[Peace] News notes for June 9 [part 1 of 3]

[C. G. Estabrook]

	NOTES ON THE WEEK'S "WAR ON TERRORISM" -- 
	FOR THE AWARE MEETING 02.06.09

[1.] WAR ON TERRORISM, PAST.  This week saw the sixtieth anniversary of
the Battle of Midway, the decisive Battle of World War II in the Pacific,
barely six months after Pearl Harbor.  The Americans lost 150 planes and
307 lives; the Japanese, 253 planes and 3,500 lives; and Japanese naval
forces were so damaged that they were from that time on the defensive.
With Russians defeating the Germans in Europe (notably at Stalingrad, in
the coming winter -- the Germans lost more than a half million soldiers in
3 months of winter fighting), it was clear to American leaders from this
time that the war would end with the US as the only undamaged country.
Under the name of "Grand Area Planning," they began making arrangement for
US hegemony in a post-war world.  The US did not blunder into empire: it
knew -- and planned for the fact -- that it would be the only undamaged
country when the war ended.  Sixty years later, we live in a world shaped
by that fact.

[2.] WAR ON TERRORISM, PRESENT.  Bush wants to create a Homeland Security
Department with 169,000 employees and $37.4 billion budget.  He explicitly
compared his proposal to the creation of the "national security state" in
1947: "During his presidency, Harry Truman recognized that our nation's
fragmented defenses had to be reorganized to win the Cold War.  He
proposed uniting our military forces under a single Department of Defense,
and creating the National Security Council to bring together defense,
intelligence and diplomacy." The War on Terrorism takes the place of the
Cold War, so now we're have a "domestic security state" to expand the
forms of control, at home and abroad, that the crusade against communism
brought us.  Of course, there was a more immediate purpose as well: the
speech was hastily scheduled to overshadow the televised hearings on 9/11
intelligence failures, with FBI lawyer Colleen Rowley, which began this
week.  Nevertheless the Democrats, as usual, went into the tank, House
minority leader Gephardt saying that he thinks the new department should
be in place by 9/11/02; meanwhile the Congressional Democrats were trying
to outflank Bush on the right by pressing for an attack on Iraq, while the
military quietly told tame reporters that it didn't want to do it.  (See
June 8, below.)

[3.] WAR ON TERRORISM, FUTURE.  The G8 Summit takes place on June 26 and
27 in Kananaskis, Alberta -- a relatively inaccessible Canadian resort, so
that the people whose fates are being decided can be kept away.
(<http://www.g8.activist.ca/>.)  The following story appeared in the
Calgary Herald on May 24 under the by-line of Mark Reid, but it is no
longer available on the paper's web-site (an increasingly common practice;
see June 6, below):  "Canadian soldiers have the green light to use
'lethal force' to protect world leaders at the G-8 summit, says a
top-level military commander.  'We are very serious . . . we have lethal
weapons and we will use force if we think there is a serious threat,'
Brig.-Gen. Ivan Fenton said an editorial board meeting with the Calgary
Herald.  Fenton also warned that protesters and 'limelight seekers' who
intend to test summit security in Kananaskis will be risking their lives.
Fenton said terrorists could very easily use the 'peaceful' protesters as
a cover to slip into Kananaskis.  'We're not interested in protesters,
except that protesters complicate our job,' Fenton said.  'They can . . .
distract us and the police from the person who is camouflaged, carrying a
weapon and moving at night.'"

