On February 10, the New York Times ran a story about "an increasing body of evidence" suggesting "an Iranian role" in supplying the "deadliest weapon aimed at American troops in Iraq." Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell wants readers to consider the source. The sources cited are "civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies," almost all anonymous. And the author of the piece is Michael R. Gordon, who "on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion," including the infamous "aluminum tubes" story. In other Iran news, the Washington Post reports that Vice-President Cheney's national security adviser, John Hannah, called 2007 "the year of Iran." President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have said the U.S. has "no intention of attacking Iran."
Monday, February 12, 2007
A Strike on Iran would signify the Beginning of an Epoch of Nuclear War
By Dmitriy Sedov | |
Global Research, February 10, 2007 | |
In this context, I would like to present the following considerations. 1. An attack on Iran is motivated by nothing but the US domestic political expediency and the unlimited appetites of the country’s military-industrial complex. President G. Bush has no choice – his only option is a breakthrough. The problem does not originate from the total failure of his doctrine of the “war on international terrorism”. If the US political elite represented by Bush based its decisions solely on the estimates of the damage to its public image that might be caused by the fiasco of the global anti-terrorist campaign, it would have extremely serious reservations about starting a new regional war. However, they are motivated by something else – they need to continue Bush’s politics backed by a conglomerate of weapons suppliers, who established control over the country’s oversized military spending. Should Bush recognize being defeated and withdraw the US military forces from the Middle East, the Democrat’s elite would overtake the financial leverage, and a major redistribution of the military commissioning would follow. When such enormous funds are at stake, people’s lives and those of entire nations become tokens in the game. For these operations, the destiny of the Middle East and its nations means absolutely nothing, just as the lives of the Vietnamese and the Cambodians showered with napalm and defoliants meant nothing either. One must be naïve to suppose that the Pentagon machine will stop and miss the new incredibly high profits. 2. The coming war between the US and Iran has to conform to certain parameters defined a priori. The US is tired of Iraq, and the public opinion in the country is turning increasingly anti-war. Therefore, the offensive against Iran has to be swift and victorious. This will save Bush’s political group and give it a higher rating in the country. There can be no doubt that a successful aggression will make Bush extremely popular in the US – in this anti-Christian society the pagan god of victory has long taken the place of the Savior. A triumph will make the US public blind and deaf – it will remain unaware of the price of the US victory for the nations of the Middle East. The crucial circumstance is that only nuclear weapons can guarantee the US victory in this war. Knowing that the US failed to win even in Iraq, a country plagued by religious and ethnic strife, one cannot expect it to prevail in the united and spiritually strong Iran. Only the use of nuclear weapons can make it possible to cause severe damage to the Iranian control system hidden in bunkers and, importantly, to behead its leadership no matter how deep underground it might be hiding. Iran without its leaders and with a paralyzed system of control, with an army devastated by “baby nukes”, is the only option which suits the US - it agrees to talk about peace only to a totally subdued offender. Such talks would let the US leaders’ old dream of a Middle Eastern Disneyland, mastered by the US and Israel, come true. Here are the facts which illustrate the process of preparation for the devastation of Iran: - The UN Security Council Resolution envisions that a further tightening of the sanctions imposed on Iran must take place after February 21, 2006. From the standpoint of international law, this is a pretext (essentially, a poor one, but one that does exist) to legalize an aggression against the country. - Two US aircraft carrier groups armed with nukes are moving into the region. The US aircraft carrier groups have been on missions 5 times over the past 15 years. In 4 cases out of the 5, they launched military offensives. In March, 2007 both groups are to take their combat positions. - Additional ground forces have been shifted to the border between Iraq and Iran. Preparations for a new phase of hostilities are underway. - In February, Patriot missile defense systems will be ready to defend Israel and the aircraft carrier groups from enemy airstrikes. - British combat engineers are entering the regions of the future fighting, clearly in order to operate in the Strait of Ormuz, where Iranians are most likely to lay mines. - The US and Israel launched a powerful information and propaganda campaign preparing the global public opinion for the aggression. - CENTCOM’s Commander John Abizaid, an opponent of the war with Iran, resigned. His position was taken over by Admiral W. Fallon, a veteran of the 1991 Iraq and 1995 Bosnia campaigns. - John Negroponte has been removed from his position as the Director of National Intelligence for persistently resisting the use of force against Iran. - Tony. Blair, the “staff peacemaker” for the Middle East, never mentions a peaceful settlement of the Iran dossier. He makes no attempts to find a way to resolve the crisis in a peaceful way, and this is highly indicative. All of the above constitute evidence of Iran being prepared for sacrifice. Will a major provocation be orchestrated for this purpose? The question is – will such a “breakthrough” do George Bush any good? The idea of attacking Iran was born in the primitive minds of those who, just for the sake of their profits, can sell the rope on which they will be hanged. This time it will be neither they nor their children who will perish in the nuclear Holocaust, and they’d rather not worry that by this they will take the whole of mankind a step closer to total catastrophe. | |
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=4729
Bush's masked men make case for attacking Iran...
By Evan Derkacz
Posted on February 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/47937/
On Sunday, "under unusually secretive circumstances," three US officials attempted to show that Iran was aiding the insurgency in Iraq. That is to say, the three Defense and Intelligence officials would not allow their identities to be made public.
This is just slapstick.
Plus, I don't see why anyone in the Bush Administration should need to shield themselves against future repercussions when you get a damned medal of honor for effing things up in their Bizarro world.
Eason Jordan of IraqSlogger writes:
After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning "dossier" of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?
According to Jordan one of the three masked men was unmasked by an Iraqi news service (why we oughtta attack you... if we hadn't already...) as Major General William Caldwell who, Jordan notes, is a PR guy who regularly gives interviews. So what gives?
And what of all those semi-mea culpas given after the lousy Iraq coverage by the Times, the Post and others? At least Colin Powell had the cojones to lie to the world as himself.
More on media credulousness HERE.
RUMSFELD'S GHOST BONUS: Rummy may be gone but his legacy is alive and kicking. When asked why so little evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq was shown, one of the three amigos responded in rumsfeldeverse: "There's a gap between what we know and what we can show."
Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/47937/
Sunday, February 11, 2007
U.S. occupation at root of violence in Iraq
The Bush administration released on Feb. 1 a vile four-page summary of a longer classified report on Iraq called the National Intelligence Estimate. Prepared by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies active there, the summary described the situation in Iraq as going from bad to worse.
That conclusion is probably the only statement in the report that is true. The rest, prepared by the same spy agencies that in 2002 backed up all the Bush administration’s false claims of “weapons of mass destruction” and Iraq’s “links to terrorism,” is a series of distortions and slanders of the Iraqis. With unintentional irony it suggests that the Pentagon, which brought “shock and awe” to Iraq, now has to stay to pacify the Iraqis, who are plagued with a genetic or cultural “ready recourse to violence.”
The problems in Iraq are described in the report in the same way that the corporate media defines the chaos there. Rather than summarize these false arguments that everyone has heard so often until they seem to be part of the air we breathe, this article will debunk them with historical truth and show who is to blame for the “unraveling” of Iraq.
It is important first to recognize that the “sectarian violence” in Iraq today has no precedence in Iraq’s history. The now common bombings and assassinations in Baghdad were uncommon even during the first two years of U.S. occupation, and those that occurred were understood as political attacks on occupation forces and their collaborators.
At the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion Iraq was considered the most secular state in the region, with a strong national identity. Shiites and Sunnis lived in intermixed neighborhoods in major cities such as Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. They often intermarried. Their religious differences were less pronounced than those between Catholic and Protestant groups in the U.S. today.
