Understanding American "Policy" in Central Asia

This article appeared in the April 9, 1999 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.















A Lexicon of 'Brzezinski-isms' Brzezinski testifies against himself

by Scott Thompson

In last week's Feature, Lyndon LaRouche warned that, if the insane geopolitical doctrines of Carter National Security Adviser Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski are imposed on an increasingly weakened President William Clinton, the consequences will be the greatest global conflagration in modern times. Brzezinski, who counts among his leading political offspring Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the self-described "Xena Warrior Princess" of the Clinton administration's Principals Committee, has done the world a favor, by putting pen to paper and spelling out his zany geopolitical views in a booklength diatribe, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997). To save our readers the agony of a full reading of Brzezinski's incompetent ravings, we provide a lexicon of the ideas presented in his chessboard fantasy.

A goofy Anglo-American imperial model

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of a prostrate Russia, what Brzezinski calls "The Black Hole," he starts his discourse on "Superpower Politics" by stating that the United States, as the sole surviving superpower in the post-Cold War world, has a window of opportunity of some 10-20 years to assert its control over all of Eurasia. "Ever since the continents started interacting politically," writes Brzezinski, "some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power. . . .

"The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as the key arbiter of European power relations, but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemispheric power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power. Eurasia, however, retains its geopolitical importance."

"For America" after the Cold War, Brzezinski adds, "the chief prize is Eurasia."

Looking for a model in the first part of his book for the sort of "hegemony" that the United States currently projects over Eurasia, Brzezinski eschews Pax Romana and Rule Britannia for a goofy model: "To find a somewhat closer analogy to today's definition of a global power, we must turn to the remarkable phenomenon of the Mongol Empire. Its emergence was achieved through an intense struggle with major and well-organized opponents. Among those defeated were the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary, the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, several Russian and Rus' principalities, the Caliphate of Baghdad, and later, even the Sung dynasty of China."

Making love to a corpse

While Brzezinski's book has probably sold more copies in Russia, where the elites are trying to figure out U.S. strategy, it is worth recalling that Brzezinski is in reality a British asset, trained by William Yandell Elliott, a Nashville Agrarian and Cecil Rhodes "Roundtable" tout who also trained Brzezinski's sibling rival, self-confessed British agent Sir Henry Kissinger (KCMG). Unlike Kissinger, who was given a knighthood usually reserved for leading members of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Brzezinski has been more covert in his Anglophilism. In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski goes out of his way to camouflage the current British role as the "back-seat driver" behind the worst policies of those such as Vice President Al Gore, Jr. and Secretary of State "Madmeddling" Albright.

In The Grand Chessboard, which always speaks of U.S. "geopolitical" interests, Brzezinski dismisses as irrelevant the ongoing manipulation by an Anglo-American cabal, in which the British "Venetian Party" is the dominant intellectual force shaping the issues that confront traditional American institutions. According to Brzezinski, Britain today occupies a special place as a U.S. ally, but it is a "retired" geostrategic player:

"In contrast, Britain is not a geostrategic player. It has fewer major options. It entertains no ambitious vision of Europe's future, and its relative decline has also reduced its capacity to play the traditional role of European balancer. Its ambivalence regarding European unification and its attachment to a waning special relationship with America, have made Great Britain increasingly irrelevant insofar as the major choices confronting Europe's future are concerned. London has largely dealt itself out of the European game. . . .

"Great Britain, to be sure, still remains important to America. It continues to wield some degree of global influence through the Commonwealth, but it is neither a restless major power, nor is it motivated by an ambitious vision. It is America's key supporter, a very loyal ally, a vital military base, and a close partner in critically important intelligence activities. Its friendship needs to be nourished, but its policies do not call for sustained attention. It is a retired geostrategic player, resting on its splendid laurels, largely disengaged from the great European adventure in which France and Germany are the principal actors."

According to Brzezinski, Britain is above reproach in terms of the dangerously "geopolitical" doctrines that "Americans" like himself have been peddling increasingly of late, being content to maintain what it can of the "special relationship" with the United States and play with its Commonwealth--the euphemism for the British Empire today.

In the footsteps of Adolf Hitler

When discussing the history of geopolitics, Brzezinski lets his guard down. What he calls geopolitics is a variant upon the Mackinder/Hitlerian quackery that, in the hands of the Prince of Wales--later King Edward VII--underlay World War I. Ultimately, this doctrine was conduited, through Anglophile circles such as the "Wagner Kreis" (i.e., Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Wagner Circle) and the mystic Thule Society, of which German geopolitician Karl Haushofer had been a member, into the pages of Hitler's Mein Kampf, as a prelude to World War II.

At the start of the section "Geopolitics and Geostrategy," Brzezinski observes: "Napoleon once said that to know a nation's geography was to know its foreign policy."

Elsewhere in this section, he remarks: "Until recently, the leading analysts of geopolitics have debated whether land power was more significant than sea power and what specific region of Eurasia is vital to gain control over the entire continent. One of the most prominent, Harold Mackinder, pioneered the discussion early this century with his successive concepts of the Eurasian `pivot area' (which was said to include all of Siberia and much of Central Asia) and, later, of the Central-East European `heartland' as the vital springboards for the attainment of continental domination. He popularized his heartland concept by the famous dictum:

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;

"Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;

"Who rules the World-Island commands the world.

"Geopolitics was also invoked by some leading German political geographers to justify their country's `Drang nach Osten' ["Drive to the East"], notably by Karl Haushofer adapting Mackinder's concept to Germany's strategic needs. Its much-vulgarized echo could also be heard in Adolf Hitler's emphasis on the German people's need for `Lebensraum' " ["living space"].

One suspects that Brzezinski is even more aware than he lets on of how Mackinder's geopolitics permeated various British channels, to Karl Haushofer, and thence to the marcher-lord Hitler.

It is therefore little short of astounding that Brzezinski offers to present a post-modern version of the Mackinder/Haushofer geopolitical doctrine, since it places him historically in the footsteps of Hitler's geostrategic doctrine.

Clearly, Brzezinski's hatred of Russia is much more motivated by his being a British asset, than by his background as heir to the lesser Polish nobility, that suffered so deeply from these "geopolitical theories."

The `Survivors' Club'

Brzezinski glosses through Russian foreign policy thinking, from the "Westernizers' " design for a strategic partnership with the United States, to building alliances with the "Near Abroad," to a semi-mystical doctrine known as "Eurasianism," laughing up his sleeve at the failure of these doctrines.

However, Brzezinski is crystal clear throughout his book that China and Russia, especially, must not be allowed to combine forces, thereby becoming a global power sufficiently strong to expel the United States from its post-Cold War "prize" of Eurasia. The alliance of China, Russia, and India that is coming into being based on Lyndon LaRouche's "Grand Design" for Eurasian integration through massive infrastructure projects such as the Eurasian Land-Bridge, what the Chinese refer to as the "New Silk Road," is, for Brzezinski, the number-one danger. This demonstrates that he does not represent traditional "American System," republican economic thought, because an equivalent of the Land-Bridge conception had originally been proposed by Henry Carey in his role as chief economist to President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was assassinated by a British conspiracy, once Britain's efforts to divide and conquer the United States with the fratricidal Civil War had failed.

Writes Brzezinski: "In early 1996, President [Boris] Yeltsin replaced his Western-oriented foreign minister [Andrei] Kozyrev, with the more experienced but also orthodox former Communist international specialist Yevgeni Primakov, whose long-standing interest has been Iran and China. Some Russian commentators speculated that Primakov's orientation might precipitate an effort to forge a new `anti-hegemonic' coalition, formed around the three powers with the greatest geopolitical stake in reducing America's primacy in Eurasia. Some of Primakov's initial travel and comments reinforced that impression. Moreover, the existing Sino-Iranian connection in weapons trade, as well as the Russian inclination to cooperate in Iran's efforts to increase its access to nuclear energy seemed to provide a perfect fit for closer political dialogue and eventual alliance. The result could, at least theoretically, bring together the world's most militant Islamic power, and the world's most populated and powerful Asian power, thereby creating a potential coalition. . . .

"Moreover, China would be the senior partner in any serious Russian effort to jell such an `anti-hegemonic' coalition. Being more populous, more industrious, more innovative, more dynamic, and harboring some potential territorial designs on Russia, China would inevitably consign Russia to the status of a junior partner, while at the same time lacking the means (and probably any real desire) to help Russia overcome its backwardness. Russia would thus become a buffer between an expanding Europe and an expansionist China."

Elsewhere in his book, Brzezinski repeats this warning that China must not be allowed to become a global power in league with Russia: "A geostrategic issue of crucial importance is posed by China's emergence as a major power. The most appealing outcome would be to co-opt a democratizing and free-marketing China into a larger Asian regional framework of cooperation. But suppose China does not democratize but continues to grow in economic and military power? A `Greater China' may be emerging whatever the desires and calculations of its neighbors, and any effort to prevent that from happening could entail an intensifying conflict with China. Such a conflict could strain American-Japanese relations--for it is far from certain that Japan would want to follow America's lead in containing China--and could therefore have potentially revolutionary consequences for Tokyo's definition of Japan's regional role, perhaps even resulting in the termination of the American presence in the Far East. . . .

"Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an `anti-hegemonic' coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously."

Thus, Brzezinski defines the emerging "Survivors' Club" as the single most dangerous "geopolitical" force which those who desire to dominate Eurasia might encounter. Once again, Brzezinski allies himself with the British "Club of the Isles," that emerged out of two world wars, that were instigated by a treasonous Anglo-American Tory plot--e.g., financing Hitler's imposition upon a prostrate Germany by E.H. Harriman, Sir George Bush's father, Prescott Bush, and Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England--in order to halt precisely such integration of Eurasia around true global economic development as the Land-Bridge conception.

NATO expansion, and China

Despite Russia's justifiable objections, Brzezinski repeatedly stresses that the expansion of NATO as a defensive alliance after the Cold War, to include the former glacis of the Soviet Union, is of the utmost importance. Eventually, he argues, starting from "the Democratic Bridgehead" of Europe, NATO ought to expand, via Poland, and thence Ukraine, to the very border of a much reduced Russia. Here is one example of this proposal:

"Ultimately at stake in this effort is America's long-range role in Europe. A new Europe is still taking shape, and if that new Europe is to remain geopolitically a part of the `Euro-Atlantic' space, the expansion of NATO is essential. Indeed, a comprehensive U.S. policy for Eurasia as a whole will not be possible if the effort to widen NATO, having been launched by the United States, stalls and falters. That failure would discredit American leadership; it would shatter the concept of an expanding Europe; it would demoralize the Central Europeans; and it could reignite currently dormant or dying Russian geopolitical aspirations for Central Europe. For the West, this would be a self-inflicted wound that would mortally damage the prospects for a truly European pillar in any eventual Eurasian security architecture; and for America, it would thus be not only a regional defeat but a global defeat as well."

Thus, to gain a "bridgehead" up to the border of Russia, Brzezinski is prepared to pursue NATO expansion and out-of-area deployments, whatever the potential danger, especially in light of his other containment policies toward Russia, of pushing the globe in the direction of World War III.

In a section on "The Far Eastern Anchor," Brzezinski insists that China, with which President Clinton has proclaimed a "constructive strategic partnership," must not be allowed to emerge as a "global power," but must be contained as a "regional power." Because, he lies, ultimately the Chinese wish to seek revenge against the United States: "China's principal objection to America relates less to what America actually does than to what America currently is and where it is. America is seen by China as the world's hegemon, whose very presence in the region, based on its dominant position in Japan, works to contain China's influence."

Brzezinski suggests that access to energy and food is China's Achilles' heel, that can be used as a weapon to prevent China from becoming a truly "global power."

Cecil Rhodes-style grab of Central Asian oil

Brzezinski devotes an entire chapter to a modern-day version of a Cecil Rhodes-style raw materials grab of the large oil and gas reserves in Central Asia. According to Brzezinski, these petroleum-based resources must be under sufficient Anglo-American control, so that they can be denied to Russia and China in particular:

"In Europe, the word `Balkans' conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its `Balkans,' but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogeneous. They are located within the central zone of global instability . . . and that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia, the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.

"The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong . . . and they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. . . .

"The Eurasian Balkans . . . are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions of at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran with China also signaling an increasing interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold. . . .

"The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures of the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin, are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea."

Noting that Central Asia not only represents at present a "power vacuum," but also that each of those countries "suffers from serious internal difficulties," Brzezinski, who must know that the British are the principal "stakeholders" on these riches through their dominance within the oil multinationals, maps out how to deny any access to this raw materials fortune by Russia, especially.

Enlarging the `Arc of Crisis'

In the second chapter, entitled "The Eurasian Chessboard," Brzezinski puts forward a vision of a "global-zone of percolating violence," that can be skillfully manipulated to stop Eurasian integration. This plan is larger in scope than his earlier "Arc of Crisis" doctrine, that had been based on a plan of British agent Bernard Lewis, according to which he gave U.S. support to the Afghansi to create a "Vietnam War" crisis for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

According to a map of this region in The Grand Chessboard, this zone of "percolating violence" includes all of Central Asia, extending westward to include Turkey, northward to include southern Russia, and eastward to touch upon the western borders of China. It includes the entire Middle East, where Brzezinski claims it is imperative for the United States to retain control, especially in the critical Persian Gulf. And, the zone extends eastward to include Afghanistan and Pakistan, up to the latter's border with India.

Consonant with the British imperial "Great Game," Brzezinski argues that skillful manipulation of this "global-zone of percolating violence" can be used to halt Russia from becoming an imperial power once again: "To what extent should Russia be helped economically--which inevitably strengthens Russia politically and militarily. . . ?" writes Brzezinski. "Can Russia be both powerful and a democracy at the same time? . . . If it becomes powerful again, . . . will it not seek to regain its lost imperial domain, and can it then be both an empire and a democracy? . . .

"Internal Russian recovery is essential to Russia's democratization and eventual Europeanization. But any recovery of its imperial potential would be inimical to both these objectives."

Hence, by manipulating this "global-zone of percolating violence," which happens to be a raw-materials-wealthy region, Brzezinski proposes to further contain and weaken Russia.

It is clear, based on reading The Grand Chessboard "geopolitical" lunacy from the perspective of Lyndon LaRouche's Eurasian Land-Bridge for the integration of the United States in strategic partnership with Franklin Roosevelt's World War II allies--i.e., China and Russia--that anyone in policymaking circles insane enough to lend credence to Brzezinski's nonsense has endorsed a fast track toward World War III. As LaRouche made clear in his Feature on "Mad Brzezinski's Chessboard," every time the Anglo-American Tory traitors have faced a depression collapse, they have sought to protect their global dominance by starting a war. The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski is a blueprint for how to start such a war, which would plunge the majority of mankind (perhaps leaving only the Chinese component of the Survivors' Club relatively unscathed) into a New Dark Age for generations to come.

CIA gets the go-ahead to take on Hizbollah

By Toby Harnden, US Editor 01/10/07 "The Telegraph" -- -- The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to take covert action against Hizbollah as part of a secret plan by President George W. Bush to help the Lebanese government prevent the spread of Iranian influence. Senators and congressmen have been briefed on the classified "non-lethal presidential finding" that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the prime minister, Fouad Siniora. The finding was signed by Mr Bush before Christmas after discussions between his aides and Saudi Arabian officials. Details of its existence, known only to a small circle of White House officials, intelligence officials and members of Congress, have been passed to The Daily Telegraph. It authorises the CIA and other US intelligence agencies to fund anti-Hizbollah groups in Lebanon and pay for activists who support the Siniora government. The secrecy of the finding means that US involvement in the activities is officially deniable. The Bush administration hopes Mr Siniora's government, severely weakened after its war with Israel last year, will become a bulwark against the growing power of the Shia sect of Islam, championed by Iran and Syria, since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Mr Bush's move is at the centre of a fresh drive by America, supported by the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt as well as Israel, to stop Iranian hegemony in the Middle East emerging from the collapse of Iraq. The finding, drawn up at the White House by National Security Council (NSC) officials, is a sign of Mr Bush's growing alarm at the threat posed by Iran, which has infiltrated the Iraqi government and is training Shia insurgents as well as supplying them with roadside bombs. A former US government official said: "Siniora's under siege there and we are always looking for ways to help allies. As Richard Armitage [a former deputy US secretary of state] said, Hizbollah is the A-team of terrorism and certainly Iran and Syria have not let up in their support of the group." Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington, is understood to have been closely involved in the decision to prop up Mr Siniora's administration and the Israeli government, which views Iran as its chief enemy, has also been supportive. "There's a feeling both in Jerusalem and in Riyadh that the anti-Sunni tilt in the region has gone too far," said an intelligence source. "By removing Saddam, we've shifted things in favour of the Shia and this is a counter-balancing exercise. Prince Bandar, now King Abdullah's national security adviser, made several trips to Washington and held meetings with Elliot Abrams, the senior Middle East official on the NSC. Prince Turki al-Faisal resigned abruptly as ambassador to Washington last month. Intelligence sources said that a principal reason for this was his belief he had been undermined by Prince Bandar, who had not told him of the Lebanon plan or even that he was visiting Washington. As a quid pro quo to the Sunni Arab states, Mr Bush and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, have agreed to work harder to re-start negotiations about a peace deal with the Palestinians. According to the Swoop website (theswoop.net), which contains briefings on diplomatic and intelligence matters: "US officials point to the Israeli release of some tax monies owed to the Palestinian Authority as the first fruits of this approach. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former clandestine CIA officer, said that such a finding would involve "various steps and types of non-military activity" agreed to by the Lebanese. "It takes two to tango. You're only those things that the Lebanese themselves would want you to do," he said. Bush administration officials have spoken of their desire to promote "mainstream" Arab states and have even spoken of the existence of a "Sunni crescent" in the Middle East. But there is tension between this policy and the support for Nouri al-Maliki's Shia-led government in Iraq, which has links to Shia death squads and Iran. "The administration is reaping its own whirlwind after Iraq," said the intelligence source. "For 50 years the US preferred stability over legitimacy in the Middle East and now it's got neither. It's a situation replete with ironies." toby.harnden@telegraph.co.uk © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2007

A Solution More for Israel

Federalism: A Solution More for Israel than for Iraq

Nicola Nasser
Tuesday, 09 January 2007

Revealing both the double standards of U.S. policies and the propaganda-oriented Israeli advocacy of “minority rights” in the Arab world, the U.S.-allied Iraqi Kurdish and sectarian leaders reacted angrily to James Baker-Lee Hamilton report because it recommended what they perceived as a possible American retract from federalism in Iraq and the Israeli Jews condemned as a catastrophic declaration of war an Israeli Arabs’ “future visions” because those visions could lead to a “federal” Israel.

