Why We Were Falsely Arrested
By Amy Goodman
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists. I was arrested with my two colleagues, “Democracy Now!” producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while reporting on the first day of the RNC. I have been wrongly charged with a misdemeanor. My co-workers, who were simply reporting, may be charged with felony riot.
The Democratic and Republican national conventions have become very expensive and protracted acts of political theater, essentially four-day-long advertisements for the major presidential candidates. Outside the fences, they have become major gatherings for grass-roots movements—for people to come, amidst the banners, bunting, flags and confetti, to express the rights enumerated in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Behind all the patriotic hyperbole that accompanies the conventions, and the thousands of journalists and media workers who arrive to cover the staged events, there are serious violations of the basic right of freedom of the press. Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition their government, to protest.
It was Labor Day, and there was an anti-war march, with a huge turnout, with local families, students, veterans and people from around the country gathered to oppose the war. The protesters greatly outnumbered the Republican delegates.
There was a positive, festive feeling, coupled with a growing anxiety about the course that Hurricane Gustav was taking, and whether New Orleans would be devastated anew. Later in the day, there was a splinter march. The police—clad in full body armor, with helmets, face shields, batons and canisters of pepper spray—charged. They forced marchers, onlookers and working journalists into a nearby parking lot, then surrounded the people and began handcuffing them.
Nicole was videotaping. Her tape of her own violent arrest is chilling. Police in riot gear charged her, yelling, “Get down on your face.” You hear her voice, clearly and repeatedly announcing “Press! Press! Where are we supposed to go?” She was trapped between parked cars. The camera drops to the pavement amidst Nicole’s screams of pain. Her face was smashed into the pavement, and she was bleeding from the nose, with the heavy officer with a boot or knee on her back. Another officer was pulling on her leg. Sharif was thrown up against the wall and kicked in the chest, and he was bleeding from his arm.
I was at the Xcel Center on the convention floor, interviewing delegates. I had just made it to the Minnesota delegation when I got a call on my cell phone with news that Sharif and Nicole were being bloody arrested, in every sense. Filmmaker Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films and I raced on foot to the scene. Out of breath, we arrived at the parking lot. I went up to the line of riot police and asked to speak to a commanding officer, saying that they had arrested accredited journalists.
Within seconds, they grabbed me, pulled me behind the police line and forcibly twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me, the rigid plastic cuffs digging into my wrists. I saw Sharif, his arm bloody, his credentials hanging from his neck. I repeated we were accredited journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped my convention credential from my neck. I was taken to the St. Paul police garage where cages were set up for protesters. I was charged with obstruction of a peace officer. Nicole and Sharif were taken to jail, facing riot charges.
The attack on and arrest of me and the “Democracy Now!” producers was not an isolated event. A video group called I-Witness Video was raided two days earlier. Another video documentary group, the Glass Bead Collective, was detained, with its computers and video cameras confiscated. On Wednesday, I-Witness Video was again raided, forced out of its office location. When I asked St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere, he suggested, “By embedding reporters in our mobile field force.”
On Monday night, hours after we were arrested, after much public outcry, Nicole, Sharif and I were released. That was our Labor Day. It’s all in a day’s work.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America.
© 2008 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
source
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Monday, September 01, 2008
Black Sea Power
Russia remains a Black Sea power
By M K Bhadrakumar
If the struggle in the Caucasus was ever over oil and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) agenda towards Central Asia, the United States suffered a colossal setback this week. Kazakhstan, the Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia's de facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated.
At a meeting in the Tajik capital Dushanbe on Thursday on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Moscow could count on Astana's support in the present crisis.
In his press conference in Dushanbe, Medvedev underlined that his SCO counterparts, including China, showed understanding of the Russian position. Moscow appears satisfied that the SCO summit also issued a statement on the Caucasus developments, which, inter alia, said, "The leaders of the SCO member states welcome the signing in Moscow of the six principles for regulating the South Ossetia conflict, and support Russia's active role in assisting peace and cooperation in the region." The SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
There were tell-tale signs that something was afoot when the Kazakh Foreign Ministry issued a statement on August 19 hinting at broad understanding for the Russian position. The statement called for an "unbiased and balanced assessment" of events and pointed out that an "attempt [was made] to resolve a complicated ethno-territorial issue by the use of force", which led to "grave consequences". The statement said Astana supported the "way the Russian leadership proposed to resolve the issue" within the framework of the United Nations charter, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and international law.
The lengthy statement leaned toward the Russian position but offered a labored explanation for doing so.
Kazakhstan has since stepped out into the thick of the diplomatic sweepstakes and whole-heartedly endorsed the Russian position.
This has become a turning point for Russian diplomacy in the post-Soviet space. Nazarbayev said:
From Moscow's point of view, Nazarbayev's words are worth their weight in gold. Kazakhstan is the richest energy producer in Central Asia and is a regional heavyweight. It borders China. The entire US regional strategy in Central Asia ultimately aims at replacing Russia and China as Kazakhstan's number one partner. American oil majors began making a beeline to Kazakhstan immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - including Chevron, with which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was associated.
Unsurprisingly, Kazakhstan figured as a favorite destination for US Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W Bush has lavishly hosted Nazarbayev in the White House.
The US had gone the extra league in cultivating Nazarbayev, with the fervent hope that somehow Kazakhstan could be persuaded to commit its oil to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, whose viability is otherwise in doubt. The pipeline is a crucial component of the US's Caspian great game.
The US had gone to great lengths to realize the pipeline project against seemingly hopeless odds. In fact, Washington stage-managed the "color" revolution in Georgia in November 2003 (which catapulted Mikheil Saakashvili to power in Tbilisi) on the eve of the commissioning of the pipeline. The general idea behind the commotion in the South Caucasus was that the US should take control of Georgia through which the pipeline passes.
Besides, Kazakhstan shares a 7,500 kilometer border with Russia, which is the longest land border between any two countries in the world. It would be a nightmare for Russian security if NATO were to gain a foothold in Kazakhstan. Again, the US strategy had targeted Kazakhstan as the prize catch for NATO in Central Asia. The US aimed to make a pitch for Kazakhstan after getting Georgia inducted into NATO.
These American dreams have suffered a setback with the Kazakh leadership now closing ranks with Moscow. It seems Moscow outwitted Washington.
Belarus voices support the other neighboring country sharing a common border with Russia, Belarus, has also expressed support for Moscow. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visited Medvedev in Sochi on August 19 to express his solidarity.
"Russia acted calmly, wisely and beautifully. This was a calm response. Peace has been established in the region - and it will last," he commented.
What is even more potent is that Russia and Belarus have decided to sign an agreement this autumn on creating a unified air defense system. This is hugely advantageous for Russia in the context of the recent US attempts to deploy missile defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic.
According to Russian media reports, Belarus has several S-300 air defense batteries - Russia's advanced system - on combat duty and is currently negotiating the latest S-400 systems from Russia, which will be made available by 2010.
Attention now shifts to the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is scheduled to take place in Moscow on September 5. The CSTO's stance on the crisis in the Caucasus will be closely watched.
It appears that Moscow and Kazakhstan are closely cooperating in setting the agenda of CSTO, whose members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The big question is how the CSTO gears up to meet NATO's expansion plans. The emergent geopolitical reality is that with Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Moscow has virtually checkmated the US strategy in the Black Sea region, defeating its plan to make the Black Sea an exclusive "NATO lake". In turn, NATO's expansion plans in the Caucasus have suffered a setback.
Not many analysts have understood the full military import of the Russian moves in recognizing the breakaway Georgian republics.
Russia has now gained de facto control over two major Black Sea ports - Sukhumi and Poti. Even if the US-supported regime of Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine creates obstacles for the Russian fleet based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol - in all probability, Moscow will shrug off any Ukrainian pressure tactic - the fleet now has access to alternative ports on the Black Sea. Poti, in particular, has excellent facilities dating to the Soviet era.
The swiftness with which Russia took control of Poti must have made the US livid with anger. Washington's fury stems from the realization that its game plan to eventually eliminate Russia's historical role as a "Black Sea power" has been rendered a pipe dream. Of course, without a Black Sea fleet, Russia would have ceased to be a naval power in the Mediterranean. In turn, Russia's profile in the Middle East would have suffered. The Americans indeed had an ambitious game plan towards Russia.
There is every indication that Moscow intends to assert the strategic presence of its Black Sea Fleet. Talks have begun with Syria for the expansion of a Russian naval maintenance base at the Syrian port of Tartus. The Middle East media recently suggested in the context of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow that Russia might contemplate shifting its Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol to Syria. But this is an incorrect reading insofar as all that Russia needs is a supply and maintenance center for its warships, which operate missions in the Mediterranean. In fact, the Soviet navy's 5th Mediterranean Squadron had made use of Tartus port for such purpose.
China shows understanding
Moscow will approach the CSTO summit pleased with the SCO's backing, even it it was not without reservations. Medvedev said of the SCO meeting,
Of course, I had to tell our partners what had actually happened, since the picture painted by some of the Western media unfortunately differed from real facts as to who was the aggressor, who started all this, and who should bear the political, moral and ultimately the legal responsibility for what happened ...
Our colleagues gratefully received this information and during a series of conversations we concluded that such events certainly do not strengthen the world order, and that the party that unleashed the aggression should be responsible for its consequences ... I am very pleased to have been able to discuss this with our colleagues and to have received from them this kind of support for our efforts. We are confident that the position of the SCO member states will produce an appropriate resonance through the international security, and I hope this will give a serious signal to those who are trying to justify the aggression that was committed.
It must have come as a relief to Moscow that China agreed to line up behind such a positive formulation. On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow also seems to have had its first contact with the Chinese Embassy regarding the issue. Significantly, the Foreign Ministry statement said the meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin and Chinese ambassador Liu Guchang took place at the Chinese initiative.
The statement claimed, "The Chinese side was informed of the political and legal motives behind Russia's decision and expressed an understanding of them." (Emphasis added.) It is highly unlikely that on such a sensitive issue, Moscow would have unilaterally staked a tall claim without some degree of prior tacit consent from the Chinese side, which is a usual diplomatic practice.
The official Russian news agency report went a step further and highlighted that "China had expressed its understanding of Russia's decision to recognize Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia".
The favorable stance by Belarus, Kazakhstan and China significantly boosts Moscow's position. In real terms, the assurance that the three big countries that surround Russia will remain on friendly terms no matter the West's threat to unleash a new cold war, makes a huge difference to Moscow's capacity to maneuver. Any time now - possibly this weekend - we may expect Belarus to announce its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Clearly, Moscow is disinterested to mount any diplomatic campaign to rally support from the world community for the sovereignty and independence of the two breakaway provinces. As a Moscow commentator put it, "Unlike in comrade Leonid Brezhnev's time, Moscow is not trying to press any countries into supporting it on this issue. If it did, it could find quite a few sympathizers, but who cares?"
It serves Moscow's purpose as long as the world community draws an analogy between Kosovo and the two breakaway provinces. In any case, the two provinces have been totally dependent on Russia for economic sustenance.
With the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, what matters critically for Moscow is that if the West now intends to erect any new Berlin Wall, such a wall will have to run zig-zag along the western coast of the Black Sea, while the Russian naval fleet will always stay put on the east coast and forever sail in and out of the Black Sea.
The Montreal Convention assures the free passage of Russian warships through the Straits of Bosphorous. Under the circumstances, NATO's grandiose schemes to occupy the Black Sea as its private lake seem outlandish now. There must be a lot of egg on the faces of the NATO brains in Brussels and their patrons in Washington and London.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
source
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
By M K Bhadrakumar
If the struggle in the Caucasus was ever over oil and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) agenda towards Central Asia, the United States suffered a colossal setback this week. Kazakhstan, the Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia's de facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated.
At a meeting in the Tajik capital Dushanbe on Thursday on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Moscow could count on Astana's support in the present crisis.
In his press conference in Dushanbe, Medvedev underlined that his SCO counterparts, including China, showed understanding of the Russian position. Moscow appears satisfied that the SCO summit also issued a statement on the Caucasus developments, which, inter alia, said, "The leaders of the SCO member states welcome the signing in Moscow of the six principles for regulating the South Ossetia conflict, and support Russia's active role in assisting peace and cooperation in the region." The SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
There were tell-tale signs that something was afoot when the Kazakh Foreign Ministry issued a statement on August 19 hinting at broad understanding for the Russian position. The statement called for an "unbiased and balanced assessment" of events and pointed out that an "attempt [was made] to resolve a complicated ethno-territorial issue by the use of force", which led to "grave consequences". The statement said Astana supported the "way the Russian leadership proposed to resolve the issue" within the framework of the United Nations charter, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and international law.
The lengthy statement leaned toward the Russian position but offered a labored explanation for doing so.
Kazakhstan has since stepped out into the thick of the diplomatic sweepstakes and whole-heartedly endorsed the Russian position.
This has become a turning point for Russian diplomacy in the post-Soviet space. Nazarbayev said:
I am amazed that the West simply ignored the fact that Georgian armed forces attacked the peaceful city of Tskhinvali [in South Ossetia]. Therefore, my assessment is as follows: I think that it originally started with this. And Russia's response could either have been to keep silent or to protect their people and so on. I believe that all subsequent steps taken by Russia have been designed to stop bloodshed of ordinary residents of this long-suffering city. Of course, there are many refugees, many homeless.
Guided by out bilateral agreement on friendship and cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia, we have provided humanitarian aid: 100 tons have already been sent. We will continue to provide assistance together with you.
Of course, there was loss of life on the Georgian side - war is war. The resolution of the conflict with Georgia has now been shifted to some indeterminate time in the future. We have always had good relations with Georgia. Kazakhstan's companies have made substantial investments there. Of course, those that have done this want stability there. The conditions of the plan that you and [President of France Nicolas] Sarkozy drew up must be implemented, but some have begun to disavow certain points in the plan.
However, I think that negotiations will continue and that there will be peace - there is no other alternative. Therefore, Kazakhstan understands all the measures that have been taken, and Kazakhstan supports them. For our part, we will be ready to do everything to ensure that everyone returns to the negotiating table.
