US vows Blackwater killings probe
Blackwater is responsible for US embassy security and protects diplomats and officials [AFP]
The US has vowed to investigate a deadly Iraqi civilian shooting after the Iraqi government ordered Blackwater USA, the main American security firm in the country, to get out over the killings.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, telephoned Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, to express regret at the loss of life and promised that the results of an internal investigation into Sunday's incident would be shared with Baghdad.
"She has expressed her personal apologies and the apologies of the government of the United States. She confirmed that the United Sates will take immediate actions to prevent such actions from happening again," al-Maliki's office said.
In video
Kimberley Halkett takes
an in-depth look at Blackwater's operations
Tom Casey, the deputy state department spokesman, said: "She told the prime minister that we were investigating this incident and wanted to gain a full understanding of what happened."
Rice and al-Maliki "agreed on the importance of working closely together in the time ahead on a transparent investigation," Casey added.
Yassin Majid, an adviser to the prime minister, said the two also agreed to hold any wrongdoers accountable.
Al-Maliki had condemned Sunday's shooting and vowed to punish the perpetrators and their employers.
Tens of thousands of private security
contractors operate in Iraq [AFP]
"We will work to punish and halt the work of the security company which conducted this criminal act," state television quoted him as saying.
The 15-minute call came after Iraq's interior ministry said it had revoked Blackwater's licence.
The firm is responsible for US embassy security and the expulsion may severely curtail US operations in Iraq by stripping diplomats and other officials of protection.
The two other private security firms employed by the US state department to protect its personnel in Iraq are Dyncorp and Triple Canopy.
Blackwater said it had not been formally notified of any expulsion. The US state department also said Washington had not been informed of the licence cancellation.
Conflicting accounts were reported of the incident in which, according to the US embassy in Baghdad, a diplomatic convoy was attacked, and security guards opened fire in response.
'Profitable patriotism'
Estimated 30,000 private security "contractors" in Iraq often referred to as shadow armies and mercenaries
US figures say in the first gulf war, ratio of private contractors to troops one to 60; now about one to three
Little known about who security firms are accountable to
Accused of being overly aggressive and above the law
Blackwater has secured more than $500m in federal contracts since 2000 - two thirds of those contracts known as "no bids"
Landed first big contract in Iraq in 2003, protecting Paul Bremer, the-then US top administrator in Iraq, for 11 months for $21m
Employs 1,500 security personnel in Iraq, specialising in transporting so-called high-value targets
US military destroyed Falluja in 2004, weeks after four Blackwater employees were killed there
Has also stirred up controversy in Potrero, a small US town along the California-Mexico border where it wants to build a huge training camp
Iraq's interior ministry said eight civilians were killed and 13 wounded when Blackwater contractors opened fire on civilians in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Mansour in western Baghdad after mortar rounds landed near their convoy.
General Abdul Kareem Khaleh, an interior ministry spokesman, said Blackwater guards "opened fire randomly at citizens".
"We have withdrawn its licence" and will "deliver those who committed this act to the court", he added.
Anne Tyrrell, a company spokeswoman, said late on Monday: "Blackwater's independent contractors acted lawfully and appropriately in response to a hostile attack in Baghdad on Sunday."
The state department could not say which Iraqi laws Blackwater or its employees might be subject to, the chain of command its employees answer to.
The US embassy said it was seeking clarification on the legal status of security contractors and whether Blackwater employees could be prosecuted in Iraq.
Khaleh said the security guards "do not have immunity, as immunity is granted only to the multi-national forces … [They] are subject to the obligations of the Iraqi penal law".
The moves by the Bush administration appear unlikely to forestall a congressional inquiry into not just Sunday's events but the government's increasing reliance on the use of contractors in Iraq.
"The controversy over Blackwater is an unfortunate demonstration of the perils of excessive reliance on private security contractors," Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said.
He said his committee would hold hearings to determine "what has happened and the extent of the damage to US security interests".
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Hanford Nuclear Accident
Subject: hanford nuclear accidentsee the report of DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD
Hanford accident is a wake-up call
By HELEN WHEATLEY
The Hanford nuclear waste site had its worst accident in years on July 27. A pipe burst and sprayed the air and ground with some of the
hottest material to be found on the site.
The accident happened at an old single-shell tank that dates back to the early 1950s. It holds highly radioactive sludge left over from producing the nation's first nuclear weapons. A contractor, CH2M Hill, was transferring the waste from the failing old tank to a new one.
Put your finger on the end of a straw and suck the other end. What happens to the straw? That appears to be what happened out on the Hanford tank farm http://www.dnfsb.gov/pub_docs/hanford/wr_20070727_hd.pdf
Besides cesium, strontium, americium, plutonium and a toxic soup of non-radiological hazardous chemicals, the peanut butter-thick sludge is chunked up with salt cake and other glop. Engineers try to stir this up, and thin it with a bit of water. They have designed all kinds of redundancies to prevent disasters in the line carrying the sludge from one tank to another. Less thought went into the pipe carrying in clean water. After all, the water should flow into the tank, not out.
Unless the pump clogs up. And somebody reverses the pump to clear it. And it doesn't work, so they do it again. Do you see that straw collapsing? Or maybe the suction finally works, and a hundred gallons of deadly brew pours out into the vacuum, escaping its half-century prison, bursting from the weakened line, and spilling onto the ground and into the air.
Did CH2M Hill know that it had a problem on its hands? It seems an increase in radiation levels registered right after the pump was run at about 2 a.m. A team was not sent to investigate until about eight hours later. What the team found was deemed serious enough to order Hanford
workers to take cover.
That event raises many red flags. Why did the engineering mistakes occur? Was it a case of too much pressure to produce results, without enough planning and oversight? Were the investigators properly protected? Could an earlier investigation have stopped workers from
coming onto the site in the first place, instead of giving them a belated order to take cover? Why did it take so long to make an official discovery of the accident?
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, for one, has asked the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to become involved. There are 149 old single-shell tanks at Hanford, and Wyden calls the commitment to getting the waste out "tenuous."
The federal government has poured billions into building a plant to treat the waste. But the plant is additional billions over budget, years behind schedule and technologically novel and uncertain. There aren't enough double shell tanks to receive the old waste; July's pipe accident is not the first problem encountered trying to pump material from one tank to another.
This is a good time to ask questions because the U.S. Department of Energy is putting together a new contract for managing the high-level radiation waste tanks at Hanford. For CH2M Hill, it is not such a good time for accidents to happen. That's why Wyden called for a truly independent investigation, "not just of the most recent release and its underlying causes, but to also examine the operational assumptions, plans, schedule and engineering approach used in the tank waste
transfer program."
Right now, Wyden stands alone. Who in Washington will join his call to get to the bottom of what happened at Tank S-102? Let's seek some fresh, disinterested opinions, before we see more inadvertent experiments in elementary physics.
Helen Wheatley is Heart of America Northwest's board president.
The Spinmeister's Return: Whatever Happened to Ari?
Pro-Bush Group Airs New War Ads
By JIM KUHNHENN
[for complete article links, please see original here. - ape]
The Petraeus Report Myth - The Petraeus Report's Real Benefactor: Big Oil
WASHINGTON (AP) - A political group supporting President Bush's Iraq war strategy with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign is airing a new TV ad denouncing a liberal group's sharp criticism of Gen. David Petraeus.
The campaign is the second rollout of ads by the group, Freedom's Watch, and capitalizes on Democratic Party unease over a newspaper ad run this week by MoveOn.org, one of the leading anti-war voices among liberal activists.
The MoveOn ad appeared Monday in The New York Times on the morning of Petraeus' first appearance before Congress to testify about conditions in Iraq. The ad accused Petraeus of "cooking the books" for the White House. "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" it asked, playing off his name.
The ad has become a rallying point for Republicans, who have demanded that Democrats disavow it.
Some Democrats have voiced concern. On Monday, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called the ad "over the top."
The Freedom's Watch ad states: "Name calling, charges of betrayal it's despicable. It's what MoveOn shamefully does - and it's wrong. America and the forces of freedom are winning. MoveOn is losing. Call your Congressman and Senator. Tell them to condemn MoveOn."
"It's not surprising that a White House front group like Freedom's Watch would come after us," said Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action. Pariser defended the MoveOn ad, saying, "when you have the Bush administration spinning the facts about what is happening in Iraq, that's a betrayal of trust."
Bradley A. Blakeman, president of Freedom's Watch, said MoveOn was employing "outrageous tactics."
"To question the character and patriotism of brave men and women who combat terrorism everyday is too much, it's in poor taste and it will not go unchallenged," he said.
Freedom's Watch also plans to respond to MoveOn with a print ad in The New York Times, and has demanded the same $65,000 rate that the liberal group paid for its full-page ad. Freedom's Watch spokesman Matt David said his organization paid "significantly more" for another full-page ad Tuesday on the 9/11 anniversary.
That ad, however, was a more expensive full-page color ad, compared to MoveOn's, which was black and white. The rate also would have been higher if Freedom's Watch asked for a specific date and placement of the ad. David said The New York Times did not offer Freedom's Watch the $65,000 rate.
Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communication at the Times, said she could not discuss specific advertisers, but said the rate for a special advocacy, full-page, black and white, standby ad is $64,575. At that rate, an advertiser can request that an ad run on a specific date, but cannot be guaranteed such placement.
"The rates are certainly things that have many different variables in them," she said.
Freedom's Watch launched a $15 million advertising blitz last month to pressure lawmakers, including Republicans, whose backing of the war was seen as wavering.
The group is financed by former White House aides and Republican fundraisers and was organized as a nonprofit organization under IRS rules. It is not required to identify its donors or the amounts they give.
Among those who have been publicly identified with the effort are billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a fundraiser for Bush and chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS), and conservative philanthropist John M. Templeton Jr. of Bryn Mawr, Pa. Both men have been major contributors to conservative causes.
Also backing Freedom's Watch are top Republican donors Anthony Gioia, Mel Sembler and Howard Leach, all former ambassadors in the Bush administration. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is a founding member.
more on Ari
Siegelman's Detractors: A Stink from Down South
The Remarkable ‘Recusal’ of Leura Canary
Harpers.org
DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED September 14, 2007
[for complete article links, please see original here. - ape]
Alabama media continue to report uncritically on almost every statement that emanates from the office of Leura Canary, the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, who is currently in the crosshairs of the Siegelman investigation. One of the most often repeated, and still unexamined, contentions to emanate from her office is the claim that Leura Canary recused herself from the prosecution of Governor Don Siegelman, and that the case was handled from that point forward by the head of her criminal department, Louis V. Franklin. As we will shortly see in an examination of that question forthcoming in a major legal periodical, Franklin’s claim that he ran the case collapses completely under close inspection. He did handle the trial, which is important, but the key aspects of tactical and case management decision-making were retained by political appointees in Washington—to an extent that was quite extraordinary. Yet it seems that no reporter in Alabama ever worked up the gumption to ask any questions or do any research about it; they all just reported what Louis Franklin said, and they didn’t put any follow-up questions to him, either.
One of the oddest claims has consistently been the simple suggestion that Leura Canary ‘recused’ herself from the case. When I first heard this, I put down on my check list: collect Canary recusal papers from court docket. My researcher went off looking for them, and reported back: there are no Canary recusal papers.
How could that be? I sent him back again, for the same result. I started asking counsel and clerks at the court. It seems no one else had ever seen the recusal papers. So did Leura Canary actually recuse herself? I’m skeptical. It’s an extremely important matter, as Mrs. Canary went to great lengths to create a public appearance that she had withdrawn. But there’s a lot to suggest that in fact she never relinquished complete control over the case. Let’s take a deeper look, shall we?
In mid-2001, Leura Canary commenced an investigation into “certain state employees” on corruption allegations. It soon became apparent that the principal target of this investigation was Governor Siegelman. The investigation had been initiated at the request of William Pryor, then Attorney General of Alabama. Various representatives of Mrs. Canary’s office have given conflicting false explanations of the source of the complaint that initiated the investigation. Usually they attribute it to a newspaper reporter from Mobile, in an effort to obscure the actual and highly partisan political source. This is important because William Pryor and Leura Canary share a common partner. And his name is William Canary.
In March 2002, David Cromwell Johnson, an attorney for Siegelman, filed paperwork with the Justice Department for her recusal. Johnson argued that Mrs. Canary was conflicted under ethical guidelines binding on U.S. Attorneys for two reasons: first, her husband, William Canary, was then working as a paid political consultant for Attorney General Pryor, the man whose complaints were driving the case, and second, her husband was the paid political consultant for Lt. Gov. Steve Windom, who had declared his intention to oppose Siegelman for the governorship.
I was amazed in reviewing this document to see how little Johnson knew about Canary and his role in Alabama Republican politics. Or perhaps he was simply being too polite to give it detail. But I think for readers to understand the depth of the conflict point, it really is essential to get a closer look at Leura Canary’s impressive husband, Bill.
Leura Canary
Karl RoveMr. Canary served as chief of staff for the Republican National Committee, as chief of staff to the 2000 G.O.P. Convention chairman and former Bush chief of staff, Andy Card, and as National Field Director for the Bush-Quayle campaign in 1992. I am told by senior Republican figures that Canary secured these various roles largely on the strength of his close personal friendship with Karl Rove and with Rove’s express endorsement. In 1994, Mr. Canary and his friend and mentor Karl Rove put together a grand strategy to turn around the court system in Alabama, putting the G.O.P.’s handpicked candidates in control of key Alabama appellate court races. This process was chronicled by Joshua Green in a major article on Rove’s remaking of the judicial politics of Alabama published in The Atlantic. In a 1995 article, Time Magazine’s Michael Kramer called Bill Canary a “legend in Republican circles” and in the same article, former RNC Chairman Rich Bond described Bill Canary as an “expert political paratrooper” and “someone you dropped into a state where something needed fixing and it got fixed.” Mr. Canary was the architect of a special relationship between the Alabama G.O.P. and the Business Council of Alabama that proved the finance lifeline for many Alabama G.O.P. election campaigns. He was widely described as the G.O.P.’s Alabama “kingpin.”
