The Phoney War: Bush Program Rolls On While Democrats Dither

Watch That Pea

What the administration is doing
while you’re watching Scooter & Sammy.

by John M. Kelley

http://www.opednews.com

It seems interesting to me that while all of the Democratic voices have gone gaga over the
indictment of Scooter Libby and the nomination to the Supreme Court of Samuel Alito, the administration is continuing to tighten its control over the national economic/political process.

On the one hand you have Democrats swooning about how this is the beginning of the end for Bush and how the white knight Fitzgerald is going to slay the Neo-Con dragon. They are ecstatic that a majority of the country now sees the war in Iraq as a tragic mistake. They feel that high gas prices, stagflation and the national deficit are winning allies from independents and moderate Republican circles every day. I saw a political cartoon today that implied Rove, Cheney and Bush were all on the run and had fled the country.

On the other hand they are gearing up for a fight over Judge Alito, even before it is clear whether there should be one. The Neo-Cons are promising the nuclear option if Alito’s nomination is filibustered, while some Democrats are already promising to shut down the Senate if they can’t win. Recent polls have given them hope that they will gain public support for a filibuster if Alito can be portrayed as clearly against Roe vs Wade. The Democrats can almost smell a house majority in the 2006 elections.

Hokum, they aren’t watching the pea. First let’s talk about the things that are being ignored that are significant and then this roll the Democrats think they are on.

Taxes

For starters the new budget bill proposes $70 billion in new tax breaks for the rich while cutting $10 billion in Medicare and Medicaid for the elderly and poor. A new tax code is being recommended that would tax labor more heavily then dividends or capital gains. In other words if you make money shoveling, you’ll pay a higher tax rate then the guy going by in the back of his chauffeured Rolls-Royce.

The government just allowed approximately $300 billion in offshore earnings to enter the country under a special deal that only taxes it a rate of 5%. So the government won’t find itself in the embarrassing position of having to work out special deals for its campaign donors in the future, the new tax code recommends that corporations not pay any tax on money earned overseas.

Even though most corporations pay never pay any real taxes, the corporate rate would be reduced to 31.5%, cheaper then they have ever been. Most would likely increase the payment of dividends which would be tax free to individual shareholders although not to most of the little folks who own stock through mutual funds and retirement vehicles, they would pay 15% on investments. Meanwhile the wealthy would pay a top capital gains tax on average, of 8.25%,

Setting a cap on corporate deductions for health insurance premiums would encourage more and more companies to drop their plans as health care costs continue to outpace inflation and employers squeeze for more profit. In the place of a number of current deductions for healthcare, retirement and education would be three tax exempt savings accounts for individuals which you could put up to $20,000 a year into. Great, I always have an extra 20k that I don’t need lying around to salt away in a tax free account.

In addition the abolition of certain tax breaks like the deductions for state and local taxes will hurt the little guy a lot more then the rich. The loss of the property tax deduction would wipe out any interest deduction for most small homeowners as well as increase resistance to raising local taxes at a time when the feds have shifted more of the costs to local and state governments.

While doing away with the alternative minimum tax for individuals, which at least needs to be indexed, it would also do away with the alternative minimum tax on corporations which has been virtually ignored in the press.

Media Concentration and Control

In notable but unheralded telecommunications acquisitions, SBC acquired AT&T and Verizon purchased MCI, which will yield further consolidation and concentration of telecommunication/media control. The few anti-monopoly restrictions placed on them will all expire after a maximum of 30 months allowing them to raise rates, shut out competition and restrict competitive use of access.

Meanwhile over at the Corporation of Public Broadcasting Board of Directors, the new GOP fundraiser Chairperson and Kenneth Tomlinson replacement, Cheryl Halpern is fast turning public broadcasting into a pro government propaganda machine. She hired former co-chair of the Republican National Committee, Patricia de Stacy Harrison, as President. She in turn has brought along her old subordinates from the State Department Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy Division (read Ministry of Foreign Propaganda) to do their magic on the American people via public television and radio. They include Tom Igsitt, Vice President for Government Affairs; Mike Levy Vice President of Communications; and Helen Mobley, director of Corporate Communications and Planning. All three have extensive overseas propaganda experience.

The Continued Removal of Corporate Responsibility

The corporate owned congress continues to feed its contributors and give the bill to the American people. Having passed bills that relieve corporate accountability for fast food and guns they now want to help the pharmaceutical industry. Stating that limiting liability is the only way to get companies to produce avian flu vaccines it is just a foot in the door to relieve them from any liability for future development of new pharmaceuticals.

All of these laws tote personal responsibility while totally ignoring the constant marketing barrage people are subjected to, starting in childhood to buy their products, the valuing of profits before negative impacts or outright deceptive practices used to increase sales. I wonder if my heirs can sue if the weight loss medicine I am using causes me to become so depressed I shoot myself.

The Growth of the Police State

Right now the President and Vice President continue to argue for the right to torture people at their discretion. The President continues to hold American citizens in seclusion without charges, trial or access to a lawyer. He maintains that the government continues the need to secretly invade American homes, search them and not tell anyone until much later. The man who advised the administration on how it could avoid war crimes prosecution is now the Attorney General and the head of the death squads in El Salvador and Nicaragua is in charge of all intelligence foreign and domestic in the United States.

We learn that in addition to people being picked up and send to countries where they can be tortured by other governments our own government is now maintaining secret prisons abroad where they presumably are exempt from any standard of civil rights or humane treatment. In Guantanamo, 21 prisoners who have been held almost four years without charges or trial are being subjected to forced feeding through nose tubes while strapped to beds so they can’t pull them out and choose death over their hopeless existence. Acts the Secretary of Defense calls “some people chose to go on diets for various reasons”.

Forget the battle over Chief Justice Roberts and nominee Alito’s views are on abortion. That pales next to their well-documented beliefs on the supremacy of the corporation and the total faith in the dictatorial powers of the Presidency. These are the votes that can install the Divine Right of Kings and primogeniture succession in America. Add to that the international judgment that the United States ranks 22nd in its freedom of the press and you are looking at an increasingly closed society.

Last week the President states that his plan for dealing with the avian flu was to offer more liability protection and subsidies to pharmaceutical companies to gear up vaccination production. They at their humanitarian best said they didn’t think it would be worth it for a one-time disease. A projected 200 million people would die in a world wide pandemic. Anybody need another reason for a national healthcare program.

Basically, the President said his goal was to get 20 million vaccines available for first responders including the military. If you include professional healthcare workers (7 million alone), medical support staff, firemen, police, military and their families that means the other 280 million people are on their own. One public health official put it this way (I paraphrase) “local governments will primarily be on their own. A pandemic could last from 1-3 years during which time many people would be out of work, have trouble obtaining food and other basic necessities. Hospitals would be overwhelmed with schools and stadiums being used as makeshift medical facilities. Morgues would not be able to handle the numbers of dead.” Estimates talk of deaths in the millions in the U.S. alone. The Presidents plan seems to be, put federal and National Guard troops around an infected area and let them ride it out.

Bush’s Alcoholic Mastery of Denial Will Not Surrender

What the Democrats don’t seem to understand is that by going to the wall on the Alito nomination is they can only lose on all accounts. While both sides can fill their coffers for the 2006 elections and unify their bases by a full scale fight, a democratic filibuster in the Senate followed by a Republican nuclear option it is a self destructive strategy. Between the enmity that it will create with moderate Republicans and the filibuster gone, the Republican arm-twisting machine will move into full throttle before the next election occurs. The filibuster will be useless on every other issue that comes up.

Once used the nuclear option will push the Republican party past the point of no return. The Republicans will be faced with the prospect of a Democratic majority using it in revenge or insuring the Democrats never come to power again. Republicans will hammer them with it on every issue. The corporations, the religious right and the neo-con militarists will want to push through everything they can in case there is a public backlash against the house, and the party will want to limit the ability for Democrats to win and be willing to push through repressive changes in the Voting Rights Act before the next election. Moderates will be forced by the need for contributions and base solidification to march to the beat of the far right. It will be a scorched earth policy.

A better strategy would be to thoroughly expose all of Alito’s beliefs about abortion, executive power, corporate power and other views repugnant to the citizenry. Claim the moral high ground and vote as a party against him if that is what it takes to stake out a position to move forward from. There is still a majority to protect Roe vs Wade and we won’t be powerless to filibuster even more repugnant legislation that the administration surely will try to push through if the nuclear option is used. Having not used the filibuster on the supreme court nominee the Republicans will be hesitant to use the nuclear option on anything less.

Secondly, the Libby/Rove prosecution/investigation is likely to be obstructed for years (anybody remember Whitewater). Claims of Executive Privilege and Classified information will stall the investigation and trial to a crawl. Libby may finally go to jail, but certainly with a promise of a pardon on Bush’s last day in office which will be about the time he actually has to show up there and for Rove, the same. The Bush family has a history of being very forgiving of those who participated with them in crimes against the country. Even if Cheney resigns, possible but doubtful, Bush will probably stumble on to the end of his term alone, isolated and paranoid. That in and of itself is a scary scenario.

