Pensees sur les USA: December 2007

Friday, December 28, 2007

Humor

In wake of assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Bush administration rushes to defense of Musharraf

By Keith Jones
28 December 2007

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

Pakistan People’s Party “life chairperson” and prime ministerial candidate Benazir Bhutto was assassinated early Thursday evening, Pakistani time, while campaigning for national and provincial assembly elections scheduled for January 8.

The assassination was carried out in Rawalpindi, headquarters of the Pakistani military and ostensibly one of the country’s most secure cities.

There are conflicting accounts of how the assassination occurred. Many news reports are citing witnesses as saying that Bhutto was shot in the neck and torso before her assassin blew himself up. The explosion killed at least 20 other people. However, the New York Times has reported senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) officials as saying Bhutto was hit by a rooftop sniper before a second assailant carried out the suicide bombing.

A rally organized by the other major opposition party, which was to have been addressed by deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, also came under attack Thursday. Snipers reportedly killed four supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and injured five more.

Before any evidence had been collected, let alone examined, and with key facts about the assassination still in dispute, the US political establishment effectively declared the investigation over, categorically attributing Bhutto’s murder to Al Qaeda or a like-minded Islamicist group.

In a perfunctory statement wildly at odds with political reality in Pakistan, President George W. Bush declared Thursday morning, US time, that Bhutto’s assassination was a “cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy.” He urged Pakistanis “to honor Benazir Bhutto’s memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life.”

Later, White House spokesman Scott M. Stanzel said Bush planned to speak with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in the coming hours, but would not tell him whether to proceed with the January 8 elections. “That is up to the Pakistanis,” said Stanzel.

Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke along the same lines as Bush, and the US media quickly took up the refrain: Bhutto was a martyr to the war on terror and the Pakistani people should rally round Musharraf and the military’s stage-managed elections.

There was hardly a voice in the US media that even hinted at the possibility that elements in and around the Musharraf regime could have had a hand in Bhutto’s murder. No matter that the Musharraf regime has an eight-year record of gross human rights abuses, including orchestrating lethal attacks on political opponents, and the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus has for decades patronized armed Islamicist groups and used them as tools of its geo-political and political machinations.

Can there be any doubt that the assassination of the leading oppositional figure in a country whose military strongman was out of favor with the US would have evoked a very different response from Washington? Then the entire American political and media establishment would have pointed the finger of guilt at the regime.

Even if the Musharraf government was not directly involved in the murder of Bhutto, a very strong case is already emerging that its calculated negligence produced an outcome it privately welcomed. Bhutto herself publicly accused elements in the government and Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment of having staged the October 19 attempt on her life in Karachi—a multiple bomb attack that killed 140 people.

Prior to her mid-October return to Pakistan, Bhutto wrote a letter to the government naming three individuals whom she said were intent on destroying her. While Bhutto never made the names public, they are reputed to have included Ijaz Shah, the director general of the Intelligence Bureau.

In recent weeks, Bhutto repeatedly complained that the government had failed to provide for her most basic security needs, including supplying her with an armored car with tinted glass windows and the requisite equipment to jam electronic bomb detonations.

One of her US spokesmen said the slain PPP leader had told him that were she killed, the Pakistani government and military should be held responsible.

US Senator Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has stated that he personally appealed to the Musharraf regime to provide greater security for Bhutto, but his appeals were ignored.

It appears that Bhutto herself, though aware of the immense danger to which she was exposed, counted on her close relations with the US to provide her with protection. In this she gravely miscalculated.

The fraud of Pakistani “democracy”

Bhutto’s assassination throws into question whether the military government headed by Musharraf will proceed with the long-promised elections. At the very least, the government can be expected to use Thursday’s assassination and bombing atrocity as the pretext to ban virtually all election campaign events.

Musharraf made a brief television appearance in which he announced three days of national mourning and blamed the killing on Islamicist terrorists.

Nawaz Sharif, whom the regime has prevented even standing as an election candidate, responded to Bhutto’s assassination by announcing that his party will boycott the elections if the government holds them on January 8.

The assassination of Bhutto, Pakistan’s best known opposition leader and a two-time prime minister, only underscores the utterly bogus character of the elections, which have been touted by the Bush administration and the US media as marking a climatic step in Pakistan’s “democratic transformation.”

On December 15, Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 military coup, lifted the state of emergency he had imposed six weeks earlier. He had declared emergency rule so as to abolish, by dictatorial fiat, all legal-constitutional impediments to his reelection as president. The state of emergency continues, however, in all but name.

The media remains subject to draconian censorship provisions. Government opponents can be tried by military courts. Election processions and all anti-government protests are banned. And the country’s Supreme and High courts, which have ultimate legal authority over the elections, have been purged of judges deemed insufficiently loyal to Musharraf.

As is generally true of such criminal conspiracies, it cannot be said with certainty who was the author of Bhutto’s assassination. But much, if not most, of the Pakistani public holds the Musharraf regime and its military sponsors responsible. Distraught PPP members who had gathered at the hospital to which the fatally wounded Bhutto was taken, chanted “Dog, Musharraf, dog.”

Leaders of Al Qaeda and various other Islamic militias did vow to eliminate Bhutto, after the Bush administration made clear earlier this year that it favored a power-sharing deal between her and Musharraf, in hopes of providing the dictatorship with greater popular legitimacy. But this does not mean that Islamacists carried out the killing or, even if they did, that it was not instigated or facilitated by elements from within the military-security apparatus and the government.

Many within the Pakistani military and bourgeois elite have never forgiven the PPP for having made demagogic appeals to mass discontent over poverty and inequality during its rise to power in the dying days of the Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan dictatorships. Bhutto’s father, PPP founder and former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged by the military regime of Zia-ul Haq in 1979 to a chorus of applause from Pakistan’s business and landlord elite.

The Bush administration expended considerable energy in the summer and fall trying to engineer a power-sharing deal between Bhutto and Musharraf and apparently still held out hope that a deal could be fashioned between them following the sham elections. But through the support it lent Musharraf during the recent “emergency,” the Bush administration made abundantly clear that it views Musharraf and the military as its best allies.

The US’s steadfast support for the government and its preposterous claim to be guiding Pakistan toward democracy could have only encouraged the most ruthless and reckless elements in the military and among Musharraf’s political cronies in the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), if not the president himself, to contemplate getting rid of Bhutto once and for all.

Bhutto’s assassination constitutes a political decapitation of the PPP, which opinion polls had indicated was likely to emerge as the largest single party in Pakistan’s national parliament. A dynastic party, the PPP has but all exclusively focused its political appeal on Benazir Bhutto and her executed father.

The assassination of the PPP’s “life chairperson” manifestly benefits Musharraf and the regime by eliminating a potential rival for power and for Washington’s favor. There are, however, concerns in the US political establishment, as voiced in a Council on Foreign Relations conference call with the press Thursday afternoon, that the assassination could strip the regime of any remaining credibility it enjoys and spark social unrest.

Rioting broke out in Karachi, in other cities in Bhutto’s native Sindh province and elsewhere in Pakistan. According to the BBC, at least eleven people were killed as security forces moved to quell the protests.

The role of US imperialism

It is imperialism, above all US imperialism, which ultimately bears responsibility for the political and socio-economic malignancy that is contemporary Pakistan—a country where the officer corps dominates the government and shares with a tiny stratum of capitalists and landlords the fortunes amassed from the brutal exploitation of the working class and impoverished rural toilers.

While the US media prattles on about Pakistani democracy, the reality is that Pakistani capitalism has failed to address the most elementary problems of the toiling masses—from guaranteeing basic civil liberties and the equality of women, to providing education and sanitation, to eliminating child- and bonded-labor.

In pursuit of the US elite’s predatory economic and geo-political interests, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have supported a succession of brutal military dictatorships.

Two interconnected processes lie at the crux of Pakistan’s still-born democracy and economic underdevelopment: the imperialist-imposed communal partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and the refashioning of Pakistan under General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. In close alliance with Washington, Zia “Islamicized” the Pakistani military and Pakistani politics, while making the country the pivot of the US campaign to undermine the Soviet Union by fomenting and arming Islamic fundamentalist militias in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is an artificial state, whose creation defied economic and geographic logic, to say nothing of the historical and cultural traditions of South Asia, and served to perpetuate two key elements in the British system of imperial control: the state-sponsored definition of Muslims as a separate political group and the Punjabi-dominated British Indian Army.

To say this is not to absolve the bourgeois Indian National Congress (INC) of responsibility for partition, nor to suggest that the independent bourgeois state created in India, on the foundations of the British Raj, has any greater historical legitimacy.

The INC connived with the Hindu communalist Hindu Mahasabha and RSS and was unwilling and organically incapable of defeating the machinations of British imperialism by uniting the subcontinent from below through the revolutionary mobilization of the working class and oppressed peasantry against landlordism and capitalism.

Partition was only the most graphic and bloody expression of the suppression, at the hands of imperialism and the aspirant national bourgeoisies of India and Pakistan, of the anti-imperialist movement that had convulsed the subcontinent in the first half of the twentieth century.

It has thwarted rational economic development, enshrined the communal divide in a state rivalry that has embroiled the peoples of South Asia in three declared wars, served as a means for the respective bourgeoisies to deflect social discontent into chauvinism, and, last but not least, facilitated imperialist domination of South Asia.

Continuing the role charted by the Muslim League prior to independence, the Pakistani bourgeoisie only more abjectly and openly aligned itself with imperialism than did its Indian rival during the Cold War. By the middle 1950s, Pakistan was one of Washington’s “frontline” states in confrontation with the USSR, and the Pakistani military was well on the way to becoming a linchpin of US geo-political strategy. When Commander in Chief Ayub Khan seized power in 1958, he received Washington’s enthusiastic support, as exemplified by the quip, “Ike [Eisenhower] likes Ayub.”

After the Ayub Khan regime collapsed in 1968-69 in the face of mass student-worker protests and opposition from East Pakistan to its subordinate position within the Pakistani federation, Nixon and Kissinger encouraged a new military strongman, Yahya Khan, in a genocidal campaign to prevent Bangladesh’s secession.

Pakistan’s ignominious defeat in the Third Indo-Pakistani War caused the Pakistani elite and Washington to turn to Bhutto, the scion of a landlord family and former protégé of Ayub Khan. Bhutto used anti-Indian chauvinism and pseudo-socialist phrases to politically emasculate the mass opposition to the military and Pakistan’s grossly unequal social order.

During his six years in power, he sought to balance precariously between conflicting social forces. He rehabilitated the military, using it to crush a nationalist insurgency in Baluchistan, proclaimed Pakistan an Islamic republic, and maintained the US-Pakistani alliance. He also carried out limited social reforms, while violently suppressing any independent actions of the working class. Ultimately, as politics internationally shifted to the right in the late 1970s, the military, under General Zia and with Washington’s encouragement, seized power.

The Zia regime would have horrific consequences for the subsequent development of Pakistan. For some eleven years, beginning in 1978-79, Washington utilized Islamabad as the nexus for the US intervention in the Afghan civil war, fomenting and organizing the anti-Soviet Islamicist forces and acting as the conduit of US and Saudi arms and money to the Afghan mujahadeen. This complemented Zia’s own efforts domestically to build up the Islamic right as a bulwark against the working class and the left, and to promote Islamic fundamentalism as the state ideology.

As the state withdrew from providing education and other basic public services, in keeping with the Zia regime’s right-wing economic policies, Islamic religious institutions were encouraged to fill the gaping holes.

The end result was the promotion of religious obscurantism, mounting sectarian strife, increased oppression of minorities, and the development of a nexus between the military and armed Islamicist groups, which all sections of the Pakistani elite sought to make use of in Pakistan’s geo-political conflict with India.

During the Cold War, Washington egged on the Pakistan elite in its ruinous rivalry with India, providing and selling Pakistan all manners of arms and weapon systems. But following the collapse of the USSR and the Indian bourgeoisie’s repudiation of its national economic policy, the US, under the Clinton administration, moved to fashion a new strategic partnership with India.

Though Pakistan was now less central to US geo-political strategy, the Pentagon-Pakistani military partnership endured, with Washington continuing to view the Pakistani military as a prized asset and the bulwark of the Pakistani state.

When the Bush administration seized on the events of September 11, 2001 to shift to a more aggressive foreign policy aimed at securing US control over the oil resources of Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon-Pakistani military relationship was injected with new vigor, and Musharraf quickly emerged as one of the US’s most important allies.

Washington admits to having provided $10 billion to Pakistan since September 2001, the vast bulk of it in the form of military aid and payments to the military for support in the “war on terror.” In return, the Musharraf regime has provided pivotal logistical support for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, allowed US security forces to run torture centers, and is now allowing Pakistan to be used as a training ground for a possible US attack on Iran.

Even as the Musharraf regime has once again bared it fangs over the past two months, imposing a six-week state of emergency, the US has moved to further strengthen its ties with the Pakistani military.

Last week, the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress approved a further $785 million in aid for Islamabad for 2008. According to reports in the Washington Post and New York Times, under a newly concluded US-Pakistani agreement, several hundred US Special Forces will be deployed to Pakistan in the coming weeks to “train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counter-terrorism units.” (December 26, Washington Post)

The working class and the struggle for democracy in Pakistan

The struggle for democracy in Pakistan is a struggle against the US-sponsored and financed military state apparatus and the imperialist-imposed nation-state system in South Asia. It requires the intervention of Pakistan’s toiling masses into political life in the fight for basic civil liberties, but also for jobs, public services and support for rural producers—that is, for radical anti-capitalist measures.

In the final analysis, the failure of the Pakistani bourgeoisie to adhere to even the most elementary democratic norms and its recourse time and again to military rule and extra-constitutional measures is rooted in the extreme polarization of wealth within Pakistani society and its subordination to imperialism.

No section of the bourgeois democratic opposition, including the minority of parties that called for an election boycott, is willing or able to make a genuine appeal to the masses, tying the struggle against military rule to the socio-economic grievances of the working class and Pakistan’s peasant toilers, above all the agricultural laborers and tenant and share-crop farmers.

This is underscored by the evolution of Bhutto. Over the past year, as opposition to the Musharraf regime became more and more publicly manifest, Bhutto time and again expressed her opposition to any popular agitation against the government, for fear it would escape the political elite’s control.

All sections of the bourgeois opposition are dependent on the military to defend their own class privileges against the working class and to maintain the territorial integrity of the crisis-ridden Pakistani state. They are, moreover, tied through a web of financial interconnections to imperialism. They consequently fear and oppose a genuine popular challenge to military rule and imperialist domination.

The growing popular discontent over deepening social inequality, mounting unemployment, food and energy shortages and price rises only makes the bourgeois opposition more disinclined to make any appeal to the Pakistani people to challenge the dictatorship. They are haunted by the fear that the once roused, Pakistan’s toilers will not quickly be returned to the shadows and will begin to invest the call for democracy with an egalitarian content that challenges their own privileges.

As part of the struggle to mobilize the masses to bring down the Musharraf dictatorship and break the pernicious political influence of the bourgeois opposition, the working class and socialist-minded students and intellectuals should demand the immediate release of all political prisoners, the scrapping of all press restrictions, the lifting of all prohibitions on political protests and strikes, the dissolution of the Musharraf regime and the holding of genuine elections.

But in doing so, they should reject the entire framework of the ruling class debate over the constitution and democracy, which reduces democracy to the observance of a handful of civil liberties and accepts as a given Pakistan’s capitalist order and subservient relationship to the United States and world imperialism.

Genuine democracy requires the liquidation of landlordism, the dismantling of the US sponsored military-security state, the separation of mosque from state, socialist measures to provide jobs and a secure income for all, and the overthrow of the communal state system that imperialism imposed on South Asia, with the connivance of the Indian National Congress and Muslim League, in 1947-48. It will be realized only in the form of a workers’ and peasants’ government that consciously links the fate of the toilers of Pakistan and South Asia to the international working class’ struggle to put an end to capitalism.

The World Socialist Web Site appeals to our readers and supporters in Pakistan and South Asia to begin the fight for a new revolutionary party of the working class—a Pakistani section of the International Committee of the Fourth International—that will prosecute this struggle.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Uzbek president returned in election 'farce'

Uzbekistan's autocratic ruler Islam Karimov yesterday tightened his grip on power, when he was re-elected president in an election condemned by opposition activists as illegal and a "farce".

Karimov won an overwhelming victory despite being ineligible to stand as a candidate, having already served two consecutive presidential terms.

Election officials claimed that Karimov's first term began in 2000 - despite the fact that he has ruled Uzbekistan for 18 years, first as a Communist party boss, and then, after independence, as president.

His government is among the most repressive in former Soviet central Asia. Uzbekistan, the region's most populous country, is at the hub of an energy-rich region that is the subject of rivalry between Russia, the US and China.

But even by the grim democratic standards of the neighbourhood, Karimov presides over a particularly authoritarian regime, his critics say. The BBC's website is blocked, dissidents are locked up, and a strange and depressing silence blankets the capital, Tashkent, a city of wide grey boulevards and unlovely Soviet architecture.

In interviews with the Guardian, opposition activists yesterday said the poll was a "joke". In the run-up to the election opposition parties were denied registration; most activists have already fled abroad.

"It's not democratic. Karimov is a neo-communist dictator. He's a bit like Mugabe," Atanazar Arif, the leader of the banned opposition Erk Democratic party, said. "He has no intention of giving up power," he added.

Before the elections, the secret police arrested dozens of opposition activists and put them in jail. Others were placed under house arrest. Last week Yusuf Djumayaev, an opposition poet, was arrested in the ancient Silk Road city of Bukhara after putting an anti-Karimov banner in his car. His whereabouts are unknown.

Around 300 dissidents are currently in jail, human rights campaigners say - including Jamshid Karimov, the president's 41-year-old nephew. In addition, 8,000 religious prisoners have been incarcerated as part of a crackdown against Islamic activity.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent a tiny election observation mission, saying that "due to the apparent limited nature of the competition" it saw no point in conducting comprehensive monitoring.

Pro-government politicians, meanwhile, have been struggling to explain why the president, who is 70 next month, has been allowed to stand in the first place. Under Uzbekistan's constitution Karimov is obliged to retire. He was first elected in 1991. A pliant parliament prolonged his rule several times - including after his last election "victory" in 2000. "We have our own traditions. It's not like Britain," Ziyedulla Ubaydullaev, an MP and lawyer for the pro-presidential Liberal Democratic Party told the Guardian. He added: "But we have high standards of democracy."

