http://www.newstarg et.com/022267. html
Originally published November 19 2007
Children herded like cattle into Maryland courthouse for forced vaccinations as armed police and attack dogs stand guardby Mike Adams(NewsTarget)
Following the State of Maryland's threats against parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, children were herded into a Price George County courthouse being guarded by armed personnel with attack dogs.
Inside, the children were forcibly vaccinated, many against their will, under orders from the State Attorney General, various State Judges and the local School Board Director, all of whom illegally conspired to threaten parents with imprisonment if they did not submit their children to vaccinations.
The State of Maryland has now turned to Gestapo tactics to force its medical will upon the People, stripping parents of any right to decide how they wish to protect their own children from infectious disease. Health authorities there have already announced their intent to essentially kidnap parents and throw them in jail, removing them from their children for up to thirty days if they continue to refuse to have their children vaccinated.
This will all be conducted at gunpoint, with armed personnel and attack dogs at the ready, making sure nobody steps out of line, and suppressing any attempt at public dissent against the Orwellian vaccination policies.The entire campaign against these parents is blatantly illegal.
There is no law in Maryland requiring the vaccination of children, thus parents who refuse to do so may not be legally charged with violating any law. Instead, Maryland health and school authorities are using Gestapo-like tactics, threatening to charge the parents with child truancy violations, criminalizing them for daring to protect their children from the dangerous chemicals found in vaccines (including thimerosal, a chemical additive containing a neurotoxic form of mercury).
The desperation of organized medicine is becoming increasingly apparent
As more and more parents are becoming informed about the dangers of vaccinations and their link to autism, state health authorities are increasingly turning to "Gunpoint Medicine" to force the People to submit to the poisons of conventional medicine. Parents who attempt to save their children from deadly chemotherapy chemicals are being arrested and having their children kidnapped by Child Protective Services (see http://www.newstarg et.com/Abraham_ Cherrix.html ), and oncologists who used to be armed only with radiation machines and chemotherapy injectors and now arming themselves with U.S. Marshals and other local law enforcement authorities who are using loaded firearms to enforce "the will of the State" against parents who resist.
Even the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) announced its strong opposition to the Maryland "Gunpoint Medicine" vaccination campaign. In a press release (http://www.truthrin g.org/?p= 5521) published Nov. 16, the AAPS states:
"The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons today condemned the "vaccine roundup" executed in Prince George's county Maryland this week, and promised to do everything it can to support parents who refuse to immunize their children."
This power play obliterates informed consent and parental rights," said Kathryn Serkes, director of policy for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), one of the few national physician groups that refuse corporate funding from pharmaceutical companies.
In a scenario reminiscent of cattle round-ups, the state's attorney has issued summons to more than 1600 parents of children who have not provided certificates of immunization for their children. But instead of toting a cattle prod, this state's attorney chooses to wield a syringe to keep the "herd" in line.
Read the rest of the press release at: http://www.aapsonli ne.org/press/ nr-11-16- 07.php...
What's next for Gunpoint Medicine?
As the truth continues to emerge about the extreme dangers of vaccinations and pharmaceuticals, Big Pharma is becoming increasingly desperate to coerce the public into relying on its products. It is now working closely with state authorities (including Governors of several states) to mandate the use of vaccinations on young children...
The FDA has already criminalized nutritional supplement companies who dare to tell the truth about the health benefits of their supplements. (Read the true history of armed FDA raids on vitamin companies here: http://www.newstarg et.com/021791. html )...
The end game of all this is to apply Gunpoint Medicine tactics to everyone: Adults and senior citizens included. Anyone suffering from high cholesterol, for example, who does not submit to Big Pharma's statin drugs could be arrested, strapped to a table and medicated against their will.
People with cancer could be arrested for choosing to treat that cancer with safe and effective botanical medicines instead of patented, high-profit Big Pharma drugs.
If you think the prisons are full enough right now from all the arrests for marijuana possession and other victimless crimes, just wait until the State starts arresting all the natural health moms and dads across the country who refuse to participate in the utterly insane and extremely harmful system of medicine that now dominates U.S. health care today.
The State is very clear about medicine: If you want to remain a free citizen, you must submit to the synthetic drugs made by the very same corporations that now control government health regulators. Anyperson who resists such "treatments" will be branded a threat to public health -- a designation just beneath "terrorist" in the eyes of many government bureaucrats.
As such, they believe there is no limit to the level of force they may use to coerce such people into submitting to Big Pharma's chemicals....
The "free" America we all once knew is long gone, and it has been replaced with The United States of Corporate America, where police tactics are now used to enforce hazardous public health policies, and the people who run the State no longer think there's anything wrong with rounding up the population at gunpoint and performing large-scale medical experiments on their children.
That's what modern vaccines are, after all: A grand medical experiment whose effects will only become known after a generation of mass poisoning has come and gone.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Final Nail in America's Coffin
The Final Nail in America's Coffin:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/
discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2305406
http://www.democraticunderground.com/
discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2305406
Friday, November 16, 2007
Torture: What Ottawa knew
Globe and Mail November 16, 2007
The Afghan Mission: detainee abuse: from Canadian custody into cruel hands
Afghan prisons: What Ottawa knew
Bloody floors, constant use of leg irons and few checks on authority revealed in declassified government files
Paul Koring and Alan Freeman
Washington, Ottawa -- The Harper government knew prison conditions were appalling long before The Globe and Mail published a series of stories last April detailing the abuse and torture of prisoners turned over by Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan's notorious secret police, documents released this week show.
The heavily censored documents also show that at the same time as senior ministers were denying evidence of abuse, officials on the ground in Afghanistan were collecting first-hand accounts from prisoners of mistreatment.
Although large sections of the more than 1,000 pages of documents and messages between Ottawa, Kabul and Kandahar remain blacked out, two disturbing pictures emerge from the pile.
First, that despite working hard to create the impression of careful follow-up in monitoring of detainees, efforts have been hampered by a chaotic and unreliable Afghan system in which scores, perhaps hundreds, of detainees have vanished.
Second, in the months prior to public allegations of abuse and torture, there was compelling evidence of terrible conditions in Afghan prisons. In addition to routine reports by diplomats citing widespread torture and abuse, Canadian officials were also delivering first-hand accounts showing how grim the prisons were.
In one, Linda Garwood-Filbert, the newly arrived leader of a Correctional Service Canada inspections team, asked for better boots in February, 2007, months before the published reports, because she was "walking through blood and fecal matter" on the floor of cells as they toured Afghan prisons.
No explanation of why the floors were covered in blood is given.
The government was forced to release the documents on detainee conditions after a federal judge ordered it to disclose them as part of a suit brought by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.
Another report noted that the warden of the main prison in Kandahar, where many prisoners handed over by Canadians soldiers were held, had been fired after charges that he raped juvenile detainees. Cosmetics and hashish were found in his office. He was exonerated because an Afghan military judge said it was "impossible for a drunken man in his 50s to commit an act of rape," reported a Canadian official in a cable to Ottawa.
Other reports detail conditions far outside internationally acceptable norms. At one Kandahar secret police prison, all inmates are shackled in leg irons around the clock. Some have been kept that way for more than a year.
Meanwhile, in the months since May, after the government hastily arranged follow-up inspections in the wake of news reports, a different, but equally disturbing picture, emerges.
It is of scores of disappeared detainees, of strong evidence of torture and abuse continuing despite the inspections and of a frantic effort, in the first few days after the stories appeared last April, to paint a far rosier picture than documented in secret diplomatic cables.
On the first Canadian visit to a secret police prison, officials reported that they were stunned that two prisoners braved almost certain retribution to complain of abuse. "To our surprise, even through NDS [Afghanistan's version of a combined CIA and FBI] officers accompanied us throughout the visit, two prisoners came forward with complaints of mistreatment," says an April 25 cable marked "secret."
The frantic damage-control efforts by the government in that tumultuous last week of April also are clear in the documents. On April 23, Canadian diplomats in Kabul reported back to Ottawa after an urgently arranged meeting with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission that "the commission is unable to monitor the condition of detainees as per their agreement with the Canadians, Dutch and others" because the NDS refused to allow them into the prisons.
The next day, then-defence minister Gordon O'Connor told the House of Commons during Question Period that "the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has assured us that it will report any abuse of prisoners. It is able to monitor all the prisoners." Mr. O'Connor had previously told the Commons that the International Committee of the Red Cross would report any abuse or torture of transferred detainees back to Canada, a claim he was later forced to retract when he apologized to the House for misleading it.
Since May, when the Harper government signed a new deal designed to plug the holes that had allowed for no follow-up monitoring of transferred detainees, the government has been claiming a sea change in treatment and tracking.
"We now have a much greater ability to track the detainees to ensure the standards that are expected are being met," Peter MacKay, then foreign minister, said on June 6. "The Afghans themselves, of course, clearly understand the expectations when it comes to detainees who were turned over by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. They will not only ensure that we know about their whereabouts, but their treatment will conform with international standards, the standards we have clearly set out." That stands in sharp contrast to what was being reported by Canadian diplomats, military officers and corrections officers actually charged with the follow-up monitoring.
