[Peace] News notes 2006-02-26

[Carl Estabrook]

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	Notes from last week's "global war on terrorism,"
	for the February 26, 2006, meeting of AWARE, the
	"Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana.
	(Sources provided on request; paragraphs followed
	by a bracketed source are substantially verbatim.)
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	"Press reports in Israel indicate that, as expected, the [Israeli]
	government is delighted with the Hamas victory, which enables the
	government to persist in its 'there is no partner' posture,
	enabling it to carry forward its programs of taking over the
	valuable parts of the West Bank and ensuring that remaining
	fragments left to Palestinians will be unviable -- a second prison
	alongside of Gaza, decisions now explicit with the announcement of
	the virtual annexation of the Jordan Valley and steps to expel the
	population gradually.  The US position is probably more complex.
	Washington doubtless welcomes the opportunity to carry forward the
	Israeli plans for which it has provided decisive support.  On the
	other hand, it is reasonably clear that Washington would have
	preferred to pursue these policies within the framework of a
	powerless Palestinian authority, reduced to weak rhetorical
	gestures and discrediting the cause of securing Palestinian
	national rights.  A genuine commitment to realizing these rights
	was not one of the options.  The non-option is supported by almost
	the entire world and by a considerable majority of the US
	population, but that is largely irrelevant, as in many other
	cases, and will remain so until real progress is made at home in
	'democracy promotion,' to borrow a fashionable phrase."
	--Noam Chomsky

[1] Violence and reprisals in Iraq this week followed the bombing of an
important Shia mosque, in Samarra.  Since the only party whose interests
are served by an escalating civil war in Iraq is the US, suspicion has
fallen upon it as the perpetrator of the bombing.  Pentagon insistence on
expanding "special operations," their public invocation of the "Salvador
option" and the encouragement of militias and death squads have made many
wonder if the bombing was carried out by someone like the US-constructed
Iraqi National Guard -- the bombs were set by men in uniforms -- under US
direction.
	Fox News featured two onscreen captions during a segment on
escalating violence in Iraq that read: " 'Upside' To Civil War?" and
"All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" [mediamatters]

[2] The US ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad [suggested this week] a
possible cutoff of US security aid if the Iraqis did not shape up. [A
intractable civil war would be an excuse to draw down troops, as the US
wants, and hold strategic strong points -- like oil fields.] Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice spoke of "outsiders" stoking tensions -- usually a
code word for Iran and Syria. [They and a civil war could be blamed for
the change from] three months ago, when the White House unveiled its
"national strategy for victory in Iraq" and Bush renewed his pledge to
stay the course ... With the US death toll in Iraq nearing 2,300, polls
show 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's Iraq policies, which
will likely be a major issue in the November legislative elections .. A
senior State Department official ... said, "It's not going to look like a
country that's being governed democratically for 20 or 25 years." [AFP]

[3] SOS Rice took a trip thru Mideast capitals to try to prevent support
for the now Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.  She was cold-shouldered even
by wholly-owned US subsidiaries like President Mubarrak of Egypt.  Local
papers such as the Daily Star of Lebanon called the trip "imbecilic."  In
the news black hole of the week -- late Friday/Saturday -- a senior U.S.
diplomat told the Palestinian leadership that U.S. aid will continue,
despite the election of the Hamas government.

[4] Meanwhile Ms. Rice was having further staff problems: she announced
support for the truckers' strike in Venezuela against the "dictatorship"
of President Chavez; the problem was, there was no truckers' strike --
apparently the CIA was behind schedule on getting such a thing underway (a
tactic they'd used to help overthrow President Allende of Chile in thirty
years ago). Angry truckers in Caracas demonstrated in front of the US
embassy against American subversion.

