Record Group Lets Small Webcasters Pay Lower Rates
By Reuters.
LOS ANGELES - A group backed by the record industry that collects Internet music royalties said on Tuesday it would defer new copyright-payment rates for small Webcasters who claim the new payments would bankrupt them.
SoundExchange, which collects and distributes royalties from Webcasters and satellite radio, said the offer was for Webcasters with revenues of $1.25 million or less.
SoundExchange’s latest efforts follows mounting pressure and activity in Congress, where legislators have introduced bills to annul the pending royalty rate increase, which they say threatens the fledgling industry.
Saying it was seeking to address “alleged weaknesses in the small Webcasters’ businesses,” SoundExchange will defer new sharply higher royalty rates for these companies set by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) on May 1, 2007, that would be retroactive to January 1, 2006, and effective through 2010.
“Although the rates revised by the CRB are fair and based on the value of music in the marketplace, there’s a sense in the music community and in Congress that small Webcasters need more time to develop their businesses,” said John Simson, executive director of SoundExchange, which collects royalties on behalf of artists and big music companies like Warner Music Group Corp. and Vivendi’s Universal Music.
But an advocate for Internet radio operators on Tuesday criticized the offer by SoundExchange. “A proposal like this would doom small Webcasters and kill large Webcasters,” said Jake Ward, of the SaveNetRadio Coalition.
Ward said by deeming a Webcaster large and subject to the higher rates, due to its popularity, ignores the fact that many of these larger sites are still small, struggling companies.
“It would also force small companies to stay small,” he said, noting that certain companies might seek to stay below the higher rate levels. “There’s no question that Webcasters with government-set revenue caps would invest less, innovate less and promote less.”
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Justice Dropping Warrantless Eavesdropping Warrant
Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, by a 2-1 decision, vacated last August's Order from District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor which enjoined the Bush administration from eavesdropping without warrants. Judge Taylor had found that the President's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program violates both the Constitution as well as federal law (FISA).
Yesterday's ruling (.pdf) had absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case -- i.e., whether the NSA program is illegal or not -- but instead rested only on the narrow, technical (though important) issue of whether the particular plaintiffs in this case are entitled to sue over the warrantless eavesdropping program (two of the three judges concluded that they are not).
While the two judges in the majority did not rule on the legality of the program, the third judge -- Judge Gilman -- agreed with Judge Taylor's finding that the President's program violated FISA. He thus wrote that he "would affirm its judgment," and he rejected the administration's standard two defenses for that behavior (i.e., (1) that AUMF implicitly authorized FISA violations and (2) the President has "inherent authority" under Article II to eavesdrop with no warrants). In fact, just as was true for Judge Taylor, Judge Gilman found that while the "standing" issue was a close one, the actual merits -- i.e., whether the President broke the law -- was not close:
The closest question in this case, in my opinion, is whether the plaintiffs have the standing to sue. Once past that hurdle, however, the rest gets progressively easier . . . . [The administration's] AUMF and inherent-authority arguments are weak in light of existing precedent and statutory construction.
The two judges in the majority did not dispute any of this. Instead, they ruled, roughly speaking, that because the program was conducted in secret, the plaintiffs cannot prove that they were subjected to warrantless eavesdropping and thus lack "standing" to contest the legality of the NSA program.
Several observations about the decision:
(1) Any journalist or Bush follower claiming that this decision constitutes vindication for warrantless eavesdropping -- or that it constitutes a repudiation of Judge Taylor's finding that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution -- is deeply confused and/or engaged in a campaign of deceit. Even worse than that, anyone celebrating this result is essentially celebrating a situation where our government leaders are able to act in secret -- even when the law makes it illegal to do so -- and as a result of this secrecy, block courts from ruling on whether they broke the law.
Why would anyone -- including those who think the NSA program is legal -- want to empower our government officials to act free of judicial review of whether they acted illegally? If those who claim to believe that the President acted legally are telling the truth, wouldn't they desire a judicial ruling on these questions?
As noted, the majority opinion here did not make a single comment suggesting they believe Judge Taylor's ruling on the merits was wrong, nor did they suggest that warrantless eavesdropping is legal. To the extent they commented on those issues at all, the majority opinion observed that the appeal "presents a number of serious issues," while the other Judge in the majority (Gibbons) described in the first paragraph of her concurring opinion the "complexity" of the "merits issues." Not a word in either of those two opinions constitutes a repudiation of the finding by Judge Taylor that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution.
(2) Unlike the two judges in the majority, the dissenting judge (Gilman) did issue findings regarding the illegality of the NSA program once he found that the plaintiffs had standing to sue. And he decided conclusively that the NSA program violates FISA and that the administration's two legal excuses are invalid. That means that the only two federal judges ever to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- Judge Taylor and now Judge Gilman -- have both decisively concluded that the President's warrantless eavesdropping is illegal.
Moreover, the rejection by both Judge Taylor and Judge Gilman of the administration's Article II and AUMF "defenses" are completely consistent with the rejection of those same defenses by the Supreme Court in its Hamdan ruling last June, when the Court found illegal the President's Guantanamo military commissions. The two prongs of the Cheney/Addington/Yoo Vision of Presidential Omnipotence used to justify a whole array of presidential lawbreaking -- Article II "inherent authority" and AUMF's "implicit" authorization -- have suffered one legal defeat after the next. If anything, yesterday's decision bolsters that trend, not undermines it.
(3) This is one of those types of legal outcomes which -- understandably so -- can drive laypersons, along with conscientious lawyers, crazy. The result, on its face, is grotesquely unfair, outrageously so.
After all, the whole point of FISA is to make it illegal for the government to spy on us in secret. And yet spying on us in secret is exactly what the Bush administration did; that is the crux of the lawbreaking here. But precisely because it spied on Americans in secret rather than with judicial oversight, nobody knows whose conversations they surveilled and we cannot find out.
It is because of this illegal behavior that the plaintiffs are unable to show that they were subjected to this surveillance. To dismiss the case on the ground that the plaintiffs are unable to make this showing, then, is to reward the Bush administration with the ultimate prize (immunity from judicial review) for having broken the law.
Worse still, it means that if the Government breaks the law in secret, it can be immune from being held accountable in a court because no one individual can ever prove that they were directly and uniquely harmed by the illegal conduct, and thus would lack standing to sue. That result is as destructive as it is Kafka-esque, and it is what happened yesterday.
But the fact that the decision's result is so unfair does not mean, unfortunately, that it was wrongly decided. The role of the judge is to apply the law as it exists, and a judge is not free -- nor should we want them to be free -- to disregard binding legal doctrine whenever the judge decides that doing so is necessary to avoid unfair results. In a society that exists under the rule of law, the solution to bad laws and bad legal doctrines is to change those laws democratically, not to empower judges unilaterally to disregard the law in order to produce (what the individual judge perceives to be) better results.
As technical-seeming as it is, "standing" is a critically important constitutional limitation on the power of the judiciary. Independently, whether one believes in the merits of this doctrine or not, it is a requirement that must be fulfilled before the Constitution permits a court to rule on any matter. And there is good reason for that.
Courts are not omnipotent, free-floating bodies that exist in order to resolve all disputes. If courts had the power to resolve every abstract political and legal dispute, courts themselves would be omnipotent, or at least supreme. The Constitution thus limits the power of courts by narrowing the circumstances in which courts are empowered to act ("The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases . . . [and] to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party"). Rightly or wrongly, the Supreme Court over the years has interpreted that provision to require (roughly speaking) direct and unique injury by the party who is suing, and the Sixth Circuit judges were required to apply that doctrine.
The role of a federal court is thus confined to resolving actual, specific disputes between specific parties where, in essence, one party has harmed the other. If such an injury is lacking, it means that the plaintiffs in a case are basically asking the court to simply issue abstract rulings -- i.e., "is the Government's warrantless eavesdropping program legal"? -- rather than resolving an actual, specific dispute ("I was harmed by the defendant and am entitled to be compensated or otherwise have that wrongful conduct remedied").
Independent of the question of whether the standing issue was correctly resolved here -- and all of the judges appeared to believe that it was a close and difficult question -- the standing doctrine is an important limitation on the power of courts. And that is true even when it produces atrocious outcomes (such as yesterday's finding that our Government can break the law in how its spies on us but remain immune from judicial review as long as it keeps its lawbreaking a secret).
(4) The most important point here is, as usual, the one most overlooked by journalists and Bush followers alike. From the beginning of the NSA scandal, Bush followers have proudly boasted about how confident they were that their warrantless eavesdropping behavior was legal. And yet, the only thing they have done is desperately block one attempt after the next to obtain a legal ruling on whether they broke the law.
There have been countless proposals and other means available to have a court rule on whether the government broke the law and violated the Constitution by spying without warrants, and the administration has resisted every such effort. Yesterday's ruling was but the latest of the obstruction efforts.
Indeed, as Judge Gilman noted -- and as so-called "legal experts" commenting on this case have completely failed to understand -- the Bush administration in this case refused to defend its conduct on the merits. The only argument they made before Judge Taylor was that she had no right to rule on these matters, and they therefore, in effect, conceded the substantive claims that they broke the law. As Judge Gilman wrote:
This is an amazingly simple point that law professors and others who strutted around criticizing Judge Taylor's opinion -- including Orin Kerr and Ann Althouse in her tour de force of ignorance in a New York Times Op-Ed -- have failed to digest.
Judge Taylor did not "fail to address" arguments made by the Bush administration regarding the legality of their behavior because they did not make any such arguments. They refused to do so, because -- as always -- their only objective is to block judicial rulings on the legality of their behavior, not to defend what they have done.
But once myths like this take hold, especially when they are spouted by so-called "experts," they are impossible to eradicate, and hence, we find this on the front page of The New York Times today in an article by Adam Liptak:
Judge Taylor's ruling, which was stayed during the appeal, had attracted criticism from across the political spectrum. Legal experts said it overlooked important precedents, failed to engage some of the government's arguments and relied on novel constitutional arguments where more straightforward ones were available.
Except on the standing issue, yesterday's ruling did not repudiate any of Judge Taylor's findings. The one judge who ruled on them at all said he would have affirmed them, and on the issue of the program's legality, ruled as she did. Moreover, the claim that she "failed to engage some of the government's arguments" is based on the complete falsehood that the government advanced arguments to defend its behavior. It did not. It expressly refused to do so. And that is the key point here, and has been from the beginning.
Since the NSA scandal emerged, there has never been a remotely meritorious -- or even non-frivolous -- defense to the President's lawbreaking. And the administration knows that, which is why they have desperately sought to block judicial review of their behavior and have refused to defend their behavior in court. Rather than simplistically focus on the binary win/loss analysis in discussing this outcome, perhaps journalists could highlight the real scandal here -- having been caught red-handed violating the law in eavesdropping on our conversations, the Bush administration has done everything possible to prevent a judicial ruling on the legality and constitutionality of its actions.
(5) The plaintiffs here will, of course, appeal, though they have no automatic right to have their appeal heard. Either the full Sixth Circuit panel or the Supreme Court must agree to hear their appeal if there is to be a further decision in this case. There are court cases (against AT&T and other telecommunication companies) challenging the legality of the NSA program pending in the Ninth Circuit, where the District Judge has refused to dismiss those lawsuits based on the "state secrets" doctrine and an appellate ruling on that question is expected soon.
