Unhappy Remembrances for the War that Never Ends

Mission Unaccomplished: Why the Invasion of Iraq Was the Single Worst Foreign Policy Decision in American History

by Peter Van Buren -  TomDispatch 

I was there. And “there” was nowhere. And nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness -- and oh yes, it was madness -- not filtered through a complacent and sleepy media that made Washington’s war policy seem, if not sensible, at least sane and serious enough. I stood at Ground Zero of what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time.

Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, One Day Even the Drones Will Have to Land

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We don’t get it. We really don’t. We may not, in military terms, know how to win any more, but as a society we don’t get losing either. We don’t recognize it, even when it’s staring us in the face, when nothing -- and I mean nothing -- works out as planned. Take the upcoming 10th anniversary of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq as Exhibit A. You could describe what happened in that country as an unmitigated disaster -- from the moment, in April 2003, U.S. troops first entered a Baghdad in flames and being looted (“stuff happens”) and were assigned to guard only the Interior Ministry (i.e. the secret police) and the Oil Ministry (well, you know what that is) to the moment in December 2011 when the last American combat unit slipped out of that land in the dead of the night (after lying to Iraqi colleagues about what they were doing).

As it happened, the country that we were going to garrison for a lifetime (to the thankful cheers of its inhabitants) while we imposed a Pax Americana on the rest of the region didn’t want us. The government we essentially installed chose Iran as an ally and business partner. The permanent bases we built to the tune of billions of dollars are now largely looted ghost towns. The reconstruction of the country that we promoted proved worse than farcical, as former State Department official Peter Van Buren, author of the already classic book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, reminds us. And an outfit proudly carrying the al-Qaeda brand name, which did not exist in Iraq before our invasion, is now thriving in a still destabilized country. Consider that just the start of a much longer list.

For Americans, however, a single issue overwhelms all of the above, one so monumental that we can’t keep our minds off it or on much of anything else when it comes to Iraq. I’m talking, of course, about “the surge,” those five brigades of extra combat troops that, in 2006, a desperate president decided to send into an occupied country collapsing in a maelstrom of insurgency and sectarian civil war. Admittedly, General David Petraeus, who led that surge, would later experience a farcical disaster of his own and is in retirement after going “all in” with his biographer. Still, as we learned in the Senate hearings on Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Pentagon chief, the question -- the litmus test when it comes to Iraq -- remains: Was the surge strategy he implemented a remarkable success or just a simple, straightforward success in essentially buying off the Sunni opposition and, for a period, giving the country a veneer of relative -- extremely relative -- calm? Was it responsible for allowing us to leave behind a shattered Iraq (and all of Washington’s shattered imperial dreams) with, as President Obama put it, our “heads held high”? Oh, and lest you think that only right-wing Republicans and the rest of the crew that once cheered us into Iraq and refused to face what was happening while we were there find the surge the ultimate measure of our stay, check out Tom Powers’s recent admiring portrait of the surge general in the New York Review of Books.

Here’s at least one explanation for our inability to look defeat in the face and recognize it for what it is: like the proverbial horseman who prefers not to change mounts in midstream, we have an aversion to changing experts in mid-disaster, even when those experts have batting averages for pure wrongness that should stagger the imagination. In fact, you could say that the more deeply, incontrovertibly, disastrously wrong you were about Iraq, the more likely the media was in the years after, on one disaster “anniversary” after another, to call on you for your opinion. At the fifth anniversary of the invasion, for example, the New York Times rounded up a range of "experts on military and foreign affairs" to look back. Six of them had been intimately involved in the catastrophe either as drumbeaters for the invasion, instigators of it, or facilitators of the occupation that followed. Somehow, that paper could not dig up a single expert who had actually opposed the invasion.

In other words, we’re talking here about a country that, for wisdom, regularly consults the walking dead, the zombies of our Iraq experience. And don’t think that, in the coming days, some of them won’t be back again to offer their balanced thoughts on what it all meant. Only one kind of expert has been noticeably missing all these years in the mainstream media when it comes to assessing our Iraq experience: those benighted, misguided types in their millions who, before March 2003, were foolish enough to go out into the streets of global cities and oppose the invasion entirely.

To inoculate you against the coverage in the anniversary week to come, and against the spirit of our American times, TomDispatch offers Peter Van Buren, who had a ringside seat at part of our Iraqi follies, on what these 10 years from hell actually meant for us as well as others. Tom

 

Mission Unaccomplished: Why the Invasion of Iraq Was the Single Worst Foreign Policy Decision in American History

by Peter Van Buren

 

The Madness of King George

It’s easy to forget just how normal the madness looked back then. By 2009, when I arrived in Iraq, we were already at the last-gasp moment when it came to salvaging something from what may yet be seen as the single worst foreign policy decision in American history. It was then that, as a State Department officer assigned to lead two provincial reconstruction teams in eastern Iraq, I first walked into the chicken processing plant in the middle of nowhere.

By then, the U.S. “reconstruction” plan for that country was drowning in rivers of money foolishly spent. As the centerpiece for those American efforts -- at least after Plan A, that our invading troops would be greeted with flowers and sweets as liberators, crashed and burned -- we had managed to reconstruct nothing of significance. First conceived as a Marshall Plan for the New American Century, six long years later it had devolved into farce.

In my act of the play, the U.S. spent some $2.2 million dollars to build a huge facility in the boondocks. Ignoring the stark reality that Iraqis had raised and sold chickens locally for some 2,000 years, the U.S. decided to finance the construction of a central processing facility, have the Iraqis running the plant purchase local chickens, pluck them and slice them up with complex machinery brought in from Chicago, package the breasts and wings in plastic wrap, and then truck it all to local grocery stores. Perhaps it was the desert heat, but this made sense at the time, and the plan was supported by the Army, the State Department, and the White House.

Elegant in conception, at least to us, it failed to account for a few simple things, like a lack of regular electricity, or logistics systems to bring the chickens to and from the plant, or working capital, or... um... grocery stores. As a result, the gleaming $2.2 million plant processed no chickens. To use a few of the catchwords of that moment, it transformed nothing, empowered no one, stabilized and economically uplifted not a single Iraqi. It just sat there empty, dark, and unused in the middle of the desert. Like the chickens, we were plucked.

In keeping with the madness of the times, however, the simple fact that the plant failed to meet any of its real-world goals did not mean the project wasn't a success. In fact, the factory was a hit with the U.S. media. After all, for every propaganda-driven visit to the plant, my group stocked the place with hastily purchased chickens, geared up the machinery, and put on a dog-and-pony, er, chicken-and-rooster, show.

In the dark humor of that moment, we christened the place the Potemkin Chicken Factory. In between media and VIP visits, it sat in the dark, only to rise with the rooster’s cry each morning some camera crew came out for a visit. Our factory was thus considered a great success. Robert Ford, then at the Baghdad Embassy and now America's rugged shadow ambassador to Syria, said his visit was the best day out he enjoyed in Iraq. General Ray Odierno, then commanding all U.S. forces in Iraq, sent bloggers and camp followers to view the victory project. Some of the propaganda, which proclaimed that “teaching Iraqis methods to flourish on their own gives them the ability to provide their own stability without needing to rely on Americans,” is still online (including this charming image of American-Iraqi mentorship, a particular favorite of mine).

We weren’t stupid, mind you. In fact, we all felt smart and clever enough to learn to look the other way. The chicken plant was a funny story at first, a kind of insider’s joke you all think you know the punch line to. Hey, we wasted some money, but $2.2 million was a small amount in a war whose costs will someday be toted up in the trillions. Really, at the end of the day, what was the harm?

The harm was this: we wanted to leave Iraq (and Afghanistan) stable to advance American goals. We did so by spending our time and money on obviously pointless things, while most Iraqis lacked access to clean water, regular electricity, and medical or hospital care. Another State Department official in Iraq wrote in his weekly summary to me, “At our project ribbon-cuttings we are typically greeted now with a cursory ‘thank you,’ followed by a long list of crushing needs for essential services such as water and power.” How could we help stabilize Iraq when we acted like buffoons? As one Iraqi told me, “It is like I am standing naked in a room with a big hat on my head. Everyone comes in and helps put flowers and ribbons on my hat, but no one seems to notice that I am naked.”

By 2009, of course, it should all have been so obvious. We were no longer inside the neocon dream of unrivaled global superpowerdom, just mired in what happened to it. We were a chicken factory in the desert that no one wanted.

Time Travel to 2003

Anniversaries are times for reflection, in part because it’s often only with hindsight that we recognize the most significant moments in our lives. On the other hand, on anniversaries it’s often hard to remember what it was really like back when it all began. Amid the chaos of the Middle East today, it’s easy, for instance, to forget what things looked like as 2003 began. Afghanistan, it appeared, had been invaded and occupied quickly and cleanly, in a way the Soviets (the British, the ancient Greeks…) could never have dreamed of. Iran was frightened, seeing the mighty American military on its eastern border and soon to be on the western one as well, and was ready to deal. Syria was controlled by the stable thuggery of Bashar al-Assad and relations were so good that the U.S. was rendering terror suspects to his secret prisons for torture.

