El Jefe on Internationalising Genocide

And Other Reflections on the Internationalization of Genocide: Where Have All the Bees Gone?
By FIDEL CASTRO

The Camp David meeting has just come to an end. All of us followed the press conference offered by the presidents of the United States and Brazil attentively, as we did the news surrounding the meeting and the opinions voiced in this connection.

Faced with demands related to customs duties and subsidies which protect and support US ethanol production, Bush did not make the slightest concession to his Brazilian guest at Camp David.

President Lula attributed to this the rise in corn prices, which, according to his own statements, had gone up more than 85 percent.

Before these statements were made, the Washington Post had published an article by the Brazilian leader which expounded on the idea of transforming food into fuel.

It is not my intention to hurt Brazil or to meddle in the internal affairs of this great country. It was in effect in Rio de Janeiro, host of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, exactly 15 years ago, where I delivered a 7-minute speech vehemently denouncing the environmental dangers that menaced our species' survival. Bush Sr., then President of the United States, was present at that meeting and applauded my words out of courtesy; all other presidents there applauded, too.

No one at Camp David answered the fundamental question. Where are the more than 500 million tons of corn and other cereals which the United States, Europe and wealthy nations require to produce the gallons of ethanol that big companies in the United States and other countries demand in exchange for their voluminous investments going to be produced and who is going to supply them? Where are the soy, sunflower and rape seeds, whose essential oils these same, wealthy nations are to turn into fuel, going to be produced and who will produce them?

Some countries are food producers which export their surpluses. The balance of exporters and consumers had already become precarious before this and food prices had skyrocketed. In the interests of brevity, I shall limit myself to pointing out the following:

According to recent data, the five chief producers of corn, barley, sorghum, rye, millet and oats which Bush wants to transform into the raw material of ethanol production, supply the world market with 679 million tons of these products. Similarly, the five chief consumers, some of which also produce these grains, currently require 604 million annual tons of these products. The available surplus is less than 80 million tons of grain.

This colossal squandering of cereals destined to fuel production -and these estimates do not include data on oily seeds-shall serve to save rich countries less than 15 percent of the total annual consumption of their voracious automobiles.

At Camp David, Bush declared his intention of applying this formula around the world. This spells nothing other than the internationalization of genocide.

In his statements, published by the Washington Post on the eve of the Camp David meeting, the Brazilian president affirmed that less than one percent of Brazil's arable land was used to grow cane destined to ethanol production. This is nearly three times the land surface Cuba used when it produced nearly 10 million tons of sugar a year, before the crisis that befell the Soviet Union and the advent of climate changes.

Our country has been producing and exporting sugar for a longer time. First, on the basis of the work of slaves, whose numbers swelled to over 300 thousand in the first years of the 19th century and who turned the Spanish colony into the world's number one exporter. Nearly one hundred years later, at the beginning of the 20th century, when Cuba was a pseudo-republic which had been denied full independence by US interventionism, it was immigrants from the West Indies and illiterate Cubans alone who bore the burden of growing and harvesting sugarcane on the island. The scourge of our people was the off-season, inherent to the cyclical nature of the harvest. Sugarcane plantations were the property of US companies or powerful Cuban-born landowners. Cuba, thus, has more experience than anyone as regards the social impact of this crop.

This past Sunday, April 1, CNN televised the opinions of Brazilian experts who affirm that many lands destined to sugarcane have been purchased by wealthy Americans and Europeans.

As part of my reflections on the subject, published on March 29, I expounded on the impact climate change has had on Cuba and on other basic characteristics of our country's climate which contribute to this.

On our poor and anything but consumerist island, one would be unable to find enough workers to endure the rigors of the harvest and to care for the sugarcane plantations in the ever more intense heat, rains or droughts. When hurricanes lash the island, not even the best machines can harvest the bent-over and twisted canes. For centuries, the practice of burning sugarcane was unknown and no soil was compacted under the weight of complex machines and enormous trucks. Nitrogen, potassium and phosphate fertilizers, today extremely expensive, did not yet even exist, and the dry and wet months succeeded each other regularly. In modern agriculture, no high yields are possible without crop rotation methods.

Read the rest here.

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The New SDS - Commentary from Bernadine Dohrn

Convergence Not Division: The New and Old SDS
By BERNADINE DOHRN

Christopher Phelps has written a timely but ultimately disappointing article in The Nation about the vibrant and growing student movement. [The New SDS (April 16, 2007)] He transforms the tough challenges of movement-building into a set of tepid formulas about what not to do. The new wave of student activism in America and around the world is a hopeful development worthy of our active participation and respect.

Yet Phelps focuses on the sectarian divides of the MDS generation rehearsing old political grudges or offering simplistic "lessons" from the New Left, rather than highlighting the steps forward and the common ground between radical organizers.

Our points of convergence (young and old, organizers and activists) are numerous, including the need to strive for participatory democracy and non-exclusion, resist the savage US wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, fight brutal poverty and gluttonous wealth here and globally, act to end catastrophic climate change, racial injustice and patriarchal power, and reject the permanent so-called war on "terror" in toto.

Phelps would have benefited from more attention to what led to coordinated anti-war actions on 60 campuses last month, and to the new SDS diverse political campaigns ranging from getting military recruiters out of high schools and off campuses to anti-sweatshop coordination, from opposition to police violence against the community to protest when war criminals speak, from support for Assata Shakur and the new Panther 8 defendants to fights for universal health care--radical youth organizing is broad and deep. This is the power and the inspiration of a vast, left umbrella network with variety and vigor.

Phelps stereotypically characterizes me as a "celebrity" while the male ideologues are described by what they say about politics. I object. Who knows why any speech or article is well received?

At the SDS conference at Brown University in Spring 2006, it seemed that the political substance of my talk was what generated the positive response from students: the urgent needs to reject the framework of US military and economic empire, to forge active opposition to white supremacy and grapple with the issue of multiracial organization, and to reckon with the importance of direct action to organizing and educating. I intentionally ignored the challenge to debate the issue of what killed SDS 38 years ago and who was right when, in favor of exploring what we all can do, in solidarity, now. Building bridges between issues, finding points of convergence, and creating an independent radical movement resonates across generations. The last thing the new SDS needs is patronizing elders wagging their fingers with cautionary tales.

Source

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FDA Attack on Alternative Medicine

There is a crisis in health freedom. On April 30, 2007 the FDA will close the public comment period on a "Guidance" which will classify every alternative practice as medicine so that only licensed physicians can carry out the procedure AND vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc., will suddenly become "untested drugs" which will be forbidden.

Bad? Real Bad! But public outcry can stop this assault on your health and your freedom.

Spread the word! Tell everyone in your Circle of Influence, professionals, alternative practitioners, nutrient and herb companies, everyone! Let them know how important their participation is to make sure the FDA backs off from this repressive course.

Please share this link with them and urge them to take action:

http://tinyurl.com/2u7ghc

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

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They Are Our Shame

What They Didn't Teach Us in Library School: The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless
By Chip Ward

Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her "nobody there" conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman's discomfort, and explains, "Don't mind me, I'm dead. It's okay. I've been dead for some time now." She pauses, then adds reassuringly, "It's not so bad. You get used to it." Not at all reassured, the woman gathers her belongings and moves quickly away. Ophelia shrugs. Verbal communication is tricky. She prefers telepathy, but that's hard to do since the rest of us, she informs me, "don't know the rules."

Margi is not so mellow. The "fucking Jews" have been at it again she tells a staff member who asks her for the umpteenth time to settle down and stop talking that way. "Communist!" she hisses and storms off, muttering that she will "sue the boss." Margi is at least 70 and her behavior shows obvious signs of dementia. The staff's efforts to find out her background are met with angry diatribes and insults. She clutches a book on German grammar and another on submarines that she reads upside down to "make things right."

Mick is having a bad day, too. He hasn't misbehaved but sits and stares, glassy-eyed. This is usually the prelude to a seizure. His seizures are easier to deal with than Bob's, for instance, because he usually has them while seated and so rarely hits his head and bleeds, nor does he ever soil his pants. Bob tends to pace restlessly all day and is often on the move when, without warning, his seizures strike. The last time he went down, he cut his head. The staff has learned to turn him over quickly after he hits the floor, so that his urine does not stain the carpet.

John is trying hard not to be noticed. He has been in trouble lately for the scabs and raw, wet spots that are spreading across his hands and face. Staff members have wondered aloud if he is contagious and asked him to get himself checked-out, but he refuses treatment. He knows he is still being tracked, thanks to the implants the nurse slipped under his skin the last time he surrendered to the clinic and its prescriptions. There are frequencies we don't hear -- but he does. Thin whistles and a subtle beeping indicate he is being followed, his eye movements tracked and recorded. He claims he falls asleep in his chair by the stairway because "the little ones" poke him in the legs with sharp objects that inject sleep-inducing potions.

Franklin sits quietly by the fireplace and reads a magazine about celebrities. He is fastidiously dressed and might be mistaken for a businessman or a professional. His demeanor is confident and normal. If you watch him closely, though, you will see him slowly slip his hand into the pocket of his sports jacket and furtively pull out a long, shiny carpenter's nail. With it, he carefully pokes out the eyes of the celebs in any photo. Then the nail is returned to his pocket, a faint smirk crossing his face as he turns the page to pursue his next photo victim.

