Peace and Justice Post

Reuters | July 6, 2007
Anthony Boadle

The closest the CIA came to killing Cuba’s Fidel Castro was a 1963 attempt with a poison pill delivered by American mobsters that was to be slipped into a chocolate milkshake, a former Cuban intelligence chief said.

But the capsule stuck to the freezer where it was hidden in the cafeteria of the Havana Libre (ex Hilton) Hotel and ripped open when the would-be assassin waiter went to get the poison.

“That moment was the closest the CIA got to assassinating Fidel,” retired state security general Fabian Escalante told Reuters in an interview this week.

Castro, who seized power in a 1959 revolution that turned Cuba into a communist state 90 miles away from the United States, has survived hundreds of attempts on his life by his enemies, from car ambushes to grenade attacks in baseball stadiums, Escalante said.

Some of the most imaginative cloak-and-dagger plots were the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, he said.

They included poisoned cigars, an exploding shell meant to be planted in his favorite underwater fishing location and a scuba diving wet suit tainted with toxins.

Among early attempts devised by the CIA to discredit Castro was a plan to place chemical powders on his boots that would cause his beard to fall out when he was in New York to speak at the United Nations in 1960.

When that failed, the CIA planned to slip him a box of cigars tainted with LSD so that he would burst into fits of laughter during a television interview, said Escalante, author of a book that documents 167 plots against Castro.

But it was the CIA’s plans to poison Castro with botulinum toxins in the early 1960s that came closest to succeeding.

The agency acknowledged last week for the first time that the plot to assassinate Castro was personally approved by the Kennedy administration’s CIA director Allen Dulles.

“FAMILY JEWELS”

The CIA declassified nearly 700 pages of secret records detailing some of its illegal acts during 25 years of overseas assassination attempts and domestic spying.

The agency’s so-called “Family Jewels” describe the initial efforts to get rid of Castro by using a go-between to convince two top mobsters, Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficant, the head of the Mafia’s Cuban casino operations, to assassinate Castro. Giancana suggested poisoning him.

Six potent pills were provided in 1961 to Juan Orta, identified as a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from gambling interests, who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind. But Orta got cold feet.

Escalante said more poisoned pills, one batch disguised in a bottle of Bayer aspirins, were delivered through the Mafia to an opposition group that almost succeeded in March 1963 when Castro went for a milkshake.

Much of the information declassified by the CIA had been released in congressional investigations in the past.

Escalante, who detailed the poison pill plot in his book “The Secret War” published in 2005, said the agency was trying to “purify” itself but continues its skulduggery today.

While there is no evidence that the CIA has plotted to kill Castro since the Ford Administration banned assassination plots against foreign leaders in 1976, Escalante sees the hand of the CIA in more recent attempts by anti-Castro militants trained by the agency for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

Despite U.S. hostility, Castro remains Cuban leader at age 80, although bowel surgery forced him to hand over formal power to his brother Raul last July.

Escalante said effective Cuban security measures around Castro and the Cuban leader’s intuitive “nose” for danger has kept him alive.

To this day, few Cubans know Castro’s whereabouts, whether he is in a hospital or at home in a residential compound in western Havana called “Point Zero.”

WASHINGTON (AFP), 07-06-2007,

Nearly half of the US public wants President George W. Bush to face impeachment, and even more favor that fate for Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a poll out Friday. The survey by the American Research Group found that 45 percent support the US House of Representatives beginning impeachment proceedings against Bush, with 46 percent opposed, and a 54-40 split in favor when it comes to Cheney. The study by the private New Hampshire-based ARG canvassed 1,100 Americans by telephone July 3-5 and had an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points. The findings are available on ARG’s Internet site. The White House declined to comment on the poll, the latest bad news for a president who has seen his public opinion standings dragged to record lows by the unpopular war in Iraq. The US Constitution says presidents and vice presidents can be impeached — that is, formally charged by the House — for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” by a simple majority vote. Conviction by the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority, means removal from office. Just two US presidents have been impeached: Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 and acquitted in 1999; Andrew Johnson was impeached and acquitted in 1868. Disgraced president Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 when a House impeachment vote appeared likely. In late April, left-wing Representative Dennis Kucinich, a long-shot Democratic presidential hopeful, introduced a resolution calling for Cheney’s impeachment. To date, the measure has nine listed co-sponsors and a 10th set to sign on when the House returns to work next week. But Democratic leaders appear unlikely to pursue such a course.

