WMD Hunt in Iraq Supressed

Iraq Letter "Suppressed" by Downer
By Marian Wilkinson
The Age - Australia

Thursday 31 August 2006

A Damning six-page letter on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was suppressed by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, according to a former senior diplomat.

Dr John Gee, a world-renowned expert on chemical weapons, worked with the US-led weapons hunt, the Iraq Survey Group, after the war and wrote the critical letter when he decided to resign.

In it he warned the Australian Government the hunt was "fundamentally flawed" and that there was "a distinct reluctance on the part of many here and in Washington to face the facts" that Iraq had no WMD.

Dr Gee recorded in an email soon after that "Downer has issued instructions it (my letter) is not to be distributed to anyone". Dr Gee wrote to his colleague on the Iraq Survey Group that a senior official in ONA, the Prime Minister's intelligence advisory agency, had told him of Mr Downer's instructions.

In another email, Dr Gee revealed that the head of the Defence Department, Ric Smith, informed him his department did not receive a copy of the critical letter even though Dr Gee was working in Iraq under contract to the department.

Dr Gee said senior Defence officials told him, "DFAT (the Department of Foreign Affairs) had not passed the letter on to Defence".

Last night, a spokesman for Mr Downer said the minister "did not recall" receiving Dr Gee's letter and described as "a conspiracy theory" material showing that the letter had not been given to the head of the Defence Department. "I have heard a lot of conspiracy theories over the years, but I have not heard that one before."

However, documents including Dr Gee's resignation letter and a series of emails he wrote to his colleague, Rod Barton, another senior weapons inspector in Iraq, reveal efforts to contain his findings. Mr Downer has previously acknowledged that he was personally briefed by Dr Gee when he returned, but has never revealed the contents of that briefing.

>From the emails it appears that Mr Downer received the damning findings months before he and Prime Minister John Howard finally accepted that no WMD would be found in Iraq.

One month after his briefing with Dr Gee, Mr Downer made a public appearance with the US head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer. At their press conference, Mr Downer insisted that the weapons hunt in Iraq "was still a work in progress" and he could not draw any conclusions.

But Dr Gee's emails reveal that every senior level of the Australian Government, including Mr Howard's office, ONA, Defence and Mr Downer's Iraq Taskforce was briefed by him when he returned from Baghdad in March 2004. They also suggest that Mr Downer knew about his letter.

In a blunt conclusion, Dr Gee's letter stated: "I now believe that there are no WMD in Iraq and that while the ISG has found a number of research activities Ö it has found no evidence so far on ongoing WMD programs of the type I had assumed would be there."

Summing up his difficulties in Baghdad, Dr Gee wrote: "I have concluded that the process here is fundamentally flawed and that there is a distinct reluctance on the part of many here and in Washington to face the facts."

No Bravery!!!!!

No Bravery Video Production


James Blunt vocals.

http://globalfreepress.com/movs/nobravery/nb.mp4

N.Y. Times move to block U.K. readers raises questions

Reuters | August 31 2006

A New York Times decision to block British online readers from seeing a story about London terrorism suspects raises new questions on restricting the flow of information in the Internet age, legal and media experts say.

The New York Times said Tuesday it had blocked British Internet readers from seeing a story detailing elements of the investigation into a suspected plot to blow up airliners between Britain and the United States.

The story was published in Monday's paper. Under British laws, courts will punish media organizations that publish material that judges feel may influence jurors and prevent suspects receiving a fair trial.

"There has not been a prosecution for contempt over anybody publishing outside this jurisdiction (Britain), but logically there is no reason why there should not be," said Caroline Kean, partner at U.K. media law firm Wiggin.

While restricting what British media can report has been effective in the past, the Internet has made it far harder to stop information published by foreign outlets, which may breach Britain's laws, from being seen by U.K. readers.

The New York Times article cited unnamed investigators providing information not given publicly by British police.

It detailed the content of martyrdom videos and bomb-making equipment found by police and said an attempt to blow up the airliners was not as imminent as authorities had suggested.

The same article appeared on the paper's Web site, but readers in Britain who clicked on the headline received the notice "This Article Is Unavailable."

"On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of NYTimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial," the notice said.

However British newspapers the Times and the Daily Mail also published details from the New York Times article this week.

A government source said no injunctions had been taken out against the British papers, but action could not be ruled out if details were in any future publications, closer to a trial date.

"We're keeping it under careful, constant review," he said.

Because British courts may impose heavy fines and jail editors, foreign newspapers sometimes hold potentially sensitive stories out of their British print editions.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens of Finer Stephens Innocent said he could not see anything wrong with the blocked New York Times article and the decision by British papers to print similar details showed the contempt of court law may be the problem.

"It's probably unhelpful to have an area of law which is so uncertain where one set of lawyers is saying censor everything while another says there's nothing wrong with it," he said.

"Even by blocking you don't have the desired effect. You actually create an enhanced interest as the blocking becomes a story in itself, which fans the flames of curiosity," he said.

This was the first time the New York Times had targeted a readership and blocked it from seeing a story on the Web, as far as a spokeswoman and a lawyer from the paper could recall.

"The British take this very seriously and tend to attack publications for contempt even if the arguments that we would have made sounded fairly reasonable," said George Freeman, a lawyer with the New York Times.

Freeman said it was no guarantee that someone in Britain could not find the story.

"But our position is that we did what we could to prevent publication in Britain. If someone carries in on a jet plane a New York Times from New York, that's not our doing and we can't prevent that," Freeman said.

If Human Rights are so Important where is the West on the Darfur isse?

Darfur: UN Troops ASAP, Say Rights Workers
By Haider Rizvi
OneWorld.net

Wednesday 30 August 2006

United Nations - Amid fears that escalating violence could unleash another round of humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan's Darfur region, rights advocacy groups are urging the world community to take immediate steps to protect civilians.

With the looming threat of fresh military action by the Sudanese army, groups say the deployment of a 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Darfur is the first step to enhance security for the civilian population.

"Rape, murder, and forced displacement continue in Darfur," said Peter kirambudde, Africa director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, "because Russia, China, Qatar, and others have protected Khartoum from tough measures by the Security Council."

"We know the Security Council's attention is focused on Iran and Lebanon," he added in a statement, "but the United States, Britain, and France must step up efforts to ensure that Darfur is a priority also."

Currently, discussions are underway at the 15-member UN Security Council on a U.S.-sponsored draft resolution calling for17,000 well-equipped peacekeepers. However, according to observers and diplomats, any breakthrough before the end of this week is highly unlikely.

The U.S. proposal calls for a gradual transition from the Africa Union (AU) force in Darfur, which has failed to take effective measures against violence, mainly due to lack of resources. The AU mandate is due to expire at the end of September.

For its part, the Sudanese government has strongly objected to the U.S. proposal, arguing that a UN force would be widely unpopular in the region. Khartoum instead has made clear that it would like to send its own troops to Darfur to protect civilians.

But human rights groups say such a move would prove to be a disaster.

"It is a sham," said Kate Gilmore of the London-based rights group Amnesty International. "How can Sudan realistically propose being a peacekeeper in a conflict to which it is a major party and perpetrator of grave human rights violations?"

Human Rights Watch's Takirambudde agreed.

"Sudanese government soldiers are not an alternative to international peacekeepers," he said, adding that any new military operations by government forces or rebels would lead to "devastating consequences for civilians."

However, the Sudanese troops have already started arriving in some parts of northern Darfur, according to Africa Action, a Washington, DC-based independent group, which has accused the Sudanese government of using force against Darfuri refugees who have resettled in the outskirts of Khartoum.

The group claims that as a result of military action by the Sudanese government, many refugees were killed and wounded and as many as 12,000 newly displaced.

"The humanitarian crisis and outright violence has reached a crescendo that demands an international response," the group said in a statement, calling for the immediate deployment of UN troops.

A 2005 Security Council resolution bans offensive flights in Darfur, but according to Amnesty International's observers, the Sudanese government has since dropped bombs on villages in the region. On the other side, the rebels also continue to engage in violent acts, including attacking humanitarian convoys.

Human Rights Watch said if Sudan failed to agree to the deployment of a UN force, then the Security Council must consider applying targeted sanctions against the officials responsible for blocking efforts to protect civilians.

The U.S.-sponsored draft resolution envisions sanctions, including a travel ban and asset freezes, for individuals who block implementation of the Darfur peace deal reached between the government and a former rebel leader some three months ago.

Despite the deal, violence in Darfur has reached a point where, in the words of a senior UN official, "even hope may escape us."

In Darfur "our nightmares have become realities," said Jan Egeland, chief of UN relief operations, in a statement that warned the Security Council of a looming humanitarian disaster in the region.

"Our entire humanitarian operation in Darfur is at risk," he added. "We need immediate action on the political front to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe with massive loss of life."