There are ways for Congress to act here in order to enable or even compel a court to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. Regardless of one's views on the legality of this program, obtaining a judicial ruling is urgently necessary. It should require little mental energy to contemplate the dangers of allowing our government leaders to spy on us (or take other actions against us) in secret and then simultaneously block any and all processes to determine whether they have broken the law.
-- Glenn Greenwald
source
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, by a 2-1 decision, vacated last August's Order from District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor which enjoined the Bush administration from eavesdropping without warrants. Judge Taylor had found that the President's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program violates both the Constitution as well as federal law (FISA).
Yesterday's ruling (.pdf) had absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case -- i.e., whether the NSA program is illegal or not -- but instead rested only on the narrow, technical (though important) issue of whether the particular plaintiffs in this case are entitled to sue over the warrantless eavesdropping program (two of the three judges concluded that they are not).
While the two judges in the majority did not rule on the legality of the program, the third judge -- Judge Gilman -- agreed with Judge Taylor's finding that the President's program violated FISA. He thus wrote that he "would affirm its judgment," and he rejected the administration's standard two defenses for that behavior (i.e., (1) that AUMF implicitly authorized FISA violations and (2) the President has "inherent authority" under Article II to eavesdrop with no warrants). In fact, just as was true for Judge Taylor, Judge Gilman found that while the "standing" issue was a close one, the actual merits -- i.e., whether the President broke the law -- was not close:
The closest question in this case, in my opinion, is whether the plaintiffs have the standing to sue. Once past that hurdle, however, the rest gets progressively easier . . . . [The administration's] AUMF and inherent-authority arguments are weak in light of existing precedent and statutory construction.
The two judges in the majority did not dispute any of this. Instead, they ruled, roughly speaking, that because the program was conducted in secret, the plaintiffs cannot prove that they were subjected to warrantless eavesdropping and thus lack "standing" to contest the legality of the NSA program.
Several observations about the decision:
(1) Any journalist or Bush follower claiming that this decision constitutes vindication for warrantless eavesdropping -- or that it constitutes a repudiation of Judge Taylor's finding that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution -- is deeply confused and/or engaged in a campaign of deceit. Even worse than that, anyone celebrating this result is essentially celebrating a situation where our government leaders are able to act in secret -- even when the law makes it illegal to do so -- and as a result of this secrecy, block courts from ruling on whether they broke the law.
Why would anyone -- including those who think the NSA program is legal -- want to empower our government officials to act free of judicial review of whether they acted illegally? If those who claim to believe that the President acted legally are telling the truth, wouldn't they desire a judicial ruling on these questions?
As noted, the majority opinion here did not make a single comment suggesting they believe Judge Taylor's ruling on the merits was wrong, nor did they suggest that warrantless eavesdropping is legal. To the extent they commented on those issues at all, the majority opinion observed that the appeal "presents a number of serious issues," while the other Judge in the majority (Gibbons) described in the first paragraph of her concurring opinion the "complexity" of the "merits issues." Not a word in either of those two opinions constitutes a repudiation of the finding by Judge Taylor that the President broke the law and violated the Constitution.
(2) Unlike the two judges in the majority, the dissenting judge (Gilman) did issue findings regarding the illegality of the NSA program once he found that the plaintiffs had standing to sue. And he decided conclusively that the NSA program violates FISA and that the administration's two legal excuses are invalid. That means that the only two federal judges ever to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- Judge Taylor and now Judge Gilman -- have both decisively concluded that the President's warrantless eavesdropping is illegal.
Moreover, the rejection by both Judge Taylor and Judge Gilman of the administration's Article II and AUMF "defenses" are completely consistent with the rejection of those same defenses by the Supreme Court in its Hamdan ruling last June, when the Court found illegal the President's Guantanamo military commissions. The two prongs of the Cheney/Addington/Yoo Vision of Presidential Omnipotence used to justify a whole array of presidential lawbreaking -- Article II "inherent authority" and AUMF's "implicit" authorization -- have suffered one legal defeat after the next. If anything, yesterday's decision bolsters that trend, not undermines it.
(3) This is one of those types of legal outcomes which -- understandably so -- can drive laypersons, along with conscientious lawyers, crazy. The result, on its face, is grotesquely unfair, outrageously so.
After all, the whole point of FISA is to make it illegal for the government to spy on us in secret. And yet spying on us in secret is exactly what the Bush administration did; that is the crux of the lawbreaking here. But precisely because it spied on Americans in secret rather than with judicial oversight, nobody knows whose conversations they surveilled and we cannot find out.
It is because of this illegal behavior that the plaintiffs are unable to show that they were subjected to this surveillance. To dismiss the case on the ground that the plaintiffs are unable to make this showing, then, is to reward the Bush administration with the ultimate prize (immunity from judicial review) for having broken the law.
Worse still, it means that if the Government breaks the law in secret, it can be immune from being held accountable in a court because no one individual can ever prove that they were directly and uniquely harmed by the illegal conduct, and thus would lack standing to sue. That result is as destructive as it is Kafka-esque, and it is what happened yesterday.
But the fact that the decision's result is so unfair does not mean, unfortunately, that it was wrongly decided. The role of the judge is to apply the law as it exists, and a judge is not free -- nor should we want them to be free -- to disregard binding legal doctrine whenever the judge decides that doing so is necessary to avoid unfair results. In a society that exists under the rule of law, the solution to bad laws and bad legal doctrines is to change those laws democratically, not to empower judges unilaterally to disregard the law in order to produce (what the individual judge perceives to be) better results.
As technical-seeming as it is, "standing" is a critically important constitutional limitation on the power of the judiciary. Independently, whether one believes in the merits of this doctrine or not, it is a requirement that must be fulfilled before the Constitution permits a court to rule on any matter. And there is good reason for that.
Courts are not omnipotent, free-floating bodies that exist in order to resolve all disputes. If courts had the power to resolve every abstract political and legal dispute, courts themselves would be omnipotent, or at least supreme. The Constitution thus limits the power of courts by narrowing the circumstances in which courts are empowered to act ("The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases . . . [and] to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party"). Rightly or wrongly, the Supreme Court over the years has interpreted that provision to require (roughly speaking) direct and unique injury by the party who is suing, and the Sixth Circuit judges were required to apply that doctrine.
The role of a federal court is thus confined to resolving actual, specific disputes between specific parties where, in essence, one party has harmed the other. If such an injury is lacking, it means that the plaintiffs in a case are basically asking the court to simply issue abstract rulings -- i.e., "is the Government's warrantless eavesdropping program legal"? -- rather than resolving an actual, specific dispute ("I was harmed by the defendant and am entitled to be compensated or otherwise have that wrongful conduct remedied").
Independent of the question of whether the standing issue was correctly resolved here -- and all of the judges appeared to believe that it was a close and difficult question -- the standing doctrine is an important limitation on the power of courts. And that is true even when it produces atrocious outcomes (such as yesterday's finding that our Government can break the law in how its spies on us but remain immune from judicial review as long as it keeps its lawbreaking a secret).
(4) The most important point here is, as usual, the one most overlooked by journalists and Bush followers alike. From the beginning of the NSA scandal, Bush followers have proudly boasted about how confident they were that their warrantless eavesdropping behavior was legal. And yet, the only thing they have done is desperately block one attempt after the next to obtain a legal ruling on whether they broke the law.
There have been countless proposals and other means available to have a court rule on whether the government broke the law and violated the Constitution by spying without warrants, and the administration has resisted every such effort. Yesterday's ruling was but the latest of the obstruction efforts.
Indeed, as Judge Gilman noted -- and as so-called "legal experts" commenting on this case have completely failed to understand -- the Bush administration in this case refused to defend its conduct on the merits. The only argument they made before Judge Taylor was that she had no right to rule on these matters, and they therefore, in effect, conceded the substantive claims that they broke the law. As Judge Gilman wrote:
This is an amazingly simple point that law professors and others who strutted around criticizing Judge Taylor's opinion -- including Orin Kerr and Ann Althouse in her tour de force of ignorance in a New York Times Op-Ed -- have failed to digest.
Judge Taylor did not "fail to address" arguments made by the Bush administration regarding the legality of their behavior because they did not make any such arguments. They refused to do so, because -- as always -- their only objective is to block judicial rulings on the legality of their behavior, not to defend what they have done.
But once myths like this take hold, especially when they are spouted by so-called "experts," they are impossible to eradicate, and hence, we find this on the front page of The New York Times today in an article by Adam Liptak:
Judge Taylor's ruling, which was stayed during the appeal, had attracted criticism from across the political spectrum. Legal experts said it overlooked important precedents, failed to engage some of the government's arguments and relied on novel constitutional arguments where more straightforward ones were available.
Except on the standing issue, yesterday's ruling did not repudiate any of Judge Taylor's findings. The one judge who ruled on them at all said he would have affirmed them, and on the issue of the program's legality, ruled as she did. Moreover, the claim that she "failed to engage some of the government's arguments" is based on the complete falsehood that the government advanced arguments to defend its behavior. It did not. It expressly refused to do so. And that is the key point here, and has been from the beginning.
Since the NSA scandal emerged, there has never been a remotely meritorious -- or even non-frivolous -- defense to the President's lawbreaking. And the administration knows that, which is why they have desperately sought to block judicial review of their behavior and have refused to defend their behavior in court. Rather than simplistically focus on the binary win/loss analysis in discussing this outcome, perhaps journalists could highlight the real scandal here -- having been caught red-handed violating the law in eavesdropping on our conversations, the Bush administration has done everything possible to prevent a judicial ruling on the legality and constitutionality of its actions.
(5) The plaintiffs here will, of course, appeal, though they have no automatic right to have their appeal heard. Either the full Sixth Circuit panel or the Supreme Court must agree to hear their appeal if there is to be a further decision in this case. There are court cases (against AT&T and other telecommunication companies) challenging the legality of the NSA program pending in the Ninth Circuit, where the District Judge has refused to dismiss those lawsuits based on the "state secrets" doctrine and an appellate ruling on that question is expected soon.
There are ways for Congress to act here in order to enable or even compel a court to rule on the legality of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. Regardless of one's views on the legality of this program, obtaining a judicial ruling is urgently necessary. It should require little mental energy to contemplate the dangers of allowing our government leaders to spy on us (or take other actions against us) in secret and then simultaneously block any and all processes to determine whether they have broken the law.
-- Glenn Greenwald
source
Monday, July 02, 2007
Impunity: Bush Commutes Scooter
Bush Commutes Libby's Jail Sentenceby David Corn
It is appropriate.
The president who led the nation into a disastrous war in Iraq by peddling false statements and misrepresentations has come to the rescue of a White House aide convicted of lying by commuting his sentence. Before the ink was dry on today's court order denying Scooter Libby's latest appeal -- a motion to allow him to stay out of jail while he was challenging his conviction -- George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence. Libby will no longer have to serve the 30-month prison sentence ordered by federal district court Judge Reggie Walton. He will, though, have to pay the $250,000 fine that was part of the sentence.
The commutation -- which is not a pardon and does not erase Libby's conviction -- is a reminder that Bush and his crew do not believe in accountability. Bush has been rather stingy in the use of his pardon power. And regulations issued by his Justice Department note that recipients of pardons should serve their sentences and demonstrate contrition before obtaining presidential absolution. (Libby had expressed no remorse and was not scheduled to report to jail for several weeks.) Yet with this commutation, Bush ducked those requirements, and he is allowing Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, who was found guilty of lying to federal investigators in the CIA leak case, to go unpunished. The fine will be no problem for Libby. His neoconservative friends and admirers will kick in to cover that tab. (Perhaps even Cheney will send a check.)
