ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

Reading from the Home Page of the World Economic Forum: "The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world.
The Forum provides a collaborative framework for the world's leaders to address global issues, engaging particularly its corporate members in global citizenship."

Clear enough!? Have you seen all those "world's leaders" who bombed women and children in Iraq, who are responsible for the concentrations camps in many parts of the world, who violated the International Law? Have you listened to those "world's leaders" who are responsible for the increasing of the massive economic injustices, for millions and millions of people living in poverty, starving and dying of treatable diseases? Have you watched on your TV the faces of these Masters of the World? And the pathetic show of those star-system celebrities, so happy to sit among them? NOW, YOU CAN DECIDE: YOU CAN LEAVE THE "STATE OF THE WORLD" TO THEM OR YOU CAN GET INVOLVED AND BE PART OF THE MOVEMENT. IT'S UP TO YOU. ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE

Elections in Iraq

The conditions under which Iraqis will be voting tomorrow are obviously bad: a poorly prepared election conducted in an atmosphere of escalating violence and lawlessness. But the time for addressing those problems is past. It's important now to focus on the hope that a reasonably successful election can be a large first step toward a self-governing and stable Iraq that can survive without huge numbers of American troops.

The New York Times
EDITORIAL
Iraq's Election Gamble
Published: January 29, 2005

Is that the real problem? The "poorly prepared election conducted in an atmosphere of escalating violence and lawlessness" as the Voice of the Master points out? Which kind of elections are those which come because of and after:
- ILLEGAL war and ILLEGAL occupation
- TORTURE and CONCENTRATION CAMPS
- VIOLATIONS of the GENEVA CONVENTIONS
- VIOLATIONS of INTERNATIONAL LAW

We should remember these words:
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole. - Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946

To know more about the 'so called' Elections in Iraq, take a look at The Iraqi Election "Bait and Switch": Faulty Poll Will Not Bring Peace or US Withdrawal

BBC, The Clown of the Day

"The Iraqi elections are the first democratic elections in Iraq for 50 years - acknowledged as a democratic opportunity. We know that the Americans and the British want the elections to be free and fair - but of course we don't yet know if that will be the case - especially bearing in mind security. But our aim is to provide impartial, fair and accurate coverage, reflecting significant strands of argument to enable our audiences to make up their own minds." (Forwarded to Media Lens, January 21, 2005)

Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News

Please, read RAPID RESPONSE UPDATE: BBC APOLOGY ON IRAN
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
Wednesday, January 26, 2005

The New York Times and Iran

President Bush began his second term with speculation rising about future military moves against Iran. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney placed Iran first on the list of world trouble spots and darkly hinted that unless tougher measures were taken to curtail its nuclear program, Israel might launch its own pre-emptive airstrikes. Earlier this month, Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker that secret reconnaissance operations have already gotten under way inside Iran, as the Pentagon prepares target lists of nuclear sites that could be attacked from the air or by ground-based commando units. Thus far, Mr. Bush has kept his own counsel. But these hawkish rumblings eerily recall the months before the American invasion of Iraq when some of the same officials pressed hardest for military action, while the president remained publicly uncommitted. Given that experience, it would be foolhardy to dismiss the current rhetorical buildup. We hope that this time, wiser heads in the administration will intervene before it is too late. (...) The next step should be a unified European-American stand that forces Iran to make a clear choice. Either fully renounce its nuclear enrichment programs and win significant trade and economic incentives or fail to do so and suffer severe economic penalties. The Iranian nuclear challenge could not be more dangerous or more pressing. It is time to put aside unilateral American military bluster and European wishful diplomacy and get serious.

Military Rumblings on Iran
The New York Times
EDITORIAL
Published: January 27, 2005

To know about who got the WMD click here!!!

Bring them home

We must withdraw our military from Iraq, the sooner the better. The reason is simple: Our presence there is a disaster for the American people and an even bigger disaster for the Iraqi people.