From Moscow's point of view, Nazarbayev's words are worth their weight in gold. Kazakhstan is the richest energy producer in Central Asia and is a regional heavyweight. It borders China. The entire US regional strategy in Central Asia ultimately aims at replacing Russia and China as Kazakhstan's number one partner. American oil majors began making a beeline to Kazakhstan immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - including Chevron, with which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was associated.
Unsurprisingly, Kazakhstan figured as a favorite destination for US Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W Bush has lavishly hosted Nazarbayev in the White House.
The US had gone the extra league in cultivating Nazarbayev, with the fervent hope that somehow Kazakhstan could be persuaded to commit its oil to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, whose viability is otherwise in doubt. The pipeline is a crucial component of the US's Caspian great game.
The US had gone to great lengths to realize the pipeline project against seemingly hopeless odds. In fact, Washington stage-managed the "color" revolution in Georgia in November 2003 (which catapulted Mikheil Saakashvili to power in Tbilisi) on the eve of the commissioning of the pipeline. The general idea behind the commotion in the South Caucasus was that the US should take control of Georgia through which the pipeline passes.
Besides, Kazakhstan shares a 7,500 kilometer border with Russia, which is the longest land border between any two countries in the world. It would be a nightmare for Russian security if NATO were to gain a foothold in Kazakhstan. Again, the US strategy had targeted Kazakhstan as the prize catch for NATO in Central Asia. The US aimed to make a pitch for Kazakhstan after getting Georgia inducted into NATO.
These American dreams have suffered a setback with the Kazakh leadership now closing ranks with Moscow. It seems Moscow outwitted Washington.
Belarus voices support the other neighboring country sharing a common border with Russia, Belarus, has also expressed support for Moscow. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visited Medvedev in Sochi on August 19 to express his solidarity.
"Russia acted calmly, wisely and beautifully. This was a calm response. Peace has been established in the region - and it will last," he commented.
What is even more potent is that Russia and Belarus have decided to sign an agreement this autumn on creating a unified air defense system. This is hugely advantageous for Russia in the context of the recent US attempts to deploy missile defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic.
According to Russian media reports, Belarus has several S-300 air defense batteries - Russia's advanced system - on combat duty and is currently negotiating the latest S-400 systems from Russia, which will be made available by 2010.
Attention now shifts to the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is scheduled to take place in Moscow on September 5. The CSTO's stance on the crisis in the Caucasus will be closely watched.
It appears that Moscow and Kazakhstan are closely cooperating in setting the agenda of CSTO, whose members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The big question is how the CSTO gears up to meet NATO's expansion plans. The emergent geopolitical reality is that with Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Moscow has virtually checkmated the US strategy in the Black Sea region, defeating its plan to make the Black Sea an exclusive "NATO lake". In turn, NATO's expansion plans in the Caucasus have suffered a setback.
Not many analysts have understood the full military import of the Russian moves in recognizing the breakaway Georgian republics.
Russia has now gained de facto control over two major Black Sea ports - Sukhumi and Poti. Even if the US-supported regime of Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine creates obstacles for the Russian fleet based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol - in all probability, Moscow will shrug off any Ukrainian pressure tactic - the fleet now has access to alternative ports on the Black Sea. Poti, in particular, has excellent facilities dating to the Soviet era.
The swiftness with which Russia took control of Poti must have made the US livid with anger. Washington's fury stems from the realization that its game plan to eventually eliminate Russia's historical role as a "Black Sea power" has been rendered a pipe dream. Of course, without a Black Sea fleet, Russia would have ceased to be a naval power in the Mediterranean. In turn, Russia's profile in the Middle East would have suffered. The Americans indeed had an ambitious game plan towards Russia.
There is every indication that Moscow intends to assert the strategic presence of its Black Sea Fleet. Talks have begun with Syria for the expansion of a Russian naval maintenance base at the Syrian port of Tartus. The Middle East media recently suggested in the context of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow that Russia might contemplate shifting its Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol to Syria. But this is an incorrect reading insofar as all that Russia needs is a supply and maintenance center for its warships, which operate missions in the Mediterranean. In fact, the Soviet navy's 5th Mediterranean Squadron had made use of Tartus port for such purpose.
China shows understanding
Moscow will approach the CSTO summit pleased with the SCO's backing, even it it was not without reservations. Medvedev said of the SCO meeting,
Of course, I had to tell our partners what had actually happened, since the picture painted by some of the Western media unfortunately differed from real facts as to who was the aggressor, who started all this, and who should bear the political, moral and ultimately the legal responsibility for what happened ...
Our colleagues gratefully received this information and during a series of conversations we concluded that such events certainly do not strengthen the world order, and that the party that unleashed the aggression should be responsible for its consequences ... I am very pleased to have been able to discuss this with our colleagues and to have received from them this kind of support for our efforts. We are confident that the position of the SCO member states will produce an appropriate resonance through the international security, and I hope this will give a serious signal to those who are trying to justify the aggression that was committed.
It must have come as a relief to Moscow that China agreed to line up behind such a positive formulation. On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow also seems to have had its first contact with the Chinese Embassy regarding the issue. Significantly, the Foreign Ministry statement said the meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin and Chinese ambassador Liu Guchang took place at the Chinese initiative.
The statement claimed, "The Chinese side was informed of the political and legal motives behind Russia's decision and expressed an understanding of them." (Emphasis added.) It is highly unlikely that on such a sensitive issue, Moscow would have unilaterally staked a tall claim without some degree of prior tacit consent from the Chinese side, which is a usual diplomatic practice.
The official Russian news agency report went a step further and highlighted that "China had expressed its understanding of Russia's decision to recognize Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia".
The favorable stance by Belarus, Kazakhstan and China significantly boosts Moscow's position. In real terms, the assurance that the three big countries that surround Russia will remain on friendly terms no matter the West's threat to unleash a new cold war, makes a huge difference to Moscow's capacity to maneuver. Any time now - possibly this weekend - we may expect Belarus to announce its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Clearly, Moscow is disinterested to mount any diplomatic campaign to rally support from the world community for the sovereignty and independence of the two breakaway provinces. As a Moscow commentator put it, "Unlike in comrade Leonid Brezhnev's time, Moscow is not trying to press any countries into supporting it on this issue. If it did, it could find quite a few sympathizers, but who cares?"
It serves Moscow's purpose as long as the world community draws an analogy between Kosovo and the two breakaway provinces. In any case, the two provinces have been totally dependent on Russia for economic sustenance.
With the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, what matters critically for Moscow is that if the West now intends to erect any new Berlin Wall, such a wall will have to run zig-zag along the western coast of the Black Sea, while the Russian naval fleet will always stay put on the east coast and forever sail in and out of the Black Sea.
The Montreal Convention assures the free passage of Russian warships through the Straits of Bosphorous. Under the circumstances, NATO's grandiose schemes to occupy the Black Sea as its private lake seem outlandish now. There must be a lot of egg on the faces of the NATO brains in Brussels and their patrons in Washington and London.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
source
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Canada and the Chinese Mafia
One man's China crusade
Donna Jacobs, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, August 25, 2008
For Canadian diplomat Brian McAdam, it wasn't that he had uncovered the lucrative sale of Canadian visas during his posting at Canada's Hong Kong consulate.
Both Canadian and Chinese consular staff, he says, were selling visas to members of the Chinese mafia and Communist China's intelligence service. The price, he heard, ranged from $10,000 to $100,000 per visa.
It wasn't that reports he sent to his bosses in Canada -- details on murderers, money launderers, smugglers and spies trying to enter Canada -- were met with silence or mostly destroyed.
It wasn't dozens of threatening calls -- "Stop what you're doing or you're going to find yourself dead" -- from Triad members during his 1989-1993 stint in Hong Kong.
What finally broke him down, he says, was "the incredible feeling of betrayal from my colleagues. I'd worked with these people for years."
"It goes to your very soul," he says. "It is a spiritual crisis. It is a psychological breakdown."
There was the day he got a phone call from his Hong Kong Police Department source, who was wiretapping a Triad kingpin.
"What shocked the Hong Kong policeman was that the Triad member had phoned someone in the Canadian immigration minister's office in Ottawa," says Mr. McAdam.
"The officer commented: 'With that kind of relationship, you've got a really serious problem.' "
What shocked Mr. McAdam was what the officer said next: The Canadian reassured the Triad boss, "Don't worry about McAdam and what he's doing. We'll take care of him."
And, says Mr. McAdam, they did.
Immigration Canada offered him a good new job in Ottawa. He returned -- and found that his ostracism was complete. His 30-year career in Europe, the Caribbean and Asia was over.
That stunning moment of clarity shut him down, physically and mentally. After two years on medical leave, swinging between hypersomnia -- sleeping 20 hours a day -- and
insomnia, he says he finally did what his bosses and almost all of his co-workers wanted. In 1993, at age 51, he took early retirement.
Though bereft of job, he says, "I felt free of a horrible group of people."
"Ill, depressed and unemployed," he says, "I knew what I'd discovered was profoundly important."
In his 850-page manuscript --working title The Dragon's Deception -- he writes: "I was mocked, demeaned and threatened in a hostile environment while dealing with some of the world's most ruthless criminals. Staff in both Hong Kong and in Ottawa gave copies of my confidential reports about some of the criminals to the gangsters themselves, and that greatly put my life at risk. I received death threats for a number of years but no one has ever been concerned about my safety. The big question (was): Why did Canadian diplomats in Hong Kong and bureaucrats in Ottawa do whatever they could to destroy my work and myself?"
As he tells it, around that time, he was formulating the idea of a formal investigation to verify and enlarge his findings in Hong Kong. By 1995, a dozen CSIS and RCMP officers formally launched their first joint project: Operation Sidewinder
Concealing his ill health, Mr. McAdam supplied the team with extensive documentation of China's criminals and the Communist government's ambitious program of acquisition, espionage and political influence in Canada and around the world.
The RCMP's own more narrow investigation into Mr. McAdam's discoveries -- separate from Sidewinder -- had begun in 1992. They probed incidents of corruption but limited themselves to locally engaged staff -- not Canadians.
A seven-year investigation ensued. Seven RCMP investigators came and went. "As soon as one (Mountie) would investigate, they'd pull him off," Mr. McAdam says. "Another officer would come along, start to make discoveries and would be pulled off."
"I believe both probes (by the Sidewinder team and by the RCMP) had considerable political interference to shut them down," says Mr. McAdam, "and it seemed to be coming from the highest levels."
Mr. McAdam credits David Kilgour, then Liberal MP for Edmonton-Strathcona and secretary of state for Latin America and Africa, for his persistent letters. Mr. Kilgour sent his first letter directly to then-prime minister Jean Chrétien asking for a public inquiry -- which Mr. McAdam had requested and continues to request. However, the government ordered an RCMP probe. Mr. Kilgour later sent letters asking the force to end its delays.
Among the RCMP officers sent to Hong Kong was a 26-year veteran, Cpl. Robert Read, who, in 1996, spent months reviewing and corroborating many of Mr. McAdam's findings. When RCMP Supt. Jean Dubé pulled him off the file in 1997, the Mountie publicly accused him of obstruction -- a charge the RCMP dismissed. Supt. Dubé fired Cpl. Read.
"They fired him to stop the investigation," says Mr. McAdam. Cpl. Read took his case -- the incriminating material, political connections between the Chinese government and Mr. Chrétien's Liberal government, the evidence of a coverup -- to the media.
In 2003, an RCMP external committee confirmed Cpl. Read's findings. It found the RCMP "consistently demonstrated a reluctance to investigate" and ordered the force to rehire him. The RCMP refused. Cpl. Read sued.
Recently retired Giuliani Zaccardelli was RCMP commissioner at the time.
In 2005, Federal Court Justice Sean Harrington heard Cpl. Read's case and upheld the firing for "lack of loyalty to the government." In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the case. Cpl. Read's and Mr. McAdam's stories are told on fairwhistleblower.ca.
The Sidewinder report supported Mr. McAdam. It went further: "They found that crime members with ties to China's military intelligence had invested billions in Canada," says Mr. McAdam, "in high-tech, in computer companies, telecommunication companies."
A few days after Sidewinder's final report was sent to CSIS in 1997, Sidewinder was shut down. CSIS disbanded the team and directed the investigators to destroy every document. Says Mr. McAdam: "It tells you there's a coverup going on."
The Sidewinder team destroyed hundreds of pages of Mr. McAdam's research, his books and his reports.
"I trusted I'd get it all back" -- he laughs at the idea of having to make copies to protect his material from Canadian law enforcement. "I never dreamed this would be the outcome -- all kinds of material, just gone.
"The (Sidewinder) team leader was demoted after submitting the report. He resigned. And CSIS's almost sole China expert also resigned in disgust.
"At least six investigations by the U.S. Senate and Congress, from 1997 to 2003, corroborated Sidewinder's findings," he says. "Though senior management at CSIS maligned the report as 'rumour-laced conspiracy theory,' others saw it as 'groundbreaking' and 'years ahead of the curve.' "
Ward Elcock, who retired in 2004, was CSIS director at the time.
Since then, the FBI has named China as the biggest intelligence threat to the U.S., says Mr. McAdam.
And Canada, he says, is now known as "one of the world's centres for Chinese organized crime and espionage."
Last year, CSIS director Jim Judd testified before the Senate that nearly half of all spies from 15 countries who operate in Canada work for China -- and consume half his counter-espionage resources.
Mr. McAdam says: "I feel better than I have for 15 years. I feel fantastic, tremendous. I feel back to normal."
What saved him? "The love of my wife, Marie. I'd never be alive without her. She nurtured me and cared for me beyond belief." And, he adds, determination. "I wanted to stop Chinese criminals and spies from trying to destroy our country."
These days, although he's never called upon by his own government, Mr. McAdam has started to do international consulting work on global operations -- including Canada -- of the increasingly strong partnership of Chinese intelligence and organized crime.
"I'm on a crusade," he says. "I don't know how to describe it any other way. I don't think we should be selling our country to China."
---------------------------
Next week: McAdam: China's Top 5 Myths
Donna Jacobs is an Ottawa writer; her e-mail address is:
donnabjacobs@hotmail.com
source
Donna Jacobs, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, August 25, 2008
For Canadian diplomat Brian McAdam, it wasn't that he had uncovered the lucrative sale of Canadian visas during his posting at Canada's Hong Kong consulate.
Both Canadian and Chinese consular staff, he says, were selling visas to members of the Chinese mafia and Communist China's intelligence service. The price, he heard, ranged from $10,000 to $100,000 per visa.
