Demonizing Jimmy Carter
by Patrick Seale
Why did Israel treat the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter so rudely during his recent visit to the Middle East? Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and senior ministers refused to meet him. The Shin Beth, Israel’s security service, refused to provide him with the protection usually given to distinguished foreign guests. Israel’s lobby in the United States vilified and insulted him, dismissing his brave peace efforts as the work of an ignorant and bumbling old man.
The most extraordinary outburst came from Israel’s United Nations ambassador, Dan Gillerman, who told journalists that Carter "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas."
How can such scandalously undiplomatic language be explained?
One would have expected Israel to be eternally grateful to Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the man, after all, who had handed Israel what was possibly the greatest single strategic prize of its history. He brokered the Israeli-Egyptian peace of 1979, which, by removing Egypt from the Arab military line-up, confirmed Israel’s military supremacy over its Arab neighbours.
The freedom of action Israel thus achieved allowed it to attack and invade Lebanon in 1982, in a bid to smash and expel Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization and draw Lebanon into Israel’s orbit.
But there is no gratitude in politics. Carter’s great gift to Israel was forgotten, wiped out -- in Israeli eyes -- by his ‘crime’ of seeking to promote an Israeli deal with Hamas, which would include a mutual ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners.
Last Friday, Israel rejected the Hamas offer of a mutual ceasefire -- conveyed through the Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman -- dismissing it as a ruse to buy time in order to regroup and rearm.
Hamas had offered to end all rocket attacks on Israel and other military operations, including arms smuggling into Gaza. In exchange, it demanded that Israel cease all assassinations, arrests and other military activity in the Gaza Strip, and ease the shipments of supplies into and out of the strip.
In a concession to Israel, the Hamas ceasefire offer was limited to Gaza alone, on the understanding that it would later be extended to the West Bank.
But Israel was not interested. It wants to destroy Hamas, not include it in any peace process. That explains its barbarous siege of Gaza, which has now been made far worse by starving the Strip of petrol and fuel oil. This has led to immobilizing virtually all vehicles, cutting off of water and electricity for long periods each day, and closing schools and universities. The absence of petrol has forced the World Food Programme and UNRWA -- the UN agency responsible for helping Palestinian refugees -- to halt the distribution of food packages on which one million inhabitants of Gaza depend for survival.
Gaza thus sinks into intolerable misery, while the world looks the other way.
There are two main reasons why Israel refuses any sort of compromise with Hamas, such as the one Carter has attempted to mediate:
First, Israel rejects any mutual ceasefire, because it would signal a form of mutual deterrence. It wants to force Hamas to stop all resistance, while retaining for itself the freedom to strike and kill at will. It has no interest in anything that might hint at a balance of power with the Palestinians, or indeed with the Arabs as a whole.
Second, Israel does not want anything that might disturb the grim farce of its ‘negotiations’ with Mahmud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority. These negotiations have gotten nowhere -- and will get nowhere -- so long as Israel continues its creeping annexation of the West Bank.
There are now close to 300,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank -- excluding the settlers in annexed East Jerusalem, who number over 150,000 and are increasing steadily. Uri Lupiansky, mayor of Jerusalem, recently said that plans for the construction of 10,000 housing units in East Jerusalem were moving forward.
By his on-going talks with Olmert, the unfortunate Mahmud Abbas is simply providing Israel with cover for its steady expansion into the West Bank. To head off any pressure from the United States, Olmert can point to his meetings with Abu Mazen.
Any involvement of Hamas would take the ‘peace process’ to a different level of seriousness -- something Israel is determined to avoid.
Little wonder, therefore, that the gentle, peace-loving Jimmy Carter is seen by Israel as an enemy, not a friend.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.
Copyright © 2008 Patrick Seale
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Grin and Bear It: Bear Stearns and Your Money
Bear Stearns Buy-Out... 100% Fraud
by John Olagues
This article is about how Bear Stearns stock was artificially collapsed so that illegal insider traders would make billions and J.P. Morgan would be paid $55 billion of US tax payer money to shore up themselves and buy Bear Stearns at bankruptcy prices.
Massive buying of puts and shorting stock in Bear Stearns
On March 10, 2008, the closing price of Bear Stearns was 70. The stock had traded at 70 eight weeks earlier. On or prior to March 10, 2008 requests were made to the
options exchanges to open new April series of puts with exercise prices of 20, and 22.5, and a new March series with an exercise price of 25.
Their requests were accommodated and new series were opened for trading March 11, 2008.
Since there was very little subsequent trading in the calls with exercise prices of 20, 22.5 or 25, it is certain that the requests were made with the intentions of buying substantial amounts of the puts.
There was, in fact, massive volumes of puts purchased in those series which opened on March 11, 2008. For example: between March 11-14 inclusive, there were 20,000 contracts traded in the April 20s, 3700 contracts traded in the April 22.5s, and 8000 contracts traded in the April 25s. In the March 25s, there were 79,000 contracts traded between March 11-14, 2008.
Question: Why did the options exchanges not open the far out of the money puts for trading the first time that Bear Stearns stock hit 70, when the April and March options had far more time to expiration? Certainly if the requesters were legitimate hedgers or speculators, their buying the March and April puts with 2 and 3 months to expiration was more reasonable.
Answer: The insiders were not ready to collapse the stock and did not request the exchanges to open the new series when Bear Stearns first hit 70...
Second Request and Accommodation
On or prior to March 13, 2008, an additional request was made of the options exchanges to open more March and April put series with very low exercise prices.
These new March put options would have just five days of trading to expiration. The exchanges accommodated their requests, knowing that the intentions of the requesters were to buy puts. They indeed bought massive amounts of puts. For example the March 20 puts traded nearly 50,000 contracts (i.e. contracts to sell 5 million shares at 20). The March 15s traded 9600, the March 10s traded 13,000 and the March 5s traded 6300 all on March 14 (the first day of trading of the new March series).
The introduction of those far-out-of-the-money put series in the April and March months immediately before the crash provided a vehicle whereby extreme leverage was available to the insiders. In other words if an insider had $100,000 and he knew that Morgan would buy Bear Stearns at 2, he could make 5-10 times more on the $100,000 by buying the newly introduced March puts. This is so because the soon to expire far out-of-the-money puts were far cheaper than the July or October out-of-the-money puts. And that is why the illegal inside traders requested the exchanges to introduce
the far out-of-the-moneys just days before the crash.
But this scenario has serious implications. This means that the deal was already arranged on March 10 or before. That contradicts the scenario that is promoted by SEC
Chairman Cox, Fed Boss Bernanke, Bear CEO Schwartz, Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan (who sits on the board of directors for the New York Federal Reserve Bank) and others that false rumors undermined the confidence in Bear Stearns making the company crash, notwithstanding their adequate liquidity days before.
I would say that the deal was arranged months before but the final terms and times were not determined until maybe March 7-8, 2008.
On March 14, 2008, the April 17.5s, the 15s, the 12.5s and the 10s traded 15,000 contracts combined. Each put gives the right to sell 100 shares. So for example,
these 15,000 April puts gave the purchaser(s) the right to sell 1.5 million shares at prices between 10 and 17.5. Those purchasers expected to make profits on 1.5 million shares because they knew the deal was coming at $2.00.
That is the only plausible explanation for anyone to buy puts with five days of life remaining with strike prices far below the market price.
So there were requests, during the period of March 10-13, to the exchanges to open the March and April series for buying massive amounts of extremely out-of-the-money puts, which were accommodated by the options exchanges. Did the Exchanges aid and abet the insider trading scheme?
We do not [feel] able to have a strong opinion on that idea.
Media statements of adequate liquidity.
However, Reuters, on March 10, 2008 was citing Bear Stearns sources that there was no liquidity crisis and that there was no truth to the speculation of liquidity problems.
And none other than the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 11, 2008 was stating that "we have a good deal of comfort with the capital cushion that these firms have".
We even had the "mad" Jim Cramer proclaiming on March 11, 2008 that all is well with Bear Stearns and that the viewers should hold on to their Bear Stearns.
And on March 12, 2008, Alan Schwartz CEO of Bear Stearns was telling David Faber of CNBC that there was no problem with liquidity and that "We don't see any pressure on our liquidity, let alone a liquidity crisis".
The fact that the requests were made on March 10 or earlier that those new series be opened and those requests were accommodated together with the subsequent massive open positions in those newly opened series is conclusive proof that there were some who knew about the collapse in advance, while Reuters, Cox, Schwartz and Cramer were telling the public that there was no liquidity problem.
This was no case of a sudden development on the 13 or 14th, where things changed dramatically making it such that they needed a bail-out immediately.
The collapse was anticipated and prepared for, even while the CEO of Bear Stearns and the SEC Chairman of the SEC were making claims of stability.
What was the reason that Cramer, Cox and Schwartz were all promoting Bear Stearns immediately before its collapse. That will be speculated upon for years to come.
Cramer has admitted that "truth" was not his friend and that he manipulated stocks to influence investors behavior. Was this one of his acts? But no apologies from Cramer as he claims now that he was referring to keeping money in Bear Stearns Bank not in Bear Stearn stock.
Proof of Insider Trading:
To prove the case of illegal insider trading, all the Feds have to do is ask a few questions of the persons who bought puts on Bear Stearns or shorted stock during the week before March 17, 2008 and before. All the records are easily available. If they bought puts or shorted stock, just ask them why. What information did they have access to which the CEO and the SEC did not have? Where did they get the info?
Why aren't Cramer and Cox, Dimon, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Faber and Schwartz subject to a bit of prosecutorial pressure to get to the bottom of this. Maybe the buyers of puts and short sellers of stock just didn't believe Reuters, Cox, Schwartz, Cramer and Faber and went massively short anyway, buying puts that required a 70% drop in a week. Maybe they had better information than Schwartz or Cox. If they did, then that's a felony, with the profits made subject to forfeiture.
April 4, 2008 Congressional Hearings on the Bear Stearns Bail-out.
I watched both sessions and drew the following conclusions:
In the first session there were the following witnesses: Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board, Cox from the SEC, Geithner representing the New York Reserve Bank and an incidental player Mr. Steel from the Treasury.
The only Senators that seem to be willing to attack these bankers were Bunning, Tester, Menedez and Reed. All the rest were useless and very respectful.
Absurdities
All witnesses did their best to keep their stories consistent but they did slip up a bit. They all agree that the bail-out was necessary without any proof that it was.
They all agreed that what caused the cash liquidity to dry up within one day was the rumor mongers. Apparently it is claimed that some people have the ability to start false rumors about Bear Stearns's and other banks liquidity, which then starts a "run on the bank". These rumor mongers allegedly were able to influence companies like Goldman Sachs to terminate doing business with Bear Stearns, notwithstanding that Goldman et al.
believed that Bear Stearns balance sheet was in good shape. (Goldman between March 11-14 warned their average customers that Bear Stearns stock was "hard to borrow" for shorting due to the fact that other customers had used up all of the stock available for borrowing for short sales).
That idea that rumors caused a "run on the bank" at Bear Stearns is 100% ridiculous. Perhaps that's the reason why every witness were so guarded and hesitant and looked so strained in answering questions.
Loans to J.P. Morgan total $55 billion from FED The Private New York FED lent $25 billion to Bear Stearns (described as the primary facility by James Dimon) and another $30 billion to J.P. Morgan (described as the secondary facility by James Dimon). So the bail-out cost was $55 billion not the $30 billion that is promoted. This was revealed at the second session of the Senate hearings in a James Dimon response to a question from Senator Reed.
Who gets the $55 billion? J.P. Morgan received the money on a loan pledging Bear Stearns assets valued at $55 billion. $29 billion is non-recourse to Morgan. Effectively the FED received collateral appraised by Bear Stearns at $55 billion for a loan to J.P. Morgan of $55 billion. That's a loan to value of 100%.
If the value of the secondary facility of $30 billion ($29 billion of which is non recourse) is worth only $15 billion when all is said and done, then J.P. Morgan
has to pay back only $1 billion of the $30 billion received and keeps the $14 billion the the Fed loses. If the $25 billion primary facility is worth only $15 billion when all is said and done, J.P. Morgan has to pay $10 billion of the $25 billion received. If J.P Morgan can not pay, then the Fed loses the $10 billion.
If after all is said and done, the $25 billion primary assets or the $30 billion secondary assets are sold for more that $25 billion or the $30 billion respectively, the difference goes to J.P. No matter how you cut it, J.P. Morgan wins.
If the $55 billion assets turn out to be worth only $20 billion when all is said and done, J.P. Morgan owes $1 billion on the $30 billion and the difference between $25 billion and the value received on the primary facility.
The best the FED can do is get their money back with interest and the worse they can do is lose about $25 -$40 billion. The FED would have been far better to just buy the
assets at Bear's and J.P.Morgan's valuation.
The question arises:
Why didn't the FED just make the $55 billiom loan to Bear Stearns directly? The FED received Bear Stearns assets valued by Bear Stearns as its only collateral for the 100% loan. I am sure that Bear Stearns would have guaranteed the full $55 billion and would have advanced more collateral and accepted a 90% loan to value. Everything would have been just fine for Bear Stearns and the FED would have had a better deal. But the Bear Stearns stock would have gone up and all short stock sellers and all put buyers would have massive losses instead of massive gains.
The bail-out is a great deal for J.P. Morgan, the illegal insider short sellers got a great deal. Bear Stearns stock holders and employees got a very bad deal and the sellers of puts sustained large losses.
This shows, in my view, that J.P. Morgan and the FED were in collusion with the short sellers and put buyers.
John Olagues
source
User Comments
Add Comment
Bill Brown
4-17-2008 at 3:20pm
"FED" up
Past time to get rid of the Federal Reserve, I think that company has stolen enough from the US citizens and so have our politicians. Sign me up for the revolution.
John Golowenski
4-17-2008 at 3:58pm
It was a play as described in the book "The Creature from Jekyll Island." JP Morgan along with several other large banker criminals hatched the scheme to defraud Americans of their money (and Constitutional Rights).
We need a Revolution as Bill says.
Daddio
4-17-2008 at 4:15pm
What are we waiting for
Seriously....why are these crooks being made to cough up the profits of these contracts? Yah, sign me up for the revolution also.
George Stafford
4-17-2008 at 4:23pm
Bear Stearns was raped, annihilated, thrown to the dogs, all in a tawdry, illegal scheme to benefit the chosen few criminals. It's not too late to open this Pandora's box and get full exposure. 48 hours after the Fed refused to inject funds claiming BSC was not a bank, they lent funds to Lehman and Morgan Stanley! This whole deal should be dissolved; put BSC either back on the map or find a sovereign wealth fund for capital infusion. Then prosecute the financial criminals, aided and abetted by Paulson. It's not too late
phil
4-17-2008 at 4:59pm
Real Reason
You tiptoe around it, but the real reason, was because the system was at risk of total meltdown. Not so much from Bear Stearns, although they may have been the fuse. The single largest player, holding most of the total derivative toxic waste, is JP Morgan. They were the one's at risk, if the derivative daisy chain started to unravel. That is why they got the sweetheart deal and used the transaction to provide tax payer funds to bail them out, under the guise of rescuing Bear Stearns!