Support our troops: Bring them home
BY HOWARD ZINN
The Miami Herald

Scott Ritter

By any standard, the ongoing American occupation of Iraq is a disaster. (...) According to press accounts, the Pentagon is considering the organisation, training and equipping of so-called death squads, teams of Iraqi assassins who would be used to infiltrate and eliminate the leadership of the Iraqi resistance. Called the Salvador Option, in reference to similar US-backed death squads that terrorised the population of El Salvador during the 1980s, the proposed plan actually has as its roots the Phoenix assassination programme undertaken during the Vietnam war, where American-led assassins killed thousands of known or suspected Vietcong collaborators. (...) While it is difficult at times to understand and comprehend, let alone justify, the tactics used by the Iraqi resistance, history has shown that the tools of remote ambush, instead of a direct assassination, have always been used by freedom fighters when confronting an illegitimate foreign occupier who possesses overwhelming conventional military superiority. As such, history celebrates the resistance of the French and the Russians when occupied by the Germans during the second world war, the Chinese resistance to Japanese occupation during that same time, or even the decades-long national liberation movement in Vietnam which defeated not only the French and the Americans, but also the illegitimate government these two occupiers attempted to impose on the people of South Vietnam. History, on the other hand, treats harshly the occupying power which resorts to the use of the tools of terror to subdue an occupied people. Thus, while it is fine for a French resistance fighter to blow up a German troop train, it is not acceptable for the Germans to burn a French village in retaliation. History will eventually depict as legitimate the efforts of the Iraqi resistance to destabilise and defeat the American occupation forces and their imposed Iraqi collaborationist government. And history will condemn the immorality of the American occupation, which has debased the values and ideals of the American people by legitimising torture, rape and murder as a means of furthering an illegal war of aggression.

The Salvador option
By Scott Ritter
ALJAZEERA

The 'New' Iraq

The 94-page report, The New Iraq? Torture and Ill-treatment of Detainees in Iraqi Custody , documents how unlawful arrest, long-term incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment of detainees (including children) by Iraqi authorities have become routine and commonplace. Human Rights Watch conducted interviews in Iraq with 90 detainees, 72 of whom alleged having been tortured or ill-treated, particularly under interrogation.

Iraq: Torture Continues at Hands of New Government
Police Systematically Abusing Detainees
(Baghdad, January 25, 2005) -- Iraqi security forces are committing systematic torture and other abuses against people in detention, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

Countdown to global catastrophe

The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already. The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.

Countdown to global catastrophe
Climate change: report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
The Independent
24 January 2005

NO WAR

Well, I’ll tell you where I’ve exercised that moral choice. When that captain, who I was with me over there, ordered the people—including me—to shoot small children that were throwing rocks at us, and I refused to obey that order, I exercised that moral choice in that particular case, that particular incident. When that order was given, we ignored it. We all looked at each other like, that man has lost his mind. So I would say that everyone who was with me at that time exercised their moral choice not to follow that illegal order.

Kevin Benderman interviewed by Omar Khan
January 24, 2005
ZNet

Kevin Benderman is a mechanic who is trained to fix Bradley armored vehicles. On December 20, 2004, he applied for conscientious objector status.

BBC and IRAN

Writing in The New Yorker magazine this month, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported US plans for an attack on Iran. A former high-level intelligence official told Hersh:

"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah - we've got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism." (Seymour M. Hersh, 'The coming wars,' The New Yorker, January 17, 2005)

Hersh added:

"In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran."

Ian Traynor reported in the Guardian this week that Western concern over Iran's suspected nuclear programme has been growing since 2003 when it was revealed that Tehran had been conducting secret nuclear activities for 18 years in violation of treaty obligations. Traynor wrote:

"The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has had inspectors in the country throughout the period. While finding much that is suspect, the inspectors have not found any proof of a clandestine nuclear bomb programme." ('Special forces "on the ground" in Iran,' Ian Traynor, The Guardian, January 17, 2005)

Remarkably, in an almost exact repeat of events in 2002 and 2003, the BBC is now reflexively boosting the US claim that Iran presents a threat to the West.

On yesterday's BBC1 lunchtime news, diplomatic correspondent James Robbins declared that US relations with Iran were "looking very murky because of the nuclear threat". (BBC1, 13:00 News, January 20, 2005)

Robbins meant, of course, the +alleged+ nuclear threat from Iran.

On the BBC's 18:00 news, Robbins again spoke of Iran "where the President is confronting the nuclear threat". (BBC1, 18:00 News, January 25, 2005)

Is this balanced, objective reporting by the BBC?

Even as the staggering catastrophe that has befallen Iraq continues to be played out, the BBC and other media are yet again preparing the public mind for war. If the public can be convinced that this latest 'threat' is real, then politicians can again unleash their bombers with impunity.

How many more innocent people have to die before journalists wake up to their moral responsibility to protect human life, to treat Third World nations as something more than Western playthings, to challenge warmongering propaganda, and to develop their powers of independent, rational thought?