Source: Nieman Watchdog, July 05, 2007

Supporting the troops’ means withdrawing them

Gen. William Odom writes that opponents of the war should focus public attention on the fact that Bush’s obstinate refusal to admit defeat is causing the troops enormous psychological as well as physical harm.

By William E. Odom
diane@hudson.org

Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to “support the troops.”

Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what “supporting the troops” means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.

No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called “post-traumatic stress disorders.” In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don’t seem to occur during the first half of a unit’s deployment in Iraq.

After the first year, following a few months back home, these same soldiers are sent back for a second year, then a third year, and now, many are facing a fourth deployment! Little wonder more and more soldiers and veterans are psychologically disabled.

And the damage is not just to enlisted soldiers. Many officers are suffering serious post-traumatic stress disorders but are hesitant to report it – with good reason. An officer who needs psychiatric care and lets it appear on his medical records has most probably ended his career. He will be considered not sufficiently stable to lead troops. Thus officers are strongly inclined to avoid treatment and to hide their problems.

There are only two ways to fix this problem, both of which the president stubbornly rejects. Instead, his recent “surge” tactic has compelled the secretary of defense to extend Army tours to 15 months! (The Marines have been allowed to retain their six-month deployment policy and, not surprisingly, have fewer cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome.)

The first solution would be to expand the size of the Army to two or three times its present level, allowing shorter combat tours and much longer breaks between deployments. That cannot be done rapidly enough today, even if military conscription were restored and new recruits made abundant. It would take more than a year to organize and train a dozen new brigade combat teams. The Clinton administration cut the Army end strength by about 40 percent – from about 770,000 to 470,000 during the 1990s. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld looked for ways to make the cuts even deeper. Thus this administration and its predecessor aggressively gave up ground forces and tactical air forces while maintaining large maritime forces that cannot be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, the lack of wisdom in that change in force structure is being paid for not by President Bush or President Clinton but by the ordinary soldier and his family. They have no lobby group to seek relief for them.

The second way to alleviate the problem is to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as possible and as securely as possible. The electorate understands this. That is why a majority of voters favor withdrawing from Iraq.

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine “supporting the troops” as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for “not supporting the troops” where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

The public is ahead of the both branches of government in grasping this reality, but political leaders and opinion makers in the media must give them greater voice.

Congress clearly and indisputably has two powers over the executive: the power of the purse and the power to impeach. Instead of using either, members of congress are wasting their time discussing feckless measures like a bill that “de-authorizes the war in Iraq.” That is toothless unless it is matched by a cut-off of funds.

The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years.

To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, the first step should be to rally the public by providing an honest and candid definition of what “supporting the troops” really means and pointing out who is and who is not supporting our troops at war. The next step should be a flat refusal to appropriate money for to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations with a clear deadline for completion.

The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceeding will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the “high crime” of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. E-mail: diane@hudson.org

The Electronic Intifada, 6 July 2007

By Osamah Khalil,

Palestinian students take part in a demonstration marking the 59th anniversary of the Nakba in the West Bank city of Nablus, 15 May 2007. (Rami Swidan/MaanImages)

No time in the recent history of the Palestinian people has appeared darker or more devoid of hope. Internally divided, splintered across the globe, and lacking effective representation, the Palestinian national movement is arguably at the lowest point in its history. Moreover, Palestine today serves as the harbinger of the future of an Arab world under siege, occupied by external forces allied with internal collaborators intent on sowing and feeding divisions. Outside of Palestine, refugees and exiles are under constant threat and pressure from Arab regimes and Western governments, with little or no support from the traditional institutions which once represented them on the world stage. Yet, if there is to be hope it is in the desiccated and ostensibly defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to which Palestinians must turn. The time has come for Palestinians globally to regain and reinvigorate the institution that the world still recognizes as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

This process begins with the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. All Palestinians living under the 41st year of their occupation in the West Bank and Gaza must declare that they will no longer be a party to their own occupation. That they will not allow Israel to illegally withhold their tax revenues, while launching repeated incursions and invasions killing with virtual impunity. Nor will they permit representatives of their “government’ to benefit financially and politically from Israel’s occupation, from the construction of Israel’s apartheid wall to the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land and the suppression of political activity. For American President George W. Bush’s favored sons — Mahmoud Abbas, Salam Fayyad, Mohammad Dahlan and their ilk — to resign with what little dignity that remains and leave Palestine for whatever shore will take them, in order to allow a new PLO to emerge not tainted by the stench of corruption and collusion. Any government which is beholden to the financial and military support of its peoples’ enemies is not deserving of either the title “Palestinian” or “Authority.” Indeed, the time for this grotesque charade to end is now and it is long overdue.