Most of the rest of the Middle East was tucked in for a long sleep with dictators reliable enough to maintain stability. Libya was an exception, though predictions were that before too long Muammar Qaddafi would make some sort of deal. (He did.) All that was needed was a quick slash into Iraq to establish a permanent American military presence in the heart of Mesopotamia. Our future garrisons there could obviously oversee things, providing the necessary muscle to swat down any future destabilizing elements. It all made so much sense to the neocon visionaries of the early Bush years. The only thing that Washington couldn’t imagine was this: that the primary destabilizing element would be us.

Indeed, its mighty plan was disintegrating even as it was being dreamed up. In their lust for everything on no terms but their own, the Bush team missed a diplomatic opportunity with Iran that might have rendered today’s saber rattling unnecessary, even as Afghanistan fell apart and Iraq imploded. As part of the breakdown, desperate men, blindsided by history, turned up the volume on desperate measures: torture, secret gulags, rendition, drone killings, extra-constitutional actions at home. The sleaziest of deals were cut to try to salvage something, including ignoring the A.Q. Khan network of Pakistani nuclear proliferation in return for a cheesy Condi Rice-Qaddafi photo-op rapprochement in Libya.

Inside Iraq, the forces of Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict had been unleashed by the U.S. invasion. That, in turn, was creating the conditions for a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran, similar to the growing proxy war between Israel and Iran inside Lebanon (where another destabilizing event, the U.S.-sanctioned Israeli invasion of 2006, followed in hand). None of this has ever ended. Today, in fact, that proxy war has simply found a fresh host, Syria, with multiple powers using “humanitarian aid” to push and shove their Sunni and Shia avatars around.

Staggering neocon expectations, Iran emerged from the U.S. decade in Iraq economically more powerful, with sanctions-busting trade between the two neighbors now valued at some $5 billion a year and still growing. In that decade, the U.S. also managed to remove one of Iran’s strategic counterbalances, Saddam Hussein, replacing him with a government run by Nouri al-Malaki, who had once found asylum in Tehran.

Meanwhile, Turkey is now engaged in an open war with the Kurds of northern Iraq. Turkey is, of course, part of NATO, so imagine the U.S. government sitting by silently while Germany bombed Poland. To complete the circle, Iraq’s prime minister recently warned that a victory for Syria's rebels will spark sectarian wars in his own country and will create a new haven for al-Qaeda which would further destabilize the region.

Meanwhile, militarily burnt out, economically reeling from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lacking any moral standing in the Middle East post-Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the U.S. sat on its hands as the regional spark that came to be called the Arab Spring flickered out, to be replaced by yet more destabilization across the region. And even that hasn’t stopped Washington from pursuing the latest version of the (now-nameless) global war on terror into ever-newer regions in need of destabilization.

Having noted the ease with which a numbed American public patriotically looked the other way while our wars followed their particular paths to hell, our leaders no longer blink at the thought of sending American drones and special operations forces ever farther afield, most notably ever deeper into Africa, creating from the ashes of Iraq a frontier version of the state of perpetual war George Orwell once imagined for his dystopian novel 1984. And don’t doubt for a second that there is a direct path from the invasion of 2003 and that chicken plant to the dangerous and chaotic place that today passes for our American world.

Happy Anniversary

On this 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, Iraq itself remains, by any measure, a dangerous and unstable place. Even the usually sunny Department of State advises American travelers to Iraq that U.S. citizens “remain at risk for kidnapping... [as] numerous insurgent groups, including Al Qaida, remain active...” and notes that “State Department guidance to U.S. businesses in Iraq advises the use of Protective Security Details.”

In the bigger picture, the world is also a far more dangerous place than it was in 2003. Indeed, for the State Department, which sent me to Iraq to witness the follies of empire, the world has become ever more daunting. In 2003, at that infamous “mission accomplished” moment, only Afghanistan was on the list of overseas embassies that were considered “extreme danger posts.” Soon enough, however, Iraq and Pakistan were added. Today, Yemen and Libya, once boring but secure outposts for State’s officials, now fall into the same category.

Other places once considered safe for diplomats and their families such as Syria and Mali have been evacuated and have no American diplomatic presence at all. Even sleepy Tunisia, once calm enough that the State Department had its Arabic language school there, is now on reduced staff with no diplomatic family members resident. Egypt teeters.

The Iranian leadership watched carefully as the American imperial version of Iraq collapsed, concluded that Washington was a paper tiger, backed away from initial offers to talk over contested issues, and instead (at least for a while) doubled-down on achieving nuclear breakout capacity, aided by the past work of that same A.Q. Khan network. North Korea, another A.Q. Khan beneficiary, followed the same pivot ever farther from Washington, while it became a genuine nuclear power. Its neighbor China pursued its own path of economic dominance, while helping to “pay” for the Iraq War by becoming the number-one holder of U.S. debt among foreign governments. It now owns more than 21% of the U.S. debt held overseas.

And don’t put away the joke book just yet. Subbing as apologist-in-chief for an absent George W. Bush and the top officials of his administration on this 10th anniversary, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently reminded us that there is more on the horizon. Conceding that he had “long since given up trying to persuade people Iraq was the right decision,” Blair added that new crises are looming. “You’ve got one in Syria right now, you’ve got one in Iran to come,” he said. “We are in the middle of this struggle, it is going to take a generation, it is going to be very arduous and difficult. But I think we are making a mistake, a profound error, if we think we can stay out of that struggle.”

Think of his comment as a warning. Having somehow turned much of Islam into a foe, Washington has essentially assured itself of never-ending crises that it stands no chance whatsoever of winning. In this sense, Iraq was not an aberration, but the historic zenith and nadir for a way of thinking that is only now slowing waning. For decades to come, the U.S. will have a big enough military to ensure that our decline is slow, bloody, ugly, and reluctant, if inevitable. One day, however, even the drones will have to land.

And so, happy 10th anniversary, Iraq War! A decade after the invasion, a chaotic and unstable Middle East is the unfinished legacy of our invasion. I guess the joke is on us after all, though no one is laughing.

 

 

Peter Van Buren, a retired 24-year veteran of the State Department, served in Iraq. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about Iraq, the Middle East, and U.S. diplomacy at his blog, We Meant Well. He is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. He is currently working on a new book, The People on the Bus: A Story of the 99%.

Copyright 2013 Peter Van Buren

The People Mourn in Venezuela

A Sea of Tears in Caracas

by TRNN

A Sea of Tears in Caracas In a raw emotional outpouring, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans walk along side the coffin of President Hugo Chavez

Oscar León is an experienced international press correspondent and documentary filmmaker based in Arizona. His work has reached continental TV broadcast in many occasions on Telesur, ECTV, Ecuavisa, Radio Canada, Canal Uno and even Fox Sports Latin America and El Garaje TV; he has been a TRNN correspondent since 2010. Oscar has reported from as many as 9 countries and more than 12 cities in US; his coverage includes TV reports, special reports and TV specials, not only covering social movements, politics and economics but environmental issues, culture and sports as well. This includes the series "Reportero del Sur", "Occupy USA - El Otoño Americano", "Habia una vez en Arizona", "Motor X" all TV mini series broadcasted to all Americas and "Once upon a time in Arizona" finalist in Radio Canada's "Migration" 2010 contest.

New Details for the Iraq War Crime

 A Low, Dishonest Decade: New Details for the Iraq War Crime Mosaic

by Chris Floyd - Empire Burlesque

The truth-telling of the imprisoned Bradley Manning continues to bear rich fruit, even as he faces a lifetime in prison for acting on principle to save innocent lives and prevent his country from staining itself further with war crimes. This week, the Guardian released a special investigation into the hideous regime of torture that the United States imposed and empowered during its years-long rape of Iraq.

The Guardian report draws on the trove of documents that Manning gave to Wikileaks (and the now diplomatically "sequestered" Julian Assange) to provide new details on the direct links of America's highest officials -- including the bipartisanly adored and now much mourned retired apparatchik David Petraeus -- to the torture of tens of thousands of Iraqis.

In many ways, of course, it's hardly a revelation that American forces were deeply involved in torture during the "extraordinary achievement" (B. Obama) in Iraq. Some cranks have been writing about it since the earliest days of the invasion -- as in this piece, from August 2003:

Here's a headline you don't see every day: "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals."

Perhaps that's not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime's new campaign to put Saddam's murderous security forces on America's payroll.

Yes, the sahibs in Bush's Iraqi Raj are now doling out American tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo – perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word, seems to be that these bloodstained "insiders" will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained "insiders" responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad – and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.

Naturally, the Iraqi people – even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potemkin "Governing Council" – aren't exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam's goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they're certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also re-opened Saddam's most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis – men, women and children as young as 11 – seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their "disappeared" loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: "No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave." Perhaps an Iraqi Akhmatova will do justice to these scenes one day.

There were many, many more where that came from, from many sources, as the mosaic of horror built up, fragment by fragment. Unfortunately, America's multifarious war crime in Iraq is news that stays news -- because awareness of the depth of evil we wrought there has scarcely penetrated the American public consciousness. And of course, the Wikileaks documents give more form and substance to the piecemeal parceling of earlier truth fragments.