According to Egeland, if the humanitarian operations were to collapse due to continued violence, "we could see hundreds of thousands of deaths" over a period of weeks, not months.

UN estimates show that in the past two months, hundreds of innocent people in Darfur have been killed, over 50,000 displaced, and more than 200 women and girls raped.

Officials said due to escalating violence, about half a million people across Darfur were unable to receive their food rations last month and it was very likely that they would not have any access to food aid this month either.

New Orleans Mayor Closes a Disputed Landfill Used for Debris From Hurricane

By Leslie Eaton
The New York Times

Wednesday 16 August 2006

Under legal pressure from the City of New Orleans, a national waste disposal company closed a controversial landfill yesterday that had been handling tons of debris from houses ruined by Hurricane Katrina.

The landfill, which is known as Chef Menteur after the highway that borders it, had been the subject of protests and lawsuits since it was opened in February, challenged by environmental groups and by residents of a nearby Vietnamese-American neighborhood.

State environmental officials, who approved the landfill, said it was safe and necessary for cleaning up the city after the storm.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered the landfill closed at 12:01 a.m. yesterday, saying that his emergency order allowing it to open had expired and that the company operating it, Waste Management, had failed to get a conventional permit, which is subject to City Council approval.

A spokeswoman for the mayor, Ceeon Quiett, said Mr. Nagin had not taken a position on the issues involving the landfill's site and safety.

Waste Management contends that its permit is valid as long as there is a state of emergency in New Orleans. The company is pursuing the matter in court, but a federal judge yesterday turned down the company's request for a temporary restraining order against the city.

The company said in a statement that it applied Monday for a conventional permit and warned that closing the landfill would delay the recovery.

"This is not the end of the story," said Gerard J. Sonnier, a Waste Management vice president. "As rebuilding is delayed and this trash stacks up, the people of New Orleans will need to deal with this again."

Opponents of the landfill had contended that it contained hazardous material, was improperly located next to a wildlife refuge and would tower over Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in the nearby neighborhood known as Versailles.

"To us, this is a victory," said Susan Do, a spokeswoman for the church. "Because of us, they closed the landfill."

Ms. Do said the community would continue to fight to make sure the closing was permanent and added that a majority of the City Council had opposed the landfill.

Joel Waltzer, a lawyer representing the opponents, said they did not believe that closing the landfill would significantly prolong the cleanup of the city.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality continued to support the landfill but had not extended permits because of opposition from local governments, a department spokesman, Darin Mann, said.

But communities near landfills that are likely to receive New Orleans debris are complaining, Mr. Mann said.

"You know the old adage about debris," he said. "Everybody wants you to pick it up, but nobody wants you to put it down."

Painfull Lessons of Hurricane Katrina

The Painful Lessons Of Hurricane Katrina

Government can't, won't protect you

Paul
Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | August 31 2006

One year after Hurricane Katrina and the
lessons remain painfully clear - the event paved the way for the standard
government response to a crisis - sabotage the rescue efforts, dominate
and enslave the victims, then reap the windfall from the tragedy.

Katrina was a trial balloon for widespread
gun confiscation under the pretext of a crisis. Following the
police chief's announcement that nobody would be "allowed" to
be armed - re-writing the 2nd amendment in one sentence - police, national
guard and private security thugs began confiscating firearms from owners
whose homes were completely undamaged and unaffected by the hurricane in
the high and dry areas of the city of New Orleans.

The New
York Times reported that the only people allowed to keep their
guns were the security squads that had been hired by wealthier residents
of New Orleans, which was totally misleading because 99% of these thugs
were hired by the federal government. A few billionaires with mansions were
able to afford the security but the middle class were not. This report gave
the impression that the middle class were not being targeted for gun confiscation
and so those readers were put back to sleep.

Katrina was another example of what FEMA
does best - deliberately
sabotages a crisis and leaves people for dead. Jefferson Parish
President Aaron Broussard's memorable emotional plea on Meet the Press went
right to the heart of what FEMA were doing.

"We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks
of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't
need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel
on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come
get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got
a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA
comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them
without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the
line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting
near these lines."

Why would FEMA make an already terrible
situation worse? Because after every purposefully botched rescue effort
that is whitewashed as a lack of resources, FEMA get more funding and more
power.

The agenda in New Orleans was about privatizing
the police state. Although abuses regularly occur, law enforcement are at
least supposed to operate within the realms of the constitution, a definition
that can be shifted when private mercenaries are hired to dominate the population
- as happened in New Orleans where we saw Blackwater security and even Israeli
troops pointing guns at American citizens.

In addition to the Israelis, armed
Mexican soldiers entered the US for the first time since 1846
to supposedly provide aid. Conditioning Americans to the perception that
foreign troops on US soil policing US citizens in times of emergency is
normal was one of the outcomes of this alarming precedent.

The Army
Times reported that hurricane survivors who wouldn't leave
New Orleans were to be treated as insurgents and that combat operations
to eliminate them were undertaken. This is where the so-called 'relief'
effort was directed towards - treating American citizens like terrorists
and hunting them down simply for wanting to stay in their own homes. And
once they were caught, FEMA treated
evacuees as internees, registering them and giving them ID
cards, preventing them from leaving the internment camps.

The deliberate misappropriation of funds
for the emergency was evident from the start when the first three organizations
on the government recommended donation list were the American Red Cross,
Pat Robertson and Bnai Brith. What a choice! The American Red Cross seize
on any disaster as a cash cow the first chance they get as we have previously
documented.

Then came Halliburton Brown and Root no
bid reconstruction contracts and outsourcing of body recoveries
to scandal
ridden companies connected to the Bush family who had been
caught dumping bodies in the past.

The US government already has developed
technology enabling control and reduction of hurricanes but rather than
seeking to use it to help people they are only interested in using it as
a weapon. Former Naval physicist Ben Livingston briefed
President Lyndon B. Johnson on hurricane control technology
40 years ago.

As Bush fiddled with a guitar in a staged
photo-op and his wife
called the hurricane 'Corrina' in interviews, the rest of his
Neo-Con cheerleading gaggle crawled out of the woodwork to attack the victims
of the tragedy.

The statements sent spewing from the frothing
mouths of the Neo-Cons again betrayed the fact that they were completely
devoid of any rational human feelings or grip
on reality.

Barbara
Bush said the victims were better off after the hurricane
than they were before it.

Tom
Delay said being forcibly detained in prison camp facilities
was kind of fun.

Glenn
Beck, the talk show host, said that hurricane victims were
scumbags and saying he hated the 9/11 families.

Immediately after 9/11 when we questioned the official
version of events these were the same people who were called us crass, insensitive,
and an insult to the family members. Now they were the ones calling the
same family members scumbags.

Michael
Chertoff called Louisiana a city.

Dick
Cheney said the hurricane victims were thankful for what the
federal government had done to them.

The bottom line on Katrina is that whether
you believe it was all incompetence or part incompetence and part malevolence,
the lasting pretext is the same. When a disaster takes place, you have no
rights and the federal government can arrest you if you don’t follow
their every order.

In creating a permanent state of emergency
as the Bush administration has attempted to do, this mandates a pervasive
and permanent state of martial law where constitutionally guaranteed rights
are suspended and rule by force applies.

The horrific suffering of the residents
of New Orleans which continues to this day underlines a basic truth - government can't protect you, won't protect you and has no intention of protecting
you.

Katrina was the calling card of the New
World Order - misery, suffering, death, authoritarianism, police state and
finally the elitists cashing their chips in on the devastation.

9-11 Vendetta Montage

Excellent Commentary and video inclusion of where this nation is headed!

Google Video | August 31 2006

 

Mike Malloy Fired at Air America

Here is a link to he thoughts


http://www.proteanmedia.com/vid/mm_avitw.aspx

DID FOX NEWS PAY DON KING TO SAY THIS

On Fox, boxing promoter Don King defended Bush on Katrina, claimed African-Americans supported Kerry in 2004 "because they didn't know any better"

http://mediamatters.org/items/200608300006

MSNBC's Olberman Comments on Rumsfield's Nazi comments

Illegals Sworming to New Orleans for low paying jobs

After the Deluge
By Jane Slaughter
In These Times

Monday 28 August 2006

Big Easy organizers confront racial tensions.

In New Orleans, the history of work in this country over the last 15 years was compressed into six months," says Saket Soni, an organizer for the New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, one of several groups reaching out to workers in the post-flood city. To give workers a voice in its reconstruction, he says, the Coalition must somehow bring together new Latino immigrants with displaced New Orleanians, mostly African Americans, who are still struggling to return to the city.

