[Peace] News notes 2006-06-05

[Carl Estabrook]

	==================================================
	My notes on last week's "global war on terrorism"
	(regularly prepared for the Sunday meeting of AWARE,
	the "Anti-War Anti-Racism Effort" of Champaign-Urbana)
	will this week take the form of the script for a radio show
	broadcast on Monday 5 June 2006 on community radio station
	WEFT-FM, Champaign.  I will be glad to provide sources
	on request;  paragraphs preceded by a bracketed source
	abbreviation are substantially verbatim. --CGE
	==================================================

		5 JUNE 2006 // "TELLING TIME" // SCRIPT

GOOD EVENING. It's just after 6pm on Monday, June 5, 2006 -- the 25th
anniversary of a brief report by a California doctor, Michael Gottlieb,
which contained the first diagnosis of the HIV virus. Since then, 25
million people have died of AIDS. An average of 8,000 continue to die each
day.  Gottlieb himself says that today there's not "enough medication to
treat the people you need to treat, who are indigent.  Our government has
had a colossal failure in responding to the AIDS epidemic."  And that's to
say nothing about much more easily cured diseases, like malaria, that kill
many more.  But our government backs the drug companies and keeps that
medicine from being made available.  The 25 years since the discovery of
HIV has been a generation of murderous crimes by government and business.

IT'S "TELLING TIME: ADDITIONS TO THE CORPORATE NEWS" at WEFT.  I'm Carl
Estabrook, and our program takes its inspiration from a line in the 1934
play "The Front Page" -- "Trying to determine what is going on in the
world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching
the second hand of a clock."

ELECTRONIC MEDIA -- and the one real American innovation of the 20th
century, Public Relations -- have made the matter much worse than it was
when Ben Hecht wrote that line, 70 years ago.  Corporate news controls
much of what we know -- not so much by suppressing stories (altho' they
sometimes do that, too) -- but by providing emphasis, directing our
attention, telling us what's important, and indicating how we should think
about the stories that are reported.

AGAINST THAT, on "Telling Time" we want to take the time to tell you
stories from the foreign press, blogs, and other alternative media, as
well as stories that have been overlooked or downplayed in the media owned
by big business.

FOR EXAMPLE, did you hear what the Los Angeles Times is reporting, that
the Pentagon has decided officially to ignore a key tenet of the Geneva
Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment"?
The LAT article comments that this is a step "that would mark a further,
potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international
human rights standards...
	"For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing its
policies on detainees, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual on
interrogation ... The detainee directive was due to be released in late
April along with the Army Field Manual on interrogation. But objections
from several senators on other Field Manual issues forced a delay. The
senators objected to provisions allowing harsher interrogation techniques
for those considered unlawful combatants, such as suspected terrorists, as
opposed to traditional prisoners of war. For decades, it had been the
official policy of the U.S. military to follow the minimum standards for
treating all detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002,
Bush [said he] suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured Al
Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush's order superseded military policy at the
time ... [the effects of the Bush policy couldn't be completely hidden, so
there were] reports of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at
Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Among the directives being rewritten following
Bush's 2002 order is one governing U.S. detention operations. Military
lawyers and other defense officials wanted the redrawn version of the
document known as DoD Directive 2310, to again embrace Common Article 3 of
the Geneva Convention. That provision known as a "common" article because
it is part of each of the four Geneva pacts approved in 1949 bans torture
and cruel treatment.  Unlike other Geneva provisions, Article 3 covers all
detainees whether they are held as unlawful combatants or traditional
prisoners of war. The protections for detainees in Article 3 go beyond the
McCain amendment by specifically prohibiting humiliation, treatment that
falls short of cruelty or torture. The move to restore U.S. adherence to
Article 3 was opposed by officials from Vice President Dick Cheney's
office and by the Pentagon's intelligence arm, government sources said.
David S. Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, and Stephen A. Cambone,
Defense undersecretary for intelligence, said it would restrict the United
States' ability to question detainees... The military lawyers, known as
judge advocates general, or JAGs, have concluded that they will have to
wait for a new administration before mounting another push to link
Pentagon policy to the standards of Geneva... The military has long [said
it] applied Article 3 to conflicts including civil wars using it as a
minimum standard of conduct, even during peacekeeping operations. The old
version of the U.S. directive on detainees says the military will "comply
with the principles, spirit and intent" of the Geneva Convention. But top
Pentagon officials now believe common Article 3 creates an "unintentional
sanctuary" that could allow Al Qaeda members to keep information from
interrogators.  "...there are certain things unlawful combatants are not
entitled to" ... The Pentagon worries that if Article 3 were incorporated
in the directive, detainees could use it to argue in U.S. courts that such
techniques violate their personal dignity... Common Article 3 was
originally written to cover civil wars, when one side of the conflict was
not a state and therefore could not have signed the Geneva Convention. In
his February 2002 order, Bush wrote that he determined that "Common
Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either Al Qaeda or Taliban
detainees, because, among other reasons, the relevant conflicts are
international in scope and Common Article 3 applies only to 'armed
conflict not of an international character.' " ... Article 3 was intended
to apply to all wars as a sort of minimum set of standards, and that is
how Geneva is customarily interpreted ... But top administration officials
contend that after the Sept. 11 attacks, old customs do not apply ... "The
overall thinking ... is that they need the flexibility to apply cruel
techniques if military necessity requires it."