It wasn't that reports he sent to his bosses in Canada -- details on murderers, money launderers, smugglers and spies trying to enter Canada -- were met with silence or mostly destroyed.
It wasn't dozens of threatening calls -- "Stop what you're doing or you're going to find yourself dead" -- from Triad members during his 1989-1993 stint in Hong Kong.
What finally broke him down, he says, was "the incredible feeling of betrayal from my colleagues. I'd worked with these people for years."
"It goes to your very soul," he says. "It is a spiritual crisis. It is a psychological breakdown."
There was the day he got a phone call from his Hong Kong Police Department source, who was wiretapping a Triad kingpin.
"What shocked the Hong Kong policeman was that the Triad member had phoned someone in the Canadian immigration minister's office in Ottawa," says Mr. McAdam.
"The officer commented: 'With that kind of relationship, you've got a really serious problem.' "
What shocked Mr. McAdam was what the officer said next: The Canadian reassured the Triad boss, "Don't worry about McAdam and what he's doing. We'll take care of him."
And, says Mr. McAdam, they did.
Immigration Canada offered him a good new job in Ottawa. He returned -- and found that his ostracism was complete. His 30-year career in Europe, the Caribbean and Asia was over.
That stunning moment of clarity shut him down, physically and mentally. After two years on medical leave, swinging between hypersomnia -- sleeping 20 hours a day -- and
insomnia, he says he finally did what his bosses and almost all of his co-workers wanted. In 1993, at age 51, he took early retirement.
Though bereft of job, he says, "I felt free of a horrible group of people."
"Ill, depressed and unemployed," he says, "I knew what I'd discovered was profoundly important."
In his 850-page manuscript --working title The Dragon's Deception -- he writes: "I was mocked, demeaned and threatened in a hostile environment while dealing with some of the world's most ruthless criminals. Staff in both Hong Kong and in Ottawa gave copies of my confidential reports about some of the criminals to the gangsters themselves, and that greatly put my life at risk. I received death threats for a number of years but no one has ever been concerned about my safety. The big question (was): Why did Canadian diplomats in Hong Kong and bureaucrats in Ottawa do whatever they could to destroy my work and myself?"
As he tells it, around that time, he was formulating the idea of a formal investigation to verify and enlarge his findings in Hong Kong. By 1995, a dozen CSIS and RCMP officers formally launched their first joint project: Operation Sidewinder
Concealing his ill health, Mr. McAdam supplied the team with extensive documentation of China's criminals and the Communist government's ambitious program of acquisition, espionage and political influence in Canada and around the world.
The RCMP's own more narrow investigation into Mr. McAdam's discoveries -- separate from Sidewinder -- had begun in 1992. They probed incidents of corruption but limited themselves to locally engaged staff -- not Canadians.
A seven-year investigation ensued. Seven RCMP investigators came and went. "As soon as one (Mountie) would investigate, they'd pull him off," Mr. McAdam says. "Another officer would come along, start to make discoveries and would be pulled off."
"I believe both probes (by the Sidewinder team and by the RCMP) had considerable political interference to shut them down," says Mr. McAdam, "and it seemed to be coming from the highest levels."
Mr. McAdam credits David Kilgour, then Liberal MP for Edmonton-Strathcona and secretary of state for Latin America and Africa, for his persistent letters. Mr. Kilgour sent his first letter directly to then-prime minister Jean Chrétien asking for a public inquiry -- which Mr. McAdam had requested and continues to request. However, the government ordered an RCMP probe. Mr. Kilgour later sent letters asking the force to end its delays.
Among the RCMP officers sent to Hong Kong was a 26-year veteran, Cpl. Robert Read, who, in 1996, spent months reviewing and corroborating many of Mr. McAdam's findings. When RCMP Supt. Jean Dubé pulled him off the file in 1997, the Mountie publicly accused him of obstruction -- a charge the RCMP dismissed. Supt. Dubé fired Cpl. Read.
"They fired him to stop the investigation," says Mr. McAdam. Cpl. Read took his case -- the incriminating material, political connections between the Chinese government and Mr. Chrétien's Liberal government, the evidence of a coverup -- to the media.
In 2003, an RCMP external committee confirmed Cpl. Read's findings. It found the RCMP "consistently demonstrated a reluctance to investigate" and ordered the force to rehire him. The RCMP refused. Cpl. Read sued.
Recently retired Giuliani Zaccardelli was RCMP commissioner at the time.
In 2005, Federal Court Justice Sean Harrington heard Cpl. Read's case and upheld the firing for "lack of loyalty to the government." In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the case. Cpl. Read's and Mr. McAdam's stories are told on fairwhistleblower.ca.
The Sidewinder report supported Mr. McAdam. It went further: "They found that crime members with ties to China's military intelligence had invested billions in Canada," says Mr. McAdam, "in high-tech, in computer companies, telecommunication companies."
A few days after Sidewinder's final report was sent to CSIS in 1997, Sidewinder was shut down. CSIS disbanded the team and directed the investigators to destroy every document. Says Mr. McAdam: "It tells you there's a coverup going on."
The Sidewinder team destroyed hundreds of pages of Mr. McAdam's research, his books and his reports.
"I trusted I'd get it all back" -- he laughs at the idea of having to make copies to protect his material from Canadian law enforcement. "I never dreamed this would be the outcome -- all kinds of material, just gone.
"The (Sidewinder) team leader was demoted after submitting the report. He resigned. And CSIS's almost sole China expert also resigned in disgust.
"At least six investigations by the U.S. Senate and Congress, from 1997 to 2003, corroborated Sidewinder's findings," he says. "Though senior management at CSIS maligned the report as 'rumour-laced conspiracy theory,' others saw it as 'groundbreaking' and 'years ahead of the curve.' "
Ward Elcock, who retired in 2004, was CSIS director at the time.
Since then, the FBI has named China as the biggest intelligence threat to the U.S., says Mr. McAdam.
And Canada, he says, is now known as "one of the world's centres for Chinese organized crime and espionage."
Last year, CSIS director Jim Judd testified before the Senate that nearly half of all spies from 15 countries who operate in Canada work for China -- and consume half his counter-espionage resources.
Mr. McAdam says: "I feel better than I have for 15 years. I feel fantastic, tremendous. I feel back to normal."
What saved him? "The love of my wife, Marie. I'd never be alive without her. She nurtured me and cared for me beyond belief." And, he adds, determination. "I wanted to stop Chinese criminals and spies from trying to destroy our country."
These days, although he's never called upon by his own government, Mr. McAdam has started to do international consulting work on global operations -- including Canada -- of the increasingly strong partnership of Chinese intelligence and organized crime.
"I'm on a crusade," he says. "I don't know how to describe it any other way. I don't think we should be selling our country to China."
---------------------------
Next week: McAdam: China's Top 5 Myths
Donna Jacobs is an Ottawa writer; her e-mail address is:
donnabjacobs@hotmail.com
source
Can NATO Survive?
Can NATO Survive Georgia?
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Amidst all the journalistic brouhaha about a new cold war, most analysts are missing out on the real crisis that has been crystallized by Saakashvili's imprudent excursion into South Ossetia. The very existence of NATO has been put into question. To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning of NATO as an institution and a concept.
The story began in 1947 when the United Kingdom and France signed the Treaty of Dunkirk, pledging mutual assistance in case of a revival of German military aggression. In 1948, this grouping was expanded to include the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg in the Treaty of Brussels, in a move still designed to defend against Germany. Later that year, the five nations set up the Western Union Defence Organization, with a combined chiefs of staff committee. There are two things to note about these treaties. The United States was not part of them, and they were aimed primarily at Germany, not the Soviet Union.
The founding of NATO in 1949 came in the wake of the Berlin Blockade of 1948. NATO in effect nullified the Western Union defense treaties. It was focused not on the dangers of renewed German militarism but on the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the point of view of the United States, NATO served several purposes. It was a message to the Soviet Union that the United States was committed to maintaining the existing boundaries of the division of power in Europe, which had seemed threatened by the Berlin Blockade. It was a method of reconciling the French and the British to the rearmament of West Germany. And it was a way of controlling the military operations of the allies by undoing their nascent military structure and subordinating their troops to a U.S. command.
The political leaders and the majority of the population of western European countries were initially quite favorable to the concept of NATO. For them, it guaranteed that the United States would indeed defend them should the Soviet Union come to think it could violate the Yalta arrangements. And France was now ready to accept West German rearmament as a part of their historic reconciliation. France, however, chafed at the third objective -- keeping French troops under U.S. command, which is what led Charles De Gaulle in 1966 to withdraw from the NATO command structure and require its headquarters to move from Paris to Brussels.
Beginning in the 1970s, western Europe had not only gotten over its worries about Germany but had begun to think that the Soviet Union no longer posed an imminent menace of invasion. Various countries, and not only France, began to think of how they could bring a tamer, post-Stalinist Soviet Union into more intensive cooperation with western Europe. This was notably the case with West Germany's Ostpolitik. And when, in the 1980’s, the idea was broached of a gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to western Europe, this was favorably received even by the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher.
The United States was dismayed by these developments. It unsuccessfully opposed the gas pipeline. It sought to discourage all talk of reviving a European army that was not part of NATO. In general, it became considerably less friendly to the idea of Europe as Europe, one that was separate from a North Atlantic community.
The strain was intensified with the collapse of the communisms in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since NATO had been created as a structure to defend western Europe against a Soviet Union governed by a Communist party, what function did NATO now have? The United States was determined to maintain NATO, and sought a new definition of its role. It was also determined not to permit the emergence of an autonomous European structure, delinked from the United States, and worse still, possibly creating the "common European home" that would include Russia, and which Mikhail Gorbachev had proposed.
The immediate structural question for NATO was the issue of expansion -- to include or not the former Soviet satellites, which were now emancipated from their links with the Soviet Union/Russia. The United States pushed hard, almost immediately, for their incorporation into NATO. The western Europeans were less enthusiastic. The former satellites saw their incorporation as their link to the United States, as protection against Russia, and as a gateway to economic betterment. The United States saw their incorporation as a constraint on Russia's possible resurgence but even more as a guarantee that "Europe" would not be able to delink from its U.S. close alliance, since these countries would oppose it. And western Europe was less enthusiastic precisely because they understood what the United States was doing.
The Iraq war exacerbated the situation greatly. Donald Rumsfeld gloated over two Europes -- "old" Europe, which was effete and uncooperative, and "new" Europe, which was committed to the same world objectives as the United States. Actually, in the immediate situation of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were three Europes: Rumsfeld's "new" Europe (that is, the former Soviet satellites); those that refused to join the "coalition of the willing" (notably France and Germany); and those western European countries that in 2003 supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq (notably the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy). France and Germany pulled closer, politically, to Putin's Russia in their common opposition to the United States at the United Nations.
The strain continued. When the United States pushed this year for the launching of the process to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, they met strong opposition not only from France and Germany but from the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy as well. Indeed they had strong support in only four of the eastern European states -- Poland and the three Baltic states. The other eastern European states were reticent as well.
Then came Saakashvili's march into South Ossetia and Russia's vigorous and successful riposte. Poland and the three Baltic states immediately gave full support to Georgia, and the United States a bit less rapidly raised its rhetorical level, and sent in warships with humanitarian aid.
What did western Europe do? Immediately, and without consulting anyone, President Sarkozy of France negotiated a truce in the fighting, and then got the European Union to endorse this fait accompli. Chancellor Merkel of Germany then got into the act with further negotiations with Russia. Even Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was telephoning Putin. All this while, Condoleezza Rice was out of the real diplomatic picture.
Did the diplomacy work? Only of course up to a point, as controversy continues about where Russian troops are presently stationed and Russia's definitive recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But western European statesmen keep making statements about how one should be careful not to cut off ties with Russia. And it seems the most the western European press can do is to scold Russia that it is they who are breaking friendly relations with western Europe. Most revealing of all is the report in the New York Times that Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states are calling not Rice but Angela Merkel, asking her to use her influence to help resolve the situation. Angela Merkel has made it clear that Germany will not be rushed into approving Georgian membership in NATO.
Most remarkable of all is an op-ed in the Financial Times by Kishore Mahbubani, a senior academic in profoundly pro-Western Singapore. Mahbubani says that 10% of the world is united in condemning Russia, and the other 90% "is bemused by western moralising on Georgia." He says Mao Zedong was right in one thing - the distinction between the primary contradiction and the secondary contradictions with which one must always compromise. "Russia is not close to becoming the primary contradiction the west faces." He ends by saying that it is Western "flawed (strategic) thinking" that is causing the world to be a more dangerous place.
The United States is not yet ready to listen to the sage counsel of its own friends in the non-Western world. Western Europe is grappling its way to understanding what's at stake for them. NATO cannot survive the irrelevance of its strategic activity in what Mahbubani calls the "post cold-war era."
Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).
Copyright ©2008 Immanuel Wallerstein – distributed by Agence Global
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Amidst all the journalistic brouhaha about a new cold war, most analysts are missing out on the real crisis that has been crystallized by Saakashvili's imprudent excursion into South Ossetia. The very existence of NATO has been put into question. To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning of NATO as an institution and a concept.
The story began in 1947 when the United Kingdom and France signed the Treaty of Dunkirk, pledging mutual assistance in case of a revival of German military aggression. In 1948, this grouping was expanded to include the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg in the Treaty of Brussels, in a move still designed to defend against Germany. Later that year, the five nations set up the Western Union Defence Organization, with a combined chiefs of staff committee. There are two things to note about these treaties. The United States was not part of them, and they were aimed primarily at Germany, not the Soviet Union.
The founding of NATO in 1949 came in the wake of the Berlin Blockade of 1948. NATO in effect nullified the Western Union defense treaties. It was focused not on the dangers of renewed German militarism but on the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the point of view of the United States, NATO served several purposes. It was a message to the Soviet Union that the United States was committed to maintaining the existing boundaries of the division of power in Europe, which had seemed threatened by the Berlin Blockade. It was a method of reconciling the French and the British to the rearmament of West Germany. And it was a way of controlling the military operations of the allies by undoing their nascent military structure and subordinating their troops to a U.S. command.