Over at the U.N John Bolton is going full speed ahead to destroy any official world opposition to U.S. policy in that body. Bolton and Rice are fomenting expanding the Iraq war to Syria and have driven Iranian leaders backwards into a theocratic frenzy suggesting to them that they have nothing to lose by becoming more militant. The Iranians are angry, paranoid and threatened. Their reactions are unifying the world along cold war lines with the U.S. again dominating the discussion and direction.

Opposite of Bush’s promise, the Iranian hardliners have grown in power. They know a war with the United States involving Syria as well is their best chance of survival internally and would unite much of the Muslim war against the U.S. In response Bush has indicated a willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons. Even if used against buried military targets with limited loss of life and no collateral damage, it would outrage the world and explode the anger of a billion Muslims, many who would be willing to carry the terrorist war to America.

The history of the Bush administration is when questioned refuse to answer, when caught lie, when cornered get do something more extreme to change the subject, but never, never give up. Expanding the war to Syria and Iran, using massive bombing, nuking the Democrats in the Senate over abortion, pushing through a tax plan that favors corporations and the rich while further limiting their liability, expanding media consolidation and propaganda efforts while further crushing dissent are quite frankly all things that will gain support on the right among the radical theocratic, ideological and corporate bases.

Bush is most likely an untreated alcoholic who is either actively drinking or on a dry drunk. Alcoholics in this position resort to megalomania as long as they have the resources to maintain their illusion, and presidents have a lot of resources for self delusion at their disposal. When they become overwhelmed by the consequences of their actions they resort to blame, rage and destructive actions. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on the other hand are hard-core ideologues who are willing to sacrifice any number of people to execute their plans for world domination.

Given this administrations willingness to ignore public opinion and forge on in spite of its mistakes, exposed lies and corruption it is not a far stretch to imagine what kind of power it might try and seize in case of a national emergency like a flu pandemic. If you think the last two elections have been a farce, what about no election because of a pandemic, what about the suspension of congress and the prohibition of any public gathering enforced by the military. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but then again maybe anybody who believes this administration is on the run hasn’t been reading past the headlines.


www.mytown.ca/johnkelley

John Michael Kelley is a teacher, philosopher, writer, artist, political activist, singer of ballads, rebellious Irishman and agent for change who worries daily about the world he is leaving for his grandchildren.

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Israel's Gaza Blitzkrieg

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Toufic Haddad reports on Gaza after “disengagement”

The Ongoing Occupation

Socialist Worker
November 4, 2005 | Page 4

ISRAEL CARRIED out a week of attacks against Palestinians in the largest offensive yet since completing “disengagement” from the occupied territory of Gaza.

Western news reports concluded that Palestinians had rejected Israel’s offering of “peace” and self-rule, focusing in particular on an October 26 suicide bombing carried out by the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad in the Israeli town of Hadera, which killed five Israelis.

But the bombing was in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of a leader of Islamic Jihad three days before--an act that the Israeli military knew would provoke a response. In the days that followed, Palestinian forces in Gaza fired rockets at southern Israel, and Israel responded with air strikes that killed nine people, most of them bystanders.

This unequal military balance and the U.S. media’s bias were both factors in Israel’s so-called “disengagement” from Gaza, which provided the backdrop to the renewed violence. Here, TOUFIC HADDAD, co-editor of a forthcoming book on the Palestinian Intifada who recently returned from the Occupied Territories, explains what “disengagement” was really about.


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THE LAVISH praise Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received for his Gaza “disengagement” plan was enough for one Israeli journalist to call him “the most warmly courted, popular new star” that “the world’s red carpets are waiting for.”
The compliments may have cleansed the name of a man associated with some of the worst war crimes committed against the Arab and Palestinian people. But disengagement itself--completed September 15 with the evacuation of the last of 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip--is likely only to open up the potential for yet more Arab blood to be shed in the future.

This is because “disengagement” had little to do with ending the occupation of Gaza--or “reinvigorating the peace process,” as was widely claimed by Israel, its allies and much of the corporate media. Rather, it was precisely intended to preclude both of these possibilities.

Is that an exaggerated or unnecessarily pessimistic judgment? Just look at what Sharon’s right-hand man, Dov Weisglass, had to say about the motivations for disengagement, to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz in October 2004. “The significance [of disengagement] is the freezing of the political process,” Weisglass said. “And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all with a [U.S.] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. What more could have been anticipated? What more could have been given to the settlers?”


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I RECENTLY returned from the Gaza strip, where I witnessed the Israeli disengagement from start to finish. The experience provided me a wide range of feelings and insights. Perhaps the strongest impression I was left with is how Gaza today represents a colonial laboratory for developing and implementing cutting-edge methods of human control and oppression.
It used to be that if an occupying power were unable to control an area due to local resistance, the occupiers would be forced to retreat from these areas. But that isn’t the case with respect to Gaza.

It’s true that the Palestinian resistance that developed in the Gaza Strip during the past five years of the Intifada (or uprising) destabilized Israel’s strategic control. Particularly with the Palestinians’ development of medium-range firepower, such as homemade mortars and primitive rockets, Israel’s strategic control over the Gaza Strip was slipping.

Israel’s answer was to devise new means to control Gaza more effectively from afar, using disengagement to consolidate its grip.

To begin with, the entire Gaza Strip remains entirely surrounded by an electronic fence and watchtowers, ensuring that its 1.4 million Palestinians don’t leave the congestion and squalor of their towns and refugee camps.

Then there’s the ever-present buzz of unmanned drones that criss-cross the skies of Gaza. In recent years, these drones have been increasingly fitted with U.S. made “Predator” missiles--which at the touch of a button pressed by someone in a room miles away, ensure instant death to whomever they target.

There is the enormous blimp that hovers above Gaza’s borders, not to mention the well-armed Israeli naval vessels prowling off Gaza’s coast.

But these are only the more tangible representations of Israeli control. There are also less visible means, including a kilometer-long wall that Israel is preparing to build into the sea, below sea-level along Gaza’s coast. Or the 650-meter buffer zone Israel wants north of the strip.

Gaza’s population registry still remains in Israel’s hands. The Palestinian Authority is still not authorized to issue personal identity cards--meaning, essentially, that Israel still controls who legally exists there. Today, there are an estimated 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza with no form of identification--who, hence, are unable to leave and re-enter their homeland, whether for educational, medical or family reasons.

There’s the question of border crossings in general, which Israel still demands direct control over. This one feature of Israeli rule essentially gives it control over all goods and people which enter or exit the strip, leaving the economic future of Gaza in the hands of Israeli generals. Israel can cut off a whole range of essential goods, from gasoline to medicine, from car parts to generators, and Gaza will continue to be a place where Israeli producers dump their goods on a captive market.

If these structural constraints weren’t enough, there are a host of other political and social concerns.

To begin with, Gaza lacks sources of clean water. Not only has Israel tapped the flow of underground water east of Gaza, resulting in the seepage of sea water into Gaza’s coastal aquifer, but Israeli settlements also over-pumped the existing aquifer, essentially leaving Gaza’s water a briny mixture that causes high rates of kidney failure.

Israel has also left Gaza economically destitute. Palestinian laborers have been prevented from getting to work inside Israel--resulting in 35 percent unemployment--and many workplaces inside Gaza, such as garages and metal workshops, were targeted during the incursions of the past year, with the excuse that they were involved in weapons production.

In this respect, it’s clear that Israel left an enormous physical mess behind in Gaza. Not only did it demolish huge swaths of the territory’s arable lands, and the homes of 25,000 people (particularly in southern Gaza), but it destroyed the settlements themselves when the army withdrew. This has left upwards of 25 percent of the Gaza Strip looking like an earthquake hit it--with the Palestinians forced to clean up the mess.

Last but not least, Israel hasn’t ended its military assaults within Gaza itself, carrying out no less than five assassinations against Palestinian resistance activists since disengagement. At least 42 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire throughout the Occupied Territories, and scores of others were left wounded.

And none of this even addresses Israeli policies in the West Bank--the continued construction of Israeli settlements, or the final sealing off of various Palestinian towns through the construction of Israel’s apartheid wall.


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THESE MACHIAVELLIAN forms of control, together with a disfigured wasteland of physical destruction, extreme poverty and continued colonial oppression, have ensured that nothing substantive has changed in Gaza.
What has changed, however, is the international perception of this reality--including among many liberals and large sections of the left that believe “a solution” for Gaza has been found. As a result, they accept U.S. and Israeli arguments that Palestinians must now “establish law and order” and “dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.”

Now is the time to raise awareness that the 38-year occupation of Gaza has not ended, but has merely entered a new stage--a stage that is potentially far more dangerous precisely because of the misperceptions surrounding disengagement and Gaza’s status. Israel understands this all too well, recently setting up artillery posts on the periphery of Gaza and openly threatening--in leaflets dropped by airplane on Gazan communities--to shell civilian areas.

It is our responsibility to make sure everyone knows the reality of Gaza--before Israel is permitted to make good on these threats.

