"Bodies are lying everywhere. It’s hell’
By Mark Franchetti, Moscow
10/08/08 "The Times" -- - OLEG KALCHAKEYEV sighed with relief as he watched the evening news on Thursday.
The reports told of renewed skir-mishes between separatist rebels seeking South Ossetian independence and the Georgian army – but also revealed that Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, had declared a ceasefire. On Friday, so the young leader said, the two sides would sit down to negotiate.
Kalchakeyev, a car mechanic from Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, told his son: “At least we’ll be able to watch the Olympics.”
Only a few hours later, however, shortly before dawn, Kalchakeyev woke up to the sound of explosions. He looked out of the window and saw the night sky over Tskhinvali filled with tracer fire. A barrage of Grad and Katyusha rockets followed.
It is unclear who first violated the ceasefire, but less than eight hours after Saakashvili’s pledge, the Georgian president had ordered his troops to retake South Ossetia by force.
“Suddenly there was a massive explosion which hit a house down the road from us,” said Kalchakeyev, who managed to flee across the border to Russia.
“Our windows shattered and I jumped for cover. I grabbed my son and wife and ran down to the basement, where I was joined by dozens of other civilians. The bombing only got worse. It was relentless and went on for hours. I never thought it would come to this – Georgians bombing us – not in my wildest imagination.”
As Vladimir Putin and George W Bush gathered with world leaders at the so-called bird’s nest stadium in Beijing for the Olympic opening ceremony, war was breaking out between Putin’s Russia and Bush’s client state Georgia.
Within hours, Russia sent its tanks rampaging into South Ossetia – even though it still officially recognises it as Georgian sovereign territory – and yesterday it ordered its air force to attack Georgian targets.
Apartment blocks were on fire in Gori, 15 miles from South Ossetia. Afterwards, a woman knelt in the street and screamed over the body of a dead man.
Another old woman covered in blood stared into the distance, and a man knelt by the road, his head in his hands.
“Why do I have to go through this again?” asked one woman, who said she had survived the second world war. “Why can’t we just live in peace?”
A wave of shock and apprehension gripped the region as survivors asked themselves whether Georgia was about to follow Chechnya into another Caucasian war.
Yesterday it emerged that Tskhinvali, a quiet, small town, had been all but destroyed by the initial Georgian attack on Friday.
As a barrage of artillery fell on its outskirts, Georgian tanks moved into the centre, where they were met with fierce resistance from South Ossetian separatist rebels.
“Georgian snipers are taking down anything that moves, even outside the town’s hospital, which is making it hard to deliver the wounded. They are not sparing anyone,” claimed a South Ossetian government spokesman.
The presidential palace of a region of only 70,000 inhabitants was in flames as intense hand-to-hand fighting broke out across the town. Ordinary apartment blocks were pounded as the remains of Georgian tanks struck by rocket-propelled grenades stood burning in the middle of the street.
“It’s hell,” said Zara Valiyeva, a local journalist trapped in the city. “Houses are being hit around us by rockets. We have no food but it’s too dangerous to go out.”
Battered Ladas delivered the wounded to the town’s hospital, which according to several reports was also badly hit.
“There were bodies lying everywhere, in the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars. There is hardly a single building left undamaged,” said Ludmilla, a woman who fled the town during the fighting.
“The city is burning,” stated a local resident, Oleg Repukhov, in a text message from a basement he took refuge in.
“Grad missiles are falling. They are taking the city. We are running out of ammunition. Where’s our f***ing help!!?” he wrote before the line went down.
“We never thought this could happen,” said Fatima Kochieva, a 47-year-old mother of two who lived on Tskhinvali’s southern outskirts, where the first Georgian artillery shells landed. “It all happened so quickly. Suddenly we were in the middle of heavy fighting. I saw our neighbour’s house get a direct hit. I took cover with the kids in the basement. It was terrifying.”
It took the Georgian army, which in the past few years has received US training and equipment, only a few hours to take the town.
Huge bomb craters cut through the streets. Blackened Soviet-era apartment block buildings were in flames; dead bodies of fighters and civilians lay on the ground amid the rubble. The remains of Georgian armed vehicles hit by grenades lay upside down close to the central square. Power and water supplies were cut off.
“The town is destroyed. There are many casualties, many wounded,” said Zaid Tsarnayev, a resident. “I was in the hospital on Friday where I saw many civilian wounded. The hospital was later destroyed by a Georgian jet.”
Russia’s response to the crisis was swift. Tank columns from the 58th army rolled across the border into South Ossetia. Backed by Russian fighter jets that pounded the Georgian army’s position, they quickly advanced towards Tskhinvali.
“Russia will not close its eyes on the deaths of Russian citizens in South Ossetia,” warned Dmitry Medvedev, the new Russian president.
Hundreds of volunteers from across the Caucasus – including scores of Cossacks – continued to cross into the disputed enclave to help the South Ossetian separatists.
Yesterday morning the Russians stepped up the pressure by sending in their Spetsnaz special forces. Clashes were reported in and around Tskhinvali but by midday the Russians had pushed the Georgians back, establishing a big military presence that Moscow will argue needs to stay for the fore-seeable future as a “peacekeeping” force.
Georgia’s interior ministry claimed that Russian warplanes had bombed a military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and three military bases on the Black Sea port of Poti. Russia denied the claims. Georgia also claimed to have shot down 10 Russian planes. The Russians said they had lost two.
It was when Russian jets attacked Gori, a small Georgian town to the south of the fighting, that the worst bloodshed occurred.
Richard Galpin of the BBC was the first foreign reporter on the scene. He said: “We saw the impact of the air strikes – buildings on fire. We could hear the Russian jets above us. In one strike the pilot missed the intended military base, instead hitting two apartment blocks.
“When we arrived, flames were pouring out of the buildings and people were still trapped inside. We saw injured civilians being pulled from the buildings.”
Roots of the conflict
Why is the Caucasus so important?
Because it is the only route for Central Asian oil supplies that does not cross Russia. Throughout the 19th century Russia fought wars to control the region and Moscow considers the area a key part of its sphere of influence.
Why does South Ossetia want to break away?
Most of its people speak their own language and feel closer to the Russians than the Georgians. They say they were absorbed into Georgia after the fall of the old Soviet Union. The 70,000 South Ossetians want independence – just like Kosovo, the breakaway Serbian province.
Why are the Georgians so upset about South Ossetia?
Because they see it as a Russian outpost funded largely from Moscow, and where most people carry Russian passports.
Why has Georgia’s president chosen to raise the issue now?
Because he thought everyone was focused on the Olympics and the Russians would hesitate to respond with force.
Why has Russia been willing to go to war?
The Kremlin is angry about western, particularly American military support for Georgia, its desire to join Nato and US plans for a missile defence shield in Europe.
Will anyone else intervene?
Unlikely, western armies are busy and the prospect of taking on Russia is not enticing.
What happens next?
The Georgians will back down looking like the bad guys. Both sides will go back to hating each other. Result: Russia 1, Georgia 0.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
The Lies Of Hiroshima Are The Lies Of Today
By John Pilger
06/08/08 "ICH" -- - On the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, John Pilger describes the 'progression of lies' from the dust of that detonated city, to the wars of today - and the threatened attack on Iran.
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.
He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.
In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.
The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".
Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus "war on terror", the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make "pre-emptive" nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current "threat". But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.
The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America's Defence Intelligence Estimate says "with high confidence" that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to "wipe Israel off the map" is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media "fact" that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.
This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.
In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country's political and military establishment, threatened "an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland". This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.
The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that "we did not know"? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence"? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.
www.johnpilger.com
source
Out of the Black Bag: Forging Ahead for Iraq War
The Forged Iraqi Letter: What Just Happened?
Ron Suskind
What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:
The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying a $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.
In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization."
The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists like Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of the CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting the CIA from conducting disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.
So, here we go again: the administration is in full attack mode, calling me names, George Tenet is claiming he doesn't remember any such thing -- just like he couldn't remember "slam dunk" -- and reporters are scratching their heads. Everything in my book is on the record, with many sources. And so, we watch and wait....
source
Ron Suskind
What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:
The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying a $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.
In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization."
The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists like Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of the CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting the CIA from conducting disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.
So, here we go again: the administration is in full attack mode, calling me names, George Tenet is claiming he doesn't remember any such thing -- just like he couldn't remember "slam dunk" -- and reporters are scratching their heads. Everything in my book is on the record, with many sources. And so, we watch and wait....
source
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
West Bank Checkpoints
The Horror Of Israeli Occupation: West Bank Checkpoints
A video clip that dramatically portrays the meeting of Israeli solders and Palestinians at controversial West Bank security checkpoints. This clip is the second of a series taken from "Land of the Settlers", the acclaimed documentary developed by Chaim Yavin, Israel's premier news anchor.
A video clip that dramatically portrays the meeting of Israeli solders and Palestinians at controversial West Bank security checkpoints. This clip is the second of a series taken from "Land of the Settlers", the acclaimed documentary developed by Chaim Yavin, Israel's premier news anchor.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Anthrax and the ABC's of Planting a Fake News Story
Glenn Greenwald
Monday Aug. 4, 2008 06:32 EDT
Additional key facts re: the anthrax investigation
for complete article links, please see:
source
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
It's perfectly possible that Bruce Ivins really is the anthrax attacker -- that he perpetrated the attacks and did so alone. Perhaps the FBI is in possession of mountains of conclusive evidence that, once revealed, will leave no doubt that Ivins is the guilty party. But no rational person could possibly assume that to be the case given the paltry amount of facts -- many of which contradict one another -- that are now known. Several points to note:
(1) Two prominent journalism professors -- Jay Rosen of NYU and Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University and a practicing journalist for 25 years -- have added their names to the list of people calling on ABC News and Brian Ross to reveal their sources for ABC's false bentonite story that was used to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq. Rosen and Gillmor both write that ABC and Ross should answer three questions which they jointly outline, and they both set forth the reasons, grounded in widely accepted principles of journalistic ethics, as to why ABC and Ross should do so.
(2) So much of the public reporting about Ivins has been devoted to depicting him as a highly unstable psychotic who had been issuing extremely violent threats and who had a violent past. But that depiction has been based almost exclusively on the uncorroborated claims of Jean Carol Duley, a social worker (not a psychiatrist or psychologist) who, as recently as last year, was apparently still in college at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. Duley's scrawled handwritten complaint against Ivins, seeking a Protective Order, has served as the basis for much of the reporting regarding Ivins' mental state, yet it is hardly the model of a competent or authoritative professional. Quite the opposite.
Duley herself has a history that, at the very least, raises questions about her credibility. She has a rather lengthy involvement with the courts in Frederick, including two very recent convictions for driving under the influence -- one from 2007 and one from 2006 -- as well as a complaint filed against her for battery by her ex-husband. Here is Duley's record from the Maryland Judicial data base:
Just three months ago, Duley pled guilty and was sentenced to probation (and fined $1,000), as a result of having been stopped in December, while driving at 1:35 a.m., and charged with driving under the influence:
On April 21, 2006, Duley was also charged with "driving a vehicle while impaired by alcohol," driving "while impaired by drugs or alcohol," and reckless driving, and on October 13, 2006, she pled guilty to the charge of reckless driving and was fined $580. Back in 1992, Duley was criminally charged with battery against what appeared to be her now-ex-husband (and she filed a complaint against him as well). Later that same year, she was criminally charged with possession of drug paraphenalia with intent to use, charges which appear to have been ultimately dismissed.
Prior to the restraining order against Ivins which Duley obtained two weeks ago, Ivins had no criminal record at all, at least not in Frederick. A story in today's Frederick News-Post quotes Duley's fiancee as claiming: "She had to quit her job and is now unable to work, and we have spent our savings on attorneys." But she doesn't appear to have used an attorney for her complaint against Ivins. If anything, her savings were likely depleted from attorneys' fees, court costs, and fines and probation for her various criminal proceedings (Larisa Alexandrovna has more details on Duley).
