Bob Parry identifying the Bush Crime family for what it is

G.W. Bush Is a Criminal, Like His Dad

By Robert Parry

Watching Attorney General Michael Mukasey evade the obvious fact that waterboarding is torture – and the reluctance of Democrats to press him – I was reminded of how the first President Bush got away with an earlier batch of national security crimes.

Indeed, one of the common questions I’ve been asked over the years is – if the evidence really does show that the Reagan-Bush crowd was guilty of illegal dealings with Iran, Iraq and the Nicaraguan contras – why didn’t the Democrats hold those Republicans to account?

For people who have posed that question, I would suggest that they watch the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Jan. 30 hearing with Mukasey. Everybody in the room knew what the unspoken reality was, but nobody dared say it: George W. Bush authorized torture, which is a crime under U.S. and international law.

However, if the Attorney General – the highest-ranking law-enforcement officer in the United States – recognized the obvious, he would have to either commence legal action against President Bush or send a referral to Congress for the initiation of impeachment proceedings.

If such a referral were sent to Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have little choice but to permit the start of impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. A wide range of Bush’s illegal actions would then begin spilling out, provoking a political crisis in the United States.

Not only do Bush’s allies want to avoid that possibility but so do Democratic congressional leaders. They fear an impeachment battle would boomerang, putting them on the spot with both angry Republicans and a hostile Washington news media.

On Dec. 20, 2007, Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now” that impeachment hearings could end up like Watergate in reverse, with today’s careerist press corps treating the notion of accountability for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney like some kind of nutty idea.

“There is a very stark reality that with the corporatization of the media, we could end up with turning people, who should be documented in history as making many profound errors and violating the Constitution, from villains into victims,” the Michigan Democrat said.

So, Democratic senators weren’t all that upset when Mukasey mumbled through a variety of obfuscations.

Orwell Reference

At one point, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, even made a George Orwell reference in noting that Mukasey’s discussion about the criminality of waterboarding had “melted into the abstract.”

Mukasey responded: “We could engage in a discussion. It would not be a concrete and factual discussion because we would be talking about if this, if that, if the other.”

When Whitehouse called Mukasey’s answer “totally not credible” because Bush administration officials already have acknowledged that CIA interrogators did use waterboarding against several terror suspects, Mukasey continued:

“All of that depends on whether certification was given and whether it was permissibly relied on and it should not turn on one person’s current view of what the (anti-torture) statute requires or doesn’t require.”

Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor, rejected that explanation too, noting that “there is no Nuremberg defense built into the criminal statute,” meaning that authorization from President Bush or some other senior official would not make torture legal.

However, Whitehouse, like other Democrats, finished his questioning with praise of Mukasey for taking a variety of steps to shield the Justice Department from the Bush administration’s political pressure.

Still, on the most sensitive issue to Bush – his assertion that he possesses unlimited presidential powers that let him violate criminal laws and ignore constitutional protections – Mukasey was as much in lock step with the administration as his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.

The only significant difference was that the more mature Mukasey, a former federal judge, was less smug in his treatment of the senators than Gonzales had been. For their part, the committee Democrats seemed eager to look to the future.

“So today we continue the restoration of the [Justice] Department,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

But that “restoration” apparently will not include holding the President and Vice President accountable for authorizing the commission of felonies – in permitting the torture of terror suspects, in ordering warrantless wiretaps of Americans, in exposing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, etc.

Not Good at Confrontation

The Democrats adopted a similar see-no-evil posture from late 1992 through the Clinton years when evidence surfaced about serious crimes committed by Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and some of their subordinates.

Like Marty McFly’s father in “Back to the Future,” the Democrats weren’t very good at “confrontation.”

So, when evidence implicated George H.W. Bush on issues ranging from the Iran-Contra cover-up and secret military support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking and a politically motivated search of Bill Clinton’s passport files, the Democrats averted their eyes and slinked away from a fight.

In December 1992 and January 1993, for instance, evidence poured in to a House task force that was investigating the so-called October Surprise controversy, whether the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign had gone behind President Jimmy Carter’s back and contacted Iranian mullahs while Iran was holding 52 Americans hostage.

Carter’s failure to resolve that hostage crisis doomed his re-election and touched off Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory. Plus, Iran’s release of the hostages as Reagan was taking the oath of office gave Reagan an aura of heroism that has continued to this day.

In a December 2007 campaign ad, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani cited Reagan’s supposed toughness with terrorists as the reason the Iranians suddenly freed the hostages after a 444-day standoff.

“They released the American hostages in one hour, and that should tell us a lot about these Islamic terrorists that we’re facing” today, Giuliani said. “The one hour in which they released them was the one hour in which Ronald Reagan was taking the oath of office as President of the United States.

“The best way you deal with tyrants and terrorists, you stand up to them. You don’t back down.” [NYT, Dec. 6, 2007]

But the House task force was learning a different reality in December 1992, as witnesses came forth and documents surfaced indicating that Reagan campaign operatives, including then vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush, had engaged in their own secret diplomacy in 1980, promising a swap of arms for the hostages.

Among this new evidence:

--Former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr sent the task force a detailed letter describing the Iranian infighting that had occurred around this Republican overture and how Iran’s most radical elements favored a deal with the Reagan-Bush team.

--The biographer for French intelligence chief Alexandre deMarenches recounted how deMarenches had confessed his role in arranging secret meetings in Paris, a statement that was corroborated by several other French intelligence operatives.

--Former CIA officer Charles Cogan described a meeting in early 1981 at which Joseph Reed, an aide to banker David Rockefeller, boasted to then CIA Director William Casey about their success in thwarting President Carter’s hoped-for October Surprise of a pre-election hostage release.

So Startling

The new evidence was so startling that the task force’s chief counsel Lawrence Barcella approached chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, with a request that the investigation be extended a few months so the new information could be evaluated.

Barcella told me during an interview in 2004 that Hamilton rejected the request for an extension.

The task force then finished up work on a report that reached the opposite conclusion from what the new evidence indicated. The task force report claimed there was no credible evidence to support the long-standing allegations that the Reagan-Bush campaign had interfered with the 1980 hostage crisis.

The task force maintained this conclusion by hiding away much of the new evidence. (I discovered some of this evidence in 1994-95 when I gained access to boxes containing the raw files of the task force.)

In January 1993, however, there was one more surprise for the October Surprise task force. After its report was already at the printers, the Russian government responded to an earlier request for information about what its intelligence files showed about secret U.S. contacts with Iran.

On Jan. 11, 1993, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow forwarded to Hamilton a translated version of the Russian report, which stated that Soviet intelligence was aware of secret meetings between Republicans and Iranian officials that had occurred in Madrid and Paris during the 1980 presidential campaign.

Among the Republican operatives menioned by the Russians were George H.W. Bush, William Casey and Robert Gates, who was then a senior CIA official and who is now U.S. Defense Secretary. The Russian report flatly contradicted the findings of the House task force, which were to be released two days later, on Jan. 13, 1993.

Despite this extraordinary example of Russian-U.S. cooperation – and the stunning assertions of Republican guilt – Hamilton’s task force simply stuffed the Russian report into one of the file boxes.

There was no mention of the Russian report or other contradictory evidence when the task force report was issued, or when Hamilton wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled “Case Closed,” which relegated the October Surprise suspicions to the loony bin of conspiracy theories.

In 2004, I asked Barcella about the Russian report and why it hadn’t been released. He explained that it was a classified document and that the task force decided not to undertake the necessary steps to arrange for its declassification.