THAT'S WHAT the criminals running this country are doing right now, and it
is surely "TELLING TIME" for that.

[2] MISREPRESENTING BOTH THE US & IRAN. The USG'S semi-official press, the
NYT and the WP, ran front-page puff pieces yesterday on Bush's bold change
of mind on direct negotiations with Iran (that's meant to be ironic) on
the administration's made-up crisis over the Iranian nuclear program. The
administration obviously planted the stories, sourced to anonymous "senior
officials."  Probably to the satisfaction of Cheney and Rumsfeld, the
change of policy, such as it is, is attributed to Secretary of State Rice,
who has found that there's no support in the rest of the world for US
belligerency. Rice gets her own back by having the article compare her
favorably to Colin Powell.
	Perhaps against the wishes of the NYT editors and their USG
handlers, a NYT reporter seems to sneak in an indication of what's really
going on in an article appended to the end of the puff piece, on page A10.
Like the front-page article, there's a simply asserted reference to Iran
as a terrorist nation (and therefore obviously a target in the GWOT), but
the juxtaposition is what's telling: "SINGAPORE, June 3 Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld told a gathering of defense experts here on Saturday
that Iran was 'one of the leading terrorist nations in the world.' Mr.
Rumsfeld also questioned why Russia and China would allow Iran to
participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional
organization that includes Russia, China and Central Asian nations."
What Washington most fears is the incorporation of Iran into an Asian
energy grid with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
	Political news in the US is led -- the pattern is set -- by the
major newspapers, especially the NYT and the WP.  In fact recently the
news has consisted of leaks to these two papers, the NYT being closer to
the so-called realists and the Europeanists of the first Bush
administration and the WP more sympathetic to the upper-class liberals
around the CIA. Appropriately enough, the first group is centered in New
York, the second in Washington.  But this becomes government by
competitive leaks.  In fact, the WP led Monday with a response to the NYT
article that tries to push the administration on Iran policy.  The Post
reports that the Bush administration is putting pressure on Europe and
Japan to impose economic sanctions on Iran. The proposed sanctions,
developed by a Treasury Department task force reporting directly to
Condoleezza Rice, are more far-reaching than any measures taken by the
White House to date. The plan would restrict the Iranian government's
access to global markets, shut its foreign accounts, and freeze assets
held in Europe and Asia.

[3] RESPONSE TO A NON-OFFER. Iran's President Ahmadinejad told Kofi Annan
on Saturday that he welcomes talks with the international coalition that
now includes the U.S. over their latest incentives package. But ... he
reiterated Iran's refusal to cease enriching uranium, the US condition
talks.
	[Reuters] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, [Iran's clerical leader], said
on Sunday that if the United States makes a "wrong move" toward Iran,
energy flows in the region would be endangered ... His remarks, likely to
upset oil markets, come days before EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana
is to deliver a package of incentives developed by six world powers to
persuade Iran to abandon plans to make nuclear fuel ... Khamenei listed
what he said were U.S. failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian
territories and elsewhere in the area. "You (the United States) are not
capable of securing energy flows in this region," he said, addressing a
crowd [on the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
founder of the Islamic Republic].

[4] FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE MYRMI-DON.  [Reuters] Rumsfeld arrived in
Vietnam on Sunday for a visit aimed at boosting security ties with a
former foe that now shares American wariness about China's rising military
might [sic] ... On Saturday, Rumsfeld told ... an annual forum of defense
experts and officials in Singapore, that China should ``demystify'' its
military spending and strategic intentions to ease fears among neighbors
... Rumsfeld said another U.S. Navy ship will visit Vietnam this summer.
Under the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training (IMET)
program, Vietnamese pilots will go to the United States for
English-language training. He said the United States was not seeking
access to military facilities in Vietnam [sic]. [Remember the rule,
"Believe nothing until it's officially denied."]

ON A LOCAL NOTE, a bit behind the turns of official rhetoric, the front
page of the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette "Commentary" section yesterday
was devoted to huge pictures and a badly-written article on the parallels
between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.  It's standard-issue
myth-making, notably about the scorned troops.  This sort of propaganda is
probably seen as necessary because the US press last week was unable
entirely to ignore accounts of US troops' execution of civilians at
Haditha last November, and elsewhere.  The My Lai story, which revealed
that Americans troops raped and killed civilians at a Vietnamese village
in 1968 was an important step towards Americans' realizing how the war in
Vietnam was fought.  In this regard, if few others, the two wars are
alike.

