• Privatising Central American health etc, etc -- but without Costa
Rica? The Business Journal, Tampa Bay, "U.S. works
on CAFTA, without Costa Rica," http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2003/12/15/daily24.html?jst=b_ln_hl , Date on webpage is incomplete, being "LATEST NEWS, 5:26 PM EST Wednesday".
Date in URL seems to be Dec 15, 2003, a Monday.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: U.S. negotiators said they completed Central America Free Trade Agreement talks Wednesday but with only four nations after Costa Rica refused to open its telecommunications and insurance industries to
privatization. Groups said disconnect in meetings mirrored problems with
the Free Trade of the Americas meetings in Miami a few weeks ago.
CAFTA,
if passed by Congress, would, in effect, create a NAFTA-style relationship
between the United States and the Central American countries of El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. The Dominican Republic could also be
annexed to the agreement, as well as Costa Rica, potentially, if the country
re-enters negotiations.
To make the Text Letters look LARGER
For Netscape Navigator 4.78: [Ctrl] + ]
For Internet Explorer v 6.0: View / Text Size > Larger (OR Largest) /
(Thanks to Paul O'Brien Web Design at http://pmob.co.uk/version7/customise.php )
• Bush officials punished truthteller by illegally revealing his
wife was a secret agent, thus endangering lives of overseas helpers.
The Crisis Papers article "Time for Plame-Case Reporters to Out the Leakers,"
www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/plame.htm ,
by Bernard Weiner, December 16, 2003.
UNITED STATES: Journalists do not reveal sources. It's
what gives the Fourth Estate some of its clout: Officials, and lower-level
whistleblowers, trust us to receive sensitive information and not get them
in trouble by ratting on them. In Washington and in state capitols, officials
leak information all the time, provide off-the-record statements to reporters,
engage in "background" interviews without permitting themselves to be quoted
by name or title.
We do not say who told us those things. We journalists
might get thrown in the clink for not revealing who provided us the information,
but the sources have no need to worry about their futures. We will keep
our mouths shut. It's not just a journalistic tradition, it's also a practical
matter: If we revealed our source in one instance, we might never get anybody
to tell us anything significant in private again.
So here I am urging my journalistic colleagues -- at least
six of them -- to break the tradition and reveal their sources, in the
interest of national security.
You know what I'm referring to. After Ambassador Joseph
Wilson wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times that contradicted Bush's
false State of the Union claims about Iraq seeking to buy Niger uranium,
two "senior administration officials" told at least six journalists in
July that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA agent. Karl Rove,
Bush's closest political advisor, reportedly told Hardball's Chris Matthews
that after Wilson's op-ed piece, Mrs. Wilson was "fair game."
This revelation of her undercover role at the CIA is against
the law, a law signed by the first Bush president, George H.W. Bush. In
1999, he told assembled CIA employees that those who would reveal the identity
of undercover intelligence officers are the "most insidious of traitors."
FIVE DIDN'T, ONE DID Five of the six journalists who were provided Plame's
name and job-history chose, for whatever reason, not to run the story.
Perhaps it didn't pass the smell test: clearly, the administration
officials wished to manipulate the news outlets from private agendas that
could only be guessed at. One right-wing columnist, Robert Novak -- often
a source of Bush administration leaks -- had no such qualms; even though
the CIA had asked him not to use Plame's name, he did so anyway.
It seems clear that the outing of Wilson's wife was not
carried out merely to ruin her career and to punish him, but to warn other
government employees who might want to oppose key Bush policy to think
twice before going public, lest something similar happen to them.
Many agents in the CIA, appalled at what was being done
to one of their colleagues by high-ranking Bush officials, chose to see
the outing of Plame as a direct slap at their agency, which had been in
conflict with the White House over intelligence matters meant to justify
the invasion of Iraq. Specifically, the CIA's intelligence analysts, try
as they might, were unable to come up with the evidence on WMDs, nuclear
weapons and a Sadaam-al Qaeda link that Rumseld and Cheney and Wolfowitz
and Bush wanted; so, because the decision already had been made to invade,
Rumsfeld quickly had to set up his private rump "intelligence" unit, staffed
not by intelligence agents but by political appointees who would do his
bidding.
That unit, the Office of Special Plans, provided the phony
"evidence" that convinced the American people and Congress that the invasion
was justifiable. The CIA was furious, and agents then began leaking damaging
anti-Administration information to reporters.
Whatever the reasons that led the two "senior administration
officials" to tell the six reporters and thus to violate the law by revealing
the identity of a secret CIA officer, Plame was out in the cold. Not only
was she compromised and potentially put in danger, but so were those abroad
with whom she had worked over many years in building up intelligence on
-- irony of ironies -- weapons of mass destruction. None of this mattered.
The two "senior administration officials" put scores of lives at risk while
doing damage to the one area of inquiry that was of most importance to
their overall policy in Iraq and to the war on terrorism in general.
This felonious behavior reminds one of the demented logic
found behind the government's firing of Arab-speaking gays who were doing
intelligence and translation work, even though the agencies are woefully
short on Arab-speaking agents. This is a gang that not only can't shoot
straight, it can't even think straight.
COVERING UP THE PLAYERS. We don't know all the players
in the Plame-Wilson scenario. Karl Rove, Bush's chief political advisor,
and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, are the main suspects
behind the outing, either doing it themselves or having lower-level aides
in their offices speak to the reporters; but, since Novak and the five
others are not talking, the Administration figures it will get away with
the felony and cover-up, since the journalistic tradition of silence will
continue to protect their dirty secret.
Bush has never showed any genuine curiosity in finding
out who broke the law in this case. He chose not to have an Independent
Counsel ("Special Prosecutor") appointed -- something the GOP would have
demanded in an instant if this had happened under a Democrat president.
Instead, he permitted Ashcroft's Justice Department to handle the investigation
in-house, despite the obvious conflict-of-interest.
As Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility
and Ethics in Washington, has written, this Ashcroft "investigation" was
suspicious from the outset: "The Justice Department launched its allegedly
official probe on September 26th, but neglected to direct the White House
to preserve critical evidence until the evening of September 29th. Then,
when the White House Counsel asked if he could wait until the next day
to inform the staff of the need to preserve documents, the Justice Department
allowed it. Simply, if the leaker(s) had not been smart enough to get rid
of the evidence between July 6th and September 29th, the White House Counsel's
office wanted to be sure that there was at least one last chance to do
so before destroying evidence would constitute criminal obstruction of
justice."
The investigatory action in this case has been absolutely
underwhelming, and, for all intents and purposes, nothing is expected to
come out of the FBI's probe -- at least not before the November 2004 balloting.
"We have let the earth-movers roll in over this one (i.e. the Plame investigation),"
a "senior White House official" was quoted by the Financial Times two weeks
ago. If the heat ever does get too intense -- if, for example, the Congress
were to initiate its own hearings and get officials under oath -- a lower-level
fall-guy no doubt could be fingered.
AN "EXTRAORDINARY" REQUIREMENT. So, it appears that the
only way justice will be served here is if one or more of the six journalists
decides that there are overriding considerations that enable a reporter,
in good conscience, to reveal the sources.
Not even Novak believes the long-honored journalistic
tradition is absolute. In 2001, he himself named a source that he'd kept
secret for years (the double-agent FBI spy Robert Hanssen), once he became
convinced that national security was at stake; he did it, he said, because
the situation, was "extraordinary."
Clearly, if an administration source told a reporter that
he was involved in an assassination plot against, say, a United States
senator, that reporter would be able to tell the difference between the
need to maintain silence as a journalist and the fact that a crime was
in the making and someone's life was endangered. If an administration source
told a journalist some career-threatening dirt on a political opponent
and bragged to the reporter that the story, whether true or not, could
never be traced back to the Administration official, wouldn't that journalist
begin to at least question the tradition of always maintaining the confidentiality
of sources? So there are no absolutes here.