William Pryor, who was notoriously eager to get a position on the federal bench and whose nomination proved the most controversial single judicial appointment ever made by George W. Bush, had another key political advisor to whom he turned for support: Karl Rove. In his political campaigns, Pryor spoke ceaselessly about the “corruption” of the Democratic administration in Alabama, and made no bones about his desire to maneuver prosecutorial resources to accomplish a political mission. And working at his side on this project, as an assistant, was Leura Canary–until President Bush picked her to be the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery. And William Pryor’s other main political advisor throughout this period was Leura’s husband, Bill Canary.
Steve Windom ultimately lost in the Republican primary to Bill Riley, but during his campaign he continuously drew on the Leura Canary investigation for political grist to support his “corruption” accusations against Siegelman. The posturing, campaign rhetoric, and advertising were arranged by William Canary. The criminal investigations that fueled it were managed by his wife.
Shortly after Johnson filed his papers, the Justice Department responded saying it had them and would study the matter. The next development came on May 16, 2002—roughly a year into the case—when Leura Canary issued a press statement:
As to any matters pertaining to any current investigation of [Governor Siegelman] which may be underway, the Department of Justice has advised me that no actual conflicts of interest exist. However, out of an abundance of caution, I have requested that I be recused to avoid any question about my impartiality.
I question the honesty of Leura Canary’s statement. First, it makes the claim–continuously repeated–that Mrs. Canary took this step on her own initiative. In fact she took it because of the request that attorney Johnson filed with the Justice Department, which launched an independent look at the matter.
Second, Mrs. Canary says that the Justice Department told her that she was okay from a conflicts perspective. I put the question to two prominent legal ethicists: would the facts I presented require Mrs. Canary’s recusal from the investigation of Governor Siegelman? Answer: “this is not a borderline or close case. Under the facts you outline, Mrs. Canary violated the canons of ethics by undertaking and handling the investigation of Governor Siegelman for the period up to her recusal.” Do you believe that a Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility officer would have advised Mrs. Canary that there was “no actual conflict.” Answer: “The standard that applies is whether there would be an ‘appearance of impartiality,’ not ‘actual conflict,’ so the Canary statement misstates the rule. Nonetheless, here the situation passes far beyond ‘appearance of impartiality’ and reaches an actual conflict. The advice she suggests could not have been competently rendered. It would be very interesting to know who at Justice gave such advice.” And third, the press statement says she recused herself. But did she?
The question then became follow-through. Career senior Justice Department officials tell me that when a U.S. Attorney recuses him- or herself, there is a standard procedure followed: a conflict of interest certification is prepared and submitted in the matter; a certificate of divestiture is prepared and submitted; “502 determinations” are prepared; there is also other ordinary documentation such as a formal appointment of an acting U.S. attorney to handle the matter, transmittal documentation and the like. The normal process, as I am told, is that a neighboring U.S. Attorney is appointed to handle the matter, usually with support of career professionals who would otherwise report to the recused U.S. Attorney.
I can find no evidence that any of these standard procedures were followed. Instead, according to public statements, a member of Mrs. Canary’s staff was appointed to handle the matter. In fact the person she designated was her principal prosecutor; that is, someone whose career and advancement was dependent directly upon her evaluations, not those of an intermediate staffer. When I reviewed this with a career senior Justice Department official I was told: “That’s very odd, and it violates the basic recusal rules. If the recused U.S. Attorney has appointed one of her staffers, without the supervision of another U.S. Attorney, then she has not really recused herself at all. The staffer operates in her office, under her apparent supervision, subject to her performance evaluations, and receiving her paychecks. The idea that the U.S. Attorney is recused and that the staffer is running the show would be a difficult sale to anyone with eyes and possessed of a brain.” Precisely. The ploy only works when the local media report it and don’t ask any questions or use their analytical faculties.
But the path of Leura’s ‘recusal’ gets still stranger as things unfold. First, no sooner did Leura announce her recusal, than Bill became involved in another campaign—Bob Riley’s effort to unseat Governor Siegelman. This was a high-stakes effort of immense importance to the G.O.P.: retaking the statehouse in Montgomery. Again, the “corruption” allegations relating to Leura’s investigations became the main staple in the Riley campaign arsenal against Siegelman. That is to say, few people benefited more than Bill Canary from the fact that the investigation was pending, and the related rumor-mongering that flooded the Alabama media in this period. It was a huge boon to the Riley campaign. And at the same time there was something else fishy going on. Investigations in Washington, D.C., into the Abramoff scandal made clear that Riley’s former press secretary, Michael Scanlon, was right in the middle of the affair, as were a whole platoon of Riley aides. Suddenly, millions in cash from Indian gaming interests advised by Abramoff began to gush into the Riley campaign. But the U.S. Attorney’s office in Montgomery, far from ever examining these matters, began to act as Riley’s guardian angel–deflecting inquiries and dead-ending investigations.
When charges were announced against Siegelman at a press conference convened in Montgomery, Noel Hillman traveled down to Montgomery to deliver the message (stating, ironically as it turns out, “Public Integrity does not do politics”), and there with him stood Leura Canary. Similarly, as the case proceeded, Leura Canary did not keep any distance from it. She gave interviews to the Los Angeles Times and to the Montgomery Advertiser about the case. Not the conduct of a ‘recused’ U.S. Attorney.
What exactly did her ‘recusal’ entail? Attorney John Aaron wanted to know the answer to that question. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Justice on February 6, 2006. He asked for all the conventional papers usually prepared in connection with a recusal.
On June 21, 2006, he received a response. It stated that no documents would be provided. It cited as the main grounds for withholding them Leura Canary’s desire for confidentiality. Generally a person is entitled to confidentiality concerning health issues and personally identifying information (a social security number, a birth date, bank account numbers and the like). The fact that information would be embarrassing to a public official is not a reason to withhold the information.
In August, I spoke with a senior Justice Department FOIA official about the case. He noted that a response had improperly been sent indicating that there were “no responsive documents,” when in fact there were more than 500 responsive documents. He said that the handling of the request had been irregular in a number of ways and that the request was the “subject of some very strange apprehension” on the part of political appointees at the Justice Department. He didn’t know what was in the files, but he thought a lot of political pressure had been exerted to “keep them secret.” He also noted that professional staff had objected to the false statements issued in response and had insisted that the false statements be corrected. “It was pulling teeth to get them to tell the truth.”
By that point, of course, Judiciary Chair Conyers and his committee were on the trail of the Siegelman case and making the same demands. Now, you’d think that a Congressional Committee with oversight powers over Justice would get these documents. You’d be wrong. The Committee’s request affected three different U.S. Attorneys. The U.S. Attorney in Wisconsin turned over his internal notes and volunteered a briefing; the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh likewise offered extensive responses. And what was the response of Leura Canary? That’s easy. It was “drop dead.” She produced nothing, not even the routine, mundane papers governing her own recusal. So what’s the dark, mysterious secret lurking in Leura Canary’s ‘recusal’? It might just be that she never recused herself at all.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Birmingham News: The Yellow Press and Don Siegelman's Crucifiction
The ‘B’ham News’ Revs Up the Slime Machine
Harpers.org
DEPARTMENT: No Comment
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED September 15, 2007
A No Comment reader who works at the Birmingham News tells us that a certain editor and writer at the illustrious Pravda of the South are royally pissed off at Representative Artur Davis. It seems that Davis’s questions and press releases on the Siegelman case are making a decisive difference in pushing the matter forward. And the reputation of the News, which has played a key role in the anti-Siegelman campaign by giving press cover to the cabal and by disseminating and lending unwarranted credibility to claims of the prosecutors who front for it, is on the line. So what’s the answer? According to my source, the word went out: Slime Artur Davis. If you can’t hit him personally, at least slime some senior aide who works for him. Do it quickly.
I am told that the News will use one its marquee writers for this, probably one who has been deep in the anti-Siegelman vendetta. Also, the News has been busily pouring over the list of Davis’s staffers, family and other associates to find someone it can land a blow against, hopefully in time for the Sunday edition.
The message that the News wants to deliver is simple: Davis, you’ll shut up if you know what’s good for you. The right adjective for this conduct: thuggery. By a newspaper, moreover. Note: they won’t lift a finger to look into any of the Simpson allegations—all they do is shovel lies attempting to discredit Simspon. And, it seems, anyone else who raises questions about the matter.
It brought back some old memories. Back in the late Soviet period, I worked for Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, helping out whenever I could, and mostly keeping anxious track of their welfare in a harsh and threatening environment. I remember that when the authorities were angry at Sakharov, they had a number of tools they could use for a sort of graduated response. And one of their favorite tools was to have the media launch an attack—sometimes on Sakharov directly. But there was a problem with that. After all, Sakharov was a sacrosanct figure, a hero. They didn’t want to publicize the fact that he was critical of them. So it was much easier to take target at someone close to Sakharov. And the favorite target was his wife, Elena Bonner—perhaps the bravest and most determined human rights advocate I ever had the privilege to work with.
One of the most striking incidents related to the Efim Davidovich, a Holocaust survivor and then Red Army colonel who sought and was denied permission to emigrate to Israel, and thus became a refusenik. Davidovich played a key role in documenting and publicizing events of shocking anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union, including one particular incident—the murder of a 14-year-old boy by a group of teenagers whipped into an anti-Semitic rage. But in the view of the justice authorities, there was no anti-Semitism, and the shocking circumstances of the case were therefore officially suppressed.
Davidovich returned his medals as an act of protest over the failure to examine and prosecute this case. And Sakharov and Bonner met with Col. Davidovich to discuss how to advance his case.
In response, and as a caution to get Sakharov to shut up, Pravda published an attack on Elena Bonner, decrying her “anti-Soviet behavior.” She was complaining about the fairness of Soviet justice; she was suggesting that there was anti-Semitism; therefore she was disloyal to the state and deserved to be scapegoated. Sakharov describes this episode in pages 443-45 of his Memoirs.
History, alas, so often repeats itself. In essence what Bonner and Sakharov had done was expose a gross injustice and demand that it be fixed. And that is exactly what Artur Davis has done. But for those who cower in the shadows and who thrive off of this injustice, that was a threatening act. It warranted a reply blow. And tomorrow let us scrutinize the News closely and see if we don’t find the echo of Pravda that I fully anticipate will appear in its pages.
source
9/11 Truth?
9/11 - the big cover-up?
Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission now admits that the official evidence they were given was 'far from the truth'.
Peter Tatchell
The Guardian
Six years after 9/11, the American public have still not been provided with a full and truthful account of the single greatest terror attack in US history.
What they got was a turkey. The 9/11 Commission was hamstrung by official obstruction. It never managed to ascertain the whole truth of what happened on September 11 2001.
The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, respectively Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, assert in their book, Without Precedent, that they were "set up to fail" and were starved of funds to do a proper investigation. They also confirm that they were denied access to the truth and misled by senior officials in the Pentagon and the federal aviation authority;
and that this obstruction and deception led them to contemplate slapping officials with criminal charges.
Despite the many public statements by 9/11 commissioners and staff members acknowledging they were repeatedly lied to, not a single person has ever been charged, tried, or even reprimanded, for lying to the 9/11 Commission.
From the outset, the commission seemed to be hobbled. It did not start work until over a year after the attacks. Even then, its terms of reference were suspiciously narrow, its powers of investigation curiously limited and its time-frame for producing a report unhelpfully short - barely a year to sift through millions of pages of evidence and to interview hundreds of key witnesses.
The final report did not examine key evidence, and neglected serious anomalies in the various accounts of what happened. The commissioners admit their report was incomplete and flawed, and that many questions about the terror attacks remain unanswered. Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission was swiftly closed down on August 21 2004.
I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I prefer rigorous, evidence-based analysis that sifts through the known facts and utilises expert opinion to draw conclusions that stand up to critical scrutiny. In other words, I believe in everything the 9/11 Commission was not.
The failings of the official investigation have fuelled too many half-baked conspiracy theories. Some of the 9/11 "truth" groups promote speculative hypotheses, ignore innocent explanations, cite non-expert sources and jump to conclusions that are not proven by the known facts. They convert mere coincidence and circumstantial evidence into cast-iron proof. This is no way to debunk the obfuscations and evasions of the 9/11 report.
But even amid the hype, some of these 9/11 groups raise valid and important questions that were never even considered, let alone answered, by the official investigation. The American public has not been told the complete truth about the events of that fateful autumn morning six years ago.
What happened on 9/11 is fundamentally important in its own right. But equally important is the way the 9/11 cover-up signifies an absence of democratic, transparent and accountable government. Establishing the truth is, in part, about restoring honesty, trust and confidence in American politics.
There are dozens of 9/11 "truth" websites and campaign groups. I cannot vouch for the veracity or credibility of any of them. But what I can say is that as well as making plenty of seemingly outrageous claims; a few of them raise legitimate questions that demand answers.
Four of these well known "tell the truth" 9/11 websites are:
1) Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which includes academics and intellectuals from many disciplines.
2) 250+ 9/11 'Smoking Guns' a website that cites over 250 pieces of evidence that allegedly contradict, or were omitted from, the 9/11 Commission report.
3) The 911 Truth Campaign that, as well as offering its own evidence and theories, includes links to more than 20 similar websites.
