BUILDING GREEN IS THE WAY TO GO
by Richard Boyce
This week I took a journey into unknown territory, in an environment that kept me out of the sun. I spent two days listening to architects, construction engineers, designers, municipal planners, authors of building codes, certification administrators, energy consultants, and building contractors of every discipline. I learned a great deal as one of 400 participants in the ‘Building Green in a Changing Climate’ conference and trade show held in Courtenay.
Public demand for environmental standards and accountability has sparked change in the construction industry and some companies are complying with tough standards in order to attract customers. Rising material costs, as well as an increase in operational costs for all buildings, have combined with skyrocketing energy costs. The result is that the construction industry is beginning to realize that it must seek out alternatives. In today’s market place building ‘green’ makes sense economically.
A great deal of creative and technical innovation is being generated with amazing results that will effectively revolutionize the building industry. However, only a small percentage of industrial, institutional, or residential construction projects are currently being built using green thinking and materials. The ground swell has begun and now it is up to the public to move it forward so that industry follows through with this green trend.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is a market driven system, which is attempting to prove to consumers that building construction meets with the highest environmental standards. LEED is an internationally recognized rating system that encourages the construction of green buildings, administered by the Canada Green Building Council. Accredited professionals are trained and certified to monitor projects in order to award buildings with coveted ratings.
LEED has 5 principle categories by which it assesses construction projects for environmental sensitivity: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality. Certification is based on the number of points awarded for their compliance with these standards. Innovation in the design process can win additional points and negative points from noncompliant areas can be off set by points gained in other areas of the overall project.
One contractor admitted that they separated all of the construction waste material, went to great lengths and expense to transport it to the proper facility, and then discovered that it was all dumped into the same land fill. None of the material was recycled because the governing authorities had not implement any recycling at that facility. However, the building received LEED points based on the fact that the contractors had done their part to recycle the material. Other large projects reached targets of 95% recycling of waste materials where the proper facilities were available in larger urban centers.
In today’s real-estate market on Vancouver Island, with the potential for massive returns on investment dollars, entire communities are being built from scratch. The theory is that environmental devastation, caused by bulldozing large tracts of land, can be off-set by the ability to plan an entire town based on platinum rated ‘green’ standards. On paper it may work to move environmental points from one area to another, but on the ground when the road is blasted in and the trees are cut down the ecosystem is changed forever.
The term ‘Net-Zero’ refers to the energy consumption of a building, this along with ‘carbon neutral’ were catch phrases used repeatedly throughout the conference. In the forefront of my mine was the term “Green wash!” However, I truly believe that many of the professionals who made presentations at ‘Building Green’ want to change construction and are working towards a green future.
A strong argument was presented about sustainable building practices, since current construction practices tend to produce homes which may only last 30 to 40 years. European models have proven that residential buildings can exist for hundreds of years by using the proper care and attention to design, construction, and materials. The call was for building standards that will increase the longevity of buildings so that they are accountable to the amount of energy and resources put into them, thereby effecting environmental sustainability.
source
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Watching the Stern Go Under: Subprime Claims Wall Street Giants
Bankers step in, bail out Bear Stearns
Famed institution hit by run on liquidity
BARRIE MCKENNA
March 15, 2008
WASHINGTON -- U.S. banking authorities have tapped a Depression-era financial tool to save Bear Stearns & Co., Wall Street's storied fifth-largest investment bank, from succumbing to a wave of contagion sweeping through the lending industry.
The loan to the 85-year-old Bear Stearns, which survived the Great Depression and a world war, marks the first time the U.S. Federal Reserve Board has stepped in to bail out an investment bank.
After repeatedly and vehemently denying rumours of liquidity woes, Bear Stearns said it sought help from the Fed late Thursday after what analysts described as a classic run on the bank. The Fed is providing the infusion through JPMorgan Chase, Bear Stearns's main banker.
And so it goes with the U.S. credit crunch, which erupted last summer in the esoteric market for high-risk home mortgages.
Print Edition - Section Front
Enlarge Image
More Report on Business Stories
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When the phones stop ringing, you're out of business
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'A BRUTAL WAKEUP CALL'
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Go to the Report on Business section
Officials keep insisting the problem is manageable and contained, only then to see it infect another corner of the banking industry - in the United States, Canada and around the world.
A majority of economists now believe the powerful U.S. economy has probably slipped into a recession, as a growing number of consumers and businesses run into credit trouble.
Bear Stearns, which has been stung by a series of bad bets on subprime mortgages and leveraged hedge funds, suddenly experienced "pretty broad cash outflows" on Thursday, chief executive officer Alan Schwartz conceded to investors and reporters in a hastily arranged conference call.
"Frankly, this is a bridge to a more permanent solution," he said.
Investors weren't impressed. Bear Stearns shares tumbled nearly 47 per cent to $30 (U.S.) yesterday - the largest one-day fall in its history. Standard & Poor's and other credit rating agencies scrambled to downgrade the company's debt, a move that exacerbated its financial stress.
News of the historic bailout triggered a broad sell-off on North American stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 194 points to 1,1951.09, or 1.6 per cent, a decline mirrored by markets elsewhere.
On Wall Street and elsewhere, skittish investors are continuing to flee to the safety of gold and oil futures, and away from the U.S. dollar amid widespread concern that the United States has slipped into recession.
Mr. Schwartz insisted the emergency 28-day loan would allow Bear Stearns to quickly resume normal operations. But the company is reportedly being shopped around already by financial adviser Lazard Ltd. to potential buyers, including JPMorgan and others. Other reports suggested the company could be wound down, with its best parts sold to others.
Among its mounting problems, Bear Stearns was a major creditor to the $21-billion (U.S.) Carlyle Capital hedge fund, which collapsed earlier this week after creditors lost confidence in its ability to pay its debts.
Experts worry that Bear Stearns might be just the tip of the iceberg, and that other financial institutions might be on the verge of collapse.
"The greatest credit bubble of all times has burst," said economist Ed Yardeni of New York-based Yardeni Research Inc. "The consequences are getting exacerbated by the greatest margin call in the credit markets of all times. The Fed and other government agencies really don't have much choice but to provide the greatest bailout of all times."
Rumours were swirling yesterday that Lehman Bros. might be the next U.S. investment bank to face liquidity problems.
The Bear Stearns bailout has sent "reverberations throughout all markets worldwide," said Sherry Cooper, chief economist at BMO Financial Group in Toronto.
"Not only because this is another 'too-big-to-fail' scenario, but also because it has strong implications for a domino effect in the already weakened financial services industry and beyond," Ms. Cooper wrote in a research note.
"... Other firms will likely continue to suffer the results of the credit crunch and loss of investor confidence."
The crisis at Bear Stearns comes just days before the Fed's next scheduled rate-setting meeting Tuesday in Washington. Economists had expected another half-a-percentage-point rate cut. Many now predict the Fed will have to lower its benchmark rate as much as three-quarters of a percentage-point to deal with the worsening housing slump, a possible recession and now a more extensive freeze-up of credit markets.
"Events are extremely fluid," agreed John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Securities. "If Bear Stearns or another major financial institution fails, a major financial panic would ensue."
The Fed would have to lend even more money to troubled financial institutions, but it would also have to "cushion the blow to the real economy," Mr. Silvia said.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke hinted at the extreme pressure he is under as he prepared to deliver a speech on the housing market in Washington yesterday. "I've had a busy morning," he told his audience.
In a brief statement acknowledging the Bear Stearns loan, the Fed said it is "monitoring market developments closely and will continue to provide liquidity as necessary to promote the orderly functioning of the financial system."
The Fed is now throwing all of its resources at the credit problem, but, so far, with limited success. Among the Fed's main challenges: Mortgage rates are continuing to climb, even as the central banking system tries to force them down because lenders are loath to lend to anyone. And tighter credit will lead to more foreclosures, still lower house prices and a squeeze on consumers.
The Fed has already cut its key interest five times, to 3 per cent from 5¼ per cent since last August. It has also announced a series of measures to inject liquidity in problem-plagued corners of the lending industry.
The Fed, for example, this week set up a special $200-billion, 28-day lending arrangement, under a provision created in the 1930s to counteract runs on banks. Bear Stearns is its first beneficiary. The plan was announced as part of a joint effort by central banks in Canada, Europe and elsewhere to boost liquidity in the banking sector.
Under the Bear Stearns deal, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York agreed to provide an unspecified amount of secured funds to JPMorgan Chase, which in turn would make loans to Bear Stearns. JPMorgan Chase said it is "working closely with Bear Stearns on securing permanent financing or other alternatives for the company."
The bailout didn't sit well with many analysts, who complained that it creates a moral hazard to a company that took undue risks in the mortgage market.
"Instead of letting Bears Stearns get crushed, and then see the assets and talent pool get scooped up by someone else, we keep a wounded Bear on life support hanging around," remarked Barry Ritholtz, director of equity research at Fusion IQ.
"My preference is creative destruction."
Famed institution hit by run on liquidity
BARRIE MCKENNA
March 15, 2008
WASHINGTON -- U.S. banking authorities have tapped a Depression-era financial tool to save Bear Stearns & Co., Wall Street's storied fifth-largest investment bank, from succumbing to a wave of contagion sweeping through the lending industry.
The loan to the 85-year-old Bear Stearns, which survived the Great Depression and a world war, marks the first time the U.S. Federal Reserve Board has stepped in to bail out an investment bank.
After repeatedly and vehemently denying rumours of liquidity woes, Bear Stearns said it sought help from the Fed late Thursday after what analysts described as a classic run on the bank. The Fed is providing the infusion through JPMorgan Chase, Bear Stearns's main banker.
And so it goes with the U.S. credit crunch, which erupted last summer in the esoteric market for high-risk home mortgages.
Print Edition - Section Front
Enlarge Image
More Report on Business Stories
BP helps fund Irving refinery plan
When the phones stop ringing, you're out of business
For Professor Bernanke, it's back to school
Court protection sets stage for new debt fight
'A BRUTAL WAKEUP CALL'
Approval of Air France bid sends Alitalia stock down
Go to the Report on Business section
Officials keep insisting the problem is manageable and contained, only then to see it infect another corner of the banking industry - in the United States, Canada and around the world.
A majority of economists now believe the powerful U.S. economy has probably slipped into a recession, as a growing number of consumers and businesses run into credit trouble.
Bear Stearns, which has been stung by a series of bad bets on subprime mortgages and leveraged hedge funds, suddenly experienced "pretty broad cash outflows" on Thursday, chief executive officer Alan Schwartz conceded to investors and reporters in a hastily arranged conference call.
"Frankly, this is a bridge to a more permanent solution," he said.
Investors weren't impressed. Bear Stearns shares tumbled nearly 47 per cent to $30 (U.S.) yesterday - the largest one-day fall in its history. Standard & Poor's and other credit rating agencies scrambled to downgrade the company's debt, a move that exacerbated its financial stress.
News of the historic bailout triggered a broad sell-off on North American stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 194 points to 1,1951.09, or 1.6 per cent, a decline mirrored by markets elsewhere.
On Wall Street and elsewhere, skittish investors are continuing to flee to the safety of gold and oil futures, and away from the U.S. dollar amid widespread concern that the United States has slipped into recession.
Mr. Schwartz insisted the emergency 28-day loan would allow Bear Stearns to quickly resume normal operations. But the company is reportedly being shopped around already by financial adviser Lazard Ltd. to potential buyers, including JPMorgan and others. Other reports suggested the company could be wound down, with its best parts sold to others.
Among its mounting problems, Bear Stearns was a major creditor to the $21-billion (U.S.) Carlyle Capital hedge fund, which collapsed earlier this week after creditors lost confidence in its ability to pay its debts.
Experts worry that Bear Stearns might be just the tip of the iceberg, and that other financial institutions might be on the verge of collapse.
"The greatest credit bubble of all times has burst," said economist Ed Yardeni of New York-based Yardeni Research Inc. "The consequences are getting exacerbated by the greatest margin call in the credit markets of all times. The Fed and other government agencies really don't have much choice but to provide the greatest bailout of all times."
Rumours were swirling yesterday that Lehman Bros. might be the next U.S. investment bank to face liquidity problems.
The Bear Stearns bailout has sent "reverberations throughout all markets worldwide," said Sherry Cooper, chief economist at BMO Financial Group in Toronto.
"Not only because this is another 'too-big-to-fail' scenario, but also because it has strong implications for a domino effect in the already weakened financial services industry and beyond," Ms. Cooper wrote in a research note.
"... Other firms will likely continue to suffer the results of the credit crunch and loss of investor confidence."
The crisis at Bear Stearns comes just days before the Fed's next scheduled rate-setting meeting Tuesday in Washington. Economists had expected another half-a-percentage-point rate cut. Many now predict the Fed will have to lower its benchmark rate as much as three-quarters of a percentage-point to deal with the worsening housing slump, a possible recession and now a more extensive freeze-up of credit markets.
"Events are extremely fluid," agreed John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia Securities. "If Bear Stearns or another major financial institution fails, a major financial panic would ensue."
The Fed would have to lend even more money to troubled financial institutions, but it would also have to "cushion the blow to the real economy," Mr. Silvia said.
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke hinted at the extreme pressure he is under as he prepared to deliver a speech on the housing market in Washington yesterday. "I've had a busy morning," he told his audience.
In a brief statement acknowledging the Bear Stearns loan, the Fed said it is "monitoring market developments closely and will continue to provide liquidity as necessary to promote the orderly functioning of the financial system."
The Fed is now throwing all of its resources at the credit problem, but, so far, with limited success. Among the Fed's main challenges: Mortgage rates are continuing to climb, even as the central banking system tries to force them down because lenders are loath to lend to anyone. And tighter credit will lead to more foreclosures, still lower house prices and a squeeze on consumers.
The Fed has already cut its key interest five times, to 3 per cent from 5¼ per cent since last August. It has also announced a series of measures to inject liquidity in problem-plagued corners of the lending industry.
The Fed, for example, this week set up a special $200-billion, 28-day lending arrangement, under a provision created in the 1930s to counteract runs on banks. Bear Stearns is its first beneficiary. The plan was announced as part of a joint effort by central banks in Canada, Europe and elsewhere to boost liquidity in the banking sector.
Under the Bear Stearns deal, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York agreed to provide an unspecified amount of secured funds to JPMorgan Chase, which in turn would make loans to Bear Stearns. JPMorgan Chase said it is "working closely with Bear Stearns on securing permanent financing or other alternatives for the company."
The bailout didn't sit well with many analysts, who complained that it creates a moral hazard to a company that took undue risks in the mortgage market.
"Instead of letting Bears Stearns get crushed, and then see the assets and talent pool get scooped up by someone else, we keep a wounded Bear on life support hanging around," remarked Barry Ritholtz, director of equity research at Fusion IQ.
"My preference is creative destruction."