Israel is still not “Jewish” neither in the demographic nor in the religious sense and the “Jewishness” of the state is still a strategic Zionist goal; hence the Israeli mainstream calls for the “transfer” of “non-Jews” and the Israeli official policies that boil down to nothing less than being ethnic cleansing practices. Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid was only the latest reminder of this existential problem that threatens both the very existence of the indigenous Arabs in Israel as well as the Zionist dream of Jews to lead an independent Jewish life.

Israeli Jews have to choose between Apartheid and a democratic state. A federal Israel could solve both an Israeli internal ethnic problem and as well be the right just, lasting and comprehensive approach to solving the Arab and Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which would spare the region more wars and violence; the ingredients of success are much more authentic than the U.S., Israeli and Iranian-backed separatist and sectarian calls for federalism in Iraq. This approach would allow for the return of Palestinian refugees without “throwing the Jews to the sea” and would allow the Jews to lead an independent life without condemning Palestinians to an eternal exile in Diaspora.

Of course the expected Israeli-U.S. rejection of this approach rules it out as unrealistic politics, but the rejection would in no way make the arguments for it less authentic. The promotion of federalism in Iraq is increasingly developing into a double-edged weapon against its U.S. and Israeli advocates and could also turn against its Iranian supporters, whose multi-ethnic country of Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Balushis, etc. will certainly not abandon its Islamic unity for a western-style pluralistic federal alternative.



According to the last updated CIA World Factbook online, Iraqi Kurds represent between 15%-20% of the population and the “non-Jews (mostly Arabs)” represent 23.6% of all Israelis. While the Kurds share with the Arab majority of Iraq the same religion, culture, historical heritage, wide-spread inter-ethnic marriages and have never had an independent state of their own, the Israeli Arabs are all either Muslims or Christians, with a distinctive oriental Arab and Muslim culture and no common historical heritage whatsoever with their Jewish compatriots, who by the sword, dispossessed and displaced the Arab majority to create their “Jewish” state and who are to this day ruling out the emergence of a Palestinian – Arab state on only a portion of their ancestral land.

Nonetheless, the U.S. and Israel have incessantly incited and supported a separate Kurdish entity in northern Iraq and since the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003 imposed as a fait accompli a “constitutional” federal system that would honour that support and as well address a similar Iranian-supported sectarian “separation” in the south, but could not yet be translated into a reality on the ground.

However neither Washington nor Tel Aviv would even ponder the possibility of a potential similar solution for the second class citizenship of the larger Arab minority of more than 1.2 million in Israel, which has a much better case for a federal arrangement with the Israeli central government. Instead the colonialist settlement of Arab land, the “transfer” and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Arabs were the components of the official Israeli Jewish solution, which had and have its strategist representatives in Israel’s successive governments, with Washington either turning closed eyes or only verbally and shyly protesting.

The contradictory U.S. policies between Iraq and Israel would potentially lead to the failure of its plan for an un-viable federal Iraq and to the failure of the viable “vision” of a federal Israel and would certainly lead to a repetition of American and Iranian betrayals of Iraqi Kurds, whose national aspirations were always opportunistically used by Washington and Tehran against the central government in Baghdad whenever this government is out of step with their regional strategies.

Iraqi Kurdistan enjoys now a de facto independence, protected by the U.S. occupation, but regional factors prevent declaring it officially and Kurdish U.S.-allied leaders are smoke-screening their separatism by claiming a federal link to Baghdad, only to buy time until the regional rejection could be overcome or outmanoeuvred.

In September last year prominent pro-Iran Shiite leader of the “Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,” a U.S.-financed and Iranian-trained militia, who was hosted later in the year by President George W. Bush in Washington, Abdel Aziz Al Hakim, used the celebration of the birth of the Al-Mahdi, a 9th century Shiite imam, to renew his call for an autonomous Shiite region in central and southern Iraq. “Federalism will lead to stability and security in Iraq,” Hakim told worshippers during Friday prayers in Karbala, adding: “Look at the example of federalism in Kurdistan, it is evidence of the success of this system.”

“If federalism cannot be assured, Iraq will not remain one state,” warned Iraqi U.S.-allied Kurdish leader Massud Barzani, adding: “We will not make any compromises.” Would Israel and Iran tolerate a similar de facto independence for Israeli Arabs or Iranian Kurds? How would Israel and Iran react were their respective Arab and Kurdish minorities to mobilize a 75,000-man Peshmerga-style militia of their own? Would they continue to support “the bad example” of the Iraqi Kurds?

More importantly, what would the U.S., the strategic ally of both Israel and the Iraqi “federalists,” say and how would it react? Of course Washington would react on a case by case basis, which would produce contradictory policies that would reject federalism in Israel but support it in Iran. And if President George W. Bush is to adopt the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report Washington would also retract from supporting the Iraqi “federalists.” This is another stark example of Washington’s double standards policy in the Middle East as well as of the absurdity of both U.S. and Israeli verbal propaganda advocacy of minority rights.

U.S. betrayal of Iraqi “federalists” is now highly probable, but the U.S. betrayal of Israeli Arabs is a 60-year old official policy. Kurdish as well as Arab-Palestinian betting on U.S. and Israeli tactical promises could in no time prove tragically counterproductive because occupying powers could not be but in solidarity and foreign occupation could not last forever. Kurds in particular, whether in Iraq or elsewhere and in spite of a lot of their legitimate grievances, could not be winners by exchanging a proven historical alliance with the regional Arab majority for temporary and unproven possible alignment with other minorities whose disloyalty to their historical coexistence with Arabs is still in doubt, despite the Israeli and U.S. incitement.

Last December Israeli Jews and Iraqi “federalists” were united in angry reaction, but ironically in contradictory stances vis-à-vis federalism: Barzani and Hakim were joined by the head of the system that is developing under the U.S. occupation, Jalal Talbani, in pledging they were “in no way abiding” by the Baker-Hamilton “unrealistic and inappropriate” recommendations “imposed on us,” which are “contrary to the principles of federalism and the constitution that forms the basis upon which the new Iraq is built,” “contradict U.S. assurances,” represent “interference in the country's internal affairs” and strengthen “the central government.” They warned the recommendations threaten Iraq’s territorial integrity, in a thinly veiled threat to secede.

The Israeli Jews’ furiously blasted a 27-page “Future Vision” of their Arab-Palestinian compatriots, which clearly envisage a federal Israel, thus undermining in an outburst of fury the “Israeli example” on which all their propaganda was based to incite the ethnic, religious and sectarian minorities coexisting peacefully for thousands of years among their Arab neighbours.

“This week, the leaders of the Arab minority in Israel declared war in their own way on the Jewish national state in the Land of Israel,” wrote Avraham Tal in Haaretz on Dec. 11. Why? Because “even if Israel one day arrives at an understanding with the leaders of the Palestinian Authority and all of the Arab states about taking the demand for the right of return off the agenda, the demands of Israeli Arab citizens for a right of return for descendants of the uprooted to their forefathers' villages and their other nationalistic demands will ensure that the flames of the conflict are not extinguished,” Tal wrote.

Tal was right: Here lies the hard core of the conflict and the key to peace as well, namely the fact that a just and lasting peace is based on the Palestinian Right of Return, a fact that has almost drowned in the “brainwashing” rhetoric of the futile “peace processes;” a Palestinian state on a 20 percent portion of the Palestinian ancestral homeland is part, and not all, of the solution.

Tal did not represent only the mainstream Israeli Jewish reaction, but more importantly the leftists and liberals who have traditionally but unsuccessfully struggled for 60 years for “equality for Arabs,” whose “visions” now reflect their despair as well as their conviction that a “state-for-all-citizens solution” has proved a dead end. Israel’s official policy has created a “national minority” out of them after they hoped in vain for too long for an equal status with their Jewish compatriots.

In a “Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” published by the Higher Follow Up Committee of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel last month, they only “envisaged” some of the demands of the Iraqi Kurds, which Israel supports and which the Iraqi Kurds already enjoy: They demanded collective rights for the Arab national minority to secure individual equality, a veto power on decisions of national import (on “transfer” for example), equality in immigration rights by annulment of the Jewish Law of Return or the legislation of a Law of Return for Arabs, separate representation at international institutions, representing Arabs in the Israeli flag and national anthem, and envisaged the creation of a national network of institutions to develop their national identity as a central strategy in their struggle for collective rights.