A more likely explanation was that the Democrats wanted to avoid a nasty fight with Republicans over the Reagan-Bush legacy. In early 1993, the Democrats, especially President Bill Clinton, saw a battle over history as a distraction from his domestic priorities. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Clinton adopted a tolerant attitude, too, toward George H.W. Bush’s unprecedented decision on Christmas Eve 1992 to pardon six Iran-Contra defendants (another scandal which implicated Bush and could be viewed as a sequel to the October Surprise case).

Clinton was equally disinterested when new evidence emerged in 1996 about Bush’s role in the Iraq-gate arming of Saddam Hussein, and in 1998 when the CIA’s inspector general compiled damning evidence on how the Reagan-Bush administration had protected drug traffickers linked to the Nicaraguan contras.

Instead of demanding the truth about these crimes and holding people accountable, the Clinton administration found it easier to sweep these unpleasant matters under the rug. One of Clinton’s rewards was a cozy relationship with the senior George Bush.

Now, the congressional Democrats seem to taking a similarly permissive approach toward the crimes of the junior George Bush.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

Original article posted here.

A story worth passing on even from Daily Kos (a normally pretty dismal, albeit popular, site

Montel Williams Loses Job after Defending Troops on Fox News

by Brandon Friedman

For just over three minutes on Saturday morning, TV talk show host Montel Williams owned the hosts of Fox and Friends. A former Marine and Naval officer, Montel lectured the stunned hosts on the stupidity of spending air time on the death of Heath Ledger, rather than covering the war in Iraq. It was a spectacle rarely seen on live cable television, as Montel exposed and condemned both tabloid "news" shows and much of American culture for what they have each become: shallow and greedy.

Three minutes into this awkward segment on Fox, one host cut off Montel in order to go to a commercial. Montel did not return after the break. Four days later, after 17 years as a television host, Montel lost his job. Variety reported on Wednesday that the

Fate of "The Montel Williams Show" was sealed when key Fox-owned stations opted not to renew it for the 2008-09 season.

• Brandon Friedman's diary :: ::
• 
  

Here is the video:

::
I have no idea whether Montel already knew his show wasn’t going to be renewed, and thus felt emboldened to cut loose on the air, or whether his firing was a result of his actions on Saturday. Either way, Montel Williams exhibited courage this week that few in the television industry ever will. And for that, American troops around the world stand with him. We support him not only because he stood up for the troops, but because he did it on Fox News—a station that has done more damage to the U.S. military since 9/11 than any other.

Montel Williams is an American patriot. Though he left the military years ago, he has never forgotten "his" troops.

For that we salute and thank you, Montel. Best of luck with whatever you choose to do next.

Original article posted here.

Jack Cafferty telling the truth about politics

This is how bad it's gotten: tasering Ivy League girls in their bedrooms

Police rapped for using Taser on girl in bedroom

Teen acquitted of assaulting cops

By STEVE BRUCE

A Dartmouth teen who was wrestled onto her bed and shocked by police last February was found not guilty Tuesday of assaulting officers and resisting arrest.

"The spectacle of a 17-year-old girl being Tasered in her bedroom is a very disturbing and disconcerting one," Judge Anne Derrick said in Halifax youth court. "I find the police acted outside the scope of their authority in arresting (the girl) and that she was entitled to resist and committed no offence in doing so, and I acquit her of the charges before the court."

The girl testified during the first day of the trial in November that being Tasered felt like having a "burning, open cut."

Now 18 and the mother of a three-week-old daughter, she told reporters Tuesday that she was confident all along that she would be cleared of the charges, which included two counts of assaulting police and one of resisting arrest.

She said she will file a complaint with Halifax Regional Police over the conduct of the three officers involved and will likely file a lawsuit as well.

"I wanted to wait until today, to make sure that I was going to win the case first," said the teen, whose name is banned from publication under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

"I just don’t understand why I was Tasered because I’m not a criminal."

The Feb. 19, 2007, incident, at a public housing project in Dartmouth, occurred at about 8:30 p.m. after the girl got into an argument on the phone with her younger sister, who had taken her purse.

The girl’s mother called police to say she wanted her daughter removed from the premises because she had threatened to damage property.

Three constables — Phillip MacKenzie, Tara Doiron and Brendan Harvey — responded to the call and went upstairs to the girl’s bedroom, where they found her quietly looking out the window.

Police admitted at trial that no damage had been done to the home and that no one had been hurt so they felt they had no authority to arrest the girl at that point.

When Const. MacKenzie tried to talk the girl into leaving the house for the night, she grew angry and began swearing at the officers.

At that point, the officers perhaps should have retreated into the hallway to confer with the girl’s mother, Judge Derrick said.

"By not leaving the bedroom that evening, the police set up the circumstances for an intense confrontation."

The girl described Const. MacKenzie’s approach as "authoritarian and confrontational."

"Whether or not he intended to intimidate her with his power and authority, that’s how she perceived the situation, which is not surprising," Judge Derrick said.

"She was an upset and agitated 17-year-old girl with three uniformed police officers in her bedroom. She was being told her mother wanted her out of the house. So an overly aggressive response to this situation could have been predicted."

Const. MacKenzie decided to arrest the girl, and she fought back. She was wrestled to the bed, sat on, Tasered by Const. Harvey and handcuffed.

Constables MacKenzie and Doiron were kicked in the face during the arrest.

Paramedics treated the girl at the scene.

The Crown argued Tuesday that the officers had grounds to arrest the girl once she "crossed the line" with her behaviour.

"The youth didn’t need to respond the way she did," Crown attorney John Nisbet said in his closing arguments.

But Judge Derrick rejected that argument.

"(The girl) was not committing a breach of the peace when the police arrived at her home," the judge said. "She was not committing a breach of the peace when the police officers went up to her bedroom. She wanted the police to leave. They could see that there had been no damage and no injury to anyone.

"If a breach of the peace occurred, it was because an unlawful arrest occurred."

Const. Jeff Carr, spokesman for the regional police, read the file over after he was contacted by reporters Tuesday afternoon.

"At some point, the officers made the decision that the most effective way to take the girl into custody without risk of injury to her or them involved deployment of the Taser," Const. Carr said.

He said department policy requires officers to complete a controlled-response report any time they use a Taser, draw a firearm or use physical force to make an arrest.

"Should we receive a complaint, as with any complaint, an investigation will be conducted," Const. Carr said. "And I would anticipate us reviewing the judge’s decision."

Taser use burst into headlines countrywide last fall after a Polish immigrant died Oct. 14 at the Vancouver airport after he was zapped with a stun gun during an altercation with RCMP.

Howard Hyde, a Dartmouth man who suffered from schizophrenia, died Nov. 22, moments after a struggle with jail guards and about 30 hours after Halifax police had shocked him twice with a Taser during his arrest on charges of spousal abuse.

Mr. Hyde’s death prompted provincial Justice Minister Cecil Clarke to order a review of Taser use in Nova Scotia. The first phase of the review is expected to be done by the end of February and will include a public report on the policies and procedures surrounding the use of Tasers, including training, when use of the devices is authorized and how often they are used.

A panel of experts from law enforcement and the sciences will then be appointed to study the findings and make recommendations to the minister.

Taser reviews are also being conducted in British Columbia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Original article posted here.

Getting rid of those poor New Orleans folk one way or another

FEMA Covered Up Cancer Risk in its Toxic Katrina Trailers

Posted by Pam Spaulding

Surprised? I didn't think so. At this point, there's nothing left to shock when it comes to the handling of post-Katrina matters involving FEMA.

[D]ocuments obtained by Salon show that FEMA also pressured scientists to water down a report on the health risks of formaldehyde. FEMA officials instructed the scientists to omit any references to cancer or other long-term health risks from exposure to formaldehyde in FEMA trailers.