Sam Mathid
4-17-2008 at 6:14pm
Interesting that the New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer who had a history of investigating and prosecuting corporate malfeasance at the highest levels was sand-bagged (by the FBI!) and forced to resign on 12th March.
It would have been very uncomfortable having him around during such shenanigans. Questions might have been asked, make that WOULD have been asked. What sort of a country have we become?
deanfv
4-17-2008 at 8:35pm
Write your congressman
Get on the fucking phone and complain to your elected officials. Otherwise, you cannot bitch and you know in the end you will be the LOSER. GET ON THE PHONE NOW!!!
Fred S.
4-20-2008 at 7:21pm
One important part of this analysis that is missing is who worte those way out of the money BSC puts?
unless their put exposure was hedged (eg. by shorted BSC shares), they would have taken a huge loss.
doesn't add up to me and while I agree that there is widespread fraud being conducted on an unprecedented scale re: ratings, level III assets, naked shorting, etc., I do think the financial system is cratering and on the verge of complete & utter collapse. the day of reckoning is coming sooner than many think.
John Olagues
4-20-2008 at 9:52pm
In responce to Fred
The sellers (writers) were generally traders who thought that the probability was near zero of the stock dropping that much that fast. The sales of some out of the moneys could have been hedged somewhat.
But given that the stock was hard to borrow, firms were not allowing short sales of the stock on the 12-14 of March .
You are correct that the sellers lost large amounts.
John
13thgeneration
4-23-2008 at 10:18am
protest 4/25
In case anyone can attend, there will be a protest outside Bear Stearns HQ this Friday. If not, please consider supporting through a donation towards travel expenses for some far-away atendees.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/2008/04/protest-coming-up-in-nyc-april-25th.html
Frederick
4-23-2008 at 10:50am
Our markets are now far too manipulated, and as such, I have taken all my money out of the stock market. This is not a market timing attempt. I don't care if it goes higher without me. Go ahead and PPT it 'til the cows come home...I don't care. I'm still not buying stocks. I'll clip coupons on treasuries while our unelected officials play chemistry set with all their new toys.
Jonezing
4-23-2008 at 12:36pm
You're missing one key element
You say that the market makers opened way OTM strikes on BSC puts. Fair enough. But do you think that the Options Market Makers were going to just take the other side of those trades without offsetting their own risk?
No. Because they are Options Market Makers (OMMs) they have an exemption and are able to short stock without finding a borrow (not that the SEC seems to care if anyone does). Point is that the OMMs could short stock as their exposure to the puts increased, thus, as the puts (which they sold) increased in value, the OMMs simply shorted stock -- stock that may not have even existed (called phantom shares or FTDs or what have you) -- through their OMM exemption.
The cycle was self-fulfilling. As the stock fell and put those puts into the money, the OMMs had no choice but to use their exemptions to force new shares on the market using their exemptions. Then they fixed the sale price at $2 a share, and everyone got to cover in the money at a fixed (non-market) price.
One of the greatest financial scams ever - if anyone every cares to write about it.
Maria Marsala
4-23-2008 at 5:06pm
just wonder...
I wonder if whole thing occured and is part of the Fed and Banks to get rid of brokerage firms in general? Or at least primary gov't bond brokerage firms?
GK
4-24-2008 at 9:52am
U forgot Blackstone-Blackrock's involvement
The Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm tied to foreign policy influence lobbying groups such as Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft Advisors, and the Madeline Albright Group, had an affiliated spinoff company, BlackRock, a Caymans Island foreign bank associate, evaluate the “fairness” to shareholders of the JP Morgan Acquisition of Bear Stearns. ...The lead negotiator of the deal, the President of the NY Fed, Geithner, is a former employee of Kissinger Associates, a Saudi-China lobbying firm, and was appointed to the Fed by Peter Peterson of Blackstone. He also worked for Secretary Rubin at the Clinton Treasury Department. Secretary Rubin is now an executive with Citibank a major beneficiary of the bailout.
Peter
4-24-2008 at 11:35pm
So who SOLD all the puts?
Those greedily attracted to the premium caused by skyrocketing demand?
Copyright 2002-2008 Truth in Options
by John Olagues
This article is about how Bear Stearns stock was artificially collapsed so that illegal insider traders would make billions and J.P. Morgan would be paid $55 billion of US tax payer money to shore up themselves and buy Bear Stearns at bankruptcy prices.
Massive buying of puts and shorting stock in Bear Stearns
On March 10, 2008, the closing price of Bear Stearns was 70. The stock had traded at 70 eight weeks earlier. On or prior to March 10, 2008 requests were made to the
options exchanges to open new April series of puts with exercise prices of 20, and 22.5, and a new March series with an exercise price of 25.
Their requests were accommodated and new series were opened for trading March 11, 2008.
Since there was very little subsequent trading in the calls with exercise prices of 20, 22.5 or 25, it is certain that the requests were made with the intentions of buying substantial amounts of the puts.
There was, in fact, massive volumes of puts purchased in those series which opened on March 11, 2008. For example: between March 11-14 inclusive, there were 20,000 contracts traded in the April 20s, 3700 contracts traded in the April 22.5s, and 8000 contracts traded in the April 25s. In the March 25s, there were 79,000 contracts traded between March 11-14, 2008.
Question: Why did the options exchanges not open the far out of the money puts for trading the first time that Bear Stearns stock hit 70, when the April and March options had far more time to expiration? Certainly if the requesters were legitimate hedgers or speculators, their buying the March and April puts with 2 and 3 months to expiration was more reasonable.
Answer: The insiders were not ready to collapse the stock and did not request the exchanges to open the new series when Bear Stearns first hit 70...
Second Request and Accommodation
On or prior to March 13, 2008, an additional request was made of the options exchanges to open more March and April put series with very low exercise prices.
These new March put options would have just five days of trading to expiration. The exchanges accommodated their requests, knowing that the intentions of the requesters were to buy puts. They indeed bought massive amounts of puts. For example the March 20 puts traded nearly 50,000 contracts (i.e. contracts to sell 5 million shares at 20). The March 15s traded 9600, the March 10s traded 13,000 and the March 5s traded 6300 all on March 14 (the first day of trading of the new March series).
The introduction of those far-out-of-the-money put series in the April and March months immediately before the crash provided a vehicle whereby extreme leverage was available to the insiders. In other words if an insider had $100,000 and he knew that Morgan would buy Bear Stearns at 2, he could make 5-10 times more on the $100,000 by buying the newly introduced March puts. This is so because the soon to expire far out-of-the-money puts were far cheaper than the July or October out-of-the-money puts. And that is why the illegal inside traders requested the exchanges to introduce
the far out-of-the-moneys just days before the crash.
But this scenario has serious implications. This means that the deal was already arranged on March 10 or before. That contradicts the scenario that is promoted by SEC
Chairman Cox, Fed Boss Bernanke, Bear CEO Schwartz, Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan (who sits on the board of directors for the New York Federal Reserve Bank) and others that false rumors undermined the confidence in Bear Stearns making the company crash, notwithstanding their adequate liquidity days before.
I would say that the deal was arranged months before but the final terms and times were not determined until maybe March 7-8, 2008.
On March 14, 2008, the April 17.5s, the 15s, the 12.5s and the 10s traded 15,000 contracts combined. Each put gives the right to sell 100 shares. So for example,
these 15,000 April puts gave the purchaser(s) the right to sell 1.5 million shares at prices between 10 and 17.5. Those purchasers expected to make profits on 1.5 million shares because they knew the deal was coming at $2.00.
That is the only plausible explanation for anyone to buy puts with five days of life remaining with strike prices far below the market price.
So there were requests, during the period of March 10-13, to the exchanges to open the March and April series for buying massive amounts of extremely out-of-the-money puts, which were accommodated by the options exchanges. Did the Exchanges aid and abet the insider trading scheme?
We do not [feel] able to have a strong opinion on that idea.
Media statements of adequate liquidity.
However, Reuters, on March 10, 2008 was citing Bear Stearns sources that there was no liquidity crisis and that there was no truth to the speculation of liquidity problems.
And none other than the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 11, 2008 was stating that "we have a good deal of comfort with the capital cushion that these firms have".
We even had the "mad" Jim Cramer proclaiming on March 11, 2008 that all is well with Bear Stearns and that the viewers should hold on to their Bear Stearns.
And on March 12, 2008, Alan Schwartz CEO of Bear Stearns was telling David Faber of CNBC that there was no problem with liquidity and that "We don't see any pressure on our liquidity, let alone a liquidity crisis".
The fact that the requests were made on March 10 or earlier that those new series be opened and those requests were accommodated together with the subsequent massive open positions in those newly opened series is conclusive proof that there were some who knew about the collapse in advance, while Reuters, Cox, Schwartz and Cramer were telling the public that there was no liquidity problem.
This was no case of a sudden development on the 13 or 14th, where things changed dramatically making it such that they needed a bail-out immediately.
The collapse was anticipated and prepared for, even while the CEO of Bear Stearns and the SEC Chairman of the SEC were making claims of stability.
What was the reason that Cramer, Cox and Schwartz were all promoting Bear Stearns immediately before its collapse. That will be speculated upon for years to come.
Cramer has admitted that "truth" was not his friend and that he manipulated stocks to influence investors behavior. Was this one of his acts? But no apologies from Cramer as he claims now that he was referring to keeping money in Bear Stearns Bank not in Bear Stearn stock.
Proof of Insider Trading:
To prove the case of illegal insider trading, all the Feds have to do is ask a few questions of the persons who bought puts on Bear Stearns or shorted stock during the week before March 17, 2008 and before. All the records are easily available. If they bought puts or shorted stock, just ask them why. What information did they have access to which the CEO and the SEC did not have? Where did they get the info?
Why aren't Cramer and Cox, Dimon, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Faber and Schwartz subject to a bit of prosecutorial pressure to get to the bottom of this. Maybe the buyers of puts and short sellers of stock just didn't believe Reuters, Cox, Schwartz, Cramer and Faber and went massively short anyway, buying puts that required a 70% drop in a week. Maybe they had better information than Schwartz or Cox. If they did, then that's a felony, with the profits made subject to forfeiture.
April 4, 2008 Congressional Hearings on the Bear Stearns Bail-out.
I watched both sessions and drew the following conclusions:
In the first session there were the following witnesses: Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board, Cox from the SEC, Geithner representing the New York Reserve Bank and an incidental player Mr. Steel from the Treasury.
The only Senators that seem to be willing to attack these bankers were Bunning, Tester, Menedez and Reed. All the rest were useless and very respectful.
Absurdities
All witnesses did their best to keep their stories consistent but they did slip up a bit. They all agree that the bail-out was necessary without any proof that it was.
They all agreed that what caused the cash liquidity to dry up within one day was the rumor mongers. Apparently it is claimed that some people have the ability to start false rumors about Bear Stearns's and other banks liquidity, which then starts a "run on the bank". These rumor mongers allegedly were able to influence companies like Goldman Sachs to terminate doing business with Bear Stearns, notwithstanding that Goldman et al.
believed that Bear Stearns balance sheet was in good shape. (Goldman between March 11-14 warned their average customers that Bear Stearns stock was "hard to borrow" for shorting due to the fact that other customers had used up all of the stock available for borrowing for short sales).
That idea that rumors caused a "run on the bank" at Bear Stearns is 100% ridiculous. Perhaps that's the reason why every witness were so guarded and hesitant and looked so strained in answering questions.
Loans to J.P. Morgan total $55 billion from FED The Private New York FED lent $25 billion to Bear Stearns (described as the primary facility by James Dimon) and another $30 billion to J.P. Morgan (described as the secondary facility by James Dimon). So the bail-out cost was $55 billion not the $30 billion that is promoted. This was revealed at the second session of the Senate hearings in a James Dimon response to a question from Senator Reed.
Who gets the $55 billion? J.P. Morgan received the money on a loan pledging Bear Stearns assets valued at $55 billion. $29 billion is non-recourse to Morgan. Effectively the FED received collateral appraised by Bear Stearns at $55 billion for a loan to J.P. Morgan of $55 billion. That's a loan to value of 100%.
If the value of the secondary facility of $30 billion ($29 billion of which is non recourse) is worth only $15 billion when all is said and done, then J.P. Morgan
has to pay back only $1 billion of the $30 billion received and keeps the $14 billion the the Fed loses. If the $25 billion primary facility is worth only $15 billion when all is said and done, J.P. Morgan has to pay $10 billion of the $25 billion received. If J.P Morgan can not pay, then the Fed loses the $10 billion.
If after all is said and done, the $25 billion primary assets or the $30 billion secondary assets are sold for more that $25 billion or the $30 billion respectively, the difference goes to J.P. No matter how you cut it, J.P. Morgan wins.
If the $55 billion assets turn out to be worth only $20 billion when all is said and done, J.P. Morgan owes $1 billion on the $30 billion and the difference between $25 billion and the value received on the primary facility.
The best the FED can do is get their money back with interest and the worse they can do is lose about $25 -$40 billion. The FED would have been far better to just buy the
assets at Bear's and J.P.Morgan's valuation.
The question arises:
Why didn't the FED just make the $55 billiom loan to Bear Stearns directly? The FED received Bear Stearns assets valued by Bear Stearns as its only collateral for the 100% loan. I am sure that Bear Stearns would have guaranteed the full $55 billion and would have advanced more collateral and accepted a 90% loan to value. Everything would have been just fine for Bear Stearns and the FED would have had a better deal. But the Bear Stearns stock would have gone up and all short stock sellers and all put buyers would have massive losses instead of massive gains.
The bail-out is a great deal for J.P. Morgan, the illegal insider short sellers got a great deal. Bear Stearns stock holders and employees got a very bad deal and the sellers of puts sustained large losses.
This shows, in my view, that J.P. Morgan and the FED were in collusion with the short sellers and put buyers.
John Olagues
source
User Comments
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Bill Brown
4-17-2008 at 3:20pm
"FED" up
Past time to get rid of the Federal Reserve, I think that company has stolen enough from the US citizens and so have our politicians. Sign me up for the revolution.
John Golowenski
4-17-2008 at 3:58pm
It was a play as described in the book "The Creature from Jekyll Island." JP Morgan along with several other large banker criminals hatched the scheme to defraud Americans of their money (and Constitutional Rights).
We need a Revolution as Bill says.
Daddio
4-17-2008 at 4:15pm
What are we waiting for
Seriously....why are these crooks being made to cough up the profits of these contracts? Yah, sign me up for the revolution also.
George Stafford
4-17-2008 at 4:23pm
Bear Stearns was raped, annihilated, thrown to the dogs, all in a tawdry, illegal scheme to benefit the chosen few criminals. It's not too late to open this Pandora's box and get full exposure. 48 hours after the Fed refused to inject funds claiming BSC was not a bank, they lent funds to Lehman and Morgan Stanley! This whole deal should be dissolved; put BSC either back on the map or find a sovereign wealth fund for capital infusion. Then prosecute the financial criminals, aided and abetted by Paulson. It's not too late
phil
4-17-2008 at 4:59pm
Real Reason
You tiptoe around it, but the real reason, was because the system was at risk of total meltdown. Not so much from Bear Stearns, although they may have been the fuse. The single largest player, holding most of the total derivative toxic waste, is JP Morgan. They were the one's at risk, if the derivative daisy chain started to unravel. That is why they got the sweetheart deal and used the transaction to provide tax payer funds to bail them out, under the guise of rescuing Bear Stearns!