"Celebrating" George's Election "Victory"

The World Can't Wait
By Russ Baker

TomPaine.com
November 1, 2005

Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of Scooter Libby for lying about how he learned of the Valerie Plame affair is an interesting and important development. But the narrowness of that focus, absent further developments, shows again the limitations of “the system” in confronting the sheer magnitude of an entire government subverted, and with it a proud people, from all that we once revered.

For those disturbed by the deceit and the intrigues, the reckless warmongering, the wholesale looting of the common trust to benefit the privileged, the clampdown on rights and liberties, the unconscionable enthusiasm for torture, the embracing of a Know-Nothing attitude toward science, the hastening of environmental collapse, the buying of the legislative process and the neutering of the judicial one, waiting for indictments is no longer sufficient.

One difficulty with opposing the current malefactors of power is that they are so venal, so mean-spirited, so incompetent on so many fronts that it’s hard to focus the public’s attention on the true magnitude of the threat, which dwarfs any single instance of wrong-doing, as egregious as this or that outrage may be. Essential to any successful anti-Bush campaign is the constant reminder that the president and his cronies are dangerous across the board, from the selection of a science textbook in a small town in Kansas to the mobilization of the “shock and awe” war machine for political purposes.

What to do? Tomorrow, on the one-year anniversary of George W. Bush’s contested re-election victory, many Americans will go the direct action route, taking off from work and from school to make their voices heard and their faces seen.

At locations throughout the country, gatherings and marches will sound a wake-up call. Some of those endorsing “The World Can’t Wait: Drive out the Bush Regime” are Gore Vidal, Cindy Sheehan, Cornel West, Studs Terkel, Alice Walker and Harold Pinter. But in such times, of course, you don’t need celebrity endorsements.

It’s possible that the turnout will be underwhelming. It is possible that these events will make no difference at all. Many former activists find themselves discouraged by the prospects of direct expression, or are just too busy—or too comfortable.

But then again, the world has copious examples, from Argentina to Ukraine, where crowds gathered, and chanted or banged pots, and began to change history. Perhaps this will be the beginning of a return to the honored tradition of democracy speaking directly.

Increasingly, we’re seeing signs that the American public is fed up. Polls show Bush’s approval ratings at near-record lows. And a combined and weighted set of fifty statewide surveys from SurveyUSA shows that that just 29 percent of American adults think the country is going in the right direction. A remarkable 66 percent think it is going in the wrong direction. And given all the red state/blue state rhetoric, it’s particularly striking that in not a single state do 50 percent of adults believe the country is on the right path. And in 25 states, fewer than 30 percent of adults think so.

We’ve seen growth of a variety of protests from mainstreamers, including the families of those who have died or been injured in Iraq. Even the iconic soccer moms and NASCAR Joes are leavening the mix with the more eccentric birds of plumage who usually come out. And to be sure, the vanguard of popular movements often includes some more strident and conspiracy-minded elements whose viewpoints don’t necessarily reflect the broader sentiments.

As for tomorrow: One day will not in and of itself a difference make. But it could be the invitation to the dance, the tantalizing seeds for a gradual mass awakening, a slumbering beast beginning to rouse itself.

In New York City, participants will gather at noon in Union Square, and then march up 8th Ave. But essentially, the organizers are asking people, wherever they live, to skip work, skip classes and converge on public spaces, from town squares to major downtowns. For those interested, more information can be found at www.worldcantwait.net.

Recent examples of civic participation at its best include nationwide vigils held last week in recognition of the 2,000-troop death milestone. And we’re seeing, thanks to the Internet, a rapid growth in petition campaigns on a host of issues. With the spectacle of Rosa Parks, a woman who wouldn’t get up from a bus seat, lying in honor this weekend in the Capitol Rotunda, we’re reminded that there’s scarcely a more honorable pursuit than putting one’s principles into action.

- Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is the founder of the Real News Project, a new organization dedicated to producing groundbreaking investigative journalism. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com.

U.N. Security Council Sidles to War in Syria

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Another Trojan Horse from the UN?

Bashing Syria
By LINDA S. HEARD

November 1, 2005

It's happening all over again. This time Syria has received the kiss of the White House don just as laid-out in the 1996 neo-con rule book "Clean Break", conceived on the bidding of none other than the Israel far-right's chief thug Benjamin Netanyahu.

The fact that the cabal is religiously sticking to its agenda is predictable but it's, surely, shocking that world leaders seem bent on bowing to the Bush bullies like a bunch of sycophantic schoolboys even as the Italian premier Berlusconi is saying his mea culpas over Iraq.

On Monday, the UN Security Council (UNSC) voted on a resolution, originally designed to threaten Syria with sanctions should it fail to cooperate with the UN team investigating the assassination of Rafik Hariri, headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.

Ostensible Syrian allies Russia, China and Algeria managed to water-down the draft removing references to sanctions before voting in favor.

This amendment may sound hopeful but actually means little as the resolution was unanimously passed under Chapter Seven, meaning it is liable to being militarily enforced.

So once again, we have a Mid-East country on the US regime-change list with a Damoclesian sword hanging over its head, should it shrink from prostrating itself before the New World Order by handing over top regime figures for what is referred to nowadays as "justice".

In this case, the suspects are the Syrian President's own brother and brother-in-law having been fingered by a Syrian deserter and embezzler who recently telephoned his elder brother from Paris with the words: "I've become a millionaire", or so reports the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Further, the "Mehlis report" is drenched with bias from start to finish, acknowledging the help investigators received from Lebanon and other countries with no mention of Syria.

Moreover, in its "Executive Summary" it terms the assassination of Hariri as "terrorist" but later goes on to suggest "fraud, corruption and money-laundering could have been motives for individuals to participate in the operation". In this case, his death would not fall under the category of terrorism but criminality.

Indeed, during the UN's recent 60th anniversary summit, delegates failed to agree on a definition of 'terrorism' so if the UN doesn't recognize the meaning of that word, what is it doing coloring a heavyweight UN report?

But let's not be too pedantic. Whether or not the higher echelons of the Syrian government were involved in the killing of the former Lebanese Prime Minister is a useful red herring in the great scheme of things.

Since when has the UN been involved with investigating the demise of individuals, even ones as beloved as Hariri?

If that was ever its mandate, why didn't it dispatch its minions to search out the killers of JFK, Salvadore Allende, Anwar Sadat or look into the mysterious deaths of Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yasser Arafat?

Why didn't the UN delve into who poisoned Viktor Yushchenko? The answer is simple. Doing so would not be politically expedient as the investigation of Hariri's death so transparently is.

It's clear that Hariri's assassination is being trumped up as a proverbial smoking gun and a handy emotive one at that - in the 'out to get Syria' game, indicating that the White House is scraping the barrel for a regime-change pretext.

Let's face it. Syria's president Bashar Al-Assad is no Saddam Hussein. He hasn't been "gassing his own people" and neither has he invaded his neighbor (he was invited in to Lebanon by the Lebanese government to quell a civil war), nor has he begun a series of pre-emptive wars.

In fact, in the run-up to the Iraq war when Syria held a temporary seat on the UNSC, Al-Assad and his British-born wife were given the red carpet treatment by both Downing Street and Queen Elizabeth.

Unlike Saddam, a rough and ready rifle-wielding bandito-type, Bashar Al-Assad is a soft-spoken eye-doctor unwillingly thrust into power when his popular brother Basil died due to a road accident. And unlike Saddam, Bashar has attempted to implement a series of political, social and economic reforms against opposition from his father's old guard.

This is a cultured man with whom the West should be dialoguing not demonizing. So where did Al-Assad go wrong and when did he become a marked man?

His greatest 'mistake' was being one of the few Arab leaders to speak out against the invasion of Iraq and give public support to Palestinian militant groups deemed 'terrorist' by the U.S.

His dressing down of Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair during the latter's visit to Damascus in front of the cameras was the start of a slippery slope. From then, he could do no right in spite of the fact the vast majority of world nations were of like mind, including France, Germany and Russia.

Since, Syria has been accused of harboring terrorists and allowing insurgents and weapons to freely cross its borders into Iraq.

In answer to these charges, it closed down the Damascus offices of Hamas and other groups and appealed for US assistance in sealing its long porous borders. It also asked Britain to supply it with night-vision goggles so as to police the border, which Britain agreed to do before reneging on its promise.

When Western nations occupying Iraq began playing the tom-toms against Syria's having over-stayed its welcome in Lebanon, Al-Assad responded by withdrawing Syrian troops and dismantling its intelligence apparatus there. A UN report signed off on Syria's exit.

So here was a country which does not have weapons of mass destruction, was not threatening or occupying its neighbors, had cooperated with Bush's war on terror and which has long been asking to return to the peace table with Israel offering peace in exchange for occupied Syrian territory including the strategically important Golan Heights. Ah! Here we may be onto something.

A return to "Clean Break", whose authors are all current or former members of the Bush administration and include Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz as well as David and Meyrav Wurmser, may give us a clue.

Given a hearty stamp of approval by Dick Cheney and Daniel Pipes, the document calls for the overthrow of both the Syrian and Iranian regimes in order to secure Israel as the dominant regional power, along with an end to the 'land for peace' policy.