4) Patriots Question 9/11, perhaps the most plausible array of distinguished US citizens who question the official account of 9/11, including General Wesley Clark, former Nato commander in Europe, and seven members and staffers of the official 9/11 Commission, including the chair and vice chair. In all, this website documents the doubts of 110+ senior military, intelligence service, law enforcement and government officials; 200+ engineers and architects; 50+ pilots and aviation professionals; 150+ professors; 90+ entertainment and media people; and 190+ 9/11 survivors and family members. Although this is an impressive roll call, it doesn't necessarily mean that these expert professionals are right. Nevertheless, their scepticism of the official version of events is reason to pause and reflect.
More and more US citizens are critical of the official account. The respected Zogby polling organisation last week found that 51% of Americans want Congress to probe President Bush and Vice-President Cheney regarding the truth about the 9/11 attacks; 67% are also critical of the 9/11 Commission for not investigating the bizarre, unexplained collapse of the 47-storey World Trade Centre building 7 (WTC7). This building was not hit by any planes. Unlike WTC3, which was badly damaged by falling debris from the Twin Towers but which remained standing, WTC7 suffered minor damage but suddenly collapsed in a neat pile, as happens in a controlled demolition.
In a 2006 interview with anchorman Evan Soloman of CBC's Sunday programme, the vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, was reminded that the commission report failed to even mention the collapse of WTC7 or the suspicious hurried removal of the building debris from the site - before there could be a proper forensic investigation of what was a crime scene. Hamilton could only offer the lame excuse that the commissioners did not have "unlimited time" and could not be expected to answer "every question" the public asks.
There are many, many more strange unexplained facts concerning the events of 9/11. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to be puzzled and want an explanation, or to be sceptical concerning the official version of events.
Six years on from those terrible events, the survivors, and the friends and families of those who died, deserve to know the truth. Is honesty and transparency concerning 9/11 too much to ask of the president and Congress?
What is needed is a new and truly independent commission of inquiry to sort coincidence and conjecture from fact, and to provide answers to the unsolved anomalies in the evidence available concerning the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Unlike the often-stymied first investigation, this new commission should be granted wide-ranging subpoena powers and unfettered access to government files and officials. George Bush should be called to testify, without his minders at hand to brief and prompt him. America - and the world - has a right to know the truth.
source
Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission now admits that the official evidence they were given was 'far from the truth'.
Peter Tatchell
The Guardian
Six years after 9/11, the American public have still not been provided with a full and truthful account of the single greatest terror attack in US history.
What they got was a turkey. The 9/11 Commission was hamstrung by official obstruction. It never managed to ascertain the whole truth of what happened on September 11 2001.
The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, respectively Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, assert in their book, Without Precedent, that they were "set up to fail" and were starved of funds to do a proper investigation. They also confirm that they were denied access to the truth and misled by senior officials in the Pentagon and the federal aviation authority;
and that this obstruction and deception led them to contemplate slapping officials with criminal charges.
Despite the many public statements by 9/11 commissioners and staff members acknowledging they were repeatedly lied to, not a single person has ever been charged, tried, or even reprimanded, for lying to the 9/11 Commission.
From the outset, the commission seemed to be hobbled. It did not start work until over a year after the attacks. Even then, its terms of reference were suspiciously narrow, its powers of investigation curiously limited and its time-frame for producing a report unhelpfully short - barely a year to sift through millions of pages of evidence and to interview hundreds of key witnesses.
The final report did not examine key evidence, and neglected serious anomalies in the various accounts of what happened. The commissioners admit their report was incomplete and flawed, and that many questions about the terror attacks remain unanswered. Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission was swiftly closed down on August 21 2004.
I do not believe in conspiracy theories. I prefer rigorous, evidence-based analysis that sifts through the known facts and utilises expert opinion to draw conclusions that stand up to critical scrutiny. In other words, I believe in everything the 9/11 Commission was not.
The failings of the official investigation have fuelled too many half-baked conspiracy theories. Some of the 9/11 "truth" groups promote speculative hypotheses, ignore innocent explanations, cite non-expert sources and jump to conclusions that are not proven by the known facts. They convert mere coincidence and circumstantial evidence into cast-iron proof. This is no way to debunk the obfuscations and evasions of the 9/11 report.
But even amid the hype, some of these 9/11 groups raise valid and important questions that were never even considered, let alone answered, by the official investigation. The American public has not been told the complete truth about the events of that fateful autumn morning six years ago.
What happened on 9/11 is fundamentally important in its own right. But equally important is the way the 9/11 cover-up signifies an absence of democratic, transparent and accountable government. Establishing the truth is, in part, about restoring honesty, trust and confidence in American politics.
There are dozens of 9/11 "truth" websites and campaign groups. I cannot vouch for the veracity or credibility of any of them. But what I can say is that as well as making plenty of seemingly outrageous claims; a few of them raise legitimate questions that demand answers.
Four of these well known "tell the truth" 9/11 websites are:
1) Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which includes academics and intellectuals from many disciplines.
2) 250+ 9/11 'Smoking Guns' a website that cites over 250 pieces of evidence that allegedly contradict, or were omitted from, the 9/11 Commission report.
3) The 911 Truth Campaign that, as well as offering its own evidence and theories, includes links to more than 20 similar websites.
4) Patriots Question 9/11, perhaps the most plausible array of distinguished US citizens who question the official account of 9/11, including General Wesley Clark, former Nato commander in Europe, and seven members and staffers of the official 9/11 Commission, including the chair and vice chair. In all, this website documents the doubts of 110+ senior military, intelligence service, law enforcement and government officials; 200+ engineers and architects; 50+ pilots and aviation professionals; 150+ professors; 90+ entertainment and media people; and 190+ 9/11 survivors and family members. Although this is an impressive roll call, it doesn't necessarily mean that these expert professionals are right. Nevertheless, their scepticism of the official version of events is reason to pause and reflect.
More and more US citizens are critical of the official account. The respected Zogby polling organisation last week found that 51% of Americans want Congress to probe President Bush and Vice-President Cheney regarding the truth about the 9/11 attacks; 67% are also critical of the 9/11 Commission for not investigating the bizarre, unexplained collapse of the 47-storey World Trade Centre building 7 (WTC7). This building was not hit by any planes. Unlike WTC3, which was badly damaged by falling debris from the Twin Towers but which remained standing, WTC7 suffered minor damage but suddenly collapsed in a neat pile, as happens in a controlled demolition.
In a 2006 interview with anchorman Evan Soloman of CBC's Sunday programme, the vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, was reminded that the commission report failed to even mention the collapse of WTC7 or the suspicious hurried removal of the building debris from the site - before there could be a proper forensic investigation of what was a crime scene. Hamilton could only offer the lame excuse that the commissioners did not have "unlimited time" and could not be expected to answer "every question" the public asks.
There are many, many more strange unexplained facts concerning the events of 9/11. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to be puzzled and want an explanation, or to be sceptical concerning the official version of events.
Six years on from those terrible events, the survivors, and the friends and families of those who died, deserve to know the truth. Is honesty and transparency concerning 9/11 too much to ask of the president and Congress?
What is needed is a new and truly independent commission of inquiry to sort coincidence and conjecture from fact, and to provide answers to the unsolved anomalies in the evidence available concerning the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Unlike the often-stymied first investigation, this new commission should be granted wide-ranging subpoena powers and unfettered access to government files and officials. George Bush should be called to testify, without his minders at hand to brief and prompt him. America - and the world - has a right to know the truth.
source
Friday, September 07, 2007
Resurrecting Terror in Guatemala
Guatemalan Presidential Election on Sunday
• More than a decade after the signing of the Peace Accords that ended 30 years of brutal conflict costing 200,000 lives, violence and shabby politics still walk hand-in-hand in Guatemala.
• Guatemala has one of the most unequal distributions of income in the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, in the wake of President Bush’s visit to the country in May, a new interest in large-scale ethanol production was ignited which is likely to lead to an even greater degree of the concentration of wealth. Nevertheless, the main issue at hand in the upcoming election is neither poverty alleviation nor securing proper energy resources, but the mounting toll of recently alleged politically-motivated assassinations of more than 80 Guatemalans.
• The two main parties continue to point fingers at each other, but none of their epidermal solutions go to the root of the problem.
Guatemala: A Nation on the Ropes
September brings with it the annual commemoration of 9/11 in the United States. Although the date represents a landmark moment, which at the same time serves as a trigger for a random discussion of terrorism, far fewer commentators in this country have noted that two days earlier another important event in the modern history of terrorism occurs—the first round of the Guatemalan general elections.
At almost 13 million people, and the most populous Central American nation, Guatemala is strategically positioned in the heart of the Western Hemisphere, with access to both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and with a long and bitter history of unremitting violence and human rights abuses, Guatemala will hold its general elections in just a few days. The president, national legislators and mayors will be facing the electorate; no governors, senators, or state representatives are running as Guatemala has neither an upper house nor a state legislature, and governors are appointed by the president. That said, the explosive fact on the docket is that more than 80 Guatemalans, half of them political candidates or their supporters, have been assassinated since the injunction of the electoral campaign.
A Deadly Tool
As Jorge Rodriguez, lawyer and former coordinator of the Justice Pastoral, observed, “it is a trend that, in Guatemala, the violence level increases during the electoral periods.” Perhaps the main reason behind these grim mathematics is that after persuading the combatants to lay down their weapons, the 1996 Acuerdos de Paz Firme y Duradera (Peace Accords) were supposed to mark not only the end of 30 years of fratricidal bloodshed and ongoing civil conflict, but also the closing down of an industry that, until then, had been providing a blood-soaked living for both leftist rebel death squad forces, and the violence-prone armed forces.
It should not be forgotten that, although the international community had been pressing for the end of the war between the militia and leftist forces at least since 1992, the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996 caught many Guatemalans by surprise. In December of that year, senior rebel officials and the armed forces met with the Arzú administration after months of secret talks and United Nations mediation, and what turned out to be a shaky peace was declared. However, the low-rank fighters largely had been left in the dark about the whole process. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that the culture of using violence for one’s livelihood developed as a prime result of the lack of re-training opportunities and the resultant high rates of unemployment. This came as a result of decades of civil war, with the country not seeing the end of the road when it came to violence. It makes eminent sense that trained fighters, suddenly unemployed with neither the necessary skills to be competitive in an already saturated formal job sector, nor in the least bit interested in a proposed land-gun exchange, would try to find new and darker markets for their talents. In addition to the classic strategy of working as mercenaries—increasingly under the command of Mexican drug lords looking for a calmer place to manage their operations, rather than in their own turbulent nation—Guatemalan former combatants also found another niche. This was recruiting from the streets an army of gunslingers among the fearless and hopeless of the forgotten youth from poor rural areas to urban slums. This can help to explain the rapid increase in organized crime in urban areas, and its emulation by the maras—a more sophisticated version of urban youth gangs.
Election Time
In this context, the general elections have presented themselves as a unique opportunity for those in the business of violence to profit. In a country that lacks a democratic experience, electoral events could generate a topical demand for those experienced in using violence to induce political instability, in order to achieve the desired results at the polls. Guatemala may be experiencing a novel era of 12 years without a military coup, but the 2007 election is already stained by a surge in violence.
Widespread Violence aimed against urban transportation
The assassination of more than 40 drivers in urban transportation services—many of which were not even followed by robbery—has generated great fear among that sector as well as apprehension among various segments of the political class.
In a recent article [June 29, 2007], Prensa Libre reports that Mario Taracena, a representative from one of the main political parties—the moderate leftist National Unity Hope (UNE)—delivered a denouncement to the Ministry of Governance, Adela Camacho de Torrebiarte, in which he accused Mark Klugmann, an experienced American political campaign advisor, of inciting violence on behalf of UNE’s main rival, the rightist Patriotic Party (PP). According to Taracena, Klugmann, who previously had worked on the campaigns of political figures such as Ronald Reagan (U.S.) and Porfírio Pepe Lobo Sosa (Honduras), was behind a campaign strategy aimed at creating political instability in the country, through harassment of urban transportation drivers, in order to generate chaos in the streets. Many in Central America believe that a similar strategy was used in the 2005 presidential election in Honduras. Klugmann’s reply to his critics was laconic: “What I do as a professional advisor has nothing to do with what an unbalanced representative says,” and added “three Guatemalan political parties contacted me and in one case we reached an agreement, but it was for surveys and public opinion research.” Whether Klugmann is working for the PP or not is at the moment unknown, but as pointed out in Prensa Libre’s article, Pepe Lobo’s old puño duro (strong first) slogan does bear some similarity to the new mano dura (strong hand) slogan of PP’s Presidential candidate, General Otto Pérez Molina.
The UNE and PP parties have used the media to debate one another, turning up the heat on the election. When it came to the drivers, while UNE’s Álvaro Colom seconded Taracena’s claim in saying that “the drivers’ deaths fulfill an electoral campaign that aims to benefit a certain candidate,” General Pérez Molina’s taut answer was that the PP was “willing to submit itself to any investigation because we don’t have any connection with the killings, as the UNE has so irresponsibly denounced.” It is true that so far the Public Ministry has not found any evidence linking the drivers’ deaths to the PP. However, Honduran legal assessor and wingman of President Manuel Zelaya, Enrique Flores, raised a telling point: Whoever is actually behind the attacks, “…one political party seems to be taking advantage of the violence out of political motivations, manipulating the facts in order to inspire fear in the population and both better gain votes and manipulate the public opinion.” With these words Flores, who is said to favor Colom, seems to be indicating that the PP, whose “strong hand” slogan is presented as a “zero tolerance” solution to the country’s increasing problem of violence, thereby links itself to that strategy.