SUNDAY, JUNE 02, 2002

HOW I WON THE WAR. Iran and America are in a tense stand-off in Herat,
Afghanistan's westernmost city, only 80 miles from the Iranian border. The
town can now fairly be described as the front line of the fight against
terrorism. Some 50 American special forces and CIA agents are lodged in a
huge palace outside the city that has been lent to them by Ismail Khan,
the self-styled amir or ruler of western Afghanistan. Below them in the
city's main tree-lined street, dozens of Iranian diplomats representing
the moderate government of President Mohammed Khatami occupy the new
Iranian consulate. Down the road live Iranian officers from the hardline
Sipah-e-Pasadran (Army of God), who are loyal to Iran's fundamentalist
supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamanei. "Everyone is gathering intelligence on
what the other side is doing," a Western diplomat said. An Iranian
diplomat said: "We have no intention of competing with America but the
United States should realise that Afghanistan is our neighbour and we need
a close relationship." Both sides are also watching Khan, 56, the
charismatic anti-Soviet warlord who has liberated the city twice: once in
1992 from the communists and again last year from the Taliban. Khan is a
master of the Afghan art of balancing the interests of outsiders while
extracting maximum benefit from them. He is the only independent warlord
to have been honoured by a visit from Donald Rumsfeld, the American
defence secretary, who described him "as a very interesting, deep man".
America has said Teheran used Khan's domain to funnel hundreds of
al-Qa'eda and Taliban militants to safety in Iran. Khan's answer to all
this is a twinkling, enigmatic smile. "America is concerned about Iran's
role without any reason," he said. "Iran has been supporting us for many
years against the Taliban but it is not supporting us now. And I am a
friend of the United States because it supported us in the war against the
Taliban." Khan's authoritarian control of the western provinces has turned
Herat into the most peaceful and the cleanest Afghan city. It is also a
city where Western aid workers can work without fear, where 75 per cent of
children go to school and where the business of rebuilding homes and shops
is booming. Even as America and Iran eye one other and lobby for influence
with Khan, both are also trying to curb his ruthless desire to maintain
his independence and persuade him to accept the authority of Hamid
Karzai's interim government in Kabul. When Khan ruled Herat from 1992-95
before being ousted by the Taliban, he was the most progressive of the
Afghan warlords. Now he pays only lip service to Mr Karzai and has refused
to reduce his 30,000-strong army. He is also hindering the election of
delegates from Herat for the loya jirga, the council which will meet this
month to create a new government. Khan is trying to pack the seats
allocated to his region with his candidates bringing angry words from
opponents. "By planting their nominees, the warlords are denying people
their rights," says Abdul Rahimi, a member of the loya jirga commission.
Khan claims that only five per cent of the Taliban forces have been
arrested or captured and still present a major threat to stability. Such
claims are clearly an excuse to maintain his grip on power as well as keep
America involved. His ability to maintain his army, keep the rival
Americans and Iranians at bay and defy Kabul rests on his growing
financial independence. At the customs post outside Herat, hundreds of
lorries are parked, loaded with Japanese tyres, Iranian fuel, cooking gas
cylinders from Turkmenistan and consumer goods from the Arab Gulf ports.
This year Khan is expected to earn between £40 million and £55 million
from customs duty on smuggled goods from Iran and Turkmenistan and the
reverse traffic from Kandahar and Pakistan. He refuses to share this
income with Kabul and has started his own reconstruction projects,
repaving Herat's roads, complete with zebra crossings [NOT CROSSINGS FOR
ZEBRAS -- THE BRIT PHRASE FOR PEDESTRIAN CROSSWALKS], and cleaning out
irrigation canals. The refusal of America and other powers to send
international peacekeepers to major cities outside Kabul after the
Taliban's defeat, when the warlords were weak and unsure of the future, is
now proving very detrimental. A senior European aid official in Herat
said: "The warlords with income are stronger now than they were last
December when the Taliban fell. "They can defy the central government and
the international community at will." [TELEGRAPH UK]