In light of the sheer ruthlessness of the above in pursuing their Straussian goals, as evidenced by the recent CIA leak case, and their need for a cassus belli to go after Syria, one must take their crocodile tears over Hariri's death with a huge shovel of salt.

Lastly, I would like to leave you with some questions which deserve mulling over.

Why would the Syrian government on the brink of quitting Lebanon and in the knowledge that it was being squeezed by the White House and Downing Street itching for a fight murder a Lebanese out-of-power politician and with such dramatic fanfare entailing the use of elaborate planning and sophisticated equipment?

The Mehlis report states both the Lebanese and Syrian secret services were tapping Hariri's phone lines and knew his every movement in advance. That said, wouldn't a single sniper's bullet have done the job even more efficiently than a bomb? And, more importantly, fewer individuals would have been involved and the evidentiary paper trail insignificant.

Even if the Syrian regime was dumb enough to kill Hariri in the way that it is alleged, there is a far bigger picture at play, which unfortunately many Lebanese are unable to see.

This myopia is because many Lebanese are rightfully angry over Syria's extended stay in their country and emotionally traumatized at the passing of a true Lebanese patriot credited for returning parts of Beirut to their pre-war magnificence.

Nevertheless, the Lebanese must realize that any attack on Syria is ultimately an attack on them and with Hizbollah vowing to stand shoulder to shoulder with Damascus yet another Lebanese internal conflagration could be triggered.

Revenge may be sweet but the Lebanese should remember it is not only fleeting it also has a nasty habit of boomeranging.

In this case, the way forward for everyone concerned should be a process of forgiveness and reconciliation.

I can only hope that Lebanon won't allow itself to be used as a pawn in a foreign power play destined to benefit Israeli expansionism and neo-con hegemonic ambitions. And, even more importantly, I would urge world leaders to look up the meaning of 'integrity' before locating their missing cajones.



Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer and columnist on Mid-East affairs based in Cairo. She can be contacted at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk

Gorilla Radio for Monday, October 31, 2005

Does Canada want Amparo Torres dead? Nchamah Miller of the Committee to Support Amparo Torres’ Rights.

Taking to the streets with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee's Write and Rally rally.

And, Janine Bandcroft bringing us up to speed with 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

This Week on Gorilla Radio

Lost amid the headlines of America’s crusades in Central Asia, one of the longest running civil wars in the world grinds on. The situation in Colombia is grim. For over forty years, a desperate armed resistance has struggled against an oligarchic government and its ruthless policies. Typically, the struggle has created refugees fleeing factional violence and government-sponsored death squads.

Amparo Torres, declared a refugee by both the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and Canadian immigration when she arrived in 1996 suddenly finds herself accused of association with a “terrorist” organization, and so eligible, under Canada’s new “terrorism” laws, for “repatriation” to her native Colombia.

Nchamah Miller is a political science Ph D candidate at York University and is the chair of the Committee to Support Amparo Torres’ Rights. Nchamah Miller and seeing justice done in the first half.

And; Last week, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee launched its ‘Write and Rally for Vancouver Island’ campaign, an effort to pressure the provincial government to protect more than the meagre 13% of wild habitat levels they are currently proposing.

In the second half, “live” from the weekend’s Write and Rally rally.

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, Nchamah Miller and Canada, taking back refuge from the storm.

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

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, Anthony Fenton, 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.

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Chavez Set to Face Bush

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - In his weekly address to the Venezuelan people, President Hugo Chavez says he's anticipating debating George W. Bush at the forthcoming Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina later this week.

www.pej.org

Chavez Set to Face Bush
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 30, 2005


Chavez told his television and radio audience he expects Bush will focus on reviving the largely moribund Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, a massive trade deal Chavez says is "doomed to failure," adding:

"The debate in Mar del Plata will be beautiful. I imagine it will be, because the gentleman Bush is going to keep making his point."

The FTAA has been a focal point of American trade delegations for both the Bush and Clinton administrations, but the failure of expanded "free trade zones" to improve the quality of life for Latin America's largely impoverished populations has turned public opinion against the deal, and initiated a continent-wide political move to the left.

Chavez left no room for doubt as to where he stands on the deal, saying:

"The FTAA is dead. It will have to be buried. The people of this continent will bury it, and another model of integration will emerge... in the streets, there is a Latin American fervor. We'll see each other there to defend our model."

Chavez maintains, the so-called elimination of trade "barriers" inordinately favours the wealthy and trans-global corporations, while doing little to better conditions for the poor. His "Bolivarian Alternative," named for the 19th century liberator, Simon Bolivar, is based on more "socialistic" principles, the tenets of which hold that a broader distribution of wealth will bring prosperity to all.

Over the last year, Chavez has used Venezuela's considerable oil reserves to bolster Cuba and other Caribbean nations, selling oil under special terms, and using the currency boon garnered from record world oil prices to solidify his standing with his neighbours by providing low-interest loans, accepting payments in barter, and employing other development assistance.

Delineating his reform programme from the FTAA's goals, Chavez said:

"Our mission is socialist because it puts social aspects first, Capitalists put capital first."

As with other high-level trade missions, the Summit of the Americas meetings will be shadowed by a "Peoples Summit," where indigenous, trade union, and social justice groups from around the world will convene.


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

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Our Near Neighbour: Mars Makes a Near Pass

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Mars will be a mere 69 million miles from Earth, and continue it's near orbit for the rest of the year. The "red planet" won't be this close to earth for another 13 years.


Planet Mars shone bright like red ruby, visible with naked eye
Chennai | October 31, 2005 2:43:49 AM IST


Skygazers were treated to a rare celestial event as Planet Mars shone like a bright red ruby during its closest encounter with Earth tonight.
In a rare phenomenon, the Red Planet, which was in the constellation of Taurus, came to a distance of about 69 million km from the Earth, making it visible with naked eye.

''It will take several years for Mars to appear this bright again,'' scientists said.

The Birla planetarium here made elaborate arrangements for the public to view the rare spectacle.

UNI AKN ROY VA BS1932

Twin Towers of Hypocrisy

Twin Towers of Hypocrisy: Israel and U.S. Express Outrage, Promise Action

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Two of the planets most egregious rogue nations took to the international stage last week to proclaim their respective outrage against their perceived enemy's perfidy, and have promised "action" against them. In Israel's case, that promise is already being fulfilled, as residents of the Gaza Strip suffer an escalated IDF aerial bombardment campaign.

www.pej.org

Twin Towers of Hypocrisy:

Israel and U.S. Express Outrage, Promise Action
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 29, 2005

At this hour, the Israeli Defense Force is conducting continued air operations over the Gaza Strip. The latest bombing attacks have knocked out an electricity generation plant, police stations, and left roadways cratered. Israeli jets are also flying lowing-level supersonic sorties over Gaza, a practice adopted several months ago, whose sonic booms smash windows and terrify civilians.

The collective punishment comes in the wake of suicide bombings that have killed Israeli civilians, and intensified "rocket" attacks against Israeli settlements. If there is any doubt these attacks are aimed directly at civilians and not, as Israel claims, at "rocket launch sites," the dropping of leaflets from IDF planes into Gaza clearly promise Palestinians more collective suffering should suicide bombings and rocket attacks continue.

Collective punishment is a war crime, as laid out by international law, but then international law has never been an impediment to Israel in the past. The country is the single most cited scofflaw at the United Nations, standing in defiance of dozens of U.N. orders in council. So, it's with more than a little irony Israel would now be petitioning the U.N. for sanction against Iran, whose president called for the erasure of Israel from the map.

President Mamoud Ahmadinejad's comments came in a speech to attendees of the "World Without Zionism" conference held last week. The Iranian government has tried to assuage international sensibilities since, seeing condemnation from America, and a rebuke from ally Russia, and assured the U.N. it has no intention of attacking Israel, but that has done little to placate Iran's antagonists in Washington and London. Tony Blair hinted earlier this week it was perhaps time to "do something" about Iran.

The military implication of his statement was clear.

Iran has long been a focus of George W. Bush's desire to "reshape" the middle east, and the dismantling of Iran's nascent nuclear energy program is seen by the administration and its supporters in Israel as of primary concern. Iran has denied their nuclear program is geared to, or will be used in the future for, weapons manufacture. U.N. inspectors granted access to the program agree. but, that's not sufficient assurance for either America, or Israel. Public threats and diplomatic pressure on Iran to abandon their nuclear ambitions have been a central policy point for Bush over the last few years, and are now intensifying. The Israeli air force destroyed Saddam Hussein's near complete nuclear power plant in the early 1980's, and a similar action remains a potent, if tacit, threat to Iran.

Meanwhile, the United States is threatening Syria due, they say, to the preliminary findings of a U.N. investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Haririri. The findings of that incomplete, and suspect, investigation has the U.S. clamouring for sanctions against Syria (imagine, murdering a former head of state!) and thousands of Syrians in the streets. The Syria now says it will begin there own investigation into the suspiciously timed assassination.