Libby had become a symbol of the Bush White House's problem with the truth. After all, his lies had been designed to block FBI agents and federal prosecutors from learning the full truth of a White House effort to discredit a critic who had accused the Bush administration of twisting the prewar intelligence. And now the final act in the long-running CIA leak scandal -- Bush's commutation -- stands as another symbol of this grand theme: Lying doesn't really bother this crowd. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush claimed he would bring responsibility to the White House and, as a PR stunt, he dubbed his campaign jet Accountability One. Yet with this commutation, he takes the position that in his administration an aide who purposefully misleads government officials investigating a possible national security crime need not be held fully accountable.
This is no shocker. Early on in the CIA leak affair, the White House announced that anyone involved in the 2003 leak that disclosed the CIA employment of Valerie Wilson, an undercover Agency officer, would be booted out of the administration. But Karl Rove, who had disclosed classified information about Valerie Wilson to two reporters and who apparently lied about his actions to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, was not pink-slipped. Bush has never acknowledged this broken promise. (Libby left the White House only after he was indicted in the fall of 2005.)
Bush shielded Rove, and now -- better late than never -- he's doing the same for Libby. Ever since Libby's conviction in March, neoconservative and conservative Libby partisans have been urging -- or demanding -- that Bush pardon Libby. They have cried that his indictment, his conviction, and his sentence were travesties of justice. They blasted Bush for declining to intervene in the proceedings, branding the president (their pal!) a coward. They acted as if Bush's refusal to pardon Libby was a personal betrayal of each and every one of them. They showed more concern for Libby than any of the civilians who have perished in Iraq in the years since they, Libby. and their allies engineered the invasion of Iraq. Libby was their cause; he was one of them.
Once again, Bush, being nudged by the neocons, has sent a clear message: Telling the truth doesn't matter. Bush has refused to acknowledge that he, Cheney, and other administration officials -- to be polite about it -- stretched the truth about Iraq and the threat it posed before the war. Today, he says that if you lie to protect the White House (especially the vice president), you can escape retribution. But if Bush, Cheney and the others could get away with big untruths about war, why shouldn't Libby get away with small lies about a cover-up? Fair's fair, right?
The foundation of a democratic judicial system is that the sentence fits the crime. In this instance, the commutation fits the administration.
David Corn is the Washington editor for The Nation magazine.
Copyright © 2007 The Nation
New York TImes Take on Palestine Heist
Gaza public servants to get Israeli fundsSteven Erlanger in Jerusalem
July 3, 2007
THE Israeli Government has agreed to restore full financial ties with the Palestinian Authority now that its President, Mahmoud Abbas, has decreed an emergency government with no Hamas members. Israel will resume transfers of taxes to the Authority and return - in instalments - about $US600 million ($707 million) withheld from the Palestinians since early last year.
On Sunday Israel transferred about $US120 million, the equivalent of a month's payroll for the entire authority.
The decision ends an Israeli policy of fiscal isolation of the Palestinians that began with the installation of a Hamas-run government in March last year, after Hamas won a legislative majority, beating the rival Fatah faction. The policy, together with a Western ban on aid to the Hamas government, was designed to undermine that government and bring it down, officials conceded at the time.
Now with Hamas having taken over the Gaza Strip, Mr Abbas, of Fatah, has sacked a Hamas-dominated "unity" government and installed an emergency cabinet led by Salam Fayyad, an independent economist close to Fatah.
Israel and the US are trying to bolster Mr Abbas, who favours a peaceful negotiated solution with Israel, and help him create a functional society in the West Bank. Israel views Mr Abbas as weak and indecisive, but officials see that by sacking the old government, he is finally standing up to Hamas.
Mr Fayyad, educated in Texas and a former economist with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, is prime minister, finance minister and foreign minister.
As finance minister he will be receiving direct transfers from the Israeli treasury and from the West. It remains to be seen whether the European Union, which has been paying part of the salaries of up to 80,000 Palestinians through direct transfers to their bank accounts, will now revert to putting its aid - $US900 million last year - solely through Mr Fayyad.
Mr Fayyad has said he plans, as prime minister of the new government, also to pay Palestinian public servants in Gaza. Many Palestinian Authority employees in Gaza work in health and education, and it would be politically impossible for Mr Fayyad to spend all Palestinian income solely in the West Bank. But how he will pay Palestinian security forces in Gaza without financing Hamas, at least indirectly, is unclear.
"Whether he pays Gaza salaries is not our business," said Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert. "This is a Palestinian government that has already outlawed all armed groups outside the official security services, and we want to co-operate."
The New York Times
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Appeal: John Graham Loses Extradition Defense Bid
JOEY ONLY OUTLAW BAND supports and stands beside our brother John Graham, a long time indigenous and anti-nuclear activist...we have supported Johnboy since day 1 of his arrest years ago! We wish we weren't on tour when the decision came down so we could have been in court with him.---------------------------------------------------------------
1.Article on our friend John Graham's extradition appeal
2.Send Johnboy a letter in prison
3.Send a letter on John's behalf
---------------------------------------------------------------
1.John Graham Loses Extradition Appeal Submitted by blackandred on Sun, 2007-07-01 03:51. British Columbia |Turtle Island | Imperialism | Indigenous | Race | Rights | Security apparatus
Former AIM Member Loses Extradition Appeal
by ROD MICKLEBURGH; Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 5:15 AM EDT - Globe and Mail
[How very sad! The FBI's 'COINTELPRO' program is still happening as another Indigenous Warrior is railroaded by the combined powers of the settler colonies of 'Canada' and the 'United States' - b&r]
VANCOUVER - Echoes from the turbulent and often violent conflicts that consumed the militant American Indian Movement in the 1970s continue to resound in the courtrooms of British Columbia.
Yesterday, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the extradition of former AIM member John Graham to stand trial in South Dakota in the chilling murder more than 30 years ago of Canadian Mi'kmaq Anna Mae Aquash.
After the decision, to the evident distress of his two adult daughters sitting in the courtroom, Mr. Graham was taken into custody to await transport to the United States, pending a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
According to U.S. authorities, Mr. Graham executed Ms. Aquash as she wept and prayed for her life on a desolate corner of the Pine Ridge Reservation on a wintry South Dakota night in 1975.
Her death was allegedly ordered by AIM leaders who believed that the 30-year-old mother was an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A U.S. federal jury convicted Arlo Looking Cloud of murder three years ago for his role in the killing. He has told authorities that he looked on while Mr. Graham shot Ms. Aquash in the back of the head.
Mr. Graham and his many supporters argue, however, that he is being framed by the FBI, as they believe well-known native activist Leonard Peltier was.
Mr. Peltier, currently serving a life sentence for the murder of two FBI agents killed during a 1975 shootout with AIM at Pine Ridge, also fought a long, unsuccessful battle to avoid extradition from B.C.
In a case that continues to arouse emotions today, the main evidence used to extradite Mr. Peltier was a sworn affidavit by native Myrtle Poorbear that later proved to be false. Many, including Amnesty International, have called for Mr. Peltier's release.
AIM was the focus of worldwide attention in those days after rifle-toting natives seized Wounded Knee reservation in 1971, keeping federal agents at bay for 71 days.
Over time, however, the militant movement bogged down in bitter divisions. Some of the statements used against Mr. Graham came from former members and leaders of AIM. They said that Mr. Looking Cloud told them Mr. Graham was involved in the murder of Ms. Aquash.
Court of Appeal Judge Ian Donald referred to the statements in upholding Mr. Graham's extradition to stand trial.
"In my opinion, a properly instructed jury acting reasonably could convict on the evidence that [Mr. Graham]...carried out [Ms. Aquash's] execution with the assistance of Looking Cloud," he concluded.
Mr. Graham's lawyer, Terry La Liberté, said he has little hope his client will receive a fair trial in the United States.
"He's going to be at the mercy of their justice system," Mr. La Liberté said. "It took them just four days to try and convict and sentence Arlo Looking Cloud. It's a railroad down there."
Apart from hearsay statements, the evidence against Mr. Graham is non-existent, he said. "There is not a tittle of forensic evidence. ... In Canada, this case wouldn't even get past the charge approval stage. It's terribly frustrating."
With a report from Canadian Press
----------------------------------------------------------------
2. Please write John a postcard - a postcard so that guards can read it - Write soon as John could be extradited at any time within the next 28 days
Attn: John Graham
North Fraser Pre Trial Center
1451 Kingsway Ave.,
Port Coquitlam,
BC V3C 1S2.
Here are some addresses I am asking people to write in the order given PLEASE send copies of your letters to whoever is appropriate. Never just send off one copy of a letter. It is sometimes in the threat of a copy going elsewhere that something gets done.
N.B ALSO please write Robert Nicholson, Minister of Justice, House of Commons. Ottawa K1A 0A6 and ask him NOT to put his signature on John's extradition order
------------------
AMNESTY ADDRESSES - Write and ask that John Graham's case be looked into as a travesty of justice and ask to have John accepted as a political prisoner. (Links are given to articles giving John's story at the end.)
Write London and US and Germany (Bonn) and the other AI groups listed only as you can. It seems rather useless to write AI Canada in view of this head-in-the-sand answer they have sent us:
( Amnesty(Canada) has previously commented on the need for careful scrutiny of the evidence presented against John Graham, whether in an extradition hearing or in a trial.
However, while we respect efforts to mount an effective defense, we do not share the position that Graham should be shielded from prosecution on the basis of past miscarriages of justice in respect to other, much more prominent members of AIM.
The US justice system is capable of meeting international fair trial standards and should be expected to do in every instance.
The alternative would be to accept that no one could be prosecuted for the murder of Indigenous rights defender Anna Mae Aquash because similar concerns about political interference past investigations would come up in every instance.
I hope that this clarifies our position.
Craig Benjamin
Campaigner for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
International Secretariat, London
If you have concerns about human rights issues in any particular country, or wish to report instances of human rights abuse, you should contact the Amnesty International Secretariat which is our research and policy headquarters based in London.
Amnesty International Secretariat
1 Easton Street
London UK
WC1X 0DW
Tel +44 (0)20 7413 5500
Fax +44 (0)20 7956 1157
www.amnesty.org
Amnesty International USA
5 Penn Plaza,
New York, NY
USA 10001
(212) 807-8400
Mid West Office
53 Jackson, Ste. 731, Chicago, IL
USA 60604
(312) 427-2060
Germany - amnesty international - Sektion der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
e. V.
Telefon
Telefax
E-mail +49 (0)228 / 9 83 73-0
+49 (0)228 / 63 00 36
info@amnesty.de
Postanschrift
amnesty international
Sektion der Bundesrepublik Deutschland e.V.
53108 Bonn
Hausanschrift
amnesty international
Sekretariat der deutschen Sektion
Büro Bonn
Heerstr. 178
53111 Bonn
amnesty international
Sekretariat der deutschen Sektion
Büro Berlin
Greifswalder Str. 4
10405 Berlin
****************************.
And
Scotland
Amnesty International Scotland
9 Haymarket Terrace
Edinburgh EH12 5EZ
Tel +44 (0) 844 800 9088
Fax +44 (0) 131 313 7000
Email scotland@amnesty.org.uk
Press and media enquiries should be directed to Naomi McAuliffe at the
above office.