OPERATION ENDURING PAYOFFS. Sitting on lawn furniture inside the
screened-in porch of a Peshawar safe house, the CIA officer made his pitch
bluntly to Haji Mohammed Zaman. Was he prepared to kill al-Qaida Arabs,
the American asked. Zaman, a powerful warlord from eastern Afghanistan,
nodded. With that, the operative handed him $10,000 in cash and a sleek
hand-held Thuraya satellite telephone. ``Is that all?'' Zaman demanded
angrily, according to a senior Western diplomat who saw the exchange in
November, as Taliban forces were collapsing in Afghanistan. ``Is that all
you give to someone who knows where to find Osama bin Laden?'' The answer,
clearly, is no. No one has yet snagged the Bush administration's $25
million ``dead or alive'' bounty on bin Laden. But a senior intelligence
official in Washington says the U.S. spy service has distributed ``tens of
millions of dollars'' in cash since last fall in the effort to find him,
as well as in other covert operations. The CIA's small army of operatives
often has worked less like James Bond than like bagmen, handing out
bundles of $100 bills - often with sequential serial numbers - to buy
intelligence and support. Sometimes the money bought less than complete
loyalty. Sometimes the Americans bought bogus information. And some
officials question whether the practice is counterproductive in the long
run. ``All money does is buy you information,'' said a Capitol Hill staff
member familiar with the operation. ``It doesn't necessarily buy you
reliable information.'' But other officials say the CIA payoffs played a
critical role in persuading commanders from the Northern Alliance and
other guerrilla groups to provide proxy fighters last fall to help oust
the Taliban and search for al-Qaida members. ``Sometimes you can do more
with $100 bills than with bullets,'' said the intelligence official, who,
in keeping with his agency's policy, spoke on condition of anonymity.
``And if we can rent guys to help, that's fine.'' The going rate, other
officials said, was $100,000 for warlords; far less for lower-ranking
commanders, village elders and the like. Generous payments also encouraged
some Taliban commanders to switch sides or to abandon their positions.
``The Taliban conquered the country with bribery and negotiation,'' said a
former CIA officer. ``And basically, that's the way we reconquered it -
with help from air power.'' Agency spokesman Bill Harlow declined to
discuss the use of cash in Afghanistan. And most Afghan commanders deny
receiving payoffs, but evidence suggests otherwise. In the Afghan capital,
Kabul, for example, three car dealers along Parwan Say, the city's
commercial strip, said they sold ``dozens and dozens and dozens'' of new
and late-model SUVs - including fully loaded Toyota Land Cruisers costing
as much as $60,000 - to cash-rich Northern Alliance warlords and their
commanders in November, December and January after the Taliban abruptly
abandoned the city. ``These commanders, they were fighting each other to
get these cars,'' a dealer said. ``We couldn't satisfy them all.'' The
dealers said the cars were sold for cash, usually crisp 1999 series $100
bills, often with sequential serial numbers. Afghan merchants note the
dates closely because many are convinced that 1988, 1990 and 1993 dollars
are counterfeit and refuse to accept them. The scene was much the same in
Pakistan. Early last fall, as Afghan warlord Gul Agha Shirzai gathered his
men near the Pakistani border city of Quetta, U.S. forces air- dropped
assault rifles, sleeping bags, ammunition, radios and other gear to fight
the Taliban. But Shirzai's aides say the warlord also was given boxes of
U.S. dollars and Pakistani rupees. Shirzai is governor of Kandahar
province. Witnesses say stacks of dollars and rupees, as well as satellite
phones, were handed out to ethnic Pashtun commanders at two safe houses in
Peshawar on Nov. 13 to enlist their support. The Northern Alliance,
composed mostly of Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic minorities, had just
taken Kabul, the capital, and provincial Taliban governments, and
garrisons were collapsing across eastern Afghanistan. Pakistani smugglers
willing to haul communications gear, weapons and other equipment to U.S.-
backed proxy forces also got satchels of cash. So much money changed hands
that the value of the dollar fell sharply against the rupee, and local
prices shot up. Inevitably, the CIA got scammed in Afghanistan. A
Pakistani intelligence official said a Peshawar shopkeeper and his cohort
got $50,000 from the CIA for a tip on bin Laden's location - then
disappeared with the money. ``It turned out to be a swindle,'' the
official said. More important, officials say, warlords misled U.S.
intelligence during the battle of Tora Bora in December. Despite intense
bombing of suspected al-Qaida caves, hundreds of fighters - perhaps bin
Laden himself - apparently escaped by buying safe passage from Afghan
commanders who supposedly were aiding U.S. forces. U.S. officials suspect
Zaman, who had ridiculed the $10,000 offer at the Peshawar safe house, of
milking money and support during the battle by providing phony
intelligence about bin Laden and inflating reports of enemy fighters.
``There is a long and strong tradition of buying just about anything in
Afghanistan,'' a senior CIA official said. ``You win battles by striking
deals. The loyalty a warlord gets with his men is usually from physically
taking care of them. He provides cash, housing and food. That's a big part
of the equation.'' [LA TIMES]