The political leaders and the majority of the population of western European countries were initially quite favorable to the concept of NATO. For them, it guaranteed that the United States would indeed defend them should the Soviet Union come to think it could violate the Yalta arrangements. And France was now ready to accept West German rearmament as a part of their historic reconciliation. France, however, chafed at the third objective -- keeping French troops under U.S. command, which is what led Charles De Gaulle in 1966 to withdraw from the NATO command structure and require its headquarters to move from Paris to Brussels.
Beginning in the 1970s, western Europe had not only gotten over its worries about Germany but had begun to think that the Soviet Union no longer posed an imminent menace of invasion. Various countries, and not only France, began to think of how they could bring a tamer, post-Stalinist Soviet Union into more intensive cooperation with western Europe. This was notably the case with West Germany's Ostpolitik. And when, in the 1980’s, the idea was broached of a gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to western Europe, this was favorably received even by the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher.
The United States was dismayed by these developments. It unsuccessfully opposed the gas pipeline. It sought to discourage all talk of reviving a European army that was not part of NATO. In general, it became considerably less friendly to the idea of Europe as Europe, one that was separate from a North Atlantic community.
The strain was intensified with the collapse of the communisms in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since NATO had been created as a structure to defend western Europe against a Soviet Union governed by a Communist party, what function did NATO now have? The United States was determined to maintain NATO, and sought a new definition of its role. It was also determined not to permit the emergence of an autonomous European structure, delinked from the United States, and worse still, possibly creating the "common European home" that would include Russia, and which Mikhail Gorbachev had proposed.
The immediate structural question for NATO was the issue of expansion -- to include or not the former Soviet satellites, which were now emancipated from their links with the Soviet Union/Russia. The United States pushed hard, almost immediately, for their incorporation into NATO. The western Europeans were less enthusiastic. The former satellites saw their incorporation as their link to the United States, as protection against Russia, and as a gateway to economic betterment. The United States saw their incorporation as a constraint on Russia's possible resurgence but even more as a guarantee that "Europe" would not be able to delink from its U.S. close alliance, since these countries would oppose it. And western Europe was less enthusiastic precisely because they understood what the United States was doing.
The Iraq war exacerbated the situation greatly. Donald Rumsfeld gloated over two Europes -- "old" Europe, which was effete and uncooperative, and "new" Europe, which was committed to the same world objectives as the United States. Actually, in the immediate situation of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were three Europes: Rumsfeld's "new" Europe (that is, the former Soviet satellites); those that refused to join the "coalition of the willing" (notably France and Germany); and those western European countries that in 2003 supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq (notably the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy). France and Germany pulled closer, politically, to Putin's Russia in their common opposition to the United States at the United Nations.
The strain continued. When the United States pushed this year for the launching of the process to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, they met strong opposition not only from France and Germany but from the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy as well. Indeed they had strong support in only four of the eastern European states -- Poland and the three Baltic states. The other eastern European states were reticent as well.
Then came Saakashvili's march into South Ossetia and Russia's vigorous and successful riposte. Poland and the three Baltic states immediately gave full support to Georgia, and the United States a bit less rapidly raised its rhetorical level, and sent in warships with humanitarian aid.
What did western Europe do? Immediately, and without consulting anyone, President Sarkozy of France negotiated a truce in the fighting, and then got the European Union to endorse this fait accompli. Chancellor Merkel of Germany then got into the act with further negotiations with Russia. Even Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was telephoning Putin. All this while, Condoleezza Rice was out of the real diplomatic picture.
Did the diplomacy work? Only of course up to a point, as controversy continues about where Russian troops are presently stationed and Russia's definitive recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But western European statesmen keep making statements about how one should be careful not to cut off ties with Russia. And it seems the most the western European press can do is to scold Russia that it is they who are breaking friendly relations with western Europe. Most revealing of all is the report in the New York Times that Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states are calling not Rice but Angela Merkel, asking her to use her influence to help resolve the situation. Angela Merkel has made it clear that Germany will not be rushed into approving Georgian membership in NATO.
Most remarkable of all is an op-ed in the Financial Times by Kishore Mahbubani, a senior academic in profoundly pro-Western Singapore. Mahbubani says that 10% of the world is united in condemning Russia, and the other 90% "is bemused by western moralising on Georgia." He says Mao Zedong was right in one thing - the distinction between the primary contradiction and the secondary contradictions with which one must always compromise. "Russia is not close to becoming the primary contradiction the west faces." He ends by saying that it is Western "flawed (strategic) thinking" that is causing the world to be a more dangerous place.
The United States is not yet ready to listen to the sage counsel of its own friends in the non-Western world. Western Europe is grappling its way to understanding what's at stake for them. NATO cannot survive the irrelevance of its strategic activity in what Mahbubani calls the "post cold-war era."
Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is the author of The Decline of American Power: The U.S. in a Chaotic World (New Press).
Copyright ©2008 Immanuel Wallerstein – distributed by Agence Global
Dark Side Of The "Free World"
The Dark Side Of The "Free World"
By Rob Gowland
27/08/08 "The Guardian" -- - The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, published in mid-July, is written by US journalist Jane Mayer, whose specialty is writing about counter-terrorism for The New Yorker.
The book has particularly peeved the CIA and its boss in the White House for, apparently, Ms Mayer has had access to a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross issued last year labelling the CIA’s interrogation methods for "high-level Qaeda prisoners" as "categorically" torture. In consequence, the Bush administration officials who approved these methods would be guilty of war crimes.
The book says the Red Cross report was shared with the CIA, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
It would not be the first time of course that US authorities (civil, intelligence or military) have indulged in or turned a blind eye to torture or other forms of horrifying brutality.
One thinks of their blood-soaked activities to thwart the former Communist Resistance leaders from gaining political power in Western Europe after WW2, or their even more bloody destruction of democracy in Guatemala or Chile, El Salvador and pre-Castro Cuba.
The many atrocities by US forces in Korea and Vietnam were far too numerous to be the work of "rotten apples"; they were clearly the result of US government and military policy, just like the actions of the US military in charge of the Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
A society that bases itself on force and brutality, on state terrorism, while simultaneously indulging in the most hypocritical lip-service to the ideals of humaneness and justice, cannot but find excuses for torture.
Only last year or the year before, Amnesty International — an organisation not noted for being hostile to the USA — stated that the procedures in many US civilian jails amounted to torture. Military prisons operated by the US in other countries must surely be hell on earth.
Red Cross representatives were only permitted to interview high-level "terrorist" detainees in late 2006, after they were moved to the military detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until then, while the prisoners were being "interrogated" in the CIA’s secret prisons, the Red Cross was not given access to them.
It is now well known that these secret prisons are located in US client states, some in Eastern Europe where anti-Communist regimes are all too willing to co-operate with their US backers, and some in states like Egypt that are equally dependent on US support. Significantly, they all practice torture.
We have all seen the images from Guantánamo Bay of prisoners, shackled and manacled, stumbling along with a guard on either side. But all the time, the particularly frightening threat hangs over them of being taken from there and returned to one of the secret prisons away from any prying eyes.
In testimony to the Red Cross, Abu Zubaydah, the first major Al Qaeda figure the United States captured, told how he was confined in a box "so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the foetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls".
The CIA has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were water-boarded, a form of torture in which water is poured in the nose and mouth of the victim to simulate the sensation of suffocation and drowning.
The Pentagon and the CIA have both defended water-boarding on the same grounds: "because it works", the torturer’s classic justification. Jane Mayer’s book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been water-boarded at least ten times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.
The Red Cross report says that another high level prisoner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the attacks of September 11, 2001, told them that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been "kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room".
A New York Times article on the report says the prisoners considered the "most excruciating" of the methods was being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. This is a well-known torture technique that has severe physical effects on the victim’s body.
According to The New York Times article, eleven of the 14 prisoners reported to the Red Cross that they had suffered prolonged sleep deprivation, including "bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day".
The New York Times reported that a CIA spokesman had confirmed that Red Cross workers had been "granted access to the detained terrorists at Guantánamo and heard their claims".
The same CIA spokesman said the agency’s interrogations were based on "detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice" and had "produced solid information that has contributed directly to the disruption of terrorist activities". There’s that justification of torture again.
Bernard Barrett of the International Committee of the Red Cross declined to comment on the book when asked by The New York Times. He did not deny any of the book’s claims, but regretted "that any information has been attributed to us" because, it seems, the International Committee of the Red Cross "believes its work is more effective when confidential"!
He went on to say: "We have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them."
So that’s OK then.
source
By Rob Gowland
27/08/08 "The Guardian" -- - The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, published in mid-July, is written by US journalist Jane Mayer, whose specialty is writing about counter-terrorism for The New Yorker.
The book has particularly peeved the CIA and its boss in the White House for, apparently, Ms Mayer has had access to a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross issued last year labelling the CIA’s interrogation methods for "high-level Qaeda prisoners" as "categorically" torture. In consequence, the Bush administration officials who approved these methods would be guilty of war crimes.
The book says the Red Cross report was shared with the CIA, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
It would not be the first time of course that US authorities (civil, intelligence or military) have indulged in or turned a blind eye to torture or other forms of horrifying brutality.
One thinks of their blood-soaked activities to thwart the former Communist Resistance leaders from gaining political power in Western Europe after WW2, or their even more bloody destruction of democracy in Guatemala or Chile, El Salvador and pre-Castro Cuba.
The many atrocities by US forces in Korea and Vietnam were far too numerous to be the work of "rotten apples"; they were clearly the result of US government and military policy, just like the actions of the US military in charge of the Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
A society that bases itself on force and brutality, on state terrorism, while simultaneously indulging in the most hypocritical lip-service to the ideals of humaneness and justice, cannot but find excuses for torture.
Only last year or the year before, Amnesty International — an organisation not noted for being hostile to the USA — stated that the procedures in many US civilian jails amounted to torture. Military prisons operated by the US in other countries must surely be hell on earth.
Red Cross representatives were only permitted to interview high-level "terrorist" detainees in late 2006, after they were moved to the military detention centre in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Until then, while the prisoners were being "interrogated" in the CIA’s secret prisons, the Red Cross was not given access to them.
It is now well known that these secret prisons are located in US client states, some in Eastern Europe where anti-Communist regimes are all too willing to co-operate with their US backers, and some in states like Egypt that are equally dependent on US support. Significantly, they all practice torture.
We have all seen the images from Guantánamo Bay of prisoners, shackled and manacled, stumbling along with a guard on either side. But all the time, the particularly frightening threat hangs over them of being taken from there and returned to one of the secret prisons away from any prying eyes.
In testimony to the Red Cross, Abu Zubaydah, the first major Al Qaeda figure the United States captured, told how he was confined in a box "so small he said he had to double up his limbs in the foetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls".
The CIA has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were water-boarded, a form of torture in which water is poured in the nose and mouth of the victim to simulate the sensation of suffocation and drowning.
The Pentagon and the CIA have both defended water-boarding on the same grounds: "because it works", the torturer’s classic justification. Jane Mayer’s book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been water-boarded at least ten times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.
The Red Cross report says that another high level prisoner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the attacks of September 11, 2001, told them that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been "kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room".
A New York Times article on the report says the prisoners considered the "most excruciating" of the methods was being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. This is a well-known torture technique that has severe physical effects on the victim’s body.
According to The New York Times article, eleven of the 14 prisoners reported to the Red Cross that they had suffered prolonged sleep deprivation, including "bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day".
The New York Times reported that a CIA spokesman had confirmed that Red Cross workers had been "granted access to the detained terrorists at Guantánamo and heard their claims".
The same CIA spokesman said the agency’s interrogations were based on "detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice" and had "produced solid information that has contributed directly to the disruption of terrorist activities". There’s that justification of torture again.
Bernard Barrett of the International Committee of the Red Cross declined to comment on the book when asked by The New York Times. He did not deny any of the book’s claims, but regretted "that any information has been attributed to us" because, it seems, the International Committee of the Red Cross "believes its work is more effective when confidential"!
He went on to say: "We have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them."
So that’s OK then.
source
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Gorilla Radio for Monday, Sept. 1st 2008
GR 04-68 CFUV 101.9FM 104.3 Cable 'cfuv.uvic.ca'
Monday, Sept. 1st, 2008
5:00:00 Welcome to GR etc. And welcome to the fresh-faced first year students here at the University of Victoria as the 2008-2009 school year begins. Many of those hopeful youngsters wandering the campus today, looking for their assigned classrooms are likely unaware of the icy grip the Cold War held over their predecessors here in Victoria and around the world. It was a fearful time, a time of true terror threats; the terror then being a little more immediate than cave-dwelling religious zealots, jealous of "our freedoms." The fear in those dark days was thermo-nuclear war between the countries of the Warsaw Pact and their opposite numbers in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Only recently has, after nearly sixty years, some of the close calls the world had for a planet-killing finale been made public. Now, it seems George W. Bush's Republican party, after seven bloody years of carnage visited around the world are, in what many view as a desperate last grasp at retaining power, attempting to create a new Cold War. Call it Cold War II.
Last month, retired American fighter pilot, nuclear and rocket scientist, and patriot, Dr. Bob Bowman spoke here in Victoria. Bowman begged the question: "Can Canada escape U.S. takeover?" Dr. Bob Bowman and Canada going down the Armageddon rode with America in the first segment.
And; in the early years of the Cold War, an American president, the country's former number one military man, warned the nation of a "Military Industrial Complex" that threatened the very foundations of democracy in the United States and around the world. Sadly, that president's warnings were not heeded, leading us to where we are today; ruled by militarists and maniacs who have perfected the perpetual war economy. Were Dwight Eisenhower alive today, he may warn of another unholy alliance, rotting the founding priniciples of American. The Prison Industrial Complex picks up at home where the globetrotting militarists leave off; making of American crime and punishment a profits bonanza with little room left for truth, justice, or the American way.
Nat Smith is an organizer with Critical Resistance, an organization formed ten years ago this month to fight the growth of the Prison Industrial Complex. CR10 is getting ready for a mobilization in Oakland, California later this month to commemorate their beginnings, and to reinforce the message more releveant now than it was even then. Nat Smith and shutting down the Prison Industrial Complex in the second half.
And; Janine Bandcroft will be here to bring us up to speed with all the good goings on in and around Victoria in the coming week. But first, Dr. Bob Bowman asking, "Can Canada Escape U.S. Takeover?"