None of this is to defend Ivins, nor is to suggest that this constitutes evidence that Duley is lying or is otherwise inaccurate in her claims. As I said, it's perfectly possible that Ivins is guilty of being the anthrax attacker. I have no opinion on whether he is. The point is that nobody should have any opinion on that question -- one way or the other -- until they see the FBI's evidence.
What is certain is that Jean Carol Duley is hardly some upstanding, authoritative source on Bruce Ivins' psychological state or his guilt, nor is she some accomplished and highly credible psychological professional, notwithstanding the fact that most media depictions of Ivins are based on uncritical recitations of her accusations. The fact that her depiction contradicts not only the claims of virtually everyone else who knew Ivins but also numerous facts about how Ivins was treated even by the FBI (see below), suggests that a large amount of skepticism is warranted.
(3) The initial report from The Los Angeles Times' David Willman said that Ivins committed suicide "just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks." But an article from The New York Times' Scott Shane this morning reported that the evidence against Ivins "was largely circumstantial" and that the "grand jury in Washington was planning to hear several more weeks of testimony before issuing an indictment."
According to The Washington Post, Ivins enjoyed full-scale clearance at Fort Detrick as late as July 10 -- hardly what one would expect if the FBI were so certain that he was the anthrax attacker. And judging from an article in today's local Frederick newspaper, The Frederick-News Post Online, the FBI is still searching for evidence against Ivins, as they removed two computers from a public library there.
Members of Congress with some personal stake in this case and who have been attempting to assert some oversight on the FBI's investigation over the last six years -- Tom Daschle, Pat Leahy, Rush Holt -- have been uniformly critical of how it has been handled. Numerous experts continue to raise serious doubts about whether Ivins even had the ability to access and handle anthrax of the type that was sent to Daschle and Leahy. Maybe the FBI's evidence demonstrates that he could and did. Maybe it doesn't. But under all circumstances, it's inconceivable that anyone would be content with having the FBI simply keep its alleged evidence to itself and not have a full public airing and accounting of what has happened here, an accounting that should include the news organizations -- led by ABC -- which are in possession of vital information that they continue to conceal.
UPDATE: The Democracy Now segment I did this morning included Dr. Meryl Nass, an anthrax expert and physician (curriculum vitae is here) who knew Bruce Ivins, and is strongly skeptical of the claim that he is the anthrax attacker. Dr. Nass made several excellent points, and I will post the link to the segment once it is available. She also has been raising many insightful points questioning the accusations against Ivins on her blog, which is here. It is worthwhile to begin at the start and scroll down.
Relating to ABC, a reader exchanged emails with Brian Ross this weekend, and Ross wrote this (the email was sent from Ross' ABC address; yesterday, I emailed both him and ABC's Jeffrey Schneider to request confirmation of its authenticity, and they didn't reply):
As we reported more than six years ago our information came from current and former government scientists. The report was discointed [sic] and denied by the White House which we reported. I believe now the scientists got it wrong although they insisted they were correct long after.
Actually, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that Ross has ever acknowledged that his sources for the bentonite story were "current and former government scientists." Given that he previously described his sources as being "well-placed," that means, presumably, that they were scientists with extremely close proximity to Fort Detrick (where the anthrax tests were being conducted) if not Fort Detrick scientists themselves. That would mean, if the FBI's accusation against Ivins is true, that the same Government lab where the attacks originated was the source for falsely telling Ross that tests revealed evidence linking the attacks to Iraq. In light of that, how can Ross possibly continue to conceal which Government scientists disseminated this false story?
It is also worth noting that Ross, who was a key witness in the Steven Hatfill litigation (since he had published numerous incriminating leaks from the DOJ) badgered at least one of his government sources, FBI spokesman Edwin Cogswell, to provide Ross with a release authorizing Ross to disclose the source's identity (allowing Ross to avoid being held in contempt by the court). Has Ross sought a similar release from his bentonite sources? Clearly, at least in some instances, Ross is able to convince his sources to allow him to disclose their identity when he is properly motivated to do so. For the reasons Professors Rosen and Gillmor point out, no release should be necessary, since these sources fed him deliberate falsehoods, but one wonders if Ross has even tried to persuade them to give permission for Ross to disclose who they are.
UPDATE II: Pulitzer Prize winning reporter John McQuaid calls on ABC News and Brian Ross to provide a full account of how they ended up publishing the false bentonite story.
UPDATE III: The video for the aforementioned Democracy Now segment with me and Dr. Nass is now available here. The transcript will be posted shortly.
Monday Aug. 4, 2008 06:32 EDT
Additional key facts re: the anthrax investigation
for complete article links, please see:
source
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
It's perfectly possible that Bruce Ivins really is the anthrax attacker -- that he perpetrated the attacks and did so alone. Perhaps the FBI is in possession of mountains of conclusive evidence that, once revealed, will leave no doubt that Ivins is the guilty party. But no rational person could possibly assume that to be the case given the paltry amount of facts -- many of which contradict one another -- that are now known. Several points to note:
(1) Two prominent journalism professors -- Jay Rosen of NYU and Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University and a practicing journalist for 25 years -- have added their names to the list of people calling on ABC News and Brian Ross to reveal their sources for ABC's false bentonite story that was used to link the anthrax attacks to Iraq. Rosen and Gillmor both write that ABC and Ross should answer three questions which they jointly outline, and they both set forth the reasons, grounded in widely accepted principles of journalistic ethics, as to why ABC and Ross should do so.
(2) So much of the public reporting about Ivins has been devoted to depicting him as a highly unstable psychotic who had been issuing extremely violent threats and who had a violent past. But that depiction has been based almost exclusively on the uncorroborated claims of Jean Carol Duley, a social worker (not a psychiatrist or psychologist) who, as recently as last year, was apparently still in college at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland. Duley's scrawled handwritten complaint against Ivins, seeking a Protective Order, has served as the basis for much of the reporting regarding Ivins' mental state, yet it is hardly the model of a competent or authoritative professional. Quite the opposite.
Duley herself has a history that, at the very least, raises questions about her credibility. She has a rather lengthy involvement with the courts in Frederick, including two very recent convictions for driving under the influence -- one from 2007 and one from 2006 -- as well as a complaint filed against her for battery by her ex-husband. Here is Duley's record from the Maryland Judicial data base:
Just three months ago, Duley pled guilty and was sentenced to probation (and fined $1,000), as a result of having been stopped in December, while driving at 1:35 a.m., and charged with driving under the influence:
On April 21, 2006, Duley was also charged with "driving a vehicle while impaired by alcohol," driving "while impaired by drugs or alcohol," and reckless driving, and on October 13, 2006, she pled guilty to the charge of reckless driving and was fined $580. Back in 1992, Duley was criminally charged with battery against what appeared to be her now-ex-husband (and she filed a complaint against him as well). Later that same year, she was criminally charged with possession of drug paraphenalia with intent to use, charges which appear to have been ultimately dismissed.
Prior to the restraining order against Ivins which Duley obtained two weeks ago, Ivins had no criminal record at all, at least not in Frederick. A story in today's Frederick News-Post quotes Duley's fiancee as claiming: "She had to quit her job and is now unable to work, and we have spent our savings on attorneys." But she doesn't appear to have used an attorney for her complaint against Ivins. If anything, her savings were likely depleted from attorneys' fees, court costs, and fines and probation for her various criminal proceedings (Larisa Alexandrovna has more details on Duley).
None of this is to defend Ivins, nor is to suggest that this constitutes evidence that Duley is lying or is otherwise inaccurate in her claims. As I said, it's perfectly possible that Ivins is guilty of being the anthrax attacker. I have no opinion on whether he is. The point is that nobody should have any opinion on that question -- one way or the other -- until they see the FBI's evidence.
What is certain is that Jean Carol Duley is hardly some upstanding, authoritative source on Bruce Ivins' psychological state or his guilt, nor is she some accomplished and highly credible psychological professional, notwithstanding the fact that most media depictions of Ivins are based on uncritical recitations of her accusations. The fact that her depiction contradicts not only the claims of virtually everyone else who knew Ivins but also numerous facts about how Ivins was treated even by the FBI (see below), suggests that a large amount of skepticism is warranted.
(3) The initial report from The Los Angeles Times' David Willman said that Ivins committed suicide "just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks." But an article from The New York Times' Scott Shane this morning reported that the evidence against Ivins "was largely circumstantial" and that the "grand jury in Washington was planning to hear several more weeks of testimony before issuing an indictment."
According to The Washington Post, Ivins enjoyed full-scale clearance at Fort Detrick as late as July 10 -- hardly what one would expect if the FBI were so certain that he was the anthrax attacker. And judging from an article in today's local Frederick newspaper, The Frederick-News Post Online, the FBI is still searching for evidence against Ivins, as they removed two computers from a public library there.
Members of Congress with some personal stake in this case and who have been attempting to assert some oversight on the FBI's investigation over the last six years -- Tom Daschle, Pat Leahy, Rush Holt -- have been uniformly critical of how it has been handled. Numerous experts continue to raise serious doubts about whether Ivins even had the ability to access and handle anthrax of the type that was sent to Daschle and Leahy. Maybe the FBI's evidence demonstrates that he could and did. Maybe it doesn't. But under all circumstances, it's inconceivable that anyone would be content with having the FBI simply keep its alleged evidence to itself and not have a full public airing and accounting of what has happened here, an accounting that should include the news organizations -- led by ABC -- which are in possession of vital information that they continue to conceal.
UPDATE: The Democracy Now segment I did this morning included Dr. Meryl Nass, an anthrax expert and physician (curriculum vitae is here) who knew Bruce Ivins, and is strongly skeptical of the claim that he is the anthrax attacker. Dr. Nass made several excellent points, and I will post the link to the segment once it is available. She also has been raising many insightful points questioning the accusations against Ivins on her blog, which is here. It is worthwhile to begin at the start and scroll down.
Relating to ABC, a reader exchanged emails with Brian Ross this weekend, and Ross wrote this (the email was sent from Ross' ABC address; yesterday, I emailed both him and ABC's Jeffrey Schneider to request confirmation of its authenticity, and they didn't reply):
As we reported more than six years ago our information came from current and former government scientists. The report was discointed [sic] and denied by the White House which we reported. I believe now the scientists got it wrong although they insisted they were correct long after.
Actually, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that Ross has ever acknowledged that his sources for the bentonite story were "current and former government scientists." Given that he previously described his sources as being "well-placed," that means, presumably, that they were scientists with extremely close proximity to Fort Detrick (where the anthrax tests were being conducted) if not Fort Detrick scientists themselves. That would mean, if the FBI's accusation against Ivins is true, that the same Government lab where the attacks originated was the source for falsely telling Ross that tests revealed evidence linking the attacks to Iraq. In light of that, how can Ross possibly continue to conceal which Government scientists disseminated this false story?
It is also worth noting that Ross, who was a key witness in the Steven Hatfill litigation (since he had published numerous incriminating leaks from the DOJ) badgered at least one of his government sources, FBI spokesman Edwin Cogswell, to provide Ross with a release authorizing Ross to disclose the source's identity (allowing Ross to avoid being held in contempt by the court). Has Ross sought a similar release from his bentonite sources? Clearly, at least in some instances, Ross is able to convince his sources to allow him to disclose their identity when he is properly motivated to do so. For the reasons Professors Rosen and Gillmor point out, no release should be necessary, since these sources fed him deliberate falsehoods, but one wonders if Ross has even tried to persuade them to give permission for Ross to disclose who they are.
UPDATE II: Pulitzer Prize winning reporter John McQuaid calls on ABC News and Brian Ross to provide a full account of how they ended up publishing the false bentonite story.
UPDATE III: The video for the aforementioned Democracy Now segment with me and Dr. Nass is now available here. The transcript will be posted shortly.
