individual rights, and the market economy combines with a single historical and cultural experience until 1776, continued cultural intermingling since then, and a common language before and after. As Douglas Johnson explains, "The two nations are very closely related by blood and philosophy."[18]

Shared Values. Ultimately, the Special Relationship is special because the shared values and common interests that bind the two countries reach far beyond the philosophical utopia prefacing speeches by European Union (EU) elites dreaming of a European superstate. The common political, diplomatic, historical, and cultural values shared between Americans and Britons actually mean something.

Further still, Britain and America are prepared to defend these values--with military force if necessary. Common values really mean something only if both parties are ready to defend them. Winston Churchill coined the term "Special Relationship" in his 1946 "Sinews of Peace Address" in Fulton, Missouri, after Britain and America had both just spilt horrendous amounts of blood and treasure in an unwavering defense of their shared values.

The tenets of classical liberalism formed the bedrock of a deeply held common political tradition between the two countries from the outset. In modern terms, this has come to mean essentially the rights of the individual over the state--or, as President Ronald Reagan so ably argued, viewing government as the problem rather than the solution.

This concept should not be dismissed. The British and American peoples are naturally suspicious of government and do not believe that they derive their rights from the government, but rather that government derives its legitimacy from the people. The European Constitution, wherein government grants the individuals their rights in exchange for ensuring vast swathes of social rights, illustrates how the mindset of most Western Europeans differs from the Anglo-American mindset.

The economic relationship that binds the U.K.- U.S. alliance is special in two separate but equally important ways.

First, whereas Brussels regularly squares off against Washington, British-American disputes are largely played out in private to augment the relationship between the world's two largest outward investors, who are also the largest investors in each other's economies.[19]

Second, the sheer contrast of the free-market Anglo-American economic model with the highly statist Rhineland model demonstrates the shared economic traditions of the Special Relationship in especially marked comparison to Europe. The fact that many European nations are still trying to regulate themselves out of disaster--matched by the complete failure of the EU's Lisbon agenda--illustrates that these already deep divisions are deepening even further. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel talks about making a more social Europe with "good jobs,"[20] Britain and America are actually getting on with the job of driving the economic engine of world growth.

Past Challenges to the Special Relationship. The Special Relationship has faced repeated challenges. In addition to occasional disagreements, events have produced passivity and indifference at times. On occasion, each country has put its national interest above the other's interests, but these events should not be interpreted as threatening the relationship. For instance, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan notably disagreed over the U.S. invasion of Grenada but still went on to cooperate fully in fighting--and eventually winning--the Cold War.

In fact, the Thatcher-Reagan era demonstrates some of the most enduring features of the Special Relationship. Thatcher's ability to be both a steadfast partner and cautionary critic during times of cooperation and conflict is not just an example of her undoubted mastery of statecraft, but a testament to the strength of the alliance. Shared beliefs do not prevent quarrels, even among allies; but more often than not, they yield the right result for both sides. Critics saw Reagan's eventual support for the British liberation of the Falkland Islands as dissenting from America's long-held Monroe Doctrine, but Reagan came to see that supporting Britain's sovereign assertion in defense of an existing possession had greater merit and value than did supporting the existential, geographical pull of Argentina.

The passivity of the 1990s came to an end as the United States and United Kingdom came to cooperate extremely closely in the war on terrorism, markedly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The recurring pattern is of each finding the other a necessary, indispensable ally in times of need, regardless of left-right orientation or prevailing political conditions.

The underlying traditions and historic cooperation shared between Britain and America essentially negate any short-term threat to this enduring alliance. Indeed, while it was the French who proclaimed "Nous sommes tous Américains" in the wake of 9/11, it is Anglo-American political, cultural, military, and diplomatic solidarity that has outlasted this initial show of strength from America's European allies.

Modern Threats. Significant threats to the Special Relationship do exist in the modern era. Britain's geographic position as a European power but history as a great global power makes for a unique situation. The EU's relentless supranational drive has demanded a surrender of British national sovereignty in areas such as trade, the economy, and public health.

However, the institutional and political constraints demanded by further European integration will severely limit Britain's ability to make foreign policy, especially in international alliance-making. In political, diplomatic, and financial terms, no good has come from limiting Britain's geopolitical outlook to the European continent, and certainly no benefit can de derived from deeper EU absorption that limits Britain's historical and proven links with the United States.

In fact, large parts of the EU policy agenda-- such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy and European Security and Defense Policy--are designed precisely to serve as counterweights to the American "hyperpower."[21] Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the perceived need for another power to counterbalance the United States has consistently motivated advocates of European integration.

The recent investigation by the European Parliament into America's renditions policy visibly demonstrates the anti-American direction of current EU policymaking.[22] The EU believes that supranational institutions like itself and the United Nations should be the sole arbiters of the use of force and should determine the rules of engagement for both symmetrical and asymmetrical conflicts. This thinking was nakedly displayed by the EU during the buildup to Operation Iraqi Freedom, with powerful European nations, including France and Germany, not just critiquing, but also actively obstructing American foreign policy. EU accession countries were even threatened with delays to their accession for supporting the war.[23] Underlying this diplomatic crisis was the message that Europe's time had come to directly challenge a sovereign foreign policy decision of the United States in an attempt to contain American power.

A major threat to the Special Relationship is also posed by rising levels of anti-American sentiment in Britain. Favorable opinion toward the United States has dropped from 83 percent in 1999-2000 to just 56 percent in 2006.[24] The British press regularly ridicules Tony Blair as President George W. Bush's poodle.[25] The Conservative Party under David Cameron's leadership has called on Britain to adopt a less "slavish" relationship with America,[26] and Kendall Myers, a leading U.S. State Department adviser, recently described the Special Relationship as a "myth," arguing that Tony Blair got "nothing, no payback" for supporting President Bush in Iraq.[27]

Neither Blair nor Bush has properly made the case for the fruits of the Special Relationship, which has in fact operated to mutual advantage especially in the new era of transnational terrorism. High-level intelligence exchange is possible only in an atmosphere in which both sides exercise a high degree of trust. Undoubtedly, the plots to detonate liquid explosives on up to 10 transatlantic flights in summer 2006 were foiled only because of key transatlantic intelligence exchange and cooperation. As Tony Blair said at the time, "There has been an enormous amount of co-operation with the U.S. authorities which has been of great value and underlines the threat we face and our determination to counter it."[28]

Both sides need to make the case for the Special Relationship much more aggressively, demonstrating the effectiveness and substantial value of the close British-American cooperation. Both sides could learn from the golden days of Thatcher- Reagan, as well as those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, each of whom regarded the other as an indispensable, critical partner.