Ireland Amnesty International Northern Ireland
397 Ormeau Road
Belfast
BT7 3GP
Tel +44 (0) 28 9064 3000
Email nireland@amnesty.org.uk
Press and media enquiries should be directed to Fiona Smith at the above
office.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Write to ask that John Graham's case be put into the Supreme Court for the
sake of all Canadians and our threatened sovereignty The Right Hon
Beverley McLachlin Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
301 Wellington St
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0J1
The Hon Irwin Cotler MP (former Minister of Justice who knows about John's case - as does Peter McKay and Andy Scott and Stephen Owen. I have spoken personally to all of them.)
491 West Block
Ottawa Ontario, K1A 0A6
-Any member can be written at House of Commons, Ottawa. K1A 0A6
Allmand was the solicitor general for Canada when Peltier was extradited)
Warren Allmand
4351 Oxford, Montréal, QC
H4A 2Y7
(514) 486-1811
**************************
International Action Center New York: (This was set up by Ramsay Clark who
was much in sympathy with Leonard Peltier)
5C - Solidarity Center
55 West 17th Street
New York, N.Y. 10011
212-633-6646
Please write Robert Nicholson, Minister of Justice, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6 and ask him NOT to put his signature on John's extradition order. Ron Basford regrettably gave his signature for the extradition of Leonard Peltier)
Also write
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association
360 Bloor St. W.
Suite 506
Toronto
Ontario
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Here are addresses for Human Rights Watch. Let them know the story and even ask them re legal help in USA. Washington and San Francisco office have always replied to me.
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor
New York, NY 10118-3299 USA
Tel: 1-(212) 290-4700, Fax: 1-(212) 736-1300
hrwnyc@hrw.org
1630 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 500
Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel:1-(202) 612-4321, Fax:1-(202) 612-4333
hrwdc@hrw.org
11500 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 441
Los Angeles, CA 90064 USA
Tel:1-(310) 477-5540, Fax: (310) 477-4622
E-mail: hrwlasb@hrw.org
Website
Human Rights Watch
100 Bush Street, Suite 1812
San Francisco, CA 94104
Tel: 415.362.3250, Fax: 415.362.3255
E-mail: hrwsf@hrw.org
Website
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Info & links:
"Who killed Anna Mae Aquash?"
by Rex Weyler
Vancouver Sun, January 8, 2005
www.grahamdefense.org/20050108weyler-van-sun.htm
Dr. Noam Chomsky on John Graham's threatened extradition from Vancouver
http://www.members.shaw.ca/johngraham/noam.html
Bob Newbrook, attending officer at Leonard Peltier's arrest
Raises doubts about John Graham's arrest
http://www.grahamdefense.org/news_province1.htm
Bruce Ellison, lawyer, 4 decades defending native activists in the US
An interview about John Graham:
http://www.danieltv.com/movies/jg-400.mov
====================
PLEASE THINK HARD RE GOOD LEGAL DEFENSE FOR JOHN IN THE USA IN THE EVENT
THE CASE DOES NOT GO TO THE SUPREME COURT. Do you know any lawyers in the US?
(www.myspace.com/xjoeyonlyx)
(www.JOEYONLY.com)
---
SOUND RESISTANCE RADIO & PRODUCTIONS
(www.myspace.com/soundresistance)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Israel: Spinning Fear into Gold
Gaza: Not Just a Prison, a Laboratory By Naomi Klein, The Nation
June 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/54216/
Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hezbollah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith.
At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?
Thomas Friedman recently offered his theory in the New York Times. Israel "nurtures and rewards individual imagination," and so its people are constantly spawning ingenious high-tech start-ups -- no matter what messes their politicians are making. After perusing class projects by students in engineering and computer science at Ben Gurion University, Friedman made one of his famous fake-sense pronouncements: Israel "had discovered oil." This oil, apparently, is located in the minds of Israel's "young innovators and venture capitalists," who are too busy making megadeals with Google to be held back by politics.
Here's another theory: Israel's economy isn't booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines, but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-nineties, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution -- the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.
Within three years, large parts of Israel's tech economy had been radically repurposed. Put in Friedmanesque terms: Israel went from inventing the networking tools of the "flat world" to selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom-a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world.
Discussions of Israel's military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country-US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel's huge and expanding export business. Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States-up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products-well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.
Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion-an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems -- precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock-in the occupied territories.
And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror."
It's no coincidence that the class projects at Ben Gurion that so impressed Friedman have names like "Innovative Covariance Matrix for Point Target Detection in Hyperspectral Images" and "Algorithms for Obstacle Detection and Avoidance." Thirty homeland security companies were launched in Israel in the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country's universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups (something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott).
Next week, the most established of these companies will travel to Europe for the Paris Air Show, the arms industry's equivalent of Fashion Week. One of the Israeli companies exhibiting is Suspect Detection Systems (SDS), which will be showcasing its Cogito1002, a white, sci-fi-looking security kiosk that asks air travelers to answer a series of computer-generated questions, tailored to their country of origin, while they hold their hand on a "biofeedback" sensor. The device reads the body's reactions to the questions and certain responses flag the passenger as "suspect."
Like hundreds of other Israeli security start-ups, SDS boasts that it was founded by veterans of Israel's secret police and that its products were road-tested on Palestinians. Not only has the company tried out the biofeedback terminals at a West Bank checkpoint, it claims the "concept is supported and enhanced by knowledge acquired and assimilated from the analysis of thousands of case studies related to suicide bombers in Israel."
Another star of the Paris Air Show will be Israeli defense giant Elbit, which plans to showcase its Hermes 450 and 900 unmanned air vehicles. As recently as May, according to press reports, Israel used the drones on bombing missions in Gaza. Once tested in the territories, they are exported abroad: the Hermes has already been used at the Arizona-Mexico border; Cogito1002 terminals are being auditioned at an unnamed US airport; and Elbit, one of the companies behind Israel's "security barrier," has partnered with Boeing to construct the Department of Homeland Security's $2.5 billion "virtual" border fence around the United States.
Since Israel began its policy of sealing off the occupied territories with checkpoints and walls, human rights activists have often compared Gaza and the West Bank to open-air prisons. But in researching the explosion of Israel's homeland security sector, a topic I explore in greater detail in a forthcoming book (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism), it strikes me that they are something else too: laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested. Palestinians -- whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan" -- are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs.
So in a way Friedman is right: Israel has struck oil. But the oil isn't the imagination of its techie entrepreneurs. The oil is the war on terror, the state of constant fear that creates a bottomless global demand for devices that watch, listen, contain and target "suspects." And fear, it turns out, is the ultimate renewable resource.
Naomi Klein is the author of "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies" and "Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate."
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/54216/
Monday, June 18, 2007
Unfit to Fly in Canada?
Grounding the No-Fly List
'Useless security theatre'?
Rights groups seek to block 'illegitimate' security plan.
By Tom Barrett
June 18, 2007
TheTyee.ca
Starting Monday, anyone boarding a commercial airliner in Canada will be screened against a home-grown no-fly list. But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is still fighting to kill the list.
Calling the process by which the list was enacted "illegitimate," the association is calling on MPs who belong to the Commons public safety committee to hold public hearings into the list.
The BCCLA is part of a coalition of 10 groups that is calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list.
The list "doesn't do a darn thing for security," BCCLA policy director Micheal Vonn told The Tyee.
"It has terrible implications for rights and it's massively subject to abuse.
"And the other thing that's kind of tied into this is that there has been no democratic process. We say that the process is illegitimate."
Known as Passenger Protect, the federal plan establishes a secret list of persons who are believed to represent an "immediate threat" to airline security.
All passengers in Canada will be automatically screened against the list before they are issued a boarding pass. In the event of a possible match, airlines must immediately contact Transport Canada, which will decide whether the passenger can fly.
'Back door'
The federal cabinet created the list by passing regulations. Unlike legislation, regulations are not debated or voted on by Parliament. And while regulations are supposed to fill in the details on specific pieces of legislation, the BCCLA argues that there is nothing in the relevant law that specifically authorizes a no-fly list.
"No one who passed this legislation would have any reason to believe that they were putting in a no-fly list," said Vonn. "The words 'no fly' have never been uttered in a parliamentary debate on the issue of whether or not we should do this."
The government brought in the list "through the back door," said Vonn. "Clearly this is a national security measure. It should go to the public safety committee."
Although no hearings have ever been held, the public safety committee has been briefed on the list by bureaucrats and several members have been sharply critical of its provisions.
The no-fly list has been criticized by opposition politicians and by the federal privacy commissioner. Earlier this week, Air Canada's head of security warned that the list could create "unruly" situations when passengers are told they cannot fly.
Yves Duguay said the airline supports the idea of a no-fly list, but is worried about the safety of front-line staff.
"That's a point we've been making for two years, the employee security issue," Vonn said.
The BCCLA is also hoping to be given permission to make a public submission to an obscure parliamentary committee that reviews federal regulations. Vonn said the association hopes to hear in the fall whether the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations will grant it permission to argue publicly against the no-fly list.
Made up of senators and MPs, the scrutiny committee reviews new regulations to ensure the government has the authority to make them and that they comply with existing laws, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
'Kafka nightmare'
The BCCLA has opposed the no-fly list since plans to implement it were first made public. The group has called the scheme a "useless piece of security theatre" that "may represent a foothold for an electronic infrastructure for unprecedented traveller surveillance."
The association argues that the U.S. No-fly list has had a "devastating impact on thousands of ordinary citizens who have been flagged by the system mistakenly or because they have a name that sounds like a name on the list."
The U.S. no-fly list, which was created in the wake of 9-11, has apparently grown to half a million names, ABC News reports.
"Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror," ABC reported last week.
With that many names, it's inevitable that confusion will set in. Because the list contains the name T. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy was stopped and questioned five times at U.S. airports by security staff. It took Kennedy more than three weeks to get his name off the list.
The U.S. no-fly system "can't tell the difference between famous U.S. senators and actual terrorists," the BCCLA has argued
Thousands of ordinary Americans "are now unable to board an airplane or are subject to highly intrusive questioning and searching before being allowed on a plane," the BCCLA says.
"And like a Kafka nightmare, they can't find out how they got on the list and can't get themselves off the list."
Two lists
Americans aren't the only ones who have run into troubles with the U.S. no-fly list. The Canadian Press has reported that Canadian airlines already use the U.S. list for domestic flights and that "dozens of Canadians have formally complained about being delayed at airports because their name -- or at least one that matches theirs -- turned up on the U.S. no-fly roster, or possibly another list that singles out passengers for secondary screening."
And, reports CP, Canadian airlines intend to keep using the U.S. list once the Canadian list goes into effect -- even though the federal government has said they should not be using the U.S. list.
Transport Canada says persons on the Canadian list will include:
"An individual who is or has been involved in a terrorist group, and who, it can reasonably be suspected, will endanger the security of any aircraft or aerodrome or the safety of the public, passengers or crew members"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening crimes against aviation security"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening offences and who may attack or harm an air carrier, passengers or crew members."
Photo ID
As of Monday, everyone travelling by air within Canada who appears to be 12 or older must present one piece of government-issued photo ID -- or two pieces of government ID without a photo -- showing their name, date of birth and gender.