As Novak noted, the journalistic rule can be bent when
an "extraordinary" occasion calls for it -- and certainly this is true
when national security is involved. It certainly was during the Vietnam
war, when the New York Times and Washington Post saw that the Nixon Administration
was hiding behind the term "national security," and published the Pentagon
Papers anyway, because they understood the true nature of that term and
the need for the American people to know the truth of how we got into that
quagmire. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed.
As President Bush#1 was well aware, harming the CIA by
revealing its agents is a clear danger to national security -- a "traitorous"
act. If Bush#2 is elected in 2004, it is entirely possible -- indeed, likely
-- that the U.S. will be threatening and perhaps invading another country
or two, probably in the Middle East, and, more than likely, treating the
CIA with contempt again while it cobbles together raw, untested "intelligence"
from suspect sources.
I'm not making up this invasion scenario; the ideologues
behind U.S foreign/military policy have been quite open about their intentions
of remaking, by force if necessary, the geopolitical map of much of the
rest of the world. All of this is codified as official U.S. policy in the
National Security Strategy promulgated by the Bush Administration in 2002.
DOING THE RIGHT THING. I don't expect that Novak will
break his silence (even if he did it once before), as he's tied ideologically
to the political agenda of Bush & Co. But surely the other five, presumably
with more integrity, would come to understand the political, legal and
international ramifications if they continue to maintain their silence.
Reportedly, the five verified with the
Washington Post the story
of their contact with the two "senior Administration officials," and those
Post reporters who did that verifying likewise know something that could
be useful.
The reason Bush & Co. can swagger and bully people
in Congress and the Press and internationally is because hardly anybody
that matters ever stands up to them. Why are there not ongoing investigations
of this major Plame scandal by the Congress? If the relevant Republican-controlled
committees of the House and Senate refuse to ask the questions that need
to be asked, why can't Democrats on their own hold the appropriate investigatory
hearings? Those probes might not be "official," but, if nothing else, they
would focus renewed attention on the "traitorous" act, keeping the issue
alive -- and such hearings might actually provide a well-publicized forum
where journalists might feel a bit more protected when answering the key
questions truthfully.
If journalists, supposedly the guardians and watchdogs
of the government, let the perpetrators get away with this cover-up of
a crime, a possible second-term Bush Administration would be unconstrained
domestically and internationally, doing untold damage to our national security
abroad and to our Constitutional protections and economy at home. In addition,
the press would be relegated to the status of lapdogs, thus abandoning
the watchdog function that Jefferson and others envisioned and which it
has carried out so ably over several hundred years. Reporters would become
mere functionaries, little more than conduits for government propaganda,
similar to journalists in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union.
I am certain that serving as little more than propagandists
is NOT what motivated those five professional reporters to get into the
journalism business. That's certainly not why I joined the fraternity.
On some level, we journalists want to discover the truth, know the truth,
pass it on to our fellow citizens -- so that our democratic institutions
can work properly, out of factual knowledge -- and to demonstrate that
nobody, not even a governor or senator or president, is beyond the law.
In short, we are motivated by the desire to do the right thing, by being
true to ourselves and to the best interests of the nation.
That credo underlying our craft is, at its most basic,
a sacred trust. Acting on behalf of one's country likewise is a sacred
trust. May the twain meet here. The situation is so dire, so extraordinary,
that it is quite proper -- indeed morally, legally and politically necessary
-- to out the rats who have endangered American national security.
-- The Crisis Papers, "Time for Plame-Case Reporters to
Out the Leakers," www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/plame.htm
, By Bernard Weiner, Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers. (Bernard Weiner has
worked as a journalist for, among others, The Miami Herald, Miami News,
Claremont Courier, San Diego Magazine, Northwest Passage, and, for nearly
20 years, the San Francisco Chronicle.) (by courtesy of "MichaelP" papadop@peak.org ) December 16, 2003
• US attorney general fined for breaking law. The
Telegraph, Britain, US attorney general fined for breaking law,
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F12%2F18%2Fwash18.xml
, By Marcus Warren, Dec 18, 2003
UNITED STATES: John Ashcroft, the US attorney general, has been fined £21,000 for breaking election laws during his defeat by a dead rival for a seat in the Senate.
During his unsuccessful campaign in 2000, America's top lawman illegally accepted £62,700 from a body set up to support a run for the presidency, the Federal Election Commission found.
A controversial, deeply religious figure, Mr Ashcroft was standing for re-election as a senator from Missouri. Humiliatingly, he was beaten by an opponent who died in a plane crash before polling day.
His rival's widow, Jean Carnahan, was later awarded the seat. One dissenting Democrat member of the FEC protested against the size of the fine, calling it "so low that I do not believe it adequately reflects the severity of the conduct at issue".
However, two Republicans on the commission described the offence as "a garden-variety complaint . . . blown far out of proportion".
Mr Ashcroft's Senate campaign fell foul of the law by using a mailing list compiled by a committee to explore a bid for the White House. The resulting contributions exceeded the legal limit and, to make matters worse, his campaign failed to disclose them.
Links:
24 September 2003: Ashcroft tells prosecutors to be even tougher on criminals: /news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$NGBVKZ4LYKCV1QFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/09/24/wash24.xml
8 August 2003: Ashcroft cracks down on liberal judges: /news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$NGBVKZ4LYKCV1QFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2003/08/08/wash08.xml
External links:
Federal Election Commission: /news/exit.jhtml?exit=http://www.fec.gov/
Office of the Attorney General - US Department of Justice: /news/exit.jhtml?exit=http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/
• Corporate Reimbursement Scheme Results In $168,000 Civil Penalty.
WASHINGTON -- The FEC [Federal Electoral Commission] has entered into a
conciliation agreement with Centex Construction Group, Inc. (CCG), Centex-Rooney
Construction Co., Inc. (Rooney), headquartered near Ft. Lauderdale, FL,
former CCG and Rooney CEO Bob Moss, and various current and former CCG
and Rooney officers. The conciliation agreement settles violations of the
Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) stemming from the reimbursement of
$56,125 in contributions with corporate funds made by the company officers.
The reimbursed contributions went to seven federal candidates, two political
party committees and one political action committee between 1998 and 2002.
The investigation stemmed from a sua sponte submission and complaint filed
with the FEC by Centex Corporation, headquartered in Dallas, TX. The conciliation
resulted in total civil penalties of $168,000. Centex Construction Group,
Inc., Centex-Rooney Construction Co., Inc., and the following corporate
officers approved the reimbursement plan: Bob Moss, Gary Esporrin, Brice
Hill, Ken Bailey, Chris Genry, and Mark Layman. They are responsible for
$112,000 of the penalty. The officers and employees who served as conduits
for the contributions were Bob Moss, Gary Esporrin, Bruce Moldow, Gary
Glenewinkel, D.J. McGlothern, Albert Petrangeli, Ted Adams, J. Michael
Wood, Raymond Southern, Larry Casey, and David Hamlin. They are responsible
for $56,000 of the penalty. According to the conciliation agreement, former
Rooney CEO Robert Moss encouraged employees to make political contributions
and to send copies of contribution checks to him or the company's CFO.