Scenes from a psych ward? Not at all. Welcome to the Salt Lake City Public Library. Like every urban library in the nation, the City Library, as it is called, is a de facto daytime shelter for the city's "homeless."

Where the Outcasts Are Inside

In bad weather -- hot, cold, or wet -- most of the homeless have nowhere to go but public places. The local shelters push them out onto the streets at six in the morning and, even when the weather is good, they are already lining up by nine, when the library opens, because they want to sit down and recover from the chilly dawn or use the restrooms. Fast-food restaurants, hotel lobbies, office foyers, shopping malls, and other privately owned businesses and properties do not tolerate their presence for long. Public libraries, on the other hand, are open and accessible, tolerant, even inviting and entertaining places for them to seek refuge from a world that will not abide their often disheveled and odorous presentation, their odd and sometimes obnoxious behaviors, and the awkward challenges they present to those who encounter them.

Although the public may not have caught on, ask any urban library administrator in the nation where the chronically homeless go during the day and he or she will tell you about the struggles of America's public librarians to cope with their unwanted and unappreciated role as the daytime guardians of the down and out. In our public libraries, the outcasts are inside.

[snip]

Ophelia is not so far off after all -- in a sense she is dead and has been for some time. Hers is a kind of social death from shunning. She is neglected, avoided, ignored, denied, overlooked, feared, detested, pitied, and dismissed. She exists alone in a kind of social purgatory. She waits in the library, day after day, gazing at us through multiple lenses and mumbling to her invisible friends. She does not expect to be rescued or redeemed. She is, as she says, "used to it."

She is our shame. What do you think about a culture that abandons suffering people and expects them to fend for themselves on the street, then criminalizes them for expressing the symptoms of illnesses they cannot control? We pay lip service to this tragedy -- then look away fast. As a library administrator, I hear the public express annoyance more often than not: "What are they doing in here?" "Can't you control them?" Annoyance is the cousin of arrogance, not shame.

We will let Ophelia and the others stay with us and we will be firm but kind. We will wait for America to wake up and deal with its Ophelias directly, deliberately, and compassionately. In the meantime, our patrons will continue to complain about her and the others who seek shelter with us. Yes, we know, we say to them; we hear you loud and clear. Be patient, please, we are doing the best we can. Are you?

Read all of this remarkable assessment from a recently retired professional librarian here.

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Part Five of Politicking Fear

Hijacking Catastrophe: Empire (5 of 10)

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Our Saturday Snapshot - Junior's Global Policy

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CIA Acts Boldy and Lawfully, Alone and With Partners

We think it's time the Amerikan people sent the CIA, BushCo, and a whole lot of other nefarious crap packing.

Let’s Hear it for the War on Terror: Somalia
By Barry Lando

04/06/07 "ICH " -- -- On April 5th, there was a moving ceremony at the State Department. Assistant Secretary Barry Lowenkron presented—as mandated by the U.S. Congress—the fifth annual Supporting Human Rights and Democracy Report, which, said the secretary, “ documents the many ways the United States worked worldwide last year to foster respect for human rights and promote democratic government.”

Then, citing one of the globe’s great champions of human rights, “ As President Bush has said, what every terrorist fears most is human freedom — societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience and live by their hopes instead of their resentments.”

Of course, in that war on terror, as in any war, you’ve got to be tough minded. You do what you have to do: torture, kidnap, murder, whatever. You also find your allies where you can, right? Like in the horn of Africa where Al Qaeda has been active—killing and bombing for years. One place they were supposed to be operating was Somalia, Black Hawk Down country: the very definition of a failed state, a seething, ungovernable land of perpetually warring clans. Between 1991 and last year, 13 governments came and went.

Then, last year a coalition of Islamic groups managed to bring calm to the capital of Mogadishu by getting the feuding clans to disarm their militias, and convincing Somalis, the majority of whom are Sunnis, to accept Islam as the solution to their turmoil.

That calm lasted for six months. The problem was that, as the U.S. saw it, while militant Islam might pacify the Somalis, it could also offer sanctuary for groups linked with Al Qaeda to regroup and train for future attacks—attacks like their bloody bombings in 1998 of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

U.S. Special Forces went to work with their military buddies in neighboring Ethiopia. And so it was that in December 2006, the Ethiopians attacked and Somali crowds cheered in the battered streets of Magadishu as the Islamists were sent packing. The Ethiopians and their U.S. advisors patted themselves on the back. This was the beginning of a new era for Somalia. It was like Baghdad after the fall of Saddam, or Kabul after the Taliban were evicted.

Similarly as well, the Ethiopian military scooped up scores of people – people of all ages, some apparently just passing through – and packed them off to clandestine prisons. Added to those were several hundred more who had fled to neighboring Kenya. International reaction was not long in coming.

According to the Associated Press, “Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.” They include citizens of 19 countries, including the U.S. Canada, France, Sweden.

While the Ethiopians deny they have any secret prisons in their country. American officials admitted to the AP that the FBI and CIA have been allowed “limited access” to question prisoners as part of their counter-terrorism work.”

As Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, put it “To fight terror, CIA acts boldly and lawfully, alone and with partners, just as the American people expect us to.”

U.S. officials, however, claimed that America had nothing to do with the arrests or imprisonment. But John Sifton, a Human Rights Watch expert on counter-terrorism, charged that, on the contrary, the United States has acted as “ringleader” in what he labeled a “decentralized, outsourced Guantanamo.”

O.K. so what goes on in the prisons of Ethiopia, America’s partner? You could ask Human Rights Watch, which of course talks of torture and beatings. But we know what knee-jerks the HRW folks are. To get the real truth, we turn to the U. S. State Department and its current report on Human Rights around the globe.

Their summary on Ethiopia?

“Human rights abuses reported during the year included: limitation on citizens’ right to change their government during the most recent elections; unlawful killings, and beating, abuse, and mistreatment of detainees and opposition supporters by security forces; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention, particularly those suspected of sympathizing with or being members of the opposition; detention of thousands without charge and lengthy pretrial detention”…and so on.
You get the picture.

Meanwhile, back in Somalia, turns out that, after the initial euphoria, the regime installed by the Ethiopians and –one presumes—their American advisors, has been incapable of bringing together the major clans. Large numbers of African peacekeepers who were supposed to take over from the Ethiopians have, for more the most part, yet to show up. Meanwhile, as the interim government, which was supposed to be a transition on the road to democracy, has become ever more authoritarian and isolated, a new insurgency has grown. It began with some clans linked to the Islamists, but has now greatly expanded.

The past weeks have seen increasingly bloody battles in Mogadishu. Government troops often refused to take action , while the Ethiopians, feeling no such restraint, have reportedly been launching devastating and indsicriminate barrages into heavily populated urban areas. Mogadishu is once again filled with death and destruction. Over a hundred thousand Somalis have fled.

Impressive, while we’ve been obsessed with Iraq and Afghanistan and Iran, the progress being made elsewhere in the War Against Terror.

Read it here.

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Liar, Liar ....

From Pensito Review

Downing Street Memo Redux: DoD Provides New Evidence of Bush ‘Fixing’ Pre-War Intel
Posted by Jon Ponder | Apr. 6, 2007, 11:53 am

There is a new report out from the inspector general at the Dept. of Defense that provides clear evidence that senior Bush officials at DoD “fixed” the pre-war intelligence on Iraq to suit their policy of fictitiously connecting Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, in order to motivate the public to go to war against Iraq.

In particular, the IG’s report includes a January 2002 memo from Paul Wolfowitz, the neocon architect of the war who was then deputy defense secretary, written to Douglas Feith, DoD’s number three official:

“We don’t seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda,” Wolfowitz wrote…

Using Pentagon jargon for the secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, he added: “We owe SecDef some analysis of this subject. Please give me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short turn-around.”

…The memo marked the beginnings of what would become a controversial yearlong Pentagon project supervised by Feith to convince the most senior members of the Bush administration that Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked — a conclusion that was hotly disputed by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time and has been discredited in the years since.

What this brings to mind, of course, is a key section of the Downing Street Memo:

[Unnamed British official “C”] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

You recall that the “memo” was actually the minutes of a meeting of top officials in Tony Blair’s government in July 2002 — seven months into the “yearlong project” to link Saddam and 9/11.

When the memo was leaked in May 2005, the mainstream media ignored it for weeks. As I recall it, its release dd not make the front page of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post or any major U.S. daily paper. When the memo finally made it into the news, the Gang of 500 dismissed it, as did rightwingers like comedian comedian Rush Limbaugh:

I purposely haven’t talked about this Downing Street memo much because, frankly, A, it didn’t interest me. And, you know, if it doesn’t interest me I’m not going to talk about it. And the reason it didn’t interest me is because it was just another one of these ginned up things by the libs…

Wrong again, Rush. And yet, while it’s nice to (once again) get proof of Bush’s skulllduggery, this revelation (once again) amounts to little more than cold comfort.

A normal president would be held accountable if proof were offered from within his own government that his team deliberately falsified intelligence in order to trick the country into going to war. And yet this revelation yesterday is barely even news.