Targeted Violence: Death of 40 political candidates and supporters
If it were the murder of the drivers alone that made violence the hot topic of the first half of the electoral campaign, politicians themselves weren’t left out of the deadly loop for long. The Public Ministry recently released figures indicating that more than 40 political candidates and campaign workers have been gunned down since the beginning of the electoral campaign.
As Juan Luis Florido, general inspector of the Public Ministry pointed out, it is unlikely that all the murders had a political motivation. For instance, the death of Edwin Saúl Martínez, a mayoral pre-candidate for Jalpatagua, seems to have been connected with narcotraffic activities, and the murder of Clara Luz López, candidate for the concejal of Casillas, appears to have been a crime of passion.
Furthermore, Colom again pointed a finger at the PP, in general, and General Pérez Molina, more specifically, as being responsible for at least several of the deaths. During a meeting with the foreign press on August 29th, Colom claimed that at least 14 of the 18 murders related to his party were committed by “members of the mobs … associated with the Military Intelligence. They (PP) have the support of old chiefs of the Military Intelligence … the people responsible for the black campaign against me.”
During the civil war the army’s Military Intelligence allegedly was one of the prime architects responsible for kidnappings, torture and killings, and Otto Pérez Molina, before being elevated to the status of general, is suspected of being involved with such activities as a member of its staff. General Pérez Molina’s answer was to menace Colom with legal reprimands. In his opinion “This is an open black campaign against me and against the PP, because the UNE is desperate now that they have realized that they are going to lose the elections.”
Coming from a militant or gang background the suspicion that political parties were hiring hit men in order to intimidate both prospective voters as well as targeting candidates has been enough to establish quite a chaotic situation with less than a week to go before the election. The members of the Electoral Supreme Court were unanimous in demanding that the parties’ maintain a campaign free of violence and verbal attacks, but its president, Óscar Bolaños, went even farther. In the last meeting with the political parties electoral observers on Wednesday, he stated: “I don’t see an atmosphere for elections. In a democratic system we all should be aware that this isn’t a matter of winning or losing, but of having a vision of what is the best for Guatemala.” Just three days after Bolaños’ appeal, two more political figures were killed.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Fellow Thomaz Alvares de Azevedo e Almeida
September 5th, 2007
• More than a decade after the signing of the Peace Accords that ended 30 years of brutal conflict costing 200,000 lives, violence and shabby politics still walk hand-in-hand in Guatemala.
• Guatemala has one of the most unequal distributions of income in the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, in the wake of President Bush’s visit to the country in May, a new interest in large-scale ethanol production was ignited which is likely to lead to an even greater degree of the concentration of wealth. Nevertheless, the main issue at hand in the upcoming election is neither poverty alleviation nor securing proper energy resources, but the mounting toll of recently alleged politically-motivated assassinations of more than 80 Guatemalans.
• The two main parties continue to point fingers at each other, but none of their epidermal solutions go to the root of the problem.
Guatemala: A Nation on the Ropes
September brings with it the annual commemoration of 9/11 in the United States. Although the date represents a landmark moment, which at the same time serves as a trigger for a random discussion of terrorism, far fewer commentators in this country have noted that two days earlier another important event in the modern history of terrorism occurs—the first round of the Guatemalan general elections.
At almost 13 million people, and the most populous Central American nation, Guatemala is strategically positioned in the heart of the Western Hemisphere, with access to both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and with a long and bitter history of unremitting violence and human rights abuses, Guatemala will hold its general elections in just a few days. The president, national legislators and mayors will be facing the electorate; no governors, senators, or state representatives are running as Guatemala has neither an upper house nor a state legislature, and governors are appointed by the president. That said, the explosive fact on the docket is that more than 80 Guatemalans, half of them political candidates or their supporters, have been assassinated since the injunction of the electoral campaign.
A Deadly Tool
As Jorge Rodriguez, lawyer and former coordinator of the Justice Pastoral, observed, “it is a trend that, in Guatemala, the violence level increases during the electoral periods.” Perhaps the main reason behind these grim mathematics is that after persuading the combatants to lay down their weapons, the 1996 Acuerdos de Paz Firme y Duradera (Peace Accords) were supposed to mark not only the end of 30 years of fratricidal bloodshed and ongoing civil conflict, but also the closing down of an industry that, until then, had been providing a blood-soaked living for both leftist rebel death squad forces, and the violence-prone armed forces.
It should not be forgotten that, although the international community had been pressing for the end of the war between the militia and leftist forces at least since 1992, the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996 caught many Guatemalans by surprise. In December of that year, senior rebel officials and the armed forces met with the Arzú administration after months of secret talks and United Nations mediation, and what turned out to be a shaky peace was declared. However, the low-rank fighters largely had been left in the dark about the whole process. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that the culture of using violence for one’s livelihood developed as a prime result of the lack of re-training opportunities and the resultant high rates of unemployment. This came as a result of decades of civil war, with the country not seeing the end of the road when it came to violence. It makes eminent sense that trained fighters, suddenly unemployed with neither the necessary skills to be competitive in an already saturated formal job sector, nor in the least bit interested in a proposed land-gun exchange, would try to find new and darker markets for their talents. In addition to the classic strategy of working as mercenaries—increasingly under the command of Mexican drug lords looking for a calmer place to manage their operations, rather than in their own turbulent nation—Guatemalan former combatants also found another niche. This was recruiting from the streets an army of gunslingers among the fearless and hopeless of the forgotten youth from poor rural areas to urban slums. This can help to explain the rapid increase in organized crime in urban areas, and its emulation by the maras—a more sophisticated version of urban youth gangs.
Election Time
In this context, the general elections have presented themselves as a unique opportunity for those in the business of violence to profit. In a country that lacks a democratic experience, electoral events could generate a topical demand for those experienced in using violence to induce political instability, in order to achieve the desired results at the polls. Guatemala may be experiencing a novel era of 12 years without a military coup, but the 2007 election is already stained by a surge in violence.
Widespread Violence aimed against urban transportation
The assassination of more than 40 drivers in urban transportation services—many of which were not even followed by robbery—has generated great fear among that sector as well as apprehension among various segments of the political class.
In a recent article [June 29, 2007], Prensa Libre reports that Mario Taracena, a representative from one of the main political parties—the moderate leftist National Unity Hope (UNE)—delivered a denouncement to the Ministry of Governance, Adela Camacho de Torrebiarte, in which he accused Mark Klugmann, an experienced American political campaign advisor, of inciting violence on behalf of UNE’s main rival, the rightist Patriotic Party (PP). According to Taracena, Klugmann, who previously had worked on the campaigns of political figures such as Ronald Reagan (U.S.) and Porfírio Pepe Lobo Sosa (Honduras), was behind a campaign strategy aimed at creating political instability in the country, through harassment of urban transportation drivers, in order to generate chaos in the streets. Many in Central America believe that a similar strategy was used in the 2005 presidential election in Honduras. Klugmann’s reply to his critics was laconic: “What I do as a professional advisor has nothing to do with what an unbalanced representative says,” and added “three Guatemalan political parties contacted me and in one case we reached an agreement, but it was for surveys and public opinion research.” Whether Klugmann is working for the PP or not is at the moment unknown, but as pointed out in Prensa Libre’s article, Pepe Lobo’s old puño duro (strong first) slogan does bear some similarity to the new mano dura (strong hand) slogan of PP’s Presidential candidate, General Otto Pérez Molina.
The UNE and PP parties have used the media to debate one another, turning up the heat on the election. When it came to the drivers, while UNE’s Álvaro Colom seconded Taracena’s claim in saying that “the drivers’ deaths fulfill an electoral campaign that aims to benefit a certain candidate,” General Pérez Molina’s taut answer was that the PP was “willing to submit itself to any investigation because we don’t have any connection with the killings, as the UNE has so irresponsibly denounced.” It is true that so far the Public Ministry has not found any evidence linking the drivers’ deaths to the PP. However, Honduran legal assessor and wingman of President Manuel Zelaya, Enrique Flores, raised a telling point: Whoever is actually behind the attacks, “…one political party seems to be taking advantage of the violence out of political motivations, manipulating the facts in order to inspire fear in the population and both better gain votes and manipulate the public opinion.” With these words Flores, who is said to favor Colom, seems to be indicating that the PP, whose “strong hand” slogan is presented as a “zero tolerance” solution to the country’s increasing problem of violence, thereby links itself to that strategy.
Targeted Violence: Death of 40 political candidates and supporters
If it were the murder of the drivers alone that made violence the hot topic of the first half of the electoral campaign, politicians themselves weren’t left out of the deadly loop for long. The Public Ministry recently released figures indicating that more than 40 political candidates and campaign workers have been gunned down since the beginning of the electoral campaign.
As Juan Luis Florido, general inspector of the Public Ministry pointed out, it is unlikely that all the murders had a political motivation. For instance, the death of Edwin Saúl Martínez, a mayoral pre-candidate for Jalpatagua, seems to have been connected with narcotraffic activities, and the murder of Clara Luz López, candidate for the concejal of Casillas, appears to have been a crime of passion.
Furthermore, Colom again pointed a finger at the PP, in general, and General Pérez Molina, more specifically, as being responsible for at least several of the deaths. During a meeting with the foreign press on August 29th, Colom claimed that at least 14 of the 18 murders related to his party were committed by “members of the mobs … associated with the Military Intelligence. They (PP) have the support of old chiefs of the Military Intelligence … the people responsible for the black campaign against me.”
During the civil war the army’s Military Intelligence allegedly was one of the prime architects responsible for kidnappings, torture and killings, and Otto Pérez Molina, before being elevated to the status of general, is suspected of being involved with such activities as a member of its staff. General Pérez Molina’s answer was to menace Colom with legal reprimands. In his opinion “This is an open black campaign against me and against the PP, because the UNE is desperate now that they have realized that they are going to lose the elections.”
Coming from a militant or gang background the suspicion that political parties were hiring hit men in order to intimidate both prospective voters as well as targeting candidates has been enough to establish quite a chaotic situation with less than a week to go before the election. The members of the Electoral Supreme Court were unanimous in demanding that the parties’ maintain a campaign free of violence and verbal attacks, but its president, Óscar Bolaños, went even farther. In the last meeting with the political parties electoral observers on Wednesday, he stated: “I don’t see an atmosphere for elections. In a democratic system we all should be aware that this isn’t a matter of winning or losing, but of having a vision of what is the best for Guatemala.” Just three days after Bolaños’ appeal, two more political figures were killed.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Fellow Thomaz Alvares de Azevedo e Almeida
September 5th, 2007
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Art of Political Prosecution
Team Chertoff and the Art of Political Prosecutionby Scott Horton
Current and former Justice Department officials I have interviewed have consistently identified Michael Chertoff, his successor Alice Fisher and his protégé Noel Hillman, as figures with a strong interest in political prosecutions. Each apparently took an interest in the Siegelman case for all the wrong reasons, I am told, and each had regular communications with the White House throughout this period.
But the Siegelman case was only one of many cases with political overtones which were closely dogged by loyal Republican Party activists at the top of the criminal process at Justice. Today the Los Angeles Times is offering more evidence linking Chertoff to political vendettas using the prosecutorial resources of the Department of Justice. David Savage and Tom Hamburger report:
Shortly after President Bush took office in 2001, Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, met with the conservative group Judicial Watch. It wanted criminal charges brought against Hillary Rodham Clinton in connection with a lavish fundraising event in Los Angeles the year before.
“Chertoff personally assured us he would pursue it,” the group’s president, Tom Fitton, said recently, recalling the meeting with several top Justice officials. “They said they weren’t afraid of taking on the Clintons.” Justice did not pursue a case against the senator from New York, but instead went after one of her fundraisers, David Rosen, who eventually was acquitted.
Now Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales has announced his resignation, brought down in part by allegations that he let politics influence Justice Department decisions. And Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is a prominent candidate to succeed him. Justice Department officials say pressure from Judicial Watch — which made its name by suing the Clintons in the 1990s — played no role in the decision to prosecute Rosen. Chertoff will not discuss the case. But it seems to be an early example of department actions under Bush that critics say were tinged with partisanship.
The key to Chertoff’s politicization of the prosecutorial service lay in placing a key political protégé in a key position: Noel Hillman was put in charge of the Public Integrity Section, the Justice Department’s division responsible for investigating and prosecuting public officials.
When Chertoff took over the criminal division, one of his first targets for change was the Public Integrity Section. This unit, established after the Watergate scandal, handled corruption cases involving public officials and others with political ties. It had a reputation as nonpartisan, professional and cautious.
Chertoff demoted career prosecutor Lee J. Radek, who had headed the section for many years, and eventually brought in a New Jersey protege, Noel L. Hillman. “There is a new sheriff in town,” Hillman told a lawyers’ group shortly after taking over…
Others… said they were concerned that the unit’s traditional insulation from partisan pressures had become frayed under Chertoff and Hillman. Hillman raised eyebrows by seeking — and eventually getting — a White House appointment to a federal judgeship. According to one veteran prosecutor, there was “a new intensity of interest among top officials like Chertoff in what cases were pursued or not pursued.” The prosecutor requested anonymity because he remains in government service and is not authorized to speak to reporters.
Noel Hillman took an extraordinary and aggressive role in pushing the Siegelman case forward around the same time that, according to an affidavit submitted by a Republican campaign attorney, Jill Simpson, Karl Rove was speaking with senior Alabama G.O.P. figures about using the Justice Department to “get rid of” Siegelman. Hillman then proceeded to apply for and obtain a judicial appointment—to the U.S. District Court in New Jersey. He acknowledges spending several months in discussions with the White House about his judicial appointment. It doesn’t require a lot of imagination to think of other topics that might have figured in these discussions, conducted with the man who was handling the Abramoff case, as well as the Siegelman prosecution.