Full article

Global Research, July 5, 2007 by Stephen Lendman

Britain’s most despised and discredited man ended his 10 year reign June 27 when he stepped down from office transferring his ruling Labor Party’s leadership to successor Gordon Brown. He had no choice because of seething public displeasure over his allying with George Bush’s illegal wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. Most Brits oppose them, yet the vast majority of Labor and Conservative MPs, including new prime minister Gordon Brown, supported them early on, now may have second thoughts, but are constrained by close relations with Washington making them reluctant to back down from what they once disingenuously trumpeted as a noble cause. That’s an open question, however, the London Guardian’s Jonathan Steele posed and answered June 29 if Mr. Brown was listening. Steele’s message to “The new man in No 10” is “seize the day….break with Bush now….signal a fresh start by taking Britain out of Iraq.” Don’t bet on it. Steele says Brown is a committed “Atlanticist.” He’s likely weighing the proper way to begin engaging his US ally. Steele tells him how, pointing to other loyal NATO members as examples. France and Germany sent no forces to Iraq, and Italy, Spain and the Netherlands withdrew theirs. It caused no rupture in relations with Washington for any of them after some name calling at first. Why not Britain now? Steele stresses how refreshing a policy change at “No 10” would be “after the subservient Blair years.” Tony Blair began his tenure May 2, 1997 with a formidable approval rating as high at times as 90% but ended it in the mid-20% range or lower. The same is likely for George Bush already at 26% in the latest Newsweek poll suggesting it’s even lower than that. Immediately post-9/11, he was compared to Lincoln, FDR and Churchill combined. It was laughable then and seems ludicrous now for a hated man barely hanging on and trying to avoid what growing numbers in the country demand – his removal from office by impeachment along with Vice-President Cheney. The feeling of many in Britain is that by allying with George Bush, Mr. Blair left a legacy of “dashed hopes and big disappointments, of so much promised and so little delivered.” That’s in spite of helping advance the Northern Ireland peace process, begun before he took office, and that leaders in Ireland had lots more to do with than him. Just hours after standing down, the announcement everyone knew in advance came, surprising no one but angering most. Referring to the so-called Quartet, the BBC reported June 27: “Tony Blair is to become a Middle East envoy working on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU.” The London Guardian called him “the Quartet’s fifth horseman,” an appointment that “beggars belief.” In his new capacity, he’ll replace former World Bank president James Wolfensohn who resigned last year for lack of progress he never had a chance to achieve in the first place. Neither will Mr. Blair, nor will he try to, as Alvaro de Soto, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and envoy to the Quartet, explained in his leaked End of Mission Report. It noted Wolfensohn was originally to cover the entire peace process, but what emerged for him was a narrowly constricted role. De Soto said he was “highjacked….by US envoys and (Secretary Condoleezza) Rice.” As a result, Wolfensohn stepped down from his job in April, 2006 with “a more jaundiced view of Israel (and US) policies than he had upon entering.” Based on his sordid war criminal record post-9/11, Tony Blair won’t likely have the qualms that got James Wolfensohn to resign his job. He’s taking it to reinvent himself, but that’s no more likely than convincing carnivores to become vegetarians. He’ll first visit Ramallah in the West Bank, showing up as a Trojan horse fooling no one about what’s behind his slick-tongued hypocrisy.   Full article

CounterPunch, July 6, 2007

Scooter Libby and Mordechai Vanunu

By Daniel Ellsberg

On the day that Scooter Libby’s prison sentence was lifted by President Bush, Mordechai Vanunu was sentenced to prison, again, in Israel. In both cases, the underlying offense was the same: speaking to journalists. In each case, the nominal charges were otherwise. For Libby, lying under oath about the circumstances, thereby obstructing justice. For Vanunu, it was breaking a restriction laid upon him when he emerged from prison three years ago, after serving an earlier full sentence of eighteen years, also for speaking to journalists: he was ordered not to speak, at all, to journalists or foreigners. Like a free man, he did both, openly and repeatedly.