Sam Mathid
4-17-2008 at 6:14pm
Interesting that the New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer who had a history of investigating and prosecuting corporate malfeasance at the highest levels was sand-bagged (by the FBI!) and forced to resign on 12th March.
It would have been very uncomfortable having him around during such shenanigans. Questions might have been asked, make that WOULD have been asked. What sort of a country have we become?
deanfv
4-17-2008 at 8:35pm
Write your congressman
Get on the fucking phone and complain to your elected officials. Otherwise, you cannot bitch and you know in the end you will be the LOSER. GET ON THE PHONE NOW!!!
Fred S.
4-20-2008 at 7:21pm
One important part of this analysis that is missing is who worte those way out of the money BSC puts?
unless their put exposure was hedged (eg. by shorted BSC shares), they would have taken a huge loss.
doesn't add up to me and while I agree that there is widespread fraud being conducted on an unprecedented scale re: ratings, level III assets, naked shorting, etc., I do think the financial system is cratering and on the verge of complete & utter collapse. the day of reckoning is coming sooner than many think.
John Olagues
4-20-2008 at 9:52pm
In responce to Fred
The sellers (writers) were generally traders who thought that the probability was near zero of the stock dropping that much that fast. The sales of some out of the moneys could have been hedged somewhat.
But given that the stock was hard to borrow, firms were not allowing short sales of the stock on the 12-14 of March .
You are correct that the sellers lost large amounts.
John
13thgeneration
4-23-2008 at 10:18am
protest 4/25
In case anyone can attend, there will be a protest outside Bear Stearns HQ this Friday. If not, please consider supporting through a donation towards travel expenses for some far-away atendees.
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/2008/04/protest-coming-up-in-nyc-april-25th.html
Frederick
4-23-2008 at 10:50am
Our markets are now far too manipulated, and as such, I have taken all my money out of the stock market. This is not a market timing attempt. I don't care if it goes higher without me. Go ahead and PPT it 'til the cows come home...I don't care. I'm still not buying stocks. I'll clip coupons on treasuries while our unelected officials play chemistry set with all their new toys.
Jonezing
4-23-2008 at 12:36pm
You're missing one key element
You say that the market makers opened way OTM strikes on BSC puts. Fair enough. But do you think that the Options Market Makers were going to just take the other side of those trades without offsetting their own risk?
No. Because they are Options Market Makers (OMMs) they have an exemption and are able to short stock without finding a borrow (not that the SEC seems to care if anyone does). Point is that the OMMs could short stock as their exposure to the puts increased, thus, as the puts (which they sold) increased in value, the OMMs simply shorted stock -- stock that may not have even existed (called phantom shares or FTDs or what have you) -- through their OMM exemption.
The cycle was self-fulfilling. As the stock fell and put those puts into the money, the OMMs had no choice but to use their exemptions to force new shares on the market using their exemptions. Then they fixed the sale price at $2 a share, and everyone got to cover in the money at a fixed (non-market) price.
One of the greatest financial scams ever - if anyone every cares to write about it.
Maria Marsala
4-23-2008 at 5:06pm
just wonder...
I wonder if whole thing occured and is part of the Fed and Banks to get rid of brokerage firms in general? Or at least primary gov't bond brokerage firms?
GK
4-24-2008 at 9:52am
U forgot Blackstone-Blackrock's involvement
The Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm tied to foreign policy influence lobbying groups such as Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft Advisors, and the Madeline Albright Group, had an affiliated spinoff company, BlackRock, a Caymans Island foreign bank associate, evaluate the “fairness” to shareholders of the JP Morgan Acquisition of Bear Stearns. ...The lead negotiator of the deal, the President of the NY Fed, Geithner, is a former employee of Kissinger Associates, a Saudi-China lobbying firm, and was appointed to the Fed by Peter Peterson of Blackstone. He also worked for Secretary Rubin at the Clinton Treasury Department. Secretary Rubin is now an executive with Citibank a major beneficiary of the bailout.
Peter
4-24-2008 at 11:35pm
So who SOLD all the puts?
Those greedily attracted to the premium caused by skyrocketing demand?
Copyright 2002-2008 Truth in Options
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Meetings Monday in New Orleans
Three Amigos Summit
Manuel Pérez Rocha and Sarah Anderson | April 15, 2008
Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
President George W. Bush will soon host what has become an annual “Three Amigos Summit.” The leaders of Mexico, the United States, and Canada will be gathering in New Orleans on April 21 and 22. What do you suppose is on the agenda? A rational response to immigration, perhaps? A thoughtful renegotiation of the unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement? Lessons from Canada’s affordable medicines program?
No. No. And no. Rather than putting their heads together around pressing issues such as these, the three leaders will be advancing a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). And while that may sound well and good, this initiative, begun in 2005, is unlikely to produce either security or prosperity. That’s because the partnership is only with big business.
The chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron, and 28 other large corporations are in on the closed-door negotiations, while members of Congress, journalists, and ordinary citizens are excluded. And the secrecy is not just around the presidential summits, but also the meetings of about 20 SPP working groups that carry on negotiations over the course of the year.
What’s on the table? Not much is public, but we do know that the executive powers of the three countries are hammering out regulatory changes that they claim do not require legislative approval. And given who’s in the room, it’s a safe bet that these changes will favor narrow corporate interests over the public good.
The official corporate advisory body, called the North American Competitive Council (NACC), made 51 proposals to the SPP negotiators last year on issues as varied as taxation and patent rights. The NACC later boasted that “all three of our governments have committed themselves to taking action on many of our recommendations.”
Bad on Process and Substance
In essence, the SPP represents the privatization of policymaking. And so it’s not surprising that on top of the outrageously anti-democratic process, there are also strong reasons to be concerned about the substance of SPP decisions. Here are just a few:
First, at a time when the Democratic presidential candidates have kicked up a long overdue debate over NAFTA, the SPP would actually expand this flawed policy. Even though the lifting of trade and investment barriers under the trade pact failed to create the promised good, stable jobs, the SPP is further chipping away at remaining economic regulations. For example, at the last SPP summit, the three leaders announced a weakening of NAFTA’s “rules of origin” to allow products with a lower level of national content to receive preferential tariff treatment. This will undermine domestic industries by making trade in products from third countries like China even more profitable.
Second, the SPP could exacerbate tensions over energy resources and deepen our dependence on fossil fuels. Under the guise of a “North American integrated energy market,” there is evidence that the U.S. government and corporations are aiming to gain greater control over its neighbors’ resources. One SPP agreement, for example, reflects the corporate advisors’ recommendations to promote energy privatization in Mexico – this in spite of a massive citizens’ movement in that country, which has fought long and hard to prevent their nation’s oil industry from being handed over to global corporations. In Canada, progressive activists are up in arms over an SPP report that envisioned a fivefold increase in environmentally destructive oil production from tar sands, with most of the increase to be exported to the United States.
Third, the SPP talks are aimed at expanding the militarized U.S. security perimeter to all of North America, with disturbing implications for civil liberties. The three countries have vowed to join forces against not only external but also “internal” threats, and Mexico and Canada have already agreed to share vast amounts of information with the U.S. government, including the fingerprints of refugees and asylum seekers. The Bush administration is also offering Mexico a multi-billion-dollar military aid package under the Merida Initiative (also known as Plan Mexico). While the new equipment is supposedly to combat drug cartels, many organizations have expressed concerns that it may also end up being used against political dissidents and immigrants.
Progressive vs. Conservative Critiques
Although the SPP has been the target of strong criticism from progressive groups in Canada and Mexico, right-wing anti-immigrant forces have dominated the discourse in the United States. And while there is unity among critics of all political stripes when it comes to denouncing the SPP’s secretive process, there are vast differences on substance.
Xenophobic groups like the Minutemen and the John Birch Society fear that the three governments are secretly plotting to erase U.S. borders and surrender its sovereignty through some sort of merger a la the European Union. In reality, the SPP vision is nearly the polar opposite of many of the founding pillars of the EU:
The EU includes political institutions, including the European Parliament, which represents all the member countries’ citizens. As stated above, SPP negotiators are only interested in hearing the perspectives of big business.
The EU has tackled inequalities directly by transferring massive funds from richer countries to poorer countries and regions. As a result, once-poor countries like Ireland, Spain, and Portugal have become strong trading partners for the rest of the Union. By contrast, SPP negotiators are perpetuating the false assumption behind NAFTA that free markets alone will lift all boats. The aid being offered is to boost Mexico’s military power, not to reduce inequalities.
The EU enforces strong social and environmental standards that help ensure economic benefits are broadly shared and support sustainable development. The SPP negotiators are doing nothing to fix the extremely weak NAFTA side agreements on labor and the environment that have allowed corporations to continue to abuse workers and communities, particularly in Mexico, with impunity.
Thanks to their efforts to narrow economic gaps, the EU has been able to have an internal “open borders” policy without destabilizing migration flows. Contrary to the anti-immigrant paranoia, the SPP negotiators are not contemplating any loosening of borders, even as a long-term goal. Instead, they aim to facilitate transit only of so-called “legitimate people,” while expanding border surveillance infrastructure to keep out other migrants. While the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the coming together of east and west Europe, the increasingly fortified wall between the United States and Mexico is a harsh sign of North America’s deep divisions.
Of course, it is important not to over-romanticize the European Union. They have their own xenophobia problems, with anti-immigrant political parties on the rise in several countries. Moreover, Europe’s trade policies towards developing countries are about as bad as those of the United States, and even within the EU, progressive forces are battling efforts to erode social protections.
However, the EU’s internal integration model still offers some important lessons for our part of the world. And with both Democratic Presidential candidates promising to renegotiate NAFTA, this is an important moment for looking at alternative approaches.
In March, four broad-based citizens’ networks from all three countries, the Alliance for Responsible Trade (United States), Common Frontiers (Canada), the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, and the Quebec Network on Hemispheric Integration produced a detailed set of proposals for NAFTA’s renegotiation. Like the EU, this new NAFTA would require strong enforcement of labor rights and environmental laws. And rather than boosting military aid, it would encourage greater cooperation between our three countries to create stable livelihoods for family farmers, as well as for the small and medium businesses that provide most of our region’s jobs.
If they’re really serious about security and prosperity, the “Three Amigos” would be discussing these types of alternatives. Instead, they are building a fortress North America in which large corporations (but not ordinary citizens) have even more power.
Manuel Pérez Rocha is an Associate Fellow and Sarah Anderson is the Global Economy Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. They are both Foreign Policy In Focus contributors.
source
Manuel Pérez Rocha and Sarah Anderson | April 15, 2008
Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco
Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
President George W. Bush will soon host what has become an annual “Three Amigos Summit.” The leaders of Mexico, the United States, and Canada will be gathering in New Orleans on April 21 and 22. What do you suppose is on the agenda? A rational response to immigration, perhaps? A thoughtful renegotiation of the unpopular North American Free Trade Agreement? Lessons from Canada’s affordable medicines program?
No. No. And no. Rather than putting their heads together around pressing issues such as these, the three leaders will be advancing a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). And while that may sound well and good, this initiative, begun in 2005, is unlikely to produce either security or prosperity. That’s because the partnership is only with big business.
The chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron, and 28 other large corporations are in on the closed-door negotiations, while members of Congress, journalists, and ordinary citizens are excluded. And the secrecy is not just around the presidential summits, but also the meetings of about 20 SPP working groups that carry on negotiations over the course of the year.
What’s on the table? Not much is public, but we do know that the executive powers of the three countries are hammering out regulatory changes that they claim do not require legislative approval. And given who’s in the room, it’s a safe bet that these changes will favor narrow corporate interests over the public good.
The official corporate advisory body, called the North American Competitive Council (NACC), made 51 proposals to the SPP negotiators last year on issues as varied as taxation and patent rights. The NACC later boasted that “all three of our governments have committed themselves to taking action on many of our recommendations.”
Bad on Process and Substance
In essence, the SPP represents the privatization of policymaking. And so it’s not surprising that on top of the outrageously anti-democratic process, there are also strong reasons to be concerned about the substance of SPP decisions. Here are just a few:
First, at a time when the Democratic presidential candidates have kicked up a long overdue debate over NAFTA, the SPP would actually expand this flawed policy. Even though the lifting of trade and investment barriers under the trade pact failed to create the promised good, stable jobs, the SPP is further chipping away at remaining economic regulations. For example, at the last SPP summit, the three leaders announced a weakening of NAFTA’s “rules of origin” to allow products with a lower level of national content to receive preferential tariff treatment. This will undermine domestic industries by making trade in products from third countries like China even more profitable.
Second, the SPP could exacerbate tensions over energy resources and deepen our dependence on fossil fuels. Under the guise of a “North American integrated energy market,” there is evidence that the U.S. government and corporations are aiming to gain greater control over its neighbors’ resources. One SPP agreement, for example, reflects the corporate advisors’ recommendations to promote energy privatization in Mexico – this in spite of a massive citizens’ movement in that country, which has fought long and hard to prevent their nation’s oil industry from being handed over to global corporations. In Canada, progressive activists are up in arms over an SPP report that envisioned a fivefold increase in environmentally destructive oil production from tar sands, with most of the increase to be exported to the United States.
Third, the SPP talks are aimed at expanding the militarized U.S. security perimeter to all of North America, with disturbing implications for civil liberties. The three countries have vowed to join forces against not only external but also “internal” threats, and Mexico and Canada have already agreed to share vast amounts of information with the U.S. government, including the fingerprints of refugees and asylum seekers. The Bush administration is also offering Mexico a multi-billion-dollar military aid package under the Merida Initiative (also known as Plan Mexico). While the new equipment is supposedly to combat drug cartels, many organizations have expressed concerns that it may also end up being used against political dissidents and immigrants.
Progressive vs. Conservative Critiques
Although the SPP has been the target of strong criticism from progressive groups in Canada and Mexico, right-wing anti-immigrant forces have dominated the discourse in the United States. And while there is unity among critics of all political stripes when it comes to denouncing the SPP’s secretive process, there are vast differences on substance.
Xenophobic groups like the Minutemen and the John Birch Society fear that the three governments are secretly plotting to erase U.S. borders and surrender its sovereignty through some sort of merger a la the European Union. In reality, the SPP vision is nearly the polar opposite of many of the founding pillars of the EU:
The EU includes political institutions, including the European Parliament, which represents all the member countries’ citizens. As stated above, SPP negotiators are only interested in hearing the perspectives of big business.
The EU has tackled inequalities directly by transferring massive funds from richer countries to poorer countries and regions. As a result, once-poor countries like Ireland, Spain, and Portugal have become strong trading partners for the rest of the Union. By contrast, SPP negotiators are perpetuating the false assumption behind NAFTA that free markets alone will lift all boats. The aid being offered is to boost Mexico’s military power, not to reduce inequalities.
The EU enforces strong social and environmental standards that help ensure economic benefits are broadly shared and support sustainable development. The SPP negotiators are doing nothing to fix the extremely weak NAFTA side agreements on labor and the environment that have allowed corporations to continue to abuse workers and communities, particularly in Mexico, with impunity.