The Guardian pieces focus on the long lineage of the American way of torture, as represented by the figure of James Steele, a Special Forces offer who made his bones in the torture racket during the murderous American-backed, American-trained, American-funded "counterinsurgency" campaigns in Latin America during the 1980s. Steele has a little pal back in those days by the name of Davy Petraeus; later, the two worked cheek-by-jowl in Iraq to foment a hell on earth of sectarian violence and state terror.

In June 2004 Petraeus arrived in Baghdad with the brief to train a new Iraqi police force with an emphasis on counterinsurgency. Steele and serving US colonel James Coffman introduced Petraeus to a small hardened group of police commandos, many of them among the toughest survivors of the old regime, including General Adnan Thabit …With Steele and Coffman as his point men, Petraeus began pouring money from a multi-million dollar fund into what would become the Special Police Commandos. According to the US Government Accounts Office, they received a share of an $8.2bn (£5.4bn) fund paid for by the US tax payer. The exact amount they received is classified. With Petraeus' almost unlimited access to money and weapons, and Steele's field expertise in counterinsurgency the stage was set for the commandos to emerge as a terrifying force.

One more element would complete the picture. The US had barred members of the violent Shia militias like the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army from joining the security forces, but by the summer of 2004 they had lifted the ban. Shia militia members from all over the country arrived in Baghdad "by the lorry-load" to join the new commandos. These men were eager to fight the Sunnis: many sought revenge for decades of Sunni-supported, brutal Saddam rule, and a chance to hit back at the violent insurgents and the indiscriminate terror of al-Qaida.

Petraeus and Steele would unleash this local force on the Sunni population as well as the insurgents and their supporters and anyone else who was unlucky enough to get in the way. It was classic counterinsurgency. It was also letting a lethal, sectarian genie out of the bottle. The consequences for Iraqi society would be catastrophic. At the height of the civil war two years later, 3,000 bodies a month were turning up on the streets of Iraq — many of them innocent civilians of sectarian war that ignited on both side.

Again, it's been known for years -- to anyone who wants to know -- that the vicious sectarian civil war in Iraq was deliberately seeded and pushed by the Pentagon brass and their White House bosses. [For an in-depth look, see Ulster on the Eurphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq.] As the Guardian investigation confirms, Petraeus was hip-deep in the process. The aim of this deeply evil program, one supposes, was to achieve the "creative destruction" so beloved of the neocon savants who provided the "intellectual" framework for the Hitlerian act of aggression. True to their Trotskyist roots, they longed for the cleansing fire of war and ruin to clear the ground for their fanatical, world-shaping dreams. (Unlike Trotsky, of course, they never led troops in the field or put their own lives on the line.) Or as that deep thinker Glenn Reynolds once put it, gleefully: "More rubble, less trouble."

What happened, of course, was the opposite: more rubble meant more trouble, and the shallow fools and blithering incompetents who comprise the American leadership class lost control of the situation. The carnage was so horrific that it threatened to damage the whole war-profiteering enterprise; why, there were even a few timorous calls among some quadrants of the elite suggesting that maybe it was time to begin thinking about considering the idea of mulling over at some unspecified point in the future the vague possibility of maybe thinking about considering the possibility of ending the war sometime, maybe, somewhere down the line. This tinkling trickle of potential opposition was quickly quelled, however, with the great googily-moogily "Surge": another invasion with thousands of American troops, more bribes for Sunni extremists, plus months of maniacal, American-backed "ethnic cleansing" to help Shiite collaborators eke out a victory in the civil war.

In one of the many blood-dark ironies of the war, Petraeus was put in charge of the murderous effort to stem the sectarian violence he had been fomenting at Washington's command. When the killing levels were no longer at historically unprecedented levels but were merely the worst anywhere in the world, the "surge" was proclaimed a great triumph, and Petraeus was the bipartisan hero of the hour.

(Speaking of bipartisan, let us not forget the Bush Regime bloodbath in Iraq was preceded by the murder of upwards of a million innocent Iraqis -- including an officially admitted total of 500,000 children -- in the ruthless sanction regime imposed by the good ole Big Dawg himself back in the 90s.)

But while he was showering in accolades on Capitol Hill, this is what the system installed by Petraeus and Steele and their Washington masters was doing back in Iraq:

The commandos set up a network of secret detention centres where insurgents could be brought and information extracted from them. The commandos used the most brutal methods to make detainees talk. There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman took part in these torture sessions, but General Muntadher al Samari, a former general in the Iraqi army, who worked after the invasion with the US to rebuild the police force claims that they knew exactly what was going on and were even supplying the commandos with lists of people they wanted brought in. He says he tried to stop the torture on several occasions, but failed and fled the country.

"We were having lunch. Col Steele, Col Coffman, and the door opened and Captain Jabr was there torturing a prisoner. He [the victim] was hanging upside down and Steele got up and just closed the door, he didn't say anything – it was just normal for him."

He says there were 13 to 14 secret prisons in Baghdad under the control of the Interior Ministry and used by the Special Police Commandos. He alleges that Steele and Coffman had access to all these prisons and that he visited one in Baghdad with both men. "They were secret, never declared. But the American top brass and the Iraqi leadership knew all about these prisons. The things that went on there: drilling, murder, torture. The ugliest sort of torture I've ever seen."

According to one soldier with the 69th Armoured Regiment who was deployed in Samarra in 2005 but who doesn't want to be identified: "It was like the Nazis … like the Gestapo basically. They [the commandos] would essentially torture anybody that they had good reason to suspect, knew something, or was part of the insurgency … or supporting it, and people knew about that."

... Neil Smith, a 20-year-old medic who was based in Samarra, remembers what low ranking US soldiers in the canteen said. "What was pretty widely known in our battalion, definitely in our platoon, was that they were pretty violent with their interrogations. That they would beat people, shock them with electrical shock, stab them, I don't know what else ... it sounds like pretty awful things. If you sent a guy there he was going to get tortured and perhaps raped or whatever, humiliated and brutalised by the special commandos in order for them to get whatever information they wanted."

He now lives in Detroit and is a born-again Christian. He spoke to the Guardian because he said he now considered it his religious duty to speak out about what he saw. "I don't think folks back home in America had any idea what American soldiers were involved in over there, the torture and all kinds of stuff."

Through Facebook, Twitter and social media the Guardian managed to make contact with three soldiers who confirmed they were handing over detainees to be tortured by the special commandos, but none except Smith were prepared to go on camera.

"If somebody gets arrested and we hand them over to MoI they're going to get their balls hooked, electrocuted or they're going to get beaten or raped up the ass with a coke bottle or something like that," one said. He left the army in September 2006. Now 28, he works with refugees from the Arab world in Detroit teaching recent arrivals, including Iraqis, English.

"I suppose it is my way of saying sorry," he said.

But as we have seen in all the recent media hoopla around the 10th anniversary of the invasion, none of criminals in charge of the war crime, or the savants who promoted it, or the media sycophants who "stovepiped" the lies of the warmongers to the public, or any member of the political-media elite who by direct or collateral hand were complicit in this war crime have ever apologized for what they have done -- much less been made to suffer the slightest discomfort or inconvenience for it.

As for Steele himself, he left Iraq after helping set up the torture apparatus and went into -- what else? -- the oil business.

How the Money is Spread Around Here

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Ignoring a Genocide: Allowing the Rohingya People Die

Ignoring Genocide: Rohingya People Deserve to Live

by Ramzy Baroud - PalestineChronicle.com

One fails to understand the unperturbed attitude with which regional and international leaders and organizations are treating the unrelenting onslaught against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, formally known as Burma. Numbers speak of atrocities where every violent act is prelude to greater violence and ethnic cleansing. Yet, western governments’ normalization with the Myanmar regime continues unabated, regional leaders are as gutless as ever and even human rights organizations seem compelled by habitual urges to issue statements lacking meaningful, decisive and coordinated calls for action.

Meanwhile the ‘boat people’ remain on their own. On February 26, fishermen discovered a rickety wooden boat floating randomly at sea, nearly 25 kilometers (16 miles) off the coast of Indonesia’s northern province of Aceh. The Associated Press and other media reported there were 121 people on board including children who were extremely weak, dehydrated and nearly starved. They were Rohingya refugees who preferred to take their chances at sea rather than stay in Myanmar. To understand the decision of a parent to risk his child’s life in a tumultuous sea would require understanding the greater risks awaiting them at home.

Reporting for Voice of America from Jakarta, Kate Lamb cited a moderate estimate of the outcome of communal violence in the Arakan state, which left hundreds of Rohingya Muslims dead, thousands of homes burnt and nearly 115,000 displaced. The number is likely to be higher at all fronts. Many fleeing Rohingya perished at sea or disappeared to never be seen again. Harrowing stories are told and reported of families separating and boats sunk. There are documented events in which various regional navies and border police sent back refugees after they successfully braved the deadly journey to other countries - Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh and elsewhere. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) reported that nearly 13,000 Rohingya refugees attempted to leave Myanmar on smugglers’ boats in the Bay of Bengal in 2012. At least five hundred drowned.

But who are the Rohingya people?