The Special Relationship demonstrates that common interests can overcome past enmities and occasional conflict. Britain and America have stood shoulder to shoulder in the hardest of times and continue to enjoy the fruits of a solid relationship. As Nile Gardiner has stated, "The U.S.-British alliance continues to operate as a strikingly successful partnership of two great nations built on the solid foundations of a common heritage, culture, and vision."[29]

This history suggests grounds for optimism about the Special Relationship in the future, in spite of today's considerable anti-American feeling in Britain. The anti-Americanism of the 1980s as the Reagan Administration installed Trident missiles in Europe gave way to the British-American-led victory in the Cold War. The passivity of the 1990s gave way to a post-9/11 period of enormous diplomatic and military unity. While hostility and indifference prove passing and ephemeral, the common interests and values that produce the Special Relationship prove enduring time and again, but their very historicity and commonality are therefore equally difficult to replicate.

Empowering Alliances

The U.S. needs a clear and proactive strategy for nurturing and building new enduring alliances. The Administration and Congress can undertake initiatives now to support that strategy, establishing better economic, social, cultural, and security relationships with other free-market democracies of geostrategic importance to the United States.

Building Bridges Between Peoples. Anenduring alliance transcends governments, building bonds of trust and confidence between people based on shared values and personal experiences. Frequent people-to-people interaction is essential and that requires improving opportunities for safe and open international travel.

Since 9/11, Congress has done far too little to encourage foreign visitors to come to the United States. Foreign travel to America has still not recovered to pre-9/11 levels, and congressional inaction threatens to undermine the competitiveness of U.S. society. Both to reestablish America's reputation as an opening and welcoming country and to make the nation more secure against foreign threats, Congress and the Administration should:

• End the requirement that 100 percent of visa applicants be interviewed. Congress recently required that every visa applicant be interviewed by a consular officer. In many parts of the world, the interview requirement represents a significant burden in terms of the expense and inconvenience of reporting and waiting for the interview and lost time from work. Likewise, the issuing officers are under pressure to speed through the interviews and make snap judgments that might deny visas to legitimate travelers or miss a serious security threat.

  Congress should amend the law to require the Department of State to conduct interviews based on a risk-based assessment conducted jointly with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The departments should have the option to waive interviews for countries, classes of travelers, and frequent visitors from trusted companies, governments, and academic institutions.

• Establish electronic travel authorization. It is long past time for the United States to join the 21st century by updating its means of issuing and monitoring visas. Other nations, such as Australia, already use electronic travel authorization.

  For low-risk countries and classes of travelers, the United States should implement online visa applications. This would greatly facilitate travel to the United States, significantly reducing the cost and inconvenience of personally applying for a visa.

• Expand the Visa Waiver Program. The Visa Waiver Program allows most visitors from participating countries to enter the United States for up to 90 days without a visa as long as they have valid passports from their countries. In turn, U.S. citizens with valid passports do not need visas to visit these countries. Currently, 27 countries participate in the program. Adding countries to the program increases security because these nations must pledge to maintain the same security standards as the United States.

  In addition, adding counties would greatly facilitate visiting America. In many places, the price of a U.S. visa is considered exorbitant. In Poland, for example, the visa application fee is a month's salary for an average worker and is nonrefundable because it pays for processing the application. If the visa is denied for any reason, the applicant has simply lost the money. Expanding the Visa Waiver Program to countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, where the United States has growing economic, cultural, and security ties, could both strengthen America's bonds to these nations and enhance travel security.[30]

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Building a Shared Common Vision. Enduring alliances can never be complacent in explaining how government policies reflect the common interests of their peoples. Sound public diplomacy programs are essential for explaining the linkage between common interests and current policies.

Public diplomacy is a long-term program to promote dialogue with foreign audiences, nurture institutional relationships, help to educate young democrats and prospective friends, and share ideas. Without this foundation, advocacy for current policies will have little resonance. A model public diplomacy (PD) strategy should therefore:

• Define the public diplomacy mission as promoting U.S. interests and security by understanding, informing, and influencing foreign publics as well as broadening dialogue between American citizens and institutions and their counterparts abroad on a daily, long-term basis. The global war on terrorism should be a priority within this broad mandate.

• Establish doctrinal principles to explain how to accomplish the PD mission. These include responding to audience needs, never misleading, disseminating bad news quickly and completely, and ensuring that information always comes from a credible source.

• Specify lines of authority. The PD strategy should clearly specify who decides and who acts, or nothing will get done. With collateral agencies engaged in international communications, guidance and arbitration of tactics must come from someone who speaks for the White House and can de-conflict competing, multiagency PD strategies.

• Target desired audiences. Priority audiences vary by country and region. A national strategy should identify classes of opinion leaders and populations that are vulnerable to anti-American messages around the globe, not just in the Middle East. The strategy should task U.S. embassy country teams with further segmenting their audiences and specifying the best approaches to dialogue, as U.S. Information Agency (USIA) diplomats once did.

• Identify multiple channels. Illiterate populations are likely to listen to radio. Elites may rely on phone text messaging and the Internet. Students get information from textbooks, which are usually in short supply outside industrial democracies. Compact disks and satellite television appeal to the middle classes, while meetings and exchanges help to form opinions one person at a time. The Bush Administration needs to go beyond reliance on the press and utilize different means of outreach more fully.

• Create planning, clearing, and assessing processes to establish a workflow across agency boundaries. Polling and country team assessments should tell planners what channels and messages apply to certain audiences. Common clearance procedures known to all agency communications leaders can facilitate rapid reaction to breaking news. Finally, research should be used to assess the effectiveness of all PD efforts. At present, each agency conducts its own limited polling, planning, and evaluation efforts. Research and broad planning should be more centralized and accessible to all PD actors.[31]

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Building Mutual Security. After 9/11, the United States incorrectly framed its international security initiatives as "pushing the border out," implying that the United States was forcing other countries to take measures to enhance American security. In fact, improving the security of international trade and travel is about enhancing security for all countries that participate in regimes to thwart terrorist travel and transportation of materials, technologies, and weapons of mass destruction.