The Bush administration, and its allies in Britain and Israel, having enjoyed a lawless romp across the planet these last years, now seem to think the world's population entirely devoid of memory. They must too believe none with a sense of irony survive, as they the same criminals behind the abominable Iraq war and occupation, the slo-mo pogrom against the Palestinians, and the plethora of immoral assaults they conduct as a matter of doing business across the globe go a-weedle to the United Nations, the very institution they deride, over minor, and concocted injuries they feel they've received.



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

Blair hints at military action after Iran's 'disgraceful' taunt

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By Philip Webster, Political Editor

10/28/05 "The Times" -- -- TONY BLAIR gave warning last night that the West might have to take military action against Iran after worldwide condemnation of its President’s call for Israel to be “wiped off the map”.

Ending a one-day European Union summit, the Prime Minister called the explosive declaration by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday a disgrace. Promising discussions with Washington and other allies over how to react, Mr Blair said that he had often been urged not to take action against Iran.

But he added: “If they carry on like this the question people will be asking us is — when are you going to do something about Iran? Can you imagine a State like that with an attitude like that having nuclear weapons?”

It was the first time Mr Blair had even hinted at military action and his words are likely to alarm Labour MPs. Mr Blair, clearly angry at the President’s outburst, said that there were people in Iran’s leadership who believed that the world was sufficiently distracted that it could not afford to focus on the nuclear arms issue.

“They will be making a very big mistake if they do that. Those sentiments are completely unacceptable,” he said. “I have never come across a situation in which the president of a country has said they want to wipe out another country. That is unacceptable.”

Mr Ahmadinejad’s words triggered international condemnation, with Israel demanding Iran’s expulsion from the United Nations. “A country that calls for the destruction of another people cannot be a member,” Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, said.

Russia, which has been helping Iran to develop its nuclear programme, called the words unacceptable. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, expressed dismay. The Bush Administration demanded that Iran behave as a responsible member of the international community.

Unlike the US, the EU has always emphasised the need to engage Iran diplomatically, but it also abandoned its more cautious stance yesterday. “Calls for violence and for the destruction of any state are manifestly inconsistent with any claim to be a mature and responsible member of the international community,” the leaders said in an agreed statement.

Iran’s chargé d’affaires in London was called to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be told of Britain’s outrage. Iranian diplomats were subjected to similar protests in other capitals.

Mr Blair said of Iran: “Their attitude towards Israel, terrorism and nuclear weapons is not acceptable. If they continue down this path people are going to believe that they are a real threat to world security and stability. I feel a real sense of revulsion. It shows how much some of these places need to reform themselves. How can we build a more secure world with that type of attitude? It is a disgrace.”

The EU leaders said that the President’s comments would cause concern about Iran’s role in the region and its future intentions. That his comments were made on the same day as the attack on Israeli civilians at Hadera only reinforces the lesson that incitement to violence, and the terrorism it breeds, were “despicable and unacceptable acts”, they said.

Britain, France and Germany have been responsible for handling the EU’s relations with Iran in international forums, and have been notably careful in their diplomatic language, particularly in reference to the prospect of any military action against Iran. By contrast, Washington has conspicuously refused to rule out such action.

But fears in Western governments have grown since the removal last June of Mr Ahmadinejad’s predecessor, Mohammad Khatami, who had been much less hostile to Israel and of whom both Tony Blair and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, had hopes of a better relationship. His successor, the former mayor of Tehran, was an unknown quantity to the West. On Wednesday he made his hardline views clear when he cited the founder of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: “As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map.”

Fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been augmented by worries about its activities in Iraq, where it has been suspected of supporting insurgents. There have been reports that high-ranking members of al-Qaeda have been allowed to roam freely in Iran. Tehran has denied any link to or support for the terrorist group.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT SAID

‘Anybody who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury [while] any [Islamic leader] who recognises the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world . . . As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map’

President Ahmadinejad

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Big Media: Caught in the Net

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Big Media: Caught in the Net

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - The captains of the great flagship newspapers and television networks are frantically changing course, hoping they've not missed the internet tide. It's a sea-change too swift apparently for Big Media, grown as it has fat and indolent, resting on the laurels of an overlong dominance of information and political influence. Now, it's a race to the rat-lines, and one rat is ahead of the pack.

www.pej.org

"Terrified" Big Media Grasps at Net
C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 28, 2005


Fitting that the fattest rat of them all should be the leader of the pack scurrying off traditional media's sinking ship. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has proven nothing less than phenomenal. Not only did the Outback outsider crack American media's Network guardians, but he's come, in a few short years to dominate. But, Rupert's victory could prove Pyrrhic if current trends continue.

Just as newspapers, magazines, and publishers (tentacles all of Murdoch's vast empire) watched circulation ebb, television viewers too are increasingly abandoning the TV for the PC. At the recent Internet Advertising Bureau conference, chief executive Martin Sorrell of WPP, one of the world's most influential advertising and marketing firms, said what everyone was thinking: The times are changing fast in media, and those that don't keep up will be left behind.

"I think there's a certain amount of panic among media owners... Most of these companies, ours included I suppose, are run by 50- or 60-year-olds who have trouble getting it, and who really don't want to see change on their watch."

Never one to wait, News Corp. is now plying all waters, casting broad nets, and snapping up internet media properties as though they were the last of the cod. It's a move Sorrell says seems "almost willy-nilly." Already this year, News Corp. has shelled out more than $1.3 billion on Intermix Media, IGN Entertainment, and Scout Media. With promises of more to come. BSkyB, the British satellite broadcaster and 37 percent controlled by News Corp. is reportedly on the hunt for broadband provider Easynet for an easy 211 million British Sterling.

If the King of Fox's deep pockets has his smaller media moguls fretting, they needn't bother. According to Microsoft head Bill Gates, also attending the IAB conference, such "distinctions" between mediums will soon be "obsolete" notions.

Cold comfort perhaps.

Gates' vision of the future is one where ALL content is distributed online. A timely epiphany, considering Microsoft's imminent release of a 'paid search system' geared to advertisers interested in hyper-specific consumer targeting. MSN's new Advertising Center is due to launch in November.

As seductive a picture a great scuttling of the "mainstream" info/tainment juggernauts is, it's unlikely they'll do so on the meagre dead-heads currently providing alternative information and the much prized "content" Bill craves. More likely, those ship that will come aground atop the tide-surge of tsunami's Bill and Rupert, leaving those of us seeking respite from both no better off.



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

Taken from Vancouver Hospital to face U.S. Marijuana Charge

by "Captain"

PEJ News
Cotober 17, 2005

"Totally out of control" is how one writer describes US and Canadian law enforcement, after an outrageous incident in which the RCMP enabled the "kidnapping" of a Vancouver hospital patient, who was turned over to US officials at the border to face marijuana charges.

According to an AP story that appeared late last week, a US army veteran, Steven W. Tuck, who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain, was taken from a hospital, driven to the border with a catheter still attached to his body, and turned over to U.S. officials.

According to his lawyer, he then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain. Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into federal court last Wednesday for a detention hearing.

"This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason," the lawyer stated.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Donohue issued a temporary release order so that Tuck could be taken to a hospital for treatment. But by the time the judge issued his order, King County jail officials had received a detainment request from Humboldt County, California, so Tuck was not released.

"I can't believe we've run into another snag here," the lawyer said.

Tuck suffered debilitating injuries in the 1980s when his parachute failed to open during a jump. Those injuries were exacerbated by a car crash in 1990, said the lawyer, and Tuck was using marijuana for chronic pain.

In 2001, while living in McKinleyville, California, his marijuana operation was raided for the second time. He fled to British Columbia to avoid prosecution but asylum was denied. Tuck checked into a Vancouver hospital for prostate problems and was arrested there by Canadian authorities shortly thereafter.

Richard Cowan, a friend, said he was with Tuck at the hospital when authorities arrested him. "I would not believe it unless I had seen it," Cowan said. "They sent people in to arrest him while he was on a gurney. They took him out of the hospital in handcuffs, put him in an SUV, and drove him to the border."

Tuck was turned over to Whatcom County Jail officials, who called federal marshals. The marshals took him to the King County Jail in Seattle.

Although Tuck has taken morphine -- as prescribed by doctors -- for about 16 years to help with his pain, he was given no painkiller or treatment at the jail other than ibuprofen, the lawyer stated. Tuck appeared emaciated in court, and the lawyer explained he had been sick from morphine withdrawal.

King County Jail officials did not return a call from AP seeking comment, and the RCMP had no comment.

Tuck is charged federally with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Judge Donohue agreed to release him on the condition that he face the charge in California upon his release from the hospital.

The conservative (and becoming more so) US Supreme Court ruled last June that people who smoke marijuana to ease pain, even on on the advice of their physicians, can still be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws, even in states like California that have laws permitting medical marijuana use.

But where does it say in Canadian law that a hospital patient may be kidnapped by our law enforcement authorities and, without an extradition hearing, returned to the US?