Source

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Cole on Ending the Iraq War

How to Get Out of Iraq
Juan Cole

Juan Cole writes that Bush's ineptitude has made a regional war in the Middle East a real possibility. Can diplomacy find a way out?

Both houses of Congress have now backed a timeline for withdrawal of US combat troops from Iraq in 2008, which George W. Bush has vowed to veto. He gives two major rationales for rejecting withdrawal. At times he has warned that Iraq could become an Al Qaeda stronghold, at others that "a contagion of violence could spill out across the country--and in time, the entire region could be drawn into the conflict." These are bogeymen with which Bush has attempted to frighten the public. Regarding the first, Turkey, Jordan and Iran are not going to put up with an Al Qaeda stronghold on their borders; nor would Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis. Most Sunni Iraqis are relatively secular, and there are only an estimated 1,000 foreign jihadis in Iraq, who would be forced to return home if the Americans left.

Bush's ineptitude has made a regional proxy war a real possibility, so the question is how to avoid it. One Saudi official admitted that if the United States withdrew and Iraq's Sunnis seemed in danger, Riyadh would likely intervene. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has threatened to invade if Iraq's Kurds declare independence. And Iran would surely try to rescue Iraqi Shiites if they seemed on the verge of being massacred.

But Bush is profoundly in error to think that continued US military occupation can forestall further warfare. Sunni Arabs perceive the Americans to have tortured them, destroyed several of their cities and to be keeping them under siege at the behest of the joint Shiite-Kurdish government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. American missteps have steadily driven more and more Sunnis to violence and the support of violence. The Pentagon's own polling shows that between 2003 and 2006 the percentage of Sunni Arabs who thought attacking US troops was legitimate grew from 14 to more than 70.

The US repression of Sunnis has allowed Shiites and Kurds to avoid compromise. The Sunnis in Parliament have demanded that the excesses of de-Baathification be reversed (thousands of Sunnis have been fired from jobs just because they belonged to the Baath Party). They have been rebuffed. Sunnis rejected the formation of a Shiite super-province in the south. Shiites nevertheless pushed it through Parliament. The Kurdish leadership has also dismissed Sunni objections to their plans to annex the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, which has a significant Arab population.

The key to preventing an intensified civil war is US withdrawal from the equation so as to force the parties to an accommodation. Therefore, the United States should announce its intention to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, which will bring Sunnis to the negotiating table and put pressure on Kurds and Shiites to seek a compromise with them. But a simple US departure would not be enough; the civil war must be negotiated to a settlement, on the model of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Lebanon.

Read the rest here.

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Terrorism - A Matter of Perspective

Why is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List?
By FRANKLIN LAMB

It was a sign of the times last week (March 27) when House Armed Services Committee Staff Director Erin Conaton declared in a memo to committee staffers that the powerful committee was scrapping the Bush Administration shop worn phrase, Global War of Terrorism. Conaton's boss, Rep. Ike Skelton,( D-Mo) the new Chairman of the Committee commented that "the overused label had become an embarrassment and had lost its meaning".

Recent research in Lebanon has turned up information previously unavailable which sheds light of the misapplication of the Terrorism label by the Bush administration.

The" T word" is often misapplied as former National Security Advisor Brzezinski reminds us as he tours the country promoting his new book, Second Chance and focusing on the "catastrophic leadership" crisis caused by the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Another area that would benefit from discarding the "terrorist label" is the Bush administration's ongoing campaign against Hezbollah. There is considerable doubt among international lawyers whether Hezbollah should ever have been classified as a terrorist organization.

At the urging of U.S. and Israel, Canada classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, which limits the group's ability to raise funds and travel internationally. . A Canadian peace coalition called Tadamon Montreal is working to remove Hezbollah from the Terrorism list in Canada.

Australia and the UK distinguish between Hezbollah's security and political wings, and other countries like China, Russia, and member states of the European Union and the United Nations have refused US/Israel demands to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization at all.

The process for putting an organization on the "Terrorism list" is as follows: The Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the U.S. State Department (S/CT) monitors the activities of groups active around the world considered potentially terrorist to identify potential targets for designation. When reviewing potential targets, S/CT looks not only at the actual terrorist attacks that a group has carried out, but also at "whether the group may be inclined toward future acts of terrorism or retains the capability to carry out such acts".

As of April 2007, a plurality (39%) of the organizations on the US Terrorism list represent Muslim groups recommended for inclusion by, among others, AIPAC and their friends in Congress. According to former AIPAC Director of Congressional Relations, Steve Rosen, soon to start his trial for passing classified information to Israel, "AIPAC owns the 'T' list!"

Read the rest here.

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The Treasonator

Punishment Fit for a Decider: Treason in the White House?
By WALTER BRASCH

Protected by a podium, thousands of thorns in the world's most beautiful rose garden, and a cordon of Secret Service agents, President Bush continued his retreat into a bunker mentality.

The House and Senate had just passed a $122 billion war funding bill that demanded U.S. troops begin a systematic withdrawal from Iraq. Sen. Harry Reid, majority leader, had said that Congress had finally acceded to the will of the people.

President Bush defiantly told the people that he would veto the bill and continue his war in Iraq. "Democrat leaders in Congress seem more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than in providing our troops what they need to fight the battles in Iraq," said the President. If anyone could be accused of not providing soldiers what they need it's the President and his Administration.

Soldiers are dying because the Administration didn't provide adequate body armor, forcing families to privately buy the bullet-proof vests for their sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers.

The Bush­Cheney Administration also stands convicted of not providing enough armor to the thin-skinned Humvees that were forced to patrol booby-trapped roads. The resourceful soldiers had to "uparmour" their own vehicles, with their own resourcefulness. The Administration would claim that manufacturers couldn't produce the better-protected Humvees fast enough. Several companies that specialize in providing war-resistant protection for Humvees for private use say they advised the Department of Defense about their companies' abilities but never received contracts.

The Bush­Cheney Administration, once it decided to lie to the American people and invade Iraq, sent in too few troops. To questions of why there weren't enough troops in Iraq to quell the rising violence and developing civil war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld merely parroted the President's naiveté-"The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that's really out of my control." The President said he provided whatever troops the military leadership requested. Gen. Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War and secretary of state at the time of the invasion, had stated that the troop level wasn't adequate for invasion and occupation. Denied and Humiliated. Gen. Eric Shinseki, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said as many as 500,000 would be needed. Denied, and forced to retire early. Gen. Tommy Franks, commanding general of Central Command, learned his lesson; he suggested "only" 250,000 troops would be needed. Denied. Even the recent surge of 21,000 troops, which President Bush said was enough to solve the problem, is a lie. The Budget Office estimates 15,000 to 28,000 more troops are necessary just to support the 21,500 combat troops.

The Bush­Cheney Administration stands convicted of sending soldiers into their third tour of duty in Iraq; in what is known as "stop-loss" enlistment it doesn't allow soldiers to leave the military at the end of their contracts.

With large numbers of military families living at or below the poverty level, the Bush­Cheney Administration stands convicted of having tried to cut a Congressionally-approved pay raise for soldiers. Bush wanted to trim a 3.7 percent raise to only 2 percent, claiming the raise was too costly. Only when it appeared the President's refusal to increase salaries would jeopardize his political future did the President do the Texas Two-Step and spin reality as quickly as a tumbleweed rolls into Crawford. "We have a solemn responsibility to support the servicemen and women who defend us in the field of battle," said the President. The following year, Bush tried to slice combat pay for persons in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Bush­Cheney Administration stands convicted of cutting about $1.5 billion for adequate military housing at a time when the Army Times reported that 83,000 barracks units and 129,000 family housing units were substandard.

The Bush­Cheney Administration stands convicted of reducing necessary veterans' health care benefits by $2 billion, of trying to end health care benefits for almost 175,000 veterans, of requiring several hundred thousand veterans to wait for months to receive medical care because of the lack of funding of VA hospitals, and refusing to allow members of the National Guard to have health care; about 20 percent of all Guardsmen don't have any health care, according to a Gannett News Service report in 2003.

Only when the "liberal media"-in this case the Washington Post-provided evidence of the conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital did Bush allow the incoming Secretary of Defense to exercise his authority to take bold action to correct the problems faced by veterans with life-threatening and permanent combat injuries.

Had the $9 billion that was "lost" in Iraq and the billions more that had been misappropriated or wasted been applied to "supporting the troops," not only would more soldiers have lived through IED explosions, but there would now be adequate medical care for the veterans and their families. There would be enough left over to rebuild New Orleans, give basic health care to the 47 million Americans without adequate insurance, assist the three million homeless (about one-third of them veterans), and probably put a large dent into funds needed to find a cure for cancer.

Of course, Donald Rumsfeld justified all of this non-support for the troops by an excuse. In December 2004, 21 months after the President ordered the shock-and-awe military to invade, occupy, and eventually destroy the Iraq, Rumsfeld flippantly said, "As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." If nothing else about the Bush­Cheney Administration matters, the war in Iraq shows that this nation does not have the president we want or need. His actions and inactions in the Iraq War alone suggest not only has he failed to support the troops, he has lied, deceived, and degraded his oath of office. A court martial for dereliction of duty is not constitutionally possible for the man who likes to be known as the "Commander-in-Chief," as a "war president," and as the "Decider." His actions justify not only impeachment but also charges of treason.