MONDAY, JUNE 03, 2002

DID ANYONE NOTICE? Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres unveiled a peace
plan yesterday calling for the centralization of Palestinian security
forces, quickly followed (as in a matter of weeks) by the formation of a
Palestinian state in about 40 percent of the West Bank and much of Gaza.
Then, the plan calls for another round of negotiations to nail down a
final settlement. It's unlikely that Prime Minister Sharon, who's in a
different party than Peres, will support the proposal. [WSJ]

THE COLUMN IS TITLED "J. EDGAR MUELLER." With not a scintilla of evidence
of a crime being committed, the feds will be able to run full
investigations for one year. That's aimed at generating suspicion of
criminal conduct--the very definition of a 'fishing expedition.' Some
sunshine libertarians are willing to suffer this loss of personal freedom
in the hope that the Ashcroft-Mueller rules of intrusion may prevent a
terror attack. They won't, because they're a fraud. [Safire, NYT]

BUSINESS-RELATED? The treasurer of El Paso Corp., one of several energy
trading companies reeling over questions about its accounting practices,
was found shot dead in an apparent suicide at his home, police said
Monday. [AP]

NEVER MIND. The Bush administration has sent the U.N. a report "detailing
specific and far-reaching effects" that global warming will have on the
American environment. The administration for the first time mostly blames
human actions for recent global warming. The report goes on to predict: A
"disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves and the
permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes ...
a few ecosystems are likely to disappear entirely in some areas." The
report "does not propose any major shift in the administration's policy"
and simply "recommends adapting to inevitable changes." [NYT]

NO WAR HERE. A number of senior career officials across several
environmental agencies have quit recently in protest over what they say
are the Bush administration's overly business-friendly environmental
policies. [LAT]

LET'S KEEP OUR PRETENCES IN PLACE, OK?  "It appears to be the hijacking of
conservatism," Rush Limbaugh charged to the nation's largest radio
audience Monday after President Bush apparently flip-flopped over Global
Warming. "George W. Al Gore, anyone?" "What's left of the conservative
agenda that has not been offered up to democrats?" questioned Limbaugh,
who has been an outspoken critic of the Global Warming theory. Limbaugh
explained: "I have not jumped across this divide, my friends. I thought
about this last night when I became aware [of the NEW YORK TIMES story],
and I thought what am I going to have to do? Am I going to have to go on
the radio tomorrow and say , 'folks, guess what? I have been wrong about
global warming. I've been wrong about it, the president says it is
happening, human beings are causing it. I've been wrong.' I just can't
because I don't think I am. I -- too many scientists out there whom I
implicitly trust who have proven to me that these predictions are
basically apocalyptic doom and gloom based on raw emotion. Even the global
warming advocates to this day will not tell you it is definitively
happening."