Shiites in Baath Party
Before 2003, both the Iraq Army and government bureaucracy were organized on a secular basis. Now nearly every article in the corporate media states that the Shiites in Iraq were totally oppressed and completely excluded from all positions of power. This is an intentionally divisive myth and was exposed in an Al-Jazeera article on Dec. 19, 2006, entitled “Media bias ‘threat’ to Iraq.”
“Information about Iraq propagated by Western media is often woefully inaccurate or downright wrong, according to leading Arab figures, and such distortions are damaging any chance of peace in the country,” says the article.
The article quotes a spokesperson from the Arab Baath Socialist Party, the ruling political party in Iraq from 1968 to 2003: “Most Western media outlets have been helping the U.S. occupation authorities to portray the Baath party as a Sunni party which suppressed the Shia and deprived them of their rights. ... The Committee of Debaathification issued a list of 100,000 senior Iraqi Baathists who would not be allowed to enjoy governmental posts, 66,000 of them were Shia—so how is the Baath party a Sunni party?”
And at the top of the Baath party? Consider the U.S. occupation’s own list of 55 top Iraqi officials who they wanted dead or alive, starting with President Saddam Hussein. Of this famous “deck of cards,” half were Shiite; others were Sunnis, along with Christian and Kurds, according to this same article.
The U.S. invasion and occupation is responsible for the violence in Iraq today. Journalists, correspondents and editors omit this basic underlying fact in almost all coverage of “sectarian violence.” The U.S. occupation army, its officials, its contractors—another name for mercenaries—wreak violence daily. They are not innocent bystanders who stumbled into the country to bring democracy and reconciliation.
Before the 1991 U.S. war, Iraq had the highest standard of living in the region, full literacy and full free health care.
Pentagon air power unleashed 110,000 aerial sorties in 1991, targeting every industrial complex, communications center, reservoir, pumping station, filtration plant and food processing plant in the country, along with schools, hospitals and housing. Sporadic U.S. bombing continued for 12 years, along with U.S. and U.N. imposed starvation sanctions. This created an artificial famine, designed to strangle the entire country, and led to 1.5 million Iraqi deaths. Then came the 2003 U.S. massive bombardment, invasion and occupation.
Occupiers set up a sectarian structure
The U.S. “occupation authority,” headed by L. Paul Bremer, then began to set up a structure that accentuated sectarian differences. Bremer closed down all the state-owned industries, started privatizing the formerly publicly owned oil resources of Iraq, and installed a hand-picked group of collaborators into office, most of whom had lived outside Iraq for over 30 years.
The collaborators were part of the old corrupt feudal class, who had been overthrown in the 1958 Iraqi Revolution. Reinstalled by the U.S., they revived the old system of clan chiefs that British colonialism had relied on, along with the most reactionary religious fundamentalists. Still, they had to demonstrate their craven loyalty by organizing witch hunts that rounded up former Baath Party members.
Bremer purged tens of thousands of Iraqi teachers, technicians, scientists and administrators at every level of government who had previously belonged to the Baath Party. This “debaathification” program barred them from working, holding office, or even voting.
The occupation authority decided who could run for office and form political parties, favoring those based on religious sects, with the elections organized strictly along sectarian lines. Since the armed resistance to the U.S. occupation was strongest in the mainly Sunni areas, Shiite and Kurdish-based parties received a larger portion of the seats in parliament and the control of ministries where they could hand out thousands of jobs and government appointments. The U.S. forces then used the threat of isolation to cajole some Sunnis into collaborating with the occupation.
The U.S. occupation authority also organized the Iraqi military units on a sectarian basis. They consciously used Shia units in Sunni areas and Sunni units against Shia resistance, while the media emphasized the sectarian fighting. The Iraqi media is hardly an independent force. To assure a U.S.-friendly line, the Pentagon awarded a $96 million contract to a U.S. communications company, Harris Corp., to establish the al-Iraqiya television and radio network and a national newspaper. The U.S. occupation forces appointed the directors, producers, staff and the journalists.
The U.S. occupation authority also pushed through a constitution that further hardened religious antagonisms and regional differences. Iraqis warned when this constitution was rushed to a vote in October 2005 that it would push the rights of women back 50 years, break the central government and promote sectarianism and even civil war.
Before 1991, rights for women in Iraq were the most advanced in the region.
While Washington always paid lip service to supporting a united Iraq, heightening the divisions among Iraqis was always part of Washington’s war plans. The constitution was actually drafted prior to the U.S. invasion by a task force of Iraqi expatriates the U.S. State Department pulled together. The final constitution gave both provinces and competing ministries the power to have their own security forces.
Washington’s hidden hand
Even without covert operations to stir up trouble, the U.S. occupation has created the structure and put the divisive policies in place. In an impoverished, war-torn country they have brought into office thousands of collaborators whose position and continued privileges are based on a divided, occupied and traumatized Iraq.
That there are at least 16 secret U.S. intelligence agencies, each with its own agenda and agents operating in Iraq, is another source of violence and instability. There are now 100,000 contractors working for the U.S. in Iraq, with some 30,000 to 50,000 working in “security” (Washington Post, Dec. 5, 2006). These are all hired guns. In addition the Israeli Mossad and other countries’ Special Forces have committed personnel.
The arrest on Sept. 19, 2005, of two British agents disguised as Arab “terrorists” with a car full of explosives in Basra raised international speculation and wide suspicion of a hidden hand behind the bombings there. Unable to secure the release of their two disguised terrorists from the local police, British forces took extraordinary action and bulldozed the police compound and jail in order to free them before they could be interrogated.
Both Washington rightist neo-cons and liberal commentators have argued that the only way to subdue and control Iraq is to divide it into a Kurdish north, Sunni center and Shiite south.
This view was strongly advocated by Peter Galbraith in the book “The End of Iraq” and in his columns in New Republic, which have been reprinted across the U.S. Earlier, Galbraith’s view prevailed regarding Yugoslavia and he became the U.S. ambassador to Croatia. He viewed the unraveling of the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia as essential to U.S. hegemony.
Leslie Gelb, a former editor and columnist for the New York Times and president emeritus of the Rockefeller-created Council on Foreign Relations, also raised this view in a widely published article, “The Three-State Solution.” (New York Times, Nov. 26, 2003) Gelb contrasted the problems in Iraq to imperialism’s success in breaking up Yugoslavia.
Another commentator given wide coverage is David Brooks, who sees NATO-occupied Bosnia as a “model that could help stabilize Iraq. Brooks applauds the resurgence of American hegemony and calls for a soft partition of Iraq. He is a regular columnist for the New York Times and Washington Post, a contributing editor at Newsweek, and a commentator on PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer and NPR’s All Things Considered.
The imperialist strategy of the U.S., and earlier Britain and France, has always been based on «divide and rule. This was their policy toward the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, the Indian sub-continent and Western Asia, also known as the Middle East.
To control the Middle East the colonial powers played on differences and hostility between communities, whether they be Sunni and Shiite, Druze and Christians on the one hand, or Kurds, Iranians and other nationalities on the other. Breaking areas into mini-states was the imperialist response to the revolutionary challenge of anti-colonial pan-Arab nationalism. Today it is the response to pan-Islamic resistance.
The official U.S. position has always been to support a unified, sovereign and democratic Iraq. With so many top imperialist commentators urging a violent breakup, however, it would be naive to assume there are no agencies involved in planning its execution.