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Oil Priced: Venezuela Opts for Euros
Venezuela opts for oil contracts in euros: report
CARACAS (AFP) - Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA has decided to sign some oil contracts in euros in the face of a plummeting dollar, local media reported, citing officials.
"There are some contracts in euros, contracts for crude, products and spot markets in euros. This is a subject which we are working on," said energy minister and Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) chief, Rafael Ramirez, in an interview with the journal El Universal published Friday.
It remained unclear which oil sales would require payment in euros.
Venezuela, Latin America's leading petroleum producer, has previously backed Iran's proposals for OPEC to abandon the dollar and use the euro for oil pricing. But the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has rejected the idea, at least in the short-term.
The head of the journal Petroleum World, Elio Ohep, said the shift to euros was "good business" for Venezuela.
"PDVSA always had an interest to negotiate in dollars because the company had refineries in the United States and needed cash but currently with the euro rising, it is taking in more dollars and (Venezuelan) bolivars," he said.
The dollar hit new lows this week against the euro and yen, with the euro at 1.5669 dollars at 21000 GMT on Friday.
Venezuela produces 3.3 million barrels of oil a day, according to official figures, and 2.4 million according to the International Energy Agency. Half of its production is sold to the United States market.
CARACAS (AFP) - Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA has decided to sign some oil contracts in euros in the face of a plummeting dollar, local media reported, citing officials.
"There are some contracts in euros, contracts for crude, products and spot markets in euros. This is a subject which we are working on," said energy minister and Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) chief, Rafael Ramirez, in an interview with the journal El Universal published Friday.
It remained unclear which oil sales would require payment in euros.
Venezuela, Latin America's leading petroleum producer, has previously backed Iran's proposals for OPEC to abandon the dollar and use the euro for oil pricing. But the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has rejected the idea, at least in the short-term.
The head of the journal Petroleum World, Elio Ohep, said the shift to euros was "good business" for Venezuela.
"PDVSA always had an interest to negotiate in dollars because the company had refineries in the United States and needed cash but currently with the euro rising, it is taking in more dollars and (Venezuelan) bolivars," he said.
The dollar hit new lows this week against the euro and yen, with the euro at 1.5669 dollars at 21000 GMT on Friday.
Venezuela produces 3.3 million barrels of oil a day, according to official figures, and 2.4 million according to the International Energy Agency. Half of its production is sold to the United States market.
GR 04-45 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable 'cfuv.uvic.ca'
Monday, March 17, 2008
5:00:00 3:00 Welcome to GR, etc. As the big day draws near, the day Vancouver will kick off the 2010 winter Olympiad, working citizens there are getting a bitter foretaste of what Vancouver will soon become. Already one of Canada's least affordable addresses, dwindling rental units and intense real estate speculation in preparation for the games, is chewing up the last remaining low-income accomodations in the city, leaving growing numbers no place to go. Monte Paulsen is an award winning journalist and author, now serving as Investigative Editor to the online news site, The Tyee.ca, who contributed to the book, 'The Buying of the President 2000,' and co-authored 'Beyond the Deep: The Deadly Descent into the World's Most Dangerous Cave.' Paulsen is an Alaska native, now living in Vancouver, who has followed the effects the impending five ring circus there is already creating for that city's residents. Monte Paulsen and the poor weathering the developing Olympic storm in the first segment.
And; across the straits, Victoria too is suffering some of the same deleterious social displacement caused by the building boom. In the city it means low-rent buildings falling altogether, or being gentrified; in the areas around the city, it means the destruction of wild lands and the displacement of creatures already endangered. Nowhere is this more contentious than in Langford, haven of unbridled development, and cozy home to conflicted politicians who comfortably vote on projects that enrich they and their closest friends. Jennifer Andison is a Langford resident standing in opposition to the mayor and council and the unfettered building boom they represent. She has walked the protest picket, attended council meetings, and created a website to record and publicize the questionable actions of Langford mayor Stewart Young and his council. She recently fell afoul of the city's bylaw enforcement officer, who charged posters affixed to trees in her yard, and in her home's living room windows must come down upon threat of prosecution. Jennifer Andison and the Langford gag reflex in the second segment.
And; a free and true press is vital to the health of the body politic, but in Canada the corporate press has concentrated and solidified, clogging the arteries functioning to inform and empower the citizenry. Where once flowed that necessary information today remains a mere trickle. The Dominion is one of the few tributaries still bringing divergent views to the Canadian public's information stream; not satisfied to merely report to the nation, the editors of The Dominion are currently on the road, bringing their message to towns and cities across the country. Dru Oja Jay is a contributing editor with the paper. He's currently on the road, somewhere between the east and west coasts. Dru Oja Jay in the third segment.
And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of the good goings-on in and around the lower island in the coming week. But first, Monte Paulsen and Vancouver's games without frontiers.
5:03:00 15:00 Discussion w/ Monte Paulsen
"Welcome to the program, Monte. Who is Robert Wilson?"
5:18:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:19:00 7:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:26:00 3:00 Music
5:29:00 16:00 Discussion w/ Jennifer Andison
Welcome back to GR, etc. Jennifer Andison is a Langford resident standing in opposition to the mayor and council and the unfettered building boom they represent. She recently fell afoul of the city's bylaw enforcement officer, who charged posters affixed to trees in her yard, and in her home's living room windows must come down upon threat of prosecution.
"Welcome to the show, Jennifer. You seem to have found by accident what the prime minister of Canada has sought in earnest: A pocket of the land where pesky laws like freedom of speech don't exist! Tell us, please about your recent encounter with the guardians of Langford's bylaws."
5:45:00 2:00 Music
5:47:00 12:00 Discussion w/ Dru Oja Jay
Welcome back to GR, etc. Not satisfied to merely report to the nation, the editors of The Dominion are currently on the road, bringing their message to towns and cities across the country. Dru Oja Jay is a contributing editor with the paper. He's currently on the road, somewhere between the east and west coasts of Canada.
"Welcome to the show, Dru. How's the Dominion's 'Own Your Media Tour' going so far?"
5:59:00 1:00 Thanks to Monte Paulsen, Jennifer Andison, Dru Oja Jay, J-9; upcoming.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
Friday, March 14, 2008
One State or Two? Neither
The Issue is Zionism
by JONATHAN COOK
March 12, 2008
Counterpunch
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into two separate states, one for Jews and the other for Palestinans.
The philosopher Michael Neumann has dedicated two articles, in 2007 and earlier this week, for CounterPunch discrediting the one-state idea as impractical and therefore as worthless of consideration. In response, Kathy Christison has mounted a robust defence, neatly exposing the twists and turns of Neumann’s logic. I will not trouble to cover the same ground.
I want instead to address Neumann’s central argument: that it is at least possible to imagine a consensus emerging behind two states, whereas Israelis will never accept a single state. That argument, the rallying cry of most two-staters, paints the one-state crowd as inveterate dreamers and time-wasters.
The idea, Neumann writes, “that Israel would concede a single state is laughable. … There is no chance at all [Israelis] will accept a single state that gives the Palestinians anything remotely like their rights.”
According to Neumann, unlike the one-state solution, the means to realizing two states are within our grasp: the removal of the half a million Jewish settlers living in the occupied Palestinian territories. Then, he writes, “a two-state solution will, indeed, leave Palestinians with a sovereign state, because that’s what a two-state solution means. It doesn’t mean one state and another non-state, and no Palestinian proponent of a two-state solution will settle for less than sovereignty.”
There is something surprisingly naive about his arguing that, just because something is called a two-state solution, it will necessarily result in two sovereign states. What are the mimimum requirements for a state to qualify as sovereign, and who decides?
True, the various two-state solutions proposed by Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and George Bush, and supported by most of the international community, would fail according to Neumann’s criterion because they were not premised on the removal of all the settlers.
But an alternative two-state solution requiring Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders might still not concede, for example, a Palestinian army -- equipped and trained by Iran? -- to guard the borders of the West Bank and Gaza. Would that count? And how likely does Neumann think it that Israel and the US would grant that kind of sovereignty to a Palestine state?
Correctly, Neumann repeatedly reminds us that those with power are the ones who dictate solutions. In which case we can be sure that when the time is right Israel and its sponsor, the United States, will impose their own version of the two-state solution and that it will be far from the genuine article Neumann advocates.
No matter. Let us leave aside that particular somersault of logic for the moment and return to the main argument: that the creation of two states is inherently more achievable and practical than the establishment of a single state.
Strangely, however, from all the available evidence, this is not how it looks to Israel’s current leaders.
Prime minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has expressed in several speeches the fear that, should the Palestinian population under Israeli rule -- both in the occupied territories and inside Israel proper -- reach the point where it outnumbers the Jewish population, as demographers expect in the next few years, Israel will be compared to apartheid South Africa. In his words, Israel is facing an imminent and powerful “struggle for one-man-one-vote” along the lines of the anti-apartheid movement.
According to Olmert, without evasive action, political logic is drifting inexorably towards the creation of one state in Israel and Palestine. This was his sentiment as he addressed delegates to the recent Herzliya conference:
“Once we were afraid of the possibility that the reality in Israel would force a bi-national state on us. In 1948, the obstinate policy of all the Arabs, the anti-Israel fanaticism and our strength and the leadership of David Ben-Gurion saved us from such a state. For 60 years, we fought with unparalleled courage in order to avoid living in a reality of bi-nationalism, and in order to ensure that Israel exists as a Jewish and democratic state with a solid Jewish majority. We must act to this end and understand that such a [bi-national] reality is being created, and in a very short while it will be beyond our control.”
Olmert’s energies are therefore consumed with finding an alternative political program that can be sold to the rest of the world. That is the reason he, and Sharon before him, began talking about a Palestinian state. Strangely, however, neither took up the offer of the ideal two-state solution -- the kind Neumann wants -- made in 2002. Then Saudi Arabia and the rest Arab world promised Israel peace in return for its withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. They repeated their offer last year. Israel has steadfastly ignored them.
Instead an alternative version of two states -- the bogus two-state solution -- has become the default position of Israeli politics. It requires only that Israel and the Palestinians appear to divide the land, while in truth the occupation continues and Jewish sovereignty over all of historic Palestine is not only maintained but rubber-stamped by the international community. In other words, the Gazafication of the West Bank.
When Olmert warns that without two states “Israel is finished”, he is thinking primarily about how to stop the emergence of a single state. So, if Neumann is to be believed, Olmert is a dreamer, because he fears that a one-state solution is not only achievable but dangerously close at hand. Sharon, it seems, suffered from the same delusion, given that demography was the main impulse for his disengaging from Gaza.
Or maybe both of them understood rather better than Neumann what is meant by a Jewish state, and what political conditions are incompatible with it.
In fact, the division of the land demanded by Neumann, however equitable, would be the very moment when the struggle for Israel to remain a Jewish state would enter its most critical and difficult phase. Which is precisely why Israel has blocked any meaningful division of the land so far and will continue to do so.
In the unimaginable event that the Israel were to divide the land, a Jewish state would not be able to live with the consequences of such a division for long. Eventually, the maintenance of an ethnic Israeli state would (and will) prove unsustainable: environmentally, demographically and ultimately physically. Division of the land simply “fast-forwards” the self-destructiveness inherent in a Jewish state.
Let us examine just a few of the consequences for the Jewish state of a genuine two-state solution.
First, Israel inside its recognized, shrunken borders would face an immediate and very serious water shortage. That is because, in returning the West Bank to the Palestinians, Israel would lose control of the large mountain aquifers that currently supply most of its water, not only to Israel proper but also to the Jewish settlers living illegally in the occupied territories. Israel would no longer be able to steal the water, but would be expected to negotiate for it on the open market.
Given the politics of water in the Middle East, that would be no simple matter. However impoverished the new sovereign Palestinian state was, it would lose all legitimacy in the eyes of its own population were it to sell more than a trickle of water to the Israelis.
We can understand why by examining the current water situation. At the moment Israel drains off almost all of the water provided by the rivers and aquifers inside Israel and in the occupied territories for use by its own population, allowing each Palestinian far less than the minimum amount he or she requires each day, according to the World Health Organization.
In a stark warning this month, Israel’s Water Authority reported that overdrilling has polluted with sea water most of the supply from the coastal aquifer, that is the main fresh water source inside Israel’s recognized borders.
Were Palestinians to be allowed a proper water ration from their own mountain aquifer, as well as to build a modern economy, there would not be enough left over to satisfy Israel’s first-world thirst. And that is before we consider the extra demand on water resources from all those Palestinians who choose to realize their right to return, not to their homes in Israel, but to the new sovereign Palestinian state.
In addition, for reasons that we will come to, the sovereign Jewish state would have every reason to continue its Judaization policies, trying to attact as many Jews from the rest of the world as possible, thereby further straining the region’s water resources.
The environmental unsustainability of both states seeking to absorb large populations would inevitably result in a regional water crisis. In addition, should Israeli Jews, sensing water shortages, start to leave in significant numbers, Israel would have an even more pressing reason to locate water, by fair means or foul.
It can be expected that in a short time Israel, with the fourth most powerful army in the world, would seek to manufacture reasons for war against its weaker neighbors, particularly the Palestinians but possibly also Lebanon, in a bid to steal their water.
Water shortages would, of course, be a problem facing a single state too. But, at least in one state there would be mechanisms in place to reduce such tensions, to manage population growth and economic development, and to divide water resources equitably.
Second, with the labour-intensive occupation at an end, much of the Jewish state’s huge citizen army would become surplus to defense requirements. In addition to the massive social and economic disruptions, the dismantling of the country’s military complex would fundamentally change Israel’s role in the region, damage its relationship with the only global superpower and sever its financial ties to Diaspora Jews.
Israel would no longer have the laboratories of the occupied territories for testing its military hardware, its battlefield strategies and its booming surveillance and crowd control industries. If Israel chose to fight the Palestinians, it would have to do so in a proper war, even if one between very unequal sides. Doubtless the Palestinians, like Hizbullah, would quickly find regional sponsors to arm and train their army or militias.
The experience and reputation Israel has acquired -- at least among the US military -- in running an occupation and devising new and supposedly sophisticated ways to control the “Arab mind” would rapidly be lost, and with it Israel’s usefulness to the US in managing its own long-term occupation of Iraq.
Also, Israel’s vital strategic alliance with the US in dividing the Arab world, over the issue of the occupation and by signing peace treaties with some states and living in a state of permanent war with others, would start to unravel.
With the waning of Israel’s special relationship with Washington and the influence of its lobby groups, as well as the loss of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, the Jewish Diaspora would begin to lose interest in Israel. Its money and power ebbing away, Israel might eventually slip into Middle Eastern anonymity, another Jordan. In such circumstances it would rapidly see a large exodus of privileged Ashkenazi Jews, many of whom hold second passports.
Third, the Jewish state would not be as Jewish as some might think: currently one in five Israelis is not Jewish but Palestinian. Although to realize Neumann’s two-state vision all the Jewish settlers would probably need to leave the occupied territories and return to Israel, what would be done with all those Palestinians with Israeli citizenship?