Before the levees broke, Latinos made up three percent of New Orleans' population. Today, they've risen to 20 percent, as immigrants seeking work in demolition and construction have arrived from other US cities and from south of the border. A study by Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley found that nearly half the reconstruction workers in the area are Latinos.

As in the rest of the country, these two groups are mostly not talking to each other. According to a new report from the Advancement Project, which worked closely with the Coalition to interview more than 700 workers, "The perception is that workers of color are competing for jobs. The reality is that private contractors are competing for the cheapest labor." Both unions and social justice organizations say they will need to confront divisive stereotypes if they are to improve workers' conditions.

Contractors have welcomed immigrants because they are more easily exploitable. Ana Mendes, for example, from Guatemala by way of Arkansas, worked four weeks without pay until she and a dozen others tracked the contractor down at his home.

Meanwhile, displaced black residents - two-thirds of New Orleans' pre-flood population - have been excluded from a city where housing is scarce and rents have doubled or tripled.

Their problems stem partly from the poverty that was a fact of life in pre-Katrina New Orleans, which had the fourth-highest unemployment rate in the country and the worst schools. Tens of thousands of residents lived payday to payday on service industry wages.

"You cannot talk about doing any type of justice work," says Coalition member Kimberley Richards, a trainer with the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, "without looking at those who were living in unjust conditions before the storm."

At Lee Circle, the city's largest corner for day laborer pick-ups, a young black man from Baton Rouge is angry at immigrants he perceives as doing better than he is. "They got Mexicans out here that are not even supposed to be here," he fumes.

"It's a pick and choose kind of thing. People feel like they can pay the Mexicans less and take more of them and get more work done. If they run up to a car where I'm at, I'm gonna beat 'em up."

Debra Campbell, a black New Orleans homeowner living in Houston and working to return home, says the Mexicans "are doing pretty good construction work. They're bringing in their families, and they're going to take the houses because they have money to pay the rent. Let our youngsters learn the skills so they can do the work."

The stereotypes run rampant on both sides. Michael White, an African American day laborer from Atlanta, insists that it's not about race discrimination - contractors are thinking only of their bottom line. He worked on a crew with four Mexican immigrants to gut a ruined house, and he didn't come back the next day: "A black man is not going to work that hard," he says.

Ana Mendes has had jobs cleaning hotels and homes. She says, "When we work, we work. When we take lunch, we take lunch. They [black workers] are more like" - she mimes a relaxed drag on a cigarette.

To bridge the gulf caused by such perceptions, the Justice Coalition is working with both African-American organizations, like the People's Institute and the People's Hurricane Relief Fund, and with experienced Latino day laborer organizers. In July the National Day Labor Organizing Network, based in Los Angeles, sent in a team of Latino organizers to recruit leaders from the corners and train them in assessing organizing possibilities.

The Coalition has successfully pressured some employers to cough up unpaid wages and has wage-and-hour lawsuits pending. NAACP attorney Tracie Washington, a board member of the Coalition's fledgling Louisiana Workers Center, advocated on behalf of 200 Latino hotel workers to get them Louisiana state ID cards. She says, "They got the opportunity to see - 'all we've heard is that black people don't like us, and here's this person on behalf of the NAACP who came to our aid.'"

Coalition members are working creatively to find ways to bring these communities together. When day laborer leaders came to town in April with the Day Laborer Run for Peace and Dignity, says Coalition activist Robert Caldwell, "we put the event in a black neighborhood with a deep history of struggle, and invited key people to the planning committee. We had food prepared by the best cook in the neighborhood." Almost 100 people, mainly African Americans, turned out.

As these grassroots efforts look for footing in the ravaged city, national unions are coming to New Orleans with ambitious programs, for what historically has been largely a non-union town.

In July the Laborers Union started free classes in construction basics, and in September the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) will offer classes for certified nurses' aides and home health aides. (Both unions are part of the Change to Win federation.) A spokesman for the two unions' Worker Resource Center said that graduates of the first one-day safety class were snapped up by employers the next day. The unions are counting on a construction boom when the government finally releases federal aid money to homeowners.

The AFL-CIO is coming at the jobs problem from a different angle: Two investment trusts sponsored by union pension funds will pump $700 million into construction of apartments, hotels and hospitals, as well as home mortgages. All construction will be union, and the federation's Building and Construction Trades Department will offer apprenticeships.

The AFL-CIO says its money is the first major infusion of private capital into the Gulf Coast since the flood. "If the community sees that the union has decided to be there for them in their fight to return and rebuild, they will see that a strong workers movement will benefit the whole of the community," says Gulf Coast Recovery Coordinator Arlene Holt Baker. "It won't be overnight that this will be a union town. We will be laying the foundations."

But who will get the jobs that are created? Although both unions say they are open to all, the programs are targeted at former Gulf Coast residents. Graduates of the first Laborers class were all African Americans. Rosana Cruz, Gulf Coast field organizer for the National Immigration Law Center, says, "For unions to come in now and just pay attention to Latinos, after decades of ignoring blacks in the South - 'here's where we can increase our market share' - would be awful."

"We get past the tensions by recognizing that we don't have to fight over a $6 an hour job changing sheets in somebody else's hotel," Tracie Washington says. "The fight is to make that job a $10 an hour job, and to ultimately own the hotel."

US Accused of Bid to Oust Chavez With Secret Funds

By Duncan Campbell
The Guardian UK

Wednesday 30 August 2006

Millions of dollars given to opposition, claim critics. Venezuelan groups' details hidden from list.

The US government has been accused of trying to undermine the Chavez government in Venezuela by funding anonymous groups via its main international aid agency.

Millions of dollars have been provided in a "pro-democracy programme" that Chavez supporters claim is a covert attempt to bankroll an opposition to defeat the government.

The money is being provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Office of Transition Initiatives. The row follows the recent announcement that the US had made $80m (£42m) available for groups seeking to bring about change in Cuba, whose leader, Fidel Castro, is a close ally of Mr Chavez.

Information about the grants has been obtained following a Freedom of Information request by the Associated Press. USAID released copies of 132 contracts but obscured the names and other identifying details of nearly half the organisations.

The Office of Transition Initiatives, which also works in such "priority countries" as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bolivia and Haiti, has overseen more than $26m in grants to groups in Venezuela since 2002.

Among the grants detailed in the information are: one for $47,459 for a "democratic leadership campaign"; $37,614 for citizen meetings to discuss a "shared vision" for society; and one of $56,124 to analyse Venezuela's new constitution.

"What this indicates is that there is a great deal of money, a great deal of concern to oust or neutralise Chávez," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Coha) in Washington yesterday. "The US is waging diplomatic warfare against Venezuela."

He said that while the US had accused Mr Chávez of destabilising Latin American countries, the term "destabilisation" more aptly applied to what the US was trying to do to Mr Chavez.

"It's trying to implement regime change," Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American lawyer who wrote The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela, told AP. "There's no doubt about it. I think the US government tries to mask it by saying it's a noble mission."

She added: "It's too suspicious to have such a high level of secrecy."

President Chavez has also accused groups of taking American money and predicted that the US will seek to use its influence in Venezuela's December polls.

USAID officials denied any suggestion the money had any political aim and said the reason for anonymity for some groups was to protect them from potential harassment.

"The goal of the programme is to strengthen democracy, which is consistent with President Bush's 'Freedom Agenda'," said a USAID official yesterday. "A strong civil society is a critical part of any healthy democracy, just as it is in the United States, England or anywhere else in the world."

The official said that the money was used to pay for "a wide range of seminars, educational programmes and even public service TV commercials aimed at promoting dialogue between pro- and anti-Chavez camps. Other projects include workshops on conflict resolution, efforts to promote human rights, and training for positive citizen involvement in their communities."

USAID also supports programmes such as day-care centres for the poor, improvement for schools, junior sports teams, and children's homes, the official said, adding that the sums being spent in Venezuela were much smaller than those allocated elsewhere this year in Latin America, with USAID budgeting $3.8m for Venezuela compared with $84.8m for Bolivia and $85.1m for Peru.

The row comes just as China has agreed to invest $5bn in energy projects in Venezuela, including the building of 13 oil rigs and 18 oil tankers. Last week Mr Chavez announced that China was endorsing Venezuela's bid for the rotating Latin America seat on the 15-member security council, a candidacy strongly opposed by the US. The commercial arrangements with Beijing are seen as part of the Chavez government's strategy of establishing new links so as to lessen the country's dependence on US trade.

As a symbol of the friendly relations established between Mr Chavez and the London mayor, Ken Livingstone, there will be a festival of Latin-American music with a Caracas theme in Trafalgar Square this Friday evening. The two men met earlier this summer when the president was a guest at an event hosted by the mayor.

Annan: Israel Responsible for Most Truce Violations

Haaretz

Wednesday 30 August 2006

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Israel was responsible for most of the violations of the UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the 34-day conflict between Israel and Hezbollah two weeks ago.