Programs that promote mutual security are essential to enduring alliances. The United States needs to reinvigorate the instruments of security assistance and cooperation that it employed during the Cold War and expand these mechanisms to address homeland security as well as military capabilities. Specifically, Congress and the Administration should:

• Establish an international homeland security and counterterrorism assistance program. The United States has long maintained the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, which provides low-cost U.S. security assistance to other countries through training on a grant basis to students from allied and friendly nations. IMET has also been critical to developing personal and professional relationships among key military personnel and to providing English language training and interoperability. Congress should authorize and fund similar programs for the DHS.

• Foster the sharing of homeland security technology. Establishing a database of homeland security technologies and an office in the DHS to facilitate technology sharing is especially urgent. The DHS clearinghouse would describe existing technologies, their capabilities, and their possible missions. A technology clearinghouse would enable partners to know what technologies are available for transfer, provide a method of setting standards so that technologies are understandable, create a forum for interoperable and transferable means for industry-to-industry dialogue, establish predictable export control requirements, and construct acquisition mechanisms such as joint development programs, licensing agreements, and something comparable to the foreign military sales program.

• Remove unnecessary technology transfer barriers. Congress should mandate consultations between the State Department and the DHS on proposed technology exports that have a significant homeland security purpose. U.S. export controls should distinguish among technologies with predominantly military, law enforcement, or homeland security applications.

• The laws and regulations will also need to balance the benefits of sharing American homeland security technologies against the risks of foreign actors employing them either against the U.S. or for inappropriate commercial purposes. If a proposed technology transfer would promote the security of the United States and the recipient and is unlikely to be wrongfully acquired or used, the transfer should be governed by the Department of Commerce's Export Administration Regulations rather than by the more demanding provisions of the U.S. Munitions List, which are administered by the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls in the State Department.[32]

The Way Ahead

Building enduring alliances should be the centerpiece of long-war strategy, but these alliances will not appear by happenstance. It will require a concerted U.S. effort to build:

• Bridges between peoples, facilitating safe and secure travel and interchange between America and its friends and allies;

• A shared common vision, enhancing public diplomacy so that America can better make its case on the world stage; and

• Mutual security by creating new opportunities for security cooperation.

America can do better, but it will require concerted leadership from the Administration and Congress to do the job.

Responsibility

Il y a un grand nombre de "dissidents" dans l'armee americaine qui n'aprouvent pas les guerres. La plus vieille farce du monde c'est de parler de patriotisme et de liberte pour faire vaciller les ideaux spirituels dans une guerre ou tout est d'ordre economique avant tout, et d'asservissement intellectuel au profit des personnes situees en haut de la pyramide sociale. C'est le cas du Sergeant Kevin Benderman qui passe 1 an en prison pour avoir refuse de s'engager moralement en Irak et il nous offre un temoignage exceptionnel sur le veritable but des guerres.

Responsibility

By Sgt. Kevin Benderman

06/13/07"ICH" -- -- A few months ago I wrote an article talking about human sacrifice and slavery and how human kind had moved away from those institutions when we had educated ourselves enough to realize that these were not honorable or sane things to do to one another.

The reason I write this today is to further explore the concept that war is slavery and human sacrifice all rolled up into one vile package.

The reason I say war is slavery is that we have trapped ourselves into believing that we cannot live in a world without war because it is and has always been with us. I believe the people who practiced those two aforementioned subjects said the same thing about them as well.

We have conditioned our minds into believing that we cannot live without war, but I say we can and we must. Look at how war keeps us from attaining the levels of humanity we could achieve if we did not spend so much talent and energy on ways to destroy each other.

The lies that we have been told to get us into this present war are another example of our accepting whatever anyone tells us and not using the mind we have been given to think on these matters for ourselves. That is enslavement of the mind and spirit and we have succumbed to it.

I refuse to accept the notion that war is some one else’s responsibility and not ours. We have some in the world who say that war is God’s fault or it is Satan’s fault, (substitute any deity’s name you want here) but it is not the fault of either of them. It is ours and ours alone. We thought it up, we created the weapons to go to war with and we carry it out on one another on a regular basis.

NO, I refuse to try and wiggle out of the blame that is mine for wanting to experience war and training for it for ten years of my life. That is my responsibility and mine alone. God did not come to me in a dream and say, “Son you must wage war on the people who are different than you”. I entered the military and I received the training that would allow me to physically destroy another human being. I entered the mindset of wanting to do this and accepted the training to do so of my own free will.

I say war is human sacrifice simply because that is what it is. We train our young people that it is honorable to kill be or be killed. I trained some of these young people myself on how to be effective in killing other human beings. I remember training the soldiers under my supervision on how to be effective with the .50 caliber Browning machine gun. I remember being trained on how to be effective with the “ma deuce” as it is known. I remember being trained on how to be effective with the hand grenade, the M16, the bayonet, and a host of other weapons in the U.S. arsenal. I also recall going in search of other methods of killing that are not taught to most regular soldiers.

I was trained and trained well to sacrifice myself to war and I was also training others to make the same sacrifice.

But what is it all for? Money for the power elite? A chance to prove my manhood? No, in the end all you get if you kill someone is a dead human being, or you are dead. That is all there is. There is no glory. There is no honor.

The hardest thing I have done in my life is go to a memorial for a fallen soldier and to see his family grieving his death. I had to watch his wife break down, I had to watch his children break down and I realized that I did not want to see another family have to go through this.

This human sacrifice has to stop.

We hear our so called leaders pay lip service to the sacrifice that is made; that they do not want to continue on with war, yet that is exactly what they do. I can give you a good example of the lip service that comes from the people who claim to be looking out for the welfare of the soldiers. When I was going through my courts-martial at Ft. Stewart, the garrison commander, Col. John Kidd, led one of the ceremonies for a fallen soldier. He laid it on pretty heavy about how he cared for the soldiers that have given the ultimate sacrifice and that he would continue to respect these people who serve. After all he had said about taking care of soldiers he did something that would have an adverse affect on them.

