[Peace] News notes 2005-07-10

[Carl Estabrook]

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   Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
   for the AWARE meeting, Sunday, July 10, 2005.
   (Sources provided on request; a paragraph followed
   by a bracketed source is substantially verbatim.)
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[1. TERRORISM] Four bombings in London on July 7 preoccupied the media
this week.  Forty-nine people were killed -- the number could double --
and hundreds were injured, or about what happens every other day in Iraq
as a result of US/UK policies.  As was the case after 9/11, anyone who
tried to say why the bombings happened was charged with being a
sympathizer.  But British MP George Galloway seemed to have it right when
he said that the bombings were inexcusable, but not inexplicable.
	The British PM immediately blamed "Muslim terrorists," but the
British Home Secretary (= minister of the interior) said that there was no
evidence the attacks on London were carried out because of the UK's role
in the Iraq war; he said the bombers wanted to destroy the "very essence
of our society" and that "some elements of Irish terrorism" might even be
responsible. Galloway said more plausibly that Londoners had paid the
price for Iraq and Afghanistan; he told the House of Commons it was the
US-led coalition's actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo which had
inflamed hatred of the West in the Muslim world. That prompted the armed
forces minister to say that Galloway was "dipping his poisonous tongue in
a pool of blood" and that his comments were "disgraceful." [BBC]
	British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that September 11 had not
come in response to any Western attack, and was itself in part responsible
for the Iraq War. Straw seems unaware that according to the September 11
Commission report, al-Qaeda conceived 9/11 in some large part as a
punishment on the US for supporting Ariel Sharon's iron fist policies
toward the Palestinians [and that former US Treasury Secretary] Paul
O'Neil reported that the very first Bush cabinet meeting he attended, in
late January 2001, was "all about Iraq" and that the 9/11 Commission found
no evidence for operational cooperation between Saddam's Iraq and
al-Qaeda.  [J. Cole]
	The London bombings are a refutation of Bush's propaganda
assertion, "We are fighting these terrorists with our military in
Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond so we do not have to face them in the
streets of our own cities."  Bush will give a speech at another military
installation, Quantico in Virginia (home of the American secret police)
on Monday night, trying to take advantage of the bombings to justify the
war in Iraq as fighting terrorism.
	Of course this new rationale for war, "turn Iraq into a terrorist
battlezone" plan is rather at odds with the "turn Iraq into a free and
stable Democratic society" idea. [Atrios]
	A previously unpublicized group took responsibility for the
crimes, but their statement was peculiar.  It used the language of secular
Arab nationalism rather than that of al-Qaeda.  Two generations ago the US
led the way in destroying political Arabism like that of Egypt's Nasser, a
source of resistance to US domination of the Greater Middle East.  In its
place the US promoted Islamic fundamentalists, the Salafi. The statement
suggests that a Russian analyst (Col. Leonid Ivashov) is correct when he
says, "One can say the Iraqi resistance forces have taken military
operations to enemy territory, Britain."
	While Christiane Amanpour of CNN was discussing the attacks on the
air from London, a man passing by interrupted and yelled, "Tell the truth
about what happened" ... "They're in Iraq, that's why it happened. There
were 50 killed in Iraq".
	The Associated Press reported July 7 that an anonymous source in
the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli
Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks in the U.K. capital. The
information reportedly was passed to the embassy minutes before the first
bomb struck at 0851 London time. The Israeli Embassy promptly ordered
Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the
morning of July 7. Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli
Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to
the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of
bombings that hit London on July 7. Several hours later, Israeli Foreign
Minister Silvan Shalom officially denied reports that Scotland Yard passed
any information to Israel regarding the bombings, and British police
denied they had any advanced warning of the attacks. The British
authorities similarly denied that any information exchange had occurred.
Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned minutes before the
first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the
Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks a couple of days
previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible
attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government
did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call
off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another
false alarm. [Stratfor]
	Newsweek reported last November, "... fears of terror attacks have
prompted FBI agents based in the U.S. Embassy in London to avoid traveling
on Londons popular underground ... While embassy-based officers of the
U.S. Secret Service, Immigration and Customs bureaus and the CIA still are
believed to use the underground to go about their business, FBI agents
have been known to turn up late to cross-town meetings because they insist
on using taxis..." [Salon]
	Also, the US administration last year crippled Blair's domestic
anti-terror efforts to track down and stop Al Qaeda cells inside Great
Britain by exposing a known Al Qaeda asset at a time when the Brits were
very close to nailing a ring of Al Qaeda cells inside the country ... the
Bush Administration blew a covert operation to aid Bush's reelection
campaign. [LeftCoaster]