AND SOME PEOPLE DIDN'T BELIEVE IN THE "NEW ECONOMY" OF THE '90S. By and
large, most Americans appear to be bullish on the economy and at least
neutral on the stock market. Mutual fund sales are going well, and housing
and consumer spending statistics show an economic recovery that is on
track. But there is one interesting group that has turned more bearish
than at any time in years: corporate insiders. "There has been huge, huge
insider selling," said Phil Roth, the veteran technical analyst at Miller
Tabak, referring to legal sales by corporate officers and directors. He
noted that over the last eight weeks, there had been 4.2 insider sales for
every insider purchase reported. There are usually more open-market
sellers than buyers, since insiders get a lot of their stock by exercising
options, but this ratio is higher than it ever was in the 1990s bull
market. That is a sharp turnaround from last fall, when insiders suddenly
stopped selling when the market reopened after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. That may have reflected patriotism, or at least a concern that
insiders who sold stock would look bad when their transactions were made
public. Or maybe they just thought prices were unreasonably cheap. If so,
that opinion has changed. Whatever their motivation in October, insiders
who bought stock generally did well as the market made a dynamic charge in
the fourth quarter. Now some of the same insiders are selling the shares
they bought then. Others who did not buy are selling, too. Just what is
causing the selling is worthy of speculation. On the benign side is the
suggestion that a lot of insiders have learned from Enron's 401(k) debacle
how unwise it is to concentrate one's wealth in any one stock,
particularly that of one's employer. The selling would therefore simply
reflect a desire to diversify. Robert Barbera, the chief economist of
Hoenig & Co., offers a more cynical Enron lesson, this one based on the
rapid rise in the number of accounting investigations being started by the
Securities and Exchange Commission. "If you believe people cooked the
books, then right now the cooks should be selling," he said. In fact, he
added, executives who acted properly may also be concerned. "We are now at
a point where accepted accounting principles of the late 1990s that were
used in a great many companies can be seen as aggressive," he said. "If
you are an insider who knows you were as aggressive as the next guy,
you've got some anxiety." Or maybe a lot of insiders simply think their
stocks are expensive. Reported profits rose more in the 1990s than did
real earnings, thanks to that aggressive accounting. But over the next
couple of years, as auditors enforce more conservatism, reported profits
may not do as well as real earnings. Will investors be willing to pay
higher price-earnings ratios to reflect that higher quality? Or will they
be scared that there are more problems yet to be uncovered? David Coleman,
editor of the newsletter Vickers Weekly Insider Report, which compiles the
insider statistics, points to one exception to the trend. Form 144
filings, which must be made by insiders selling shares they owned before
the company went public, are flat. Evidently, shares of initial public
offerings of recent years have fallen so far that few insiders want out.
He suggests that could mean some of these companies are getting to be
cheap. Insiders do not know everything, of course. As a group, they failed
to anticipate the bursting of the bubble in early 2000. But they rightly
turned negative before last summer's market swoon, which began months
before Sept. 11. That selling came as companies felt the economy weakening
around them. This wave may reflect fears that the recovery will not live
up to expectations. [NYT]

WE WON'T BE NEEDING THAT. The Army has decided to close its Peacekeeping
Institute, the only arm of the military devoted entirely to developing
principles of how to conduct peacekeeping missions. The unannounced
decision came after months of deliberation. It is part of a move to cut
staff positions at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., where the
institute is based . . . The institute was created in July 1993 to guide
the Army's thinking on the conduct of peacekeeping missions, to analyze
the strengths and weaknesses of specific missions and to promote Army
exchanges with international organizations involved in peace operations.
[AP]

USEFUL IDIOT. Remember the "secret" evidence, 'verified' by Tony Blair,
that Bush used to justify the invasion of Afghanistan? The 'evidence' that
proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that 'Osama bin Laden' was behind 9-11?
It's just been revealed that that secret 'evidence' withheld from the
public all these months is nothing other than the terror threat briefing
that Bush received on August 6th. In other words, information that was not
compelling enough to merit Bush cutting his month-long vacation short or
getting the US air defense in gear on August 6th suddenly became detailed
enough to merit the invasion of a country we were not even at war with.
[BRASS CHECK]

FAMILY FARMS, RIGHT? Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal farm
subsidies go to city and state governments, well-endowed state
universities and prison systems, while thousands of poor farmers are
denied funds to stay in business. During the past six years, the U.S.
Agriculture Department doled out crop subsidies to 413 city and town
governments, 44 state universities and 14 state prison systems, but turned
away tens of thousands of small farmers and ranchers who applied,
according to an analysis by The Washington Times . . . Eligibility for
farm subsidies is determined by the crop that is grown, with growers of
corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice getting more than 90 percent of the
$20 billion spent yearly for the federal program. In 2001, according to
the Agriculture Department, large growers and agribusinesses earning more
than $250,000 yearly, including a dozen Fortune 500 companies, received
almost three-fourths of all farm subsidies. Only 40 percent of U.S.
farmers collect farm subsidies. More than two-thirds of them are located
in 12 farm-belt states. [WASH TIMES]