Many analysts see this division as the only way to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat. For example, in a Jan. 14, 2005, article in Newsweek, in an article titled The Salvador option, the subhead read: The Pentagon may put Special Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq. In other words, death squads.
The growing mass enthusiasm in the region over Washington’s humiliation in Iraq and Israel’s stunning setback in Lebanon threaten all of the corrupt feudal regimes and military dictatorships held in place by U.S. military power. Popular resistance and unity are a threat to imperialist domination.
The U.S. client regimes in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt have stepped forward with the full power of their media in the Arab world to push daily news coverage that heightens the divisions, suspicion and antagonisms between Sunni and Shiite religious sects.
While the chaos of deepening sectarian conflict and civil war will take a devastating toll on the entire Iraqi population, it will not necessarily help the U.S. occupation stabilize its rule in Iraq or in the region. The conflict could instead take on a radical anti-U.S. character and lead to wider anti-imperialist resistance throughout the entire region.
All groupings are distrustful of the U.S. and feel betrayed by U.S. promises because the occupation has brought insecurity, misery and chaos to all of Iraq.
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
Page printed from:
http://www.workers.org/2007/world/iraq-0215/
On the picket line
Published Feb 9, 2007 9:39 AM
Janitors win family health care
Twin Cities—The threat of a strike helped 4,200 janitors who clean the airport and corporate offices in Minneapolis and St. Paul negotiate a contract in the wee hours of Feb. 5 that includes family health care coverage. Up to now only 14 members could afford such coverage.
After their contract expired on Dec. 31, members of Service Employees’ Local 26, who are part of the union’s national Justice for Janitors campaign, voted to strike on Jan. 13. On Jan. 30, more than 200 members flooded the skyways linking major buildings in Minneapolis with a sea of purple T-shirts to publicize their struggle for affordable coverage.
Thanks to a visible community struggle over the last six months, the workers, 70 percent of whom are Latin@ immigrants, won support from more than 100 local clergy and public officials, include the mayor of St. Paul.
The head of the local Teamsters union vowed that his members would not cross Local 26 picket lines.
“I think it’s shameful that workers have to threaten a strike in order to get their basic needs met. These workers are fighting the fight for all workers,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council, AFL-CIO, at www.workdayminnesota.org. (Jan. 30)
In another Justice for Janitors struggle, this time in Florida, more than 300 Haitian and Latin@ groundskeepers, janitors, bus drivers and maintenance workers at Nova Southeastern University became the third group of university workers in less than a year to win union representation.
A SEIU press release noted that this “effectively creates a new standard for contract workers in South Florida.”
Women office workers: Fight to protect pensions
What do you do when the boss’s final contract offer would cut pensions for your union of mostly older women office workers? And you know the company already signed contracts with all its other unions protecting pensions of their mostly male members. First you vote down the offer, and then you picket.
The 120 members of OPEIU Local 35 were so angry about this obvious discrimination against women they rejected the offer on Jan. 16 and picketed Miller Brewing in Milwaukee on Jan. 25. The local has been negotiating a new contract for months with South African Brewery, which owns Miller.
“The company’s pension demand is like asking our members to throw away two or more decades of dedicated and dependable labor,” said Judy Burnick, Local 35 business manager, in a Jan. 25 union media release.
With a workforce overwhelmingly made up of women over 50 years of age, with 20 or more years on the job, most local members are within five to 10 years of retirement.
The union release noted: “With revenues in excess of $15.3 billion and profits in excess of $2.9 billion, SAB/Miller can well afford to meet their retirement obligations to these female workers.”
LGBT organizations demand: Raise minimum wage
Noting that low-wage jobs and stagnant pay are issues affecting many in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) communities, Nancy Wohlforth, co-president of Pride at Work, AFL-CIO, sent a letter Jan. 17 to the Senate urging passage of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 signed by eleven LGBT organizations.
To read this precedent-setting statement and a list of signing organizations, go to www.prideatwork.org.
The Senate passed one version of the bill on Feb. 1 with $8.3 million tax breaks for small businesses, while the House of Representatives passed a bill on Jan. 10 without tax breaks. The bill, raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour in small increments to $7.25 an hour by 2009, is the first raise for low-wage workers in eleven years. But first the two houses of Congress must agree on one bill.
What’s not widely known is that not having one bill is holding up the annual—that’s right, annual—Congressional pay hike. A raise of 1.7 percent of the current lawmakers’ salary of $165,200—$2,760—is projected for this year. And Republicans and Democrats are quibbling over when to make their raise effective. If the minimum wage bill passes soon, the date the lawmakers’ raise becomes effective is June 1, 2007. (New York Times, Jan. 30)
Why make low-wage workers wait two years for their sorely needed raise? Such obvious inequality is truly obscene when you consider that it will take someone earning $7.25 an hour 381 hours, or nearly 48 workdays or 10 weeks, to earn the same $2,760.
That’s capitalism!
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
Page printed from:
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/picket-line-0215/
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Pot Prisoners Cost Americans $1 Billion a Year
Posted on February 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47815/
American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. That's according to statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.
According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for pot-related offenses.
Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison pot offenders.
The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses. In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.
Of course, several hundred thousand more Americans are arrested each year for violating marijuana laws, costing taxpayers another $8 billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs.
According to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.
These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Nevertheless, self-reported pot use by adults, as well as the ready availability of marijuana on the black market, remains virtually unchanged.
Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However, pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.
According to federal statistics, about 94 million Americans -- that's 40 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older -- self-identify as having used cannabis at some point in their lives, and relatively few acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects due to their use. America's public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals.
This article originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.
Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC. (norml.org, 888-67-NORML).
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/47815/
The Corporate Media Propaganda Blitz Begins!
February 10, 2007
Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
NYT Article Here
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran.
The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.
In interviews, civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing “lethal support” to Shiite militants in Iraq.
The focus of American concern is known as an “explosively formed penetrator,” a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shiite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military
officials say.
More Here
Friday, February 09, 2007
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Quarantine U.S.A - Part Three
The Avian Flu Fright is Politically Timed A Public Health Warning and Political Essay By Dr. Leonard Horowitz | |
Global Research, October 12, 2005 | |
Tetrahedron | |
Abstract The Avian Flu Fright: Politically Timed for Global “Iatrogenocide” If avian flu becomes more than a threatened pandemic, it will have done so by political and economic design. This thesis is supported by current massive media misrepresentations, profiteering on risky and valueless vaccines, gross neglect of data evidencing earlier similar man-made plagues including SARS, West Nile Virus, AIDS and more; continuance of genetic studies breeding more mutant flu viruses likely to outbreak, inside trading scandals involving pandemic savvy White House and drug industry officials, curious immunity of these pharmaceutical entities over the past century to law enforcement and mainstream media scrutiny, and published official depopulation objectives. With the revelations and assertions advanced herein, the public is forewarned against this physician-assisted mass murder best termed “iatrogenocide.”* This genocidal imposition is expected to serve mainly economic and political depopulation objectives.