[2. LOOTING] The bombings overshadowed the G8 meeting of heads of
government in Scotland. To the satisfaction of the US administration and
the media (notably Fox News) attention was shifted to terrorism from
subjects potentially uncomfortable to the US, global warming and aid to
Africa. Bush claims to have doubled U.S. aid to Africa, but his point man
for the summit meeting, Faryar Shirzad, a deputy national security
adviser, said later that the aid commitment involved no new money from the
United States. [NYT], while a July 6 Wall Street Journal editorial echoed
Bush's false but frequently repeated claim that he has "tripled" U.S. aid
to Africa.
	The Scotsman reported that [Ford Motor] company is providing 24
Jaguar XJ Sovereign cars for government leaders, 30 Galaxy people carriers
for delegates and 54 vehicles to support the policing of the summit. In
return, the company's logo is featured in summit documents and on the G8
Gleneagles website's "sponsorship" page. Robin Harper, of the Scottish
Green Party, told The Scotsman that the relationship between Ford and the
Gleneagles meeting "compromised" the climate change talks: "The very idea
that any big business should be able to advertise themselves as part of
the G8 summit is abhorrent." [DRUDGE]
	Toyota announced that it would open a new $800 million plant in
Ontario. The company turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in
subsidies in the United States because, when compared to Canadians, U.S.
workers are too hard to train, often illiterate, and expensive to insure.
[CBC]
	Over the past four months, the economy has added an average of
166,000 jobs per month. During the expansion of the 1990s, from 1993
through 1999, the economy added an average of 251,000 jobs each month,
more than 50 percent higher than the current pace of job growth. [CEPR]
	At the end of the Iraq war, vast sums of money were made available
to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on
rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months
later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared. [LRB]

[3. OCCUPATION] The British paper, The Mail on Sunday, reports today that
Britain and America are secretly preparing to withdraw most of their
troops from Iraq ... a secret paper [prepared] for Tony Blair reveals that
many of the 8,500 British troops in Iraq are set to be brought home within
three months, with most of the rest returning six months later. The leaked
document -- marked Secret: UK Eyes Only -- is titled Options For Future UK
Force Posture In Iraq ... One senior officer claimed the Minister had no
option but to recall 3,000 British troops in October as Britain has
already promised to send an extra 3,000 personnel to southern Afghanistan
to replace US soldiers ... The memo leaves little doubt that the British
plan to take their lead from the White House, where an increasingly
unpopular Mr Bush is under huge pressure from the US public to bring
American troops home fast ... It says Mr Bush's allies in the Pentagon and
Centcom, or Central Command, are at odds with Army chiefs in Iraq, who
fear it is too soon to withdraw in such large numbers ... The Ministry of
Defence last night confirmed the leaked document was genuine ... 52 per
cent of Britons think UK troops should return home only when Iraq is a
peaceful democracy ... 18% said UK soldiers should return immediately and
23 per cent said they should withdraw in six months. [Mail On Sunday]
	Reuters has picked up on a report that first appeared in The
Guardian on July 6, that the British are planning to draw down from 8,000
to 9,000 troops in Iraq now to 2,000 to 3,000 by spring-summer of 2006.
But it has gotten hold of a leaked memo from the British Ministry of
Defense that reveals that the US plans to draw down its forces from
138,000 to 66,000 by July of 2006, as well. The Pentagon is expecting to
be able to turn security duties in 14 of the 18 provinces over to the
Iraqi government by then ... the withdrawal plan implies a willingness to
turn the five northern provinces over to the Kurdish Peshmerga
paramilitary, and the 9 southern provinces over to a combination of Shiite
militias and new Iraqi government security forces. [J. Cole]
	U.S. Marines said on Saturday they had launched a new
counter-insurgency operation, the latest in a series of sweeps designed to
root out militant bases in Iraq's Euphrates valley. Operation Scimitar
involved about 500 U.S. troops and 100 Iraqis, making it about half the
scale of Operation Sword and Operation Spear in the past three weeks. The
military said the Marines had detained 22 suspected militants since the
raid was launched in secret in the village of Zaidon 30 km (20 miles)
southeast of Falluja on Thursday. Washington says the western Euphrates
valley between the Syrian border and Baghdad is a conduit for foreign
militants behind a wave of suicide bombings that worsened after the
Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government took power in April. Marines in the
area have launched operations just about weekly, hoping to clear
insurgents out of town after town. During Operation Spear, they called in
air strikes and left much of the border town of Karabila in ruins after
battles they said killed dozens of insurgents. Operation Sword was
quieter, with no heavy resistance reported. [Reuters]
	A large riot involving a thousand persons broke out in Tikrit on
Wednesday. When a member of the local council showed up dead, his
relatives and supporters accused the police chief of having had him
killed. They then stormed the police station. One policeman was killed and
three civilians were injured in the course of the protest.
	Reuters rounds up other deaths in the ongoing guerrilla war:
  *Guerrillas fired 10 mortar rounds into a bustling market in central
Mosul on Thursday, killing 3 and wounding 52. Then they fired more rounds
later on, killing 2 and wounding 7.
  *In Baiji, guerrillas shot an Iraqi soldier and a civilian.
  *In Mashru, a town near Hilla south of Baghdad, two car bombs killed 18
persons and wounded dozens more late on Wednesday.
  *Guerrillas in Baghdad killed 3 barbers on Tuesday, it was announced
early Thursday. Salafi radicals consider it a crime to shave a Muslim man,
who they think should wear a beard in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad.
  *The bombings in London on Thursday underlined what absolute hell Iraqis
are living through, who suffer the equivalent every other day. [J. Cole]