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Unspeakable Crimes: For Those to Follow

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The Epic Crime That
Dares Not Speak Its Name

John Pilger 10/27/05 "ICH " -- -- A Royal Air Force officer is about to be tried before a military court for refusing to return to Iraq because the war is illegal. Malcolm Kendall-Smith is the first British officer to face criminal charges for challenging the legality of the invasion and occupation. He is not a conscientious objector; he has completed two tours in Iraq. When he came home the last time, he studied the reasons given for attacking Iraq and concluded he was breaking the law. His position is supported by international lawyers all over the world, not least by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who said in September last year: "The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN Charter." The question of legality deeply concerns the British military brass, who sought Tony Blair's assurance on the eve of the invasion, got it and, as they now know, were lied to. They are right to worry; Britain is a signatory to the treaty that set up the International Criminal Court, which draws its codes from the Geneva Conventions and the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. The latter is clear: "To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." At the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership, counts one and two, "Conspiracy to wage aggressive war and waging aggressive war", refer to "the common plan or conspiracy". These are defined in the indictment as "the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances". A wealth of evidence is now available that George Bush, Blair and their advisers did just that. The leaked minutes from the infamous Downing Street meeting in July 2002 alone reveal that Blair and his war cabinet knew that it was illegal. The attack that followed, mounted against a defenceless country offering no threat to the US or Britain, has a precedent in Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland; the lies told to justify both are eerily similar. The similarity is also striking in the illegal bombing campaign that preceded both. Unknown to most people in Britain and America, British and US planes conducted a ferocious bombing campaign against Iraq in the ten months prior to the invasion, hoping this would provoke Saddam Hussein into supplying an excuse for an invasion. It failed and killed an unknown number of civilians. At Nuremberg, counts three and four referred to "War crimes and crimes against humanity". Here again, there is overwhelming evidence that Blair and Bush committed "violations of the laws or customs of war" including "murder... of civilian populations of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war". Two recent examples: the US onslaught near Ramadi this month in which 39 men, women and children - all civilians - were killed, and a report by the United Nations special rapporteur in Iraq who described the Anglo-American practice of denying food and water to Iraqi civilians in order to force them to leave their towns and villages as a "flagrant violation" of the Geneva Conventions. In September, Human Rights Watch released an epic study that documents the systematic nature of torture by the Americans, and how casual it is, even enjoyable. This is a sergeant from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division: "On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC [prisoners'] tent. In a way it was sport... One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal [baseball] bat. He was the fucking cook!" The report describes how the people of Fallujah, the scene of numerous American atrocities, regard the 82nd Airborne as "the Murdering Maniacs". Reading it, you realise that the occupying force in Iraq is, as the head of Reuters said recently, out of control. It is destroying lives in industrial quantities when compared with the violence of the resistance. Who will be punished for this? According to Sir Michael Jay, the permanent under-secretary of state who gave evidence before the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee on 24 June 2003, "Iraq was on the agenda of each cabinet meeting in the nine months or so until the conflict broke out in April". How is it possible that in 20 or more cabinet meetings, ministers did not learn about Blair's conspiracy with Bush? Or, if they did, how is it possible they were so comprehensively deceived? Charles Clarke's position is important because, as the current British Home Secretary (interior minister), he has proposed a series of totalitarian measures that emasculate habeas corpus, which is the barrier between a democracy and a police state. Clarke's proposals pointedly ignore state terrorism and state crime and, by clear implication, say they require no accountability. Great crimes, such as invasion and its horrors, can proceed with impunity. This is lawlessness on a vast scale. Are the people of Britain going to allow this, and those responsible to escape justice? Flight Lieutenant Kendall-Smith speaks for the rule of law and humanity and deserves our support. First published in the New Statesman - www.newstatesman.co.uk

Siccing the Bulldog: Patrick Fitzgerald Gets the Rove Treatment

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Pre-Emptive War Against Patrick Fitzgerald
Rep. John Conyers

Huffington Post
October 25, 2005

As if spin and character attacks were a viable justification for a massive breach of national security, Republicans have already decided to smear Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald rather than take responsibility for their own misdeeds. Prevailing wisdom expects grand jury indictments to be issued this week. Any criminal charges will likely reach deep into the White House.

Over the weekend, the GOP spin machine gave us a preview of what we can expect from the Republican Party when we finally learn who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

The New York Times reports that “allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor” and that, in what appears to be a coordinated Congressional and White House attack, “allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case."

Before the Congress and the American people can consider the possibility of a White House cover up, it will have to penetrate the smokescreen of character assassination and RNC talking points. This sort of misdirection is nothing new to this White House. The weapons they will use will be the same used to defame Ambassador Joe Wilson; in the words of a Republican Congressional aide months ago, “it’s slime and defend.”

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson was tapped to test drive the strategy on this weekend’s edition of “Meet the Press.” As if insider trading were at all comparable to alleged treason, Senator Hutchinson attempted to draw parallels between the Fitzgerald investigation and the Martha Stewart trial: mere perjury under oath shouldn’t really bring criminal sanctions, she argued, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime." Senator Hutchinson further expressed her hope that the grand jury would not “go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

Much like the war in Iraq and the clumsy smear of Joe Wilson, the campaign against Patrick Fitzgerald appears doomed from the outset. First and foremost, if the grand jury does choose to bring indictments, neither Senator Hutchinson and her band of White House apologists nor the general public yet know what the scope of those indictments will be. It is quite possible that Patrick Fitzgerald could indict under the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to disclose classified information to someone not authorized to received it. The smear artists are already arguing about technicalities-as if perjury under oath were somehow not criminal behavior. Is espionage enough of a crime for Senator Hutchinson? Is conspiracy? Is outright treason?

If senior White House advisors are, in fact, charged with perjuring themselves, why isn’t that enough for Republicans? It was enough for Senator Hutchinson to vote to remove President Clinton from office, when she said “Lying is a moral wrong. Perjury is a lie told under oath that is legally wrong....[t]o say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders....I will not compromise this simple but high moral principle...” The American people are simply smarter than Senator Hutchinson gives them credit-we remember the high moral principles brought to bare against the Clinton Administration. We will not be fooled by terms like “perjury technicality.”

What about President Bush, whose Administration is being so disingenuously defended? When the story first broke, the President told the nation: “If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of." The President did not make a distinction between some crimes and other crimes.

And how do those who claim Patrick Fitzgerald is an overzealous prosecutor reconcile that view with the statements made by the President they so ruthlessly seek to protect? Not one week ago, President Bush again addressed the country: “The special prosecutor is conducting a very serious investigation. He's doing it in a very dignified way, by the way, and we'll see what he says."

The American public should be outraged-not surprised, but truly indignant-if the grand jury has uncovered evidence that the advisors closest to the President placed politics and petty revenge over national security. Time will tell. The only certainty, it seems, is that Republican leaders are less willing to confront the facts on the ground then they are to smear the character of a decent and dedicated public servant.

Representative John Conyers, Jr. was re-elected in November 2002 to his nineteenth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the second most senior member of the House and was re-elected by his Congressional Colleagues to remain the first African-American Democratic Leader of the pivotal House Committee on the Judiciary. Congressman Conyers is also a founding member and Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus. Most recently, he led efforts to investigate irregularities in the Ohio presidential election.

© 2005 The Huffington Post

Red Cross, Black History

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A Bait-and-Switch Charity

The Scandalous History of the Red Cross
By JOE ALLEN
October 20, 2005

In recent years, the image of the Red Cross has been tarnished. The worst scandal came after the September 11 attacks, when it was revealed that a large portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars donated to the organization went not to survivors or family members of those killed, but to other Red Cross operations, in what was described by chapters across the country as a "bait-and-switch" operation.

Recently, long-simmering concerns about the Red Cross' disaster relief operations were expressed by Richard Walden, of the humanitarian group Operation USA, in the Los Angeles Times--prompting a vitriolic response by the Red Cross.

But these recent scandals are nothing new for the Red Cross. In fact, the whole history of the organization is one gigantic scandal--stretching from its racist policies toward African Americans to its corporate mentality toward human beings.

It is a tribute to the feebleness of the U.S. media--and the Red Cross' powerful Republican allies--that an institution with such a dubious history continues as the symbol of "humanitarian leadership," when it should have been replaced by a far more effective agency decades ago.


* * *

The Red Cross was founded in 1881 by Clara Barton, who became famous during the Civil War for organizing the distribution of food and medical supplies to Union Army soldiers.

The Red Cross is specifically mandated, according to its Congressional charter adopted in 1905, to "carry out a system of national and international relief in time of peace, and apply that system in mitigating the suffering caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods and other great national calamities, and to devise and carry out measures preventing those calamities." The organization was also to carry out its work in accordance with the Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war. Later, the Red Cross would also be entrusted with control of a large part of the nation's blood supply.

But who got relief after disasters has always been affected by the racism that has been part of the Red Cross' long history.

For example, during the Great 1927 Flood that destroyed large parts of the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana, Black farm laborers and sharecroppers without a doubt suffered the most. As John Barry documents in his epic history of the flood, Rising Tide, delta plantation owners refused to evacuate them out of the region for fear--rightly--that most wouldn't return to their miserable, slave-like conditions.