Asked why it was necessary to ban the BBC he replied: "The BBC attacks us."

Activists say that the Karimov regime has become more brutally repressive since the massacre in the eastern city of Andijan in May 2005, when government soldiers killed almost 1,000 people. The official death toll was put at 187 - with Karimov blaming Islamist extremists and the west for the uprising. The revolt prompted Karimov to expel US troops, based in the country since 2001, and to forge a new strategic partnership with Russia.

Observers inside the country say that Uzbekistan's economy is on the brink of collapse - with much of its 27 million population living in poverty. Average wages are $24 (£12) a month

"Uzbekistan is like the Soviet Union, but the wrong way round. Everything bad about the Soviet Union we still have. But everything that was good - like its welfare and education system - has disappeared," Nigara Khidovatova, leader of the opposition Free Farmers party, said.

"Our economy is feudal. The situation for workers in the countryside is one of near-slavery. Corruption is rampant," she added.

Opposition leaders say they are exasperated with the European Union, and especially Germany, for not pressurising the Karimov government to end human rights abuses. The EU recently weakened its sanctions against his administration.

"I'm disappointed by the west. There needs to be a total political, cultural and economic boycott of Uzbekistan. It worked in Libya. It can work here," Khidovatova said. However she had nothing but praise for Craig Murray - Britain's former ambassador in Tashkent, sacked in 2004 for criticising the Karimov regime.

Surat Ikramov is one of only a handful of activists left inside Uzbekistan who are willing to criticise Karimov. A human rights advocate, Ikramov has been tortured, beaten up and imprisoned. These days, he says, he has a good relationship with the Uzbek secret police who sit outside his Soviet-built apartment block: "Everyone is exhausted by this regime. Even they are," he says, pointing to them.

Ikramov says he has declined several offers of asylum in the west. The chairman of the Human Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan, an NGO, he intends to carry on fighting the regime, he says.

"The problem is there are so few of us. But it's not hard to explain why there are not more people struggling for democracy. People are afraid," he says.

Officials Falling Behind on Mortgage Fraud Cases

La propriete c'est du vol et le capitalisme c'est de l'escroquerie:

By JOHN LELAND

Published: December 25, 2007

The number of mortgage fraud cases has grown so fast that government agencies that investigate and prosecute them cannot keep up, lenders and law enforcement officials have said.

Reports of suspected mortgage fraud have doubled since 2005 and increased eightfold since 2002. Banks filed 47,717 reports this year, up from 21,994 two years ago, according to statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the Treasury Department. In 2002, banks filed 5,623 reports.

“I don’t think any law enforcement agency can keep up with mortgage fraud, because it’s such a growth industry,” said Chuck Cross, vice president of mortgage regulatory policy for the conference of state bank supervisors, an organization of regulators and bankers. “There’s too many cases, not enough agents.”

Mortgage fraud covers crimes like false statements on mortgage applications and elaborate “flipping” schemes that involve multiple properties and corrupt appraisers, title companies and straw buyers.

In one common flipping plot, someone buys a house, has it appraised for more than its true value and sells it to a straw buyer for the inflated price, pocketing the difference. The straw buyer lets the house fall into foreclosure, leaving the bank with the loss.

The cases coming into view reflect the recent boom in mortgages with limited borrower documentation and lax scrutiny.

Law enforcement agencies say they are overwhelmed, especially because investigating and prosecuting fraud can be complex and time consuming. The officials say career criminals and organized-crime rings have increasingly turned from other crimes to mortgage fraud because it offers lower risks and high profits.

“I could hire a dozen investigators and a dozen prosecutors and only scratch the surface,” said David McLaughlin, a senior assistant attorney general in Georgia who coordinates prosecutions of mortgage fraud.

Losses involving federally insured banks totaled $813 million in the 2007 fiscal year, more than double the $293 million lost in the 2002 fiscal year.

These figures most likely represent “the tip of the iceberg,” said the Mortgage Bankers Association, an industry group, because they do not cover mortgage brokers, who arrange more than half of new mortgages. The industry estimates the total loss this year at $4 billion.

Mortgage fraud can damage whole neighborhoods. Derrick Duckworth, a real estate broker in southwestern Atlanta, has watched “about 40 percent” of the houses in his neighborhood, Adair, become vacant as a result of mortgage fraud. The remaining residents cannot sell their houses because of the abandoned buildings and the neighborhood’s reputation for fraud, he said.

“The other day, someone broke into my neighbor’s crawl space and stole her copper plumbing,” he said. “Last week, we had an 18-year-old shot on the street.”

Fraud is especially common with subprime mortgages, the high-price loans for borrowers with poor credit. Lenders and investigators trace part of the foreclosure crisis to mortgage fraud.

For local law enforcement agencies, fraud is increasing as regulatory budgets are tight and other crimes seem more pressing, said Tom Levanti, a fraud investigator in New York.

“You only have a certain amount of resources,” Mr. Levanti said, “and in New York, you need to spend them on counterterrorism, protecting citizens, reducing violent crime. Mortgage fraud cases are long and time consuming, and the victims are usually financial institutions that can write off the loss. So as a police department, return on investment has to be thought about.”

Lenders say they have good relationships with investigating and prosecuting agencies.

“But law enforcement is just absolutely overwhelmed,” said Corey Carlisle, senior director for government affairs for the Mortgage Bankers Association, which has lobbied for more money to fight fraud. “Lenders say they have to market their cases to law enforcement,” meaning showing extraordinarily high sums or multiple criminals.

John Arterberry, executive deputy chief of the fraud section in the Justice Department, said federal prosecutors and the F.B.I. had made progress on mortgage fraud. Mr. Arterberry cited sweeps in 2004 and 2005 that resulted in more than 150 defendants charged in each sweep.

The bureau has 1,210 open mortgage fraud inquiries, up from 436 in 2003. Last year, those cases led to 204 convictions.

“We have limited resources and have to put them where they do the most good,” Mr. Arterberry said. “We’re able to zero in on hot spots and organized efforts.”

This progress is too slow for Kristine Baugh, who said her neighborhood in Dallas had not recovered from a mortgage fraud that left in six vacant houses on her block. Ms. Baugh, a real estate broker, said she discovered what she believed was a fraud scheme in 2005, when six properties sold for far more than she felt they were worth and remained vacant until being foreclosed.

Suspecting fraudulent appraisals, she gathered documents on the sales and took them to the F.B.I., the district attorney and local officials. With neighbors, she sued an investor who she said was behind the fraud.

Years later, there have been no arrests in the case. The residents ran out of money and dropped their civil suit after the investor filed a countersuit. “Our neighborhood is still in shambles,” Ms. Baugh said. “The properties deteriorated and have to be kept up by the city. They’re a health hazard.”

The swimming pools at the vacant sites are breeding grounds for mosquitoes and potential West Nile virus sources, she said.

Such cases are likely to multiply, said Constance Wilson, executive vice president of Interthinx, which develops fraud detection tools for the lending industry.

“The cases we’re seeing today are from 18, 24, 36 months ago, when the market was still good,” Ms. Wilson said. “Now we’re going to see an increase in mortgage fraud, because all those loan officers, brokers and appraisers who were making six-figure incomes, now their back is against the wall. If that loan doesn’t close, they can’t make their home payment.

“So you have a desperation cycle,” she said. “There’s a lot of push for them originate volume.

“The consequences are that people are getting away with it. It’s damaging the entire real estate market. It’s devastating to victims. Not just lenders but consumers. It’s devastating to entire communities.

“When it’s this prolific,” she said, “we just don’t have enough law enforcement or enough prosecutors for all the cases out there.”

Monday, December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas

Saturday, December 22, 2007

9/11 Truth Manifest

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

12/20/07 "ICH" -- -- For evidence that America’s political system is a criminal conspiracy, open your mind to piles of new analyses that prove beyond doubt that the official 9/11 story is a lie. Years of a bipartisan cover-up of 9/11 lies make it much more than one horrendous past event. It endures in infamy as a symptom of a corrupt and dishonest government.

Every day we pay for what 9/11 and its cover-up have burdened us with, including the costly Iraq war and the erosion of the rule of law and constitutional rights. Power elites have suppressed the truth because they fear what will happen when the public understands that 9/11 was not accomplished solely by foreign terrorists.

Technically sound analyses of what happened at the World Trade Center have unequivocally shown that the official 9/11 story is not credible (www.ae911truth.org). Truth seekers have met their burden of proof; the government has not met theirs. Simply put, controlled demolition brought down three buildings, not fires from the impact of planes on two of them. Not only was the US government involved, it has also conspired to hide the truth from the public. Why? Republican and Democratic politicians and power elites fear that 9/11 truth will remove what little public trust remains in government. The truth will produce political instability, perhaps breaking the two-party stranglehold on our political system. And it should. And it must, if we are to finally obtain the deep political reforms our nation desperately needs.

The decline started before George W. Bush and his criminal co-conspirators accelerated it with their blatant disregard for the rule of law and our Constitution. It will continue, even with a Democratic administration, unless we reform our political system. We must remind Americans that our nation was born in an insurrectionist, populist rebellion against political tyranny – and that 9/11 teaches us that we need a Second American Revolution. We must destroy the domestic Axis of Arrogance of our plutocracy more than fear a foreign Axis of Evil. How?

A vast nationwide grassroots 9/11 truth movement is ignored by the mainstream news media. Its success will be the catalyst for renewing American democracy. It will produce a shock wave that rattles the brains of all Americans: Shock therapy from a truth so powerful and unsettling that Americans finally see the decline of American democracy that allowed 9/11 and its cover-up.

Make no mistake, the 9/11 truth movement holds the future of the United States. We are not subversive “conspiracy theorists” or enablers of foreign terrorism. We are patriotic warriors working to nullify group delusion produced by government propaganda. Dozens of books and websites reveal countless technical contradictions and inconsistencies with the official government 9/11 story and the laws of physics. The weight of the evidence supports one painful verdict: Our federal government played a role, probably through a large “black op.” The “why” is obvious: To justify an unjust war to serve corporate interests and greed.

Here is our opportunity: To make 9/11 the tipping point for American democracy renewal. Our enemies fear that if this movement succeeds, their plutocratic, elitist cabal – the Axis of Arrogance – run by the two-party duopoly will collapse. Corruption keeps our political system stable – truth must clean it up. Instability is the necessary price for restoring democracy.

A Paradigm Shift

9/11 lies have sustained the ruling terrorism-threat paradigm. 9/11 truth must energize a new political-reform paradigm. Patriotism framed as defending the nation against terrorism must be replaced by patriotism focused on repairing American democracy.

Already, status quo protectionists lie about us to defeat our movement. Things will get worse as our movement draws closer to bringing down the corrupt political system. And we are getting closer. Only 16 percent of Americans believe that members of the Bush administration are telling the truth about what they knew about terrorist attacks on the US prior to 9/11, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. But what people say in polls is not the same as coming out publicly and vociferously for 9/11 truth, or seeing the roots of 9/11 in the decay of American democracy, not merely the actions of a few evil people.

The deceived public must be re-educated to see the arrogant power elites running our national plutocracy as worse than radical Islamic terrorists. Paul Craig Roberts captured the essence of the problem: “Americans think their danger is terrorists. They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. ... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren't able to perceive that.”

9/11 is a history lesson to inform the nation about democracy decline. As John McMurtry asked, “So which goes - the faith in America’s greatness and goodness in the world, or the facts which disclose the opposite at the very top?” We must always remember that Americans are better than their government. They do not get the government they deserve. They get the government that the rich and powerful impose. That must end.

We confront more than power elites. There is psychological resistance of millions of Americans to painful 9/11 truth – a shameful, “unthinkable” truth about their elected government. Even if they have doubts about the official story, they instinctively recoil and erect mental barriers to block out the full truth. They want to keep believing that they live in a great democracy. They want to believe that when the Bush administration is replaced our democracy will be in good shape again. Hard to accept that 9/11 truth could not have been suppressed this long without the tacit or explicit approval of Democratic politicians and power brokers.

It is as if we are telling children that their parents are mass murderers. Distracted, time-poor, depressed, political disengaged, cynical and insecure Americans do not want to hear that their government had a hand in 9/11. That for years their two-party-controlled government has blatantly lied to them. That thousands of good Americans have died and been terribly injured in a war propped up by the false-flag 9/11 fiction. In sum, that despite elections a vast criminal conspiracy has been so successful for so long. Such thoughts hurt.

Also, political instability is scary to ordinary Americans. But stability based on corruption and lies is destructive. Only when Americans see 9/11 as a political attack (by Americans on Americans) – not solely a terrorist attack (by foreigners on Americans) – will they understand that revealing 9/11 truth must lead to major political reforms. Instability is the cost of democracy renewal.

Here are powerful messages: The collapse of the rule of law is more important than the collapse of buildings. Countless more have died because of 9/11 than on 9/11. The events of 9/11 ultimately are less important than the reasons for and consequences of 9/11.

As John McMurtry said, “[9/11] allowed an illegitimate administration to transmute into America’s patriotic champion at war - above accountability and the rule of law. ‘Defending America from another terrorist attack’ became a political blank check for corporate corruption of government expenditures with impunity, war criminal acts and threats across the Islamic and alternative third world, and attacks on civil rights and commons at home.” All this persists as 9/11 lies persist.

Despite record-low levels of public trust in Congress and the president, too many Americans still believe that elections are the path to major political reforms. Despite a solid history of campaign lies from politicians, and overwhelming belief that the nation is on the wrong track, Americans keep hoping that they can vote their way into a better future. Most Americans do not have a Boston Tea Party mentality. They are unready to revolt despite revolting conditions. Our truth movement must help Americans accept painful truth and its political fallout. We must put all the technical truth discovered by reputable scientists and engineers to work for systemic reforms.

We must do more than oust the official story and obtain a new 9/11 investigation that now has wide support by hundreds of respected Americans (www.patriotsquestion911.com). We must guide Americans into a more patriotic and courageous mental state. We must help Americans become outraged and rebellious, yet also optimistic about major political reforms.

Political Strategy

Success against the power elites running and ruining our nation requires building an army of Americans openly revolting against the two-party corporatist state now in control. The 9/11 truth movement must use political strategies to defeat the status quo political establishment. Here are three actions.

First, with detailed technical analyses unequivocally proving that the official story is false, the movement can draft a bill that might be titled The 9/11 Truth Act of 2008. This proposed federal legislation should be delivered to every member of the House and Senate early next year. It would clarify the investigation: What its scope and objectives must be. What reliable entity, public or private or a combination, must be used. How the public must be given opportunities to present information. What resources must be provided and what time frame must be adhered to.

We must take the initiative and specify exactly what kind of new official 9/11 investigation is necessary, recognizing that professionals in the truth movement have limited resources and cannot address all questions. The 9/11 truth movement itself must define exactly what the first real credible and comprehensive government sponsored investigation must consist of. We can have no confidence in anything that the political establishment might devise to silence our movement. We must tell the public, the media and the political world what is required to reveal the total truth as to what caused, for example, the collapse of three World Trade Center buildings, especially building 7 not even hit by a plane.

Developing and submitting this legislation must then be followed up by all 9/11 groups urging their supporters to bombard Congress with demands for hearings and passage of the bill. This is the way to engage more Americans politically to obtain full 9/11 truth.

However, few politicians’ comments support the truth movement. A rare statement came from presidential candidate Ron Paul. In a radio interview in January, 2007 he said that the 9/11 investigations to date are “more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on.” However, later in the year when he became more visible he was asked about the possibility of the official story being orchestrated by the government. He said emphatically “absolutely not.” In another interview, when asked whether he thought 9/11 was an inside job that our government made happen, he responded forcefully “No.” So apparently Paul sees a cover-up but not about the involvement of our government. Would he support legislation for a new investigation?

Thus the second critical political action is this: Proclaim that only politicians that actively support passage of our legislation will earn support in the 2008 elections from the millions of Americans doubting the official 9/11 story. This threat is an absolute necessity. If the legislation is not passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, then we must aggressively support a boycott on voting for all Democrats and Republicans in the 2008 federal elections.

Third, all those committed to 9/11 truth should honor what the Founders gave us in our Constitution in case some day Americans lost confidence in the federal government, especially in Congress. That day has arrived. 9/11 was that day. They gave us the option in Article V for a convention of state delegates to propose constitutional amendments. We must see SYSTEM reforms as only achievable through constitutional amendments that Congress will never propose nor achieve through normal legislation.

Congress and the entire elitist political establishment have intentionally denied us a convention for over 200 years. The one and only requirement in Article V has more than been satisfied by over 500 state applications from all 50 states. Enough is enough. Our truth movement should join the effort of Friends of the Article V Convention at www.foavc.org by urging truth group members to join FOAVC. The political establishment fears both 9/11 truth and an Article V convention. We must grasp that 9/11 truth can bring us to the brink of political reforms and the convention is the process to obtain them.

Conclusion

The 9/11 truth movement must also be a political movement – but not in any partisan sense. 9/11 truth can help Americans take back their country. 9/11 truth can end the criminal, corrupt and conniving plutocracy that stole our government and mutilated our democracy.

We must transform 9/11 from a catalyzing event for imperialistic war-mongering to one for democracy renewal. We must convert terrorist-transfixed fear into political reform enthusiasm.

The pursuit of truth is not always the pursuit of happiness – not when the truth hurts. The 9/11 truth movement is not about finding immediate happiness. It is about rebooting American democracy and, after accomplishing that, earning happiness.

FBI's Hoover planned mass U.S. jailings: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan in 1950 to suspend the right to habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty, The New York Times reported on their web site on Saturday.

Hoover wanted President Harry Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage" and sent the plan to the White House 12 days after the start of the Korean War, the Times reported, citing a newly declassified document.

There is no evidence to suggest Truman or any other president approved any part of Hoover's proposal.

According to the Hoover plan, the FBI would "apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous" to national security.

The arrests would come from a list of approximately 12,000 names that Hoover had been compiling for years, the Times said.

"In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus," Hoover's proposal said, referring to the right to seek relief from illegal detention, a centuries-old fundamental principle of law.

According to the Constitution, habeas corpus must prevail "unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it." But Hoover's proposal broadened that to include "threatened invasion" or "attack upon United States troops in legally occupied territory," the Times said.

Prisoners would have the right to an eventual hearing from a board made up of one judge and two citizens. The hearings, however, would "not be bound by the rules of evidence," Hoover's letter added.

Habeas corpus is currently at issue in the United States, with President George W. Bush following the September 11 attacks issuing an order that effectively allowed the United States to hold suspects indefinitely without a hearing, a lawyer, or formal charges.