Myanmar officials and media wish to simply see the Rohingyas as ‘illegal Bengali immigrants’, a credulous reading of history at best. The intentions of this inaccurate classification, however, are truly sinister for it is meant to provide a legal clearance to forcefully deport the Rohingya population. Myanmar President Then Sein had in fact made an ‘offer’ to the UN last year that he was willing to send the Rohingya people “to any other country willing to accept them.” The UN declined.

Rohingya Muslims, however, are native to the state of “Rohang”, officially known as Rakhine or Arakan. If one is to seek historical accuracy, not only are the Rohingya people native to Myanmar, it was in fact Burma that occupied Rakhine in the 1700’s. Over the years, especially in the first half of the 20th century, the original inhabitants of Arakan were joined by cheap or forced labor from Bengal and India, who permanently settled there. For decades, tension brewed between Buddhists and Muslims in the region. Naturally, a majority backed by a military junta is likely to prevail over a minority without any serious regional or international backers. Without much balance of power to be mentioned, the Rohingya population of Arakan, estimated at nearly 800,000, subsisted between the nightmare of having no legal status (as they are still denied citizenship), little or no rights and the occasional ethnic purges carried out by their Buddhist neighbors with the support of their government, army and police. The worst of such violence in recent years took place between June and October of last year. Buddhists also paid a heavy price for the clashes, but the stateless Rohingyas, being isolated and defenseless, were the ones to carry the heaviest death toll and destruction.

And just when ‘calm’ is reported – as in returning to the status quo of utter discrimination and political alienation of the Rohingyas – violence erupts once more, and every time the diameters of the conflict grow bigger. In late February, an angry Buddhist mob attacked non-Rohingya Muslim schools, shops and homes in the capital Rangoon, regional and international media reported. The cause of the violence was a rumor that the Muslim community is planning to build a mosque.

What is taking place in Arakan is most dangerous, not only because of the magnitude of the atrocities and the perpetual suffering of the Rohingya people, which are often described as the world’s most persecuted people. Other layers of danger also exist that threatens to widen the parameters of the conflict throughout the Southeast Asia region, bringing instability to already unstable border areas, and, of course, as was the case recently, take the conflict from an ethnic one to a purely religious one. In a region of a unique mix of ethnicities and religions, the plight of the Rohingyas could become the trigger that would set already fractious parts of the region ablaze.

Although the plight of the Rohingya people have in recent months crossed the line from the terrible, but hidden tragedy into a recurring media topic, it is still facing many hurdles that must be overcome in order for some action to be taken. While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been making major economic leaps forward, it remains politically ineffective, with little interest in issues pertaining to human rights. Under the guise of its commitment to ‘non-interference’ and disproportionate attention to the festering territorial disputes in the South China Sea, ASEAN seems unaware that the Rohingya people even exist. Worst, ASEAN leaders were reportedly in agreement that Myanmar should chair their 2014 summit, as a reward for superficial reforms undertaken by Rangoon to ease its political isolation and open up its market beyond China and few other countries.

Meanwhile, western countries, led by the United States are clamoring to divide the large Myanmar economic cake amongst themselves, and are saying next to nothing about the current human rights records of Rangoon. The minor democratic reforms in Myanmar seem, after all, a pretext to allow the country back to western arms. And the race to Rangoon has indeed begun, unhindered by the continued persecution of the Rohingya people. On February 26, Myanmar's President Sein met in Oslo with Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in a ‘landmark’ visit. They spoke economy, of course, for Myanmar has plenty to offer. And regarding the conflict in Arakan, Jens Stoltenberg unambiguously declared it to be an internal Burmese affair, reducing it to most belittling statements. In regards to ‘disagreements’ over citizenship, he said, “we have encouraged dialogue, but we will not demand that Burma’s government give citizenship to the Rohingyas.” Moreover, to reward Sein for his supposedly bold democratic reforms, Norway took the lead by waving off nearly have of its debt and other countries followed suit, including Japan which dropped $3 billion last year.

While one is used to official hypocrisy, whether by ASEAN or western governments, many are still scratching their heads over the unforgivable silence of democracy advocate and Noble Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. Luckily, others are speaking out. Bangladesh's Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, along with former Timor-Leste president Ramos-Horta had both recently spoke with decisive terms in support of the persecuted Rohingya people.

“The minority Muslim Rohingya continue to suffer unspeakable persecution, with more than 1,000 killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes just in recent months, apparently with the complicity and protection of security forces,” the Nobel laureates wrote in the Huffington Post on February 20. They criticized the prejudicial Citizenship Law of 1982 and called for granting the Rohingya people full citizenship.

The perpetual suffering of the Rohingya people must end. They are deserving of rights and dignity. They are weary of crossing unforgiving seas and walking harsh terrains seeking mere survival. More voices must join those who are speaking out in support of their rights. ASEAN must break away from its silence and tediously guarded policies and western countries must be confronted by their own civil societies: no normalization with Rangoon when innocent men, women and children are being burned alive in their own homes. This injustice needs to be known to the world and serious, organized and determined efforts must follow to bring the persecution of the Rohingya people to an end.

 

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

Grinding Howe Sound Down

Under the Radar; Howe Sound Gravel Mine an Environmental Catastrophe

by Rafe Mair - The Canadian.org

There is a new axiom in BC, evidently, which says, ‘You can’t be against EVERYTHING."

Unhappily, this had led the NDP and Energy critic John Horgan to support Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants in northwest BC for export. This is turning out to be an unmitigated disaster and my prediction is that there will be no LNG plants in BC thus no market.

But this new axiom, so critical to those who would take away our heritage, is also permitting a gravel pit to be developed in Howe Sound at McNab Creek. This is not for want of private opposition – it is alive and very well indeed. What it’s lacking is public awareness.

Howe Sound is a world-class area. It’s taken a hell of a beating since my Dad, Mom and I fished it back when if you didn’t get a fish you must have forgotten to put a hook on your line. Eagles have returned to how they were in the days when I was a boy and so have porpoises. Whales are being sighted again. Salmon runs, except the ones dependent on the Ashlu, which has been ruined by a private power company, are returning. Howe Sound is for boaters, canoeists, and a paradise for kayaks, as it may well become again for fishermen.

This hasn’t all happened by accident. There are a number of organizations and individuals who have put their hearts and sweat into making these good things happen.

Now in the midst of this recovering of our heritage, a company called Burnco wants to build a 77-hectare gravel pit, running day and night, all year. In doing this they will excavate the entire estuary from one side of the valley to the other, thus eliminating one of only three estuaries in Howe Sound.

This horrid enterprise will change the movement of water through the valley thus threatening the entire estuary and the ecology it sustains. There are 21 species at risk, including Roosevelt Elk, introduced there in 2010 by the BC Ministry of Environment (one of my old stamping grounds) as well as our usual coastal wildlife.

There are other serious problems – like a gravel pit being worked 24/7/365, bringing noise and light pollution in a big way.

Here is the bad news – the really bad news. The project has already got approval in principle and is moving towards environmental hearings. This is the beloved “process” of the MP for the area, John Weston. He has never seen government-style “process” at work. I have and at the risk of repeating myself I’d rather have a root canal without anesthetic than go to another of those democratic disgraces.

When you go to such a meeting to protest the project, period, you are ruled out of order. You’re only there, you see, to help frame the environmental principles to be imposed. The unstated reality, none the less a fact for not being stated, is that this is a done deal.

Even the environmental review is cold comfort, for whatever constraints are put in place, the company will ignore them. You don’t have to go far to see what I mean – wander up to the Independent Power Project (IPP) on the Ashlu River. Though they crossed their heart and hoped to die that they would live up to their commitment they haven’t. The environmental destruction they have inflicted has been enormous.
Just 16 private power projects in this region - a quarter of the total in operation in BC - generated a staggering 749 environmental violations in a one year period, according to recent documents pried loose by freedom of information request. These companies faced virtually no consequences for their actions.

It’s a bit long but worth reading is what Gwen Barlee of the Wilderness Committee wrote on the subject:

Last year (2011) I received a tip that there were serious problems with the Ashlu private power project. The person who called me said: ‘they are killing the river.’

We had been hearing rumours that private power projects have significant problems with fish kills, so when I got that phone call I immediately submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to confirm what was happening.

FOIs are a tool used by civil society groups like the Wilderness Committee, reporters and private citizens to gain access to government documents that might not otherwise see the light of day. They can be an important part of keeping government open and transparent...

...After waiting for more than eight months for our FOI to arrive, we received more than 3000 pages of government documents about environmental problems at the Ashlu project. Those documents showed that there where repeated problems with fish being stranded on gravel bars resulting in fish kills and that efforts to get the owners of the project, Innergex Renewable Energy Inc, to address these issues were “not satisfactory.”

In those documents staff from the provincial Ministry of the Environment and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) where quoted as saying things like “FYI: lotsa dead fish from yesterday’s Ashlu episode . . . will be interesting to see DFO’s response” and “I agree, their requirement is to keep the fish ladder functional, and this is the key time of year regardless of whether they think they are ‘losing too much water’ to keep it operational.”...