Employees understood that each of their political contributions for which
they submitted a check to the company would be considered in determining
their year-end bonus. At bonus time, the contribution amounts were increased
to offset tax liability and added to the bonus amounts each employee would
have otherwise received from any incentive plan. . . . -- Federal
Electoral Commission, United States of America, news release, "Corporate
Reimbursement Scheme Results In $168,000 Civil Penalty," www.fec.gov/press/20031218murs.html
, Contact: George Smaragdis, Ron Harris, Bob Biersack, Ian Stirton; December
18, 2003
• Publishers didn't publish newsitems deviating from the official
line in Afghanistan -- but reporter Sarah Chayes broke free, now helps
there. UNITED STATES, Dec 18: * * * And yet it proved a difficult juncture
to be an American journalist. "The worst period in my entire career," a
dear friend confided as we were comparing notes afterwards. He sent me
a list of story ideas his editors had turned down. "They simply didn't
want any reporting," he explained. "They told us the story lines, and asked
us to substantiate them." CNN correspondents received written instructions
on how to frame stories of Afghan suffering. A BBC reporter told me in
our Quetta hotel the weekend before Kabul fell how he had had to browbeat
his desk editors to persuade them that Kandahar was still standing. * *
*
What I have found is that the two elements of our work
-- development and advocacy -- complement each other indispensably. Without
building that village, I would never have known what warlord government
means. Our analyses are grounded in intimate hands-on experience. But had
we not strived to change the situation of women, the income we provide
for 200 of them -- by commissioning and buying the intricate embroidery
that is local tradition -- would be next to meaningless. On the day that
things blow here --and they could erupt if poor policies are not reversed
-- it will be as if we had never come in the first place. * * *
-- Columbia Journalism Review, at Columbia University's
http://www.columbia.edu Graduate School of Journalism http://www.jrn.columbia.edu
, "VOICES, Breaking Ranks; A reporter dons the wings of advocacy," www.cjr.org/issues/2003/6/voice-chayes.asp
, by Sarah Chayes, Issue 6, Nov-Dec 2003; e-mail dated Dec 18 03
• Civilian death toll suppressed in Iraq. IRAQ, Dec 19: Despite
the capture of Saddam Hussein, civilian deaths in Iraq may prove to be
the true Achilles heel of the US and Britain's intervention. The bodies
pile up in morgues around the country, and reliable press and media reports
put the total civilian death toll since March 19 as approaching 10,000.
More than 2,000 occupation-related deaths have occurred in Baghdad since
President Bush announced the "end of major combat" on May 1. This bloodshed
is inflaming anti-coalition passions in Iraq and beyond it, encouraging
paramilitary organisations and provoking acts of revenge from ordinary
Iraqis driven beyond moderation by the deaths of friends and family under
the Coalition Provisional Authority's military rule. * * *
Since the start of hostilities, Iraq Body Count has been
tracking civilian deaths through worldwide media reports. We will continue
this work until some official agency fulfils its responsibilities to the
memory of those who have died since March 19 2003. The innocent victims
of the Iraq conflict must be recorded and honoured - and their relatives
compensated - for it is they who have paid most dearly for the decisions
of our politicians. Special report:Iraq Chronology:Iraq
timeline Interactive guides:Click-through
graphics on Iraq Key documents:Full
text of speeches and documents Audio reports:Audio
reports on Iraq More special reports:Politics
and the war; Aid
for Iraq; Iraq
- the media war; The
anti-war movement; 28.01.2003; Guide
to anti-war websites Useful links:Provisional
authority: rebuilding Iraq; Iraqi-American
chamber of commerce -- The Guardian, Britain, "We must honour the dead; Thousands
of Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the occupation. So why is there
no official death toll?" www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1110060,00.html
, by John Sloboda, Friday December 19, 2003.
• John Sloboda is co-founder of Iraq Body Count www.iraqbodycount.net
and incoming executive director of the Oxford Research Group. Dec 19 03
• US Attorney-General 1. Fined for election fund abuse, 2. Admonished
for compromising terror trial defendants' rights. WASHINGTON, Dec 19:
[1] United States Attorney-General John
Ashcroft has been fined about $50,000 for breaking election laws and
admonished by a Federal judge for violating a court order.
In 2000, America's top lawman illegally accepted about
$150,000 from a presidential election fund for his own campaign for re-election
as a Missouri senator, the Federal Election Commission found. He was beaten
by an opponent [Mel Carnahan] who died in a plane crash before polling
day. His rival's widow was later awarded the seat.
Mr Ashcroft's Senate campaign fell foul of the law by
using a mailing list compiled by a committee to explore a bid for the White
House. The resulting contributions exceeded the legal limit and, to make
matters worse, his campaign failed to disclose them.
[2] In Detroit, US District Judge Gerald Rosen
said statements made by Mr Ashcroft could have compromised the defendants'
rights in the first big terror trial after September 11, 2001. The judge
said the violations did not warrant contempt charges or require Mr Ashcroft
to appear to explain himself. "The Attorney-General's office exhibited
a distressing lack of care in issuing potentially prejudicial statements
about this case," Judge Rosen wrote in an opinion released this week.
. . . -- The West Australian,
"Law catches up with US Attorney-General," Associated Press and The Telegraph
Group, London, p 34, Fri Dec 19, 2003
[COMMENT: Yes, this is the same Mr Ashcroft who, as A-G, has been "flying the religion flag" in the "war on terror." AND he has
supported the pro-slavery rebel states in the American Civil War.
Personal quotes:
"Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send
your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his
son to die for you."
www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/linkscopy/MenOfFaith.html .
"We need the law to make it clear that it's as much a
conspiracy to aid and assist the terrorists, to join them for fighting
purposes as it is to carry them a lunch or to provide them with a weapon"
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/06/05/ashcroft_terror030605 .
"[Southern Partisan] helps set the record straight. [It's] got a heritage of doing
that, of defending Southern patriots like Lee, Jackson and Davis ...We've
all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught
that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes
and their honor to some perverted agenda." www.fair.org/press-releases/southern-partisan.html • Quotes from webpage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft
(which also has picture), last modified 22:30, 17 Dec 2003.
For more on Mr Ashcroft's comments on the terrorist trial/s,
try Detroit Free Press, "Judge wants Ashcroft out of terror trial," www.freep.com/news/locway/tri19_20030419.htm , BY DAVID ASHENFELTER, April 19, 2003; and Capitol Hill Blue, "Ashcroft
mouths off, ignores gag order," www.capitolhillblue.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=16&num=2112 , By DAVID RUNK, 06:14, Apr 19, 2003. -- Just World Campaign 20 Dec 03.
COMMENT ENDS.] [Article.Dec 19, 2003]
• Pentagon fired the military lawyers assigned to defend
illegally-detained Guantanamo prisoners.
UNITED STATES, Dec 19, 2003: Pentagon officials have reportedly dismissed the first crew of military lawyers recruited last
spring to defend prisoners being held incommunicado in the US detention
camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Last July, President George W. Bush designated
six of the 660 prisoners being held there as eligible for trial by "military
commissions". As yet, no formal charges have been brought. An article in
the January 2004 issue of the American magazine Vanity Fair entitled
"Operation Take Away My Freedom: Inside Guantanamo Bay" said that the selected
"judge advocates", as the military defense attorneys are known, were reassigned
after protesting that the terms of the proceedings would make it impossible
for them to assure the defendants a fair trial.
The prospective defense counsel objected in particular
to rules allowing prosecutors to monitor attorney-client conversations.
Ordinary rules of evidence are to be waived, allowing the admittance of
hearsay, confessions obtained under duress, and secret evidence that would
be kept from the defendant. In addition, the tribunals are to allow unsworn
written and telephone testimony by prosecution witnesses, making a mockery
of the principle of facing and cross-examining one's accusers. Unlike regular
military courts-martial, there is no possibility of appeal to civilian
authority. The only appeal allowed is to a panel of three military judges
appointed by the same secretary of defense who brings the charges in the
first place. If, by some miracle, a defendant is found not guilty, President
Bush has the authority to reverse the verdict, imposing the death penalty,
or simply remanding the defendant back to the limbo of indefinite detention
without charges from which he came before trial. Pentagon officials denied
that the attorney firings ever took place, while offering no explanation
for the reports.
The Vanity Fair article went on to state that the attorneys
brought in to replace those who were dismissed are equally troubled by
the unfair procedures. They were reportedly planning to submit the commission's
rules to the ethics committees of the state bar associations to which they
belong, with a lawsuit to be filed alleging improper orders, if, as they
expect, the ethics panels find that the rules violate due process. On December
3, the British Guardian newspaper released a report on its own month-long
investigation into Guantanamo Bay, making substantially the same allegations.
The Guardian quoted an ex-military lawyer familiar with the incident: "There
was a circular that went out to military lawyers in the early spring of
2003 which said "we are looking for volunteers' for defense counsel. There
was a selection process, and the people they selected were the right people,
they had the right credentials, they were good lawyers.