[5] A FERAL PLACE.  The right-wing British paper the Telegraph published
this week an account of the background of the Haditha massacre:
	"In January, shortly before the first published reports emerged
about US marines methodically gunning down men, women and children in the
Iraqi town of Haditha, The Daily Telegraph [reporter] spent time at the
main camp of the battalion under investigation. [By then] Rumours had
spread that what happened on Nov 19 diverged from the official line that
locals were killed by a roadside bomb.
	"None of the troops wanted to talk, but even a short stay with the
men of the 3rd Bn 1st Marine Division in their camp located in Haditha Dam
on the town's outskirts, made clear it was a place where institutional
discipline had frayed and was even approaching breakdown.
	"Normally, American camps in Iraq are almost suburban, with their
coffee shops and polite soldiers who idle away their rest hours playing
computer games and discussing girls back home.
	"Haditha was shockingly different - a feral place where the
marines hardly washed; a number had abandoned the official living quarters
to set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out;
and a daily routine punctured by the emergency alarm of the dam itself
with its antiquated and crumbling machinery.
	"The dam is one of Iraq's largest hydroelectric stations. A US
special operations unit had secured it during the invasion and American
troops had been there ever since. Now they were spread across the dozen or
so levels where Iraqi engineers once lived. The lifts [elevators] were
smashed, the lighting provided only a half gloom. Inside, the grinding of
the dam machinery made talking difficult. The place routinely stank of
rotten eggs, a by-product apparently of the grease to keep the turbines
running.
	"The day before my arrival one soldier had shot himself in the
head with his M16. No one would discuss why.
	"The washing facilities were at the top and the main lavatories at
the base. With about 800 steps between them, many did not bother to use
the official facilities.
	"Instead, a number had moved into small encampments around the
dam's entrances that resembled something from Lord of the Flies. Entering
one, [I found] a marine was pulling apart planks of wood with his
dirt-encrusted hands to feed a fire. A skull and crossbones symbol had
been etched on the entrance to the shack.
	"I was never allowed to interview a senior officer properly,
unlike during every other stint with American forces. The only soldiers
willing to speak at length were those from the small Azerbaijani
contingent whose role was to marshal the band of Iraqi engineers who kept
the machinery going into and out of the facility.
	"The US troops liked them. "They have looser rules of engagement,"
one said admiringly in a rare, snatched conversation.
	"It is not yet known where exactly the men responsible for the
killing of the 24 civilians in Haditha were based. There was a handful of
small, forward-operating bases in the town and surrounding area, with two
dozen or so in each. If they were in these, it is highly unlikely their
conditions were any better.
	"They would certainly also have shared the recent history of the
battalion. It had undergone three tours in Iraq in two and a half years.
	"More than 30 of its members had died in the previous one, the
majority when the unit led the major attack on Fallujah, then at the heart
of the insurgency. Now they were in Haditha, one of the most dangerous
settlements in Iraq, after only seven months away.
	It is a place where six marines died in three days during the
previous August and where in nearby Parwana 14 died shortly afterwards in
the most deadly roadside bomb attack of the war.
	At the dam there was one American civilian, an engineer sent out
by the US government with instructions to keep the facility operational.
It was a difficult task. Each time there was a power cut the turbines
stopped working, the water against the dam would start to build up and
everybody knew that if the local engineers could not get the generators
started in time it would collapse.
	"The American's job was not helped by the marines viewing his
Iraqi workers as potential saboteurs. The troops he was quartered with
terrified him, so much so that he would not let his name be quoted for
fear of reprisal.
	"He was keeping a secret dossier of breaches he said he had
witnessed, or learned of. He planned to present it to the authorities when
he returned to the US. "Marines are good at killing," he said. "Nothing
else. They like it."
	["feral" = regressed to savagery; said of formerly domesticated
animals]
	[DN] The wife of one of the staff sergeants involved in the
Haditha killings has told Newsweek that there was a total breakdown in
discipline including drug and alcohol abuse within the Marine unit. She
said "I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked
out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha." The
militarys actions in Iraq are coming under increasing scrutiny. Over the
weekend, top officials in Iraq demanded the U.S. do more to investigate
two different alleged massacres at the hands of U.S. troops: the killing
of 24 civilians in Haditha last November and the killing of 13 in the town
of Ishaqi outside of Balad in March. On Saturday Major General William
Caldwell announced that the Pentagon had cleared U.S. troops of any
wrongdoing in the killings in Ishaqi.  Our Iraqi government, however, has
rejected the Pentagons findings. On Saturday an aide to Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri Maliki said that the Iraqi government would open its own
investigation into the deaths of Iraq civilians in Ishaqi. The Iraqi Human
Rights Minister said a commission would be sent to the town to investigate
the deaths in the next few days. Relatives of the Iraqi family killed in
Ishaqi accused the U.S. of slaughtering innocent civilians.

[6] OUR WAR. [AP] Masked gunmen stopped two minivans carrying students
north of Baghdad Sunday, ordered the passengers off, separated Shiites
from Sunni Arabs, and killed the 21 Shiites ... In predominantly Shiite
southern Basra, police hunting for militants stormed a Sunni Arab mosque
early Sunday, just hours after a car bombing [killed more than two dozen
people]. The ensuing fire fight killed nine.
	In Baghdad, gunmen ambushed five Russian Embassy workers, killing
one and kidnapping the others, and [DN] Iraqi government officials
announced the discovery of 22 bodies that had been burned, blindfolded,
handcuffed and thrown into a river. Earlier today, gunmen wearing police
uniforms raided bus stations in central Baghdad, abducting at least 50
people.
	[DN] The Los Angeles Times is reporting that government records
show that more Baghdad residents died in shootings, stabbings and other
violence in May than in any other month since the U.S.-led invasion in
2003. Just under 1,400 bodies were brought to the citys central morgue
during the month The actual number of people killed in Baghdad was even
higher because the count doesn't include soldiers or civilian victims of
explosions.  In other Iraq news, US troops shot and killed two Iraqi women
Wednesday one of them about to give birth. The women were in a vehicle
rushing to the hospital where one of the victims, Nabiha Nisaif Jassim,
was to deliver her baby. US troops said their car failed to stop in a
prohibited zone despite warnings. But Jassims brother, who drove the
vehicle, said he never saw or heard any warnings. Doctors failed to save
Jassims unborn baby. She was the mother of two children. Her cousin was
also killed in the attack.