Five days earlier, on June 1, diplomats struggling to cope with NDS record-keeping reported that some detainees are listed as being "released about three months before they are arrested," while for others there was no record "of these detainee names anywhere on our spreadsheet."
Another report later in June said that "given the poor level of record-keeping, it is to be expected that we will not be able to verify the status of some of these detainees." Canadian Forces flatly refuse to say how many prisoners they have taken and either released or handed over to Afghan authorities. However, blacked-out numbers in the documents indicate the number is in triple digits and Canadian sources in Afghanistan say more than 200.
Yet in more than six months of follow-up monitoring, Canadian officials have been able to arrange only 32 interviews. Several of those were multiple meetings with the same detainees, David Mulroney, the government's point man on the Afghan file, has said.
That suggests that more than 100, perhaps more than 150 detainees have gone missing.
In the 32 interviews, at least seven detainees claimed they were abused or ill-treated. The government no longer seems to use the word "torture" in connection with prisoners in Afghanistan.
Among the many partially blacked-out references in the documents released in Ottawa is a cryptic mention from early April, warning "there are also indications that Canadians may have been present during questioning of detainees by NDS."
*****
What the documents say
This spring, as cabinet ministers were defending prisoner safeguards as adequate and denying the existence of prison-abuse allegations, numerous government reports showed otherwise.
1 - In February, conditions were so appalling in Afghan prisons that a Correctional Service Canada team asked for better boots with which to wade through the blood and feces on the floors.
2 - When The Globe and Mail published allegations of abuse in April, cabinet ministers denied any knowledge. But officials knew that Kandahar's notorious Sarpoza prison - where many detainees captured by Canadian soldiers were held - was run by a warden suspected of raping inmates as early as February, when Correctional Service officials arrived in Afghanistan.
3 - In June, one month after the Harper government announced new follow-up visits to monitor detainees, Canadian diplomats reported that Afghan records were so bad it was impossible to know what happened to many prisoners.
1 EQUIPMENT
CIVPOL have made the request on our behalf to be issued with the desert camel boots, as they have also had to convert since being in theatre. they afford the appropriate ankle support when getting in and out of the LAV/Coyote/Nyala vehicles. Additionally the colour is more appropriate in the summer heat. On a Health and Safety level we will be walking through blood and fecal matter when either on patrol or in the prison and should not be wearing our personal footwear as it will track into our personal quarters. We are also trying to get Ranger blankets issued as there is no guarantee that when we go on patrol that we will
2
Specific discussion focused on the recent exoneration of the previous Warden of Sarpoza. MUHAMMAD NADIR was accused and arrested in early 2007 for the rape or attempted rape of a juvenile prisoner. When the Warden's room was searched they also found hashish, wine and cosmetics. CSC had been made aware of this incident when they arrived in theatre in early February.
3
1) Follow-up on detainee transfers by Canada.
Have we heard back from ANP [Afghan National Police] and ANA [Afghan National Army] on detainees we transferred to them? What are we doing to pursue this?
ANP and ANA were provided with a list of individuals transferred into their custody by the Canadian Forces. given the poor level of record-keeping by the ANP/ANA, and the fact that they do not keep any records on original detaining force, it is to be expected that we will not be able to verify the status of some of these detainees, particularly if they were released. KABUL is in regular contact with ANP and ANA officials.
FOR AIHRC [Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission] AND ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] EYES ONLY
NDS SITE VISIT
2007-04-25
The Director of the Corrections Component and Gavin Buchan of DFAIT [Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade] attended NDS. The following was noted in relation to persons on remand.
XXXXXXX, son of XXXXXXXX has been there for 21/2 months. His investigation is finished. When asked about abuse he said his toes had been burned but it was not apparent to CSC [Correctional Service of Canada] inspection. He also said he had been kicked and beaten while blindfolded, that they had stepped on his belly. This reportedly took place in the NDS office. When asked who had abused him he said it was officers at NDS however he could not identify them due to the blindfold. NDS alleged that XXXXXXXXX had killed two ANP in Myan Shin or Shah Wali Kot before being captured.
Another prisoner beckoned to us and told us his name was XXXXXXXX (spelling to be verified), son of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. He said that he had been in detention for about one year. The first month was at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. When asked about cells at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, which is where he was held. When asked about other prisoners he said that there were none. When asked about the number of cells he said it was just a room. He went on to state that he had been interrogated by foreigners and XXXXXXXX. He alleged that XXXXXXXX beat him and gave him electric shocks. He also stated he was bound by his feet and hands and was made to stand for 10 days.
He said the reason for the detention was that he had been accused by an enemy in Government of being XXXXXX of Taliban XXXXXXXXX. He has never been to court. His name in the file is XXXXXXXXXX but he claims that is inaccurate and that he was captured in Maywand, not Panjawayi as recorded in the file, and that after his detention his care was appropriated by XXXXXXXXXX.
For your considerations,
L. Garwood-Filbert
Director Corrections Component
KPRT
Monday, November 12, 2007
SOOKE FOOD SECURITY: VISIONING WORKSHOP
SOOKE FOOD SECURITY: VISIONING WORKSHOP
November 7th, 2007 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Sooke Harbour House
Potlatch Room
WHAT IS FOOD SECURITY?
There are many formal and informal definitions of food security. For the purposes of this project ’food security’ can be defined as “a situation in which all community residents obtains a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes self-reliance and social justice.
A ‘sustainable food system’ can be described as a food system that improves the health of the community, environment and individuals over time, involving a collaborative effort in a particular setting to build locally based, self-reliant food systems and economies.”
A local ‘food system’ can be described as “one in which food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of end products are integrated to enhance the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of a particular community and place”
WHAT IS VISIONING & WHY DO WE NEED IT?
(Andrew Moore)
What is it?
A vision is an ideal that we can project into the future and work towards achieving.
‘A picture in which everyone can see themselves’.
A vision expresses all that is important to an individual or group e.g.
Potential, Aspiration, Interests, Values, Dreams, Roots
Why do we need one?
If you do not have a strong vision of where you want to go you will probably end up being a bit player in other people’s visions.
Once we have a vision we can share it with others and see if they too can see themselves in this picture.
Visions and values form the basis for developing goals and objectives that when implemented turn the vision into a reality
Transforming any idea into a reality is usually 10% Inspiration, 90% Perspiration
Visioning is one of the ‘inspiration’ components so do not miss the chance, otherwise you may end up with the 90% ‘perspiration’ components - carrying out someone else’s vision!
WHO IS FUNDING OUR PROJECT & WHAT HAVE WE BEEN FUNDED FOR?
VIHA’s Community Food Action Initiative (CFAI):
The Vancouver Island Health Authority’s (VIHA) Community Food Action Initiative (CFAI) is part of the Healthy Eating component of ActNow BC. The purpose is to increase food security in BC by supporting the implementation of community, regional and provincial initiatives that improve access to healthy foods for all members of the community. They have awarded us with $10,000 to help fund our Community Food & Health Action Plan (Please see below objectives. If you have not send the CFAI funding proposal please let me know and I will email it to you).
Region of Focus:
From East Sooke to Port Renfrew (including all communities within this geographical area: East Sooke, Beecher Bay, Sooke, Shirley, Otter Point, Jordan River, Pacheedaht and Port Renfrew).
Project Objectives:
To initiate, support, and enhance the collaboration between a broad range of community members, decision-makers, and key stakeholders to develop the regional Food & Health Action Plan.
To provide the community with clear, accessible and relevant information on the assets and needs related to the local food system.
For the community to prioritize areas for improvement and develop next steps for achieving priorities.
To strengthen the link between community needs and government decision-making by providing elected officials and local planners with relevant and useful information to inform land-use planning.
Actions & Time Line:
Kate Kittredge will speak to this.
Additional Funding Sources (to supplement VIHA’s $10,000):
a. District of Sooke ($5000 grants in Aid)
b. VanCity (funding CASA’s community kitchen to upgrade to a commercial/ community kitchen).
c. Unlocked NDP funds (Sinclair?)
d. United Way
e. Victoria Foundation
f. Vancouver Foundation
g. Canadian Organic Growers
h. Ministry of Agriculture & Lands
i. First Nations Agricultural Lending Association
j. Corky Evans & Kathleen Gibson (funding resources?).
TASK GROUPS:
FUNDING (from September – December):
Members: Kate Kittredge, Phoebe Dunbar, Ellen Anderson, Andrew Moore, Amy Rubidge.
Tasks: Research available funding sources (see above suggestions), write proposals, and secure funding for an additional $20,000-$25,000 for the Community Food & Health Action Plan.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT (on-going):
Members: Jessica Boquist, Mary Alice Johnson, Sinclair Philip, Toni Tata, Marlene Barry (?), Mary Dunn (?)