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Josh Wolf Freed

Free at Last!! -- Josh Wolf's First Public Statement
by Josh Wolf‚ Apr. 05‚ 2007

EDITOR'S NOTE: On April 3rd, Josh Wolf was released from prison. Josh became the longest incarcerated journalist in U.S. history -- for refusing to turn in his videotape to a federal grand jury. His case is Exhibit A of why we need a federal shield law -- to allow journalist to protect their sources free of harassment. The following was his public statement upon being released.

In his dissenting opinion in the case of US v. Coldwell (1972), Justice William O. Douglas wrote these prescient words which are not only significant to my case -- but also reflect the greater state of affairs in the United States today: “As the years pass, the power of government becomes more and more pervasive. It is a power to suffocate both people and causes. Those in power, whatever their politics, want only to perpetuate it. Now that the fences of the law and the tradition that protected the press are broken down, the people are the victims. The First Amendment, as I read it, was designed precisely to prevent that tragedy.”

Contrary to popular opinion, this legal entanglement which has held me in Federal Prision for the past eight months, has never been about a videotape nor is the investigation about the alleged attempted arson of a San Francisco police vehicle as the government claims. While it is true that I was held in custody for refusing to surrender the tape and that the justification for making a federal case out of this was the police car, things are not always as they appear. The reality is that this investigation is far more pervasive and perverse than a superficial examination will reveal.

When I was subpoenaed in February of last year, I was not only ordered to provide my unedited footage, but to also submit to testimony and examination before the secretive grand jury. Although I feel that my unpublished material should be shielded from government demands, it was the testimony which I found to be the more egregious assault on my right and ethics as both a journalist and a citizen.

As there was nothing of a sensitive or confidential nature on my video outtakes, I had no reason to withhold their publication once I had exhausted all my legal appeals. When that point arrived I had already spent three months behind bars. I was advised by my legal team that publishing the video would not lead to my release; instead it would indicate to the court that my imprisonment was having a coercive effect even though it was not.

This hypothesis was verified when one of my attorneys inquired whether the Assistant US Attorney would accept the footage in lieu of my testimony, he was told that the video alone would not suffice and that the US Attorney would accept nothing less than my full compliance with the demands of the subpoena. Things change.

When the judge came to realize the support for my cause was growing and that I was unlikely to waver anytime soon, he ordered both parties to meet with a magistrate judge in the hopes we could reach a solution amenable to everyone. After two rather strenuous sessions of mediation, we at last came to an agreement that not only leaves my ethics intact but actively serves the role of a free press in our so-called free socieity.

In the words of Justice Douglas, “The press has a preferred position in our constitutional scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a favored class, but to bring fulfillment to the public’s right to know”.

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This Could Be YOU

RIGHTS-US/IRAQ: "My Name Used to Be 200343"
David Phinney*

WASHINGTON, Apr 5 (IPS) - A year ago, Donald Vance learned what its like to be falsely accused by the U.S. military of aiding terrorists. He was held without charge for more than three months in a high-security prison in Iraq, and interrogated daily after sleepless nights without legal counsel or even a phone call to his family.

On Wednesday, the former private security contractor was honoured for his ordeal in Washington and for speaking out against the incident. At a luncheon at the National Press Club, Vance received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, an award named in memory of Army helicopter gunner Ron Ridenhour who struggled to bring the horrific mass murders at My Lai to the attention of Congress and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.

Vance was joined by former president Jimmy Carter, who won a lifetime achievement award, and journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post who was recognised for his recent book, "Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone".

As hundreds at the luncheon finished their lobster salad, Vance, a two-time George W. Bush voter and Navy veteran, recounted the events of his imprisonment and the grief of his fiancé and family. They did not know if he was alive or dead, he said. They were already making inquiries to the U.S. State Department on how to ship his body home.

He then drew a wider circle around his ordeal to include the countless others who have been held falsely without charge and denied normal legal constitutional protections under law. "My name used to be 200343," Vance said recalling his prisoner ID. "If they can do this to a former Navy man and an American, what is happening to people in facilities all over the world run by the American government?"

Vance's nightmare began last year on Apr. 15 when he and co-worker Nathan Ertel barricaded themselves in a Baghdad office after their employer, an Iraqi private security firm, took away their ID tags. They feared for their lives because they suspected the company was involved in selling unauthorised guns on the black market and other nefarious activity. A U.S. military squad freed them from the red zone in Baghdad after a friend at the U.S. embassy advised him to call for help.

Once they reached the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, government officials took them inside the embassy, listened to their individual accounts and then sent them to a trailer outside for sleep. Two or three hours later, before the crack of dawn, U.S. military personnel woke them. This time, however, Vance and Ertel, Shield Security's contract manager, were under arrest. Soldiers bound their wrists with zip ties and covered their eyes with goggles blacked out with duct tape.

The two were then escorted to a humvee and driven first to possibly Camp Prosperity and then to Camp Cropper, a high-security prison near the Baghdad airport where Saddam Hussein was once kept. Vance says he was denied the usual body armour and helmet while traveling through the perilous Baghdad streets outside the safety of the Green Zone or a U.S. military installation.

It was not the way the tall 29-year-old with an easy charm and keen mind had expected to be treated. Vance claims that during the months leading up to his arrest, he worked as an unpaid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes twice a day, he would share information with an agent in Chicago about the Iraqi-owned Shield Group Security, whose principals and managers appeared to be involved in weapons deals and violence against Iraqi civilians. One company employee regularly bartered alcohol with U.S. military personnel in exchange for ammunition they delivered, Vance said.

"He called it the bullets for beer programme," Vance claimed while relating the incident during an interview this week at a cigar bar just walking distance from the White House.

But his interrogators at Camp Cropper weren't impressed. Instead, his jailers insisted that Vance and Ertel had been detained and imprisoned because the two worked for Shield Group Security where large caches of weapons have been found -- weapons that may have been intended for possible distribution to insurgents and terrorist groups, Vance said.

In a lawsuit now pending against former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and "other unidentified agents," Vance and Ertel accuse their U.S. government captors of subjecting them to psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears for hours on end, their legal complaint alleges.

They lived through "conditions of confinement and interrogation tantamount to torture", says the lawsuit filed in northern Illinois U.S. District Court. "Their interrogators utilised the types of physically and mentally coercive tactics that are supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants."

Rumsfeld is singled out as the key defendant because he played a critical role in establishing a policy of "unlawful detention and torment" that Vance, Ertel and countless others in the "war on terror" have endured, the lawsuit asserts, noting that the former defence secretary and other high-level military commanders acting at his direction developed and authorised a policy that allows government officials unilateral discretion to designate possible enemies of the United States.

Because the incident and allegations are now in litigation, the Pentagon has no comment, spokesman Army Lieut. Col. Mark Ballesteros said. He referred all inquires to the U.S. Justice Department, which also had no comment for similar reasons.

But darker allegations are included in the complaint over false imprisonment. Because he worked with the FBI, Vance contends, U.S. government officials in Iraq decided to retaliate against him and Ertel. He believes these officials conspired to jail the two not because they worked for a security company suspected of selling weapons to insurgents, but because they were sharing information with law enforcement agents outside the control of U.S. officials in Baghdad.

"In other words," claims the lawsuit, "United States officials in Iraq were concerned and wanted to find out about what intelligence agents in the United States knew about their territory and their operations. The unconstitutional policies that Rumsfeld and other unidentified agents had implemented for 'enemies' provided ample cover to detain plaintiffs and interrogate them toward that end."

It may take some time to sort out the allegations as the legal process grinds forward, but, in the meantime, Vance is raising new questions about his detention. He still wonders why his jailers didn't just call the FBI and have him cleared. They had access to his computer and cell phone to determine if his claims were true.

"When I told them to do that, they just got angry and told me to stop answering questions I wasn't being asked," Vance said. "I think they were butting heads with the State Department. I just snitched on the wrong people. I took the bull by the horns and got the horn."

And why weren't managers with the Shield Group held and interrogated?

Interrogators were certainly interested in these other individuals, according to the lawsuit. They wanted to know about the company's structure, its political contacts, and its owners -- most of whom are related to a long-established Iraqi family who fled Iraq during the years the country was ruled by Saddam Hussein, Vance said.

More startling even now is that the company has reformed. At the time they left, Shield Security held U.S.-funded contracts with the Iraqi government, Iraqi companies, NGOs and U.S. contractors. As far as Vance knows, the company still does -- but under a different name: National Shield Security.

"I built the original web site for Shield Security. All they did was change the name," he said. "And they are still being awarded millions of dollars in contracts."

*David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com. (END/2007)

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Chomsky on the "Iran Effect"

Tomgram: Noam Chomsky on "the Iran Effect"

On Tuesday, meeting with the press in the White House Rose Garden, the President responded to a question about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Syria this way: "[P]hoto opportunities and/or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they're part of the mainstream of the international community, when, in fact, they're a state sponsor of terror." There should, he added to the assembled reporters, be no meetings with state sponsors of terror.