[5] The principal impulses of the Bush administration, killing and looting
-- if you prefer, the neocons and the businessmen -- collided this week
over the Dubai Ports World (DPW) deal.  The remarkable heat with which
Bush defended the deal illustrates how much this administration considers
its base to be the wealthiest corporate interests (including ones in which
they have a personal stake).  When the neocons trumpet the propaganda that
the US is engaged in a"Long War"(TM) with "The Global Extremist Islamic
Empire"(TM), Americans are rightly confused when the Bushies are busily
doing deals with Muslim governments and corporations.  (There's a feverish
denunciation of Osama bin Laden's plans for "global domination" by an
ex-CIA man in today's Washington Post.)  Add to this the disregard the
administration has show for the any real security concerns about American
ports -- where only 6% of incoming containers are physically examined --
and we can see what the real concerns of this group of crooks really are,
however confusing the matter seems. Thomas H. Kean from the 9/11
Commission says that a debate over who should run the ports is "the wrong
question," adding that the actual issue of port security isn't being
discussed.
	The second in command at the Pentagon ... said Thursday that
people who publicly oppose allowing a Middle Eastern company to take over
management of some U.S. ports could be threatening national security.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the Senate Armed Services
Committee that blocking the deal could ostracize one of the United States'
few Arab allies. [CNN]
	The Bush Administration has jumped to the defense of DP World not
because the company has operated internationally in Germany, Australia,
and Hong Kong and is one of the 3 largest port operators in the world; nor
because Dubai hosts more U.S. Navy ships than any other country in the
region (which it does). And don't be fooled when the President offers this
soundbite. "I want those who are questioning it to... explain why all of a
sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard..." The
fact is, the administration is defending this deal because their guiding
principle is one of maximizing corporate profits, as Harold Meyerson notes
in the Washington Post ... And as an editorial in the New York Times
points out, "[The Bush administration] has been perpetually willing to
sacrifice individual rights in favor of security. But it has been loath to
do the same thing when it comes to business interests." Not surprisingly,
the Bush administration has significant business ties to DP World.
According to the New York Daily News, David Sanborn, who runs DP World's
European and Latin American operations, was named by Bush to direct the
U.S. Maritime Administration just last month. And Treasury Secretary John
Snow, who headed the federal review of the deal, was Chairman of CSX which
sold its international port operations to DP Word for $1.15 billion just
one year before Mr. Snow joined the Bush cabinet. Finally, blogger David
Sirota notes that the Bush administration is currently negotiating a
free-trade agreement with the UAE and doesn't want anything to interfere
with its global trade goals. So what are the real security issues we need
to be talking about? As the Center For American Progress reports, how
about the fact that in 2002 the Coast Guard estimated that it would cost
$5.4 billion over 10 years to make the necessary improvements to the
nation's ports, and last year only $175 million was appropriated to the
program? [Notion]
	So why is the fearmonger-in-chief being so casual about this Dubai
business? Because at some level of consciousness even George Bush knows
the inflated fears are bogus. So do a lot of the politicians merrily
throwing spears at him. He taught them how to play this game, invented the
tactics and reorganized political competition as a demagogic dance of
hysterical absurdities, endless opportunities to waste public money. Very
few dare to challenge the mindset. Thousands have died for it.  Bush's
terrorism war has from the start been in collision with the precepts of
corporate-led globalization... [Greider]

[6] The New York Times leads with the military's quiet expansion of the
detention center at Bagram, Afghanistan, where approximately 500 suspects
are being held indefinitely and in poor conditions that seem to be worse
than those in Guantanamo ... As the administration decided to pretty much
stop sending new detainees to Guantanamo in 2004, the population of Bagram
has soared. No one from the outside world, except the Red Cross, is
allowed to visit the facilities. Officials who spoke anonymously to the
NYT insist that Bagram was never meant to house long-term prisoners, but
now some have been there for three years ... prisoners are mostly held in
large wire cages. [Slate]
	The head of Canada's contingent to the NATO force in Afghanistan
said foreign troops will be there for "years and years." Major General
Michel Gauthier made the comments in an interview published in the
Guardian of London. [DN]

[7] A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release the
names of all of the detainees being secretly held at Guantanamo Bay. Up
until now, only a handful of the detainees have been officially
identified. The ruling comes as the Bush administration is coming under
increasing international pressure to close the prison camp. Meanwhile
newly released FBI memos show that FBI agents repeatedly warned military
interrogators at Guantanamo that their aggressive methods were legally
risky and also likely to be ineffective. The memos indicate that senior
military officials, including former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, were aware of and in some cases had approved of putting hoods
on prisoners, threatening them with violence and subjecting them to
humiliating treatment. [DN]
	Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention
center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli
flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights
during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according
to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday. FBI agents working at
the prison complained about the military interrogators' techniques in
e-mail to their superiors from 2002 to 2004, 54 e-mails released by the
American Civil Liberties Union showed. The agents tried to get the
military interrogators to follow a less coercive approach and warned that
the harsh methods could hinder future criminal prosecutions of terrorists
because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court. Maj. Gen.
Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of the prison at the time, overrode the
FBI agents' protests, according to the documents. The memos offer some of
the clearest proof yet that the abuses and torture of prisoners weren't
the isolated actions of low-ranking soldiers, the ACLU said. [KR]