Hillman was touted throughout this period as the “Abramoff prosecutor,” though that’s a title that requires quite a bit of qualification. Indeed, the Public Integrity Section did go after JackAbramoff, Michael Scanlon and a number of other key figures. But a study of the way their investigation trailed off in Alabama raises strong suspicions. Evidence pointed to the funneling of millions of dollars in Mississippi Choctaw Indian money into the campaign of Don Siegelman’s adversary, Bob Riley. The project involved a significant number of Riley’s Congressional and campaign staff, many of whom had direct links to Abramoff. However, instead of looking into these connections, Hillman began to channel his investigative and prosecutorial resources into an amazing quest to “get Siegelman.” And that assured that the Alabama leads of the Abramoff case were dropped and went dead. In fact they seem to have been dropped right about the time that President Bush decided to have a secret meeting with judicial candidate Hillman.
Considering these facts, it’s little wonder that the White House dropped Hillman’s nomination to the Third Circuit just as the U.S. attorneys scandal surfaced.
The Los Angeles Times report concerning the highly political vendetta prosecution of Rosen greatly strengthens the accusations made by a Michigan attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, in a case with strong parallels and similar political circumstances. It also casts a strong light on the mindset and working relationships within Justice at the time the chase after Alabama Governor Siegelman began.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Canadian Fascists: The Future Police State will be Televised
Democracy's new dawn is on CCTV: the security state as infotainment
So keen are America's leaders to hear dissent they're videotaping the dissenters. Welcome to a world of total surveillance
Naomi Klein
Friday August 24, 2007
The Guardian
As protesters gathered recently outside the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello, Quebec, to confront George Bush, Felipe Calderón, the Mexican president, and Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, Associated Press reported this surreal detail: "Leaders were not able to see the protesters in person, but they could watch the protesters on TV monitors inside the hotel ... Cameramen hired to ensure that demonstrators would be able to pass along their messages to the three leaders sat idly in a tent full of audio and video equipment ... A sign on the outside of the tent said, 'Our cameras are here today providing your right to be seen and heard. Please let us help you get your message out. Thank You.'"
Yes, it's true: like contestants on a reality TV show, protesters at the SPP meeting were invited to vent into video cameras, their rants to be beamed to "protest-trons" inside the summit enclave. It was security state as infotainment - Big Brother meets, well, Big Brother. The spokesperson for Prime Minister Harper explained that although protesters were herded into empty fields, the video link meant that their right to political speech was protected. "Under the law, they need to be seen and heard, and they will be."
It is an argument with sweeping implications. If videotaping activists meets the legal requirement that dissenting citizens have the right to be seen and heard, what else might fit the bill? How about all the other security cameras that patrolled the summit - the ones filming demonstrators as they got on and off buses and peacefully walked down the street? What about the mobile phone calls that were intercepted, the meetings that were infiltrated, the emails that were read? According to the new rules set out in Montebello, all these actions may soon be recast not as infringements on civil liberties but the opposite: proof of our leaders' commitment to direct, unmediated consultation. Elections are a crude tool for taking the public temperature - these methods allow constant, exact monitoring of our beliefs. Think of surveillance as the new participatory democracy; of wiretapping as the political equivalent of MTV's Total Request Live.
Protesters in Montebello complained that while they were locked out, chief executives from about 30 of the largest corporations in North America - from Wal-Mart to Chevron - were part of the official summit. But perhaps they had it backwards: the CEOs had only an hour and 15 minutes of face time with the leaders. The activists were being "seen and heard" around the clock. So instead of shouting about police-state tactics, maybe they should have said: "Thank you for listening." (And reading, and watching, and photographing, and data-mining.)
The Montebello "seen and heard" rule also casts the target of the protests in a new light. The SPP is described in the leaders' final statement as an "ambitious" plan to "keep our borders closed to terrorism yet open to trade". In other words, a merger of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the homeland security complex - Nafta with spy planes. The model dates back to September 11, when Paul Cellucci, the US ambassador to Canada, pronounced that in the new era, "security will trump trade". But there was an out clause: the trade on which the economies of Canada and Mexico depend could continue uninterrupted, as long as the governments of those countries were willing to welcome the tentacles of the US war on terror. Canadian and Mexican business leaders leaped to surrender, aggressively pushing their governments to give in to US demands for "integrated" security in order to keep the goods and the tourists flowing.
Almost six years later, the business leaders at Montebello - under the banner of the North American Competitiveness Council, an official wing of the SPP - were still holding up "thickening borders" as the bogeyman. The fix? According to the SPP website, "technological solutions, improved information-sharing, and, potentially, the use of biometric identifiers". From experience we know what this means: continent-wide no-fly lists, integrated databases, as well as the $2.5bn contract to Boeing to build a "virtual fence" on the northern and southern borders of the United States, equipped with unmanned drones.
In short, under the SPP vision of the continent, "thick" borders will soon be replaced with a nearly invisible web of continental surveillance - almost all of it run for profit. Two members of the SPP advisory group - Lockheed Martin and General Electric - have already received multibillion-dollar contracts from the US government to build this web. In the Bush era, security doesn't trump big business; it may be the biggest business of all.
In the run-up to the SPP summit, a spate of surveillance scandals helped paint a fuller picture. First, Congress not only failed to curtail the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping but opened the door to snooping into bank records, phone call patterns and even physical searches - all without any onus to prove the subject is a threat.
Next, the Boston Globe reported on plans to link thousands of CCTV cameras on streets, subways, apartment buildings and businesses into networks capable of tracking suspects in real time. And on August 15 confirmation came that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - the arm of the American military that runs spy planes and satellites over enemy territory - would be fully integrated into the infrastructure of domestic intelligence gathering and local policing, becoming the "eyes" to the National Security Agency's "ears".
Add a few more hi-tech tools - biometric IDs, facial-recognition software, networked databases of "suspects", GPS bundled into ever more electronic devices - and you have something like the world of total surveillance most recently portrayed in The Bourne Ultimatum.
Which brings us back to the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Who needs clumsy old border checks when the authorities are making sure we are seen and heard at all times - in high definition, online and off, on land and from the sky? Security is the new prosperity. Surveillance is the new democracy.
· Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, is published next month; a version of this article appears in the Nation www.thenation.com
www.naomiklein.org
So keen are America's leaders to hear dissent they're videotaping the dissenters. Welcome to a world of total surveillance
Naomi Klein
Friday August 24, 2007
The Guardian
As protesters gathered recently outside the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello, Quebec, to confront George Bush, Felipe Calderón, the Mexican president, and Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, Associated Press reported this surreal detail: "Leaders were not able to see the protesters in person, but they could watch the protesters on TV monitors inside the hotel ... Cameramen hired to ensure that demonstrators would be able to pass along their messages to the three leaders sat idly in a tent full of audio and video equipment ... A sign on the outside of the tent said, 'Our cameras are here today providing your right to be seen and heard. Please let us help you get your message out. Thank You.'"
Yes, it's true: like contestants on a reality TV show, protesters at the SPP meeting were invited to vent into video cameras, their rants to be beamed to "protest-trons" inside the summit enclave. It was security state as infotainment - Big Brother meets, well, Big Brother. The spokesperson for Prime Minister Harper explained that although protesters were herded into empty fields, the video link meant that their right to political speech was protected. "Under the law, they need to be seen and heard, and they will be."
It is an argument with sweeping implications. If videotaping activists meets the legal requirement that dissenting citizens have the right to be seen and heard, what else might fit the bill? How about all the other security cameras that patrolled the summit - the ones filming demonstrators as they got on and off buses and peacefully walked down the street? What about the mobile phone calls that were intercepted, the meetings that were infiltrated, the emails that were read? According to the new rules set out in Montebello, all these actions may soon be recast not as infringements on civil liberties but the opposite: proof of our leaders' commitment to direct, unmediated consultation. Elections are a crude tool for taking the public temperature - these methods allow constant, exact monitoring of our beliefs. Think of surveillance as the new participatory democracy; of wiretapping as the political equivalent of MTV's Total Request Live.
Protesters in Montebello complained that while they were locked out, chief executives from about 30 of the largest corporations in North America - from Wal-Mart to Chevron - were part of the official summit. But perhaps they had it backwards: the CEOs had only an hour and 15 minutes of face time with the leaders. The activists were being "seen and heard" around the clock. So instead of shouting about police-state tactics, maybe they should have said: "Thank you for listening." (And reading, and watching, and photographing, and data-mining.)
The Montebello "seen and heard" rule also casts the target of the protests in a new light. The SPP is described in the leaders' final statement as an "ambitious" plan to "keep our borders closed to terrorism yet open to trade". In other words, a merger of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the homeland security complex - Nafta with spy planes. The model dates back to September 11, when Paul Cellucci, the US ambassador to Canada, pronounced that in the new era, "security will trump trade". But there was an out clause: the trade on which the economies of Canada and Mexico depend could continue uninterrupted, as long as the governments of those countries were willing to welcome the tentacles of the US war on terror. Canadian and Mexican business leaders leaped to surrender, aggressively pushing their governments to give in to US demands for "integrated" security in order to keep the goods and the tourists flowing.
Almost six years later, the business leaders at Montebello - under the banner of the North American Competitiveness Council, an official wing of the SPP - were still holding up "thickening borders" as the bogeyman. The fix? According to the SPP website, "technological solutions, improved information-sharing, and, potentially, the use of biometric identifiers". From experience we know what this means: continent-wide no-fly lists, integrated databases, as well as the $2.5bn contract to Boeing to build a "virtual fence" on the northern and southern borders of the United States, equipped with unmanned drones.
In short, under the SPP vision of the continent, "thick" borders will soon be replaced with a nearly invisible web of continental surveillance - almost all of it run for profit. Two members of the SPP advisory group - Lockheed Martin and General Electric - have already received multibillion-dollar contracts from the US government to build this web. In the Bush era, security doesn't trump big business; it may be the biggest business of all.
In the run-up to the SPP summit, a spate of surveillance scandals helped paint a fuller picture. First, Congress not only failed to curtail the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping but opened the door to snooping into bank records, phone call patterns and even physical searches - all without any onus to prove the subject is a threat.
Next, the Boston Globe reported on plans to link thousands of CCTV cameras on streets, subways, apartment buildings and businesses into networks capable of tracking suspects in real time. And on August 15 confirmation came that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency - the arm of the American military that runs spy planes and satellites over enemy territory - would be fully integrated into the infrastructure of domestic intelligence gathering and local policing, becoming the "eyes" to the National Security Agency's "ears".
Add a few more hi-tech tools - biometric IDs, facial-recognition software, networked databases of "suspects", GPS bundled into ever more electronic devices - and you have something like the world of total surveillance most recently portrayed in The Bourne Ultimatum.
Which brings us back to the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Who needs clumsy old border checks when the authorities are making sure we are seen and heard at all times - in high definition, online and off, on land and from the sky? Security is the new prosperity. Surveillance is the new democracy.
· Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, is published next month; a version of this article appears in the Nation www.thenation.com
www.naomiklein.org
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Quebec police admit using provocateurs
Quebec police admit using provocateurs
CP/CUPE HANDOUT
In this handout photo provided by CUPE, police and 'protesters' clash in Montebello, Que. on Monday, Aug.22. Quebec provincial police confirmed Thursday, Aug. 23, that the three protestors shown being detained here were Quebec provincial police undercover officers. Email story
YouTube: Video of alleged police provocateursSpeak Out: '09 pullout?Travers: Communication breakdown, but no conspiracyIs the jelly bean up to standard?Border impasse continuesVideo: Cameraman injuredCP Video: Police, protesters face offTravers: Bush woes ensure little actionSummit notebookBig business slams summit secrecyLeaders eye border disaster protocolLittle expected at meetingEditorial: When Harper plays hostAug 23, 2007 09:33 PM
Steve Lambert
Canadian press
MONTREAL—With the proof caught on video, Quebec provincial police were forced to admit Thursday that three undercover agents were playing the part of protestors at this week’s international summit in Montebello, Que.
But the Quebec police force denied they were attempting to provoke protestors into violence. Rather, they said the three were planted in the crowd to locate any protestors who were not peacefully demonstrating.
Police said the trio’s cover was blown when they refused to toss any objects.
“At no time did the Quebec provincial police officers act as agents provocateurs or commit criminal acts. Also, it is not part of the policy of the police force nor is it part of its strategy to act in this manner. At all times, the officers responded to their mandate to maintain law and order,” the QPP said in a news release on Thursday night.
The police said after viewing a video clip from YouTube.com and video shot by police officers, they were able to confirm the three were Quebec provincial police officers.
Earlier, both the QPP and the RCMP had denied altogether any of their officers were involved.
The Quebec provincial police declined to comment further, a spokeswoman in Montreal said. And while Quebec Justice Minister Jacques Dupuis was made aware of the news, a spokesman from his office said he will not comment on the matter either.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day rejected opposition calls Thursday for an inquiry into agents role in trying to provoke protesters into violence at this week’s North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que.
“I’ve made the inquiries and there was no RCMP that were involved as far as those three individuals go,” Day told reporters after making a crime-prevention announcement in Winnipeg.
“If people have concerns ... there is a complaints process for the RCMP. There is also one for the Surete du Quebec. This incident happened in Quebec, so I imagine people could also file under that complaints process.”
Day’s words did little to appease Dave Coles, the union leader who confronted the three men on the protest line and accused them of being cops.