That night, Brian Ross of ABC News reported that, since 2005, the U.S. has "encouraged and advised" Jundullah, a Pakistani tribal "militant group," led by a former Taliban fighter and "drug smuggler," which has been launching guerrilla raids into Baluchi areas of Iran. These incursions involve kidnappings and terror bombings, as well as the murder (recorded on video) of Iranian prisoners. According to Ross, "U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or 'finding' as well as congressional oversight." Given past history, it would be surprising if the group doing the encouraging and advising wasn't the Central Intelligence Agency, which has a long, sordid record in the region. (New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has been reporting since 2005 on a Bush administration campaign to destabilize the Iranian regime, heighten separatist sentiments in that country, and prepare for a possible full-scale air attack on Iranian nuclear and other facilities.)

The President also spoke of the Iranian capture of British sailors in disputed waters two weeks ago. He claimed that their "seizure… is indefensible by the Iranians." Oddly enough, perhaps as part of secret negotiations over the British sailors, who were dramatically freed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, an Iranian diplomat in Iraq was also mysteriously freed. Eight weeks ago, he had been kidnapped off the streets of Baghdad by uniformed men of unknown provenance. Reporting on his sudden release, Alissa J. Rubin of the New York Times offered this little explanation of the kidnapping: "Although [Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar] Zebari was uncertain who kidnapped the man, others familiar with the case said they believe those responsible work for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which is affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency." The CIA, of course, has a sordid history in Baghdad as well, including running car-bombing operations in the Iraqi capital back in Saddam Hussein's day.

And don't forget the botched Bush administration attempt to capture two high Iranian security officials and the actual kidnapping of five Iranian diplomats-cum-Revolutionary-Guards in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan over two months ago -- they disappeared into the black hole of an American prison system in Iraq that now holds perhaps 17,000 Iraqis (as well as those Iranians) and is still growing. As Juan Cole has pointed out, most such acts, and the rhetoric that goes with them, represent so many favors to "an unpopular and isolated Iranian government attempting to rally support and strengthen itself."

In addition, just this week, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and other ships in its battle group left San Diego for the Persian Gulf. Two carrier battle groups are already there, promising an almost unprecedented show of strength. As the ship left port, U.S. military officials explained the mission of the carriers in the Gulf this way: They are intended to demonstrate U.S. "resolve to build regional security and bring long-term stability to the region."

And stability in the region, it seems, means promoting instability in Iran by any means possible. So, the President's Global War on Terror also turns out to be the Global War of Terror. No one has dealt with the way "state sponsorship of terror" works, when it comes to our own country, more strikingly than Noam Chomsky, who considers the larger Iranian crisis below. His latest book, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy, is just out in paperback and couldn't be more to the point at the present moment. Right now, if the U.S. isn't already a failing state, it's certainly a flailing one. Tom

What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico? - Putting the Iran Crisis in Context
By Noam Chomsky

Unsurprisingly, George W. Bush's announcement of a "surge" in Iraq came despite the firm opposition to any such move of Americans and the even stronger opposition of the (thoroughly irrelevant) Iraqis. It was accompanied by ominous official leaks and statements -- from Washington and Baghdad -- about how Iranian intervention in Iraq was aimed at disrupting our mission to gain victory, an aim which is (by definition) noble. What then followed was a solemn debate about whether serial numbers on advanced roadside bombs (IEDs) were really traceable to Iran; and, if so, to that country's Revolutionary Guards or to some even higher authority.

This "debate" is a typical illustration of a primary principle of sophisticated propaganda. In crude and brutal societies, the Party Line is publicly proclaimed and must be obeyed -- or else. What you actually believe is your own business and of far less concern. In societies where the state has lost the capacity to control by force, the Party Line is simply presupposed; then, vigorous debate is encouraged within the limits imposed by unstated doctrinal orthodoxy. The cruder of the two systems leads, naturally enough, to disbelief; the sophisticated variant gives an impression of openness and freedom, and so far more effectively serves to instill the Party Line. It becomes beyond question, beyond thought itself, like the air we breathe.

The debate over Iranian interference in Iraq proceeds without ridicule on the assumption that the United States owns the world. We did not, for example, engage in a similar debate in the 1980s about whether the U.S. was interfering in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and I doubt that Pravda, probably recognizing the absurdity of the situation, sank to outrage about that fact (which American officials and our media, in any case, made no effort to conceal). Perhaps the official Nazi press also featured solemn debates about whether the Allies were interfering in sovereign Vichy France, though if so, sane people would then have collapsed in ridicule.

In this case, however, even ridicule -- notably absent -- would not suffice, because the charges against Iran are part of a drumbeat of pronouncements meant to mobilize support for escalation in Iraq and for an attack on Iran, the "source of the problem." The world is aghast at the possibility. Even in neighboring Sunni states, no friends of Iran, majorities, when asked, favor a nuclear-armed Iran over any military action against that country. From what limited information we have, it appears that significant parts of the U.S. military and intelligence communities are opposed to such an attack, along with almost the entire world, even more so than when the Bush administration and Tony Blair's Britain invaded Iraq, defying enormous popular opposition worldwide.

"The Iran Effect"

The results of an attack on Iran could be horrendous. After all, according to a recent study of "the Iraq effect" by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, using government and Rand Corporation data, the Iraq invasion has already led to a seven-fold increase in terror. The "Iran effect" would probably be far more severe and long-lasting. British military historian Corelli Barnett speaks for many when he warns that "an attack on Iran would effectively launch World War III."

What are the plans of the increasingly desperate clique that narrowly holds political power in the U.S.? We cannot know. Such state planning is, of course, kept secret in the interests of "security." Review of the declassified record reveals that there is considerable merit in that claim -- though only if we understand "security" to mean the security of the Bush administration against their domestic enemy, the population in whose name they act.

Even if the White House clique is not planning war, naval deployments, support for secessionist movements and acts of terror within Iran, and other provocations could easily lead to an accidental war. Congressional resolutions would not provide much of a barrier. They invariably permit "national security" exemptions, opening holes wide enough for the several aircraft-carrier battle groups soon to be in the Persian Gulf to pass through -- as long as an unscrupulous leadership issues proclamations of doom (as Condoleezza Rice did with those "mushroom clouds" over American cities back in 2002). And the concocting of the sorts of incidents that "justify" such attacks is a familiar practice. Even the worst monsters feel the need for such justification and adopt the device: Hitler's defense of innocent Germany from the "wild terror" of the Poles in 1939, after they had rejected his wise and generous proposals for peace, is but one example.

The most effective barrier to a White House decision to launch a war is the kind of organized popular opposition that frightened the political-military leadership enough in 1968 that they were reluctant to send more troops to Vietnam -- fearing, we learned from the Pentagon Papers, that they might need them for civil-disorder control.

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Go Fuck Yourself, Dick Cheney

It's fair to say we've wanted to say this to Big Dick for quite awhile. This seemed to us to be a particularly relevant moment, after he once again repeats his ludicrous long-standing lie that there was a tie between Iraq and al Qaeda. The Rag

Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted: Pentagon Report Says Contacts Were Limited
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 6, 2007; Page A01

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.

"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the report's declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.

The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.

Read the rest here.


And there's also this from Informed Comment (16 March 2006):

Saddam Was Trying to Capture Zarqawi

The Bush administration repeatedly made the presence in Iraq of Abu Musab Zarqawi a pretext for invading the country and overthrowing Saddam Hussein. They implied that he was a client of Saddam and that Saddam had arranged for hospital care for him.

Newly released documents from the captured Iraqi archives show that Saddam had put out an APB for Zarqawi and was trying to have him arrested as a danger to the Baath regime!

' However, one of the documents, a letter from an Iraqi intelligence official, dated August 17, 2002, asked agents in the country to be on the lookout for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and another unnamed man whose picture was attached. '

Update: This is the original pdf document as released by the USG. It is at Blackvault.com but does not appear to be listed any longer at the original Ft. Leavenworth site. (Update 9/9/06).

The September 29, 2002 Denver Post paraphrased Cheney, "He said the evidence presented against Iraq will be long and persuasive, including more details of a relationship between Hussein's forces and the al-Qaeda terrorist network."

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Passover Faire on Foodie Friday - M. Wizard

Flaming Rack of Lamb Encrouté – a Passover Spectacle

Lamb is an indispensable Passover main course, but many Americans are unfamiliar with its preparation, and timid in their choice of methods. Here is an infallible procedure:

When shopping for your rack of lamb at Central Market or Whole Foods, cruise through the wine department on your way to the check-out counter and down as many shots of whatever they are sampling as possible! If the server tries to withhold wine from you, point to your butcher-paper wrapped selection and say clearly, "I AM BUYING A RACK OF LAMB." The server should then pour you an extra-large serving of alcohol. This will help prevent sticker shock when that slab of little pointy bones and teentsy chops rings up on the register!

Marinate the entire rack of lamb, covered in the refrigerator, for 24 hours or longer in a half-bottle of some nice raspberry-walnut or raspberry-hazelnut salad dressing and a dollop of red wine. This is the same red wine you will use to make charoses, a mixture of apples, walnuts, raisins and honey which symbolizes the mortar used by Hebrew slaves to build the Egyptian pyramids. You may want to sample this wine while you're chopping apples to decide if you will also serve it at your Passover service, or if you want something fancier, or maybe a nice white instead. Sample it well; you can't be too careful!