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to James Robbins:
Email: james.robbins@bbc.co.uk

Write to Helen Boaden, director of BBC News
Email: helen.boaden@bbc.co.uk

Write to Roger Mosey, head of BBC TV news
Email: roger.mosey@bbc.co.uk

Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens:
Email: editor@medialens.org

Visit the Media Lens website

Iran - The Last Hurrah
Friday, January 21, 2005
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
RAPID RESPONSE MEDIA ALERT: TARGETING IRAN - THE BBC PROPAGANDA BEGINS

George Bush's Vietnam

"This is a disaster because it's a result of blunder after blunder after blunder," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, has said. "It's George Bush's Vietnam."

Activists See Iraq War as the New Vietnam
cbs5.com

Heil Hitler !

If you want to understand America, I hope you were in Washington on Thursday. I hope you heard the high ideals of President Bush's inaugural address (...) I hope you heard the president talk about freedom as "the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul," (...) Two years from now, no one will remember the spending or the ostrich-skin cowboy boots. But Bush's speech, which is being derided for its vagueness and its supposed detachment from the concrete realities, will still be practical and present in the world, yielding consequences every day. With that speech, President Bush's foreign policy doctrine transcended the war on terror. He laid down a standard against which everything he and his successors do will be judged. (...) Liberation and democratization will be the ghost present at every international meeting. (...) From now on, the borders established by any peace process will be less important than the character of the regimes in that process. The speech does not command us to go off on a global crusade, instantaneously pushing democracy on one and all. The president vowed merely to "encourage reform." He insisted that people must choose freedom for themselves. The pace of progress will vary from nation to nation. The speech does not mean that Bush will always live up to his standard. But the bias in American foreign policy will shift away from stability and toward reform. It will be harder to cozy up to Arab dictators because they can supposedly help us in the war on terror. It will be clearer that those dictators are not the antidotes to terror; they're the disease. Bush's inaugural ideals will also be real in the way they motivate our troops in Iraq. Military Times magazine asked its readers if they think the war in Iraq is worth it. Over 60 percent - and two-thirds of Iraq combat vets - said it was. While many back home have lost faith, our troops fight because their efforts are aligned with the core ideals of this country, articulated by Jefferson, Walt Whitman, Lincoln, F.D.R., Truman, J.F.K., Reagan and now Bush. Americans are, as George Santayana observed, "idealists working on matter." On Thursday in Washington, the ideal and the material were on ample display. And we're reminded once again that this country has grown rich, powerful and effective not because its citizens are smarter or better, but because the ideals bequeathed by the founders are practical and true.

Ideals and Reality
By DAVID BROOKS
The New York Times
Published: January 22, 2005

WILLIAM BLUM

The Anti-Empire Report, No. 17 - January 20, 2005 - by William Blum

Freedom means knowing how big your cage is
On January 20, 1969, during the inaugural parade for Richard Nixon, I stood in a crowd of onlookers on Pennsylvania Avenue and when Nixon's limousine passed by I threw an apple at the car. It bounced off the car behind the one carrying Tricky Dick (who now seems like a liberal compared to the likes of George W., Bill Clinton and John Kerry; seriously). No law enforcement authority rushed into the crowd looking for the perpetrator. Imagine if I had repeated my act at today's inauguration. Everyone within a ten-foot radius of me would be thrown to the ground, handcuffed, if not hogtied, and hauled away to some local version of Guantanamo as a helicopter hovered just above.
I trust that the Statute of Limitations applies to such confessions. I trust also that the Justice Department accords more respect to the Statute of Limitations than it does to the Geneva Conventions.
I tell this story not to defend my action -– which was not exactly politically sophisticated -– but to try to illustrate how times have changed, and why I believe that the United States has now become a police state. Not the worst police state in history to be sure; not even the worst police state in the world today; but a police state nonetheless. The War on Drugs made America a virtual police state; the War on Terror has removed the virtual. From expelling a 10-year-old girl for bringing a pair of scissors to school to the death of habeas corpus as a cherished, inviolable principle, with a thousand false and fateful steps in between, American society is fast becoming a giant airport. We live surrounded by a hundred levels of authority -- military and civilian, federal, state, city, and corporate, uniformed and plainclothesed.
Men don't become enforcers of authority because they have a burning passion to advance the cause of justice. And what the enforcers desire in the areas of "security" or "crime", they get: PATRIOT Acts, Homeland Security, preemptive mass arrests, who they want to arrest, how they want to arrest them, where they want to take them, how long they want to keep them, their phone conversations, their computer, their tax return, their census information, their body cavities ... the enforcers get what they want, just like in a police state. Is there anything the Bush administration or its ideological comrades at lower levels might do to infringe upon human rights or civil liberties which would truly surprise and shock those of you who follow the news carefully? What's that? They might appoint the legal architect of torture policy as Attorney General?
"War on drugs" ... "war on terror" -- such terms tell the enforcers that they're warriors fighting a war, and in a war, you use the tactics of war, anything goes. "This, of course, is not really a war at all," says Washington journalist Sam Smith, "but a new status quo that has been declared, one in which violence and paranoia and strip searches are not just part of a sacrifice one must make for a better future. They ARE the future."
The Washington Post (January 10) reports that "Washington police officers are using new behavioral profiling techniques as they patrol subway stations, identifying suspicious riders and pulling them aside for questioning. The officers are targeting people who avoid eye contact, loiter or appear to be looking around transit stations more than other passengers, officials said. Anyone identified as suspicious will be stopped and questioned about what they are doing and where they are going." This is not just for the inauguration; it's now regular police policy in DC and elsewhere.
Problem: I routinely do not make eye contact with police officers because I am turned off by the visage of the human being turned policeman.