Friday, August 01, 2008
Solar Science Ready
"Major Discovery" From MIT Primed to Unleash Solar Revolution
Thursday 31 July 2008
Anne Trafton, MIT News
MIT's Professor Daniel G. Nocera has discovered a way to do large-scale solar power generation. (Photo: Donna Coveney)
Scientists mimic essence of plants' energy storage system.
In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.
Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today's announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.
Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.
The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity - whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source - runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.
The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.
"Giant Leap" for Clean Energy
Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year.
James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a "giant leap" toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. "The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem."
"Just the Beginning"
Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.
More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.
"This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."
Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.
The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that "this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science."
The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.
The ‘Empire of Chaos’ or living in the age of impunity
by William Bowles
Review: International Justice and Impunity - The Case of the United States, edited by Nils Andersson, Daniel Iagolnitzer and Diana G. Collier. Clarity Press, 2008.
Impunity: N. Nonliability, exemption, let-out, immunity, special treatment. Impunity: Vb. Exempt, set apart, absolve, grant immunity, are just some of the descriptions my Roget’s Thesaurus lists for the word impunity.
Other descriptions listed by the Thesaurus are perhaps even more apt:
Owe no responsibility, be free from, have no liability, spare oneself the necessity, exempt oneself, excuse oneself, the list goes on…
“The American ambassador to the United Nations in the middle of the 1970s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has thus congratulated himself in his memoirs, for having rendered “totally ineffective, on the instructions of the State Department, all measures taken by the United Nations [with regard to the 40-plus UN resolutions on Palestine]”. — ‘Rudolph El-Kareh, The American Politic in the Middle East, Force, Impunity, Lawlessness.’ (p.64)
Another way of describing impunity is that ‘might is right’ but a ‘right’ reinforced and delivered by the corporate media’s complicity in the process of granting immunity (invisibility) to those who practice mass murder and genocide on a scale that almost defies description.
The book is divided into three sections: Part I: From Hiroshima to Guantanamo; Part II: Humanitarian Law: Legal and Moral Values to Defend and Part III: In Pursuit of an End to Impunity.
The collection of essays gathered together in ‘International Justice and Impunity’ encompasses the views of many people and organizations united by one thing, namely the examination and condemnation of the ‘right’ enjoyed by the United States and its principal allies the UK, the EU and Japan, to be extremely selective about international law and human rights, applying such laws as and when it suits them to and simply ignoring the self-same international laws when it doesn’t.
Of course such behaviour by the imperialist states is nothing new but given the power of a hegemonic global media to blank out the crimes of the US and its allies, impunity takes on an ominous significance given the awesome power the US employs as it seeks to extend its control of the world and its resources.
Again (and again), I have to return to the simple fact that without the corporate (and state) media’s collusion in this massive sleight-of-hand such deceptions would be well nigh impossible to carry out. And, if I have a criticism of the book it is the omission of a section that directly addresses the role of the mass media in delivering the imperialist message, without which it would be difficult to persuade us to go along with the slaughter and the barbarity practiced by those who impudently like to call themselves civilized.
The process is plain to see for anyone who cares to look; it’s the media equivalent of saturation bombing. The names Zimbabwe, Darfur, Tibet, Islamist, Hamas, Hizbollah, Chavez, Cuba, immediately come to mind but over the years the list is an extremely long one.
The recipe is extremely simple: take one event where there are obvious human rights violations eg in Sudan and go hell for leather in swamping the ‘news’ outlets with cries of rage and indignation about the Sudanese government’s treatment of its population and keep on doing it until the word DARFUR is burned into everyone’s brain. Follow this up with demands for intervention, and, in the supreme irony, demand that a special (and illegal) criminal tribunal be convened, using the cover of the ‘United’ Nations to bring the miscreants to justice before the eyes of the world.
Ironic because the US fought tooth and nail to stop the formation of the International Criminal Court and failing to do that, watered it down at every step along the way and then, to add insult to injury, refused to recognize its jurisdiction, when over 100 countries signed up to it (Bush even removed the US signature from it when it realized that even with its awesome power, it couldn’t prevent its formation).
Worse still, the US was instrumental in the creation of ad hoc ‘criminal tribunals’ by arm-twisting the United Nations whose Charter has no powers to convene such creatures.
The degree to which the US perverts every international law (including those that it has reluctantly signed) is perhaps best exemplified by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for contrary to the mass media misconception, the NPT is not just about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons (beyond the original six signatories) but is specifically aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating existing nuclear weapons entirely.
So all the while that the US and its allies engineer an hysterical campaign against Iran and its alleged development of nuclear weapons, the US is actively developing new nuclear weapons not as deterrents but to use in combat. The 2002 Nuclear Posture Review[1] spells it out in horrendous detail as Tadatoshi Akiba relates in his contribution to the book ‘Toward the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons’.
“…instead of simply utilizing nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence, they [the US] will start manufacturing bombs and other devices of mass destruction for the purpose of actually using them … and the most important point I believe, is that they clearly stated their intention to use those weapons in combat.” (p.26)
At first reading the selection of essays chosen for this book seemed to have no immediate connection one to the other but on closer inspection they reveal that Impunity is the thread across the decades which, as Samir Amin’s contribution ‘The Geostrategy of Contemporary Imperialism’ shows is an intrinsic component of the US ruling class’s project to “extend their military control over the whole planet”, a project that Amin describes as
“…overwheening, even crazy, and criminal by what it implies, [and one that] did not come out of President Bush Junior’s head, to be implemented by an extreme right junta, seizing power through dubious elections.
“It is the project which the ruling class of the United States has unceasingly nurtured since 1945, even though its implementation evidently passed through ups and downs, encountered a few vicissitudes, and was here and there checked, and could be not be pursued with the consistency and violence that this implied in certain conjunctural moments like that following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.” (p.34)
It is, as Amin states, the Monroe Doctrine extended to to the entire planet and one that he describes in his conclusion as “The Empire of Chaos and Permanent War”. (p.54)
As an aside, the reality described by Amin and other contributors bears absolutely no resemblence to what we are all fed by the corporate media, indeed it’s as if we live on two different planets, so integrated is the media into the ‘Empire of Chaos’s’ view of the world and how it works and currently best exemplified by the incessant hammering of the ‘War on Terror’ motif that insinuates itself into our daily lives. But again, the ‘War on Terror’ is merely the War on Communism by another name, which in turn was the war on any country that dared defy the imperialist ‘right to rule’ which in turn is, as Michael Parenti’s excellent summation of imperialism’s ‘divine right’ to own the planet, ‘Rulers of the Planet - The Real Reasons for the US Invasion of the Planet’ puts it,
“The objective of US global policy is not just power for its own sake but the
power to control the world’s natural resources and markets,
power to privatize and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world,
power to prevent alternative self-defining, self-developing economic models from arising,
and power to hoist upon the backs of peoples everywhere—including Europe and North America—the blessings of an untrammeled global “free market” (pps. 123-1)
The integration of the media into the imperialist project is total and virtually seamless, made possible by a veritable army of a complicit intelligentsia created by an education system designed literally to “mold” a view of the world that complies with the imperialist project.[2]
Two essays reveal the two realities most tellingly, the first is Rudolph El-Kareh’s, ‘The American Politic in the Middle East, Force, Impunity, Lawlessness,’ and Monique Chemiller-Gendreau’s contribution, ‘Impunity and Massive Breaches of Humanitarian Law in Vietnam’, the war that slaughtered perhaps three million Vietnamese and whose consequences haunt the Vietnamese people to this day through the US use of Agent Orange which was dropped on around 8.5% of Vietnamese territory or 2.5 million hectares.
“It is notably in the Middle East, and surrounding the question of Palestine, that the United States has systematically instituted impunity in the face of violations of international law…. The violation of international law and the work of sapping the United Nations were not only infractions of its Charter, of which the United States was one of the principal authors, but also contravened Article 6 of the American Constitution considering this as an integral part of the “supreme law” of the country.” (p.64)
Hey, but this is what impunity is all about, ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say!’ As Bill Blum’s contribution ‘Freeing the World to Death - How the United States Gets Away with It’ says,
“When I speak before American university students I say this to them: If I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don’t ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés and the platitudes they feed us.” (p.102)
If it weren’t all so tragic, it would be laughable. The gulf between the words and the actions of the United States is demonstrated by the contribution of Daniel Iagolnitzer, ‘International Law Relative to War and the United States’, an overview of the progress made over the past century and a half in the development of international law as it applies to war and how the US has demolished every last one of them!
Ironically, one of the first laws governing the conduct of the state when engaged in war was president Lincoln’s Lieber Code, introduced in 1863 which included the prohibition of the use of torture,
“Military necessity does not admit of the inflicting of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge, nor of wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way or of the wanton devastation of a district… (Art. 16).”
Perhaps the most devastating exposé of not only the United States actions but also of other Western states and especially the UK, is revealed in Jan Myrdal’s contribution ‘The Necessity of Defending the Rule of Law!’. Myrdal quotes sections of the testimony of Reich Marshal, Defendant Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. The parallels between his defence of the concentration camps and ‘preventive detention’ and that of the US in creating Guantanamo (and in the UK of ‘preventive detention’ under its ‘anti-terror’ laws) are most illuminating and chilling. Referring to what Goering called “protective custody”:
Mr. Justice Jackson: … You did prohibit all court review and considered it necessary to prohibit court review of the causes for taking people into what you called protective custody?
/…/
Goering: In connection with your question that these cases could not be reviewed by the court, I want to say that a decree was issued by me and jointly to the effect that those who were turned over to concentration camps were to be informed after 24 hours of the reason for their being turned over, and that after 48 hours, or some short period of time, they should have the right to an attorney. But this by no means rescinded my order that a review was not permitted by the courts of a politically necessary measure of protective custody. These people were simply to be given an opportunity of making a protest.
Mr. Justice Jackson: Protective custody meant that you were taking people into custody who had not committed any crimes but who, you thought, might possibly commit a crime?
Goering: Yes. People were arrested and taken into protective custody who had not yet committed any crime, but who could be expected to do so if they remained free, just as protective measures are being taken in Germany today on a tremendous scale.
Sound familar? You bet it does as it describes exactly the situation today as the result, allegedly of the ‘war on terror’.
Finally, the sub-text of impunity must also be described as a crime of ‘omission’, omission that is, on the part of us, the citizens of empire.
The section by Amy Bartholomew “Strategies of the Weak”? Contesting Empire Through Litigation Under International Humanitarian Law’ addresses the issue of ‘omission’ directly (and not merely of the media), when she says,
“Such a felt sense of political responsibility for Empire’s actions by its citizens is dependent on viewing oneself not as an innocent or impotent bystander but rather as an implicated agent.
…as a relationship of perpetrators of atrocities liable for legal prosecution for having committed crimes of commission, their innocent and violated victimes, and bystanders who may be viewed, at most, as culpable of sins of omission, morally guilty, of the “excusable and forgiveable misdeed of “bystanding’”. This approach … misses the fact that there is a necessary relationship—a “grey area”—between perpetrayors and ‘bystanders’. But by constituting them as distinct categories we miss the fact that there may be “common ground to both”, an “affinity between ‘evil doing’ and ‘non-resistance to evil”’ and this needs not just be recognized but also to be the object of our political efforts to bring these these two categories under the lens of moral political concern.” (p.221)
As Bartholomew says, citizens of empire,
“do have a responsibility to act to resist empire. This is based on an analysis of the impunity of empire for it is the idea that there is a nonreciprocal right of Empire to run roughshod over everyone else in the name of spreading its own values and its own conception of security globally—one of the essential hallmarks of ‘empire’s law’— that must be contested.” (pps.222-223)
It is only by directly addressing the issue of our complicity, by our failure to act that the Empire does indeed run roughshod over all opposition. Moreover, Bartholomew suggests that,
“while capitalism is unleashed and “economic forces are free to act globally”, there are at best only germs and premonitions of a globally binding legal and juridicial system, global democracy or globally binding, enforceable and obeyed ethical code.”