...One of the most concerning revelations of these investigations is an industry practice known as ramping, which increases and decreases flow levels downstream of the power project. Ramping down the river flow has the potential to strand and kill fish and can also result in egg dewatering and cause spawning interference.

The private power industry has often claimed that their projects would not be built in fish habitat but we have seen that in far too many cases that is not the case. According to … Watershed Watch, 72% of river diversion projects are located in known or suspected fish habitat. Private power proponents have told us that their projects would not impact fish but now we are seeing serious problems in regards to fish stranding, kills and habitat damage.

Let’s put it plainly – once you get to the environmental assessment stage, it’s all easy as pie to agree to anything and know that no government inspectors will trouble you - and even if they do, there will be no charges laid.

All is not lost.

First Nations have a special connection to this area and will no doubt fight the project.

Secondly, if the people make enough fuss, the project can be stopped, as the Glacier-Howser private river power project was stopped by irate citizens. There’s a story there to end on.

The company, which gets the right to put on the meeting, doesn’t like too many tiresome citizens around, so instead of holding this hearing in Nelson, the population centre, they hold it in Kaslo, with but 1,000 people.

Over 1,100 people showed up! And the project was effectively stopped because the company couldn’t or wouldn't put in proper safeguards for the Bull Trout population.

The motto is, as the great Scottish Bard, Sir Harry Lauder put it, “Keep right on ‘til the end of the road.”

Or as I put it after the Alcan victory in 1993, you never know you’ve won until you’ve won.


Rafe Mair was a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. Since 1981 he has been a radio talk show host, and is recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists.

Killing Hopes of Peace in Bethlehem One Olive Tree at a Time

Settlers Cut 60 Olive Trees Near Bethlehem

by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC and Agencies

The Palestine News Network (PNN) has reported that a number of extremist Israeli settlers cut, on Tuesday morning, nearly 60 Palestinian olive trees that belong to a resident of Nahhalin town, in the Bethlehem District.

Owner of orchard, Taha Fannoun, told PNN that settlers of the nearby Beit Ayin illegal settlement carried out the attack.

Fannoun added that he filed a complaint to the Israeli Police, and said that this attack is not an isolated incident as the settlers are responsible for dozens of attacks against Palestinian lands and residents in the area.

In related news, Palestinian medical sources reported on Monday evening that a Palestinian youth from Doha town, west of Bethlehem, was injured after being attacked and beaten by Israeli soldiers.

The youth, Malek Abdul-Aziz Adawi, 17, suffered moderate injuries and was moved to the Beit Jalal governmental hospital.

Venezuela's Social Work Left Undone

Venezuela's Real Division Over Who Benefits from Oil Wealth 

by Alex Main - TRNN

American "Mainstream" media accuses Chavez of leaving Venezuela "divided and polarized", but Venezuela is not divided over Chavez's personality, it's whether oil wealth will go to the people or the elite.

In his work at CEPR, Alexander Main focuses on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean and regularly engages with U.S. policy makers and civil society groups to inform the public debate. He is frequently interviewed by media in the U.S. and Latin American and his analyses on U.S. policy in the Americas have been published in a variety of domestic and international media outlets including Foreign Policy, NACLA and the Monde diplomatique. Prior to CEPR, Alexander spent more than six years in Latin America working as an international relations analyst. He has a degree in history and political science from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France.

The Coup Chavez Denied

The Assassination of Hugo Chavez

by Greg Palast

Fracking: A Stain that Can't Be Washed Away

You Can’t Wash Away Fracking’s Effects

by WALTER BRASCH

José Lara just wanted a job. A company working in the natural gas fields needed a man to power wash wastewater tanks. Clean off the debris. Make them shining again. And so José Lara became a power washer for the Rain for Rent Co.

“The chemicals, the smell was so bad. Once I got out, I couldn’t stop throwing up. I couldn’t even talk,” Lara said in his deposition, translated from Spanish.

The company that had hired him didn’t provide him a respirator or protective clothing. That’s not unusual in the natural gas fields. José Lara did his job until he no longer could work. At the age of 42, he died from pancreatic and liver cancer.

Accidents, injuries, and health problems are not all that unusual in the booming natural gas industry that uses horizontal hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, to invade the earth in order to extract methane gas.

Of the 750 chemicals that can be used in the fracking process, more than 650 of them are toxic or carcinogens, according to a report filed with the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2011. Several public health studies reveal that homeowners living near fracked wells show higher levels of acute illnesses than homeowners living outside the “Sacrifice Zone,” as the energy industry calls it.

In addition to toxic chemicals and high volumes of water, the energy industry uses silica sand in the mixture it sends at high pressure deep into the earth to destroy the layers of rock. The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) issued a Hazard Alert about the effects of crystalline silica. According to NIOSH there are seven primary sources of exposure during the fracking process, all of which could contribute to workers getting silicosis, the result of silica entering lung tissue and causing inflammation and scarring. Excessive silica can also lead to kidney and autoimmune diseases, lung cancer, tuberculosis, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

In the Alert, NIOSH pointed out that its studies revealed about 79 percent of all samples it took in five states exceeded acceptable health levels, with 31 percent of all samples exceeding acceptable health levels by 10 times. However, the Hazard Alert is only advisory; it carries no legal or regulatory authority.

In addition to the normal diesel emissions of trucks and trains, there are numerous incidents of leaks, some of several thousand gallons, much of which spills onto roadways and into creeks, from highway accidents of tractor-trailer trucks carrying wastewater and other chemicals.

The process of fracking requires constant truck travel to and from the wells, as many as 200 trips per day per well. Each day, interstate carriers transport about five million gallons of hazardous materials. Not included among the daily 800,000 shipments are the shipments by intrastate carriers, which don’t have to report their cargo deliveries to the Department of Transportation. “Millions of gallons of wastewater produced a day, buzzing down the road, and still nobody’s really keeping track,” Myron Arnowitt, the Pennsylvania state director for Clean Water Action, told AlterNet.

Drivers routinely work long weeks, have little time for rest, and hope they’ll make enough to get that house they want for their families.

But fatigue causes accidents. And contrary to industry claims, workers don’t always wear protective gear when around toxic chemicals they put into the earth, and the toxic chemicals they extract from the earth. Or the toxic chemicals they drive on public roads.

In the Great Recession, people become desperate for any kind of job. And the natural gas industry has responded with high-paying jobs. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is ecstatic that a side benefit of destroying the environment and public health is an improvement in the economy and more jobs—even if most of the workers in Pennsylvania now sport license plates from Texas and Oklahoma.

The drivers, and most of the industry, are non-union or are hired as independent contractors with no benefits. The billion dollar corporations like it that way. It means there are no worker safety committees. No workplace regulations monitored by the workers. And if a worker complains about a safety or health violation, there’s no grievance procedure. Hire them fast. Fire them faster.

No matter how much propaganda the industry spills out about its safety record and how it cares about its workers, the reality is that working for a company that fracks the earth is about as risky as it gets for worker health and safety.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued Rain for Rent nine violations for exposing José Lara to hydrogen sulfide and not adequately protecting him from the effects of the cyanide-like gas.

It no longer matters to José Lara.

The effects from fracking should matter to every everyone else.



[Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist and professor emeritus of mass communications. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an in-depth analysis of the effects of fracking upon public health, the environment, worker safety, and agriculture. Dr. Brasch also investigates the history of energy policies in the U.S. and the relationships between the energy companies and politicians at local, state, and federal levels. The book is available at amazon.com, www.greeleyandstone.com, or local bookstores.]


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D.
Latest Book: Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution
(www.greeleyandstone.com)
www.walterbrasch.com
www.walterbrasch.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/walterbrasch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6cC4zHnFAY

Illegal Neck Snare Wolf Management in BC

BC's Torturous Wolf Management

by Chris Genovali - Raincoast Conservation Foundation

Although an increasing number of British Columbians are learning about the provincial government's unscientific and unethical wolf cull, most are likely unaware their tax dollars are supporting not only the killing but also the sanctioned torturing of these animals. To compound matters, the government's persecution and inhumane treatment of wolves is ostensibly being carried out to "protect" privately owned cattle grazing on provincial Crown land.

Brad Hill, a wildlife photographer and biologist from the Columbia Valley, discovered that the province has been placing wolf neck snares on Crown land near his home. Hill located 18 snares near a bait pile of road-killed elk and mule deer, designed to draw wolves into the area.

Snares are the most inhumane, legally allowed traps in use. The U.S. National Humane Education Society describes snares as primitive and brutal. Snares can catch animals by the neck, midsection, or a limb. As the animal struggles to become free, the wire grows tighter around the animal's body. This can result in broken legs, crushed organs, and suffocation. Animals caught in these traps die slow, painful deaths.

Moreover, the use of neck snares to kill wolves is another violation by Canada of an international treaty -- in this case "The Agreement of International Humane Trapping Standards," which came into force on June 1, 1999. Canada is a signatory to the agreement.



Hill has also learned that the neck snares targeting wolves were placed by provincial conservation officers at the behest of a privately held ranching operation that runs cattle on this particular Crown land. The justification for the snaring is highly dubious with evidence of wolf predation being highly questionable at best.