5:03:00 20:00 Discussion w/ Bob Bowman
Welcome to the show, Bob; America is Canada's long-time ally and its largest and closest trading partner; why would it want to "take us over?"
5:23:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:24:00 11:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:35:00 3:00 Music
5:38:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:39:00 20:00 Disscussion w/ Nat Smith
Welcome back to GR, etc. in the early years of the Cold War, an American president, the country's former number one military man, warned the nation of a "Military Industrial Complex" that threatened the very foundations of democracy in the United States and around the world. Sadly, that president's warnings were not heeded, leading us to where we are today; ruled by militarists and maniacs who have perfected the perpetual war economy. Were Dwight Eisenhower alive today, he may warn of another unholy alliance, rotting the founding priniciples of American.
Nat Smith is an organizer with Critical Resistance, an organization formed ten years ago this month to fight the growth of the Prison Industrial Complex. CR10 is getting ready for a mobilization in Oakland, California later this month to commemorate their beginnings, and to reinforce the message more releveant now than it was even then.
"Welcome to the program, Nat; Critical Resistance has been on the Prison Industrial Complex case for a decade now; where do thing stand today, as compared to when this resistance began?"
5:59:00 1:00 Thanks to Dr. Bob Bowan, Nat Smith, J9; upcoming.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
Goon Squad Try-Outs: Pre-emptive House Raids for Minneapolis RNC
Source
Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis
[updated below (with video) - Update II - Update III]
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.
Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly. Posted below is the video of the scene, including various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is actually going on here.
In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.
Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.
Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.
There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.
UPDATE: Here is the first of the videos, from the house that had just been raided:
Jane Hamsher has more here, and The Minnesota Independent has a report on another one of the raided houses, here.
UPDATE II: Here is the video we took from the second house as the raid was occurring. We were barred from entering but spoke with neighbors outside as well as with Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota Lawyer's Guild, regarding these raids:
Over at FDL, Lindsay Beyerstein spoke with the property owner whose house -- the fourth one we now know of -- was being raided while the raid was in progress, and Lindsay has details here ("About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house. One of my roommates said 'I want to see a warrant' and she was immediately detained"). Meanwhile, Indy Media of Twin Cities -- an association of independent journalists in the area -- just told me that several of their journalists have been detained while trying to cover these raids. Their site, with ongoing updates, is here.
The Uptake also has several reports of the various raids, including video of the raid at the property whose owner Bernstein spoke with as the raid occurred. That video includes an interview with a lawyer from the National Lawyer's Guild who was detained and put in handcufffs, explaining that the surrounded house is one where various journalists are staying. Additionally, a photojournalist with Democracy Now was detained at that house as well. So, both journalists and lawyers -- in addition to protesters -- have been detained and arrested even though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred.
UPDATE III: FDL has the transcript of part of my discussion about these raids with the National Lawyer Guild's Minnesota President -- here.
The Uptake has this amazing video interview with the Democracy Now producer who was detained today. As the DN producer explains, she was present at a meeting of a group called "I-Witness" -- which videotaped police behavior at the 2004 GOP Convention in New York and helped get charges dismissed against hundreds of protesters who were arrested. The police surrounded the St. Paul house where they were meeting even though they had no warrant, told them that anyone who exited the house would be arrested, and then -- even though they finally, after several hours, obtained a warrant only for the house next door -- basically broke into the house, pointed weapons at everyone inside, handcuffed them, searched the house, and then left. Here is a blog post from one of the members of I-Witness asking for help during the time when they were forced to stay inside the house (see the second post -- it reads like a note from a hostage crying out for help). This is truly repugnant, extreme police behavior designed to intimidate protesters, police critics and others, and it ought to infuriate anyone and everyone who cares about basic liberties.
-- Glenn Greenwald
Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis
[updated below (with video) - Update II - Update III]
Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.
Jane Hamsher and I were at two of those homes this morning -- one which had just been raided and one which was in the process of being raided. Each of the raided houses is known by neighbors as a "hippie house," where 5-10 college-aged individuals live in a communal setting, and everyone we spoke with said that there had never been any problems of any kind in those houses, that they were filled with "peaceful kids" who are politically active but entirely unthreatening and friendly. Posted below is the video of the scene, including various interviews, which convey a very clear sense of what is actually going on here.
In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs. The 10 or so individuals in the house all said that though they found the experience very jarring, they still intended to protest against the GOP Convention, and several said that being subjected to raids of that sort made them more emboldened than ever to do so.
Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.
Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.
There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention. The DNC in Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether. Targeting people with automatic-weapons-carrying SWAT teams and mass raids in their homes, who are suspected of nothing more than planning dissident political protests at a political convention and who have engaged in no illegal activity whatsoever, is about as redolent of the worst tactics of a police state as can be imagined.
UPDATE: Here is the first of the videos, from the house that had just been raided:
Jane Hamsher has more here, and The Minnesota Independent has a report on another one of the raided houses, here.
UPDATE II: Here is the video we took from the second house as the raid was occurring. We were barred from entering but spoke with neighbors outside as well as with Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota Lawyer's Guild, regarding these raids:
Over at FDL, Lindsay Beyerstein spoke with the property owner whose house -- the fourth one we now know of -- was being raided while the raid was in progress, and Lindsay has details here ("About an hour and a half ago 20 to 30 heavily armed police officers surrounded the house. One of my roommates said 'I want to see a warrant' and she was immediately detained"). Meanwhile, Indy Media of Twin Cities -- an association of independent journalists in the area -- just told me that several of their journalists have been detained while trying to cover these raids. Their site, with ongoing updates, is here.
The Uptake also has several reports of the various raids, including video of the raid at the property whose owner Bernstein spoke with as the raid occurred. That video includes an interview with a lawyer from the National Lawyer's Guild who was detained and put in handcufffs, explaining that the surrounded house is one where various journalists are staying. Additionally, a photojournalist with Democracy Now was detained at that house as well. So, both journalists and lawyers -- in addition to protesters -- have been detained and arrested even though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred.
UPDATE III: FDL has the transcript of part of my discussion about these raids with the National Lawyer Guild's Minnesota President -- here.
The Uptake has this amazing video interview with the Democracy Now producer who was detained today. As the DN producer explains, she was present at a meeting of a group called "I-Witness" -- which videotaped police behavior at the 2004 GOP Convention in New York and helped get charges dismissed against hundreds of protesters who were arrested. The police surrounded the St. Paul house where they were meeting even though they had no warrant, told them that anyone who exited the house would be arrested, and then -- even though they finally, after several hours, obtained a warrant only for the house next door -- basically broke into the house, pointed weapons at everyone inside, handcuffed them, searched the house, and then left. Here is a blog post from one of the members of I-Witness asking for help during the time when they were forced to stay inside the house (see the second post -- it reads like a note from a hostage crying out for help). This is truly repugnant, extreme police behavior designed to intimidate protesters, police critics and others, and it ought to infuriate anyone and everyone who cares about basic liberties.
-- Glenn Greenwald
Friday, August 29, 2008
German Occupiers Kill Three in Afghanistan
Germany: 3 civilians killed at Afghan checkpoint
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's Defense Ministry says three civilians were killed when security forces opened fire after their vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint in northern Afghanistan.
Ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe says the incident happened Thursday evening at a checkpoint southeast of Kunduz manned by Afghan police and German soldiers.
He said Friday that two civilian vehicles failed to stop despite being warned to do so clearly and security forces then opened fire. He said three civilians in one of the vehicles were killed.
Raabe said the incident is under investigation by Afghan police and the German military contingent in Kunduz. It's not immediately clear whether the German soldiers opened fire.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Afghanistan | Kunduz | Thomas Raabe
source
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's Defense Ministry says three civilians were killed when security forces opened fire after their vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint in northern Afghanistan.
Ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe says the incident happened Thursday evening at a checkpoint southeast of Kunduz manned by Afghan police and German soldiers.
He said Friday that two civilian vehicles failed to stop despite being warned to do so clearly and security forces then opened fire. He said three civilians in one of the vehicles were killed.
Raabe said the incident is under investigation by Afghan police and the German military contingent in Kunduz. It's not immediately clear whether the German soldiers opened fire.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Afghanistan | Kunduz | Thomas Raabe
source
Thursday, August 28, 2008
“Chaos and Instability Washington’s Official Policy Line”
Back to the Future: “Chaos and Instability Washington’s Official Policy Line”
by William Bowles
Back to the future: “Chaos and instability Washington’s officlal policy line”
by William Bowles • Thursday, August 28, 2008 23:06
“In the operation the West conducted on Georgian soil against Russia - South Ossetians were the victims or hostages of it - we can see a rehearsal for an attack on Iran. There is a great deal of “new features” that today are being fine tuned in the theater of military operations.
“…[T]he likelihood of a war against Iran was growing with each passing day, “As a result, the situation in the region will become destabilized…causing chaos and instability" was becoming Washington's official policy line. — ‘Russian analyst points to link between Georgian attack and Iran’.
All the talk by the major Western powers of a return to the days of the Cold War must surely be a wake up call to us all as to what is in reality the ultimate expression of a resurgent and I might add, desperate, imperialism, the recreation of its historical enemy for the better part of the 20th century, Russia, but is Russia the object of desire here? I think not, at least not directly, Georgia is yet another piece on the chessboard, the question is, do the Russians want to play and if they do, by whose rules?
War has been for the better part of five centuries the ‘solution’ to capitalism’s woes, indeed wars of aggression over resources and competitors is the norm for the major powers of the West. But for a brief period, less than fifty years following the end of WWII, the existence of a nuclear-armed Soviet Union curbed the inevitable drive toward a major conflagration over markets and the imperative for the accumulation of capital, without which capitalism is a dead duck.
So with the former Soviet Union out of the way all the signs pointed to a 21st century dominated by the leading imperialist power, the US; after all, where is the opposition?
But reality has a way upsetting the plans of even the most powerful nation on the planet. I am reminded (again) of a major article that appeared in the Economist following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 which amazingly lamented the passing of the Soviet Union, arguing quite forcefully that without an enemy to drive the economies of the West things could only go from bad to worse and how right they were in spite of the invention of the ‘war on terror’ as a cheap replacement for the war on communism (though an ‘enemy’ which is essentially invisible does have advantages over one which can give as good as it gets).
It’s obvious that the Georgian provocation instigated by the US, is part of a larger and even more ominous scheme of destabilization, but the issue here is more complex than ‘grand schemes of world domination’ because I contend that the real world of the collapsing capitalist economies is now dictating events (which makes the situation even more dangerous for all of us).
First of all, Russia is in the way of the US move Eastward, which is where Georgia plays a vital role, hence the need to get Georgia into NATO. However, as with many of the US’s previous ‘allies’, Saakashvili has proved to be totally unreliable (if not mentally unbalanced), and if as seems more than likely, the US ‘advised’ him to invade Ossetia, it has proved to be yet another strategic blunder, or did the US assume that the Russians would roll over and play dead?
Either way, under the circumstances the ‘Cold War’ card was all that was left to the West, but bluffing is all well and good when playing poker but not when the game is chess.
But the Western ‘allies’ are in a bit of a bind, especially the EU members who are divided over what action, if any, to take, especially France and Germany whose economic ties to Russia are at risk. The UK predictably, has been banging the war drums, under the guise of defending ‘new democracies’,
“There was a strong element of what Miliband does best: preaching democracy to new democracies – which are more than converted to the principle – while asking for little in return for his praise that would be awkward for them to give.” — ‘David Miliband at last delivers the right words in the right haircut’, The Times, August 27, 2008.
And in another Times piece, we read,
“David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, also flew to Ukraine to assemble the “widest possible coalition against Russian aggression” — ‘Cold War tension rises as Putin talks of Black Sea confrontation’, The Times, August 28, 2008.
But in actuality, short of going to war, what can the US and its allies actually do? The situation is perhaps revealed by the following quote, “A former British ambassador to Tbilisi said that Nato might have to send troops to the region. Donald McLaren, who was Ambassador to Georgia from 2004 to July last year and is now retired, told the Today programme on [BBC] Radio 4: “I think we shouldn’t be too complacent or too scared in a situation like this.”
“He suggested that a peacekeeping force made up of troops from the US, Britain, France, Germany and Russia should be sent to Georgia to replace the Russian units. If Moscow rejected such a proposal, he said, Nato had only two choices: “To give up and surrender and say to the Russians, ‘It’s your backyard, you’ve won’, or to put men on the ground to protect Georgia’s sovereignty and the east-west oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian and Central Asia.” [ibid]
The problem for the West is that has no mandate to send troops, so short of an illegal invasion there’s very little it can do, “Nato diplomatic sources said that no one within the alliance was speaking about sending troops. “We have no mandate to act in the Caucasus” [ibid]
A mini 9/11 in a far-off land?
There’s also no doubt that the inflammatory rhetoric coming out of Washington is directly connected to the November presidential elections and what better way of boosting McCain’s chances of winning than by invoking the ‘Russian menace’ given the almost total ignorance the US public has over what really happened on August 7 and after. And this allegation is now borne out by prime minister Putin’s latest statement.
“Mr Putin told CNN US citizens were “in the area” during the conflict over South Ossetia and were "taking direct orders from their leaders". “He said his defence officials had told him the provocation was to benefit one of the US presidential candidates.
“The suspicion arises that someone in the United States especially created this conflict with the aim of making the situation more tense and creating a competitive advantage for one of the candidates fighting for the post of US president.” — ‘Putin blames US for Georgia role’, BBC Website, 28 August, 2008
And Putin’s allegations are not without substance. Only days before Georgia attacked Southern Ossetia individuals from the Republican Party were in Georgia.
“And so it was that a team from the vice president's office, U.S. security officials and others were in Georgia several days before the war began.” — ‘Why was Cheney's Guy in Georgia Before the War?’ By James Gerstenzang.
And given that the Georgian armed forces have been armed by the US and Israel, drawing such conclusions is not surprising.
Clearly though, provoking the Russians into taking military actions was not unexpected, even the desired outcome, as it provided the US and its capos, with the perfect propaganda weapon, one which was promoted in a very specific way from the onset of the war, namely it was Russian, not Georgian aggression that was the cause. Georgia has been consistently presented as the ‘David’, conveniently ignoring the fact that it is directly (and openly) a US/Israeli client state. As I have indicated elsewhere, from the hour Georgia launched its blitzkreig on the capital, the Western media and the states downplayed or ignored the Georgian attack and focused instead on Russsian ‘aggression’, a theme which they have maintained to this day.