The Israeli Jews have to reconsider; so the Iraqi Kurds, whose current leaders have explicitly or implicitly identified with the Israeli propaganda about the Arab majority’s “oppression” of the minority Jews and Kurds in the region, a view that is still promoted by a “selected” article by Ariel Natan Pasko, dated March 17, 2004, which is still posted on the official Web site of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government:

“As the discussion of "democratization" of the Middle East continues, an important point that must be made time and time again, is the importance in building structures that liberate the minorities of the region from oppression … Contrary to the propaganda that the region is Arab/Muslim, these minorities are remnants of the indigenous peoples, before the great Arab imperialist wars of the 7th century, and "Islamicization process" that followed” and “have all resisted "Arabization" for over 1,000 years,” Pasko wrote, adding: “Only Israel, the Jewish State, has fully liberated itself - in the political sense - from this Arab/Muslim oppression.”

This twisted rewriting of history to serve the purposes of foreign invaders of the Arab land has caused wars and tragedies and still could cause more of the same. Reconsideration by Kurds and Israelis in particular of this tragic path could prove a turning point in the regional history. However, given the status quo, more bloodletting is in the offing before the two peoples come to their senses to make their leaders change course.

*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

A bigot called Bibi

Rattling the Cage: A bigot called Bibi

Larry Derfner

THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 3, 2007

By rights, Binyamin Netanyahu, who every poll says is by far the most popular politician in Israel, should be ranked with Jean Le Pen, Jorge Haider and the rest of the Western world's racist demagogues.

But he won't be, because anti-Arab racism in Israel is either supported or strategically ignored by the mainstream of the Jewish world, and pretty much taken for granted by the gentile world.

What Netanyahu said Tuesday night was not new for him; he was reported to have made the same appeal to the same sort of audience - haredi political leaders - a couple of years ago as finance minister.

Then, as now, he was apologizing for the way his child welfare cuts had hurt large haredi families, while at the same time asking the haredim to look at the bright sides of that policy.

"Two positive things happened," he told a conference of haredi government officials in Nir Etzion this week. "Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate." (Quoted in Ynet, Yediot Aharonot's Web site. The speech was also reported in Haaretz.)

The once-and-possibly-future prime minister of Israel says publicly that he's sorry his welfare cuts made life harder for Jewish families who are "blessed," as he put it, with many children, but isn't it "positive" that these cuts resulted in fewer Arab children being born? Then Netanyahu went on to suggest a national remedy for the victims of his economic policies - but for Jewish victims only, not Arab victims.

"I don't think that the Jewish Agency should refrain from helping part of the Jewish public in the state," he said, "and it is possible that additional non-governmental bodies could have done so."

IMAGINE IF any gentile government official in the world cited the lowering of the Jewish birthrate in his country as an accomplishment, then recommended that his country's founding institution raise money to help poor gentile families, but not poor Jewish families. How would the Jewish world, starting with Israel, characterize such an individual? What sort of pressure would the Jewish world apply to get him or her fired, blackballed and, if possible, indicted?

Yet everyone knows the speech in Nir Etzion will not hurt Netanyahu at all - even though, again, this is not the first time he's said this, and even though the statements are perfectly in line with his standing as Israel's number one fear-monger on the Israeli Arab "demographic threat." (On second thought, Netanyahu is probably only number two - Avigdor Lieberman, his former right-hand man and alter ego, is number one. When it comes to the subject of Israeli Arabs, it's hard to tell where Netanyahu ends and Lieberman begins.)

The worst that will happen to Netanyahu from this is that maybe another liberal commentator or two will denounce him, and there will be a press release from some civil rights organization. Maybe not even that. If, on the other hand, we're really, really lucky, the attorney-general might have a word to say. (FYI, even if there was a chance of it happening, I wouldn't want to see Netanyahu indicted. If every Israeli who made racist remarks in public had to stand trial, the courts would collapse under the load.)

The only political parties that might censure Netanyahu are the left-wing parties, and nobody cares about them; in fact, a bad word from Meretz can only help the Likud leader in the polls.

The Anti-Defamation League won't say anything, and neither will the other Diaspora Jewish organizations. Bibi is just too big, too popular, too important, too much a symbol of Israel for the Diaspora Jewish establishment to say a word against him, let alone accuse him of being a shameless bigot.

Two positive things happened: Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate.

That's the Israeli people's overwhelming choice for prime minister talking. I hope The New York Times, CNN and every other major news medium in the world picks up this story and doesn't let it go until Israel and Diaspora Jewry are shamed into dumping this guy once and for all.

On second thought, exposure as an anti-Arab racist by the international media could cause Netanyahu some problems overseas, but at home, it would only increase his appeal.

source:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467
656176&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Crossing Class Lines in Paris

Middle-Class French Join Sleep-In Over Homelessness
by Craig S. Smith




the New York Times
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 by

PARIS - Hundreds of people emerged from tents beside this city’s Canal St.-Martin to greet the chilly New Year with a hot lunch from a nearby soup kitchen. But not all of them were homeless.

Dozens of otherwise well-housed, middle-class French have been spending nights in tents along the canal, in the 10th Arrondissement, in solidarity with the country’s growing number of “sans domicile fixe,” or “without fixed address,” the French euphemism for people living on the street. The bleak yet determinedly cheerful sleep-in is meant to embarrass the French government into doing something about the problem.


To highlight the plight of the homeless, some have traded the comfort of their apartments for cold tents along the Canal St.-Martin in Paris. (Photo: François Mori/Associated Press)

“Each person should have the minimum dignity in a country as rich as this,” said Bleunwenn Manrot, a 28-year-old with a newsboy cap on her head and a toothbrush in her hand. Ms. Manrot drove more than six hours with friends from her home in Carhaix, Brittany, to spend New Year’s Eve along the canal.

The demonstration has drawn enough media attention over the holidays for President Jacques Chirac to acknowledge it during his traditional New Year address to the nation on Sunday. He asked the government to work in the coming weeks to “put in place a truly enforceable right to housing” that would give the homeless the legal means to demand a place to live.

Given France’s well-financed social services, the country’s homeless problem is relatively mild — the national statistics bureau estimated the number of people living without a fixed address on any one night at 86,000 for all of France in 2004, about equal to the number of homeless in Los Angeles alone.

But even that number is disturbing for the socially active segment of France’s population. In December 2005, the French affiliate of the international charity Doctors of the World began distributing nylon pup tents to people who sleep on Paris’s sidewalks and beneath its bridges. The movement took hold, and since then the tents have become a fixture in odd corners of the city.

In an effort to increase pressure on politicians, another group, Don Quixote’s Children, marshaled some of the tent dwellers last year to set up their tents along the Canal St.-Martin, in the heart of “bobo” (short for bourgeois bohemian) Paris. The canal was dug by Napoleon to supply Paris with clean drinking water. Since mid-December, the encampment has become a happening in one of Paris’s most happening neighborhoods.

“There are 250 tents now,” said Jean-Baptiste Legrand, the organization’s president. “The people keep coming, and the tents are full.”

The protest has started to spread to other cities, including Orléans, Toulouse and Lyon, and has been picked up by politicians as the presidential campaign gets under way.

François Hollande, the leader of the Socialist Party, and Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, have signed the group’s petition calling for a solution to the housing problem. Both of the leading presidential candidates — Nicolas Sarkozy, of the governing Union for a Popular Movement, and Ségolène Royal of the Socialists — support the cause.

Catherine Vautrin, the minister for social cohesion, met with Mr. Legrand and other members of his group and last week announced a tenfold increase in spending to help the homeless, to $92 million from $9 million. She said the money would allow homeless shelters to stay open around the clock on weekends and extend their weekday opening by three hours a day.

But a legally enforceable right to housing is the biggest prize sought by housing activists, including Don Quixote’s Children, and they remain skeptical of Mr. Chirac’s New Year promise. France already has a hard time housing new immigrants and asylum seekers. Fires in overcrowded, substandard lodgings have caused scandals in recent years. Finding a place for the hardcore homeless is certain to complicate those problems.

“Chirac’s speech means nothing,” said Ms. Manrot, the Brittany protester.

Such comments suggest that the long camp-out will continue. Organizers have arranged portable toilets and a soup kitchen to keep the ad hoc village operating. Vans of blankets and other supplies arrive regularly, much of the material donated by Parisians. Volunteers sweep the canal-side cobblestones to keep the area clean.

“I like the protest because it’s nonviolent,” said another protester, Renaud Huvé, 39, a photographer. “It’s a citizens’ call.”

So far, the authorities have been tolerant, though they have quietly evicted tent dwellers before, when the news media were not watching. The police broke up one encampment under a bridge farther north along the canal in October.

Magali Marx, 23, a sales assistant in a clothes shop, expressed the laissez-faire attitude of the neighborhood’s residents as she passed by. “It’s a bit of a pain for the people who want to walk along the side of the canal,” she said. “But then, these people don’t have a roof.”