The threat of wolves to livestock is routinely exaggerated by ranching and trophy hunting interests, despite evidence to the contrary. To put it in perspective, approximately 200,000 head of cattle are run on Crown land in B.C.; government records confirm that over the last 12 months 162 depredations can be attributed to all predators, including but not limited to wolves.

"Even if these snares successfully targeted the suspected wolves, the result is morally repugnant and ecologically illogical. But it could easily end up being much worse than that -- I've recently seen coyote and cougar tracks in the area, and the snares don't care what animal they strangle to death," says Hill, who is running an online anti-snaring petition which has garnered over 2,300 signatures.

There is no reliable way to ensure the targeted species is the only one trapped as neck snares and other lethal traps kill indiscriminately. A recent article in the Wildlife News revealed "for the last two years, since wolves in the Northern Rockies were delisted (in the U.S.), wolf trappers in Idaho have killed approximately 177 wolves (via snaring and other trapping methods). However, during just the 2011/2012 trapping season these trappers have captured approximately 246 non-target animals."

In a seminal paper published in the journal Animal Welfare, Raincoast Conservation Foundation large carnivore scientists Drs. Paul Paquet and Chris Darimont wrote that "In most parts of North America where wolves persist, human disturbance has already, or is now, displacing wolves from favourable habitat. Additional disturbances, additive to current background disruption, may surpass the level of habituation or innate behavioural plasticity that allows wolves to cope with human encroachment."

The direct killing of wolves, whether by snaring, trapping or trophy hunting is a harsh addition to the numerous and significant challenges Canis lupus already faces in a human-dominated landscape.

"The province's primary conservation philosophy regards wolves as a dispensable 'resource' or as 'problem animals', which should be exploited and killed with little regard for the pain and suffering they might endure. Rather than being dedicated to the promotion of a responsible wildlife ethic and contemporary principles of wildlife conservation, government agencies are the primary enablers in the legalized destruction of wolves," states Paquet, in response to the latest wolf snare revelations.

Wolves are clearly under siege in B.C., largely because of a seat-of-the-pants management approach in which political science trumps biological science. According to the B.C. government, approximately 1,200 wolves were killed deliberately in 2010 by hunters and trappers for sport, trophy or profit. This staggering death toll is recklessly taken from an unknown population of wolves, but is allowed to occur in order to mollify special interests, including ranchers and trophy hunters. The emerging snare controversy in the Columbia Valley is a preview of things to come if the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources' "Draft Management Plan For The Grey Wolf In British Columbia" is actually put into practice.

A few days ago Hill was informed by his MLA's constituent office that the snares on Crown land near his home have been removed. He's just posted an eloquent account at the Nature Photographer's Network website about his neck snare discovery and his efforts to stop the killing. Here is an excerpt of his reaction to the news that these inhumane devices are, at least temporarily, inactivated:

"That felt good. But not nearly as good as when I traveled to the snare site the next morning to confirm the removal of the snares and found the area absolutely littered in wolf tracks -- and, most critically, found the snares gone. I felt the best when I looked up on the hillside above the snares and saw five wolves emerge from the forest, stop and lock their eyes on me for about a few seconds, and then turn and disappear into the woods.

It's a small victory. We made the government blink. They noticed, and they tried to defuse the situation. In all likelihood we saved between one and five wolves, at least for awhile.

We haven't done anything yet to stop the future use of killing neck snares in BC, or to make the powers-that-be reconsider their strategy for managing wolves and other apex carnivores in BC. The big fight -- the one where we convince the government to discard historical bias and actually look at the science -- is still to come."

Memo to the BBC: "Just Reporting Ain't Rocket Science"

BC Newsnight, Iraq And The Export Of Democracy

by David Cromwell - Media Lens

It is a prerequisite for corporate journalists that they respect the ideological conventions of their paymasters and of state power – a vital source of 'news' and 'informed' comment, after all. At the same time, the corporate journalist likes to project a self-serving image as a valiant investigator, a champion of democracy, and a facilitator of fair and balanced debate. All too often, of course, the public can see through the charade.

Huw Edwards, the BBC newsreader, once related an anecdote about being accosted on a train by an 'enraged' man:

'Shortly after my return from Lashkar Gah [a city in southern Afghanistan and the capital of Helmand Province] in 2008, I was confronted by a man on a train heading for London. In a blistering conversation that lasted no more than five minutes, he raised fundamental concerns about the BBC's coverage of Afghanistan. They were all linked in some way to the nature of the British media's relationship with the armed forces.

'He had been enraged by our "twisted" reporting, our status as "prisoners" of the forces during our stay in Helmand, and our seemingly wilful refusal to report "the truth". Ah, yes. The truth.' (Richard Lance Keeble and John Mair, editors, Afghanistan, War and the Media: Deadlines and Frontlines, Arima Publishing, Bury St Edmunds, 2010, p. ix)

The BBC man's airily dismissive response – 'Ah yes. The truth' – may play well on the page, in black and white. But he doesn't tell the reader what he actually said to the challenger in the train, and how their exchange ended. After all, that would involve Edwards revealing his opinion, which BBC journalists are ostensibly not allowed to do!

Instead, he sighs philosophically and tells his readers that 'the truth' is the journalist's 'most elusive aspiration', adding:

'In war reporting, that elusiveness is taken to even more daunting levels.'

Huw Edwards makes accurate reporting sound like some abstruse problem in quantum gravity, something 'elusive' that will perhaps forever be out of reach. But his fellow train passenger was surely right. There are 'fundamental concerns about the BBC's coverage of Afghanistan' - and Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Iran, Syria, poverty, global capitalism, impending climate chaos, and on and on. But Edwards – someone entrusted with reading the News at Ten and commenting on royal pageants, no less - is part of the exclusive inner BBC News circle characterised by institutional groupthink that permits no fundamental concerns about the broadcaster's role.

As sociologist Stuart Hall correctly observes:

'The media define for the majority of the population what significant events are taking place, but, also, they offer powerful interpretations of how to understand these events.'

And in any 'responsible' discussion of events and issues, the boundaries are set within manageable limits that preclude serious challenges to the establishment. As a prime example, historian Mark Curtis cites the BBC programme Question Time - chaired by David Dimbleby, another senior corporation man (and former Bullingdon Club member) entrusted with live commentary of state events - as 'a microcosm of how the media works':

'rarely are critical voices invited. If they are, it is so rare that their views can end up sounding ridiculous in comparison with the "normal" and "balanced" views of the other panellists. It is acceptable for Question Time panellists to criticise each other from within the elite consensus but not for anyone to criticise all of them from outside that consensus.' (Web of Deceit, Vintage, 2003, p. 378)

Curtis continues:

'The evidence is overwhelming that BBC and commercial television news report on Britain's foreign policy in ways that resemble straightforward state propaganda organs. Although by no means directed by the state, their output might as well be; it is not even subtle. BBC, ITV and Channel 5 news simply report nothing seriously critical on British foreign policy; the exception is the odd report on Channel 4 news. Television news – the source of most people's information – provides the most extreme media distortion ... playing an even greater ideological function than the press.' (Ibid., p. 379)

Crafty Propaganda

This ideological function was clear in the BBC Newsnight 'special' edition on February 26, 2013, titled 'Iraq: 10 Years On'. One of the guests on the platform in front of an invited audience was the grandly titled 'World Affairs Editor', John Simpson. The veteran journalist has an air of avuncular gravitas, like a political-reporting version of David Attenborough, which helps to promote the notion of BBC News as authoritative and insightful. But look at his words in the cold light of common sense, stripped of the ponderous tone and stolid presentation, and they actually contain little of substance, far less anything that seriously challenges power (as we have documented before: see here and here). Indeed, sometimes those words are simply deceptive. For example, at one point in his Newsnight contribution Simpson really did say:

'It came as a genuine shock to Blair and Bush to find that Saddam had craftily got rid of his weapons beforehand.'

What secret psychic powers could Simpson possibly possess to detect 'genuine shock' inside the brains of Blair and Bush? Rather than Saddam 'craftily' getting rid of his weapons, why didn't Simpson report, as he should have done 10 years ago, that Iraq had been effectively disarmed of its WMD?

The BBC website itself still has a transcript of an interview with Saddam Hussein, conducted by Tony Benn in February 2003, in which Saddam says: 'Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever.' Indeed, the Iraqi weapons chief General Hussein Kamal, who defected from the regime in 1995, told the CIA, British intelligence and UN inspectors that Iraq had got rid of its WMD following the 1990-91 Gulf War:

'All weapons-- biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed.'

This was revealed in an issue of Newsweek magazine published in February 2003, before the invasion of Iraq. But it was to no avail in halting the predetermined course for war set by Bush, with Blair a willing accomplice. Indeed, the US media watchdog, FAIR, reported that 'no major U.S. newspapers or national television news shows' touched the story; it was ignored. Craftily, or otherwise, the BBC's John Simpson did not mention any of this on Newsnight.

Later, Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark addressed Hans Blix via video link:

'You were the senior weapons inspector. You were tasked with looking for and finding WMD. We're in a position now where Iran may well be on its way to having WMD.'

