Down in the Bush Bunker

Torture's Final Stand

Bunker Days with George
By MIKE WHITNEY


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CounterPunch.org
Weekend Edition
October 8 / 9, 2005

Bush's speech to the National Endowment for Democracy was a long and tedious journey through the shadowy world of terrorism. It was loaded with the same wearisome phantoms and dreary evil-doers that have appeared in every Bush speech since September 2001. Bush is beginning to sound like the three wheeled ox-cart trundling down the road emitting the same shrill screech with every rotation. The man needs some new material.

His dismal performance on Thursday further demonstrated his inability to grasp reality or to deal with the mess he's created. He dredged up the lackluster imagery of 9-11 to cobble together a 40 minute monologue that excluded every topic of national interest except terrorism. Even his audience, which was chock-full of flag-waving jingoes and "democracy-spreading" zealots, appeared dumbstruck.

"Recently our country observed the fourth anniversary of a great evil, and looked back on a great turning point in our history," Bush said. "We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire, or rest, until the war on terror is won."

9-11; 9-11; 9-11, ad infinitum ...

Bush's penchant for repetition would leave Joseph Geobbels wincing. It's simply impossible to reiterate the same mantra for 4 years without producing a jaw-dropping silence among one's audience. That's especially true given the latest polls that show that only 7% of Americans think that terrorism is the most important topic on the national docket. For Bush, however, terrorism is the last flimsy bit of straw that holds his presidency together.

"Our nation stood guard on tense borders; we spoke for the rights of dissidents and the hopes of exile; we aided the rise of new democracies on the ruins of tyranny," Bush boomed ... "In this new century, freedom is once again assaulted by enemies determined to roll back generations of democratic progress."

Bush's delusional ravings are increasingly reminiscent of his German forebears in the waning "bunker-days" of the Reich.

Is there someone in the crowd who hasn't heard of Bush's threat to veto a Defense Dept spending bill to preserve his inalienable right to torture prisoners? And yet, even while the bombs are falling on far off Tal Afar, or thousands of America's poor and huddled masses have been shunted off to relocation centers, or hundreds of skeletal prisoners in Guantanamo waste away under Bush's approving glare; the imposter-in-chief still rattles on about "freedom and democracy".

It's extraordinary.

Bush's soliloquy contained all the shrill invective and empty-headed rhetoric we've heard a thousand times before; the same bedraggled metaphors the same fusty platitudes, the same scripted delivery.

"While the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism ... .This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent, political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom."

Bush has joined fellow-travelers Hitchens, Friedman, and Blair in pushing the errant theory that terrorism arises from an "evil ideology". The assumption has been discredited by experts like Robert Pape, who have proved beyond a doubt that more than 90% of all terrorist attacks are a response to occupation not ideology. They hate our soldiers garrisoned in their countries not "our freedoms".

"Figures show that Al Qaida today is less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the US and Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim counties." (Robert Pape; NY Times 7-9-05)

Still, we can't expect Bush or his dissembling cadres to abandon their last frail shred of legitimacy.

No way.

If Bush was serious about "evil ideologies" he'd direct his attention to the neocon dogma that has already killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, with millions more entering the imperial crosshairs every day.

Who are the real terrorists?

"We know the vision of the radicals because they've openly stated it," Bush averred. "The militant network wants to use the vacuum created by an American retreat to gain control of a country ... ..The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror."

Blah, blah, blah. There's nothing here but pure, unalloyed fear-mongering; 5 years of blather neatly wrapped in one fatuous paragraph.

What a pathetic creature Bush is; a tattered coat-on-a-stick waving his finger in the air in false bravado with head bobbing like it's on a spring. What a poseur, a flimsy, cardboard cut-out of a man, slapped on a TV screen in a blue suit, or with sleeves rolled up for a Crawford photo-op. If you could get close enough you could pass your hand through this pasty-gray hologram; this vacuous political light-show that appears like an apparition and then vanishes into thin air; its 100% fakery from stem to stern.

How apropos that Bush would proffer his terror-fantasies to the NED, that amalgam of global warriors who are under contract to spread the neoliberal message to the four corners of the earth; the modern-day Trostkyites who siphon money from the public till to topple regimes and bring in the corporate parasites from Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater. How convenient to have the forces of empire assembled under one blood-stained banner to reaffirm their lifelong commitment to pilfering the world's oil and grinding the great mass of humanity into endless, crushing poverty.

Bush's terror-speech will do nothing to boost his popularity. The latest polls all show Bush and Co. headed for the bottom of the political fish-tank. Don't expect a change in tactics though, Bush will ride bin Laden's coattails to the bitter end. Terrorism is the grand deception; the "Big Lie" that animates the war machine and breathes life into the crusade of wanton destruction.

"The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century ... .. It's like the ideology of communism ... and explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy is dismissive of free peoples, claiming that men and women who live in liberty are weak and decadent ... .. Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation, decline, and collapse. Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future".

Yup; 4 years later and they still "hate our freedoms". They're not seeking relief from the American soldier who has a boot on their neck, or who shoots them at check-points, or who humiliates them in their own home in front of their children, or who tortures them in Saddam's prisons, or who bombs their wedding parties, or who poisons their land, or who steals their resources, or who savagely kills over 100,000 of their brothers and sisters.

Nope; it's "our freedoms" they hate.

The people who tuned in to Bush's speech thinking they'd hear something different, some willingness to change direction and put the ship-of-state aright, must have been sorely disappointed. The Bush loyalists are radicals to the core, unable to accept responsibility for their actions and incapable of reason. The speech was the culmination of 5 years of unrelenting deception and demagoguery. Nothing has changed. It's futile to hope that fanaticism can be tempered or mitigated. It's either rooted out or it spreads.



Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com

Bush's Supreme Folly

Courting Disaster: Bush's Supreme Folly

Empire Burlesque - Chris Floyd - Last week, George W. Bush filled the final vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court – and right on cue, all the knee-jerk Bush-bashers were up in arms, sputtering the usual objections: Unqualified crony! Right-wing apparatchik! Fawning, groveling Bush Family factotum! Wheel-greasing goon in high-priced threads!

www.chris-floyd.com



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Supreme Court Justice Roberts

Moot Court: Harriet,
Jughead and Judicial Jokery
Chris Floyd

Empire Burlesque
Friday, 07 October 2005


This is an expanded version of the column published in the Oct. 7 edition of The Moscow Times. For annotations and sources, see the Times version here.

Poor little dissident lambkins. They must be the only people left in the United States who still take the country's governance seriously. For it's obvious that the nation's political elite – whatever party label they happen to wear – do not. No ruling class that was actually serious about governing would ever countenance the pair of jokers whom Bush has foisted on what is supposed to be the ultimate guarantor of law in the land. Yet the first bad joke sailed through with bipartisan support and the second is bound to follow. Clearly this is an Establishment in the throes of nervous breakdown, collapsing in a fit of hysteria-induced giggles while a pack of ruthless thugs loot the store and burn down the house.

For its sheer brazen mockery of the judicial system, Bush's nomination of his personal lawyer Harriet Miers to the high court outdoes the installation of hard-right knee-capper John "Jughead" Roberts as Chief Justice. Jughead spent most of his early career trying to screw the poor and the dark-skinned out of whatever meagre rights and protections they had won after hundreds of years of slavery, exclusion and savage repression. He really made his bones, however, with his stalwart service in the Busha Nostra's shutdown of the Florida recount in 2000. For this, Jug was elevated to the federal appeals court, where – while he was negotiating for the Supreme slot – he upheld Bush's imperial right to "disappear" anyone on earth into his own rigged system of military tribunals.

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Nominated Bush Personal Council, Miers



Miers, who has zero judicial experience, is cut from the same cloth. Bush first hired Miers to dig into his own past and bury the skeletons she found there as he limbered up for his presidential run in the 1990s, AP reports. Miers delivered the goods, brokering a convoluted $23 million payoff to former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes and his business partner. Barnes said he'd used political pull to get young war-coward Georgie into the National Guard back in the Vietnam day, the Washington Post reports. With payoff in hand, the whistleblower's memory suddenly became all fuzzy. Miers was also instrumental in wangling Bush out of a jury duty assignment: the standard jury questionnaire would have revealed the drunk driving conviction that Bush had hidden for more than 20 years, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. (Yes, Bush is the first convicted criminal ever elected – or in this case, selected – as president.)

