Source: The Guardian,

Attorney general urged to clarify role in concealing $1bn payments to prince

David Leigh and Rob Evans
Saturday June 9, 2007

The government was last night fighting to contain the fallout over £1bn in payments to a Saudi prince as the attorney general came under renewed pressure to explain how much he knew about the affair.While in public the government was issuing partial denials about its role in the controversy, in private there were desperate efforts to secure a new BAE £20bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

And any hopes that the furore could be halted were dashed last night when the Guardian learned that the world’s anti-corruption organisation, the OECD, was poised to resume its own inquiry into why the British government suddenly abandoned its investigations into the £43bn al-Yamamah arms deal.

The OECD’s anti-bribery panel will meet in Paris on June 19 and is expected to discuss the disclosures. When it travels to London, its inspectors are likely to ask ministers for a full explanation of their conduct.Last night, the Liberal Democrat leader, Menzies Campbell, demanded to know the role of the attorney general in concealing from the OECD the payments of more than £1bn from BAE to Prince Bandar as part of the al-Yamamah contract.

The money was paid from an account at the Bank of England into accounts in Washington controlled by Prince Bandar. Details of the transfers were discovered by the Serious Fraud Office during the marathon investigation into BAE.

However, the SFO inquiry was suddenly halted late last year. Al-Yamamah, Britain’s biggest ever arms deal, which was signed in 1985, involves the sale of Tornado fighter jets and Hawk aircraft.

The Guardian has this week published accusations that £30m a quarter – for at least 10 years – was paid into accounts controlled by Prince Bandar at the Riggs bank in Washington.

The attorney general yesterday categorically denied part of the Guardian story in the affair.

He said that he had not ordered British investigators to conceal the £1bn payments from the OECD.

The director of the SFO took responsibility for the decision to withhold information. In a statement, Robert Wardle said the decision was made by his own organisation “having regard to the need to protect national security”.

The Guardian investigation has revealed that:

· The attorney general became aware of these payments because of the SFO inquiry into BAE corruption allegations.

· He recognised the vulnerability of the government to accusations of complicity over a long period in the secret payments.

· There is no dispute that, as reported by the Guardian, the fact of the payments was concealed from the OECD when it demanded explanations for the dropping of the SFO inquiry.

· UK government officials have been exposed as seeking to undermine the OECD process, and complaining that its Swiss chairman has been too outspoken.

· When, before publication, the Guardian originally asked the attorney general’s office who was responsible for concealing the information from the OECD, the newspaper was told: “The information presented to the OECD bribery working group … was prepared by AGO and SFO”.

The AGO is the attorney general’s office. Both departments report to Lord Goldsmith himself.

Last night, when Lord Goldsmith was asked if the concealment was done with his knowledge, he said he could not respond. His spokesman had previously said that full evidence had not been given to the OECD because of “national security” considerations. He also refused to discuss the allegations concerning the payments. “I am not going into the detail of any of the individual allegations,” he said.

It also emerged yesterday that Des Browne, the defence secretary, held talks this week with the Saudi crown prince, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz – the father of Prince Bandar – to try to secure a £20bn arms deal for BAE Systems.

Sir Menzies said the attorney general had more questions to answer.

“If it is true that information about payments made to Prince Bandar was not given to the OECD, then that is an allegation of the utmost seriousness. It would be unsupportable for Britain to sign up to an international agreement on bribery and then fail to honour its obligations when an investigation comes too close to home.”

CounterPunch,

June 6, 2007

Inevitable Truths

The Mirage of the Two State Solution

By GEORGE BISHARAT

Forty years ago this week, Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip, re-establishing a political system in which one sovereign ruled over all of former Palestine. Unnoticed by the world, this brought about a version of a “single state solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — albeit one in which Palestinians and Jews do not have equal rights.

Instead, Israel has ruled the West Bank and Gaza Strip through military governments that control the daily lives of millions of Palestinians in every aspect, yet in which they have no say. Although Palestinians now elect representatives to a Palestinian Authority, these officials administer the tiny Gaza Strip, and less than 20 percent of the West Bank. Their powers scarcely exceed those of county supervisors.

Meanwhile, international opinion has steadily solidified behind a “two state solution.” In this scenario, independent Jewish and Palestinian states would divide the land between the Mediterranean coast and the River Jordan. By the mid-1970s, most states in the U.N. General Assembly supported Palestinian nationhood. In 1988, the PLO explicitly recognized Israel within its pre-1967 borders, agreeing to sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, together comprising just 22 percent of former Palestine.