The Dragon Lady gets hers, a bit
We dissenters, we fringe people in America, we beggars, we do not get many occasions for public vindication and satisfaction in the mainstream political arena. The "bad guys" always seem to come out ahead, and unscathed. Thus did I take some pleasure on January 18 to hear Condoleezza Rice verbally slapped around by Senator Barbara Boxer at the Senate hearings on Rice's nomination to be Secretary of State. Boxer documented in detail several of the very serious lies and contradictions that Rice had engaged in, in her attempts to justify the Iraq war; nothing that we dissenters had not reported in countless places some time ago, but confronting the Dragon Lady to her face was something else.
And now her voice was clearly strained as she asked that she be questioned "without impugning my credibility or my integrity". She proceeded to defend her past remarks and in the process rewrote yet more history – saying that the no-fly zones, used by the US and Britain to bomb Iraq repeatedly over the years, had been authorized by the UN. Not so, it was a joint private creation of Washington and London. And then she said that the US had good reason to fear Saddam Hussein because we knew that he had a biological weapons capability, failing to mention that we knew about that because we had given him that capability in the 1980s.
I had the thought that if these further statements of Rice were challenged by the Senators, as well as the many other questionable statements she made in discussing Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela (she said that she could not think of anything positive to say about the Chavez government), the Dragon Lady might just crack a bit. I pictured Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny, when, under intense questioning by a Navy board of inquiry, he suddenly takes out a pair of metal balls from his pocket and begins to nervously and obsessively play with them. And that was the end of Captain Queeg.
Well, a poor, ungratified dissenter can dream, can he not?