Miers – an ex-Catholic turned hardcore Protestant evangelical – has broader experience, of course. She was the managing partner of a high-powered Texas law firm that, under her gentle Christian guidance, paid out more than $30 million in two separate cases of helping corporate clients defraud their investors, The Huffington Post reports. At the firm, Miers also walked in Our Saviour's footsteps by specializing in union-busting and gutting worker safety protections. As the firm's prospectus proudly noted: "We defend [safety and injury] claims of any type, including multiple death cases." If you accidentally fed a few of your coolies into the company wood-chipper, no worries: Holy Harriet and her crew would have your back.

After defrauding investors and backing corporate killers, Miers moved to the White House, where, as the Los Angeles Times reports, she became Bush's chief gatekeeper for his most important briefings, including the August 6, 2001 number entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." – you know, the explicit, hair-raising report that somehow lulled the entire Bush team into a warm, comfy sleep until September 11. According to Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman, Miers then became "heavily involved in the War on Terror" that followed those fortuitous attacks. ("Through my tears, I see opportunity," as Bush declared repeatedly in those palmy days of 90 percent approval ratings).

This week Mehlman has been on the horn to Bush's hard-right "base" (although we prefer the more eloquent Arabic term for this loyal band: "al Qaeda"), assuring them that Miers "will not interfere with the administration's management of the War on Terrorism," The Hill reports. He said Miers believes that neither the courts nor Congress should "micromanage" the Terror War, i.e., put fetters on the unrestrained powers of the Commander-in-Chief to kill, incarcerate and torture whom he sees fit. This is particularly important now, as the revelations of blood-soaked atrocity in Bush's prisons have grown so mountainous and foul that even the rubber-stamps in the Senate were forced this week to approve a cosmetic and meaningless measure to set guidelines for interrogating captives. (The bill leaves a gaping black hole for unregulated CIA interrogations, however, and will in any case be killed or watered down to even thinner gruel by the more zealous Bushist cadres in the House.)

In fact, as White House counsel, Miers "provided the president with guidance on the legal parameters" for the Terror War, Mehlman told the faithful. In other words, Miers helped draw up the "justifications" for torture, rendition and aggressive war which she will now be ruling upon at the Supreme Court. Oh, there'll be a hot time in the old gulag when Harriet joins Jughead on the bench!

But who cares? Most of the wiggly, giggly Democratic "opposition" – which sent Jughead over the top with a big bipartisan cushion – is already rolling over and playing dead for Miers; in fact, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid actually recommended that Bush appoint this torture-enabling, worker-whipping political fixer to the nation's highest court. The whole American leadership class has given up democratic government for the brutal absurdities of junta rule: cronyism, conquest, corruption and moral collapse.

Annotations

New Supreme Court nominee's
ties to Bush's National Guard scandal
Philadelphia Daily News, Oct. 3, 2005

Miers-Led Law Firm Repeatedly Forced
to Pay Damages for Defrauding Investors
The Huffington Post, Oct. 3, 2005

Texas Speaker Reportedly Helped Bush
Get Into Guard
Washington Post, Sept. 21, 1999

Harriet Miers, Pro and Anti
WorldViews, Oct. 3, 2005

Miers Briefed Bush on Famous Bin Laden
Memo
Editor & Publisher, Oct. 4, 2005

Harriet Miers "Worships the President
WorldViews, Oct. 3, 2005

Miers Backs Wide Executive Role;
Helped Develop Patriot Act
Boston Globe, Oct. 5, 2005

Harriet Miers Headed Law Firm
Engaged in Union Busting
Confined Space, Oct. 3, 2005

Soothing the Seething Right Wing
The Hill, Oct. 4, 2005

Threading the Needle: Republican
Talking Points on Miers
National Journal Hotline, Oct. 3, 2005

The President's Pit Bull
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 4, 2005

In Mid-Career, A Turn to Faith to
Fill a Void
New York Times, Oct. 4, 2005

The Unification of Church and State
Molly Ivins/Creators Syndicate, Oct. 4, 2005

High Court Nominee Has Never
Been a Judge
Associated Press, Oct. 3, 2005

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Planet Disaster

Planet Disaster: Your Daily Cataclysm Chronicle

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides, and war: Just another day on Planet Disaster!

www.pej.org

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Planet Disaster:
Your Daily Cataclysm Chronicle
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 8, 2005

Killer Quake Hits Pakistan

World-wide news is reporting today thousands dead following a massive earthquake in the Near East. The 7.6 Richter Scale temblor struck early this morning local time near the confluence of Pakistan, Aghanistan and India. Hundreds of children were reported killed in Pakistan when their school was buried in a mudslide triggered by the quake. The region has been experiencing heavy rainfall for weeks.

Northern Pakistan was most seriously effected, with government sources there saying the earthquake is the worst seen in living memory. Witness, Mansehra village shopkeeper, Haji Fazal Ilahi describes the disaster that took the lives of his wife, two daughters and his brother:

"I could see rocks and homes tumbling down the mountains," said Ilahi, who was driving to his village of Garlat when the quake struck. "When I reached my village, there was nothing left of my home."


Heavy Rains Triggers Volcano Mudslide

Hurricane Stan is lashing Central America, bringing with it heavy rains. The worst hit was the small town of Santiago Attitlan, located in central Guatamala. Santiago, sitting on the world renown tourist mecca, Lake Attitlan was buried in mud sent down the side of one of the three volcanoes ringing the lake, burying an undetermined number of villagers. So far, more than 200 bodies have been recovered. Another 300 in Guatamala have perished in storm.

Terror Bombings in Bali

Indonesian authorities, after initially blaming members of Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorist group believed behind a nightclub bombing on the island of Bali in 2002, are now saying a new group may be responsible for this week's attack against another nightspot. Twenty-three patrons and staff were killed in the bombings in Kuta Beach, the same site of the previous blast that killed more than two humdred, mostly Australian tourists.

American Fatalities in Afghanistan

Today, the U.S. military counted it's 200th military death in Afghanistan. A soldier was killed when he trod on a landmine during a patrol. Authorities there say they are unsure whether the landmine was freshly planted, or is one of thousands remaining throughout the decades-long, war torn country. This has been the deadliest year for American soldiers in Afghanistan, which has seen a dramatic upsurge in resistance attacks against the multi-national occupation. NATO is currently preparing to expand its role there.


Gotham Commuters Warily Board the Underground

After seeing the New York City subway system all but shut down after warnings of a "credible" terror attack similar to that that struck London in July, commuters are again taking to the rails. The warnings were publicized this week, triggering a massive security operation that saw hundreds of heavily armed police converge on the city's mass transit system. No evidence of a terrorist attack were produced, though police have made a number of arrests. The warnings were issued by New York City mayor, Michael Bloomsberg hours before U.S. President George W. Bush was to deliver an address to the nation defending the ongoing "War on Terror." The alleged plot was revealed by Iraqi prisoners after interrogation.

Officials Warn Against Global Flu Pandemic

The U.S. president has slated meetings with health officials and has issued warnings to the population of a possible outbreak of "Bird Flu." For weeks there have been dire warnings of the disease, said eminating from Asian poultry farms, is spreading fast and has already claimed scores of lives.

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Plague Plane Down?

Plague Plane Down? FedEx Cargo Included Lab Viruses

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - While the world press rings dire warnings against the next Big One, a pandemic potentially as deadly as the infamous 'Spanish Flu' outbreak almost a century ago, the circumstances of the fatal crash of a FedEx plane today in Winnipeg raises disturbing questions about the transport of deadly pathogens and the threat it represents.

www.pej.org

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Plague Plane Down?
FedEx Cargo Included Lab Viruses
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 6, 2005


Getting Winnipeg's Level 4 bio-containment laboratory wasn't easy. Locals were concerned at the prospect of sharing the neighbourhood with the world's deadliest germs. Experts assured the labs were impenetrable; no virus would escape their custody. But accidents happen.

Of course, it doesn't matter how safe the laboratories are when viruses are sent out the door. The Winnipeg facility was embarassed earlier this year when a FedEx courier truck involved in a downtown accident was later revealed to be carrying ebola, tuberculosis, and hepatitis bacilli from their facility. Now, a second incident involving the transport through population centres is again raising questions.