In September 2006 Congress passed a law suspending habeas corpus for anyone deemed an "unlawful enemy combatant."

But the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the right of U.S. citizens to seek a writ of habeas corpus and the court this month heard arguments on whether some 300 foreigners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba had the same rights. A ruling is expected by next summer.

Hoover's plan was declassified on Friday along with a collection of Cold War documents concerning intelligence issues from 1950 to 1955, the Times said.

Tony Blair joins Catholic Church

Voltaire in England wrote a few centuries ago: "No one can hold office in England or Ireland unless he is a faithful Anglican".

Click on the BBC link to read the rest.

Tent city in suburbs is cost of home crisis

Aux USA une fois qu'on a perdu son travail et sa maison, on vit dans des tentes:

ONTARIO, California (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.

The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.

The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.

As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.

While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it's just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.

"They don't hit the streets immediately," said activist Jane Mercer. Most families can find transitional housing in a motel or with friends before turning to charity or the streets. "They only hit tent city when they really bottom out."

Steve, 50, who declined to give his last name, moved to tent city four months ago. He gets social security payments, but cannot work and said rents are too high.

"House prices are going down, but the rentals are sky-high," said Steve. "If it wasn't for here, I wouldn't have a place to go."

'SQUATTING IN VACANT HOUSES'

Nationally, foreclosures are at an all-time high. Filings are up nearly 100 percent from a year ago, according to the data firm RealtyTrac. Officials say that as many as half a million people could lose their homes as adjustable mortgage rates rise over the next two years.

California ranks second in the nation for foreclosure filings -- one per 88 households last quarter. Within California, San Bernardino county in the Inland Empire is worse -- one filing for every 43 households, according to RealtyTrac.

Maryanne Hernandez bought her dream house in San Bernardino in 2003 and now risks losing it after falling four months behind on mortgage payments.

"It's not just us. It's all over," said Hernandez, who lives in a neighborhood where most families are struggling to meet payments and many have lost their homes.

She has noticed an increase in crime since the foreclosures started. Her house was robbed, her kids' bikes were stolen and she worries about what type of message empty houses send.

The pattern is cropping up in communities across the country, like Cleveland, Ohio, where Mark Wiseman, director of the Cuyahoga County Foreclosure Prevention Program, said there are entire blocks of homes in Cleveland where 60 or 70 percent of houses are boarded up.

"I don't think there are enough police to go after criminals holed up in those houses, squatting or doing drug deals or whatever," Wiseman said.

"And it's not just a problem of a neighborhood filled with people squatting in the vacant houses, it's the people left behind, who have to worry about people taking siding off your home or breaking into your house while you're sleeping."

Health risks are also on the rise. All those empty swimming pools in California's Inland Empire have become breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which can transmit the sometimes deadly West Nile virus, Riverside County officials say.

'TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT'

But it is not just homeowners who are hit by the foreclosure wave. People who rent now find themselves in a tighter, more expensive market as demand rises from families who lost homes, said Jean Beil, senior vice president for programs and services at Catholic Charities USA.

"Folks who would have been in a house before are now in an apartment and folks that would have been in an apartment, now can't afford it," said Beil. "It has a trickle-down effect."

For cities, foreclosures can trigger a range of short-term costs, like added policing, inspection and code enforcement. These expenses can be significant, said Lt. Scott Patterson with the San Bernardino Police Department, but the larger concern is that vacant properties lower home values and in the long-run, decrease tax revenues.

And it all comes at a time when municipalities are ill-equipped to respond. High foreclosure rates and declining home values are sapping property tax revenues, a key source of local funding to tackle such problems.

Earlier this month, U.S. President George W. Bush rolled out a plan to slow foreclosures by freezing the interest rates on some loans. But for many in these parts, the intervention is too little and too late.

Ken Sawa, CEO of Catholic Charities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, said his organization is overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle the volume of people seeking help.

"We feel helpless," said Sawa. "Obviously, it's a local problem because it's in our backyard, but the solution is not local."

(Additional reporting by Andrea Hopkins in Ohio; Editing by Mary Milliken and Eddie Evans)

Friday, December 21, 2007

Record inequality in the US: Billions for Wall Street bosses as workers’ share of income shrinks

By Patrick Martin
20 December 2007

Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author

Goldman Sachs, the most profitable US investment bank, will distribute a staggering $12.1 billion in bonuses this month, up from $9.9 billion last year. The company will pay $20.2 billion in all forms of compensation, up from $16.5 billion last year.

While the total compensation figure includes salaries and benefits for all 30,000 people employed at Goldman Sachs—leading to breathless media reports of an “average” compensation of $661,490 per employee—the lion’s share will go to a few hundred top executives, managers and partners, who will receive tens of millions apiece.

Chairman and CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein will rake in about $70 million himself, up from $53.4 million last year, which at the time was the highest income ever reported by a bank CEO.

The bank reported Tuesday that its fourth-quarter profits rose 2.2 percent to $3.2 billion, $7.01 for each share of stock, well above the expectation of $6.61 a share set by stock analysts. Total profits for 2007 were $11.6 billion, up 22 percent over 2006, on total revenues of $88 billion.

Lehman Brothers, the fourth-biggest securities firm, announced last week a bonus pool of $5.7 billion and total compensation of $9.5 billion, with CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr. awarded a $35 million stock bonus, on top of his salary and benefits.

The vice-grip on Wall Street by a handful of big firms is underscored by the report that Goldman’s bonus pool alone was bigger than the total market value of the fifth-largest investment bank, Bear Stearns.

Another yardstick of the influence of Goldman Sachs is that the company’s bonus pool of $12.1 billion was greater than the $11 billion total increase in US government spending on all domestic social programs proposed by the congressional Democrats, and blocked last week by a White House veto threat.

A single Wall Street firm will distribute more than twice as much money to a few hundred executives as the US government spends on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program serving millions of children of low-paid workers, and more than the federal government spent this year on Hurricane Katrina reconstruction and relief.

Goldman Sachs total annual compensation exceeds the budget of the federal departments of Treasury, Justice, Labor, Agriculture or Interior, the EPA or NASA.

Such figures demonstrate the grotesque distortions inflicted on American society by the domination of financial speculators whose activities create nothing of value and have, from the standpoint of material production, an entirely parasitic and destructive impact.

Much of Goldman’s record profits this year come from its successful financial manipulations in the subprime mortgage market, where it essentially bet against its major Wall Street rivals, who plunged heavily into the business of repackaging home mortgages into ever-more-complex financial securities whose value is now problematic, even unknowable.

The company also raked in over $1 billion in profits in the fourth quarter alone from its private equity operations. Goldman-owned hedge funds serve the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent, those who can afford to bet tens of millions on financial manipulations that may return 20, 25, even 30 percent, far more than can be gained from investment in the development of the productive infrastructure of society.

One of the principal activities of hedge funds and other private equity firms is to buy up struggling companies, strip their assets, shut factories and offices, fire thousands of workers, and then refloat them on the stock exchange at a huge profit. Essentially, these firms coin the economic distress of laid-off workers and their families into gold.

Goldman Sachs reported its record bonus pool only a few days after a new report by the Congressional Budget Office that documented, from the standpoint of the US economy as a whole, the increasingly pernicious role of the super-rich.

The CBO report, made public Friday, found that the richest one percent of Americans saw a greater increase in their total income from 2003 to 2005 than the combined total income of the poorest 20 percent of the population. The income of the top one percent rose from under $1.3 trillion in 2003 to $1.8 trillion in 2005. The increase of $524.8 billion far exceeded the total income of the poorest fifth of Americans, $383.4 billion.

If the top one percent had simply been compelled to live in 2005 on the same exorbitant income they made in 2003, with the increase diverted to the poor, the incomes of the bottom 20 percent of the population could have been increased by 170 percent. In other words, the abolition of poverty in America would merely require stopping the superrich from grabbing an ever-greater share of the vast wealth produced by the labor of working people.

The CBO report provided other metrics for gauging the staggering growth of economic inequality. The total 2005 income of the top three million Americans was equivalent to the total income of the bottom 166 million.

The average household in the top one percent enjoyed an increase of $465,700 in annual income; the average household in the bottom 20 percent saw an increase of only $200, while those in the middle fifth saw a rise of just $2,400.

Further analysis of the CBO data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute suggests the historic dimensions of the social polarization in the United States.

The wealthiest fifth of the population now collects 55 percent of total national income, considerably more than the total combined income of the bottom 80 percent, and the highest such figure ever recorded in the US.

The wealthiest one percent saw its share of national income double from 1979 and 2005, rising from 9 percent to 18 percent. During that quarter-century, the average income of this top layer more than tripled, rising 228 percent, from $319,000 to $1.1 million. During the same period, the average after-tax income of the poorest fifth grew only 6 percent, the average income of the middle fifth grew 21 percent, less than one percent a year.

The disparities between rich and poor, and between rich and the middle, ballooned accordingly. In 1979, the top 1 percent averaged 8 times more than middle-income families and 23 times more than the poorest 20 percent. By 2005, the top 1 percent had 21 times the income of middle-income families and 70 times the average income of the poorest 20 percent.

Jared Bernstein of EPI, summing up the record of the years 2003-2005, wrote, “Over those two years, the growth of inequality transferred $400 billion dollars from the bottom 95 percent to the top 5 percent.” He concluded, “Such concentration of income is unsustainable in a democratic society.”

Or to put it more bluntly: such a concentration of income is the driving force of the present assault on democratic rights, spearheaded by the Bush administration and supported by both big business parties, which defend the existing economic order.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

La tribu des Indiens Lakota font une declaration d'independance contre les USA:

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.

The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said.

"This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.

Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.

One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

"Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

Bush, Maliki Break Iraqi Law to Renew U.N. Mandate for Occupation

By Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted December 20, 2007.

A majority of Iraqi lawmakers say renewal requests not ratified by the parliament are illegal.

On Tuesday, the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council extending the mandate that provides legal cover for foreign troops to operate in Iraq for another year.

The move violated both the Iraqi constitution and a law passed earlier this year by the Iraqi parliament -- the only body directly elected by all those purple-finger-waving Iraqis in 2005 -- and it defied the will of around 80 percent of the Iraqi population.

Earlier in the week, a group representing a majority of lawmakers in Iraq's parliament -- a group made up of Sunni, Shiite and secular leaders -- sent a letter to the Security Council, a rough translation of which reads: "We reject in the strongest possible terms the unconditional renewal of the mandate and ask for clear mechanisms to obligate all foreign troops to completely withdrawal from Iraq according to an announced timetable."

We don't know if it was even read by members of the Security Council, but we do know that it, like previous communications from the Iraqi legislature, was completely ignored.

James Paul, director of the Global Policy Forum, which follows the United Nations' intrigues, said that while "there's concern in many delegations at the United Nations about what is going on," Security Council delegates "are under instructions from their governments to lay low and pass the U.S. resolution." According to Paul, the move "shows the despotic power of the U.S. government to force everyone to knuckle under, no matter how much the law is violated."

It was an egregious assault on Iraq's nascent democracy, as well as its supposed "sovereignty," and can only encourage more bloodshed. Yet the commercial media has so far ignored the story entirely, reporting only that "Iraq" had requested that the mandate be renewed.

The real picture is dramatically different. Just as some congressional Democrats in Washington have tried desperately to limit Bush's ability to maintain troops in Iraq forever -- inserting various conditions into the endless series of supplemental spending bills that have financed the occupation -- and been thwarted by the administration, so too has a majority of Iraq's parliament come out against renewing the mandate without attaching conditions to it, including a requirement that the United States set a timetable for withdrawal.

That's a process story, unsexy by definition, but that doesn't change its importance. This move speaks to the degree to which occupation and democracy are mutually exclusive, and to how Bush and Maliki must run roughshod over the Iraqi legislature (not to mention the U.S. Congress), sacrificing opportunities for political reconciliation along the way, in order to maintain an almost universally despised American military presence in the country.

The U.N. mandate

The U.N. mandate provides vital political cover for the occupation. The Bush administration has ignored or violated much of the international law governing the conduct of an occupying power. As Orwellian as it is, the United States, having bombed the hell out of Iraq, invaded it with a huge mechanized army and installed a government that exists wholly within the confines of its sheltered "international zone" -- the "Green Zone" -- and now maintains that its troops are in the country by the invitation of that government. The United Nations' mandate is a key part of maintaining that fiction.

Last year, at Maliki's request, the Security Council renewed the U.N. mandate suddenly, surprising many of the Iraqi lawmakers we reached in Baghdad at the time. Dr. Alaa Makki, a Sunni MP representing the Accord Front, asked that we send him a copy of the U.N. resolution and Al-Maliki's letter since he had no clue about the machinations that were going on between the PM and the Security Council. Hasan al-Shammari, a Shia parliamentarian with the Al-Fadhila party, told us by phone: "We had a closed session two days ago, and we were supposed to vote on the mandate in 10 days. I can not believe the mandate was just approved without our knowledge or input." Dr. Hajim al-Hassani, a secular MP and the former speaker of the parliament, also didn't know that the mandate had been renewed until receiving our call. "We were supposed to have a meeting with the Prime Minister and other top officials in the parliament during the next couple of weeks to decide what to do with the mandate," he said.

A majority of Iraq's legislators viewed the renewal as unconstitutional. While article 80, section 6, of the young constitution gives the cabinet the right to "negotiate" and "sign" international agreements and treaties, article 61, section 4, reads: "A law shall regulate the ratification of international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Council of Representatives." Like the U.S. system, the executive branch can only negotiate international treaties; the legislature has to ratify them.

At the time, Maliki argued that while he respected the powers given to the parliament, the U.N. mandate didn't count as either a treaty or an agreement, and therefore didn't require a nod from the legislative branch.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of the PM's maneuvers this year, the Iraqi legislature has tried to put its foot down and assert its rights under the country's constitution. First, at the end of April, 144 members of the parliament -- a majority -- sent a nonbinding letter to the members of the United Nations Security Council and to the United Nations secretary general condemning last year's "unconstitutional" renewal and calling for a timetable for foreign troops to withdraw from Iraq.

The Parliament then went a step further at the end of May, when 140 of its members co-sponsored a resolution requiring Maliki to get parliamentary approval before renewing the mandate this year.

Here the story gets a bit legalistic, but bear with us. The resolution was submitted on May 27. During the session, Al-Mashhadani, the head of the Iraqi parliament, refused to allow a vote on the measure, sending it instead to the parliament's legal committee for review (also known as "sending it to die in committee"). On June 5, however, Al-Mashhadani bowed to pressure and allowed a vote on the resolution, which passed by an 85-59 margin. Maliki's cabinet then had a choice of vetoing the law or sending the resolution to the federal court for review.

According to Article 73, section 3 of the constitution, if neither of those actions are taken, then a law passed by the parliament is "considered ratified after 15 days from the date of receipt." The legislation was neither vetoed nor sent to the judiciary for review, so, according to the Constitution, it was duly passed and became binding under Iraqi law.

A few days later, Hoshyar Zebari, the minister of foreign affairs, was called to a hearing at which a member of the parliament's legal committee posed a question. "A few days ago," said Omar Khalaf Jawad, an MP from the secular National Iraqi Dialogue Front, "the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution that obligates the cabinet to receive approval from the parliament before renewing the occupation forces' mission. What steps have your ministry, or the Iraqi cabinet as a whole, taken to inform international entities and countries with forces in Iraq about this resolution, so that we will be sure the resolution will be respected and implemented?" Zebari assured the parliament that its legislation would be disseminated to the appropriate parties and respected by the prime minister and his cabinet.

But, four months after that hearing, in an off-the-record conference call with most of the Security Council's 15 delegates and a number of Sunni, Shiite and secular Iraqi MPs, two unexpected discoveries came to light.

First, the delegates were informed that a report submitted by the secretary-general contained some crucial factual errors. The SG's report said that the parliament had "passed a nonbinding resolution on 5 June obligating the cabinet to request parliament's approval on future extensions of the mandate governing the multinational force in Iraq and to include a timetable for the departure of the force from Iraq." On the call, the Iraqi lawmakers explained to the delegates that the resolution was a binding law and that it did not contain a request to include a timetable. One of the MPs attending the meeting from Baghdad clarified: "All that the resolution requests is that the Iraqi parliament be allowed to practice its constitutional rights."

The second and more shocking discovery of the meeting was that the letter sent in April by the 144 members of Iraq's parliament had never been delivered to the Security Council delegations. Some of the Iraqi MPs confirmed that they had handed the letter to Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the United Nation's special representative for Iraq (Qazi later insisted that he had indeed delivered the letter to the Security Council members and to the secretary-general).

The next day, the Iraqi MPs took it upon themselves to notify the Security Council delegates that any request to renew the mandate that is "issued by the Iraqi cabinet without the Iraqi parliament's approval is unconstitutional." It added: "The Iraqi parliament, as the elected representatives of the Iraqi people, has the exclusive right to approve and ratify international treaties and agreements including those signed with the United Nations Security Council."

At the end of November, Foreign Affairs Minister Zebari was again called to testify before the Iraqi parliament. He promised, unequivocally, that any request to extend the mandate "will not be presented to the U.N. Security Council prior to its submission to the Iraqi parliament for deliberation."

But that wasn't to be. In the letter sent this week, Iraqi lawmakers' demand was unambiguous: "We ask the Security Council not to accept any letter requesting renewal that is not ratified by the parliament. Such a letter would be deemed illegal and unconstitutional according to the laws of Iraq," it read.

No debate was held in the Iraqi legislature, and on Tuesday the Security Council voted unanimously to renew the mandate.

Iraqi lawmakers not the only ones getting the runaround

Our sources in the United Nations told us to expect a vote towards the end of the week, and we were caught by surprise when it was held Tuesday.

The timing appears to have been a response to senior members of Congress picking up on the Iraqi legislature's efforts to put conditions on the renewal. In a letter sent to Condoleezza Rice on Dec. 5, Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., chairman of a House subcommittee on foreign affairs, noted the Iraqi parliament's legislation and warned that ignoring its prerogatives might lead to a broader perception that the occupation is "illegal, illegitimate and evidence of a desire for the long-term basing of our military officials in Iraq."

On Wednesday, Delahunt held hearings on the renewal (at which one of this article's authors, Raed Jarrar, testified). We can't say for sure if the attempt to get these issues into the record on Capitol Hill had to do with the vote being moved up to Tuesday, but the fact that the mandate was renewed, suddenly, just one day before Congressional hearings were held suggests that there was an effort to create "facts on the ground" that would effectively sideline legislators' interest in the matter.