Tasks: Engage with and create an inventory of potential project partners including all aspects of the Food System (i.e.: producers, distributors, stakeholders, families, youth/students, marginalized populations, those participating in the hidden economies, etc.); keep recruited project partners informed and engaged with the process (without needing to become a part of the steering committee).
COMMUNICATIONS (on-going):
Members: Kathryn Kusyszyn, Amy Rubidge, Tracy Kelly, Kate Kittredge, Marlene Barry (?),
Tasks: Educate the community, media, decision-making bodies (i.e.: government), stakeholders, etc. about what we are doing and why, what our values are, when our focus groups are, etc. Idea: screen films locally educating the public about food security issues (regionally, nationally, globally); food security calendar, etc..
NOTE: It is important to align with the District of Sooke as they revise their Official Community Plan. Because there will be a new Food Security component to the OCP we will need to closely connect with them and keep them informed of the outcomes from our community engagement (through our focus groups, forum, etc.).
FUTURE TASK GROUPS:
Hiring of Project Coordinator (Late Fall):
Tasks: Develop job description; Interview & hire Co-ordinator; Orient to job and expectations.
Focus Groups: Organize the development and implementation of at least 6 community focus groups.
Food Resource Inventory
Community Forum
Final Report Writing
November 7th, 2007 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Sooke Harbour House
Potlatch Room
WHAT IS FOOD SECURITY?
There are many formal and informal definitions of food security. For the purposes of this project ’food security’ can be defined as “a situation in which all community residents obtains a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes self-reliance and social justice.
A ‘sustainable food system’ can be described as a food system that improves the health of the community, environment and individuals over time, involving a collaborative effort in a particular setting to build locally based, self-reliant food systems and economies.”
A local ‘food system’ can be described as “one in which food production, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of end products are integrated to enhance the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of a particular community and place”
WHAT IS VISIONING & WHY DO WE NEED IT?
(Andrew Moore)
What is it?
A vision is an ideal that we can project into the future and work towards achieving.
‘A picture in which everyone can see themselves’.
A vision expresses all that is important to an individual or group e.g.
Potential, Aspiration, Interests, Values, Dreams, Roots
Why do we need one?
If you do not have a strong vision of where you want to go you will probably end up being a bit player in other people’s visions.
Once we have a vision we can share it with others and see if they too can see themselves in this picture.
Visions and values form the basis for developing goals and objectives that when implemented turn the vision into a reality
Transforming any idea into a reality is usually 10% Inspiration, 90% Perspiration
Visioning is one of the ‘inspiration’ components so do not miss the chance, otherwise you may end up with the 90% ‘perspiration’ components - carrying out someone else’s vision!
WHO IS FUNDING OUR PROJECT & WHAT HAVE WE BEEN FUNDED FOR?
VIHA’s Community Food Action Initiative (CFAI):
The Vancouver Island Health Authority’s (VIHA) Community Food Action Initiative (CFAI) is part of the Healthy Eating component of ActNow BC. The purpose is to increase food security in BC by supporting the implementation of community, regional and provincial initiatives that improve access to healthy foods for all members of the community. They have awarded us with $10,000 to help fund our Community Food & Health Action Plan (Please see below objectives. If you have not send the CFAI funding proposal please let me know and I will email it to you).
Region of Focus:
From East Sooke to Port Renfrew (including all communities within this geographical area: East Sooke, Beecher Bay, Sooke, Shirley, Otter Point, Jordan River, Pacheedaht and Port Renfrew).
Project Objectives:
To initiate, support, and enhance the collaboration between a broad range of community members, decision-makers, and key stakeholders to develop the regional Food & Health Action Plan.
To provide the community with clear, accessible and relevant information on the assets and needs related to the local food system.
For the community to prioritize areas for improvement and develop next steps for achieving priorities.
To strengthen the link between community needs and government decision-making by providing elected officials and local planners with relevant and useful information to inform land-use planning.
Actions & Time Line:
Kate Kittredge will speak to this.
Additional Funding Sources (to supplement VIHA’s $10,000):
a. District of Sooke ($5000 grants in Aid)
b. VanCity (funding CASA’s community kitchen to upgrade to a commercial/ community kitchen).
c. Unlocked NDP funds (Sinclair?)
d. United Way
e. Victoria Foundation
f. Vancouver Foundation
g. Canadian Organic Growers
h. Ministry of Agriculture & Lands
i. First Nations Agricultural Lending Association
j. Corky Evans & Kathleen Gibson (funding resources?).
TASK GROUPS:
FUNDING (from September – December):
Members: Kate Kittredge, Phoebe Dunbar, Ellen Anderson, Andrew Moore, Amy Rubidge.
Tasks: Research available funding sources (see above suggestions), write proposals, and secure funding for an additional $20,000-$25,000 for the Community Food & Health Action Plan.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT (on-going):
Members: Jessica Boquist, Mary Alice Johnson, Sinclair Philip, Toni Tata, Marlene Barry (?), Mary Dunn (?)
Tasks: Engage with and create an inventory of potential project partners including all aspects of the Food System (i.e.: producers, distributors, stakeholders, families, youth/students, marginalized populations, those participating in the hidden economies, etc.); keep recruited project partners informed and engaged with the process (without needing to become a part of the steering committee).
COMMUNICATIONS (on-going):
Members: Kathryn Kusyszyn, Amy Rubidge, Tracy Kelly, Kate Kittredge, Marlene Barry (?),
Tasks: Educate the community, media, decision-making bodies (i.e.: government), stakeholders, etc. about what we are doing and why, what our values are, when our focus groups are, etc. Idea: screen films locally educating the public about food security issues (regionally, nationally, globally); food security calendar, etc..
NOTE: It is important to align with the District of Sooke as they revise their Official Community Plan. Because there will be a new Food Security component to the OCP we will need to closely connect with them and keep them informed of the outcomes from our community engagement (through our focus groups, forum, etc.).
FUTURE TASK GROUPS:
Hiring of Project Coordinator (Late Fall):
Tasks: Develop job description; Interview & hire Co-ordinator; Orient to job and expectations.
Focus Groups: Organize the development and implementation of at least 6 community focus groups.
Food Resource Inventory
Community Forum
Final Report Writing
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Iraq: Worth Another Soldier's Life?
'I Don't Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier's Life'
After 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence, members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical.
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 27, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead, but they don't worry much about those.
"I hate this road," someone says over the radio.
They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.
A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.
"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."
That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.
Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.
Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."
While top U.S. commanders say the statistics of violence have registered a steep drop in Baghdad and elsewhere, the soldiers' experience in Sadiyah shows that numbers alone do not describe the sense of aborted normalcy -- the fear, the disrupted lives -- that still hangs over the city.
Before the war, Sadiyah was a bustling middle-class district, popular with Sunni officers in Saddam Hussein's military. It has become strategically important because it represents a fault line between militia power bases in al-Amil to the west and the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Dora to the east. U.S. commanders say the militias have made a strong push for the neighborhood in part because it lies along the main road that Shiite pilgrims travel to the southern holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people. After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to hold meetings and store weapons. The neighborhood deteriorated so quickly that many residents came to believe neither U.S. nor Iraqi security forces could stop it happening.
The descent of Sadiyah followed a now-familiar pattern in Baghdad. In response to suicide bombings blamed on Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, went from house to house killing and intimidating Sunni families. In many formerly mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, such as al-Amil and Bayaa, Shiites have become the dominant sect, with their militias the most powerful force.
"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.
The focus of the battalion's efforts in Sadiyah was to develop the Iraqi security forces into an organized, fair and proficient force -- but the American soldiers soon realized this goal was unattainable. The sectarian warfare in Sadiyah was helped along by the Wolf Brigade, a predominantly Shiite unit of the Iraqi National Police that tolerated, and at times encouraged, Mahdi Army attacks against Sunnis, according to U.S. soldiers and residents. The soldiers endured repeated bombings of their convoys within view of police checkpoints. During their time here, they have arrested 70 members of the national police for collaboration in such attacks and other crimes.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the national police, has said that officials are working hard to root out militiamen from the force and denied that officers have any intention of participating in sectarian violence.
But in one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco arrived on the scene, he noticed that "abandoned houses to them meant houses that had Sunnis in them."
"What we later found out is they weren't really moving anyone in, it was a cover for the INP to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there," recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. "We showed up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the area."
As the militiamen and insurgents battled it out, the bodies mounted up. U.S. troops said that earlier this year it was common for them to find at least half a dozen corpses scattered on the pavement during their daily patrols.
Militiamen in BMWs rode around the neighborhood with megaphones, demanding that residents evacuate. Mortar rounds launched from nearby Bayaa, a Mahdi Army stronghold, began crashing down regularly in Sadiyah. Three mosques in the neighborhood were rigged with explosives and destroyed.
The national police erected checkpoints outside other mosques and prevented Sunnis from attending services. The U.S. soldiers began facing ever more sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs known as EFPs, short for explosively formed penetrators. Some of them were linked in arrays that blasted out as many as 18 heated copper slugs.