But whereas Libby had passed classified information, and Vanunu had served his earlier sentence for doing the same, in this instance Vanunu was not charged with revealing any secrets. The transcripts or published accounts of his conversations being available, it was open knowledge that what he had mainly talked about was the truth of his personal convictions about nuclear weapons: that they should universally be abolished, Israel’s among them.

Perjury, with the intent and effect of obstructing justice (successfully, as it happens, in Libby’s case) is an ancient, established crime under virtually any system of justice. Vanunu’s act of speaking his mind freely is not, under existing international human rights law. Nor is it a domestic crime in other democratic societies. These were not conditions of parole, as frequently misstated. Vanunu was not paroled from prison for his earlier conviction, but served his full sentence of eighteen years, eleven and a half of them in solitary confinement. Therefore, under most systems of criminal justice, he should have been subject to no further restrictions or requirements.

What, then, was the legal status of the restrictions which he has now been sentenced for violating? The answer is that the Israeli law under which his speech and movement are restricted is an unmodified relic of the British Mandate period in Palestine, i.e. a colonial regulation. Nothing like it exists in any other democracy in the world. It is as if the young United States had re-enacted the British oppressions and restrictions that lead to the revolution, and that were condemned in the Declaration of Independence and banned in the Bill of Rights. Vanunu mordantly reflected on hearing his new sentence that perhaps his appeal should be to the Queen of England.

Continue

CounterPunch.org, July 5, 2006

Media Silent About the Carnage in Iraq

Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

BY Michael Schwartz
A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded that–as of a year ago–600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.

The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as “methodologically flawed,” even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study’s findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was “a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones”; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).

Reputable researchers have accepted the Lancet study’s results as valid with virtually no dissent. Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized it in a particularly vivid comment: “the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.”

…Full article

Al-Ahram Weekly, 5-11 July 2007

Sukant Chandan argues that the recent botched terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow are the result of Britain’s botched imperial designs against the Muslim world

 

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Following unsuccessful car-bomb attacks in London and Glasgow on the first day in office of the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, debate in Britain revolves around two main issues: are Muslims justified in arguing that Islam and Islamic countries are victims of a Western plot of domination and aggression, and is the invasion and occupation of Iraq the cause of the radicalisation of Muslim youth and the growth of militant Jihadi networks planning attacks in Britain?What is at stake is the very relationship between the Muslim communities, the white community and the British state.

The process of mutual understanding and dialogue will escape us so long as the British government, the mainstream media and the public are in denial over the fact that strained relations between the Muslim community and the British state must be seen primarily within the context of British government policy vis-à-vis Muslims and Islam across the world, especially in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Further violence and conflict will continue both in Britain and the Middle East if this state of denial and lack of mutual respect continue.

In the post-WWII period, it was the war in Vietnam which epitomised the relationship between not only East and West, but also North and South. Since the collapse of the Socialist Bloc this relationship has been symbolised by the wars and occupations of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Indeed the 1990 US-led aggression against Iraq was the US’s signal to the rest of the world that it was establishing its world hegemony, or New World Order in the words of Bush Senior. The Middle East continues to be the epicentre of this battle between the poor and rich nations, the North and South. The attacks in London and Glasgow took place against a stark backdrop of occupation and resistance in the Middle East and the ludicrous appointment of Tony Blair as a Middle East peace envoy by the Quartet. Al-Quds Al-Arabi ‘s Editor-in-Chief Abdul-Bari Atwan suggested that “the only reception befitting of Blair is with rotten eggs and tomatoes.”

Instead of a reasoned public debate about the root causes of Arab and Muslim anger against Western foreign policy, Blair set the boundaries of the public debate in blaming the victims. In what was probably the most vicious of a long line of attacks on Muslims and their identity and beliefs, Blair insists: “it’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.” This is typical of Blair, the ideological spokesperson of the West’s “civilising mission” against Muslims and Arabs, but it is given further credence when Muslim voices echo Blair. One Hassan Butt has obliged and been prominent in the print and TV media.

Butt, a former member of the now disbanded militant British pro-Jihadi group Al-Muhajiroun, said in The Observer on 1 July that Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their identity through their dress, construction of mosques and equal rights before the law. Butt, the spokesperson for the model Western civilised Muslim, helps to confirm The Observer ‘s editorial on the same day which assures us that “the West does not want to dominate the lands of Islam.” Meanwhile, he helps to confirm the misplaced fears of many that Islam is blindly violent to non-Muslims, referring casually to “those passages of the Quran which instruct on killing unbelievers”.