This is because, “Ethically motivated and informed global action has no adequately global instruments.” (p.225) But Bartholomew does suggest an approach that I believe is extremely important, based upon our raising the issue of legally challenging the right to wage war,
“What the American Empire fears, and I think rightly, is that such strategies may contribute to our capacities to become the ‘strong’…my claim is that such politically inspired attempts litigating against American Empire under international humanitarian law may contribute to the goals of cultivating a sense of poitical responsibility, while both depending on political action for their broad effectivity and contributing to further political action.” (p.228)
But warning us that “the development of cosmopolitan law, of global law” will not, by itself lead to “perpetual peace and universal freedom”, only a coherent, progressive and anti-capitalist (socialist) agenda has even a chance of achieving the defeat of Empire of Chaos.
Notes
1. See for example, ‘Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable’ A secret policy review of the nation’s nuclear policy puts forth chilling new contingencies for nuclear war. by William M. Arkin
2. The national education system implemented by the Tory government in the closing days of WWII described the advantages of such a system using the term “molding” an entire generation. Molding our views to support the idea of our ‘divine right’ to rule, a strategy that up until now anyway, appears to have been very successful.
This essay is archived at: http://www.creative-i.info/?p=305
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Review: International Justice and Impunity - The Case of the United States, edited by Nils Andersson, Daniel Iagolnitzer and Diana G. Collier. Clarity Press, 2008.
Impunity: N. Nonliability, exemption, let-out, immunity, special treatment. Impunity: Vb. Exempt, set apart, absolve, grant immunity, are just some of the descriptions my Roget’s Thesaurus lists for the word impunity.
Other descriptions listed by the Thesaurus are perhaps even more apt:
Owe no responsibility, be free from, have no liability, spare oneself the necessity, exempt oneself, excuse oneself, the list goes on…
“The American ambassador to the United Nations in the middle of the 1970s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has thus congratulated himself in his memoirs, for having rendered “totally ineffective, on the instructions of the State Department, all measures taken by the United Nations [with regard to the 40-plus UN resolutions on Palestine]”. — ‘Rudolph El-Kareh, The American Politic in the Middle East, Force, Impunity, Lawlessness.’ (p.64)
Another way of describing impunity is that ‘might is right’ but a ‘right’ reinforced and delivered by the corporate media’s complicity in the process of granting immunity (invisibility) to those who practice mass murder and genocide on a scale that almost defies description.
The book is divided into three sections: Part I: From Hiroshima to Guantanamo; Part II: Humanitarian Law: Legal and Moral Values to Defend and Part III: In Pursuit of an End to Impunity.
The collection of essays gathered together in ‘International Justice and Impunity’ encompasses the views of many people and organizations united by one thing, namely the examination and condemnation of the ‘right’ enjoyed by the United States and its principal allies the UK, the EU and Japan, to be extremely selective about international law and human rights, applying such laws as and when it suits them to and simply ignoring the self-same international laws when it doesn’t.
Of course such behaviour by the imperialist states is nothing new but given the power of a hegemonic global media to blank out the crimes of the US and its allies, impunity takes on an ominous significance given the awesome power the US employs as it seeks to extend its control of the world and its resources.
Again (and again), I have to return to the simple fact that without the corporate (and state) media’s collusion in this massive sleight-of-hand such deceptions would be well nigh impossible to carry out. And, if I have a criticism of the book it is the omission of a section that directly addresses the role of the mass media in delivering the imperialist message, without which it would be difficult to persuade us to go along with the slaughter and the barbarity practiced by those who impudently like to call themselves civilized.
The process is plain to see for anyone who cares to look; it’s the media equivalent of saturation bombing. The names Zimbabwe, Darfur, Tibet, Islamist, Hamas, Hizbollah, Chavez, Cuba, immediately come to mind but over the years the list is an extremely long one.
The recipe is extremely simple: take one event where there are obvious human rights violations eg in Sudan and go hell for leather in swamping the ‘news’ outlets with cries of rage and indignation about the Sudanese government’s treatment of its population and keep on doing it until the word DARFUR is burned into everyone’s brain. Follow this up with demands for intervention, and, in the supreme irony, demand that a special (and illegal) criminal tribunal be convened, using the cover of the ‘United’ Nations to bring the miscreants to justice before the eyes of the world.
Ironic because the US fought tooth and nail to stop the formation of the International Criminal Court and failing to do that, watered it down at every step along the way and then, to add insult to injury, refused to recognize its jurisdiction, when over 100 countries signed up to it (Bush even removed the US signature from it when it realized that even with its awesome power, it couldn’t prevent its formation).
Worse still, the US was instrumental in the creation of ad hoc ‘criminal tribunals’ by arm-twisting the United Nations whose Charter has no powers to convene such creatures.
The degree to which the US perverts every international law (including those that it has reluctantly signed) is perhaps best exemplified by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for contrary to the mass media misconception, the NPT is not just about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons (beyond the original six signatories) but is specifically aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating existing nuclear weapons entirely.
So all the while that the US and its allies engineer an hysterical campaign against Iran and its alleged development of nuclear weapons, the US is actively developing new nuclear weapons not as deterrents but to use in combat. The 2002 Nuclear Posture Review[1] spells it out in horrendous detail as Tadatoshi Akiba relates in his contribution to the book ‘Toward the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons’.
“…instead of simply utilizing nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence, they [the US] will start manufacturing bombs and other devices of mass destruction for the purpose of actually using them … and the most important point I believe, is that they clearly stated their intention to use those weapons in combat.” (p.26)
At first reading the selection of essays chosen for this book seemed to have no immediate connection one to the other but on closer inspection they reveal that Impunity is the thread across the decades which, as Samir Amin’s contribution ‘The Geostrategy of Contemporary Imperialism’ shows is an intrinsic component of the US ruling class’s project to “extend their military control over the whole planet”, a project that Amin describes as
“…overwheening, even crazy, and criminal by what it implies, [and one that] did not come out of President Bush Junior’s head, to be implemented by an extreme right junta, seizing power through dubious elections.
“It is the project which the ruling class of the United States has unceasingly nurtured since 1945, even though its implementation evidently passed through ups and downs, encountered a few vicissitudes, and was here and there checked, and could be not be pursued with the consistency and violence that this implied in certain conjunctural moments like that following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.” (p.34)
It is, as Amin states, the Monroe Doctrine extended to to the entire planet and one that he describes in his conclusion as “The Empire of Chaos and Permanent War”. (p.54)
As an aside, the reality described by Amin and other contributors bears absolutely no resemblence to what we are all fed by the corporate media, indeed it’s as if we live on two different planets, so integrated is the media into the ‘Empire of Chaos’s’ view of the world and how it works and currently best exemplified by the incessant hammering of the ‘War on Terror’ motif that insinuates itself into our daily lives. But again, the ‘War on Terror’ is merely the War on Communism by another name, which in turn was the war on any country that dared defy the imperialist ‘right to rule’ which in turn is, as Michael Parenti’s excellent summation of imperialism’s ‘divine right’ to own the planet, ‘Rulers of the Planet - The Real Reasons for the US Invasion of the Planet’ puts it,
“The objective of US global policy is not just power for its own sake but the
power to control the world’s natural resources and markets,
power to privatize and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world,
power to prevent alternative self-defining, self-developing economic models from arising,
and power to hoist upon the backs of peoples everywhere—including Europe and North America—the blessings of an untrammeled global “free market” (pps. 123-1)
The integration of the media into the imperialist project is total and virtually seamless, made possible by a veritable army of a complicit intelligentsia created by an education system designed literally to “mold” a view of the world that complies with the imperialist project.[2]
Two essays reveal the two realities most tellingly, the first is Rudolph El-Kareh’s, ‘The American Politic in the Middle East, Force, Impunity, Lawlessness,’ and Monique Chemiller-Gendreau’s contribution, ‘Impunity and Massive Breaches of Humanitarian Law in Vietnam’, the war that slaughtered perhaps three million Vietnamese and whose consequences haunt the Vietnamese people to this day through the US use of Agent Orange which was dropped on around 8.5% of Vietnamese territory or 2.5 million hectares.
“It is notably in the Middle East, and surrounding the question of Palestine, that the United States has systematically instituted impunity in the face of violations of international law…. The violation of international law and the work of sapping the United Nations were not only infractions of its Charter, of which the United States was one of the principal authors, but also contravened Article 6 of the American Constitution considering this as an integral part of the “supreme law” of the country.” (p.64)
Hey, but this is what impunity is all about, ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say!’ As Bill Blum’s contribution ‘Freeing the World to Death - How the United States Gets Away with It’ says,
“When I speak before American university students I say this to them: If I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don’t ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés and the platitudes they feed us.” (p.102)
If it weren’t all so tragic, it would be laughable. The gulf between the words and the actions of the United States is demonstrated by the contribution of Daniel Iagolnitzer, ‘International Law Relative to War and the United States’, an overview of the progress made over the past century and a half in the development of international law as it applies to war and how the US has demolished every last one of them!
Ironically, one of the first laws governing the conduct of the state when engaged in war was president Lincoln’s Lieber Code, introduced in 1863 which included the prohibition of the use of torture,
“Military necessity does not admit of the inflicting of suffering for the sake of suffering or revenge, nor of wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way or of the wanton devastation of a district… (Art. 16).”
Perhaps the most devastating exposé of not only the United States actions but also of other Western states and especially the UK, is revealed in Jan Myrdal’s contribution ‘The Necessity of Defending the Rule of Law!’. Myrdal quotes sections of the testimony of Reich Marshal, Defendant Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. The parallels between his defence of the concentration camps and ‘preventive detention’ and that of the US in creating Guantanamo (and in the UK of ‘preventive detention’ under its ‘anti-terror’ laws) are most illuminating and chilling. Referring to what Goering called “protective custody”:
Mr. Justice Jackson: … You did prohibit all court review and considered it necessary to prohibit court review of the causes for taking people into what you called protective custody?
/…/
Goering: In connection with your question that these cases could not be reviewed by the court, I want to say that a decree was issued by me and jointly to the effect that those who were turned over to concentration camps were to be informed after 24 hours of the reason for their being turned over, and that after 48 hours, or some short period of time, they should have the right to an attorney. But this by no means rescinded my order that a review was not permitted by the courts of a politically necessary measure of protective custody. These people were simply to be given an opportunity of making a protest.
Mr. Justice Jackson: Protective custody meant that you were taking people into custody who had not committed any crimes but who, you thought, might possibly commit a crime?
Goering: Yes. People were arrested and taken into protective custody who had not yet committed any crime, but who could be expected to do so if they remained free, just as protective measures are being taken in Germany today on a tremendous scale.
Sound familar? You bet it does as it describes exactly the situation today as the result, allegedly of the ‘war on terror’.
Finally, the sub-text of impunity must also be described as a crime of ‘omission’, omission that is, on the part of us, the citizens of empire.
The section by Amy Bartholomew “Strategies of the Weak”? Contesting Empire Through Litigation Under International Humanitarian Law’ addresses the issue of ‘omission’ directly (and not merely of the media), when she says,
“Such a felt sense of political responsibility for Empire’s actions by its citizens is dependent on viewing oneself not as an innocent or impotent bystander but rather as an implicated agent.