Standing up to the schoolyard bullies
Seymour Hersh's recent article in The New Yorker about US plans to invade Iran, reminds me of something that happened exactly 51 years ago.
In January 1954, the United States was busily preparing to invade Guatemala with a proxy army to overthrow the democratically elected, progressive government. (Because the government wasn't doing exactly what Washington wanted, that's why. Is that not a good enough reason for you? Are you some kind of peacenik terrorist troublemaker?) Suddenly, the operation appeared to have suffered a serious setback when key documents found their way into the hands of the Guatemalan government, and then the Guatemalan press published some of them, revealing the existence of the staging, training and invasion plans and American involvement in them.
The State Department labeled the accusations "ridiculous and untrue" and said it would not comment further because it did not wish to give them a dignity they did not deserve. Said a Department spokesperson: "It is the policy of the United States not to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. This policy has repeatedly been reaffirmed under the present [Eisenhower] administration."
Time magazine concluded that the whole exposé had been "masterminded in Moscow". The New York Times concurred.{1}
And the CIA continued with its preparations as if nothing had happened. In June, the invasion took place, overthrowing the government and sentencing the people of Guatemala to abject poverty, death squads and torture forever.
In his article, Hersh says that at least since last summer the United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential targets for attack. Said one of Hersh's sources: "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."
This is not the first disclosure of Washington's plans to invade Iran, nor will it be the last. And, sad to say, it will not slow down the war preparations any more than did the disclosures in Guatemala in 1954 or the numerous disclosures of preparations leading up to the invasion of Iraq, while we were being told repeatedly that no decision to invade had yet been made.
The arrogance of American leaders is such that they can not be embarrassed. They do not particularly mind being exposed as liars, if it's not face to face, or as violators of US and international law.
Yet there have been a number of occasions in recent years when the Bush administration has backed off certain positions or plans, or conceded to modifications. This has happened when the European Union, China or other nations have stood up to the schoolyard bullies. Such foreign action would be even more effective if the Democrats at home also stood up to them.
The Dems, however, continue to be more concerned with copying the Republicans than challenging them. Thus it was that in recent weeks, Sen. Edward Kennedy declared that it was useful that a Democratic candidate "talked about God"; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi cited a pair of biblical passages on the House floor, saying the Scriptures "tell us that to minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship"; and a meeting of Senate Democrats invited as their main speaker a minister who has been urging Democrats to speak more openly about religion. "They gave more time to this [religion] than any other issue," said the minister afterward.{2}
Due to reduced federal government contributions, the state of Tennessee is making steep cutbacks in its highly innovative and much praised expanded health care program for the working poor – 323,000 adults are being cut off, including 67,000 people with serious medical conditions and 97,000 with extremely high medical bills. When I read this my first thought was that I'd love to meet some of those people being cut off and ask them if they voted for Bush. And if they said "yes" I'd want to shake them and vent my best sarcasm at them. Then came my second thought – that the Democrats did not offer anything approaching guaranteed health coverage either.
As I've mentioned in this space before, Harry Truman had it right when he said: "If you give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican, they'll always choose a Republican." Who knows how many liberals and radicals stayed home on election day because Kerry failed to offer them anything like a decent alternative to Bush?

The Tsunami
I'm surprised that I haven't yet read of a survivor who thanked god (or God, if you prefer) for saving his life and calling it a "miracle". If any reader has read of such a person, please try to contact him and let him know that the Bush administration has a fairly well paid position awaiting him in Iraq in the Department of Faith-based Destruction.
"I've been in war and I've been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations, but I have never seen anything like this," said Colin Powell after a helicopter tour of tsunami-battered Indonesia. "I cannot begin to imagine the horror that went through the families and all of the people who heard this noise coming and then had their lives snuffed out by this wave."{3}
And the horror of Fallujah? Can he begin to imagine that? Or the horror of Panama 1989 and Iraq 1991, both of which he played major roles in?
The preceding is directed to those many people on the left who think that Powell is somehow a more decent imperialist than Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, and gang. Oh, did I mention his cover-up of war crimes in Vietnam?

George in Wonderland
"The Jewish community of Germany has rejected recent overtures from the Nazi government to improve their strained relationship, prompting Berlin to respond with a tougher policy toward the Jews, Hitler administration officials said yesterday."
That was announced in Germany in 1934. Not.
However, the following was announced in the United States in 2005. Yes.
"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has rejected recent overtures from the United States to improve the nations' strained relationship, prompting Washington to respond with a tougher policy toward the country, Bush administration officials said yesterday."
"It is very clear to us that Chavez's unrelenting hostility toward the United States prevents him from pursuing a normal relationship," a senior administration official said. The official also expressed concern about the "militarization of Venezuelan society," noting that Caracas is seeking to purchase more than 100,000 AK-47s "for a military of fewer than 40,000."{4}
These statements come after the United States was intimately involved in a coup to overthrow Chavez in 2002, expressed public satisfaction about the coup's initial success, and was a major financier of the movement to unseat Chavez in a recall referendum two years later.
As to the United States criticizing another country for excess militarization ... the absurdity and hypocrisy of such an idea can produce a pounding headache in any thinking person.

A tale of two kinds of doctors
The New England Journal of Medicine (January 6) declared that US Army doctors had violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, with "probable cause for suspecting" that the doctors had participated in torture.
Doctors in the United States have lost their medical license for a lot less than that. If the names of the particular doctors involved in abuse/torture of prisoners could be ascertained, perhaps some of my readers with connection to the medical profession might want to look into reporting them. Physicians for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Human Rights might be two organizations also interested in the matter.
In 1990-91, a doctor named Yolanda Huet-Vaughn, as a conscientious objector, refused to submit to mobilization of her National Guard unit in Kansas for the American military action in what became the Gulf War. She spoke out publicly against it on national TV and at an anti-war rally before returning to Kansas City to submit voluntarily to military authorities to face court martial for desertion. "Everything I did in 1990-91 was based upon my deepest moral convictions and commitment to the highest principles of medical ethics," she said in a later statement. "At that time I desperately sought to prevent what I saw as the unnecessary public health disaster of the Persian Gulf War."
There was an attempt by conservatives to get Huet-Vaughn's medical license revoked, but it did not succeed. However, she served eight months in a military prison and was reprimanded and fined $5,000 by the Kansas state body that oversees medical practices.{5}