Drain the marinated lamb onto a broiling pan so that forms an arch like the one in St. Louis. Using a spoon, spread creamy horseradish over all exposed surfaces. Press a layer of crushed walnut meats into the horseradish. Pour yourself a glass of wine and pop the meat under the hot broiler. Set the timer for 15 minutes.

Ooops! Is that a call of Nature? Could it be all that wine? Well, better hurry it up – don't forget to wash your hands after!! – because something certainly smells interesting in the kitchen, and it hasn't been nearly 15 minutes yet, has it? Is that smoke?

Quickly remove the lamb from the broiler! Wow, walnut oil must be really flammable, ya think? After scraping off the charcoaled layer of walnuts and horseradish, slice into the thickest part of the cut, between the two center chops. If it doesn't bleed, it's done. Have another glass of wine, and Happy Passover!

- Mariann Wizard

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Too Good Not to Reprint

PETER PACE PORKS A PECK OF PINKO PERVERTS
by Susie Day
April 05, 2007
MRZine

Dear Peter Pace,

As a lesbian, I often turn, in my quest for moral guidance, to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You, Peter Pace, being Chairman of the JCS, are to me a virtual guru of ethical enlightenment! So, naturally, I was struck by your recent Chicago Tribune interview, in which you said, "I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts."

At first, your words threw me into a panic of denial. Does this mean, I asked myself, that I am basically good, and bad only when I am performing acts of a homosexual nature? What if there were more than two individuals getting it homosexually on – if I were part of an orgy of, say, 3 to 11,847 people – would I be less immoral? And what if I joined the Army and shot a lot of Iraqi insurgents, along with a few innocent civilians – would Peter Pace at last condone me?

Then I stopped bargaining with myself. I realized that you, Peter Pace, are right. Just as I have accepted the fact of my homosexuality, I now must accept the fact that I am morally depraved. Thank you for informing me of my innate evil. I will try to keep this in mind the next time I engage in acts of sordid, sin-soaked muff diving with my homosexual girlfriend.

I shall now endeavor to go on with my life, with perhaps slightly lower self-esteem, but also with joy in the knowledge that that you and I share a common humanity. For you, too, Peter Pace, have stood alone as an outcast, scorned and snickered at by your peers. In 2005, you had the guts to stand up to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to argue that it was the duty of American troops to prevent torture. Wow. It's one thing to have humanitarian (or, "humo") tendencies – but actually opposing torture in this Administration must make you feel like some noncom Army fag with his head stuffed into a barracks toilet.

Speaking of epithets, did you hear that, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, pundit Ann Coulter called Presidential hopeful John Edwards a "faggot"? I'm sure she meant that in a good way. In fact, in a recent appearance on "Hannity and Colmes," Ann explained that her use of the word "isn't offensive to gays; it has nothing to do with gays."

Ann must mean that she sees John Edwards not as a homosexual, but as an annoying, effete, wussy kind of guy – a guy who possibly wouldn't like to be tortured. After all, Ann is unwavering in her anti-wuss position, and has made her name with such actual, alpha-femme statements as: "I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantánamo."

Ann is not pretty when she's mad. So I worry, Peter Pace. I worry that Ann Coulter will find out about your stance against torture and call you, at some nationally-televised gathering, a "faggot." I mean, we homosexuals can take it when we're called names, but you people are more delicate. It's good, then, that you reclaimed the moral high ground with your defense of the use of white phosphorous – an incendiary chemical that burns down to the bone when exposed to oxygen – in flushing out insurgents during the American siege on Fallujah. "It is a legitimate tool of the military," you said.

I guess "legitimate," here, is a code word for "moral." Which is a code word for "heterosexual." Which is the preferred libidinal default of you and God and Ann Coulter and all good people. It is natural, then, that when we meet a person, we assume she or he is heterosexual – or "moral" – unless, of course, we ask and are then told that the person we have just met is a godlessly debauched queer.

So, given that there are, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, approximately 65,000 gay men and lesbians serving in our military, your endorsement of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy makes perfect sense. I feel truly proud, truly grateful, knowing that none of our soldiers who caused the deaths of at least 60,411 (and counting) Iraqi civilians were immoral enough to admit that they were queer.

Perhaps, in order for us all to sleep nights, Peter Pace, we Americans – straight and gay – should apply the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy to you, as well. For instance, we won't ask you just what the military did at Fallujah and other places in Iraq, and you won't tell us, OK? It's one way of maintaining our national morality at its current level.

Well, gotta go. My girlfriend wants to have sex again. This time, she's asked me to dress up as Ann Coulter. As if that could wash away the stain…

© Susie Day, 2007

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Why Venezuela Makes Inherent Sense

The Onkwehonwe Democratic Agenda
by Kahentinetha Horn
April 05, 2007
Socialist Voice

We’ve been complaining about the top-down bureaucratic agenda of the colonizers. Do we have something to replace it? Yes we do. It’s called the "Kaianerehkowa/Great Law of Peace" [the constitution of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy].

Our philosophy can be used to build a society based on peace, power and righteousness. These words have meanings that are deeply rooted in our culture and completely different from the kinds of expectations they raise among the colonized. Our understanding of these concepts has nothing in common with the command and obedience model of predatory capitalism or the exploitation of ordinary people for the power and profit of a few. The new (colonial) world order is opposite to our way of life based on the principles of fully informed consent and consensus in all our relationships.

Stephen Lendman, in CounterCurrent.org, describes how Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has "constructed socialism from below", built "from the base" in the communities." He has found a way to rebuild Venezuelan society. He wants a coalition of smaller parties whose power comes from the communities.

Chavez thinks this is the way democracy should work. A lot of ordinary people agree.

There are presently 16,000 regional federations of Communal Councils organized across the country that deal with local issues. Each represent 200 to 400 families. That number is expected to grow to 21,000 councils by the end of 2007. This new state is driven by the same basic philosophy of egalitarian human respect that underlies the Kaianerehkowa.

A decentralized government will distribute billions of dollars to these Councils. If the people so chose, billions can be put into a "National Development Fund." Yellow journalism has been attacking this thinking. They put fear into people’s minds, calling it "nationalization", which is a dirty word to capitalists and colonialists. Capitalism is a one way road for the privileged few. Development of democratic programs look threatening to those who are at the top of the old hierarchal heap.

As we assert our sovereignty, we have lots to think about. What can we Onkwehonwe do with all our land and resources and all the squatters who are here? The land belongs to us and our future generations. It always will. All our resource revenues can be used to compensate the colonists fairly. The rest can be put towards rebuilding a safe and healthy environment.

U.S., Canada and Mexico will, of course, become irrelevant. These cancerous organizations don’t belong. They are trying to kill the hosts. That’s us. Then they’ll kill everybody else! Where will that leave them?

The old hierarchies will cling to their delusional powers. They will keep their guns pointed at us and try to invent more lethal weapons. We’ll have to bring out the feathers and start tickling them so they can let down their defenses and so they can grab a shovel and take part. If they don’t, we might have to ask them to leave. Their hysterical megalomania is getting them involved in serious violations of international accords. If they’re not careful, they could be declared persona non grata worldwide.

With all the money from our land and resources, we could buy out the big corporations so that we have the major shares, say 40%, as Chavez is doing. The rest can be joint ventures with us. In other words, we want all these companies under the control of the people. The colonists can have shares after we take everything out of private control.

The people must control the energy sector, including oil production. Private investors can still play a role. But it will be based on joint ventures that include the people as decision makers, not just consumers.

The money should be put back into our hands, out of the hands of private for-profit bankers. We would invest it into worthwhile projects that restore and protect the land so that the coming generations can be healthy, happy and prosperous. The days of genocide and exploitation are over. We must benefit from our resource revenues and other businesses that provide essential services like public utilities. Clean drinking water and fresh air to breathe would be top priorities.

It goes without saying that Indian Affairs terrorism has to go. There is no excuse for that organization to exist. Its very existence is founded on a misinterpretation of the BNA Act, the constitution of Canada. Britain could only give Canada the authority to negotiate with us. There is no authority under the BNA Act, under international law, or under any treaty to make laws for us.

We have to dismantle the "Tower of Terror" in Hull. Communal power at the grass roots will be the order of the day. Kaianerehkowa can make this happen and can be the start of a real egalitarian and humanistic society.

All social structures will have to be reorganized. Selections of local officials, the economy, finance, banking, transportation, security, public safety and policies related to energy are part of this. There is no need for a top heavy governmental structure when everyone takes responsibility at all levels.

The current colonial bureaucracy will have to be dismantled. Corruption and greed are major problems. They are products of hierarchy. They will naturally disappear when egalitarian democratic structures are put in place.

The changes needed aren’t such a big deal. As long as existing representatives are carrying out the will of the people, they may remain in their positions.

All procedures and decision-making must be public and the work of all administrative officials will be subject to constant review. They have to look out for the people and their directions, instead of looking up to the artificial bosses. They can be removed from office if they do not follow the people’s directions or heed our warnings. All must be given the experience of being a representative so that we can all learn how to help the people. It is important for everyone to learn how difficult it is to serve.