These Palestinians have been citizens of Israel for six decades and live legally on land that has belonged to their families for many generations. They are also growing in number at a rate faster than the Jewish population, the reason they are popularly referred to in Israel as a “demographic timebomb”.
Were these 1.3 million citizens to be removed from Israel by force under Neumann’s two-state arrangement, it would be a violation of international law by a democratic state on a scale unprecedented in the modern era, and an act of ethnic cleansing even larger than the 1948 war that established Israel. The question would be: why even bother advocating two states if it has to be achieved on such appalling terms?
Assuming instead that the new Jewish state is supposed to maintain, as Israel currently does, the pretence of being democratic, these citizens would be entitled to continue living on their land and exercising their rights. Inside a Jewish state that had offically ended its conflict with the Palestinians, demands would grow from Palestinian citizens for equal rights and an end to their second-class status.
Most importantly, they would insist on two rights that challenge the very basis of a Jewish state. They would expect the right, backed by international law, to be able to marry Palestinians from outside Israel and bring them to live with them. And they would want a Right of Return for their exiled relatives on a similar basis to the Law of Return for Jews.
Israel’s Jewishness would be at stake, even more so than it is today from its Palestinian minority. It can be assumed that Israel’s leaders would react with great ferocity to protect the state’s Jewishness. Eventually Israel’s democratic pretensions would have to be jettisoned and the full-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens implemented.
Still, do these arguments against the “practicality” of Neumann’s genuine two-state arrangement win the day for the one-state solution? Would Israel’s leaders not put up an equally vicious fight to protect their ethnic privileges by preventing, as they are doing now, the emergence of a single state?
Yes, they would and they will. But that misses my point. As long as Israel is an ethnic state, it will be forced to deepen the occupation and intensify its ethnic cleansing policies to prevent the emergence of genuine Palestinian political influence -- for the reasons I cite above and for many others I don’t. In truth, both a one-state and a genuine two-state arrangement are impossible given Israel’s determination to remain a Jewish state.
The obstacle to a solution, then, is not about dividing the land but about Zionism itself, the ideology of ethnic supremacism that is the current orthodoxy in Israel. As long as Israel is a Zionist state, its leaders will allow neither one state nor two real states.
The solution, therefore, reduces to the question of how to defeat Zionism. It just so happens that the best way this can be achieved is by confronting the illusions of the two-state dreamers and explaining why Israel is in permanent bad faith about seeking peace.
In other words, if we stopped distracting ourselves with the Holy Grail of the two-state solution, we might channel our energies into something more useful: discrediting Israel as a Jewish state, and the ideology of Zionism that upholds it. Eventually the respectable façade of Zionism might crumble.
Without Zionism, the obstacle to creating either one or two states will finally be removed. And if that is the case, then why not also campaign for the solution that will best bring justice to both Israelis and Palestinians?
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His new book, “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Spitzer's Fighting Speech not Reported in the Media
Spitzer Comes Out Fighting: Speech Not Reported in the Media
by Dennis Morrisseau / March 12th, 2008
Ahem!
The Spitzer Press Conference
SPITZER’S ACTUAL WORDS [Not reported by the media]
[Responding to the first question]
Well … my wife whom I love has been hurt by this, and I am very sorry for that. Very. I never intended to hurt her …
[The Governor, struggling to gather himself for nearly a minute, then continued.]
… But now I have to ask why a man’s or a woman’s sexual peccadilloes have to be splashed all over the media in this country. As though private sexual relations between men and women are news.
You know … the religious NAZIs in this country …. the so-called religious leaders … and the completely corrupt media that are always going on about this sort of thing … maybe it’s time for people to grow up.
See, I’ve got news for you. All humans are sexually active. And most of of us do have sexual relations outside our main family relationships. That may uncomfortable to hear but its true.
So-called “religious leaders,” most of whom are certainly “getting a little” on the side — sometimes with men, sometimes with women (and a LOT of politicians too); even some media moguls know this. Everybody knows this. So why is it NEWS?
I’ll tell you why: Because SEX is used to blackmail and control people by all these so-called “leaders”. They control politics with it. They use SEX for power, the same way rapists do. And that, I grant you, is a slimeball thing to do.
First they lie to convince you that sex outside marriage is always bad. Then they lie again, pretending that they themselves and other so-called “good” people never do such things. Finally, they lie when they tell you all it’s NEWS … that a political figure sought and found a bit of sexual comfort, in privacy.
Humans seek and need a lot of sexual comfort in this screwed up world that these so-called leaders have foisted on us all — every one of you does and every damned one of you knows this.
So if you want to understand our so-called religious leadership in America today … and our so-called political and MEDIA leadership. There is a WORD you should keep in mind … more clearly even than these words: MONEY and BRIBE. The word you should keep in mind is BLACKMAIL.
An awful lot of politics is controlled by blackmail.
Think Bush. Think NSA spying. That’s how they’re running the country.
[Spitzer then abruptly left the briefing room.]
* Editor: The above is, of course, a satire.
Army 2LT Morrisseau actively opposed the Vietnam War in uniform in 1967-68, eventually getting arrested for a one-man, uniformed-stand in front of the LBJ Whitehouse on 3/10/68. A week later he was seized and ordered to Vietnam; he refused, and he was again arrested. Morrisseau and his small legal team defeated the resultant court-martial; he resigned his Commission and was released from further military duty Under Honorable Conditions. Read other articles by Dennis, or visit Dennis's website.
source
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Chris Genovali, J9 ( FunDrive '08)
GR 04-44 CFUV 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable 'cfuv.uvic.ca'
Monday, March 10, 2008
FunDrive
5:00:00 8:00 Welcome to GR, etc. And welcome to FunDrive. Today marks Gorilla Radio's tenth FunDrive. Every one of those ten years, the station met its fundraising goals thanks to you. This year we've set our sights high, but we've got a few more days to go...we'll leave the usual format, etc... Janine Bandcroft is with me in the studio, and Chris Genovali of the Raincoast Conservation Society will be here to discuss the B.C. Liberal's budget and its rich diggings for B.C.'s oil and gas industry, and trade unionist and social activist, Roger Annis on the upcoming Parliamentary vote on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. And there'll be music and more for Gorilla Radio's 2008 FunDrive show today.
5:08:00 4:00 Music
5:12:00 16:00 Welcome back to GR, etc. FunDrive reit. The provincial government released its budget recently, and most notable was the country's first carbon tax. But less publicized than the rise in petrol prices, is the offset benefits offered B.C.'s oil and gas sector. Chris Genovali is a long-time environmental campaigner and founding member of both the Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition, and the Taiga Rescue Network. His past work with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee helped establish the Sooke Hills Wilderness Park and earned him Monday Magazine’s "Person who made a Difference Award." He’s a 2002 Vancouver Island Human Rights Award winner and currently serves as Executive Director for the Raincoast Conservation Society.
"Welcome back to the show, Chris; the Campbell budget has received praise from unusually green quarters; what's in this budget for environmentally-minded folk?" 5:28:00 2:00 Cart(s)
5:30:00 8:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:38:00 4:00 Music
5:42:00 1:00 Cart(s)
4:43:00 16:00 Discussion with Roger Annis
Welcome back to GR, etc. Later this week, Parliament will hold a vote on the Conservative's motion to extend again Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan through 2011. Roger Annis is a trade unionist and social activist and member of Vancouver's Stopwar.ca coalition.
"Welcome to the show, Roger. The Manley Report informs the upcoming government motion, what did Manley recommend?"
5:59:00 1:00 Ad Lib; upcoming; housekeeping, etc.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
-0-
Monday, Aug. 5, 2002
5:00:00 2:00 Welcome to GR etc. Canada’s fishery management record is abysmal. Governed by politics, ravaged by cut backs, and rife with incompetence, the Department of Oceans and Fisheries is simply not doing the job Canadians expect. Now, the west coast salmon fishery is threatened. The Raincoast Conservation Society is a non-profit research and public education organization working to protect natural habitat and generate public awareness of the threats B.C.’s land and ocean species face. They’ve just released “Ghost Runs: the Future of wild salmon on the north and central British Columbia” an alarming report whose warnings cannot go unheeded. Chris Genovali is a long-time environmental campaigner and founding member of both the Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition, and the Taiga Rescue Network. His past work with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee helped establish the Sooke Hills Wilderness Park and earned him Monday Magazine’s “Person who made a Difference Award” in 1998. He’s a 2002 Vancouver Island Human Rights Award winner and currently serves as Executive Director for the Raincoast Conservation Society.
Welcome to GR, etc. Some of British Columbia’s highest profile Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGO’s) have spent thousands of hours in tripartite negotiations with the provincial government and major timber interests here in efforts to create protected zones within the Great Bear Rainforest. Last week, Premier Gordon Campbell refused to endorse the deal, effectively nullifying the initiative. But, that may not be as bad a development for environmentalists as it at first appears. Chris Genovali is Executive Director for the Raincoast Conservation Society, a long-time environmental campaigner, and founding member of both the Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition, and the Taiga Rescue Network. His past work with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee helped establish the Sooke Hills Wilderness Park and earned him Monday Magazine’s “Person who made a Difference Award” in 1998. A recent study by Raincoast is highly critical of the unendorsed deal for its failure to adequately protect species’ habitat in the Great Bear. Chris Genovali and taking the bear out of the Great Bear Rainforest in the first half.
Monday, March 10, 2008
FunDrive
5:00:00 8:00 Welcome to GR, etc. And welcome to FunDrive. Today marks Gorilla Radio's tenth FunDrive. Every one of those ten years, the station met its fundraising goals thanks to you. This year we've set our sights high, but we've got a few more days to go...we'll leave the usual format, etc... Janine Bandcroft is with me in the studio, and Chris Genovali of the Raincoast Conservation Society will be here to discuss the B.C. Liberal's budget and its rich diggings for B.C.'s oil and gas industry, and trade unionist and social activist, Roger Annis on the upcoming Parliamentary vote on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. And there'll be music and more for Gorilla Radio's 2008 FunDrive show today.
5:08:00 4:00 Music
5:12:00 16:00 Welcome back to GR, etc. FunDrive reit. The provincial government released its budget recently, and most notable was the country's first carbon tax. But less publicized than the rise in petrol prices, is the offset benefits offered B.C.'s oil and gas sector. Chris Genovali is a long-time environmental campaigner and founding member of both the Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition, and the Taiga Rescue Network. His past work with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee helped establish the Sooke Hills Wilderness Park and earned him Monday Magazine’s "Person who made a Difference Award." He’s a 2002 Vancouver Island Human Rights Award winner and currently serves as Executive Director for the Raincoast Conservation Society.
"Welcome back to the show, Chris; the Campbell budget has received praise from unusually green quarters; what's in this budget for environmentally-minded folk?" 5:28:00 2:00 Cart(s)
5:30:00 8:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:38:00 4:00 Music
5:42:00 1:00 Cart(s)
4:43:00 16:00 Discussion with Roger Annis
Welcome back to GR, etc. Later this week, Parliament will hold a vote on the Conservative's motion to extend again Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan through 2011. Roger Annis is a trade unionist and social activist and member of Vancouver's Stopwar.ca coalition.
"Welcome to the show, Roger. The Manley Report informs the upcoming government motion, what did Manley recommend?"
5:59:00 1:00 Ad Lib; upcoming; housekeeping, etc.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
-0-
Monday, Aug. 5, 2002
5:00:00 2:00 Welcome to GR etc. Canada’s fishery management record is abysmal. Governed by politics, ravaged by cut backs, and rife with incompetence, the Department of Oceans and Fisheries is simply not doing the job Canadians expect. Now, the west coast salmon fishery is threatened. The Raincoast Conservation Society is a non-profit research and public education organization working to protect natural habitat and generate public awareness of the threats B.C.’s land and ocean species face. They’ve just released “Ghost Runs: the Future of wild salmon on the north and central British Columbia” an alarming report whose warnings cannot go unheeded. Chris Genovali is a long-time environmental campaigner and founding member of both the Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition, and the Taiga Rescue Network. His past work with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee helped establish the Sooke Hills Wilderness Park and earned him Monday Magazine’s “Person who made a Difference Award” in 1998. He’s a 2002 Vancouver Island Human Rights Award winner and currently serves as Executive Director for the Raincoast Conservation Society.
Welcome to GR, etc. Some of British Columbia’s highest profile Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGO’s) have spent thousands of hours in tripartite negotiations with the provincial government and major timber interests here in efforts to create protected zones within the Great Bear Rainforest. Last week, Premier Gordon Campbell refused to endorse the deal, effectively nullifying the initiative. But, that may not be as bad a development for environmentalists as it at first appears. Chris Genovali is Executive Director for the Raincoast Conservation Society, a long-time environmental campaigner, and founding member of both the Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition, and the Taiga Rescue Network. His past work with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee helped establish the Sooke Hills Wilderness Park and earned him Monday Magazine’s “Person who made a Difference Award” in 1998. A recent study by Raincoast is highly critical of the unendorsed deal for its failure to adequately protect species’ habitat in the Great Bear. Chris Genovali and taking the bear out of the Great Bear Rainforest in the first half.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Reviewing the Unrecognizable Nation
O! Canada '08: Reviewing the Unrecognizable Nation
by C. L. Cook
The Century has not so far been kind to those Canadians pining reminiscent for the days the country was a liberal democracy; run by relatively responsible actors on the world stage, the brokers of peace, guarantors of civility and fair governance in a dangerous, chaotic world.
To be fair to the successors of Brian Mulroney, the prime minister who hitched the nation's wagon to America's seemingly forever rising star through the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), destiny dealt them a crummy hand; but both the Jean Chretien and Paul Martin administrations went beyond the investment oriented FTA (later to morph, with the inclusion of Mexico, into the tripartite NAFTA agreement) "committing" Canada to both America's foreign policy objectives, and the military methods it employs to achieve them.
While more extreme than his predecessors, Stephen Harper's administration has merely accelerated the process begun by Mulroney, and furthered by the Liberal party, a process that has most dramatically manifested in the deaths of at least seventy-eight Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, and the killing and maiming and imprisoning of uncounted numbers of Afghanis.
Harper recently proposed legislation in Parliament to extend the country's entanglement in Afghanistan in the form of promises made to NATO to continue past the already extended exit schedule of February 2009 through to the end of 2011. He did this with the complicity of the federal Liberals, whose support his minority government had to have.
The fact the majority of Canadians opposed Canada's involvement in what was ostensibly America's revenge for the 9/11 attacks, (based on the untried assumption Osama bin Laden planned and orchestrated the storied operation from his cave hideout in Afghanistan) before the launch of 'Operation Enduring Freedom' carried no freight with Jean Chretien's administration, just as majority opposition to the country's continued involvement means nothing to the current Harper regime. Canadians will continue to follow U.S. diktats in Afghanistan, and both Canadians and Afghanis will continue to pay the price for Ottawa's acquiescence.