Not all of the homeless are down-and-out French. A group of immigrants continues to live farther up the canal beneath what people in the area have dubbed “the bridge of the Afghans.” The government says that a third of the country’s homeless hold jobs.

The homeless who make up the bulk of the canal-side campers are thankful for the attention. “Let’s hope it makes a difference,” said Jean, a middle-aged man who said he had been living on the streets of Paris for eight years.

But staying on the street is anything but restful for those who have a warm bed waiting at home. Rain and high winds dampened the canal-side New Year’s Eve celebration. Ms. Manrot and her boyfriend, Franck Renardineau, ended up sleeping in their car.

“I sleep in one of the tents,” Mr. Legrand said, rubbing his pale, exhausted face. “But I’ve stayed at home a couple of times. We’ve got a lot going on.”

Jethro Mullen contributed reporting.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

source:
http://www.commondreams.org:80/headlines06/0102-56.htm

GE Cows to the Rescue

Young bulls were genetically engineered to be prion-free.

Genetically engineered cattle could resist mad cow disease
Updated 1/1/2007 9:39 PM ET

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

Scientists at a South Dakota biotech company have genetically engineered cattle that appear to be resistant to mad cow disease, a paper published in the Monday issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology reports.

Although similar genetic engineering had been done in mice, this is the first time it has been accomplished in cattle.

The team of scientists first genetically engineered a cell line in which the gene that produces the infectious protein that cause mad cow disease — prions — was disabled. They then used those cells to clone 12 bulls on the theory that the genetic engineering will prevent them from making the protein that, when "misfolded," causes prion diseases such as mad cow.

Those 12 bulls are now two years old and so far appear to be perfectly normal, says James Robl,. president of Hematech Inc.. in Sioux Falls, S.D., a biotech firm owned by the pharmaceutical division of Japanese brewing giant Kirin..

Although misfolded prions are not alive in the conventional sense, they can cause other proteins they come in contact with to misfold as well, creating the holes in the brain that characterize bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or spongy brain disease) in cattle and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob. disease in humans and other mammals.

When scientists took brain cells from the resistant cattle and mixed them with prions in a test tube, the cattle brain cells did not misfold. Brain cells from normal cattle did. "That's a pretty good indication that they will not be able to contract the disease, nor would they be able to pass the disease on," Robl says.

Researchers have now injected mad cow-infected brain cells into the brains of some of the resistant cattle to see whether they develop mad cow disease.

"In one and a half years we'll have an answer," because prion diseases are so slow to develop, says Jürgen Richt,. a co-author on the paper and veterinary microbiologist at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, Iowa.

The bulls appear to be developmentally and reproductively normal and should be able to breed true, creating a line of mad cow-resistant cattle, says Robl. Because they are still adolescents, they have not yet been bred, but their semen appears to be normal.

Because the animals are only two years old it's not certain if they might begin to show signs of difference as they live out their natural lifespan, which in cattle is about 15 years, says Richt.

In general the animals are no different from regular cattle, he says.

"They're more friendly than the other because they have been bottle fed and they had a lot of human interaction when they were calves. But they do seem more nervous." However that could simply be that the original bull they were cloned had a nervous disposition, he says.

Some scientists have argued that because the gene for creating prion proteins is so common in mammals and hasn't mutated, it must have some critical function that researchers don't yet know about.

Whether it's that the gene actually isn't important, or if there are redundant systems within the genome that take over when it's gone isn't known, Richt says.

At least for now the cattle are not meant for human consumption, says Robl. Instead, if they prove incapable of getting mad cow disease, they could be used to produce products important to industry, such as blood serum used in making pharmaceuticals and collagen for cosmetics. Because of concerns about mad cow disease, many companies have been scrambling to find cost-effective replacements for these, often with little success.

George Seidel, a expert on cattle reproduction technologies at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, CO, calls the research "elegant" but with mad cow disease so rare in North America, he says it's more a niche market.

"There are much easier ways to deal with mad cow than to make transgenic cattle," he says.

source:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-01-01-
genetic-cattle_x.htm?POE=TECISVA

A Forgetting of Convenience

Conveniently forgotten

Saddam committed most of his crimes when he was an ally of those who now occupy his country

By Tariq Ali

01/01/07 "The Guardian" --- It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging - most of it shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. The trial was so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch had to condemn it as a travesty. Judges were changed on Washington's orders, defence lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nuremberg was a relatively dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam Hussein's trial was the crudest and most grotesque to date.

The great thinker-president's reference to it "as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy" is as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger. The leaders of the European Union, supposedly hostile to capital punishment, were passive, as usual.
Although some Shia factions celebrated in Baghdad, the figures published by a fairly independent establishment outfit, the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, reveal that more than 80% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before it was occupied. (The ICRSS research is based on detailed house-to-house interviewing carried out during the third week of November.) Only 5% of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003; 12% felt things had improved and 9% said there was no change. Unsurprisingly, 95% felt the security situation was worse than before.

Add to this the figures supplied by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees: 1.6 million Iraqis (7% of the population) have fled the country since March 2003, and 100,000 leave every month - Christians, doctors, engineers, women. There are 1 million Iraqis in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 150,000 in Cairo. These are refugees who do not excite the sympathy of western public opinion, since the US - EU-backed - occupation is the cause. Perhaps it was these statistics, and estimates of a million Iraqi dead, that necessitated the execution of Saddam.

That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond dispute, but what is conveniently forgotten is that most of his crimes were committed when he was a staunch ally of those who are now occupying the country. It was, as he admitted in one of his trial outbursts, the approval of Washington and the poison gas supplied by what was then West Germany that gave him the confidence to douse Halabja with chemicals in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam deserved a proper trial and punishment in an independent Iraq. Not this.

The double standards applied by the west never cease to astonish. Indonesia's Suharto, who presided over a mountain of corpses, was protected by Washington. He never annoyed them as much as Saddam.

And what of those who have created the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Falluja; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad; the Kurdish prison boss who boasts that his model is Guantánamo. Will Bush and Blair ever be tried for war crimes? Doubtful. And former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar? He is currently employed as a lecturer at Georgetown University, in Washington, where the language of instruction is of course English - of which he hardly speaks a word.

Saddam's lynching might send a shiver down the spines of the Arab ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged, so can the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, the Hashemite joker in Amman and the Saudi royals - as long as those who topple them are happy to play ball with the United States.

Tariq Ali is the author of Bush in Babylon: the recolonisation of Iraq - tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

RCMP Raids on B.C. Legislature Offices (Dec. 28, 2003)

Fifth Part
RCMP Raids on B.C. Legislature Offices (Dec. 28, 2003).

Hearings. Delays. Obstruction in the Basi, Basi, Virk case.
Journalistic cover-up. The collapse of responsible journalism in Canada.


By
Robin Mathews
Dec. 29, 2006

Gary Mason, special B.C. columnist for the Globe and Mail, has written one of the silliest and - at the same time - one of the most disturbing columns a Canadian might imagine. It was published to mark the third anniversary of the December 28, 2003 "raids" by RCMP on B.C. Legislature offices. It is based upon a face to face interview with the three men, David Basi, Aneal Basi, and Bob Virk, charged, variously, with a total of 14 criminal offenses, largely related to the dirty sale of B.C. Rail by the Gordon Campbell government.

The three men and the charges against them are, you might say, the tip of the huge iceberg of suggestions, allegations, and factual revelations of corruption in the Gordon Campbell government.

The silly report by Gary Mason might be acceptable if the Globe and Mail was doing anything like reasonable coverage of the thickening corruption in B.C. government. It is not. Mason is what I call "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Globe and Mail". He manages to make the Campbell government look good in everything he writes. Or he manages to leave it out of stories in which it should figure importantly - like this one. Recently he wrote a front page story on the complexity of Gordon Campbell's policies, never once referring to (a) the unflagging policy of destroying medicare in B.C., (b) the policy of removal of safety legislation all over the province (c) the policy of privatisation and sell-out of B.C.-owned wealth-assuring operations to large private (often foreign) corporations (d) the policy to downgrade and destroy protection of all kinds for all vulnerable people in the province (e) the policy to destroy the ownership of B.C. rivers by British Columbians and to hand ownership (in fact) to large corporate foreign control and ownership. What then did Gary Mason write? Fluff.

He is not alone. In a front page story (Globe and Mail, Dec. 11 06 S1) Mark Hume wrote a laudatory piece about the miraculous transformation of Gordon Campbell under (violins are heard playing softly here) the soothing guidance of a woman. All is beautiful, Hume tells us, about Native/B.C. government relations - never uttering a word of the information to appear a little later in this column. Vaughn Palmer I call "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Vancouver Sun." Why? Let me use one "for instance".