[4. MILITARY] The U.S. Army, having increased the maximum enlistment age
from thirty-four to thirty-nine and the maximum age for officer candidate
school from twenty-nine to forty-two, having offered $20,000 more for
college per soldier, and having lowered its recruitment goal for this June
by more than one thousand as compared to the previous year, announced that
it had exceeded its June recruitment goal by 507 soldiers. [HARPERS]
	The Pentagon has adopted a new homeland security plan that calls
for the U.S. military to greatly expand its domestic role. [WP]
	A coalition of central Asian countries -- including Russia and
China -- have called on the U.S. to withdraw its military presence from
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and to stop meddling in the domestic affairs of
the region. The coalition known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
passed a declaration that read, "Considering that the active phase of the
military anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has finished, member
states... consider it essential that the relevant participants in the
anti-terrorist coalition set deadlines for the temporary use' of bases in
Central Asia." Meanwhile in Washington, the Bush administration is poised
to revive its program to develop new nuclear bombs designed to target
underground facilities. [DN]
	A major article in this week's issue of The New Yorker by Jane
Meyer reveals how methods developed by the US military for withstanding
torture are being used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay. [DN]

[5. MEDIA] For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has
been investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as an undercover
CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July
14, 2003. . . Presidential adviser Karl Rove's words on the Plame case
have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak
her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do
with the Plame leak. [Newsweek] This week the New York Times' chief
propagandist for the Iraq war, Judith Miller, went to jail not because of
the blood on her hands but for refusing to testify to the grand jury on
the Plame matter. (As the poet says, "The last temptation is the greatest
treason / To do the right deed for the wrong reason.") Time's Matt Cooper
meanwhile testified, as the man who first published the name, Robert
Novak, is assumed to have done.
	Listening to the people talk on Fox and Friends was truly
disturbing. They sounded happy ... almost giddy about the attacks. They
were saying stuff like, and I am paraphrasing here, this is good to keep
peoples minds on terrorism. How can anything like this ever be good?
	[Brian Kilmeade, Fox News] KILMEADE: And he [British Prime
Minister Tony Blair] made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly
determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the
people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --
believe it or not -- was global warming, the second was African aid.  And
that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know
now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to
be together. I think that works to our advantage. . .
	VARNEY: It puts the Number 1 issue right back on the front burner
right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes
global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front
burner. It sticks terrorism and the fight on the war on terror, right up
front all over again.
	[Brit Hume, Fox News] HUME: Well, maybe. The other thing is, of
course, people have -- you know, the market was down. It was down
yesterday, and you know, you may have had some bargain-hunting going on. I
mean, my first thought when I heard -- just on a personal basis, when I
heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which
were really in the tank, I thought, "Hmmm, time to buy." [mediamatters]

[6. GME] All the Muslim governments condemned the bombings of London,
including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, along with Iran, as well as
Turkey, and even Hamas and Hizbullah. Hamas has long foresworn violence
against American and European targets, and has been holding talks with the
UK, for which it has been condemned by the al-Qaeda-linked groups. Note
that only at ArabicNews.com and the Chinese sites will the unadorned truth
of these Arab and Muslim condemnations be reported in detail. The
Financial Times mentioned it but then discussed a few negative individual
responses in chat rooms, as though the Egyptian foreign minister was only
as important as some guy in an internet cafe. All the Muslim governments
are as vulnerable as London, and most of the Arab and Muslim capitals have
been bombed by radical fundamentalists -- Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad,
Riyadh, Tehran, Jakarta, etc. Sometimes it has been the country's second
city, as with Casablanca or Istanbul. Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that its
contacts in the radical fundamentalist community of British Muslims
maintain that the July 7 attacks on London were undertaken by one of
several al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Europe, which had been planted there by
Ayman al-Zawahiri and his lieutenants in preparation for a decades-long
war with the West.  [J.  Cole]