[7] DEALING WITH TERRORISM. [DN] In Canada, 12 men and five youths have
been rounded up in what has been described as one of the largest
anti-terrorism operations ever undertaken in North America. More than 400
police officers took part in a series of raids on Saturday. The men have
been accused of planning to carry out attacks in southern Ontario with
bombs made from the fertilizer ammonium nitrate. It is unclear how much of
the plot was actually a government sting operation. According to the
Toronto Star, it was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police itself that
delivered three tons of the potential bomb-making material to the group.
Once the material was delivered, officials moved in and made the arrests.
	[Reuters] Vandals smashed 30 windows of a Toronto mosque and
damaged nearby cars after the arrest of 17 suspected al Qaeda sympathizers
accused of planning bomb attacks. Canadian Muslims expressed fear on
Sunday that a backlash had begun.  Two brothers suspected of plotting to
make a chemical bomb for an attack in Britain have denied all accusations
... as police continued to search their home. The men, aged 23 and 20,
were held during a dawn raid on Friday when more than 250 police officers,
some in chemical protection suits, stormed their house in east London. The
23-year-old brother was shot in the shoulder during the raid, one of the
biggest operations since last July's suicide attacks in the British
capital, although police said it was not related.

[8] A DECENT RESPECT FOR THE OPINIONS OF MANKIND?  [The NYT reports on a
counter-terrorism conference in Florence, Italy, in late May.] Baltasar
Garzon, Spain's most prominent investigative magistrate, has called on the
United States to immediately close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. "A model like Guantanamo is an insult to countries that respect
laws," Judge Garzon said ... "It delegitimizes us. It is a place that
needs to disappear immediately" ... last month, Britain's attorney
general, Lord Goldsmith, called on the United States to close Guantanamo
... The Bush administration argues that ... the indefinite detention of
prisoners without charge at Guantanamo and the secret transfer, or
rendition, of suspects for interrogation by other governments are
justified under laws of armed conflict ... "In Spain, we also practiced
torture and the forced disappearance of people," he said. "When the
temptation came, we succumbed to it." ... "We in Italy knew fascism for
many years," said Armando Spataro, Italy's best-known investigating
magistrate, in an interview. "We know it's a great mistake to fight
terrorism in this way, the way of Guantanamo, the way of renditions. It's
extremely damaging to all our efforts to integrate our Muslim communities
who see these practices as unjust." Judge Spataro has opened a criminal
case in Milan against 22 people allegedly linked to the Central
Intelligence Agency who have been charged with the abduction of a Muslim
cleric from a Milan street in 2003 as part of a counter-terrorist
rendition operation. Last month the Milan judge announced that he intended
to try them in absentia this year ... Garzon also faulted the United
States for withholding information on the fate of Mustafa Setmarian Nasar,
... wanted in connection with the Madrid terrorist train attacks in March
2004. News reports since late last year have cited unidentified American
and Pakistani officials as saying that Mr. Nasar was seized in Pakistan
and turned over to American authorities. "I don't know where he is," Judge
Garzon said. "Nobody knows where he is. Can you tell me how this helps the
struggle against terrorism?"

[9] DISTRACTION. As the US continues killing people in the ME and
apparently contemplates more in Iran, and as its torture policy and secret
prisons have become the scandal of the world, some upcoming special
elections in the US mean that Bush needs to spring into action: he did so
by calling for an amendment banning same-sex marriage in his weekly radio
address.
	[DN] On Saturday Bush dedicated his entire radio address to the
issue; he never mentioned the war in Iraq once. The Senate is expected to
begin debate on same-sex marriage this week. Senate Majority Leader Bill
Frist recently argued that banning gay marriage and flag burning are two
of the nations most pressing priorities.