…as a relationship of perpetrators of atrocities liable for legal prosecution for having committed crimes of commission, their innocent and violated victimes, and bystanders who may be viewed, at most, as culpable of sins of omission, morally guilty, of the “excusable and forgiveable misdeed of “bystanding’”. This approach … misses the fact that there is a necessary relationship—a “grey area”—between perpetrayors and ‘bystanders’. But by constituting them as distinct categories we miss the fact that there may be “common ground to both”, an “affinity between ‘evil doing’ and ‘non-resistance to evil”’ and this needs not just be recognized but also to be the object of our political efforts to bring these these two categories under the lens of moral political concern.” (p.221)
As Bartholomew says, citizens of empire,
“do have a responsibility to act to resist empire. This is based on an analysis of the impunity of empire for it is the idea that there is a nonreciprocal right of Empire to run roughshod over everyone else in the name of spreading its own values and its own conception of security globally—one of the essential hallmarks of ‘empire’s law’— that must be contested.” (pps.222-223)
It is only by directly addressing the issue of our complicity, by our failure to act that the Empire does indeed run roughshod over all opposition. Moreover, Bartholomew suggests that,
“while capitalism is unleashed and “economic forces are free to act globally”, there are at best only germs and premonitions of a globally binding legal and juridicial system, global democracy or globally binding, enforceable and obeyed ethical code.”
This is because, “Ethically motivated and informed global action has no adequately global instruments.” (p.225) But Bartholomew does suggest an approach that I believe is extremely important, based upon our raising the issue of legally challenging the right to wage war,
“What the American Empire fears, and I think rightly, is that such strategies may contribute to our capacities to become the ‘strong’…my claim is that such politically inspired attempts litigating against American Empire under international humanitarian law may contribute to the goals of cultivating a sense of poitical responsibility, while both depending on political action for their broad effectivity and contributing to further political action.” (p.228)
But warning us that “the development of cosmopolitan law, of global law” will not, by itself lead to “perpetual peace and universal freedom”, only a coherent, progressive and anti-capitalist (socialist) agenda has even a chance of achieving the defeat of Empire of Chaos.
Notes
1. See for example, ‘Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable’ A secret policy review of the nation’s nuclear policy puts forth chilling new contingencies for nuclear war. by William M. Arkin
2. The national education system implemented by the Tory government in the closing days of WWII described the advantages of such a system using the term “molding” an entire generation. Molding our views to support the idea of our ‘divine right’ to rule, a strategy that up until now anyway, appears to have been very successful.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Arrested Double Life of Radovan Karadzic
Radovan Karadzic and the Killing of Flies
by Slavenka Drakulic
image
That afternoon Dr. Dragan Dabic took his long, gray ponytail and fixed it with a plastic hair clip at the top of his head. Then he put on a Panama hat and threw a side-glance in the mirror in the entrance hall of his rented apartment in New Belgrade. As usually, he was pleased with what he saw and even proud of himself. For years now he was not bothered by the fear that he would be recognized. With his long hair, long beard and a pair of old fashioned glasses, he looked like an aged hippy, a Bohemian figure in any case. This was a perfect image for a doctor of alternative medicine, for the New Age guru that he had become. Yet, there was a price to pay for his new look. Before he looked like a romantic poet with his longish dark hair with strikes of gray, dressed in a dark suit and a butterfly. He had flamboyance that impressed people, especially women. But that was long ago, when his name was still Dr. Radovan Karadzic.
Dr. Dabic headed towards a bus stop nearby. Riding on a bus fitted the lifestyle of a modest, elderly, spiritual guide. He politely greeted one of his neighbors, a lady of his age. She smiled. Tenants from his building in Yuri Gagarin Street were not curious about the strange looking person, which suited him well. He no longer had to hide in Orthodox monasteries or remote villages high up in the mountains of Montenegro. Besides, anonymity was not his cup of tea. Even under his false name, he wanted to be among people. He craved attention.
On the other hand, this other image brought him something extremely precious -- freedom to move around. Like any ordinary citizen of Belgrade, he was free to walk the streets and visit the coffee shops, meet people, deliver lectures, visit other cities. Most important, he was free to practice something remotely similar to his former profession as a psychiatrist. He considered himself to be a healer of both body and soul.
On the bus he was sitting somewhere in the middle when a young man sat down next to him and discreetly showed him his police badge. Secret policemen of today are a different species, he probably thought, remembering his encounters with them in his former life in Yugoslavia, long before he became the president of Rebublika Srpska. In those days, he was accused of fraud and even served an 11 months sentence. Pointing at three other men positioned strategically at exit doors of the bus, the man asked him, ever so politely, to please step down with them. Karadzic, now suddenly back to his own identity, showed no sign of surprise, much less of an intent to resist them. Other passengers saw nothing unusual when a small group with a bearded man in a Panama hat left the bus at the next stop.
When he was arrested on July 21, Karadzic must have been aware that it was not by chance. It did not happen because the Serbian secret service finally had recognized him. He knew that they were following his every move; after all, it was the same secret police that had provided him with false documents and his new identity. His arrest was a matter of political decision. True, he had contemplated surrender, but he wanted to do it on his own conditions. In his opinion, it would have been better if he would do it in 2009 -- then he would have been safe from extradition to the International Criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. No new trials would open after the end of this year, 2008. Besides, to be tried in Serbia was not such a frightening prospect as to face the court in The Hague. But it was not to be, he probably thought, now back in his usual fatalistic mood.
It doesn’t matter much if Karadzic was arrested as media reported it, on the bus no.83 in the afternoon hours of July 21, or if it happened a few days before, under totally different circumstances. When the news hit the media and the photo of Dr. Dabic appeared, the first reaction, besides surprise and then satisfaction that one of the most wanted war criminals is no longer at large, was incredulity. People were amazed at the mere fact that Karadzic lived a normal life, in a city, among them. After all, there was a bounty of five million dollars on his head, which alone could have brought him into trouble. Then an even bigger astonishment and admiration followed, because of what was described as his perfectly crafted disguise. Who in his right mind would ever have believed that one of the two most hunted men in Europe would dare to live a normal life as a New Age doctor, ”specializing” in meditation, healthy life, reiku, haiku, homeopathy, as well as any other kind of prana-mana thing?
How poor and amateurish Saddam Hussein looked when he, not so long ago, appeared from his rat hole, all dirty and frightened. In comparison to him, Karadzic showed some style. At least, his looks were chosen by himself and not created by fear and despair of somebody on the run. He possessed documents, legal documents. He even published a few books in the last twelve years of that other life, not a small achievement. A born leader and charismatic person -- as he liked to think of himself -- Karadzic even behind his false identity was capable of attracting people, even followers who believed his every word. Looking at his audience of a guru, he must have thought at times that if only he could gather as many people as that for his poetry readings…
As guru Dr. Dabic, he held lectures in several towns in Serbia. In the period between October 26, 2007 and May 23, 2008, he attended different public events and festivals in cities like Smederevo, Kikinda, and Novi Sad. In May this year, at the big Festival for Healthy Life at Ada Ciganlija in Belgrade, he delivered a lecture under the title ” How to nourish one’s own energies.” Hundreds of people saw him and listened to him; he even appeared on the local TV program in Kikinda. Yet nobody detected or even doubted his true identity.
Suddenly a million details, presented as facts, popped up about the secret life of Radovan Karadzic, alias Dr. Dabic: his favorite coffee place was ”Crazy House”, where he occasionally played the gusle, a one string folk instrument. He drank red wine appropriately named Bear’s blood, and ate healthy corn bread with yogurt. A sales girl in the nearby supermarket thought that he was sympathetic. He had a mistress named Mila and was often seen in her company, holding hands with her. When he was arrested, he was on his way to summer vacation on the Adriatic coast. Someone remembered that he used to bite his nails, while someone else witnessed that he had dandruff. Needless to say, there is much less written about why he was indicted by the ICTY for crimes against humanity and for genocide. In the local press, he is treated like a real celebrity. On the other hand, anyone in media, regardless of what he or she did to deserve such publicity, is a star -- even if he is held responsible for the death and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people.
However, the thing with Radovan Karadzic is that he, although stealing another man’s name, was not at all in disguise. What to others looks like a clever, elaborate mask, is just another side of the same personality. Before he became president, a war criminal and a doctor of alternative medicine, he was a psychiatrist and a poet. It is rarely mentioned that he specialized in treating depression. Later on, for a while, he was the psychiatrist of the Belgrade football team ”Red star,” a position that gave him a certain visibility. It was evident that Karadzic knew how to deal with people, a strike of character crucial in order to become a politician.
Besides the fact that in 1997 he was detained for eleven months, following the trial for building his weekend house with money actually belonging to the hospital where he worked, the most interesting detail reported from his past is that he was an -- ecologist.
Just before launching himself head-on into politics as a founder of the nationalist Serbian Democratic Party in 1990 -- just following the ”spirit” of those days -- he was one of the founders of the Green Party in Bosnia. Moreover, he and his wife Ljiljana, founded the first S.O.S. telephone in Bosnia, helping people with advice for all kind of psychological troubles. Becoming a staunch nationalist only shortly afterwards was just an indication that the ”spirit” of those days had changed.
The ecologist turning nationalist? The lifesaving expert who treated so many traumas, turning into a war criminal? What happened to the good-guy-nice-person that he was? And how come that for six years, between 1990 and 1996, he behaved as a completely different person? What had changed in him? The answer is not so complicated: Even if his change seems to be a dramatic one, it is just the same set of events that changed the life of so many others.
For example, the life of another war criminal colleague, Goran Jelisic. This man, who would otherwise never have hurt a fly, was sentenced by the Tribunal to 40 years for executing thirteen Muslim prisoners in May of 1992, in the Luka camp near Brcko. Jelisic worked as a farm mechanic until one day, when -- by a sudden twist of destiny, as it often happens in times of war -- his situation had changed quite by coincidence. This man of 21 with a baby-face who loved fishing and his neighbors, regardless if they were Muslims or Serbs, was given a gun. During 18 days of that May he acted as an executioner, something he never before had done and never after did. Having the ultimate power over life and death, Jelisic behaved as if he would have been another person.
So did the ambitious and vain Radovan Karadzic. His ambition and vanity, however, turned him first into a president and then into a war criminal who ordered killings. But there is no mystique in these changes, as every human being has the potential for acting in good or bad ways. What really changed were circumstances. In Karadzic’s case, circumstances were such that as the first president of Republika Srpska (although he personally, of course, would never hurt a fly), he ordered the killing of some eight thousand Muslim men in Srebrenica in 1995, because in his eyes they evidently had turned into flies. Certainly a nasty business, but, from his point of view, a necessary one. Such orders, however, were not in contradiction to the character of Karadzic the poet and psychiatrist, the man who loved to help people. Not actually, since he was convinced that both the siege of Sarajevo and the killing of civilians that he allowed (of which 1 500 were children), as well as the mass executions in Srebrenica, the concentration camps and ethnic cleansing of the self-proclaimed territory of Republika Srpska, which resulted in emigration and displacement of millions -- was done for the benefit of the Serbs, his people. They needed their ”Lebensraum.”
Dr. Dabic’s posing as a New Age guru, also, was not in opposition to that of Karadzic the ecologist, the understanding psychiatrist, the helping telephonist. In all his different roles he was in a position of power, helping and ”helping,” but always dominating the stage and holding power over people. Both as the good and the bad Radovan, as real maverick greedy for applause, he proved the best at fooling people. Therefore, his transformation into Dr. Dabic was a perfect one, because it was no change at all. Karadzic turned into Dabic easily, because Dabic was his own other self. And equally easily he changed his image just by letting his own hair and beard grow long. Of course, he continued to ”heal” people, but this time he had changed his method. No more genocide, now its time for alternative medicine! As his alleged lover Mila (more likely a groupie) expressed it: ”His mind could cure any illness … he was like a saint to me.” Indeed, when you think about it, there is a similarity between a guru and a president of a state, even if small like Republika Srpska: this way or the other, people look up to you, which in the end is all that matters for a person like Karadzic.
In spite of the general claim to the opposite, Radovan Karadzic showed no imagination when he chose to disguise himself as Dr. Dabic. He just returned to what he had been when he hadn’t attained such immense and deadly power.