The underlying cause of the growth of political Islam is Western policy in the Middle East. Instead of recognising this simple fact, the terrorist activities of a handful of frustrated militants are used to trivialise any notion that Muslims may have a convincing case for their concerns. The attacks in London and Glasgow are being used by some to argue that the widespread solidarity for those resisting occupation in the Middle East in the Muslim community is really support for Al-Qaeda-type armed attacks against civilians in this country.

The subtext is that Western tolerance towards Muslims and Islam requires that they confine themselves to praying quietly, dressing as they like, and respecting the law, but in no way should Muslims or anyone else support the rights of Arab and Middle Eastern people to end occupation. If they do, they are branded terrorist sympathisers. Rather, Muslims and the public in general are told time and time again that there is no project to dominate the Middle East, whilst every season sees a new campaign against a Middle Eastern country. Attacks in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, regime- change threats against Sudan, Syria and Iran, a secret international network of US prisons for Muslim men, women and children, the obscenity that is Camp X-Ray, and the sadistic humiliation and torture at Abu Ghraib prison… What else is necessary to prove that Arabs and Muslims who stand up for the independence of their countries and their identity are being victimised?

The Middle East was the last region of the world to be conquered by the colonial powers. It continues to be the most difficult to subdue, but is a crucial region for the West to control due to its geographical proximity and oil. It is so important, and acquiescence to control it is so important, the very act of resisting US, British and Israeli aggression and occupation is therefore in effect a crime in the eyes of the West.

In this context and due to the related terrorism laws here, most of the Muslim community is afraid to get involved in legitimate democratic political activity. Those who are involved, even the most mainstream organisations, have to constantly defend themselves from attempts at criminalisation from the more hawkish sections of the British state. Rather than victimising dissenters, true believers in British democracy should be trying to show that democracy can work; they should involve them in consultation with the authorities and in light of this apply a wiser policy in the interests of all parties.

What is taking place instead is polarisation between the British authorities and the Muslim community. A small section of Muslim youth here see that, on the one hand, democratic methods such as lobbying and marching in the millions does not shift British policies one iota, and that mainstream Muslim organisations are ignored and even attacked despite all their meetings with panels and committees with the British authorities. It is no wonder then that in the face of the unabated suffering of their brothers and sisters in the Middle East, some sympathise and a few even take up the strategy espoused by Al-Qaeda of refusing the West security as long as Muslims are denied security through occupation and aggression. This emergence of the more extreme and violent methods of protest when legal protests fail was infamously explained by Mohamed Siddiq Khan in his video before the bomb attacks that he led on 7 July 2005: “our words have no impact upon you, therefore I’m going to talk to you in a language that you understand. Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood.”

This Al-Qaeda political strategy of treating violence with violence is not unique to militant Islam: it was most recently employed in England by the Irish Republican Army and by secular Palestinian nationalists in the 1970s amongst others. It is the “shock and awe” of the weak. When peaceful and democratic means to resolve conflicts and grievances are allowed to fail by those who have the power to resolve conflicts, it is inevitable that some will try other means.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is clearly setting a markedly different tone to that of the comparatively hawkish and offensive former PM Tony Blair. Unlike Blair, Brown has not so far opportunistically encouraged the media and authorities to take advantage of this situation to immediately justify the strengthening of the terrorism laws and encourage an atmosphere where Islamophobia flourishes. However, on all the most important issues of foreign policy in the Middle East there is no sign that Brown will be moving away from the policies of his predecessor. Whether or not the attacks in London and Glasgow are Al-Qaeda-inspired, Brown should understand that these attacks are inevitable when one nation occupies and creates calamities in another nation.

Continue

Source: RINF.com

Thursday, July 5th, 2007

Australia has admitted for the first time that securing the supply of oil is a key motive for its involvement in the US-led war in Iraq.

Brendan Nelson, the defence minister, said “energy security” was one of the main priorities behind his country’s support for the war, which is unpopular among Australians.

His remarks add weight to war protesters’ arguments that the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was aimed at grabbing the country’s oil supplies rather than a bid to counter the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which later proved to be non-existent.

Nelson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Australia’s priorities were set out in a defence and security review being released on Thursday ”and resource security is one of them”.