[10] FECKLESS DEMOCRATS & THE COMMON POLICY.  Al Gore appeared on ABC's
"This Week" program Sunday and did not call for any sort of withdrawal
from Iraq. Quite the opposite -- he argued that a pullout would make the
situation worse. From ABC:  "I would pursue the twin objectives of trying
to withdraw our forces as quickly as we possibly can, while at the same
time minimizing the risk that we'll make the mess over there even worse
and raise even higher the danger of civil war," Gore said.  Dismissing
calls for any deadline, Gore added, "It's possible that setting a deadline
could set in motion forces that would make it even worse. I think that we
should analyze that very carefully. My guess is that a deadline is
probably not the right approach" [Mickey Kaus at Slate writes] Gore might
have said this because he didn't want to make news that would distract
from his global warming pitch; he might have said it because he's willing
to cede John Kerry the left in any presidential primary Iraq debate. But
the most likely reason he said it is because he actually believes it,
which will be highly disappointing to pro- withdrawal Democrats who have
been pushing a Gore candidacy out of frustration with Hillary's pro-war
stands. Turns out he's just another 'now-that-we're-there' Democrat.
	In a speech in Los Angeles last week, Senator John Kerry, who
voted to give President Bush authorization to use force against Saddam
Hussein in 2002, said he would attach an amendment to this summer's
defense appropriations bill calling for a total withdrawal of U.S. combat
troops by the end of this year. But he acknowledged that the idea would be
unpopular. "I know I'm not going to get the majority of my own caucus."
[LAT]
	The unpopularity of withdrawal among Senate Democrats and the like
contrasts sharply with the popularity of the idea with the American
public, a large majority of whom now say the invasion of iraq was a
mistake.  This is an example of the "democratic deficit" -- the contrast
between the views of the public and the politicians who supposedly
represent them, but in fact are working for the interests of dominant
social groups in the country.
	Although Kerry did say during the last Presidential campaign,
perhaps out of desperation, that the US should have no permanent bases in
Iraq, it's hard to believe that even the withdrawal that he so
unenthusiastically supports would include those bases, because they're so
central to the real reason Republicans and Democrats attacked Iraq -- the
control of Mideast oil.
	A woman called From Carol Brightman writes to the LRB from Walpole
ME reminds us of "the strategic dimension of the war, what Condoleezza
Rice evokes when she declares that while the Bush administration has
committed tactical errors, thousands of them, its right on strategy.
	"In Iraq, briefly, the larger US strategy has been to do away with
Saddam Husseins government, set up a few giant military bases our Little
Americas to protect long-term access to Iraqi oil and secure the
submission of two remaining outlaw nations in the Middle East, Iran and
Syria. Fostering civil war is how the US has made Iraq hospitable to an
enduring American occupation; not by fighting an insurgency, a battle it
lost two years ago, and certainly not by awaiting the functioning of a
hopelessly disunited government.
	"Setting up these huge fortresses Balad in the east, al-Qayyarah
in the north, al-Asad in the west, Tallil in the south the Pentagon has
fulfilled a tradition that began with Kosovo in 1999, which was to leave
behind clusters of new bases after every US military intervention. Now the
string starts in the Balkans, extends to most of the Central Asian
countries and Afghanistan, and continues through the Persian Gulf states.
	"The timely question for Iraq is whether these mega-bases with
their vast armouries, their miniature golf courses, their cut-rate Fords,
Chevies and Harley-Davidsons to be bought and shipped home, their Baskin
Robbins ice cream, Pizza Huts, Popeyes, Burger Kings are vulnerable to
attack by the insurgency. Not at first glance, for they are remote from
villages and their average population of 30,000 US soldiers and contract
workers includes no Iraqi forces. But their opponents have included the
controversial prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, whom Washington has been
so desperate to unseat; and retired American generals, among them Anthony
Zinni, former US Mideast Commander, who calls them a stupid provocation to
Iran.
	"As the civil war unravels whats left of the Iraqi state, the
fighting will become uglier (if that is imaginable) than now, as Donald
Rumsfeld has reminded us. The Pentagon, in fact, has invested in the
training of Iraqi death squads, a story from the autumn of 2004 that most
have now forgotten. When US involvement with the worst of the
assassination teams finally be-comes apparent, the days of the American
occupation in Iraq will be numbered." Ms. Brightman concludes, perhaps
optimistically.
	Incidentally, the mention of "cut-rate ... Harley-Davidsons to be
bought and shipped home" is instanced by an article in the Sunday
News-Gazette, which tells of a Paxton cop who went to Iraq as a mercenary
for one of the principal merchants of death, Dyncorp, made a lot of
tax-free money, and came home with his Harley.  He was a guard, he says --
that's how we're defending those bases.

[11] US RING OF FIRE.  [BBC] An Islamist militia says it has seized
Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, after weeks of fighting against an alliance
of warlords ... backed by the US. The warlords have controlled the capital
since they toppled Somalia's last effective government 15 years ago ...
This year's clashes in the capital have been the most serious for more
than a decade, with some 330 people killed and about 1,500 injured in the
past month. In a statement read over local radio stations, the Union of
Islamic Courts leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said the control of
Mogadishu by warlords was over and he urged residents to accept the new
leadership. "The Union of Islamic Courts are not interested in a
continuation of hostilities and will fully implement peace and security
after the change has been made by the victory of the people with the
support of Allah," he said. "This is a new era for Mogadishu," he told AFP
news agency, adding that the Islamic Courts were ready for dialogue ...
Local people in Mogadishu gave a cautious welcome to the news. "They said
they would work with residents to improve security in the capital," city
resident Ali Abdikadir told Reuters news agency. "This is good news for us
because the warlords were always engaged in battles. We are looking
forward to a life without fighting." ... others expressed concern about
what the future might hold with Islamists who want to introduce Sharia law
in control. "What I am afraid of is if they interfere with the education
system and bring religion by force to the schools," Asha Idris, a mother
of five, told AFP.  On Saturday, UN aid workers pulled out of Jowhar, some
90km (56 miles) north of Mogadishu, in case the fighting spread there. The
violence began earlier this year when warlords who had divided Mogadishu
into fiefdoms united to form the Anti-Terrorism Alliance to tackle the
Islamic Courts, who they accused of sheltering foreign al-Qaeda militants.
The Islamic Courts deny this. They were originally set up in Mogadishu as
a grassroots movement by businessmen to establish some law and order in a
city without any judicial system. The head of the BBC's Somali service
described the rise of the Islamic Courts as a popular uprising. The
Islamic Courts have long said the warlords in the Anti-Terror Alliance
were being backed by the US. Washington merely says it will support those
trying to stop people it considers terrorists setting up in Somalia but
stresses its commitment to the country's transitional government, which
functions from Baidoa, 250km (155 miles) north-west of the capital.
President Abdullahi Yusuf had urged the US to channel its campaign against
Somalia's Islamists through his government, rather than the warlords.
	The USG's murderous interest in Somalia, going back at least to
the Bush I administration, makes more sense when one notes its proximity
to the cynosure of US foreign policy, Mideast energy resources.  Army
Times reported early this year that the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of
Africa, created early in the Bush II administration, might be expanded to
include all of Africa.