"The first day, when they were being briefed on the dos
and don'ts, at least a couple said, "You can't impose these restrictions
on us because we can't properly represent our clients. "When the group
decided they weren't going to go along, they were relieved. They reported
in the morning and got fired that afternoon". The British newspaper went
on to cite a "uniformed source with intimate knowledge" of the current
situation in Guantanamo, who said that the mood among a new team of six
military defense lawyers was one of "deep unhappiness".
"It's like you took military justice, gave it to a prosecutor
and said, "modify it any way you want,'" the source said. The fact that
the US military's own handpicked lawyers are unable to stomach the rules
governing the planned military tribunals is the clearest indication that
the Guantanamo detainees will receive nothing but drumhead justice. Apparently
taking the Pentagon's denials as good coin, the US television networks
and leading newspapers have virtually all failed to report on the controversy.
The firing of the military lawyers is only one of the
indications that the Bush administration is facing a growing crisis over
its illegal detentions in Guantanamo. The December 6 Washington Post cited
reports of plea agreements prosecutors were negotiating with the first
two defendants who were among those expected to be tried, the Australian
David Hicks and Moazzam Begg, a British citizen. Sources said that, after
two years of detention, much of it in solitary confinement, the two were
prepared to plead guilty to associating with Al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban,
making a confession in open court and expressing regret for their actions.
Armed with the threat of the death penalty, as well as the incentive of
improved conditions of confinement for those who "cooperate", interrogators
have apparently been softening up their captives for the plea bargains
without their having benefit of legal representation. Since formal plea
bargains can only be accepted after defendants have consulted counsel,
these reports would also explain the timing of the Pentagon's decision
to allow David Hicks to meet with his military-appointed lawyer Major Michael
Mori. On December 11, Mori became the first lawyer to see a Guantanamo
detainee, along with Stephen Kenny, the Australian civilian attorney retained
by the Hicks family.
Kenny was not allowed to meet with his client without
Major Mori present, and he was banned from talking to the media about his
visit. British attorney Clive Stafford Smith, hired to represent Moazzam
Begg, responded to the reports of his client pleading guilty by saying,
"This is all part of a Stalinist show trial, in which you're tried in public
only if you agree to plead guilty". Smith has not been allowed to meet
with Begg. For over two years, the Bush administration has maintained that
the Guantanamo detainees have no right to an attorney or for that matter
any rights whatsoever under US or international law. That they have now
granted one detainee access to an attorney -- albeit under strictly controlled
conditions in which a free client-attorney exchange is precluded -- suggests
a tactical concession aimed at salvaging its brutal and unconstitutional
policy of holding anyone it likes indefinitely without charges by simply
declaring them "unlawful combatants", a term that has no meaning in either
US or international law. -- World Socialist Web Site, Pentagon fired the
military lawyers assigned to defend Guantanamo prisoners, www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/guan-d19.shtml
, By Jamie Chapman,
19 December 2003
• Iraqis ripped off in post-war chaos. PERTH,
W. Australia, Dec 21: Iraqis are enduring delayed pay at $US60 a month,
overcharging and chaos. ABC News Radio had a report on Sunday [Dec 14]
about 400 Iraqi officers demonstrating against their pay cheques being
three months overdue. The same reporter had been told that half the army
of Iraqis that the US had recruited had resigned. A US officer told the
world that it was only the recruits with families who were leaving. The
army had retained the single men, and they were paid $60 dollars a month.
For $US60 they expect Iraqis to risk being murdered by crazy people who
even blow up the Red Cross.
Reports about the purges of teachers and public servants
by the hundreds of thousands have been coming in for months. And US oil
services giant Halliburton has been credibly accused of overcharging for
fuel -- in an oil-rich region of the world!
Yes, the US and Britain obviously don't have a clue how
to administer their new overseas conquest. The Rev Neville Watson of Perth
said something like that after returning from Iraq a few months ago.
Chaos is the main game.
A positive suggestion would be to remove all foreigners
from the country and withdraw armed units to the borders. Then patrol the
skies to prevent further fanatics from entering. Then pray. -- The
Sunday Times, letter from John Massam, Greenwood (Perth), p 61,
December 21, 2003
[CONFIRMATION, AND DUBIOUS FIGURE: Time magazine,
page 16, Dec 22, 2003: "53% estimated percentage of recruits who have quit
the U.S.-trained Iraqi army, mostly over complaints about low salaries.
$60 Monthly salary for privates in the new Iraqi army. $2 Monthly salary
Iraqi recruits made under Saddam Hussein. CONFIRMATION AND DUBIOUS FIGURE
ENDS.]
[EXPLANATION: "Ripped off" in the heading is slang for being defrauded. EXPLANATION ENDS.]
[Letter: Dec 21 03]
• Why the US wants Iraq's debts cancelled - and Argentina's paid
in full. BRITAIN: Comment: Contrary to predictions, the doors of Old
Europe weren't slammed in James Baker's face as he asked forgiveness for
Iraq's foreign debt last week. Germany and France appear to have signed
on, and Russia is softening.
In the days leading up to Baker's drop-the-debt tour,
there was virtual consensus that the former US secretary of state had been
sabotaged by deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose move to shut
out "non-coalition" partners from reconstruction contracts in Iraq of $18.6bn
seemed designed to make Baker look a hypocrite.
Only now it turns out that Wolfowitz may not have been
undermining Baker, but rather acting as his enforcer. He showed up with
a big stick to point out "the threat of economic exclusion from Iraq's
potential $500bn reconstruction" just as Baker was about to speak softly.
The Iraqi people "should not be saddled with the debt
of a brutal regime", said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. No argument
here. But when I heard about Baker's "noble mission", as George Bush described
it, I couldn't help thinking about an under-reported story earlier this
month. On December 4, the Miami Herald published excerpts from a state
department transcript of a meeting on October 7 1976 between Henry Kissinger,
then secretary of state under Gerald Ford, and Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti,
Argentina's then foreign minister under the military dictatorship.
It was the height of Argentina's dirty war to destroy
the "Marxist threat" by systematically torturing and killing not only armed
guerrillas, but also peaceful union organisers, student activists and their
friends, families and sympathisers. By the end of the dictatorship, approximately
30,000 people had been "disappeared".
At the time of the meeting, at the Waldorf Astoria in
New York, much of Argentina's left had already been erased, and news of
bodies washing up on the banks of the Rio de la Plata was drawing increasingly
urgent calls for sanctions. Yet the transcript of the meeting reveals that
the US government not only knew about the disappearances, it openly approved
of them.
Guzzetti reports to Kissinger on "good results in the
last four months. The terrorist organisations have been dismantled". Kissinger
states: "Our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed... What
is not understood in the US is that you have a civil war. We read about
human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed, the
better."
And here is where Mr Baker's present-day mission becomes
relevant. Kissinger moves on to the topic of loans, encouraging Guzzetti
to apply for as much foreign assistance as possible before Argentina's
"human rights problem" ties US hands. "There are two loans in the bank,"
Kissinger says, referring to the Inter-American Development Bank. "We have
no intention of voting against them ... We would like your economic programme
to succeed and will do our best to help you."
The World Bank estimates that roughly $10bn of the money
borrowed by the generals went on military purchases, including the concentration
camps from which thousands never emerged, and hardware for the Falklands
war. It also went into numbered Swiss accounts, a sum impossible to track
because the generals destroyed all records.
We do know this: under the dictatorship, Argentina's external
debt ballooned from $7.7bn in 1975 to $46bn in 1982. Ever since, the country
has been caught in an escalating crisis, borrowing billions to pay interest
on that original, illegitimate debt, which today, at $141bn, is only slightly
higher than that held by Iraq's creditors. . . .
-- The Guardian, Britain, Comment, "It's greed,
not ideology, that rules the White House. Why the US wants Iraq's debts
cancelled - and Argentina's paid in full," www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4824800-103677,00.html , by Naomi Klein, Tuesday December 23, 2003
2004 • Hawks Demand An End To All Evil, And Maybe France, Too.Sydney Morning Herald, January 1, 2004, By David Rennie in Washington.