Local Federal Member of Parliament, Pat Martin expressed concern with current procedures, saying: "There are weak links here, and we won't tolerate it in our community." Adding, "We want an inquiry and we want better security measures." Viruses and other hazardous materials are routinely transported this way in Canada.

In a lightning fast threat assessment of the crash site, Transportation Safety Board investigator Ross Peden declared the public safe: "There is no threat to the public, or workers." Peden claims the frozen vials containing a variety of viruses, including Herpes and Flu strains, were destroyed in the fire following the crash.

The Cessna came down, while attempting to land at Winnipeg's airport when it experienced trouble shortly after take-off. The pilot, Nancy Chase-Allen was killed in the crash, but managed to put the plane down on traintracks, avoiding buildings and the morning rush hour traffic. The cause is still unknown, but weather may be a factor, as Winnipeg has suffered heavy rains and snow squalls this week.

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Democracy is For the Birds

Martial Law: It’s for the Birds

Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire
October 5th, 2005

It’s like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, the Birds—or maybe a scene left on the cutting room floor. Birds are going to get us—not by attacking us directly, as in the Hitchcock movie, but through the H5N1 bird flu virus, also known as Avian influenza. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), H5N1 is of the “influenza pandemic” sort, that is to say it is different from seasonal outbreaks or “epidemics” of influenza. “Seasonal outbreaks are caused by subtypes of influenza viruses that are already in existence among people, whereas pandemic outbreaks are caused by new subtypes or by subtypes that have never circulated among people or that have not circulated among people for a long time. Past influenza pandemics have led to high levels of illness, death, social disruption, and economic loss,” the CDC assures us. In other words, it is the perfect disease for our autocratic rulers, forever angling to get rid of the barriers (the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) preventing them from further militarizing our society.

“I am just suggesting that we better be thinking about [H5N1],” Bush said yesterday. “And we are. And we’re more than thinking about it; we’re trying to put plans in place.” And what exactly are these plans? “The US military might have to quarantine areas of the United States if there was a serious outbreak of the deadly avian flu,” reports the Sydney Morning Herald. “Regional quarantine would raise difficult policy decisions and legal issues, but the possibility had to be discussed.” Naturally, the “possibility” is so great only the military would be able to address it. “It’s one thing to shut down your airplanes, it’s another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu,” said Bush. “To do this, we might have to use the military, which is able to plan and move.” In other words, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 stands in the way of saving American lives.

Bush failed to mention the fact H5N1 is at best a minor threat. “As of July 21, 2005, one hundred and nine cases of human infection have been confirmed resulting in fifty five deaths outside of China,” explains Wikipedia. “Thirteen countries across Asia and Europe have been affected. Additionally more than one hundred and twenty million birds have died from infection or been culled.” In other words, H5N1 is a pandemic among birds, not humans. Maybe Bush should call out the military and have them quarantine sparrows and finches and such, not entire U.S. cities or geographic regions. Even so, Bush tells us “that we better be thinking about” H5N1 and other pathogenic threats because we need to be sensitive to the possibility the military (or military contractors such as Blackwater) will be on our streets, going house to house, confiscating guns and forcibly evacuating people to “evacuee” camps.

Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, knows something about disaster and government response. “The translation of this is martial law in the United States,” Redlener told CNN. Gene Healy, of the Cato Institute, made mention of “traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that’s well-justified.”

Bush’s mention of H5N1 is part of a “robust discussion” underway to break down the legal barriers preventing the government from imposing martial law “in certain extreme circumstances.” Last month, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush “wants to make sure that we learn the lessons from Hurricane Katrina,” including the use of the military in “a severe, catastrophic-type event…. The Department of Defense would assume the responsibility for the situation, and come in with an overwhelming amount of resources and assets, to help stabilize the situation,” McClellan said.

As for the “lessons from Hurricane Katrina,” if the situation in New Orleans is any indication, the government will allow a hypothetical (and unlikely) bird flu pandemic to kill off large numbers of people (as it allowed flood waters to kill an as of yet undetermined—or never to be reported—number of people in New Orleans before it responded) and then send in Bush cronies and favored corporations, operating under no-bid and cost-plus contracts, to figure out how to chisel the government out of billions. Imagine M16-toting Blackwater mercenaries in biohazard suits patrolling the streets of your town with shoot-to-kill orders for all of those who violate imposed curfews or are caught “looting” food and water. If Bush gets his way, the 1866 Supreme Court ruling in Ex Parte Milligan limiting martial law will become a quaint historical oddity.

H5N1 is but another excuse to chip away at our constitutional liberties. Bush and crew want to send in the military because they are at war with the American people—or their constitutionally guaranteed liberties, anyway. The Army and Marines are trained to kill people and break things, not engage in mundane every-day law enforcement. Katrina, Rita, and the promised bird flu pandemic are stepping stones in an effort to erect a police state and militarily-imposed dictatorship in this country. After the Posse Comitatus is dismantled, Bush will be able to send the troops wherever he wants and for whatever reason, no matter how fallacious or exaggerated.

Canadians Target of Afghani Suicide Bombing

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Three Canadian soldiers were injured today, none seriously, when their convoy was rammed by a suicide car-bomber. At least one bystander, a young child, was killed, as was the bomber.

www.pej.org

Canadians Target of Afghan
Suicide Bombing
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 5, 2005


If there were any hope Canadian troops would be received in their new home away from the comforts of Kabul congenially by the inhabitants of Kandahar, they were quickly dispelled today with the attack against a three vehicle convoy of Canadian soldiers. The Canadians were lucky, escaping with reported "burns and minor injuries," and were also reported to have returned to duty within hours. The fate less fortunate for the hapless Afghani motorists and pedestrians travelling the same road; at least one is dead, and several others injured.

In the Spring, Canada's Minister of Defense, Bill Graham announced a restructuring of the country's military and its traditional, world famous role as 'peacekeepers.' The redefinition of Canadian military parameters of operationability coincides with the redeployment of troops that have spent the last four years trying to keep the capital city quiet.

By most accounts, they've accomplished this without incurring local resentment common to American missions. The Canadians have been pulling up stakes in the north, and are headed to the heart of Taliban country in the south.

Graham has since been touring Canada, telling eveyone who'll listen to get ready for body bags. That is to say; Canadians not used to Maple Leaf flag and coffin parades of their fellow citizens on their final journey, brought to that pitiful demise through yet another adventure in the service of empire, should get used to the idea.

It's as though no-one remembers what the poppy means.

Today's Canadian Liberal government is setting a century's agenda. Most are clueless about what's going on, let alone the intricacy of the design, or what it will mean for their future and that of the nation. The news has been remarkably yawned over by the renowned pinky pacifist citizenry. That may be attributed to the summer season, where the House of Parliament is turned over to the echoes of its history.

But, the wheels of government grind on, even if unobserved by the House. And, while the Loyal Opposition lolled in sultry hammocks and media Fat Cats vacated Ottawa, Prime Minister Paul Martin and his chief lieutenant, Bill Graham perverted Canada's recognized mission on the World stage as one dedicated to peace and justice.

No longer; Canada is now officially an apposite of Them. That is to say, we are Us. With you, George!

This isn't a necessarily new stance, only one kept on the cuff for the duration of this disaster movie of an administration south of the border. In large part, this is thanks to the masterful policy hypocrisy practiced by erstwhile P.M., Jean Chretien. The Little Guy from Shawinigan's place in the pantheon of fallen Canadian heroes is unrivalled, save for Brian Mulroney. Both served the long-simmering ambition within certain quarters for a North American 'Continentalism.'

Now, with Paul Martin, the millionaire son of a millionaire elite familiar, the final spike is struck to the heart of Canadian sovereignty and values we so treasured for, if nothing else, differentiating ourselves from the behemoth next door.

Mr. Graham's "warnings" are less that than a promise; a promise to bear the bitter fruit of war to this land; a promise to prove the besmirching of Canada's name for years to come.

Whether the minister's profile will rise or fall on that inevitable occasion, remains to be seen.



Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast fromt the University of Victoria, Canada. He also serves as Senior Editor to PEJ News. You can see the GR Blog here.