The community of Hinesville had a service for the soldiers of Ft. Stewart where they did not have to pay deposits to move into a rental property or pay one for the utilities. This deposit waiver program had been in place since about 1971 or so, give or take a few years. In 2005 the garrison commander told the people who were running the program that they could no longer offer this service to the soldiers of Ft. Stewart. This is the same commander who cried crocodile tears at a soldier’s memorial service. Is this what our soldiers sacrifice themselves for?

As someone who has seen what war is and what it does to people and to know how it made me some what different than before I went, I would like to challenge the people to stand up and accept their responsibility for war and to stop blaming it on Gods or Devils or who ever else we can try and lay the blame on.

We created it, we own it.

The question is; will we get smart enough to stop it?

Sgt. Kevin Benderman served a combat tour in Iraq and returned home to file a conscientious objector application as his legal refusal to participate further in an unjust, immoral action. He was court-martialed for his actions and served over a year in prison. Kevin and his wife Monica are now working on projects to integrate veterans and communities, and will be speaking about their experiences on a Truth Be Told tour beginning this summer.

Kevin and Monica may be reached at info@bendermansbridge.org

Le business des armes americaines "as usual"

Les USA ont delivre des armes au Fatah pour combattre contre le Hamas dans Gaza; le Hamas reprenant le control de la ville de Gaza. Ca sent la guerre civile en Palestine et les USA comme d'habitude doivent s'imiscer dans les affaires des autres. Cliquez sur le lien.

De l'argent jette par les fenetres

Aujourd'hui les membres du Congres ont regarde une video de leur investissement de 63 millions de dollars ou l'avion qui devait decoller doucement comme un helicoptere a crashe au bout de quelques secondes. C'etait le 49ieme test sans essai fructueux. Il faudra m'expliquer pourquoi ils depensent de l'argent dans ce domaine alors qu'ils ont deja cette technologie (Harrier airplane).
Cliquez sur le lien d'en haut si le popup video ne marche pas.


Members of Congress watched videos today of what they got for $63 million spent on an experimental aircraft the military did not want: repeated crashes and significant failures.

Video: Watch Congress' $63 Million Investment Crash

The plane, designed to take off like a helicopter and then fly at high speed, failed to remain in the air for more than a few seconds in 49 separate tests last year, according to John Kinzer of the Office of Naval Research.

"None of these attempts resulted in controlled hover for more than a few seconds," Kinzer told members of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

US expected to open BAE investigation

Encore un exemple ou la "justice" americaine me fait eclater de rire. Remplacer le mot "justice" par "mafia".


The US Department of Justice is now virtually certain to open an investigation into BAE under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

This would cover the alleged £1bn arms deal payments to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, well-placed sources say.

Washington-based sources familiar with the thinking of senior officials at the DoJ, said today it is "99% certain" that a criminal inquiry will be opened.

Such an investigation would have potentially seismic consequences for BAE, which is trying to take over US arms companies and turn the Pentagon into its biggest customer.

LA plus grosse faille de securite de l'histoire des USA

La plus grande faille de securite des USA est l'histoire de Robert Hanssen agent americain travaillant pour l'Union Sovietique dans les annees 80. Robert Hanssen se considerait comme chretien, et patriotique par dessus tout, bien qu'il filmait en cachette des scenes sexuelles de sa femme et se masturbait au boulot sur son ordinateur avec des images de Catherine Zeta Jones.
Le dammage inflige aux USA en terme d'intelligence est enorme. Il avait fait liquider 2 personnes du KGB travaillant pour les USA, et on considere qu'une cinquantaine d'agents ont perdu leur couverture secrete en travaillant pour lui. De plus il n'y a jamais eu un mot sur les espions sovietiques qui ont eu acces a tous ces dossiers (ils n'ont pas ete pris ou ils ont ete tues, on n'en sait rien). Robert Hanssen etait avant tout quelqu'un sans scrupules, ou il partageait ses informations pour de l'argent. La verite sur cette histoire ne sera jamais revelee, car elle est classee dans les archives de la securite nationale. Je connais un petit peu la personne qui a fait l'interview de l'agent du FBI alors j'espere qu'elle ne m'en voudra pas trop de faire paraitre l'histoire sur mon blog. Cliquez sur le lien comme d'habitude pour acceder a l'article.

Presidents Sarkozy and Putin at the G8

That was a french interview from Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 with Vladimir Putin. Since I did not find any link in English, I choose to translate it partially into English.



QUESTION – How did it go with Vladimir Putin?

The PRESIDENT – It was frank, since we evoked all subjects: Chetchnia, the journalist, human rights, rights of the homosexuals and so on and so on . We communicated calmly, peacefully. I did it without any aggressiveness and we exchanged alot. I found a man open to the dialog, accepting the discussion on these complex problems. Myself, I tried to include/understand the problems of the Russians who had for twenty years, it is undeniable, to face many crises and difficulties. I said to President Putin that Europe did not want to isolate Russia. Moreover, how to isolate this country as big as a continent? I also said to him that France wanted to have a true partnership of confidence and friendship with Russia, that France gathered energies and, to in no case, did not seek to divide. I think I may say that went well since that lasted much longer than planned. I found a man despite the fact of his files, very calm, very intelligent and it was very interesting to talk about all of this. He explained to me in details the proposal on radars and missiles that he had made to President Bush a few tens of minutes before starting our negotiations . I offered him that French and Russian military experts meet together to talk about it. I must say to you that I had much pleasure and interest to speak with President Putin.

QUESTION You spoke with President Putin about the annoying subjects. You spoke about the assassinations of journalists, can you return in details and explain to us what was said?