In a scathing letter sent today to Dr. Howard Frumkin, chief of the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Reps. Brad Miller, chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, and Nick Lampson, chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, wrote, "you appear to have been complicit in giving FEMA precisely what they wanted ... However what FEMA wanted and what you approved giving them was not the whole truth regarding formaldehyde. It was not based on 'best science,' nor did it provide 'trusted health information' to the Katrina survivors." FEMA and ATSDR officials are expected to testify Tuesday before the House Committee on Homeland Security, which is also investigating the matter.

After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA placed tens of thousands of displaced families in travel trailers, more than 40,000 of which are still in use. Almost immediately, hundreds of families called FEMA to complain of illnesses, from breathing difficulties, bloody noses and rashes to more serious problems, and even deaths, possibly connected to high levels of formaldehyde gas permeating the trailers. Formaldehyde is a nearly colorless gas with a pungent, irritating odor even at low levels. It is used in many products and manufacturing procedures, notably as an adhesive in plywood used to make trailers. Health reports reveal that exposure to formaldehyde can impact fertility and the developing fetus, leading to spontaneous abortion or physical malformations.

I guess protecting the fetus under Bush doesn't extend to government agencies like FEMA.

Seriously, there has been little public discussion in this election cycle about what kind of plans each candidate has for the overhaul/revitalization, quality control of FEMA. The next president will inherit a bureaucracy that has been crippled and rife with incompetence. A complete house cleaning is necessary.

Original article posted here.

The end of Ghouliani and the politics of fear

Rudy defeat marks end of 9/11 politics

By: Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn

Giuliani's failure will force a major shift in Republican campaigns, some GOP strategists said. Photo: AP

Rudy Giuliani's distant third-place finish in Florida may put an end to his bid for president, and it seems also to mark the beginning of the end of a period in Republican politics that began on Sept. 11, 2001.

Giuliani's national celebrity was based on his steady, comforting appearance in Americans' living rooms amid the terrorist attacks, and his campaign for president never found a message beyond that moment.

The emotional connection he forged that day, it seems, has proved politically worthless. After months of wonder that the former mayor seemed to have no ceiling to his support, he turned out to have no floor, trading fourth-place finishes with Ron Paul, a little-known Texas congressman.

"There's a paradox for Rudy," said former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission. "One of the things he did very well on 9/11 was say, 'We've got to get back to normal.' And that's what's happened. We've gotten back to normal."

Giuliani's failure reflects a broader shift in the American landscape, in which Sept. 11 has so diminished as an emotional touchstone that neither The Gallup Organization nor The Pew Research Center has even polled Americans about the attacks for a half year.

"We have 9/11 fatigue in the United States," said Mitchell Moss, a professor at New York University and an adviser to Giuliani's successor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a technocrat who has focused on the future, and away from 9/11 and terrorism-related concerns.

Giuliani isn't the only one who suffered from the declining salience of the terror attacks. The Partnership for a Secure America, a bipartisan group that's still pressing to fulfill the recommendations of the 2004 9/11 Commission Report, announced Tuesday that it had produced a 30-second television advertisement to remind Americans of the threat of nuclear terrorism. A country that was brought to war less than five years ago in part by the specter of a "smoking gun" in the form of "a mushroom cloud" now needs reminding that the threat even exists.

"The American attention span has always been very short," former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, the former chairman of the commission and an adviser to the Partnership, told Politico.

When Gallup last asked about Sept. 11, in the summer of 2007, only 43 percent of Americans considered the war in Iraq "to be part of the war on terrorism which began on Sept. 11, 2001." Four years earlier, in the summer of 2003, 57 percent of Americans believed the war in Iraq was related to the Sept. 11 attacks.

It was that perception shift that made a Sept. 11 campaign far more effective in 2004 than in 2008. The image of George W. Bush standing amidst the rubble of the World Trade Center gave the Bush campaign an anchor to effectively tout their candidate's leadership qualities.

But in the ensuing years — as the war in Iraq plummeted in popularity, concern over imminent attacks ebbed, and Americans became increasingly worried about the economy — the evocative image of Giuliani managing a city under attack became less and less relevant.

The Giuliani campaign failed to shift with the country. Last year, as Sept. 11 was receding from the American zeitgeist, Giuliani's strategists made his performance that day the bedrock of his campaign.

"They never made the pivot from success as a leader after 9/11 in New York to the ability to make success as a leader in federal or national government," said Matt Dowd, the chief strategist for George W. Bush's 2004 campaign. "They over relied on 9/11. There was no reason to talk about that. It was baked into his DNA. What they had to do was to make the transition from why what he did in the aftermath of 9/11 why that would make him a great leader at the time of any situation."

Instead, Giuliani managed to do something that would have been unthinkable a few years earlier: He turned 9/11 into a punch line. The late-night television riffs bubbled into prime time during a Democratic debate in October, when Sen. Joe Biden dismissed the former mayor scornfully.

"There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb and 9/11," Biden said.

Giuliani's campaign tried in vain to awaken the country to the urgency of terrorism with a television ad released Jan. 2, which featured chanting terrorist hordes and the images of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Osama bin Laden. Another ad, released Jan. 18, flashed an image of the ruined Twin Towers.

"When the world wavered and history hesitated, he never did," said the narrator.

His ads, though, drew more snide jokes than votes, and he closed out his campaign in Florida on the relatively anodyne question of insurance policy.

After growing accustomed to tapping into fears of terrorism and faith in Republican strength, Giuliani's failure will force a major shift in Republican campaigns, some GOP strategists said.

"Between the trauma of 9/11 and the civil war we had over the present policy in the Gulf — people have reached a point where they're just exhausted by it. I think that's a terrible, terrible thing," said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP adman who produced perhaps the iconic post-9/11 television ad: Saxby Chambliss' searing attack on the willingness of Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero, to keep America safe — a spot illustrated with the visages of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

"Americans want to watch 'America's Top Model' — and they really, really don't want to be reminded that bad people want to kill them," said Wilson, who worked for Giuliani's 2000 Senate campaign and advised him informally this year. "Talking about 9/11 now is like 'Remember the Maine.'"

Original article posted here.

No, the "New World Order" is not a conspiracy theory

Brown's secret talks on 'new world order'

By Andrew Grice

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has begun secret talks with other world leaders on far-reaching reform of the United Nations Security Council as part of a drive to create a "new world order" and "global society".

Brown is drawing up plans to expand the number of permanent members in a move that will provoke fears in his country that the veto enjoyed by Britain could be diluted eventually.

The United States, France, Russia and China also have a veto but the number of members could be doubled to include India, Germany, Japan, Brazil and one or two African nations.

Brown has discussed a shake-up of a structure created in 1945 to reflect the world's new challenges and power bases during his four-day trip to China and India. British sources revealed "intense discussions" on UN reform were under way and Brown raised it whenever he met another world leader.

The Prime Minister believes the UN is punching below its weight. In 2003, it failed to agree on a fresh resolution giving explicit approval for military action in Iraq. US President George W. Bush then acted unilaterally, winning the support of then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

His aides are adamant that the British veto will not be negotiated away. One option is for the nations who join not to have a veto, at least initially. In a speech in New Delhi, the Prime Minister was to say: "I support India's bid for a permanent place - with others - on an expanded UN Security Council." However, he is not backing Pakistan's demand for a seat if India wins one.

Brown will unveil a proposal for the UN to spend £100 million ($257 million) a year on setting up a "rapid reaction force" to stop "failed states" sliding back into chaos after a peace deal has been reached.