WASHINGTON: Washington's hawks have sent a public manifesto to President George Bush
demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military
blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its
nuclear sites.
The manifesto, which was sent on Tuesday, is presented as a "manual for
victory" in the war on terrorism. It also calls for Saudi Arabia and
France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies.
The manifesto is contained in a new book by Richard Perle , a
Pentagon adviser and "intellectual guru" of the hardline neo-conservative
movement, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. They warn of a
faltering of the "will to win" in Washington.
In the battle for the President's ear, the manifesto represents an attempt
by hawks to break out of the post-Iraq doldrums and strike back at what
they see as a campaign of hostile leaking by their foes in such centres of
caution as the State Department or in the military top brass.
Their publication, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, coincided
with the latest broadside from the hawks' main enemy, the Secretary of
State, Colin Powell.
Though recovering from prostate cancer, Mr Powell summoned reporters to
his bedside to hail "encouraging" signs of a "new attitude" in Iran and
call for the US to keep open the prospect of dialogue with Tehran.
Such talk is anathema to hawks like Mr Perle and Mr Frum, who urge
Washington to shun the mullahs and work for their overthrow in concert
with Iranian dissidents.
The book demands that any talks with North Korea require the complete and
immediate abandonment of its nuclear program.
As North Korea will probably refuse such terms, the book urges a
Cuba-style military blockade and overt preparations for war, including the
rapid withdrawal of US forces from the South Korean border so that they
move out of range of North Korean artillery.
Such steps, with luck, will prompt China to oust its nominal ally, Kim
Jong-il, and install a saner regime in North Korea, the authors write.
The authoritarian rule of Syria's leader, Bashar Assad, should also be
ended, encouraged by shutting oil supplies from Iraq, seizing arms he buys
from Iran, and raids into Syria to hunt terrorists.
The book calls for tough action against France and its dreams of
offsetting US power. "We should force European governments to choose
between Paris and Washington," it says.
January 1, 2004
• US: land of the unfree.
Le Monde diplomatique, http://mondediplo.com/2004/01/03landofunfree , January 2004
After the events of 11 September 2001 Muslims from Arab countries and
Southeast Asia were the first victims of the freedom-stifling measures
taken by the administration of President George Bush. More than 1,000 were
arrested because of their religion or ethnic origins. After weeks or
months in detention, not one was charged with terrorist crimes.
In the name of the "war on terrorism", the administration can now conduct
secret operations, crack down on expressions of opinion (as an offence),
put citizens under surveillance, even when there are no grounds for
suspecting them of criminal activity and, with a view to carrying out
investigations, gather sensitive information on the private life of US
nationals and foreign residents.
The best-known laws that allow this, the USA Patriot Act and the Homeland
Security Act, were adopted on 26 October 2001. They are backed by other
anti-terrorist measures and decrees decided by the administration, which
has granted itself the powers that Congress refused it.
The Bill of Rights has become the latest victim of the war against
terrorism (1). Vice-president Dick Cheney set the tone shortly after 11
September 2001, saying: "Many steps that we have now been forced to take
will become permanent in American life, and will be part of a new
normalcy." A frightening prospect, according to lawyer Deborah Pearlstein,
for whom this normalcy equates to "a detachment from the rule of law as a
whole. The US has become unbound from the principles that have long held
it to the mast" (2).
"Six months ago," notes David Cole, "the percentage of Americans concerned
about the restriction of individual freedoms was 7%. Today, according to
CBS, the figure is 52%." All the Democratic presidential candidates have
called into question the USA Patriot Act, asking for it to be annulled or
amended. "There has been much talk about the need to sacrifice liberty for
security. In practice, however, the government has most often at least
sacrificed non-citizens' liberties. But as the cases of Hamdi and Padilla
illustrate [see opposite], what we do to foreign nationals today often
paves the way for what will be done to American citizens tomorrow."
The distortion of constitutional rights predates Bush. After the first
attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993 and the bombing of the Oklahoma
federal office in 1995, Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism Act, "one of
the worst assaults on the Constitution for decades" (3).
This law revived the crime of association, and created a special court
with access to classified information to deport foreign nationals
suspected of terrorism. Most of all, the act abolished the recent law that
banned the FBI from probing activities relative to the first amendment
(freedom of expression and political, religious and press association).
The US justice ministry has more such legislation in the pipeline. It is
reportedly working on a domestic security enhancement act, which,
according to the Yale law professor Jack Balkin, gives the state "the
authority to rescind citizenship on the charge of providing material
support to an organisation on the attorney-general's blacklist even if the
accused has no idea that the organisation has been blacklisted."
To put it bluntly, writes Noam Chomsky, "give a few dollars to a Muslim
charity that Ashcroft thinks is a terrorist organisation and you could be
on the next plane out of this country. With no right of appeal" (4).
____________________
(1) Nancy Chang, a member of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, in Lost
Liberties, The New Press, New York, 2003.
(2) "Assessing the New Normal", 2003, www.lchr.org .
(3) Terrorism and Constitution, The New Press, New York, 2002.
(4) Hegemony of Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance, Editions
American Empire Project, 2003.
[Article: Jan 2004]
• Plan by global firm to "own" word Koola and selling cordials in a handled bottle called a jug!
The West Australian, "Anchor has Koola win over Schweppes," by Sue Peacock, p 47, Wednesday, January 14, 2004
PERTH, Western Australia (Jan 14): The David and Goliath battle for WA's cordial heartland is over.
A confidential settlement reached on Christmas Eve means lovers of the fruity beverage can still enjoy Anchor Koola Lime cordial, despite legal attempts to have it taken off supermarket shelves in WA
Global beverage and confectionary giant Cadbury Schweppes took Federal Court action against the O'Connor-based minnow Anchor Foods in September, alleging design and trademark infringements had damaged its own Coola lime cordial brand name.
The dispute centred on the use by Anchor of the word Koola on its lime cordial sold in WA in Woolworths and independent supermarkets.
Also in the spotlight was Anchor's revamped "jug" cordial bottle design, which Cadbury Schweppes -- owner of the Cottees brand in Australia -- claimed was a copy of its own bottle.
Anchor Foods managing director David Clapin said yesterday a confidential settlement had been reached before Christmas with all court action to be discontinued.
"We are bound by the agreement not to disclose terms," he said.
The settlement leaves the 150-year-old Anchor free to use its jug design and sell the Koola product in the market as was the case before the action was launched.
Cadbury Schweppes was seeking damages and the removal from the market of Anchor's Koola cordial and its jug bottles.
In documents tendered in the Federal Court in Melbourne, the cordial multinational claimed to have spent more than $1.17 million promoting and advertising goods bearing the Coola name since 1994.
It said sales of Coola products totalled $76 million in the past decade.
Anchor -- a 150-year-old food and beverage company previously owned by Goodman Fielder -- claimed to have continuously used the term Koola for almost 20 years, well before Cadbury Schweppes registered the Coola trademark.
In September, Mr Clapin said the litigation was a positive sign Anchor's attempts to win back market share, via a major overhaul of the company and its products, were working.
Anchor has annual sales of about $25 million, 80 per cent of which is in WA.
It makes Anchor cordial and vinegar, dried fruit, Spencers Spices, Lion and Robur cake and bread mixes, bread crumbs, Snowflake flour and sugar and coconut.
The WA business was bought by Mr Clapin, a former head of Kailis & France Foods and finance director for Janet Holmes à Court's Heytesbury group in 2002 for about $7 million.
A Cadbury Schweppes spokeswoman declined to comment on the settlement.
[Jan 14, 04]
Suing "Koola" drinks was like suing the Bear Kids Workshop
PERTH, Western Australia (Jan 15): Well, the gigantic Cadbury Schweppes thought they owned the rights to the idea of a "cooler" drink, and of cordials in a "jug." (See The West Australian, "Anchor has Koola win over Schweppes," by Sue Peacock, p 47, Wednesday, January 14, 2004)
The multinational corporation lodged their case in MELBOURNE, the other side of the continent from where Anchor operates. Which firm, Anchor Foods of Perth, or CS, could least afford to take the court case at a distance from home base?