Biological Weapon Used Against Anti-War Demonstrators?

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - More than a week after massive protests against the Iraq war and occupation in Washington, public health officials informed the media of their detection of an unusually high occurrence of the biological pathogen, francisella tularensis, a bacteria also known as tularemia. Revelations of the discovery of tularemia was passed from the Department of Homeland Security, who operate biological agent sensors in the Capitol.

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Biological Weapon Used Against
Anti-War Demonstrators?
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 4, 2005


Waiting a week before raising the alarm of the possible infection of possibly thousands of the hundreds of thousands of Anti-War demonstrators and D.C. citizens exposed over the September 23-24 weekend, many of whom by that time having long departed, dispersed far and wide to their various home states across the nation, is not the strangest thing about the story, run in the Washington Post's Saturday, Oct 1 edition, and since broadly picked up.

The source informing the story, The Department of Homeland Security, lay it out roughly this way: Sensors placed around Washington, specifically designed to detect trace amounts of considered biological weapons agents, were examined and determined to contain unnaturally large amounts of tularemia. The samples where then, apparently, rigorously tested, and retested, the results kept underwraps for almost a week. Only then was the Center for Disease Control alerted, and in turn, D. C. health officials. Those officials were upbeat, saying that the normal gestation period, the time before doctors can expect to see the symptoms of an epidemic manifest, had passed without producing evidence of a significant nature.

The bacterium, francisella tularensis, also called 'rabbit fever' is naturally occurring, but has a long history of manipulation for the purpose of weaponization. Imperial Japan is noted for its groundbreaking experiments on tularemia's effects on human physiology. They are estimated to have sacrificed more than 10,000 prisoners to science during their occupation of China.

The results of Japanese efforts were not lost on the American government, and by the late 1960's Biological Weapon (BW) tularemia was a component of both the vast U.S. arsenal of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and that of their arch Cold War nemesis.

Officially, the sensor readings have been deemed normal levels of background bacteria, possibly amplified by the many thousands of feet stirring the earth enough to create particulate clouds, that in turn set off alarms. Weaponized, biological agents are generally aerosolized for deployment; so, defensive measures are directed toward air-borne particles.

Could be. But, if that's the nuts of it, why release this report?

Contrite perhaps, there have been mumblings from the administration of attempts to now track, and presumably contact people identifying themselves as having attended the anti-administration rallies to see if they're okay.

O.K!

The implications of this are, in themselves furtile ground enough for plantations of conspiracy speculation. But, there's a still more worrisome aspect to all this.

The only informtion so far released to back up Homeland Security's claims is their word. Considering the past record of the agency, and its rainbow hued terror alerts, many conspicuously convenient to the Commmander-in-Chief's political aims, determining whether this event is real, or another invention of the myriad black and psy-op disinformation campaigns, the ones Donald Rumsfeld announced as initiated, then cancelled, is an open question. Which is of course the exact mandate of those extant but non-existent programs designed to confound with info-noise.

And the squawk levels seem to be increasing.

Bird flu has been on the lips of various news disseminators for weeks. So far, the flu has proven a hard sell - hardly on par with SARS - but the season's changing, and once the sniffles and annual ague begins, it's signifigance should grow in the public mind, raising too its stock on the "Disaster Index Market" (DIM). That the dread pandemic promised has killed an approximated 100 persons throughout all of Asia, it's reputed home, is overshadowed by dire media reports that it has proven to be a fatal illness in 50% of those so far afflicted; hardly the kind of numbers to qualify an expert statistical survey.

Ever ahead of the curve, G.W. Bush pitched Bird flu today, outlining the kind of powers he thinks his office should be granted, extra-constitutional to be sure, to handle the plague to come. Being DIM-minded and thinking the timing right, George now suggests the army be mobilized in such a scenario, rather than State agencies, etc., much as they were in the aftermath of Katrina and the "draining of the New Orleans swamp," to "handle" the forced quarantine of potentially thousands.

Oddly enough, the symptoms of 'rabbit fever' ape those of the common flu: muscle aches, repiratory difficulty, fever, etc. It's beginning to seem as though the Bush administration is moving away from the well-worn "War on Terror' to ever more mundane "threats" to the American people to justify his grab for total power and the further militarization of that society.

Imagine; all of us just a sneeze away from the Q-Camp.



Chris Cook is the recently elevated Senior editor of PEJ News. He also hosts Gorilla Radio, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.

Stay informed. Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.

Sensors Detect Bio-weapon in Washington, D.C.

Health Officials Vigilant for Illness After Sensors Detect Bacteria on Mall

Agent Found as Protests Drew Thousands of Visitors
By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 2, 2005; Page C13

A week after six bioterrorism sensors detected the presence of a dangerous bacterium on the Mall, health officials said there are no reports that any of the thousands of people in the nation's capital Sept. 24 have tularemia, the illness that results from exposure to the bacteria.

Federal health officials are still testing the samples from air sensors on the Mall and in downtown Washington that collected a small amount of the tularemia agent, which can cause flulike symptoms and is usually treated with antibiotics.


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The bacteria probably was not the result of nefarious activity, according to federal investigators. "There is no known nexus to terror or criminal behavior. We believe this to be environmental," said Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

The mission for health officials now is to figure out how the bacteria got there, why they were detected that day and whether they are from a strain that doesn't affect humans.

"Our purpose now is to reach into the medical community just to make sure nobody out there has any symptoms," said Von Roebuck, spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There is an incubation window of one to six days, but we still want to get this information into clinicians' hands."

Health officials in the Washington area were notified Friday that the filters on biohazard sensors that make up the BioWatch network detected the bacteria Sept. 24, when tens of thousands of people were on the Mall for antiwar demonstrations and the National Book Festival.

The samples were collected between 10 a.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday. The naturally-occurring biological agent -- which is on the "A list" of the Department of Homeland Security's biohazards, along with anthrax, plague and smallpox -- was detected in small amounts, said Gregg A. Pane of the D.C. Department of Health.

Detection of the bacteria turned into an incident with nationwide implications, because thousands of protesters had come from throughout the country. The infection is not spread from person to person, but tracking potential patients became a coast-to-coast undertaking. Police said that more than 100,000 people attended the rally; organizers put the figure at 300,000.

After the filters were tested in Washington, further tests were done by CDC laboratories in Atlanta, Knocke said.

Meanwhile, the CDC was using its nationwide tracking system to look for unusual occurrences of pneumonia-like symptoms in every state, Roebuck said.

After seeing no cases and finding that the levels of tularemia in their samples were low, health officials at the CDC decided Friday night to release their findings in the event that there were cases, on the sunset of the incubation period, that weren't being detected, Roebuck said.

Pane said he learned of the biohazard alert that night, when CDC officials told him that sensors at the Lincoln Memorial, Judiciary Square and Fort McNair tested positive for the bacterium.

He immediately put out an alert to hospitals, clinics, doctors and pharmacies in the area to be on the lookout for symptoms, which can resemble pneumonia. "The linchpin is that we're still in the incubation window, so we really don't know that there were no cases," he said.

Pane said one theory is that tularemia bacteria, which occur naturally in soil, might have been kicked up by the thousands of feet stomping on the Mall grounds that day.

Homeland Security and the CDC work together to operate the BioWatch sensors. The $60 million-plus system was created in 2001 to monitor air in more than 30 U.S. cities.

The system recently was criticized in a June report by the Government Accountability Office. It highlighted communication problems within the network and questioned the nation's capabilities in environmental surveillance, an emerging technical field.

A similar incident occurred in Houston in October 2003, when two air sensors detected fragments of tularemia bacteria. There were no human cases of tularemia reported after the incident, and some experts in the bioterror field said they believe the incident was actually spurred by a strain of the bacteria that does not affect humans.

"It's probably something that just lives in the environment," said Tara O'Toole, who is director of the Center for Biosecurity, sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "We forget that microorganisms rule the world. Now we're looking and finding things we didn't know were there."

Tularemia, often called "rabbit fever" because small animals are often carriers in rural areas, was amassed by the U.S. military as a biological weapon in the 1960s.