The federal government has said it will "take steps to minimize the risk" of mistakes through several procedures:
"The specified persons list will be limited in scope and focused only on aviation security"
"The list will be reviewed and refreshed at least every 30 days to incorporate any new information quickly"
"The list provided to air carriers will provide name, date of birth and gender for each entry, which will allow accurate identification"
"Air carriers will verify possible matches with the list"
"Individuals will be required to present government-issued ID for the verification of name, date of birth and gender."
"The government, not the airline, will make the final decision on whether to deny boarding to an individual who is a match with the list," states Transport Canada.
A passenger who is mistakenly barred from flying can appeal to a Transport Canada "Office of Reconsideration."
To complain to the office, known as the OOR, a person must provide a notarized document that proves that they are who they say they are.
After reviewing the case, the OOR will recommend to the minister of transport whether the government should consider taking the person's name off the list.
"The OOR process will take approximately 30 working days, and the individual will be informed of the decision," states Transport Canada. "Should the individual not be satisfied with the decision of the Minister, they will still have the option of pursuing other legal avenues to challenge the decision, such as the Federal Court."
Privacy concerns
Despite the complaints of civil libertarians, the government says the Canadian no-fly list will comply with both the Charter and privacy laws.
However, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart isn't happy.
Stoddart was highly critical of the home-grown no-fly list when it was first announced and a spokeswoman for her office recently told CanWest News that the commissioner's views "have not drastically changed."
When the no-fly list was first proposed, Stoddart sent Transport Canada a list of 24 questions that outlined her concerns.
Stoddart's first question was:
"What studies, if any, has the department carried out to demonstrate that advance passenger information will be useful in identifying high-risk travelers?"
The government's answer:
"The Passenger Protect program proposes to use a watchlist to prevent specified individuals from boarding flights based on practical global experience and risk assessment rather than specific studies."
Critics say this means that the government has no proof no-fly lists work.
The coalition of groups calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list includes the BCCLA, the Canadian Arab Foundation, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the Centre for Research Action in Race Relations, the Coalition of Arab Canadian Professionals and Community Associations, the Chinese Canadian National Council, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the National Anti-Racism Council of Canada.
The B.C. government's response to the U.S. Patriot Act pre-empted its own privacy commissioner.
Why Are U.S. Drug Cops in Vancouver?
Despite slams from a Supreme Court judge and civil liberties advocates, America's DEA calls B.C. home.
Tom Barrett is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Read his previous stories here.
'Useless security theatre'?
Rights groups seek to block 'illegitimate' security plan.
By Tom Barrett
June 18, 2007
TheTyee.ca
Starting Monday, anyone boarding a commercial airliner in Canada will be screened against a home-grown no-fly list. But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association is still fighting to kill the list.
Calling the process by which the list was enacted "illegitimate," the association is calling on MPs who belong to the Commons public safety committee to hold public hearings into the list.
The BCCLA is part of a coalition of 10 groups that is calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list.
The list "doesn't do a darn thing for security," BCCLA policy director Micheal Vonn told The Tyee.
"It has terrible implications for rights and it's massively subject to abuse.
"And the other thing that's kind of tied into this is that there has been no democratic process. We say that the process is illegitimate."
Known as Passenger Protect, the federal plan establishes a secret list of persons who are believed to represent an "immediate threat" to airline security.
All passengers in Canada will be automatically screened against the list before they are issued a boarding pass. In the event of a possible match, airlines must immediately contact Transport Canada, which will decide whether the passenger can fly.
'Back door'
The federal cabinet created the list by passing regulations. Unlike legislation, regulations are not debated or voted on by Parliament. And while regulations are supposed to fill in the details on specific pieces of legislation, the BCCLA argues that there is nothing in the relevant law that specifically authorizes a no-fly list.
"No one who passed this legislation would have any reason to believe that they were putting in a no-fly list," said Vonn. "The words 'no fly' have never been uttered in a parliamentary debate on the issue of whether or not we should do this."
The government brought in the list "through the back door," said Vonn. "Clearly this is a national security measure. It should go to the public safety committee."
Although no hearings have ever been held, the public safety committee has been briefed on the list by bureaucrats and several members have been sharply critical of its provisions.
The no-fly list has been criticized by opposition politicians and by the federal privacy commissioner. Earlier this week, Air Canada's head of security warned that the list could create "unruly" situations when passengers are told they cannot fly.
Yves Duguay said the airline supports the idea of a no-fly list, but is worried about the safety of front-line staff.
"That's a point we've been making for two years, the employee security issue," Vonn said.
The BCCLA is also hoping to be given permission to make a public submission to an obscure parliamentary committee that reviews federal regulations. Vonn said the association hopes to hear in the fall whether the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations will grant it permission to argue publicly against the no-fly list.
Made up of senators and MPs, the scrutiny committee reviews new regulations to ensure the government has the authority to make them and that they comply with existing laws, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
'Kafka nightmare'
The BCCLA has opposed the no-fly list since plans to implement it were first made public. The group has called the scheme a "useless piece of security theatre" that "may represent a foothold for an electronic infrastructure for unprecedented traveller surveillance."
The association argues that the U.S. No-fly list has had a "devastating impact on thousands of ordinary citizens who have been flagged by the system mistakenly or because they have a name that sounds like a name on the list."
The U.S. no-fly list, which was created in the wake of 9-11, has apparently grown to half a million names, ABC News reports.
"Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror," ABC reported last week.
With that many names, it's inevitable that confusion will set in. Because the list contains the name T. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy was stopped and questioned five times at U.S. airports by security staff. It took Kennedy more than three weeks to get his name off the list.
The U.S. no-fly system "can't tell the difference between famous U.S. senators and actual terrorists," the BCCLA has argued
Thousands of ordinary Americans "are now unable to board an airplane or are subject to highly intrusive questioning and searching before being allowed on a plane," the BCCLA says.
"And like a Kafka nightmare, they can't find out how they got on the list and can't get themselves off the list."
Two lists
Americans aren't the only ones who have run into troubles with the U.S. no-fly list. The Canadian Press has reported that Canadian airlines already use the U.S. list for domestic flights and that "dozens of Canadians have formally complained about being delayed at airports because their name -- or at least one that matches theirs -- turned up on the U.S. no-fly roster, or possibly another list that singles out passengers for secondary screening."
And, reports CP, Canadian airlines intend to keep using the U.S. list once the Canadian list goes into effect -- even though the federal government has said they should not be using the U.S. list.
Transport Canada says persons on the Canadian list will include:
"An individual who is or has been involved in a terrorist group, and who, it can reasonably be suspected, will endanger the security of any aircraft or aerodrome or the safety of the public, passengers or crew members"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening crimes against aviation security"
"An individual who has been convicted of one or more serious and life-threatening offences and who may attack or harm an air carrier, passengers or crew members."
Photo ID
As of Monday, everyone travelling by air within Canada who appears to be 12 or older must present one piece of government-issued photo ID -- or two pieces of government ID without a photo -- showing their name, date of birth and gender.
The federal government has said it will "take steps to minimize the risk" of mistakes through several procedures:
"The specified persons list will be limited in scope and focused only on aviation security"
"The list will be reviewed and refreshed at least every 30 days to incorporate any new information quickly"
"The list provided to air carriers will provide name, date of birth and gender for each entry, which will allow accurate identification"
"Air carriers will verify possible matches with the list"
"Individuals will be required to present government-issued ID for the verification of name, date of birth and gender."
"The government, not the airline, will make the final decision on whether to deny boarding to an individual who is a match with the list," states Transport Canada.
A passenger who is mistakenly barred from flying can appeal to a Transport Canada "Office of Reconsideration."
To complain to the office, known as the OOR, a person must provide a notarized document that proves that they are who they say they are.
After reviewing the case, the OOR will recommend to the minister of transport whether the government should consider taking the person's name off the list.
"The OOR process will take approximately 30 working days, and the individual will be informed of the decision," states Transport Canada. "Should the individual not be satisfied with the decision of the Minister, they will still have the option of pursuing other legal avenues to challenge the decision, such as the Federal Court."
Privacy concerns
Despite the complaints of civil libertarians, the government says the Canadian no-fly list will comply with both the Charter and privacy laws.
However, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart isn't happy.
Stoddart was highly critical of the home-grown no-fly list when it was first announced and a spokeswoman for her office recently told CanWest News that the commissioner's views "have not drastically changed."
When the no-fly list was first proposed, Stoddart sent Transport Canada a list of 24 questions that outlined her concerns.
Stoddart's first question was:
"What studies, if any, has the department carried out to demonstrate that advance passenger information will be useful in identifying high-risk travelers?"
The government's answer:
"The Passenger Protect program proposes to use a watchlist to prevent specified individuals from boarding flights based on practical global experience and risk assessment rather than specific studies."
Critics say this means that the government has no proof no-fly lists work.
The coalition of groups calling for the immediate cancellation of the no-fly list includes the BCCLA, the Canadian Arab Foundation, the Canadian Council for Refugees, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the Centre for Research Action in Race Relations, the Coalition of Arab Canadian Professionals and Community Associations, the Chinese Canadian National Council, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the National Anti-Racism Council of Canada.
The B.C. government's response to the U.S. Patriot Act pre-empted its own privacy commissioner.
Why Are U.S. Drug Cops in Vancouver?
Despite slams from a Supreme Court judge and civil liberties advocates, America's DEA calls B.C. home.
Tom Barrett is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Read his previous stories here.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
China: First Starving Casualties of 'Biofuels'
China wants food first, not fuel
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - A customary Chinese greeting from the years of rations and shortages - "Have you eaten yet?" - is being jokingly resurrected as the public watches the prices of key staples, particularly pork, soaring by the day.
Chinese economic minders, however, are not amused. Worried about social instability fueled by inflation, they have been mulling over whether to steady prices by using the state strategic reserve
of hundreds of thousands of live pigs kept at special farms for contingencies.
Disturbingly, this is the second time in seven months that the Chinese leadership has had to resort to the country's strategic reserves to stave off politically dangerous increases in food prices. In December, Beijing ordered the auctioning of some of the state wheat reserves to halt the rise in crops prices and prevent panic among the public.
"Almost every inflationary crisis in the past 20 years has begun with an increase in food prices," noted Xia Yeliang, professor of economics at Peking University. "Historically Chinese people have always regarded food as their first necessity. For people of middle age and the elderly, the memories of most recent times when food was lacking still endure."
The last big famine China experienced - arguably the greatest in human history - during the disastrous Great Leap Forward experiment with communist industrialization in the late 1950s, killed up to 30 million people. Since then, ensuring food sufficiency for the country's population of 1.3 billion has been regarded by Chinese leaders as a matter of national security.
Current hikes in both grain and pork prices are blamed on the same culprit - the ethanol industry, whose explosive growth has been gobbling up a growing share of China's corn (maize) harvest traditionally preserved for food and animal feed.
Having promoted the production of the environmentally friendly gasoline additive for years, Chinese economic planners now fear the sector has grown too much and too quickly, presenting them with an uncomfortable dilemma of choosing between the country's green agenda and its national food security.
Leadership fears were clearly manifested late last month when Premier Wen Jiabao visited a meat market in Xian, central China, to check the prices of pork. He called on local officials to pay pig breeders to increase production and tried to reassure the public that the situation was under control. As of mid-May, prices of pork were up by 43% compared with the same period last year, said the Agriculture Ministry.
Soaring pork prices have been partly blamed on outbreaks of contagious pig disease, which swept 22 Chinese provinces, killing 18,000 pigs in the first five months of the year and disrupting the pig industry. About a million pigs died from the disease last year.