Thanks to their efforts to narrow economic gaps, the EU has been able to have an internal “open borders” policy without destabilizing migration flows. Contrary to the anti-immigrant paranoia, the SPP negotiators are not contemplating any loosening of borders, even as a long-term goal. Instead, they aim to facilitate transit only of so-called “legitimate people,” while expanding border surveillance infrastructure to keep out other migrants. While the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the coming together of east and west Europe, the increasingly fortified wall between the United States and Mexico is a harsh sign of North America’s deep divisions.
Of course, it is important not to over-romanticize the European Union. They have their own xenophobia problems, with anti-immigrant political parties on the rise in several countries. Moreover, Europe’s trade policies towards developing countries are about as bad as those of the United States, and even within the EU, progressive forces are battling efforts to erode social protections.
However, the EU’s internal integration model still offers some important lessons for our part of the world. And with both Democratic Presidential candidates promising to renegotiate NAFTA, this is an important moment for looking at alternative approaches.
In March, four broad-based citizens’ networks from all three countries, the Alliance for Responsible Trade (United States), Common Frontiers (Canada), the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, and the Quebec Network on Hemispheric Integration produced a detailed set of proposals for NAFTA’s renegotiation. Like the EU, this new NAFTA would require strong enforcement of labor rights and environmental laws. And rather than boosting military aid, it would encourage greater cooperation between our three countries to create stable livelihoods for family farmers, as well as for the small and medium businesses that provide most of our region’s jobs.
If they’re really serious about security and prosperity, the “Three Amigos” would be discussing these types of alternatives. Instead, they are building a fortress North America in which large corporations (but not ordinary citizens) have even more power.
Manuel Pérez Rocha is an Associate Fellow and Sarah Anderson is the Global Economy Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. They are both Foreign Policy In Focus contributors.
source
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Hitler's Lasting Gift: Shedding the Torch
Shedding Light on the Torch
by Dave Zirin
The journey of the Olympic torch was supposed to be a 58-day celebration of the Beijing Olympics. Through 21 countries and across 85,000 miles, the flame was meant to spotlight the way 21st century China was ready to claim its place as modern economic superpower.
Instead, the journey has been a public relations apocalypse, and an obstacle course for unsuspecting athletes and dignitaries, confronted by an international gauntlet of agitators. In France, police alongside Chinese security officers had to use tear gas to keep protesters at bay and officials had to extinguish the torch five separate times. In London, 37 people were arrested trying to impede the torch. In San Francisco last Wednesday, thousands turned out to demonstrate, which led to a bizarre situation where the torchbearers ran a few yards, disappeared into a warehouse, and then reappeared on a city bus. This isn't the esteemed expedition of the torch. This is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles go to the Olympics.
China has blamed the protests on "a few Tibetan separatists." That would be news to the protester Charles Altekruse, who as a member of the U.S. Olympic rowing team, was forced to sit out the 1980 Moscow Games because of the U.S. boycott. "Today, my voice is the voice for thousands of people whose voices cannot be heard," said Altekruse, who lives not in Lhasa, but Berkeley.
China's recent crackdown on Tibet has opened a view on a host of abuses throughout the Chinese mainland, as well as the complicity of the International Olympic Committee and the West embedded in every abuse: the 2 million people displaced for Olympic facilities, the violation of labor standards so Western nations have an endless army of cheap labor, mass jailing of dissidents who dare to complain, and the environmental degradation of the country.
But the protests have been also aimed at the IOC and their efforts to shamelessly promote China's titanic economy. Juliana Barbassa of the Associated Press could not have been clearer writing, "The torch's global journey was supposed to highlight China's growing economic and political power."
IOC president Jacques Rogge lamented the protests, saying that the journey of the torch was supposed to be "a Journey of Harmony, bringing the message of peace to the people of different nationalities, cultures and creeds." Would that it were.
The first torch run was actually the brainchild of Dr. Carl Diem, the organizer of Adolf Hitler's 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He convinced Hitler's propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, that 3,422 young Aryan runners should carry burning torches along the 3,422 km route from the Temple of Hera on Mount Olympus to the stadium in Berlin. The event would be captured by the regime's filmmaking prodigy, Leni Riefenstahl, and broadcast over radio.
In fact, Rogge's dream that the torch be a symbol of "peace, harmony and global unity" is reminiscent of Hitler's own words in 1936. "Sporting chivalrous contest," Hitler proclaimed before the torch's inaugural lighting, "helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore, may the Olympic flame never expire."
As Chris Bowlby wrote for BBC News, "...it was planned with immense care by the Nazi leadership to project the image of the Third Reich as a modern, economically dynamic state with growing international influence."
China today, with the IOC's backing, wanted the torch to travel through the nations of Western Europe and the United States, as well as Tibet, as a way to spread the gospel of China's global reach. In 1936, Diem also planned the route with political considerations in mind. The torch was carried exclusively through European areas where the Third Reich wanted to extend its reach.
When the flame made its way through Vienna, it was accompanied by mammoth pro-Nazi demonstrations. Two years later, Austria would be annexed.
Today, without question, there are people with dubious motives calling for a boycott of the Summer Games. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has hedged on attending even though Britain's Olympic Committee has already laid down the law that its athletes are forbidden from any political acts on Chinese soil. The reptilian Sen. Hillary Clinton has said President Bush should boycott, even though she and her husband in the 1990s fought to make China a part of the World Trade Organization, and repeatedly granted China Most Favored Nation trade status. Barack Obama just joined Clinton in the "me too" chorus to see who can blame China for the ecoomic maladies facing the U.S. Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan lamented in a commentary that President Bush and the Republican Party is "coddl[ing] Communist China."
None of these critics existed before people started protesting. And none of them will refrain from doing business with China in the future.
Protesters have held a light to the present hypocrisy of the Olympic torch. In expressing concern about the San Francisco protests, USOC President Peter Ueberroth said, "The only concern is our reputation as a country." Perhaps, as this debacle runs its course, Ueberroth should be more concerned with the reputation of the International Olympic Committee and the quadrennial orgy of sporting nationalism and corporate greed.
[Dave Zirin is the author of "Welcome to the Terrordome:" (Haymarket). You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com. Comment on this article at www.edgeofsports.com]
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Killing the Migratory Birds of the Americas
American Songbirds Are Being Wiped Out by Banned Pesticides
by Leonard Doyle
The number of migratory songbirds returning to North America has gone into sharp decline due to the unregulated use of highly toxic pesticides and other chemicals across Latin America.
Ornithologists blame the demand for out-of-season fruit and vegetables and other crops in North America and Europe for the destruction of tens of millions of passerine birds. By some counts, half of the songbirds that warbled across America’s skies only 40 years ago have gone, wiped out by pesticides or loss of habitat.
Forty-six years ago, the naturalist Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, a study of the ravages caused to wildlife, especially birds, by DDT. The chemical’s use on American farms almost eradicated entire species, including the peregrine falcon and bald eagle.
The pesticide was banned and bird numbers recovered, but new and highly toxic pesticides banned by the US and European Union are being widely used in Latin America.
Because of changed consumer habits in Europe and the US, export-led agriculture has transformed the wintering grounds of birds into intensive farming operations producing grapes, melons and bananas as well as rice for export.
Ornithologists say another silent spring is dawning across the US as birds are being poisoned by toxic chemicals or killed as pests in their winter refuges across South and Central America as well as the Caribbean. They say that many species of songbird will never recover, and others may even become endangered or extinct if controls are not put in place or consumer habits changed.
More problems await those birds which make it home. Millions of acres of wilderness the birds use as nesting grounds have been ploughed under in the drive to grow corn for ethanol, for bio-fuel.
Some 150 species of songbirds undertake extraordinary migrations up to 12,000 miles every year as they move from the south to nesting grounds in the US and Canada every spring. Ornithologists say that almost all these species are at risk of poisoning.
The migratory songbirds in most trouble include the wood thrush, the Kentucky warbler, the eastern kingbird and the bobolink, celebrated by the 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson as “the rowdy of the meadows”.
Bridget Stutchbury, an ornithologist and professor at York University in Toronto, said: “With spring we take it for granted that the sound of the songbirds will fill the air with their cheerful sounds. But each year, as we continue to demand out-of-season fruits and vegetables, fewer and fewer songbirds will return.”
The bobolink songbird has experienced such a steep decline, it has almost fallen off the charts. The birds migrate in flocks from Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay to the east coast of the US, feeding on grain and rice, prompting farmers to regard them as a pest. Bobolink numbers have plummeted almost 50 per cent in the past four decades, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.
Rosalind Renfrew, a biologist who studied bobolinks as they were feeding in rice paddies in Bolivia, found about half of the birds had been exposed to toxic chemicals banned in Europe and the US. Some 40 to 50 species, which include the barn swallow, the wood thrush the dickcissel as well as migratory birds of prey, are starting to disappear.
It is only recently that the decline has been definitively linked to the use of toxic pesticides in the Caribbean and across Latin America. “Everyone who has looked for pesticide poisoning in birds has found it,” Professor Stutchbury said. “When we count birds during our summers we are finding significant population declines in about three dozen species of songbirds.”
She wrote in the comment pages of The New York Times: “They are the modern-day canaries in the coal mine.” She said: “The imported fruits and vegetables found in our shopping carts in winter and early spring are grown with types and amounts of pesticides that would often be illegal in the United States.”
Growers are using high doses of pesticides, which the World Health Organisation calls class I toxins. These are also toxic to humans and are either restricted or banned in the US and EU. But controls in Latin American countries are easily flouted.
“I believe that if we don’t make drastic changes quite literally many birds which are common now are going to become rare,” said Professor Stutchbury.
Testing by individual EU countries and the US Food and Drug Administration reveals that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are three and sometimes four times as likely to violate basic standards for pesticide residues.
© 2008 The Independent
Thursday, April 03, 2008
PROJECT REVIVAL: Trying Fascism
PROJECT REVIVAL: POOR PEOPLE SWEPT INTO JAIL AS CITY CUTS SERVICES
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
April 2, 2008
STOP THE WAR ON THE POOR!
Yesterday, the Metro Toronto police announced almost 300 arrests in a sweep of one of this city's poorest neighbourhoods. The arrests took place in the area bounded by Gerrard St. E., Queen St. E., Church St. and Parliament St. Developed through the 51 Division "Community Police Liaison Committee", the sweep involved undercover officers in a 6 week operation, code named "Project Roundup" and "Project Revival".
The priorities of cops, city officials, and the gentrifying forces of this neighbourhood are clear. The downtown East End is being remade and 'revived' through crackdowns on the poor people who call it home. It is our friends, our neighbours, the people who use the rapidly disappearing services in the East End, who are being swept into jail through operations like this one.
According to Det. Sgt. Howie Page of 51 Division, "When the community came to 51 Division ... it was a project aimed at improving the quality of life of people in this area." And we must ask: Which community? Whose quality of life? We must also ask: When demands are made for affordable housing, detox or harm reduction programs, shelter beds, and better welfare rates, the basic right for people to live in dignity and safety, what kind of response do we get?
The City officials who pay and oversee this police force are the same ones who, over the past year, allowed three large rooming houses in the neighborhood to be shut down, and five major shelters to be closed. $2 million dollars worth of CCTV cameras have been installed in the downtown core, two of them outside the biggest men’s shelters in the east end. Homeless people are being targeted, fined thousands of dollars in Provincial Offense tickets for minor infractions like encumbering the
sidewalk, or camping in a park without a permit. Poor and homeless people are being dispossessed, displaced, and destroyed.
We condemn this latest, blatant attack on the people of the downtown East End. We condemn the police for sweeping the streets, criminalizing people who are fighting to survive. We need housing, shelter, food and income to address the issues in the neighborhood, not more police harassment and intimidation.
For more information contact OCAP at 416-925-6939
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
April 2, 2008
STOP THE WAR ON THE POOR!
Yesterday, the Metro Toronto police announced almost 300 arrests in a sweep of one of this city's poorest neighbourhoods. The arrests took place in the area bounded by Gerrard St. E., Queen St. E., Church St. and Parliament St. Developed through the 51 Division "Community Police Liaison Committee", the sweep involved undercover officers in a 6 week operation, code named "Project Roundup" and "Project Revival".
The priorities of cops, city officials, and the gentrifying forces of this neighbourhood are clear. The downtown East End is being remade and 'revived' through crackdowns on the poor people who call it home. It is our friends, our neighbours, the people who use the rapidly disappearing services in the East End, who are being swept into jail through operations like this one.
According to Det. Sgt. Howie Page of 51 Division, "When the community came to 51 Division ... it was a project aimed at improving the quality of life of people in this area." And we must ask: Which community? Whose quality of life? We must also ask: When demands are made for affordable housing, detox or harm reduction programs, shelter beds, and better welfare rates, the basic right for people to live in dignity and safety, what kind of response do we get?
The City officials who pay and oversee this police force are the same ones who, over the past year, allowed three large rooming houses in the neighborhood to be shut down, and five major shelters to be closed. $2 million dollars worth of CCTV cameras have been installed in the downtown core, two of them outside the biggest men’s shelters in the east end. Homeless people are being targeted, fined thousands of dollars in Provincial Offense tickets for minor infractions like encumbering the
sidewalk, or camping in a park without a permit. Poor and homeless people are being dispossessed, displaced, and destroyed.
We condemn this latest, blatant attack on the people of the downtown East End. We condemn the police for sweeping the streets, criminalizing people who are fighting to survive. We need housing, shelter, food and income to address the issues in the neighborhood, not more police harassment and intimidation.
For more information contact OCAP at 416-925-6939
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Canada’s latest political prisoners
By Justin Podur
Global Research, April 1, 2008
The Bullet. Socialist Project E-Bulletin
On March 18, 2008, the Ontario Superior Court’s Judge Patrick Smith sentenced Chief Donny Morris and six other council members from the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (or KI) First Nation, a community of about 1200 people in northern Ontario, Canada, to six months in jail for ‘contempt of court.’ They defied a court order to stay away from a part of their lands, slated for mining by the Platinex Corporation. They were also fined an exorbitant sum, but the judge applied the jail terms because he knew that they could not pay – they were already bankrupt because of the $500,000 in court fees they had paid trying to defend themselves from Platinex before the court, over the past several years. Platinex had sued KI, at first for $10 billion (before reducing it to $10 million).
In his sentence, Judge Smith cited as a precedent the jailing of Ardoch Algonquin Nation leader, Bob Lovelace, who had been sentenced to his own six months on February 15 for trying to stop uranium mining by the mining company Frontenac Ventures on their lands, about 100km from Canada’s capital, Ottawa (for a map of the area and some discussion of the legal aspects see the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation’s website at: www.aafna.ca and specifically www.aafna.ca/Uranium_mining.html). Lovelace was also ordered to pay $25,000. Paula Sherman, the Nation’s chief, was ordered to pay $15,000 and the community an additional $10,000, plus $2000 a day for non-compliance. The judge in this case, J. Cunningham, said that he found the sentencing an “unpleasant task.”