Peace Bug: CDC Reports Bacterial Exposure Threat During D. C. Anti-War Demo

[A fishy tale]

US finds fever bacteria during war protest weekend
Washington Post
Oct. 1, 2005

The World War II Memorial (front) as viewed from the top of the Washington Monument along with the Reflecting Pool leading to the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall May 27, 2004. Small amounts of bacteria that cause "rabbit fever" were found on the Mall last weekend as thousands of protesters marched against the Iraq War, U.S. health authorities said on Saturday. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Reuters

Oct 3, 2005 — WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Small amounts of bacteria that cause "rabbit fever" were found on Washington's National Mall last weekend as thousands of protesters marched against the Iraq War, U.S. health authorities said on Saturday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said several government environmental air monitors in the Mall area detected low levels of Francisella tularensis bacteria that cause tularemia, commonly known as rabbit fever, on September 24-25.

Public health agencies had no reports of any related human or animal illnesses caused by the bacteria.


The CDC said it issued an alert on Friday night as a precaution so medical personnel were aware of the situation and could report any suspected cases.

Rabbit fever cannot be passed from person to person and can be effectively treated with readily available medicines, the CDC said. Symptoms usually appear 3 to 5 days after exposure, but in rare cases can take up to 2 weeks.

Symptoms of the disease, which an infected person would have begun experiencing no earlier than on Monday, include: sudden fever, chills, headaches, conjunctivitis, diarrhea, muscle aches, joint pain, dry cough and progressive weakness.

District of Columbia health officials told local radio station WTOP on Saturday the detected bacteria were not harmful and probably occurred naturally.

The CDC waited a week to notify city officials of the detected bacteria because it took that long to test the samples at labs and confirm its presence, the radio station reported.

According to the CDC's Web site, people can get rabbit fever by being bitten by a infected tick, deerfly or other insect; handling infected animal carcasses; eating or drinking contaminated food or water; or, breathing in the bacteria.

The CDC also said the bacteria can be used as a weapon if made into an aerosol that could be inhaled.

"The bacteria that cause tularemia occur widely in nature and could be isolated and grown in quantity in a laboratory, although manufacturing an effective aerosol weapon would require considerable sophistication," the CDC said.

Gorilla Radio for October 3rd, 2005

Gorilla Radio for Monday, Oct. 3, 2005

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - This week: Bernie Dwyer, Irish film maker and journalist living in Cuba on her latest documentary, 'Mission Against Terror,' and the on-going struggle to free "The Cuba Five."

And Jon Elmer reporting from Palestine's Gaza Strip.

And, Janine Bandcroft bringing us up to speed on all that's good to do in and around Victoria this week.


Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca He also serves as a contributing editor at the progressive web news site: http://www.pej.org.

You can check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com

Gorilla Radio for 3/10/05
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 2, 2005


America’s antipathy towards Cuba is nothing new. In fact, an active counter-revolution campaign including sabotage, assassination, and acts that have no definition but terrorism has been conducted from U. S. soil, all condoned and directed often by every administration since Kennedy. To this day, admitted terrorists live in seaside comfort in Miami.

Bernie Dwyer is a film maker and radio journalist working with Radio Cuba. She’s currently touring Canada and the world screening the award-winning documentary, ‘Mission Against Terror’ with co-writer and director, Roberto Ruiz Rebo. The film relates the fate of “The Cuba Five,” five men sent to Florida to infiltrate Miami’s Cuban community, seeking organizations behind terrorist attacks against the island nation. Bernie Dwyer in the first half.

And; the Israeli Defence Force, true to Ariel Sharon’s word, evicted Israeli settlers and military posts in Palestine’s Gaza Strip. But, what had been initially greeted with cautious optimism in Gaza has quickly transformed by the dread of random destruction at the hands of IDF artillery and air-strikes occurring there.

Jon Elmer is a Halifax-based journalist and edits the news site, From Occupied Palestine.org. Jon has been in Palestine for the last couple months, and joins us from Gaza in the second half.

And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that’s good to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, Bernie Dwyer and freeing the Cuba Five.

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the mainstream media.

Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Juan Cole, David Cromwell, Jon Elmer, Reese Erlich, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Susan George, Stan Goff, Robert Greenwald, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Diana Johnstone, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Wayne Madsen, Stephen Marshall, Linda McQuaig, George Monbiot, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Kurt Nimmo, Greg Palast, Michael Parenti, William Rivers Pitt, Sheldon Rampton, Paul Craig Roberts, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, Danny Schechter, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Mickey Z., Dave Zirin, and many others.

Betrayal in the Woods: British Columbia Balks at Forest Protection

Gordon Campbell Balks at Promised Great Bear Rainforest Deal
PEJ News - C. L. Cook - The deadline has come and gone for Premier Campbell's signing on to the deal struck with environmental groups and the timber industry to protect the Great Bear Rainforest. Over the past week, I've conducted an e:mail interview with intrepid local environmental activist, Ingmar Lee from his new digs in India. In case Gordon Campbell's Liberals, or their pals in Big Timber thought Ingmar's departure a welcome thorn out of their side; think again boys!

www.pej.org

Gordon Campbell Balks at Promised
Great Bear Rainforest Deal

An E-mail Interview with Ingmar Lee
by C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 1, 2005

"Can we finally stand together now, and start working together against this monstrous, lying, voracious forest-destroying industry/government consortium??!! Can we finally unite behind an uncompromising NO MORE OLD GROWTH LOGGING stance? Can we now go around the world and without fetter, denounce and damage the BC logging industry? - Ingmar Lee

[chris cook] Greetings again, Ingmar; I've just reread your CounterPunch.org piece, "Compromise with a Chainsaw" and the blood boils anew! A while back, I did an e-mail interview with Mickey Z. (I was the interviewee for a change!) It basically goes like this: I pose a question and you respond. If you're into it, we'll go until a logical stopping point presents itself. I'll then clean it up for posting at PEJ and on Gorilla Radio Blog.

So, in reference to your article, I'd like to know the mechanics of the Rain Forest Solutions Project (RSP)?

[Ingmar Lee] Great idea and I'm up for it!

[Lee] It's been impossible to understand the mechanics of the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP) because it's been an entirely secretive closed circle clique which has not communicated any aspect of its strategies or end-goal vision. It's only been in the last few years that it's begun to come to light amongst the larger enviro-community that a complicated machination between government, industry and the RSP enviros, namely Greenpeace, BC Sierra Club, Forest Ethics and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has been going on.

[chris cook] These are icons of the environmental movement you're talking about. They've spent years, millions of person-hours by hundreds of thousands. Now, they're too suspect?

[Lee] It is apparent that right off the bat, the enviro's accepted major compromises just to be able to sit at the table with industry, the Weyerhaeuser, Interfor, Western, CANFOR and Norske Skog consortium with whom they've been bargaining. Although the RSP negotiators lost enormously in the "Great Bear Rainforest" (GBR) negotiations and have not got a deal which will protect the areas outstanding natural biodiversity, they sacrificed Vancouver Island and the rest of BC's forests in exchange for discussions on the 22 million acre GBR.

[chris cook] We both have lived on Vancouver Island for many years, so perhaps our readers can take this as a biased issue, but living on an island, in a geo-graphically finite environment, the effects of industrial sized forestry is all the more stark.

[Lee] Over the past few years, we've seen all forest initiatives being undertaken by the RSP ENGO's on Vancouver Island shut down. The Sierra Club of BC, a long-time fighter for Vancouver Island's forests shut down all of its Vancouver Island campaigns in spite of its head office being located in Victoria. Have you ever seen Greenpeace on Vancouver Island? RAN has got a huge international campaign going against Weyerhaeuser, with the single exception of BC, because of the GBR negotiations. The logging of Vancouver Island has run amok without a peep of complaint from the big groups. The WCWC [http://www.wildernesscommittee.org/] might send out a print-run of flyers once and a while or a petition here and there, or amass 40-50 people down at the Ledge, [B.C. Legislature Buildings, seat of provincial government, located in Victoria: http://members.shaw.ca/Glenndell2/GlennImages/LegBuilding.jpg] but there's been no concerted, organized campaign whatsoever.