The things which are not barriers to success in America
Harvard president Lawrence Summers has created a minor uproar for his remark that the shortage of elite female scientists may stem in part from women not having the same "innate ability" or "natural ability" as men do in some fields. The news accounts of this which I've seen fail to remind us of another Summers remark of even greater insensitivity.
In December 1991, while chief economist for the World Bank, he wrote an internal memo saying that the Bank should encourage migration of "the dirty industries" to the less-developed countries because, amongst other reasons, health-impairing and death-causing pollution costs would be lower. Inasmuch as these costs are based on the lost earnings of the affected workers, in a country of very low wages the computed costs would be much lower. "I think," he wrote, "the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that."{6}
Despite this memo receiving wide distribution and condemnation, Summers, in 1999, was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Clinton. This was a promotion from being Undersecretary of the Treasury -- for international affairs. Soon thereafter, Harvard chose him for its presidency.

In case you're not cynical or conspiracy-minded enough
An article in The Washington Post on December 19 about large contributors to the Bush inauguration mentioned that the Post itself had given $100,000 for the first Bush inaugural in 2001. No explanation as to why this contribution to the needy was made.

Frank McKenna is the newly appointed Canadian ambassador to the United States. He is also chairman of the Canadian advisory board to The Carlyle Group. Carlyle bills itself as the world's largest private equity-investment firm and has specialized in weapons investments greased by the political connections of its executives and board members such as George Bush, Sr.; former US secretary of state, James A. Baker III; former British prime minister, John Major; former secretary of defense and former deputy director of the CIA, Frank Carlucci. McKenna has stated that he wants to see more Canadian investment in Carlyle, while pitching military production as an economic stimulator for his home province. He is on record defending the Canada Pension Plan's investment of US$60 million of Canadians' accumulated pension contributions into a Carlyle venture fund.
In 2002, McKenna hosted a Carlyle meeting in Canada attended by George Bush Sr. and many of the largest corporate players. During a press conference, McKenna dismissed concerns about Carlyle's connections to military investments and high-ranking political individuals. "We're not here to try and talk about some military-governmental-industrial conspiracy or globalization," he told reporters. "We're just here to try to help contribute to the Atlantic economy. No more. No less." Indeed.{7}

The Agency's family jewels
Of the numerous skeletons in the CIA's closet, few are more closely guarded than information about the many books the Agency covertly helped to publish during the first three decades of the cold war. The Church Committee of the Senate, among its many other revelations, disclosed in 1976 that "well over a thousand books" had been produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA by 1967, with about 250 more from then to 1976. Many of the books were sold in the United States as well as abroad. Like many other researchers, I have filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the names of these books, but to no avail. At one point the Agency sent me 84 pages of material, which did not contain the name of a single book. I appealed this and just last month, after more than two years, I received a reply, which stated in part:
"The Agency is unable to conduct a search for the records requested because we are unable to identify an Agency record system where records responsive to your request could reasonably be expected to be located."
If I understand the English, they're saying that they couldn't find the records I asked for because they didn't know where to look. Hmmm. Well, they might begin with the name of one of their frequently used publishers, Praeger (formerly F. A. Praeger), which put out half of the books in the following list of CIA-backed titles which have been revealed in one place or another over the years:
"The Dynamics of Soviet Society" by Walt Rostow; "The New Class" by Milovan Djilas; "Concise History of the Communist Party" by Robert A. Burton; "The Foreign Aid Programs of the Soviet Bloc and Communist China" by Kurt Muller; "In Pursuit of World Order" by Richard N. Gardner; "Peking and People's Wars" by Major General Sam Griffith; "The Yenan Way" by Eudocio Ravines"; "Life and Death in Soviet Russia" by Valentin Gonzalez; "The Anthill" by Suzanne Labin; "The Politics of Struggle: The Communist Front and Political Warfare" by James D. Atkinson; "From Colonialism to Communism" by Hoang Van Chi; "Why Viet Nam?" by Frank Trager; and "Terror in Vietnam" by Jay Mallin.
Another family jewel is Operation Gladio, the astounding terrorist campaign in Western Europe run by the CIA, NATO, and several European intelligence agencies for decades following World War II, which I've written about in my books.{8} What promises to be the bible on the subject has just appeared –– Operation Gladio: NATO's Top Secret Stay-Behind Armies and Terrorism in Western Europe, in English from Frank Cass Publishers (London) and Amazon, and upcoming in Italian from Fazi Editore (Rome). The Swiss author, Daniele Ganser, is uniquely suited for the task, being a fluent reader of Italian, German, French and English, all the key languages of the Gladio documentation.