The United States finally joined the bandwagon in 2002, when President Bush called for two democratic states living side by side in his “Roadmap to Peace.” Even Israel has signed on, although its conception of what territory and powers a Palestinian state should possess is more constrictive than anyone else’s.

Ironically, this unanimity, so laboriously assembled over decades, upholds a solution that is now impossible to achieve. Israel’s program of colonizing the West Bank has become irreversible, and the land base for a viable Palestinian state has disappeared. Some 450,000 Israeli settlers now occupy more than 140 settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. These Jewish settlements, the security swaths around them, the roads linking them to each other and to Israel, and the “separation wall” that pens Palestinians into discontiguous islands of land, cover more than 40 percent of the West Bank. Much of this is either private Palestinian property, seized without compensation, or state lands in which Palestinians hold traditional use rights that Israel refuses to respect.

Meanwhile, Israel’s colonizing juggernaut rolls ahead. Recently, plans to build 2,500 new homes for Israeli settlers east of Jerusalem were announced, and orders were given to continue construction of the “separation wall” in the Jordan Valley. There appears to be no political force capable of slowing, let alone halting, this movement.

A comforting illusion has been fostered that if Palestinians and Israelis could only be coaxed back into negotiations, the elusive two-state solution would somehow materialize. The interests of leaders on all sides are served by this fiction, although for different reasons. For President Bush, an appearance of progress toward Palestinian-Israeli peace quells hostility toward the United States in the Middle East, and eases policy options elsewhere in the region, including Iraq. The PLO leadership, personified in the hapless Mahmoud Abbas, staked its entire political legitimacy in the Oslo accords and the endless “peace process” it inaugurated. Abandoning negotiations toward a two-state solution would constitute an admission that it had led the Palestinians into a terrible dead-end. Israel mollifies the United States by engaging in the negotiation charade, exploits the continuing indeterminacy to continue colonizing the West Bank, and advances its strategic objective of permanent control over most or all of former Palestine. Like the shimmering waters of a desert mirage, the two-state solution moves just out of reach with every apparent advancing step.

The tragedy is that temporizing in the face of this inevitable truth ultimately serves neither Israeli Jews, nor Palestinian Arabs, nor Americans. Continued conflict in the region hurts the direct parties in obvious ways, and also deeply undermines the status of the United States in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Our reflexive support of Israel, even in its self-destructive policies, is a prime cause of hostility against us.

The number of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs living within the borders of former Palestine are now roughly equivalent, at just more than 5 million each. The question is: Will political power within this single political system continue to be exercised in what former ANC member and current South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils and others have described as an acute form of apartheid? Or will Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews enjoy equal rights and share power fairly in what is already a joint polity? For those who support peace, justice and respect for international law, the choice should be obvious.

George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law, and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.

Source: The New York Times

Rights Group Offers Grim View of C.I.A. Jails

By DOREEN CARVAJAL

Published: June 9, 2007

PARIS, June 8 — In a report on Friday, the lead investigator for the Council of Europe gave a bleak description of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency in Eastern Europe, with information he said was gleaned from anonymous intelligence agents.

Prisoners guarded by silent men in black masks and dark visors were held naked in cramped cells and shackled to walls, according to the report, which was prepared by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating C.I.A. operations for the Council of Europe, a 46-nation rights group.

Ventilation holes in the cells released bursts of hot or freezing air, with temperature used as a form of extreme pressure to wear down prisoners, the investigators found. Prisoners were also subjected to water-boarding, a form of simulated drowning, and relentless blasts of music and sound, from rap to cackling laughter and screams, the report says.

The report, which runs more than 100 pages, says the prisons were operated exclusively by Americans in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2006. It relies heavily on testimony from C.I.A. agents.

Critics in Poland and Romania attacked Mr. Marty’s use of anonymous sources and issued categorical denials, as they have done repeatedly. Denis MacShane, a British member of Parliament and longtime critic of Mr. Marty, complained that the investigator “makes grave allegations to two European Union member states, Poland and Romania, without any proof at all.”

Tomasz Szeratics, a spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “We shall not make any comments on Dick Marty’s latest report until we receive it officially and analyze the evidence presented. The Polish position remains unchanged and it is very clear: There were no secret C.I.A. detention centers on the territory of the Republic of Poland.”

But Mr. Marty said at a news conference in Paris that anonymous testimony was backed by thousands of flight records showing prisoner transfers, including private planes linked to the C.I.A. that made 10 flights from Afghanistan and Dubai to the Szczytno-Szymany International Airport in Poland between 2002 and 2005.

That was the closest airport to a Soviet-era military compound where about a dozen high-level terror suspects were jailed, the report charges. The local authorities formed secure buffer zones around the jails, which were operated exclusively by Americans, Mr. Marty reported.