His arrest and extradition to the ICTY was an easy trade off for Serbia. Neither is he a Serbian citizen, nor a Serbian hero. By arresting him, Serbia considerably strengthened her political credit. He lost his mythological status. If anything was shattered by his arrest, it was the myth that he is a hero whose arrest would shake Serbia to the core. Karadzic is more or less on his own, and it must feel bad. Especially because the same fate did not befell his comrade-in-arms Ratko Mladic, the then commander of his army. Karadzic knows all to well that the arrest of Mladic will be a very different story.
When he boards the Het Oranje Hotel, as the Dutch call the Schevenninge detention center, it is almost too easy to predict his behavior. He will, of course, plead not guilty, while at the same time enjoying every moment on the stage of world media. But that will not last long. Waiting for his trial in the detention center, he will seek attention again, albeit under limited circumstances and in front of a rather small public. He will probably form a therapy group to help his fellow inmates of all nationalities. What does it matter that they were at war with each other? He personally has nothing against anyone of them. He understands that all of them were just doing their duty, obeying orders. Karadzic will surely write poems and novels, maybe a couple of books for children and, of course, a book about his life in prison. He will have ideal conditions for that, and all the time in the world.
Slavenka Drakulic is an author and journalist from Croatia, whose books have been published in over twenty languages. Her latest book published in the United States is They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague (Penguin).
Copyright © 2008 Slavenka Drakulic -- distributed by Agence Global
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Early Acts of an Iranian War
Acts of War
by Scott Ritter
29/07/08 " TruthDig" -- - -The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities which result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions which took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today.
Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in the world of American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency’s backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.
The MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeg. Formed among students and intellectuals, the MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, the MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. The MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.
However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members who were active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits the MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.
It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes the MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran. As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate the MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, the MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva conventions. The MEK says that its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.
The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.
Now, I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop computer: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled. Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer’s stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer’s contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programs.
The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data contained are why the U.S. government will never agree to such an investigation being done. A prosecutor, when making a case of criminal action, must lay out evidence in a simple, direct manner, allowing not only the judge and jury to see it but also the accused. If the evidence is as strong as the prosecutor maintains, it is usually bad news for the defendant. However, if the defendant is able to demonstrate inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the data being presented, then the prosecution is the one in trouble. And if the defense is able to demonstrate that the entire case is built upon fabricated evidence, the case is generally thrown out. This, in short, is what should be done with the IAEA’s ongoing probe into allegations that Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.
A key question that must be asked is why, then, does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, the agency’s Finnish deputy director for safeguards and the IAEA official responsible for the ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Moreover, why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies, in a manner which results in questionable allegations appearing in the public arena as unquestioned fact? Under normal circumstances, leaks of the sort which have occurred regarding the ongoing investigation into Iran’s alleged past studies on nuclear weapons would be subjected to a thorough investigation to determine the source and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to end them. And yet, in Vienna, Heinonen’s repeated transgressions are treated as a giant “non-event,” the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone pretends isn’t really there.
Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of his boss, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Every time ElBaradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that the IAEA can find no evidence of any past or present nuclear weapons program, and that there is a full understanding of Iran’s controversial centrifuge-based enrichment program, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well-publicized briefings are given to IAEA-based diplomats. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur. Heinonen’s Finnish nationality serves as a flimsy cover for neutrality which long ago disappeared. He is no longer serving in the role as unbiased inspector, but rather a front for the active pursuit of an American- and Israeli-inspired disinformation campaign designed to keep alive the flimsy allegations of a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to justify the continued warlike stance taken by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.
The fact that the IAEA is being used as a front to pursue this blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome. Calling the Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which of course has been well explained by Iran previously as something the Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran’s security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to the IAEA inspectors. When the IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question posed by the IAEA about how the document came to be in Iran. For Heinonen to call the document “alarming,” at this late stage in the game, is not only irresponsible but factually inaccurate, given the definition of the word. The Iranian document in question is neither a cause for alarm, seeing as it is not a source for any “sudden fear brought on by the sense of danger,” nor does it provide any “warning of existing or approaching danger,” unless one is speaking of the danger of military action on the part of the United States derived from Heinonen’s unfortunate actions and choice of words.
Olli Heinonen might as well become a salaried member of the Bush administration, since he is operating in lock step with the U.S. government’s objective of painting Iran as a threat worthy of military action. Shortly after Heinonen’s alarmist briefing in March 2008, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today’s briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen’s briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop computer of questionable provenance. But that did not matter to Schulte, who noted that “Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponization.” Schulte did not bother to note that it would be difficult for Iran to explain or acknowledge that which it has not done. “This is particularly troubling,” Schulte went on, “when combined with Iran’s determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium.” Why is this so troubling? Because, as Schulte noted, “Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran’s civil program but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponized into a bomb.”
This, of course, is the crux of the issue: Iran’s ongoing enrichment program. Not because it is illegal; Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Not again because Iran’s centrifuge program is operating in an undeclared, unmonitored fashion; the IAEA had stated it has a full understanding of the scope and work of the Iranian centrifuge enrichment program and that all associated nuclear material is accounted for and safeguarded. The problem has never been, and will never be, Iran’s enrichment program. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy. The specter of nuclear enrichment is simply a vehicle for facilitating the larger policy objectives. Olli Heinonen, and those who support and sustain his work, must be aware of the larger geopolitical context of his actions, which makes them all the more puzzling and contemptible.
A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying an almost uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America’s largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America’s biggest television news programs, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.
I have studied the minutes of meetings involving John McCloy, an American official who served numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, in the decades following the end of the Second World War. His diplomacy with the Soviets, conducted with senior Soviet negotiator Valerein Zorin and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, was real, genuine, direct and designed to resolve differences. The transcripts of the diplomacy conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to bring an end to the Vietnam conflict is likewise a study in the give and take required to achieve the status of real diplomacy.
Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. Any student of diplomatic history could tell you this. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy, without challenge or clarification, to describe Burns’ mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy. How this was going to happen with a diplomat hobbled and muzzled to the degree Burns was apparently skipped the attention of these writers and their bosses. Diplomacy, America was told, was the new policy option of choice for the Bush administration.
Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed program of investigation concerning the MEK-supplied laptop computer further poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran, predictably, refused to suspend its enrichment program, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA’s mandate in Iran.
Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on the issue of Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend its enrichment program), then it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (although it is doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).
The issue of unilateral U.S. sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation which would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran. Back in October 1962, President Kennedy, when considering the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in that nation, opined that “a blockade is a major military operation, too. It’s an act of war.” Which, of course, it is. The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva simply pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the president can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression. One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don’t have the moral courage to admit it.
Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
source
by Scott Ritter
29/07/08 " TruthDig" -- - -The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities which result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions which took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today.
Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in the world of American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency’s backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.
The MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeg. Formed among students and intellectuals, the MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, the MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. The MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.
However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members who were active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits the MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.
It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes the MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran. As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate the MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, the MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.
The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva conventions. The MEK says that its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.
The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.
Now, I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop computer: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled. Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer’s stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer’s contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programs.
The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data contained are why the U.S. government will never agree to such an investigation being done. A prosecutor, when making a case of criminal action, must lay out evidence in a simple, direct manner, allowing not only the judge and jury to see it but also the accused. If the evidence is as strong as the prosecutor maintains, it is usually bad news for the defendant. However, if the defendant is able to demonstrate inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the data being presented, then the prosecution is the one in trouble. And if the defense is able to demonstrate that the entire case is built upon fabricated evidence, the case is generally thrown out. This, in short, is what should be done with the IAEA’s ongoing probe into allegations that Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.
A key question that must be asked is why, then, does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, the agency’s Finnish deputy director for safeguards and the IAEA official responsible for the ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Moreover, why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies, in a manner which results in questionable allegations appearing in the public arena as unquestioned fact? Under normal circumstances, leaks of the sort which have occurred regarding the ongoing investigation into Iran’s alleged past studies on nuclear weapons would be subjected to a thorough investigation to determine the source and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to end them. And yet, in Vienna, Heinonen’s repeated transgressions are treated as a giant “non-event,” the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone pretends isn’t really there.
Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of his boss, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Every time ElBaradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that the IAEA can find no evidence of any past or present nuclear weapons program, and that there is a full understanding of Iran’s controversial centrifuge-based enrichment program, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well-publicized briefings are given to IAEA-based diplomats. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur. Heinonen’s Finnish nationality serves as a flimsy cover for neutrality which long ago disappeared. He is no longer serving in the role as unbiased inspector, but rather a front for the active pursuit of an American- and Israeli-inspired disinformation campaign designed to keep alive the flimsy allegations of a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to justify the continued warlike stance taken by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.
The fact that the IAEA is being used as a front to pursue this blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome. Calling the Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which of course has been well explained by Iran previously as something the Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran’s security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to the IAEA inspectors. When the IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question posed by the IAEA about how the document came to be in Iran. For Heinonen to call the document “alarming,” at this late stage in the game, is not only irresponsible but factually inaccurate, given the definition of the word. The Iranian document in question is neither a cause for alarm, seeing as it is not a source for any “sudden fear brought on by the sense of danger,” nor does it provide any “warning of existing or approaching danger,” unless one is speaking of the danger of military action on the part of the United States derived from Heinonen’s unfortunate actions and choice of words.
Olli Heinonen might as well become a salaried member of the Bush administration, since he is operating in lock step with the U.S. government’s objective of painting Iran as a threat worthy of military action. Shortly after Heinonen’s alarmist briefing in March 2008, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today’s briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen’s briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop computer of questionable provenance. But that did not matter to Schulte, who noted that “Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponization.” Schulte did not bother to note that it would be difficult for Iran to explain or acknowledge that which it has not done. “This is particularly troubling,” Schulte went on, “when combined with Iran’s determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium.” Why is this so troubling? Because, as Schulte noted, “Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran’s civil program but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponized into a bomb.”
This, of course, is the crux of the issue: Iran’s ongoing enrichment program. Not because it is illegal; Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Not again because Iran’s centrifuge program is operating in an undeclared, unmonitored fashion; the IAEA had stated it has a full understanding of the scope and work of the Iranian centrifuge enrichment program and that all associated nuclear material is accounted for and safeguarded. The problem has never been, and will never be, Iran’s enrichment program. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy. The specter of nuclear enrichment is simply a vehicle for facilitating the larger policy objectives. Olli Heinonen, and those who support and sustain his work, must be aware of the larger geopolitical context of his actions, which makes them all the more puzzling and contemptible.
A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying an almost uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America’s largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America’s biggest television news programs, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.
I have studied the minutes of meetings involving John McCloy, an American official who served numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, in the decades following the end of the Second World War. His diplomacy with the Soviets, conducted with senior Soviet negotiator Valerein Zorin and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, was real, genuine, direct and designed to resolve differences. The transcripts of the diplomacy conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to bring an end to the Vietnam conflict is likewise a study in the give and take required to achieve the status of real diplomacy.
Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. Any student of diplomatic history could tell you this. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy, without challenge or clarification, to describe Burns’ mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy. How this was going to happen with a diplomat hobbled and muzzled to the degree Burns was apparently skipped the attention of these writers and their bosses. Diplomacy, America was told, was the new policy option of choice for the Bush administration.
Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed program of investigation concerning the MEK-supplied laptop computer further poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran, predictably, refused to suspend its enrichment program, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA’s mandate in Iran.
Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on the issue of Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend its enrichment program), then it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (although it is doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).
The issue of unilateral U.S. sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation which would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran. Back in October 1962, President Kennedy, when considering the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in that nation, opined that “a blockade is a major military operation, too. It’s an act of war.” Which, of course, it is. The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva simply pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the president can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression. One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don’t have the moral courage to admit it.
Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
source
Monday, July 21, 2008
Death of Free Internet is Imminent
Death of Free Internet is Imminent
Canada Will Become Test Case
By Kevin Parkinson
21/07/08 "Global Research" -- - In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world B and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet. The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community.