Annan said he would ask Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in talks on Wednesday to lift Israel's air and sea blockade of Lebanon, imposed at the start of the war nearly seven weeks ago.

Speaking after a meeting with Defense Minister Amir Peretz in Jerusalem, Annan appealed for all sides to work together to ensure the peace holds and "not risk another explosion in six years or 20 years."

Peretz said Tuesday following talks with Annan that he hopes Israel will soon be able to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon, imposed at the start of its 34-day conflict with Hezbollah that ended with a United Nations-brokered truce on August 14.

"Israel will pull out once there is a reasonable level of forces there," he said.

The defense minister did not clarify what it would take for Israel to lift the embargo, but Israel has demanded that Lebanese and international forces take control of the Lebanon-Syrian border to prevent Hezbollah guerrillas from smuggling in arms.

The UN chief said he spoke with Peretz about lifting the blockade "as soon as possible in order to allow Lebanon to go on with normal commercial activities and also rebuild its economy."

Annan also met with the families of three kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldiers Tuesday night, hours after calling for their release and for the lfiting of the blockade on Lebanon.

Reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were snatched by Hezbollah in a cross-border raid on July 12, which sparked the 34-day conflict ended on August 14 by a UN brokered cease-fire. Corporal Gilad Shalit was abducted by Palestinian militants in late June, after they tunneled under the Gaza-Israel border and raided his IDF base.

Goldwasser's wife, Karnit, told Israel TV after the meeting with Annan that he gave them no new information about the fate of their loved ones.

"But the good news was that we got a personal pledge from the secretary-general of the UN that he accepts the mission to get the three kidnapped soldiers home and that's a really big thing," she said.

The relatives said they had heard lip service from many international officials about efforts to get their relatives freed.

"We asked him to be the one to start turning words into deeds and bring about their return home, all three," Karnit Goldwasser said. "He spoke to Lebanese cabinet ministers from Hezbollah and asked them to help him."

The families of the three men also appealed for word on the soldier's conditions.

"They must first of all give us a sign of life. [Annan] must act toward that. It's a moral demand that's basic in any negotiations," Regev's brother Benny said before the meeting.

They also wanted Annan to back down from his demands that Israel lift its blockade of Lebanon, for fear that an end to the siege would allow Hezbollah to move its captives out of Lebanon.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, said Tuesday the meeting between Annan and the families carried important symbolism.

"I hope that he will leave here with a real feeling of obligation, of a moral mission to do everything he can - and he is going to several capitals in which there is influence on this matter - to bring about Udi [Ehud], Eldad and Gilad's speedy return home," Gillerman told Israel TV.

Meanwhile, veteran civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, speaking in Beirut, said he was told that the three soldiers were alive during his meetings with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Khaled Mashaal, political leader of Hamas, in Damascus.

"The Hamas leadership says that the soldier they are holding is alive and well," Jackson told reporters in Beirut, where he was meeting political and religious leaders.

"The president [Assad] believes that the two held somewhere by Hezbollah are alive," he added.

Syria and Iran are the main backers of Hezbollah. "Obviously under any kind of international law, we should have been given a sign of life immediately. But these are terrorists," government spokeswoman Miri Eisen said. "Though we'd like to believe them, we continue to demand the unconditional release of all three."

Annan arrived in Israel on Tuesday afternoon, after a visit to Lebanon during which he called on Hezbollah to free the two IDF soldiers it is holding and for Israel to end the sea and air blockade imposed on Lebanon at the start of the conflict.

"We need to resolve the issue of the abducted soldiers very quickly," Annan said. "We need to deal with the lifting of the embargo - sea, land and air - which for the Lebanese is a humiliation and an infringement on their sovereignty."

"I think the time has come for the siege to be lifted. The Lebanese have shown they're serious about the implementation of [UN resolution] 1701 in all the deployments and efforts they have made," he added.

Israel has insisted it will maintain the restrictions until an arms embargo against Hezbollah is enforced.

The UN chief has said there is a high risk of renewed hostilities unless the resolution is fully implemented.

Families Pin Hopes on Annan

Ahead of their meeting with Annan, the families of Regev and Goldwasser said Tuesday they hoped the UN chief would help secure their safe and quick release.

"We ask [Annan] to act toward releasing our soldiers," Regev's brother, Benny, said before the meeting with Annan.

"The UN decided that Lebanon and the Lebanese government and Hezbollah must release the soldiers without any conditions. This was the resolution. We expect him to act toward achieving it."

The family members also appealed for word on the soldiers' conditions.

"They must first of all give us a sign of life. [Annan] must act toward that. It's a moral demand that's basic in any negotiations," Benny Regev said.

"I know that Kofi Annan is an important man... he has a lot of power and influence and he can speak to the government in Lebanon," said Karnit Goldwasser.

Goldwasser's mother, Miki, said she would be open to talks and a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah.

South Lebanon Visit

Earlier Tuesday, Annan flew to south Lebanon where up to 15,000 UN peacekeepers are expected to be sent to bolster the 16-day-old truce between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.

Italy's first contingent of 800-1,000 troops set sail on what Rome said would be a "long and risky" mission. The aircraft carrier Garibaldi met four other Navy ships off the Mediterranean port of Brindisi for an official send-off for the force.

France promised to send a 900-strong battalion before the middle of September, with a second battalion to follow.

Annan also visited the base of the currently 2,000-strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in Naqoura.

The UN chief was briefed Tuesday by French Major General Alain Pellegrini, the UNIFIL commander, and other top officials, then reviewed an honor guard of UN troops in blue berets standing at attention on the green lawn inside the UN's white-walled compound.

He laid a wreath at a monument for nearly 300 peacekeepers killed in Lebanon since UNIFIL deployed here in 1978. Muslim and Christian clergymen said prayers, and Annan stood in silence in front of a display of portraits of those killed, including four UNIFIL members killed in an Israel Air Force strike on their base in Khiam on July 25.

Annan is expected to travel to Syria and Iran, Hezbollah's chief allies, later in the week.

The United Nations hopes to create a buffer zone in south Lebanon free of Israeli or Hizbollah forces and policed by up to 15,000 UN troops and a similar number of Lebanese soldiers.

It is hoping that Muslim nations will contribute troops to balance the 7,000 or so pledged by European countries.

Potential Muslim contributors include Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh, although Israel has objected to their taking part because they have no diplomatic ties with Israel.

"The UN should take steps to convince Israel to be rational in seeing the contribution of Indonesian peacekeeping troops," said Indonesia's chief security minister Widodo Adi Sutjipto, whose country has offered 1,000 troops.

Who will help your child? Apathy in America

This is truely disturbing, but what can you expect. I have seen where it is a dead baby lying in the gutter and people just walk by as if it is nothing. To many people have the attuitude, "its not my problem". WAKE UP PEOPLE IT IS OUR PROBLEM!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/default.cdnx/id/11925653/displaymode/1157

Corporate Globalization and Middle East Terrorism

By Charles Sullivan

08/29/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- By now the whole world knows that America is none of the things that she purports to be; that is, everyone except the Americans. It is said that America has fifty states but in fact she has fifty-one, Israel being the fifty-first. Perhaps Great Britain could be counted as the fifty-second.

It is ironic that the people who think they are the freest are the most controlled people on earth. It is equally odd that those who think they are part of the greatest democracy the world has ever known do not participate in a democracy at all; nor do they recognize one when they see it. These facts attest to how thoroughly the American people have been propagandized by the corporate media.

A controlled people have no will of their own. They believe what they are told, and they do what their government tells them to do. They have little intellectual curiosity about the world and rarely, if ever, question authority, much less challenge it. They have little or no knowledge of their nation’s history, and are a frightened and timid people that have no conception of reality. None are more effectively enslaved than those who think they are free. Americans are slaves to a corrupt system that preys upon them and tells them how well they are treated.

As America’s fifty-first state—Zionist Israel influences American foreign policy nearly as much as the corporations that run the government. On Capital Hill the Zionist lobby rivals the power of even the wealthiest corporations. The Pentagon, in particular, is heavily influenced by Zionists, and chief among them are Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Michael Rubin. The combination of Zionism and corporate Plutocracy is a particularly deadly and violent one; a perfect storm that has gathered over the Middle East and rained corpses upon the land in a cyclone of savage violence without end.

The evidence visibly demonstrates that both the American and Israeli governments are savage terrorist states. I make a clear distinction between the people and their respective governments; although the people must bear some of the responsibility for what their governments do. Recent reports from Amnesty International make clear that both nations deliberately target civilians and civilian infrastructure—including roads and bridges, water sanitation facilities, electrical generating stations, ambulances transporting the wounded to hospitals, rescue workers recovering the dead, and even women and children seeking refuge in bomb shelters. Other humanitarian NGOs have uncovered similar findings.