Lower-level prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq were held at a military base near the Black Sea in Romania, the report says. The Romanians were restricted to the buffer zone.

“Our Romanian officers do not know what happened inside those areas because we sealed them off and we had control,” the report cites a senior military agent as saying.

The details of prison life were given by retired and current American intelligence agents who had been promised confidentiality, the report says.

Their motives were varied, Mr. Marty said. “For 15 years, I have interviewed people as an investigating magistrate and I have always noticed that at a certain point, people with secrets need to talk,” he said.

Others justified the grim treatment, the reports said, saying, in one instance: “Here’s my question. Was the guy a terrorist? ’Cause if he’s a terrorist, then I figure he got what was coming to him.”

According to the report, suspects were often held for months with no contact except with masked, silent guards who would push meals of cheese, potatoes and bread through hatches.

When prisoners resisted, the report says, one investigator considered it a welcome sign. “You know they are starting to crack,” he said, “So you hold out. You push them over the edge.”

Source: The New York Times

Secret Prisons in 2 Countries Held Qaeda Suspects, Report Says

By STEPHEN GREY and DOREEN CARVAJAL

Published: June 8, 2007

LONDON, June 7 — Investigators have confirmed the existence of clandestine C.I.A. prisons in Romania and Poland housing leading members of Al Qaeda, contends a new report from the Council of Europe, the European human rights monitoring agency.

Dick Marty, the Swiss senator leading the inquiry, said in a recent interview that his conclusions were based on information from intelligence agents on both sides of the Atlantic, including members of the C.I.A. counterterrorism center. The report is to be released on Friday.

The report says the jails operated from 2003 to 2005. “Large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice,” it says.

These suspects included Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed master planner for the Sept. 11 attacks; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a member of the Hamburg, Germany, cell that organized the conspiracy; and Abu Zubaida, believed to have been a senior figure in Al Qaeda.

The report says that some of the information comes from trusted intelligence agents, who reported directly to former President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland and to two former Romanian leaders, Ion Iliescu and Traian Basescu.

The governments of Poland and Romania have denied the existence of such prisons, and officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday. Poland has criticized Mr. Marty and his investigators in the past for not traveling there to investigate the compound that the report describes as a prison.

The current president, Lech Kaczynski, has said that since he came to power in December 2005 “there has been no secret prison — I am 100 percent sure of it,” adding, “I am assured there never were any in the past either.”

Romania has repeatedly denied the presence of a secret prison there.

But last year, President Bush acknowledged for the first time that terrorism suspects had been held in C.I.A.-run prisons overseas, without specifying where.

Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, said Thursday that, “While I’ve yet to see the report, Europe has been the source of grossly inaccurate allegations about the C.I.A. and counterterrorism,” and he added, “People should remember that Europeans have benefited from the agency’s bold, lawful work to disrupt terrorist plots.”

The report contends, “What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven.” An advance copy of the report was obtained by the British Channel 4 program “Dispatches” and provided to The New York Times.

Apart from the statements of what his report describes as former and serving intelligence agents, Mr. Marty quotes aviation records that he suggests provide detailed evidence of clandestine visits by C.I.A. planes to Szymany, in Poland; as well as the text of confidential military agreements signed between the United States and Romania that, he suggests, allowed the establishment of a C.I.A. base in the country.

Mr. Marty said the C.I.A.’s partners in establishing the secret prisons were the military intelligence agencies of both countries, which reported only to their presidents and defense ministers. Neither the countries’ prime ministers nor the two Parliaments’ intelligence committees were consulted or informed.

Prisoners in the secret jails were subjected to sleep deprivation and water-boarding, or simulated drowning, said Mr. Marty, who also said that the two jails had been divided into two categories.

The main C.I.A. jail was centered in a Soviet-era military compound at Stare Kjekuty, in northeastern Poland, where about a dozen high-level terrorism suspects were jailed, the report concludes. Lower-level prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq were held in a military base near the Black Sea in Romania, the report contends.

Jails were staffed entirely by the C.I.A., and local guards secured the perimeters, the report says. “The local authorities were not supposed to be aware of the exact number or the identities of the prisoners who passed through the facilities — this was information that they did not ‘need to know,’ ” the report said.

Mr. Marty said last month in an interview with the Swiss newspaper La Liberté that the report relied on information from disaffected C.I.A. agents and other intelligence officials on the other side of the Atlantic. Many of the agents said they were surprised that the prisons remained a secret for so many years. “They spoke to me because they found what was happening to be disgusting,” he was quoted as saying.