The jailing of these leaders offers a window into a whole host of Canada’s irrationalities and cruelties – the callous dispossession of the indigenous, the search for quick profits to be torn out of the ground and turned into money whatever the consequences, the energy system based on unsustainable premises, the heartlessness in defence of an indefensible system.
The story in Canada is an old one, described eloquently in a 25-year old book that could have been written yesterday by Robert Davis and Mark Zannis (1983) called “The Genocide Machine in Canada.” Indigenous nations are deprived of their landbases and surrounded by settlers, extractive industries, or developments. They lose their means of survival when their lands are taken or when their lands are poisoned. They are dependent on small payments from the government. When they resist further encroachments on their lands, these sources of income are threatened. If that doesn’t scare them, there’s always violence and jail terms.
To understand the significance of the jailings, it is necessary to take a moment to explain Canada’s laws on indigenous rights and public land use.
Legal trickery
KI falls under “Treaty 9,” which was signed in 1929. The legal dispute is that Platinex claims it has a right to explore and exploit under Ontario’s mining laws and tried to do so in 2005-6. Do the rights of mining companies to profit, based on provincial jurisdiction, trump agreements between the federal government and indigenous nations in an effort to protect the nations' means of survival? These means, to be clear, are good hunting, gathering, and fishing lands on Big Trout Lake in some good natural forest that will be destroyed by mining operations. KI argued that the drilling would do irreparable harm. Platinex argued that they were losing money. The Ontario court went with Platinex.
Ontario’s Mining Act is 135 years old and based on a wild-west model. It allows anyone to stake a claim anywhere on Crown land. This means that public land can be exploited for profit by private interests. The legal issue is whether this law supercedes all others – as well as any ethical or common sense that anyone might apply to the situation. KI and others have claimed that the Mining Act is unconstitutional, bypassing as it does the ‘duty to consult’. The court claimed that if these leaders weren’t jailed, there would be a loss of respect for the law, the creation of two regimes of justice. But there are two regimes of justice already. Those who illegally take or pollute indigenous territories are not punished with jail terms, the way Bob Lovelace and these other leaders have been. The Shabot Obaajiwan’s spokesperson Earl Badour put it succinctly in a press relese of March 18. ”The government accuses First Nations of breaking Canadian laws when they defend their lands, but Canada itself is selective about which of its own laws it will abide by,” said Badour. “If the law doesn't serve their purposes they conveniently ignore it." The Shabot Obaajiwan is suing the mining companies and the government based on the ‘duty to consult’ in Supreme Court rulings and the constitution. The duty to consult means that indigenous communities must be meaningfully consulted on resource exploration on their lands. This of course clashes with Ontario’s Mining Act, which is based on corporations grabbing whatever they can. The concern for the rule of law that was Judge Smith’s justification for the draconian sentences is a concern for the Mining Act above the constitution and Supreme Court decisions. Higher laws have been circumvented through for the sake of profit.
Other legal trickery included the company getting a court order and an injunction rather than filing trespass charges against the indigenous – the trespass charge would have opened up all the legal questions about whose land it was.
Mining Politics
The company trying to get the uranium at the expense of the Ardoch Algonquin community, Frontenac Ventures, is shrouded in mystery. Mining researcher Jamie Kneen told IPS’s Chris Arsenault that "aside from the president and their lawyer, no one knows who they are or where they get their money." Frontenac’s president George White refused to answer media calls.
The lawyer for Frontenac, Neil Smitheman, is also representing Platinex. Indeed, when the provincial court in 2006 ruled that Platinex had to stop its operations while consultations were held with KI, Smitheman said “There are numerous mining companies and exploration companies that could be in a similar situation if there’s a failure to have proper consultation on lands that could be subject to a claim by first nations people.” Apparently the court came to the same conclusion, deciding in 2007 that Platinex could in fact drill on KI’s territories.
For a sense of what KI’s territories face if uranium mining does take place, there is precedent. Canada’s most famous uranium mine was the Elliot Lake mine, also in northern Ontario, that left 130 million tons of tailings and destroyed the Serpent Lake ecosystem while helping the nuclear weapons buildup of the 1950s and 1960s (see Mining Watch’s page on Elliot Lake).
There are no non-toxic industrial mining methods (and certainly if there are they haven’t been discovered by Canadian mining companies), so people could be forgiven for asking whether it would be so bad to leave the stuff in the ground. Uranium after all is a material that is radioactive and poisonous and which, once used, is hazardous for thousands of years. In the words of Doreen Davis, another Algonquin leader who was sentenced to jail, "Uranium mining has no record other than environmental destruction and negative health issues". Uranium is a part of Ontario’s current energy mix. Nuclear power is being presented as a solution to climate change and the oil running out. But nuclear power, like ethanol, is a false solution. Ethanol offers a way to take huge amounts of agricultural land out of circulation so that societies can feed cars and starve people. Uranium offers a way to trade the dangers of climate change in for the dangers of radioactive poisoning and potential nuclear catastrophe. But in both cases, the rising prices are making it economically viable to further dispossess and destroy communities – in Latin America for ethanol, and in Canada for uranium.
Paul McKay, a friend and neighbour of Lovelace’s, made some other points about the mining in an op-ed in the Kingston Whig-Standard: “As even the mine promoter's lawyer has admitted in court hearings, there is a vanishingly small chance a uranium mine will ever get built at the headwaters of the Mississippi River northwest of Sharbot Lake. Compared to other deposits in Saskatchewan, Australia, South Africa and Asia, the ore is laughably low-grade, and the cost to mine fatally high.” So, too, McKay argues, recalling the Elliot Lake mines, would the pollution risk of trying to extract this low-grade uranium from these deposits.
The point of these jailings, McKay argues, is a two-fold political message. One, to the mining companies – the mineral wealth of the north is open to access and the government will clear any indigenous resistance out of the way. These include giants like the De Beers diamond company, which is operating in the north around the James Bay. Two, to the indigenous – that any resistance against the latest bonanza of extraction and destruction will be met with criminalization and brutal penalties. McKay also suggests that these mining companies might be looking, not for platinum or uranium, but for a government payoff “if the Ontario government effectively pays it to go away. If this occurs, then it will be Ontario taxpayers who end up being mined for millions. not uranium or platinum deposits.”
This, too, has a recent Ontario precedent – the Douglas Creek Estates on Six Nations Territory (I wrote about this for ZNet in 2006). In that case as well, the Ontario government is attempting the tactic of paying a massive amount of taxpayers’ money to a corporation to “go away.” In addition to benefiting speculators, it has the added propaganda benefit of making indigenous claims seem prohibitively expensive and “impractical” (the practicalities of endlessly expanding suburban subdivisions and toxic uranium and platinum mines having been accepted as a given).
Governmental games and the indigenous response
When indigenous people from affected communities lit a symbolic, sacred fire in support of the jailed in Thunder Bay, a town of 100,000 people about 600km from the KI First Nation, in support of the jailed, city police and fire marshals extinguished it – itself an ugly and symbolic gesture.
As in other cases (see my article on Shawn Brant for example), the government’s actions are narrowing options down to make resistance the only option for indigenous communities. A March 20 press release from First Nations of Sachigo Lake, Bearskin Lake, Muskrat Dam, Kasabonika, Wunnimun, Wapekeka, Kingfisher and Wawakapewin called for sustained opposition to the court’s decision and the mining companies stance. A group of Chiefs from the western Canadian province of British Columbia suggested the AFN (Assembly of First Nations) tear up its Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), signed on March 4, 2008. “The community members have been jailed for protecting their Title and Rights to their territories and any continued relationship with the mining industry will be indelibly stained by these shocking events… Given the ugly, thuggish approach demonstrated thus far by the Courts and by the mining industry, it is of the utmost importance to show our support of the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation and refuse to have any relationship with the mining industry.” The Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) suspended mining-related negotiations with the Ontario government the day after the KI leaders were sentenced. "It was a real insult to all first nations," Alvin Fiddler, Deputy Grand Chief of NAN, told reporters on March 19. AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine visited some of the jailed leaders in Thunder Bay on March 22 and called the jailings an obstacle to peace. Canada’s Anglican primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, wrote a letter to Ontario’s premier saying the jailing arises “out of the continual imposition of the power and values of colonizers.”
The Grand Chief of NAN, Stan Beardy, was quoted in the Kingston Whig-Standard arguing that other political considerations were at work. "The McGuinty government got labelled weak in dealing with Caledonia, and now they say, 'We're not weak and we'll show you by throwing these Indians in jail…’ What is happening here is we've been criminalized for practising our way of living. The government wants to make an example of us. What's being done is, once more, we're being moved out of the way, our valuable resources are being exploited and everybody is benefiting except us."
The federal government has been silent, and by its silence, leaving the issue to the province, has sent a message that indigenous issues are not national issues at all. Given the views of the Harper regime on indigenous rights, however – prominent Harper adviser, the University of Calgary’s Thomas Flanagan, has argued in his book “First Nations? Second Thoughts,” that “European civilization was several thousand years more advanced than the aboriginal cultures of North America” and that “the European colonization of North America was inevitable, and, if we accept the philosophical analysis of John Locke and Emer de Vattel, justifiable” – it is probably better that the Harper people not be involved. As for the provincial government, they are using familiar tactics. While the Superior Court imposes draconian sentences, the provincial government’s Aboriginal Affairs minister Michael Bryant offers a ‘compromise’ – in which the leaders don’t go to jail, pay only some of the fines, and allow the mining to continue. In other words, surrender. And despite having tried very hard to prevent jail sentences, Bryant says, he’s not willing to give up (presumably on trying to get the indigenous to give up).
But the government and the mining companies are asking too much. As they do in other parts of the world, mining transnationals try to isolate the communities that are affected. They want the indigenous to consent to the destruction of the small amount of land that has been left to them, in order that some companies can make money extracting toxic metals. If consent is not forthcoming, government officials will use force. But to use force, they’ll still have to convince Canadians that it’s worth destroying other people’s lands and livelihoods for uranium, platinum, diamonds, or money. They are betting on Canadians being ignorant, or indecent.
Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer and activist. He can be reached at justin@killingtrain.com. More articles by Justin are available on his blog killingtrain.com.
Please take a moment today to send a letter
to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.
The Maquila Solidarity Network has a long-standing relationship with the leadership of KI First Nation, who have lent support to MSN's campaigns over the years. Although this urgent action alert is not specifically related to labour or women's rights in the apparel and footwear industries, we hope our network will lend their support to the leadership and citizens of the KI First Nation as they confront corporations and governments that have failed to respect their rights.
On March 17, 2008, an Ontario Superior Court judge sentenced six Aboriginal protesters to six months of jail for peacefully defying a court order that would allow Platinex, a mining exploration company, to drill for minerals on their traditional lands in Northern Ontario, Canada. The Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation fears that mining activity will jeopardize hunting and burial grounds and argues that the Ontario government awarded the mining permits without consulting and accommodating their people, a violation of aboriginal rights and Canadian law.
The individuals jailed include the Chief and four Councilors of the (KI) First Nation. One of them, a woman, is separately incarcerated at the Thunder Bay District jail.
KI First Nation continues to recognize its Chief and Councilors as leaders in exile and as prisoners of conscience. It has also declared that a 2001 community declared moratorium on exploration and development will continue to be enforced in KI traditional territory, pending resolution of a treaty land entitlement claim and fulfillment of the Government of Ontario's legal obligation to consult and accommodate.
For more information and to monitor developments, check out: intercontinentalcry.org and kitchenuhmaykoosib.com
Take action NOW!
Write today to the Premier of Ontario, demanding the release of the jailed First Nation Chief and Councilors and a halt to mining exploration in KI First Nation lands. Please cc Lynda Yanz at MSN so that we can pass on copies of your letters to KI First Nation leaders: lyanz@maquilasolidarity.org. You'll find a sample letter at the end of this e-mail.
You can also write letters of support to the jailed leaders. Here are the names and addresses where you can send individual letters of solidarity and encouragement. Chief Donny Morris, Deputy Chief Jack McKay, Councillor Samuel McKay, Councillor Darryl Sainnawap, Bruce Sakakeep, Lands & Environment Director:
C/O Thunder Bay Correctional Centre, Highway 61 South, PO Box 1900, Thunder Bay ON, P7C 4Y4
Head Councillor Cecilia Begg, is being held separately at Thunder Bay District Jail:
Cecilia Begg, C/O Thunder Bay District Jail, 285 McDougall St S, Thunder Bay, ON P7A 2K6
Sample Letter to Dalton McGuinty, Premer of Ontario
E-mail to: dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org
Cc: lyanz@maquilasolidarity.org
Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario
Legislative Building
Queen's Park
Toronto ON
M7A 1A1
Dear Premier McGuinty;
I am writing regarding the incarceration of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI)
First Nation Chief Donny Morris, Council members Samuel McKay, Jack McKay,
Darryl Sainnawap Cecilia Begg, and community member Bruce Sakakeep.
They have recently been convicted of civil contempt charges and jailed for
6 months for peacefully opposing mineral exploration on their traditional
territory.
I understand that Ontario continues to grant exploration permits to mining
companies without fulfilling its legal obligation to consult with and
accommodate Aboriginal peoples. It is disgraceful that these six people
are serving time for upholding their community's rights while Ontario
continues to flout the law.
I ask that the Province change its antiquated Mining Act to ensure real
consultation and accommodation of aboriginal rights before granting mineral
leases. I also ask that the Ontario Government take action to release the
six KI First Nation prisoners of conscience currently being punished for
protecting their lands and community.
Sincerely,
[Your signature]
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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Sunday, March 30, 2008
"Cost of Freedom" Tour/Days 16-17
"Some humans ain't human. Some people ain't kind. If you open up their hearts, here's what you'll find. A few frozen pizzas, some ice cubes with hair, some broken popsicles, you don't want to go there."
— John Prine
Snowing, rainy, sunshine, icy ... snowing, rainy, sunshine, icy .... snowing, rain ...
BEAVERS CANTINA, Corvallis, Oregon — The forecast for central Oregon today was "light rain, followed by hard rain, with a stint of scattered precipitation, to be followed by a period of general gloom."
This morning I left Bend, headed north on Highway 97, trying to go around the Cascades and not have to go over the summit like I did yesterday and hit the heavy snow. But 97 turned to a total white-out, so I turned around. A few miles later there is a pickup on its top. It wasn't there a few minutes ago. I found my way to I-85, Portland, Salem and down to the land of Oregon State University.
Go Beavs.
Yesterday I read at The Book Barn in Bend, owned by Linda Torres. She came to Bend from southern California in 1972. Bend was cool then.
"I hate it now," she says.
It has grown, one of the fastest growing cities in the country for a while, says my host for the day, Ray Duray. Ray is a one-man peace & justice coalition and 9/11 Truth campaign.
After my talk we go along with the "Save The Badlands" group on one part of it's three-bar pub crawl around the downtown.
I hitchhiked from Bend to Nebraska in 1978, I think it was. Roger and Bob and I came out here after Wayne State College let out for the summer. We worked in a mushroom plant in Salem. We hoped to get jobs in the woods, but didn't. I eventually got lonely for Sarah Sister Golden Hair, and I had a job lined up with the state roads department, so I rode my thumb home.