Not only are such events an abomination, they are acts of extreme cowardice; the work of madmen intoxicated by transitory power in pursuit of private wealth.

The Israeli and American governments have little regard for life, or human freedoms. Both thoroughly propagandize their own people and call themselves democracies. They are known to kidnap, imprison, torture, and assassinate their foes without due process. Both possess nuclear arsenals capable of destroying the world many times over. The world surely remembers that America is the only nation to hold human life in such low regard as to actually deploy the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even with Japan’s eminent surrender at hand.

These governments are guilty of the same war crimes that the Nazi leadership was executed for after World War Two. They have histories of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The blood of innocent people runs warm on their hands, and they continually thirst for more.

It is clear that neither America nor Israel is interested in a negotiated peace in the Middle East. Both governments intend to force capitalism upon the region by systematically invading and occupying the Arab states. Their stated intent is to denationalize the immense natural wealth of the region, and turn it over to private corporations; to force the Islamic Arab states to join the World Trade Organization, and to accept capitalism as the new religious order. Some kind of Middle East Free Trade Agreement will likely be brokered at gun point, and the corporate fire sale will commence. Similar plans exist for other parts of the world.

Forget what the talking heads on the television tell you, and ignore the idiocy spewed forth by conservative talk show hosts; America’s Middle East policy has nothing to do with threats stemming from the development of nuclear arsenals, or imaginary terrorist plots to maim and kill, as reported in the corporate media. Such claims are useful propaganda, shameless promotions created to deceive a gullible people into believing there is an eminent threat to their freedoms that must be dealt with militarily. None of it is true.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was foretold in a document titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” This paper was authored some six years ago by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and a host of neocon luminaries who are always clamoring for war. It provides the blue print for what is to come, but it is conveniently ignored by the corporate media.

If the neocons and their Zionist allies succeed, Iran will also be invaded and occupied, followed by Lebanon and Syria. Other states will follow, insuring that America and Israel remain in a state of perpetual war for the next hundred years. Preemptive strikes are the modus operandi. The plan calls for permanent military bases throughout the region, and the U.S. is already constructing fourteen permanent bases in Iraq. America has no intentions of leaving until the last drop of oil runs dry, and Iraq’s natural wealth has been privatized.

The larger purpose of the American-Israeli Middle East policy is to force capitalism onto the region. If they are successful, the occupied territories will fall under virtual martial law, and virtual U.S-Israeli rule. The dollar will become the currency, and every Arab state will be forced to join the WTO, and to comply with its laws. Membership in the WTO effectively renders a nation’s Constitution and its laws null and void. WTO membership is a key element in the new world order envisioned by the world’s wealthiest people.

The independent Arab states will be coerced into accepting loans from the IMF and the World Bank. A key feature of these loans is that they require the state to open its borders to private ownership and foreign investors (privatization). That is what occurred in Iraq when the Bremer orders were issued. A puppet government is installed to lend the appearance of legitimacy to the process. Some kind of Middle East Free Trade Agreement will likely be brokered at gun point; the inhabitants will eventually lose their cultural identity and become westernized. Imagine downtown Baghdad with a McDonalds at every corner, and Wal-Mart Super Centers all around.

This is the New World Order envisioned by George Herbert Walker Bush—corporate governance by the world’s wealthiest individuals. For everyone else it will be a world-sized gulag with all the accoutrements of a concentration camp.

Western capitalists break into a cold sweat when they think about the money to be made. They see private wealth in the form of the Middle East’s immense oil reserves, cheap exploitable labor, and the millions of new consumers that capitalism demands.

Any nation that resists corporate globalization will be labeled ‘terrorist states,’ and subjected to military invasion. The imperial invaders will declare that these states are developing nuclear weapons and present an eminent threat to the U.S and its allies. The corporate media will report that we are bringing democracy to the Middle East. All of this should sound hauntingly familiar.

Once the groundwork is laid, the invasion of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, and all of the corporations that are plundering Iraq can begin in earnest. Some 150 American corporations are already reaping billions in stolen Iraqi wealth. That is just the beginning.

The masters of war are promoting their agenda of corporate globalization by equating the resistance to free trade with terrorism. As all things Bush, this is just marketing hype and brazen lies—pure propaganda. By linking resistance to free trade to terrorism in the public mind, the perpetrators expect to market future wars and more occupations to the people who will be required to carry them out.

Speaking truth in America is becoming tantamount to an act of sedition, or terror. We already know what happens to terrorists in Bush World.

Acting as America’s fifty-first state, Israel’s elite will also reap the economic spoils of war, and expand its power throughout the region. She will then be in position to police the territory, and to put down insurrections with weapons made in the USA.

Much of the world already knows that democracy and capitalism are an oxymoron. As we can see (if we are willing to look), capitalism and free trade oppresses human freedoms, rather than foster them. Do the people of Iraq feel liberated? Their country is being divvied out to corporate predators, while America holds a gun to their heads. When will we remove our blinders and see with clear eyes? Every atrocity that America and her allies accuse their enemies of committing, they have themselves committed. Will we ever remove our blinders and see with clear eyes?

There will never be peace as long as capitalism thrives and men without souls occupy human flesh. Nations will be carpet bombed, and millions of innocent people will suffer and die horribly. The corporate CEOs and their share holders view this as a small price for others to pay, so long as they profit.

In an article published in The New Yorker this week, Seymour Hersch exposed the Pentagon’s covert plot to invade Iran. The corporatocracy considers Iran as the crown jewel of the Middle East. What the Plutocrats did not count on, however, was the fierce resistance the occupying forces have encountered in Iraq, where nothing has gone according to plan. Beyond the green zone there is no part of the country that is safe. The world’s most powerful military cannot defeat the building guerilla resistance that continues to grow and intensify. In Lebanon, the world’s second strongest military was unable to defeat Hezbollah and its antiquated weaponry.

While these are viewed as ominous signs for the New World Order, they are an indication that there may be justice in this world after all. The fierce resistance to occupation by the Palestinians on the West and Bank and the Gaza Strip, the spirited defiance to occupation in Iraq, and the repulsion of the Israeli military from Lebanon are cause for hope. They are victories for the people against their oppressors. Apart from the aggressors, the world recognizes the right of all peoples to resist foreign occupation and to determine their own fate. It is a moral duty. There is hope in resistance. Someone once said, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

In their unfathomable hubris, both the Israeli and the American governments have seriously underestimated the spiritual strength and determination of the freedom fighters resisting corporate globalization. They will never stop fighting until the occupiers have been driven out, as occupying armies always are. The invaders can kill the majority of the population with their sophisticated weaponry, but those who remain will expel them, as the Vietnamese expelled the U.S. from Viet Nam. History has taught us these lessons again and again, but we Americans do not know history; nor do we want to know it.

Sources:

The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time, Antonia Juhasz, May 2006

Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, Dick Cheney and others.

National Security Strategy of the USA, Dick Cheney and others, September, 2002.

Dick Cheney’s Song of America, David Armstrong

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Richard Perle and others, 1996

Watching Lebanon, Seymour Hersch, New Yorker, August 21, 2006

Mad Dog on a Leash, Sheila Samples, Dissident Voice, August 15, 2006

Democracy Now!, Pacifica Radio Network, various dates

Where's the outrage?

U.S. troops have been accused of committing atrocities in Iraq. Americans should care.

By William Neikirk
Tribune senior correspondent

08/27/06 "Chicago Tribune" -- -- WASHINGTON -- Abeer Qassim al-Janabi is not a household name, though perhaps she should be. The 14-year-old girl was repeatedly raped, then shot to death in her home March 12. Her body was set on fire. Her mother, father and sister also were murdered.

It happened in Iraq, in the village of Mahmoudiya near Baghdad, in the so-called Triangle of Death, the most stressful, violent place in a stressful, violent country. The alleged perpetrators: American troops.

Before the incident, the soldiers allegedly downed whiskey, played cards and hit golf balls. Afterward, they dined on grilled chicken wings.

A similar act of violence here in the U.S. would have triggered overpowering outrage, non-stop TV coverage and a grave concern about our military. It might even have surpassed the wall-to-wall coverage that the arrest in the JonBenet Ramsey murder has received.

Yet no great public outcry has arisen over one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq war. People say the incident is appalling and inexcusable in one breath then in the next shrug it off as just another unfortunate example of what war can do to young soldiers.

For all its horror, the murder of al-Janabi and her family has not become another My Lai Massacre, in which U.S. forces mowed down as many as 500 people in March 1968 and turned many Americans against the war.

Instead, the murders are another horror piled on top of a series of horrors, including the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha last year and the torture at Abu Ghraib prison.