The surrender of sovereign foreign policy is not limited to Afghanistan: Canada under Harper was first to express support for Israel's embargo against the rightfully elected Hamas government in Palestine, and uttered nary a word of protest against Israel's brutal and illegal bombing campaign over Lebanon in 2006. This support came even as one of the last Canadian peacekeepers attached to the United Nations was deliberately murdered, (with three colleagues) by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) while at his U.N. observation post in southern Lebanon.
Harper too had nothing to say about a Canadian family of seven murdered by a missile as they attempted to flee the Lebanon blitzkrieg in their car. On that occassion, Harper's team thought it more pertinent to question why the Lebanese-Canadians were visiting what was about to become a warzone, rather than demanding the IDF cease its killing spree, at least until the thousands of Canadians known to be in harm's way had a chance to evacuate.
If the official Canadian silence on Israel's serial war crimes in Palestine, crimes that translate as a measured, systematic genocide, were not dutiful enough for America and her racist client/colony in the Middle East, Stephen Harper's Conservatives too take pride of place, being among America's first and most eager accomplices in its self-proclaimed War on Terror, an essentially open-ended declaration of war on any and all standing between America and her perceived "vital interests."
The Canada/U.S. cooperation under arms is an arrangement about to get cosier in Afghanistan, where Canada's demand for a thousand more soldiers is being answered in part by France, which is expected to send as many as 700 more soldiers to relieve American forces operating in the east, enabling then a redeployment of those American soldiers to enjoin the battle at the heart of the resistance to the foreign occupation in southern Afghanistan, beside Canadian Forces.
Harper has proven the perfect pupil for neo-con Washington so far, but a breaking story, predictably suffixed in the press, 'NAFTA-gate' highlights his first failure in his masters' eyes.
In the hours before the much vaunted Clinton-Obama primaries in Ohio and Texas earlier this week, a whisp of scandal wafted south of the forty-ninth. Apparently the war of words between the candidates, each claiming to audiences in delegate-rich, rust-belt Ohio to hate the NAFTA agreement more than the other, is nothing but a con.
Agents for both camps had tipped nervous Canadian officials, telling them the NAFTA rhetoric was just that, and reassuring the deal was in safe hands.
Curiously, it was only the second revelation of Democrat duplicity, that of 'front-runner' Obama, that hit the airwaves. Now, Harper is being pilloried in the U.S. media, dragging down with him the reputation of the Prime Minister's office, and as Toronto Star columnist, Chantal Hebert pointed out on tonight's C.B.C. television broadcast of 'The National,' the administration's loose lips could also sink Canada's foreign services.
Hebert wonders if the Obama-embarrassing revelations would raise doubts in the minds of others who might otherwise confide in Canadian agents, trusting their information would not lead the next evening newscast, either by political design or through incompetence. This she argues could make their efforts extremely difficult and disadvantage the country.
It would be ironic if Stephen Harper, accomplished Canadian boot-lick, found himself on the wrong side of history; caught wrong-footed as the new political reality of an Obama presidency dawns.
But perhaps Hillary would smile upon her unwitting servant, who already granted one great service in a tight race needing winning. A second President Clinton would also continue Canada's newly understood role at America's side, as enacted by Harper, no doubt extending "The Mission" in Afghanistan still further, and assimilating the rest of Canada's military, law enforcement, and political infrastructure.
It will doubtless make for an awkward moment for Stephen Harper, should President Barak Obama come to call. That is assuming Harper has a year left in his rule.
The Chuck Cadman affair is not going away. In that lurid case, Harper emissaries offer death bed conversion to the terminally ill independent MP Cadman in exchange for a vote in the House that could bring down the erstwhile Liberals of Paul Martin.
The operatives are said to have offered an insurance policy arrangement allegedly worth up to a million dollars for Cadman's widow, (herself now the official candidate for Harper's conservatives in her late husband's riding).
Though a recording of Stephen Harper admitting he knew beforehand of the plan to make the offer to Cadman, an offer the Liberals insist is a bribe, has aired nationwide. Harper does not admit to either authoring, or authorizing the plan. He does however admit to knowing about, and doing nothing to stop the plan - an illegal plan, if the Liberals are proved correct.
That makes Mr. Harper guilty of conspiracy to bribe a public official.
Considering the seriousness of the charge, and the dogged grip with which the opposition has taken up the allegation, (Liberal heavy, former hockey star, Ken Dryden going so far as repeating his charge against Harper for the cameras word for word outside House of Commons' slander protections) the Cadman affair could well bring on the election Harper has been spoiling for.
Should Harper and his Republican-like Tories survive the year, or be replaced by the equally servile Liberal party, Canada in 2009 will resemble nothing more than it does today: A rump-nation, pulled along by a shortening leash, made to devote its blood and treasure in the service of a tyrannical master; a nation made to savage the rights and freedoms at home it purportedly fights wars to instill abroad.
This is not the Canada I remember.
This is not the Canada any Canadian can remember.
Brain-Dead Press
A Brain-Dead Press
by Scott Horton
PUBLISHED March 7, 2008
Back in the sixties, when the citizens of Alabama wanted to get a fair report on the progress of the Civil Rights movement in their state, they had to turn to the national media, and especially the network news, to get it. The local print and broadcast media would either grossly distort what was going on, or, more likely, they would simply report nothing.
In a sense those days are back. There are a handful of independent papers in the state, but the three Advance newspapers published in the state’s major urban areas, operate to the historical tradition of their most shameful moment. The big offenders, as I have chronicled repeatedly, are the Birmingham News and the Mobile Press-Register. If a special prosecutor is appointed to examine the gross irregularities surrounding the Siegelman case—and calls for that step mount with each passing day—then the inexplicably cozy relationship between the two papers in Birmingham and Mobile and the politically directed prosecutors who pushed the case against Siegelman should be right near the top of the matters investigated. It reflects a press that masquerades as independent and objective while it takes up a partisan sword in a particularly vicious style, slashing away at the roots of civil society.
The third paper, the Huntsville Times is regularily held up as something more akin to a newspaper, standing on legs of its own. It’s certainly not as bad as the other two. But the best that can be said is that this paper is slumbering through one of the more important crises in the state’s history, with an attitude of self-satisfied and arrogant indifference. Just take a look at this editorial published yesterday morning. It’s an amazing demonstration of intellectual torpor.
The saga of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman continues. So does Siegelman’s incarceration in a federal prison. If nothing else, the lingering controversy over Siegelman’s trial, conviction and sentence has at least brought public interest to the kind of federal criminal procedures that rarely stir much passion.
On Tuesday, Michael Copps, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, asked for an investigation into the TV broadcast blackout that kept Huntsville viewers from watching most of a CBS “60 Minutes” report on Siegelman Feb. 24. The local CBS affiliate, WHNT-TV, Channel 19, says the problem was technical and had nothing to do with the content.
Skeptics smell a political motive, but if Channel 19 were trying to suppress the report, which seems unlikely, it brought more attention to it than would have occurred otherwise. WHNT broadcast the entire Siegelman segment later that night and again on its 6 p.m. newscast the next day and posted the video on its Web site. That’s a lot of Don.
The timing of the technical problem was unfortunate, but there is no evidence to support the claims by some viewers that the blackout was intentional.
The attitude of visceral contempt towards Siegelman that is typical of the Republican-leaning Alabama media is clear right from the outset. Whereas papers and broadcasters across the country focused on the blackout at WHNT and discussed it—led by the New York Times which made it the subject of two articles and an editorial—the Huntsville Times initially dealt with this national headline grabber on its home turf by reproducing the official statement issued by the station’s management, full stop. Now that’s what we call aggressive journalism! The editorial claims “there is no evidence to support the claims… that the blackout was intentional.” But the initial justification given by WHNT for the blackout was false, and was not corrected until they were caught in the misrepresentation. And the editorial writer does not find it even remotely curious that only one segment of the 60 Minutes program was blocked—the Siegelman segment? Now my, that’s quite a coincidence. It’s just the sort of coincidence that was commonplace back in the Civil Rights era. And my recollection is that back in those days, the Times had just the same take: it’s just a coincidence.
Indeed, the appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals should have been filed before now, but it wasn’t because the original court reporter died after the trial, and preparing the transcript, needed for the appeal, has taken longer than normal.
Same pattern here: whatever lame excuse offered up is accepted as plenty good for this editorial writer. Why take a second to examine the assertions? Might he, for instance, confer with a court reporting service about the average time it would take a professional court reporter to transcribe the record? He would have heard, as I did, “two to three weeks.” So why did this take over 14 months? Of course, it’s impolite to ask such questions. It’s also impolite to note who had responsibility for having the record completed on time. His name is Judge Mark Fuller.
Again, events have proven unfortunate for Siegelman, but no one has suggested the court reporter died on purpose to keep Siegelman behind bars.
Indeed, no one does suggest that the court reporter’s death was to “keep Siegelman behind bars.” What is not just suggested, but is completely clear, is that this is a pathetic excuse cited for just that purpose. The deceased court reporter is not responsible for the delay. The judge’s failure to have the record prepared is. The judge cynically concluded that mention of the misfortune that befell his court reporter would end all queries. And if the world consisted only of the terminally incurious sorts who write pieces like this one, it would.
Yes, it may have been unusual for a defendant of Siegelman’s stature to be refused bond during his appeal, but it is not entirely unheard of. On Monday, international media mogul Conrad Black began serving time in Florida after being convicted of fraud. Like Siegelman, Black will be in federal prison while his appeal is pending. Like Siegelman, he was also convicted of obstruction of justice, a charge which may have resulted in both men receiving similar treatment. But Black was at least given a few days before reporting to prison. Siegelman was whisked from the courtroom after surrendering his belt and shoes. Black is a member of Great Britain’s House of Lords and holds the title of Lord Black of Crossharbour. Maybe that made a difference.
So the editorial writer actually believes that a foreign aristocrat is entitled to different–superior–legal protection from a citizen who served in public office for over a decade and has deep connections to the community. Of course the legal standard is the opposite. A person without roots in the community, for instance, a foreign resident, is considered a flight-risk and is less likely to receive freedom pending appeal. Hard to believe this gets written, and even more amazing that a newspaper publishes it. Ahh, but this is written by one of the editors.
As for Siegelman, it’s hard to avoid two observations. One is that federal prosecutors pursued the case with an unusual degree of fervor. But this also seems true: Don Siegelman did what he was accused of doing, the illegality of which may remain in question but the ethical standards of which leave a lot to be desired.
So here’s the crux of it. The writer also couldn’t be bothered to actually watch 60 Minutes, or even read a summary of what it reported. He’s completely satisfied with his own thoroughly misinformed prejudices (that’s what editorial writers are paid for, isn’t it?) But that won’t stop him from writing about what he hasn’t seen.
Had he watched the segment, he would have seen that the 60 Minutes investigators, and 52 former state attorneys general, found that there was no credible evidence that Siegelman “did what he was accused of doing.” Or more particularly, the evidence offered was false, and was or should have been known to the prosecutors to be false. The editorial writer also has never taken note of the decision issued by a federal judge in Birmingham, who reviewed sworn allegations respecting the misconduct of the Siegelman prosecutors and found them “extremely troubling,” and said that they raised a “prima facie case of impermissible conduct” by the prosecution. That actually had to do with precisely the same false evidence that was the focus of the 60 Minutes segment. Of course, that’s just another coincidence. Aren’t they multiplying? But then of course, I forget, this is an Advance newspaper, and none of the Advance newspapers ever reported on that published opinion. They treated it the way they treated demonstrations in the mid-sixties: they just didn’t happen.
Moreover, the prosecutors suppressed exculpatory evidence which would have rendered the testimony of their principal witness unbelievable. All of this does indeed raise very profound questions about ethical standards—of the prosecutors, and the lapdog press.
Americans deserve less partisanship in their federal court system and Justice Department, and Alabamians deserve more upright conduct from their elected officials.
And even more urgently, Alabamians need genuine newspapers. None of the three Alabama markets served by Advance has one.
by Scott Horton
PUBLISHED March 7, 2008
Back in the sixties, when the citizens of Alabama wanted to get a fair report on the progress of the Civil Rights movement in their state, they had to turn to the national media, and especially the network news, to get it. The local print and broadcast media would either grossly distort what was going on, or, more likely, they would simply report nothing.
In a sense those days are back. There are a handful of independent papers in the state, but the three Advance newspapers published in the state’s major urban areas, operate to the historical tradition of their most shameful moment. The big offenders, as I have chronicled repeatedly, are the Birmingham News and the Mobile Press-Register. If a special prosecutor is appointed to examine the gross irregularities surrounding the Siegelman case—and calls for that step mount with each passing day—then the inexplicably cozy relationship between the two papers in Birmingham and Mobile and the politically directed prosecutors who pushed the case against Siegelman should be right near the top of the matters investigated. It reflects a press that masquerades as independent and objective while it takes up a partisan sword in a particularly vicious style, slashing away at the roots of civil society.
The third paper, the Huntsville Times is regularily held up as something more akin to a newspaper, standing on legs of its own. It’s certainly not as bad as the other two. But the best that can be said is that this paper is slumbering through one of the more important crises in the state’s history, with an attitude of self-satisfied and arrogant indifference. Just take a look at this editorial published yesterday morning. It’s an amazing demonstration of intellectual torpor.
The saga of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman continues. So does Siegelman’s incarceration in a federal prison. If nothing else, the lingering controversy over Siegelman’s trial, conviction and sentence has at least brought public interest to the kind of federal criminal procedures that rarely stir much passion.
On Tuesday, Michael Copps, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, asked for an investigation into the TV broadcast blackout that kept Huntsville viewers from watching most of a CBS “60 Minutes” report on Siegelman Feb. 24. The local CBS affiliate, WHNT-TV, Channel 19, says the problem was technical and had nothing to do with the content.
Skeptics smell a political motive, but if Channel 19 were trying to suppress the report, which seems unlikely, it brought more attention to it than would have occurred otherwise. WHNT broadcast the entire Siegelman segment later that night and again on its 6 p.m. newscast the next day and posted the video on its Web site. That’s a lot of Don.
The timing of the technical problem was unfortunate, but there is no evidence to support the claims by some viewers that the blackout was intentional.
The attitude of visceral contempt towards Siegelman that is typical of the Republican-leaning Alabama media is clear right from the outset. Whereas papers and broadcasters across the country focused on the blackout at WHNT and discussed it—led by the New York Times which made it the subject of two articles and an editorial—the Huntsville Times initially dealt with this national headline grabber on its home turf by reproducing the official statement issued by the station’s management, full stop. Now that’s what we call aggressive journalism! The editorial claims “there is no evidence to support the claims… that the blackout was intentional.” But the initial justification given by WHNT for the blackout was false, and was not corrected until they were caught in the misrepresentation. And the editorial writer does not find it even remotely curious that only one segment of the 60 Minutes program was blocked—the Siegelman segment? Now my, that’s quite a coincidence. It’s just the sort of coincidence that was commonplace back in the Civil Rights era. And my recollection is that back in those days, the Times had just the same take: it’s just a coincidence.