The PRESIDENT – Listen, I mentioned these questions without giving lessons, and it is not up to me to say the answers of President Putin, nor to explain his difficulties and I cannot tell you anything on this subject. I said to President Putin that the world needed Russia to ensure its stability and that it is very important. You know that the influence of Russia for example on the case of Iran, is something that counts. We spoke a long time about Kosovo and I made a proposal that I can detail you. I also indicated that, we also, the older democracies, we could receive lessons on the question of human rights, as I agreed perfectly to speak about it and that my idea was not to wound the Russian national feeling. My idea was to include/understand and draw the attention. And it is in a very alleviated way that we did it. On Kosovo, I made the following proposal: initially, I believe that it would be a very difficult situation to present a motion, a deliberation with the Security Council and to be opposed to the Russian veto. Indeed, as from this moment, I draw your attention to the fact that we will find in the situation to have hundreds of men on the ground without knowing which would be their legal statute. I.e. with certain countries which would recognize the independence of Kosovo and others which would dispute it. I think that it is necessary to avoid going to the conflict immediately. And the proposal which I made, it is that President Putin recognizes — the words have a direction — the inescapable prospect for the independence of Kovoso. For six months, one would ensure the perpetuation of the legal effects of the resolution 1244 to give a mandate to the soldiers who are on the ground; one would push Belgrade and Pristina to be discussed and dialog together. And, at the end of six months, if Belgrade and Pristina found a better statute, and, in this case, it is that one which applies, that is to say they did not find it and, in this case, it is the Ahtisaari solution which would apply. This would have the advantage of making it possible Mr Putin to have a little time and to oblige the Serb ones and the Kosovan ones to discuss. Without legal statute, violences are likely to begin again and I do not see well what one would have to gain there. Then, there was a discussion with President Bush, Tony Blair, President Putin. If it were simple, that would be known. It is not absurd that one discusses, that one reflects, and that that poses problems with each one. I add that I will see only advantages to allow Mr Putin who fears, over all, widening with other situations, to give him a little time. I believe that it would be good for the balance of the area.

Gambit to link Iran to the Taliban backfires

Dans cet article vous apprendrez que Dick Cheney pousse pour aller en guerre en Iran et qu'il n'hesite pas a utiliser la desinformation comme par exemple l'Iran qui fournirait des armes aux forces du Taleban dans la region de l'Afghanistan. Heureusement qu'on a des gens comme Gates pour dementir de telles affirmations de la presse. Cliquez sur le lien comme d'habitude.

Nicolas Sarkozy drunk at the G8

Sarkozy ivre au G8
Uploaded by LesInsoumis

I blame myself for our downfall in Iraq

Les Americains ont importe plein de methodes. Dans un post precedent on a vu comment les Americains avaient importe les methodes de torture francaise. Dans ce commentaire, on apprend que la technique pour casser le psyche d'une personne vient de l'Union Sovietique. En psychologie americaine, cette bande d'abrutis au gouvernement font une difference entre la torture physique et la torture mentale; or il y a plein de livres de psychologie ou l'on sait tres bien que la torture mentale est aussi nefaste que la torture physique. Chez moi 1 personne torturee sans l'intervention de la justice c'est un terroriste de plus.

A former American army torturer has laid bare the traumatic effects of American interrogation techniques in Iraq - on their victims and on the perpetrators themselves.

Tony Lagouranis conducted mock executions, forced men and boys into agonising stress positions, kept suspects awake for weeks on end, used dogs to terrify detainees and subjected others to hypothermia.

But he confesses that he was deeply scarred by the realisation that what he did has contributed to the downfall of American forces in Iraq.

Mr Lagouranis, 37, suffered nightmares and anxiety attacks on his return to Chicago, where he works as a bouncer.

Between January 2004 and January 2005, first at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison - by then cleaning up its act as the prisoner abuse scandal was breaking - and then in Mosul, north Babil, he tortured suspects, most of whom he says turned out to be innocent. He says that he realised he had entered a moral dungeon when he found himself reading a Holocaust memoir, hoping to pick up torture tips from the Nazis.

Mr Lagouranis told The Sunday Telegraph: "When I first got back I had a lot of anxiety. I had a personal crisis because I felt I had done immoral things and I didn't see a way to cope with that. I saw a psychologist. I had a lot to work through." He says that helped prevent him becoming "a totally broken human being".

Disturbingly for the British military, which has distanced itself from the worst excesses of Abu Ghraib, Mr Lagouranis says the Americans learnt much of their uncompromising approach from British interrogators.

"We heard about interrogators in Northern Ireland who were successful. Some of our interrogators went on the British interrogation course, which was tough. People wanted to emulate that, but we went too far."

Mr Lagouranis, who held the rank of specialist, equivalent to a lance corporal, says he never beat a prisoner. But he said: "These coercive techniques - isolation, dogs, sleep deprivation, stress positions, hypothermia - crossed a legal line because they violated the Geneva Convention.

"They also crossed a moral line. If you keep a man awake for a month, that's torture. If you subject a man to hypothermia, that's torture. If you keep him on his knees off and on for a month, that's torture."

	Torture at Abu Ghraib prison cost the US its moral authority, says Mr Lagouranis

His revelations raise disturbing questions about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques. British intelligence has used information supplied under torture in Uzbekistan, and the Government has been accused of turning a blind eye to the extraordinary rendition of suspects to secret prisons where they could be tortured.

Mr Lagouranis, who has written a recently published book about his experiences, added: "These techniques were developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War because they are successful in breaking a person's will and spirit. That doesn't mean they work in terms of extracting intelligence.

"I didn't get actionable intelligence using the harsher methods, I got it using manipulation and lying and by promising them things I didn't deliver on. No one wants to give you intelligence if they think you are going to brutalise them."

He added: "The FBI never advocates torture. It says it will give you bad intelligence."

He is highly critical of the Pentagon for issuing instructions to pursue enhanced interrogation techniques. "Some commanders tacitly allowed harsher things like beating detainees and breaking their bones," he said.

Mr Lagouranis is scathing about a system in which inexperienced young interrogators copied what they saw in Hollywood and on television programmes such as 24, whose lead character Jack Bauer -regularly uses torture on -terrorists.

"The interrogators need to be smarter and better trained. I did one tour in Iraq, but if I had gone back again I would have been behind a desk and inexperienced people would be in the interrogation room. Interrogators are trained by people who have no experience of interrogation. It's the stupidest thing in the world."

In the book, Fear Up Harsh - a term for intimidating a detainee by shouting at him - he makes clear that torture has cost America its moral authority in Iraq by detaining innocent people and treating them badly. He writes: "My actions, combined with the actions of the arresting infantry who left bruises on their prisoners, and the actions of the officers who wanted to get promotions, repeated in microcosm all over this country, had a cumulative effect.

"I could blame Bush and Rumsfeld, but I would always have to also blame myself."

The Pentagon's policy on torture is still in turmoil. The Bush administration is reviewing whether to outlaw waterboarding - making a suspect think he will drown unless he talks.