In April, 2003, a social experiment called SARS, said to have arrived from Asia, heavily struck Toronto. I was there throughout most of this Asian flu-foreshadowing fright. This bizarre new pneumonia-like illness was named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It was said to be the latest threat in an ongoing series of attacks on humanity by mysteriously mutating "supergerms." A careful study of the scientific and medical-sociological correlates and antecedents of this “outbreak” revealed something amiss far more insidious than SARS. I critically considered Toronto’s media reaction as any Harvard-trained public health expert in media persuasion behavioral science might. The scourge had all the earmarks of a novel social experiment conducted by white-collar bioterrorist. It seemed clear to me that this unprecedented population manipulation effectively indoctrinated the mass mind in support of a grossly ineffective, albeit legislated, public health response in advance of the arrival of "the Big One." Throughout the “SARS Scam,”(1) repeated references were made to biological agents that might facilitate decimation of approximately a third to half of the world's population. Having extensively reviewed political population control literature and contemporary objectives of leading global industrialists, I noted these predictions were in close keeping with current official population reduction objectives.(2) Canada’s response to SARS in 2003 was, for the first time in history, directed by the United Nations and World Health Organization (WHO). Having reviewed the intimate financial and administrative ties between these organizations, the Rockefeller family, Carnegie Foundation, and the world’s leading drug makers, “the fox,” in essence, reigned over Canada’s “chickens.” The truth about plagues includes the fact that “no grand pandemic ever evolved divorced from major socio-political upheaval." SARS advanced a political agenda more than a public health emergency. If public health officials earnestly intended to prevent these new emerging diseases, or successfully treat them at their roots, I repeated, they would study their obvious origins from the merged military-medical-biotechnology arena. A basic course in medical sociology simply justifies this utilitarian counsel. "Experts" had been predicting the arrival of a super-plague for decades. What was HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS about the mysterious and terrifying arrival of SARS, however, was its timing. It synchronously arrived with the global war on terrorism, and the Anglo-American war with Iraq. It seemed a convenient distraction from the fact that the earlier Bush administration had shipped Saddam Hussein most of his deadly biological weapons arsenal including anthrax and West Nile Virus. SARS was pathognomonic (i.e., symptomatic and characteristic) of what I had predicted and explained in the book, Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare (Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2001; http://www.healthyworlddistributing.com/), a prophetically-titled text that predated the 9-11 attacks on America by several months, and provided a contextual analysis of certain globalists’ links to recent “outbreaks.” In essence, I provided insight into the broad application of a new form of institutionalized "bioterrorism" consistent with state sponsored biological warfare. Saddam Hussein was said to have exposed populations in his and adjacent lands with biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. SARS and the current avian flu fright is sanctioned by military-medical-pharmaceutical-petrochemical industrialists likewise operating above the law in many documented instances. Having testified before the U.S. Congress, I personally experienced how premiere pharmaceutical industrialists direct our political-economic representatives in government. Emerging diseases complement the political "War on Terrorism," and our bioterror-influenced culture. This agenda serves two primary objectives: profitability and population-reduction. Political Reality Versus Mass-Mediated Myths The ever increasing madness around us is eerily consistent with globalist think tank recommendations for the current "conflicts short of war." Beginning in the late 1960s, "economic substitutes for standard militarization" were sought and found by leading global industrialists. New biological threats, the “war on terrorism,” and increasing numbers of “natural disasters” including space-based threats and superstorms were considered economically and politically expedient compared with the first and second world wars. These “conflicts short of war” were decidedly more manageable and economically viable. For this reason, especially their profitability, they were leading options among Anglo-American policy makers. Nelson Rockefeller’s protégé, Henry Kissinger, for instance, as National Security Advisor (NSA) under Richard Nixon, oversaw foreign policy while considering Third World population reduction "necessities" for the U.S., Britain, Germany, and other allies. This Bush nominee to direct the 9-11 conspiracy investigation, a reputed war criminal, then selected the option to have the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) develop biological weapons, according to the U.S. Congressional Record of 1975. Among these new man-made biological weapons were germs far deadlier than the avian flu. For example, by 1968, when Kissinger requested and received updated intelligence on useful “synthetic biological agents“ for germ warfare and population control, mutant recombinant flu viruses had just been engineered by Special Virus Cancer Program researchers O’Conner, Stewart, Kinard, Rauscher and others.(3) During this program, influenza and parainfluenza viruses were recombined with quick acting leukemia viruses (acute lymphocytic leukemia) to deliver weapons that potentially spread cancer, like the flu, by sneezing. These researchers also amassed avian cancer (sarcoma) viruses and inoculated them into humans and monkeys to determine their carcinogenicity. In related efforts, Raucher et al. used radiation to enhance avian virus’s cancer-causing potential. These incredible scientific realities have been officially censored and generally neglected by the media’s mainstream. Similarly, the Institute of Science in Society (IoSS) in London raised the genetic engineering question in the origin of SARS. “Could genetic engineering have contributed inadvertently to creating the SARS virus?” they asked. “This point was not even considered by the expert coronavirologists called in to help handle the crisis, now being feted and woed by pharmaceutical companies eager to develop vaccines.” Those living in glass houses should not throw stones. The above emphasis is added to show IoSS they had “not even considered” intentional SARS deployment in their scientific, allegedly unbiased, purview.(4) Conflicts short of war, like the "War on AIDS," "War on Drugs," "War on Terrorism," "War on Cancer," and now “War on the Avian Flu” require sophisticated propaganda programs employing fear campaigns for social acceptance and popular support of legislated policies. These psychological operations (officially termed PSYOPS) for “command and control warfare” (technically called C2W), experts advise, best support the emerging "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA). The RMA‘s capabilities include "a form of human slavery" in which the world’s captive populations would not know they are enslaved.(2) The RMA undoubtedly incorporates the use of debilitating biologicals and chemical agents most generously on behalf of drug and vaccine makers. A classic example is the toxic carcinogenic organophosphate pesticides deployed against human populations, said to target “mosquitoes,” in the "War Against the West Nile Virus." Such "non-lethal warfare" agents, as these are militarily termed, are indeed deadly, but mortality results slowly from toxic exposures allowing more profits to be made by allied pharmaceutical and medical industrialists. Victims of the "non-lethal" exposures die slowly from chronic debilitating diseases. Expensive hospitals and long-term care facilities are virtual concentration camps. The ailments generated for “iatrogenocide” include the plethora of autoimmune diseases and newer cancers virtually non-existent 50 years ago. This fact, alone, strongly suggests a genocidal socio-economic and political agenda. Avian Flu for Profit In response to SARS, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, Michael Fumento, published an economic thesis in Toronto related to the one I advance here. The "Super-bug or Super Scare," he wrote was published in Canada’s National Post. Canadians were warned to "quarantine themselves," wear masks, and in some cases stay home. The Ontario Health Minister declared a "health emergency," as the media dubbed the "mysterious killer" a "super-pneumonia.” Recoiling from the hype, Fumento asked and answered a few “real questions . . . How lethal, how transmissible, and how treatable is this strain?” The answers, he concluded, “leave no grounds for excitement, much less panic.” The same may be said for this new curse of avian flu.(1) | |
© Copyright Leonard Horowitz, Tetrahedron, 2005
Quarantine U.S.A - Part Two
Bird Flu: A Corporate Bonanza for the Biotech Industry Tamiflu, Vistide and the Pentagon Agenda By F. William Engdahl | |
Global Research, November 6, 2005 | |