Over time, the neighborhood became a battleground that residents fled by the thousands. Hundreds of shops shut down, schools closed, and access to basic services such as electricity, fuel and food deteriorated. "The end state was people left. They felt unsafe," said Timmerman, the operations officer.
"We were so committed to them as a partner we couldn't see it for what it was. In retrospect, I've got to think it was a coordinated effort," Timmerman said. "To this day, I don't think we truly understand how infiltrated or complicit the national police are" with the militias.
Lt. Col. George A. Glaze, the battalion commander, says his soldiers are playing the role of a bouncer caught between brawling customers. Alone, they can restrain the fighters, keep them off balance, but they cannot stop the melee until the house lights come on -- that is, until the Iraqi government steps in.
"They're either going to turn the lights on or we're all going to realize they've moved the switch," he said.
"I'm frustrated. After 14 months, I've got a lot of thoughts in my head. Do they fundamentally get giving up individual rights and power for the greater good?" Glaze said. "I'm going to leave here being skeptical of everything."
Over the past two months, the U.S. soldiers have recruited more than 300 local residents, most of them Sunnis, into a neighborhood defense force. This has proved more controversial in Sadiyah than elsewhere; the Iraqi government has openly accused the force's members of abusing residents and has limited their freedom of movement. In September, after Glaze led an eight-month campaign to kick out the Wolf Brigade, soldiers from the Iraqi army's Muthanna Brigade, which has clashed with Sunni volunteers in the Abu Ghraib area, arrived in Sadiyah.
The Iraqi army's arrival and the emergence of the Sunni volunteers have coincided with some positive signs, the soldiers said. Some of the shops along the once-busy commercial district of Tijari Street now open for a few hours a day. The number of violent incidents has dropped, although it rose again over the past two weeks, officers said.
"This is a dangerous place," said Capt. Lee Showman, 28, a senior officer in the battalion. "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it."
On Oct. 14, Washington Post special correspondent Salih Saif Aldin was killed while on assignment in Sadiyah.
Those who patrol the neighborhood every day say the fight has left them tired, bitter, wounded and confused. Many of their scars are on display, some no one can see. Sgt. 1st Class Todd Carlsrud has a long gash on the right side of his neck and carries a lump of shrapnel lodged against his spine that his doctors would not risk cutting out. Another sergeant felt the flaming pain of a bullet tearing through his cheek and learned the taste of his own warm blood. He was one of three soldiers that day to get shot in the head -- a fourth was hit in the biceps -- when his squad walked into a house and found two gunmen waiting.
"The closer we get to leaving, the more we worry about it," said Alarcon, 27, sitting at a plastic table with several other soldiers outside their outpost in Sadiyah. "Being here, you know that any second, any time of the day, your life could be over."
"Gone in a flash," said Sgt. Matthew Marino.
"We had two mechanics working in the motor pool get hit by mortars," Alarcon said. "You would have never thought." Both died.
Many of the soldiers from the battalion are on their second tour in Iraq. Three years ago, they were based in Tikrit, the home of Saddam Hussein, a city they entered expecting to fight a determined Sunni insurgency. By the end of their tour, with much of the violence contained, many of them felt optimistic about progress in Iraq.
"I honestly thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come back to a hellhole," Marino said. "That was a playground compared to Baghdad."
The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.
"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground."
After 14 months in a Baghdad district torn by mounting sectarian violence, members of one U.S. unit are tired, bitter and skeptical.
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 27, 2007; A01
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead, but they don't worry much about those.
"I hate this road," someone says over the radio.
They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.
A bomb crater blocks one lane, so they cross to the other side, where houses are blackened by fire, shops crumbled into bricks. The remains of a car bomb serve as hideous public art. Sgt. Victor Alarcon's Humvee rolls into a vast pool of knee-high brown sewage water -- the soldiers call it Lake Havasu, after the Arizona spring-break party spot -- that seeps in the doors of the vehicle and wets his boots.
"When we first got here, all the shops were open. There were women and children walking out on the street," Alarcon said this week. "The women were in Western clothing. It was our favorite street to go down because of all the hot chicks."
That was 14 long months ago, when the soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, arrived in southwestern Baghdad. It was before their partners in the Iraqi National Police became their enemies and before Shiite militiamen, aligned with the police, attempted to exterminate a neighborhood of middle-class Sunni families.
Next month, the U.S. soldiers will complete their tour in Iraq. Their experience in Sadiyah has left many of them deeply discouraged, by both the unabated hatred between rival sectarian fighters and the questionable will of the Iraqi government to work toward peaceful solutions.
Asked if the American endeavor here was worth their sacrifice -- 20 soldiers from the battalion have been killed in Baghdad -- Alarcon said no: "I don't think this place is worth another soldier's life."
While top U.S. commanders say the statistics of violence have registered a steep drop in Baghdad and elsewhere, the soldiers' experience in Sadiyah shows that numbers alone do not describe the sense of aborted normalcy -- the fear, the disrupted lives -- that still hangs over the city.
Before the war, Sadiyah was a bustling middle-class district, popular with Sunni officers in Saddam Hussein's military. It has become strategically important because it represents a fault line between militia power bases in al-Amil to the west and the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Dora to the east. U.S. commanders say the militias have made a strong push for the neighborhood in part because it lies along the main road that Shiite pilgrims travel to the southern holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
American soldiers estimate that since violence intensified this year, half of the families in Sadiyah have fled, leaving approximately 100,000 people. After they left, insurgents and militiamen used their abandoned homes to hold meetings and store weapons. The neighborhood deteriorated so quickly that many residents came to believe neither U.S. nor Iraqi security forces could stop it happening.
The descent of Sadiyah followed a now-familiar pattern in Baghdad. In response to suicide bombings blamed on Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, went from house to house killing and intimidating Sunni families. In many formerly mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad, such as al-Amil and Bayaa, Shiites have become the dominant sect, with their militias the most powerful force.
"It's just a slow, somewhat government-supported sectarian cleansing," said Maj. Eric Timmerman, the battalion's operations officer.
The focus of the battalion's efforts in Sadiyah was to develop the Iraqi security forces into an organized, fair and proficient force -- but the American soldiers soon realized this goal was unattainable. The sectarian warfare in Sadiyah was helped along by the Wolf Brigade, a predominantly Shiite unit of the Iraqi National Police that tolerated, and at times encouraged, Mahdi Army attacks against Sunnis, according to U.S. soldiers and residents. The soldiers endured repeated bombings of their convoys within view of police checkpoints. During their time here, they have arrested 70 members of the national police for collaboration in such attacks and other crimes.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees the national police, has said that officials are working hard to root out militiamen from the force and denied that officers have any intention of participating in sectarian violence.
But in one instance about two months ago, the American soldiers heard that the Wolf Brigade planned to help resettle more than 100 Shiite families in abandoned houses in the neighborhood. When platoon leader Lt. Brian Bifulco arrived on the scene, he noticed that "abandoned houses to them meant houses that had Sunnis in them."
"What we later found out is they weren't really moving anyone in, it was a cover for the INP to go in and evict what Sunni families were left there," recalled Bifulco, 23, a West Point graduate from Huntsville, Ala. "We showed up, and there were a bunch of Sunni families just wandering around the streets with their bags, taking up refuge in a couple Sunni mosques in the area."
As the militiamen and insurgents battled it out, the bodies mounted up. U.S. troops said that earlier this year it was common for them to find at least half a dozen corpses scattered on the pavement during their daily patrols.
Militiamen in BMWs rode around the neighborhood with megaphones, demanding that residents evacuate. Mortar rounds launched from nearby Bayaa, a Mahdi Army stronghold, began crashing down regularly in Sadiyah. Three mosques in the neighborhood were rigged with explosives and destroyed.
The national police erected checkpoints outside other mosques and prevented Sunnis from attending services. The U.S. soldiers began facing ever more sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs known as EFPs, short for explosively formed penetrators. Some of them were linked in arrays that blasted out as many as 18 heated copper slugs.
Over time, the neighborhood became a battleground that residents fled by the thousands. Hundreds of shops shut down, schools closed, and access to basic services such as electricity, fuel and food deteriorated. "The end state was people left. They felt unsafe," said Timmerman, the operations officer.
"We were so committed to them as a partner we couldn't see it for what it was. In retrospect, I've got to think it was a coordinated effort," Timmerman said. "To this day, I don't think we truly understand how infiltrated or complicit the national police are" with the militias.
Lt. Col. George A. Glaze, the battalion commander, says his soldiers are playing the role of a bouncer caught between brawling customers. Alone, they can restrain the fighters, keep them off balance, but they cannot stop the melee until the house lights come on -- that is, until the Iraqi government steps in.
"They're either going to turn the lights on or we're all going to realize they've moved the switch," he said.
"I'm frustrated. After 14 months, I've got a lot of thoughts in my head. Do they fundamentally get giving up individual rights and power for the greater good?" Glaze said. "I'm going to leave here being skeptical of everything."