Indeed, the appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals should have been filed before now, but it wasn’t because the original court reporter died after the trial, and preparing the transcript, needed for the appeal, has taken longer than normal.
Same pattern here: whatever lame excuse offered up is accepted as plenty good for this editorial writer. Why take a second to examine the assertions? Might he, for instance, confer with a court reporting service about the average time it would take a professional court reporter to transcribe the record? He would have heard, as I did, “two to three weeks.” So why did this take over 14 months? Of course, it’s impolite to ask such questions. It’s also impolite to note who had responsibility for having the record completed on time. His name is Judge Mark Fuller.
Again, events have proven unfortunate for Siegelman, but no one has suggested the court reporter died on purpose to keep Siegelman behind bars.
Indeed, no one does suggest that the court reporter’s death was to “keep Siegelman behind bars.” What is not just suggested, but is completely clear, is that this is a pathetic excuse cited for just that purpose. The deceased court reporter is not responsible for the delay. The judge’s failure to have the record prepared is. The judge cynically concluded that mention of the misfortune that befell his court reporter would end all queries. And if the world consisted only of the terminally incurious sorts who write pieces like this one, it would.
Yes, it may have been unusual for a defendant of Siegelman’s stature to be refused bond during his appeal, but it is not entirely unheard of. On Monday, international media mogul Conrad Black began serving time in Florida after being convicted of fraud. Like Siegelman, Black will be in federal prison while his appeal is pending. Like Siegelman, he was also convicted of obstruction of justice, a charge which may have resulted in both men receiving similar treatment. But Black was at least given a few days before reporting to prison. Siegelman was whisked from the courtroom after surrendering his belt and shoes. Black is a member of Great Britain’s House of Lords and holds the title of Lord Black of Crossharbour. Maybe that made a difference.
So the editorial writer actually believes that a foreign aristocrat is entitled to different–superior–legal protection from a citizen who served in public office for over a decade and has deep connections to the community. Of course the legal standard is the opposite. A person without roots in the community, for instance, a foreign resident, is considered a flight-risk and is less likely to receive freedom pending appeal. Hard to believe this gets written, and even more amazing that a newspaper publishes it. Ahh, but this is written by one of the editors.
As for Siegelman, it’s hard to avoid two observations. One is that federal prosecutors pursued the case with an unusual degree of fervor. But this also seems true: Don Siegelman did what he was accused of doing, the illegality of which may remain in question but the ethical standards of which leave a lot to be desired.
So here’s the crux of it. The writer also couldn’t be bothered to actually watch 60 Minutes, or even read a summary of what it reported. He’s completely satisfied with his own thoroughly misinformed prejudices (that’s what editorial writers are paid for, isn’t it?) But that won’t stop him from writing about what he hasn’t seen.
Had he watched the segment, he would have seen that the 60 Minutes investigators, and 52 former state attorneys general, found that there was no credible evidence that Siegelman “did what he was accused of doing.” Or more particularly, the evidence offered was false, and was or should have been known to the prosecutors to be false. The editorial writer also has never taken note of the decision issued by a federal judge in Birmingham, who reviewed sworn allegations respecting the misconduct of the Siegelman prosecutors and found them “extremely troubling,” and said that they raised a “prima facie case of impermissible conduct” by the prosecution. That actually had to do with precisely the same false evidence that was the focus of the 60 Minutes segment. Of course, that’s just another coincidence. Aren’t they multiplying? But then of course, I forget, this is an Advance newspaper, and none of the Advance newspapers ever reported on that published opinion. They treated it the way they treated demonstrations in the mid-sixties: they just didn’t happen.
Moreover, the prosecutors suppressed exculpatory evidence which would have rendered the testimony of their principal witness unbelievable. All of this does indeed raise very profound questions about ethical standards—of the prosecutors, and the lapdog press.
Americans deserve less partisanship in their federal court system and Justice Department, and Alabamians deserve more upright conduct from their elected officials.
And even more urgently, Alabamians need genuine newspapers. None of the three Alabama markets served by Advance has one.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Behind Kosovo's Independence
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
By Jeremy Scahill
25/02/08 "AlterNet" -- - News Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as international law.
But, predictably, it is not being invoked to address the US prison camps at Guantanamo, the wide use of torture, the invasion and occupation of sovereign countries, the extraordinary rendition program. No, it is being thrown out forcefully as a condemnation of the Serbian government in the wake of Thursday's attack by protesters on the US embassy in Belgrade following the Bush administration's swift recognition of the declaration of independence by the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Some 1,000 protesters broke away from a largely non-violent mass demonstration in downtown Belgrade and targeted the embassy. Some protesters actually made it into the compound, setting a fire and tearing down the American flag.
"I'm outraged by the mob attack against the U.S. embassy in Belgrade," fumed Zalmay Khalilzad,the US Ambassador to the United Nations. "The embassy is sovereign US territory. The government of Serbia has a responsibility under international law to protect diplomatic facilities, particularly embassies." His comments were echoed by a virtual who's who of the Bill Clinton administration. People like Jamie Rubin, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's deputy, one of the main architects of US policy toward Serbia. "It is sovereign territory of the United States under international law," Rubin declared. "For Serbia to allow these protesters to break windows, break into the American Embassy, is a pretty dramatic sign." Hillary Clinton, whose husband orchestrated and ran the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, said, "I would be moving very aggressively to hold the Serbian government responsible with their security forces to protect our embassy. Under international law they should be doing that."
There are two major issues here. One is the situation in Kosovo itself (which we'll get to in a moment), but the other is the attack on the US embassy. Yes, the Serbian government had an obligation to prevent the embassy from being torched and ransacked. If there was complicity by the Serbian police or authorities in allowing it to be attacked, that is a serious issue. But the US has little moral authority not just in invoking international law (which it only does when it benefits Washington's agenda) but in invoking international law when speaking about attacks on embassies in Belgrade.
Perhaps the greatest crime against any embassy in the history of Yugoslavia was committed not by evil Serb protesters, but by the United States military.
On May 7, 1999, at the height of the 78 day US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens, two of them journalists, and wounding 20 others. The Clinton administration later said that the bombing was the result of faulty maps provided by the CIA (Sound familiar?). Beijing rejected that explanation and alleged it was deliberate. Eventually, under strong pressure from China, the US apologized and paid $28 million in compensation to the victims' families. If the US was serious about international law and the protection of embassies, those responsible for that bombing would have been tried at the Hague along with other alleged war criminals. But "war criminal" is a designation for the losers of US-fueled wars, not bombers sent by Washington to drop humanitarian munitions on "sovereign territory."
Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of the US condemnations of Serbia and the sudden admission that international law exists, the Kosovo story is an important one in the context of the current election campaign in the United States. Perhaps more than any other international conflict, Yugoslavia was the defining foreign policy of President Bill Clinton's time in power. Under his rule, the nation of Yugoslavia was destroyed, dismantled and chopped into ethnically pure para-states. President Bush's immediate recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation was the icing on the cake of destruction of Yugoslavia and one which was enthusiastically embraced by Hillary Clinton. "I've supported the independence of Kosovo because I think it is imperative that in the heart of Europe we continue to promote independence and democracy," Clinton said at the recent Democratic debate in Austin, Texas.
A few days before the attack on the US embassy in Belgrade, Clinton released a Molotov cocktail statement praising the declaration of independence. In it, she referred to Kosovo by the Albanian "Kosova" and said independence "will allow the people of Kosova to finally live in their own democratic state. It will allow Kosova and Serbia to finally put a difficult chapter in their history behind them and to move forward." She added, "I want to underscore the need to avoid any violence or provocations in the days and weeks ahead." As seasoned observers of Serbian politics know, there were few things the US could have done to add fuel to the rage in Serbia over the declaration of independence -- "provocations" if you will -- than to have a political leader named Clinton issue a statement praising independence and using the Albanian name for Kosovo.
On the campaign trail, the Clinton camp has held up Kosovo as a successful model for how to conduct US foreign policy and Clinton criticized Bush for taking "so long for us to reach this historic juncture."
Perhaps a little of that history is in order. If Kosovo is her idea of solid US foreign policy, it speaks volumes to what kind of president she would be. The reality is that there are striking similarities between the Clinton approach to Kosovo and the Bush approach to Iraq.
On March 24, 1999, President Bill Clinton began an 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Like Bush with Iraq, Clinton had no UN mandate (he used NATO) and his so-called "diplomacy" to avert the possibility of bombing leading up to the attacks was insincere and a set-up from the jump. Just like Bush with Iraq.
A month before the bombing began, the Clinton administration issued an ultimatum to President Slobodan Milosevic, which he had to either accept unconditionally or face bombing. Known as the Rambouillet accord, it was a document that no sovereign country would have accepted. It contained a provision that would have guaranteed US and NATO forces "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout" all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. It also sought to immunize those occupation forces "from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia]," as well as grant the occupiers "the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment." Additionally, Milosevic was told he would have to "grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO." Similar to Bush's Iraq plan years later, Rambouillet mandated that the economy of Kosovo "shall function in accordance with free market principles."
What Milosevic was actually asked to sign is never discussed. That it would have effectively meant the end of the sovereignty of the nation was a non-story. The dominant narrative for the past nine years, repeated this week by William Cohen, Clinton's defense secretary at the time of the bombing, is this: "We tried to achieve a peaceful resolution of what was taking place in Kosovo. And Slobodan Milosevic refused." Refused peace? More like he unwisely refused one of Don Corleone's famous offers. Washington knew he would reject it, but had to give the appearance of diplomacy for international "legitimacy."
So the humanitarian bombs rained down on Serbia. Among the missions: the bombing of the studios of Radio Television Serbia where an airstrike killed 16 media workers; the cluster bombing of a Nis marketplace, shredding human beings into meat; the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train; the use of depleted uranium munitions; and the targeting of petrochemical plants, causing toxic chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. Also, the bombing of Albanian refugees, ostensibly the people being protected by the U.S.
Similar to Bush's allegations about Iraqi WMDs in the lead up to the US invasion, in 1999 Clinton administration officials also delivered stunning allegations about the level of brutality present in Kosovo as part of the propaganda campaign. "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing ....They may have been murdered," Cohen said five weeks into the bombing. He said that up to 4,600 Kosovo men had been executed, adding, "I suspect it's far higher than that." Those numbers were flat out false. Eventually the estimates were scaled back dramatically, as Justin Raimondo pointed out recently in his column on Antiwar.com, from 100,000 to 50,000 to 10,000 and "at that point the War Party stopped talking numbers altogether and just celebrated the glorious victory of 'humanitarian intervention.'" As it turned out "there was no 'genocide' -- the International Tribunal itself reported that just over 2,000 bodies were recovered from postwar Kosovo, including Serbs, Roma, and Kosovars, all victims of the vicious civil war in which we intervened on the side of the latter. The whole fantastic story of another 'holocaust' in the middle of Europe was a fraud," according to Raimondo.
Following the NATO invasion of Kosovo in June of 1999, the US and its allies stood by as the Albanian mafia and gangs of criminals and paramilitaries spread out across the province and systematically cleansed Kosovo of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Romas and other ethnic minorities. They burned down houses, businesses and churches and implemented a shocking campaign to forcibly expel non-Albanians from the province. Meanwhile, the US worked closely with the Kosovo Liberation Army and backed the rise of war criminals to the highest levels of power in Kosovo. Today, Kosovo has become a hub for human trafficking, organized crime and narcosmuggling. In short, it is a mafia state. Is this the "democracy" Hillary Clinton speaks of "promoting" in "the heart" of Europe?
It didn't take long for the US to begin construction of a massive US military base, Camp Bondsteel, which conveniently is located in an area of tremendous geopolitical interest to Washington. (Among its most bizarre facilities, Bondsteel now offers classes at the Laura Bush education center, as well as massages from Thai women and all the multinational junk food you could (n)ever wish for). In November 2005, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described Bondsteel as a "smaller version of Guantanamo." Oh, and Bondsteel was constructed by former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.
Herein lies an interesting point. The Serbian government is largely oriented toward Europe, not the US. The country's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is a conservative isolationist who is not enthusiastic about a US military base on Serbian soil any more than Cuba is about Gitmo. He charged that, in recognizing Kosovo, Washington was "ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardize international order for the sake of its own military interests." To the would-be independent Kosovo government, however, Bondsteel is no problem.
Russia and a few other nations are fighting the recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, but that is unlikely to succeed. Still, this action will undoubtedly reverberate for years to come. "We have in Serbia a situation in which the U.S. has forced an action --the proclamation of independence by the Kosovo Albanians -- that is in clear violation of the most fundamental principles of international law after World War II," argues Robert Hayden, Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. "Borders cannot be changed by force and without consent -- that principle was actually the main stated reason for the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq."
And this brings us full circle. International law matters only when it is convenient for the US. So too are the cries for "humanitarian interventions." And despite the extremism of the Bush administration, this is hardly a uniquely Republican phenomenon. In a just world, there would be a humanitarian intervention against the US occupation of Iraq -- with its indiscriminate killings of civilians, torture chambers and widespread human rights violations. There certainly would have been such an intervention during the bipartisan slaughter, through bombs and sanctions, of Iraq's people over the past 18 years. But that's what you get when the cops and judges and prosecutors are the criminals. US policy has always operated on a worthy victim, unworthy victim system that is almost never primarily about saving the victims. Humanitarianism is the publicly offered justification for the action, seldom, if ever, the primary motivation. With Iraq, Bush wheeled out the humanitarian justification for the occupation--Saddam's brutality -- only after the WMD lies were thoroughly debunked. In Yugoslavia, Clinton used it right out of the gates. In both cases, it rang insincere.
If you are a victim who happens to share a common geography with US interests, international law is on your side as long as it is convenient. If not, well, tough. The UN is just a debate club anyway. Just ask the tens of thousands of Kurds who were slaughtered by Turkey with weapons sold to them by the Clinton administration during the 1990s. Or the Palestinians who live under the brutality of Israel's occupation. In some cases, the "victims" allegedly being protected by the US actually get bombed themselves, as was the case with President Clinton's "humanitarian" bombings of the north and south of Iraq once every three days in the late 1990s.
In the bigger picture, the Bush administration's quick recognition of an independent Kosovo has given us a powerful reminder of a fact that is too often overlooked these days: empire is bipartisan, as are the tactics and rhetoric and bombs used to defend and expand it.
Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
By Jeremy Scahill
25/02/08 "AlterNet" -- - News Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as international law.