The report includes more specific conclusions than a study issued in June last year that contended that at least 14 European countries had accepted secret transfers of terrorism suspects by the United States. That report listed a web of landing points around the world that it said had been used by American authorities for its air network.

The new report contends that the C.I.A. took extraordinary measures to cover its activities. When C.I.A. jets flew to the Szymany airport in Poland, they used flight plans with “fictitious routes,” it says, giving no indication that the airport was the destination. Polish air traffic controllers — working with military intelligence — completed the cover-up, the report says.

Although the report singled out Poland and Romania, it said that it could not rule out the possibility that other European countries permitted these jails to operate.

Among its accusations, this report said NATO agreements, under the guise of waging a “war on terror,” provided the framework that the C.I.A. used to expand its European operations after Sept. 11.

The Marty report says it would be pointless for researchers to visit the Polish compound because “we have no doubts about the capability of those who would have removed any traces of the prisoner’s presence.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

Sources:

https://sudhan.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=59

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/mayjun_07/0507001.htmlThe rapid course of events that had started unfolding in the second half of 1989 in Eastern Europe eventually culminated in the disintegration of the Soviet Union by the end of 1991. These colossal changes in the former Eastern bloc countries undoubtedly constitute one of the major turning points in the history of the twentieth century. In view of the epochal changes that had taken place, political observers asked questions, such as: What will be the final outcome of these developments? What sort of new global order will emerge to replace the former balance of power between the East and the West? How is the United States as the sole superpower going to behave in relation to those countries that choose to follow their independent socio-economic developments, stand for their national interests or refuse to bow to the U.S. domination and pressure? As it turned out, no one had to wait long for the answers. The events during the last fourteen years are before us. They have revealed clearly the shape of international developments.

Let us take a quick glance at some of the events. We have seen how during the course of the last sixteen years the U.S. has virtually monopolized the United Nations and started to use it to dictate its decrees in the international organization. In the first place, this ploy succeeds because it gives the appearance of legalistic formality to the American conduct before the silent majority in the international community who in any case has little or no effective influence on the major decisions, which are taken in the Security Council. Secondly, this practice has been closely associated with asserting the full weight of the U.S., the only superpower in the international arena. The foundation of this role is to protect and increase the sphere of the U.S. interests. These, in any case, are not confined to any fixed area or location; they extend to the whole world in general, and in particular, the oil-rich countries of the Middles East. At the same time, only the U.S. can define and proclaim its national interests in any manner it chooses to do so. This assertion of supra-national interests is backed by the most destructive military arsenal and prowess in the human history as well as by using the policy of terror and intimidation against those countries that dare to defy the United States diktat.

continued…

Aska Draft Registration Freeze
scott@draftresistance.org

This site is a crime against the Military Selective Service Act. It advocates. We are specifically encouraging resistance to the registration laws of the United States, seeing registration as the necessary step toward conscription (the draft). We are what the Selective Service calls ‘anti-war intellectuals.’ We see the direct link between registration, the draft, and aggressive war. Remember, non- registration is the strategy to beat the draft. If enough of us refuse, there is nothing they can do!
— Scott A Kohlhaas

Defining patriotism

EDITORIAL – Ron Paul before the U.S. House of Representatives, May 22, 2007

Read more…

Posted on May 24, 07 | 9:24 pm

The truth is getting him fired VA says the rules will cost agency a valued worker

VA says the rules will cost agency a valued worker

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Posted on May 11, 07 | 7:44 pm

The Draft and Dirigibles

A highly-qualified Veteran’s Administration employee is being fired for failure to register with the Selective Service.

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Posted on May 11, 07 | 7:42 pm

Amman opts to resume military conscription

Jordan has decided to resume limited military conscription for men and women.

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Posted on Mar 08, 07 | 3:44 pm

AFP Conscripts prepare to boost Eritrea’s defences on tense border

For Eritrea, a nation that has spent most of the past half-century in bloody battles against arch-foe and large neighbour Ethiopia, war worries are never far from people’s minds.

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Posted on Mar 01, 07 | 3:33 pm

SELECTIVE SERVICE STUDIED RAPID-FIRE DRAFT PLAN

The Selective Service System last year studied whether it should revert to a Cold War-era plan of being able to draft people within 13 days of a crisis, compared to its current goal of carrying it out within six months.

Read more…

Posted on Feb 25, 07 | 7:43 pm

Regiment is in ‘parlous state’, MP tells House of Commons

A British MP has launched a stinging attack on the Bermuda Regiment in the House of Commons.
Anti-conscription campaigner Andrew MacKinlay – a member of the ruling Labour Party – said the Regiment was in a “parlous state”.