Yet the root of the problem, according to officials, is not the disease. "The main reason is the big price increases of animal feed that began last June," Jia Youling, director of the Veterinary Bureau affiliated with the ministry, said at a press briefing this week.
Pig feed, which is made mostly of corn, simply followed increases in corn prices. Prices of the commodity have risen by up to 30% since the latter half of last year, according to the ministry.
What is more, producers have ignored a government limit on converting about 3 million tonnes of corn into ethanol a year and used up to 16 million tonnes of the crop in 2006, the ministry said in April.
China has been encouraging the production of biofuel such as ethanol and bio-diesel from renewable resources to satisfy the country's voracious appetite for energy and reduce its growing dependence on imported petroleum.
Biofuel is also touted as green panacea for environmental problems caused by oil. Chinese planners have made the development of green energies a key priority in the country's five-year economic plan. By 2020 they want renewable energy to account for 15% of the country's total supply.
While a relative latecomer to the biofuel market, in the past two years China has grown to be the world's third-largest producer after Brazil and the United States.
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top planning body, reported in December that the country's ethanol capacity had reached 10 million tonnes, or 10 times the amount approved for the four government facilities in Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui and Henan provinces.
The excess amount has been coming from a cluster of small, unlicensed producers, who sell their production to officially approved mills or oil refineries. Industry insiders say that just Jilin, one of the nine designated provinces where ethanol is sold, has more than 400 ethanol mills, all of them producing the fuel from corn.
Fearing that the explosive growth of the ethanol industry was making a serious dent in the country's grain reserves, the central government stopped approving new corn-based ethanol plants in December. This month it took another step, announcing that it would stop the production of ethanol from corn altogether.
Xiong Bilin, a senior official with the NDRC, said the State Council, China's cabinet, has decided ethanol should be developed without occupying arable land, large-scale consumption of grain, or damage to the environment.
Despite three straight years of bumper harvests, Chinese planners are still worried that fast-shrinking farmland could affect grain supply in the near future. Arable land is said to have shrunk by 8 million hectares between 1999 and 2005.
"The country will not approve new projects of food-based ethanol," Xiong told a development forum in Beijing last week. "The current four [state] plants engaged in making ethanol from corn are urged to switch to new sources."
This, however, might not see the end of corn-based ethanol production in the country. Chinese press reports say domestic corn processors are rapidly expanding their capacities to resume ethanol production when the government relaxes its stance.
(Inter Press Service)
Baghdad U.S.A.
Police crack down on 8 Mile
Norman Sinclair / The Detroit News
21 agencies from across area team up in effort to rid communities of drugs, prostitution, other crimes.
DETROIT -- Officers from 21 agencies today are wrapping up Operation Eight Mile, a three-day crackdown on drugs, prostitution and other crimes in communities bordering the Eight Mile corridor from Harper Woods to Farmington Hills.
The effort netted 67 arrests for offenses ranging from drugs to parole violations between 2-10 p.m. Tuesday, the first day. Traffic officers wrote 512 tickets, made 24 arrests and impounded 19 cars. The action continues until 10 tonight.
"I see Operation Eight Mile as an opportunity to get the police and community together to make the area safer," said Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans, whose department coordinated the effort.
"A safe and vibrant Eight Mile corridor is critical to the region as well as to the image and perception of the area people have around the country."
Other departments include Macomb and Oakland Sheriff's departments; Detroit and State Police; officers from Harper Woods, Eastpointe, the five Grosse Pointe departments, Warren, Roseville, Hazel Park, Ferndale, Oak Park, Southfield, Livonia, Redford and Farmington Hills; prosecutors from the three counties; agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the U.S Marshal; the state Department of Corrections; and National Guard also are in the task force.
Evans said he realizes the impressive show of police and hardware during the three-day crackdown, including tanks and helicopters, will not end crime in the area.
"When you hit it that hard for a few days you get a residual drop off in crime and that's a benefit before there is any build up again," he said.
For example, police made arrests at a house on the Detroit side of Eight Mile using information picked up in Eastpointe and Roseville. With an undercover officer posing as a dealer, officers ticketed 45 people who were attempting to buy drugs there and seized 22 cars.
Macomb County Sheriff Mark A. Hackel said the public will see more of these collaborative police efforts in the future.
"Instead of just doing it one week out of the year, you are going to see it on a more continuous basis throughout the year," Hackel said.
Outsourcing Dirty Work in Baghdad
Iraq Contractors Face Growing Parallel War
As Security Work Increases, So Do Casualties
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 16, 2007
As Security Work Increases, So Do Casualties
By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 16, 2007
BAGHDAD -- Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 "hostile actions" in the first four months.
The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, in part because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process, according to U.S. officials. Blackwater USA, a prominent North Carolina firm that protects U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, and several other companies have not applied, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew.
The security industry's enormous growth has been facilitated by the U.S. military, which uses the 20,000 to 30,000 contractors to offset chronic troop shortages. Armed contractors protect all convoys transporting reconstruction materiel, including vehicles, weapons and ammunition for the Iraqi army and police. They guard key U.S. military installations and provide personal security for at least three commanding generals, including Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Scott, who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"I'm kind of practicing what I preach here," Scott said in an interview on the use of private security forces for such tasks. "I'm a two-star general, but I'm not the most important guy in the multinational force. If it's a lower-priority mission and it's within the capabilities of private security, this is an appropriate risk trade-off."
The military plans to outsource at least $1.5 billion in security operations this year, including the three largest security contracts in Iraq: a "theaterwide" contract to protect U.S. bases that is worth up to $480 million, according to Scott; a contract for up to $475 million to provide intelligence for the Army and personal security for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and a contract for up to $450 million to protect reconstruction convoys. The Army has also tested a plan to use private security on military convoys for the first time, a shift that would significantly increase the presence of armed contractors on Iraq's dangerous roads.
"The whole face of private security changed with Iraq, and it will never go back to how it was," said Leon Sharon, a retired Special Operations officer who commands 500 private Kurdish guards at an immense warehouse transit point for weapons, ammunition and other materiel on the outskirts of Baghdad.
U.S. officials and security company representatives emphasized that contractors are strictly limited to defensive operations. But company representatives in the field said insurgents rarely distinguish between the military and private forces, drawing the contractors into a bloody and escalating campaign.
The U.S. military has never released complete statistics on contractor casualties or the number of attacks on privately guarded convoys. The military deleted casualty figures from reports issued by the Reconstruction Logistics Directorate of the Corps of Engineers, according to Victoria Wayne, who served as deputy director for logistics until 2006 and spent 2 1/2 years in Iraq.
Wayne described security contractors as "the unsung heroes of the war." She said she believed the military wanted to hide information showing that private guards were fighting and dying in large numbers because it would be perceived as bad news.
"It was like there was a major war being fought out there, but we were the only ones who knew about it," Wayne said.
After a year of protests by Wayne and logistics director Jack Holly, a retired Marine colonel, the casualty figures were included. In an operational overview updated last month, the logistics directorate reported that 132 security contractors and truck drivers had been killed and 416 wounded since fall 2004. Four security contractors and a truck driver remained missing, and 208 vehicles were destroyed. Only convoys registered with the logistics directorate are counted in the statistics, and the total number of casualties is believed to be higher.
"When you see the number of my people who have been killed, the American public should recognize that every one of them represents an American soldier or Marine or sailor who didn't have to go in harm's way," Holly said in an interview.
According to the logistics directorate, attacks against registered supply convoys rose from 5.4 percent in 2005, to 9.1 percent in 2006, to 14.7 percent through May 10. The directorate has tracked 12,860 convoys, a fraction of the total number of private supply convoys on Iraqi roads.
"The military are very conscious that we're in their battle space," said Cameron Simpson, country operations manager for ArmorGroup International, a British firm that protects 32 percent of all nonmilitary supply convoys in Iraq. "We would never launch into an offensive operation, but when you're co-located, you're all one team, really."
ArmorGroup, which started in Iraq with 20 employees and a handful of SUVs, has grown to a force of 1,200 -- the equivalent of nearly two battalions -- with 240 armored trucks; nearly half of the publicly traded company's $273.5 million in revenue last year came from Iraq. Globally, ArmorGroup employs 9,000 people in 38 countries.
The company, with headquarters at a complex of sandstone villas near Baghdad's Green Zone, is acquiring a fleet of $200,000 tactical armored vehicles equipped with two gun hatches and able to withstand armor-piercing bullets and some of the largest roadside bombs.
The U.S. Labor Department reported that ArmorGroup has lost 26 employees in Iraq, based on insurance claims. Sources close to the company said the figure is nearly 30. Only three countries in the 25-nation coalition -- the United States, Britain and Italy -- have sustained more combat-related deaths.
A Turning Point
In spring 2004, Holly built the logistics network for Iraq's reconstruction from scratch. The network delivered 31,100 vehicles, 451,000 weapons and 410 million rounds of ammunition to the new Iraqi security forces, and items as varied as computers, baby incubators, school desks and mattresses for every Iraqi government ministry. The network came to rival the military's own logistics operation.
Holly also discovered he was at the center of an undeclared war.
He assembled a small private army to protect materiel as it flowed from border crossings and a southern port at Umm Qasr to the 650,000-square-foot warehouse complex at Abu Ghraib and on to its final destination.
"The only way anything gets to you here is if somebody bets their life on its delivery," said Holly, a burly civilian with a trimmed gray beard who strikes a commanding presence even in khakis, multicolored checked shirts and tennis shoes. "That's the fundamental issue: Nothing moves anywhere in Iraq without betting your life."
The most dangerous link in Holly's supply chain is shipping. It requires the slow-moving convoys to navigate Iraq's dangerous roads. Holly erected a ground-traffic control center in a low-slung trailer near his office in Baghdad's Green Zone. The security companies monitor their convoys in air-conditioned silence, which is shattered by a jarring klaxon each time a contractor pushes a dashboard "panic button," signaling a possible attack.
On May 8, 2005, after dropping off a load that included T-shirts, plastic whistles and 250,000 rounds of ammunition for Iraqi police, one of Holly's convoys was attacked. Of 20 security contractors and truck drivers, 13 were killed or listed as missing; five of the seven survivors were wounded. Insurgents booby-trapped four of the bodies. To eliminate the threat, a military recovery team fired a tank round into a pile of corpses, according to an after-action report.
The convoy had been protected by Hart Security, a British firm that used unarmored vehicles. Within a month, another Hart-led convoy was hit. The team leader informed the ground-control center by cellphone that he was running out of ammunition. He left the cellphone on as his convoy was overrun.
"We listened to the bad guys for almost an hour after they finished everybody off," Holly said.
The attacks represented a turning point in the private war.
Holly vowed he would never again use unarmored vehicles for convoy protection. He went to his primary shipper, Public Warehousing Co. of Kuwait, and ordered a change. PWC hired ArmorGroup, which had armed Ford F-350 pickups with steel-reinforced gun turrets and belt-fed machine guns.
Other companies followed suit, ramping up production of an array of armored and semi-armored trucks of various styles and colors, until Iraq's supply routes resembled the post-apocalyptic world of the "Mad Max" movies.
Bolstered Tactics, Armor
ArmorGroup started in Iraq in 2003 with four security teams and 20 employees. It now has 30 mechanics to support its ground operation. "It's a monster," said Simpson, the country operations manager, strolling past a truck blown apart by a roadside bomb.