Then there is the ceasefire document drawn up by Sarkozy of France, which when the US read it objected quite strongly to some of its provisions, especially the issue of Russian troop withdrawal.
“U.S. Deputy State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the Russians ‘without a doubt have failed to live up to their obligations under the ceasefire agreement.’
“An immediate concern expressed by all sides involved buffer zones outside of two Georgian breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russia insists it has the right to create these zones under the cease-fire deal, but Wood said, ‘Establishing check-points and buffer zones are definitely not part of the agreement.’
“Wood is of course wrong. Point 5 of the signed ceasefire agreement says:
“Russian forces must go back to positions they held prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Pending an international peace monitoring mechanism, Russian peacekeepers will take additional security measures.” — See also ‘The Mysterious ‘Sarkozy Letter’' for a complete rundown on the events leading up to the ceasefire and after it had been signed and implemented on August 17.
The devil, as far as the US was concerned lay in the phrase “Russian peacekeepers will take additional security measures”, which can mean anything you want it to and under the circumstances, with the US promising to re-arm Georgia, the Russians would be fools not to take whatever “additional security measures” they felt were needed. And in any case, what right do the US or the EU have to dictate to the Russians how they should respond to an unprovoked attack on its citizens?
Wood, by the way is one of the State Department officials who was in Georgia only days before Georgia invaded.
But it is perhaps Point Six of the Ceasefire Agreement that the West has done its best to destroy:
‘Launch of international discussions on security and stability arrangements for Abkhazia and South Ossetia.’
Instead the West, led by the US and the UK have inflamed the situation by sending an armada into the Black Sea, promised to re-arm Georgia, broken off any meaningful dialog with Russia, and re-invented the Cold War. And in so doing, backed Russia into a corner by refusing to recognize its legitimate rights.
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RAN Sells-Out Canadian Boreal Forests
Rainforest Action Network greenwashes destruction of half of Ontario, Canada's boreal forests; despite lack of any detail regarding vague promised protections, and without scientific findings that doing so is ecologically sufficient
(Earth) -- Rainforest Action Network (RAN) of San Francisco has long been one of America's leading rainforest campaign organizations. Yet in July their campaign to protect Ontario, Canada's boreal forests doomed half this vital global ecological system to industrial destruction. In return, RAN and other proponents received vague promises of protections over a decade from now, but no protected area boundaries or protection plans.
Canada's boreal forests are home to hundreds of sensitive species of animals including polar bears, caribou and wolverines. Boreal forests are some of the world's largest carbon storehouses, with holdings equal to decades of global emissions from fossil fuels, while continually absorbing new emissions. The boreal region is also the world's largest reservoir of clean fresh water.
"Just how much longer do you think environmentalists can strike deals that give up half of large wilderness ecosystems to industrial development for vague promises of protection? Simply, more ecologically attuned folks know no more natural habitats can be lost and expect to survive climate hange," explains Ecological Internet's President, Dr. Glen Barry.
Neither RAN, WWF or even Greenpeace realize that there is no longer any acceptable reason to industrially destroy or diminish an intact natural ecosystem -- not if falsely FSC certified, not to briefly alleviate poverty, and not because indigenous people are in favor. The state of the Earth is so
grim, and the needs to protect and restore natural ecosystem so large, that only sufficient campaigns seeking to end industrial cutting and burning are worthwhile any longer. The rest is greenwash.
It is unknown if 50 percent protection -- of unknown strength and placement -- will be enough to fully sustain Ontario's biodiversity and ecosystem services. Future protections will likely center on the sparsely populated and largely unthreatened northern boreal, while with its promotion and endorsement of the vague plan, RAN has greenwashed intensified forestry and mining in the already heavily fragmented southern boreal.
"The only meaningful forest protection is to work to keep all ancient primary forests standing, and to meet needs for forest products from secondary forests regenerating into old-growth. There is no chance of achieving global ecological sustainability until ecological destruction ends, what remains is fully protected, and restoration begins," explains Dr. Barry.
This is the second time in recent history -- the other being in British Columbia, Canada's priceless Great Bear temperate rainforest -- that RAN has been a driving force in continuing industrial loss of the world's most important remaining large, intact forest wildernesses. Greenwashing millions of acres of industrial wilderness destruction in the name of indigenous rights is not doing these people or the environment any favors. Thankfully, RAN now does little tropical rainforest campaigning, so they may be safe. With more victories like this, soon there will be no ancient forests or an operable climate.
RAN's slide from a force for forest good to a force for forest greenwash must not go unchallenged. This is particularly difficult for Ecological Internet, as President Dr. Glen Barry is a RAN rainforest award recipient, and has worked collaboratively with them for decades. Yet RAN's string of blunders -- also including occupying campaign offices of Al Gore to protest oil investments (which Nader also had),
possibly swinging the 2000 election -- cannot be forgotten nor forgiven, particularly while ill-informed appeasement continues. RAN has censored those questioning these policies on their blog.
Dr. Barry laments, "You can't present yourselves as cutting edge, selfless and knowledgeable forest protestors and be routinely cutting deals to turn over millions of acres of ancient forests to fatcat loggers and minders. We need to focus on how many ecosystems are necessary to maintain the Earth's habitability, and reaching these levels of protection and restoration, not upon what can be indelicately and easily negotiated.
RAN is called upon to get on board protecting all ancient forests and working to restore mature, old-growth forests; or they, like so much of the mainstream environmental movement, are part of the climate and biodiversity crises. "Giving up on half of Canada's boreal forests for a pocket full is mumbles is not the role of the Rainforest Action Network, members or donors. They have no authority or expertise to be pursuing such deals."
Dr. Glen Barry is a leading global spokesperson on global forest and climate policy. Ecological Internet provides the world's leading climate and forest web portals at http://www.climateark.org/ and http://forests.org/. Dr. Barry frequently conducts interviews on the latest environmental policy developments and can be reached at:
glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org
(note confirmation email response required)
and +1 (920) 776-1075.
PRESS/SOCIAL MEDIA RELEASE
August 28, 2008
By Earth News, a project of Ecological Internet
Dr. Glen Barry, +1 (920) 776-1075
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
B.C.'s Oil Future
Oil Futures
BY: CHRIS GENOVALI
We're in for a whale of a time, one way or another
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently released its 2008 list of threatened species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises). While this news was reasonably encouraging for the global recovery of populations of humpback whales, these assessments have far-reaching impacts on their conservation management. Populations in the Atlantic may now be approaching pre-whaling levels, and while the situation may also be trending in a positive direction on this side of the world's oceans, in the North Pacific researchers still consider the humpback-whale population threatened, and the western North Pacific population endangered.
Until a few decades ago, commercial whaling severely depleted many of the blue, fin, sei and humpback whale populations that inhabited British Columbia¹s waters. Today, our image of whales has changed, and the global moratorium on whaling has given these species an opportunity to recover. Yet for reasons not fully understood, in the North Pacific, populations have yet to rebound to historic levels of abundance, and indeed, fin, sei and blue whales remain endangered.
Raincoast Conservation is now at sea completing five years of systematic marine mammal surveys from Vancouver Island to the Alaskan border. Aboard our research vessel, Achiever, a team of scientists and observers work, eat and sleep on rotations for one to two months at a time. The team records observations of all marine mammals as Raincoast surveys the waters between Dixon Entrance (near the Alaska-B.C. border) and Vancouver Island. Our pre-set tracklines take us back and forth across Hecate and Queen Charlotte Straits and into inlets along the central and north coasts. To date, Raincoast has surveyed over 12,000 kilometers at sea.
In addition to recording sightings of large whales, the results of our surveys provide population estimates for harbour and Dall¹s porpoises, Pacific white-sided dolphins and minke whales, among others. At present there are no population estimates for any of these species in the area. We are working in conjunction with our partners at Duke University¹s Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab to rectify this data gap.
Collecting distribution and abundance data on marine animals is critical to making informed decisions about oil and gas development on the B.C. coast. The habitat of these species and other marine life is under threat from coastal oil and gas exploration and drilling, as well as a potential increase in tanker traffic linked with the proposed liquid natural gas and oil pipeline terminals intended for the north coast.
In fact, every stage of the looming "energy corridor" scheme poses a threat to cetacean populations on the coast, starting with harmful noise impacts generated by seismic activity all the way through to the prospective spills, underwater noise and ship strikes associated with the transport of the recovered oil and gas. Specific to the IUCN report, the good-news story regarding humpbacks could be put in jeopardy if this array of hydrocarbon-based projects is allowed to proceed.
Addressing the frenzied election-year driven drumbeat in the United States to pursue a similar strategy as is being flogged in B.C., Thomas Kostigen of the online business journal MarketWatch wrote last month that:
"Coastal drilling for oil is mindless, not only from a supply perspective but from an environmental perspective. The amount of oil to be found off our nation¹s coasts would be a trickle of what¹s needed to meet consumer demand."
Coastal oil drilling in the contiguous U.S. is a transparent politicized panacea that will not make much of a dent in terms of demand or pricing in that country. Despite this reality, a collective state of election-fed delusion has distorted the debate as the Republicans attempt to force-feed coastal drilling down the Democratic Party's throat. The Democrats' response has been, as one pundit put it, to crumble like feta cheese. In his article, Kostigen pointed out:
"Drilling creates hazards, and costs the economy dearly. Take a look at the local Alaskan economies that suffered because of the Valdez spill. Not a pretty picture."
This begs the question as to why there is such a push to expose the B.C. coast to these same "hazards" when lifting the drilling and tanker moratoria is so fraught with risk.
The Stats Can website just might have the answer:
"Canadian oil companies derive the majority of their revenues from exports; in 2005, two-thirds (66 percent) of Canada¹s crude oil production flowed out of Canada. Since 1995, thirsty Americans have received practically all (99 percent) of Canadian oil exports."
We do not need coastal oil exploration to satisfy domestic consumption in Canada and the oil sands crude from Alberta anticipated for shipping to Kitimat will be headed straight out of the country (likely to Asian markets)on Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC¹s) approximately the size of the Exxon
Valdez rescinding the moratoria in B.C. has everything to do with export markets. For instance, the U.S. has five percent of the world¹s population, yet their oil usage makes up 25 percent of world oil consumption; Canada ranks as the number-one supplier of oil to the U.S., well above Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela and Iraq.
Both the current provincial and federal governments have indicated their desire to lift the coastal moratoria, even if it means having to double down on the odds of a catastrophic oil spill, not to mention significantly contributing to the already dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the Earth's
atmosphere once all those foreign consumer countries of Canadian oil burn up the product. Parenthetically, in a July article by Gwynne Dyer in Monday Magazine, climate scientist James Hansen of NASA stated that we have passed what he considers the threshold for "maximum permissible concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."
It remains to be seen whether federal and provincial opposition parties will ultimately make like feta cheese as the Democrats have in the U.S. or whether they will actually stand up to the ruling parties' oil and gas blitz. The real question, however, is whether British Columbians are willing to gamble with the future of this coast and allow their governments to play the role of hydrocarbon pusher to oil-addicted American and Asian markets.
Chris Genovali is executive director of Raincoast Conservation
BY: CHRIS GENOVALI
We're in for a whale of a time, one way or another
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently released its 2008 list of threatened species of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises). While this news was reasonably encouraging for the global recovery of populations of humpback whales, these assessments have far-reaching impacts on their conservation management. Populations in the Atlantic may now be approaching pre-whaling levels, and while the situation may also be trending in a positive direction on this side of the world's oceans, in the North Pacific researchers still consider the humpback-whale population threatened, and the western North Pacific population endangered.
Until a few decades ago, commercial whaling severely depleted many of the blue, fin, sei and humpback whale populations that inhabited British Columbia¹s waters. Today, our image of whales has changed, and the global moratorium on whaling has given these species an opportunity to recover. Yet for reasons not fully understood, in the North Pacific, populations have yet to rebound to historic levels of abundance, and indeed, fin, sei and blue whales remain endangered.
Raincoast Conservation is now at sea completing five years of systematic marine mammal surveys from Vancouver Island to the Alaskan border. Aboard our research vessel, Achiever, a team of scientists and observers work, eat and sleep on rotations for one to two months at a time. The team records observations of all marine mammals as Raincoast surveys the waters between Dixon Entrance (near the Alaska-B.C. border) and Vancouver Island. Our pre-set tracklines take us back and forth across Hecate and Queen Charlotte Straits and into inlets along the central and north coasts. To date, Raincoast has surveyed over 12,000 kilometers at sea.
In addition to recording sightings of large whales, the results of our surveys provide population estimates for harbour and Dall¹s porpoises, Pacific white-sided dolphins and minke whales, among others. At present there are no population estimates for any of these species in the area. We are working in conjunction with our partners at Duke University¹s Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab to rectify this data gap.
Collecting distribution and abundance data on marine animals is critical to making informed decisions about oil and gas development on the B.C. coast. The habitat of these species and other marine life is under threat from coastal oil and gas exploration and drilling, as well as a potential increase in tanker traffic linked with the proposed liquid natural gas and oil pipeline terminals intended for the north coast.
In fact, every stage of the looming "energy corridor" scheme poses a threat to cetacean populations on the coast, starting with harmful noise impacts generated by seismic activity all the way through to the prospective spills, underwater noise and ship strikes associated with the transport of the recovered oil and gas. Specific to the IUCN report, the good-news story regarding humpbacks could be put in jeopardy if this array of hydrocarbon-based projects is allowed to proceed.
Addressing the frenzied election-year driven drumbeat in the United States to pursue a similar strategy as is being flogged in B.C., Thomas Kostigen of the online business journal MarketWatch wrote last month that:
"Coastal drilling for oil is mindless, not only from a supply perspective but from an environmental perspective. The amount of oil to be found off our nation¹s coasts would be a trickle of what¹s needed to meet consumer demand."
Coastal oil drilling in the contiguous U.S. is a transparent politicized panacea that will not make much of a dent in terms of demand or pricing in that country. Despite this reality, a collective state of election-fed delusion has distorted the debate as the Republicans attempt to force-feed coastal drilling down the Democratic Party's throat. The Democrats' response has been, as one pundit put it, to crumble like feta cheese. In his article, Kostigen pointed out:
"Drilling creates hazards, and costs the economy dearly. Take a look at the local Alaskan economies that suffered because of the Valdez spill. Not a pretty picture."