[7. AFGHANISTAN] News from Iraq is so disturbing that it is easy to
overlook the increasingly grim reports about Afghanistan ... The Bush
administration has concentrated American forces in Iraq, with the result
that the fewer than 18,000 troops in Afghanistan are insufficient to quell
widening attacks and kidnappings ... the downing an American Chinook
helicopter last week is particularly ominous. But much of Afghanistan's
agony comes from a failure to make more progress in rebuilding the country
from the ruins of more than 30 years of war. [This is from the Louisville
KY Courier-Journal.]

[8. CANADA] Canadian officials have denied a visa to allow an outspoken
Iraqi critic of the U.S. to visit Ottawa, local peace activists who
invited him said. The Canadian Peace Alliance invited Dr. Salam Ismael,
29, to Canada later this month to speak about his experiences as a doctor
during both sieges of Fallujah. However, he was denied a visa by Canada's
embassy in Jordan. Salam heads a group called Doctors for Iraq Society and
has frequently travelled abroad to raise money for food and medical
supplies. He's known for speaking about the suffering of Iraqi civilians
during the war.

[9. ISRAEL] Israeli Cabinet Ministers on Sunday rejected British PM
Blair's contention that the Mideast conflict is one of the underlying
causes of terror ... Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that
"the terrorists operating in London last week were doing it as part of a
comprehensive terrorist war against the Western civilization similar to
what they've done in America, similar to what they've done in Spain."
Israeli officials have long stressed the global nature of terror,
apparently wary that a connection between attacks on Western countries and
Middle East policy could increase pressure on Israel to resolve its
conflict with the Palestinians.
	Israeli finance minister Netanyahu warned that the West must do
more to counter Irans potential nuclear threat ... He said he wanted the
shipment of Russian nuclear equipment and nuclear fuel to a plant under
construction at Bushehr to be stopped. [Times/UK]
	Leaders of the G8 group of industrialized countries indirectly
urged Israel Friday to immediately ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) and abide by other conventions on the weapons of mass
destruction. [IRNA]

[10. IRAQ] The FT reports [that] Iran will give Iraq $1 billion in foreign
aid, and will help train the new Iraqi military. Everyone is doing a
double-take about these developments. But they were predictable, given
that the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party
won the January 30 elections that the American public was so excited
about. This is what that victory really means. Iran in some sense as much
won those elections as the Bush administration lost them. [J. Cole]
	Chicago political scientist Robert Pape argues in his new book,
"Dying to Win," that the vast majority of suicide bombers are protesting
foreign military occupation undertaken by democratic societies where
public opinion matters. He points out that there is no recorded instance
of a suicide attack in Iraq in all of history until the Anglo-American
conquest of that country in 2003. He might have added that neither had any
bombings been undertaken elsewhere in the name of Iraq.

[11. KOREA] North Korea announced that by the end of the month it will
return to the six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons program
for the first time in more than a year. The LAT and NYT point out North
Korea's willingness to resume talks may stem from the Bush
administration's somewhat softer rhetoric in recent months, along with
promises of aid from South Korea. [Slate]

[12. SELF-REFERENTIALITY] Finally, the Bush administration and their
allies have a way of saying things that curl back upon themselves, as if
their unconscious is covertly shrieking the truth about themselves.
Consider Bush's comment after the London bombings, given that his
administration is responsible for taking the lives of many, many more
innocent folks than the bombers, atrocious as their acts were:

"The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of
those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and
those who kill, those who've got such evil in their heart that they will
take the lives of innocent folks."

And British PM Blair's response to the bombings could without a change be
spoken by the Iraqi resistance, the victims of US/UK terrorism:

"It's important, however, that those engaged in terrorism realize that our
determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than
their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people and
a desire to impose extremism on the world."

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	    C. G. Estabrook <www.newsfromneptune.com>
	   "News from Neptune" (Saturdays 10-11AM), and
	"From Bard to Verse: A Program of the Spoken Arts"
	 (Saturdays noon-1PM) on WEFT, Champaign, 90.1 FM,
	    Community Radio for East Central Illinois
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