But, predictably, it is not being invoked to address the US prison camps at Guantanamo, the wide use of torture, the invasion and occupation of sovereign countries, the extraordinary rendition program. No, it is being thrown out forcefully as a condemnation of the Serbian government in the wake of Thursday's attack by protesters on the US embassy in Belgrade following the Bush administration's swift recognition of the declaration of independence by the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Some 1,000 protesters broke away from a largely non-violent mass demonstration in downtown Belgrade and targeted the embassy. Some protesters actually made it into the compound, setting a fire and tearing down the American flag.
"I'm outraged by the mob attack against the U.S. embassy in Belgrade," fumed Zalmay Khalilzad,the US Ambassador to the United Nations. "The embassy is sovereign US territory. The government of Serbia has a responsibility under international law to protect diplomatic facilities, particularly embassies." His comments were echoed by a virtual who's who of the Bill Clinton administration. People like Jamie Rubin, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's deputy, one of the main architects of US policy toward Serbia. "It is sovereign territory of the United States under international law," Rubin declared. "For Serbia to allow these protesters to break windows, break into the American Embassy, is a pretty dramatic sign." Hillary Clinton, whose husband orchestrated and ran the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, said, "I would be moving very aggressively to hold the Serbian government responsible with their security forces to protect our embassy. Under international law they should be doing that."
There are two major issues here. One is the situation in Kosovo itself (which we'll get to in a moment), but the other is the attack on the US embassy. Yes, the Serbian government had an obligation to prevent the embassy from being torched and ransacked. If there was complicity by the Serbian police or authorities in allowing it to be attacked, that is a serious issue. But the US has little moral authority not just in invoking international law (which it only does when it benefits Washington's agenda) but in invoking international law when speaking about attacks on embassies in Belgrade.
Perhaps the greatest crime against any embassy in the history of Yugoslavia was committed not by evil Serb protesters, but by the United States military.
On May 7, 1999, at the height of the 78 day US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens, two of them journalists, and wounding 20 others. The Clinton administration later said that the bombing was the result of faulty maps provided by the CIA (Sound familiar?). Beijing rejected that explanation and alleged it was deliberate. Eventually, under strong pressure from China, the US apologized and paid $28 million in compensation to the victims' families. If the US was serious about international law and the protection of embassies, those responsible for that bombing would have been tried at the Hague along with other alleged war criminals. But "war criminal" is a designation for the losers of US-fueled wars, not bombers sent by Washington to drop humanitarian munitions on "sovereign territory."
Beyond the obvious hypocrisy of the US condemnations of Serbia and the sudden admission that international law exists, the Kosovo story is an important one in the context of the current election campaign in the United States. Perhaps more than any other international conflict, Yugoslavia was the defining foreign policy of President Bill Clinton's time in power. Under his rule, the nation of Yugoslavia was destroyed, dismantled and chopped into ethnically pure para-states. President Bush's immediate recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation was the icing on the cake of destruction of Yugoslavia and one which was enthusiastically embraced by Hillary Clinton. "I've supported the independence of Kosovo because I think it is imperative that in the heart of Europe we continue to promote independence and democracy," Clinton said at the recent Democratic debate in Austin, Texas.
A few days before the attack on the US embassy in Belgrade, Clinton released a Molotov cocktail statement praising the declaration of independence. In it, she referred to Kosovo by the Albanian "Kosova" and said independence "will allow the people of Kosova to finally live in their own democratic state. It will allow Kosova and Serbia to finally put a difficult chapter in their history behind them and to move forward." She added, "I want to underscore the need to avoid any violence or provocations in the days and weeks ahead." As seasoned observers of Serbian politics know, there were few things the US could have done to add fuel to the rage in Serbia over the declaration of independence -- "provocations" if you will -- than to have a political leader named Clinton issue a statement praising independence and using the Albanian name for Kosovo.
On the campaign trail, the Clinton camp has held up Kosovo as a successful model for how to conduct US foreign policy and Clinton criticized Bush for taking "so long for us to reach this historic juncture."
Perhaps a little of that history is in order. If Kosovo is her idea of solid US foreign policy, it speaks volumes to what kind of president she would be. The reality is that there are striking similarities between the Clinton approach to Kosovo and the Bush approach to Iraq.
On March 24, 1999, President Bill Clinton began an 11-week bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Like Bush with Iraq, Clinton had no UN mandate (he used NATO) and his so-called "diplomacy" to avert the possibility of bombing leading up to the attacks was insincere and a set-up from the jump. Just like Bush with Iraq.
A month before the bombing began, the Clinton administration issued an ultimatum to President Slobodan Milosevic, which he had to either accept unconditionally or face bombing. Known as the Rambouillet accord, it was a document that no sovereign country would have accepted. It contained a provision that would have guaranteed US and NATO forces "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout" all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. It also sought to immunize those occupation forces "from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia]," as well as grant the occupiers "the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment." Additionally, Milosevic was told he would have to "grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services, needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO." Similar to Bush's Iraq plan years later, Rambouillet mandated that the economy of Kosovo "shall function in accordance with free market principles."
What Milosevic was actually asked to sign is never discussed. That it would have effectively meant the end of the sovereignty of the nation was a non-story. The dominant narrative for the past nine years, repeated this week by William Cohen, Clinton's defense secretary at the time of the bombing, is this: "We tried to achieve a peaceful resolution of what was taking place in Kosovo. And Slobodan Milosevic refused." Refused peace? More like he unwisely refused one of Don Corleone's famous offers. Washington knew he would reject it, but had to give the appearance of diplomacy for international "legitimacy."
So the humanitarian bombs rained down on Serbia. Among the missions: the bombing of the studios of Radio Television Serbia where an airstrike killed 16 media workers; the cluster bombing of a Nis marketplace, shredding human beings into meat; the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train; the use of depleted uranium munitions; and the targeting of petrochemical plants, causing toxic chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. Also, the bombing of Albanian refugees, ostensibly the people being protected by the U.S.
Similar to Bush's allegations about Iraqi WMDs in the lead up to the US invasion, in 1999 Clinton administration officials also delivered stunning allegations about the level of brutality present in Kosovo as part of the propaganda campaign. "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing ....They may have been murdered," Cohen said five weeks into the bombing. He said that up to 4,600 Kosovo men had been executed, adding, "I suspect it's far higher than that." Those numbers were flat out false. Eventually the estimates were scaled back dramatically, as Justin Raimondo pointed out recently in his column on Antiwar.com, from 100,000 to 50,000 to 10,000 and "at that point the War Party stopped talking numbers altogether and just celebrated the glorious victory of 'humanitarian intervention.'" As it turned out "there was no 'genocide' -- the International Tribunal itself reported that just over 2,000 bodies were recovered from postwar Kosovo, including Serbs, Roma, and Kosovars, all victims of the vicious civil war in which we intervened on the side of the latter. The whole fantastic story of another 'holocaust' in the middle of Europe was a fraud," according to Raimondo.
Following the NATO invasion of Kosovo in June of 1999, the US and its allies stood by as the Albanian mafia and gangs of criminals and paramilitaries spread out across the province and systematically cleansed Kosovo of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Romas and other ethnic minorities. They burned down houses, businesses and churches and implemented a shocking campaign to forcibly expel non-Albanians from the province. Meanwhile, the US worked closely with the Kosovo Liberation Army and backed the rise of war criminals to the highest levels of power in Kosovo. Today, Kosovo has become a hub for human trafficking, organized crime and narcosmuggling. In short, it is a mafia state. Is this the "democracy" Hillary Clinton speaks of "promoting" in "the heart" of Europe?
It didn't take long for the US to begin construction of a massive US military base, Camp Bondsteel, which conveniently is located in an area of tremendous geopolitical interest to Washington. (Among its most bizarre facilities, Bondsteel now offers classes at the Laura Bush education center, as well as massages from Thai women and all the multinational junk food you could (n)ever wish for). In November 2005, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described Bondsteel as a "smaller version of Guantanamo." Oh, and Bondsteel was constructed by former Halliburton subsidiary KBR.
Herein lies an interesting point. The Serbian government is largely oriented toward Europe, not the US. The country's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, is a conservative isolationist who is not enthusiastic about a US military base on Serbian soil any more than Cuba is about Gitmo. He charged that, in recognizing Kosovo, Washington was "ready to unscrupulously and violently jeopardize international order for the sake of its own military interests." To the would-be independent Kosovo government, however, Bondsteel is no problem.
Russia and a few other nations are fighting the recognition of Kosovo as an independent nation, but that is unlikely to succeed. Still, this action will undoubtedly reverberate for years to come. "We have in Serbia a situation in which the U.S. has forced an action --the proclamation of independence by the Kosovo Albanians -- that is in clear violation of the most fundamental principles of international law after World War II," argues Robert Hayden, Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. "Borders cannot be changed by force and without consent -- that principle was actually the main stated reason for the 1991 U.S. attack on Iraq."
And this brings us full circle. International law matters only when it is convenient for the US. So too are the cries for "humanitarian interventions." And despite the extremism of the Bush administration, this is hardly a uniquely Republican phenomenon. In a just world, there would be a humanitarian intervention against the US occupation of Iraq -- with its indiscriminate killings of civilians, torture chambers and widespread human rights violations. There certainly would have been such an intervention during the bipartisan slaughter, through bombs and sanctions, of Iraq's people over the past 18 years. But that's what you get when the cops and judges and prosecutors are the criminals. US policy has always operated on a worthy victim, unworthy victim system that is almost never primarily about saving the victims. Humanitarianism is the publicly offered justification for the action, seldom, if ever, the primary motivation. With Iraq, Bush wheeled out the humanitarian justification for the occupation--Saddam's brutality -- only after the WMD lies were thoroughly debunked. In Yugoslavia, Clinton used it right out of the gates. In both cases, it rang insincere.
If you are a victim who happens to share a common geography with US interests, international law is on your side as long as it is convenient. If not, well, tough. The UN is just a debate club anyway. Just ask the tens of thousands of Kurds who were slaughtered by Turkey with weapons sold to them by the Clinton administration during the 1990s. Or the Palestinians who live under the brutality of Israel's occupation. In some cases, the "victims" allegedly being protected by the US actually get bombed themselves, as was the case with President Clinton's "humanitarian" bombings of the north and south of Iraq once every three days in the late 1990s.
In the bigger picture, the Bush administration's quick recognition of an independent Kosovo has given us a powerful reminder of a fact that is too often overlooked these days: empire is bipartisan, as are the tactics and rhetoric and bombs used to defend and expand it.
Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The General Does Not Debate
Hillier: The General Does Not Debate
by C. L. Cook
Canada's Numero Uno military man, shoot from the lip Rick Hillier mounted a pre-emptive attack on those parliamentarians with the temerity to voice doubt over the course the country has taken in Afghanistan.
In fact Hillier says those expressions are in essence aiding the "Taliban" and could be proving the impetus for the spate of suicide attacks mounted against Canadian soldiers over the last several weeks.
Hillier's logic is not exactly new; the Bush administration has used the same argument to silence debate on its disastrous Iraq project for years. The success of the American model for silencing debate is tough to argue; though the U.S. is the biggest and deadliest operator in Afghanistan yet, the collusion between the Bush administration, opposition democrats, and the corporate media has rendered the "other occupation" politically invisible, a never mentioned non-event.
And so Hillier would apparently have it in Canada too. Speaking in Ottawa today at a meeting of defence industry advocates known collectively as the Conference of Defence Associations, General Hillier offered M.P.'s his marching orders, saying;
* "We are, in the eyes of the Taliban, in a window of extreme vulnerability. The longer we go without that clarity, with the issue in doubt, the more the Taliban will target us as a perceived weak link."
If the general is to be understood, he's saying the practice of democratic debate is a hindrance to "The Mission," and Afghani fighters, witnessing what was ostensibly on offer to them in the form of a fully functioning democracy, will take comfort in our "confusion" and be emboldened to mount more attacks against Canadians.
Ergo: debate=weakness, weakness=vulnerability, vulnerability=attacks.
So, to forestall further attacks we need only cease debate and send the Parliament home for the duration. Presumably, we can leave the running of the nation's foreign policy in the capable hands of General Rick and his Southern Alliance buddies. That'll show those Taliban what's what.
And lest any legislator miss the meaning behind his not so nuanced message, Hillier stresses the motion to extend for two years Canada's war fighting role in and around Kandahar, heart of the resistance, is really an up or down vote on "supporting the troops." Hillier went on to suggest the upcoming vote is more than liberal or conservative politics, but a matter of patriotism.
New Democrat Party defence critic, Dawn Black attacked Hillier, charging his statements came close to "contempt of Parliament," saying;
* "I think that Gen. Hillier's comments today are really out of line for a Canadian military officer. It appears to be an attempt to inject some fear and some intimidation into the democratic debate here in Canada."
Adding;
* "He infers that maybe some of this recent horrible violence and suicide attacks are related to debate or discussion that has happened here in Canada . . . good grief."
This week past in Canada, the party in government and its titular opponents in the House agreed to agree: Canada's soldiers, and billions more from the treasury need be devoted to a further two year upping of "commitment" to Afghanistan, pledging to extend military action, this time until mid-2011, and promising full withdrawal from Kandahar by December of that year. The cozy arrangement comes just days ahead of scheduled "debate" on a government motion of support for the extension in Parliament.
It's a debate overdue and demanded as much by the clear majority of Canadians who never supported what both the current government and opposition has dubbed 'The Mission,' as by erstwhile "mission" supporters who fail to see the benefit to either Afghanis or Canadians following the country's six year experience so far in Afghanistan.
In fact, most Canadians see the situation in-country as a worsening one, but the "cooperation" between the two major parties has limited the scope of the debate, making it largely a sham exercise.
Majority public opinion, ignored now by the Tory government as it was by their predecessor Liberals when prime minister Jean Chretien first opened the door to Canada's military role in far off Afghanistan back in 2001, was touted as a Tory soft spot that could prove a trigger for a non-confidence vote in the House against the minority Conservatives; with both parties now determined to the same course, there is little chance Canadians will see an election fought over the on-going occupation and its attendant costs to taxpayers.
It is left now to the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, both calling for Canada's immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, to be the voice for disengangement within Parliament, while a growing constituency of Canadians harbouring anti-war sentiment search for a political home for their aspirations outside either the governing Conservative party, or the "opposition" Liberals.
Addendum
Amir Attaran, Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa, in the Feb. 21, 2008 issue of the Globe and Mail takes a look at the faithful attendees to General Hillier's pronouncements from the Conference of Defence Associations. - lex
* "Take the Conference of Defence Associations, a think tank that got $500,000 from DND last year. That money comes not with strings, but with an entire leash. A current DND policy reads that to receive money, CDA must "support activities that give evidence of contributing to Canada's national policies." Apparently, if CDA's activities were neutral and unbiased, or even-handedly supported and questioned government policy, DND would refuse to pay!