The free transfer of information, uncensored, unlimited and untainted, still seems to be a dream when you think about it. Whatever field that is mentioned- education, commerce, government, news, entertainment, politics and countless other areas- have been radically affected by the introduction of the Internet. And mostly, it's good news, except when poor judgements are made and people are taken advantage of. Scrutiny and oversight are needed, especially where children are involved.
However, when there are potential profits open to a corporation, the needs of society don't count. Take the recent case in Canada with the behemoths, Telus and Rogers rolling out a charge for text messaging without any warning to the public. It was an arrogant and risky move for the telecommunications giants because it backfired. People actually used Internet technology to deliver a loud and clear message to these companies and that was to scrap the extra charge. The people used the power of the Internet against the big boys and the little guys won.
However, the issue of text messaging is just a tiny blip on the radar screens of Telus and another company, Bell Canada, the two largest Internet Service Providers (ISP'S) in Canada. Our country is being used as a test case to drastically change the delivery of Internet service forever. The change will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access.
In the upcoming weeks watch for a report in Time Magazine that will attempt to smooth over the rough edges of a diabolical plot by Bell Canada and Telus, to begin charging per site fees on most Internet sites. The plan is to convert the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and then pay to visit sites beyond a cutoff point.
From my browsing (on the currently free Internet) I have discovered that the 'demise' of the free Internet is slated for 2010 in Canada, and two years later around the world. Canada is seen a good choice to implement such shameful and sinister changes, since Canadians are viewed as being laissez fair, politically uninformed and an easy target. The corporate marauders will iron out the wrinkles in Canada and then spring the new, castrated version of the Internet on the rest of the world, probably with little fanfare, except for some dire warnings about the 'evil' of the Internet (free) and the CEO's spouting about 'safety and security'. These buzzwords usually work pretty well.
What will the Internet look like in Canada in 2010? I suspect that the ISP's will provide a "package" program as companies like Cogeco currently do. Customers will pay for a series of websites as they do now for their television stations. Television stations will be available on-line as part of these packages, which will make the networks happy since they have lost much of the younger market which are surfing and chatting on their computers in the evening. However, as is the case with cable television now, if you choose something that is not part of the package, you know what happens. You pay extra.
And this is where the Internet (free) as we know it will suffer almost immediate, economic strangulation. Thousands and thousands of Internet sites will not be part of the package so users will have to pay extra to visit those sites! In just an hour or two it is possible to easily visit 20-30 sites or more while looking for information. Just imagine how high these costs will be.
At present, the world condemns China because that country restricts certain websites. "They are undemocratic; they are removing people's freedom; they don't respect individual rights; they are censoring information,” are some of the comments we hear. But what Bell Canada and Telus have planned for Canadians is much worse than that. They are planning the death of the Internet (free) as we know it, and I expect they'll be hardly a whimper from Canadians. It's all part of the corporate plan for a New World Order and virtually a masterstroke that will lead to the creation of billions and billions of dollars of corporate profit at the expense of the working and middle classes.
There are so many other implications as a result of these changes, far too many to elaborate on here. Be aware that we will all lose our privacy because all websites will be tracked as part of the billing procedure, and we will be literally cut off from 90% of the information that we can access today. The little guys on the Net will fall likes flies; Bloggers and small website operators will die a quick death because people will not pay to go to their sites and read their pages.
Ironically, the only medium that can save us is the one we are trying to save- the Internet (free). This article will be posted on my Blog, www.realitycheck.typepad.com and I encourage people and groups to learn more about this issue. Canadians can keep the Internet free just as they kept text messaging free. Don't wait for the federal politicians. They will do nothing to help us.
I would welcome a letter to the editor of the Standard Freeholder from a spokesperson from Bell Canada or Telus telling me that I am absolutely wrong in what I have written, and that no such changes to the Internet are being planned, and that access to Internet sites will remain FREE in the years to come. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to write to the media, ask questions, phone the radio station, phone a friend, or think of something else to prevent what appears to me to be inevitable.
Maintaining Internet (free) access is the only way we have a chance at combatting the global corporate takeover, the North American Union, and a long list of other deadly deeds that the elite in society have planned for us. Yesterday was too late in trying to protect our rights and freedoms. We must now redouble our efforts in order to give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance in the future.
Author's website: http://realitycheck.typepad.com/
Canada Will Become Test Case
By Kevin Parkinson
21/07/08 "Global Research" -- - In the last 15 years or so, as a society we have had access to more information than ever before in modern history because of the Internet. There are approximately 1 billion Internet users in the world B and any one of these users can theoretically communicate in real time with any other on the planet. The Internet has been the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century by far, and has been recognized as such by the global community.
The free transfer of information, uncensored, unlimited and untainted, still seems to be a dream when you think about it. Whatever field that is mentioned- education, commerce, government, news, entertainment, politics and countless other areas- have been radically affected by the introduction of the Internet. And mostly, it's good news, except when poor judgements are made and people are taken advantage of. Scrutiny and oversight are needed, especially where children are involved.
However, when there are potential profits open to a corporation, the needs of society don't count. Take the recent case in Canada with the behemoths, Telus and Rogers rolling out a charge for text messaging without any warning to the public. It was an arrogant and risky move for the telecommunications giants because it backfired. People actually used Internet technology to deliver a loud and clear message to these companies and that was to scrap the extra charge. The people used the power of the Internet against the big boys and the little guys won.
However, the issue of text messaging is just a tiny blip on the radar screens of Telus and another company, Bell Canada, the two largest Internet Service Providers (ISP'S) in Canada. Our country is being used as a test case to drastically change the delivery of Internet service forever. The change will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access.
In the upcoming weeks watch for a report in Time Magazine that will attempt to smooth over the rough edges of a diabolical plot by Bell Canada and Telus, to begin charging per site fees on most Internet sites. The plan is to convert the Internet into a cable-like system, where customers sign up for specific web sites, and then pay to visit sites beyond a cutoff point.
From my browsing (on the currently free Internet) I have discovered that the 'demise' of the free Internet is slated for 2010 in Canada, and two years later around the world. Canada is seen a good choice to implement such shameful and sinister changes, since Canadians are viewed as being laissez fair, politically uninformed and an easy target. The corporate marauders will iron out the wrinkles in Canada and then spring the new, castrated version of the Internet on the rest of the world, probably with little fanfare, except for some dire warnings about the 'evil' of the Internet (free) and the CEO's spouting about 'safety and security'. These buzzwords usually work pretty well.
What will the Internet look like in Canada in 2010? I suspect that the ISP's will provide a "package" program as companies like Cogeco currently do. Customers will pay for a series of websites as they do now for their television stations. Television stations will be available on-line as part of these packages, which will make the networks happy since they have lost much of the younger market which are surfing and chatting on their computers in the evening. However, as is the case with cable television now, if you choose something that is not part of the package, you know what happens. You pay extra.
And this is where the Internet (free) as we know it will suffer almost immediate, economic strangulation. Thousands and thousands of Internet sites will not be part of the package so users will have to pay extra to visit those sites! In just an hour or two it is possible to easily visit 20-30 sites or more while looking for information. Just imagine how high these costs will be.
At present, the world condemns China because that country restricts certain websites. "They are undemocratic; they are removing people's freedom; they don't respect individual rights; they are censoring information,” are some of the comments we hear. But what Bell Canada and Telus have planned for Canadians is much worse than that. They are planning the death of the Internet (free) as we know it, and I expect they'll be hardly a whimper from Canadians. It's all part of the corporate plan for a New World Order and virtually a masterstroke that will lead to the creation of billions and billions of dollars of corporate profit at the expense of the working and middle classes.
There are so many other implications as a result of these changes, far too many to elaborate on here. Be aware that we will all lose our privacy because all websites will be tracked as part of the billing procedure, and we will be literally cut off from 90% of the information that we can access today. The little guys on the Net will fall likes flies; Bloggers and small website operators will die a quick death because people will not pay to go to their sites and read their pages.
Ironically, the only medium that can save us is the one we are trying to save- the Internet (free). This article will be posted on my Blog, www.realitycheck.typepad.com and I encourage people and groups to learn more about this issue. Canadians can keep the Internet free just as they kept text messaging free. Don't wait for the federal politicians. They will do nothing to help us.
I would welcome a letter to the editor of the Standard Freeholder from a spokesperson from Bell Canada or Telus telling me that I am absolutely wrong in what I have written, and that no such changes to the Internet are being planned, and that access to Internet sites will remain FREE in the years to come. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to write to the media, ask questions, phone the radio station, phone a friend, or think of something else to prevent what appears to me to be inevitable.
Maintaining Internet (free) access is the only way we have a chance at combatting the global corporate takeover, the North American Union, and a long list of other deadly deeds that the elite in society have planned for us. Yesterday was too late in trying to protect our rights and freedoms. We must now redouble our efforts in order to give our children and grandchildren a fighting chance in the future.
Author's website: http://realitycheck.typepad.com/
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Oilflation
Gulf Inflation and the Dollar Peg
by Patrick Seale
The oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf are suffering from a painful and insidious disease which, if unchecked, will eat away at their prosperity and stability. The disease is called inflation.
The figures tell the story. Inflation in Saudi Arabia -- by far the region’s biggest economy -- is running at about 10.4% a year; in the United Arab Emirates it is 11%; in Kuwait 10%; in Oman 13.2%; in Qatar 14%.
Double-digit inflation such as this is hard to check. Governments are forced to compensate by increasing subsidies on basic items, by introducing price controls and, above all, by increasing wages of public employees. Private employers have usually to follow suit -- and inflation edges upwards.
In inflationary situations, it is always those who live by their labour -- who have no access to oil revenues and are not cushioned by wealth -- who suffer first and who start to agitate, threatening political stability.
The root cause of Gulf inflation is, of course, the stupendous avalanche of wealth which has poured over the region as a result of the soaring price of oil. Not so long ago, oil was selling at $20; now it is edging towards $150. The oil price has surged seven-fold since 2002. It has doubled in price in the last year alone.
If one cause of inflation is the sharp increase of wealth -- too many riyals and too many dirhams chasing too few goods -- another cause is the peg of most Gulf currencies to the weakening dollar. The Saudi riyal, for example, has been pegged at a rate of 3.75 riyals to the U.S. dollar since 1986.
As the dollar falls sharply against the euro and the yen, such dollar pegs contribute to inflation by making Gulf imports from Europe and Japan more expensive. Oman’s import bill, for example, surged in 2007 by almost 47% to $15.96bn.
Economists and central bankers up and down the Gulf are now debating whether it would be wise to end the dollar peg and revalue their currencies.
A committee of Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council has recommended to King Abdallah that the riyal should be revalued by up to 30%. But Hamad Saud al-Sayyari, head of the Saudi central bank, has said that adjusting exchange rates will not solve the problem of high inflation. Meanwhile, Muhammad al-Jahdhamy, executive vice-president of Oman’s central bank, has said that inflation will stabilise, a remark that implied that a revaluation was not necessary.
Some experts believe that Gulf currencies should abandon the dollar peg in favour of a peg to a basket of currencies. Others argue that only a floating exchange rate would give the Gulf countries the monetary policy independence they need in a situation of global financial turbulence.
Ala’a A-Youssuf, chief economist of the London-based Gulf Finance House, argued in a letter to the Financial Times (July 16) that exchange rate appreciation alone would not be effective. He called for a “comprehensive medium-term development framework that explicitly recognizes the need to contain inflation while fostering growth and development.” Such a programme, he might have added, would be easier to implement if the Gulf countries were to adopt a single currency, on the model of the European Union.
The Financial Times (8 July) has called for Gulf currencies to include the price of oil in the basket to which they could peg their currencies. Their currencies would appreciate when oil was strong and depreciate when it was weak.
The truth is that the world economy is in great trouble. While oil and other commodities continue to climb, stock markets tumble and several leading commercial banks are struggling to stay afloat. In the United States, consumer confidence is at a 28-year low.