"There is limited value in military action to end fighting if law and order does not follow," he will say. "So we must do more to ensure rapid reconstruction on the ground once conflicts are over and combine traditional humanitarian aid and peace-keeping with stabilisation, recovery and development."

THE UNITED NATIONS: EYE ON THE WORLD
* The UN Security Council's membership has remained virtually unchanged since it first met in 1946.

* Great Britain, the United States, the then Soviet Union, China and France were designated permanent members of the powerful body.

* Initially, six other countries were elected to serve two-year spells on the council in 1946. They were Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, the Netherlands and Poland.

* The number of elected members, who are chosen to cover all parts of the globe, was increased to 10 in 1965. They are currently Belgium, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, Indonesia, Italy, Libya, Panama, South Africa and Vietnam.

* Decisions made by the council require nine "yes" votes out of 15. Each permanent member has a veto over resolutions.

* The issue of UN reform has long been on the agenda. One suggestion is that permanent membership could be expanded to 10 with India, Japan, Germany, Brazil and South Africa taking places. Any reform requires 128 nations, two-thirds, to back it in the assembly.

Original article posted here.

Never enough to spy on

Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring

Intelligence Agencies to Track Intrusions

By Ellen Nakashima

President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.

The directive, whose content is classified, authorizes the intelligence agencies, in particular the National Security Agency, to monitor the computer networks of all federal agencies -- including ones they have not previously monitored.

Until now, the government's efforts to protect itself from cyber-attacks -- which run the gamut from hackers to organized crime to foreign governments trying to steal sensitive data -- have been piecemeal. Under the new initiative, a task force headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will coordinate efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government computer systems. As part of that effort, the Department of Homeland Security will work to protect the systems and the Pentagon will devise strategies for counterattacks against the intruders.

There has been a string of attacks on networks at the State, Commerce, Defense and Homeland Security departments in the past year and a half. U.S. officials and cyber-security experts have said Chinese Web sites were involved in several of the biggest attacks back to 2005, including some at the country's nuclear-energy labs and large defense contractors.

The NSA has particular expertise in monitoring a vast, complex array of communications systems -- traditionally overseas. The prospect of aiming that power at domestic networks is raising concerns, just as the NSA's role in the government's warrantless domestic-surveillance program has been controversial.

"Agencies designed to gather intelligence on foreign entities should not be in charge of monitoring our computer systems here at home," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. Lawmakers with oversight of homeland security and intelligence matters say they have pressed the administration for months for details.

The classified joint directive, signed Jan. 8 and called the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23, has not been previously disclosed. Plans to expand the NSA's role in cyber-security were reported in the Baltimore Sun in September.

According to congressional aides and former White House officials with knowledge of the program, the directive outlines measures collectively referred to as the "cyber initiative," aimed at securing the government's computer systems against attacks by foreign adversaries and other intruders. It will cost billions of dollars, which the White House is expected to request in its fiscal 2009 budget.

"The president's directive represents a continuation of our efforts to secure government networks, protect against constant intrusion attempts, address vulnerabilities and anticipate future threats," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. He would not discuss the initiative's details.

The initiative foreshadows a policy debate over the proper role for government as the Internet becomes more dangerous.

Supporters of cyber-security measures say the initiative falls short because it doesn't include the private sector -- power plants, refineries, banks -- where analysts say 90 percent of the threat exists.

"If you don't include industry in the mix, you're keeping one of your eyes closed because the hacking techniques are likely the same across government and commercial organizations," said Alan Paller, research director at the SANS Institute, a Bethesda-based cyber-security group that assists companies that face attacks. "If you're looking for needles in the haystack, you need as much data as you can get because these are really tiny needles, and bad guys are trying to hide the needles."

Under the initiative, the NSA, CIA and the FBI's Cyber Division will investigate intrusions by monitoring Internet activity and, in some cases, capturing data for analysis, sources said.

The Pentagon can plan attacks on adversaries' networks if, for example, the NSA determines that a particular server in a foreign country needs to be taken down to disrupt an attack on an information system critical to the U.S. government. That could include responding to an attack against a private-sector network, such as the telecom industry's, sources said.

Also, as part of its attempt to defend government computer systems, the Department of Homeland Security will collect and monitor data on intrusions, deploy technologies for preventing attacks and encrypt data. It will also oversee the effort to reduce Internet portals across government to 50 from 2,000, to make it easier to detect attacks.

"The government has taken a solid step forward in trying to develop cyber-defenses," said Paul B. Kurtz, a security consultant and former special adviser to the president on critical infrastructure protection. Kurtz said the initiative's purpose is not to spy on Americans. "The thrust here is to protect networks."

One of the key questions is whether it is necessary to read communications to investigate an intrusion.

Ed Giorgio, a former NSA analyst who is now a security consultant for ODNI, said, "If you're looking inside a DoD system and you see data flows going to China, that ought to set off a red flag. You don't need to scan the content to determine that."

But often, traffic analysis is not enough, some experts said. "Knowing the content -- that a communication is sensitive -- allows proof positive that something bad is going out of that computer," said one cyber-security expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the initiative's sensitivity.

Allowing a spy agency to monitor domestic networks is worrisome, said James X. Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We're concerned that the NSA is claiming such a large role over the security of unclassified systems," he said. "They are a spy agency as well as a communications security agency. They operate in total secrecy. That's not necessary and not the most effective way to protect unclassified systems."

A proposal last year by the White House Homeland Security Council to put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of the initiative was resisted by national security agencies on the grounds that the department, established in 2003, lacked the necessary expertise and authority. The tug-of-war lasted weeks and was resolved only recently, several sources said.

Original article posted here.

Touching heaven or "merely a slide show consisting of pretty pictures of the sky set to dreary music"

weazl is not a doctor, but this is a pretty interesting documentary about questions relating to AIDS. Well worth watching.

More on the fraud that was the New Hampshire primary

Harris Calls For Resignations In New Hampshire Recount Fiasco Vote fraud expert convinced chain of custody is corrupt, says "criminal enterprise" is at work

Paul Joseph Watson

Fresh from her confrontations in New Hampshire during which public officials were grilled about slapdash chain of custody and ballot box tampering issues, Bev Harris told the Alex Jones Show that a "criminal enterprise" is running the primary recount and has called for Secretary of State William Gardner to resign and his assistant to be fired.

Harris was fundamental in the vetting and production of the HBO special Hacking Democracy, and has contributed towards bringing charges against vote fraudsters who cheated in Ohio in 2004.

Harris traveled to New Hampshire personally to discover for herself the disgraceful lapses in chain of custody for the memory cards and ballot boxes used in the recent primary.

Harris is featured in the video below asking public officials about slits in ballot boxes as they bizarrely deny that the slits are big enough to allow tampering, amongst a myriad of other disturbing questions about chain of custody. Follow-up questions are frowned upon and one official calls security to have Harris removed.

Following Republican candidate Albert Howard's attempts to oversee the recount, Harris said "I knew that somebody needed to get to New Hampshire and protect or find out what they're doing with chain of custody of the ballots....New Hampshire has the memory cards for 81 per cent of its votes counted by this one company - we found there was a convicted felon involved in that....that's why I wanted to see what the chain of custody was".

After hooking up with other vote fraud experts, Harris confronted public officials and asked pointed questions about chain of custody.

"The problem was we were either not getting answers or we were getting bizarre answers," said Harris.

New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner was questioned on the whereabouts of the memory cards that hold electronic records of the votes.

"She kept asking him and ultimately he had to admit he didn't know where they were, and this is days after the election," said Harris.

One of the observers followed the ballots back to the vault where they were being stored overnight and noticed slits in the ballot boxes that had not been counted, a complete violation of federal election laws.