On November 1, President George W. Bush went to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland to hold a high profile press conference, to announce a 381-page plan, officially called the Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan. It was no ordinary Bush photo opportunity. This one was meant to be a big splash event. The President was surrounded by almost half his cabinet, including Secretary of State Condi Rice, joined by the Secretaries of Homeland Security, Agriculture, Health & Human Services, Transportation and, interestingly enough, Veteran Affairs. And, just to underscore that this was a big deal, the White House invited the Director-General of the World Health Organization, who flew in from Geneva for the occasion. The President began his remarks with the now-obligatory scare-story from 1918: ‘At this moment, there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world. But if history is our guide, there is reason to be concerned. In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics -- and viruses from birds contributed to all of them. The first, which struck in 1918, killed over half-a-million Americans and more than 20 million people across the globe…’ He was remarkably candid about the imminent danger to the American people: ‘Scientists and doctors cannot tell us where or when the next pandemic will strike, or how severe it will be, but most agree: at some point, we are likely to face another pandemic. And the scientific community is increasingly concerned by a new influenza virus known as H5N1 -- or avian flu…’ Mr. Bush went on to stress, ‘At this point, we do not have evidence that a pandemic is imminent. Most of the people in Southeast Asia who got sick were handling infected birds. And while the avian flu virus has spread from Asia to Europe, there are no reports of infected birds, animals, or people in the United States. Even if the virus does eventually appear on our shores in birds, that does not mean people in our country will be infected. Avian flu is still primarily an animal disease. And as of now, unless people come into direct, sustained contact with infected birds, it is unlikely they will come down with avian flu.’ Despite the admission of absence of a clear and present danger to the American public, the President called on Congress to immediately pass a new $7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare for that not-imminent, not-pandemic, possible-in-the-future danger. The speech was an exercise in the Administration’s now-famous ‘pre-emptive war,’ this one against Avian Flu. As with the other pre-emptive wars, there is a multiple agenda—one might say, killing two birds with one stone, were it not so tasteless. Prominent among the President’s list of emergency measures was a call for Congress to appropriate another $1 billion explicitly for Tamiflu. Conflict of interest or insider trading? The saga of Tamiflu is just the tip of a big iceberg. As we noted in an earlier article, the real point of interest is the company in California who developed Tamiflu, Gilead Sciences, listed on the NASDAQ as (GILD). As we also noted, US Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences from 1997 until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. Rumsfeld had been on the board of Gilead since 1988, some thirteen years. A as-yet-unconfirmed report is that Rumsfeld recently purchased additional stock in his former company, Gilead Sciences, worth $18 million, making him one of its largest if not the largest stock owners today. Whether that is true or not, earlier this year, when the Bird Flu scare was just heating up, according to a report in the November 14 Fortune magazine, the Defense Secretary decided not to sell his many shares in Gilead so as to ‘avoid being accused of insider trading.’ If true, that means Mr. Rumsfeld, apparently not one to shy away from turning a fast buck, has bagged an eye-popping windfall, as demand for Tamiflu worldwide explodes. Today it is the hottest drug in the world market. On October 6, the Pentagon announced it had stockpiled quantities of Tamiflu for members of the military. Since early 2001 when Rumsfeld left the board of Gilead Sciences to become Defense Secretary, Gilead’s stock price has gone from around $7 per share to just a hair above $50 a share today. The future price direction? The stratosphere, especially since the President made it an explicit goal of the US ‘flu defense pre-emptive war’ on November 1. Gilead, which signed over the world marketing rights to Hoffmann-LaRoche, gets 10% of every dose of Tamiflu sold. Gilead is presently in a legal battle to retake 100% marketing control as well. From $7 to $50 translates into a neat 720% profit for Mr. Rumsfeld’s Gilead stock holdings since he went to Washington four-and-a-half years ago. Since the start of the carefully orchestrated current Bird Flu hysteria this March, Rummy’s Gilead stocks have gained a neat 56% alone. That might explain why, instead of dumping his shares as one might expect from an honest government official wanting to avoid a conflict of interest, he instead opted to buy another $18 million worth. Curiously, the Secretary waited until October 26, 2005 before issuing an official Department of Defense press statement that he had ‘recused’ himself from involvement in any future Pentagon decisions involving Gilead Sciences. By then, of course, the horse had long burst out of the barn door and the price of Gideon was racing at full gallop as the Pentagon and the Administration had already decided to stockpile millions of doses of Tamiflu. In March the reliable Washington friend, Britain’s Tony Blair, ordered the UK Government to buy enough Tamiflu drugs to supply 25% of the 56 million British citizens. Mr Blair seems always ready to help his friends in Washington whether backing Washington’s war against WMD in Iraq or Tamiflu. In Washington it’s called the ‘Anglo-American Special Relationship.’ The Secretary of Defense, the man who allegedly supported the use of contrived intelligence to justify the war on Iraq, who oversaw billions of dollars in Pentagon no-bid contracts to Bechtel and Halliburton corporations, is now poised to reap huge gains for a flu panic his Administration has done everything it can to promote. It would be useful to know whether the Pentagon’s successor to Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans developed the strategy of bio-warfare that is evidently behind the current Avian Flu panic. An enterprising Congressional committee in ordinary times would already be looking into the entire subject of plausible conflicts of interest regarding Secretary Rumsfeld, except for the fact the Congress is controlled by Mr Rumsfeld’s own party. Gilead Sciences is no small-time biotech startup, either. Helped by the propaganda from its friends in Washington and other high places, today Gilead has a total market capitalization of $ 22 billion. Its board today includes Bechtel Corporation director and former Secretary of State, George P. Shultz. According to Fortune, Shultz turned a neat $7 million profit earlier this year in insider selling of some of his Gilead stock. Bechtel is right up there with Halliburton in grabbing the lion’s share of Pentagon sweetheart contracts to rebuild Iraq. Most certainly it did not hurt Bechtel’s business that Shultz and Rumsfeld knew each other from their common days on the board of Gilead. The Gilead Sciences board also includes Gordon Moore of Intel, and Viscount Etienne Davignon, the Belgian Count who seems to be involved in everything big and Atlanticist, whether it be Bilderberg meetings or Trilateral Commissions, and now, profiting from the Bird Flu panic. The Gilead model also suggests a parallel to the Halliburton Corporation, whose former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney’s company has so far gotten billions worth of US construction contracts in Iraq and elsewhere. Is it just a coincidence that Cheney’s closest political friend is Defense Secretary and Avian Flu beneficiary, Donald Rumsfeld? Vistide, Small Pox, Big Bucks The Defense Secretary is an accomplished hand at getting the government to buy vaccines from companies in which he has a direct financial interest. Recall the scare just following the events of September 11, 2001. One of the terror scenarios discussed widely by the Administration was a possible release of a deadly smallpox attack that would devastate the American population. In November 2001 the Administration reversed a two decade policy. On the advice of the Pentagon and others in the Administration, the President ordered that the US’ remaining stock of smallpox microbes, stored at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, not be destroyed as he world community had been urging, but be kept until new vaccines were developed. The United States and Russian Governments at the time held the only known smallpox microbe stocks known. The disease had long since been eradicated. The Administration announced at the time it was backing development of a new vaccine for smallpox that could be given the entire population. The major media from Judith Miller in the New York Times, to more widely read papers, carried horror stories. Typical was one from Knight-Ridder which began, ‘When counterterrorism officials compare notes on what keeps them awake at night, the weapon they most fear is not a nuclear bomb or poison gas, but a disease that was wiped off the planet 20 years ago. They worry about smallpox, a lethal, super-contagious virus that, if unleashed, would spread quickly…’ The scare around smallpox and what to do was curiously similar then as it is today against Bird Flu pandemics. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at that time ordered members of the Armed Forces to be inoculated against smallpox, an inoculation with horrendous side-effects. Rumsfeld’s smallpox package also included ordering Pentagon stockpiling of a drug named Vistide, supposedly to minimize side-effects of smallpox infection should it occur. The Bush Administration had made repeated attempts to convince the public and above all, the health and medical profession to go with mass inoculation against smallpox. In 2002 the CDC and certain high Administration officials were calling for pre-emptive smallpox inoculation of broad sectors of the population against threat of terrorists unleashing the pox. The Government began stockpiling hundreds of millions of smallpox vaccine doses. It also stockpiled Vistide. With every official statement by members of the Administration, population panic regarding smallpox threats grew. Fear was driving the debate. Yet the reality was that, contrary to what was being said, smallpox was not a highly contagious disease. As Dr. Kuritsky, MD, director of the National Immunization Program and Early Smallpox Response and Planning at the CDC put it, ‘Smallpox has a slow transmission and is not highly contagious.’ Even were someone exposed to a known bio-terrorist attack with smallpox, it would not mean that he would contract smallpox, Kuritsky added. The signs and symptoms of the disease would not occur immediately, and there was time to plan. Increasingly, experienced US health professionals began going public with the dangers of the side effects from the smallpox immunization itself. These included ‘serious brain and heart diseases, autism, abnormal chromosomal changes, diabetes, various cancers and leukemias, plus demyelination of nerve tissue years after vaccination.’ Many thought it better to run the risk of a bio-terror attack than take the ‘cure.’ The Administration mass vaccination campaign for smallpox was a flop. Yet in the meantime millions of doses of Vistide were produced and sold to the US government, to ‘ease’ the effects of smallpox should such an hypothetical attack materialize. The Pentagon was one of the major purchasers of Vistide at the time. The smallpox terror scenario fear-mongering reached a peak in the run-up to the February 2003 war in Iraq, with scare stories speculating that Saddam Hussein may have been holding stolen Russian stocks of the smallpox virus ready to unleash an attack on the American public. In his January 2003 State of the Union Address, the President proposed creation of Project BioShield to develop vaccines and drugs against bio-terror attack including anthrax and smallpox. On July 21, 2004 President Bush signed into law Project BioShield, to provide ‘new tools to improve medical countermeasures protecting Americans against a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) attack.’ The fiscal year 2004 appropriation for the Department of Homeland Security included $5.6 billion over 10 years for the purchase of next generation countermeasures against anthrax and smallpox as well as other CBRN agents. Mr Rumsfeld knew well what he was prescribing for his soldiers. Vistide was also a product of Gilead Sciences, Mr. Rumsfeld’s former company. Rumsfeld was the person who signed off on the decision to give US Troops Vistide. That decision was obviously not made out of benevolence, or concern for the health of the troops on the part of the Defense Secretary, who had been personally involved with the side-efects of Vistide at Gilead since the company first developed it in the late 1990’s as an AIDS treatment. As Rumsfeld well knew, Vistide had some pretty hefty side effects. According to Dr. Christopher J Hogan, MD, Professor at the Department of Emergency Medicine, Medical College of Virginia, complications of Vistide include renal toxicity, neutropenia, fever, anemia, headache, hair loss, uveitis and/or iritis, and abdominal pain. Yet, despite the fact of who is making millions on the fears being stirred over smallpox or Avian Flu, it would be a dangerous diversion to think the end of the story is personal or corporate greed. The alarming aspect to this Tamiflu, Vistide and proposed new legal regimes for the ‘vaccine industry,’ is the fact that it all fits, evidently, into a far larger strategy that the Administration seems to have been developing for some time. During the smallpox scare three years ago, the Administration got Republican Congressmen to insert a paragraph into the Homeland Security bill that would give immunity for liability to drug companies who manufacture smallpox vaccine. Abolishing the Nuremburg Code on Human Rights in Experimentation Now the Bush Administration is seeking to vastly expand that drug company immunity, using the climate of fear around Avian Flu. The President, in his November 1 NIH pandemic speech, proposed completely exempting drug makers from being sued for their products. Explicitly he termed it ‘liability protection for the makers of life-saving vaccines.’ Stripped of its nice-sounding noble rhetoric, it means drug makers can produce and promote whatever they choose to foist on the public, whether it be Vistide, Tamiflu or Thalidomide, and fear no legal consequences. One need only think for a minute about the consequences of removing the gains of more than a Century of bitter battles to establish even minimal controls over what drugs can be sold to the public. During the 1960’s in Germany, Dr. Heinrich Mueckter, an infamous Nazi doctor, wanted by the Polish government for hideous experiments using live Typhus on concentration camp inmates, founded a drug company in West Germany where he developed a drug he marketed as a harmless sleeping tablet. His product, Contergan, was advertised as so harmless that it could be sold over-the-counter and one million Germans used it daily to sleep. He specially marketed his drug for ‘pregnant mothers’ having sleep problems. The results were soon clear in the form of tens of thousands of grotesquely deformed births. The drug he developed contained Thalidomide. At that time, German law left regulation of such drugs to the industry, a kind of self-policing, or to local government. Or consider the huge scandals surrounding the anti-arthritic drug, VIOXX, which was being used by more than two million people around the world when it was pulled from the market by Merck & Co. last September, after serious studies indicated VIOXX users had a 400% increased risk of heart attack or stroke. Threat of litigation was clearly a major factor leading Merck to pull VIOXX. Merck & Co. began in Germany in the late 1800’s by selling products including morphine, codeine, quinine and strychnine as ‘medications.’ There were no regulations on drug makers then. The German aspirin inventor, Bayer Company, in 1898 sold heroin labelled as a ‘superior cough suppressant.’ It probably was, but they also didn’t speak of side effects in those days. This was before many such scandals and serious consequences on the public forced governments to begin regulating what was sold as drugs. In 1962, in response to the Thalidomide scandals, Senator Estes Kefauver drafted and got passed the Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments of 1962, tightening drug safety requirements and requiring pharmaceutical makers, or as George Bush prefers to call it, ‘the vaccine industry,’ to prove a given drug is effective before it can be sold to the public. Drugs were required to be registered with the US Food and Drug Administration, and the FDA was given ‘explicit authority to require compliance with good manufacturing practices.’ Safety and purity standards were defined. It also required drug makers explicitly state risks in their products. In 1948 the member countries of the United Nations adopted the so-called Nuremburg Code following the military trial in Nuremburg Germany in 1946 of 23 Nazi doctors for crimes against humanity and experimentation with drugs and viruses on human subjects. It was recognized as international common law guiding medical research. With the grant of legal immunity from lawsuits for effects of their drugs, pharmaceutical companies would succeed in rolling back not only the Nuremburg Code but also more than a Century of bitterly-fought gains in public safety in the regulation of drug manufacturing and promotion. In promoting drug industry immunity from legal damage suits, the President claims he is ‘breaking down barriers to vaccine production.’ In reality he is taking steps to create an environment which not even the Nazi doctors and drug companies during the Third Reich enjoyed—they had to be secretive about their actions. This is a very alarming precedent should it become law. The real question to ask is what could be so important to compel the President of the United States to put his own population at risk in such an unfettered drug environment? That there exists a virulent viral strain affecting birds especially in parts of Vietnam and China is not the issue at hand here. Rather it is the politicization of such a condition to introduce a wholly other agenda, one whose ultimate consequences on human life and well-being are potentially far more damaging than any conceived damage from H5N1 or other virus strains
Related article: Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax? by F. William Engdahl | |
Quarantine U.S.A
By MIKE WHITNEY
http://counterpunch.org/whitney02052007.html
"Officials gassed tens of thousands of turkeys and extended restrictions on the movement of poultry on Sunday to prevent the spread of deadly bird flu from a farm in Suffolk. The discovery of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu on a farm run by Europe's largest turkey producer surprised experts and raised questions about how the virus had been introduced into a sealed shed". (Reuters)
Man, these guys give me the creeps.