The huge multinational evidently couldn't make enquiries and discover that the Anchor "Koola" had been used for 20 years, which was before CS's "Coola". Perhaps CS couldn't afford the cost of a search!
Do you understand that the launching of these hopeless court cases is designed to keep the executives' minds worrying about legal matters, attending at lawyer's offices, and paying extortionate legal expenses? What should Australian company leaders be thinking about? Their businesses, right! These court games are all part of "globalism," that is, the global control by less and less people over more and more businesses.
It's part of a pattern. Harry Potter fashion clothes had been operating for some years in Australia. The publishing phenomenon of the Harry Potter books by J.K.Rowling went around the world.
But, adabracadra, the boy wizard's "intellectual property rights" had been sold, and around December 18 2003 it was reported
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/17/1071337025918.html
that the company was determined to extract even more gold than the boy wizard himself could have conjured up. Alas and alack, the courts didn't see it that way, and although the firm had given the fashion lady a great number of worrying days, she was left in peace. (Anyone who knows how much it cost her, nett, could e-mail the details.)
To see how correct, and sleepy, Australian authorities are, read this: "Wombat co-owner Clair Jennifer, said she came up with the harry potter name in 1994 (three years before the first Harry Potter book was published), thinking it was a good label for women's wear. When she tried to register the trademark, she was told that, as it was also possible it could be a real person's name, she would have to get it known before it could be registered." (The Age,
"Harry Potter fails test of legal wizardry,"
Melbourne, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/17/1071337025918.html , By Leonie Lamont
December 18, 2003) Well, there is a person named Harry Potter, and he has been seen on television
In March 2003 it had been reported that Build-a-Bear Workshop www.buildabear.com of St Louis, Missouri, had accused Richard and Roseleigh White, who run the Bear Kids Workshop shop at Carousel shopping centre in Cannington (a Perth suburb), of imitating its product designs and passing them off as their own. The "teddy bear" idea is about a century old, and by now many possible variations of the design have, presumably, been made on every continent, and even by your old Granny! Such a "fantastical whim" case (started in SYDNEY, also on the other side of the continent, as you might have guessed) ended, like the "Koola" one, in an out-of-court "settlement," and neither side was talking. (The West Australian, "WA teddy designers grin and bear it," by Anne Calverley, p 3, Sat. March 15 2003)
Previously, a woman who sold fish shop "batter" was sued by an American giant, who objected to her using a name on her packaging. It was her own surname -- but they stoutly insisted they owned the rights to it, even though she had never heard of them and their batter!
Will multinational firms stop doing this? No, because they are working out how to control the appointment of judges, just like in the USA. Don't believe me? Watch how each Australian State will gradually, bit by bit, and with each step looking so reasonable, change the way judges are appointed, and even how they think of themselves. "The Queen, wigs set to go" was a recent heading in Western Australia. Queensland is a fair way along that path, and they have prosecutors and judges now who don't understand Common Law and Equity Law, as was shown in the Pauline Hanson gaoling, the decision being thrown out, with criticism of the prosecutor's staffing.
And, the transnational corporations know that if they keep making business difficult enough, worrying enough, people like the Ahern family or even the Holmes à Court family will eventually say "Why should we worry? Why not sell out, and we can play golf, or sail, or take on charity work, and live on our millions." That's what the globalists want.
Go back in history. An American lawyer in 1903 sued Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company, saying they he owned the very idea of a "motor car," even though the first known automobile dates back to 1770! (see Funk and Wagnalls
Encyclopedia). The law case lasted from 1903 to 1911, being lost by George B. Selden.
-- Just World Campaign, http://www. multiline. com.au/~johnm/ cont12.htm# suekoola ,
Jan 15, 2004.
• Students from Palestine snatched from dormitories, left to rot in desert concentration camp.
Christian Peacemaker Team and Voices in the
Wilderness, "A Batch of TCNs,"
http://antiwar.com/article.php?articleid=1707 ,
by Kathy Kelly, January 16, 2004
IRAQ:
"We've given up hope," said 20 year old Mohammed Al Katib, a
Palestinian student imprisoned in the Umm Qasr prison camp in southern
Iraq. "We don't think we'll ever get out of here."
On January 3, 2004, I traveled with Rev. Jerry Zawada, OFM, and
several of our Iraqi friends to Umm Qasr, located on the Iraq-Kuwait
border. There, in a remote and desolate area where US Coalition
authorities have constructed a network of tent prisons, we visited
four Palestinian students who've been held for many months by US
coalition authorities. In the "Bucca Camp," (named after a firefighter
who died in the World Trade Center) prisoners and guards alike battle
against monotony, anxiety, and isolation. The prisoners we met listed
one more emotional pitfall: despair.
We left Baghdad just after sunrise that Saturday morning and drove six
hours to Basra, without stopping, hoping that we might reach Umm Qasr
before visiting hours ended. At the outskirts of the prison, a US
soldier whose badge read MP (Military Police) politely told us that we
were too late. Visiting hours lasted from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.,
Thursday - Saturday. The next opportunity to visit would be five days
later. Reluctant to leave, we asked if an exception could be made,
explaining that we'd come a long way on a difficult stretch of road
and that some of us would leave Iraq within the next several days.
The MP, a young dental hygienist from Tennessee, agreed to contact
Major Garrity, a woman whom our Christian Peacemaker Team friends in
Baghdad assured us would do her best to help. She initially said, "No
way, today we already processed a batch of 500 new prisoners." After
some further conversation, she hesitated and then said, "Hang on.
Maybe we can do something." I think she knew how beleaguered the young
men we hoped to see were feeling and wanted to give them some small
measure of hope. An hour later, jostling on the benches of an army
jeep, we were transported over bumpy desert terrain to the prison
visitor's tent at Compound 11, Tampa 11, where Officer Lou, formerly a
Miami police officer, had delivered four men in their early twenties,
each of them former students in Baghdad.
Prison authorities refer to the young men as "TCNs," Third Country
Nationals. Four of them were arrested in their dorm rooms on April 10,
the day after US Marines arrived in Baghdad. When they asked the
Marines what crime they had committed, they were told they were guilty
of being Palestinians. The students presume that the Marines wanted to
occupy their building because it was one of the tallest in the area
and offered a good view. A fifth youngster, Ameer Abbas, a Palestinian
who has Iraqi citizenship, was on his way home from his university on
June 23, 2003, when a shootout erupted at the local mosque. Clutching
his textbooks, he ran in the opposite direction. US soldiers spotted
him running and arrested him. His brother, a dentist in Baghdad, has
tried repeatedly to secure his release. Dr. Amer Abbas accompanied us
to the prison, hoping for a second visit with his brother.
Two other students who were arrested at the same time as Jayyab,
Mohammed, Basel, and Ahmed were released in June of 2003, perhaps
because they spoke English and were better able to plead their case.
Since then, they have tirelessly explored every possible means of
helping their companions who remain in prison. Upon hearing that a
handful of westerners with Christian Peacemaker Team and Voices in the
Wilderness might be able to help, they contacted our small delegation
as soon as we arrived in Amman, in late December of 2003. We promised
to do our best. In Baghdad, Christian Peacemaker Team members scoured
their list of 6,000 prisoners and found the Capture Tag numbers for
two of the prisoners. Available details for all five prisoners filled
only one sheet of paper.
Guards assured us that prisoners in the Bucca Compound are better off
than those who are held in Baghdad prisons. "We give them clothes,
they each get a blanket, and we feed them," said a guard. "We try to
do everything we can for them." I think the guards feel genuine
compassion, but there's little they can do to help these young men.
Certainly no one can do anything about the fact that the students have
already lost two years of studies because of missed exams.