Over the past two months, the U.S. soldiers have recruited more than 300 local residents, most of them Sunnis, into a neighborhood defense force. This has proved more controversial in Sadiyah than elsewhere; the Iraqi government has openly accused the force's members of abusing residents and has limited their freedom of movement. In September, after Glaze led an eight-month campaign to kick out the Wolf Brigade, soldiers from the Iraqi army's Muthanna Brigade, which has clashed with Sunni volunteers in the Abu Ghraib area, arrived in Sadiyah.
The Iraqi army's arrival and the emergence of the Sunni volunteers have coincided with some positive signs, the soldiers said. Some of the shops along the once-busy commercial district of Tijari Street now open for a few hours a day. The number of violent incidents has dropped, although it rose again over the past two weeks, officers said.
"This is a dangerous place," said Capt. Lee Showman, 28, a senior officer in the battalion. "People are killed here every day, and you don't hear about it. People are kidnapped here every day, and you don't hear about it."
On Oct. 14, Washington Post special correspondent Salih Saif Aldin was killed while on assignment in Sadiyah.
Those who patrol the neighborhood every day say the fight has left them tired, bitter, wounded and confused. Many of their scars are on display, some no one can see. Sgt. 1st Class Todd Carlsrud has a long gash on the right side of his neck and carries a lump of shrapnel lodged against his spine that his doctors would not risk cutting out. Another sergeant felt the flaming pain of a bullet tearing through his cheek and learned the taste of his own warm blood. He was one of three soldiers that day to get shot in the head -- a fourth was hit in the biceps -- when his squad walked into a house and found two gunmen waiting.
"The closer we get to leaving, the more we worry about it," said Alarcon, 27, sitting at a plastic table with several other soldiers outside their outpost in Sadiyah. "Being here, you know that any second, any time of the day, your life could be over."
"Gone in a flash," said Sgt. Matthew Marino.
"We had two mechanics working in the motor pool get hit by mortars," Alarcon said. "You would have never thought." Both died.
Many of the soldiers from the battalion are on their second tour in Iraq. Three years ago, they were based in Tikrit, the home of Saddam Hussein, a city they entered expecting to fight a determined Sunni insurgency. By the end of their tour, with much of the violence contained, many of them felt optimistic about progress in Iraq.
"I honestly thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come back to a hellhole," Marino said. "That was a playground compared to Baghdad."
The American people don't fully realize what's going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section leader from Buffalo.
"They just know back there what the higher-ups here tell them. But the higher-ups don't go anywhere, and actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little bit of gunfire," he said. "They don't ever [expletive] see what we see on the ground."
Selling Out British Columbia's Forests
Paul Willcocks
Times Colonist
Monday, November 05, 2007
The Liberal government's willingness to hand benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars to forest company owners simply doesn't make sense.
The government has written contracts with forest companies covering their private land that has been included in provincial tree farm licences.
The public compensated the companies handsomely to get them to sign the contracts, which ensure the land is managed and protected as timber-producing forests.
But now all the companies do is ask and the government lets them out of the agreements.
The companies make huge, quick profits.
The public loses access, green space, environmental protection, forest jobs -- and gets nothing.
This started in 2004. Weyerhaeuser asked the government to take 223,000 acres out of its tree farm licences on Vancouver Island.
Ministry staff told Mike de Jong, then the forests minister, that it was a bad deal.
The company had already been compensated for including the land; the tougher environmental and replanting standards were worth continuing; and the agreement ensured the land stayed as forest. Communities saw this as an important social contract, staff reported.
And if the government let the company take the land out of the tree farm licence, it would have to negotiate how much compensation would be paid to taxpayers, staff said, and that would be tricky.
But de Jong over-ruled the ministry's non-political staff and said OK to the company's request. He got nothing in compensation for taxpayers.
Within months Weyerhaeuser began negotiating its sale to Brascan, which agreed to pay $1.4 billion.
Much of that value was due to de Jong's decision, which meant a $500-million windfall for the company.
Brascan executives said that getting the lands out of the tree farm licence meant an extra $18 million to $24 million a year in profits for the business, now called TimberWest.
And for the first time, the company could sell the land for development instead of being obliged to keep it as timber to ensure the future of the Island forest industry.
That meant a huge increase in the land's value.
The company now says it has identified 94,000 acres it wants to take out of forest use. They're worth $300 million to $450 million as is, "with a significantly higher valuation potentially achieveable through value-added development activities."
De Jong could have said no; nothing bad would have happened and the company had no case for demanding the gift.
He could have asked for compensation for the public or job and investment guarantees, or at least demanded a donation of land for parks.
Instead, he handed benefits worth $500 million over and got nothing in return.
Forests Minister Rich Coleman did it again this year. Western Forest Products asked him to let it out of its tree farm licence, reducing its environmental and replanting obligations and allowing more raw log exports.
And, more important, freeing up 70,000 acres for sale and development, including waterfront west of Victoria used by surfers, campers and tourists and land adjacent to provincial parks.
It's a gold mine for the company. And the government got nothing for the public -- not money, investment commitments or a single acre protected as a park.
Coleman didn't consult anyone -- politicians or public -- from any of the communities. It was astonishingly arrogant.
A developer has already bought the Jordan River property. He won't commit to public access to the surfing beach and camping area.
Western Forest Products is also selling another big chunk of land near Sooke Potholes Provincial Park. Just two years ago, the public helped raise money to buy land for the park. Part of the appeal was the park would be surrounded by land protected as forest. It might be logged, but it would replanted.
Coleman ended that. The company now has 561 acres for sale around the Potholes.
So why did he do it? Coleman says the company asked for help and he delivered.
There's no evidence he saved one job or that Western Forest Products needed a handout.
Coleman hasn't released a single scrap of paper showing a review or rationale or business case for his decision.
Now the government is planning the next giveaway, in the Kootenays. Pope and Talbot has been advertising 16,000 acres currently covered by tree-farm licences for sale for development. Coleman maintains he hasn't decided whether to let the company out of the contract.
But in fact, the same developer who bought the Jordan River property has purchased a large lakefront tract from Pope and Talbot. Both the developer and the company seem confident the deal is done, despite Coleman's claims.
Again, why would the government give a bankrupt forest company a gift worth millions? Especially when the land includes property that's important for running the business in future.
Companies ask for favours worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The government doesn't negotiate, or consult community, or protect the public. It says sure.
And you lose.
pwillcocks@tc.canwest.com
Times Colonist
Monday, November 05, 2007
The Liberal government's willingness to hand benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars to forest company owners simply doesn't make sense.
The government has written contracts with forest companies covering their private land that has been included in provincial tree farm licences.
The public compensated the companies handsomely to get them to sign the contracts, which ensure the land is managed and protected as timber-producing forests.
But now all the companies do is ask and the government lets them out of the agreements.
The companies make huge, quick profits.
The public loses access, green space, environmental protection, forest jobs -- and gets nothing.
This started in 2004. Weyerhaeuser asked the government to take 223,000 acres out of its tree farm licences on Vancouver Island.
Ministry staff told Mike de Jong, then the forests minister, that it was a bad deal.
The company had already been compensated for including the land; the tougher environmental and replanting standards were worth continuing; and the agreement ensured the land stayed as forest. Communities saw this as an important social contract, staff reported.
And if the government let the company take the land out of the tree farm licence, it would have to negotiate how much compensation would be paid to taxpayers, staff said, and that would be tricky.
But de Jong over-ruled the ministry's non-political staff and said OK to the company's request. He got nothing in compensation for taxpayers.
Within months Weyerhaeuser began negotiating its sale to Brascan, which agreed to pay $1.4 billion.
Much of that value was due to de Jong's decision, which meant a $500-million windfall for the company.
Brascan executives said that getting the lands out of the tree farm licence meant an extra $18 million to $24 million a year in profits for the business, now called TimberWest.
And for the first time, the company could sell the land for development instead of being obliged to keep it as timber to ensure the future of the Island forest industry.
That meant a huge increase in the land's value.
The company now says it has identified 94,000 acres it wants to take out of forest use. They're worth $300 million to $450 million as is, "with a significantly higher valuation potentially achieveable through value-added development activities."
De Jong could have said no; nothing bad would have happened and the company had no case for demanding the gift.
He could have asked for compensation for the public or job and investment guarantees, or at least demanded a donation of land for parks.
Instead, he handed benefits worth $500 million over and got nothing in return.
Forests Minister Rich Coleman did it again this year. Western Forest Products asked him to let it out of its tree farm licence, reducing its environmental and replanting obligations and allowing more raw log exports.
And, more important, freeing up 70,000 acres for sale and development, including waterfront west of Victoria used by surfers, campers and tourists and land adjacent to provincial parks.
It's a gold mine for the company. And the government got nothing for the public -- not money, investment commitments or a single acre protected as a park.