DON'T WORRY, IT'S ONLY A PRECAUTION. Westchester County will begin giving
away potassium iodide tablets next week to people living within 10 miles
of the Indian Point nuclear power plant to help protect them from possible
radiation exposure during an emergency. The tablets, which combat
radiation-induced thyroid cancer, have become a popular option since the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which have provoked widespread anxiety over
the safety of nuclear power plants. In Westchester, many residents have
already rushed out to buy the over-the-counter tablet because of growing
concern about Indian Point's two working reactors in Buchanan, about 40
miles north of Midtown Manhattan. Reactor 2 has been plagued by minor
leaks and safety lapses, including a February 2000 radiation leak that
shut down the reactor for nearly a year. [NYT]

THERE'S A PATTERN HERE: IT TOOK THE FBI A YEAR TO FIND 12 PROSTITUTES IN
NEW ORLEANS. An unusual federal prostitution case ~ has set New Orleans
abuzz. Who are the johns in the FBI's 200-plus pages of phone transcripts?
And why did the bureau pursue with such energy what is a misdemeanor in
state courts, and rarely a federal crime? After an investigation lasting
more than a year, 12 alleged prostitutes and madams were indicted in April
on conspiracy and racketeering charges; three others, including two men,
were accused of helping the operation. Federal statutes applied because
the prostitutes flew in and out of New Orleans and were part of a national
prostitution ring, according to the local U.S. attorney . . . "The whole
thing is an incredible waste of federal resources," said Arthur A. "Buddy"
Lemann III, one of the most experienced of the city's criminal defense
lawyers. "To make a federal offense out of it is like using an elephant
gun to kill a fly." Jonathan Turley, an expert on constitutional criminal
procedure at George Washington University, said: "It's extremely unusual
for federal prosecutors to pursue a prostitution case. It's particularly
curious in an administration that is built on respecting traditional areas
of state authority." [WASH POST]

EVEN NUCLEAR WAR IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS. With nuclear powers India and
Pakistan on the edge of war, the role of the Blair government in fuelling
the conflict has been critical. In the year 2000, the government approved
nearly 700 export licenses for weapons and military equipment to both
countries. These had a total value of £64 million. India, which gets the
great majority of British weapons, is building under license Jaguar
bombers that are capable of delivering nuclear weapons. In January, as the
two countries prepared for war, Tony Blair arrived in the subcontinent on
what was called a "peace mission." In fact, as the Indian press revealed,
he discussed the opposite of peace - a £1 billion deal to sell India 60
Hawk fighter-bombers made by British Aerospace . . . Three weeks later,
the British High Commission in New Delhi threw a party for a group of
British arms salesmen in town for a major weapons fair called Defexpo,
whose organizers made no secret of their aim to exploit the "recent
developments taking place in the south-east Asia region" - in other words,
the conflicts in Kashmir and Afghanistan. So keen has the Blair government
been to exploit this opportunity of war that a British official has the
full-time assignment, in New Delhi, of "defense supply." He works with the
Defense Export Sales Organization in London, an arm of the Ministry of
Defense, whose sole aim is to sell weapons to foreign armies. A secret
list of 22 "highly valuable priority markets" targeted for British arms
sales has India and Pakistan near the top. British missiles, tanks,
artillery, howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, small arms and ammunition are
all available on buy-now-pay-later terms. [John Pilger, MIRROR UK]

AND WE KEEP TELLING THEM TO CONCENTRATE ON BEER AND SPORTS. While 86
percent of Americans support the war on terrorism, just 57 percent of
college students back the government's anti-terror efforts. 74 percent say
poorly performing schools are a bigger threat to the future of the United
States than terrorism. [Panetta Institute for Public Policy]

[continued in part 2]