[12] THE LATIN AMERICAN SITUATION GETS FURTHER OUT OF HAND. Bolivia,
President Evo Morales has introduced a sweeping new land reform program to
give farmland to poor, indigenous communities. On Saturday, he handed over
10,000 square miles of state-owned property. More land, including unused
private property, is expected to be turned over as part of what Morales
called an "agrarian revolution. Morales has defended the plan despite
protests from the business community
	What do you bet that, if the US military weren't tied down in
Iraq, it would be tied down in the Andean region?  Washington is scared to
death of the move to the Left among LA governments.

[13] MAKING EXAMPLES. [DN] There has been a major development in the case
of Wen Ho Lee the U.S. nuclear scientist of Chinese descent who was
falsely accused by the Clinton administration of spying for the Chinese
government. The government has agreed to pay Lee nearly $900,000 for
violating his right to privacy by leaking information to the press. In
addition, five major news outlets have agreed to pay Lee $750,000 to
settle a lawsuit in order to avoid identifying who within the government
leaked information that falsely implicated Lee. When the Wen Ho Lee case
first broke the press used anonymous sources to portray the case as one of
the most serious spy scandals in U.S. history. In April 1999, the New York
Times opened an article about Lee like this: A scientist suspected of
spying for China improperly transferred huge amounts of secret data from a
computer system at a Government laboratory, compromising virtually every
nuclear weapon in the United States arsenal, Government and lab officials
say. Eight months later he was indicted on 59 counts -- but none of them
were for spying. He was held in solitary confinement and threatened with
execution but within a year the government dropped 58 of the 59 charges.
After Wen Ho Lee had endured 278 days of solitary confinement, a federal
judge named James Parker released him from prison, and in an unusual
statement from the bench, he rebuked the government and apologized to him.

[14] ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE. Simultaneous protests were held on
Saturday in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and the Palestinian city of
Ramallah calling for an end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza that began 39 years ago. In Ramallah demonstrators called for an end
to the blockade on the Palestinian people. The Tel Aviv protest was
organized by a series of Jewish peace and student groups.

[15] JOURNALISM UNION CALLS FOR YAHOO.COM BOYCOTT. In media news, the
leading journalist union in Britain and Ireland has called on its 40,000
members to boycott the Internet company Yahoo. The union criticized the
company for helping the Chinese government identify and prosecute
pro-democracy journalists and dissidents. The union said it would stop
using all Yahoo-operated services including the popular search engine.

[16] CALL YOUR INTERNATIONAL LAWYER, MR. BUSH. The American Bar
Association Board of Governors has voted unanimously to investigate
whether President Bush is violating the constitution by issuing signing
statements to bypass new laws. The Boston Globe recently reported
President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey an
unprecedented 750 laws enacted since he took office. Among other laws,
Bush has said he can ignore Congress' ban on torture as well as
Congressional oversight of the Patriot Act.

[17] POODLE IN TROUBLE. [The British paper The Independent on Sunday
reported yesterday that] Tony Blair faces an unprecedented revolt from the
wives and mothers of serving soldiers, who want British troops to be
withdrawn from Iraq ... Dozens of women whose sons, husbands and daughters
are now in the Gulf or have served there, have joined a national campaign
to be launched this week calling for Britain to pull out of Iraq. In a
strongly worded statement passed to the IoS, they claim the war in Iraq
"was based on lies", and call for British withdrawal "as a matter of
urgency". The organisers of Military Families Against the War, set up by
the parents of dead armed forces personnel last year, say their movement
is supported by hundreds of service families and that more than 100
families and veterans are actively involved. Lynda Holmes, 55, a nurse,
whose son is a Guardsman in Iraq, said. "Our forces are risking their
lives for an illegal war. So many have been killed. I'm not anti-Army. I'm
not anti what my son does. I'm just anti this war." ...  The new campaign,
which is being launched in London on Saturday by wives and mothers of
serving soldiers, will culminate in a protest march by the families at
Labour's annual conference in Manchester in September. Their protests will
deeply trouble senior military commanders and alarm ministers. Military
families have traditionally refused to complain in public about ongoing
wars because of loyalty and the risks to relatives' careers and morale.
The outgoing commander of Sandhurst officers' training college admitted
yesterday that the "mum factor" was having a significant impact on army
recruitment, which is 15 per cent below target. Maj-Gen Andrew Ritchie
said the Army's involvement in an unpopular conflict and the dangers of
serving in Basra and Baghdad had undermined support. "Mums find Iraq
deeply unpopular - they are concerned that their youngsters will be
exposed to real risk and danger," he said. "That worries them. And mums
are hugely influential in boys and girls joining the Army." ... Several
mothers have told the IoS their sons are increasingly unhappy about doing
further tours in Iraq, because of the increasing hostility from ordinary
Iraqis and the growing strength of the insurgency. Others who back the
campaign said they would not speak publicly because it could make trouble
for their husbands, daughters and sons.... A petition to be handed in to
Downing Street is on the campaign website, www.mfaw.org.uk. A spokeswoman
for No 10 said: "We respect the right of individuals to express their
views, but the Government believes that what's important is the wishes of
the Iraqi people, as expressed through Iraq's democratically elected
government."
	[Sunday Times] Pope calls on Blair to end Iran stand-off. POPE
Benedict XVI pressed Tony Blair to find a diplomatic resolution to the
Iran nuclear crisis when he granted the prime minister a half-hour
audience in the Vatican Saturday ... Once talks got under way, they were
described by Downing Street as a dynamic discussion, a possible reference
to contrasting views. The Pope made it clear he wanted to see an open and
constructive dialogue