The biggest threat overhanging the world economy is the uncertain future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the pillars of the U.S. mortgage market. Together, they own or guarantee almost half of the $12,000bn U.S. mortgage market. But, as house prices fall and foreclosures rise across the United States, they have incurred huge losses. If they collapsed, the consequences could be disastrous for the global financial system -- and for the dollar.
To survive, Fannie and Freddie need to borrow and raise fresh capital. But it will not be easy to attract private lenders so long as it is not clear what the U.S. government will do to save these venerable institutions.
One solution being floated is not to nationalize them -- which would be contrary to America’s liberal market ideology -- but to place them in “conservatorship” -- a sort of disguised nationalization, which would allow the U.S. government to pretend that the liabilities of Fannie and Freddie were not its own.
With the world teetering on the edge of a depression, these are not easy times for financial authorities, whether in the United States, in the Gulf, or indeed anywhere else.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
by Patrick Seale
The oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf are suffering from a painful and insidious disease which, if unchecked, will eat away at their prosperity and stability. The disease is called inflation.
The figures tell the story. Inflation in Saudi Arabia -- by far the region’s biggest economy -- is running at about 10.4% a year; in the United Arab Emirates it is 11%; in Kuwait 10%; in Oman 13.2%; in Qatar 14%.
Double-digit inflation such as this is hard to check. Governments are forced to compensate by increasing subsidies on basic items, by introducing price controls and, above all, by increasing wages of public employees. Private employers have usually to follow suit -- and inflation edges upwards.
In inflationary situations, it is always those who live by their labour -- who have no access to oil revenues and are not cushioned by wealth -- who suffer first and who start to agitate, threatening political stability.
The root cause of Gulf inflation is, of course, the stupendous avalanche of wealth which has poured over the region as a result of the soaring price of oil. Not so long ago, oil was selling at $20; now it is edging towards $150. The oil price has surged seven-fold since 2002. It has doubled in price in the last year alone.
If one cause of inflation is the sharp increase of wealth -- too many riyals and too many dirhams chasing too few goods -- another cause is the peg of most Gulf currencies to the weakening dollar. The Saudi riyal, for example, has been pegged at a rate of 3.75 riyals to the U.S. dollar since 1986.
As the dollar falls sharply against the euro and the yen, such dollar pegs contribute to inflation by making Gulf imports from Europe and Japan more expensive. Oman’s import bill, for example, surged in 2007 by almost 47% to $15.96bn.
Economists and central bankers up and down the Gulf are now debating whether it would be wise to end the dollar peg and revalue their currencies.
A committee of Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council has recommended to King Abdallah that the riyal should be revalued by up to 30%. But Hamad Saud al-Sayyari, head of the Saudi central bank, has said that adjusting exchange rates will not solve the problem of high inflation. Meanwhile, Muhammad al-Jahdhamy, executive vice-president of Oman’s central bank, has said that inflation will stabilise, a remark that implied that a revaluation was not necessary.
Some experts believe that Gulf currencies should abandon the dollar peg in favour of a peg to a basket of currencies. Others argue that only a floating exchange rate would give the Gulf countries the monetary policy independence they need in a situation of global financial turbulence.
Ala’a A-Youssuf, chief economist of the London-based Gulf Finance House, argued in a letter to the Financial Times (July 16) that exchange rate appreciation alone would not be effective. He called for a “comprehensive medium-term development framework that explicitly recognizes the need to contain inflation while fostering growth and development.” Such a programme, he might have added, would be easier to implement if the Gulf countries were to adopt a single currency, on the model of the European Union.
The Financial Times (8 July) has called for Gulf currencies to include the price of oil in the basket to which they could peg their currencies. Their currencies would appreciate when oil was strong and depreciate when it was weak.
The truth is that the world economy is in great trouble. While oil and other commodities continue to climb, stock markets tumble and several leading commercial banks are struggling to stay afloat. In the United States, consumer confidence is at a 28-year low.
The biggest threat overhanging the world economy is the uncertain future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the pillars of the U.S. mortgage market. Together, they own or guarantee almost half of the $12,000bn U.S. mortgage market. But, as house prices fall and foreclosures rise across the United States, they have incurred huge losses. If they collapsed, the consequences could be disastrous for the global financial system -- and for the dollar.
To survive, Fannie and Freddie need to borrow and raise fresh capital. But it will not be easy to attract private lenders so long as it is not clear what the U.S. government will do to save these venerable institutions.
One solution being floated is not to nationalize them -- which would be contrary to America’s liberal market ideology -- but to place them in “conservatorship” -- a sort of disguised nationalization, which would allow the U.S. government to pretend that the liabilities of Fannie and Freddie were not its own.
With the world teetering on the edge of a depression, these are not easy times for financial authorities, whether in the United States, in the Gulf, or indeed anywhere else.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Logging Wrecks Vancouver Island Watersheds
Island's future water supply made unfit by logging
It will take decades to make Leech River Valley suitable resource for Victoria-area communities, official estimates
JUSTINE HUNTER
July 19, 2008
VICTORIA -- The Leech River Valley on Vancouver Island holds the future water supply for the rapidly expanding communities in and around Victoria.
But thanks to logging on private lands, the water is unfit for the city's taps.
The watershed is scarred by clear-cuts. More than 20 landslides, many triggered by logging, mark the steep gulley leading to the Leech River.
Last summer, the Capital Regional District spent nearly $60-million buying the valley from TimberWest Forest Corp. and is now preparing to spend more to restore the watershed to something that mimics the original forest.
It will take decades to restore the watershed to the point that it can provide clean drinking water, estimates Jack Hull, the CRD's general manager for water services.
"We are taking a long-term view," he said yesterday. "We could be looking at 30 or more years."
With growing development pressures on the island, similar conflicts over private timberlands were highlighted this week when Auditor-General John Doyle assailed the former forests minister for a decision on the forestry land base just west of the Leech River watershed.
Mr. Doyle said the province didn't act in the public interest when it removed about 28,000 hectares of Western Forest Products' private timberlands from Forest Ministry regulation, paving the way for real-estate development - or the kind of logging that has marked the Leech River watershed.
Until last year's land-use decision, the Western Forest Products lands were subject to tree farm licence (TFL) regulations that required higher standards for logging. The company has since provisionally sold a portion of the properties around Jordan River to a real-estate developer.
The deal, worth an estimated $150-million to the forest company, has generated anger in communities in the region along the west coast of Vancouver Island. Environmentalists and unionized forest workers have banded together to oppose the sell-off of the timberlands.
Mr. Doyle concluded the government should have looked at what happens to private lands when they are lifted from the TFL restrictions before altering the status of the lands. The province received no compensation for the change.
Historically, forest companies in B.C. agreed to put private forestry lands under provincial control in exchange for access to timber on public land.
"There wasn't a sufficient review of past decisions, they fell between the cracks," Mr. Doyle said in an interview.
But Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the information was there in the government's own database, had the Forests Ministry chosen to consider the potential impact.
In a study released this week, Mr. Parfitt found that logging rates increased dramatically once land was taken out of TFL controls. Companies pay less in taxes and royalties on strictly private lands, and are subject to fewer restrictions to sell raw logs for export.
(Virtually all of the private TFL lands have been wiped out since 1999. There are just a few pockets left on Vancouver Island and in the Kootenays, a total of about 17,000 hectares.) "I think the Leech River watershed is a good example of where the public interest is impacted negatively by logging rates and methods on private lands," Mr. Parfitt said.
His report calls for reforms of private forest land regulations to ensure sustainable harvests. "If we had proper rules in place we wouldn't be out of pocket for the Leech watershed."
Conflicts over logging on private forestry lands are particularly acute on Vancouver Island because a high ratio of the island is in private hands. On the mainland, about 95 per cent of the province is publicly owned. On Vancouver Island, nearly a quarter of the land is in private hands.
With environmental and development pressures rubbing up against logging activities, most of the big private timberland owners are moving into the real estate business.
"Vancouver Island is changing at a rapid rate with respect to population growth," noted Steve Lorimer, TimberWest's manager of public affairs. "There is pressure to find land for areas to live, to recreate and maintain a good water supply." It's a formula that makes it harder to log, but more lucrative to build.
Nearly a fifth of TimberWest's 322,000 hectares of private lands on Vancouver Island have been earmarked for development. As a sign of the times, TimberWest hired its first vice-president of real estate last year.
source
It will take decades to make Leech River Valley suitable resource for Victoria-area communities, official estimates
JUSTINE HUNTER
July 19, 2008
VICTORIA -- The Leech River Valley on Vancouver Island holds the future water supply for the rapidly expanding communities in and around Victoria.
But thanks to logging on private lands, the water is unfit for the city's taps.
The watershed is scarred by clear-cuts. More than 20 landslides, many triggered by logging, mark the steep gulley leading to the Leech River.
Last summer, the Capital Regional District spent nearly $60-million buying the valley from TimberWest Forest Corp. and is now preparing to spend more to restore the watershed to something that mimics the original forest.
It will take decades to restore the watershed to the point that it can provide clean drinking water, estimates Jack Hull, the CRD's general manager for water services.
"We are taking a long-term view," he said yesterday. "We could be looking at 30 or more years."
With growing development pressures on the island, similar conflicts over private timberlands were highlighted this week when Auditor-General John Doyle assailed the former forests minister for a decision on the forestry land base just west of the Leech River watershed.
Mr. Doyle said the province didn't act in the public interest when it removed about 28,000 hectares of Western Forest Products' private timberlands from Forest Ministry regulation, paving the way for real-estate development - or the kind of logging that has marked the Leech River watershed.
Until last year's land-use decision, the Western Forest Products lands were subject to tree farm licence (TFL) regulations that required higher standards for logging. The company has since provisionally sold a portion of the properties around Jordan River to a real-estate developer.
The deal, worth an estimated $150-million to the forest company, has generated anger in communities in the region along the west coast of Vancouver Island. Environmentalists and unionized forest workers have banded together to oppose the sell-off of the timberlands.
Mr. Doyle concluded the government should have looked at what happens to private lands when they are lifted from the TFL restrictions before altering the status of the lands. The province received no compensation for the change.
Historically, forest companies in B.C. agreed to put private forestry lands under provincial control in exchange for access to timber on public land.
"There wasn't a sufficient review of past decisions, they fell between the cracks," Mr. Doyle said in an interview.
But Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the information was there in the government's own database, had the Forests Ministry chosen to consider the potential impact.
In a study released this week, Mr. Parfitt found that logging rates increased dramatically once land was taken out of TFL controls. Companies pay less in taxes and royalties on strictly private lands, and are subject to fewer restrictions to sell raw logs for export.
(Virtually all of the private TFL lands have been wiped out since 1999. There are just a few pockets left on Vancouver Island and in the Kootenays, a total of about 17,000 hectares.) "I think the Leech River watershed is a good example of where the public interest is impacted negatively by logging rates and methods on private lands," Mr. Parfitt said.
His report calls for reforms of private forest land regulations to ensure sustainable harvests. "If we had proper rules in place we wouldn't be out of pocket for the Leech watershed."
Conflicts over logging on private forestry lands are particularly acute on Vancouver Island because a high ratio of the island is in private hands. On the mainland, about 95 per cent of the province is publicly owned. On Vancouver Island, nearly a quarter of the land is in private hands.
With environmental and development pressures rubbing up against logging activities, most of the big private timberland owners are moving into the real estate business.
"Vancouver Island is changing at a rapid rate with respect to population growth," noted Steve Lorimer, TimberWest's manager of public affairs. "There is pressure to find land for areas to live, to recreate and maintain a good water supply." It's a formula that makes it harder to log, but more lucrative to build.
Nearly a fifth of TimberWest's 322,000 hectares of private lands on Vancouver Island have been earmarked for development. As a sign of the times, TimberWest hired its first vice-president of real estate last year.
source
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