"I then came in the next day and asked the assistant Secretary of State David Scanlan - what about that slit in the end of the box?" said Harris, after which Scanlan attempted to dismiss the concern by claiming the slits weren't big enough to allow tampering (an OJ tries on the glove moment, according to Harris).

One of the observers then proceeded to shame Scanlan by easily sticking her whole hand into the ballot box.

Officials then claimed that a special tape was in place to seal the box, bt as Harris proves in the video, the tape can easily be peeled off and re-applied.

"It's a post-it note," said Harris, "You can rip it on and off, on and off."

Harris then discovered that the ballot boxes were not being transfered from state to state by police as should be the case, but by "Butch and Hoppy," two truck drivers who raced around the state at high speed endangering people and and employing evasive manoevers to escape from observers who were following them.

"We caught them meeting up with a green jeep in the middle of nowhere half way through their route and we walk up to them and they drive off in a different direction," said Harris.

"I wanted to see what the ballots looked like when Butch and Hoppy take them off the truck, well sure enough they didn't have seals on them and some of them weren't even closed - they had the box top open with big gashes and tears in them," said Harris, who also revealed how officials left ballots in their offices and did not store them in secure vaults.

"Every way that it could break down it seemed to have broken down," said Harris, "Even to the extent of just not following procedures".

"How can you say that you can open someone's ballot box without them present?" asked Harris.

Based on her experiences with the sham nature of the process, Harris called for the resignation of the Secretary of State Gardener and his assistant David Scanlan.

"I think assistant Secretary of State David Scanlan, who is actually their operations guy, should be dismissed from his position and the Secretary of State should resign, and they need to refund the money for both candidates and recount all those ballots in public," said Harris.

"What they're doing here is a criminal enterprise," she added, "It has all the earmarks of it."

Click here to listen to the MP3 interview.

Original article posted here.

The cost of a weak dollar

Weak Dollar Fuels China's Buying Spree Of U.S. Firms

Foreign Cash Ignites Political Concerns

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

SHANGHAI -- From his posh office in a coastal city in eastern China, millionaire Zhou Jiaru oversees more than 100 workers at an auto parts refurbishing factory he purchased in a struggling manufacturing town on the other side of the world.

Zhou's new company is in Spartanburg, S.C.

The Chinese entrepreneur bought it from Richard Lovely, a 56-year-old industrial engineer and mechanic who says his business was in dire straits because of competition from abroad.

Zhou's 85 percent stake in the company now known as GSP North America is one example of how the weak dollar and weakening U.S. economy have made the United States a bargain for overseas companies shopping for investments.

In 2007, acquisitions in the United States by foreign ventures hit $407 billion, up 93 percent from the previous year, according to Thomson Financial. The top countries investing were Canada, Britain and Germany; the Middle East and Asia -- especially China -- are quickly catching up.

The biggest deals in recent months have involved Wall Street firms hit by losses from exposure to mortgage-related investment vehicles.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is once again coming to Citigroup's rescue. Canada's Toronto-Dominion Bank is buying an $8.5 billion share of Commerce Bancorp. Singapore's state-run Temasek Holdings purchased a stake in Merrill Lynch valued between $4.4 billion and $5 billion. And the sovereign wealth fund that invests the Chinese government's hard currency is injecting $5 billion into Morgan Stanley, while Citic Securities, a private Chinese firm, is investing $1 billion in Bear Stearns.

But the investment hasn't stopped there. Smaller companies in remote parts of the United States are also being bought out.

"The U.S. dollar is getting weaker and weaker, and many medium to small U.S. companies are in economic crisis. So they need investments from China. It is very good timing," said Yu Dan, a representative for the state of Pennsylvania in China.

Yu, who is one of about 30 people in China who represent American cities and states, said at least six Chinese companies are in the process of closing deals in Pennsylvania. One will make some purchases in the food industry. Another will invest in the wood industry, because as Yu put it, "Pennsylvania has very good hardwood resources, and the aboriginal people in the north Pennsylvania woods are good workers."

Aboriginal people? The Amish, Yu clarified.

As the dollar's value against other currencies fluctuates, the tricky part for foreign investors is buying at the right time. When the dollar is falling, there's a danger in overpaying. The $3 billion stake that China Investment Corp. bought in Blackstone last May, for instance, is now worth closer to $2 billion.

Much of the recent overseas investment in the United States has been driven by sovereign wealth funds backed by foreign states. While these funds comprise only about 1.5 percent of the $165 trillion of global traded securities, they are growing quickly.

The funds -- at least a dozen of which were created since 2000 -- now control about $2.5 trillion. Morgan Stanley's Stephen Jen estimates that their worth will jump to $12 trillion by 2015.

For much of their half-century history, sovereign wealth funds have been seen as ideal investors by many U.S. firms. They have deep pockets and a long-range investment horizon, and they have shown little interest in interfering in the operations of the firms they invest in.

"The vast majority of sovereign wealth funds are long-term investors that tend to take very small stakes in companies without seeking to control or influence companies," said David M. Marchick, head of global regulatory affairs for Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm in the District. "They are just along for the ride."

But as recently as a few years ago, when credit flowed more freely, some members of Congress expressed alarm about acquisitions of strategically important entities like oil companies and ports by outside funds backed by foreign states.

These days, the general weakness in the U.S. economy has touched off a fresh wave of concern.

"Foreign investment, in general, strengthens our economy and creates jobs. But as investments by sovereign wealth funds in American companies increase and the specter of control and undue influence by government entities looms, we have to be careful," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) said in a statement that "governments are motivated by a broader range of factors than commercial investors."

"While foreign governments may invest money in a country to make a profit, they may also do so in order to further their foreign policy ambitions, to acquire national security assets, or to purchase a stake in strategic industries," Webb said.

The fact that little is known about the funds' assets, liabilities or investment strategies only exacerbates worries.

"Most of them are not transparent and don't seem to be accountable to anybody, including their own people," said Edwin M. Truman, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who has testified before Congress about the funds. He said that a large group of sovereign wealth funds is engaged in discussions with the International Monetary Fund to develop a set of best practices for such funds.

Much of the concern about foreign investment has been centered on China, where the line between private industry and state enterprise is often blurry. A 2005 attempt by the China National Offshore Oil Corp. to buy California-based Unocal fell apart because of political opposition.

While the money coming from China is still limited -- $9.6 billion in 2007, up from $66 million the previous year, according to Thomson Financial -- it is reminiscent of the Japanese and German buying sprees of U.S. firms in the 1970s and '80s.

One place where the trend is playing out is South Carolina, where nearly 21 percent of the manufacturing labor force works for foreign companies, the biggest proportion in any state except Hawaii.

It's also a place with high unemployment -- 6.6 percent statewide and 10 to 15 percent in some counties, according to December 2007 figures. South Carolina has also led the fight against outsourcing of jobs overseas. But in recent years the opposite has occurred: Chinese companies have invested in South Carolina -- albeit on limited terms.

Haier, a Chinese appliance maker, has a refrigerator factory in the state. There's also a Chinese-owned chemical factory, printing company and general construction company, among others, that in total employ thousands of South Carolinians, according to John X. Ling, the state's representative in China.

The low cost of land, cheaper than in China's major cities, and electricity -- which tends to be about a third or a fourth the cost in China -- are attractions. So is the idea of being closer to American consumers, their primary customers.

Zhou, 54, who purchased the auto refurbishing company in Spartanburg, said another factor has to do with politics.

"We look at the example of the Japanese company Honda. . . . The U.S. was against the dumping of Japanese cars at low prices, but Honda was not affected because it had operations in the United States," he said.