[18] MURDER IS THE STRATEGY.  [lefti] The Haditha massacre and other
ongoing scandals are hardly isolated incidents.  For example, ONn the eve
of the assault on Fallujah, it was reported that a Sgt. Major Carlton W.
Kent gave an emotional pep-talk to 2,500 Marines who were poised to attack
the city. The marines had just notified the people of Fallujah that any
male between the age of 15-55 who dared go outside would be automatically
killed. Youre all in the process of making history, the Sgt. Major
exhorted his soldiers. This is another Hue City in the making. I, have no
doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to
do what you have always done kick some butt. (AP, November 7, 2004)
    Hue was a city in South Vietnam that was captured by the Vietnamese
and retaken by U.S.-led forces in March 1968. U.S. Under-Secretary of the
Air Force, Townsend Hoopes, admitted that Hue was left a devastated and
prostrate city. Eighty percent of the buildings had been reduced to
rubble, and in the smashed ruins lay 2,000 dead civilians (Noam Chomskys
forward to the papers of the 1967 International War Crimes in Vietnam
Tribunal.) "The Geneva Conventions expressly prohibit the targeting of
civilians under any circumstances. But the Pentagon had a bigger political
concern than adhering to international law. The fundamental fear of the
Pentagon and the White House in Korea, as it was in Vietnam and during the
first and current war against Iraq, was that public opinion at home would
turn against the imperialist adventure and tie the hands of the
war-makers. The logic of their political calculus was that U.S. public
opinion would turn against the war directly as a result of a large number
of U.S. casualties. This thought took them to the next murderous
conclusion: if civilians pose even a remote risk to U.S. soldiers it is
better to shoot the civilians first and ask questions later. Dead Korean
or Vietnamese or Iraqi civilians will not be as politically damaging back
home as dead American soldiers."
	When Dahr Jamail published an article two days ago entitled,
"Countless My Lai Massacres in Iraq," that was hardly news to most Left I
readers, who have been reading about these things as they occur. What's
actually more remarkable to most of us, I suspect, is that these things
are finally being acknowledged in the corporate media. Tonight there are
reports of Marines in who are in the brig, and on the verge of being
charged with the cold-blooded murder of one Iraqi man in Hamandiyah (and
planting a shovel on the body to make it appear he was planting IEDs), and
a second report, originating with the BBC, about the possible murder of 11
more Iraqis in the town of Ishaqi in March. Once again, information
suggests that the soldiers covered up the murders to make it appear that
the victims were killed by a collapsing house.

[19] VOICE OF LABOR. [lefti] The largest labor union in the Canadian
province of Ontario has voted unanimously to boycott Israel "until it
recognizes the Palestinians' right of self-determination" and accepts all
United Nations resolutions relating to Palestinians, including the right
of return. The decision was made by the Ontario division of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which has 450,000 members. The union's
decision says that it is joining an international campaign to boycott
Israel and to impose sanctions on it, until it fulfills all UN resolutions
including Resolution 194, which recognizes the right of return of
Palestinian refugees from 1948. In addition, the union intends to support
pro-Palestinian organizations in an educational campaign, which will
depict Israel as an apartheid state. Amazing. And guess who will never
know about it? That's right, Americans. Because, while this story has been
reported in the Canadian and Israeli press, as I write this not a single
American media outlet has reported the story.