[8] Almost 100 prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan
since August 2002, according to US group Human Rights First. The details
were first aired on BBC television's Newsnight programme. Of the 98
deaths, at least 34 were suspected or confirmed homicides, the programme
said ... The report defines the 34 cases classified as homicides as
"caused by intentional or reckless behaviour".  It says another 11 cases
have been deemed suspicious and that between eight and 12 prisoners were
tortured to death.  But despite this, charges are rare and sentences are
light, the report says. [BBC]

[9] The New Yorker magazine has revealed that two years before the Abu
Ghraib photos were first published, the Navy's general counsel, Alberto
Mora, began challenging what he described as the administration's
"disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror
suspects." Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the
consequences of President Bush's decision, in 2002, to circumvent the
Geneva conventions.

[10] The New York Times is reporting the country's intelligence agencies
have been secretly reclassifying thousands of historical documents that
had been declassified and available to the public. The program began in
1999 and intensified after President Bush took office ... Some historians
fear they could now be tried under the Espionage Act because they have
copies of files that are no longer declassified. [DN]

[11] NY Times Baghdad correspondent Dexter Filkins reviews L. Paul Bremer
III's memoir, "My Year in Iraq" in today's NY Times Book Review, and, as
Noam Chomsky said on today's radio program "Media Matters"
(http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/mediamatters/default.htm), his review is an
example of the typical style of US political reporting -- roughly that of
a home-town newspaper reflecting on its sports team, e.g., Was Bremer the
right coach to enable the good old team to win?

[12] Seventy-seven percent of U.S. adults watch local broadcast news,
while 71 percent watch network news, compared to 18 percent who read a
national newspaper. A Harris Interactive poll ... also found 64 percent
get their news several times a week or daily by going online, while 63
percent read a local daily newspaper. Fifty-four percent listen to radio
news broadcasts, 37 percent listen to talk radio and 19 percent listen to
satellite news programming. [UPI]

[13] Republican Congressmember Joe Barton of Texas has launched an
investigation into one of the world's major oil companies -- Citgo. The
Venezuelan-owned company announced a discounted gas program for poor
Americans last year. [DN]

[14] Several members of Congress are calling for an investigation into
recent raids conducted by the FBI targeting pro-independence activists in
Puerto Rico. Last week, hundreds of members of the FBI's counterterrorism
unit conducted six simultaneous raids targeting members of the
pro-independence group known as the Macheteros. [DN]

[15] The Financial Times is reporting an intelligence wing of the Marines
has hired a private defense contractor to conduct a secret study of Iran's
ethnic minorities. This is a move that could indicate early stages of
contingency plans for a ground assault on Iran. The Marines conducted a
similar study in Iraq. A former intelligence officer said the ultimate
purpose of the Marines intelligence wing was to support effective ground
military operations by the Marine Corps. The study appeared to focus on
whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind
of fault lines that are splitting Iraq. The Financial Times reports
several Iranians living in the United States refused to help with the
study because they saw it as part of an effort to break up Iran. To
conduct the analysis, the military hired a subsidiary of the defense
contractor SAIC, the Science Applications International Corp. [DN]

[16] In news on Haiti, President Bush has spoken for the first time with
newly elected president Rene Preval. According to the White House Bush
congratulated Preval on his victory and discussed Haiti's cooperation in
the so-called war on drugs. But tension already seems to be mounting
between the U.S. and the new government over whether former Haitian
President Jean Bertrand Aristide should be allowed to return ... State
Department spokesman Adam Ereli said: "Aristide is from the past. We're
looking to the future." [DN]

[17] In Arizona, an environmental activist is facing 25 years in jail and
a $250,000 fine for a speech he gave in San Diego three years ago. The
government charges the activist, Rodney Coronado, broke the law by urging
people to commit arson and telling them how to build an incendiary device.
The FBI has described Coronado as a leader of the Earth Liberation Front.
His speech came just a day after the Earth Liberation Front claimed
responsibility for burning down a new condominium complex in San Diego.
Coronado has never been charged in connection with the fire just the
speech he gave the next day. [DN]