I see hitchhikers along the road quite often. So far I haven't picked anyone up. I tell myself I don't have room, too much stuff crammed into every corner. The hitchhikers are the hobos of our time. Back in California I thought about the Oakies and the "Grapes of Wrath." I try to write that book every time I start a new novel. I think the Oakies of today are from Oaxaca.
Back in Chico I had a short talk with Marylyn about the movie "Zeitgeist." Marylyn says it doesn't matter if the date Dec. 25 and resurrection, and a bunch of other stuff have been copied in several religions, doesn't mean it's not real, that there's not a God.
I just wonder if when we sit in church with our rosaries we aren't a bunch of pygmies dancing around a campfire in the middle of the woods at night.
__________________________
Everyone is so full of shit
Born and raised by hypocrites
We are the kids of war and peace
From Anaheim to the middle east
We are the stories and disciples
Of the Jesus of suburbia
Land of make believe
That don't believe in me
— Green Day, Jesus of Suburbia
__________________________
I came down out of the mountains and saw the Columbia River. That is why there are so many liberals out here. I can see why someone from Nebraska or Iowa wouldn't care that much about nuclear war or the end of the world. If it's ... say January 17, at about 3:30 in the afternoon, you're like, awright, whatever.
But if you were out here you would want to save this shit..
____________________
"It would be so much easier if this were a dictatorship."
— George W. Bush
____________________
If I were king for a day, I would be busy. I would put loggers and hunters in county jail. I would let the druggies go and rich people would take their place.
Yesterday in Bend the discussion came, as it does sometimes, to the question of, if Bush & Co. did 9/11 themselves, how do they live with themselves. Some people think it's because these folks are psychopathic, without a conscience. Maybe, but I'm still not sure.
Linn County Oregon is the "Grass Seed Capital of the World," so this is where America really takes root.
About a block from me, on Fourth Street, between Monroe and Jefferson Avenues, in front of the county courthouse, the longest running protest against the war is now taking place.
People have been standing out there at 5 p.m. every-effing-day for six years. That's a lot. I could be there, but there's a college basketball game on the TV here in this bar, and I have really been out of touch for the past weeks.
I'm not really Joe Protester, to tell you the truth. This book "Cost of Freedom" celebrates the many people who do the stuff like stand on street corners every day for six years, and I am glad to be a part of that, but I haven't really done that much.
I have gone to work and written my books.
Go Beavs.
seeya
— Mike
_________________
Letters from Readers
Mike,
This is getting to be too much spam, please take me off your list. I need to keep this email cleared for important message related to actual organizing opportunities.
Good luck,
— Chris
Mike,
You need a pee bottle for pete’s sake. Just like the truckers do.
— DW
Dude ... you're getting to see all kinds of groovy places.
I dig on Bigfoot. Have since I was in about sixth grade.
In the mid-'70s I saw movie that featured that Patterson film footage that was shown in the Ritz Theatre in Denison. I believe it was called "Mysterious Monstors."
The movie also included the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti. My sister and I went.
I remember staring out the window each night at the corn field behind our house, halfway hoping to see a Bigfoot, and halfway hoping I didn't. The movie was sort of scary.
This may have been the same year I saw Jaws in the same theatre. I must have been only eight or nine years old. But they let me in. I left in the middle with hands over my eyes.
— David Namanny
Please take me off this list.
— Jeanne
Mike.
.Enjoy reading you.
Eureka is always cold always raining,that is exactly what you found.
Eureka!..You found it!
On the subject of nuclear missile bases...you will love this.
I have a very good friend in Uzbekistan, he is dean of the university of Sanmarkand. I met him in Iowa City. Really cool guy, tap dances, plays saxophone.
But during the cold war he was in the Soviet army and his job was to calibrate all of the Russian missiles on American targets. Cool huh?..my pal, Kamol.
One day we were driving to Pella Days, and he was looking at the Iowa map, and laughed.
For all of the crap we were fed about Soviet surveillance systems?
They used FREE maps from the Triple A to aim the missiles back at us!
Drive good.
— Tim Tafco
Hey Mike ...
Well, it was good to have you! Too short, though. I
keep thinking of other things to say. Like ... re: Bobby Kennedy ...I
saw a very well-done documentary (BBC?)
about Bobby which highlighted his "conversion" from
what he was as Attorney General to what he became
when campaigning for the presidency. Seems he was
pretty hard-nosed as AG, but when he started his
campaign and found himself in direct contact with
the poor, his heart really softened.
Also about faith in God ...
It's always difficult for me to put this in words, but I have
a sense of the fact that from the very earliest times,
human beings have KNOWN that a Mystery beyond our
ken has not only posited a creation, but has somehow
penetrated the boundary between Thing and NO-Thing
and become one with this creation. And from the earliest
times, we finite human beings have tried and tried
to explain this to ourselves and others by means of
stories. Some do a better job than others. And always
we know it's impossible for our puny little minds to understand because
it would have to be a puny little God (and, therefore, no God at all) if
our little minds could comprehend this Mystery.
— Marylyn
Dear Mike-
Recieved a letter this am from Tom Wodetski via email telling that only two people showed at your appearance at Cheshire Books.
I couldn't make it because of another commitment, but would have loved to have been there. I've been busy trying to put together a benefit for a small shelter for children in Baghdad and working on the details; ie.- posters, tickets, PR, on my computer.
This is an unusual area in that we have a long-time, blue collar working class contingent, "resistant to change" and people who moved here in the late 60's-early 70's "back to the landers" and now the recently retired, rich folks who used to come up for vacation, who've driven the price of property sky-high.
So- it's a mix. Mostly Democrats though. A few sprinklings of Greens, Libertarians, and Whatevers--and GOP.
I have been standing against the Illegal Invasion of Iraq since before it happened, here on the coast. The mood has certainly changed towards us in the last two years toward the positive. Friends and I have organized a few rallys, marches and I stand with Women in Black every First Friday. I have worked to educate young folks about the Draft for many years. And--I'm on The Single-payer Healthcare Board for this Chapter for SB840 in CA. I am 61 and getting tired...I'm only sorry that I can't do more or be at every event possible. I am sorry I had to miss yours. Don't blame Fort Bragg tho--blame the diseases:
apathy, greed and fear.
My best to you on you sojourn,
In Peace,
? Nancy Milano
Mike,
Good, just got back from a hike around Topanga Canyon with the family. Warm and sunny in the canyon, but socked in with luscious fog here in Santa Monica. For some reason, dense marine layer coastal fog, the kind that drips from the eaves, has become a rarity. This isn't so mushy, but it's nice. I used to live in the Mission in SF, so I enjoyed picturing you having a drink at a rooftop bar. It was less trendy in those days, but unless it's all been bulldozed, I'm sure it still retains funk. As is so often the case, I'm listening to Sun Ra. Hope alls well.
— Rex
Mike, I've heard you comment so often about the stress of needing to pee in traffic, and as a voluminous cross-country coffee and beer drinker, I do understand the crises you've experienced.
NO PROBLEM MAN!
Get yourself a pecan .... (heh, down in some parts of Oklahoma, the pronounce it pee-can). I don't travel anyplace without a pecan in my old truck. When the bladder gets full, I pull over even in heavy traffic, pull out the pecan and use it. At the earliest opportunity, I take the opportunity to empty it. Sometimes even at the spot where I used it. Just open the door a bit and dump it on the assfault.
— Larry Hicks
Mike,
I've been getting your travel notes via email from a friend.
How may I get on your email list to receive these wonderful missives?
I've shared them with various political people on my email list and most are thoroughly enjoying your take on life, the world, the road.
BTW, I work for the actor/ activist Ed Asner and he's been enjoying too.
— Patty Egan
Personal Assistant to
Ed Asner
Mike,
We want to accept your article but it needs a bit more work, as described below.
You submitted an article titled:
Wealth is a Very Dangerous Thing To Hold in One's Hand
— Op Ed News Administrator
P.S. You need to remove "shit," and substitute something else. While foul language may be appropriate to impart strong emotion, it is just gratuitous as you have used it here. The same may be said with your described urinary tract urgency.
Your Original Submission is attached to this email
Please do NOT reply to this email; no one will see it.
Dear Mike,
I enjoyed your book very much. Thanks for your daily dose of e-sanity in a world gone mad.
Stay cool,
David
* * * * * * * * *
— David Mathison
BE THE MEDIA
On March 19, I dragged my friend Kim, a special ed. teacher, to a war protest held in Memorial Park in Omaha, NE, and organized by moveon.org. Earlier, Friends for Peace, held a rally in the same location. It was cold and damp and got dark quickly. The speeches were too long and the wind got stronger as each speech got longer. We held placards protesting the war and flashlights or glow sticks. Kim and I shared a blanket I’d brought as the rain began to fall. When the wind rushed up the hillside like an attack of shrieking, suicidal banshees, we caved and headed for the car. We were followed by the remainder of the protesters and a few lightweight lawn chairs! Where was the press to cover the protest? Where was the follow-up reporting in the next day’s newspapers? No one cares because the media is keeping it out of the news. And who owns the media?
— Kathleen J.
Hey Mike-
You’re in the best part of the state now. Someday I will move back there, not sure I should have left.. But I did.
I’d be glad to unblock Namanny, if I knew what that was, or how to do it. He emailed me and replied a couple of weeks ago. I’ll email him again.
I doubt you’ll find anyone that remembers me, it was almost 20 years ago.
Jesus – that’s a long time – who’d a thunk?
Take care, stay out of trouble and try to avoid the body casts
— Lundquist
Well, Holy Easter Crap, Auto-Crusader!
Careful of all those nerves you're touchin' Out There!
And just remember, when Zinn was in MN a few years back, here's what he said:
You try and you try and you try and you try; and you try and you try and you try and you try; and nothing happens.
Then, one day, it does.
It's all about process, putting in place an alternative vibe, sending an alternative message, as we keep heading toward a better way of being, while hoping we don't blow ourselves up, or completely wreck the planet, first.
— Leigh
Dear Mike,
We're still aglow from the other night with yr powerful presenation & encourage us to try to harmonize.
Onwords!
— David & Judy Ray
Mike, thanks SO MUCH for the copy of IOWA TERROR -- it's even better than I remember it from the file.
I very much like the presentation -- the cover slightly reminds me of a coloring book, which I like, and
the illustrations extend that feeling. And though the sans serif font is not supposed to work for longer documents, it seems to do well here, maybe especially because the paragraphs are short. Just excellent all around.
— Phil Hey
Gadhafi Takes it to the Arab Summit
'Your Turn Is Next,'
Gadhafi warns Arab leaders after US toppling of Saddam
By The Associated Press
29/03/08 "AP" -- - DAMASCUS, Syria: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders at a summit Saturday and warned that they might be overthrown like former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Gadhafi's rambling, off-the-cuff speech to the opening of the Arab summit both bewildered and brought reluctant smiles to the faces of the other leaders.
The maverick Libyan's litany of insults at Arabs and his undiplomatic railing at the disarray of Arab regimes have become almost a tradition at the annual gathering.
Dressed in lush purple and pink robes with a traditional Libyan cloak and cap, Gadhafi blasted Arab countries for doing nothing while the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew Saddam.
"How can we accept that a foreign power comes to topple an Arab leader while we stand watching?" he said. He said Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, "but they sold him out."
"Your turn is next," Gadhafi told the leaders, some of whom looked stunned while others broke into laughter at his frankness. "Destruction will be yours."
In recent years, Gadhafi has dramatically repaired ties with the United States — once his top enemy — by giving up his country's weapons of mass destruction programs and paying compensation for the 1988 Pan Am bombing. Libya is hoping for a landmark visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, though one is still not set, and has stepped up economic ties to the West.
Still, that hasn't stopped Gadhafi from denouncing U.S. domination of the world and criticizing other Arab countries for their closeness to Washington.
In his speech, Gadhafi slammed Arab disunity and inaction on the region's multiple crises.
"Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence? Everything has disappeared," he said. "Our blood and our language may be one, but there is nothing that can unite us"
"If they (Arabs) will not reorganize themselves, they will turn into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps," he said.
Gadhafi also mocked a plan by the Arab League to start Arab cooperation on a joint nuclear program. "How can do we that? We hate each other, we wish ill of each other and our intelligence services conspire against each other. We are our own enemy."
Gadhafi repeated his frequently made proposal that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be settled by creating one democratic state where the two peoples live together, to be called Isratine.
He threw a compliment-cum-backhanded insult at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, praising him as the "hero of Oslo," referring to the 1993 Oslo peace accords that created the Palestinian Authority, now headed by Abbas, but are derided by many Arabs for failing to bring a final peace.
Abbas scowled at the comment.
Gadhafi has angered other Arab leaders with his sharp remarks at past summits.
Last year, he boycotted the summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but gave a televised speech saying "Liza" — referring to Rice — had dictated the gathering's agenda.
In 2005, he told the summit in Algeria that Palestinians and Israelis are "stupid." A year earlier, he sat smoking cigars on the conference floor of the Tunisia summit to show his contempt for the other leaders.
During a 2003 gathering, he traded insults with Saudi King Abdullah in the conference hall.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
British Columbia: Solicitor Generalissimo John Les Steps Down amid Corruption Investigation
B.C. premier says solicitor general right to step down pending investigation
5 hours ago
VANCOUVER — British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell says his solicitor general did the right thing by resigning his cabinet post while he is the subject of an investigation.
John Les stepped down after it was revealed a special prosecutor had been looking into allegations that he may have improperly benefited from a land deal.
"(Les) phoned me and he told me what had taken place and he said that he felt it was best for him to step down as the chief law enforcement officer," Campbell told a Saturday news conference.
Attorney General Wally Oppal will take on the solicitor general role as the probe runs its course.
A statement from the province's Criminal Justice Branch says the investigation includes examining "potential misconduct on the part of former officials with the City of Chilliwack" and the allegations date back a decade, when Les was mayor.
The premier said he did not know of the investigation until Friday.
Campbell pledged that the investigation into the allegations against Les will be free of political interference.
"It's in the public interest to make sure those investigations and those decisions are totally free of any kind of political interference," Campbell said. "I don't know who's being investigated, or when it's being investigated, or when a special prosecutor's appointed and that's the way it should be."
Les said he, too, only found out about the investigation Friday and has no doubt he'll be cleared of any wrongdoing.
He said he knew there was some kind of investigation underway involving the city, but he didn't pay much attention to it because he believed it had nothing to do with him.
But when he found out Friday he was part of the investigation, Les said he knew he must step aside.
The criminal justice branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General issued a statement that it had appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the matter last June.
In a prepared statement, Les said he would not comment further on the investigation until the special prosecutor has concluded his work.
Les, who said he will keep his Chilliwack seat on the Liberal backbench, was adamant about his innocence.
"On a personal level, I hope this matter can be concluded as expeditiously as possible," he said in the statement.
Les, known for his tough stance on crime, said he doesn't know what the investigation is about and has never been questioned by anyone.
News about the special prosecutor was released after business hours on Friday.
Neil MacKenzie, spokesman for the branch, said the information was released in response to an inquiry from the media.
Last month, the City of Chilliwack confirmed in a news release the RCMP was investigating possible criminal activity dating back 10 years.