Last week the US Supreme Court ruled that inmates at Guantánamo Bay can take their case that they are unlawfully imprisoned to the American courts.

The campaign group Human Rights Watch and two of Mr Lagouranis's fellow interrogators have confirmed the details of his account. His book was cleared for publication by the Pentagon.

Experts warn of threat of terrorist nuclear attacks

On nous expose une fois de plus la menace d'un jihade nucleaire tout en prenant soin de souligner qu'un scientifique nucleaire du Pakistan a donne des plans nucleaires a l'Iran. Toutefois les pays fournisseurs d'uranium enrichi sur le marche noir sont l'Ukraine, le Kazahkstan et la Russie, et il y a eu une fois un pays de l'Europe (Allemagne?) mais la source ne fut jamais citee officiellement. C'est toujours pareil, on sort du cadre des lois internationales en citant le terrorisme nucleaire: attraper les coupables avant qu'ils preparent une attaque terroriste. Psychologiquement, tous les pays qui sortent du credo occidental vont etre vises, en particulier l'Iran meme si ses intentions sont/seraient naturelles. De l'autre cote, si une attaque sur l'Iran se produisait, les USA n'hesiterait pas a utiliser leurs petites roquettes nucleaires pour percer le beton arme des ateliers de production iranien. Une bombe nucleaire qu'elle soit petite ou grande, ca ne change pas, c'est du nucleaire tout court.

Security experts from around the world meeting here Monday warned of the threat of a terrorist nuclear attack, and called for renewed efforts to crack down on black market sales of nuclear and radioactive material.

"Nuclear terrorism is a global threat that requires a global response," said FBI director Robert Mueller, as he inaugurated an international conference on nuclear terrorism, a component of the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT).

He described nuclear terrorism as "one of the most dangerous and deadly threats" that nations around the world face.

President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the initiative in July 2006 at the G8 summit of industrialized nations meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

At the time the two leaders urged nations around the world to work to fight the threat of nuclear terrorism by working to better safeguard nuclear material and radioactive substances.

Officials from some 30 nations that signed on to the initiative were present at the Miami conference.

The mechanics of assembling a nuclear explosive is relatively easy, experts said. Much more difficult is gaining access to highly enriched uranium or plutonium necessary for the bomb.

"The laws of supply and demand dictate that someone, somewhere, will provide material to the highest bidder," Mueller said.

Vladimir Bulavin, the deputy director of Russia's Federal Security Bureau, said that the threat of nuclear terrorism "is still the main threat of every country."

Russia has taken steps to control the threat through close "accounting and control of nuclear material," Bulavin said.

Mueller called for cracking down on the international nuclear technology black market, warning that the likes of Al-Qaeda network leader Osama bin Laden -- responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States -- are actively seeking nuclear material.

Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan -- father of his country's nuclear program who in 2004 confessed to providing nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea -- "is one of many to prove that there is a sellers' market" of nuclear technology.

"This is not about catching the crook after the crime is committed," said Mueller's boss, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was also at the event.

"Rather, it is about prevention -- and keeping weapons and the building blocks for them, accounted for, secure, outside of illicit markets, and away from terrorists."

Addressing the foreign law enforcement officials in the audience he said: "Communication, sharing and coordination ... are the essence of what will ultimately make our network stronger than the terrorist network."

The meeting, lasting nearly a week, will include conferences on smuggling trends and detection of nuclear material around the world, border security, improvised nuclear devices and "dirty bombs," bombs that spread radiation.

Experts said there is a strong possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States following the September 11 attacks.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a publication that operates the "Doomsday Clock" to signal the chances of a nuclear catastrophe, currently has the clock set at five minutes to midnight.

Scientists at the bulletin last year moved the hand forward from seven minutes to midnight, saying that the likelihood is high because of terrorists on suicide missions looking for spectacular strikes.

Sudan is secret partner of U.S.

Comment rester de marbre, ne pas crier au complot, lorsque la CIA a une politique bien differente de l'administration Bush a l'egard du Soudan: la CIA utilise les Jihadistes du Soudan infiltres en Irak pour amasser de "l'intelligence humaine" (operation HUMINT). Admirez le titre: "Sudan is secret partner of the US"


Washington // Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq - an example of how the United States has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.

President Bush has condemned the killings in Darfur as genocide and has imposed sanctions on Sudan's government. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.

The relationship underscores the complex realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which the United States has relied heavily on intelligence and military cooperation from countries, including Sudan and Uzbekistan, that are considered pariah states for their records on human rights.

"Intelligence cooperation takes place for a whole lot of reasons," said a U.S. intelligence official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing intelligence assessments. "It's not always between people who love each other deeply."

Sudan has become increasingly valuable to the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks because the Sunni Arab nation is a crossroads for Islamic militants making their way to Iraq and Pakistan.

L’exemple democratique au Moyen-Orient

Les medias cherchent toujours a ameliore l ‘image des USA a l’etranger. Apres s’etre plante sur l’Ouzbekistan, le President Bush avait designe d’office l’exemple de la Turquie comme une force democratique et exemplaire du Moyen-Orient. La encore la realite fut tout autre, la Turquie n’est pas un exemple democratique, c’est un Etat policier et militaire avant tout. Finalement les medias viennent de trouver un bouc emissaire, c’est l’Albanie qui insufflera la theorie des dominos sur le Moyen-Orient ou le President Bush fut accueilli par la population comme un heros.

Turkish, Iranian cooperation against PKK irks Iraq and US

La Turquie s'aligne sur l'Iran en matiere de lutte contre le terrorisme.

News that Iranian and Turkish forces are shelling the PKK hideouts in northern Iraq from their own territories apparently in a coordinated manner has created deep discomfort in Baghdad, Erbil and Washington prompting the Iraqi government to hand a diplomatic note to Turkey calling "to act together" against the militants.
Turkey's charge d'affair in Baghdad Ahmet Yzal was invited to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Saturday where he was handed the note.
Turkish diplomatic sources stressed that this was not a protest note and that it was aimed to call for cooperation.
Foreign news agencies, however, said Baghdad had protested Turkey for shelling border regions. A statement by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Mahmoud called for an immediate halt to the shelling, saying such actions "undermine confidence between the two nations and negatively affect their friendship."
The statement was the first government confirmation of the shelling.
Mahmoud said the shelling had started large fires and caused serious damage, but gave no other details.
The note said the recent security measures Turkey is taking in the border regions is causing scare among the people of the region on the Iraqi side and requested a concerted effort to prevent any harm to the locals.
Turkey has been building up its forces along the border with Iraq, and its leaders are debating whether to stage a major incursion to pursue separatist Kurdish militants who cross over to attack Turkish targets.