What this story reveals, again, is that U.S. "interests" -- that is, the interests of the U.S. foreign policy elite -- which include establishing a permanent foothold in the Middle East and exerting influence over the political and economic course Iraq takes in the future, are paramount, and that any talk of democratizing missions or "liberating Iraqis" has never been more than political theater.

The renewal is the latest in a string of instances in which the Bush administration and its allies in Iraq's executive branch have shut down a nonviolent, political avenue for Iraqi citizens to resist the presence of foreign troops in their country. By denying them those avenues, Bush and Maliki have effectively done what they accuse advocates of withdrawal of doing: "emboldening" violent insurgents and getting more innocent Iraqis and more U.S. troops killed.

One can only wonder, now that the United States has "liberated" Iraq from Saddam Hussein, just who will liberate Iraq from the United States?

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

PeakTchaws ov Ze deeh

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Inflation puts bite on a new item: Food

Cette annee aux USA aura vu une inflation dans les produits alimentaires:

A government inflation report issued Friday confirmed what most grocery store shoppers already suspected: Putting food on the table is taking a bigger bite out of their wallets.

Food inflation has more than doubled during the past 12 months, with the cost of some staples of the American diet soaring even faster. Jack Romine noticed it last week, when he paid $2.29 for a dozen eggs at the Brookdale Cub Foods. Nationally, eggs cost 37 percent more than a year ago.

"We couldn't believe it," he said.

A 5.3 percent annual increase in the cost of food may not sound like a lot, but it could prove a big drain on family budgets and the nation's economy.

Workers could demand higher wages to keep up with the cost of living. Or they could be forced to reduce purchases of everything from clothes to cars. Already, most major retailers are reporting weak holiday spending.

Anyone hoping for a retreat from the current price spikes may be disappointed. A growing chorus of experts says the higher prices herald a new world economy shaped by rising worldwide demand for basic commodities such as corn, wheat and oil.

"This is long-term," said Ben Senauer, professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota. "There's good reason to believe the days of low-cost food and energy are over."

Ethanol use growth

Twin forces have been driving the worldwide commodity boom: the rise of a global middle class and biofuels.

In the United States alone, the use of corn for ethanol grew two and a half times since 2000. High demand this year lured American farmers into growing a record corn crop of 13.2 billion bushels, a whopping 25 percent increase over last year's harvest.

And yet it still hasn't been enough to meet demand, pushing prices up. Corn neared $4.40 a bushel in trading on the Chicago Board of Trade this week, more than double historical averages of $1.50 to $2 a bushel.

All of that expensive corn makes it a lot more costly to produce eggs, said Steve Olson, a spokesman for the Broiler and Egg Association of Minnesota. Chicken feed -- made mostly of corn -- is 60 to 70 percent of an egg farmer's costs.

Dairy farmers pay more for feed, too, up by as much as 40 percent since last year, said Bob Lefebvre, executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association.

Meanwhile, General Mills, Sara Lee and other food companies that rely on corn for many of their products have responded by raising prices on the goods they ship to grocery stores.

Ethanol has also taken acreage away from wheat and soybeans, helping to raise the prices of those now less plentiful grains, said Rick Kment, a dairy and biofuel analyst at DTN in Omaha.

Those pressures could increase in coming years if Congress passes new farm and energy bills that require even bigger increases in the use of ethanol and other biofuels.

The acting USDA secretary has cautioned against blaming ethanol for the rise in food prices, saying more complex factors are at work.

South Asian affluence

The most significant may be the rising affluence of emerging nations like India and China. A typical Chinese consumer drank 5 kilograms of milk in 1990 and 18 kilograms last year, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. It predicts milk and vegetable consumption will grow 70 percent between 2000 and 2025 for all of South Asia. Consumption of meat, eggs and fish, meanwhile, will grow by 100 percent during the same period.

That's good news for food companies like Cargill and Hormel and for Minnesota farmers, who have seen global exports grow.

"We have demand that's outstripping supply," said Lefebvre.

Supplies may not match demand for a decade, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. Forty years ago, Americans spent a quarter of their income to feed themselves. Today, thanks in part to government subsidies that made staples like corn cheap and plentiful, an average U.S. family spends 7.2 percent of its household budget on food eaten at home. For low-income families, which spend about 20 percent of their household budget on food, the sting of rising food prices is especially sharp.

An inevitability

With more people worldwide competing to buy those products, and the possibility that climate change could further stress world crops, price increases may be inevitable.

Wells Fargo senior economist Scott Anderson sees a spiral of inflation from a sustained march of higher food and energy costs.

"People used to see this as a shock, thinking things will return to normal," he said. "Now it's becoming part of their inflation expectation. Then they'll go push employers for higher wage increases. This can just snowball."

mckinney@startribune.com • 612-673-7329 hcummins@startribune.com • 612-673-4671

Saturday, December 15, 2007

After the Money's Gone

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 14 December 2007

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced plans to lend $40 billion to banks. By my count, it's the fourth high-profile attempt to rescue the financial system since things started falling apart about five months ago. Maybe this one will do the trick, but I wouldn't count on it.

In past financial crises - the stock market crash of 1987, the aftermath of Russia's default in 1998 - the Fed has been able to wave its magic wand and make market turmoil disappear. But this time the magic isn't working.

Why not? Because the problem with the markets isn't just a lack of liquidity - there's also a fundamental problem of solvency.

Let me explain the difference with a hypothetical example.

Suppose that there's a nasty rumor about the First Bank of Pottersville: people say that the bank made a huge loan to the president's brother-in-law, who squandered the money on a failed business venture.

Even if the rumor is false, it can break the bank. If everyone, believing that the bank is about to go bust, demands their money out at the same time, the bank would have to raise cash by selling off assets at fire-sale prices - and it may indeed go bust even though it didn't really make that bum loan.

And because loss of confidence can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, even depositors who don't believe the rumor would join in the bank run, trying to get their money out while they can.

But the Fed can come to the rescue. If the rumor is false, the bank has enough assets to cover its debts; all it lacks is liquidity - the ability to raise cash on short notice. And the Fed can solve that problem by giving the bank a temporary loan, tiding it over until things calm down.

Matters are very different, however, if the rumor is true: the bank really did make a big bad loan. Then the problem isn't how to restore confidence; it's how to deal with the fact that the bank is really, truly insolvent, that is, busted.

My story about a basically sound bank beset by a crisis of confidence, which can be rescued with a temporary loan from the Fed, is more or less what happened to the financial system as a whole in 1998. Russia's default led to the collapse of the giant hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, and for a few weeks there was panic in the markets.

But when all was said and done, not that much money had been lost; a temporary expansion of credit by the Fed gave everyone time to regain their nerve, and the crisis soon passed.

In August, the Fed tried again to do what it did in 1998, and at first it seemed to work. But then the crisis of confidence came back, worse than ever. And the reason is that this time the financial system - both banks and, probably even more important, nonbank financial institutions - made a lot of loans that are likely to go very, very bad.

It's easy to get lost in the details of subprime mortgages, resets, collateralized debt obligations, and so on. But there are two important facts that may give you a sense of just how big the problem is.

First, we had an enormous housing bubble in the middle of this decade. To restore a historically normal ratio of housing prices to rents or incomes, average home prices would have to fall about 30 percent from their current levels.

Second, there was a tremendous amount of borrowing into the bubble, as new home buyers purchased houses with little or no money down, and as people who already owned houses refinanced their mortgages as a way of converting rising home prices into cash.

As home prices come back down to earth, many of these borrowers will find themselves with negative equity - owing more than their houses are worth. Negative equity, in turn, often leads to foreclosures and big losses for lenders.

And the numbers are huge. The financial blog Calculated Risk, using data from First American CoreLogic, estimates that if home prices fall 20 percent there will be 13.7 million homeowners with negative equity. If prices fall 30 percent, that number would rise to more than 20 million.

That translates into a lot of losses, and explains why liquidity has dried up. What's going on in the markets isn't an irrational panic. It's a wholly rational panic, because there's a lot of bad debt out there, and you don't know how much of that bad debt is held by the guy who wants to borrow your money.

How will it all end? Markets won't start functioning normally until investors are reasonably sure that they know where the bodies - I mean, the bad debts - are buried. And that probably won't happen until house prices have finished falling and financial institutions have come clean about all their losses. All of this will probably take years.

Meanwhile, anyone who expects the Fed or anyone else to come up with a plan that makes this financial crisis just go away will be sorely disappointed.

TERROR'S ADVOCATE

Friday, December 14, 2007

China leaves the US and India trailing

LA Chine a finalise un contrat de petrole a Teheran en depit des avertissements de Washington. C'est un signe que l'Iran est persuade a mener sa politique etrangere aussi longtemps que les USA sont bloques dans le bourbier irakien, renforcant l' axe Pekin-Teheran.

Hardly a week passes without Delhi taking stock of China's creeping "encirclement" of India. The Indian media reported on Thursday that Delhi denied permission for China's cargo carrier Great Wall Airlines to land in Mumbai or Chennai since the two Indian cities have "key nuclear facilities" which Chinese aeroplanes might reconnoiter.

That becomes more grist to the mill, though no one knows what it could be that the two aging Indian cities would hide that Google Earth hasn't yet spotted. Beijing predictably balked. Some Indian strategic thinkers go so far as to call it China's "containment" of India - as if the Indian rogue elephant has gone berserk in the Asian courtyard and needs to be shackled.

Actually, the latest irritant shouldn't have been aerial reconnoitering, but China's upset win - trumping formidable rivals like the US, Canada and Russia - in the massive Afghan tender for copper mines. But the strategic community in Delhi doesn't know, as the Indian media kept it in the dark.

The news from the Hindu Kush would have made Indian thinkers pull their hair in despair. China has never been a player in Afghanistan in modern history. Indeed, it is a needless provocation on the part of the Chinese to be so utterly fearless of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. While India prides itself as a major donor for Afghan reconstruction - building roads, bridges, hospitals, a Parliament building and even, intriguingly, public toilets - China marches ahead and wins the tender for the Aynak cooper deposit in Afghanistan's Logar province bordering Kabul, which is billed as one of the world's largest copper mines.

The project involves US$4 billion in investment by China Metallurgical Group, which will be by far the biggest foreign investment in Afghanistan and is estimated to provide employment for 10,000 people. Significantly, the project includes the development of a railway system linking Afghanistan to China. (Nepal also has sought the extension of China's railway system from Lhasa to Kathmandu.)

Beijing-Tehran oil deal
These audacious Chinese are pole-vaulting across the impenetrable Himalayan ranges with merry abandon in their zest to globalize and integrate.

But the mother of all Chinese encirclement of India still remains largely unnoticed in Delhi - the Beijing-Tehran axis. There is wide recognition that if the United States hasn't been able to push through another tougher United Nations Security Council resolution against Iran over its nuclear program, that has been largely because of China's reluctance to concur.

But what happened last Sunday still came as a bolt from the blue. China Petroleum Corporation, better known as the Sinopec Group, signed a contract with the Iranian Oil Ministry for the development of the Yadavaran oil and gas fields in southwestern Iran.

The current estimation is that the project cost will be $2 billion. Under the contract, China will make the entire investment necessary to develop the fields. The first phase is to produce 85,000 barrels of oil per day and the second phase will add another 100,000 barrels. According to Iranian estimates, Yadavaran has in place oil reserves of 18.3 billion barrels and gas reserves amounting to 12.5 trillion cubic feet.

Iran is already China's third-largest supplier of crude oil, but the Iranians are simply delighted. Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari was quick to point out that the deal with China flies in the face of Washington's attempts to block foreign investments in Iran. Sinopec merely said, "We are very happy to sign this contract ... China is willing to buy LNG [liquefied natural gas] from Iran and we hope to talk about an LNG project later."

The Sino-Iranian deal has been closed within a week of the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear program, which has conclusively debunked any conspiracies hatched by the neo-conservative coterie within the George W Bush administration for launching a military strike against Iran. Beijing has indeed moved fast.

But what stands out is that Beijing anticipated a long time ago the inevitability of precisely such a u-turn in US policy towards Iran. More important, it began plotting how it could take optimal advantage when the Iran question inexorably moved toward its denouement. Beijing estimated that time was of the essence. Beijing could visualize a day when Tehran would have competing customers from the Western world seeking access to its oil and gas.

Beijing's take on the Iran question
As far back as May, the government newspaper China Daily commented, "This policy [of Washington refusing to have dealings with Iran] is no longer workable. The reality of the Middle East is that the US cannot ignore Iran."

And by the beginning of June, Chinese regional experts had already assessed, "Iran, with no geopolitical competitors, has become the 'boss' within the Persian Gulf region. Since the US has fallen into the Iraqi quagmire, Iran concludes that the United States dare not use force against Iran. Therefore, it maintains strong strategic determination and refuses to make concessions on the nuclear issue.

"This favorable environment, coupled with a strategic resolve, has earned Iran a certain status of equilibrium with the United States in the contest within the Persian Gulf region. It is this balance of power that has forced the United States to sit down and talk with Iran. Iran, hence, has won the battle for survival and the status of a regional power."

The anonymous scholar from the Institute of Asia and Africa under the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations, who wrote the above commentary for the People's Daily, went on to give his prognosis with extraordinary prescience. He wrote, "Despite many variables and the complicated situation in the Middle East, there is one thing that remains clear. The United States cannot reverse its current downhill trend in the Middle East. Iran's rise and its challenging gestures will further accelerate the decline of the United States' presence within the region. In the emerging 'new Middle East', Iran will certainly play a role that cannot be ignored."

By end-July, Beijing knew its assessment was perfect and that the US position with regard to Iran was rapidly eroding.

In the context of the US-Iran security talks over Iraq in July, the People's Daily noted, "The United States has eventually recognized Iran as a 'game player' in the region ... From the angle of geopolitics or religious culture, Iran can give scope to its role of a radiant power or influence over Iraq, which is exactly what the US refused to acknowledge but has [now] come to recognize."

India's Iran policy in tatters
How is it that such wisdom and foresight that immensely strengthens Beijing's hand today in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East eluded the strategic community in Delhi? Admittedly, Indian regional policy in the Middle East has been shaken to the core in recent days. The Indian strategic community was shell-shocked by the NIE.

The trauma was all the more painful as Delhi had just recently succumbed to Washington's arm-twisting and imposed banking restrictions on Iran, beyond what the two United Nations Security Council resolutions on that country demanded. That was a disastrous decision by any diplomatic yardstick. It is immaterial that Washington pressured Delhi into it despite knowing that the NIE was to sail into view. What matters is that Delhi looks very foolish and naive.

India is, alas, facing collateral damage from the reverses that the United States policy is taking in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Delhi's estimation that it was always safe to hitch its diplomatic wagon to the US-Israeli caravan in the Middle East region has been put to the test. Delhi must now confront the reality that playing poodle to Washington didn't help advance India's medium- and long-term interests.

Delhi's Middle East policy rested on assumptions. First, it was assumed that the Bush administration would ultimately sort out the Iran question on American terms and the international community would have to learn to live with it. Delhi believed that Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's strategic defiance of Washington would prove to be vacuous once the formidable American juggernaut got cracking down in earnest.

The Indian security community lives in absolute thrall of Israel's capability to stretch its long arm and squash Iran. It was only logical to wait for the morning after Ahmadinejad to do any serious business with Iran. Meanwhile, Delhi assumed that calibrating its Iran policy in terms of US-Israeli thinking was simply the right thing to do.

Thus, almost across-the-board cooperation with Iran got mothballed. No one talked anymore about the "north-south transportation corridor" that the previous government in Delhi initiated as a means of gaining access to Afghanistan and the Central Asian region (and Russia). The strategic dialogue with Iran on regional security issues lost traction, even though the ascendancy of forces of religious militancy and the Taliban's resurgence demanded it.

The gas pipeline project from Iran via Pakistan to India languished while Delhi seized one pretext or the other for keeping it on the backburner. The 25-year mega LNG deal, which the previous government in Delhi negotiated, has become moribund. The latest banking restrictions imposed by Delhi will discourage even normal trade and investment.

Delhi toes US-Israel line
Without doubt, the imperatives of the on-going negotiations over the civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the US left Delhi with hardly any leeway to withstand the combined American and Israeli pressure to curtail India's cooperation with Iran.

But that is only part of the story. On the broader issues of regional security in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, Delhi also seemed to have moved with planning within the broad framework of India's rapidly expanding strategic partnership with the US.

Actually, Delhi's estimation wasn't altogether as illogical as it might seem today. It was an approach that fitted with the present Indian government's priorities of harmonizing India's regional policies with the US's global strategies. The thinking ran as follows: the core agenda of the Bush administration's Middle East policy lies in ensuring Israel's regional dominance, and the influence of the neo-conservatives on the Bush administration's foreign policy being what it is and given the challenge Iran poses to Israel's regional dominance, the Bush administration cannot be expected to sit back and allow Tehran to consolidate the strategic influence it gained during the period since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Besides, there was also a quid pro quo. American Congressmen known for their strong links with Israel stood up and constantly began reminding Delhi over the past couple of years that there is nothing like a free lunch. India has enjoyed excellent chemistry with the Jewish lobby and neo-conservative circles in the US in recent years, and they have enormous goodwill towards Delhi and time and again demonstrated their capacity to influence the US Congress, media and the White House over issues affecting Indian interests. (The Israeli lobby in Washington gave a big helping hand canvassing support for the nuclear deal on the Capitol Hill.) Delhi began feeling the heat when middle-level American politicians wantonly began mocking the Indian foreign minister and even addressing the Indian prime minister asking for explanations over Delhi's delay in signing the nuclear cooperation deal.

Furthermore, Indian thinking took into account Washington's sustained efforts in the recent period to bring together the pro-West Arab regimes and Israel in a grouping arrayed against Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. Delhi concluded that Iran's regional isolation was a foregone conclusion. The underlying assumption, of course, was that the conservative pro-West Arab regimes were in no mood to cohabit with the radical leadership in Tehran and were instead on practically alliance terms with Israel already.

Delhi needs course correction
In the recent period, therefore, India put a deliberate distance between it and what it saw as the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas lineup. But that didn't stop Delhi from voicing support for a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem. The rhetoric remains important for its resonance in Indian domestic politics, considering that India has a huge Muslim electorate which keenly follows developments in the Islamic world. The rhetoric is carefully crafted insofar as it sounds passionately supportive of the Palestinian cause and lends itself to free interpretation while it can cause no annoyance to Israel.