This begs the question as to why there is such a push to expose the B.C. coast to these same "hazards" when lifting the drilling and tanker moratoria is so fraught with risk.
The Stats Can website just might have the answer:
"Canadian oil companies derive the majority of their revenues from exports; in 2005, two-thirds (66 percent) of Canada¹s crude oil production flowed out of Canada. Since 1995, thirsty Americans have received practically all (99 percent) of Canadian oil exports."
We do not need coastal oil exploration to satisfy domestic consumption in Canada and the oil sands crude from Alberta anticipated for shipping to Kitimat will be headed straight out of the country (likely to Asian markets)on Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCC¹s) approximately the size of the Exxon
Valdez rescinding the moratoria in B.C. has everything to do with export markets. For instance, the U.S. has five percent of the world¹s population, yet their oil usage makes up 25 percent of world oil consumption; Canada ranks as the number-one supplier of oil to the U.S., well above Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela and Iraq.
Both the current provincial and federal governments have indicated their desire to lift the coastal moratoria, even if it means having to double down on the odds of a catastrophic oil spill, not to mention significantly contributing to the already dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the Earth's
atmosphere once all those foreign consumer countries of Canadian oil burn up the product. Parenthetically, in a July article by Gwynne Dyer in Monday Magazine, climate scientist James Hansen of NASA stated that we have passed what he considers the threshold for "maximum permissible concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."
It remains to be seen whether federal and provincial opposition parties will ultimately make like feta cheese as the Democrats have in the U.S. or whether they will actually stand up to the ruling parties' oil and gas blitz. The real question, however, is whether British Columbians are willing to gamble with the future of this coast and allow their governments to play the role of hydrocarbon pusher to oil-addicted American and Asian markets.
Chris Genovali is executive director of Raincoast Conservation
Monday, August 25, 2008
wind turbines can kill bats without touching them
Study finds wind turbines can kill bats without touching them
by Rich Bowden - Aug 25 2008, 21:28
Canadian researchers have found wind turbines can kill bats without them actually flying into the blades.
Scientists at the University of Calgary have discovered that bats can die from a lowering in the air pressure close to the blades of the turbines which causes fatal damage to the bats' lungs. A similar condition is called the bends in humans and can occur during ascents and descents by divers and airline passengers.
"As a turbine blade goes around, it creates lift—like an airplane's wings—and there is a small zone of [dropping] pressure, maybe a meter or so in diameter, on the tips of the blades," explained Erin Baerwald, a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary, in Alberta, who led the research.
"Bats fly through this area, and their lungs expand, and the fine capillaries around the edges of the lungs burst," Baerwald said to the National Geographic.
The team found that as bats use echolocation (radar) when they fly, they rarely fly into structures as big as wind turbines, however their study of bats found in Alberta, Canada found no contact with the blades, they report in Current Biology journal.
"An atmospheric drop in pressure at wind-turbine blades is an undetectable - and potentially unforeseeable - hazard for bats, thus partially explaining the large number of bat fatalities at these specific structures," said Baerwald.
"Given that bats are more susceptible to barotraumas than birds and that bat fatalities at wind turbines far outnumber bird fatalities at most sites, wildlife fatalities at wind turbines are now a bat issue, not a bird issue."
The researchers found that, as the bats fed on insects which do damage to crops, their deaths could have a negative impact on surrounding agriculture.
Wind industry officials have said they will do all they can to reduce the deaths of the bats but concede the task is difficult as little is known of the habits of the nocturnal creatures.
"It's a huge challenge," says Jason Edworthy, director of stakeholder relations for TransAlta Wind said to Canwest News Service. The company operates Summerview Wind Farm where close to 700 bats die each year.
by Rich Bowden - Aug 25 2008, 21:28
Canadian researchers have found wind turbines can kill bats without them actually flying into the blades.
Scientists at the University of Calgary have discovered that bats can die from a lowering in the air pressure close to the blades of the turbines which causes fatal damage to the bats' lungs. A similar condition is called the bends in humans and can occur during ascents and descents by divers and airline passengers.
"As a turbine blade goes around, it creates lift—like an airplane's wings—and there is a small zone of [dropping] pressure, maybe a meter or so in diameter, on the tips of the blades," explained Erin Baerwald, a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary, in Alberta, who led the research.
"Bats fly through this area, and their lungs expand, and the fine capillaries around the edges of the lungs burst," Baerwald said to the National Geographic.
The team found that as bats use echolocation (radar) when they fly, they rarely fly into structures as big as wind turbines, however their study of bats found in Alberta, Canada found no contact with the blades, they report in Current Biology journal.
"An atmospheric drop in pressure at wind-turbine blades is an undetectable - and potentially unforeseeable - hazard for bats, thus partially explaining the large number of bat fatalities at these specific structures," said Baerwald.
"Given that bats are more susceptible to barotraumas than birds and that bat fatalities at wind turbines far outnumber bird fatalities at most sites, wildlife fatalities at wind turbines are now a bat issue, not a bird issue."
The researchers found that, as the bats fed on insects which do damage to crops, their deaths could have a negative impact on surrounding agriculture.
Wind industry officials have said they will do all they can to reduce the deaths of the bats but concede the task is difficult as little is known of the habits of the nocturnal creatures.
"It's a huge challenge," says Jason Edworthy, director of stakeholder relations for TransAlta Wind said to Canwest News Service. The company operates Summerview Wind Farm where close to 700 bats die each year.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Solving Afghanistan
Solving the Afghanistan Quagmire
by Patrick Seale
Spectacular Taliban successes in Afghanistan and Pakistan are forcing Western leaders to re-think their anti-terrorist strategy in both countries.
In recent days, French President Nicola Sarkozy and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown have paid separate flying visits to Kabul to assess the situation. They, and other Western heads of government, are facing the painful possibility that NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan -- a war which has also destabilized neighbouring Pakistan.
Three events, among many other violent episodes, have shocked governments and public in both the West and the region:
• The death of 10 French paratroopers and the wounding of 21 others in a Taliban ambush on 18 August, a mere 60 kilometres east of Kabul. The main Afghan- Pakistan highway passes through this district of Sarubi. Severed by Taliban roadblocks, the road is now so insecure that it is out of bounds to foreigners.
As France mourns its dead, a furious debate has broken out in Paris about the wisdom of Sarkozy’s decision last April -- clearly as a gesture towards the United States to increase the French contingent in Afghanistan by an extra 700 men to a total of some 3,000. The French parliament is due to meet in September in extraordinary session to debate strategy in Afghanistan.
• On 21 August, two suicide bombers attacked Pakistan’s largest weapons factory in Wah, 30 kilometres north of Islamabad, killing 60 people and wounding 100 more. The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was in retaliation for military operations by the Pakistan army in the tribal areas along the Afghan border -- carried out under U.S. pressure.
• On 22 August, the Afghan Interior Ministry claimed that U.S. air strikes in the West of the country had killed between 60 and 90 Afghan civilians, including many women and children.
The U.S. command claimed that no civilians had been killed, only some 30 Taliban militants, but it has agreed to conduct an inquiry.
Such events point to the sharply deteriorating situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan capital Kabul is virtually under Taliban siege. A climate of fear reigns there. All UN personnel, as well as all foreigners working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have been consigned to their homes because of the high level of threat.
Meanwhile, 40 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan in August alone, bringing the total for the year so far to around 200, compared to 232 in the whole of 2007.
Seven years ago, NATO and the United States invaded Afghanistan to punish and destroy Al-Qaeda for its September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, and to overthrow the Taliban regime that was giving Al-Qaeda refuge. But the job was never completed, largely because, under pressure from pro-Israeli neo-cons inside the U.S. administration, the U.S. effort was diverted to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Today, the Afghan war has expanded into an unwinnable conflict against a formidable coalition of Pashtun tribesmen on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. The war has drawn in Islamic militants from the Arab world, from Kashmir, and even from Central Asia.
Al-Qaeda may be no more than a small element in this coalition. The tribes are fighting to protect themselves from what they sees as a foreign threat to their religion and traditions, to their tribal way of life, and to the sanctity of their families. Civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes inflame opinion and play into the hands of the Taliban.
What should NATO and the West do? The United States has endorsed a $17bn plan to build up the Afghan army to 122,000 over the next five years. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown thinks this is still too small to defeat the Taliban. Some experts believe, however, that there is no military solution to the conflict, indeed that the war is already lost.
A more promising approach would be to negotiate a ceasefire with both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban movements, within the context of a regional strategy, which would include India and Iran, as well as the governments in Kabul and Islamabad.
The goals of such a regional strategy should be:
• To end the U.S.-NATO conflict with the Pashtun tribes of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They would undertake, in exchange, to close down the sanctuaries they provide for Al-Qaeda. Such a deal would almost certainly mean bringing the Taliban into the Afghan government and confirming the autonomy of Pakistan’s tribal agencies, free from attack by the central government.
• To agree to a timetable for the full withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, while redoubling international efforts for reconstruction and development.
• To negotiate a settlement of the long-running Kashmir dispute, which has poisoned relations between India and Pakistan since partition, but has also spilled over into their competition in Afghanistan.
• To associate Iran with a broad Afghan-Pakistan-India regional settlement, so as to reassure it that there will be no threat to its security from the east.
Such a regional strategy may seem utopian, but it should be high on the list of priorities of the next American president, before more lives are uselessly thrown away and more anti-Western anger aroused in a volatile part of the world.
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.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
by Patrick Seale
Spectacular Taliban successes in Afghanistan and Pakistan are forcing Western leaders to re-think their anti-terrorist strategy in both countries.
In recent days, French President Nicola Sarkozy and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown have paid separate flying visits to Kabul to assess the situation. They, and other Western heads of government, are facing the painful possibility that NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan -- a war which has also destabilized neighbouring Pakistan.
Three events, among many other violent episodes, have shocked governments and public in both the West and the region:
• The death of 10 French paratroopers and the wounding of 21 others in a Taliban ambush on 18 August, a mere 60 kilometres east of Kabul. The main Afghan- Pakistan highway passes through this district of Sarubi. Severed by Taliban roadblocks, the road is now so insecure that it is out of bounds to foreigners.
As France mourns its dead, a furious debate has broken out in Paris about the wisdom of Sarkozy’s decision last April -- clearly as a gesture towards the United States to increase the French contingent in Afghanistan by an extra 700 men to a total of some 3,000. The French parliament is due to meet in September in extraordinary session to debate strategy in Afghanistan.
• On 21 August, two suicide bombers attacked Pakistan’s largest weapons factory in Wah, 30 kilometres north of Islamabad, killing 60 people and wounding 100 more. The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was in retaliation for military operations by the Pakistan army in the tribal areas along the Afghan border -- carried out under U.S. pressure.
• On 22 August, the Afghan Interior Ministry claimed that U.S. air strikes in the West of the country had killed between 60 and 90 Afghan civilians, including many women and children.
The U.S. command claimed that no civilians had been killed, only some 30 Taliban militants, but it has agreed to conduct an inquiry.
Such events point to the sharply deteriorating situation in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan capital Kabul is virtually under Taliban siege. A climate of fear reigns there. All UN personnel, as well as all foreigners working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have been consigned to their homes because of the high level of threat.
Meanwhile, 40 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan in August alone, bringing the total for the year so far to around 200, compared to 232 in the whole of 2007.
Seven years ago, NATO and the United States invaded Afghanistan to punish and destroy Al-Qaeda for its September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States, and to overthrow the Taliban regime that was giving Al-Qaeda refuge. But the job was never completed, largely because, under pressure from pro-Israeli neo-cons inside the U.S. administration, the U.S. effort was diverted to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Today, the Afghan war has expanded into an unwinnable conflict against a formidable coalition of Pashtun tribesmen on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. The war has drawn in Islamic militants from the Arab world, from Kashmir, and even from Central Asia.
Al-Qaeda may be no more than a small element in this coalition. The tribes are fighting to protect themselves from what they sees as a foreign threat to their religion and traditions, to their tribal way of life, and to the sanctity of their families. Civilian casualties from U.S. airstrikes inflame opinion and play into the hands of the Taliban.
What should NATO and the West do? The United States has endorsed a $17bn plan to build up the Afghan army to 122,000 over the next five years. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown thinks this is still too small to defeat the Taliban. Some experts believe, however, that there is no military solution to the conflict, indeed that the war is already lost.
A more promising approach would be to negotiate a ceasefire with both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban movements, within the context of a regional strategy, which would include India and Iran, as well as the governments in Kabul and Islamabad.
The goals of such a regional strategy should be:
• To end the U.S.-NATO conflict with the Pashtun tribes of both Afghanistan and Pakistan. They would undertake, in exchange, to close down the sanctuaries they provide for Al-Qaeda. Such a deal would almost certainly mean bringing the Taliban into the Afghan government and confirming the autonomy of Pakistan’s tribal agencies, free from attack by the central government.
• To agree to a timetable for the full withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan, while redoubling international efforts for reconstruction and development.
• To negotiate a settlement of the long-running Kashmir dispute, which has poisoned relations between India and Pakistan since partition, but has also spilled over into their competition in Afghanistan.
• To associate Iran with a broad Afghan-Pakistan-India regional settlement, so as to reassure it that there will be no threat to its security from the east.
Such a regional strategy may seem utopian, but it should be high on the list of priorities of the next American president, before more lives are uselessly thrown away and more anti-Western anger aroused in a volatile part of the world.
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.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
Ontario: The Tory's Electoral Death Wish
Do The Tories Have A Death Wish?
Charles Conn
They are planning to appoint another candidate, in Halton this time.
The federal riding of Halton lies west of Toronto. The city of Milton is in the centre and corners of Oakville and Burlington lie on its southern border. The rest is farm, estate and small village country. It's a natural Tory stronghold and the Tories are doing everything they can to hand it over to the Liberals.
It's Garth Turner's riding. He was a staunch Tory until he offended some sensitive person(s) in the PMO and the Party threw him out. Now he's a staunch Liberal.