Baghdad ready for talks
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the BBC his government is ready to discuss with Turkey how to deal with the PKK separatists.
He was speaking after Iraq presented its diplomatic note to Turkey.
Zebari told the BBC's Arabic Service that Iraq was ready to talk about the activities of the PKK in northern Iraq, and other matters of concern to Turkey.
"We are open to dealing with these positively," he said, "but not via an intensive and large-scale bombardment of border areas."
"We are against any military interventions or violations of borders or the regional security, and all issues are negotiable and can be resolved through dialogue," Zebari added.
Observers said the Iraqi protest letter is clearly aimed at keeping the rising tension as an affair to be dealt with between the two states and not between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds.

Rice warns
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Turkey risks increasing regional tensions by moving troops into Iraq against Kurdish terrorists. She added it would be "not good for Iraq and not good for Turkey."
The statement by Rice, speaking to a panel of journalists and editors from The Associated Press, suggested that Washington could do little to halt limited Turkish incursions across the rugged frontier against the PKK.
Rice said it's "not good for anybody for a robust move across the border."

Turkey, Iran shelling
The warning came as Turkish and Iranian forces reportedly shelled positions across the border in northern Iraq
Iraqi Kurdish sources have claimed Turkey and Iran have been shelling border areas.
Military observers say Turkish artillery positions are too far away from the Kurdish region where the PKK is holed out and thus the shelling may not be from Turkey but from Iran.
Iran has clashed with Iranian Kurdish militants who have bases in remote, mountainous areas of northern Iraq.
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has claimed in its web-site on Friday that artillery shells overnight hit some areas in the Sidikan area in Irbil Province, where the borders of Turkey, Iran and Iraq converge, and that nine villages were affected.
"Huge damage was inflicted on the area," the PUK said, citing what it described as an unidentified "source" in the area. "The source said residents have left their houses, fearing for their lives." Lieutenant Ahmad Karim of the Iraqi border guards force told The Associated Press that seven Turkish shells landed on a forest near Sakta village in the Batous area, but no casualties were reported.
Turkish and Iranian officials have reportedly agreed to fight the Kurdish separatists. The Iranians have promised Turkey to cut the escape routes of the PKK terrorists and prevent them from escaping back to their hideouts in northern Iraq.
Meanwhile, in a related development Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Ergin Saygun met in Ankara and discussed recent developments about Iraq.
Ambassador Oguz Celikkol, Turkey's Special Envoy in Iraq, also attended the meeting at the Foreign Ministry.
The meeting focused on Kirkuk and the future of Iraq.

Middle East, North Africa markets attract Chinese suppliers: report

La Chine s'est lancee a la conquete du marche de l'Afrique et du Moyen-Orient. 58% des fournisseurs Chinois exportent desormais dans cette region. Geopolitiquement, les USA vont essayer de defaire tout ce que la Chine est en train d'accomplir dans la region du Moyen Orient et de l'Afrique du Nord (region MENA) comme au Soudan par exemple ou le President George Bush n'a pas trouve mieux de deplorer les crimes humains au lieu de denoncer l'appui de la Chine. Le 21ieme siecle promet une longue serie de domages colatteraux avant l'affrontement final dans la region du Moyen-Orient.

Sustained by the oil boom in recent years, the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) markets are more and more attractive to suppliers in China.

From 2003 to 2005, economic growth in the MENA region ( excluding Iraq) was the strongest in nearly three decades, averaging 6.2 percent a year, up from an average annual growth rate of 3.7 percent during the 1990s, according to the World Bank Annual Report 2006.

The continuous growth the economies of the MENA region resulted in increasingly consumer-based markets, said Bill Janeri, General Manager of the Middle East for Global Sources, a Hong Kong-based B2B (business to business) trade media publisher.

The increasing demands in markets of the MENA region constitute a lure to suppliers around the world, including those in China.

Driven by a desire to diversify their markets, many suppliers in China wants to establish themselves in "new, emerging markets", Janeri said.

A survey by Global Sources indicated that 58 percent of Chinese suppliers are currently exporting to the MENA region, while another 21 percent plan to enter the region within two years.

China is now definitely "the world's workshop", Janeri said, adding that with both manufacturing and manufacturing processes transferred to China, it "boasts sophisticated, world-class products."

Chinese suppliers are reliable and committed, "they want to develop long-term relationships," he added.

Critics Say U.S. Focus On Al-Qaida In Iraq Is Overblown

Quelqu'un de sense pour une fois pense que le President des USA emploie un peu trop souvent le mot Al Qaeda. Les Americains sont tellement habitues a ce mot que leur conscience refute de savoir si l'on parle bien du meme terrorisme que le 11 septembre. Il etait trop facile de dire "au lieu de combattre les terroristes sur notre sol, on va les combattre dans leur pays", l'Irak n'ayant rien a voir avec l'Afghanistan. Dans la realite meme un resistant en Irak est appele un terroriste.

By CHARLES J. HANLEY The Associated Press

Published: Jun 9, 2007

BAGHDAD - Inside the bloody kaleidoscope of Iraq, the list of enemies and allies is long, shifting and motley, running from "revolution brigades" and Baathists to Salafists, secularists and suicidal zealots, but only one group routinely is tagged "Public Enemy No. 1" by the Americans.

Nine out of 10 times, when it names a foe it faces, the U.S. military names al-Qaida in Iraq. President Bush says Iraq may become an al-Qaida base to "launch new attacks on America." The U.S. ambassador here suggested this week al-Qaida might "assume real power" in Iraq if U.S. forces withdraw.

Critics say this is overblown and possibly a diversion.

"Such speculation is unrealistic," Amer Hassan al-Fayadh, Baghdad University political science dean, said of the U.S. statements.

Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, strong Kurdish ethnic minority, secularist Sunni Muslims and others would suppress any real power bid by the fringe Sunni religious extremists of al-Qaida, al-Fayadh said.