For instance, Vaughn Palmer has written column after column on the Native land claims in B.C.and about Gordon Campbell's sudden and stunning enlightenment and humanity on the whole question of Native rights. It took B.C. Mary, a serious non-journalist Canadian who is disturbed about the corruption in B.C., to point out that the recent Tsawwassen proposed treaty uses Agricultural Land Reserve territory to pay off the Natives AFTER they have given up some key treaty rights so they may be pushed into development games with private entrepreneurs probably to lose everything they have.

"The Tsawwassens have agreed to give up their Reserve status". The land they will receive has been removed "from the Agricultural Land Reserve making it OK to pave the richest, blackest soil in B.C." "So what seemed like a long-awaited treaty settlement is really just another part of Gordon Campbell's plan to sell off B.C. Rail and everything connected to it. Why else are there 185 spin doctors in the employ of the government, at the Ministry of Finance (See Order in Council #656 dated 12 Sept. '06)? " I quote BC Mary there to show what Palmer, Hume, Mason and the rest of the servants of the Private Corporate Press and Media fail, almost doggedly, almost devotedly to report.

B.C. Mary (not Vaughn Palmer! Not Mark Hume! Not Gary Mason!) revealed Campbell can attack the ALR preserves (and is doing so), destroy them, take in the Native peoples, rub out their historic defenses, and turn over land he has intended for Private Corporations to those Corporations under the guise of following a just and progressive policy.

Column after column from the major news journalists on Native Land Claims, and not a word of what B.C. Mary revealed. Two very simple questions offer themselves. If Gordon Campbell is doing his utmost to sell out every asset belonging to the British Columbia people and is doing so with secrecy, deceit, false advertising, and barbarous legislation, why would he work sincerely and humanely for the Native people? If he is permitting (and in fact earlier constructing) a ministry of Children and Families involved in the needless deaths of Native children, why would he be working for the future good of the Native people in B.C.? Are the journalists of the private corporate press really so stupid they don't look into real Native policy? Into the real designs of Gordon Campbell? Surely not. Then we must conclude their nonsense writing about Native policy and Gordon Campbell's enlightened humanity arises from other motivations. What are they?

On the legislature raids, from the allegations (true or false) against the three men named and the dirty sale of B.C. Rail, the focus shines hard down on B.C. affairs so that - played out in any reasonable way - the trial should threaten the very existence of the Gordon Campbell government. Is it fair to say the private corporate press and media are "employed" in covering up any information that may point to that central fact?

On the eve (?) of the trial of the three men Gary Mason secured an intimate interview with them. The three men came together in one room with Mason. Two of them even posed for a photograph "at play" at Bob Virk's home. That's called, in the trade, a "human interest" shot.

How did Gary Mason get the interview? Why did the men agree to do it? What negotiations did the Globe and Mail have with the Defence lawyers? They must have been involved. What Globe and Mail executives were involved in any negotiations? What guarantees were given that Mason would not ask certain questions? Did the Globe and Mail consult Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell's chief of staff - the man who fired Dave Basi the day of the raid on the legislature offices? Was the Special Prosecutor, appointed by cabinet in fact, consulted? Who vetted the "story" before it was published - who read it pre-publication?

Clearly, the interview and story resulting from Gary Mason's meeting are considered important - or those events would never have happened. Who considers them important? The Defence team? The Special Prosecutor? Martyn Brown and Gordon Campbell? The purchasers of B.C. Rail? Who? Who else?

Not a word on any of that from Gary Mason.

Early in Gary Mason's story, we are told that Dave Basi "was an aide to the then-finance-minister Gary Collins [in 2003]. He [Basi] was considered the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government. Mr. Basi was also a political operative of some renown in both federal and provincial wings of the Liberal Party, highly prized for his ability to sign up large numbers of Indo-Canadian members." Bob Virk was assistant to Judith Reid, transportation minister.

We know, too, that Martyn Brown sent an early message, after the first Campbell victory, telling cabinet ministers, in fact, they were front-men only. Real power would be in the Campbell-appointed deputy ministers. I quote Charlie Smith in the Georgia Straight, 2003-12-31: "On June 25, 2001, Campbell wrote a letter to all cabinet minsters telling them that [Martyn] Brown would arrange the 'structuring and staffing' of their offices. Campbell also instructed ministers not to act like the chief executive officer of their ministries, adding that this role should be performed by their deputies who would be selected by the premier's office." That was the building of a despotism under the pretence of conformity to parliamentary democracy, a despotism in which all decisions of significance were to be made by one person: Gordon Campbell.

In despotisms the despot is the person responsible for government crimes and wrong-doing, for he is, in fact, the sole power-holder. Gordon Campbell, therefore, is implicated in every crime and wrong-doing of the present B.C. government. He has to be because of the structure of power he, himself, has instituted.

We know, too, because Dave Basi tells us in the interview, that Martyn Brown phoned him on December 28, 2003, and fired him. Note carefully that his apparent employer, Gary Collins, didn't fire him, the minister for whom he apparently worked. Martyn Brown fired him. And he did so by saying, "We're going to have to rescind your OIC [Order in Council] immediately".

Was he not saying, in effect, that Gordon Campbell and I hired you, and we're firing you, now? He seems to be saying, in effect, "You don't work for the minister, Gary Collins. You work for Gordon Campbell and me, and we're firing you". Was he saying more things?

We all know the questions that should come out of Gary Mason's description of Dave Basi as "the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government" and the rest quoted about him above.

What were Basi's duties? Just what did he actually do? From whom did he take instructions? To whom did he report? To Collins? To Martyn Brown? To Gordon Campbell? What relation did he have - as the most powerful ministerial assistant - to other ministers, other aides and assistants? What "political work" did he do from the ministerial offices? And who directed him in it? What role did he play in the dirty sale of B.C. Rail? How did he "sign up large numbers of Indo-Canadian members" to the Liberal Party? Who paid for the memberships? Where did the money come from? What, in short, did he do as apparent aide to "then-finance-minister Gary Collins"?

From Gary Mason, not a word, not a question. If Mason had asked the questions, we would have the answers. If he didn't ask the questions, the "interview" was a game, nonsense theatre, smoke and mirrors. And if he asked them and answers were refused, he should have told us that.

At the general time covered by the Gary Mason "story", Herb Dhaliwal is reported as saying David Basi was instrumental in his [Dhaliwal's] loss of his federal Liberal candidacy. Bill Tieleman (The Tyee Nov. 30 2006) quotes Dhaliwal directly: "I was concerned that people in Victoria were involved in meddling in my riding….I was the senior minister for B.C. who was working closely with the premier, and they had their own political staff trying to undermine me. I find that incredible."

Notice: "they had their own political staff involved in meddling in my riding." That would be Dave Basi among others, would it not? Who were the others? Is it not obvious that Gordon Campbell would have to have been closely linked to such activity (as the employer of Dave Basi)? To what other dubious activities was and is Campbell directly or closely linked?

There was, indeed, so much open talk and reporting of fraudulent bulk Party membership gathering that some of us acted. Nineteen others and I wrote a joint letter to the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, and his office asking for an investigation of improper Party membership gathering practices in B.C. (Remember - see Fourth Part - Judy Tyabi Wilson reports that Gordon Campbell himself (earlier) allegedly floated to the leadership of the Provincial Liberal Party on what were alleged to be untraceable bulk Party membership votes.)

The Chief Electoral Officer - I believe - stalled and obstructed our request. He or his office wrote to say investigation is not in his hands. (Is he, or is he not, Chief Electoral Officer?) He referred us to another office and suggested we make our request there. Since the office was in the same building and part of the same operation, I wrote and said, in effect, "carry our material across the hall to them". Since the Chief Electoral Officer could hardly refuse to do so without looking like someone clearly attempting to obstruct, that was done.
The officer in charge of investigations refused to investigate and wrote - as I remember it - that if WE would get evidence of wrong-doing, he might act.

You could believe from that information that the Chief Electoral Officer and his offices cover for the dubious behaviour of the Liberal Party. But pause. They are not so exclusive. Remember when Peter MacKay broke his written promise to David Orchard not to integrate the Progressive Conservative Party into Stephen Harper's reactionary formation. Remember that MacKay then integrated with Harper, and the new force decided to call itself the Conservative Party. There were good grounds to fight both the integration and the choice of name - before the Chief Electoral Officer and before the courts - if the opponents moved fast.

But Harper, MacKay, and the Chief Electoral Officer moved faster. The Chief Electoral Officer extraordinarily opened his office on a Sunday and granted the Harper forces the status they wanted when the courts, of course, were not open to challenge the procedure, and most of the opponents probably didn't even know the Sunday meeting was being held.

Now, Jean-Pierre Kingsley has announced his resignation as Chief Electoral Officer after "a dustup with the federal Conservative party over political financing rules …whether the party broke the law by failing to disclose more than $500,000.00 worth of political donations." (Vanc. Sun, Dec 29, 06 A4) Jean-Pierre Kingsley seems to have won that round. Is he being forced out by Stephen Harper because he did so and wouldn't okay wrong-doing? We can only hope so. If that is so, we might be convinced that even Jean-Pierre Kingsley has limits beyond which he won't go.