Together, the brutalities have contributed to a desensitizing of the American public to atrocities in Iraq. As repugnant as they are, we have learned to write them off as part of the tragedy of this war.

"Almost surely, [the crimes] will be treated as another byproduct of the war," said Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University professor and a military expert. "I doubt that even the opponents of the war will make much of it as they do not want to be seen as anti-soldier.

"That the anti-war movement portrays itself as pro-soldier," Moskos added, "is the big difference from the anti-war movement of Vietnam."

Bill Taylor, an Army colonel in Vietnam and now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a few more atrocities like the one in Mahmoudiya could change the pro-military attitude.

"You add this one to Haditha, and then you have a spate of these, look out," he said.

Jonathan Shay, a Boston psychiatrist and author who has studied Vietnam War atrocities, said American military leaders know that "every atrocity strengthens the enemy and potentially disables the troops who were involved."

Why such atrocities occur is unclear. But experts point to the lowering of recruiting standards to fill spots in an all-volunteer army and the use of troops to police in an extremely dangerous atmosphere.

"We live in a country that has a voluntary military but which more than 95 percent of our citizens have elected not to serve," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank.

"If the mainstream of our society refuses to serve, it shouldn't be surprising that you get soldiers who are not qualified to serve," he added.

The Bush administration has brushed off the rape-murder case as an aberration, saying the majority of our troops would never do such a thing. Legislators have shied away from questions, reluctant to criticize troops.

When Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a decorated Vietnam veteran and a critic of the Iraq war, said U.S. troops "killed innocent civilians in cold blood" in Haditha, one of the Marines under investigation in the attack sued him for libel.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), a retired Marine Corps colonel, even apologized to the Marines for appearing to suggest troops had lied and covered up the Haditha incident.

Mike Steele, a professor of literature at Pacific University in Oregon and a former anti-war activist during the Vietnam War, said some people are in denial. "Who wants to believe that the nice kid next door could do something like this?" he said. "It's difficult."

Among those charged with the rape and murder of al-Janabi is Steven Green, an Army private who has since been discharged for a personality disorder. He denies wrongdoing, but before the incident he told a Washington Post reporter, "Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like, `All right, let's go get some pizza.'"

At a Baghdad hearing, a member of the same unit, Pfc. Justin Cross, said constant attacks in the Triangle of Death had put the soldiers under incredible stress. "You're just walking a death walk," he said. "It drives you nuts. You feel like every step you might get blown up."

The deaths of two soldiers before the slayings in Mahmoudiya "pretty much crushed the platoon," Cross said. To deal with the stress and the toll on their unit, he said, they turned to whiskey and painkillers.

Judge Blocks Florida Voter Registration Law

The Associated Press

Monday 28 August 2006

Miami - A federal judge on Monday declared a new Florida voter registration law unconstitutional, ruling that its stiff penalties for violations threaten free speech rights and that political parties were improperly exempted.

The 48-page ruling by US District Judge Patricia Seitz means that state authorities cannot enforce the provisions of the law. It took effect Jan. 1 and has been blamed by several labor unions and nonprofit groups for effectively blocking voter registration drives across the state because of the financial risk.

"If third-party voter registration organizations permanently cease their voter registration efforts, Florida citizens will be stripped of an important means and choice of registering to vote and of associating with one another," Seitz wrote.

The law also "unconstitutionally discriminates" against third-party registration groups because it does not apply to political parties, Seitz added.

The law imposes fines of $250 for each form that is submitted to election officials more than 10 days after it is collected from an individual and can reach $5,000 for each form that is collected but never submitted.

State officials said the decision would be appealed to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

"At this point, we respectfully disagree with the ruling and plan to take the issue up on appeal," said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb, whose office oversees elections.

The measure quietly passed the Legislature in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election that saw national attention focused on Florida as a key battleground state and the registration of more than 1.5 million new voters, nearly twice the number registered in the 2000 election cycle.

"This is a win for democracy and will send a signal to officials in Florida and other states that you cannot erect unreasonable barriers to voter registration," said Wendy Weiser, co-counsel for the third-party groups and deputy director of the Democracy Program at the New York University law school's Brennan Center for Justice.

The plaintiffs in the case included the League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and other groups.

Attorneys for the state had argued that the Legislature was within its powers to single out third-party groups because of evidence of past registration problems.

Hizbollah's reconstruction of Lebanon is winning the loyalty of disaffected Shia

By Robert Fisk

08/24/06 "The Independent" -- -- Hizbollah has trumped both the UN army and the Lebanese government by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars - most of it almost certainly from Iran - into the wreckage of southern Lebanon and Beirut's destroyed southern suburbs. Its massive new reconstruction effort - free of charge to all those Lebanese whose homes were destroyed or damaged in Israel's ferocious five-week assault on the country - has won the loyalty of even the most disaffected members of the Shia community in Lebanon.

Hizbollah has made it clear that it has no intention of disarming under the UN Security Council's 1701 ceasefire resolution and yesterday afternoon, Major-General Alain Pellegrini, the commander of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon - which the Americans and British are relying upon to seize the guerrilla army's weapons - personally confirmed to me at his headquarters in Naqoura that "the Israelis can't ask us to disarm Hizbollah". Describing the ceasefire as "very fragile" and "very dangerous", he stated that disarming Hizbollah "is not written in the mandate".

But for now - and in the total absence of the 8,000-strong foreign military force that is intended to join Unifil with a supposedly "robust" mandate - Hizbollah has already won the war for "hearts and minds". Most householders in the south have received - or are receiving - a minimum initial compensation payment of $12,000 (£6,300), either for new furniture or to cover their family's rent while Hizbollah construction gangs rebuild their homes. The money is being paid in cash - almost all in crisp new $100 bills - to up to 15,000 families across Lebanon whose property was blitzed by the Israelis, a bill of $180m which is going to rise far higher when reconstruction and other compensation is paid.

In the 20sqkm of Beirut's southern suburbs which have been destroyed or badly damaged in 35 days of Israeli bombing, 500,000 residents - most of them Shia - lost their homes. But money is being poured in. For example, one Shia owning four floors of an apartment block, Hussein Selim, has already received $42,000 in cash for his possessions and lost furniture. And Hizbollah has pledged to rebuild the entire municipal area from its own - or perhaps Iran's - funds.

A frightening side to this long-term promise for believers in the UN ceasefire is that Hizbollah has encouraged its Shia population to rent homes in Khalde, south of Beirut, since it intends to delay its entire city construction project for a year - because of its conviction that the ceasefire will break down and that another Israeli-Hizbollah war will only wreck newly built homes.

Across the devastation of southern Lebanon, Hizbollah has now visited hundreds of thousands of Shia families for details of their losses. In some cases, Lebanese government officials - largely distrusted by the local population - have also made notes of compensation costs but all the authorities have done so far is to start the repair of water pipes and power lines. I found bulldozers working for Hizbollah's "Jihad al-Bena" company, clearing rubble from streets and tearing down half-destroyed houses. "We are doing this for nothing at the moment, but we know we will get paid because we trust Sheikh Hassan," a construction team leader told me. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has promised to indemnify all survivors.

Driving more than 100 miles across the south of the country yesterday, the sheer enormity of Hizbollah's task - and of the Lebanese government's failure - becomes evident. Looking across thegreen countryside of southern Lebanon, the villages appear undamaged as they bask in thesun. But the closer you get, the more you notice vast grey fields of rubble that were once homes. Some villages - Bint Jbeil, for example, and Zibqin - have been half-destroyed.

In Zibqin itself, I found one especially poignant ruin: the bombed remains of a mosque well over 1,000 years old which the Lebanese believe contains the body of Zein Ali Yaqin, son of the Prophet Yacoub - Jacob in the Jewish faith - and grandson of the Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham. Two of Abraham's sons - Yacoub and Ismail (Ishmael) - define the split between Islam and Judaism, the former believing God told Abraham to sacrifice Ismail and the latter contending it was Yacoub/Jacob who was to be sacrificed. Zein Ali Yaqin is thus of precious Jewish lineage - yet the casket containing his mortal remains actually moved on the floor of the shrine as Israeli bombs fell outside.

The explosives have blasted down an old façade and tumbled hundreds of rocks from the original outside wall of the green-domed mosque on the slope below, cracking open the interior walls and cascading wreckage on to the floor beside the cloth-covered tomb. "The Israelis did all this to their own man," Hussein Barakat said as he hobbled down the road below. "Everyone here knows the origin of our little shrine, but look at it now." Mr Barakat is 69 and was the only villager to remain in Zibqin when the rest of the villagers fled the Israeli bombardment. He has a wound on one finger and has been left half deaf from the sound of explosions.