NOTES
{1} William Blum, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II", chapter 10
{2} Washington Post, January 17, 2005
{3} Associated Press, January 5, 2005
{4} Washington Times, January 14, 2005
{5} Associated Press, March 6, 1998; The Humanist (American Humanist Association), Mar/Apr 2002, article by John Swomley
{6} The Economist (London), February 8, 1992, p.66 (US edition)
{7} Daron Letts, www.rabble.ca, January 10, 2005
{8} "Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire", p.7

William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

The “other” Inauguration

Hundreds Of Protests Will Mark The Inauguration Of The Second Term Of The Anti-war Movement:

USA

UK

The Prince and the Nazi

None of this to suggest that Harry’s costume choice was anything more malicious or premeditated than the true-to-form, blinkered idiocy of an oblivious, inbred snot; the question, instead, is to ask how it is that two of the greatest tragedies of the last century – the Holocaust and the blood-stained quest for empire, both rooted in notions of white supremacy and racial superiority – could be reduced so easily to shallow symbols held up for ridicule by English brats. When we examine the Anglo-American re-colonization of the Middle East, a process that in Palestine invokes the memory of the Holocaust in a sick historical irony, we see that, in fact, the echoes of human trauma have already been hollowed out by forces far more powerful than even the richest, drunkest, most spoiled Princes and Princesses that the British Isles have to offer.

The Nazi formerly known as Prince
January 18, 2005
Charles Demers

VANDALISM

The damage wrought by the construction of an American military base in the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon must rank as one of the most reckless acts of cultural vandalism in recent memory. And all the more so because it was unnecessary and avoidable.

Cultural vandalism
Leader
Saturday January 15, 2005
The Guardian

BABYLON

The Guardian recently reported that “troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon.” The ancient city, south of Baghdad, has been used by US and Polish forces as a military camp during the occupation, despite objections from archaeologists. A study conducted by archeological experts found cracks and gaps where people had tried to gouge out the decorated bricks forming the famous dragons of the Ishtar Gate, “2,600 year-old brick pavement crushed by military vehicles, archaeological fragments scattered across the site, and trenches driven into ancient deposits.” The story in The Guardian continues: “Outrage is hardly the word, this is just dreadful,” said Lord Redesdale, an archaeologist and head of the all-party parliamentary archaeological group. “These are world sites. Not only is what the American forces are doing damaging the archaeology of Iraq, it's actually damaging the cultural heritage of the whole world.” Tim Schadla Hall, reader in public archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, said: “In this case we see an international conflict in which the US has failed to take into account the requirements of the Hague convention ... to protect major archaeological sites - just another convention it seems happy to ignore.” So Babylon is being destroyed. Along with the Iraqi people.

Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches
Destroying Babylon
January 16, 2005

SEYMOUR HERSH

George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

THE COMING WARS
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
What the Pentagon can now do in secret.
Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31

SMOKING 'FREE' MARKET

Tobacco industry responses to research linking smoking to carcinogenic p53 mutations mirror prior industry efforts to challenge the science linking smoking and lung cancer. The extent of tobacco industry involvement in p53 research and the potential conflict of interest discussed here demonstrate the need for consistent standards for the disclosure and evaluation of such potential conflicts in biomedical research.

The p53 tumour suppressor gene and the tobacco industry: research, debate, and conflict of interest - The Lancet January 14, 2005

Death-Squad Democracy

Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. (...) Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 5:24 p.m. ET Jan. 11, 2005

Among the many tools used to build and defend pro-American democracies, murder is among the trickiest. But murder—yes, let’s insist on that word—is also quite common in the annals of nation-building, at least in my experience, and sometimes it’s been very effective. Now we hear that some of the Bush administration’s strategists are talking about what they call “ The Salvador Option ”, which seems to imply “death squads” (as the murderers were called in El Salvador and Guatemala) or “hit teams” (as they’ve been called in Israel).