It must be quite puzzling for the 'smart guys' in the Tory PMO to see the polls continuing to show them lagging the Liberals in 98-seat southern Ontario. Let me venture an opinion. It's not just the avalanching list of errors of omission and commission made by the Harper-quarterbacked government. It's also the thuggish behaviour of Doug Finley who runs the Party's political operations PoliOps in bureaucratic newspeak. He and his gang of yespersons are alienating riding memberships so much that they will not work for appointed "Stars". And grassroots do feed the lawn!
By his disdainful contempt for the membership in ridings like Toronto Centre, Guelph, Mississauga East-Cooksville, Mississauga South, Halton and who knows how many others, Finley is virtually guaranteeing the Tories will do even less well in southern Ontario in October 2009 than they did in January 2006. Quebec won't offset and they'll be lucky to maintain a minority government.
The pattern of misbehaviour varies only slightly in detail.
In Toronto Centre, Mark Warner was duly elected as their candidate by the membership. PoliOps threw him out and appointed a non-resident. He lost a by-election. (Hal Jackman was not pleased!)
In Guelph, the membership elected Brent Barr to be their candidate by a substantial majority over Gloria Kovach, a local city councillor. PoliOps threw out Barr and installed Kovach. She will lose in the September by-election.
In Mississauga East-Cooksville, PoliOps installed Melissa Bhagat, a Liberal living in Brampton, as the candidate before the new board, never mind the membership, had a chance to organize a candidate search and fair election. She will lose.
It is likely that so much fuss was raised in The Star, the Mississauga News and bloggers about the underhanded treatment of the membership in Mississauga East-Cooksville that PoliOps had to tell Major Ted Opitz of Etobicoke that they couldn't give him an automatic appointment in Mississauga South after all he'd have to campaign for the candidacy! (Mississauga South's two-time candidate, Phil Green, had been unceremoniously told that he wouldn't be allowed to even contest for the candidacy this time in order to give Opitz an opening.) Mississauga South was finally allowed to hold their candidate election June 10 at which date poor Major Opitz was blown away by a resident, Hugh Arrison. So far, PoliOps has not thrown him out. He might have a chance because the membership will work for a candidate they chose.
Halton has suffered a textbook combination of political Dirty Tricks.
First of all the riding's board has been asking PoliOps for permission to hold a candidate election for nearly two years. Their requests have been denied and, most recently, simply ignored. (One might wonder how an unelected, unaccountable staff can deny the elected, accountable representatives of the membership, but that's Tory democracy nowadays under the new Rules & Regulations drafted by [surprise] PoliOps.)
Halton riding has a consistent and active membership of around 550 and a significant amount of money in the bank. It has always had a healthy riding association active in many community events and experienced at winning elections. There have been at least three very well-qualified members who have announced their intention to seek the candidacy for the same two years. All the requirements for holding a candidate selection process have been in place. It is axiomatic that the longer a candidate has to work the riding the more likely he/she is to have a positive influence on the outcome of an election.
However, PoliOps has decided to appoint Lisa Raitt as the Tory candidate in Halton.
Lisa Raitt at least lives in the riding. She is the CEO of the Toronto Harbour Commission. Formerly, she was chief counsel for the THC and was responsible for extracting the $35M penalty from Toronto City Council for their holdup of the Island Airport. Clearly a "Star" candidate!
While at the THC, Ms. Raitt hired two lobbyists Vic Gupta and Mark Spiro. Vic Gupta is the Principal of Prime Strategies - a PR firm in Toronto. Mark Spiro is a Partner at Goodmans LLP in Toronto and ran the Target Management Group for Doug Finley during the 2005-06 election. He has recently backed off from open contact with Ms. Raitt, but is still a key advisor to Doug Finley.
Investigators might possibly find it useful to also probe Toronto city councillors and mayor Miller about Ms. Raitt's tenure at THC.
Now here's where it gets a little complicated. Early in 2008, both Lisa Raitt and the Halton board were told that Lisa Raitt was going to be the Tory candidate in the next election. Ms. Raitt was introduced to the board as such. Only one board member resigned in protest, the rest prepared to dig in their heels.
It is likely that the fuss raised by the newspapers and blogs about the nefarious treatment of the Mississauga East-Cooksville membership caused PoliOps a little temporary concern (see Mississauga South) and sometime in February/March 2008 they told Lisa Raitt she'd have to campaign for the candidacy (like Major Ted Opitz). She flatly refused. She gave the bogus excuse that her position in a government agency didn't allow her to campaign for a political position. This is not true. More likely she was concerned about the optics among Toronto city councillors and/or she simply didn't want to lower herself, or exert herself, to engage in a contest for a position she had previously been assured was hers and that she still wanted to have.
So PoliOps made a tactical shift. The membership in Halton will not be allowed to choose their own candidate. Whenever the writ is dropped for the next federal election, the cover of the call to arms will be used to sneak in Lisa Raitt as the official Party Representative.
Recently, Ms. Raitt has been showing up at community events and behaving for all the world as though she is in fact the Tory candidate for Halton.
Investigators might find it useful to ask Ms. Raitt whether she is going to compete for the nomination or whether she has already been promised the candidacy.
Talk about abusing the membership!
The National Council of the Conservative Party is elected to serve and protect the interests of the membership and the Party. Instead, as recent events have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, National Councillors have abdicated their positional responsibility and ceded their authority to the bully-tactics of Doug Finley and his gang of fellow hirelings.
National Councillors know full well what's going on. I for one sent complete details of what transpired in Mississauga East-Cooksville to: Don Plett President, Richard Ciano Vice President, Jean LeBlanc Secretary, Lois Brown Ontario Councillor, Kara Johnson Ontario Councillor and Susan McArthur Ontario Councillor. Not one had the courtesy, never mind the integrity, to respond.
Furthermore, they can read the media accounts that relate the destruction being wrought, not just in southern Ontario, but also in Quebec, the Maritimes, Manitoba, Alberta and B.C. just in the last year. And probably three time as much damage is being done in ridings lacking the juice to fight back or get media attention.
National Councillors and the PMO must soon realize that Finley's actions are wrecking the enthusiasm of party members by denying the memberships and boards the fundamental democratic right to choose who will represent them in elections and parliament. If they don't do something about Finley and his gang they will rightly bear the blame for the next reign of Liberal socialism.
In addition to the persons named above, you may wish to contact:
Keith Hesse, long time and still current Halton board member, 905-876-9900 (home), 905-34-5307 (cell). Lisa Raitt told him she won't declare because she's worried about the media and Toronto Council finding out about her responsibility for the Island Airport. (Rumour has it the Tories want to make her Transport Minister to expand Toronto Island Airport so Porter will buy more planes from Bombardier in Montreal!!!}
Tasha Woodcock, Ontario PoliOps, 613-755-2192.
Wally Butts, south central Ontario Region PoliOps, 519-586-3019
Karma MacGregor, GTA Region PoliOps, 416-846-8236.
Guy Giorno and Tony Kenanke in the PMO with Doug Finley.
Charles W. Conn, Mississauga. August 18, 2008
Charles Conn
They are planning to appoint another candidate, in Halton this time.
The federal riding of Halton lies west of Toronto. The city of Milton is in the centre and corners of Oakville and Burlington lie on its southern border. The rest is farm, estate and small village country. It's a natural Tory stronghold and the Tories are doing everything they can to hand it over to the Liberals.
It's Garth Turner's riding. He was a staunch Tory until he offended some sensitive person(s) in the PMO and the Party threw him out. Now he's a staunch Liberal.
It must be quite puzzling for the 'smart guys' in the Tory PMO to see the polls continuing to show them lagging the Liberals in 98-seat southern Ontario. Let me venture an opinion. It's not just the avalanching list of errors of omission and commission made by the Harper-quarterbacked government. It's also the thuggish behaviour of Doug Finley who runs the Party's political operations PoliOps in bureaucratic newspeak. He and his gang of yespersons are alienating riding memberships so much that they will not work for appointed "Stars". And grassroots do feed the lawn!
By his disdainful contempt for the membership in ridings like Toronto Centre, Guelph, Mississauga East-Cooksville, Mississauga South, Halton and who knows how many others, Finley is virtually guaranteeing the Tories will do even less well in southern Ontario in October 2009 than they did in January 2006. Quebec won't offset and they'll be lucky to maintain a minority government.
The pattern of misbehaviour varies only slightly in detail.
In Toronto Centre, Mark Warner was duly elected as their candidate by the membership. PoliOps threw him out and appointed a non-resident. He lost a by-election. (Hal Jackman was not pleased!)
In Guelph, the membership elected Brent Barr to be their candidate by a substantial majority over Gloria Kovach, a local city councillor. PoliOps threw out Barr and installed Kovach. She will lose in the September by-election.
In Mississauga East-Cooksville, PoliOps installed Melissa Bhagat, a Liberal living in Brampton, as the candidate before the new board, never mind the membership, had a chance to organize a candidate search and fair election. She will lose.
It is likely that so much fuss was raised in The Star, the Mississauga News and bloggers about the underhanded treatment of the membership in Mississauga East-Cooksville that PoliOps had to tell Major Ted Opitz of Etobicoke that they couldn't give him an automatic appointment in Mississauga South after all he'd have to campaign for the candidacy! (Mississauga South's two-time candidate, Phil Green, had been unceremoniously told that he wouldn't be allowed to even contest for the candidacy this time in order to give Opitz an opening.) Mississauga South was finally allowed to hold their candidate election June 10 at which date poor Major Opitz was blown away by a resident, Hugh Arrison. So far, PoliOps has not thrown him out. He might have a chance because the membership will work for a candidate they chose.
Halton has suffered a textbook combination of political Dirty Tricks.
First of all the riding's board has been asking PoliOps for permission to hold a candidate election for nearly two years. Their requests have been denied and, most recently, simply ignored. (One might wonder how an unelected, unaccountable staff can deny the elected, accountable representatives of the membership, but that's Tory democracy nowadays under the new Rules & Regulations drafted by [surprise] PoliOps.)
Halton riding has a consistent and active membership of around 550 and a significant amount of money in the bank. It has always had a healthy riding association active in many community events and experienced at winning elections. There have been at least three very well-qualified members who have announced their intention to seek the candidacy for the same two years. All the requirements for holding a candidate selection process have been in place. It is axiomatic that the longer a candidate has to work the riding the more likely he/she is to have a positive influence on the outcome of an election.
However, PoliOps has decided to appoint Lisa Raitt as the Tory candidate in Halton.
Lisa Raitt at least lives in the riding. She is the CEO of the Toronto Harbour Commission. Formerly, she was chief counsel for the THC and was responsible for extracting the $35M penalty from Toronto City Council for their holdup of the Island Airport. Clearly a "Star" candidate!
While at the THC, Ms. Raitt hired two lobbyists Vic Gupta and Mark Spiro. Vic Gupta is the Principal of Prime Strategies - a PR firm in Toronto. Mark Spiro is a Partner at Goodmans LLP in Toronto and ran the Target Management Group for Doug Finley during the 2005-06 election. He has recently backed off from open contact with Ms. Raitt, but is still a key advisor to Doug Finley.
Investigators might possibly find it useful to also probe Toronto city councillors and mayor Miller about Ms. Raitt's tenure at THC.
Now here's where it gets a little complicated. Early in 2008, both Lisa Raitt and the Halton board were told that Lisa Raitt was going to be the Tory candidate in the next election. Ms. Raitt was introduced to the board as such. Only one board member resigned in protest, the rest prepared to dig in their heels.
It is likely that the fuss raised by the newspapers and blogs about the nefarious treatment of the Mississauga East-Cooksville membership caused PoliOps a little temporary concern (see Mississauga South) and sometime in February/March 2008 they told Lisa Raitt she'd have to campaign for the candidacy (like Major Ted Opitz). She flatly refused. She gave the bogus excuse that her position in a government agency didn't allow her to campaign for a political position. This is not true. More likely she was concerned about the optics among Toronto city councillors and/or she simply didn't want to lower herself, or exert herself, to engage in a contest for a position she had previously been assured was hers and that she still wanted to have.
So PoliOps made a tactical shift. The membership in Halton will not be allowed to choose their own candidate. Whenever the writ is dropped for the next federal election, the cover of the call to arms will be used to sneak in Lisa Raitt as the official Party Representative.
Recently, Ms. Raitt has been showing up at community events and behaving for all the world as though she is in fact the Tory candidate for Halton.
Investigators might find it useful to ask Ms. Raitt whether she is going to compete for the nomination or whether she has already been promised the candidacy.
Talk about abusing the membership!
The National Council of the Conservative Party is elected to serve and protect the interests of the membership and the Party. Instead, as recent events have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, National Councillors have abdicated their positional responsibility and ceded their authority to the bully-tactics of Doug Finley and his gang of fellow hirelings.
National Councillors know full well what's going on. I for one sent complete details of what transpired in Mississauga East-Cooksville to: Don Plett President, Richard Ciano Vice President, Jean LeBlanc Secretary, Lois Brown Ontario Councillor, Kara Johnson Ontario Councillor and Susan McArthur Ontario Councillor. Not one had the courtesy, never mind the integrity, to respond.
Furthermore, they can read the media accounts that relate the destruction being wrought, not just in southern Ontario, but also in Quebec, the Maritimes, Manitoba, Alberta and B.C. just in the last year. And probably three time as much damage is being done in ridings lacking the juice to fight back or get media attention.
National Councillors and the PMO must soon realize that Finley's actions are wrecking the enthusiasm of party members by denying the memberships and boards the fundamental democratic right to choose who will represent them in elections and parliament. If they don't do something about Finley and his gang they will rightly bear the blame for the next reign of Liberal socialism.
In addition to the persons named above, you may wish to contact:
Keith Hesse, long time and still current Halton board member, 905-876-9900 (home), 905-34-5307 (cell). Lisa Raitt told him she won't declare because she's worried about the media and Toronto Council finding out about her responsibility for the Island Airport. (Rumour has it the Tories want to make her Transport Minister to expand Toronto Island Airport so Porter will buy more planes from Bombardier in Montreal!!!}
Tasha Woodcock, Ontario PoliOps, 613-755-2192.
Wally Butts, south central Ontario Region PoliOps, 519-586-3019
Karma MacGregor, GTA Region PoliOps, 416-846-8236.
Guy Giorno and Tony Kenanke in the PMO with Doug Finley.
Charles W. Conn, Mississauga. August 18, 2008
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