US ‘prestige’

He said: “Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq, but the entire region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world.

”… it’s extremely important that Australia take the view that it’s in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security.”

Nelson also said it was important to support the “prestige” of the US and UK.

“We’re also there to support our key ally – that’s the United States of America – and we’re there to ensure that we don’t have terrorism driven from Iraq which would destabilise our own region,” he said.

Howard criticised

His comments contrast with those made by John Howard, the Australian prime minister, on the eve of the Iraq invasion in February 2003 when he denied the war was linked to oil.

He said at the time: “It [the war] is about the danger to Australia if countries like Iraq continue to have chemical and biological weapons, and those weapons get into the hands of international terrorists – that fundamentally is what this is about.”

The opposition Labor Party, which wants to withdraw Australia’s troops from Iraq, said the government’s admission contradicted its statements before the invasion.

Kevin Rudd, the opposition leader, said on Thursday: “When Mr Howard was asked back in 2003 whether this war had anything to do with oil, Mr Howard said in no way did it have anything to do with oil.

“This government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq.”

China ‘threat’

Meanwhile, John Howard said on Thursday that China’s rapid military expansion risked causing greater instability in the region.

“The pace and scope of its military modernisation, particularly the development of new and disruptive capabilities such as the anti-satellite missile, could create misunderstandings and instability in the region,” he said at the launch of the new defence paper.

Beijing has overtaken Japan as Australia’s top trading partner and Canberra has been reticent to comment on China’s military and economic development.

But with Washington viewing Canberra’s close relationship with Beijing with some concern, the document launched by Howard brings his government into closer step with Japan and the US – both partners with Australia in security pacts.

Howard, who has committed Australia’s military to a $43bn build-up, said Canberra had buried the “self-defeating” idea that Australia’s military should be based on home defence.

“It needs to be able to defend our mainland and approaches in the unlikely event these ever come under direct military threat.

“But it must also be capable of conducting substantial operations in our immediate region, whether alone or as the leader of a coalition, and of making meaningful military contributions as a member of coalitions further abroad.”

Source: War In Iraq

“Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the ‘wall of separation between church and state,’ therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.” – Former US President Thomas Jefferson

President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God’s end-of-days plan, according to close observers.
Historians and investigative journalists following the “end-time Christian” movement have grown alarmed at the impact it may be having on Bush’s Middle East policies, including the current war in Iraq, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the strife in Lebanon and the administration’s repeated attempts to find a cause for war against Iran.

Many people are aware that Bush is “the most aggressively religious president in American History,” as eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described him, (Schlesinger, “War and the Presidency,” 143) but most remain without a clue to what this actually means.

One piece of evidence is Bush’s funneling billions of dollars to “faith-based” organizations. Faith offices making grants are now so widespread inside government agencies that federal watchdog officials have serious difficulties accounting for how much money has actually been spent. (Goldberg, “Kingdom Coming” 121). Marvin Olasky, a devotee of end-time theology, designed Bush’s faith-based welfare concept. See also Goldberg, “Kingdom Coming,” 110.

Further evidence is the Bush administration’s transformation of the military. Until complaints forced its removal, a religious recruitment video made by a group called the Christian Embassy appeared on the Department of Defense web site. The video included interviews made inside the Pentagon with seven high-ranking military officers, congressmen, other federal officials and even the Christian Ethiopian ambassador to the US about their personal relationship with Christ. Army Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin made headlines in 2003 when he said he believed America was engaged in a holy war as a “Christian nation” battling Satan. Adversaries can be defeated, he said, “only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” Despite his highly publicized rhetoric, Boykin remains Bush’s deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Beneath Bush’s benign-sounding words, “faith” and “Christian,” lies the deeper reality of the authoritarian, doomsday religious beliefs of the ministers and spiritual counselors that surround him, say experts. Officially he has been at pains to show an openness traditionally expected of an American president. Typical is his assertion in a speech at a National Prayer Breakfast found on the White House website: “There’s another part of our heritage we are showing in Iraq, and that is the great American tradition of religious tolerance. The Iraqi people are mostly Muslims, and we respect the faith they practice.” However, experts point out the particular brand of Christianity that permeates Bush’s environment is anything but tolerant. For example, Bush’s own personal minister, Franklin Graham, has called Islam “evil and very wicked.” He has said, “Let’s use the weapons we have, the weapons of mass destruction if need be, and destroy the enemy.”

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