This was outrageous bias by a high-profile, 'impartial' BBC journalist. It was positively Kafkaesque for a senior BBC journalist, in discussing the propaganda-led catastrophe of Iraq, to repeat the same invented WMD scare story in relation to Iran, apparently with complete unawareness!

There is no solid evidence at all, only supposition and fear-mongering by powerful Western countries and Israel, that Iran is developing WMD (see The Iran 'Threat' in a Kafkaesque World by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson). But the bias was persistent in Kirsty Wark's approach throughout Newsnight as BBC 'moderator'. In her interview with former prime minister Tony Blair, Wark even asked:

'But isn't terrible in a way that in this country now we cannot go to war on the basis of intelligence again, can we?'

Wark's ignorance of the realpolitik of the motivation for war is unforgiveable and all but inexplicable.The Iraq war was certainly not waged 'on the basis of intelligence'. Instead, as the infamous Downing Street memos revealed, 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy'. And the policy was to launch a war of aggression against Iraq.

Indeed, Washington and London conspired to lure Saddam into supposedly obstructing the UN, thus providing an insidious pretext for war. As we noted in 2005, the 'real news in the Downing Street memos' was spelled out by reporter Michael Smith in the Los Angeles Times:

'Although Blair and Bush still insist the decision to go to the UN was about averting war, one memo states that it was, in fact, about "wrong-footing" Hussein into giving them a legal justification for war.

'British officials hoped the ultimatum could be framed in words that would be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright. But they were far from certain this would work, so there was also a Plan B... Put simply, US aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.'

Smith's insightful conclusion was that the 'way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war was old news.' Instead:

'The real news is the shady April 2002 deal [when Blair visited Bush in Crawford, Texas] to go to war, the cynical use of the UN to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress.'

Alan Greenspan, the long-serving chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, famously wrote:

'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.' (The Age of Turbulence, Penguin, New York, 2007, p. 463)

And Michael Klare, a professor of peace and world security studies and author of Resource Wars, observed that:

'Controlling Iraq is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel. Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China. It's having our hand on the spigot.'

Exporting Democracy Down The Barrel Of A Gun

But such realism is not ideologically acceptable, perhaps not even thinkable, to anyone with aspirations to be a safe pair of BBC hands; and it is seemingly not permitted to intrude into any prepared BBC script.

The author and political analyst Nafeez Ahmed was present at the recording of the Newsnight special and he was given a few seconds to speak from the audience. The very same day that the Newsnight special was broadcast, he published a piece that exposed and demolished the principal 'seven myths' underpinning the BBC's limiting and distorted framing of debate. These included the mendacious claim that decision-making in Washington and London had been skewed by 'wrong intelligence', and that the Blair government's decision to go to war was based on legitimate parliamentary process. In short, says Ahmed:

'Newsnight ignored the now well-documented fact that the war was conceived for a set of narrow strategic goals which did not genuinely have the interests of the Iraqi people at heart.... Despite the facts being widely and easily available in the public record, Newsnight's programme on the 10 year anniversary of the war obfuscated them to such an extent that the real, serious questions were largely overlooked.'

If one single, loaded question epitomised the BBC's service to state propaganda, it was when Kirsty Wark asked her colleague, BBC Newsnight diplomatic and defence editor Mark Urban:

'Do you think the idea of exporting democracy at the end of a barrel of a gun has gone?'

Media Lens reader Tony Shenton challenged Kirsty Wark on email (February 26, 2013):

'You clearly believe that Britain invades other countries to export democracy and freedom. Thus, please can you explain why Blair and Cameron et al continue to be friends with brutal dictators such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain etc?

'Isn't Noam Chomsky correct when he says Britain and the US will support the most brutal regimes as long [as] they remain subservient to Western elites?'

Wark responded (February 27, 2013):

'Thank you for your email. You are entitled to your opinion, but I don't know how you can presume to know what I think, I was simply framing a question.'

Shenton replied (February 28, 2013):

'As you know, how you frame a debate reveals a lot about your ideological beliefs.'

Wark's ideologically-loaded question about the West 'exporting democracy' recalls a bizarre email once sent to Media Lens by Helen Boaden, then BBC News director. She had attached six pages of quotes from Bush and Blair supposedly proving their benign intentions behind invading Iraq!

The Function Of BBC News? Preserving The Balance Of Power!

Nick Robinson provides a succinct job description of his role as BBC political editor in the book Live From Downing Street:

'My job is to report on what those in power are thinking and doing and on those who attempt to hold them to account in Parliament.' (Bantam Books, 2012, foreword).

This notion of public service broadcasting has been around since the early days of the BBC, all the way back to the 1920s. Commercial stations followed suit. Stuart Hood, a former Controller of BBC Television, once observed of both the BBC and commercial stations that they:

'interpreted impartiality as the acceptance of that segment of opinion which constitutes parliamentary consensus. Opinion that falls outside that consensus has difficulty in finding expression.' (James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility: The press and broadcasting in Britain, 5th edition, Routledge , London, 1997, p. 170)

Author Dan Hind notes correctly that when society is already dominated by corporate interests, corporate media 'balance and impartiality' heavily favour those who have already secured huge power, 'while making this bias seem both natural and just.' (The Return of the Public, Verso, 2007, p. 56).

Hind adds:

'...the BBC's managers remain convinced that they can discern what the population needs to know and that they can frame political and economic controversies in a balanced and fair way. The notion of public service helps them to see themselves as high-minded professionals. Their right to decide what receives publicity derives from their technical accomplishments, their experience and their commitment to a quite specific ideology.' (Ibid., p. 56)

This 'specific ideology' is, as we have elucidated in several books and numerous alerts, the false assumption that 'our' government will act out of benign intent, even when inflicting humanitarian catastrophes on other countries; and that corporate-led capitalism is a natural – or, at least, unchallengeable - state of affairs.

BBC managers, senior editors and journalists have internalised this false notion, so that they are incapable of treating state propaganda and disinformation with the requisite scrutiny and scepticism. The results of this gross failure for democracy include Permanent War, rampant corporate capitalism and effectively zero government response to the threat of climate chaos. Is it not time, then, for a Gandhi-style campaign of peaceful disobedience towards the corporate media, not least the BBC?


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Kirsty Wark, BBC Newsnight presenter
Email: kirsty.wark@bbc.co.uk
Twitter: @KirstyWark

Wearing the Black and Green in Comox: First Annual Anarchist Bookfair Rise-Up for May

Rise-Up for May Day Weekend at the Comox Valley Anarchist Book Fair

On Saturday, May 4, 2013, the Village Muse Bookstore in Cumberland (centrally located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia) will be hosting the first ever Comox Valley Anarchist Book Fair at The Abbey, featuring a May Day feast of subversive ideas and creative resistance possibilities. As a black and green event, it is bathed in both the radical legacy of the Cumberland mine wars and the soaring Beltane spirit of the Merry Month of May, and has absolutely nothing to do with Queen Victoria's birthday.

This anarchist festival of the book has been fomented in the cooperative spirit of mutual aid that unites Cumberland and Denman Island co-conspirators. While we anticipate that lots of anarchists and anarchist-friendly folks will converge on Cumberland that weekend, you don't have to be a self-described anarchist to attend the Book Fair. All you need is an open mind and an anti-authoritarian sense of curiosity.

In The Abbey on this day, you will find rows of tables peopled by individuals, distros, and bookstores that feature a wide array of anarchist and anarchist-related books, zines, publications, and crafts. Participating bookstores and distros, in alphabetical order, so far include: BC Blackout (Vancouver/Denman Island), Black Banner Distro (Vancouver), Black Sheep Collective (Calgary), Camas Books (Victoria), One Way Ticket (Victoria), Red Lion Press (Nanaimo), Spartacus Books (Vancouver), Village Muse Bookstore ( Cumberland), and Warrior Publications (Vancouver).

At this point, individual book authors who will be at tables include: Gord Hill, Grant Schilling, Jeff Shantz, Larry Gambone, Matta, Matt Rader, Miles Olson, Ron Sakolsky, Sean Woods, and Tom Swanky. Only a limited number of tables are still available, so please apply asap.There will be free food all day and a potluck at the Abbey between 6 and 7 PM. The Abbey will provide space for an “art wall”and an acoustic open-mic event starting at 7:30 PM, dubbed The Creative Mayhem Anarchist Cabaret.

Across the street from the Abbey, at the OAP Hall, there will be a series of free direct action, skill-sharing and radical history workshops at the top of every hour all day. They will feature such topics as: combating the Raven and Bear coal mines/anti-pipeline solidarity; street theatre; rewilding; Cortes Island forest defense; the BC government's historical use of biological warfare against indigenous people through the spread of smallpox on Vancouver Island and in the Comox Valley; decolonization; and Cumberland's radical roots. Outdoors, there will be a medicinal plant walk and a blacksmithing workshop. As we get closer to the Book Fair date, we will provide more detailed info on titles, facilitators and scheduling, as well as billeting possibilities for out-of-towners.

On the occasion of this 2013 May Day event, we recognize the 127th anniversary of the judicial murder of the Haymarket anarchists in their fight against wage slavery back in 1886, and we remember Ginger Goodwin, who was shot in the back by the law at Comox Lake for militant union organizing activities among his fellow Cumberland mine workers and for his principled refusal of conscription during the First World War.