Coleman didn't consult anyone -- politicians or public -- from any of the communities. It was astonishingly arrogant.
A developer has already bought the Jordan River property. He won't commit to public access to the surfing beach and camping area.
Western Forest Products is also selling another big chunk of land near Sooke Potholes Provincial Park. Just two years ago, the public helped raise money to buy land for the park. Part of the appeal was the park would be surrounded by land protected as forest. It might be logged, but it would replanted.
Coleman ended that. The company now has 561 acres for sale around the Potholes.
So why did he do it? Coleman says the company asked for help and he delivered.
There's no evidence he saved one job or that Western Forest Products needed a handout.
Coleman hasn't released a single scrap of paper showing a review or rationale or business case for his decision.
Now the government is planning the next giveaway, in the Kootenays. Pope and Talbot has been advertising 16,000 acres currently covered by tree-farm licences for sale for development. Coleman maintains he hasn't decided whether to let the company out of the contract.
But in fact, the same developer who bought the Jordan River property has purchased a large lakefront tract from Pope and Talbot. Both the developer and the company seem confident the deal is done, despite Coleman's claims.
Again, why would the government give a bankrupt forest company a gift worth millions? Especially when the land includes property that's important for running the business in future.
Companies ask for favours worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The government doesn't negotiate, or consult community, or protect the public. It says sure.
And you lose.
pwillcocks@tc.canwest.com
Monday, November 05, 2007
THE CASE OF POLITICALLY TARGETED ANTIWAR ACTIVIST ALISON BODINE
ALISON BODINE DEFENSE COMMITTEE
UPDATE #21
THE CASE OF POLITICALLY TARGETED ANTIWAR ACTIVIST ALISON BODINE GOES INTERNATIONAL!
ALISON BODINE DEFENCE COMMITTEE DEMANDS:
LIFT THE BAN! STOP THE REMOVAL OF ALISON BODINE!
On October 31st, the Immigration & Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) ordered US antiwar activist Alison Bodine banned from Canada for 2 years and news of the unjust and politically motivated ban has already spread around the world. Alison Bodine was targeted as a political activist based on the antiwar materials in her car, harassed and arrested by the Canada Border Services Agency in September 2007. Currently Alison Bodine is Co-chair, executive committee member and spokesperson of Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO) in Vancouver, BC. The October 31st decision orders her to leave Canada by November 17th and the Alison Bodine Defence Committee has vowed to fight it.
By the end of the day on October 31st, the story of the antiwar activist banned from entry for two years by Canada border officials had already been published by the Canadian Press news agency and the West Island Chronicle, a Montreal-based newspaper.
On Thursday November 1st, the story went worldwide and was run by the AP-Associated Press, a newswire serving 121 countries around the world and the MSNBC newswire, one of the largest online news providers in the US. The popular online news source Common Dreams also featured a story about Alison's case as did PR-inside (Pressemitteilung), a news service based in Vienna, Austria. The story was also printed locally by the 24hrs Newspaper in Vancouver, the Province Newspaper, the Globe & Mail. For full details on media coverage of the case, please go to http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com
The political harassment and targeting of Alison Bodine began with intimidation and harassment by CBSA agents when she was searched at the US-Canada border on September 10th and has continued over 7 weeks of legal delays and processes. The IRB decision and ban attempts to keep Alison from traveling to Canada to work with antiwar organizers here in Canada, much like when two CODEPink Women for Peace organizers who were denied entry to Canada two separate times in October 2007. The women were coming to Canada to participate in antiwar speaking events and meetings. The CBSA is partaking in the attempt by the governments of Canada and the US to keep antiwar organizers from both sides of the border from uniting and working together to make the US and Canada antiwar movements stronger.
The Alison Bodine Defence Committee (ABDC) is exploring and pursuing all possible legal avenues while continuing the political campaign against the attack on Alison and against attacks on all antiwar and social justice activists! In the next week, the ABDC is organizing a legal defence fundraiser, a public forum to discuss the developments and future work of the campaign. The ABDC is also launching another appeal for support letters against the removal and a petition campaign to demand "Lift the Ban! Stop the Removal of Alison Bodine!" Details on events and activities will be at http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com.
***********************
Contact the Alison Bodine Defence Committee:
defendalisonbodine@hotmail.com
778 891 1470
778 882 5223
604 339 7103
Check the blog for all updates and upcoming actions!
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com
UPDATE #21
THE CASE OF POLITICALLY TARGETED ANTIWAR ACTIVIST ALISON BODINE GOES INTERNATIONAL!
ALISON BODINE DEFENCE COMMITTEE DEMANDS:
LIFT THE BAN! STOP THE REMOVAL OF ALISON BODINE!
On October 31st, the Immigration & Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) ordered US antiwar activist Alison Bodine banned from Canada for 2 years and news of the unjust and politically motivated ban has already spread around the world. Alison Bodine was targeted as a political activist based on the antiwar materials in her car, harassed and arrested by the Canada Border Services Agency in September 2007. Currently Alison Bodine is Co-chair, executive committee member and spokesperson of Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO) in Vancouver, BC. The October 31st decision orders her to leave Canada by November 17th and the Alison Bodine Defence Committee has vowed to fight it.
By the end of the day on October 31st, the story of the antiwar activist banned from entry for two years by Canada border officials had already been published by the Canadian Press news agency and the West Island Chronicle, a Montreal-based newspaper.
On Thursday November 1st, the story went worldwide and was run by the AP-Associated Press, a newswire serving 121 countries around the world and the MSNBC newswire, one of the largest online news providers in the US. The popular online news source Common Dreams also featured a story about Alison's case as did PR-inside (Pressemitteilung), a news service based in Vienna, Austria. The story was also printed locally by the 24hrs Newspaper in Vancouver, the Province Newspaper, the Globe & Mail. For full details on media coverage of the case, please go to http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com
The political harassment and targeting of Alison Bodine began with intimidation and harassment by CBSA agents when she was searched at the US-Canada border on September 10th and has continued over 7 weeks of legal delays and processes. The IRB decision and ban attempts to keep Alison from traveling to Canada to work with antiwar organizers here in Canada, much like when two CODEPink Women for Peace organizers who were denied entry to Canada two separate times in October 2007. The women were coming to Canada to participate in antiwar speaking events and meetings. The CBSA is partaking in the attempt by the governments of Canada and the US to keep antiwar organizers from both sides of the border from uniting and working together to make the US and Canada antiwar movements stronger.
The Alison Bodine Defence Committee (ABDC) is exploring and pursuing all possible legal avenues while continuing the political campaign against the attack on Alison and against attacks on all antiwar and social justice activists! In the next week, the ABDC is organizing a legal defence fundraiser, a public forum to discuss the developments and future work of the campaign. The ABDC is also launching another appeal for support letters against the removal and a petition campaign to demand "Lift the Ban! Stop the Removal of Alison Bodine!" Details on events and activities will be at http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com.
***********************
Contact the Alison Bodine Defence Committee:
defendalisonbodine@hotmail.com
778 891 1470
778 882 5223
604 339 7103
Check the blog for all updates and upcoming actions!
http://alisonbodine.blogspot.com
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Britain's Healthcare Providers Take to the Street
Thousands join in NHS protest rally
12 hours ago
NHS workers marched in London on Saturday in protest at health reforms.
Organisers estimated 7,000 nurses, midwives, doctors, physiotherapists, hospital cleaners and technicians had joined the march to Trafalgar Square.
The "I Love The NHS" march was culminating in a rally with speakers and entertainment.
Workers from across the NHS voiced their concerns over low staff morale, private sector involvement and greater workloads.
Hamish Meldrum, 59, chairman of the BMA's council, and a GP from Bridlington, Yorkshire, said: "As GPs, we're saying, stop blaming us for the NHS's problems. Stop going on about us as overpaid and not working hard enough.
"It's actually the GPs who have the potential to help save the NHS."
Tim Cracker-Buque, a medical student at Nottingham University, said Government investment in training new doctors was being squandered through lack of jobs.
The 22-year-old from Brighton, who hopes to be a surgeon, said: "It costs £250,000 to train each medical student, yet we are only guaranteed jobs for one year.
"We need to make sure public money is being spent on continuing our training."
After meeting at Temple Place on the Thames Embankment, the march progressed through Westminster to Trafalgar Square. Carnival-style stilt walkers and musicians marched alongside health workers.
source
12 hours ago
NHS workers marched in London on Saturday in protest at health reforms.
Organisers estimated 7,000 nurses, midwives, doctors, physiotherapists, hospital cleaners and technicians had joined the march to Trafalgar Square.
The "I Love The NHS" march was culminating in a rally with speakers and entertainment.
Workers from across the NHS voiced their concerns over low staff morale, private sector involvement and greater workloads.
Hamish Meldrum, 59, chairman of the BMA's council, and a GP from Bridlington, Yorkshire, said: "As GPs, we're saying, stop blaming us for the NHS's problems. Stop going on about us as overpaid and not working hard enough.