The Red Cross came in to provide temporary housing and food aid. What African Americans of the Delta got was prison-like camps where they were routinely beaten by white, racist National Guardsmen. Food distributed by the Red Cross was given to whites first, and if anything was left, it went to Black survivors.

On the eve of the Second World War, the Red Cross stockpiled large amounts of blood because of techniques developed by the brilliant African American scientist Dr. Charles Drew. Drew himself became director of the Red Cross's Blood Bank in 1941, but resigned his position after the War Department ordered that the blood of Black and white donors be segregated.

Drew called the order "a stupid blunder," but the Red Cross complied and imposed Jim Crow in the blood supply. The Red Cross even initially refused to accept the donation of blood by African Americans at the beginning of the war effort--though it was willing to accept cash donations from them. Throughout the war, the NAACP investigated complaints by Black servicemen of racist treatment by Red Cross.

The Red Cross desegregated the blood supply after the Second World War nationally, but it allowed its Southern chapters to continue segregating blood through the 1960s.

People who think of the Red Cross as a "private charity" would be shocked to discover its actual legal status.

Congress incorporated the Red Cross to act under "government supervision." Eight of the 50 members of its board of governors are appointed by the president of the United States, who also serves as honorary chairperson. Currently, the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security are members of the board of governors.

This unique, quasi-governmental status allows the Red Cross to purchase supplies from the military and use government facilities--military personnel can actually be assigned to duty with the Red Cross. Last year, the organization received $60 million in grants from federal and state governments. However, as one federal court noted, "A perception that the organization is independent and neutral is equally vital."

The leading administrators and officials of the Red Cross are almost always drawn from the corporate boardroom or the military high command. Among the past chairs and presidents of the Red Cross are seven former generals or admirals and one ex-president.

The current president Marty Evans is a retired rear admiral and a director of the investment firm Lehman Brothers Holdings. Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, the chair of the Red Cross, is also CEO of Pace Communications, whose clients include United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and AT&T--a group of companies known for their vicious treatment of workers.

The Red Cross has become particularly tied up with the Republican Party in recent decades. Both McElveen-Hunter and Evans are Bush appointees--for her part, McElveen-Hunter has donated over $130,000 to the Republican Party since 2000.


* * *

THOUGH IT is technically a nonprofit, the Red Cross is run more like profit-hungry corporation than what most people think a "charity" would act like. The most deadly example of this was the Red Cross' criminally negligent response to the early stages of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

The Red Cross has been for many decades, and remains today, the largest blood bank in the country. In 1982 and especially 1983, when it would have possible to contain the outbreak--or at least stop the spread of the disease through infusions of infected blood--major blood banks, led by the Red Cross, opposed national testing of blood for HIV.

The Red Cross' opposition was based on the financial cost. As investigative journalist Judith Reitman wrote in her book Bad Blood: "It appeared it would be cheaper to pay off infected blood recipients, should they pursue legal action, than to up the Red Cross blood supply."

Earlier this year, the Canadian Red Cross pleaded guilty to distributing contaminated blood supplies that infected thousands of Canadians with HIV and hepatitis C in the 1980s. This scandal is a large part of why the Canadian Red Cross was removed from running the country's blood supply in the late 1990s--but not the American Red Cross.

Enron-style bookkeeping, deceptive advertising and outright theft of funds have also been a big part of the Red Cross' recent history.

For years, the organization has been criticized for raising money for one disaster, and then withholding a large chunk of it for other operations and "fundraising." For example, the Red Cross raised around $50 million for the victims of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake in San Francisco, but it's estimated that only $10 million was ever turned over to the victims.

Similar charges were made against the Red Cross following fundraising operations after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and a San Diego fire in 2001. There was also a huge scandal involving the embezzlement of millions of dollars in donations in the New Jersey chapter in the late 1990s.

These scandals and the potentially embarrassing political fallout from them were muffled by the media and the Red Cross' political allies. But the truth couldn't be contained after September 11.

Soon after the attacks, Dr. Bernadine Healy, who was appointed president of the Red Cross in 1999, appealed for donations to help survivors and the families of those killed. In record-breaking time, the organization raised nearly $543 million.

Then the controversy began. A congressional investigation revealed that--though it had promised that all 9/11 donations would all go to victims' families--the Red Cross held back more than half of the $543 million. During congressional hearings, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.)--soon to become a lobbyist for Big Pharma--declared: "What's at issue here is that a special fund was established for these families. It was specially funded for this event, September 11. And it is being closed now because we're told enough money's been raised in it, but we're also told, by the way, we're going to give two-thirds of it away to other Red Cross needs."

Healy was forced to resign, and her successors promised to allocate all of the money to September 11 survivors and their families.


* * *

THE HURRICANE Katrina catastrophe on the Gulf Coast has revealed the same old problems with the Red Cross. In late September, the organization was ordered out of a suburban Atlanta relief center because, according to the New York Times, its "application process had resulted in long lines and the group had made false promises of financial payments."

In an even more bizarre incident in Chicago, students were turned away from volunteering for a multi-agency relief center because they refused to sign a loyalty oath to the U.S. government!

Some more scrutiny of the Red Cross is beginning to take place. As Richard Walden, of Operation USA, wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Its fundraising vastly outruns its programs because it does very little or nothing to rescue survivors, provide direct medical care or rebuild houses."

Walden noted (and the Red Cross now confirms) that the organization has raised $1 billion in pledges and gifts for hurricane relief. He also revealed that "FEMA and the affected states are reimbursing the Red Cross under pre-existing contracts for emergency shelter and other disaster services. The existence of these contracts is no secret to anyone but the American public."

How many people would donate to the Red Cross if they knew all this?

In the richest country in the history of the world, it is a travesty that such an organization is responsible for lifesaving. We deserve so much better.

Joe Allen writes for the Socialist Worker.

Berlusconi Behind Fake Yellowcake Dossier

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Double-Dealers and Dilettantes--
the Men Behind Nigergate Were All Italians
Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo

October 26, 2005 - 1:24pm.
Source: La Republica via Nur al-Cubicle

The military intervention in Iraq was justified by two revelations: Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire unprocessed uranium (yellowcake) in Niger (1) for enrichment with centrifuges built with aluminum tubes imported from Europe(2). The fabricators of the twin hoaxes (there was never any trace in Iraq of unprocessed uranium or centrifuges) were the Italian government and Italian military intelligence. La Repubblica has attempted to reconstruct the who, where and why of the manufacture and transfer to British and American intelligence of the dodgy dossier for war.

They are the same two hoaxes that Judith Miller, the reporter who betrayed her newspaper, published (together with Michael Gordon) on September 8, 2002. In a lengthy investigative piece for the New York Times, Miller reported that Saddam could have built an atomic weapon with those aluminum tubes. These were the goods that the hawks in the Bush administration were expecting.

The "war dance" which followed Judith Miller’s scoop seemed like "carefully-prepared theater” to an attentive media-watcher, Roberto Reale of Ultime Notizie (The Latest News).

Condoleezza Rice, who was then White House Security Advisor, said on CNN: We don’t want the smoking gun to look like a mushroom cloud. A menacing Dick Cheney told Meet the Press that We know with absolute certainty that Saddam is using his technical and commercial capacities to acquire the material necessary to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon. This was the beginning of an escalation of fear.

26 September 2002: Colin Powell warns the Senate: The Iraqi attempt to acquire uranium is proof of its nuclear ambitions.

19 December 2002: The information on Niger and the uranium is included in the three-page President’s Daily Briefing prepared each day by the CIA and the Department of State for George W. Bush. The ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, added his stamp of approval: Why is Iraq dissimulating its purchase of Niger uranium?

28 January 2003: George W. Bush pronounced the 16 words, which amountd to a declaration of war. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The beans in that bag are Roman

In the general haze of events which precede the invasion of Iraq, Italian involvement is prefigured by a single, grotesque protagonist: Rocco Martino, son of Raffaele and America Ventrici, born in Tropea (Province of Catanzaro) on September 20, 1938.

Unmasked by the British press (The Financial Times, The Sunday Times) in the summer of 2004, Rocco Martino spills the beans: It’s true, I had a hand in the dissemination of those (Niger uranium) documents, but I was duped. Both Americans and Italians were involved behind the scenes. It was a disinformation operation.

An incomplete confession but close to the truth

Martino conceals the identify of the architects behind the “operation” and appears to be merely a pawn, like his partners in crime. So who is the puppeteer pulling the strings behind their sordid adventure? To find out, we’ll start with that funny-looking fellow who came to Rome from Tropea...

Rocco Martino is a dishonest cop and a crooked spy. He’s got the aura of a rogue about him even if you don’t know his background. A captain of politico-military intelligence between 1976 and 1997, he was let go for “conduct unbecoming”. In 1985, he was arrested for extortion in Italy. In 1993, he was arrested in Germany in possession of stolen checks. Nevertheless, according to a Defense Ministry official, Martino worked for SISMI until 1999 as a double agent.