Indian diplomacy has a lot of catching up to do. In the short term, Delhi will have to pay a price for overlooking the geopolitical reality that Iran is the only really viable regional power in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Delhi's best hope is that true to their innate pragmatism, Iranians will let bygones be bygones. The pressure will begin to mount once full-fledged US engagement of Iran commences. Ahmadinejad has said, "It [NIE] is a positive step, a step forward … If they [Bush administration] take one or two more such steps, the issues will be totally changed and ... the way will be paved for the resolution of regional and bilateral issues."

Second, Delhi has no choice but to revisit its blind faith in the US capacity to influence the countries of the Persian Gulf region. The Indian delegation at last Sunday's regional security conference in Manama, Bahrain, saw first hand the derisive reaction by senior Arab officials to the speech by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The Indian officials realized that contrary to what Delhi imagined, the Gulf Arab regimes have a complex attitude toward Iran.

When Gates maintained that Israel is a benign power while Iran is subverting its neighbors, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani retorted, "We can't really compare Iran with Israel. Iran is our neighbor, and we shouldn't really look at it as an enemy. I think Israel through 50 years has taken land, kicking out the Palestinians, and it interferes under the cover of security." He called on the US to hold direct talks with Iran. Other Arab officials referred to the US's "double standards".

Again, Delhi would have noted that Iran was invited to a Gulf Cooperation Council summit for the first time in Doha on December 2. And it transpired on Tuesday that for the first time ever, Saudi King Abdullah has extended an invitation to the Iranian president to make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Equally, there are indications that the Saudis are disappointed with the Annapolis meeting in the US on November 27 to discuss a solution to the Palestinian problem.

Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper published from London reported on Sunday that a revival of the Saudi-sponsored Mecca Agreement of February (involving Hamas and Fatah) could be in the works. Hamas' website also reported that Hamas chief Khaled Mishaal, who is based in Damascus, traveled to Riyadh "to discuss means of restoring Palestinian national dialogue". Even thoughtful Israelis like the former spy chief Efraim Halevy feel it's time to negotiate with Hamas' leaders - "the same men his former agency and his nation have targeted for assassination" (to quote The Wall Street Journal).

Clearly, Delhi's simplistic, one-dimensional view of the Persian Gulf lineup, imbued with the vision of the US neo-conservatives - that pro-West Arab regimes plus the US and Israel are fighting an epochal war with Iran - is untenable. The underlying flaws in India's Middle East policy, however, are difficult to jettison as long as the policy remains dovetailed to the US regional agenda. The specter of a Chinese arc of encirclement in the Persian Gulf may just be the stimulus needed for Delhi to seriously introspect where and how its policy floundered in figuring out the Persian puzzle.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

Apprendre le mandarin - How to learn Chinese (Mandarin)

U.S. producer prices surge in November

Biggest jump in 34 years due to record rise in gasoline prices

WASHINGTON - Wholesale prices shot up 3.2 percent in November, the biggest jump in 34 years, propelled by a record rise in gasoline prices.

The big inflation pickup in the Producer Price Index, which measures the costs of goods before they reach stores shelves, came after wholesale prices inched up by just 0.1 percent in October, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

When volatile energy and food prices are removed, all other prices rose by 0.4 percent in November, after being flat the month before. The last time this price barometer registered a bigger increase was one year ago. The pickup in “core” prices suggested inflation may be seeping into a wider range of goods.

The inflation figures were worse than economists were expecting. They were forecasting overall wholesale prices to go up by 1.5 percent, and core prices to increase 0.2 percent.

Soaring energy prices were mostly to blame.

They leaped by a record 14.1 percent in November.

Gasoline prices posted an all-time high increase of 34.8 percent last month. Diesel fuel prices jumped 35.8 percent and home heating oil soared 31.5 percent.

In another report, new applications filed last week for unemployment benefits dropped by 7,000 to 333,000, the lowest level since the middle of November. It was an encouraging sign that the employers aren’t resorting to large-scale layoffs as they cope with an economy whose growth has been slowed by housing and credit troubles.

The figures were close to analysts’ forecasts for claims to dip to 335,000.

Still, new-job creation has clearly lost speed this year as construction companies, factories, mortgage companies and others slash jobs because of the housing collapse and credit crunch.

Rising inflation could complicate the Federal Reserve’s job of trying to keep the fragile economy expanding and inflation low.

The Fed on Tuesday sliced a key interest rate to 4.25 percent, the third reduction this year, in an effort to prevent the country from falling into a recession. Rate reductions are a bracing tonic for weak economic growth, while rate increases are used to combat inflation.

Retail sales see biggest jump in six months

Oil prices, which had neared $100 a barrel, have moderated. But they are still high. High energy prices can slow economic activity and spread inflation if they cause the prices of lots of other goods and services to rise.

“Elevated energy and commodity prices, among other factors, may put upward pressure on inflation,” the Fed warned on Tuesday. The Fed pledged to continue to “monitor inflation developments carefully.”

Some bright spots in the inflation report: food costs were flat in November, after rising by a sharp 1 percent in October. And, costs for electronic computers dropped 2.4 percent.

But prices for many other goods moved higher. Light motor truck prices rose 2.3 percent, the most in one year. Passenger car prices went up 0.6 percent and platinum and gold jewelry rose 2 percent.

U.S. loses status as top World Bank donor to Britain

Signe d'endettement de la part des USA conduisant le pays de la banniere etoilee a diminue sa part de contribution a la Banque Mondiale. De ce fait la Grande-Bretagne est passee numero 1 devant les Etats-Unis en matiere de contribution financiere aux pays pauvres. Incidemment un manque de contribution dans les pays pauvres risquerait de diminuer l'hegemonie des USA dans le reste du monde.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States lost its status as the largest donor to the World Bank's main fund for poor countries, the lender said on Friday, as Britain pledged more in the latest funding round which secured a record amount of aid.

After negotiations that began in March in Paris and ended with two days of talks in Berlin, Britain promised $4.2 billion for the period from July 2008 through June 2011, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told reporters on a conference call.

He declined to say how much the United States had pledged before a statement from the U.S. Treasury due later on Friday.

Losing its position as the top donor could weaken Washington's influence over the World Bank, which is the largest provider of development assistance to poor countries, and over the policies that decide how its cash is spent.

"The U.S. pledged a very substantial contribution but is now down to second place after Britain," World Bank Vice President Philippe Le Houerou told a news conference in Berlin.

The Washington-based lender conducts a fund-raising campaign among its richer members every three years to determine funding for the International Development Association (IDA), the bank's lending arm.

Forty-five donor countries, the most ever, promised a record total of $25.1 billion at the Berlin talks, with a further $16.5 billion coming from the bank and previous donor pledges for financing debt forgiveness, officials told the news conference.

The total of $41.6 billion, also a record, represents an increase of $9.5 billion over the previous funding period and will support around 80 countries, mainly in Africa.

In a coup for Zoellick, who is in China this week, Beijing was one of six nations joining the list of donors for the first time, along with Cyprus, Egypt, and the three Baltic states.

"We're feeling pretty positive but I'm glad I don't have to do this every year," Zoellick said. "The donor community has demonstrated its full commitment to helping countries overcome poverty and achieve sustainable growth, especially in Africa."

WEAKER DOLLAR

The latest talks were complicated by slowing economic growth in rich nations and the weakening dollar, which inflates contributions by some other countries when calculated in the U.S. currency.

At the same time, the bank's mission is widening, with governments demanding more help in developing sophisticated economies and markets.

The United States, whose economy is almost six times as big as Britain's, has been keen to hold on to its No. 1 spot as the bank's largest donor but is also struggling with a budget stretched by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. share of contributions has slowly declined from 22 percent in 1960, the year of the fund's inception. After the last round of IDA negotiations in 2005, the U.S. share stood at 13.8 percent and Britain's at 13.2 percent.

Germany made the fourth biggest contribution to the new funding round, boosting its pledge by 18.57 percent to 1.514 billion euros ($2.20 billion), the Development Ministry said.

Zoellick said the money would go towards helping 2.5 billion people in poor nations across five continents.

IDA-financed projects support education, basic health services, clean water and sanitation, as well as environmental safeguards, infrastructure and policy and institutional reform.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

US Intelligence Tapping Phones of Indonesian Civilians

Les services americains de renseignement surveillent les conversations telephoniques en Indonesie (et dans d'autres parts du reste du monde):

Investigative journalist Allan Nairn reveals that U.S. intelligence officers in Jakarta are secretly tapping the cell phones and reading the SMS text messages of Indonesian civilians. Some of the Americans involved in the spy operation work out of the Jakarta headquarters of Detachment 88, a US-trained and–funded paramilitary unit which is part of Kopassus, the Indonesian army’s special forces famed for abduction, torture and assassination. The news comes as Congress weighs whether to send more military aid to Indonesia. [includes rush transcript]

link here

Growing Food When The Oil Runs Out

Petite demonstration technique qui nous dit que lorsque le petrole se fera plus rare, la consequence risque d'etre un manque de nourriture dans les supermarches:

By Peter Goodchild

12 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org

Most people in modern industrial society get their food mainly from supermarkets. As a result of declining hydrocarbon resources, however, it is unlikely that such food will always be available. The present world population is nearly 7 billion, but food supplies per capita have been shrinking for years. Food production will have to become more localized, and it will be necessary to reconsider less-advanced forms of technology that might be called "subsistence gardening."

The peak of world oil production ("peak oil") will be at some point in the early 21st century; it is quite possible that we are already past that event. The "peak" will be (or was) about 30 billion barrels of oil a year, but by 2030 annual production will be less than half that amount [2, 4]. Without oil and other hydrocarbons, there will be no fuel, no plastics, no chemical fertilizer. Alternative energy sources will do little to solve the problem [16]. Partly as a further consequence of declining oil supplies, electricity and metals will also be in short supply [8]. But in terms of daily life, the most important effect of oil depletion will be a shortage of food.

The effect of oil depletion on food is partly obscured by two separate but related issues: skyrocketing food prices and the great increase in biofuel production [6, 9, 10]. In the present chaos, however, to follow questions of money is to go on a wild-goose chase, while biofuel production can only be seen as a mad attempt to evade the problem of oil depletion while depriving the world of needed food.

SUBSISTENCE GARDENING

Subsistence gardening might be defined as having three characteristics. In the first place, as much as possible it involves less-advanced technology; reliance on machinery and chemicals will not be possible without a global economic network to support them, whereas a shovel, a hoe, and a wheelbarrow (with a non-pneumatic tire!) are probably a once-only purchase.

Secondly, it is water-efficient. Without a municipal water supply or a motorized pump, water for agriculture will no longer be abundant.

Thirdly, subsistence gardening entails a largely vegetarian way of life: the growing of crops takes less land than raising animals (although some animals can make good use of less-fertile land), and it is less complicated. With a largely vegetarian diet, of course, there can be a danger of deficiencies in vitamins A and B12, iron, calcium, and fat, all of which can be found in animal food. Most of these deficiencies are covered by an occasional taste of meat; daily portions of beef and pork are really not necessary. Animal husbandry does not have to be large-scale; in sparsely populated areas, even fishing, trapping, and hunting can be useful skills.

INITIAL PREPARATION OF LAND

New land should be broken with a plow, a device that generally requires either a tractor or a draft animal, but a fair amount can be done with hand tools. Much depends on the time of year and the weather. In the spring after a good rain, it is possible to dig up 50 m2 in a day, even if one is not especially muscular. In August after a long drought, however, digging even 5 m2 in a day might be hard. But there are ways to the task easier: if the grass is long, it can be cut with a scythe before the digging begins, and hot weather can be avoided by starting work at sunrise. When the sod has been dug up, it can be shaken thoroughly to release the soil, and then piled up and burned.

Actually many of the native North Americans preferred forest, rather than grassland, as sites for agriculture. The forest land was more fertile, and digging up heavy sod would have been arduous with the available tools. The native people girdled the trees (i.e., cut a ring of bark from around each tree) to kill them, and then felled the trees much later, with fire and axes.

CHOICE OF CROPS

Besides grains and fruits, the most useful food plants in temperate climates belong to about nine families, including the Amaryllidaceae (garlic, leeks, onions), Chenopodiaceae (beets, chard), Brassicaceae (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, collards, kale, kohlrabi, rutabagas, turnips), Leguminosae (beans, peanuts, peas), Umbelliferae (carrots, parsnips), Convulvulaceae (sweet potatoes), Solanaceae (peppers, potatoes, tomatoes), Cucurbitaceae (squash), and Compositae (sunflowers).

A good general rule is to choose old-fashioned (including "heirloom" or "heritage") varieties rather than modern, big plants rather than small (but small fruit rather than big), pole or vine rather than bush. Popular varieties over the last several decades, unfortunately, have been heading in the opposite direction. Commercial growers want faster varieties, urban gardeners want small ones. Choosing varieties that are hardy and drought- resistant means going in the opposite direction. The rule does not always work — bush beans are not necessarily worse than pole beans, for example — but it serves as a guide. A somewhat similar guide is to look for something that closely resembles a wild plant, or is roughly the same thing as a wild plant — dandelions, mustard, or purslane, for example.

Modern-day city-dwellers who live sedentary lives are likely to focus on low-calory food. Those concerned about subsistence gardening, however, will want to do the opposite: country living requires substantial meals. Subsistence gardening means the production of a large number of calories with a small amount of labor and a small amount of risk, and perhaps with not much land. With these factors in mind, one could say that there are not so many crops worthy of attention. There is no such thing as a perfect type of food to grow, because there are advantages and disadvantages to every type. Reliance on a single crop would be dangerous, and variety is essential. We never know exactly what will happen, and no rules are absolute. The following notes are based on a North American perspective, but they can be applied more generally to conditions in other parts of the world.

Many of what might seem obvious choices may be questionable. Potatoes are highly susceptible to Colorado potato beetles, blight, and several other pests and diseases. Most grains might be difficult to grow without a plow (with a horse or tractor) and other specialized equipment. The brassicas are excellent for vitamins and minerals, but some of them are bothered by pests and diseases; kale is perhaps the least trouble-prone.

A good starting point might be to focus on corn (maize), beans, and squash, the main crops grown by the native peoples of North America. These three crops are easy to grow, and they require little or no watering if the plants are well spaced. Corn and beans, eaten together, provide excellent protein.

Corn has the scientific name of Zea mays and several confusing common names. There are basically two types of corn, sweet corn and field (grain) corn, although these are not botanical distinctions. The former is the type that is usually eaten as "corn on the cob." Sweet corn, unfortunately, is unsuitable for drying, and it has more problems with diseases and insects. Field corn, on the other hand, is definitely worth growing. It has a higher yield per hectare than any other temperate-climate grain, and unlike other grains it requires no complicated threshing or winnowing.

It is essential to grow only open-pollinated varieties of corn; hybrid types do not reproduce properly. In modern times, however, one is unlikely to find varieties of corn that qualify as both "field corn" and "open-pollinated," with the exception of those colorful varieties that are generally known as "Indian" or "ornamental" corn. Of those, the hard ("flint") types do better in areas where spring or fall frosts may be a danger.

Beans (e.g., Phaseolus vulgaris) and other legumes are another important part of the diet, especially for people on a vegetarian or largely vegetarian diet. Beans are high in protein, they are not demanding in terms of soil or climate, and they need little or no irrigation, at least after they have produced a few leaves. Unlike most other plants, legumes actually add nitrogen to the soil; traditional agriculture has always relied on their vital service.

Squash can be divided informally into the soft-skinned "summer" types and the hard-skinned "winter" types. Summer squash, however, provide only 167 kcal/kg, as opposed to 475 kcal for winter squash, so it is the latter that are more important. All squash are members of the genus Cucurbita, and of these the three main species are C. maxima, C. pepo, and C. moschata. C. maxima includes Buttercup, Hubbard, and Delicious, all of which are drought-resistant. C. pepo winter squash worth growing are Acorn, Spaghetti, and the "true" pumpkin (a lot of so-called pumpkins are a type of C. maxima); these are also drought-resistant, but Acorn squash is not especially good for storing. Of the C. moschata types, the most familiar is Butternut; while it is not noteworthy for being drought-resistant, it is one of the best squash for storing. In general, vining squashes are more drought- resistant than bush types.

For green vegetables and fruit, one can sometimes even supplement the diet with wild plants. There over a dozen species of wild fruit to be found within a 10-minute walk from my own house here in central Ontario, and this is a rather infertile part of the world.

AMOUNT OF LAND

The amount of land needed for subsistence gardening depends on several factors, including the type of soil, the climate, and the kinds of crops to be grown. The following, however, may provide some rough figures.

The production of corn can be used as the basis for calculations, if we pretend for the moment that someone is going to be living entirely on corn. A hardworking adult burns about 5,000 kcal/day, or 1.8 million kcal/year. With fairly primitive technology, corn yields about 2,000 kg/ha, or 6.9 million kcal [13]. One adult, therefore, would need about 0.26 ha of land; it would be safer, of course, to use twice that much land. (Incidentally, the world even now has a density of only 3.3 people per hectare of arable land, but that does not account for unevenness of distribution, or for other use of the arable land.)

Oddly enough, if other crops are substituted for corn, there is usually no enormous difference in the number of kcal produced per ha. Beans (as "dry beans") produce about half the yield of corn. Root crops (turnips, carrots, beets, etc.) are impressive in terms of their bulk — mass — per ha, yet they do not differ greatly from corn in kcal/ha.

SOIL FERTILITY

Most of the world’s land is not suitable for agriculture. Either the soil is not fertile or the climate is too severe. Anyone intending to buy a piece of land should take a sample of the soil and have it tested by a government-approved laboratory, while that kind of service is still available. If the soil is really poor to begin with, and especially if it is very low in potassium or phosphorus, there is not a great deal that can be done about it, at least with the resources available in a survival situation.

If most of the trees are evergreens, the land is too acidic. Acidic soil may also be indicated by chamomile, garden sorrel, mayweed, or sheep sorrel. Land that is excessively wet due to poor drainage may be growing buttercup, cattail, ferns, ironweed, Joe-Pye weed, or loosestrife. Other weeds might be indicators of reasonably good soil: amaranth, burdock, lamb’s quarters, purslane, ragweed, or thistles

Soil used for the growing of crops must have adequate amounts of organic matter (humus), which can come directly from decomposed vegetation or from animal manure. Organic matter holds water and air in the soil, contains — often to a rather limited extent — some of the elements needed for plant growth, and provides an environment for small organisms that are essential to the fertility of the soil.