“We’re going to talk to our legal counsel and we’ll decide (Friday) what our next action is going to be,” said Coles, president of the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.
The Liberals called for a police probe into the issue, while the NDP called on Day to launch a public inquiry. The NDP said the public should be worried about the possibility police officers were used to try to turn a peaceful protest into a violent one.
“If they are police officers, and if they are stepping forward with a mandate to disrupt in any way, that’s a cause for concern,” said New Democrat MP Peter Julian.
The three officers, sporting bandannas, showed up on the front lines of a peaceful protest at the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit earlier this week.
One carried a large rock, and protesters allege the officers were trying to incite a riot so that police could move on the crowd.
The event was captured on video and shows one of the mystery men talking to police officers before being brought to the ground, handcuffed and quietly led away along with his friends.
The men were never charged, and photos show them wearing combat boots with identical markings to the ones worn by police at the scene.
“It’s just too coincidental that these guys attack a (police) line with a boulder and they’re not charged,” Coles said.
“The other four protesters who were arrested (over the weekend) were all charged.”
Quebec Provincial Police and the RCMP have both said they do not use agents to provoke violence.
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Luc Bessette said this week he could not discuss details of security measures for major events such as the summit because it could compromise future operations.
police admit they infiltrated protest
NOTE: Is this denial by the QPP disinformation? One witness says: ""They think that they have the right to infiltrate us as they've done before. But to be packing large boulders, they were going to do something with those rocks and it wasn't peaceful."
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=66de9807-d2f0-444e-903e-1c0ba64556de&k=39211
Quebec police admit they infiltrated protest
CanWest News Service
Thursday, August 23, 2007
CREDIT: MIKE CARROCCETTO, The Ottawa Citizen Protester Alex Hundert tries to talk his way past police and inside Chateau Montebello. Day 2 at Chateau Montebello, where the North American leaders are meeting.
QUEBEC - The Quebec provincial police acknowledged in a statement Thursday that their agents had infiltrated protesters demonstrating during the recent North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que. but denied that they acted as "agent provocateurs" to instigate violence.
"They had the mandate to spot and identify violent demonstrators to avoid the situation from getting out of hand," the Surete du Quebec said in a statement. "The police officers were identified by demonstrators when they refused to throw projectiles."
"At no time did the Surete du Quebec police officers act as agents provocateurs or committed criminal acts," the statement adds.
A spokesperson for the police force refused to further comment on the statement.
Protesters have accused police of planting agents outside the Chateau Montebello to instigate violence during Monday's demonstration.
A prominent labour official pointed Wednesday to video made available on Youtube and photographs of three burly men, dressed as "Black Bloc" anarchists, standing out in the midst an otherwise peaceful sit-in adjacent to Surete du Quebec and RCMP riot squads.
The video shows the three black-clad bandana-wearing men being singled out by union organizers and the crowd. Other protesters started pointing at them and crying "police."
One of the three men is seen shoving and swearing at Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada, who is angrily confronting the trio, demanding they put down the rocks, remove their bandanas, and identify themselves.
After being backed into a corner against a line of provincial police officers in riot gear, they try to force themselves through the police line and are arrested while the crowd cheers.
"People have the right to peacefully protest something they don't like," said Coles this week, demanding answers from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest.
"They think that they have the right to infiltrate us as they've done before. But to be packing large boulders, they were going to do something with those rocks and it wasn't peaceful."
© CanWest News Service 2007
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=66de9807-d2f0-444e-903e-1c0ba64556de&k=39211
Quebec police admit they infiltrated protest
CanWest News Service
Thursday, August 23, 2007
CREDIT: MIKE CARROCCETTO, The Ottawa Citizen Protester Alex Hundert tries to talk his way past police and inside Chateau Montebello. Day 2 at Chateau Montebello, where the North American leaders are meeting.
QUEBEC - The Quebec provincial police acknowledged in a statement Thursday that their agents had infiltrated protesters demonstrating during the recent North American leaders summit in Montebello, Que. but denied that they acted as "agent provocateurs" to instigate violence.
"They had the mandate to spot and identify violent demonstrators to avoid the situation from getting out of hand," the Surete du Quebec said in a statement. "The police officers were identified by demonstrators when they refused to throw projectiles."
"At no time did the Surete du Quebec police officers act as agents provocateurs or committed criminal acts," the statement adds.
A spokesperson for the police force refused to further comment on the statement.
Protesters have accused police of planting agents outside the Chateau Montebello to instigate violence during Monday's demonstration.
A prominent labour official pointed Wednesday to video made available on Youtube and photographs of three burly men, dressed as "Black Bloc" anarchists, standing out in the midst an otherwise peaceful sit-in adjacent to Surete du Quebec and RCMP riot squads.
The video shows the three black-clad bandana-wearing men being singled out by union organizers and the crowd. Other protesters started pointing at them and crying "police."
One of the three men is seen shoving and swearing at Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union of Canada, who is angrily confronting the trio, demanding they put down the rocks, remove their bandanas, and identify themselves.
After being backed into a corner against a line of provincial police officers in riot gear, they try to force themselves through the police line and are arrested while the crowd cheers.
"People have the right to peacefully protest something they don't like," said Coles this week, demanding answers from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest.
"They think that they have the right to infiltrate us as they've done before. But to be packing large boulders, they were going to do something with those rocks and it wasn't peaceful."
© CanWest News Service 2007
High Profile Companies Buying Boreal Forest Destruction
Greenpeace report reveals high profile companies buying Boreal Forest destruction
International companies, consumers urged to take action to save forest20 August 2007Print Send to a friend Montreal, Canada — A Greenpeace investigative report released today reveals the names of many high profile and recognizable international companies fueling the destruction of Canada’s Boreal Forest to create everyday consumer products.
Among the 35 companies listed are Best Buy, Grand & Toy, Toys “R” Us, Time Inc., Sears, Coles/Indigo, Penguin Books US and Harlequin. Rona, the Canadian home improvement and hardware store, is also named in the report.
Each company is profiled as a customer of logging and pulp companies Abitibi-Consolidated, Bowater, Kruger and SFK Pulp, whose destructive logging practices are responsible for decimating nearly 200,000 km2 of Boreal Forest, or 3.5 times the size of Nova Scotia.
“Today, we’re naming names,” said Kim Fry, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace. “The logging companies and customers featured in this report are driving the destruction of Canada’s Boreal Forest.”
The report, Consuming Canada’s Boreal Forest: The chain of destruction from logging companies to consumers, calls for action from the international marketplace to protect one of the largest ancient forests left on Earth. It also condemns the governments of Ontario and Quebec, where less than nine and five per cent of the forest, respectively, is protected from industrial development.
“We expect customers of these logging companies to temporarily suspend their multi-million dollar contracts until action is taken on the ground to protect the forest and end destructive logging,” added Fry. “We are looking to the marketplace to transform this situation.”
In addition to environmental destruction—including forest fragmentation, climate impacts and loss of wildlife habitat and ecosystem biodiversity—the report also highlights Abitibi-Consolidated’s refusal to end operations in the traditional territory of Grassy Narrows First Nation, despite a longstanding blockade against logging.
Canada’s Boreal Forest stretches across the north of the country, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. It represents a quarter of the world’s remaining intact ancient forests and stores 47.5 billion tonnes of carbon in its soils and trees. Less than 15 per cent of the Boreal Forest in Quebec and 18 per cent in Ontario remains intact. More than 68 per cent of the area managed by the three logging companies has already been degraded or destroyed.
- 30 -
The report can be downloaded here: http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/documents-and-links/publications/consuming-the-boreal-forest-t
Note to editors: Broadcast-quality video and high resolution photos are available upon request.
Related Reports
Consuming the Boreal Forest: the chain of destruction from logging companies to consumers
14 August 2007
Further contact information for reporters to get video, photos or report details
Kim Fry, Greenpeace Forests Campaigner, 416-406-0664 Jane Story, Greenpeace Communications, 416-930-9055
International companies, consumers urged to take action to save forest20 August 2007Print Send to a friend Montreal, Canada — A Greenpeace investigative report released today reveals the names of many high profile and recognizable international companies fueling the destruction of Canada’s Boreal Forest to create everyday consumer products.
Among the 35 companies listed are Best Buy, Grand & Toy, Toys “R” Us, Time Inc., Sears, Coles/Indigo, Penguin Books US and Harlequin. Rona, the Canadian home improvement and hardware store, is also named in the report.
Each company is profiled as a customer of logging and pulp companies Abitibi-Consolidated, Bowater, Kruger and SFK Pulp, whose destructive logging practices are responsible for decimating nearly 200,000 km2 of Boreal Forest, or 3.5 times the size of Nova Scotia.
“Today, we’re naming names,” said Kim Fry, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace. “The logging companies and customers featured in this report are driving the destruction of Canada’s Boreal Forest.”
The report, Consuming Canada’s Boreal Forest: The chain of destruction from logging companies to consumers, calls for action from the international marketplace to protect one of the largest ancient forests left on Earth. It also condemns the governments of Ontario and Quebec, where less than nine and five per cent of the forest, respectively, is protected from industrial development.
“We expect customers of these logging companies to temporarily suspend their multi-million dollar contracts until action is taken on the ground to protect the forest and end destructive logging,” added Fry. “We are looking to the marketplace to transform this situation.”
In addition to environmental destruction—including forest fragmentation, climate impacts and loss of wildlife habitat and ecosystem biodiversity—the report also highlights Abitibi-Consolidated’s refusal to end operations in the traditional territory of Grassy Narrows First Nation, despite a longstanding blockade against logging.
Canada’s Boreal Forest stretches across the north of the country, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. It represents a quarter of the world’s remaining intact ancient forests and stores 47.5 billion tonnes of carbon in its soils and trees. Less than 15 per cent of the Boreal Forest in Quebec and 18 per cent in Ontario remains intact. More than 68 per cent of the area managed by the three logging companies has already been degraded or destroyed.
- 30 -
The report can be downloaded here: http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/documents-and-links/publications/consuming-the-boreal-forest-t
Note to editors: Broadcast-quality video and high resolution photos are available upon request.
Related Reports
Consuming the Boreal Forest: the chain of destruction from logging companies to consumers
14 August 2007
Further contact information for reporters to get video, photos or report details
Kim Fry, Greenpeace Forests Campaigner, 416-406-0664 Jane Story, Greenpeace Communications, 416-930-9055
Hundred-Mile Diet
The Hundred-Mile Diet
by Christopher Ketcham
Released: 24 Aug 2007
It's a pitiful thing to contemplate: By my estimation, close to 85 percent, perhaps even 95 percent, of the food that feeds my hometown of Moab, Utah, population 5,000, gets trucked or flown in over the red-rock desert, often from continental distances. Cut off that supply line -- an absurd, wasteful and polluting operation where the average morsel travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate -- and the city would starve to death in a week.
Eighty years ago Moab fed itself. The locals ate beef from cattle that grazed in the cool of the nearby mountains in summer or on the warm canyon floors in winter, where the townspeople also tended melons, peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, romaine lettuce and much else. The last of the old melon orchards are gone, bulldozed to make way for condo sprawl named after the destroyed gardens -- a classic pattern that holds even for big cities. Among these is Washington, DC, where as recently as the 1950s most residents got their produce from Maryland farms next door that are now subdivisions of tarmac and drywall.
A few of my fellow Moabites balk at this foolery and plant their own gardens to take advantage of the desert sun. Jon Olschewski, who is 29 and pays his rent waiting tables at one of Moab's restaurants, where the food tastes like salted rubber, gets up to 70 percent of his family's diet from his 2.5-acre farm, depending on the season. He and his father, a stonemason, tend twenty-three types of fruit and vegetable and herb -- melons, kohlrabi, cilantro, squash, edamame, garlic, dill, chocolate peppers -- and cull the eggs of as many as ten chickens a season. "In the first half of the twentieth century, a semi truck of fruit rolled out of Moab every day," Olschewski tells me. "Out of acres and acres of orchards. Under 5 percent are still here. This town has turned a blind eye to its agricultural roots. And it's something that nobody wants to talk about." He likes to quote Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower, who notes that an average 2.5-acre farm suffices to provide enough produce for 100 locals for a year.
In an era when transcontinental food consumption has exploded -- the value of international food trade is up threefold since 1960, the tonnage of food shipped between nations up fourfold (while population has only doubled) -- Olschewski and his ilk are a beleaguered minority, to be sure. But their numbers across the nation are growing. They even have a name: They call themselves localvores. The term is the invention of a group of Northern Californians who on the occasion of World Environmental Day in the summer of 2005 saw an opportunity to fight global warming by eating only from their Bay Area "foodshed," defined as foods sourced within 100 miles of one's doorstep. Thus was born Locavores.com and the annual Eat Local Challenge, which has flowered into a nationwide movement that asks participants to spend several months out of the year confined to the "hundred-mile diet." Gourmet magazine, in an article by activist-author Bill McKibben, has featured the pleasures and challenges of localvorism, while alt-supermarket chain Whole Foods now dedicates shelf space to delectables identified as "locally grown." Novelist Barbara Kingsolver this spring published Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a memoir -- eleven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list -- that chronicles a year of eating locally after she and her husband fled the deserts of the Southwest for the farms of Virginia. "Our highest shopping goal," Kingsolver writes, "was to get our food from so close to home that we'd know the person who grew it."