Read more…

Posted on Feb 18, 07 | 11:15 pm

Source: CounterPunch.org

Why Did Bush Invade Iraq?

The Secret War

BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

American soldiers have been fighting and dying in Iraq since 2003, and Americans do not know why.

All the reasons President Bush gave us for his war are false. Bush said he invaded Iraq “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people.”

We now know that these were false claims. Disinformation about Iraq was produced by a special unit within the Pentagon run by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith. The unit operated outside the normal intelligence channels of the CIA and DIA. Its purpose was to create false intelligence to enable Bush to initiate war with Iraq.

Did President Bush know that the claims put into his speeches by his speechwriters was false?

Who instructed Bush’s speechwriters to incorporate known lies into the President’s speeches?

Why did Vice President Cheney, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and the Secretary of Defense all lie to the American people and to the entire world?

What is the real agenda?

Millions of Americans have come to their own conclusions about the reasons for Bush’s invasion: (1) Oil: the US government wants to hold on to power by expanding its control over oil, and Bush and Cheney want to reward their oil company cronies. (2) Military-security complex: Police agencies favor war as a means of expanding their power, and military industries favor war as a means of expanding their profits. (3) Neoconservative ideology: Neocons’ believe in “American exceptionalism” and claim that America’s virtue gives the US government the right and the obligation to impose US hegemony on the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East where independent Muslim states object to Israel’s theft of Palestine. (4) Karl Rove: Rove used the “war president” role to rescue Bush from attack by Democrats as an illegitimate president elected by one vote of the US Supreme Court. (5) American self-righteousness over 9/11 and lust for revenge.

All of these reasons came together to make a cruel war on an innocent people.

There may be other reasons about which we know not.

As it is now recognized that every reason for the war is false or illegitimate, the question is: why does Bush insist on persisting with a costly war, the express reasons for which are now known to be mistakes? There were no weapons of mass destruction, no connections to al Qaeda, and Bush has installed a puppet Iraqi government that cannot venture outside the heavily fortified and US protected “green zone.” The Iraqi government governs nothing.

War without cause is murder, not war.

That Bush persists with a war for which he can provide no legitimate reason indicates that there is a secret agenda that has not been shared with the American people. Are we experiencing the privatization of the US government by police agencies, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby?

That the American people and their elected representatives continue to tolerate a war that has killed and maimed thousands of their own soldiers, destroyed the infrastructure of a country,

killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and created 4 million refugees for no known reason raises serious questions about the morals of the American people.

Is the impotence of the peace movement due to the power of the Israel Lobby or have Americans become morally degenerate as commentators increasingly assert?

One indication would be the response of presidential candidates to the gratuitous and failed war. What we saw at the Republican presidential candidates’ debate on June 5 is inconsistent with the self-esteem of the American people. All of the leading Republican presidential candidates openly and nonchalantly endorsed using nuclear weapons against Iran unless Iran abandons its right to enrich uranium under the non-proliferation treaty, to which Iran is a signatory (unlike nuclear-armed Israel, India, and US puppet Pakistan).

What is moral degeneracy if it is not using nuclear weapons to murder masses of innocent civilians and spread deadly radioactivity over vast areas merely in order to force a country to do as we order? If this isn’t barbarism, what is barbarism?

Do the American people realize that the frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination are monsters who want to murder people who have done us no harm?

After five years of war that has achieved no noble purpose, no valid aim, indeed, no aim at all except perhaps Osama bin Laden’s aim of stirring up uncontrollable strife in the Middle East, how can Republicans cheer for candidates who preach a wider war and the use of nuclear weapons against defenseless people?

Is the approval lavished on Republican presidential candidates, who are willing to use nuclear weapons as means of terrorizing Muslim peoples, an indication that the American people have morphed into inhuman monsters?

If not, what does it indicate? Ignorant fanaticism? Paranoia? Blind hatred? The belief that no one is of any value but Americans?

For six and one-half years the Bush Regime has relied on coercion, intimidation, war, and threats of war. Diplomacy and good will have been shunned. The regime’s blatant warmongering has resurrected the nuclear arms race. China and Russia regard America’s drive for world hegemony with great alarm. China has put nuclear ICBMs on mobile platforms to increase their survivability in event of an American attack. Russia has developed new multi-warhead ICBMs, which can penetrate any known missile defense, and new cruise missiles that Putin says will be targeted on Europe if the US persists in its aggressive military encirclement of Russia.

An administration that resurrects the threat of nuclear Armageddon so that its cronies in the military-security complex can become still richer is evil beyond compare.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com