* "Attendees at CDA's annual conference, which begins today, will hear speeches by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and MP Laurie Hawn, a retired lieutenant-colonel. Curiously for an organization that calls itself "non-partisan," no opposition politicians will speak. Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier will lecture, as will NATO's military head, General Ray Henault. The agenda includes a session titled "Contemporary Security Concerns" -- a discussion on Russia and Iran."
You can find Attaran's complete article below.
by C. L. Cook
Canada's Numero Uno military man, shoot from the lip Rick Hillier mounted a pre-emptive attack on those parliamentarians with the temerity to voice doubt over the course the country has taken in Afghanistan.
In fact Hillier says those expressions are in essence aiding the "Taliban" and could be proving the impetus for the spate of suicide attacks mounted against Canadian soldiers over the last several weeks.
Hillier's logic is not exactly new; the Bush administration has used the same argument to silence debate on its disastrous Iraq project for years. The success of the American model for silencing debate is tough to argue; though the U.S. is the biggest and deadliest operator in Afghanistan yet, the collusion between the Bush administration, opposition democrats, and the corporate media has rendered the "other occupation" politically invisible, a never mentioned non-event.
And so Hillier would apparently have it in Canada too. Speaking in Ottawa today at a meeting of defence industry advocates known collectively as the Conference of Defence Associations, General Hillier offered M.P.'s his marching orders, saying;
* "We are, in the eyes of the Taliban, in a window of extreme vulnerability. The longer we go without that clarity, with the issue in doubt, the more the Taliban will target us as a perceived weak link."
If the general is to be understood, he's saying the practice of democratic debate is a hindrance to "The Mission," and Afghani fighters, witnessing what was ostensibly on offer to them in the form of a fully functioning democracy, will take comfort in our "confusion" and be emboldened to mount more attacks against Canadians.
Ergo: debate=weakness, weakness=vulnerability, vulnerability=attacks.
So, to forestall further attacks we need only cease debate and send the Parliament home for the duration. Presumably, we can leave the running of the nation's foreign policy in the capable hands of General Rick and his Southern Alliance buddies. That'll show those Taliban what's what.
And lest any legislator miss the meaning behind his not so nuanced message, Hillier stresses the motion to extend for two years Canada's war fighting role in and around Kandahar, heart of the resistance, is really an up or down vote on "supporting the troops." Hillier went on to suggest the upcoming vote is more than liberal or conservative politics, but a matter of patriotism.
New Democrat Party defence critic, Dawn Black attacked Hillier, charging his statements came close to "contempt of Parliament," saying;
* "I think that Gen. Hillier's comments today are really out of line for a Canadian military officer. It appears to be an attempt to inject some fear and some intimidation into the democratic debate here in Canada."
Adding;
* "He infers that maybe some of this recent horrible violence and suicide attacks are related to debate or discussion that has happened here in Canada . . . good grief."
This week past in Canada, the party in government and its titular opponents in the House agreed to agree: Canada's soldiers, and billions more from the treasury need be devoted to a further two year upping of "commitment" to Afghanistan, pledging to extend military action, this time until mid-2011, and promising full withdrawal from Kandahar by December of that year. The cozy arrangement comes just days ahead of scheduled "debate" on a government motion of support for the extension in Parliament.
It's a debate overdue and demanded as much by the clear majority of Canadians who never supported what both the current government and opposition has dubbed 'The Mission,' as by erstwhile "mission" supporters who fail to see the benefit to either Afghanis or Canadians following the country's six year experience so far in Afghanistan.
In fact, most Canadians see the situation in-country as a worsening one, but the "cooperation" between the two major parties has limited the scope of the debate, making it largely a sham exercise.
Majority public opinion, ignored now by the Tory government as it was by their predecessor Liberals when prime minister Jean Chretien first opened the door to Canada's military role in far off Afghanistan back in 2001, was touted as a Tory soft spot that could prove a trigger for a non-confidence vote in the House against the minority Conservatives; with both parties now determined to the same course, there is little chance Canadians will see an election fought over the on-going occupation and its attendant costs to taxpayers.
It is left now to the NDP and Bloc Quebecois, both calling for Canada's immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, to be the voice for disengangement within Parliament, while a growing constituency of Canadians harbouring anti-war sentiment search for a political home for their aspirations outside either the governing Conservative party, or the "opposition" Liberals.
Addendum
Amir Attaran, Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa, in the Feb. 21, 2008 issue of the Globe and Mail takes a look at the faithful attendees to General Hillier's pronouncements from the Conference of Defence Associations. - lex
* "Take the Conference of Defence Associations, a think tank that got $500,000 from DND last year. That money comes not with strings, but with an entire leash. A current DND policy reads that to receive money, CDA must "support activities that give evidence of contributing to Canada's national policies." Apparently, if CDA's activities were neutral and unbiased, or even-handedly supported and questioned government policy, DND would refuse to pay!
* "Attendees at CDA's annual conference, which begins today, will hear speeches by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and MP Laurie Hawn, a retired lieutenant-colonel. Curiously for an organization that calls itself "non-partisan," no opposition politicians will speak. Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier will lecture, as will NATO's military head, General Ray Henault. The agenda includes a session titled "Contemporary Security Concerns" -- a discussion on Russia and Iran."
You can find Attaran's complete article below.
The Canadian Forces' Contracted Propagandists
When think tanks produce propaganda
AMIR ATTARAN, February 21, 2008, Globe and Mail
At the very least, credible public intellectuals should disclose the source of their funding The war in Afghanistan is one of ideas and ideologies. Ideologies, in that the Pashtun extremist worldview is far rom our own. Ideas, in that our society is likely to prevail only if it makes wiser and cleverer decisions than theirs. That is why, when one adds up Canada's advantages in this war, there is none greater than our values of inquiry and debate.
But recently, a new threat has emerged. The Department of National Defence is intruding on academic financing, spending millions of dollars sponsoring think tanks and scholars to offer up agreeable commentary. When these intellectuals comment, they are not always quick to disclose that the military funds them.
Take the Conference of Defence Associations, a think tank that got $500,000 from DND last year. That money comes not with strings, but with an entire leash. A current DND policy reads that to receive money, CDA must "support activities that give evidence of contributing to Canada's national policies."
Apparently, if CDA's activities were neutral and unbiased, or even-handedly supported and questioned government policy, DND would refuse to pay!
Attendees at CDA's annual conference, which begins today, will hear speeches by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and MP Laurie Hawn, a retired lieutenant-colonel. Curiously for an organization that calls itself "non-partisan," no opposition politicians will speak. Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier will lecture, as will NATO's military head, General Ray Henault. The agenda includes a session titled "Contemporary Security Concerns" -- a discussion on Russia and Iran.
Now consider: If the Prime Minister staged a government event and declared Russia and Iran "contemporary security concerns," some Canadians would be made uneasy by the signal that sends. But if the government finances CDA, which stages an "independent" event where the Prime Minister rubs shoulders with military officers, weapons company executives and intellectuals addressing those same security concerns, it might just pass without Canadians noticing.
CDA gets away with shilling because it is so discreet. Nowhere on its website does CDA disclose its half-million dollars of DND sponsorship. The Harper government knows what the money is for, because cabinet reviewed the funding agreement between DND and CDA, and it has been secret ever since.
Nonetheless, Maclean's got CDA's executive director, Colonel Alain Pellerin, to admit that the contract obliges it "to write a number of op-eds to the press" -- propaganda paid for by you and me. More disturbing still is the manner in which DND spends money to elicit friendly comment by Canadian scholars.
Most people would find it strange that DND sponsors the salaries, research, travel and tuition of dozens of professors, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. But DND's Security and Defence Forum does exactly this. The list of Canadian universities getting over half a million dollars of SDF money is extensive: York University ($580,000), UQAM ($630,000), Wilfrid Laurier University ($630,000), Université Laval ($655,000), McGill ($680,000), UBC ($680,000), University of Manitoba ($680,000), UNB ($680,000), Carleton University ($780,000), Dalhousie University ($780,000), University of Calgary ($780,000) and Queen's University ($1,480,000).
What's the money for? It's not for the technical work that militaries obviously require -- building better airplanes, for example. Instead, it sponsors policy scholars, who create the ideas, news and views that shape Canadians' perception of the military and the war. And the evidence suggests that the military and government have politicized some SDF grants.
The same bureaucrat who administers SDF grants to scholars also manages DND's liaison with cabinet and Parliament. When DND needs a kind word in Parliament or the media -- presto! -- an SDF-sponsored scholar often appears, without disclosing his or her financial link.
There is one Canadian professor who received an $825,000 SDF grant. For that money, DND expects the professor to "conduct outreach activities with the Canadian public ... and Parliament about security and defence issues." And reach out he does -- eloquently, but not always disclosing that he is funded by DND. He made no disclosure when he testified to Parliament that the government's Afghanistan policy "is the right mission for Canada and the right mission for the Afghan people." He also made no disclosure in a published op-ed where he praised former Conservative defence minister Gordon O'Connor as "an outstanding success," and assailed "years of Liberal [party] neglect of ... defence policy
and the Canadian Forces."
I don't ever want this professor to stop saying and writing what he believes. But I do want Canadians who encounter his interventions to know how he has been funded.
That is why, at the very least, credible public intellectuals owe disclosure to their public. But the government, too, should know better. Rather than have DND dole out cash to public intellectuals -- and risk tainting their scholarship and their conferences -- it should give the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council that money, to award grants on an arm's-length basis. This is how other public intellectuals in Canada get funded.
Parliament, the Auditor-General and journalists need a watching brief on this file. As the war in Afghanistan becomes bigger and longer, it will prove dangerous to let DND sponsor intellectuals. Canada needs fresh ideas - not groupthink - to win.
Amir Attaran, Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and not by DND.
Spinwatch
http://www.spinwatch.org
AMIR ATTARAN, February 21, 2008, Globe and Mail
At the very least, credible public intellectuals should disclose the source of their funding The war in Afghanistan is one of ideas and ideologies. Ideologies, in that the Pashtun extremist worldview is far rom our own. Ideas, in that our society is likely to prevail only if it makes wiser and cleverer decisions than theirs. That is why, when one adds up Canada's advantages in this war, there is none greater than our values of inquiry and debate.
But recently, a new threat has emerged. The Department of National Defence is intruding on academic financing, spending millions of dollars sponsoring think tanks and scholars to offer up agreeable commentary. When these intellectuals comment, they are not always quick to disclose that the military funds them.
Take the Conference of Defence Associations, a think tank that got $500,000 from DND last year. That money comes not with strings, but with an entire leash. A current DND policy reads that to receive money, CDA must "support activities that give evidence of contributing to Canada's national policies."
Apparently, if CDA's activities were neutral and unbiased, or even-handedly supported and questioned government policy, DND would refuse to pay!
Attendees at CDA's annual conference, which begins today, will hear speeches by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and MP Laurie Hawn, a retired lieutenant-colonel. Curiously for an organization that calls itself "non-partisan," no opposition politicians will speak. Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier will lecture, as will NATO's military head, General Ray Henault. The agenda includes a session titled "Contemporary Security Concerns" -- a discussion on Russia and Iran.
Now consider: If the Prime Minister staged a government event and declared Russia and Iran "contemporary security concerns," some Canadians would be made uneasy by the signal that sends. But if the government finances CDA, which stages an "independent" event where the Prime Minister rubs shoulders with military officers, weapons company executives and intellectuals addressing those same security concerns, it might just pass without Canadians noticing.
CDA gets away with shilling because it is so discreet. Nowhere on its website does CDA disclose its half-million dollars of DND sponsorship. The Harper government knows what the money is for, because cabinet reviewed the funding agreement between DND and CDA, and it has been secret ever since.
Nonetheless, Maclean's got CDA's executive director, Colonel Alain Pellerin, to admit that the contract obliges it "to write a number of op-eds to the press" -- propaganda paid for by you and me. More disturbing still is the manner in which DND spends money to elicit friendly comment by Canadian scholars.
Most people would find it strange that DND sponsors the salaries, research, travel and tuition of dozens of professors, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. But DND's Security and Defence Forum does exactly this. The list of Canadian universities getting over half a million dollars of SDF money is extensive: York University ($580,000), UQAM ($630,000), Wilfrid Laurier University ($630,000), Université Laval ($655,000), McGill ($680,000), UBC ($680,000), University of Manitoba ($680,000), UNB ($680,000), Carleton University ($780,000), Dalhousie University ($780,000), University of Calgary ($780,000) and Queen's University ($1,480,000).
What's the money for? It's not for the technical work that militaries obviously require -- building better airplanes, for example. Instead, it sponsors policy scholars, who create the ideas, news and views that shape Canadians' perception of the military and the war. And the evidence suggests that the military and government have politicized some SDF grants.
The same bureaucrat who administers SDF grants to scholars also manages DND's liaison with cabinet and Parliament. When DND needs a kind word in Parliament or the media -- presto! -- an SDF-sponsored scholar often appears, without disclosing his or her financial link.
There is one Canadian professor who received an $825,000 SDF grant. For that money, DND expects the professor to "conduct outreach activities with the Canadian public ... and Parliament about security and defence issues." And reach out he does -- eloquently, but not always disclosing that he is funded by DND. He made no disclosure when he testified to Parliament that the government's Afghanistan policy "is the right mission for Canada and the right mission for the Afghan people." He also made no disclosure in a published op-ed where he praised former Conservative defence minister Gordon O'Connor as "an outstanding success," and assailed "years of Liberal [party] neglect of ... defence policy
and the Canadian Forces."
I don't ever want this professor to stop saying and writing what he believes. But I do want Canadians who encounter his interventions to know how he has been funded.
That is why, at the very least, credible public intellectuals owe disclosure to their public. But the government, too, should know better. Rather than have DND dole out cash to public intellectuals -- and risk tainting their scholarship and their conferences -- it should give the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council that money, to award grants on an arm's-length basis. This is how other public intellectuals in Canada get funded.
Parliament, the Auditor-General and journalists need a watching brief on this file. As the war in Afghanistan becomes bigger and longer, it will prove dangerous to let DND sponsor intellectuals. Canada needs fresh ideas - not groupthink - to win.
Amir Attaran, Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and not by DND.
Spinwatch
http://www.spinwatch.org
Monday, February 18, 2008
Fallacy of Terrorism
Role of Canadian Intelligence Agencies to Terrorize Citizens
by Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
12/16/07 "ICH" -- - -Do cruelty, falsehood and wickedness have known faces and shapes? Only if you have experienced it, you will know it. If so, would you not strive to seek the protection of law and ultimate goal of justice? The quest for justice itself presupposes injustice. In Western democracies, manufactured “suspicion” and individual opinions, not the facts of life, are fast becoming the criterion measurement of legal provisions to prosecute innocent citizens as alleged terrorist across North America and Europe. Guatanama Bay could well be identified as the “Abu Ghraib” of America. The American led “ war of choice”: perpetual war creating perpetual fear contributing to perpetual profits, the mutual alliance of the governments and mass media networks to carve up images of Muslims and Islam as the focused creed of alleged terrorism. Eric Margolis (“ The big lie about ‘Islamic Fascism’”: Aug 28, 2006), a distinguished Canadian journalist quotes the observation of Sir Peter Ustinov: “terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.”