Kingsolver was inspired to engage in this all-consuming experiment by the same concern that drove the pioneer localvores in California: Transcontinental foodism is destructive, unsustainable, irrational. According to the Worldwatch Institute, an imported long-distance meal of typical value -- meat, grain, fruits, vegetables -- consumes up to four times as much energy and produces four times as much greenhouse gas emissions as the locally grown equivalent. In 2002 food transportation was among the largest and fastest-growing sources of British greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, trade studies in Britain find that the British import huge quantities of staples such as milk, pork and lamb, while exporting comparable tonnages of these same products -- trapped in lunatic "food swap" trade agreements made possible by cheap oil, subsidized transport and centralized purchases by massive retailers. Perhaps localvorism is best understood as an act of rebellion against a system that should not -- cannot -- stand.
The one state in the union that appears most inclined to cut itself off from the industrial food pipeline is Vermont. A recent study by a graduate student at the University of Vermont found that the state leads the nation in localized movement of agricultural goods, with the highest per capita direct sales of farmers' products -- 1.2 percent -- among the fifty states. Less than 2 percent is not a lot, of course, but it's a start. With this in mind, last winter 133 Vermonters in the Mad River Valley, accompanied by scores of others in five separate localvore "chapters" statewide, joined to exploit their state's market advantage in the so-called Winter Challenge. The Challenge required that participants survive only on a 100-mile foodshed for up to a week in cold February. Robin McDermott, who moved to Vermont with her husband three years ago and co-founded the Mad River Valley Localvores chapter in 2006, is somewhat harder on herself: Her challenge lasts all year.
By early summer, McDermott is planning six months of survival, from the first snows of September until the April melt. She cans, dries, cellars, preserves or freezes almost all of what she eats -- her cellar stocked with carrots and potatoes, onions and beets; her freezer stocked with half a pig and half a lamb and many chickens, because "we know it is no fun for a farmer to slaughter chickens in the middle of the winter."
McDermott is unalloyed in her enthusiasm for the payoff in all this effort. If pipeline food promotes a kind of roboticism and mindlessness -- every food always at hand, strawberries blooming in the aisles in icy January, the beef perfect in T-bones and strips always fresh -- she believes that localvorism promotes intelligence, discretion and choice that go hand in hand with a recognition of limits. Consider the problem of asparagus. "There is a short period during the year, maybe three weeks, when I can get asparagus," McDermott tells me. "You can bet that I know when asparagus time is. I also know when strawberries, peas, spinach, tomatoes and corn will be available, and I plan for them."
There are two other big payoffs: one healthwise, the other as a stand for economic freedom. First, pipeline food is often polluted with additives, preservatives, pesticides and, not least, the germs of the many human hands and environments through which it passes (the latter most evident in the recent rash of Chinese food scandals -- toxic fish, filthy shrimp, contaminated pet food). Second, if there's one big winner in the absurdist world-food supply line, it's large corporations that don't care about local economies. Just five companies control 75 percent of the global vegetable seed market; a handful of transnational companies control 90 percent of the trade in coffee and cocoa; five retailers account for 50 percent of all food purchases in France, Germany and Britain; the ur-predator among corporate retailers, Wal-Mart, is now the largest food retailer in the country.
On the other hand, if Vermonters shifted 10 percent of their food purchases to locally grown products, it would add more than $100 million to the state economy. Part of this added benefit is the infrastructure that arises to grow, process and distribute food (packinghouses, slaughterhouses, dairies, canneries). A study by the London-based New Economics Foundation concludes that food that stays local generates nearly twice as much income for the local economy as food exported or imported.
This spring I met two hippie vegetarians, Buck Butcher and Greg Marchand, as they wandered the West in a pickup chasing indigenous plants to eat (pinyon nuts in the high deserts of Nevada; strawberries, raspberries, currants in southern Montana). During the previous winter, in the hills of Tennessee, the two men culled at least half of their diet foraging in the richness of the temperate woods. Within a mile of their home -- a notable 1/100th of the localvore limit -- they gathered oyster mushrooms, watercress, wintercress, wild onions and Jerusalem artichokes. They roasted breadroots in olive oil with salt and pepper or boiled and mashed them like potatoes. "That was 50 percent of the time," said Buck. "The rest of the time we ate pizza."
Granted, most Americans have neither the leisure nor desire to wander the woods pulling roots, nor the skill and time to sow or kill their protein. We are bound to the diet that's most accessible -- fast food, TV dinners, the wilted things at the supermarket -- because of pressures of rent, work and children and, most important, because that's what the big food distributors make available. "I don't see this as an all-or-nothing proposition," says food scholar Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, which devotes a chapter to localvorism. "Trade in food goes back thousands of years. It's not inherently evil, but we're trading too much. I can't see us going all the way back to local or even regional food production. But we can try to move in that direction, and the localvores are teaching us that. They're also teaching us how hard it is to go back."
Christopher Ketcham is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York, and Moab, Utah.
by Christopher Ketcham
Released: 24 Aug 2007
It's a pitiful thing to contemplate: By my estimation, close to 85 percent, perhaps even 95 percent, of the food that feeds my hometown of Moab, Utah, population 5,000, gets trucked or flown in over the red-rock desert, often from continental distances. Cut off that supply line -- an absurd, wasteful and polluting operation where the average morsel travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate -- and the city would starve to death in a week.
Eighty years ago Moab fed itself. The locals ate beef from cattle that grazed in the cool of the nearby mountains in summer or on the warm canyon floors in winter, where the townspeople also tended melons, peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, romaine lettuce and much else. The last of the old melon orchards are gone, bulldozed to make way for condo sprawl named after the destroyed gardens -- a classic pattern that holds even for big cities. Among these is Washington, DC, where as recently as the 1950s most residents got their produce from Maryland farms next door that are now subdivisions of tarmac and drywall.
A few of my fellow Moabites balk at this foolery and plant their own gardens to take advantage of the desert sun. Jon Olschewski, who is 29 and pays his rent waiting tables at one of Moab's restaurants, where the food tastes like salted rubber, gets up to 70 percent of his family's diet from his 2.5-acre farm, depending on the season. He and his father, a stonemason, tend twenty-three types of fruit and vegetable and herb -- melons, kohlrabi, cilantro, squash, edamame, garlic, dill, chocolate peppers -- and cull the eggs of as many as ten chickens a season. "In the first half of the twentieth century, a semi truck of fruit rolled out of Moab every day," Olschewski tells me. "Out of acres and acres of orchards. Under 5 percent are still here. This town has turned a blind eye to its agricultural roots. And it's something that nobody wants to talk about." He likes to quote Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower, who notes that an average 2.5-acre farm suffices to provide enough produce for 100 locals for a year.
In an era when transcontinental food consumption has exploded -- the value of international food trade is up threefold since 1960, the tonnage of food shipped between nations up fourfold (while population has only doubled) -- Olschewski and his ilk are a beleaguered minority, to be sure. But their numbers across the nation are growing. They even have a name: They call themselves localvores. The term is the invention of a group of Northern Californians who on the occasion of World Environmental Day in the summer of 2005 saw an opportunity to fight global warming by eating only from their Bay Area "foodshed," defined as foods sourced within 100 miles of one's doorstep. Thus was born Locavores.com and the annual Eat Local Challenge, which has flowered into a nationwide movement that asks participants to spend several months out of the year confined to the "hundred-mile diet." Gourmet magazine, in an article by activist-author Bill McKibben, has featured the pleasures and challenges of localvorism, while alt-supermarket chain Whole Foods now dedicates shelf space to delectables identified as "locally grown." Novelist Barbara Kingsolver this spring published Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a memoir -- eleven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list -- that chronicles a year of eating locally after she and her husband fled the deserts of the Southwest for the farms of Virginia. "Our highest shopping goal," Kingsolver writes, "was to get our food from so close to home that we'd know the person who grew it."
Kingsolver was inspired to engage in this all-consuming experiment by the same concern that drove the pioneer localvores in California: Transcontinental foodism is destructive, unsustainable, irrational. According to the Worldwatch Institute, an imported long-distance meal of typical value -- meat, grain, fruits, vegetables -- consumes up to four times as much energy and produces four times as much greenhouse gas emissions as the locally grown equivalent. In 2002 food transportation was among the largest and fastest-growing sources of British greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, trade studies in Britain find that the British import huge quantities of staples such as milk, pork and lamb, while exporting comparable tonnages of these same products -- trapped in lunatic "food swap" trade agreements made possible by cheap oil, subsidized transport and centralized purchases by massive retailers. Perhaps localvorism is best understood as an act of rebellion against a system that should not -- cannot -- stand.
The one state in the union that appears most inclined to cut itself off from the industrial food pipeline is Vermont. A recent study by a graduate student at the University of Vermont found that the state leads the nation in localized movement of agricultural goods, with the highest per capita direct sales of farmers' products -- 1.2 percent -- among the fifty states. Less than 2 percent is not a lot, of course, but it's a start. With this in mind, last winter 133 Vermonters in the Mad River Valley, accompanied by scores of others in five separate localvore "chapters" statewide, joined to exploit their state's market advantage in the so-called Winter Challenge. The Challenge required that participants survive only on a 100-mile foodshed for up to a week in cold February. Robin McDermott, who moved to Vermont with her husband three years ago and co-founded the Mad River Valley Localvores chapter in 2006, is somewhat harder on herself: Her challenge lasts all year.
By early summer, McDermott is planning six months of survival, from the first snows of September until the April melt. She cans, dries, cellars, preserves or freezes almost all of what she eats -- her cellar stocked with carrots and potatoes, onions and beets; her freezer stocked with half a pig and half a lamb and many chickens, because "we know it is no fun for a farmer to slaughter chickens in the middle of the winter."
McDermott is unalloyed in her enthusiasm for the payoff in all this effort. If pipeline food promotes a kind of roboticism and mindlessness -- every food always at hand, strawberries blooming in the aisles in icy January, the beef perfect in T-bones and strips always fresh -- she believes that localvorism promotes intelligence, discretion and choice that go hand in hand with a recognition of limits. Consider the problem of asparagus. "There is a short period during the year, maybe three weeks, when I can get asparagus," McDermott tells me. "You can bet that I know when asparagus time is. I also know when strawberries, peas, spinach, tomatoes and corn will be available, and I plan for them."
There are two other big payoffs: one healthwise, the other as a stand for economic freedom. First, pipeline food is often polluted with additives, preservatives, pesticides and, not least, the germs of the many human hands and environments through which it passes (the latter most evident in the recent rash of Chinese food scandals -- toxic fish, filthy shrimp, contaminated pet food). Second, if there's one big winner in the absurdist world-food supply line, it's large corporations that don't care about local economies. Just five companies control 75 percent of the global vegetable seed market; a handful of transnational companies control 90 percent of the trade in coffee and cocoa; five retailers account for 50 percent of all food purchases in France, Germany and Britain; the ur-predator among corporate retailers, Wal-Mart, is now the largest food retailer in the country.
On the other hand, if Vermonters shifted 10 percent of their food purchases to locally grown products, it would add more than $100 million to the state economy. Part of this added benefit is the infrastructure that arises to grow, process and distribute food (packinghouses, slaughterhouses, dairies, canneries). A study by the London-based New Economics Foundation concludes that food that stays local generates nearly twice as much income for the local economy as food exported or imported.
This spring I met two hippie vegetarians, Buck Butcher and Greg Marchand, as they wandered the West in a pickup chasing indigenous plants to eat (pinyon nuts in the high deserts of Nevada; strawberries, raspberries, currants in southern Montana). During the previous winter, in the hills of Tennessee, the two men culled at least half of their diet foraging in the richness of the temperate woods. Within a mile of their home -- a notable 1/100th of the localvore limit -- they gathered oyster mushrooms, watercress, wintercress, wild onions and Jerusalem artichokes. They roasted breadroots in olive oil with salt and pepper or boiled and mashed them like potatoes. "That was 50 percent of the time," said Buck. "The rest of the time we ate pizza."
Granted, most Americans have neither the leisure nor desire to wander the woods pulling roots, nor the skill and time to sow or kill their protein. We are bound to the diet that's most accessible -- fast food, TV dinners, the wilted things at the supermarket -- because of pressures of rent, work and children and, most important, because that's what the big food distributors make available. "I don't see this as an all-or-nothing proposition," says food scholar Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, which devotes a chapter to localvorism. "Trade in food goes back thousands of years. It's not inherently evil, but we're trading too much. I can't see us going all the way back to local or even regional food production. But we can try to move in that direction, and the localvores are teaching us that. They're also teaching us how hard it is to go back."
Christopher Ketcham is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York, and Moab, Utah.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
MARKET CRASH as PROCESS
A FINANCIAL MARKET CRASH IS A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT
Saturday, 18 August 2007
Liquidity dries up, truth is revealed
By Eric Janszen
Reprinted from ITULIP.COM
Article contains headlines from 1929 as well as a video clip of this week's financial headlines. The similarities are striking.
A financial crash is not sudden, singular event. The way the Crash of 1929 is commonly misunderstood, the market crashed on Monday, October 31, 1929 and soup lines formed Tuesday.
A financial crash is a process lasting as long as a year, punctuated by a few notable grip-and-grin market events that make it into the history books. Underlying the process is the dissolution of a fallacious belief system that developed over a period of many years. Fallacies floated on an ocean of cheap credit. As the credit dries up, facts are revealed under the harsh light of reality.
Multiple fallacious beliefs now show under the light of evidence for all to see. The complicity of the ratings agencies in creating the housing bubble, while notable, is a minor revelation compared to the big three.
Financial Risk is Buried and Gone
False Belief: Risk spreading instruments disperse financial risk, creating greater financial market stability and resilience.