[20] KILLING FIELDS. [R. Fisk] What kind of trauma is now being
experienced in Iraq? Just who is doing the mass killing? Who is dumping so
many bodies on garbage heaps? After Haditha, we are going to reshape our
suspicions.
	It's no good saying "a few bad apples." All occupation armies are
corrupted. But do they all commit war crimes? The Algerians are still
uncovering the mass graves left by the French paras who liquidated whole
villages. We know of the rapist-killers of the Russian army in Chechnya.
	We have all heard of Bloody Sunday. The Israelis sat and watched
while their proxy Lebanese militia butchered and eviscerated its way
through 1,700 Palestinians. And of course the words My Lai are now uttered
again. Yes, the Nazis were much worse. And the Japanese. And the Croatian
Ustashi. But this is us. This is our army. These young soldiers are our
representatives in Iraq. And they have innocent blood on their hands.
	I suspect part of the problem is that we never really cared about
Iraqis, which is why we refused to count their dead. Once the Iraqis
turned upon the army of occupation with their roadside bombs and suicide
cars, they became Arab "gooks," the evil sub-humans whom the Americans
once identified in Vietnam. Get a president to tell us that we are
fighting evil and one day we will wake to find that a child has horns, a
baby has cloven feet.
	Remind yourself these people are Muslims and they can all become
little Mohamed Attas. Killing a roomful of civilians is only a step
further from all those promiscuous air strikes that we are told kill
'terrorists" but which all too often turn out to be a wedding party or --
as in Afghanistan -- a mixture of "terrorists" and children or, as we are
soon to hear, no doubt, "terrorist children."
	In a way, we reporters are also to blame. Unable to venture
outside Baghdad -- or around Baghdad itself -- Iraq's vastness has fallen
under a thick, all-consuming shadow. We might occasionally notice sparks
in the night -- a Haditha or two in the desert -- but we remain meekly
cataloguing the numbers of "terrorists" supposedly scored in remote
corners of Mesopotamia. For fear of the insurgent's knife, we can no
longer investigate. And the Americans like it that way.
	I think it becomes a habit, this sort of thing. Already the
horrors of Abu Ghraib are shrugged away. It was abuse, not torture. And
then up pops a junior officer in the United States charged for killing an
Iraqi army general by stuffing him upside down in a sleeping bag and
sitting on his chest. And again, it gets few headlines. Who cares if
another Iraqi bites the dust? Aren't they trying to kill our boys who are
out there fighting terror.
	For who can be held to account when we regard ourselves as the
brightest, the most honorable of creatures, doing endless battle with the
killers of Sept. 11 or July 7 because we love our country and our people
-- but not other people -- so much. And so we dress ourselves up as
Galahads, yes as Crusaders, and we tell those whose countries we invade
that we are going to bring them democracy. I can't help wondering today
how many of the innocents slaughtered in Haditha took the opportunity to
vote in the Iraqi elections -- before their "liberators" murdered them.

[21] PLASTIC MEN. Illinois' senior senator, Durbin, says Illinois' junior
senator, Obama, should consider a presidential run.  There is no
discernible difference between the position of the "liberal" Obama and
that of the Bush administration on the war in the Middle east -- except
that Obama may be *more* willing to attack Iran.

[22] FORGOTTEN WAR. [DN] In Afghanistan, thousands took part Monday in the
most violent anti-U.S. protests in the capital of Kabul since the fall of
the Taliban. The riots were sparked by a traffic accident involving a U.S.
military truck. Within hours of the crash, protests had spread throughout
the city. By days end at least 14 people died and another 100 were
wounded. Police stations were set on fire. Hotels came under attack. The
office of CARE International was torched to the ground. Stores were
ransacked. The U.S.-backed government imposed a night-time curfew for the
first time in four years. Protesters called on the U.S. to end its
occupation of Afghanistan.
	Meanwhile U.S. forces killed about 50 Afghans in an air strike in
the town of Helmand in Southern Afghanistan. Over 400 people have now died
in the region over the past 10 days.
	The US military admitted later in the week that it fired directly
into a crowd of demonstrators during an anti-US protest held in Kabul
Monday. The Pentagon initially claimed soldiers had only fired into the
air. An Afghan police commander told the New York Times the shootings
killed 4 people.

[23] PENTAGON SEEKS ABILITY TO BOMB ANYWHERE IN WORLD. [DN] The New York
Times reports the Pentagon is pressing Congress to approve the development
of a global strike missile that would enable the United States to carry
out non-nuclear missile strikes against any target in the world within an
hour ... the Pentagon plans to deploy the non-nuclear warhead atop the
submarine-launched Trident II missile. The same submarines that carry
nuclear Trident II missiles would also carry the non-nuclear version.
Critics say it would be hard for other countries, such as Russia, to
determine if a missile coming out a Trident submarine was conventional or
nuclear.
	In Nevada, protesters have forced the Bush administration to
indefinitely postpone a controversial bomb test ... The government had
planned to set off 700 tons of explosives in the Nevada Test Site creating
an explosion 50 times more powerful than the Armys largest conventional
bomb. According to government documents, the test known as Divine Strake
-- was needed to determine the proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy
underground facilities. The Pentagon estimated the blast would have been
so large that it would have created a 10,000 foot-high mushroom cloud.
Critics called for the government to cancel the test because they feared
the mushroom cloud would contain radioactive dust from old nuclear tests.

[24] NEWSPAPERS ARE HALF ADVERTISEMENTS, AND THE REST LIES BETWEEN THEM.
[FT] In the UK, the internet will this year overtake national newspapers
to become the third biggest advertising medium by spending ... By the end
of 2007, internet advertising will close the gap on regional newspapers,
the number two medium, but will still be well short of television, the
biggest outlet in the 12bn-a-year media advertising market ... Search
advertising, in which businesses pay to reach customers trawling on
websites such as Google, accounted for more than half of web advertising
in 2005. This is predicted to grow this year ... Newspapers have responded
by investing in their own websites and buying, at valuations well above
mainstream publishers, online businesses, particularly those which have
captured highly lucrative classified advertising.

*** "YOU'VE BEEN LISTENING to TELLING TIME: ADDITIONS TO THE CORPORATE
NEWS on WEFT.  I'm Carl Estabrook, and we're telling stories from the
foreign press, blogs, and other alternative media, as well as stories that
have been overlooked or downplayed in the media owned by big business.
I'm happy to fill requests for sources and references.  Email me at
<cge at shout.net>."***

	===========================================================
	C. G. Estabrook, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
	109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801
	### <www.carlforcongress.org> <www.newsfromneptune.com> ###
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