Canadian Maher Arar was the first victim. He was guilty of traveling thru JFK shortly after the 9/11 attacks, but Canadian intelligence agencies identified him as a fundamentalist and security risk. He was suspected to have been involved in something that later on Canadian establishments could not prove except they arranged third party torture and victimize him for long time. The political dictum of “suspicion” was used to imprison Maher Arar in Syria. How conveniently suspicion was transformed into accepted norm to arrest, imprison and torture Muslims throughout the Western world. “Suspicion” became the threshold for police actions, not the societal laws to use force to demonstrate the opinions and preconceived notions of the few minority elite against the citizens.. History was re-enacted not learnt from, when people of Japanese origin were interned in Canada and the US during the 2nd WW. It was suspicion implied as law of the land – a political, moral and legal injustice to the citizens of Canada and America who had no role to play in the making of the WW2. Half century later, both Canada and the US offered apology to those either in graveyards or their succeeding generations kept the harsh memory of sufferings alive. After the Maher Arar tragedy, it was Dr. Khawaja and his family, the next targeted victims of the “War on Terror.” According to the Globe and Mail (July 18, 2005), President Bush had instructed Paul Martin to “fix Khawaja.” On March 29, 2004, Canadian Intelligence armed brigade attacked the Khawaja family residence in Orleans and at gunpoint arrested his wife and school children were called out of the classroom under the guise of “bomb making” but found no evidence to support the accusation. The newspaper Citizens and CBC were instrumental to falsify the information base and articulated fear mongering fictitious episode to misinform the public. While this stunt was staged near the capital, the agency formally requested Saudi Arabia to detain Dr. Khawaja who was teaching in a university. What were the charges against as per the documentary evidence? He is father of accused Momin Khawaja, who since March 2004 is a political prisoner of conscience at a Canadian detention center without a trial on charges of “terrorism” involvement in the UK case of March 2004. The then Security Minister Ms. Anne McClellan denied ever requesting a foreign government to arrest the scholar. The real world events and documentary evidence provide a different picture that the Canadian Government was lying to safeguard its illegal action against its own citizen. Does a political Minister ever lie? Do agents of intelligence services ever lie? The honorable Judge presiding over the Maher Arar investigation clearly pointed out the history of misinformation and lies involving the official intelligence organizations. Consequently, the Chief of the one of the intelligence agency was asked to resign.
To poison the mindset of soft-hearted Canadian public thru the media screen, young Momin was chained to show the public that he is abnormal and dangerous to public interest, not that he has done anything wrong or illegal. Four years later, his case has not gone to trial because the government has no tangible evidence to prove the accusation in a public court. The prosecution uses dogmas, not facts that a secret trial should be conducted to protect the interest of the state. In a democratic valued society as Canada is, how ridiculous it seems that if the prosecution is sure of its claim, why not have an open public trial? Why to look for escape from the real world? After all, what is so secret about political terrorism? Does it mean that informed public will no longer trust in the official version and realize that it was a political trial, not a criminal case to start with? Consequently, the masses will point finger at the continuing failure of the intelligence services to use “suspicion”, and not the law of the land to prosecute its own citizens. Now the prosecution insists on a secret trial of Momin Khawaja whereas public opinions are questioning the official dictum. For Four years, Momin has been imprisoned for unproven allegations under the law of suspicion to have participated in some conspiracy to bomb making theory. The defense lawyer Mr. Greenspon argues to have access to secret files on terror suspect and clarifies that “MOMIN KHAWAJA IS AT RISK OF BEING WRONGLY CONVICTED…and “THAT HE COULD BE WRONGFULLY IMPRISONED FOR LIFE IF THE GOVERNMENT INSISTS ON WITHHOLDING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION IT ADMITS IS RELEVANT TO HIS DEFENCE AGAINST TERRORISM CHARGES.” Contrary to this, the prosecution claims that an open trial would harm the national security and relations with foreign governments. To defy logic and facts, the prosecution contends two distinct orders of TRUTH. Truth is One, not many, that it is a political trial as it is being identified by the Canadian Justice Department to be mindful of “security policy” and relations with foreign governments – as the reasoning to hold the secret trial. In democratic governance, the official opinion is flawed, secret trials are a negation of liberty, human rights, freedom and justice – justice delayed is justice denied. Momin and his family are continued to be punished, not because they are guilty of any crimes except on suspicion; they are being treated as guilty of crimes without committing any crimes. In several communication, Dr. Khawaja asked the Federal Minster, why he and his family are being systematically victimized? The Minister would only reply with “no comments.” Amnesty International asked the Canadian Government the same question but got abstract reply. Would the new Progressive Conservative Canadian Government review its policy and take initiative to apologize from the innocent victims of its inherited policy on terrorism? Would it free Momin Khawaja after four years of harsh ordeal at a detention center? Would the current Minister of Security with first-hand knowledge of the issues initiate action and facilitate measures to deliver justice and compensate the Khawaja family for the state sponsored terrorism against its own citizens? After all President Bush is leaving the White House soon and perhaps Canada needs to see its own policy interest and national priorities rather than blindly follow the American adventures to undo the world peace and harmony. Eric Margolis sheds more light on the media created images fostered by the governmental policy sponsorship: “ In the Western world, hatred of Muslims has become a key ideological hallmark of rightwing parties. We see this overtly in the United States, France, Italy, Holland …and most lately Canada.”
End cannot be assumed based on the notion of “suspicion”, and dogmas cannot replace truth to explain the facts of human life. When facts live in denial, dogmas construct dark illusions to assert the political agenda for encroachment of human rights, dignity and real freedom. The Canadian intelligence apparatus enjoys history of flawed record to victimize people under the “war on terror.” Given the obvious public mistrust, they seem to be overwhelmingly occupied in building castles over moving sand. British author and producer Adam Curtis (“Power of Nightmares re-awakened” BBC), made attempts to re-awaken the human conscience that the myth of international terrorism is a misleading political phenomenon to embark on American ambitions of global hegemony. Michael Meacher, MP and former UK Minister of Environment of Blair’s Cabinet points out to the same agenda (“This War on Terrorism is Bogus:”): “It seems that the so called “war on terrorism” is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives.” On the part of targeted victims of this war of choice is similar to those cases of the 2nd WW internment of people of Japanese, German and Italian origins in North America. The search for justice itself implies the pr-existence of injustice. Justice and societal harmony cannot be preached in the name of illegal detentions and systematic torture of the citizens. Targeted victims look to human conscience to stop the continued political cruelty, violations of human rights and travesty of justice. Those whose lives have been destroyed by the false official claims of terrorism, do ask the living and THINKING People of the globe, could there be two distinct orders of truth? Is there any legal stipulations in Canada to prosecute state sponsored terrorism and wickedness?
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, the author is a political scientist with interests in strategic studies and comparative cultures and civilizations affairs of Muslims and the West, and author of several publications including: Muslims and the West: Quest for Change and Conflict Resolution and “Pakistan: Enigma of Change.”
by Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
12/16/07 "ICH" -- - -Do cruelty, falsehood and wickedness have known faces and shapes? Only if you have experienced it, you will know it. If so, would you not strive to seek the protection of law and ultimate goal of justice? The quest for justice itself presupposes injustice. In Western democracies, manufactured “suspicion” and individual opinions, not the facts of life, are fast becoming the criterion measurement of legal provisions to prosecute innocent citizens as alleged terrorist across North America and Europe. Guatanama Bay could well be identified as the “Abu Ghraib” of America. The American led “ war of choice”: perpetual war creating perpetual fear contributing to perpetual profits, the mutual alliance of the governments and mass media networks to carve up images of Muslims and Islam as the focused creed of alleged terrorism. Eric Margolis (“ The big lie about ‘Islamic Fascism’”: Aug 28, 2006), a distinguished Canadian journalist quotes the observation of Sir Peter Ustinov: “terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.”
Canadian Maher Arar was the first victim. He was guilty of traveling thru JFK shortly after the 9/11 attacks, but Canadian intelligence agencies identified him as a fundamentalist and security risk. He was suspected to have been involved in something that later on Canadian establishments could not prove except they arranged third party torture and victimize him for long time. The political dictum of “suspicion” was used to imprison Maher Arar in Syria. How conveniently suspicion was transformed into accepted norm to arrest, imprison and torture Muslims throughout the Western world. “Suspicion” became the threshold for police actions, not the societal laws to use force to demonstrate the opinions and preconceived notions of the few minority elite against the citizens.. History was re-enacted not learnt from, when people of Japanese origin were interned in Canada and the US during the 2nd WW. It was suspicion implied as law of the land – a political, moral and legal injustice to the citizens of Canada and America who had no role to play in the making of the WW2. Half century later, both Canada and the US offered apology to those either in graveyards or their succeeding generations kept the harsh memory of sufferings alive. After the Maher Arar tragedy, it was Dr. Khawaja and his family, the next targeted victims of the “War on Terror.” According to the Globe and Mail (July 18, 2005), President Bush had instructed Paul Martin to “fix Khawaja.” On March 29, 2004, Canadian Intelligence armed brigade attacked the Khawaja family residence in Orleans and at gunpoint arrested his wife and school children were called out of the classroom under the guise of “bomb making” but found no evidence to support the accusation. The newspaper Citizens and CBC were instrumental to falsify the information base and articulated fear mongering fictitious episode to misinform the public. While this stunt was staged near the capital, the agency formally requested Saudi Arabia to detain Dr. Khawaja who was teaching in a university. What were the charges against as per the documentary evidence? He is father of accused Momin Khawaja, who since March 2004 is a political prisoner of conscience at a Canadian detention center without a trial on charges of “terrorism” involvement in the UK case of March 2004. The then Security Minister Ms. Anne McClellan denied ever requesting a foreign government to arrest the scholar. The real world events and documentary evidence provide a different picture that the Canadian Government was lying to safeguard its illegal action against its own citizen. Does a political Minister ever lie? Do agents of intelligence services ever lie? The honorable Judge presiding over the Maher Arar investigation clearly pointed out the history of misinformation and lies involving the official intelligence organizations. Consequently, the Chief of the one of the intelligence agency was asked to resign.
To poison the mindset of soft-hearted Canadian public thru the media screen, young Momin was chained to show the public that he is abnormal and dangerous to public interest, not that he has done anything wrong or illegal. Four years later, his case has not gone to trial because the government has no tangible evidence to prove the accusation in a public court. The prosecution uses dogmas, not facts that a secret trial should be conducted to protect the interest of the state. In a democratic valued society as Canada is, how ridiculous it seems that if the prosecution is sure of its claim, why not have an open public trial? Why to look for escape from the real world? After all, what is so secret about political terrorism? Does it mean that informed public will no longer trust in the official version and realize that it was a political trial, not a criminal case to start with? Consequently, the masses will point finger at the continuing failure of the intelligence services to use “suspicion”, and not the law of the land to prosecute its own citizens. Now the prosecution insists on a secret trial of Momin Khawaja whereas public opinions are questioning the official dictum. For Four years, Momin has been imprisoned for unproven allegations under the law of suspicion to have participated in some conspiracy to bomb making theory. The defense lawyer Mr. Greenspon argues to have access to secret files on terror suspect and clarifies that “MOMIN KHAWAJA IS AT RISK OF BEING WRONGLY CONVICTED…and “THAT HE COULD BE WRONGFULLY IMPRISONED FOR LIFE IF THE GOVERNMENT INSISTS ON WITHHOLDING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION IT ADMITS IS RELEVANT TO HIS DEFENCE AGAINST TERRORISM CHARGES.” Contrary to this, the prosecution claims that an open trial would harm the national security and relations with foreign governments. To defy logic and facts, the prosecution contends two distinct orders of TRUTH. Truth is One, not many, that it is a political trial as it is being identified by the Canadian Justice Department to be mindful of “security policy” and relations with foreign governments – as the reasoning to hold the secret trial. In democratic governance, the official opinion is flawed, secret trials are a negation of liberty, human rights, freedom and justice – justice delayed is justice denied. Momin and his family are continued to be punished, not because they are guilty of any crimes except on suspicion; they are being treated as guilty of crimes without committing any crimes. In several communication, Dr. Khawaja asked the Federal Minster, why he and his family are being systematically victimized? The Minister would only reply with “no comments.” Amnesty International asked the Canadian Government the same question but got abstract reply. Would the new Progressive Conservative Canadian Government review its policy and take initiative to apologize from the innocent victims of its inherited policy on terrorism? Would it free Momin Khawaja after four years of harsh ordeal at a detention center? Would the current Minister of Security with first-hand knowledge of the issues initiate action and facilitate measures to deliver justice and compensate the Khawaja family for the state sponsored terrorism against its own citizens? After all President Bush is leaving the White House soon and perhaps Canada needs to see its own policy interest and national priorities rather than blindly follow the American adventures to undo the world peace and harmony. Eric Margolis sheds more light on the media created images fostered by the governmental policy sponsorship: “ In the Western world, hatred of Muslims has become a key ideological hallmark of rightwing parties. We see this overtly in the United States, France, Italy, Holland …and most lately Canada.”
End cannot be assumed based on the notion of “suspicion”, and dogmas cannot replace truth to explain the facts of human life. When facts live in denial, dogmas construct dark illusions to assert the political agenda for encroachment of human rights, dignity and real freedom. The Canadian intelligence apparatus enjoys history of flawed record to victimize people under the “war on terror.” Given the obvious public mistrust, they seem to be overwhelmingly occupied in building castles over moving sand. British author and producer Adam Curtis (“Power of Nightmares re-awakened” BBC), made attempts to re-awaken the human conscience that the myth of international terrorism is a misleading political phenomenon to embark on American ambitions of global hegemony. Michael Meacher, MP and former UK Minister of Environment of Blair’s Cabinet points out to the same agenda (“This War on Terrorism is Bogus:”): “It seems that the so called “war on terrorism” is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives.” On the part of targeted victims of this war of choice is similar to those cases of the 2nd WW internment of people of Japanese, German and Italian origins in North America. The search for justice itself implies the pr-existence of injustice. Justice and societal harmony cannot be preached in the name of illegal detentions and systematic torture of the citizens. Targeted victims look to human conscience to stop the continued political cruelty, violations of human rights and travesty of justice. Those whose lives have been destroyed by the false official claims of terrorism, do ask the living and THINKING People of the globe, could there be two distinct orders of truth? Is there any legal stipulations in Canada to prosecute state sponsored terrorism and wickedness?
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, the author is a political scientist with interests in strategic studies and comparative cultures and civilizations affairs of Muslims and the West, and author of several publications including: Muslims and the West: Quest for Change and Conflict Resolution and “Pakistan: Enigma of Change.”
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