"The people who are fighting al-Qaida in Iraq are the Sunnis themselves," he said.

Since Iraqis rose up against the U.S. occupation in 2003, the insurgency has spawned a long roster of militant groups - the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Islamic Army in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah and the Mujahedeen Army, among others - drawing on loyalists of the ousted, Sunni-dominated Baathist regime, other nationalists, Islamists, tribal groups and militant Shiites.

Some 30 groups now claim responsibility for attacks against U.S. and government targets, said Ben Venzke, head of the Virginia-based IntelCenter, which tracks such statements for the U.S. government.

Despite this proliferation of enemies, the U.S. command's news releases on American operations focus overwhelmingly on al-Qaida.

During the first half of May, those releases mentioned al-Qaida 51 times, versus five mentions of other groups.

La plus grande organisation terroriste du monde

Tiens, il y a qqn qui pense que la plus grande organisation terroriste est la Maison Blanche.
Cliquez sur le lien comme d'habitude.

The death squads - les escadrons de la mort

Usually the wikipedia is a very good source whenever you want to look at History but the authors missed the ideological link on both of these articles and the changes of the worlds since WW2. You'll find a link here in french and a link here in english. So what's wrong with both of these articles? There is a lack of historical knowledge. In the french article, the authors focused more on particular examples of History, trying to find its origins in the US with the KKK or during the secession war then focus on Latin America. On the other side, the english article only focused on historical knowledge viewed by Americans. It seems like both of these articles try to deny each other. The truth is the methods of the death squads used by the USA in the Latin America or the Middle-East were taught by the French.
It was during the war of Indochina and Algeria that the French perfected their methods. The general Masmur came with the idea that the war in Indochina was a different approach from World War II. These wars viewed by a military point of view are indeed very different: World War II was viewed by a linear point of view, it was a war with military unites, on the other hand, the war in Indochina was also viewed by a military point of view but it was a war of surface which is quite different from a linear war, since population is militarized, and insurgencies are hidden inside the civilian population in a urban warfare environment. This aspect is very interesting to understand the natural shift that happened after WWII and we can even find its new objectives in the "war of terror", objectives in which we'll discuss the complex reality/irreality later.

Historical confusion: on the american side now, lots of people are confused and think that the Death Squads come from the idea Negroponte. Well it is wrong too. Geopolitically after WWII the French were training the troops all over the parts of Latin and South America, the Americans had not at this time that much footprint into these countries such as Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia. The origins of the Death Squads is situated in Argentina in the 1976. The Argentina soldiers were trained by french commanders.

Exportations of the french methods towards the USA: the french methods were exported to the USA during the war of Indochina (Vietnam for the US). Back then NacNamara was convinced that typical conventional military means would be adequate enough to solve the problems of Indochina and it was Pierre Messmer (Ministry of Defense from 1960 to 1969) who suggested new implementations to Americans and then decided to send instructors to the american troops. The ideology of the French was based on the theory of the "revolutionnary war". This theory was completely revolutionnary since WW2 and found its roots in Indochina and Algeria. It was brand new because ppl added a sort of humanist dimension to wars: it was not good enough to conquer lands, new military objectives had also to capture the hearts and minds of people. This is how they decided to implement many new ideas that had never been used during WW2 such as technics of infiltration, torture, terrorist attacks. The main core idea was implemented by JFK in the early 60s. Back then the Americans had only 2 military courses, one about "special forces" and another one about "urban warfare", then they decided to look at the french sstrategic information and decided to implement a 3rd course called "counter-insurgency". It was even a French military guy that sent a full translated military report about these french technics to JFK. This is how american technics were born and perfected for the rest of the countries in Latin America (Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala...etc).

Vision and absurdity of the "revolutionnary war": the idea was good but it cannot be applied to any kind of situations because first most of the time objectives differ completely from military ppl and political goals. Also the use of death squads has perverse effects if military troops are situated within the country under attack, and even by cloistering different intel agencies (such as CIA from the DOD) the effects are still negative and in perfect contradiction with military rules, rules of the law, and international laws. To top it off, the long term effects are catastrophic and it does not reduce the frustrations about curbing down terrorism but it only adds more fire to the burning oil. It creates resentment all over the world and in the long term all our ideals that we fight for are reduced to nothing because we only swear by the military vision for humanist aims and we people are so obsessed with our strategic objectives that we keep going further and further from these humanist aims.


This article is not finished, I will add more things within a few hours if possible.

Le President Bush annule le meeting du G8 suite a un probleme a l'estomac

La verite illustree par des photos. C'est la biere qui lui donne des problemes d'estomac.

Les prisons secretes de la CIA en Europe et dans le reste du monde

Il y a eu dernierement un dementi de la CIA sur les prisons roumaines et polonaises. En diplomatie americaine, uniquement les dementis du DOD, du Pentagone et du Dpt d'affaires sont bons a prendre en compte. Il y a tellement eu d'histoires de la CIA en Europe (Italie) que leur credibilite n'est plus significative de leur relation publique. Il n'y a jamais eu un mot de la CIA sur le cas des Irakiens tortures et massacres a Abu Ghraib, et bouche cousue sur le massacre des Irakiens dans le quartier Nord de Baghdad (240 morts) ou l'opinion public a toujours soupconne l'intervention de la CIA trois ans auparavant. De plus il y a un gros point d'interrogation sur le sort des 39 disparus arretes dans differents pays comme l'Egypte, le Kenya, la Libye, le Maroc, le Pakistan, l'Espagne, l'Iran, la Somalie et le Soudan. Plus de details sur cette affaire en francais ici.

Tous ces faits nous conduisent a nous demander en toute honnetete si la CIA a des prisons secretes dans le reste du monde. On vise souvent la CIA, et on oublie souvent que les operations furent endorsees avec Donald Rumsfeld. En Roumanie et en Pologne par exemple, des accords bilatteraux furent signes entre les 2 partis, or on n'a jamais su le contenu de ces accords. A un niveau juridique, ces accords donneraient l'immunite des USA face aux lois internationales. Il est ainsi tout a fait legitime pour la CIA de dementir de telles accusations, puisque ces accords sont consideres avant tout comme secret dans un cadre bilatterral.


2 textes qui se contredisent sur les prisons de la CIA:

CIA rejects secret jails report

VS

CIA jails in Europe 'confirmed'