[18] A coalition of American churches sharply denounced the U.S.-led war
in Iraq on Saturday, accusing Washington of "raining down terror" and
apologizing to other nations for "the violence, degradation and poverty
our nation has sown." The statement, issued at the largest gathering of
Christian churches in nearly a decade, also warned the United States was
pushing the world toward environmental catastrophe with a "culture of
consumption" and its refusal to back international accords seeking to
battle global warming. "We lament with special anguish the war in Iraq,
launched in deception and violating global norms of justice and human
rights," said the statement from representatives of the 34 U.S. members of
World Council of Churches. "We mourn all who have died or been injured in
this war. We acknowledge with shame abuses carried out in our name." The
World Council of Churches includes more than 350 mainstream Protestant,
Anglican and Orthodox churches; the Roman Catholic Church is not a member.
The U.S. groups in the WCC include the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian
Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, several Orthodox churches and
Baptist denominations, among others ... On Friday, the U.S. National
Council of Churches which includes many WCC members released a letter
appealing to Washington to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and
saying reports of alleged torture violated "the fundamental Christian
belief in the dignity of the human person" ... The churches said they had
"grown heavy with guilt" for not doing enough to speak out against the
Iraq war and other issues. The statement asked forgiveness for a world
that's "grown weary from the violence, degradation and poverty our nation
has sown." [AP]

[19] Torture flights landed in UK, admit air controllers.  CIA jets
suspected of flying terrorist suspects to secret prisons for torture have
landed at commercial British airports and received help from UK air
traffic control, the authorities have admitted for the first time ... The
planes are part of a ghost fleet of CIA jets that have been spotted at UK
airports since 2001 ... the admission by the civil aviation service that
CIA aircraft have used UK airspace is the first admission that the
authorities and ministers are aware of the flights. Tony Blair has claimed
that he has no knowledge of so-called torture flights coming in and out of
the country, and has refused to hold an independent public inquiry. The
flights have been associated with the practice of extraordinary rendition.
which involves taking terrorist suspects to foreign prisons and secret
jails in Europe. Seventy-six planes used by the CIA are believed to have
made stops in Britain since 11 September 2001, at Prestwick, RAF Northolt,
Luton and Glasgow. [Independent]

[20] A written report from Secret Service agents guarding Vice President
Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting
outing two weeks ago says Cheney was "clearly inebriated" at the time of
the shooting. Agents observed several members of the hunting party,
including the Vice President, consuming alcohol before and during the
hunting expedition, the report notes, and Cheney exhibited "visible signs"
of impairment, including slurred speech and erratic actions, the report
said. According to those who have read the report and talked with others
present at the outing, Cheney was drunk when he gunned down his friend and
the day-and-a-half delay in allowing Texas law enforcement officials on
the ranch where the shooting occurred gave all members of the hunting
party time to sober up. We talked with a number of administration
officials who are privy to inside information on the Vice President's
shooting "accident" and all admit Secret Service agents and others saw
Cheney consume far more than the "one beer' he claimed he drank at lunch
earlier that day. "This was a South Texas hunt," says one White House
aide. "Of course there was drinking. There's always drinking. Lots of it."
Cheney has a long history of alcohol abuse, including two convictions of
driving under the influence when he was younger. Doctors tell me that
someone like Cheney, who is taking blood thinners because of his history
of heart attacks, could get legally drunk now after consuming just one
drink ... Secret Service officials also took possession of all tests on
Whittington's blood at the hospitals where he was treated for his wounds.
When asked if a blood alcohol test had been performed on Whittington, the
doctors who treated him at Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial in Corpus
Christi or the hospital in Kingsville refused to answer. One admits
privately he was ordered by the Secret Service to "never discuss the case
with the press."  It's a sure bet that is a private doctor who treated the
victim of Cheney's reckless and drunken actions can't talk to the public
then the memo that shows the Vice President was drunk as a skunk will
never see the light of day. [Capitol Hill Blue]

[21] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday he was mistaken
when he stated last week that the U.S. military had stopped paying Iraqi
newspapers to publish pro-American articles. Rumsfeld had said in a
television interview on Friday that the U.S. military had ceased paying to
place positive stories in Iraqi media after criticism in the U.S. Congress
and press. Rumsfeld made similar comments the same day to the Council on
Foreign Relations. "I just misstated the facts," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon
briefing on Tuesday. [Reuters]

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  C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
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