Death-Squad Democracy
Are there parallels between El Salvador in the ‘80s and Iraq today? Maybe. But the ‘lessons learned’ by Washington are the wrong ones
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Christopher Dickey

To understand the background and to know more about "The Salvador Option", you may want to read about The Most Dangerous Person in Baghdad

GREG PALAST ON CBS PURGE

"Independent" my ass. CBS' cowardly purge of five journalists who exposed George Bush's dodging of the Vietnam War draft was done under cover of what the network laughably called an "Independent Review Panel." The "panel" was just two guys as qualified for the job as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi.

CBS' COWARDICE AND CONFLICTS BEHIND PURGE
Network's Craven Back-Down on Bush Draft Dodge Report Sure to Get a Standing Rove-ation at White House
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
By Greg Palast

THE CLOWN OF THE DAY

Is there any way this can still work? Is there any plausible scenario for how Iraq can turn into a functioning society? (...) The task will be to crush the terrorists while scaring the Sunni opportunists into believing that if they don't join the New Iraq, they will lose everything. The government will have to do this without fracturing the Shiite-Sunni centrist coalition or touching off all-out bloodletting. It will be a long and monumental task. And the strange thing is that even with our 150,000-odd troops fighting heroically around the country, the destiny of Iraq is largely out of our hands. The U.S. tried to hand a new Iraq back to the Iraqis. We failed. And yet there is a plausible path to success. The relative strengths of the two sides mean it is too early to despair. When the decent 95 percent of a society take on the ruthless 5 percent, and when the ruthless 5 percent have no positive vision, it just may happen that the decent people will somehow - eventually - win.

Can We Save Iraq? No, but the Iraqis Can
By DAVID BROOKS
The New York Times
Published: January 11, 2005

Filmmakers Against War

Filmmakers Against War interviews filmmaker and activist Gabriele Zamparini on the making of award winning and controversial documentary “XXI CENTURY” and other hot issues. Watch the interview on Filmmakers Against War.

Mickey Z.

Mickey Z., the New York City author, essayist and poet, chronicles America’s thirst for war in many of his works. His most recent book on the topic, The Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda , takes the reader on a journey through U.S. war propaganda from the Spanish-American War to the current Bush administration’s adventures in Iraq.

Read 'Exposing the Lies of Our Times: An Interview with Mickey Z.'
on Press Action

John Pilger

The west's crusaders, the United States and Britain, are giving less to help the tsunami victims than the cost of a Stealth bomber or a week's bloody occupation of Iraq. The bill for George Bush's coming inauguration party would rebuild much of the coastline of Sri Lanka. Bush and Blair increased their first driblets of "aid" only when it became clear that people all over the world were spontaneously giving millions and a public relations problem beckoned. The Blair government's current "generous" contribution is one sixteenth of the £800m it spent bombing Iraq before the invasion and barely one twentieth of a billion pound gift, known as a "soft loan", to the Indonesian military so that it could acquire Hawk fighter-bombers.

The Other, Man-made Tsunami
By John Pilger
ZNet

AMERICANISM

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 - After raids in recent months that captured hundreds of insurgents in Iraq, the United States has significantly increased the number of prisoners it says are foreign fighters, a group the Bush administration contends are not protected by the Geneva Conventions, American officials said.

CAPTURED INSURGENTS
U.S. Said to Hold More Foreigners in Iraq Fighting
By DOUGLAS JEHL and NEIL A. LEWIS
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: January 8, 2005

As American as Apple Pie

Mr. Gonzales is said to face a sure confirmation. But thanks to the members of the committee, including some Republicans, who met their duty to question Mr. Gonzales aggressively, the hearing served to confirm that Mr. Bush had made the wrong choice when he rewarded Mr. Gonzales for his loyalty. The nation deserves an attorney general who is not the public face for inhumane, illegal and clearly un-American policies.

Mr. Gonzales Speaks
The New York Times Editorial
Published: January 7, 2005

What The New York Times calls un-American, others call As American as Apple Pie

DISASTER

Who said this and when? "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient that the public knows... We are today not far from a disaster." Answer: TE Lawrence (of Arabia fame) in The Sunday Times in August, 1920. And every word of it is true today.

A Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities
by Robert Fisk
The Independent
ZNet