It's outrageous that in 2003, a road was pushed into East Creek, the 85th of 91 primary watersheds on Vancouver Island to face the axe, without the slightest complaint from organized enviro. The Vancouver Island marmot is virtually extinct in the wild due to voracious unconscionable logging, and not a single group is there to defend it. In spite of years of flyers and petitions by the WCWC, clear-cut logging in the Walbran's ancient forests has continued apace and East Creek is being destroyed. The only thing which has put a check on the destruction has been volunteer, anarchist citizens groups and First Nations staging direct-action civil-disobedience blockades.

[chris cook] Tactics has always been a big debate within the community of local and off-islanders concerned with forest practices and the environmental situation both here and throughout B.C. The logic of one argument strives for "mainstream" support, so fears alienating possible allies through either direct action, or being seen to support those actions.

[Lee] The RSP compromise-collaborationist approach, combined with funding commitment obligations and charitable status has been devastating to our forests and has completely neutered our once-strong and proud forest-protection community. Volunteer activists are now expected to show up to lick envelopes for fundraising mail-outs at Big ENGO [Environmental Non-Government Organization] offices and shut up while the professionals sit down and talk. Whenever citizens do take the initiative and get out there to directly confront the logging, not only do they not receive a stitch of help from Big-ENGO, but they are denigrated and even sneered at for being confrontational and 'extremist.' Betty Krawcyzk rotted in jail for 10 months for standing up to Weyerhaeuser in the Walbran and was ignored, and the peace-loving vegan forest activist Tre Arrow continues to languish in a BC jail, utterly ignored and even castigated by professional BC enviros. He's been branded as an "eco-terrorist" by the corporate media, and if he is deported back to the USA, could well be destined for the American-gulag torture chambers at Guantanamo Bay.

[chris cook] British Columbia has an image in the rest of Canada that roughly apes the stereotypes much of the U.S. has of California: A "hang-loose" attitude, essentially Liberal. In the salons of Ottawa and Toronto, we quaint "Left Coasters," in the local parlance, exist in "Lotus Land." But the B.C. political reality is a long way from Berkley.

[Lee] What's also greatly disturbing is how this deal has been manoeuvred in order to accommodate the political ambitions of Gordon Campbell. Let's face it, with the bulk of his election financing derived from Big Logging, the Campbell government is bought lock, stock an barrel. It's so abundantly clear that if Big Logging has bought into the GBR compromise, that Campbell will follow suit. It's not Campbell who calls the shots in the BC forests. Yet with all the current RSP 'down to the wire' "Stand Tall for the GBR ~write the Premier" hype which is blanketing the BC and international media, the compromisers would have the people believe that everybody's on board for the momentous deal except Campbell.

It was expected that he would endorse it in the lead up to the last BC election, to send voters the message that he had "turned over a new Green leaf." But that Campbell political calculus was not to be and he deferred the decision. That was a big mistake, as he really took a beating over his visionless, substance-devoid environmental stance and all his most rampant pro-logging industry MLA's like Rod Visser, Gillian Trumper and Bill Belsey all went down to defeat. Stan Hagen only eked in by the skin of his teeth. It's clear that British Columbian's punished Campbell for his myopic and destructive treatment of the BC forests.

[chris cook] Victoria, Vancouver Island, and the whole of B.C. is an international tourist destination - the old Social Credit Party ads remind: 'Super Natural British Columbia.' - and those visitors lucky enough to connect with the soaring natural world surviving here tend too to feel a responsibility toward it and have mounted huge boycotts against forestry practices here; is that sentiment still strong over there?

[Lee] When I was touring Germany, Denmark and Sweden in November 2003, lecturing on the "Vancouver Island Clear-cutting Massacre" I stopped in at the 'Verbrand Deutsche Papierfabriken' offices in Bonn which is the major conduit through which BC forest products flow into Germany. I went there to plead with the VDP executives to stop purchasing BC forest products derived from ancient forests and I showed them graphic current evidence of what Weyerhaeuser and ilk were doing to our forests. Their response? They pulled out a fax, fresh sent from the Gordon Campbell government, that "all was well in the BC woods because of the momentous RSP/industry/government negotiations which had settled all the GBR issues. The fax even mentioned that the parties had settled on the protection of just 21% of the GBR tract, and now the War in the Woods was over. Campbell was saying to his major global wood-product customers that it was now ethical to purchase such product from BC, and the RSP enviro-endorsement guaranteed it.

So all this nonsense about getting the people to write to Campbell begging him to sign is just a smokescreen to build as much momentum of support for this pathetic deal as possible. The idea is that if Campbell is seen to be balking at signing, then there must be some impressive environmental significance to it. So then when he does sign, the RSP enviro's will claim that they've achieved a monumental victory in bringing on board one of the most ruthless forest-destroying Premiers in BC history.

[chris cook] They will have converted the most blatantly pro-corporate agenda this province has yet known?

[Lee] What a horrific bunch of Greenwash bularky! Campbell signed on to the GBR deal long ago, and all this dragging it out is simply to cater most optimally to his political agenda. The foot-dragging has also allowed the companies to get a major head-start on destroying the area under Campbell's awful 'Forest and Range Practices' Act, and to dither over the as-yet undefined "Eco-system Based Management" which is just more Greenwash for the destruction of intact primeval forest. Just like the scam of 'variable retention' logging took that wind out of the citizen actions to stop clear-cutting 10 years ago, the scam of compromise-collaborationism between BIG ENGO and the government/industry consortium will buy the industry another 10 years to finish off the GBR. By the time the BC public recognizes how severely they were hoodwinked that magnificent Great Bear Rainforest will have been reduced to another BC steaming stump-field.

The crux of the problem is simple: The GBR deal Greenwashes the further destruction of intact primeval forests. These are the final repositories of the Earth's most magnificent biodiversity. Less that 20% of the planets ancient forests remain intact an they're going fast.

The solution is simple: NO MORE LOGGING IN ANCIENT FORESTS

[chris cook] Thanks, Ingmar; but allow me one further question, please: Recent developments here, and I know you're currently on the other side of the world, but the on-going Canada-U.S. softwood lumber trade dispute is turning. In the wake of the recent disaster in New Orleans and the great need there to rebuild, a growing chorus of industry voices in the United States are clamouring for the ditching of U.S. tariffs long levied against Canadian, and especially B.C. wood imports. What's your understanding of the cross-border dispute, and how does its fate effect the future of British Columbia's forests and the creatures calling those woods home?

[Lee] As far as Canada/USA goes, to anyone who looks, the USA is going down, and once the Chinese call the debt home, and fuel prices double, the crash will make the fall of the Berlin Wall look like a picnic. All around the world, Bush has utterly ruined the already widely unpopular USA 'reputation.' I have hardly seen any Americans at all since I've been on the road here in India, and from the local sentiment, I can see why. Wearing a USA flag anywhere is asking for trouble big time. Even in Victoria, one hardly sees a USA flag on the millions of American tourists who are now swarming to Canada, quite rightly afraid to go elsewhere in the world for their vacations. I take it as a personal duty in Victoria to remind anyone I see wearing the USA flag, that what it represents around the world today is: attack, invade, occupy, torture and massacre, and it says "See Me, ~I'm in total support of George W. Bush and his global domination agenda."

No ethical or sane American will wear a USA flag outside the United States.

[chris cook] Canada is so tightly tied to the United States: They’re our biggest single trading partner by far, and “we’ve” invested so much time and effort drawing up trade agreements it seems improbable that this country would ever take a stand against American trade, or their odious foreign policies.

[Lee] Canada absolutely must tear up the quisling Mulroney NAFTA scam, and shut off all the southbound oil, water and forest spigots. If we must sell our resources instead of keeping them around for our grandchildren, there are many ethical places around the world thatwill pay just as much or more.

And now we see that Campbell hasn't signed the [GBR] deal after all, although the ever-compliant RSP, grovelling once again, has extended his contract by another two weeks!

Therefore if Gordon Campbell has refused to endorse the "Great Bear Rainforest" 'consensus' reached between the RSP and the logging industry, that has to be because that's what industry told him to do!!

Today’s [Oct. 1, 2005] non-announcement is a huge coup for the logging industry, which will have gained 7 years of complete acquiescence from the RSP groups to gut and destroy Vancouver Island and other forests around BC without complaint, and to get a big head start on trashing the GBR. Campbell's non-endorsement of the deal will further set back the agreed-to 2009 'compliance date' by which time GBR loggers were to have switched from clear-cut destruction to some vaguely defined EBM logging system.