On Friday there was an article in the New York Times ("In a Daylong Drill, an Agency Tries to Prepare for a Real Outbreak of Avian Flu", Donald McNeil Jr.) that gave the details of the drills that are being conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) in case a full-blown pandemic breaks out in the United States. The exercises were supervised by CDC chief, Dr. Julie Gerberding, the agency's director. A number of disastrous scenarios were simulated to test the judgment of the supervisors and the strengths of the system.
I'm sure everyone is relieved that the C.D.C. and Dr. Gerberding are practicing their routine in the event of an outbreak of lethal influenza. After all, Gerberding may confront a situation where she will be asked to decide whether or not to quarantine cities or, perhaps, entire states to prevent the spread of an epidemic, like Avian Flu.
So, why is this so weird?
Well, when was the last time Bush-Cheney devoted millions of dollars to anything that served the public interest? That is an oddity in itself.
They refuse to provide the recommended security-measures for the nation's nuclear power plants from terrorist attack, and they waged a bitter battle over legislation that required the checking of cargo coming into US ports. They even fought congress on the issue of air-port screeners following the attacks on 9-11?!?
So now they're spending millions on drills for a potential outbreak of Bird Flu?
Why? Why this sudden interest in the health and welfare of the American people?
Of course, we know what the administration REALLY thinks of the American people as evinced in their reaction to Hurricane Katrina. That's when tens of thousands of people were (intentionally?) cut-off from food, water, and medical supplies while Bush blew kisses to his people from 30,000 feet from Air-force 1.
And, what ever happened to the zillions of dollars that congress provided to rebuild New Orleans after the storm?
My guess is that it vanished into a Republican black-hole like the trillions earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction.
The only thing that's been rebuilt in New Orleans is the one house that was used in the photo-op of Bush pounding nails in his shirtsleeves.
So, what is the real motive behind these C.D.C. drills and why did Bush the media involved? According to the NY Times:
"Four reporters, from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press and The Canadian Press, were allowed to watch the exercise (and even to comment on how well C.D.C. public affairs officers played reporters during a mock news conference)"
In fact, Dr Gerberding even chirped, "This is new for us. A lot of people feel it's really high-risk to let the press look inside the sausage factory while the sausage is being made."
"High risk"?!? No way. The Bush administration is doing what they always do; manipulating public perceptions by releasing tidbits that prepare people for disaster.
Isn't that true?
And why are privately-owned corporations like MPRI overseeing Dr. Gerberding's work?
That's right; according to the article in the New York Times:
"Although Dr Gerberding was nominally in charge, the man pulling the strings was in a little room upstairs known as the Simulation CellHe was Pete Taylor, a 69 year old retired general who spent 34 years running war games for the Pentagon and now does it for MPRI, a consulting group with many former military officers on staff."
(MPRI was formerly known as Military Professionals Resources Inc is covered in the New York Times "America's For-Profit Secret Army" Leslie Wayne 10-13-02)
"War games"?!?
Is that what this is?
And, why are former military officers overseeing drills that are needed to best protect the American people from an epidemic?
Is this another crackpot Bush scheme to seal the borders, lockdown entire regions of the country, establish martial law, and put us all under quarantine?
And, for what? Bird Flu?
Doesn't this all sound a bit fishy?
Like I said before; these guys give me the creeps.
Note: Francis A. Boyles' new book "Biowarfare and Terrorism" cites a number of organizations both inside and outside the U.S. which are conducting illegal bioweapons research--one even got a grant from the EPA. Another lab is in earthquake-prone San Francisco where an accident could release some of these lethal agents and start a plague.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Media skeptical of Bush Admin lying about Iran
Posted on February 6, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/47662/
It's 4 years and a day since Colin Powell gave his "damning" and almost entirely false speech to the UN that put the final nail in the coffin of what is now over 3,000 American soldiers and over a half million Iraqis.
The press lapped it up, coming as it did from the administration's most skeptical cabinet-member and resident "centrist."
As Iraq devolves into a chaos (the long-awaited 2007 National Intelligence Estimate uses the term "Civil War" to describe parts of Iraq) and the administration marches toward war on Iran, the press has yawned and stretched and tried to come to life. To paraphrase Dolly Parton.
The following is the transcript of the video to the right, featuring two reporters tired of being jerked around by a duplicitous White House. They simply don't trust them. No pumping fists here... just a "finally you're doing your job."
Hat tip to Editor & Publisher for finding this exchange.
***
Q: Steve, in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the Iraq war, the administration made statements that were obviously not borne by facts subsequently. And it later came out that caveats from the intelligence community, caveats from Energy Department analysts, those were left out of public statements of Vice President Cheney, the President, others in the administration. Now when it comes to Iran, you've been saying for months that Iran is a key driver of violence in Iraq. You've said there is evidence tying Iran to attacks in Iraq. You've said that you'd make that evidence public. That supposed to be made public on the 31st.
MR. HADLEY: Right.
Q: It wasn't.
MR. HADLEY: That's correct.
Q: Now you have this report saying it contributes in some way, so does Syria, so do other factors, but it is not, in and of itself, causing the violence, nor would the violence stop if Iranian influence stopped.
MR. HADLEY: I didn't read it that way...
Q: You see it on the second --
MR. HADLEY: "Iraq's neighbors influence and are influenced by events within Iraq. But the involvement of these outside -- is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospect for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics."
We need to get control of that. Now, to the extent Iraqi support -- sorry, Iranian support is going to extremist groups that are participating in that sectarian violence, it is obviously a factor. And as we talked about it more broadly, they are, of course, a disruptive factor in the region.
The reason we put the intelligence briefing on hold was really two reasons. One, we thought we'd better get the NIE out so people could see the full context, which you now can. And secondly, quite frankly, we want to make sure that if we put out intelligence, the intelligence community and MNFI can stand behind it, because we are sensitive to try and put out the facts as accurately as we can.
Q: When will that be, that briefing?
MR. HADLEY: When this process gets done, the briefing will be -- will come out.I don't think there's a timetable on this point since it's slipped a couple times. We want to get the work done so that we can get people a firm date and that we won't have to change.
Q: Even though it was already scheduled and officials in Baghdad gave a date, they gave a time, and in some cases, they gave a place?
MR. HADLEY: Correct.
Q: And now it's been pushed back. Can we conclude anything from that other than people looked at the intelligence that was set to offered and said, this is not good enough?
MR. HADLEY: No, I wouldn't --
Q: Does that mean there was a willingness to overstate it?
MR. HADLEY: The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated. And we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts. And that's not a criticism of anybody. It was, in some sense, an attempt to do and address some of the issues in the NIE in a briefing on intelligence of Iranian activity in Iraq. And we thought, hey, why are we doing this? Let's get the NIE out, the coordinated intelligence judgment of the intelligence community. And then with that as context, get a briefing that is focused on and one that we're confident everyone can stand behind.
Q: Mr. Hadley, given the track record on weapons of mass destruction, and recent events that have alleged that intelligence has been cherry-picked and pulled selectively, how can the public be assured that intelligence is driving the policy and not the other way around, that it's being tailored to what the President and the Vice President want the policy to be?
MR. HADLEY: By putting out things like this, the coordinated judgment of the intelligence community, so you can see the intelligence on which the policy was based.
Q: How can we be assured that this wasn't written for that purpose?