ArmorGroup operates 10 convoy security teams in support of Holly's logistics operation. The company runs another 10 to 15 under a half-dozen contracts, as well as for clients who request security on a case-by-case basis, Simpson said.
The company charges $8,000 to $12,000 a day, according to sources familiar with the pricing, although the cost can vary depending on convoy size and the risk. For security reasons, the convoys are limited to 10 tractor-trailers protected by at least four armored trucks filled with 20 guards: four Western vehicle commanders with M-21 assault rifles and 9mm Glock pistols, and 16 Iraqis with AK-47s.
The Western contractors, most with at least 10 years' experience, are paid about $135,000, the same as a U.S. Army two-star general. The Iraqis receive about a tenth of that.
"Every time I think about how it was at the beginning, arriving here with a suitcase and $1,000, and there was no one else around, it's just incredible," Simpson said. "Nobody envisioned that private security companies would be openly targeted by insurgents."
ArmorGroup prides itself on a low-key approach to security. Its well-groomed guards travel in khakis and dark blue shirts. The company's armored trucks are adorned with stickers issued by the Interior Ministry, where the company is fully licensed. Holly's former deputy, Victoria Wayne, said ArmorGroup turned down an opportunity to use more powerful weaponry as the insurgent threat increased.
"As a publicly traded company, they didn't want to be perceived as a mercenary force," she said.
But the company is under constant attack. ArmorGroup ran 1,184 convoys in Iraq in 2006; it reported 450 hostile actions, mostly roadside bombs, small-arms fire and mortar attacks. The company was attacked 293 times in the first four months of 2007, according to ArmorGroup statistics. On the dangerous roads north of Baghdad, "you generally attract at least one incident every mission," Simpson said.
Allan Campion, 36, who joined ArmorGroup after 18 years in the British infantry, said one of his convoys was recently attacked three times on a two-mile stretch outside Baghdad. One bomb exploded near the team leader's vehicle, but the convoy managed to continue, he said. Within minutes, another bomb exploded, followed by small-arms fire.
A firefight ensued as the convoy continued through the "kill zone," Campion said.
"We were still moving, so whether you've hit anybody or not, it's very hard to say," he said.
With the insurgents employing more-lethal roadside bombs, ArmorGroup has responded by changing tactics and spending $6.8 million to bolster its armor. Its new armored "Rock" vehicles are built on Ford F-550 chassis and are favored by ArmorGroup because of a V-shaped hull that provides better protection against roadside bombs.
Chris Berman, a former Navy SEAL who helped design the Rock for North Carolina-based Granite Tactical Vehicles, said its main deterrent is its twin gun hatches. "That gives you twice as much firepower," Berman said. "With two belt-fed machine guns in there, that's enough to chew up most people."
'Caught Up in the Mix'
Built on the site of a former Iraqi tank factory, the Abu Ghraib warehouse complex is known variously as Fort Apache, the Isle of Abu and Rocket City, a reference to when rockets and mortars frequently rained down on the compound.
The bleak, windswept facility consists of 64 buildings spread over a 1 1/2 -mile-long and half-mile-wide area; employees of Public Warehousing (now Agility) -- barricaded inside the fortress -- installed a driving range and a small fishing pond for entertainment. The perimeter is protected by double blast walls, guard towers equipped with belt-fed Dushka machine guns and uniformed Kurdish guards who answer to a military-style rank structure and carry AK-47 assault rifles.
Over the past two years, warehouse personnel "probably average four to six KIA a month and six to eight wounded a month," said Leon Sharon, the Falcon Security representative, dressed in a khaki military uniform with a "Falcon 6" patch identifying him as a field commander for the company.
"It's not a game," Sharon said. "People get killed here trying to go home. People trying to come here get killed because they work here. People on convoy escort get killed because of the materiel that we're shipping out of here. Truck drivers get killed because they get caught up in these ambushes. And you have security personnel who end up caught up in the mix. And the work has to go on as normal."
Attacks on Iraqi employees became so common that a trauma center was set up inside the main warehouse. Dozens of Iraqis, fearful of going home after work, live in barracks-style housing in the compound.
Sharon, 61, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is rail thin with a weathered, intelligent face shaped by chain-smoking and four decades of military work. He works out of a small office that is also his bedroom. A humidor sits on his desk. A U.S. flag covers his window. Cartons of Marlboro Reds are stacked behind him near a leather-bound copy of the Koran.
Sharon called Falcon Security a "private military company."
"When you have this many men, you don't manage it as you do a corporation. You manage it very much in the military style," he said. "My men aren't carrying potatoes; they're carrying AK-47s. It's not pilferage we're worried about. It's people storming the walls."
Falcon performs "a military-like role" in Iraq, he said, "with one key exception: We do not, and have no desire to, conduct offensive operations."
But even behind the blast walls, the private and public wars collide, Sharon said. Last year, insurgents attacked a passing U.S. military convoy on a highway outside the gates. Kurdish guards in one of the towers opened fire, killing two insurgents. "The Americans were thrilled," he said.
"All of the work that's being conducted here in Iraq by private security companies would have to be conducted by somebody, and that somebody is U.S. military personnel," he said. "If you had 500 soldiers here, that's 500 less soldiers that you have on the battlefield. And this isn't the only site. There are hundreds of sites around Iraq where you have private security. Where are you going to get this personnel?"
Sharon turns 62 in October. Asked when he planned to leave Iraq, he smiled.
"Last man here, please put the key under the door," he said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
'President' Tony Blair?
Push for Blair as new EU president
George Parker in Brussels, John Thornhill
in Paris and James Blitz in London
Financial Times
June 15 2007
June 15 2007
Tony Blair, the British prime minister, could end up swapping Downing Street for a job as the first full-time European Union president, under a plan being actively touted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.
Mr Sarkozy is understood to have discussed the idea with other EU leaders ahead of next week’s European summit, Mr Blair’s last major international event as prime minister.
His support for Mr Blair taking on a big European job is a remarkable sign of Anglo-French rapprochement since Mr Sarkozy replaced Jacques Chirac as president last month.
German diplomats say Mr Sarkozy put his plan to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, while EU officials say the French president has also touted his idea around other capitals, including Madrid. But the British prime minister remains unpopular with governments in countries such as Italy and Spain, which opposed the Iraq war. Mr Blair’s failure to take Britain into the euro will also count against him.
Mr Blair’s aides admit that Mr Sarkozy and other EU leaders have suggested the idea, but Downing Street insisted that Mr Blair was standing down from frontline politics on June 27. He has denied interest in the job.
Number 10 said talks on “theoretical” jobs formed no part of sensitive negotiations on a new treaty, which aims to establish an EU president and foreign minister in 2009. The new role of president of the European Council – representing the bloc’s 27 member states – would be a permanent replacement for the six-monthly rotating presidency of the EU.
One of Mr Sarkozy’s allies said they could not confirm the president was backing Mr Blair, but expressed support for the idea: “Why not? He is qualified for it. We want a politically strong Europe. We want a president who is credible.”
The president would have few formal powers, but would give the EU strategic leadership and represent the bloc on the world stage on issues such as climate change, bilateral relations and development in conjunction with the new foreign minister.
An FT/Harris opinion poll, out on Monday, suggests Mr Blair remains a divisive figure, with 64 per cent of Germans, 60 per cent of Britons and 53 per cent of French respondents saying he would not be good for the job.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Believe It or Not: Middle East Edition
Believe It or Not in the Middle East
by ROBERT FISK
by ROBERT FISK
When I was a schoolboy, I loved a column which regularly appeared in British papers called "Ripley's Believe It or Not!". In a single rectangular box filled with naively drawn illustrations, Ripley - Bob Ripley - would try to astonish his readers with amazing facts:
"Believe It or Not, in California, an entire museum is dedicated to candy dispensers ... Believe It or Not, a County Kerry man possesses an orange that is 25 years old ... Believe It or Not, a weather researcher had his ashes scattered on the eve of Huricane Danielle 400 miles off the coast of Miama, Florida." Etc, etc, etc.
Incredibly, Ripley's column lives on, and there is even a collection of "Ripley Believe It or Not" museums in the United States.
The problem, of course, is that these are all extraordinary facts which will not offend anyone. There are no suicide bombers in Ripley, no Israeli air strikes ("Believe It or Not, 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon"), no major casualty tolls ("Believe It or Not, up to 650,000 Iraqis died in the four years following the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq"). See what I mean? Just a bit too close to the bone (or bones).
But I was reminded of dear old Ripley when I was prowling through the articles marking the anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Memoirs there have been aplenty, but I think only the French press - in the shape of Le Monde Diplomatique - was prepared to confront a bit of "Believe It or Not".
It recalled vividly - and shamefully - how the world's newspapers covered the story of Egypt's "aggression" against Israel. In reality - Believe It or Not - it was Israel which attacked Egypt after Nasser closed the straits of Tiran and ordered UN troops out of Sinai and Gaza following his vituperative threats to destroy Israel. "The Egyptians attack Israel," France-Soir told its readers on 5 June 1967, a whopper so big that it later amended its headline to "It's Middle East War!".
Quite so. Next day, the socialist Le Populaire headlined its story "Attacked on all sides, Israel resists victoriously". On the same day, Le Figaro carried an article announcing that "the victory of the army of David is one of the greatest of all time". Believe It or Not, the Second World War - which might be counted one of the greatest of all time, had ended only 22 years earlier.
Johnny Hallyday, France's undie-able pop star, sang for 50,000 French supporters of Israel - for whom solidarity was expressed in the French press by Serge Gainsbourg, Juliette GrÈco, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, ValÈry Giscard d'Estaing and FranÁois Mitterand. Believe It or Not - and you can believe it - Mitterand once received the coveted Francisque medal from PÈtain's Vichy collaborationists.
Only the president of France, General de Gaulle, moved into political isolation by telling a press conference several months later that Israel "is organising, on the territories which it has taken, an occupation which cannot work without oppression, repression and expulsions - and if there appears resistance to this, it will in turn be called 'terrorism'". This accurate prophecy earned reproof from the Nouvel Observateur - to the effect that "Gaullist France has no friends; it has only interests". And Believe It or Not, with the exception of one small Christian paper, there was in the entire French press one missing word: Palestinians.
I owe it to the academic Anicet MobÈ Fansiama to remind me this week that - Believe It or Not - Congolese troops from Belgium's immensely wealthy African colony scored enormous victories over Italian troops in Africa during the Second World War, capturing 15,000 prisoners, including nine generals. Called "the Public Force" - a name which happily excluded the fact that these heroes were black Congolese - the army mobilised 13,000 soldiers and civilians to fight Vichy French colonies in Africa and deployed in the Middle East - where they were positioned to defend Palestine - as well as in Somalia, Madagascar, India and Burma.
Vast numbers of British and American troops passed through the Congo as its wealth was transferred to the war chests of the United States and Britain.
A US base was built at Kinshasa to move oil to Allied troops fighting in the Middle East.
But - Believe It or Not - when Congolese trade unions, whose members were requisitioned to perform hard labour inside Belgium's colony by carrying agricultural and industrial goods and military equipment, often on their backs, demanded higher salaries, the Belgian authorities confronted their demonstrations with rifle fire, shooting down 50 of their men.