Officers in the Bucca camp have recommended release for these
prisoners, but the only people with authority to issue releases are
the Baghdad based members of the "Sec-Det," the Security Detainees
Review Board. A prisoner's best hope for release rests on their
paperwork arriving at the desk of the Sec-Det group as part of a
"boarding" process. As our hour long visit came to a close, we
promised the five students that we would try our best to bring more
attention to their cases by contacting elected representatives in the
US, foreign embassies, and the International Commission of the Red
Cross.
"Can you think of anything else we can do?" I asked, as we bade the
youngsters farewell. "Please," Jayyad Ehmedat said firmly, "there are
many here. Help us all."
Please contact Voices in the Wilderness or visit www.vitw.org for more information about ways to assist Jayyab Ehmedat, Mohammed Al-Katib,
Basel Ali, Ahmed Badran and Ameer Abbas. For more information about the Campaign to Assure Justice for Iraqi Detainees, please visit
www.cpt.org Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of the Voices in the Wilderness
campaign. She can be reached at kathy@vitw.org [Jan 16, 04]
• Katharine Gun faces gaol for telling truth about twisting arms to back war
This is about the leak - last year [2003] - of a memo - dated 31 January 2003 - in
which Frank Koza, chief of staff of the NSA's Regional Targets section,
requested British intelligence help to discover the voting intentions of
the key 'swing six' nations at the UN. Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Chile,
Mexico and Pakistan were under intense pressure to vote for a second
resolution authorising war in Iraq.
GCHQ worker Katharine Gun faces jail for exposing American corruption
in the run-up to war on Saddam. Now her celebrity supporters insist it
is Bush and Blair who should be in the dock.
The Observer (London),
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1125812,00.html ,
by Martin Bright, Sunday January 18, 2004
BRITAIN:
She was an anonymous junior official toiling away with 4,500 other
mathematicians, code-breakers and linguists at the Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham.
But now Katharine Gun, an unassuming 29-year-old translator, is set to
become a transatlantic cause celebre as the focus of a star-studded
solidarity drive that brings together Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn
and senior figures from the US media and civil rights movement, including
the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Gun appears in court tomorrow accused of breaching the Official Secrets
Act by allegedly leaking details of a secret US 'dirty tricks' operation
to spy on UN Security Council members in the run-up to war in Iraq last
year. If found guilty, she faces two years in prison. She is an unlikely
heroine and those who have met her say she would have been happy to remain
in the shadows, had she not seen evidence in black and white that her
Government was being asked to co-operate in an illegal operation.
The leak has been described as 'more timely and potentially more important
than The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, the celebrated whistleblower
who leaked papers containing devastating details of the US involvement in
Vietnam, in 1971. Ellsberg has been vocal in support of Gun. She was
arrested last March, days after The Observer first published evidence of
an intelligence 'surge' on UN delegations, ordered by the GCHQ's partner
organisation, the National Security Agency.
Legal experts believe that her case is potentially more explosive for the
Government than the Hutton inquiry because it could allow her defence team
to raise questions about the legality of military intervention in Iraq.
The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is likely to come under pressure to
disclose the legal advice he gave on military intervention - something he
has so far refused to do.
At a hearing last November, Gun's legal team indicated that she would use
a defence of 'necessity' to argue that she acted to save the lives of
British soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
At the time Gun, who was sacked after her arrest and whose case is funded
by legal aid, said in a statement: 'Any disclosures that may have been
made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious
illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the US government who attempted
to subvert our own security services; and to prevent wide-scale death and
casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an
illegal war.'
She added: 'I have only ever followed my conscience.'
Sean Penn and Jesse Jackson have already signed a statement of support for
Gun and a broader campaign will be launched later this year. They are
joined by Ellsberg, who is keen to travel to Britain soon to meet Gun.
Other signatories of the statement, to be released in the coming weeks,
include Linda Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild, and Ramona Ripston
of the American Civil Liberties Union, both in their personal capacities.
The statement is a glowing tribute to the publicity-shy GCHQ mole who has
avoided all media attention since her arrest: 'We honour Katharine Gun as
a whistleblower who bravely risked her career and her very liberty to
inform the public about illegal spying in support of a war based on
deception. In a democracy, she should not be made a scapegoat for exposing
the transgressions of others.'
The statement also pays tribute to the transatlantic opposition to the war
in Iraq, which it links to historical campaigns against oppression. 'There
has been much talk in recent months about the "special relationship"
between the US and British governments, which led the world to war, but
history tells us of another "special relationship" - between people of
good will in the United States and Britain who worked together in
opposition to slavery and colonialism, and most recently against the push
for war on Iraq. It is in the spirit of friendship between our peoples in
defence of democracy that we sign this statement.'
The leaked memorandum - dated 31 January 2003 - from Frank Koza, chief of
staff of the NSA's Regional Targets section, requested British
intelligence help to discover the voting intentions of the key 'swing six'
nations at the UN. Angola, Cameroon, Guinea, Chile, Mexico and Pakistan
were under intense pressure to vote for a second resolution authorising
war in Iraq.
The disclosure of the 'dirty tricks' memo caused serious diplomatic
difficulties for the countries involved and in particular the socialist
government in Chile, which demanded an immediate explanation from Britain
and America. The Chilean public is deeply sensitive to dirty tricks by the
American intelligence services, which are still held responsible for the
1973 overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende. In the
days that followed the disclosure, the Chilean delegation in New York
distanced itself from the draft second resolution, scuppering plans to go
down the UN route.
Opposition politicians are already increasing pressure on Tony Blair to
release Goldsmith's legal advice. Parliamentary answers last week to Lord
Alexander of Weedon QC, the Tory head of the all-party legal reform group
Justice, show that the Government recognises there are precedents for
disclosure.
In 1993, government legal advice in the arms-to-Iraq affair was disclosed
to the Scott inquiry and advice concerning the 1988 Merchant Shipping Act
was disclosed when Spanish fishermen argued that it breached EU law. The
government response of Baroness Amos would appear to be an open invitation
to Gun's defence team: 'In both cases, disclosure was made for the
purposes of judicial proceedings.'
But she continued: 'It has been made clear in a number of parliamentary
questions that the Attorney General's detailed advice would not be
disclosed in view of a long-standing convention, adhered to by successive
governments, that advice of law officers is not publicly disclosed. The
purpose of the convention is to enable the Government, like everyone else,
to receive full and frank legal advice in confidence.'
A summary of the legal advice published on 17 March last year showed that
Goldsmith believed that UN Resolution 678, which authorised force against
Iraq to eject it from Kuwait in 1990, could be used to justify the
conflict. This position has been fiercely criticised by most experts in
international law, who argue that 678 applied specifically to the threat
posed to the region by Saddam in 1990. Alexander has accused Goldsmith of
'scraping the bottom of the legal barrel' and described the use of 678 as
'risible'.
When the details of the GCHQ disclosure were published in The Observer on
2 March last year, there was considerable media speculation that Goldsmith
was set to resign over the issue of his legal advice over the war. Foreign
Office legal experts were known to be split on the issue.
A key figure could prove to be 54-year-old Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy
legal adviser to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who stepped down on 21
March. Wilmshurst is said to have left her post because she would not
agree to Goldmith's legal advice.
Since leaving her post she has not spoken about the crucial discussions in
the Foreign Office last March. Many believe that a second whistleblower
could prove fatal to the Government.
For full details, go to accuracy.org at: http://www.accuracy.org/ ;
(e-mail from Michael P 20 Jan 04)
[Jan 18, 04]
• 100,000 demand Iraqi elections The Guardian, Britain;
www.guardian. co.uk/Iraq/ Story/0,2763, 1126468,00.html ,
Associated Press, Monday January 19, 2004
BAGHDAD, IRAQ: Tens of thousands of Shia Muslims demonstrated in Baghdad today to demand prompt elections, the protest coming hours before US and Iraqi officials prepared to seek UN approval for their plans to transfer power in Iraq.
(By courtesy Information Clearing House) [Jan 19, 04]
• Genetically modified food polls, now 82% against. BJ,
20 Jan 04
AUSTRALIA: In the SMH's list of past polls, I see this:
"Genetically modified food : Do you support GM crops?