Farmland must also have adequate amounts of about 16 elements — naturally occurring or otherwise. Of these 16, the most critical are phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and especially nitrogen (N). Calcium and magnesium are probably next in importance. Some of the elements may be found in organic matter, but the quantities are generally insufficient. These elements might be abundant in the soil before any cultivation is done, but whenever crops are harvested a certain amount of the three critical elements is removed.

The problem of inadequate amounts of the 16 elements is generally remedied nowadays by adding fertilizer, which can be artificial or can come from such sources as rock dust — the latter a fashionable "soil amendment" that will no longer be available without hydrocarbon-based mining and transportation. Acidity can be counteracted by adding crushed limestone (again, not likely to be available) or wood ashes, which contain calcium. Nitrogen, however, can be provided by planting any legume, such as beans or peas, since bacteria in the roots take nitrogen from the air; the plants must be dug back into the soil, of course.

Primitive societies had a simple but imperfect solution to the problem of maintaining fertility: abandonment. No fertilizer was used, except for ashes; as a result, the soil became exhausted after a few years, so the fields were abandoned and new ones were dug.

A common response to the N-P-K problem, used in many countries for centuries, has been to turn crop waste into compost and put it back onto the land. The problem with that technique, however, is that one cannot create a perpetual-motion machine: every time the compost is recycled, a certain amount of N-P-K is lost, mainly in the form of human or animal excrement after the crops are eaten, but also as direct leaching and evaporation [11]. One can come closer to sustainability by recycling those human and animal wastes, but the recycling will always be less than perfect. After all, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are elements, and by definition they cannot be created. Of the three main elements, nitrogen is by far the most subject to loss by leaching, but to some extent that can also happen with phosphorus and potassium.

There are partial solutions that are worth considering. Besides using vegetable compost and animal manure for increasing the sustainability of agricultural land, many societies have employed such related techniques as crop-rotation, fallowing (leaving land uncultivated for a year or so), cover-cropping, and green manuring. Such practices also replenish the humus content of the soil. Some of these practices can even partly replenish the phosphorus and potassium, since plants with deep roots can draw such elements to the surface. Some of these techniques are difficult with hand tools, however. In other countries, vegetation was brought in from the hills, or mud was taken from streams that ran down from the mountains [12].

WATER

The term "irrigation" refers to any use of water other than the direct use of rainfall or other natural precipitation. In a post-oil economy it will not be possible to used a motorized water supply for irrigation. Yet if one were to try using an old-fashioned hand pump to get the water out of the well, a good deal of manual labor would be involved. A garden needs about 2 or 3 cm of water a week. On a garden of 0.26 ha, that amounts to 66 m3 of water. That would mean carrying a bucket to the pump about 2,300 times a week, except when it rained. Not very practical.

What the North American native people and pioneers did was to give the plants plenty of space, and then just rely on the rain [14]. Almost any type of crop, given enough room, can be left to the mercy of the weather, although some crops need to be watered as seeds or seedlings. The essence of water-efficient gardening is to space the plants out so that the distance between them is greater than most modern gardening manuals recommend. That way the roots can spread out and explore in all directions to find the water that has been stored there over the previous months.

To keep that underground moisture from evaporating, a hoe must be used to remove all weeds, because most water vanishes through plant leaves. Hoeing also keeps the surface of the ground watertight by creating a "dust mulch": water does not easily pass through a layer of well disturbed dust, since the lack of water and the separation of particles prevent capillary action. ("Organic" mulches, such as wood chips or hay, are not much use on an entire garden; even if one could find enough material for so much land, there would be further trouble with bugs, weeds, and cold soil.)

If the garden has at least 1 meter of soil, and if there is also close to a meter of precipitation annually, with that moisture spread out fairly evenly over the 12 months, then it is possible to garden without irrigation.

On the other hand, if there is only about 30 cm of soil above the bedrock, or if there is less than about 50 cm of precipitation annually, gardening without irrigation is still possible, but the plants need to be spaced out far more.

Contrary to popular belief, in other words, "intensive" gardening is not practical without a garden hose and an unlimited supply of water. More plants per unit of land simply means using more water per unit. With such a method, the lack of bare ground between rows also means that it is not easy to get a hoe to the weeds; as L.H. Bailey said long ago, intensive gardening is just "cultivating the backache."

CONTROL OF PESTS AND DISEASES

The following topics apply mainly to the control of insects, but roughly the same are relevant to the control of more primitive forms of life, such as fungi, viruses, and bacteria: (1) selection — choosing resistant species and varieties; (2) diversity — growing a fair number of species and varieties at the same time (avoiding monoculture); (3) rotation — not growing a crop in the same place in the following year; (4) health — keeping plants strong by providing good soil and enough water, light, and space; (5) sanitation — removing and burning any dead or dying plants, and avoiding contact with wet plants; (6) tillage — digging up the ground each year to destroy insects; (7) attack — fighting insects by handpicking; one might also want to experiment with sprinkling wood ashes or spraying solutions of garlic, hot pepper, or soap.

STORAGE

One way of storing vegetables for winter is to keep them in a root cellar or something similar. The basic idea is to keep the food just above freezing. In pioneer times a root cellar was often little more than a cave dug into a hillside and provided with a door. The earth provided the necessary coolness and humidity to keep the vegetables fresh all winter long. Nowadays a root cellar can be made by walling off a northern corner of a basement, including a window that can be opened to regulate temperature.

Rutabagas, carrots, beets, and parsnips require packing in damp hay, sand, or some other damp material to prevent shriveling. Turnips do not store as well as rutabagas. Potatoes and onions should be kept in loosely woven bags or at least open boxes, in a dark room. Winter squash need slightly warmer conditions than other stored crops.

Another simple method of storing is to build a clamp, which is an outdoor mound of vegetables placed on a 30-cm layer of dry vegetation (hay, leaves, or similar material), then covered with another 30-cm layer of dry vegetation, and finally covered with a layer of earth. Usually some sort of drainage is provided by digging a trench around the clamp, but that is easily done as the soil is dug to be put on top of the clamp. Clamping is simple and cheap, but it is not always successful: a winter might be extreme, freezing and ruining the food or solidifying the mound too much for it to be opened.

Drying is a good technique for preserving almost any crop. Grains and beans are very easy to dry. Squash can be peeled and cut into strips or spirals 1 or 2 cm wide, then hung up to dry in the sun. Beets, turnips, rutabagas, and carrots can be dried the same way. Fruits can also be spread out in the sun. Leafy vegetables can be tied in bunches and hung in the shade to dry for a few days before being packed into jars; in winter, these dried leaves can be crumbled and added to soup.

SAVING SEEDS

Producing one’s own supply of seeds means keeping an eye on the more-desirable plants, and earmarking those for the next year’s crop. The best plants should be chosen, not the earliest; contrary to popular belief, seeds that appear late in the season do not produce slower plants the next year. Hybrid vegetables should always be avoided, of course, because they do not reproduce properly.

There are two methods for producing seed, although they overlap considerably. For the first method, crops are just be left in the ground until they to go to seed. Annuals are the simplest crops to deal with, since they go to seed in the first year, and often the seed is precisely what is eaten; grains and beans are obvious examples. Biennials (two-year plants) — most brassicas, for example — are also possible candidates for this method. The main question is whether the biennials can be left in the ground over the winter, and the answer to that depends on the species or variety, on the climate, and perhaps on whether the selected plants are covered in winter with something such as leaves, grass, straw, or even twigs.

The second method is to dig up the plants at the end of the first summer, store them carefully over the winter, and then replant them. This second method requires more work, but it is safer, and it also allows one to "rogue out" (remove) stunted or deformed plants.

In most cases it is best not to grow more than one variety of a vegetable for seed, because varieties will cross and produce offspring with uncertain qualities. Growing more than one variety is possible, however, if they are allowed to go to seed in alternate years, or if the varieties are planted several weeks apart so that they do not blossom at the same time.

Seeds need proper care if they are to stay viable. The longevity of seeds can be a single year or it can be many years, depending on the species, but that longevity can be increased by careful storage. Most seeds need to be kept very dry, and most also need to be kept away from light, so they should not be stored in glass jars, and it is important that they be sealed against insects or larger creatures.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Ashworth, Suzanne. Seed to Seed. Decorah, Iowa: Seed Saver, 1991.

2. BP Global Statistical Review of World Energy, annual. http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview

3. Bradley, Fern Marshall, and Barbara W. Ellis, eds. Rodale’s All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. Emmaus, Pennyslvania: Rodale, 1992.

4. Campbell, Colin J. and Jean H. Laherrère. The End of Cheap Oil. Scientific American, March 1998. http://www.dieoff.org/page140.htm

5. Duncan, Richard C. The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge. http://dieoff.org/page224.htm

6. Earth Policy Institute. Earth Policy Indicators.
http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/

7. Emery, Carla A. The Encyclopedia of Country Living. 9th ed. Seattle, Washington: Sasquash, 1994.

8. Gever, John, et al. Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 1986.

9. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Food Outlook: Global Market Analysis, November 2007.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ah876e/ah876e16.htm

10. Heinberg, Richard. What Will We Eat as the Food Runs Out?

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
Archives2007/HeinbergEat.html

11. Hopkins, Donald P. Chemicals, Humus, and the Soil. London: Faber & Faber, 1957.

12. King, F.H. Farmers of Forty Centuries. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Organic Gardening, n.d.

13. Pimentel, David, and Carl W. Hall, eds. Food and Energy Resources. Orlando: Academic, 1984.

14. Solomon, Steve. Water-Wise Vegetables. Seattle: Sasquatch, 1993.

15. Weatherwax, Paul. Indian Corn in Old America. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

16. Walter Youngquist, "Alternative Energy Sources." http://www.oilcrisis.com/youngquist/altenergy.htm

Peter Goodchild is the author of Skills of the North American Indians, published by Chicago Review Press. He can be reached at petergoodchild@interhop.net.

Financer des operations secretes par le traffic de cocaine

On entend souvent parler du financement des activites de la CIA avec le traffic de drogue, et voici encore un exemple ou cette fois-ci un avion s'est ecrase a cote du Yucatan avec 3 tonnes de cocaine.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Al-Qaeda's Far-Reaching New Partner

Salafist Group Finds Limited Appeal in Its Native Algeria

By Craig Whitlock

Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 5, 2006; Page A01

PARIS -- In a video released last month on the Internet, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, declared that he had "great news." Al-Qaeda, he reported, had joined forces with an obscure Algerian underground network and would work in tandem with the group to "crush the pillars of the crusader alliance."

The Algerian partner, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, had fought the Algerian government in a barbaric civil war for almost a decade. But Zawahiri said the new alliance had different targets in mind. "Our brothers," he said, "will be a thorn in the necks of the American and French crusaders and their allies, and a dagger in the hearts of the French traitors and apostates."

Zawahiri's statement was the latest sign of how, with al-Qaeda's help, the Algerian network has rapidly transformed itself from a local group devoted solely to seizing power at home into a global threat with cells and operations far from North Africa.

Since 2003, the group known by its French initials GSPC has emerged as an umbrella for radical Islamic factions in neighboring countries, sponsoring training camps in the Sahara and supplying streams of fighters to wars in Iraq and Chechnya, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts in Europe and North Africa.

The network also has planted deep roots in Europe. In the past year, authorities have broken up cells in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, including one group that allegedly plotted to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Geneva.

On Sept. 1, the French Anti-Terrorist Coordination Unit issued a statement classifying the group as "one of the most serious threats currently facing France," Algeria's former colonial master. Ten days later, the assessment was given fresh urgency by Zawahiri's videotape, timed for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. In it, he noted that Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's founder, had given his personal approval to the "blessed union" between the Algerian network and al-Qaeda.

Responding to Zawahiri's declaration, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said there was a "real and permanent" risk to France, in part because of its military involvement in Lebanon and Afghanistan, as well as its policy of forbidding Muslim girls to wear head scarves in public schools.

Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the head of France's domestic intelligence service, added: "For our Islamist adversaries, our country is frankly in the Western camp -- the 'crusaders' in their words -- and we will be spared nothing."

Overcoming Differences

Al-Qaeda forged its alliance with the GSPC in spite of a long history of feuding with Algerian radicals.

The Algerian conflict, which has claimed an estimated 200,000 lives since 1991, at first attracted enthusiastic support from Islamic radicals around the world, including Zawahiri and other future al-Qaeda leaders. They sent money, fighters and supplies to the guerrillas, seeing the war as an opportunity to replace Algeria's secular, military-backed government with a fundamentalist Islamic state.

But their zeal was shaken when Algerian rebels led by another terrorist network, the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, began slaughtering thousands of civilians. The GIA subscribed to an Islamic ideology called takfir , a belief that any Muslim who does not embrace strict, medieval codes of conduct is an apostate deserving of death.

Bin Laden, who was living in Sudan at the time, believed that killing fellow Muslims was counterproductive. So he sent an emissary to Algeria to demand that the GIA change its approach and pledge loyalty to the fledgling al-Qaeda network, according to European intelligence officials. The GIA refused.

As the massacres continued, bin Laden's allies in London and elsewhere wrote scathing denunciations of the Algerian group, a rejection that persisted for years.

The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat -- its name is derived from a branch of fundamentalist Islam -- was founded in 1998 by a splinter group of Algerian rebels who wanted to reduce the number of civilian massacres. It quickly eclipsed the GIA, but it still struggled to win support from abroad.

That started to change after al-Qaeda launched the Sept. 11 attacks. With its territorial base in Afghanistan in jeopardy, al-Qaeda's leadership began looking for safer places to relocate.

In the fall of 2001, according to French and Algerian officials, bin Laden dispatched a Yemeni deputy to Algeria for talks with the radical group. The emissary was reported killed in September 2002 by Algerian security services, but his presence in Algeria marked a turning point, they said.

"Until 2001, the GSPC wasn't trusted by the rest of the international jihad," said Louis Caprioli, former director of international counterterrorism for the DST, the French counterintelligence service. "That's when the GSPC started to become international. It used to be focused solely on Algeria."

On the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a leader of the Algerian group posted a statement on the Internet pledging the group's allegiance to al-Qaeda for the first time, adding: "We strongly and fully support Osama bin Laden's jihad against the heretic America." In March 2005, a successor leader, Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, issued a similar statement praising bin Laden.

Until recently, al-Qaeda's leadership had offered cautious or tepid responses. In the summer of 2005, bin Laden referred to "our brothers" in the Algerian network in a long statement on audiotape, but otherwise has not publicly embraced the group.

It became clear, however, that an alliance could bring benefits to both sides, analysts said. If the Algerians could win al-Qaeda's endorsement, it would erase their network's pariah status in radical Islamic circles, making it easier to raise money and logistical support. In turn, al-Qaeda would gain a local affiliate and an operational foothold in North Africa.

"The leadership of al-Qaeda doesn't have a secure base left anywhere else in the world," said Liess Boukraa, a terrorism expert and author in Algiers. "So al-Qaeda needs the GSPC at the logistical level. The GSPC needs al-Qaeda at the ideological level."

Al-Qaeda has pursued this strategy in multiple Muslim countries, partnering with local underground groups in an effort to extend its name and influence. In Iraq, al-Qaeda teamed with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's insurgent group, prevailing on him to change its name to al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam and various organizations in Kashmir have similar ties with bin Laden's movement.

Analysts said the shift by the Algerian organization toward a global strategy was a tacit admission that its original goal -- seizing power in its home country -- had failed. The network continues to attack government targets in Algeria almost weekly, but it has taken heavy losses in recent years and is confined to remote areas in the mountains and desert.

Estimates of the number of active GSPC members, who constitute almost all of the remaining fighters against the Algerian government, run from 500 to 1,200 -- a sharp drop from the 40,000 Islamic extremists who took up arms against the government in the 1990s.

Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said last month that Algerian security forces had killed or captured 500 Islamic fighters over the past year. In addition, about 250 members of the GSPC and other extremists have accepted the Algerian government's offer of political amnesty under a national reconciliation program, he said.

Mounir Boudjema, an expert on Algerian terrorist groups and editor of the newspaper Liberte, said the Salafist radical group is weaker than ever at home.

"In terms of strategy, they have lost," Boudjema said in an interview in Algiers. "The population doesn't want to have them anymore. The people in the villages refuse to give them blankets or water or food. The whole logistical network is falling apart."

Training and Support

Even as it struggles in Algeria, the GSPC has rapidly extended its reach elsewhere in North Africa.

With al-Qaeda's backing, the network has partnered with other radical groups, including extremists in Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Mauritania, according to Arab and European counterterrorism officials. There was little overlap among such factions in the past, officials said, but now many have turned to the Algerians for training and support.

"The message we get is that al-Qaeda has given delegation to the GSPC to coordinate their operations in the Maghreb region," said Chakib Benmoussa, the Moroccan interior minister.

"Al-Qaeda's objective is to have a base in the region of the Sahel," he added, referring to the remote stretch of North Africa that borders the southern edge of the Sahara and covers such impoverished nations as Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

In June 2005, about 150 of the Algerian group's fighters from different countries attacked a Mauritanian military outpost, killing 15 soldiers. Another of its cells kidnapped 32 European tourists in the Sahara in 2003 and reportedly received a $5 million ransom from the German government for their release.

Counterterrorism officials said the network operates training camps in the Sahara and Sahel that cater to fighters from countries bordering Algeria, but also recruits from Europe. The camps are small and temporary, consisting of four-wheel-drive vehicles and a few instructors who teach bombmaking and guerrilla tactics, said a U.S. counterterrorism official who has studied the network and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's all mobile and on the run. They'll rendezvous in a wadi for four or five days, then disperse," the official said, using an Arabic word for a streambed that is usually dry. "We're very much concerned about it. It's more than just a few guys. If you add it up, it's a substantial number of folks."

Many veterans of the North African camps have traveled to Iraq, where they make up one of the biggest contingents of foreign fighters battling U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts.

According to a study released in March by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an adviser to the Saudi government, North Africans make up about 30 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq, with 22 percent from Algeria alone. U.S. military officials and independent analysts said other estimates have shown somewhat lower numbers of North Africans, but agreed that Algerians and the Salafist group are playing key roles in the conflict.

"The GSPC, they saw the handwriting on the wall," the U.S. counterterrorism official said. "If they just stuck to fighting the Algerian government, all they would be is a minor thorn in their side. So they had to reach out."

In Europe, meanwhile, the group has revived dormant networks of Algerian radicals who emigrated after the outbreak of the civil war 15 years ago, counterterrorism officials said.