Fact: Underwriters, mostly investment banks, sold exotic credit derivatives and externalized the risk, dumping it mostly on foreign pension funds. Risk spreading instruments create Risk Pollution, causing financial risk to disappear from sight for a time, where it concentrates in the weakest parts of the financial system only to reappear later like PCBs at Love Canal. The subprime mortgage market is the beginning of the discovery of hundreds of Credit Love Canals. A multi-trillion dollar Risk Pollution Superfund will have to be developed, at taxpayer expense, to clean up over ten years of Risk Pollution.
The Housing Bubble Collapse is Benign
False Belief: The Housing Bubble Correction will not seriously damage the economy.
Fact: Every aspect of the economy on which rising home prices depended, from the market for mortgages to furniture to autos, is in decline. The collapse of the housing bubble will cause a recession in the U.S. by Q4 2007.
Deficits Don't Matter
False Belief: Deficits don't matter. An economy can be continuously stripped of its industrial capacity and its assets inflated and traded for profit continuously, and imports can be paid for with borrowed money forever.
Fact: No economy in history has ever survived long running large trade and fiscal deficits. The entire economy needs to be overhauled, from the tax system to the monetary system, to re-build capacity for capital formation, saving, and capital investment in productive industries. USA, Inc. needs to be restructured.
There is very little that the Fed can do to stop the dissolution of fallacies process now that it is underway. Rate cuts will further weaken dollar and create even higher inflation, which is one of the causes of the crash. The Fed will keep the discount window open to prevent cascading debt defaults and bank failures.
Here's how it went down last time. You will notice a few parallels.
1929 Headlines
Wave of Buying Sweeps Over Market as Stocks Swing Upward
Radio Flashes High; General Motors and Steels Soar
By Laurence Stern
The atmosphere of doubt and caution which Wall Street in recent weeks has come to regard almost as habitual on Thursdays was swept away yesterday in a rush of buying...
Perhaps the market's own strength weighed as heavily with speculative minds as the logic of the situation, since the tape is the one institution Wall Street does not argue with. At any rate, the market appeared entirely confident from the opening gong. It was a firm, almost buoyant, opening, many initial transactions involving large blocks at sizable price advances...
The advance was one of the most vigorous of the year, amounting to a net gain of 6.97 points in the Dow Jones "average" of thirty representative industrial issues...
- The World, March 15, 1929
_____
Stocks Soar As Bank Aid Ends Fear of Money Panic
By W. A. Lyon
The stock market strode out from under the shadow of a panic in call money that so lately threatened, revived in all its old strength yesterday. Assured that the New York banks were ready with their boundless resources to prevent a money crisis, the public and the professional trader set out to repair the damage done to prices on Monday and the major part of Tuesday.
Stocks in the aggregate, though bucking a 15 per cent rate for loans, enjoyed the greatest advance they have known in a single day in the last two years. Not even the surging bull markets of the memorable year 1928 saw such a day of heavy buying.
- New York Herald Tribune, March 28, 1929
_____
Banker Says Boom Will Run Into 1930
That at least a part of the great amount of money in the securities market may represent temporary employment of funds eventually finding their way into business uses, and that the prosperity of the present business cycle will probably not end in 1929, is the belief expressed by the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation in the quarterly review of the London house of Schroder.
- The World, March 30, 1929
_____
Public Liquidation Spurred by Bears, Hits Low Market Scare Orders From All Over Country Halt Ticker an Hour in Feverish Day
By Laurence Stern
With speculative nerves rubbed raw under the persistent hammering of bearish traders, a renewed wave of public liquidation swept over the stock market yesterday, depressing prices severely and hopelessly clogging the quotation ticker...
...To the majority of the market's followers, who now must be counted in millions, the most significant aspect of the decline is that it has carried the average level of the list to a lower point than was reached on Oct. 4 in the sharp break that climaxed a month of gradual recession.
This raises a pertinent question, whether the bull movement of the last five years has definitely given way to a liquidating market...
-The World, October 20, 1929
_____
Brokers Believe Worst Is Over and Recommend Buying of Real Bargains
Wall Street in looking over the wreckage of the week, has come generally to the opinion that high grade investment issues can be bought now, without fear of a drastic decline. There is some difference of opinion as to whether not the correction must go further, but everyone realizes that the worst is over, and that there are bargains for those who are willing to buy conservatively and live through the immediate irregularity.
-New York Herald Tribune, October 27, 1929
_____
Gigantic Bank Pool Pledged To Avert Disaster as Second Big Crash Stuns Wall Street
Largest Financial Powers in the City Meet After Day of Hysterical Liquidation Sinking Prices Below Thursday's
By Laurence Stern
After the stock market had come crashing down again in a veritable deluge of forced and hysterical liquidation, word sped through the financial district last evening that the largest banks in the city were prepared to exert their organized power this morning to prevent further disaster.
Arrangements described as "fully adequate" were completed at a conference at the offices of J. P. Morgan & Co. at Broad and Wall Streets...
Although no formal statement was issued, it was the consensus of those at the meeting that the worst of the liquidation is over and that a natural demand for investment stocks now available on the bargain counter should go far toward an immediate restoration of trading stability.
-The World, October 29, 1929
_____
Stocks Up in Strong Rally; Rockefellers Big Buyers; Exchanges Close 2-1/2 Days
By Ferdinand Lundberg
Revived by spontaneous investment buying and declarations of large extra cash dividends by leading companies, and free of the delirium that has recently gripped share owners, the stock market yesterday received a fresh start and scored a record comeback. Volume on the Stock Exchange totaled 10,727,320 shares, the third largest day on record.
The high spot of the day from a stock market viewpoint was the statement by John D. Rockefeller that there was no need to destroy values and that he and his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., had been heavy buyers of stocks for investment in the last few days, and would continue to buy at present prices...
-- New York Herald Tribune, October 31, 1929
_____
Very Prosperous Year Is Forecast
Guenther Analyzes the Report of Mellon Covering 1929
That 1930 may be a very prosperous year, industrially and otherwise, without the peak conditions that made 1929 and exceptional year for business prosperity, is an observation made by Louis Guenther, publisher of the Financial World, in a statement based upon Secretary Mellon's fiscal report...
"To grow too fast is often unhealthy because of the suddenness with which a readjustment must be met. By far and large the country would be better off were further progress made along more normal lines...
Fortunately, we have returned to a more normal mind in appraising prospects. We are not looking for the Midas touch on everything to which we turn. That makes us more satisfied with normal incomes and normal profit returns."
-The World, December 15, 1929
Saturday, 18 August 2007
Liquidity dries up, truth is revealed
By Eric Janszen
Reprinted from ITULIP.COM
Article contains headlines from 1929 as well as a video clip of this week's financial headlines. The similarities are striking.
A financial crash is not sudden, singular event. The way the Crash of 1929 is commonly misunderstood, the market crashed on Monday, October 31, 1929 and soup lines formed Tuesday.
A financial crash is a process lasting as long as a year, punctuated by a few notable grip-and-grin market events that make it into the history books. Underlying the process is the dissolution of a fallacious belief system that developed over a period of many years. Fallacies floated on an ocean of cheap credit. As the credit dries up, facts are revealed under the harsh light of reality.
Multiple fallacious beliefs now show under the light of evidence for all to see. The complicity of the ratings agencies in creating the housing bubble, while notable, is a minor revelation compared to the big three.
Financial Risk is Buried and Gone
False Belief: Risk spreading instruments disperse financial risk, creating greater financial market stability and resilience.
Fact: Underwriters, mostly investment banks, sold exotic credit derivatives and externalized the risk, dumping it mostly on foreign pension funds. Risk spreading instruments create Risk Pollution, causing financial risk to disappear from sight for a time, where it concentrates in the weakest parts of the financial system only to reappear later like PCBs at Love Canal. The subprime mortgage market is the beginning of the discovery of hundreds of Credit Love Canals. A multi-trillion dollar Risk Pollution Superfund will have to be developed, at taxpayer expense, to clean up over ten years of Risk Pollution.
The Housing Bubble Collapse is Benign
False Belief: The Housing Bubble Correction will not seriously damage the economy.
Fact: Every aspect of the economy on which rising home prices depended, from the market for mortgages to furniture to autos, is in decline. The collapse of the housing bubble will cause a recession in the U.S. by Q4 2007.
Deficits Don't Matter
False Belief: Deficits don't matter. An economy can be continuously stripped of its industrial capacity and its assets inflated and traded for profit continuously, and imports can be paid for with borrowed money forever.
Fact: No economy in history has ever survived long running large trade and fiscal deficits. The entire economy needs to be overhauled, from the tax system to the monetary system, to re-build capacity for capital formation, saving, and capital investment in productive industries. USA, Inc. needs to be restructured.
There is very little that the Fed can do to stop the dissolution of fallacies process now that it is underway. Rate cuts will further weaken dollar and create even higher inflation, which is one of the causes of the crash. The Fed will keep the discount window open to prevent cascading debt defaults and bank failures.
Here's how it went down last time. You will notice a few parallels.
1929 Headlines
Wave of Buying Sweeps Over Market as Stocks Swing Upward
Radio Flashes High; General Motors and Steels Soar
By Laurence Stern
The atmosphere of doubt and caution which Wall Street in recent weeks has come to regard almost as habitual on Thursdays was swept away yesterday in a rush of buying...
Perhaps the market's own strength weighed as heavily with speculative minds as the logic of the situation, since the tape is the one institution Wall Street does not argue with. At any rate, the market appeared entirely confident from the opening gong. It was a firm, almost buoyant, opening, many initial transactions involving large blocks at sizable price advances...
The advance was one of the most vigorous of the year, amounting to a net gain of 6.97 points in the Dow Jones "average" of thirty representative industrial issues...
- The World, March 15, 1929
_____
Stocks Soar As Bank Aid Ends Fear of Money Panic
By W. A. Lyon
The stock market strode out from under the shadow of a panic in call money that so lately threatened, revived in all its old strength yesterday. Assured that the New York banks were ready with their boundless resources to prevent a money crisis, the public and the professional trader set out to repair the damage done to prices on Monday and the major part of Tuesday.
Stocks in the aggregate, though bucking a 15 per cent rate for loans, enjoyed the greatest advance they have known in a single day in the last two years. Not even the surging bull markets of the memorable year 1928 saw such a day of heavy buying.
- New York Herald Tribune, March 28, 1929
_____
Banker Says Boom Will Run Into 1930
That at least a part of the great amount of money in the securities market may represent temporary employment of funds eventually finding their way into business uses, and that the prosperity of the present business cycle will probably not end in 1929, is the belief expressed by the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation in the quarterly review of the London house of Schroder.
- The World, March 30, 1929
_____
Public Liquidation Spurred by Bears, Hits Low Market Scare Orders From All Over Country Halt Ticker an Hour in Feverish Day
By Laurence Stern
With speculative nerves rubbed raw under the persistent hammering of bearish traders, a renewed wave of public liquidation swept over the stock market yesterday, depressing prices severely and hopelessly clogging the quotation ticker...
...To the majority of the market's followers, who now must be counted in millions, the most significant aspect of the decline is that it has carried the average level of the list to a lower point than was reached on Oct. 4 in the sharp break that climaxed a month of gradual recession.
This raises a pertinent question, whether the bull movement of the last five years has definitely given way to a liquidating market...
-The World, October 20, 1929
_____
Brokers Believe Worst Is Over and Recommend Buying of Real Bargains
Wall Street in looking over the wreckage of the week, has come generally to the opinion that high grade investment issues can be bought now, without fear of a drastic decline. There is some difference of opinion as to whether not the correction must go further, but everyone realizes that the worst is over, and that there are bargains for those who are willing to buy conservatively and live through the immediate irregularity.
-New York Herald Tribune, October 27, 1929
_____
Gigantic Bank Pool Pledged To Avert Disaster as Second Big Crash Stuns Wall Street
Largest Financial Powers in the City Meet After Day of Hysterical Liquidation Sinking Prices Below Thursday's
By Laurence Stern
After the stock market had come crashing down again in a veritable deluge of forced and hysterical liquidation, word sped through the financial district last evening that the largest banks in the city were prepared to exert their organized power this morning to prevent further disaster.
Arrangements described as "fully adequate" were completed at a conference at the offices of J. P. Morgan & Co. at Broad and Wall Streets...
Although no formal statement was issued, it was the consensus of those at the meeting that the worst of the liquidation is over and that a natural demand for investment stocks now available on the bargain counter should go far toward an immediate restoration of trading stability.
-The World, October 29, 1929
_____
Stocks Up in Strong Rally; Rockefellers Big Buyers; Exchanges Close 2-1/2 Days
By Ferdinand Lundberg
Revived by spontaneous investment buying and declarations of large extra cash dividends by leading companies, and free of the delirium that has recently gripped share owners, the stock market yesterday received a fresh start and scored a record comeback. Volume on the Stock Exchange totaled 10,727,320 shares, the third largest day on record.
The high spot of the day from a stock market viewpoint was the statement by John D. Rockefeller that there was no need to destroy values and that he and his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., had been heavy buyers of stocks for investment in the last few days, and would continue to buy at present prices...
-- New York Herald Tribune, October 31, 1929
_____
Very Prosperous Year Is Forecast
Guenther Analyzes the Report of Mellon Covering 1929
That 1930 may be a very prosperous year, industrially and otherwise, without the peak conditions that made 1929 and exceptional year for business prosperity, is an observation made by Louis Guenther, publisher of the Financial World, in a statement based upon Secretary Mellon's fiscal report...
"To grow too fast is often unhealthy because of the suddenness with which a readjustment must be met. By far and large the country would be better off were further progress made along more normal lines...
Fortunately, we have returned to a more normal mind in appraising prospects. We are not looking for the Midas touch on everything to which we turn. That makes us more satisfied with normal incomes and normal profit returns."
-The World, December 15, 1929
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)