Bodies of civilians and Hizbollah fighters were still being unearthed from the wreckage of southern Lebanon this week; four brothers, all members of Hizbollah it turned out, died together under Israeli fire in the eastern town of Khiam. Some civilian families searched in vain through the rubble for relatives. In Siddiqin, just east of Qana, I found one shopkeeper who had spent hours trying to discover the ruins of his two shops which had been turned to dust by aerial bombs. But he, too, believed that "Sheikh Hassan" would rebuild his home. A few miles away, I found a 65-year-old woman clambering like a cat over the pancaked roof of her home, looking for her family gold in clefts between the packed concrete.

It is Hizbollah's army of workers which has been told to rebuild these villages. The guerrilla army's political and economic organisation will hire the tens of thousands of men to reconstruct a virtual city within Beirut and turn south Lebanon's wasteland back into the farming and tobacco-growing villages that existed two months ago.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Terrorist Watch List' To Meet Quota

Marshals Say They Must File One Surveillance Detection Report, Or SDR, Per Month

POSTED: 9:49 pm MDT July 21, 2006
UPDATED: 10:56 pm MDT July 21, 2006

DENVER -- You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.
Click here to find out more!

These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. Air marshals told 7NEWS that managers in Las Vegas created and continue to maintain this potentially dangerous quota system.

"Do these reports have real life impacts on the people who are identified as potential terrorists?" 7NEWS Investigator Tony Kovaleski asked.

"Absolutely," a federal air marshal replied.

7NEWS obtained an internal Homeland Security document defining an SDR as a report designed to identify terrorist surveillance activity.

"When you see a decision like this, for these reports, who loses here?" Kovaleski asked.

"The people we're supposed to protect -- the American public," an air marshal said.

What kind of impact would it have for a flying individual to be named in an SDR?

"That could have serious impact ... They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious," said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.

That's why several air marshals object to a July 2004 memo from top management in the Las Vegas office, a memo that reminded air marshals of the SDR requirement.

The body of the memo said, "Each federal air marshal is now expected to generate at least one SDR per month."

"Does that memo read to you that Federal Air Marshal headquarters has set a quota on these reports?" Kovaleski asked.

"Absolutely, no doubt," an air marshal replied.

A second management memo, also dated July 2004, said, "There may come an occasion when you just don't see anything out of the ordinary for a month at a time, but I'm sure that if you are looking for it, you'll see something."

Another federal air marshal said that not only is there a quota in Las Vegas for SDRs, but that "it directly reflects on (their) performance evaluations" and on how much money they make.

The director of the Air Marshal Service, Dana Brown, declined 7NEWS' request for an interview on the quota system. But the agency points to a memo from August 2004 that said there is not a quota for submitting SDRs and which goes on to say, "I do not expect reports that are inaccurate or frivolous."

But, Las Vegas-based air marshals say the quota system remains in force, now more than two years after managers sent the original memos, and that it's a mandate from management that impacts annual raises, bonuses, awards and special assignments.

"To meet this quota, to get their raises, do you think federal air marshals in Las Vegas are making some of this stuff up?" Kovaleski asked.

"I know they are. It's a joke," an air marshal replied.

"Have marshals in the Las Vegas office, I don't want to say fabricated, but 'created' reports?" Kovaleski asked.

"Creative writing -- stretching a long ways the truth, yes," an air marshal replied.

One example, according to air marshals, occurred on one flight leaving Las Vegas, when an unknowing passenger, most likely a tourist, was identified in an SDR for doing nothing more than taking a photo of the Las Vegas skyline as his plane rolled down the runway.

"You're saying that was not an accurate portrayal of a potential terrorist activity?" Kovaleski asked.

"No, it was not," an air marshal said.

"It was a marshal trying to meet a quota ..." Kovaleski said.

"Yes, he was," the air marshal replied.

Strange said he didn't have a quota in the Atlanta office when he was in charge.

"I would never have done that ... You are going to have people reporting every suspicious looking activity they come across, whether they in their heart feel like it's a threat, just to meet the quota," Strange said.

Strange and other air marshals said the quota allows the government to fill a database with bad information.

A Las Vegas air marshal said he didn't write an SDR every month for exactly that reason.

"Well, it's intelligence information, and like any system, if you put garbage in, you get garbage out," the air marshal said.

"I would like to see an investigation -- a real investigation conducted into the ways things are done here," the air marshal in Las Vegas said.

Although the agency strongly denies any presence of a quota system, Las Vegas-based air marshals have produced documents that show their performance review is directly linked to producing SDRs.

IS THIS DEMOCRACY IN ISREAL

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO OF PROTESTERS, IN ISREAL, BEING KILLED.

Bush's final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator?

London Times | August 20, 2006

The news was buried in a New York Times story last week but it confirmed what others in the Washington chattering classes have been observing lately.

The context is that the White House has been inviting outsiders in to the Oval Office to discuss strategy in Iraq. The new chief of staff Josh Bolten has apparently been trying to pierce the intellectual cocoon in which the president comfortably resides. Bush family consigliere James Baker has already been asked to rescue the president’s failed Iraq policy.

But last week the new nugget: an anonymous “military affairs expert” attended a White House briefing and reported: “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy. Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

Indeed. The number of civilian casualties in what can now only be called Iraq’s civil war grows with each month. The thousands of innocent Iraqis killed in the past month dwarfs the civilian losses in Lebanon and Israel. The attempt by Nouri al-Maliki’s government to put down sectarian warfare in Baghdad has failed, requiring more US troops in the capital and thus abandoning the heartland of the insurgency, Anbar, to the enemy. General John Abizaid, head of American forces in the Middle East, told the Senate earlier this month that violence in Iraq is “probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular”.

Last Wednesday more grim statistics emerged. The number of roadside bomb attacks are at an all-time high. In July 1,666 “improvised explosive devices” exploded and 959 were discovered before they went off. In January 1,454 bombs exploded or were found. That’s the wrong direction, and it’s after an elected unity government has been installed.

A Pentagon official anonymously told the press last week: “The insurgency has got worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels. The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”

Remember Dick Cheney’s comments about the insurgency being in its “last throes”? Those words have become as credible as the president’s denial of torture as an interrogation policy authorised by the White House.

There comes a point at which even Bush’s platinum-strength levels of denial have to bow to reality. That point may be now. Why else would he be reading Albert Camus’s existentialist masterpiece, The Stranger, in Texas?

Recently Bush has been wondering why the Shi’ites in southern Iraq have displayed such ingratitude to the man who liberated them from Saddam. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that a populace terrorised by sectarian murder, nonexistent government and near anarchy might feel angry at the man who rid them of dictatorship but then refused to provide a minimal level of security for the aftermath. And so, the frustrated born-again neocon in Bush may be ceding to the caucus of those dubbed the “to-hell-with-them” hawks.

This conservative caucus never liked the neocon argument for removing Saddam. They didn’t like nation building and didn’t believe that Iraqis were capable of democracy. They wanted to remove a WMD threat but, most of all, they wanted to strike terror into the heart of the enemy by showing what US military might could do.

Depose Saddam, remove the weapons, install a client dictator and leave as much rubble behind: that was the game plan. It would deter the Iranians and leave a light military footprint. It had Donald Rumsfeld written all over it and it helps explain a lot about the Bush administration’s dogged refusal to add more troops in the first few months after the invasion.

Rumsfeld and Cheney may well be the key proponents of this argument. It is, of course, stupid. When you are dealing with a generational struggle to defang Islamist extremism, your central weapon is winning over moderate Muslims and Arabs. You do the reverse by bombing a country into chaos and then leaving.

When one of the biggest threats in a terrorised world are failed states in the Middle East, why create another one in Iraq? When western unity and intelligence sharing is essential, why pursue a strategy that is almost guaranteed to divide allies and unite all Muslims under the extremist banner?

What’s done is done, however. But the Bush administration knows that its Iraq debacle is central to its legacy and future. What’s interesting in the latest polls — in the middle of the Israel-Lebanon war and the foiled terror plot that shut Heathrow — is how Iraq is still more important to Americans than the more general issue of terrorism.

Pollster John Zogby opined: “President Bush’s numbers mainly reflect the country’s thinking on the war in Iraq, and most people have made up their minds that the war overall has not been worth the loss of American lives. Terrorism is an important issue to Americans, but when it comes to judging Bush’s presidency, their decision is based largely on Iraq.”

Pessimism about Iraq has deepened on every front since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Last week’s Pew poll found that 63% believed that the US was “losing ground” in preventing a civil war in Iraq. Among Republicans, the numbers have dropped 16% on this question in the past two months alone. More worryingly, a clear majority now believes that Bush is not a “strong leader” and “not trustworthy”, two key qualities Bush once had commanding support on.

And anti-incumbent feeling is stronger than at any time since the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. One poll last week had Bush’s ratings at a new low of 34%. Crunch time approaches.