Zhou is the founder and chairman of Guanshen Auto Parts Manufacturing in Wenzhou, a city about 260 miles southwest of Shanghai that has an almost mythical reputation for capitalist wealth. When U.S. business delegations come to China seeking investments, Wenzhou is a popular stop.

Guanshen Auto is a leading supplier of constant-velocity axles, which transfer power from a vehicle's transmission to its wheels. Lovely's company, Powerline, refurbished old CV axles and sold them.

Zhou made his initial purchase of a stake in Powerline in 2005, a few months after the Chinese government did away with its currency's long-held peg to the dollar and its value began to rise. As the dollar continued to weaken in 2007, Zhou bought more of the company, renaming it GSP North America after the Chinese initials of the parent company. After having paid a total $1.3 million, Zhou now owns 85 percent of the South Carolina factory.

He said that the factory employees were apprehensive about working for a Chinese company. "People objected. When we went to visit the factory, American workers said, 'We work for Chinese now. We don't have face,' " Zhou recalled.

Lovely, who remains chief operating officer of the company and still owns 15 percent, himself was apprehensive. "People said, 'You're very gutsy to do that.' . . . It was hard for other people to understand. People think there's no law over there" in China, he said.

Dick Adams, 57, whom Zhou hired to be in charge of sales and marketing at GSP North America, said the company is proving to employees, the community and the state of South Carolina that they are "good Chinese."

When Zhou took over, he initially operated the factory Chinese-style, 24 hours a day -- with a day shift and a graveyard shift. But the workers complained about working in the middle of the night, so now the factory just keeps regular daytime hours.

"You have Chinese that come in here and just want to take, take, take and not give anything. They'll come in here just to get an order and run away. GSP hasn't done that. They have come and invested millions of dollars in buildings and people and distribution," Adams said.

Original article posted here.

New Nato blueprint for global destruction

Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told

by Ian Traynor

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists. Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".

The manifesto has been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April. "The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. "The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

The authors - General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato's ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany's former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato's military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK - paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope.

The five commanders argue that the west's values and way of life are under threat, but the west is struggling to summon the will to defend them. The key threats are:

· Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

· The "dark side" of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

· Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential "environmental" migration on a mass scale.

· The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

To prevail, the generals call for an overhaul of Nato decision-taking methods, a new "directorate" of US, European and Nato leaders to respond rapidly to crises, and an end to EU "obstruction" of and rivalry with Nato. Among the most radical changes demanded are:

· A shift from consensus decision-taking in Nato bodies to majority voting, meaning faster action through an end to national vetoes.

· The abolition of national caveats in Nato operations of the kind that plague the Afghan campaign.

· No role in decision-taking on Nato operations for alliance members who are not taking part in the operations.

· The use of force without UN security council authorisation when "immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings".

In the wake of the latest row over military performance in Afghanistan, touched off when the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said some allies could not conduct counter-insurgency, the five senior figures at the heart of the western military establishment also declare that Nato's future is on the line in Helmand province.

"Nato's credibility is at stake in Afghanistan," said Van den Breemen.

"Nato is at a juncture and runs the risk of failure," according to the blueprint.

Naumann delivered a blistering attack on his own country's performance in Afghanistan. "The time has come for Germany to decide if it wants to be a reliable partner." By insisting on "special rules" for its forces in Afghanistan, the Merkel government in Berlin was contributing to "the dissolution of Nato".

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund thinktank in Brussels and a former senior US state department official, described the manifesto as "a wake-up call". "This report means that the core of the Nato establishment is saying we're in trouble, that the west is adrift and not facing up to the challenges."

Naumann conceded that the plan's retention of the nuclear first strike option was "controversial" even among the five authors. Inge argued that "to tie our hands on first use or no first use removes a huge plank of deterrence".

Reserving the right to initiate nuclear attack was a central element of the west's cold war strategy in defeating the Soviet Union. Critics argue that what was a productive instrument to face down a nuclear superpower is no longer appropriate.

Robert Cooper, an influential shaper of European foreign and security policy in Brussels, said he was "puzzled".

"Maybe we are going to use nuclear weapons before anyone else, but I'd be wary of saying it out loud."

Another senior EU official said Nato needed to "rethink its nuclear posture because the nuclear non-proliferation regime is under enormous pressure".

Naumann suggested the threat of nuclear attack was a counsel of desperation. "Proliferation is spreading and we have not too many options to stop it. We don't know how to deal with this."

Nato needed to show "there is a big stick that we might have to use if there is no other option", he said.

The Authors:

John Shalikashvili

The US's top soldier under Bill Clinton and former Nato commander in Europe, Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw of Georgian parents and emigrated to the US at the height of Stalinism in 1952. He became the first immigrant to the US to rise to become a four-star general. He commanded Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq at the end of the first Gulf war, then became Saceur, Nato's supreme allied commander in Europe, before Clinton appointed him chairman of the joint chiefs in 1993, a position he held until his retirement in 1997.

Klaus Naumann

Viewed as one of Germany's and Nato's top military strategists in the 90s, Naumann served as his country's armed forces commander from 1991 to 1996 when he became chairman of Nato's military committee. On his watch, Germany overcame its post-WWII taboo about combat operations, with the Luftwaffe taking to the skies for the first time since 1945 in the Nato air campaign against Serbia.

Lord Inge

Field Marshal Peter Inge is one of Britain's top officers, serving as chief of the general staff in 1992-94, then chief of the defence staff in 1994-97. He also served on the Butler inquiry into Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and British intelligence.

Henk van den Breemen

An accomplished organist who has played at Westminster Abbey, Van den Breemen is the former Dutch chief of staff.

Jacques Lanxade

A French admiral and former navy chief who was also chief of the French defence staff.

Original article posted here.

Unipolar superpower empire no longer

A China base in Iran?

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

In the aftermath of President George W Bush's recent tour of the Persian Gulf, coinciding with a similar trip by France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, culminating in a deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a small French base, Iran's security calculus has changed. It has almost reached the point of Tehran considering the option of reciprocating the perceived excess Western intrusion into its vicinity by allowing a military base for China at one of Iran's Persian Gulf ports or on one of its islands.

Without doubt, this would be a significant geopolitical move on both Iran's and China's part, bound to unsettle the US superpower that enjoys unrivalled hegemony in the oil region and which has unsettled China with its recent civilian nuclear agreement with India, widely interpreted as a long-term "containing China" initiative.

In the tight interplay of geopolitics and geo-economics, with China heavily dependent on energy imports from Iran and other Persian Gulf states, the trend is definitely toward China's naval complement of its flurry of energy deals in order to secure its precious oil and (liquefied) gas cargo ships exiting through the narrow corridors of the Strait of Hormuz.

Presently, China's strategy is confined to the port city of Gwadar along the southwestern coast of Pakistan in Balochistan province, strategically located near the Hormuz Strait. Yet, due to the close US-Pakistan relations, it is highly improbable the US would permit Islamabad to enter into strategic relations with Beijing so that China, still lacking a formidable navy, could utilize it for power projection in the region.

Not so with Iran, which is constantly threatened by the US, and now France, and which already enjoys observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), headed by China and Russia. Iran's bid to join the SCO has been stalled partly as a result of the standoff over its nuclear program, but will likely succeed in the not too distant future should the present patterns of Iran-Russia and Iran-China cooperation continue.

Regarding the latter, China has already surpassed Germany as Iran's number one trade partner. Sinopec, China's largest oil refiner, has just finalized a multi-billion dollar deal to develop the giant Yadavaran oil field, and this is in addition to the "deal of the century" contract for natural gas from Iran's immense North Pars field. Chinese contractors are also busy constructing oil terminals for Iran in the Caspian Sea, extending the Tehran metro, building airports, among other projects. And this while China arms sales to Iran have included such hot items as ballistic-missile technology and air-defense radars.