It's as rotten as that folks, - the GBR discussions tied down the most powerful voices in ENGO, sat them down behind closed doors for 7 years, sucked millions of dollars out of the movement, neutered direct forest activism, and seriously divided the environmental community.

Weyerhaeuser, Interfor, CANFOR, Norske Skog, Western and their Gordon Campbell lackey has ruthlessly backstabbed their RSP partners and the central coast First Nations.

Today was Campbell's deadline, but the only people celebrating at the Champagne Party are logging corporations and their government lackeys.

Can we finally stand together now, and start working together against this monstrous, lying, voracious forest-destroying industry/government consortium??!! Can we finally unite behind an uncompromising NO MORE OLD GROWTH LOGGING stance? Can we now go around the world and without fetter, denounce and damage the BC logging industry.

Or how much more lying, expense, scamming, grovelling and embarrassment are the RSP groups willing to endure, and expose our community to, over this dreadful, rotten deal?

Disgusted all around, Ingmar


To learn more about forestry and other ecological issues on Vancouver Island and British Columbia, check out Ingmar Lee’s writings on PEJ.org here.

Ingmar Lee is a Vancouver Island environmentalist, whose activism encompasses Nanaimo’s toxic watershed, the too few wild places left on the island, and the protection of its endangered wildlife. He’s been a loud and persistent voice for change across all media, an unflinching critic of corporate irresponsibility and government’s refusal to fulfill their duty to the people of British Columbia and future generations. He’s a graduate student of Asian and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, currently studying in India. Ingmar spent more than two decades working in the coastal woods of British Columbia as a tree-planter, and estimates he’s planted more than a million trees.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from UVic. He also serves as a contributing editor to PEJ News. This e:mail exchange took place between late September and October 2005. Interview questions are ‘post-write’ insertions, included to create a conversational flow.

Stay informed. Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.

Indelible Marks: Same Whip, New Stripe

Indelible Marks: Same Whip, New Stripe

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - These last weeks, last days, have borne more fuel for a Bush political pyre greater than any ever witnessed, but the cinders have yet to prove their promise. Sparks that would certainly have torched previous governments lay smouldering and largely unattended. Unprecedented scandals, flowing now over America in waves fast as a tide-surge, and with a disturbingly increasing frequency beg patience: "Is it too soon to hope for the fall of the House of Bush and all the great misery its operation encompasses?" Today, more revelations of wrong-doings perpetrated by more of those inhabiting the rarefied, if shrinking, impunity bubble so far surrounding this administration.

http://images.chron.com/content/news
/photos/05/07/19/roberts_mug.jpg

Here Come Da judge!
www.pej.org

Indelible Marks:
Same Whip, New Stripe
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
September 29, 2005

Yesterday, Tom "The Hammer" DeLay, George Bush's political bully boy heard an indictment in a long festering case of political gerrymandering in the Texas state elections. DeLay is now accused of diverting corporate political donations illegally from national Republican coffers into the hands of select state representatives in Texas for, what has yet to be proved, quid pro agreement of a redrawing of electoral districts that unfairly favoured Republican prospects in then upcoming federal elections. The man whose influence has long been thought second only to Karl Rove's is now staring at jail time and heavy fines for activities done in service of the Bush campaign for president.

There have already been "liberal" allowances made as per court appearance delays, the case now scheduled to convene in late October, but the legal ball is set in motion for what could be a trial capable of bringing down the White House long before 2008. But, before those who would welcome the premature demise of Mr. Bush celebrate, it must be remembered: American Justice is firmly in the hands of those operating in concert with they who would be judged.

Of course, it's no surprise George W. Bush would nominate a cretin politico on the throne of American Justice. If it wasn't John Roberts it would have been an equally vile partisan, sent in with marching orders drafted by the way-out policy wonks running the White House.

Today, the U.S. Senate endorsed Mr. Bush's nominee for Supreme Court Justice, John Roberts 78-22. Roberts' all-American looks and manicured manner mask a hard core ideologue, whose history is intertwined with the original sin against the American constitution that was the inaugural "election" of George W. Bush in 2000, something Danny Schechter, long-time media maven and founder of MediaChannel.org, an influential news site, details. This means a further tilt of a court already skewed enough to grant an unprecedented edict determining the results of a general election.

Timing is everything in politics, and common among PR professionals is simultaneous news release: This is where you send out flak designed to wow the press and, hopefully throw your client's public perfidy into the shadows of a greater mendacity.

That precept may help explain a second explosion in Base Bush today.

Republican Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist is now the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of his divestment of stocks in the family business, the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), moments before a spectacular dive in its stock value. Think Martha Stewart on steroids. HCA had already been the subject of the single largest fine in U.S. corporate history for its defrauding of billions from government MediCare and MediCaid programs. As prominent as billionaire Senator Frist is, DeLay's disgrace, he being as close to the inner ring of the Bush administration as is possible, is difficult to top.

Just in case the relatively subterranean Frist is too small a log for the diversionary fire, former Reaganite, Bill Bennett made news today for his impolitic suggestion an Indira Ghandi-like abortion campaign against Black America would do wonders for reducing the nation’s crime rate.

There couldn’t be more. Or, could there?

Judith Miller, the New York Times employed Bush administration hack, and rumoured CIA operative, has been released from her inconvenient internment for contempt of court, stemming from her refusal to reveal high-level sources in the Valerie Plame case. If this can be interpreted as her capitulation to Patrick “Bulldog” Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury investigation of that act of treachery, there are more than sparks to come for the Bushists.

On a more parochial note: "Canadian" Senator, Kenny grasped for media straws, wilfully provided via CanWestGoebbels, to double Canada’s military budget. All in view of “Defense” Minister, Bill Graham's crusade to transform traditional Canadian foreign policy to more correctly mirror his government’s cohesion with its southern cousin.



Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. He also serves as a contributing editor to PEJ News. You can check out the GR Blog here.

The Basra File

Sinister Events in a Cynical War By John Pilger 09/28/05 "ICH" -- -- Here are questions that are not being asked about the latest twist of a cynical war. Were explosives and a remote-control detonator found in the car of the two SAS special forces men "rescued" from prison in Basra on 19 September? If true, what were they planning to do with them? Why did the British military authorities in Iraq put out an unbelievable version of the circumstances that led up to armoured vehicles smashing down the wall of a prison? According to the head of Basra's Governing Council, which has co-operated with the British, five civilians were killed by British soldiers. A judge says nine. How much is an Iraqi life worth? Is there to be no honest accounting in Britain for this sinister event, or do we simply accept Defence Secretary John Reid's customary arrogance? "Iraqi law is very clear,? he said. ?British personnel are immune from Iraqi legal process." He omitted to say that this fake immunity was invented by Iraq?s occupiers. Watching "embedded" journalists in Iraq and London, attempting to protect the British line was like watching a satire of the whole atrocity in Iraq. First, there was feigned shock that the Iraqi regime's "writ" did not run outside its American fortifications in Baghdad and the "British trained" police in Basra might be "infiltrated". An outraged Jeremy Paxman wanted to know how two of our boys - in fact, highly suspicious foreigners dressed as Arabs and carrying a small armoury - could possibly be arrested by police in a "democratic" society. "Aren't they supposed to be on our side?" he demanded. Although reported initially by the Times and the Mail, all mention of the explosives allegedly found in the SAS men's unmarked Cressida vanished from the news. Instead, the story was the danger the men faced if they were handed over to the militia run by the "radical" cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Radical" is a gratuitous embedded term; al-Sadr has actually co-operated with the British. What did he have to say about the "rescue"? Quite a lot, none of which was reported in this country. His spokesman, Sheikh Hassan al-Zarqani, said the SAS men, disguised as al-Sadr's followers, were planning an attack on Basra ahead of an important religious festival. "When the police tried to stop them," he said, "[they] opened fire on the police and passers-by. After a car chase, they were arrested. What our police found in the car was very disturbing - weapons, explosives and a remote control detonator. These are the weapons of terrorists." The episode illuminates the most enduring lie of the Anglo-American adventure. This says the "coalition" is not to blame for the bloodbath in Iraq - which it is, overwhelmingly - and that foreign terrorists orchestrated by al-Qaeda are the real culprits. The conductor of the orchestra, goes this line, is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. The demonry of Al-Zarqawi is central to the Pentagon's "Strategic Information Program" set up to shape news coverage of the occupation. It has been the Americans' single unqualified success. Turn on any news in the US and Britain, and the embedded reporter standing inside an American (or British) fortress will repeat unsubstantiated claims about al-Zarqawi. Two impressions are the result: that Iraqis' right to resist an illegal invasion - a right enshrined in international law - has been usurped and de-legitimised by callous foreign terrorists, and that a civil war is under way between the Shi'ites and the Sunni. A member of the Iraqi National Assembly, Fatah al-Sheikh said this week, "There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupiers to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people and spread rumours in order to scare the one from the other... The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will start an internal Shi'ite incitement." The Anglo-American goal of "federalism" for Iraq is part of an imperial strategy of provoking divisions in a country where traditionally the communities have overlapped, even inter-married. The Osama-like promotion of al-Zarqawi is integral to this. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he is everywhere but nowhere. When the Americans crushed the city of Fallujah last year, the justification for their atrocious behaviour was "getting those guys loyal to al-Zarqawi". But the city's civil and religious authorities denied he was ever there or had anything to do with the resistance. "He is simply an invention." said the Imam of Baghdad's al-Kazimeya mosque. "Al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north. His family even held a ceremony after his death." Whether or not this is true, al-Zaqawi's "foreign invasion" serves as Bush's and Blair's last veil for their "war on terror" and botched attempt to control the world's second biggest source of oil. On 23 September, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, an establishment body, published a report that accused the US of "feeding the myth" of foreign fighters in Iraqi who account for less than 10 per cent of a resistance estimated at 30,000. Of the eight comprehensive studies into the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the "coalition", four put the figure at more than 100,000. Until the British army is withdrawn from where it has no right to be, and those responsible for this monumental act of terrorism are indicted by the International Criminal Court, Britain is shamed. John Pilger is an internationally renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is currently a visiting professor at Cornell University, New York. His film, Stealing a Nation, about the expulsion of the people of Diego Garcia, has won the Royal Television Society's award for the best documentary on British television in 2004-5. His latest book is Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs (Jonathan Cape, 2004). Visit John Pilger's website: www.johnpilger.com First published in the New Statesman - www.newstateman.co.uk