In 1994, Algerians from the GIA hijacked an Air France jet and planned to crash it into the Eiffel Tower, but a commando unit stormed the plane and rescued passengers. The next year, another GIA cell carried out bomb attacks on the Paris subway.

The same group planned attacks during the 1998 World Cup in France. But French police disrupted the plots and initiated a continent-wide round of arrests that effectively knocked out the organization on European soil.

In reconstituted form, the Algerian underground in Europe is no longer fighting solely for a national cause. That has enabled it to recruit large numbers of Tunisians, Moroccans, Syrians and other extremists who do not hold a stake in the Algerian conflict, said Xavier Raufer, a terrorism specialist at the University of Paris and a former French intelligence officer.

In July, for instance, German authorities arrested a 36-year-old man of Moroccan descent in the northern city of Kiel and charged him with recruiting fighters to go to Iraq. Prosecutors said he was a member of al-Qaeda and knew members of the Hamburg cell that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Last November he had traveled to Algeria to receive explosives training at a GSPC camp.

In March, eight Moroccans and a Tunisian were arrested in Casablanca and accused of planning attacks in Italy, with targets including a church in Bologna and the Milan subway system, Moroccan and Italian officials said. The cell was charged with working on behalf of the GSPC and taking orders from a deputy in Algeria.

Many of the Salafist group's foot soldiers in Europe have never been to Algeria, but are motivated to join the network because of Islamic anger over conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, Raufer said. "For them, it's an easy time," he said of the recruiters. "When they preach, a lot of people are furious. A lot of Muslims are outraged at what's going on."

Staff writer Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.

Oil Rises More Than $4 After Central Banks Act to Spur Growth

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose more than $4 a barrel, the biggest gain since January, on speculation a decision by central banks to provide cash to financial institutions will spur economic growth.

The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and three other central banks moved to end a credit squeeze that's threatened to slow the global economy and reduce energy consumption. U.S. crude-oil supplies fell as fuel use increased last week, an Energy Department report showed.

``The energy markets have been interconnected with the global capital markets for some time now,'' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at MF Global Ltd. in New York. ``The renewed outlook for energy demand has us back in rally mode; $100 is squarely back on the table and within reach before year end.''

Crude oil for January delivery rose $4.37, or 4.9 percent, to settle at $94.39 a barrel at 3:03 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest close since Nov. 27. Oil had the biggest one-day gain since Jan. 30. Futures rose to a record $99.29 on Nov. 21.

Brent oil for January settlement rose $4.03, or 4.5 percent, to $94.02 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange, the highest close since Nov. 26. Futures touched $94.15, the highest since Nov. 27.

The rise accelerated after a state report showed that Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest oil company, had a fire yesterday at its Beaumont, Texas, refinery.

Combination of Factors

``There are a combination of factors moving prices higher,'' said Nauman Barakat, senior vice president of global energy futures at Macquarie Futures USA Inc. in New York. ``Central banks have reached a consensus to spur growth, which should spur demand. The DOE report showed that consumption is strong despite the high prices, this shows there's been no demand destruction.''

Total implied fuel demand in the U.S. averaged 21 million barrels a day in the four weeks ended Dec. 7, up 1.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the department. Gasoline demand averaged 9.3 million barrels a day over the period, up 0.4 percent from a year earlier. The department measures shipments from refineries, pipelines and terminals to calculate demand.

Crude-oil supplies fell 722,000 barrels to 304.5 million barrels last week, the report showed. The drop left inventories 1.1 percent higher than the five-year average for the week. A 750,000 barrel decline was expected, according to the median of responses in a Bloomberg News survey.

Economic Concerns

``There was no eye-catching number today to change anyone's opinion about the market,'' said Rick Mueller, an analyst with Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Tilburg, the Netherlands. ``Concerns about the economy are the primary driver of the market.''

The Fed said in a statement it will make as much as $24 billion available to the European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank to increase the supply of dollars in Europe. The Fed also plans four auctions, including two this month that will add as much as $40 billion, to increase cash in the U.S.

``Central bankers want to make the impression that they are doing something,'' Mueller said. ``The actual effect of this action is limited. There are still a lot of big problems for the economy down the road.''

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world's largest securities firm, raised its forecast for crude oil prices next year on concern that investment costs and weaker demand may prompt producers to limit supply. West Texas Intermediate crude oil will average $95 a barrel in 2008, up from a previous forecast of $85, the Goldman report showed.

WTI, which is traded in New York, may rise to as much as $105 a barrel by the end of next year, according to Goldman.

Goldman's Credibility

``Goldman has credibility because they were the first to predict that crude would spike to $100,'' Barakat said. ``A sharp increase in their forecast catches everyone's attention.''

Arjun Murti, a New York-based Goldman Sachs analyst who covers oil producers and refiners, roiled markets in March 2005 with a report saying prices could touch $105 a barrel during a ``super spike'' because demand was stronger than anticipated. Prices might also go as low as $50, Murti said at the time.

Norway said about 24,100 barrels of oil spilled into the North Sea when a tanker was loading during rough weather about 200 miles offshore, in the country's second-largest leak. The spill near the Statfjord A platform operated by StatoilHydro ASA occurred at 12:40 p.m. local time today. Norway is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Waterboarding useful but torture: former U.S. agent

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Waterboarding saved lives in the war against al Qaeda but is torture and should not be used, an ex-CIA interrogator said on Tuesday as lawmakers demanded answers about the agency's destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation technique.

Former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou told U.S. news media that suspected al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaida agreed to cooperate after being subjected to the simulated drowning technique for less than a minute by CIA officials in 2002.

"It was like flipping a switch," he told the Washington Post.

He said the session yielded valuable information and probably helped prevent attacks, but he now believes waterboarding is torture and "Americans are better than that."

Many countries, U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups have denounced waterboarding as torture. Reports of its use, as well as harsh treatment of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, have damaged the U.S. image around the world.

Kiriakou, who now works in the private sector, told his story to several media outlets as the CIA faced criticism for destroying a videotape of the interrogation, along with another showing the questioning of a second suspected al Qaeda member.

A judge had ordered the tapes to be preserved as possible evidence in a lawsuit filed by prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base on Cuba, where the United States holds captured terrorism suspects.

EVIDENCE FROM WATERBOARDING

A legal adviser at Guantanamo prison did not rule out using evidence collected from waterboarding suspects at military trials of detainees there.

"Torture is prohibited under U.S. law," Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday. But when California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked him whether that meant that evidence from waterboarding was not used, he replied: "No ma'am, I didn't say that."

Critics have charged that the CIA destroyed the tapes to hide evidence of illegal torture. The agency said it destroyed the tapes in 2005 to protect the interrogators from possible retaliation.

The Justice Department, the CIA and the House and Senate oversight committees all plan to investigate the tape destruction.

In addition, the chairman and top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed the Justice Department to explain whether it knew of the tapes.

"What communication has the department had with the White House about the existence, plan to destroy and destruction of the videotapes?" Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter wrote in a letter to the Justice Department.

CIA director Michael Hayden and Attorney General Michael Mukasey were to testify on interrogation techniques on Tuesday behind closed doors to the Senate Intelligence Committee

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to comment on any specifics of the interrogation program but reiterated the White House position that the program was lawful.

"The president has repeatedly said that we do not torture, we also know that this program has saved lives by disrupting terrorist attacks," Perino said.

Abu Zubaida was captured in Pakistan in the spring of 2002, one of the first high-level al Qaeda operatives to be taken into U.S. custody after the September 11, 2001, hijacking attacks.

He was defiant and uncooperative until he was waterboarded that summer, said Kiriakou, who did not participate in the interrogation but was briefed by those who did. The next day he offered to tell his captors everything he knew, Kiriakou said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell and Tabassum Zakaria; editing by David Alexander and David Storey)

This moose needs his eyes checked

Monday, December 10, 2007

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002

In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say

By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; Page A01

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.

GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed.

U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.

That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.

Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the know widened.

In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the summer

"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the program moving forward into the future."

Waterboarding Used on at Least 3

Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.

In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or other flat surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. A cloth is then placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is poured over his face to make the prisoner believe he is drowning.

U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.

Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.

The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28 additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency provided information about the techniques it was using as well as the information it collected.

Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.

Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in January 2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.

Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.

Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program even though he was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke out against waterboarding in private conversations with White House officials in late 2005 before denouncing it publicly.

In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and well after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators submitted written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, still unspecified "enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to Hayden last spring, shortly after receiving a classified hearing on the topic. One letter was sent on May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A similar letter was sent May 10 by a bipartisan group of three senators: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it."

Staff writers Josh White and Walter Pincus and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection

reddit: The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection

del.icio.us: The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection

On December 5, the CIA's director, General Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement disclosing that in 2005 at least two videotapes of interrogations with al Qaeda prisoners were destroyed. The tapes, which the CIA did not provide to either the 9/11 Commission, nor to a federal court in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, were destroyed, claimed Hayden, to protect the safety of undercover operatives.

Hayden did not disclose one of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed. But he did identify the other. It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."

In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

It would be nice to further investigate the men named by Zubaydah, but that is not possible. All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead. As for the three Saudi princes, the King's 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh's top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, "of thirst." The head of Pakistan's Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up -- suspected as sabotage -- in February 2003. Pakistan's investigation of the explosion -- if one was even done -- has never been made public.

Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America's closest allies in the war on terror -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- to the 9/11 attacks. Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah's confessions? It is, or course, because the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran. The Sunni governments in Riyadh and Islamabad have as much to fear from a resurgent Iran as does the Bush administration. But does this mean that leads about the origins of 9/11 should not be aggressively pursued? Of course not. But this is precisely what the Bush administration is doing. And now the cover-up is enhanced by the CIA's destruction of Zubaydah's interrogation tapes.

The American public deserves no less than the complete truth about 9/11. And those CIA officials now complicit in hiding the truth by destroying key evidence should be held responsible.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

New country (Iraqi song)

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

American Exception: Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers

Imaginez l'histoire: vous pretez une voiture a un de vos collegues, et vous vous retrouvez en prison a vie car votre collegue a tue une personne. Le raisonnement de la justice americaine est simple: si vous n'aviez pas prete la voiture, le meurtre n'aurait pas ete commis. A ce rythme-la on se demande comment Bush n'est pas encore alle en taule.

CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. — Early in the morning of March 10, 2003, after a raucous party that lasted into the small hours, a groggy and hungover 20-year-old named Ryan Holle lent his Chevrolet Metro to a friend. That decision, prosecutors later said, was tantamount to murder.

The friend used the car to drive three men to the Pensacola home of a marijuana dealer, aiming to steal a safe. The burglary turned violent, and one of the men killed the dealer’s 18-year-old daughter by beating her head in with a shotgun he found in the home.

Mr. Holle was a mile and a half away, but that did not matter.

He was convicted of murder under a distinctively American legal doctrine that makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer for murders committed during felonies like burglaries, rapes and robberies.

Mr. Holle, who had given the police a series of statements in which he seemed to admit knowing about the burglary, was convicted of first-degree murder. He is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole at the Wakulla Correctional Institution here, 20 miles southwest of Tallahassee.

A prosecutor explained the theory to the jury at Mr. Holle’s trial in Pensacola in 2004. “No car, no crime,” said the prosecutor, David Rimmer. “No car, no consequences. No car, no murder.”

Most scholars trace the doctrine, which is an aspect of the felony murder rule, to English common law, but Parliament abolished it in 1957. The felony murder rule, which has many variations, generally broadens murder liability for participants in violent felonies in two ways. An unintended killing during a felony is considered murder under the rule. So is, as Mr. Holle learned, a killing by an accomplice.

India and other common law countries have followed England in abolishing the doctrine. In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated “the principle that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.”

Countries outside the common law tradition agree. “The view in Europe,” said James Q. Whitman, a professor of comparative law at Yale, “is that we hold people responsible for their own acts and not the acts of others.”

But prosecutors and victims’ rights groups in the United States say that punishing accomplices as though they had been the actual killers is perfectly appropriate.

“The felony murder rule serves important interests,” said Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor in the Holle case, “because it holds all persons responsible for the actions of each other if they are all participating in the same crime.”

Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims’ rights group, said “all perpetrators of the underlying felony, not just the one who pulls the trigger” should be held accountable for murder.

“A person who has chosen to commit armed robbery, rape or kidnapping has chosen to do something with a strong possibility of causing the death of an innocent person,” Mr. Scheidegger said. “That choice makes it morally justified to convict the person of murder when that possibility happens.”

About 16 percent of homicides in 2006 occurred during felonies, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Statistics concerning how many of those killings led to the murder prosecutions of accomplices are not available, but legal experts say such prosecutions are relatively common in the more than 30 states that allow them. About 80 people have been sentenced to death in the last three decades for participating in a felony that led to a murder though they did not kill anyone.

Terry Snyder, whose daughter Jessica was the victim in Mr. Holle’s case, said Mr. Holle’s conduct was as blameworthy as that of the man who shattered her skull.

“It never would have happened unless Ryan Holle had lent the car,” Mr. Snyder said. “It was as good as if he was there.”

Prosecutors sometimes also justify the doctrine on the ground that it deters murders. Criminals who know they will face harsh punishment if someone dies in the course of a felony, supporters of the felony murder rule say, may plan their crimes with more care, may leave deadly weapons at home and may decide not to commit the underlying felony at all.

But the evidence of a deterrent effect is thin. An unpublished analysis of F.B.I. crime data from 1970 to 1998 by Anup Malani, a law professor at the University of Chicago, found that the presence of the felony murder rule had a relatively small effect on criminal behavior, reducing the number of deaths during burglaries and car thefts slightly, not affecting deaths during rapes and, perversely, increasing the number of deaths during robberies. That last finding, the study said, “is hard to explain” and “warrants further exploration.”

The felony murder rule’s defenders acknowledge that it can be counterintuitive.

“It may not make any sense to you,” Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor in Mr. Holle’s case, told the jury. “He has to be treated just as if he had done all the things the other four people did.”

Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Charles Miller Jr., the man who actually killed Jessica Snyder, but he was sentenced to life without parole. So were the men who entered the Snyders’ home with him, Donnie Williams and Jermond Thomas. So was William Allen Jr., who drove the car. So was Mr. Holle.

Mr. Holle had no criminal record. He had lent his car to Mr. Allen, a housemate, countless times before.

“All he did was go say, ‘Use the car,’ ” Mr. Allen said of Mr. Holle in a pretrial deposition. “I mean, nobody really knew that girl was going to get killed. It was not in the plans to go kill somebody, you know.”

But Mr. Holle did testify that he had been told it might be necessary to “knock out” Jessica Snyder. Mr. Holle is 25 now, a tall, lean and lively man with a rueful sense of humor, alert brown eyes and an unusually deep voice. In a spare office at the prison here, he said that he had not taken the talk of a burglary seriously.

“I honestly thought they were going to get food,” he said of the men who used his car, all of whom had attended the nightlong party at Mr. Holle’s house, as had Jessica Snyder.

“When they actually mentioned what was going on, I thought it was a joke,” Mr. Holle added, referring to the plan to steal the Snyders’ safe. “I thought they were just playing around. I was just very naïve. Plus from being drinking that night, I just didn’t understand what was going on.”

Mr. Holle’s trial lawyer, Sharon K. Wilson, said the statements he had given to the police were the key to the case, given the felony murder rule.

“It’s just draconian,” Ms. Wilson said. “The worst thing he was guilty of was partying too much and not being discriminating enough in who he was partying with.”

Mr. Holle’s trial took one day. “It was done, probably, by 5 o’clock,” Mr. Holle said. “That’s with the deliberations and the verdict and the sentence.”

Witnesses described the horror of the crime. Christine Snyder, for instance, recalled finding her daughter, her head bashed in and her teeth knocked out.

“Then what did you do?” the prosecutor asked her.

“I went screaming out of the home saying they blew my baby’s face off,” Ms. Snyder said.

The safe had belonged to Christine Snyder. The police found a pound of marijuana in it, and, after her daughter’s funeral, she was sentenced to three years in prison for possessing it.

Not every state’s version of the felony murder rule is as strict as Florida’s, and a few states, including Hawaii, Kentucky and Michigan, have abolished it entirely.

“The felony-murder rule completely ignores the concept of determination of guilt on the basis of individual misconduct,” the Michigan Supreme Court wrote in 1980.

The vast majority of states retain it in various forms, but courts and officials have taken occasional steps to limit its harshest applications.

In August, for instance, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster, the driver of a getaway car in a robbery spree that ended in a murder.

Mr. Holle was the only one of the five men charged with murdering Jessica Snyder who was offered a plea bargain, one that might have led to 10 years in prison.

“I did so because he was not as culpable as the others,” said Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor.

Mr. Holle, who rejected the deal, has spent some time thinking about the felony murder rule.

“The laws that they use to convict people are just — they have to revise them,” he said. “Just because I lent these guys my car, why should I be convicted the same as these people that actually went to the scene of the crime and actually committed the crime?”

Mr. Rimmer sounded ambivalent on this point.

“Whether or not the felony murder rule can result in disproportionate justice is a matter of opinion,” Mr. Rimmer said. “The father of Jessica Snyder does not think so.”

Monday, December 03, 2007

UN Kicks Off Bali Climate Conference

Les Etats-Unis continuent a s'isoler du reste du monde: c'est le seul pays a ne pas avoir signe le protocole de Kyoto:

The American position suffered a blow Monday when the new Australian prime minister signed papers to ratify the Kyoto Protocol climate pact. The move leaves the U.S. the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases as the sole industrial power not to have joined.

Conference leaders urged delegates to move quickly to combat climate change.

"The eyes of the world are upon you. There is a huge responsibility for Bali to deliver," said Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the conference. "The world now expects a quantum leap forward."

Over 40 mln in U.S. can't afford health care: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 40 million people in the United States say they cannot afford adequate heath care and go without drugs, eyeglasses or dental treatment, according to a federal report released on Monday.

The latest look at the state of U.S. health care also shows that while death rates from cancer and heart disease have dropped in recent years, just as many Americans are dying in car crashes.

"There has been important progress made in many areas of health such as increased life expectancy and decreases in deaths from leading killers such as heart disease and cancer," Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a statement.

"But this report shows that access to health care is still an issue where we need improvement."

The report, available on the Internet at www.cdc.gov/nchs/, has a special section on access to health care.

Health care has jumped to the forefront of the 2008 campaign for the White House with virtually every presidential candidate offering some plan to provide more Americans with health insurance.