Social justice and economic independence must be based on equitable distribution of national wealth. Education is most important. The habit of censorship has to end. Racism must be eliminated from all school curricula. All students need to learn our points of view on history. They have to know what really happened to us. They have to know that this land belongs to us and our future generations. Science and technology has to benefit all of the people. So must health, the environment, biodiversity, industry, quality of life and security. We have to take up our responsibility and take charge of our own lives.

Social issues can and must be resolved through consensus. We will have to rethink the need for a judiciary. We cannot give anyone power to harm civil or human rights of our people or even of our opponents. Resources must be taken care of, not exploited. The products of the land must be distributed fairly. No one will become desperate enough to want to sell their soul to the devil.

Our young people have a job to do. They can be part of the first wave of reeducation. Every person has a responsibility throughout their lives to educate the people they meet and the coming generations.

Our way is to manage our own relations with all other countries. The colonial states are squatting on our land. They do not represent us.

The people they brought here do not need to fear us. We will not expropriate private property. Right of occupancy can be given to people. The land will always belong as it always has to the future generations of the Onkwehonwe.

We are hoping that the last days of the colonial system are at hand. Democracy and colonialism cannot coexist. Colonialism is a military or civilian "dictatorship" derived from a combination of isolation, overarching greed and an attempt to pull local and global forces together to control all the people and the resources of the world.

Savage capitalism is in its death throes. It is fighting to stay alive. Because of this, it’s becoming more and more vicious. It is important for everyone to stay grounded at this time. We are all working for each other and for the future generations.

The colonial nations are on the tipping edge of fascism. They combine elements of corporatism, patriotism, nationalism and the delusion of an Almighty-directed mission. It requires an iron-fisted militarist agenda with thugs like "Homeland Security" illegally spying on everyone. In this system everything is for sale to the few who can pay.

Colonialism is out of date, illegal and so yesterday. No longer will the armies oppress and kill for the key resources, markets and cheap labor where "might makes right" and any difference of opinion will not be tolerated.

Our youth are precious to us. The Los Angeles Times did a story about "A wildly successful Venezuelan program that makes musical instruments and training available, free of charge, to all children." This gives children something constructive to do. Unlike the U.S. model that Canada copies, the kids are exercising their minds instead of exercising their thumbs playing video games.

Instead of a make-work program for police and social workers who try to slot kids into a system of jail and imprisonment, Chavez created a musical education program called "El Sistema." 500,000 children from all strata of society get training at more than 120 centers around the country. More than 200 youth orchestras have been created. Training in music is known to develop math skills in the young to prepare them later for professional training. There’s no problem keeping guns out of the kids’ hands. They’re too busy making music. That Chavez knows what he is doing.

Instead of punishing youth, we inspire them. As the author, Paul Cummins, put it, "We reap what we sow, and we don’t harvest what we don’t plant."

The Chavez approach is actually much less expensive than the multi-billion dollar state-sponsored iron-fisted prison system and militarist Homeland Security "thuggery."

Another savage effect of the capitalist hierarchy is homelessness. One-way wealth distribution siphons everything upwards except for a few crumbs that are handed to the middle class while nothing goes to the millions on the bottom who are the most in need. They all hope we will just go away. We won’t. Neither will our needs. We come from a participatory tradition which can eliminate the greedy fantasies of colonialism.

Many who come from repressive societies are unable to see a bottom-up model of relationships. We have shown that we always resisted enslavement.

Free expression is part of an open democratic society. No more secrecy or lies. No more corporate media support for capitalists and colonial states. No more thought-control police to mock our efforts at free expression which is vital to a healthy transition from tyranny to democracy. The "thought police" don’t want us to say what is on our minds. They don’t want us to think. We can and will do it because the Kaianerehkowa mandates it. People in the far south of the border are trying to get back on the natural path that has always been there, for us and for everyone. This can be done without a war and without global interference.

An earlier version of this article was published on Mohawk Nation News on February 26th 2007.--Socialist Voice

Kahentinetha Horn is a longtime indigenous rights activist from the Mohawk Nation. She was involved in the 1962 Conference on Indian Poverty in Washington D.C., the blocking of the International Bridge at Akwesasne in 1968, and other indigenous rights campaigns.

In the summer of 1990, she was behind the Canadian Army razor wires that surrounded the Mohawk compound in Kanehsatake. This was the historic Mohawk land rights struggle that became known as the "Oka Crisis." After almost 20 years of service, Kahentinetha was fired by the Department of Indian Affairs for her involvement there.

More recently Kahentinetha has been involved with the Kahnawake Elders Council, and was active at the Six Nations Land reclamation near Caledonia, Ontario, publishing and distributing almost daily accounts of the developments there.

Kahentinetha Horn is an editor for Mohawk Nation News, a daily news service that she founded during the Oka crisis. Recently, Mohawk Nation News came online. It features articles on Mohawk struggles and other issues affecting indigenous people across turtle island and beyond. Check out the site at www.mohawknationnews.com.

Source

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Defying Power For Humanity's Good

Sustainable Agriculture Rice Farming Community to Defy Eviction
By Ilang-Ilang D. Quijano
Apr 5, 2007, 15:13

Note from "Firefly" - Unbelievable but true! These organic farmers in Bukidnon, Philippines are being EVICTED by a state owned university so the rice planted land can be leased to a CORPORATION to promote chemicalized farming!!!

ORGANIC farmers need the support of all human beings who are against the toxic chemicalized environment that PROFIT DRIVEN corporations are fast tracking into this globalized world.

Firefly
Tawo Seed Carrier
POB 1456
South Pasadena, CA 91031

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE RICE FARMING COMMUNITY TO DEFY EVICTION
By Ilang-Ilang D. Quijano

Only defiance will turn these rice fields gold.

A rice farming community in the province of Bukidnon, Southern Philippines is once again facing eviction from a 400-hectare land they have long struggled to till. But now they have more to lose than 20 years ago, when a state-owned university first tried, unsuccessfully, to take away their land.

Six hundred farming families in the municipality of Magalang do not simply cultivate rice fields: they are in control of a thriving sustainable agriculture (SA) farm and a community seedbank with hundreds of traditional rice varieties (TRVs) that have disappeared elsewhere in the country.

Yet the significance of this courageous leap from chemical-dependent rice farming to SA is lost on the Central Mindanao University (CMU), which wants to lease the land to big agri-businesses.

Harassment comeback

Last March 28, more than 20 security agents of CMU, at gunpoint, prevented farmers from working the fields. They confiscated several farming tools and machines, including a small tractor.

“CMU’s harassment is making a comeback. But we have already made a decision. We will not leave our lands. If we do not plant rice, what will our families eat?” said Jun Macote, chairperson of Buffalo-Tamaraw-Limus (BLT), a farmers association affiliated with Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) or Peasant Movement of the Philippines.

Macote came to Manila to participate in Pesticide Action Network’s Week of Rice Action culmination events and to relate to other farmers and the international community their community’s SA practice and current land problem.

Failed land reform program

The BLT farmers experience is a classic case of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program’s (CARP) failure to redistribute land to poor farmers and wrest it from the control of landlords and agri-businesses.

In 1987, the farmers, mostly former CMU employees, were awarded Certificate of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). The CLOAs were issued under CARP, implemented by former president Corazon Aquino after the People Power uprising that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.

The CMU brought the case to the Court of Appeals in 1991, and lost. It elevated the case to the Supreme Court, which in 1992 overturned the lower court’s decision and ruled in favor of CMU on the grounds that land use “for educational purposes” were among CARP’s many exemptions. The farmers’ CLOAs were subsequently revoked.

But the farmers defied the Supreme Court and refused to vacate the land and asserted their rights through collective and militant struggle, even when these led to direct confrontations with CMU’s security agents.

In 2001, the Congressional Committee on Agrarian Reform visited the community to help settle the land dispute. The committee declared it a “stable area” and saw no reason to take the land away from the farmers.

After a year of negotiations, CMU and the BLT farmers signed a Memorandum of Agreement on a five-year lease of the land. The said lease expired last March 10, 2001.

Read the rest here.

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The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War

Israeli Invasion of Lebanon, 2006: Fact and Fiction
By Brian Harring
Apr 5, 2007, 16:05

Editorial Note: Israel's foray into Lebanon last year resulted a resounding military defeat for the Zionist state. According to a confidential French Foreign Office report, seen by Brian Harring, far from losing from 116 to 120 men, as it claims, IDF losses totalled 2300 - Ranimar

Author's Note: On a business trip to Moscow for a conference with my publishers, I stopped in Paris for four days for business, research and sightseeing. During that time, one of my French friends in their Foreign Office gave me a copy of an official report and summary of the causes, actions and losses of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006. This document runs to over three hundred pages and is complete with charts, graphs and many photographs. Here is a translation and condensation of that report for your interest. - Brian Harring

Subject: Causes of the attack

Both the State of Israel and the United States viewed Syria as a potentially dangerous enemy. Joint intelligence indicated that Syria was a strong supporter of the Hezbollah Shiite paramilitary group. Israel had planned a punitive military operation into Lebanon both to clip Hezbollah’s wings and send a strong message to Syria to cease and desist supplying arms and money to the anti-Israel group. Because of its involvement in Iraq, the United States indicated it would be unable to supply any ground troops but would certainly supply any kind of weapon, to include bombs, cluster bombs and ammunition for this projected operation.