Bomber-Blind Media Gropes Forward

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Blame Iran
Robert Fisk

What we were actually doing in Basra
was to turn a blind eye on abuse, murder and anarchy

09/24/05 "The Independent" - - "Water is your friend" was the advice regularly given to a truly good friend of mine here in the Middle East. The speaker was a member of the One-Thousand- Litres- a-Day-Keeps-Dehydration-at-Bay Brigade, although I have to say that the Arabs take a different view. After generations of sword-like desert heat, they take tea in the morning, endure an oven-like day without sustenance, and then sip another scalding tea at dusk. The less you drink, the less you perspire, the less you need to drink. In a land with few oases, it's a craft worth learning.

The problem is that today, water is not our "friend". It comes smashing into New Orleans; it drowns the nursing home elderly in their baths; it assaults Galveston and Houston; it kills millions in Bangladesh, dozens in Andhya Pradesh; it floods south from the great ice-cold green bays of the Arctic; it carries 19th-century houses through the centre of Prague, and it bubbles into the bars of English pubs from the ancient, overflowing river-banks of Kent. Water has become our enemy.

There is a beautiful, delicate, inevitably cruel irony at the way in which nature and man conspire to uncover the lies of the rich and powerful. Just as President Bush's disastrous environmental policies are now destroying the southern coast of the United States--yes, it is global warming that causes this massacre of the innocent--America is preparing to receive its 2,000th dead soldier back from Iraq. No bodies, please--let's not dishonour the dead of New Orleans by taking photographs of them. Nor the American dead of Iraq by taking pictures of their coffins en route home. Death, as usual, is what happens to other people.

But the photographs of British soldiers, cowled in fire, hurling themselves from the top of their Warrior fighting vehicle in Basra this week, were the final iconic images of our uniquely British folly in Iraq. Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara's henchmen have concocted another monstrous lie about all this, of course. The Iraqi policemen who protested at Britain's destruction of their prison--and the crowds who set fire to the Warrior (and its crew) -- were only a few hundred people. Who were we to suggest they represented the millions of Shia Muslim voters who solemnly went to the polls last January? Ho, ho, ho. Yes, and who were we to suggest that the "few hundred" Saddam "remnants" identified as troublemakers in mid-2003 represented a Sunni insurgency? And who were we, back in 1971, to suggest that a few hundred stone-throwers in the Falls Road and Short Strand in Belfast represented "the vast majority of ordinary peace- loving Catholics" in Northern Ireland?

I speculated some weeks ago as to when the bubble will burst. With the insurgent capture (and massacre) of a US base in Iraq? With the overrunning of the Green Zone in Baghdad? Every day now brings Vietnam-style evidence of our collapse. The Americans batter their way into Tal Afar and kill, so they say, "142 insurgents". Get that? US forces manage to kill 142 of their enemies, not a single innocent man, woman or child among them!

But let's go back to the Brits. Remember how we were told that our immense experience of "peace- keeping" in Northern Ireland had allowed us to get on better with the Iraqis in the south than our American cousins further north? I don't actually remember us doing much "peacekeeping" in Belfast after about 1969--the rest, I recall, was about biffing the IRA--but in any case the myth was burned out on the uniforms of British troops this week.

Indeed, much of the war in Northern Ireland appeared to revolve around the use of covert killings and SAS undercover operatives who blew away IRA men in ambushes. Which does raise the question, doesn't it, as to just what our two SAS lads were doing cruising around Basra in Arab dress with itsy-bitsy moustaches and guns? Why did no one ask? How many SAS men are in southern Iraq? Why are they there? What are their duties? What weapons do they carry? Whoops! No one asked.

What we were actually doing to "keep the peace" in Basra was to turn a Nelsonian "blind eye" on the abuse, murder and anarchy of Basra since 2003 (including, it turns out, quite a bit of abuse by our very own squaddies). When Christian alcohol sellers were murdered, we remained silent. When ex-Baathists were slaughtered in the streets--including women and their children, a civil war if ever there was one--our British officers somehow forgot to tell the press. Anything to keep our boys out of harm's way.

But this is what has been happening in Basra. As the locally recruited police force (paid by the occupation authorities) sucked into its ranks the riff-raff of every local militia--as it did in Sunni areas to the north--we ignored this. Even when an American reporter investigating this extraordinary phenomenon was murdered--almost certainly by these same policemen--the British remained silent. We were "controlling" the streets. In Amara--by awful coincidence, the very same Kut al-Amara with whose name, I'm sure, my favourite prime minister will soon be ennobled--British soldiers now operate just one heavily armed convoy patrol a day. That is the extent of our "control" over Amara. Now we are reducing our patrols in Basra. You bet we are.

And a familiar bleat is rising from the sheep pen. "Outside powers" are interfering in southern Iraq. Thirty-five years ago, it was the Irish Republic that was assisting Britain's IRA enemies. Now it is Iran that is supposedly urging the Shia of Basra to revolt. In other words, it's not our fault--yet again, it's the bloody foreigners what's to blame.

Alas, it is not. Iraqis do not need Iranian weapons or military expertise. Their country is afloat with weapons and they learned how to make bombs--in their millions--during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Half the Iraqi cabinet are linked to Iran--have the British forgotten that their honourable Dawa party government officials in Baghdad worked for the very same Dawa party that blew up the US and French embassies in Kuwait, and tried to kill the emir in the late 1980s? That these same gentlemen belong to a party which was effectively controlling the western hostages in Beirut during this same period?

No. All this is forgotten. Blame Iran. Later, no doubt, we'll blame those ungrateful Iraqis and then we'll declare victory and do what Defence Secretary John Reid claims we won't do: cut and run. And there again, we're in danger of forgetting the origin of such things. Faced with the imminent destruction of his vessel, a sailing ship captain would cut his anchor or sail ropes to allow his ship to move away from rocks or from being overwhelmed by the waves. Cutting and running was often an eminently sensible thing to do. But not for John Reid. We're not going to cut and run. We're going to be blown on to the rocks.

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.