At least 3,000 political prisoners were deported for hard labour to a remote district of Congo. Thus were those who gave their blood for Allied victory repaid. Or rather not repaid. The four billion Belgian francs which was owed back to the Congo - about £500m in today's money - was never handed over. Believe It or Not.
So let's relax and return to Ripley reality. "Believe It or Not, Russell Parsons of Hurricane, West Virginia, has his funeral and cremation instructions tattooed on his arm! ... Believe It or Not, in April 2007 (yes, these are new Ripleys) a group of animal lovers paid nearly $3,400 to buy 300 lobsters from a Maine fish market - then set them free back into the ocean! ... Believe It or Not, in a hospital waiting room, 70 per cent of people suffer from broken bones, 75 per cent are fatigued, 80 per cent have fevers. What percentage of people must have all four ailments?" Believe It or Not, I don't know. And oh yes, "Geta, Emperor of Rome AD189-212, insisted upon alternative meals. A typical menu: partridge (perdix), peacock (pavo), leek (porrum), beans (phaseoli), peach (persica), plum (pruna) and melon (pepone)."
I guess after that, you just have to throw up.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is The Conquest of the Middle East.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
A Death in Colombia: Dying to be Green
Biofuel gangs kill for green profits
Tony Allen-Mills, New York
HE survived decades of Colombia's murderous guerrilla uprisings. He lived through paramilitary purges and steered well clear of the cocaine overlords who swarmed across his rural region. It was something completely different that killed Innocence Dias. He died because the world is turning green.
The global quest for alternative sources of environmentally friendly energy has attracted high-profile support from American politicians, including President George W Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California. Celebrities such as Daryl Hannah, the actress, and Willie Nelson, the country singer, are leading a campaign to promote green fuels.
Yet the trend has already had disastrous consequences for tens of thousands of peasants in rural Colombia. A surge in demand for biofuels derived from agricultural products has unleashed a chaotic land grab by a new breed of gangster entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the world's thirst for palm oil and related bioproducts.
Vast areas of Colombia's tropical forest are being cleared for palm tree plantations. Charities working with local peasants claim that paramilitary forces in league with biofuel conglomerates - some of them financed by US government subsidies - are forcing families off their land with death threats and bogus purchase offers.
"The paramilitaries are not subtle when it comes to taking land," said Dominic Nutt, a British specialist with Christian Aid who recently visited Colombia. "They simply visit a community and tell landowners, 'If you don't sell to us, we will negotiate with your widow'."
Dias was one of several landowners around the remote settlement of Llano Rico who decided not to abandon his property when the paramilitaries first moved into the area. "My father felt protected because he had a local government position," said his daughter, Milvia Dias, 29.
Even when paramilitaries warned the villagers that if they stayed they would be considered left-wing guerrilla sympathisers, Dias refused to be bullied. "He had cattle and land and one day, after all this happened, he went out to fix a hole in one of the farm's fences," his daughter said. He never came back. A search party found him with his throat cut and seven stab wounds in his torso.
"We held the funeral at 5pm the same day and we ran away the next morning," said Dias. The land is now covered in palm trees owned by Urapalma, a Colombian enterprise that has repeatedly been accused in court proceedings of improperly invading private property.
Nutt said last week that he had heard stories of paramilitaries cutting off the arms of illiterate peasants and applying their fingerprints to land sale documents. In many cases, Nutt added, the land is collectively owned by indigenous people or Afro-Colombians and protected by federal laws that courts seem unable or unwilling to enforce.
There is no reliable estimate of how many thousand acres have been appropriated, or how many of the 3m Colombians who have lost their homes since 1985 were forced out by the palm oil business.
Washington has been struggling for years to persuade Colombian farmers to turn their backs on coca leaf production in favour of other crops. Desperate to find energy alternatives to expensive and politically volatile sources of Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil, Bush is also advocating a global increase in biofuel production.
Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, has urged local palm oil producers to more than double the land they have under cultivation within four years. Uribe's critics complain that he has effectively given a green light to paramilitaries.
At a congressional hearing on Colombia last week, Luis Gilberto Murillo-Urrutia, the former governor of Choco province, told a House foreign affairs subcommittee that US trade policy was likely to "generate an expansion of palm oil cultivation in Afro-Colombian territories . . . there is evidence that palm oil companies, taking advantage of the vulnerability of Afro- Colombian people, have been taking over lands illegally".
For Don Enrique Petro, 67, formerly a wealthy landowner from Curvarado, growing international awareness of the human cost of a green conscience has come several years too late.
"I arrived in Curvarado 39 years ago with my wife and five sons," he said last week. He bought a patch of jungle and slowly transformed it into a 30-acre spread with 110 cows, 20 bulls and 10 horses.
He lost two sons and a brother to the guerrilla wars and in the early 1990s fled his land for five years. When he returned, he found a right-wing paramilitary group in control. "They said they wanted my land to fight the guerrillas," Petro said. "They were lying. It was so they could grow palm on it and make money." Petro refused to sell up. He claims he was eventually taken prisoner by the paramilitaries and, when released, found his land had been planted with palm trees belonging to Urapalma. The company has denied that it is cooperating with paramilitaries or acquiring land illegally.
The world's demand for alternative fuels is unlikely to diminish, but Nutt argued that biofuel consumers should put pressure on Colombia to return stolen land.
Celebrities such as Hannah are beginning to distinguish between palm oil and less controversial biofuels such as ethanol, which is derived mainly from corn.
"I want biofuels that are grown and produced in a sustainable manner," said Hannah, who leads a pressure group which is lobbying for US government standards on green fuel production. "I would not buy biodiesel made from palm oil."
Have your say
As much as all of the concerns expressed are valid, another sustainability factor we should endeavor to respect is the "food miles" content of the finished product. Raw materials transported thousands of miles, however sustainably produced, are far less desirable than using a home grown oil bearing crop that doesn't feature in the human food chain. Better yet, recycled waste vegetable oil, as is accomplished here in my corner of California.
Michael, Santa Cruz, California
As an American, I have to wonder if Hannah has ever heard of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) or the Palm Oil Truth Foundation? Surely if palm oil is produced in a sustainable manner and yields higher output with less land it makes sense to use biofuels from palm oil?
"I would not buy biodiesel made from palm oil." Hannah says - hmm, probably more to do with protectionism than real concern for the environment!
© Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions . Please read our Privacy Policy .To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click here .This website is published by a member of the News International Group. News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY, is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.
Tony Allen-Mills, New York
HE survived decades of Colombia's murderous guerrilla uprisings. He lived through paramilitary purges and steered well clear of the cocaine overlords who swarmed across his rural region. It was something completely different that killed Innocence Dias. He died because the world is turning green.
The global quest for alternative sources of environmentally friendly energy has attracted high-profile support from American politicians, including President George W Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California. Celebrities such as Daryl Hannah, the actress, and Willie Nelson, the country singer, are leading a campaign to promote green fuels.
Yet the trend has already had disastrous consequences for tens of thousands of peasants in rural Colombia. A surge in demand for biofuels derived from agricultural products has unleashed a chaotic land grab by a new breed of gangster entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the world's thirst for palm oil and related bioproducts.
Vast areas of Colombia's tropical forest are being cleared for palm tree plantations. Charities working with local peasants claim that paramilitary forces in league with biofuel conglomerates - some of them financed by US government subsidies - are forcing families off their land with death threats and bogus purchase offers.
"The paramilitaries are not subtle when it comes to taking land," said Dominic Nutt, a British specialist with Christian Aid who recently visited Colombia. "They simply visit a community and tell landowners, 'If you don't sell to us, we will negotiate with your widow'."
Dias was one of several landowners around the remote settlement of Llano Rico who decided not to abandon his property when the paramilitaries first moved into the area. "My father felt protected because he had a local government position," said his daughter, Milvia Dias, 29.
Even when paramilitaries warned the villagers that if they stayed they would be considered left-wing guerrilla sympathisers, Dias refused to be bullied. "He had cattle and land and one day, after all this happened, he went out to fix a hole in one of the farm's fences," his daughter said. He never came back. A search party found him with his throat cut and seven stab wounds in his torso.
"We held the funeral at 5pm the same day and we ran away the next morning," said Dias. The land is now covered in palm trees owned by Urapalma, a Colombian enterprise that has repeatedly been accused in court proceedings of improperly invading private property.
Nutt said last week that he had heard stories of paramilitaries cutting off the arms of illiterate peasants and applying their fingerprints to land sale documents. In many cases, Nutt added, the land is collectively owned by indigenous people or Afro-Colombians and protected by federal laws that courts seem unable or unwilling to enforce.
There is no reliable estimate of how many thousand acres have been appropriated, or how many of the 3m Colombians who have lost their homes since 1985 were forced out by the palm oil business.
Washington has been struggling for years to persuade Colombian farmers to turn their backs on coca leaf production in favour of other crops. Desperate to find energy alternatives to expensive and politically volatile sources of Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil, Bush is also advocating a global increase in biofuel production.
Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, has urged local palm oil producers to more than double the land they have under cultivation within four years. Uribe's critics complain that he has effectively given a green light to paramilitaries.
At a congressional hearing on Colombia last week, Luis Gilberto Murillo-Urrutia, the former governor of Choco province, told a House foreign affairs subcommittee that US trade policy was likely to "generate an expansion of palm oil cultivation in Afro-Colombian territories . . . there is evidence that palm oil companies, taking advantage of the vulnerability of Afro- Colombian people, have been taking over lands illegally".
For Don Enrique Petro, 67, formerly a wealthy landowner from Curvarado, growing international awareness of the human cost of a green conscience has come several years too late.
"I arrived in Curvarado 39 years ago with my wife and five sons," he said last week. He bought a patch of jungle and slowly transformed it into a 30-acre spread with 110 cows, 20 bulls and 10 horses.
He lost two sons and a brother to the guerrilla wars and in the early 1990s fled his land for five years. When he returned, he found a right-wing paramilitary group in control. "They said they wanted my land to fight the guerrillas," Petro said. "They were lying. It was so they could grow palm on it and make money." Petro refused to sell up. He claims he was eventually taken prisoner by the paramilitaries and, when released, found his land had been planted with palm trees belonging to Urapalma. The company has denied that it is cooperating with paramilitaries or acquiring land illegally.
The world's demand for alternative fuels is unlikely to diminish, but Nutt argued that biofuel consumers should put pressure on Colombia to return stolen land.
Celebrities such as Hannah are beginning to distinguish between palm oil and less controversial biofuels such as ethanol, which is derived mainly from corn.
"I want biofuels that are grown and produced in a sustainable manner," said Hannah, who leads a pressure group which is lobbying for US government standards on green fuel production. "I would not buy biodiesel made from palm oil."
Have your say
As much as all of the concerns expressed are valid, another sustainability factor we should endeavor to respect is the "food miles" content of the finished product. Raw materials transported thousands of miles, however sustainably produced, are far less desirable than using a home grown oil bearing crop that doesn't feature in the human food chain. Better yet, recycled waste vegetable oil, as is accomplished here in my corner of California.
Michael, Santa Cruz, California
As an American, I have to wonder if Hannah has ever heard of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) or the Palm Oil Truth Foundation? Surely if palm oil is produced in a sustainable manner and yields higher output with less land it makes sense to use biofuels from palm oil?
"I would not buy biodiesel made from palm oil." Hannah says - hmm, probably more to do with protectionism than real concern for the environment!
© Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions . Please read our Privacy Policy .To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click here .This website is published by a member of the News International Group. News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY, is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69.
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