The growing Iran-China cooperation on the energy and trade fronts is bound sooner or later to spill over into more meaningful military cooperation and, in turn, this depends to some extent on the ebbs and flows of Iran-US and China-US "games of strategy", particularly if China feels additional pressure from the US on the geopolitical front.

For sure, Iran's willingness to show a greater willingness than hitherto to embrace China's naval vessels making port calls to Iran is now in the cards, this as a prelude to more extensive agreements up to and including provisions for a small Chinese naval outpost on one of Iran's Persian Gulf islands.

Again, such a scenario, sure to raise the serious ire of Washington, depends on a number of intervening variables. These include future US moves in the Persian Gulf, for example, whether or not the US military will end up utilizing some of the man-made artificial islands set up by the UAE. If so, thus enhancing the US's power projection capability with regard to Iran, Tehran may be more inclined to try to offset the US's leaning so heavy on it by playing the "China card".

To reiterate, France's bold new move in the Persian Gulf is equally unsettling to Tehran, which finds the new pro-US turn of French foreign policy detrimental to its national interests. The net result is the cognitive bifurcation of "West" versus "us" [1] that nicely dovetails with the new "eastern orientation" of Iran under President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. This is part and parcel of an energetic new "globalist" approach that includes new strategic openings with certain Latin and Central American nations.

In other words, it is sheer error to misinterpret Iran's "new foreign policy" as one-dimensionally regional or continental in nature, despite its narrow focus on Iran's immediate regions.

"Iran cannot remain indifferent to the aggressive geopolitical maneuvers against it by Western nations [who are] targeting Iran in no unmistakable language," says a prominent political science professor at Tehran University.

The professor loudly wondered how France would react if all of a sudden Iran started setting up bases near its coastline or, for that matter, how Washington would respond to an Iranian base in Iran-friendly Nicaragua? "They definitely need a wake-up call that national security is not a one-way process."

While Iran's political pundits are not yet willing to concede that Iran is now at the stage to allow a Chinese base along its vast Persian Gulf coastline, nonetheless quite a few agree that with the changing geopolitical milieu representing potentially serious national security threats to Iran, all options must remain open.

Note
1. After all, Sarkozy has stepped down from his predecessor's talk of "multiploarism" and, instead, per an article in this week's New York Times, "has tempered that notion with talk about France's place within its 'Western family', an expression welcomed in Washington".

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

Original article posted here.

Another great site supporter emailed me with the following information to spread about Ron Paul in Louisiana

Hi Weazl,

In case you want to post this info or spread the word: I phoned the Louisiana Republican Party here: http://lagop.com/ ,telling them it is getting out in the national news and making the state look bad. I asked for transparency, particularly:

- How and why did they extend the delegate deadline without a rule change (or did they)? Apparently it was only 6 hours after receiving Pauls totals on the deadline that they extended the deadline for 2 days to let other candidates get more delegates.

- Why did some registered delegates get provisional ballots?

- Have the provisional ballots been counted, and if not why? When will tallies be posted in the open for all to see?



I also contacted the Governor’s office. Bobby Jindal is the first Indian-American governor in America to be elected (he was just sworn in last week) and he won on a reform and “I promise to root out the corruption no matter what” platform. I asked him to use his influence with the party to make sure this thing is resolved in an open and above-board way.



Email: http://www.gov.state.la.us/index.cfm?md=pagebuilder&tmp=home&navID=5&cpID=28&cfmID=0&catID=0

Phone: 225.342.0991 (Governor’s Office, Constituent Services – you’ll have to leave a message).

Julia

Making your children crazy: obey or be medicated

How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet.

For a generation now, disruptive young Americans who rebel against authority figures have been increasingly diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric (psychotropic) drugs.

Disruptive young people who are medicated with Ritalin, Adderall and other amphetamines routinely report that these drugs make them "care less" about their boredom, resentments and other negative emotions, thus making them more compliant and manageable. And so-called atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal and Zyprexa -- powerful tranquilizing drugs -- are increasingly prescribed to disruptive young Americans, even though in most cases they are not displaying any psychotic symptoms.

Many talk show hosts think I'm kidding when I mention oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). After I assure them that ODD is in fact an official mental illness -- an increasingly popular diagnosis for children and teenagers -- they often guess that ODD is simply a new term for juvenile delinquency. But that is not the case.

Young people diagnosed with ODD, by definition, are doing nothing illegal (illegal behaviors are a symptom of another mental illness called conduct disorder). In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) created oppositional defiant disorder, defining it as "a pattern of negativistic, hostile and defiant behavior." The official symptoms of ODD include "often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules" and "often argues with adults." While ODD-diagnosed young people are obnoxious with adults they don't respect, these kids can be a delight with adults they do respect; yet many of them are medicated with psychotropic drugs.

An even more common reaction to oppressive authorities than overt defiance is some type of passive defiance.

John Holt, the late school critic, described passive-aggressive strategies employed by prisoners in concentration camps and slaves on plantations, as well as some children in classrooms. Holt pointed out that subjects may attempt to appease their rulers while still satisfying some part of their own desire for dignity "by putting on a mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent than they really are, by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies."

Holt observed that by "going stupid" in a classroom, children frustrate authorities through withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene, thus achieving some sense of potency.

Going stupid -- or passive aggression -- is one of many nondisease explanations for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Studies show that virtually all ADHD-diagnosed children will pay attention to activities that they enjoy or that they have chosen. In other words, when ADHD-labeled kids are having a good time and in control, the "disease" goes away.

There are other passive rebellions against authority that have been medicalized by mental health authorities. I have talked to many people who earlier in their lives had been diagnosed with substance abuse, depression and even schizophrenia but believe that their "symptoms" had in fact been a kind of resistance to the demands of an oppressive environment. Some of these people now call themselves psychiatric survivors.

While there are several reasons for behavioral disruptiveness and emotional difficulties, rebellion against an oppressive environment is one common reason that is routinely not even considered by many mental health professionals. Why? It is my experience that many mental health professionals are unaware of how extremely obedient they are to authorities. Acceptance into medical school and graduate school and achieving a Ph.D. or M.D. means jumping through many meaningless hoops, all of which require much behavioral, attentional and emotional compliance to authorities -- even disrespected ones. When compliant M.D.s and Ph.D.s begin seeing noncompliant patients, many of these doctors become anxious, sometimes even ashamed of their own excessive compliance, and this anxiety and shame can be fuel for diseasing normal human reactions.

Two ways of subduing defiance are to criminalize it and to pathologize it, and U.S. history is replete with examples of both. In the same era that John Adams' Sedition Act criminalized criticism of U.S. governmental policy, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry (his image adorns the APA seal), pathologized anti-authoritarianism. Rush diagnosed those rebelling against a centralized federal authority as having an "excess of the passion for liberty" that "constituted a form of insanity." He labeled this illness "anarchia."

Throughout American history, both direct and indirect resistance to authority has been diseased. In an 1851 article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, Louisiana physician Samuel Cartwright reported his discovery of "drapetomania," the disease that caused slaves to flee captivity. Cartwright also reported his discovery of "dysaesthesia aethiopis," the disease that caused slaves to pay insufficient attention to the master's needs. Early versions of ODD and ADHD?

In Rush's lifetime, few Americans took anarchia seriously, nor was drapetomania or dysaesthesia aethiopis taken seriously in Cartwright's lifetime. But these were eras before the diseasing of defiance had a powerful financial ally in Big Pharma.