Strangely, none of that kind of information is even hinted at in the Gary Mason "story" called "There is nothing to these charges". And, indeed, no investigation has been conducted (as far as we can know), and certainly no charges have arisen from fraudulent bulk Party membership gathering which appears to have been an intense, illicit operation conducted in the surround of the Gordon Campbell cabinet and related circles at the time.

There is not much reason to write about the seemingly staged chatter presented by Gary Mason in the "interview". But a few things may be said. David Basi protests about the charge against him (later dropped) and the media fuss made over the tenant in his rented house being charged with running a marijuana grow-op there. Basi says: "How many landlords ever got charged for grow-ops in rental homes?" Very few, we can easily reply. But reasonable Canadians may ask how many landlords of grow-op rental homes can claim to be "the most powerful ministerial assistant in the B.C. government", hired by the premier himself, and active in political candidacies both legitimately and, allegedly, otherwise?

Reasonable Canadians might say: "If you have such a publicly important and responsible job, you don't let marijuana growers rent your revenue house, do you? And if you do, should you be surprised that the situation causes a storm?" Dave Basi seems to think so, perhaps showing a dangerous kind of naivete about his actions and actions occurring around him.

Clearly Gary Mason was on an inside track when he conducted the "interview" and wrote the "story". He knows just what to include and what to leave out. Mostly. I call him in these columns "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Globe and Mail". He continues to suit the description. He slips a little, however, in his text. In his third anniversary story, before the January 15, 2007 hearing before Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett, Mason tells us that the trial of the three men "is expected to begin next Spring". Obviously, Mason has consulted - with whom?

With Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett? She is the only person who can rule on the trial date. Or perhaps there were negotiations among the Globe and Mail, the accused, the Defence lawyers, the Special Prosecutor, Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell - and who knows what others? Could it have been the Defence Counsel, or the Special Prosecutor, or even Gordon Campbell who said there will be no trial until next Spring?

We have to face painful facts about the trial. To begin, the disclosure of evidence, it is argued, was obstructed by the RCMP and by the Department of Justice. The Special Prosecutor, appointed by the Attorney General with whom he had once been in partnership, appears to have done very little to produce evidence for the Defence in a clear, timely, and efficacious fashion. The Associate Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court, Patrick Dohm - who interested himself in the proceedings, and the trial judge, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett, did not act quickly, surely, and insistently to make sure (over two years following the laying of charges) that all processes moved swiftly and with efficiency. The Associate Chief Justice, in addition, has put in place a set of protocols governing the release of public information concerning criminal trials which is an insult to democratic society.

Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett acts - in relation to this trial - as far as this observer is concerned, not as if she is presiding at events that bring into question the legitimacy of the whole Gordon Campbell government, but rather as if she is dealing with a rather annoying case involving break and entry to a street-corner pizza parlour.

Let it not be forgotten that the former Appeals Court judge who dropped into Gordon Campbell's cabinet in a move that violates the prudent and necessary separation of the courts and political power has taken on the mantle of Attorney General of the province. As such, Wally Oppal recently made irresponsible remarks which, plainly, served (whatever his intentions) to call into question the legitimacy of the Basi, Basi, Virk trial.

Altogether too much about this case reveals activity and behaviour that many reasonable and prudent Canadians would not in any way condone.

One item of Gary Mason's information - as I have pointed out - is the casual announcement that the trial date of the three men is now "expected" to be Spring of 2007. Each delay, of course, brings closer the date upon which the Defence can claim that the accused have suffered so much by delay the judge must declare a mistrial and release them from all charges. For that reason Madam Justice Bennett must declare that the trial will go ahead very soon because it relates to the very fundamental basis of governmental behaviour in a free society and because it is a trial of deep concern to every British Columbian. Other commitments, other plans must be put aside by all parties concerned, and the trial must be undertaken before the end of January. If Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett does not insist on such a procedure, Canadians may assume that law, justice, and the proper conduct of public officers are, for her, a silly, old-fashioned joke.

The last small insight in Gary Mason's "interview" comes from Dave Basi's conversation about Eric Bornmann, "the Crown's star witness, against the word of the two Basis and Mr. Virk. Mr. Bornmann has told police he paid Mr. Basi money for confidential information related to the sale of B.C. Rail. One of Mr.Bornmann's clients, OmniTRAX, was a bidder for the rail line."

No one at OmniTRAX, not Mr. Bornmann, nor lobbyist Brian Kieran - the last involved with giving Basi and Virk "benefits" - is charged with anything. That point has been made before and may, usefully, be pointed out again.

But what is also interesting is Dave Basi's and Bob Virk's familiarity with the characters involved. Basi refers to Bornmann as "Erik", and to Kieran as "Brian". Indeed, Erik Bornmann sent an effusive card and "the largest bouquet of flowers Amy Virk had ever seen" when her daughter Aleena was born. That, according to Virk, happened well after Bornmann had alleged to police the information which makes him "the Crown's star witness" against Basi and Virk.

Gary Mason probed none of that. Nor did he ask what other people might be implicated in the kinds of criminal actions about which the three men claim absolute innocence.

The foolish, silly, smoke-and-mirrors "interview" by Gary Mason is another indication of the collapse of responsible journalism in Canada. It, however, opens two questions. First: how much is the so-called trial of the three men charged (altogether) with something like 14 criminal offenses a sham, a farce, a smoke and mirrors performance, a piece of ugly and ridiculous theatre never intended to have an end but to be, somehow, aborted? Secondly, Mason's interview opens another question - opens it widely without, apparently, Mason even intending it to do so. Who, from Gordon Campbell himself down through government and associated ranks outside, should be facing criminal charges arising out of the particular corruption related to the dirty sale of B.C. Rail, to dirty party membership gathering, and to general and widespread B.C. government corruption elsewhere?

Those are not questions Gary Mason poses, or even intends, it seems. But they are the questions that just won't go away no matter how much he and his private corporate journalist associates try to paint Campbell and the Campbell government in rosy colours - to, it seems, cover for their every dirty deed. The questions that Gary Mason and his private corporate press and media associates absolutely refuse to ask are the ones that, fairly answered, would very likely bring the Campbell government crashing down.
------
Robin Mathews can be contacted at:
rmathews@sfu.ca

The Other Proxy War

US proxy war in Somalia reckless

Salim Lone

30/12/2006 12:00 AM (UAE)

Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has succeeded in opening another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full US backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which until three days ago, controlled almost the entire south of the country.

As with Iraq in 2003, the US has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles across from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. US General John P. Abizaid, the current Iraq war military chief, was in Ethiopia this month, and Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.

The US instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of the world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if the US succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts. An insurgency by Somalis, millions of who live in Kenya and Ethiopia, would surely ensue, and create and attract thousands of new anti-US militants and terrorists.

With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. Even Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, who last Sunday condemned the "ignorant" policy on Iraq that made Muslims believe that there was a crusade against them, did not refer to this new war, even though it will exacerbate the divisions he highlighted.

The United Nations Security Council, however, did take up the issue. In another craven act that will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, it bowed to US and UK pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional "government" that is fighting the Islamic Courts. This government was created outside Somalia by US allies and, until two days ago, only controlled the small town of Baidoa. What gives the UN the right to intervene on behalf of one of the parties struggling for political supremacy?

The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to achieve "peace and stability" in Somalia. But all major international news organizations have reported that the country finally experienced this year its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of marauding warlords who drove out UN peace keepers by killing 18 American soldiers in 1993.

Since then, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peace keepers there, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary - because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability.

Rallying people

Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by establishing law and order through the application of Sharia law, which Somalis universally practice.

The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. This government is entirely unviable, having been organized in Kenya by US regional allies; it is so completely devoid of internal support that it turned to Somalia's archenemy, Ethiopia, for assistance in holding on even to Baidoa.

The United States opposes the Islamic Courts, saying they support terrorism, but the only "proof" of this inclination is a misinformation campaign that included a forged letter, along the lines of the one that detailed Iraq's attempt to buy yellow cake [uranium] from Niger, that predicted imminent suicide bombings and assassinations by Courts' followers in Kenya and Ethiopia.

There are some UIC members who have a terror history, but their collective pool of terror acts is dwarfed by the terrorism of the warlords the US has been supporting in a blatant violation of a UN arms embargo on Somalia.

If this war continues, it will affect the whole region and also do serious harm to US interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa. Ethiopia is at even greater risk as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by large internal revolts. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports that it now seeks in Somalia.

The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of US and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace.

-Global Viewpoint. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.



Salim Lone, former spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq in 2003, is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya.

source:
http://www.gulfnews.com/
opinion/columns/region/10093046.html

Bum's Rush to the Gallows

Hanging Saddam

By Mike Whitney

December 29, 2006


“There’s no way to describe the loss we’ve experienced with this war and occupation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of the Americans in their tanks, fear of the police patrols in the black bandanas, fear of the Iraqi soldiers wearing their black masks at the checkpoints.” Riverbend; blogs from Baghdad


12/29/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The execution of Saddam Hussein is another grim chapter in the catalogue of war crimes perpetrated against the Iraqi people. It is a gratuitous act of barbarism devoid of justice.