"It's actually the GPs who have the potential to help save the NHS."
Tim Cracker-Buque, a medical student at Nottingham University, said Government investment in training new doctors was being squandered through lack of jobs.
The 22-year-old from Brighton, who hopes to be a surgeon, said: "It costs £250,000 to train each medical student, yet we are only guaranteed jobs for one year.
"We need to make sure public money is being spent on continuing our training."
After meeting at Temple Place on the Thames Embankment, the march progressed through Westminster to Trafalgar Square. Carnival-style stilt walkers and musicians marched alongside health workers.
source
Gorilla Radio for Monday, November 5, 2007
GR 04-27 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable 'cfuv.uvic.ca'
Monday Nov. 5, 2007
5:00:00 3:00 Welcome to GR, etc; "It's elementary," Sherlock Holmes famously deduced, informing Watson, the solution to any mystery presides within the constituent elements of the situation. Today, the mystery is: How can our society come to terms with the damaging effects we have on the elements required to sustain life?
You need not be a genius on the order of Conan Doyle's detective to see: The air, earth, and water are threatened. Everywhere you look, the elements we, and all the natural world need to survive are being destroyed. And, the culprit is we, and our "way of life."
But what's to be done?
On the southern tip of Vancouver Island, the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, the Greater Victoria Water Watch Coalition are gathering to address the issues vital to our, and the greater environment's, collective preservation. Rodger Oakley and Janet Gray are two Vancouver Islanders involved with the campaign; Rodger from the Nanaimo-based, Island Water Watch, and Janet down here with the Greater Victoria Water Watch.
Rodger Oakley and Janet Gray and Water, Ours to Protect in the first segment.
And; in a time of decay, when all the institutions of western enlightenment are perverted, resembling gnarled fruits, hanging grotesquely below democracy's dying tree; in a world where massive crimes of unprecedented magnitude are allowed to continue unremarked upon, and go unpunished; in a climate of fear, when men and women abrogate their natural duty to decency, serving personal comfort and career, as the vital needs of humanity go unserved, there remains a few dedicated and undaunted media professionals chronicling the debasement of the age, and speaking truth to power.
John Pilger has, for more than four decades, served the highest ethos of journalism: Truth. He's produced more than 55 documentary films, written thousands of articles, and received the highest honours his profession affords: Twice named Journalist of the Year in Britain, and International Journalist of the Year, John Pilger was also granted the United Nations Association Media Peace Prize. Among the many awards his documentary films garnered are an Emmy in the United States, and Britain's "Oscar," the BAFTA award. His latest film, the first to be released theatrically, is 'The War on Democracy,' a timely examination of the drastic decline of that institution in the early years of the 21st Century.
John Pilger and the global war on democracy in the second half.
And; Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that's good to do in and around Victoria in the coming week. But first, Rodger Oakley and Janet Gray, keeping watch over Vancouver Island's water.
5:00:03 22:00 Discussion w/ Rodger and Janet
"Welcome to the program Rodger Oakley and Janet Gray. Janet, first what can we expect from the Ours to Protect conference?"
5:25:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:26:00 8:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:34:00 3:00 Music (Memory War)
5:36:00 22:00 Discussion w/ John Pilger (tape)
"Welcome back to GR, etc. (Reit. JP intro)
John Pilger has, for more than four decades, served the highest ethos of journalism: Truth. He's produced more than 55 documentary films, written thousands of articles, and received the highest honours his profession affords: Twice named Journalist of the Year in Britain, and International Journalist of the Year, John Pilger was also granted the United Nations Association Media Peace Prize. Among the many awards his documentary films garnered are an Emmy in the United States, and Britain's "Oscar," the BAFTA award. His latest film, the first to be released theatrically, is 'The War on Democracy,' a timely examination of the drastic decline of that institution in the early years of the 21st Century.
"Welcome to the program, John. In a review of your film, 'The War on Democracy,' John Saniford writes of your early television broadcasts from London's ITV television in the 1970's as inspiring youth to action to right the ills you documented, but then laments the fact that this film is "unlikely to have the same effect on today's youth." How do we, if we do, differ today from that inspired generation you urged to action three decades ago?"
5:59:00 1:00 Thanks to Rodger Oakley, Janet Gray, John Pilger, J9; upcoming.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
“WATER OURS TO PROTECT” St. Aidans Church, 3703 St. Aidans St. Victoria Nov. 17, 2007 9am 4pm
Workshops will be held concurrently on November 17th, 2007 from 1:00pm 2:30pm
website: greatervictoriawaterwatchcoalition.ca
Workshops: 1. Sacred nature of water an aboriginal perspective. 2. Community action and governance how people can make a difference. 3. Water for people and nature; not for profit the truth about bottled water. 4. Groundwater, aquifers and watersheds: The dynamic of groundwater in the subsurface and aquifer sustainability. 5. Preservation,/Restoration/ & Recovery of Watersheds 6. Modern Alchemy: Turning Waste into Gold
Rodger Oakley has been a Union and Community activist for the past twenty-seven years with the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Rodger is the past President of CUPE Local 401. He has been involved in various associations as an activist including member and chair of the CUPE BC Municipal Committee, Member of the Vancouver Island Distinct Council, and was a founding member of the Mid Island Coalition for Strong Communities.
Currently Rodger’s attention is on water. He was instrumental in establishing the Island Water Watch Campaign with CUPE BC and CUPE National, and is the chair of that committee. Rodger has worked with, Greater Victoria Water Watch Coalition, Ocean Side Coalition, KIROS, Council of Canadians, Campbell River Water Watch Coalition, Comox Valley Water Watch Coalition. Water is invaluable. Rodger’s goal is to help form a broad Coalition of Activists in every segment of our society to protect what is most valuable to our communities. WATER!
Janet Gray has been active in the community all her adult life, as a nurse, mother, homeschooling educator and organic gardener; she believes in the strength of the grassroots community in the making changes we need to create a healthy future for all. Active in Kairos and Social Justice Organizations within the United Church of Canada, she has been working on water issues for the past two years with the Greater Victoria Water Watch Coalition. Janet is passionate about Water.
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'The War On Democracy'
JP
The rising of Latin America - the genesis of 'The War On Democracy' 13 Jun 2007 In the 1960s, when I first went to Latin America, I travelled up the cone of the continent from Chile across the Altiplano to Peru, mostly in rickety buses and single-carriage trains. It was an experience my memory stored for life, especially the spectacle of the movement of people.
They moved through the dust of a snow-capped wilderness, along roads that were ribbons of red mud, and they lived in shanties that defied gravity. "We are invisible," said one man; another used the term abandonados; an indigenous woman in Bolivia unforgettably described her poverty as a commodity for the rich.
When I later saw Sebastiao Salgado's photographs of Latin America's working people, I recognised the people at the roadside, the gold miners and the coffee workers and the silhouettes framed in crosses in the cemeteries. Perhaps the idea for a cinema film began then, or when I reported Ronald Reagan's murderous assault on Central America; or when I first read the words of Victor Jara's ballads and heard Sam Cooke's anthem A Change Is Gonna Come.
The War On Democracy is my first film for cinema. It follows more than 55 documentary films for television, which began with The Quiet Mutiny, set in Vietnam. Most of my films have told stories of people's struggles against rapacious power and of attempts to subvert and control our historical memory. It is this control, this organised forgetting, that has always intrigued me both as a film-maker and a journalist. Described by Harold Pinter as a great silence unbroken by the incessant din of the media age, it assures the powerful in the west that the struggle of whole societies against their crimes is merely "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged... It never happened. Even while it was happening it never happened. It didn't matter. It was of no interest".
This was true of Nicaragua in the early 1980s, when a popular revolution began to turn back poverty and bring literacy and hope to a country long dismissed as a banana republic. In the United States, the Sandinista government was successfully portrayed as communist and a threat, and crushed. After all, Richard Nixon had said of all of Latin America: "No one gives a shit about the place." The War On Democracy is meant as an antidote to this.
Modern fictional cinema rarely seems to break political silences. The very fine Motorcycle Diaries was a generation too late. In this country, where Hollywood sets the liberal boundaries, the work of Ken Loach and a few others is an honourable exception. However, the cinema is changing as if by default. The documentary has returned to the big screen and is being embraced by the public, in the US and all over. They were still clapping Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 two months after it opened in this country. Why? The answer is uncomplicated. It was a powerful film that helped people make sense of news that no longer made sense. It did not present the usual phoney "balance" as a pretence for presenting an establishment consensus. It was not riddled with the cliches, platitudes and power assumptions that permeate "current affairs". It was realist cinema, as important as The Grapes of Wrath was in the 1930s, and people devoured it.
The War On Democracy is not the same. It comes out of a British commercial television tradition that is too often passed over: the pioneering of bold factual journalism that treated other societies not as post-imperial curios, as useful or expendable to "us", but extraordinary and important in their own terms. Granada's World in Action, where I began, was a prime example. It would report and film in ways that the BBC would not dare. These days, with misnamed "reality" programmes consuming much of television like a plague of cane toads, cinema has been handed a timely opportunity. Such are the dangers imposed on us all today by a rampant, neo-fascist superpower, and so urgent is our need for uncontaminated information that people are prepared to buy a cinema ticket to get it.