Martino rents a place at No. 3 rue Hoehl in Sandweiler, Luxemburg. He gets a fixed salary from French intelligence and uses a consulting firm as cover: Security Development Organization. In other words, he also works for French intelligence. Serving two masters, Rocco tries his best. He sells information on the Italians to the French and information on the French to the Italians. That’s my job. I sell information.

In 1999, the pleasure-seeking Rocco is running out of cash. When he’s down to his last dime, he hatches a plot of his own. He's convinced that he’s got a brilliant and risk-free idea. What illuminates the light bulb is the problem the French are encountering in Niger.

In brief, between 1999 and 2000 the French realize that someone is working abandoned mines to generate a brisk clandestine trade in uranium. Who is purchasing the smuggled uranium? The French are looking for an answer and Rocco Martino senses an opportunity.

So he asks for help form an old colleague at SISMI: Antonio Nucera. A Carabinieri (cop) like Rocco, Antonio is the Deputy Chief of the SISMI center in viale Pasteur in Rome. He’s chief of the 1st and the 8th divisions (weapons and technology transfers and WMD proliferation counterespionage, respectively, for Africa and the Middle East.

This section is very busy section at the end of the 1980s tailing the many agents whom Saddam has deployed around the world prior to the invasion of Kuwait. “With some success”, according to an Italian intelligence official who at the time worked for the division. The official recalls: We succeeded in getting our hands on Niger code books and a telex from Ambassador Adamou Chékou to the Niger Foreign Ministry informing Niamey that Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, would be coming to Niger as a representative of Saddam Hussein.

But that wasn’t all. We confiscated maraging steel (ultra-high strength steel) in the port of Trieste. We thought it was destined for a series of centrifuges used to separate uranium. We exchanged information on Iraqi nuclear proliferation at the end of the eighties with the British of MI6—the cream of the crop. A sincere friend of Italy worked there: Hamilton MacMillan. MacMillan mentored Francesco Cossiga [Interior Minister, in charge during the kidnapping and murdering of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades] in Cossiga's introduction to the mysterious ways of espionage when he was "resident" in Rome.

Nucera decided to give a hand to his old friend, Rocco. Rocco quickly briefs him on the job. Isn’t there anything you can give me—Info? A good Niger contact? I’ll take anything you have! The French are as dry as people lost in the desert. They want to know who is buying their uranium under the table. I’m prepared to pay well to find out.

In the archives of Nucera’s SISMI division, there are documents that could be useful in pawning off a half-baked frittata and making a few bucks. There’s the telex from the Niger ambassador. Further needs might be met at the Niger Embassy at No. 10 via Baiamonte in Rome. SISMI director Nicolò Pollari confirms to La Repubblica: Nucera wanted to help out his friend. He offered him the use of an intelligence asset—no big deal, you understand--one who was still on the books but inactive--to give a hand to Martino. The asset worked at the Niger Embassy in Rome. She was in bad shape. She barely eked out a living in the back of the espionage shop. She didn't get a monthy sum from Italian intelligence. In other words, she was a contractor.

Information and cash were exchanged. It was only chickenfeed—a few hundred thousand lira notes. But that was a lot of money in 2000, when Martino was really desperate. He was on a slow slide to destitution—nothing to spy on and nothing to sell.

La Signora

You should have seen her, "La Signora". Sixty years old if she was a day! A face that once was pretty—now it looked a crinkled leaf. You could call her a gofer for the Niger Embassy. She looked like my old auntie. A French accent. A complicit wink. Always spoke in a whisper. Even when she said “hello”, her voice was like a tiny, mysterious flute, ready to reveal a thousands secrets. But even "La Signora" was in need of cash.

Nucera arranged the meeting. Rocco and La Signora don’t take long. He going to get what he came for. But wasn’t Nucera her official contact at SISMI? Then why wasn’t she supposed to know that it was SISMI who wanted the favor? And why was the item useful to the Agency?

With the blessing of Nucera, Rocco and La Signora, a pair of clever snake oil vendors, conclude a bargain. There would be a few sheets of paper available for sale. But the help of a Niger national was needed. La Signora points him to the right man. He’s First Embassy Counselor Zakaria Yaou Maiga. As Pollari told us, that Maiga spent six times more than he earned.

The gang of spendthrift bunglers, short on cash, is ready to go into action. Rocco Martino, La Signora, Zakaria Yaou Maiga. Nucear retreats into the shadows. They wait for the embassy to close its doors for New Years 2001. They simulate a break-in and burglary. When on January 2, 2001, bright and early, the Second Secretary for Administrative Affairs Arfou Mounkaila reports the burglary to the Carabinieri of the Trionfale station, he has to admit with a grin that the burglars were half asleep. A lot of trouble and effort for nothing. Mounkaila is unable to report missing what he doesn’t know is gone: Letterhead, and official stamps. In the hands of the snake oil vendors, useful stuff with which to assemble a dodgy dossier.

Old documents are extracted from the SISMI division’s archives where Nucera is deputy chief of section: code books, letters, contracts and a memorandum of understanding between the government of Niger and Iraq “concerning the supply of uranium on 5 and 6 July 2000 in Niamey”. The memorandum has a 2-page attachment entitled “Agreement”. Rocco hands over the “package” to agents from the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. They hand him some banknotes which he spends in Nice. Rocco loves the Cote d’Azur.

Up to this point, a caper worthy of Stan Laurel, Goofy and Cruella deVille. But it's an innocuous swindle. The French take the documents and toss them in the dumpster. One of the agents remarks, Niger is a French-speaking place and we know how things are there. But nobody would have confused one minister with another they way they did in that useless piece of garbage.

Case closed, then? No! The burlesque imbroglio is transformed into a very grave matter—along comes September 11th and Bush immediately starts to think about Iraq and requests proof of Saddam’s involvement in the attacks.

SISMI recalls the via Baiamonti squad to into action. A new director, Nicolò Pollari, arrives at Forte Brasco. And Col. Alberto Manenti, the new man on the job, is placed in charge of WMD. A well-prepared officer but completely incapable of saying "No" to a superior, says a SISMI official with whom he worked. Col. Manenti had Nucera on his staff for a time and knew him well. Manenti, who knows that Nucera is about to retire, asks him to stay on as a consultant.

SISMI is straining at the bit. It's got room for maneuver like it’s never had before in the history of Italy. Berlusconi asks Pollari for a feat on the international stage which will catapult Italy to the first among US allies. A request along the same line comes in from the CIA station chief in Rome, Jeff Castelli. News, information, useful scraps of intelligence are needed. Now! On the double! Washington is looking for proof to use against Saddam.

The White House (in particular, Cheney) puts pressure on the CIA to hop to it. The absence of proof isn’t proof of absence, philosophizes Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. In that kind of climate, with their phony dossier, the snake oil salesmen of via Baiamonti, (Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera) would be useful. So what do they do in the fall of 2001? Rocco Martino describes it this way: At the end of 2001, SISMI handed the yellowcake dossier to the British of MI6.

They hand over a dossier devoid of scrutiny. They claim only that they got it from “a reliable source.” Then they make a small tweak: SISMI wanted to disseminate the Niger documents to allied intelligence but at the same time, did not want its collaboration in the operation known. These are allegations which Palazzao Chigi vehemently denies. The government tells a bald-faced lie. After the war reveals the WMD chicanery, the Italian Government swears that no uranium dossier was handed over or made to be handed over to anyone, either directly or through intermediaries.

The next move was predictable. The Italian Government and SISMI build a dike between Forte Braschi and the footprints of the via Biaimonte squad. But its denial does not hold up. It is a known fact that in fall of 2001, SISMI monitored Rocco Martino’s every move in London. This is confirmed to La Repubblica by SISMI chief Nicolò Pollari. We monitored Martino and photographed his meetings in London. Would you like to see the pictures? So why didn’t Rome put the lie to its ex-agent and snake oil salesman? Especially since the information in the dossier was vouched for by Pollari to Jeff Castelli, CIA station chief. It is a known fact that a report on the bogus, made-in-Rome dossier ended up at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence—in the Office of Strategic, Military and WMD Proliferation Affairs.

Strategic Affairs is not a big place. At the time, 16 analysts worked there under the direction of Greg Thielmann. Thielmann tells La Repubblica: I received the report in fall of 2001. We thought that Langley acquired it from their field officer in Italy. The agent in the field reports that Italian intelligence permitted him see some papers documenting the attempt by Iraq to acquire 500 tons of uranium ore from Niger. So, SISMI purported the truth of documents it knew to be false to the CIA. There’s a second confirmation. At Langley, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson was assigned the mission to verify the Italian “story” of the 500 tons of uranium.

Says Wilson: The report was not very detailed. It’s not clear if the agent who signed the report materially saw the peddled documents or whether he heard it from another source.

We'll have to modify the sequence of events:

Fall 2001: General Pollari’s SISMI is in possession of a phony dossier assembled by Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera. They show it to the CIA while Rocco Martino delivers it to Sir Richard Dearlove’s MI6. This is only the beginning of the Great Italian Yellowcake Scam.