What right does Bush have to kill Saddam? What right does the author of Abu Ghraib, Falluja, Haditha and countless other atrocities have to pass judgment on the former leader of a nation which posed no threat to the United States?

Let’s be clear, the lowliest, most ruthless Iraqi has more right to rule Iraq than the most upright American. That’s what’s meant by “self determination”. When we honor “self rule” we avoid bloody interventions like the invasion of Iraq.

Bush believes that killing Saddam will achieve the “closure” which has eluded him through 4 years of occupation. But he is mistaken. Saddam’s death will only eliminate any opportunity for a political solution. Reconciliation will be impossible and Saddam will die as a hero.

Is that what Bush wants?

Or does Bush really know what he wants? Perhaps, he is just a war-mongering psychopath completely disconnected from reality.

Capital punishment is a moral evil. The state never has the right to kill its own people regardless of their crimes; Saddam is no exception. But the premeditated murder of Saddam is particularly appalling, because it is stupid as well as unjust. It cuts off dialogue with the very people (the Ba’athist-led resistance) who need to be entered into the political process to achieve normalization. Bush is destroying his last chance for a negotiated settlement and paving the way for America’s total defeat.

It’s complete madness.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, told the Times Online that “the deposed president could be hanged ‘within hours’” and that his death sentence would be executed by Saturday at the latest.

Munir Haddad, the presiding judge on the appeals court, said, “All the measures have been done. There is no reason for delays.”

Plans are already underway to film the entire event.

It’s impossible to imagine a more fitting summary of 6 years of Bush rule than video-footage of Saddam’s limp figure dangling at the end of a rope. The pictures will no doubt replace the iconic photos of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner who appeared in headlines across the world.

The United States will pay a heavy price for Bush’s savagery. The war is already going badly and this latest travesty will only quicken America’s inevitable withdrawal.

America has become a moral swamp, its leaders incapable of wisdom or mercy. Hanging Saddam only adds to our mutual disgrace and exposes the real face of American justice.

One Day Closer to Race War in America

No red carpet: Texas town takes serious steps against illegal aliens

November 13, 2006 | AP




FARMERS BRANCH - This Dallas suburb could become the first city in Texas to adopt a sweeping ordinance intended to keep out illegal immigrants, a cause for concern among its large minority population.

More than 50 municipalities nationwide have considered, passed or rejected laws banning landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants, penalizing businesses that employ undocumented workers and making English the local official language.

But until now, that trend hasn't been matched in the Lone Star State.

"This is the first town in Texas that had the guts to do what's right," Susie Hart, who grew up in Farmers Branch, said during a recent demonstration outside City Hall. "The education system is tanking, health care has gone through the roof, everybody is bilingual."

Such sentiments and the proposed ordinance trouble many people in Texas, where many Latino families can trace their roots here to the era before statehood. "This is not just a Farmers Branch problem," Elizabeth Villafranca said of the proposal.

Villafranca, whose family owns a Mexican restaurant in Farmers Branch, said she worries that such laws will spread to other cities if the city council approves the proposal. The measure is expected to be submitted to the council on Monday, but there was no indication when it might be put to a vote.

Since 1970, Farmers Branch has changed from a small, predominantly white bedroom community with a declining population to a city of almost 28,000 people, about 37 percent of them Hispanic, according to the census.

It also is home to more than 80 corporate headquarters and more than 2,600 small and mid-size firms, many of them minority-owned.

The local debate over illegal immigration began in August and spawned demonstrations by both sides of the issue. Council members adopted a resolution criticizing the federal government for not aggressively addressing the issue.

A councilman has given city attorneys drafts of an ordinance that would make English the city's official language and proposals to fine companies and landlords who do business with illegal immigrants.

The Farmer's Branch proposal follows a vote this year in Hazleton, Pa., to fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants, deny business permits to companies that employ them and require tenants to register and pay for a rental permit. However, a federal judge temporarily blocked enforcement of the Hazleton ordinance while he considers a lawsuit against the town by the
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.

More than a dozen other Pennsylvania cities have taken up similar ordinances, as have several others in the South and a handful in California.

Many of the towns and counties have based their ordinances on a model provided by the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which favors limits on immigration and is affiliated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

"They've all expressed a great deal of frustration with the failure of the federal government to respond" to illegal immigration, said Mike Hethmon, the institute's general counsel.

Critics fear the spread of anti-illegal immigration rules will lead to sanctioned discrimination and racism.

"It's basically saying those people are illegal in their very nature; it is all right to be against them because they are lawbreakers. Many people are assuming that all immigrants are lawbreakers, and that people who are different, who speak a different language, are to be shunned," said Cesar Perales, president and general counsel of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and
Education Fund.



source:
http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/111306/sta_111306050.shtml ^

Ethiopia says forced into war

Ethiopia says forced into war with Somali Islamists
By Hassan Yare

BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Sunday he was waging war against Somalia's Islamists to protect his country's sovereignty, intensifying a conflict that threatens to engulf the Horn of Africa.

It was Ethiopia's first public admission of military involvement in Somalia, where for the first time it sent warplanes on Sunday to pound the Islamist fighters now encircling the weak interim government.

Ethiopian officials have said the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC), which now controls most of Somalia except for the government-held town of Baidoa, is a terrorist group backed by Ethiopia's enemy, Eritrea.

"Ethiopian defence forces were forced to enter into war to the protect the sovereignty of the nation and to blunt repeated attacks by Islamic courts terrorists and anti-Ethiopian elements they are supporting," Meles said in a televised address.

"Our defence forces will leave as soon as they end their mission."

Despite the military campaign, Meles said Ethiopia supported talks between the two sides to set up a joint administration.

RIVAL CLAIMS

Earlier, Ethiopian Information Minister Berhan Hailu said the operation had targeted several sections of the battle front including Dinsoor, Bandiradley and Baladwayne and the town of Buur Hakaba, close to Baidoa. Fighting on the front has now raged for six days.

Somalia's ambassador to Ethiopia, Abdikarin Farah, said government forces had killed 500 Islamist troops, most of them Eritreans, in two days of heavy fighting, but there was no independent confirmation of the death toll.

Farah said the Islamists had killed 10 government soldiers and wounded 13. He said the government had taken 280 prisoners, including Pakistanis, Afghans and Sudanese.

The Islamists, armed with machine-guns and mortars, say they have killed hundreds of pro-government troops, but aid agencies put the total number of dead at dozens.

The Islamists claim broad popular support and say their main aim is to restore order to Somalia after years of warlord rule and anarchy.

They said Ethiopia, which has also sent tanks towards the front in the last few days, had used MiG fighters and helicopters against their forces. Somali witnesses reported that the aircraft had been firing missiles.

Ali Dahir Horow, a resident of Baladwayne, 190 miles (300 km) north of Mogadishu, said one airstrike killed two people.

"People started fleeing once the planes fired at the town," he said, adding that most of the missiles nearby hit Ceel Jaale, which many people escaped to after last month's heavy flooding.

Diplomats fear the war will not only suck in Ethiopia and Eritrea but also attract foreign jihadists answering the Islamists' call for a holy war against Christian-led Ethiopia.

"There is a risk that the civil conflict in Somalia will develop into a regional war. And that could make an already serious situation even more serious," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told Sweden's national news agency.

"The task now is very much to prevent a military escalation," he said.

DISASTER FOR FLOOD VICTIMS

U.N. aid agencies said the conflict would have disastrous consequences for efforts to supply food and aid to 1.4 million people suffering from the floods.

The European Union condemned the bombardments and exchanges of artillery fire, and urged both sides to return to talks.

But the war against old foe Ethiopia has roused the support of many Somalis.

In the Islamist-controlled port city of Kismayu, women and children waved goodbye to 1,000 men who had volunteered for the frontline. Dressed in ragged fatigues, the men sped off in camouflage trucks to the chants of "Victory is ours".

Further north in Mogadishu, women and children gathered in a market to badger men walking along the streets to join the war.

"They told me to wear their clothes if I will not go to war," said Abdi Rashid. "They said I'm not a man, because all men are on the frontline, so I should wear women's clothes."

The SICC captured Mogadishu and a swathe of south Somalia in June, frustrating the Western-backed government's aim of restoring central rule for the first time in 15 years.

Somalia analyst Matt Bryden said he did not expect either side to win the war decisively.

"The Ethiopians are trying to hit the Islamists hard enough that they will come to the negotiation table," he told Reuters. "But they run the risk that the war will become a protracted and unwinnable conflict."

Military experts estimate Ethiopia has 15,000-20,000 troops in Somalia, while Eritrea has about 2,000 behind the Islamists.

Eritrea denies it has sent troops.

(Additional reporting by Guled Mohamed and Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu, Sahra Abdi in Kismayu, Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa; Wangui Kanina in Nairobi; Simon Johnson in Stockholm)

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/
detail/Ethiopia_says_forced_into_war_with_Somali
_Islamists.html?siteSect=143&sid=7380516&cKey=
1166995389000

Reuters (IDS)