The War On Democracy examines the false democracy that comes with western corporations and financial institutions and a war waged, materially and as propaganda, against popular democracy. It is the story of the people I first saw 40 years ago; but they are no longer invisible; they are a mighty political movement, reclaiming noble concepts distorted by corporatism and they are defending the most basic human rights in a war being waged against all of us.
Cinema and television production are closely related, of course, but the differences, I have learned, are critical. Cinema allows a panorama to unfold, giving a sense of place that only the big screen captures. In The War On Democracy, the camera sweeps across the Andes in Bolivia to the highest and poorest city on earth, El Alto, then follows Juan Delfin, a priest and a taxi driver, into a cemetery where children are buried. That Bolivia has been asset-stripped by multinational companies, aided by a corrupt elite, is an epic story described by this one man and this spectacle. That the people of Bolivia have stood up, expelled the foreign consortium that took their water resources, even the water that fell from the sky, is understood as the camera pans across a giant mural that Juan Delfin painted. This is cinema, a moving mural of ordinary lives and triumphs.
Chris Martin and I (we made the film as a partnership) used two crews and two very different cinematographers, Preston Clothier and Rupert Binsley. They shot in high-definition stock, which then had to be converted to 35mm film - one of cinema's wonderful anachronisms.
The film was backed by the impresario Michael Watt, a supporter of anti-poverty projects all over the world, who had told producer Wayne Young that he wanted to put my TV work in the cinema. Granada provided additional support, and ITV will broadcast the film later in the year. The extra funding also allowed me to persuade the late Sam Cooke's New York agents to license A Change Is Gonna Come, one of the finest, most lyrical pieces of black music ever written and performed. I was in the southern United States when it was released. It was the time of the civil-rights movement, and Cooke's song spoke to and for all people struggling to be free. The same is true of the ballads of the Chilean Victor Jara, whose songs celebrated the popular democracy of Salvador Allende before Pinochet and the CIA extinguished it.
We filmed in the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, where Jara was taken along with thousands of other political prisoners. By all accounts, he was a source of strength for his comrades, singing for them until soldiers beat him to the ground and smashed his hands. He wrote his last song there and it was smuggled out on scraps of paper. These are the words:
What horror the face of fascism
creates
They carry out their plans with
knife-like precision ...
For them, blood equals medals ...
How hard it is to sing
When I must sing of horror ...
In which silence and screams
Are the end of my song.
creates
They carry out their plans with
knife-like precision ...
For them, blood equals medals ...
How hard it is to sing
When I must sing of horror ...
In which silence and screams
Are the end of my song.
After two days of torture, they killed him. The War On Democracy is about such courage and a warning to us all that "for them" nothing has changed, that "blood equals medals".
John Pilger: This Much I Know
Acclaimed journalist, John Pilger is scheduled to appear on this week's Gorilla Radio - Monday November 5th at 5:30pm pacific time. - ape
This Much I Know - John Pilger
Sunday 13 November 2005, The Observer
- If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I've seen, if they'd watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.
- The story from Iraq on our television screens is rarely about the people our side kill, and that our side are the principal killers. Calling to account our governments, the source of so much state terrorism, ought to be a Western journalist's first responsibility.
- The great maverick reporters saw themselves as agents of people, not of authority. Journalism is a great privilege, in which the journalist is allowed into people's lives and trusted to go away and tell their stories.
- The scoop of the century was when the Australian Wilfred Burchett became the first reporter to reach Hiroshima after the atomic bombing, and discovered that the deadly after-effects of the bomb were due to radiation. The Daily Express carried his report on its front page, headlined: 'The Atomic Plague: I write this as a warning to the world.' The occupation authorities tried to discredit his story, but he was vindicated.
- Burchett is one of my favourite mavericks. On the return journey to Tokyo, armed with a .45 Colt pistol, he single-handedly liberated two PoW camps.
- My great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother came to Australia in chains. Francis McCarthy was convicted in Cork of uttering unlawful oaths, Mary McCarthy was transported at 17 for working as a prostitute in London, which was the same as being convicted of poverty. She was only spared hanging because she was, as they said in court, 'in child'. I'm proud of Francis and Mary because they survived - more than half the passengers on those five-month sea journeys didn't.
- It's quite fashionable to have a convict in the family now, which wasn't always true. Certain members of my mother's family had social pretensions, and had tried to cover up what people called 'The Stain'.
- I love swimming, I love surfing. I grew up on Bondi Beach. I was shocked to find when I arrived in England that the basic swimming stroke was something called breaststroke, which just confirmed my Antipodean prejudices about the English - breaststroke is a version of treading water.
- I really enjoyed the Ashes this summer. It was regarded as a national tragedy back in Australia. I was in Sydney when England won the rugby world cup, beating Australia, and I got a perverse enjoyment out of it. There is a sports jingoism in Australia I don't find attractive.
- I came to live in London in the Sixties, during the worst winter since the 18th century, and almost went back home again. I really loathe the cold and grey.
- When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience.
- I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.
- When I first went to Vietnam I lived in a fog of fear and was always pleased to leave. But I realised that if you stop being frightened you convert your natural compassion to a cynicism - and then you're in trouble as a human being.
- Being tall invests you with an authority you have no right to - and you're not likely to be mugged. But in parts of southeast Asia, where if you stand out someone might shoot you, it's a huge disadvantage.
- Martha Gellhorn was a friend of many years. Her article on Dachau is the most precise, brilliant piece of journalism of its kind I've read. It's unsentimental, and it's full of black farce and irony.
- The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God; they're results of respectable politicians' decisions.
- I'm grateful to my parents for not bringing me up to believe in a higher authority.
This Much I Know - John Pilger
Sunday 13 November 2005, The Observer
- If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I've seen, if they'd watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.
- The story from Iraq on our television screens is rarely about the people our side kill, and that our side are the principal killers. Calling to account our governments, the source of so much state terrorism, ought to be a Western journalist's first responsibility.
- The great maverick reporters saw themselves as agents of people, not of authority. Journalism is a great privilege, in which the journalist is allowed into people's lives and trusted to go away and tell their stories.
- The scoop of the century was when the Australian Wilfred Burchett became the first reporter to reach Hiroshima after the atomic bombing, and discovered that the deadly after-effects of the bomb were due to radiation. The Daily Express carried his report on its front page, headlined: 'The Atomic Plague: I write this as a warning to the world.' The occupation authorities tried to discredit his story, but he was vindicated.
- Burchett is one of my favourite mavericks. On the return journey to Tokyo, armed with a .45 Colt pistol, he single-handedly liberated two PoW camps.
- My great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother came to Australia in chains. Francis McCarthy was convicted in Cork of uttering unlawful oaths, Mary McCarthy was transported at 17 for working as a prostitute in London, which was the same as being convicted of poverty. She was only spared hanging because she was, as they said in court, 'in child'. I'm proud of Francis and Mary because they survived - more than half the passengers on those five-month sea journeys didn't.
- It's quite fashionable to have a convict in the family now, which wasn't always true. Certain members of my mother's family had social pretensions, and had tried to cover up what people called 'The Stain'.
- I love swimming, I love surfing. I grew up on Bondi Beach. I was shocked to find when I arrived in England that the basic swimming stroke was something called breaststroke, which just confirmed my Antipodean prejudices about the English - breaststroke is a version of treading water.
- I really enjoyed the Ashes this summer. It was regarded as a national tragedy back in Australia. I was in Sydney when England won the rugby world cup, beating Australia, and I got a perverse enjoyment out of it. There is a sports jingoism in Australia I don't find attractive.
- I came to live in London in the Sixties, during the worst winter since the 18th century, and almost went back home again. I really loathe the cold and grey.
- When governments and other vested interests attack me personally I usually regard it as a vindication, otherwise they would use facts. That's why I believe in the wonderful Claud Cockburn dictum, 'Never believe anything until it is officially denied.' It has certainly been my experience.
- I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.
- When I first went to Vietnam I lived in a fog of fear and was always pleased to leave. But I realised that if you stop being frightened you convert your natural compassion to a cynicism - and then you're in trouble as a human being.
- Being tall invests you with an authority you have no right to - and you're not likely to be mugged. But in parts of southeast Asia, where if you stand out someone might shoot you, it's a huge disadvantage.
- Martha Gellhorn was a friend of many years. Her article on Dachau is the most precise, brilliant piece of journalism of its kind I've read. It's unsentimental, and it's full of black farce and irony.
- The impact of the human tragedies I've reported on is that, more often than not, I'll be angry. I want to know why is this child dying? These are not acts of God; they're results of respectable politicians' decisions.
- I'm grateful to my parents for not bringing me up to believe in a higher authority.
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