If the Republicans are to recover by November 2008, let alone November 2006, they have to get Iraq behind them. They have to show progress or provide some credible strategy for victory that is not simply more of the gruelling same. Bush doesn’t have one.

The to-hell-with-them hawks do. And they’re gaining traction. Before too long a compliant US-backed dictator may not seem like such a bad option in Mesopotamia. And I feel Rumsfeld will be telling himself he knew it all along.

Bush's final gamble: giving Iraq a dictator?

London Times | August 20, 2006

The news was buried in a New York Times story last week but it confirmed what others in the Washington chattering classes have been observing lately.

The context is that the White House has been inviting outsiders in to the Oval Office to discuss strategy in Iraq. The new chief of staff Josh Bolten has apparently been trying to pierce the intellectual cocoon in which the president comfortably resides. Bush family consigliere James Baker has already been asked to rescue the president’s failed Iraq policy.

But last week the new nugget: an anonymous “military affairs expert” attended a White House briefing and reported: “Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy. Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect, but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

Indeed. The number of civilian casualties in what can now only be called Iraq’s civil war grows with each month. The thousands of innocent Iraqis killed in the past month dwarfs the civilian losses in Lebanon and Israel. The attempt by Nouri al-Maliki’s government to put down sectarian warfare in Baghdad has failed, requiring more US troops in the capital and thus abandoning the heartland of the insurgency, Anbar, to the enemy. General John Abizaid, head of American forces in the Middle East, told the Senate earlier this month that violence in Iraq is “probably as bad as I’ve seen it, in Baghdad in particular”.

Last Wednesday more grim statistics emerged. The number of roadside bomb attacks are at an all-time high. In July 1,666 “improvised explosive devices” exploded and 959 were discovered before they went off. In January 1,454 bombs exploded or were found. That’s the wrong direction, and it’s after an elected unity government has been installed.

A Pentagon official anonymously told the press last week: “The insurgency has got worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels. The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”

Remember Dick Cheney’s comments about the insurgency being in its “last throes”? Those words have become as credible as the president’s denial of torture as an interrogation policy authorised by the White House.

There comes a point at which even Bush’s platinum-strength levels of denial have to bow to reality. That point may be now. Why else would he be reading Albert Camus’s existentialist masterpiece, The Stranger, in Texas?

Recently Bush has been wondering why the Shi’ites in southern Iraq have displayed such ingratitude to the man who liberated them from Saddam. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that a populace terrorised by sectarian murder, nonexistent government and near anarchy might feel angry at the man who rid them of dictatorship but then refused to provide a minimal level of security for the aftermath. And so, the frustrated born-again neocon in Bush may be ceding to the caucus of those dubbed the “to-hell-with-them” hawks.

This conservative caucus never liked the neocon argument for removing Saddam. They didn’t like nation building and didn’t believe that Iraqis were capable of democracy. They wanted to remove a WMD threat but, most of all, they wanted to strike terror into the heart of the enemy by showing what US military might could do.

Depose Saddam, remove the weapons, install a client dictator and leave as much rubble behind: that was the game plan. It would deter the Iranians and leave a light military footprint. It had Donald Rumsfeld written all over it and it helps explain a lot about the Bush administration’s dogged refusal to add more troops in the first few months after the invasion.

Rumsfeld and Cheney may well be the key proponents of this argument. It is, of course, stupid. When you are dealing with a generational struggle to defang Islamist extremism, your central weapon is winning over moderate Muslims and Arabs. You do the reverse by bombing a country into chaos and then leaving.

When one of the biggest threats in a terrorised world are failed states in the Middle East, why create another one in Iraq? When western unity and intelligence sharing is essential, why pursue a strategy that is almost guaranteed to divide allies and unite all Muslims under the extremist banner?

What’s done is done, however. But the Bush administration knows that its Iraq debacle is central to its legacy and future. What’s interesting in the latest polls — in the middle of the Israel-Lebanon war and the foiled terror plot that shut Heathrow — is how Iraq is still more important to Americans than the more general issue of terrorism.

Pollster John Zogby opined: “President Bush’s numbers mainly reflect the country’s thinking on the war in Iraq, and most people have made up their minds that the war overall has not been worth the loss of American lives. Terrorism is an important issue to Americans, but when it comes to judging Bush’s presidency, their decision is based largely on Iraq.”

Pessimism about Iraq has deepened on every front since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Last week’s Pew poll found that 63% believed that the US was “losing ground” in preventing a civil war in Iraq. Among Republicans, the numbers have dropped 16% on this question in the past two months alone. More worryingly, a clear majority now believes that Bush is not a “strong leader” and “not trustworthy”, two key qualities Bush once had commanding support on.

And anti-incumbent feeling is stronger than at any time since the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. One poll last week had Bush’s ratings at a new low of 34%. Crunch time approaches.

If the Republicans are to recover by November 2008, let alone November 2006, they have to get Iraq behind them. They have to show progress or provide some credible strategy for victory that is not simply more of the gruelling same. Bush doesn’t have one.

The to-hell-with-them hawks do. And they’re gaining traction. Before too long a compliant US-backed dictator may not seem like such a bad option in Mesopotamia. And I feel Rumsfeld will be telling himself he knew it all along.

70's Law Costs 61,000 Military Widows

Thousands of Dollars in Survivor Benefits
By Lizette Alvarez
The New York Times

Saturday 19 August 2006

As many as 61,000 military widows whose husbands died of causes relating to their military service lose out on thousands of dollars a year in survivor benefits because of a law that dates from the 1970s.

Widows and retirees have spent decades trying to persuade Congress to change the law, which hits hardest at the widows of lower-ranking service members and is referred to by many critics as the "widow's tax."

The Senate passed such a change last year and again this year as part of the military authorization bill. But House Republican leaders oppose the change because of its steep price tag, nearly $9 billion over 10 years, Senate legislative aides from both parties say. A change was not in the military bill that passed the House, but lawmakers who support the change are hoping to make it part of the bill's final version, which is now being worked on by a bipartisan Congressional committee.

"My husband thought he was securing my future," said Edie Smith, a member of the Gold Star Wives, a group of military widows who are lobbying to change the law. "He didn't realize his own disability would void the benefit he purchased for me."

A 1972 law created the Survivor Benefits Plan, a Department of Defense retirement income fund similar to a life insurance policy. The plan, in turn, pays benefits calculated according to a dead service member's rank and length of service.

In addition, widows of veterans who died of service-related causes receive monthly cash stipends from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Known as the Dependency and Indemnity Compensation stipend, it is currently $1,033 plus $257 for each child.

But under the law, which placed restrictions on the plan that it created, the payment to widows enrolled in the Survivor Benefits Plan is reduced, dollar for dollar, by the amount of the Dependency and Indemnity Compensation stipend.

For example, a widow who would be entitled to $1,000 from the Survivor Benefits Plan and the $1,033 Dependency and Indemnity stipend receives $1,033, not $2,033.

Widows whose husband paid into the plan are reimbursed their premiums, without interest, but the amount is taxed and does not make up the losses from the plan.

The Department of Defense opposes changing the law to allow both payments, arguing that survivors should not receive two separate benefits for a single death.

But widows and their supporters say that the Pentagon's opposition to a change in the law really stems from its cost, especially at a time of rising expenses for the war in Iraq.

They also argue that because service members paid into the Survivors Benefits Plan, its benefits should not be reduced.

"If you take one benefit from another, you don't leave the survivor with very much," said Col. Lee Lange, the deputy director of government relations for the influential Military Officers Association of America, which has made this issue a priority. "These are widows. Let them collect both."

Juan del Castillo, a retired Coast Guard commander who has been paying into the plan since 1972, accused the Pentagon of "stealing money from widows."

"They are financing their operation from money stolen from military widows,'' Mr. Castillo said. "They have been doing that since 1972.''

Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, who has pushed for five years to change the law, said he had allies in the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and the committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan. The $9 billion price tag needed to insure a full payout under both plans sounds expensive, Mr. Nelson said, but is less than the price of a single aircraft carrier.

"Widows and orphans are made as a result of war," he said. "They are victims of war. They are giving the ultimate sacrifice, and the nation has an obligation to care for them."

In the last two years, Congress has passed several bills to ease restrictions in the Survivor Benefits Plan. It ended a reduction in benefits to widows who reached the age of 62. And in 2003, as more and more women were widowed because of the war in Iraq, Congress decided to allow those whose husbands died after Nov. 23, 2003, to receive money from both funds by designating surviving children instead of wives as beneficiaries. But that does not affect the vast number of the 61,000 widows whose husbands died before that date.

Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, does not support including the change in this year's military authorization bill. But he has said Congress is doing right by the widows, pointing out that last year it approved significant increases in life insurance payouts and death benefits.

That "should have been done a long time ago," Mr. Hunter said.