A casus belli was created by the Israeli Mossad’s assassination of Rafik Haarri, a popular Lebanese politician and subsequent disinformation promulgated and instigated by both Israel and the United States blamed Syria for the killing.

The IDF was being supplied faulty and misleading intelligence information, apparently originating from Russian sources, that gave misinformation about Hezbollah positions and strengths and therefore the initial planning was badly flawed.

In full concert with the American president, the IDF launched its brutal and murderous attack on July 12, 2006 and continued unabated until the Hezbollah inflicted so many serious casualties on the Israeli forces and also on the civilian population of Israel, that their government frantically demanded that the White House force a cease fire through the United Nations. This was done for Israel on August 14, 2007 and the last act of this murderous and unprovoked assault was when Israel removed their naval blockade of Lebanese ports.

The contrived incident that launched the Israeli attack was an alleged attack by Hezbollah into Israeli territory where they were alleged to have ‘kidnapped” two Israeli soldiers and subsequently launched a rocket attack to cover their retreat.

The conflict killed over six thousand people, most of whom were Lebanese, severely damaged Lebanese infrastructure, displaced 700,000-915,000 Lebanese, and 300,000-500,000 Israelis, and disrupted normal life across all of Lebanon and northern Israel. Even after the ceasefire, much of Southern Lebanon remained uninhabitable due to unexploded cluster bombs. As of 1 December 2006, an estimated 200,000 Lebanese remained internally displaced or refugees

During the campaign Israel's Air Force flew more than 12,000 combat missions, its Navy fired 2,500 shells, and its Army fired over 100,000 shells. Large parts of the Lebanese civilian infrastructure were destroyed, including 400 miles of roads, 73 bridges, and 31 other targets such as Beirut International Airport, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities, 25 fuel stations, 900 commercial structures, up to 350 schools and two hospitals, and 15,000 homes. Some 130,000 more homes were damaged.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered commanders to prepare civil defense plans. One million Israelis had to stay near or in bomb shelters or security rooms, with some 250,000 civilians evacuating the north and relocating to other areas of the country.

On 26 July 2006 Israeli forces attacked and destroyed an UN observer post. Described as a nondeliberate attack by Israel, the post was shelled for hours before being bombed. UN forces made repeated calls to alert Israeli forces of the danger to the UN observers, all four of whom were killed. Rescuers were shelled as they attempted to reach the post. According to an e-mail sent earlier by one of the UN observers killed in the attack, there had been numerous occasions on a daily basis where the post had come under fire from both Israeli artillery and bombing. The UN observer reportedly wrote that previous Israeli bombing near the post had not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to "tactical necessity," military jargon which retired Canadian Major General Lewis MacKenzie later interpreted as indicating that Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets extremely close to the post.

On 27 July 2006 Hezbollah ambushed the Israeli forces in Bint Jbeil and killed eighteen soldiers. Israel claimed, after this event, that it also inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah.

On 28 July 2006 Israeli paratroopers killed 5 of Hezbollah's commando elite in Bint Jbeil. In total, the IDF claimed that 80 fighters were killed in the battles at Bint Jbeil. Hezbollah sources, coupled with International Red Cross figures place the Hexbollah total at 7 dead and 129 non-combattant Lebanese civilian deaths.

On 30 July 2006 Israeli airstrikes hit an apartment building in Qana, killing at least 65 civilians, of which 28 were children, with 25 more missing. The airstrike was widely condemned.

On 31 July 2006 the Israeli military and Hezbollah forces engaged Hezbollah in the Battle of Ayta ash-Shab.

Read all of it here.

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2nd Annual Neighborhood Planning Conference

Hey Look Us Over. Get Ready. We are a GO for the The Second Annual Neighborhood Planning Conference: Continue to Save the Date, Time and Place:

May 5, 2007, Austin Community College, Eastview Campus: THE NEXT TEN YEARS: Building Community Capacity.

Click on Agenda (pdf) for more information about the workshops. The May 5th Conference is only $25 (It’s $35 after April 27th, and space may be limited). And you get a lunch too! Scholarships available. Opportunities for Tax-deductible contributions (Thanks Austin Community Foundation)! Working together is the only way to a sustainable future… The 2007 Conference will include over 40 citizen-led workshops in 8 Tracks on topics solicited from community organizations and leaders that would be useful in enhancing Community Capacity Building (see Agenda above and Tracks below*).

You can’t do it all! As stated by one Community Leader…

“The 2007 Neighborhood Planning Conference schedule has depth and ambition; folks will want to attend every session. Let's work together to get neighborhood coverage of the workshops. I would like all of our Neighborhood Association leadership to attend, (8 RNA officers) in order to get saturation and to share knowledge. In addition to the Lunch session, make the last session where people network to collectively implement meaningful action. Deep thanks to each of you for this pioneering event.” Martha Ward, Ridgetop Neighborhood Association.

Please contact us for any additional information for and/or from the Neighborhood Planning Convening Committee (or contact us at neighbors@austin.rr.com. See you on the 5th, if not sooner. (In the alternative, send your check made out to “One Neighbor”, P.O. Box 1961, Austin, Texas 78767. Include your address and telephone number.)

Hosted by the NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING CONVENING COMMITTEE (See also Convening Committee (pdf))

The Schedule: Welcome to the 2007 Neighborhood Planning Conference

When: May 5, 2007, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm

Where: Austin Community College, EASTVIEW CAMPUS,
3401 Webberville Rd., Austin, TX 78702.

THE MAP TO GET THERE: Click Here

Registration ~ 7:30 am

· Main Speakers & Opening Session: ~ The Next Ten Years: Building Capacity 8:30 am
· Break ~ 10 am
· 1st Workshop ~ 10:15 am
· 2nd Workshop ~ 11:15 am
· Watershed Lunch [Panel with Reps from Neighborhood Councils ~ 12:15 pm
· 3rd Workshop ~ 1:00 pm
· 4th Workshop ~ 2:00 pm
· 5th Workshop ~ 3:00 pm
· Closing Session: Interim Community Projects ~ 4:00 pm
· End of Conference ~ 4:30 pm

The Conference Tracks (5 Workshops Each Track):

Track 1. Jerry Schultz: Community Capacity Building.
Track 2. Jim Diers: Governmental/Structural Capacity Building.
Track 3. Neighborhoods Building Relationships with Governments
Track 4. TNT and Susan Hill: Boot Camp
Track 5. Neighborhood Environment
Track 6. Neighborhood Transportation and Economic Development
Track 7. Neighborhood Communications
Track 8. Neighborhood Planning Vision

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Politicking Fear, Part 4

Hijacking Catastrophe: "Things Related and Not" (4 of 10)

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Not to Suck the Blood of the Iraqi People

Analysis: Iraq oil union has storied past
By BEN LANDO, UPI Energy Correspondent

WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- Hassan Jumaa Awad wants Iraq's oil to stay under state control, and the unionists, who have long worked the rigs, to be supported in developing the national resource. But this is no request from the president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions.

It's a demand.

"Since we are working to make progress in production, we need a real participation in all the laws that are related to the oil policy," Awad told United Press International, speaking on his mobile phone from the southern port city of Basra. "We are the sons of this sector and we have the management and technical capability and we have the knowledge on all the oil fields."

The IFOU represents more than 26,000 workers organized under various unions in the oil-rich southern and northern areas of Iraq. Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, together they've operated Iraq's oil sector before, during and after Saddam Hussein. Their rights to officially unionize are still denied under a 1978 Saddam law, one of a few of the former president's laws the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi Parliament upheld.

Iraq's oil production is still around 2 million barrels per day, down from the 2.6 million bpd before the war, but far below its potential since most of its 115 billion barrels of reserves are untapped. Investment in the world's third-largest oil market is hampered by conditions past and present, and an unknown future.

Saddam pushed certain oilfields too hard while neglecting maintenance and new technologies. The sector was hit with war starting in 2003, and now regular sabotage and a shortage of electricity.

Kurdish and central government negotiators reached a deal last month on the framework for a law governing Iraq's oil. Details on ownership rights and revenue sharing are still far from finalized. The Iraq National Oil Co. would restart but compete with foreign oil companies, who could win contracts giving them partial ownership of the respective fields.

INOC "should have full privileges," Awad said, "and we don't agree on the production partnership."

Iraq's oil has been nationalized for four decades. Iraqis view it with a pride of ownership, something the law would reduce if the contract language allowing for foreign ownership stands.

"We think that to reserve sovereignty of Iraq is to be able to control the oil wealth," Awad said, and foreign investment should be limited to technical assistance. "I wish if the foreign companies were to come into Iraq, that they help us," Awad said. "Not to suck the blood of the Iraqi people."

The unions were kept in the dark, as were most members of Iraq's parliament, until the draft law was leaked to the media. Even then it was still out the reach of most of Iraq's citizens.

"The discussion over the oil law was held very tightly between the Bush administration and key representatives of the most influential parts of Iraq's decision making authority," said Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International and author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time."

Read the rest here.

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True Love on Wildlife Wednesday

I ne'er saw cute 'til now

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