MR. HADLEY: Well, you can talk to the intelligence community. This came from the NIC -- the National Intelligence Council. And it came out of that process. It was not a result of a policy process. It was a result of the intelligence process. And there was no effort to put a policy spin on that by the White House. This is a thing we got roughly a day or two before you.
Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/47662/
Why they hate us [VIDEO]
Perhaps you've heard that "they" hate us for our Freedom™.
The video on the right, courtesy of Crooks and Liars, is of a U.S. Humvee navigating Baghdad traffic. It shows there may be other factors at play.
Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Finally, A Paper Trial...
Editorial
Good Election News From Florida
NYT Article Here...
Florida, famous for doing so much wrong in its elections, is poised to take two very important right steps. First, Gov. Charlie Crist says he plans to end the use of touch-screen voting machines that do not produce a paper record. Florida’s move may finally sound the death knell for these unreliable, inherently antidemocratic voting machines.
After the 2000 election, there was a rush to eliminate the punch-card machines that produced the infamous hanging chads. But many states replaced them with paperless touch-screen machines that require voters to accept on faith that the reported vote totals accurately reflect the votes cast.
It has been hard to have faith. There have been widespread reports of “vote flipping,” in which machines record votes cast for one candidate as votes for the opponent. The Florida courts are still trying to resolve a challenge to a Congressional race last fall in which as many as 18,000 votes may have disappeared. The race was extremely close, and the possibly missing votes were in the losing candidate’s strongest county.
Governor Crist is asking the Legislature to finance the purchase of new optical-scan machines, and it is expected to agree. Choosing optical scans is Governor Crist’s second good move. In optical-scan voting, voters mark a paper ballot that is then read by a computer. Polling place lines are shorter, because many voters can fill out ballots at the same time. These paper ballots are the official ballots, and can be recounted by hand to resolve a dispute.
More than half the states — including large ones like California, New York, Illinois and Ohio — require computerized voting machines to produce a paper record. The addition of Florida would be a major defeat for election officials and voting-machine companies that have stubbornly opposed paper-trail requirements.
Governor Crist’s move should provide further momentum for a bill that Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, plans to introduce in Congress today that would require voting machines nationwide to produce voter-verified paper records.
With the Democrats in control of Congress, the bill has a good chance of passing. But it is gratifying that Florida’s shift is led by a Republican governor, and expected to pass a Republican-controlled Legislature. This has for too long been considered a Democratic issue. It shouldn’t be. It is, as Governor Crist said, “common sense.”
10 Portents of Washington DC's Possible War on Iran
9. Policymakers do not discuss an alternative future.
8. Diplomatic opportunities are not pursued.
7. Psychological Operations Hour has replaced FOX News.
6. The "state sponsored terrorism" argument is back in play.
5. Iran tops the list of "preeminent threats".
4. US politicians are in-fighting about who should attack Iran.
3. US Strategic Command has mobilised its plans for bomb targeting.
2. The US peace movement is drawing up counter-plans.
1. The US Presidential election is 600+ days away . . .
From The Disinformation Newsletter
Sunday, February 04, 2007
"Enabling" a False Perception: Hugo Chavez, the Press and the "Rule By Decree" Meme
Did you hear that President Chavez is going to Rule by Decree for the next 18 months? The very idea evokes a picture of a not-too-distant South American past, one in which all-powerful executives live out their capricious whims and mete out brutal retribution against political enemies. It's all so dramatic and perverse and larger than life. Somewhere Andrew Lloyd Webber is already mapping out the musical score.
But it this case, it's just not true. Of course, if you've been reading the newspapers lately, you'd have a hard time figuring that out. The Miami Herald headline blares: "Chavez Granted Power to Rule by Decree." Time Magazine asks "Is Chavez Becoming Castro?" And those are the restrained ones. The right-wing rags have headlines like "A Dictatorship Rises," and "Hugo Chavez Kills Democracy." So you'd be forgiven for not getting the nuances in this storyline.
Here's what's actually happening: The Venezuelan assembly is poised to pass a law that will give the executive branch greater leeway to establish norms on a certain range of issues. Most of these involve guidelines for the president's own cabinet-level agencies. In other words, the Venezuelan version of the IRS will map out the country's tax structure; the Transportation department will devise its own strategic plan for public transit nationwide, etc. This represents a shift of certain powers from the legislative branch to the executive, to be sure, but on paper they don't seem to stray too far from the powers that the executive branch in the United States already has. Venezuelanaysis.com has a full listing of the ten issue areas that are affected.
It is important to note that this type of power-transfer is allowed under the Venezuelan constitution of 1999, which expressly permits the President to issue executive orders specifically within these issue areas. Of course, the constitution continues to guide the country's overall legal framework, which is to say that no "decree" can supercede constitutional law.
What's more, this "enabling law" is not new to the current constitution. Venezuela's previous constitution allowed for similar powers shifts to the executive, and you can be sure that past presidents took advantage of this authority on multiple occasions throughout the 70's, 80's and 90's. Here are a few examples:
� In 1974, Congress gave President Carlos Andres Perez the right to "rule by decree" on a number of economic matters, which he used to pass a slew of new regulations-instituting a minimum wage increase, freezing the market price of "necessary" goods, instating tax relief on agricultural activities, increasing government pensions, and even establishing new state institutions, including the National Institute of Housing and an Industrial Development Fund.
But Perez was a close ally of the US government, so there was little controversy from Washington.
� Ten years later, in May 1984, Congress again gave authority to the President, this time Jaime Lusinchi, to deal with the country's financial crisis by decree. He enacted a complicated exchange scheme, which was different for various sectors. For example, he extended a fixed exchange rate (4.3 bolivars to the dollar) for the payment of foreign debt and for Venezuelan students studying abroad; a second rate (6 bolivars to the dollar) for trade in the oil and iron industries; and a third (7.5 to 1) for the commercial and financial sectors. A fourth, "fluctuating dollar," constantly changing by market forces, was in use for everything else.
Nobody balked at all this, certainly not on the international scene. Lusinchi is remembered for hosting the first-ever visit of a Pope to Venezuela, and left office a few years later with what at the time was the highest approval ratings of an outgoing Venezuelan president.
� In 1993, interim President Ramon Jose Velasquez used these special "decree" powers to retool the country's debt and reform the financial system. Once again, nobody-well, nobody remembers much about Velasquez at all. He was sort of a historical footnote, serving only 8 months in office.
So why all the finger-wagging, hand-wringing and label-slinging this time around? In short: because it's Chavez. The Bush administration has long been on a campaign to brand him a despot. His influence throughout Latin America is seen as a threat to U.S. power in the region, and after failed attempts to overthrow him by force, sabotage the nation's economy, and finance opposition parties, the label game is the last arrow they have in their increasingly feeble anti-Chavez quiver.
For their part, the international press is all too eager to go along for the ride. You'll be shocked (shocked!) to hear that they often take the Bush Administration's analyses at face value, with little of the digging that would provide balance or context to the story.
But more than that, the Caracas-based correspondents for the big newspapers are hampered by their lack of familiarity with Venezuelan history. How many of them would know offhand that Velazquez "ruled by decree" ten years ago, much less be familiar with similar instances in the 80s or the 70s? And the Venezuelan elites they go to for context are not about to highlight this. They've got a government to undermine.
So for those itching to see a musical Chavez biopic in the works, it's going to be a little less "Evita" and a little more "1776."
Authors Website: www.BoRev.Net
Authors Bio: I am a freelance writer with a special focus on Latin America. My blog, www.BoRev.net deals with Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution and its portrayal in the U.S. press.