"In 2005, more than 40 million adults did not receive 'needed services' because they could not afford them," the report said.

"Nearly 15 million adults did not obtain eyeglasses, 25 million did not get dental care, 19 million did not get needed prescribed medicine, and 15 million did not get needed medical care due to cost."

The report found about one third of all children living below the poverty level had not visited a dentist in 2005, compared with fewer than one-fifth of children from wealthier families.

"The United States spends more on health per capita than any other country, and health spending continues to increase," the report said.

"In 2005, national health care expenditures in the United States totaled $2 trillion, a 7 percent increase from 2004. Hospital spending, which accounts for 31 percent of national health expenditures, increased by 8 percent in 2005."

Private insurance plans paid for 36 percent of total personal health care expenditures in 2005, while the federal government paid 34 percent, state and local governments paid 11 percent, and patients paid for 15 percent out of pocket.

Prescription drugs accounted for 10 percent of national health expenditure in 2005.

There was some good news: life expectancy was up to 77.8 years for a baby born in 2004 -- three years more than in 1990. "Mortality from heart disease, stroke, and cancer has continued to decline in recent years," the report said.

But the death rate for motor vehicle-related injuries has remained stable since the early 1990s, with 15 deaths per 100,000 people per year, down from 18.5 per 100,000 in 1990.

U.S. report contradicts Bush on Iran nuclear program

Ben mince alors ca ferait 4 ans que l'Iran a arrete son programme nucleaire...

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new U.S. intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration's earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb.

The new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released on Monday could hamper U.S. efforts to convince other world powers to agree on a third package of U.N. sanctions against Iran for defying demands to halt uranium enrichment activities.

Iran says it wants nuclear technology only for civilian purposes, such as electricity generation.

Tensions have escalated in recent months as Washington has ratcheted up the rhetoric against Tehran, with U.S. President George W. Bush insisting in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War Three.

But in a finding likely to surprise U.S. friends and foes alike, the latest NIE concluded: "We do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."

That marked a sharp contrast to an intelligence report two years ago that stated Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons."

But the new assessment found Iran was continuing to develop technical capabilities that could be used to build a bomb and that it would likely be capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon "sometime during the 2010-2015 time-frame.

Iran has already been hit with two rounds of U.N. sanctions over its defiance. Washington, which insists it wants to solve the problem diplomatically while leaving military options open, is pushing for a third package.

The nuclear standoff has become a major issue of debate in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, with candidates from both major parties weighing in on the prospects for military action against Iran.

U.S. STILL SEES IRANIAN "RISK"

"Today's National Intelligence Estimate offers some positive news," Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley said in a statement.

"It confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. It tells us that we have made progress in trying to ensure that this does not happen," he said.

"But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem."

The latest NIE said: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. We also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."

The report said U.S. intelligence had "moderate confidence" that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program by mid-2007, but added that Tehran's intentions were unclear.

"Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so," it said.

Psychological Operations are my specialty. PsyOps

The following article is excerpted from the upcoming edition of the book The Art of Mental Warfare by David Vincent.

Everything I've done has been highly classified, all black programs and black operations. Some people I know thought I worked for the CIA, but it's much more complicated than that. I've worked with people in the CIA, DIA, NSC, NSA, SAIC, Army Intel and many more lesser known agencies within the intelligence apparatus.

Before focusing on PsyOps I started out running covert combat missions, special operations. I was good at what I did and rose through the ranks fast. When the "War on Terror" started I was paid a lot of money to consult with private military contractors. When private paramilitary units needed to get the jobs done that paid the most money they would come to me with checkbooks filled with US taxpayer dough.

I've seen the worst things imaginable, hell on earth. Had friends die in my arms. Seen piles of rotten corpses. Seen men, women and children tortured. I've seen the eyes of terrified and confused children being sold into a vicious life of slavery and an early death.

I could get a lot more graphic, but you get the idea.

That was my life, and all along I was told that I was fighting for freedom and working for the "good guys." What a ridiculous comment that is! In the black world, that is, in the covert world, there aren't any "good guys" — just varying degrees of evil.

As Brigadier General Butler famously stated, "War is a racket." It doesn't have anything to do with freedom and democracy. It is not good fighting evil. There's just a bunch of old greedy gangsta motherfuckers making obscene amounts of cash and breeding hatred, violence, terrorists and sex slaves.

The truth is, there is no oversight! Meaning, you can get away with anything, nothing is illegal because no one knows about it, or the few who do are either in on it or have a vested interest in keeping quiet. Whether you're runnin' guns, weapons, drugs, gold, diamonds, women, children, it just doesn't matter. As long as the old guard gets their resources, it's all good. And in the end, it's all about power. The people who really run this planet know that natural resources (oil, water, coltan, cobalt, etc.) are the key. The "War on Terror" is just a front for a geo-strategic resource grab on a massive scale. Even the wars in Northern Africa are all about exploitation of resources. Once the good ole CIA boys at Bechtel did their NASA satellite studies of the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) mineral resources and discovered that it was the "richest patch of earth on the planet," all hell broke loose! They figured out that the DRC has 80% of the world's coltan, among many other vital resources. Without coltan, you can't have any technology that requires a computer chip: computers, cell phones, satellites and weapon systems, of course. So Bechtel, the CitiBank boys, the World Bank, IMF and various covert elements have been supplying brutal regime after brutal regime in the region. Well over four million and counting have died there.

Same thing with oil in the Middle East. Do you think they really give a shit about Iraqi freedom? We worked hard to make you believe that, but c'mon, they don't give a shit about the Iraqi people. They've killed about a MILLION of them! And that's NOT an exaggeration! They sure as hell give a shit about Iraqi oil though. They also care about Saudi oil, and have a nice deal with a dictatorship that brutally oppresses their people. If freedom and democracy are the issue, how about freeing the Saudi people? Why do you think 15 of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia? We support a regime that oppresses those people. We support them because they cooperate on the oil front. So, why strike back at them? Let's hit Iraq. They don't give us any oil - let's get'em!

If you look at the history of covert special operations, it's all about securing a piece of land that has some valuable resource. Once the resource is identified, special ops figures out the most efficient way to suppress or extinguish the population that is unfortunate enough to live near it. Then the big companies come in, from the United Fruit Company to the Bechtels and Halliburtons of the world. That is the way it has been and still is, from John D. Rockefeller and Allen Dulles right through Kissinger, Bush Sr. and Cheney. Millions of innocent civilians have been slaughtered. Let me repeat that: Millions of innocent civilians have been slaughtered. And I'm not kidding you. These are evil motherfuckers and they are no friends of ours. These things don't have anything to do with protecting the US people or standing up for freedom and democracy. They don't give a shit about the average American. In this age of the global economy, the concept of nation state is obsolete. If only proud Americans could understand that. Pride in the American way is just another propaganda device for PsyOps agents — people like me — to use to manipulate you and make you think that black is white and white is black.

If you were to ask me who is a bigger threat to the people of the US, Cheney or bin Laden, or who has done more damage to the US, I would say Cheney without hesitation. Cheney, along with Bush Sr. and Kissinger, has been running the covert world for about 40 years now.

A little side note for you: I firmly believe Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense and Bush Sr.'s right-hand man in the covert world, used computer cryptography and software security assets to get Bush Jr. elected both times. I do not have direct knowledge of the operation, but research "Robert Gates," "Bill Owens," "electronic voting security," "HAVA," "VoteHere" and "Scientific Applications International Corp." [We will post more on this in the near future.] The operation went so well that Gates was going to be made the first ever Director of National Intelligence. He turned down the job, but then took the Secretary of Defense position when Rumsfeld was removed from his public position. I don't think there will ever be solid evidence linking directly to members of the administration; it's all a tangled web of plausible deniability. But I do think it will eventually be proven that the elections were manipulated to deliver Bush the victory. Many people in the covert world take this for granted, as common sense. Please don't confuse this as partisan propaganda. I don't give a shit about the Democrat or Republican PsyOps mind-fuck dynamic. They're just labels to divide a potentially powerful united US public.

It's hard to get the average American to understand these things. Most everyone in this country has been mind-fucked since birth. For a very blatant example, you can look at the advertising industry and the way they have increased intensely their focus on the youth. It's all about breeding impulsive emotionally driven consumers through repetition - over and over again - buy, buy, buy. You hear something enough and you internalize the message. It becomes something like the air you breathe, like gravity. It's there, omnipresent, but you don't realize it or consciously think about it. It becomes the spring from which your thoughts leap forth.

What it all boils down to is the exposure rate. You take a simple message and you repeat it over and over, such as mentioning Saddam and 9/11. You don't have to say Saddam was involved in 9/11, because that is not true. You just have to mention Saddam and 9/11 in the same simple repetitive message thousands of times and people will support an attack on a country that didn't have anything to do with 9/11 because they've been psychologically conditioned to link the two.

It's psychological operations on a grand scale, mass psychology. The scientific art of manipulating public opinion is 100 years old now. PsyOps have evolved to the point, thanks to the all pervasive mass media, where we can make you believe, or at least passively accept, whatever we want you to. I secretly worked with the world's most powerful media companies to get you to believe what "they" want you to believe. The media is the most efficient weapon of tyranny and oppression ever created. No need to physically control populations anymore when you can do it mentally - program it in, internalize the rules.

To give a little more background on publicly revealed psychological operations, in 1977, after the Congressional Church Committee investigated CIA manipulation of the news media, and right after George Bush Sr. left his post as the Director of the CIA, famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein searched a little deeper into what was known as Operation Mockingbird. He revealed that over 400 US journalists were actually carrying out clandestine CIA PsyOps services. Bernstein identified operations involving almost every major US news outlet, most notably The New York Times, CBS and Time magazine. The CIA responded to all of this with a "limited hangout." A "limited hangout" is CIA speak for when classified information gets out and you have to make it seem as if you are "coming clean" with all the information on the operation, but in reality you are really just admitting part of the operation so you can cover up other deeper parts and continue the program. This worked very effectively for them, as the US public quickly moved on and this operation has largely been forgotten. Currently, I would estimate, with cable news and the Internet now, that there are well over a thousand covert operatives spread throughout the news media. They have a firm grip on television, newspapers, wire services, radio and magazines. However, with the Internet - that's their weak spot - it's too decentralized and difficult to control.

The Pentagon's Information Operations Roadmap now describes the Internet as an enemy "weapons system." The Pentagon doesn't hide the fact that they want total control over information, or as they call it "information dominance." They very plainly state that they seek to "control land, sea, space and information." This is what they refer to as "full spectrum dominance." If you don't think they see this as a top priority, look at Iraq. The plan to "embed" journalists with the military in Iraq was a strategic operation that considered "journalism as part of psychological operations." The journalists that weren't "embedded" were considered "enemy combatants." More journalists have been killed in Iraq than in any other war, and it is the US doing a large portion of the killing.

Before I go too far here, the point I want to make to the US public, the bottom line is that the most power crazed and greed addicted people are above the law and get away with everything. In the covert world rules do not apply. Democracy is a fairy tale. Nothing is what it seems, reality isn't real. Through the looking glass Alice goes.

I've fought against it and got nowhere. I've informed people that I naively thought could do something, but nothing could be done. I took all the blood money I've made and donated it to humanitarian causes. Will it make a difference? No. Not in the grand scheme of things, but in the short run it may save a few people… maybe. And that's all I can hope for at this point.

I've become so cynical! I live with guilt and cynicism weighing on my every move, my every thought.

When you've seen the things I have seen, been involved with the things I've been involved with, when you've spent the majority of your life living like I have, what do you do when you decide to give it up and get out? Can you ever get out?

I was able to get out, thus far, when no one I knew thought I could get out. But once you lived in the covert world, "normal" civilian life feels like a prison sentence. Then again, the covert world was a prison sentence.

I've been strongly advised to keep a very low profile and forget about things for a while. But I find it hard to just fade into the night when we are reaching an event horizon, a breaking point. Despite my cynicism, there is a part of me that knows I have to keep fighting. The stakes are just too high, higher then they've ever been. The human species is in serious trouble, facing a set of crises unlike anything we've ever faced before. Unless these covert forces are exposed, and ultimately eliminated, I don't see how we can even begin to make the bold actions that we need to start making now - and I mean right fucking now! These covert forces are a root cause and driver, a cancer spreading through the system and planet.

As far as I can tell, you can't change the system from within the intelligence community itself. This includes the Senate Intel Committee. If the urgently needed changes are ever to happen, it has to come from the US public. Now I know first hand how the American public has been conditioned to be apathetic and not get involved in politics and has been fed a steady diet of misinformation. But propaganda only works to the point where the population being propagandized is not feeling the direct impact and negative consequences on a personal level in their daily lives. That's why the draft played a large role in bringing an end to Vietnam. We need another draft to push the mainstream over the edge and into action, but the façade is beginning to crack - 9/11 had some effect, the war in Iraq certainly, Katrina, massive job loses and an economic downturn that has really just begun have all factored into creating a critical mass. Even the most propagandized population in the history of civilization will have to act when their very survival and well- being is directly threatened and impacted. I just hope enough people will understand the need for bold decisive action now, before it's too late.

So, to the people who have awareness of the problems facing us, if I could give advice, it would be this:

1. Try the Bush Administration for war crimes. If the case could ever be brought to court, the evidence to convict is definitely there. This is why the administration has been strongly against the International Criminal Court. If we are to begin repairing this country, and the world, we must begin by showing these power crazed and covert forces that they are accountable. If we can convict someone like Cheney, we will send a powerful message to the covert world. If we let them walk, we will keep having these problems. New people will follow them and take their place.

2. Investigate where all the military spending has been vanishing off to. There are literally trillions of taxpayer dollars unaccounted for. This money is fueling the covert world and terrorism in general. As part of this, I would include an investigation into war profiteering as well.

3. Make it mandatory that all electronic voting machines must have a 100% verifiable paper trail.

4. Get people into the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who will smash the current media ownership rules. The concentration of media ownership is the foundation of the covert power structure. Without that, the whole thing is a house of cards. That's why the FCC is currently trying to ram through rules that will further consolidate media ownership before the Bush administration leaves office. As part of this, it is pivotal that we protect the open architecture of the Internet. The media belongs to the people, as does the government, in theory anyway, but we need an information system that actually serves the public interest.

5. Declare a national and global emergency on the environmental front. We have already reached the breaking point. We need organized, governmental, policy driven, bold action now.

6. We need to address entities that now have power over the Constitution, such as the undemocratic and unelected corporate global governing structure - institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and "agreements" like NAFTA and DR-CAFTA, to name a few. Most Americans don't even know what these power structures are, let alone that they have power that supersedes the Constitution. We must also address the National Security Act, that's where the ultimate power of our country lies. The National Security Act has effectively made the Constitution meaningless and is the primary driver of the covert world. The PATRIOT Act and various other newly granted powers must also be drastically revised or eliminated completely in order to protect our civil liberties.

7. Lastly, we need to have publicly financed elections. As long as we have a system that requires candidates to raise tens of millions of dollars to even be considered for office, we will have politicians who bend over backwards for the richest one percent and the most powerful elements of society at the citizens' expense. An important aspect of this has to be a requirement for large media companies to provide candidates with free airtime. Candidates have to spend the majority of their money on advertising in the mainstream media. That's why the major news media spend so much time focusing on who is raising the most money, because they are the ones who end up with all that money. Once we have publicly financed elections and free airtime for candidates, we will get people in office who will work in the interests of the public because they are not beholden to the large and powerful entities. When you have politicians depending on the public instead of the private sector for survival, all the issues mentioned above could be addressed because they won't have to fear the withdrawal of support from large corporations and the wealthy and powerful who do not want these things to happen. This will also enable us to eliminate tax breaks for the richest one percent, put an end to corporate welfare practices, and stop funding for obscene military and prison industrial companies that are profiting off of disasters and no longer serve security interests. Then we can redirect that money into environmental, education, health care and social security programs, to mention a few.

In the current political environment this may all sound like an unrealistic pipe dream, but these are the seven pivotal things that MUST happen. If all seven don't happen within the next few years, we will have set the world on a disastrously irreversible course. This is "the unfortunate reality of our current situation." It is not going to be easy, but you better start fighting for it now, while we still can.

It really does come down to us. You have to personally, in your daily life, do everything you can. With enough public pressure all of these things are achievable. Once we get a small portion of the population acting in this direction, it will quickly catch on and spread. Even though the overwhelming majority of the US population is incredibly propagandized on the surface, just underneath is the realization of the need for mass action. They just need leaders to point this out. The mainstream just needs a spark. Do what you can to set it off. It is a matter of unprecedented significance.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

DEBKAfile Reports: US Gulf armada built up again amid preparations for third round of Security Council sanctions against Iran

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that a third aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman , arrived in the Central Command area over the weekend to join the USS Enterprise and USS Nimitz . All three head mighty strike groups of assorted warships, aircraft, marine forces, amphibious craft and nuclear submarines. Our sources interpret the new build-up as signifying US preparedness for a possible military confrontation with Iran.

The Truman strike group under the command of Rear Adm. Bill Gortney is equipped with the most advanced electronics in the fleet for coordinating offensive and defensive operations in a major war.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that, last week, on its way to the Gulf arena, an element of the Truman group, the guided missile destroyer USS Oscar Austin , ran tests on the ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle. This UAV’s primary mission is to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support for the Truman group.

It is the first time a UAV has been employed in this way by a US multi-mission naval group and, should hostilities break out with Iran, this drone would make war history. ScanEagle flies up to 10,000 feet, clicking electro-optical or infrared cameras 20 hours of the day and night. It is completely noiseless.

Another key element of the Truman group is the huge floating supply depot USNS Artic . While keeping up with the speed of the carrier group, the Artic can take on from shuttle ships and redistribute to the rest of the group more than 177,000 barrels of oil, 2,150 tons of ammunition, and hundreds of tons of stores. The ten-vessel Truman group also includes a British destroyer, the HMS Manchester .

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that in response to the focus the Iranian navy is now placing on submarine warfare, the USS Enterprise group carried out a comprehensive anti-sub exercise in the northern Arabian Sea in mid-November. While the Enterprise operates mainly in the Afghanistan war arena, it can reach the Persian Gulf and Sea of Oman within hours if called.

The Security Council is expected to approve before the end of the year harsh sanctions against Iran for flouting its resolutions on uranium enrichment and its clandestine military nuclear program. The US-led force massed close to Iran’s shores is poised to support these sanctions as well as react in the event of Tehran lashing out in the Gulf, Iraq, Lebanon or other fronts manned by its terrorist proxies.