In every generation there will be authoritarians. There will also be the "bohemian bourgeois" who may enjoy anti-authoritarian books, music, and movies but don't act on them. And there will be genuine anti-authoritarians, who are so pained by exploitive hierarchies that they take action. Only occasionally in American history do these genuine anti-authoritarians actually take effective direct action that inspires others to successfully revolt, but every once in a while a Tom Paine comes along. So authoritarians take no chances, and the state-corporate partnership criminalizes anti-authoritarianism, pathologizes it, markets drugs to "cure" it and financially intimidates those who might buck the system.

It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine -- or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X -- were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality?


Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green, 2007).

Original article posted here.

One Krazy Bushtard

Great joke from the wonderful site supporter Joyce. Luv ya, much!

While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by a truck and dies.

His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.

'Welcome to heaven,' says St. Peter. 'Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you.'

'No problem, just let me in,' says the man.

'Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity.'

'Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,' says the senator. 'I'm sorry, but we have our rules.'

And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the e levator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.

Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.

They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and champagne.

Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it is time to go.

Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises...The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St Peter is waiting for him.

'Now it's time to visit heaven.'

So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.

'Well, then, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.'

The senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: 'Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.'

So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.

Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.

He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.

The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder. 'I don't understand,' stammers the senator. 'Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?'

The devil looks at him, smiles and says, 'Yesterday we were campaigning......

Today you voted.

Warrant? Why bother?

The End of Privacy

By Elliot Cohen

Amid the controversy brewing in the Senate over Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform, the Bush administration appears to have changed its strategy and is devising a bold new plan that would strip away FISA protections in favor of a system of wholesale government monitoring of every American's Internet activities. Now the national director of intelligence is predicting a disastrous cyber-terrorist attack on the U.S. if this scheme isn't instituted.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has already been spying on the e-mail, voice-over-IP, and other Internet exchanges between American citizens since as early as and possibly earlier than Sept. 11, 2001. The National Security Agency has set up shop in the hubs of major telecom corporations, notably AT&T, installing equipment that makes copies of the contents of all Internet traffic, routing it to a government database and then using natural language parsing technology to sift through and analyze the data using undisclosed search criteria. It has done this without judicial oversight and obviously without the consent of the millions of Americans under surveillance. Given any rational interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, its mass spying operation is illegal and unconstitutional.

But now the administration wants to make these illegal activities legal. And why is that? According to National Director of Intelligence Mike McConnell, who is now drafting the proposal, an attack on a single U.S. bank by the 9/11 terrorists would have had a far more serious impact on the U.S. economy than the destruction of the Twin Towers. "My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens," said McConnell. So the way to prevent this from happening, he claims, is to give the government the power to spy at will on the content of all e-mails, file transfers and Web searches.

McConnell's prediction of something "horrendous" happening unless we grant government this authority has a tone similar to that of the fear-mongering call to arms against terrorism that President Bush sounded before taking us to war in Iraq. Now, Americans are about to be asked to surrender their Fourth Amendment rights because of a vague and unsupported prediction of the dangers and costs of cyber-terrorism.

The analogy with the campaign to frighten us into war with Iraq gets even stronger when it becomes evident that along with the establishing of American forces in Iraq, the cyber-security McConnell is calling for was, all along, part of the strategic plan, devised by Dick Cheney and several other present and former high-level Bush administration officials, to establish America as the world's supreme superpower. This plan, known as the Project for the New American Century, unequivocally recognized "an imperative" for government to not only secure the Internet against cyber-attacks but also to control and use it offensively against its adversaries. The Project for the New American Century also maintained that "the process of transformation" it envisioned (which included the militarization and control of the Internet) was "likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." All that appears to be lacking to make the analogy complete is the "horrendous" cyber-attack - the chilling analog of the 9/11 attacks - that McConnell now predicts.

Apparently, the Bush administration had hoped to continue its mass surveillance program in secret, but as many as 40 civil suits were filed against AT&T and other telecoms, threatening to blow the government's illegal spying activities wide open. Unable to have these cases dismissed in appellate court by once again playing the national-security card, the administration drafted and tried to push through Congress a version of the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 that gave retroactive immunity to telecom corporations for their assistance in helping the government spy en mass on Americans without a court warrant. The administration's plan was to use Congress' passage of this provision of immunity to nullify any cause of civil action against the telecoms, thereby pre-empting the exposure of the administration's own illegal activities.

Two versions of the FISA bill emerged, one from the Senate Intelligence Committee drafted largely by Cheney himself, which contained the immunity provision, and another from the Senate Judiciary Committee that did not contain the provision. Although Senate Majority leader Harry Reid inauspiciously chose the former to bring to the Senate floor, the bill was surrounded by much controversy. There had been well organized grass-roots pressure to stop it from passing, and the House had already passed a version that did not include the retroactive immunity provision. Thus, in the face of a filibuster threat by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Reid postponed the discussion until the January 2008 session.

Now Reid has tried to put off the FISA Amendments Act once again by asking Republicans to extend, for one more month, the Protect America Act of 2007, an interim FISA reform act that is due to sunset in February. However, Cheney has urged Congress to pass his version of the FISA Amendments Act now. "We can always revisit a law that's on the books. That's part of the job of the elected branches of government," Cheney said. "But there is no sound reason to pass critical legislation ... and slap an expiration date on it."

Cheney's point about the possibility of later revisiting the FISA Amendments Act after it becomes law may foreshadow replacing it in the coming months with a law based on McConnell's plan, which is due to emerge in February. This would mark a gradual descent into divesting Americans entirely of their Fourth Amendment right to privacy - first by blocking their ability to sue the telecoms for violating their privacy and then by giving the government the same legal protection. After all, the FISA Amendments Act still requires the government to get warrants for spying on American citizens even if it does not afford adequate judicial oversight in enforcing this mandate. McConnell's proposal, on the other hand, would make no bones about spying on Americans without warrants, thereby contradicting any meaningful FISA reform.

President Bush has already made clear he would veto any FISA bill that did not give retroactive immunity to the telecoms. However, if McConnell's soon to be unveiled spy-at-will plan is turned into law, a separate law giving retroactive immunity to the telecoms would be unnecessary. All Bush and Cheney would need to do to protect themselves from criminal liability would be to make the new spy-at-will law retroactive in effect from the inception of the illegal NSA surveillance program. This would also be sufficient to deflate the civil suits filed against the telecoms because the past illegal spying activities that these companies conducted on behalf of the government would then become "legal." Indeed, the Bush administration has already done this sort of legal retro-dating and nullifying of civil rights and gotten it through Congress. For example, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 conveniently gave Bush the power to decide whether someone - including himself - is guilty of torture, irrespective of the Geneva Conventions, and it made this authority retroactive to Nov. 26, 1997.

Whatever the final disposition of FISA in the coming weeks or months, the administration is now bracing to take a much more aggressive posture that would seek abridgement of civil liberties in its usual fashion: by fear-mongering and warnings that our homeland will be attacked by terrorists (this time of the menacing hacker variety) unless we the people surrender our Fourth Amendment right to privacy and give government the authority to inspect even our most personal and intimate messages.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the resolve of the Bush administration. But it would be a bigger mistake for Americans not to stand united against this familiar pattern of government scare tactics and manipulation. There are grave dangers to the survival of democracy posed by allowing any present or future government unfettered access to all of our private electronic communications. These dangers must be carefully weighed against the dubious and unproven benefits that granting such an awesome power to government might have on fending off cyber-attacks.

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Elliot D. Cohen, PhD, is a media ethicist and critic. His most recent book is "The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America Into a Dictatorship." He is a first-prize winner of the 2007 Project Censored Award.

Original article posted here.