Chilliwack Coun. Mel Folkman said councillors have been advised not to discuss the issue.
"It's an investigation, so we can't make any comment during that process," he said.
MacKenzie said the special prosecutor, Vancouver lawyer Robin McFee, was appointed at the behest of the RCMP.
On Saturday, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Robert Gillen released a statement outlining the guidelines of the circumstances involved when a special prosecutor is appointed to an investigation.
"A decision to appoint a special prosecutor is made when there is significant potential for real or perceived improper influence in the independent exercise of prosecutorial responsibilities," the statement read.
It went on to say that a special prosecutor is appointed in cases involving cabinet ministers, members of the legislature, other senior or ministry officials, high-ranking police officers, other senior positions in the justice system or people in close proximity to them.
Gillen said an announcement would be made if the special prosecutor approves a charge and it is laid.
NDP Leader Carole James has called the development disturbing and said Les had no choice but to step down.
Further, she said in a news release that the premier's comments left many questions unanswered about the investigation.
"We still need to know how it could possibly be that John Les served as B.C.'s top law enforcement officer for almost a year after he came under criminal investigation," said James.
She called for disclosure of who in government knew about the probe and when they knew it.
"We need to know how John Les could possibly have not have known he was under investigation, and we need to know why it took a media inquiry to make this mess public."
Les was mayor of Chilliwack between 1987 and 1999 and was elected to the legislature in 2001.
Les is the third minister in Campbell's cabinet to step down after news they were being investigated by a special prosecutor.
In 2004, Gordon Hogg resigned as children's minister over financial irregularities connected to government contracts doled out to a non-profit society run by a former Prince George car dealer.
An audit later cleared Hogg of any personal wrongdoing and he was returned to cabinet in a junior portfolio in a shuffle in 2006.
John van Dongen resigned as fisheries minister in 2003 over allegations he improperly disclosed an investigative report to a fish farming company.
A special prosecutor concluded there was no evidence van Dongen had criminal intent when he disclosed the information and van Dongen was reinstated to cabinet.
Les was appointed minister of public safety and solicitor general on June 16, 2005.
His tenure as the dual portfolio minister was not without controversy.
Les was the first government minister to admit the Liberal government mismanaged child death files after boxes containing more than 700 incomplete children's death files were found in a government warehouse.
He originally denied fraud problems at the Crown-owned lottery corporation, but then tabled an audit that found some lottery retailers were winning multiple payouts.
Les also criticized a Vancouver area police chief for calling for the formation of a metro police force to tackle the Vancouver area's rising gang killings. Les later agreed to hold joint meetings with Vancouver area officials to discuss improving regional policing.
He previously was minister of small business and economic development and has served on several government caucuses, including the standing committee on parliamentary reform, ethical conduct, standing orders and private bills.
source
5 hours ago
VANCOUVER — British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell says his solicitor general did the right thing by resigning his cabinet post while he is the subject of an investigation.
John Les stepped down after it was revealed a special prosecutor had been looking into allegations that he may have improperly benefited from a land deal.
"(Les) phoned me and he told me what had taken place and he said that he felt it was best for him to step down as the chief law enforcement officer," Campbell told a Saturday news conference.
Attorney General Wally Oppal will take on the solicitor general role as the probe runs its course.
A statement from the province's Criminal Justice Branch says the investigation includes examining "potential misconduct on the part of former officials with the City of Chilliwack" and the allegations date back a decade, when Les was mayor.
The premier said he did not know of the investigation until Friday.
Campbell pledged that the investigation into the allegations against Les will be free of political interference.
"It's in the public interest to make sure those investigations and those decisions are totally free of any kind of political interference," Campbell said. "I don't know who's being investigated, or when it's being investigated, or when a special prosecutor's appointed and that's the way it should be."
Les said he, too, only found out about the investigation Friday and has no doubt he'll be cleared of any wrongdoing.
He said he knew there was some kind of investigation underway involving the city, but he didn't pay much attention to it because he believed it had nothing to do with him.
But when he found out Friday he was part of the investigation, Les said he knew he must step aside.
The criminal justice branch of the Ministry of the Attorney General issued a statement that it had appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the matter last June.
In a prepared statement, Les said he would not comment further on the investigation until the special prosecutor has concluded his work.
Les, who said he will keep his Chilliwack seat on the Liberal backbench, was adamant about his innocence.
"On a personal level, I hope this matter can be concluded as expeditiously as possible," he said in the statement.
Les, known for his tough stance on crime, said he doesn't know what the investigation is about and has never been questioned by anyone.
News about the special prosecutor was released after business hours on Friday.
Neil MacKenzie, spokesman for the branch, said the information was released in response to an inquiry from the media.
Last month, the City of Chilliwack confirmed in a news release the RCMP was investigating possible criminal activity dating back 10 years.
Chilliwack Coun. Mel Folkman said councillors have been advised not to discuss the issue.
"It's an investigation, so we can't make any comment during that process," he said.
MacKenzie said the special prosecutor, Vancouver lawyer Robin McFee, was appointed at the behest of the RCMP.
On Saturday, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Robert Gillen released a statement outlining the guidelines of the circumstances involved when a special prosecutor is appointed to an investigation.
"A decision to appoint a special prosecutor is made when there is significant potential for real or perceived improper influence in the independent exercise of prosecutorial responsibilities," the statement read.
It went on to say that a special prosecutor is appointed in cases involving cabinet ministers, members of the legislature, other senior or ministry officials, high-ranking police officers, other senior positions in the justice system or people in close proximity to them.
Gillen said an announcement would be made if the special prosecutor approves a charge and it is laid.
NDP Leader Carole James has called the development disturbing and said Les had no choice but to step down.
Further, she said in a news release that the premier's comments left many questions unanswered about the investigation.
"We still need to know how it could possibly be that John Les served as B.C.'s top law enforcement officer for almost a year after he came under criminal investigation," said James.
She called for disclosure of who in government knew about the probe and when they knew it.
"We need to know how John Les could possibly have not have known he was under investigation, and we need to know why it took a media inquiry to make this mess public."
Les was mayor of Chilliwack between 1987 and 1999 and was elected to the legislature in 2001.
Les is the third minister in Campbell's cabinet to step down after news they were being investigated by a special prosecutor.
In 2004, Gordon Hogg resigned as children's minister over financial irregularities connected to government contracts doled out to a non-profit society run by a former Prince George car dealer.
An audit later cleared Hogg of any personal wrongdoing and he was returned to cabinet in a junior portfolio in a shuffle in 2006.
John van Dongen resigned as fisheries minister in 2003 over allegations he improperly disclosed an investigative report to a fish farming company.
A special prosecutor concluded there was no evidence van Dongen had criminal intent when he disclosed the information and van Dongen was reinstated to cabinet.
Les was appointed minister of public safety and solicitor general on June 16, 2005.
His tenure as the dual portfolio minister was not without controversy.
Les was the first government minister to admit the Liberal government mismanaged child death files after boxes containing more than 700 incomplete children's death files were found in a government warehouse.
He originally denied fraud problems at the Crown-owned lottery corporation, but then tabled an audit that found some lottery retailers were winning multiple payouts.
Les also criticized a Vancouver area police chief for calling for the formation of a metro police force to tackle the Vancouver area's rising gang killings. Les later agreed to hold joint meetings with Vancouver area officials to discuss improving regional policing.
He previously was minister of small business and economic development and has served on several government caucuses, including the standing committee on parliamentary reform, ethical conduct, standing orders and private bills.
source
Understand the Latest Violence in Iraq
Five Things You Need to Know to Understand the Latest Violence in Iraq
By Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar, AlterNet. Posted March 27, 2008.
The traditional media is incapable of reporting what's going on in Southern Iraq.
Heavy fighting has spread across Shia-dominated enclaves in Iraq over the past two days. The U.S.-backed regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered 50,000 Iraqi troops to "crack down" -- with coalition air support -- on Shiite militias in the oil-rich and strategically important city of Basra, U.S. forces have surrounded Baghdad's Sadr City and fighting has been reported in the southern cities of Kut, Diwaniya, Karbala and Hilla. Basra's main bridge and an oil pipeline connecting it to Amara were destroyed Wednesday. Six cities are under curfew, and acts of civil disobedience have shut down dozens of neighborhoods across the country. Civilian casualties have reportedly overwhelmed poorly equipped medical centers in Baghdad and Basra.
There are indications that the unilateral ceasefire declared last year by the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is collapsing. "The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans," one militiaman loyal to al-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor's Sam Dagher by telephone from Sadr City. Dagher added that the "same man, when interviewed in January, had stated that he was abiding by the cease-fire and that he was keeping busy running his cellular phone store."
A political track is also in play: Sadr has called on his followers to take to the streets to demand Maliki's resignation, and nationalist lawmakers in the Iraqi Parliament, led by al-Sadr's block, are trying to push a no-confidence vote challenging the prime minister's regime.
The conflict is one that the U.S. media appears incapable of describing in a coherent way. The prevailing narrative is that Basra has been ruled by mafialike militias -- which is true -- and that Iraqi government forces are now cracking down on the lawlessness in preparation for regional elections, which is not. As independent analyst Reider Visser noted:
On closer inspection, there are problems in these accounts. Perhaps most importantly, there is a discrepancy between the description of Basra as a city ruled by militias (in the plural) ... [and the] facts of the ongoing operations, which seem to target only one of these militia groups, the Mahdi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Surely, if the aim was to make Basra a safer place, it would have been logical to do something to also stem the influence of the other militias loyal to the local competitors of the Sadrists, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq [SIIC], as well as the armed groups allied to the Fadila party (sic) (which have dominated the oil protection services for a long time). But so far, only Sadrists have complained about attacks by government forces.
The conflict doesn't conform to the analysis of the roots of Iraqi instability as briefed by U.S. officials in the heavily-fortified Green Zone. It also doesn't fit into the simplistic but popular narrative of a country wrought by sectarian violence, and its nature is obscured by the labels that the commercial media uncritically apply to the disparate centers of Iraqi resistance to the occupation.
The "crackdown" comes on the heels of the approval of a new "provincial law," which will ultimately determine whether Iraq remains a unified state with a strong central government or is divided into sectarian-based regional governates. The measure calls for provincial elections in October, and the winners of those elections will determine the future of the Iraqi state. Control of the country's oil wealth, and how its treasure will be developed, will also be significantly influenced by the outcome of the elections.
It's a relatively straightforward story: Iraq is ablaze today as a result of an attempt to impose Colombian-style democracy on the unstable country: Maliki's goal, shared by the like-minded allies among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities that dominate his administration, and with at least tacit U.S. approval, is to kill off the opposition and then hold a vote.
To better understand the nature of this latest round of conflict, here are five things one needs to know about what's taking place across Iraq.
1. A visible manifestation of Iraq's central-but-under-teported political conflict (not "sectarian violence")
Iraq, which had experienced little or no sectarian-based violence prior to the U.S. invasion, has been plagued with sectarian militias fighting for the streets of Iraq's formerly heterogeneous neighborhoods, and "sectarian violence" has become Americans' primary explanation for the instability that has plagued the country.
But the sectarian-based street-fighting is a symptom of a larger political conflict, one that has been poorly analyzed in the mainstream press. The real source of conflict in Iraq -- and the reason political reconciliation has been so difficult -- is a fundamental disagreement over what the future of Iraq will look like. Loosely defined, it is a clash of Iraqi nationalists -- with Muqtada al-Sadr as their most influential voice -- who desire a unified Iraqi state and public-sector management of the country's vast oil reserves and who forcefully reject foreign influence on Iraq's political process, be it from the United States, Iran or other outside forces.
The nationalists now represent a majority in Iraq's parliament but are opposed by what might be called Iraqi separatists, who envision a "soft partition" of Iraq into at least four semiautonomous and sectarian-based regional entities, welcome the privatization of the Iraqi energy sector (and the rest of the Iraqi economy) and rely on foreign support to maintain their power.
We've written about this long-standing conflict extensively in the past, and now we're seeing it come to a head, as we believed it would at some point.
2. U.S. is propping up unpopular regime; Sadr has support because of his platform
One of the ironies of the reporting out of Iraq is the ubiquitous characterization of Muqtada al-Sadr as a "renegade," "radical" or "militant" cleric, despite the fact that he is the only leader of significance in the country who has ordered his followers to stand down. His ostensible militancy appears to arise primarily from his opposition to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
He has certainly been willing to use violence in the past, but the "firebrand" label belies the fact that Sadr is arguably the most popular leader among a large section of the Iraqi population and that he has forcefully rejected sectarian conflict and sought to bring together representatives of Iraq's various ethnic and sectarian groups in an effort to create real national reconciliation -- a process that the highly sectarian Maliki regime has failed to accomplish.
It's vitally important to understand that Sadr's popularity and legitimacy is a result of his having a platform that's favored by an overwhelming majority of Iraqis.
Most Iraqis:
* Favor a strong central government free of the influence of militias.
* Oppose, by a 2-1 margin, the privatization of Iraq's energy sector -- a "benchmark towards progress according to the Bush administration.
* Favor a U.S. withdrawal on a short timeline (PDF) (most believe the United States plans to build permanent bases -- both are issues about which the Sadrists have been vocal.
* Oppose al Qaeda and the ideology of Osama Bin Laden and, to a lesser degree, Iranian influence on Iraq's internal affairs.
With the exception of their opposition to Al Qaeda, the five major separatist parties -- Sunni, Shia and Kurdish -- that make up Maliki's governing coalition are on the deeply unpopular side of these issues. A poll conducted last year found that 65 percent of Iraqis think the Iraqi government is doing a poor job, and Maliki himself has a Bush-like 66 percent disapproval rate.
As in Vietnam, the United States is backing an unpopular and decidedly undemocratic government in Iraq, and that simple fact explains much of the violent resistance that's going on in Iraq today.
3. "Iraqi forces" are, in fact, "Iranian- (and U.S.-) backed Shiite militias"
Every headline this week has featured some variation of the storyline of "Iraqi security forces" battling "Shiite militias." But the reality is that it is a battle between Shite militias -- separatists and nationalists -- with one militia garbed in Iraqi army uniforms and supported by U.S. airpower, and the other in civilian clothes.
It has always been the great irony of the occupation of Iraq that "our" man in Baghdad is also Tehran's. Maliki heads the Dawa Party, which has long enjoyed close ties to Iran, and relies on support from SIIC, a staunchly pro-Iranian party, and its powerful Badr militia. The "government crackdown" is an escalation of a long-simmering conflict in the south between the Badr Brigade, the Sadrists and members of the Fadhila Party, which favors greater autonomy for Basra but rejects SIIC's vision of a larger Shiite-dominated regional entity in Southern Iraq.
4. Colombia-style democracy
Basra has been engulfed in a simmering conflict since before the British pulled their troops back to a remote base near the airport and turned over the city to Iraqi authorities. But the timing of this crackdown is not coincidental; Iraqi separatists -- Dawa, SIIC and others -- are expected to do poorly in the regional elections, while the Sadrists are widely anticipated to make significant gains. It is widely perceived by those loyal to Sadr that this is an attempt to wipe out the movement he leads prior to the elections and minimize the influence that Iraqi nationalists are poised to gain.