In turn, we commemorate the hundredth anniversary of local resistance to the military invasion and occupation of Cumberland by order of BC Attorney General Bowser in 1913. His kilted dragoons were stationed in the village at the behest of coal baron Robert Dunsmuir to protect his financial empire by breaking the Vancouver Island miners' strike of 1912-1914 and restoring order through the imposition of martial law. Today, anarchists, along with many others, are engaged in an effort to prevent Cumberland from once again becoming a mining town under the thumb of the coal bosses should the Compliance Energy Corporation's proposal for a Raven coal mine project get approved, which would then open the door for the proposed open-pit Bear coal mine to be precariously perched over Comox Lake, threatening the village's water supply.

Finally, we respectfully acknowledge that we are holding this event on K'ómoks' territory, and we express our solidarity with their ongoing struggle for their land and against colonization.




For Immediate Release

Contacts: Cathy Stoyko
Ron Sakolsky (250-335-0843)

Thought-Police: Mind-Kettling Resistance

Strategies of Containment

by William T. Hathaway

Many of us on the left have been kettled at demonstrations: surrounded by a wall of police, herded into a small area, and prevented from reaching our goal. The term is a translation of kesseln, the German military tactic of enclosing an enemy force within a tight cordon of troops and gradually wearing it down rather than attacking it directly.

But we are also kettled by the thought police, and that's even more insidious. This strategy of containment is used politically to confine potentially revolutionary energy into an area where it can't reach its goal. Instead of by cops, we are corralled by institutions that purport to be progressive or even socialist. This pseudo-left diverts our energies away from organizing a militant working class and towards supporting the Democratic Party. Democrat congressman Dennis Kucinich referred to this when he described his calls for a more peaceful US foreign policy as a way to keep peace activists within "the big tent" -- the Democratic Party. The Democrats like to have a few seeming progressives like Kucinich in their ranks to create the illusion that they are the party of change.

They also have media and political groups on their periphery that are often critical of their policies but consistently promote the premise that this party is our only chance and with enough effort it can be made progressive. They spend their energy trying to convince the Democrats to move left. Their base is not in the working class but among slightly-left-of-liberal professionals who prefer progressive policies because they will benefit from them. They want to reduce the accumulation of wealth by the superrich and direct more of it in their direction and some of it down to the masses to ease discontent. As befits their class, they are well educated and have access to financial and political power. They communicate professionally and persuasively. Like the wall of cops, their message is clear: You must stay here. The only way to change the system is from within it. There is no alternative.

To prevent militant rank-and-file activism, labor bureaucrats also kettle workers into pro-capitalist unions tied to the Democratic Party. The union hierarchy exists to block independent action by the workers. The leaders speak with populist rhetoric, but to keep their privileged position they collude with employers to force lower wages and poorer working conditions onto their members.

The goal of these pseudo-left media, political groups, and unions is to hold us within capitalist institutions, thus rendering our efforts futile. The police kettle us physically and the pseudo-left tries to kettle us mentally, to keep us in the system.

"Working within the system" is a strategy promoted by the system itself in order to divert demands for fundamental change into superficial reforms. But this gradual approach has been proved to be a sham. Hard won improvements in wages, health care, and retirement benefits are being reversed under both Democrat and Republican presidents.

Instead of advancing Roosevelt's modest reforms, the Democrats have undermined them. They have consistently served the needs of capital for imperialist wars and exploitation of workers. When they allowed wage increases in the 1950s and '60s, it was largely to stimulate domestic consumption. When they supported equal employment opportunities for women and minorities in the '70s and '80s, it was largely to expand the labor pool so corporations could reverse the earlier wage increases.

It's not just greed that causes corporations to be vicious. The system requires this. Slashing labor costs is the only way they can maintain dominance in the face of low-wage competition from emerging industrial powers such as China and India. The corps are shifting their economic pressures onto us, the workers. They've lowered wages to the point where young workers are earning less than their parents did. The only "progress" is that now we all have an equal opportunity for the lousy jobs that are available.

The Democrats led this attack on workers when they were in office and colluded with it when they were in the opposition. Labor union leadership cooperated in this betrayal of their members. Throughout it all the pseudo-left clucked in disapproval but continued to support the Democrats. This pattern continues today.

But more and more people are now breaking free of these strategies of containment. A look at the historical record and the experience of our day-to-day reality show we've been kettled with lies. It has become obvious that capitalism can't produce long-term prosperity for its workers. Its profits must continually increase, and it has three ways of generating those: exploiting our labor by paying us less than the value we have added to the product; innovating new ways to lower costs; expanding their markets. Now that these last two methods are approaching their limits, the exploitation must increase to produce the required profits.

Liberal prosperity was a feature of the Keynesian phase of capitalism, a 30-year bubble of better wages that occurred only in North America and Europe when it was necessary to stimulate consumer demand. But those conditions are gone and can't return. The world market has become more important than the home country, and selling there requires low prices, which in turn requires cheap labor.

We're now in the consolidation phase of capitalism, when global competition eliminates the less effective predators and wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer giant corps and the rest of us become their vassals. We have to overthrow this barbaric system and build a humane one or face an increasingly degraded life.

To direct this struggle successfully, we need a political program based on the lessons of history and a strategy for implementing it. We need a militant base within the working class that can defend workers independently of the unions. We must break decisively from the Democratic Party, that graveyard of social movements. We need media that inform the working class rather than delude it. And we must do all this internationally, coordinating our efforts with workers in other countries to build democratic socialism, where the people decide how the economic life of society will be organized. When the resources and productive capacity of the world belong to its people, they can use them to meet human needs rather than to generate private profits for a few owners.

This is the challenge of our time, an historic battle for liberation. It's an enormous job, but no more difficult than other evolutionary changes humanity has mastered. The best program I've found for building this economic democracy is the Socialist Equality Party's: http://www.wsws.org.

*

William T. Hathaway is an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. His latest book, RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War, presents the experiences of peace activists who have moved beyond demonstrations and petitions into direct action, defying the government's laws and impeding its ability to kill. Chapters are posted on a page of the publisher's website at http://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace. He is also the author of SUMMER SNOW, the story of an American warrior in Central Asia who falls in love with a Sufi Muslim and learns from her an alternative to the military mentality. Chapters are available at www.peacewriter.org.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Ray Mesaud Burhi, Bob Simpson, Janine Bandcroft Mar 4, 2013

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Pacific Free Press

Two weeks ago, the European Union's Parliament approved a Free Trade deal with Morocco, promising to extend duty-free status to more of that country's agriculture and fisheries exports.

It's a deal that, if ratified, would strengthen economic and political ties with the North African nation. While garnering bumper profits for transnational corporations and a handful of Moroccan insiders, this deal will not, in Member of the European Parliament, Jose Bove's opinion, benefit either Moroccan farmers, or be helpful in addressing the displacement and ongoing occupation by Morocco of the indigenous people of Western Sahara.


Listen. Hear.

As in Palestine, the EU, and the United States continue to, despite repeated UN resolutions declaring its illegality, support and profit from the brutal occupation.

Ray Mesaud Burhi is the official representative to Canada of the government of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic in exile. He and his family fled their homeland in Western Sahara when he was a child, settling in the refugee camp at Tindouf, Algeria.

Burhi received his engineering degree at the University of Oriente in Cuba, and master's degree in international cooperation and development at the University of Barcelona. He has served Saharawi Delegations to Spain, the EU, South-East Asia and now North America. Ray Mesaud Burhi will be here in Victoria on the 22nd of this month as part of a public event for Western Sahara sponsored by the Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation's Mining Justice Action Committee, and UVic's Social Justice Studies Program.

Ray Mesaud Burhi in the first half.

And; in anticipation of British Columbia's looming election, the BC Liberals have introduced a bit of legislation that promises to complete what the long-gone and unlamented Social Credit party tried to foist on us before their immolation nearly 25 years ago. The innocuously titled, Bill 8 is a Harper-styled omnibus of rich give-aways to corporations far and near, and if allowed to run its ruinous course will entirely reverse decades of forestry policy in the province, delivering up whole hog unknowable lucre to the likes of mega-corps BAM and TAM, Shock Doctrine troopers specializing in "distressed asset management." It would mean a mass transfer of wealth into private hands, chapping public assets, while endangering the future well-being of both the people and wildlife of BC.

Bob Simpson is MLA for Cariboo North, sitting as an Independent since his unceremonious ejection by erstwhile NDP leader, Carole James in 2010. He's been warning everyone who'll listen, Bill 8 is a bad deal all around for this province, saying; "[I]t's a backroom deal with no requirement for public consultation." He also says it's tantamount to the privatization of our publicly held forests. Of Christie Clark's effort with Bill 8, Simpson says; "The public will see it as privatization" adding; "...[T]his is a 100-year conversation in B.C. and the public has always said 'no' and they're going to say 'no' again." Perhaps they will, if given the chance to find out about it.

Bob Simpson and rooting out the rotten core of Bill 8 in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom the hour to bring us newz from our city's streets and beyond. But first, Ray Mesaud Burhri and that other occupation state, the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.