The United States, for its part, continues to take sides in this conflict -- in addition to providing airpower, U.S. forces are enforcing the curfew in Sadr City -- rather than playing the role of neutral mediator. That's because the interests of the Bush administration and its allies are aligned with Maliki and his coalition. That they are not aligned with the interests of most Iraqis is never mentioned in the Western press, but is a key reason why Bush's definition of "victory" -- the emergence of a legitimate and Democratic state that supports U.S. policy in the region -- has always been an impossible pipedream.
5. Chip off the old block: Maliki's attempt to criminalize dissent
It's unclear whether Sadr has lifted the cease-fire entirely, or simply freed his fighters to defend themselves. He continues to call for peaceful resistance.
Whatever the case may be, it's not entirely accurate to say that he "chose" this conflict. The reality is that while his army was holding the cease-fire, attacks on and detentions of Sadrists have continued unabated. Sadr renewed the cease-fire last month, but he did so over the urging of his top aides, who argued that their movement was threatened with annihilation. He later authorized his followers to carry weapons "for self-defense" to head off a mutiny within his ranks.
Ahmed al-Massoudi, a Sadrist member of Parliament, last week "accused the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) of planning a military campaign to liquidate the Sadrists."
The lawmaker told Voices of Iraq that Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim's "SIIC and the Dawa Party have held meetings with officers of the militias merged recently into security agencies to launch a military campaign outwardly to impose order and law, but the real objective is to liquidate the Sadrist bloc." "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is directly supervising this scheme with officers from the Dawa Party and the SIIC," he added. Despite his close ties with Tehran and deep involvement in Shiite militia activity, Hakim has been invited to the White House, where he was feted by Bush himself.
Sadr called for nationwide civil disobedience that would have allowed his followers to flex some political muscle in a nonviolent way. His orders, according to Iraqi reports were to distribute olive branches and copies of the Koran to soldiers at checkpoints.
The Maliki regime responded by saying that individuals joining the nationwide strike would be punished and that those organizing it are in violation of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Act issued in 2005. A spokesman for the prime minister promised to punish any government employees who failed to show up for work.
This is consistent with a long-term trend: the U.S.-backed government's obstruction of Iraqi efforts to foster political reconciliation among diverse groups of Iraq nationalists. (Read more about this here.)
Propaganda and the surge
The Maliki regime has set an ultimatum demanding that the militias -- the nationalist militias -- lay down their arms within the next two days or face "more serious consequences." Al-Sadr has also issued an ultimatum: The government must cease its attacks on his followers, or his followers will escalate. It is an extremely dangerous situation, especially given the fact that the main U.S. resupply routes stretch from Baghdad through the Shia-dominated southern provinces.
But the precariousness of the situation appears to be of little concern to the military command, which issued a statement saying that the violence was a result of the success of the U.S. troop "surge" (Bush called the "crackdown" a "bold decision'' that shows the country's security forces are capable of combating terrorists). It's yet another example of the administration putting U.S. geostrategic (and economic) interests ahead of Iraqi reconciliation and democratic governance.
The much-touted troop "surge" had little to do with the drop in violence in recent months -- it didn't even correlate with the lull chronologically and was certainly a minor causal factor at best. A number of factors led to the reduced violence, but Sadr's cease-fire had the greatest impact. Nonetheless, the Maliki regime, backed by the United States, continued a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Sadr's followers, denied them space to peacefully resist the occupation and forced his hand.
Given the degree to which the coalition has continued to stir a hornets' nest, we may be seeing a perfect illustration of the dangers of believing one's own propaganda play out as Iraq is once again set aflame.
See more stories tagged with: iraq, sadr, siic, al fadhila, maliki, hakim, basra, sadr city
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. Raed Jarrar is Iraq Consultant to the American Friends Service Committee. He blogs at Raed in the Middle.
source
By Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar, AlterNet. Posted March 27, 2008.
The traditional media is incapable of reporting what's going on in Southern Iraq.
Heavy fighting has spread across Shia-dominated enclaves in Iraq over the past two days. The U.S.-backed regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered 50,000 Iraqi troops to "crack down" -- with coalition air support -- on Shiite militias in the oil-rich and strategically important city of Basra, U.S. forces have surrounded Baghdad's Sadr City and fighting has been reported in the southern cities of Kut, Diwaniya, Karbala and Hilla. Basra's main bridge and an oil pipeline connecting it to Amara were destroyed Wednesday. Six cities are under curfew, and acts of civil disobedience have shut down dozens of neighborhoods across the country. Civilian casualties have reportedly overwhelmed poorly equipped medical centers in Baghdad and Basra.
There are indications that the unilateral ceasefire declared last year by the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is collapsing. "The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans," one militiaman loyal to al-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor's Sam Dagher by telephone from Sadr City. Dagher added that the "same man, when interviewed in January, had stated that he was abiding by the cease-fire and that he was keeping busy running his cellular phone store."
A political track is also in play: Sadr has called on his followers to take to the streets to demand Maliki's resignation, and nationalist lawmakers in the Iraqi Parliament, led by al-Sadr's block, are trying to push a no-confidence vote challenging the prime minister's regime.
The conflict is one that the U.S. media appears incapable of describing in a coherent way. The prevailing narrative is that Basra has been ruled by mafialike militias -- which is true -- and that Iraqi government forces are now cracking down on the lawlessness in preparation for regional elections, which is not. As independent analyst Reider Visser noted:
On closer inspection, there are problems in these accounts. Perhaps most importantly, there is a discrepancy between the description of Basra as a city ruled by militias (in the plural) ... [and the] facts of the ongoing operations, which seem to target only one of these militia groups, the Mahdi Army loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. Surely, if the aim was to make Basra a safer place, it would have been logical to do something to also stem the influence of the other militias loyal to the local competitors of the Sadrists, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq [SIIC], as well as the armed groups allied to the Fadila party (sic) (which have dominated the oil protection services for a long time). But so far, only Sadrists have complained about attacks by government forces.
The conflict doesn't conform to the analysis of the roots of Iraqi instability as briefed by U.S. officials in the heavily-fortified Green Zone. It also doesn't fit into the simplistic but popular narrative of a country wrought by sectarian violence, and its nature is obscured by the labels that the commercial media uncritically apply to the disparate centers of Iraqi resistance to the occupation.
The "crackdown" comes on the heels of the approval of a new "provincial law," which will ultimately determine whether Iraq remains a unified state with a strong central government or is divided into sectarian-based regional governates. The measure calls for provincial elections in October, and the winners of those elections will determine the future of the Iraqi state. Control of the country's oil wealth, and how its treasure will be developed, will also be significantly influenced by the outcome of the elections.
It's a relatively straightforward story: Iraq is ablaze today as a result of an attempt to impose Colombian-style democracy on the unstable country: Maliki's goal, shared by the like-minded allies among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities that dominate his administration, and with at least tacit U.S. approval, is to kill off the opposition and then hold a vote.
To better understand the nature of this latest round of conflict, here are five things one needs to know about what's taking place across Iraq.
1. A visible manifestation of Iraq's central-but-under-teported political conflict (not "sectarian violence")
Iraq, which had experienced little or no sectarian-based violence prior to the U.S. invasion, has been plagued with sectarian militias fighting for the streets of Iraq's formerly heterogeneous neighborhoods, and "sectarian violence" has become Americans' primary explanation for the instability that has plagued the country.
But the sectarian-based street-fighting is a symptom of a larger political conflict, one that has been poorly analyzed in the mainstream press. The real source of conflict in Iraq -- and the reason political reconciliation has been so difficult -- is a fundamental disagreement over what the future of Iraq will look like. Loosely defined, it is a clash of Iraqi nationalists -- with Muqtada al-Sadr as their most influential voice -- who desire a unified Iraqi state and public-sector management of the country's vast oil reserves and who forcefully reject foreign influence on Iraq's political process, be it from the United States, Iran or other outside forces.
The nationalists now represent a majority in Iraq's parliament but are opposed by what might be called Iraqi separatists, who envision a "soft partition" of Iraq into at least four semiautonomous and sectarian-based regional entities, welcome the privatization of the Iraqi energy sector (and the rest of the Iraqi economy) and rely on foreign support to maintain their power.
We've written about this long-standing conflict extensively in the past, and now we're seeing it come to a head, as we believed it would at some point.
2. U.S. is propping up unpopular regime; Sadr has support because of his platform
One of the ironies of the reporting out of Iraq is the ubiquitous characterization of Muqtada al-Sadr as a "renegade," "radical" or "militant" cleric, despite the fact that he is the only leader of significance in the country who has ordered his followers to stand down. His ostensible militancy appears to arise primarily from his opposition to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
He has certainly been willing to use violence in the past, but the "firebrand" label belies the fact that Sadr is arguably the most popular leader among a large section of the Iraqi population and that he has forcefully rejected sectarian conflict and sought to bring together representatives of Iraq's various ethnic and sectarian groups in an effort to create real national reconciliation -- a process that the highly sectarian Maliki regime has failed to accomplish.
It's vitally important to understand that Sadr's popularity and legitimacy is a result of his having a platform that's favored by an overwhelming majority of Iraqis.
Most Iraqis:
* Favor a strong central government free of the influence of militias.
* Oppose, by a 2-1 margin, the privatization of Iraq's energy sector -- a "benchmark towards progress according to the Bush administration.
* Favor a U.S. withdrawal on a short timeline (PDF) (most believe the United States plans to build permanent bases -- both are issues about which the Sadrists have been vocal.
* Oppose al Qaeda and the ideology of Osama Bin Laden and, to a lesser degree, Iranian influence on Iraq's internal affairs.
With the exception of their opposition to Al Qaeda, the five major separatist parties -- Sunni, Shia and Kurdish -- that make up Maliki's governing coalition are on the deeply unpopular side of these issues. A poll conducted last year found that 65 percent of Iraqis think the Iraqi government is doing a poor job, and Maliki himself has a Bush-like 66 percent disapproval rate.
As in Vietnam, the United States is backing an unpopular and decidedly undemocratic government in Iraq, and that simple fact explains much of the violent resistance that's going on in Iraq today.
3. "Iraqi forces" are, in fact, "Iranian- (and U.S.-) backed Shiite militias"
Every headline this week has featured some variation of the storyline of "Iraqi security forces" battling "Shiite militias." But the reality is that it is a battle between Shite militias -- separatists and nationalists -- with one militia garbed in Iraqi army uniforms and supported by U.S. airpower, and the other in civilian clothes.
It has always been the great irony of the occupation of Iraq that "our" man in Baghdad is also Tehran's. Maliki heads the Dawa Party, which has long enjoyed close ties to Iran, and relies on support from SIIC, a staunchly pro-Iranian party, and its powerful Badr militia. The "government crackdown" is an escalation of a long-simmering conflict in the south between the Badr Brigade, the Sadrists and members of the Fadhila Party, which favors greater autonomy for Basra but rejects SIIC's vision of a larger Shiite-dominated regional entity in Southern Iraq.
4. Colombia-style democracy
Basra has been engulfed in a simmering conflict since before the British pulled their troops back to a remote base near the airport and turned over the city to Iraqi authorities. But the timing of this crackdown is not coincidental; Iraqi separatists -- Dawa, SIIC and others -- are expected to do poorly in the regional elections, while the Sadrists are widely anticipated to make significant gains. It is widely perceived by those loyal to Sadr that this is an attempt to wipe out the movement he leads prior to the elections and minimize the influence that Iraqi nationalists are poised to gain.
The United States, for its part, continues to take sides in this conflict -- in addition to providing airpower, U.S. forces are enforcing the curfew in Sadr City -- rather than playing the role of neutral mediator. That's because the interests of the Bush administration and its allies are aligned with Maliki and his coalition. That they are not aligned with the interests of most Iraqis is never mentioned in the Western press, but is a key reason why Bush's definition of "victory" -- the emergence of a legitimate and Democratic state that supports U.S. policy in the region -- has always been an impossible pipedream.
5. Chip off the old block: Maliki's attempt to criminalize dissent
It's unclear whether Sadr has lifted the cease-fire entirely, or simply freed his fighters to defend themselves. He continues to call for peaceful resistance.
Whatever the case may be, it's not entirely accurate to say that he "chose" this conflict. The reality is that while his army was holding the cease-fire, attacks on and detentions of Sadrists have continued unabated. Sadr renewed the cease-fire last month, but he did so over the urging of his top aides, who argued that their movement was threatened with annihilation. He later authorized his followers to carry weapons "for self-defense" to head off a mutiny within his ranks.
Ahmed al-Massoudi, a Sadrist member of Parliament, last week "accused the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) of planning a military campaign to liquidate the Sadrists."
The lawmaker told Voices of Iraq that Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim's "SIIC and the Dawa Party have held meetings with officers of the militias merged recently into security agencies to launch a military campaign outwardly to impose order and law, but the real objective is to liquidate the Sadrist bloc." "Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is directly supervising this scheme with officers from the Dawa Party and the SIIC," he added. Despite his close ties with Tehran and deep involvement in Shiite militia activity, Hakim has been invited to the White House, where he was feted by Bush himself.
Sadr called for nationwide civil disobedience that would have allowed his followers to flex some political muscle in a nonviolent way. His orders, according to Iraqi reports were to distribute olive branches and copies of the Koran to soldiers at checkpoints.
The Maliki regime responded by saying that individuals joining the nationwide strike would be punished and that those organizing it are in violation of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Act issued in 2005. A spokesman for the prime minister promised to punish any government employees who failed to show up for work.
This is consistent with a long-term trend: the U.S.-backed government's obstruction of Iraqi efforts to foster political reconciliation among diverse groups of Iraq nationalists. (Read more about this here.)
Propaganda and the surge
The Maliki regime has set an ultimatum demanding that the militias -- the nationalist militias -- lay down their arms within the next two days or face "more serious consequences." Al-Sadr has also issued an ultimatum: The government must cease its attacks on his followers, or his followers will escalate. It is an extremely dangerous situation, especially given the fact that the main U.S. resupply routes stretch from Baghdad through the Shia-dominated southern provinces.
But the precariousness of the situation appears to be of little concern to the military command, which issued a statement saying that the violence was a result of the success of the U.S. troop "surge" (Bush called the "crackdown" a "bold decision'' that shows the country's security forces are capable of combating terrorists). It's yet another example of the administration putting U.S. geostrategic (and economic) interests ahead of Iraqi reconciliation and democratic governance.
The much-touted troop "surge" had little to do with the drop in violence in recent months -- it didn't even correlate with the lull chronologically and was certainly a minor causal factor at best. A number of factors led to the reduced violence, but Sadr's cease-fire had the greatest impact. Nonetheless, the Maliki regime, backed by the United States, continued a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Sadr's followers, denied them space to peacefully resist the occupation and forced his hand.
Given the degree to which the coalition has continued to stir a hornets' nest, we may be seeing a perfect illustration of the dangers of believing one's own propaganda play out as Iraq is once again set aflame.
See more stories tagged with: iraq, sadr, siic, al fadhila, maliki, hakim, basra, sadr city
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. Raed Jarrar is Iraq Consultant to the American Friends Service Committee. He blogs at Raed in the Middle.
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