Yes - 22%
No - 73%
Undecided - 5%
Total Votes: 3713 Poll date: 21/10/03 "
Well, a few months later, and it's
For - 13%
Against - 82%
Undecided - 4%
Total Votes: 4340
Please also visit the Gene Ethics Network site to have your say:
www.geneethics.org/ • Senator John Kerry Speaks Out - He was ' Misled'
Information Clearing House,
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5559.htm ,
by Charles Jenks (at foot it says Charles Jenks : Deerfield, MA) , June 20, 2003
UNITED STATES: Senator John Kerry says he - in fact "every one of us" - was misled by President Bush concerning Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. And he says the deception is one reason he is running for President
The BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3002820.stm reports on Kerry's realization that he had been lied to and his determination that he will not let President Bush "off the hook."
If John Kerry had been interested in the truth, why did he refuse to meet with his Western Mass constituents before voting for the war resolution? Why did he close his Springfield office on October 11 - shutting out his constituents - in the aftermath of his vote in favor of war? Link http://traprockpeace.org/KerryOffice101102/
Before his vote, on September 30, a group of his constituents,
including this writer, met with his foreign policy aide, as part of a
national effort organized by the Education for Peace in Iraq Center with
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Peace Action,
Sisters of St. Joseph, and others. This joint effort worked to bring
important resources and constituent concerns about the war directly to
their Members of Congress. 140 citizens from 23 states fanned out and
had meetings in 102 Congressional Offices, primarily meetings with
Senate foreign policy aides.
The intellectual core of the resources presented were from the UK. 1)
The 'Counter-Dossier'
- written by Glen Rangwala, Lecturer in Politics at the University of
Cambridge and Alan Simpson, Labour MP) was written to counter the
notorious Blair dossier released on September 24, 2002 to Parliament and
2) 'Counter-Dossier
II' - a more technical treatment of the weapons of mass destruction
claims.(Traprock had published these papers in the US on the internet
and in booklet form with the cooperation of Glen Rangwala. Mr. Rangwala
updated and replaced Counter-Dossier II as the lead-up to war progressed
- see Link.)
(As a prelude to the citizens' lobbying, Traprock Peace Center
visited 31 Senate offices on September 24, distributing the
Counter-Dossier and meeting with some Senate aides, and WILPF followed
up by bringing it to House members the next day.
In October, 2002, 23
Senators and 133 Representatives voted against
the Bush Administration's war resolution. John Kerry voted for it. What
did 156 Members of Congress know that Kerry did not know? Hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of his constituents had called him, urging him to
vote against war. After he voted for war, over 20,000 constituents wrote
in the name of Randall Forsberg, who ran against him in a last minute
write-in anti-war campaign in November.
During the lead up to war, much came to light in terms of US and UK
deceptions concerning the weapons of mass destruction allegations.
Surely, Senator Kerry took note of these developments.
A few examples:
1) Colin Powell made a case for war to the UN Security Council on
February 5th. (See Glen Rangwala's analysis
at the time.) Powell referred to a British intelligence report, at the
UN and as a follow-up before Congress. Glen Rangwala broke the story to
the British press that the British 'Intelligence' report was largely a
plagiarized and out-dated paper
by a postgraduate student.
Per The
Observer (UK) "the finished document appeared to have been
cobbled together not by Middle East experts, but by the secretary of
Alastair Campbell, the Government's chief spin doctor, and some
gofers."
2) Newsweek reported that the UN Inspectors had hidden the full
interview Gen. Hussein Kamel, who had been in charge of Iraq's weapons
programme before Gulf War I. He defected in 1995 and provided details of
Iraq's programme, but said Iraq destroyed its WMD's. The US
Administration heavily replied in its public statements on the parts of
the Kamel interview that it liked, while neglecting the sticky parts -
such as his assertions that the WMD's had been destroyed. Conveniently,
the UNSCOM kept the interview under wraps. The CIA re-buffed Newsweek's
story, saying "It
is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue." Then, Glen Rangwala showed
the CIA was 'misinformed' when he published the original transcript of
the interview. See his briefing (with a link to the full transcript) here.
3) The so-called evidence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from
Niger - a major reason that Kerry says he supported the war - were
widely reported by March 8 to be fraudulent (Chicago Tribune -
"Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation
described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents
and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had
been given to the UN inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by
U.S. intelligence." Link.
Further, on March 16 the Tribune reported that the US had relied on
the faked evidence. "At one point, the Niger letters were seen as
key evidence in the U.S. case against Iraq. In December, the State
Department said Iraq's declaration to the United Nations regarding its
weapons program omitted numerous items. Among them, the State Department
said, were "efforts to procure uranium from Niger.'" Link.
See also "The
Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update" by IAEA
Director General Dr. Monhamed ElBaradei, March 7, 2003.
The report states: "Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has
concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents
- which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions
between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic. We have therefore
concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded. However, we
will continue to follow up any additional evidence, if it emerges,
relevant to efforts by Iraq to illicitly import nuclear materials."
John Kerry had ample opportunities to discern the truth, before he
voted for the war resolution in October, 2002 and during the build up to
the invasion. He says that the Bush administration misled everyone. 156
of his colleagues in Congress would disagree; they voted against war.
And, thousands of his constituents would disagree - they called his
office or voted for his write-in opponent in November. After the deaths
of between 5567 and 7240 civilians in Iraq as of this date (per the Iraq
Body Count Project) with almost daily shooting deaths of both US
soldiers and Iraqi during the occupation (not to mention the thousands
of Iraqis who will die due to destructions of infrastructure and health
care systems, continuing violence and exposure to the hundreds of tons
of depleted uranium residue left in Iraq from US and UK munitions),
Senator Kerry speaks out.
He says was misled. Perhaps he was not as sharp as his 156 colleagues
and thousands of constituents. Could there be a darker possibility?
Could he have realized the truth and for political reasons went along,
knowing that he could claim later - after things had started to go badly
- that he had been misled, along with "every one of us."
Charles Jenks : Deerfield, MA
June 20, 2003:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5559.htm
• Planning for Baghdad occupation all put aside, troops go in without a coherent plan The Atlantic Monthly, United States,
"BLIND INTO BAGHDAD,"
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/media-preview/fallows.htm , by James Fallows,
January/February 2004
[The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no
planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully
ignored by the people in charge. The inside story of a historic failure
[Here's the link to a huge (130K) piece from the current "Atlantic
Monthly". I think it's a "keeper" - anyone not able to make the link work
should feel free to ask for an email text copy.]
(By courtesy of Michael)
AFTER 9/11, ARMY WAR GAMES INVOLVING IRAQ BEGAN IN EARNEST.
In his first State of the Union address, on January 29, 2002, President
Bush said that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were an "axis of evil" that
threatened world peace. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these
regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to
terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack
our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States." By the time of this
speech efforts were afoot not simply to remove Saddam Hussein but also to
imagine what Iraq would be like when he was gone. In late October of 2001,
while the U.S. military was conducting its rout of the Taliban from
Afghanistan, the State Department had quietly begun its planning for the
aftermath of a "transition" in Iraq. At about the time of the "axis of
evil" speech, working groups within the department were putting together a
list of postwar jobs and topics to be considered, and possible groups of
experts to work on them.
ONE YEAR BEFORE THE WAR: THE "FUTURE OF IRAQ"
Thus was born the Future of Iraq project, whose existence is by now well
known, but whose findings and potential impact have rarely been reported
and examined. The State Department first publicly mentioned the project in
March of 2002, when it quietly announced the lineup of the working groups.
At the time, media attention was overwhelmingly directed toward
Afghanistan, where Operation Anaconda, the half-successful effort to kill
or capture al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, was under way .
[snip]
January/February 2004
• No-citizenship Britons will be shown the door The Sunday Times, Perth, Western Australia;
by Estelle Blackburn, pp 52, 54, 56,
Jan. 11, 2004
PERTH: A recent judgment in the High Court of Australia could result in any number of Britons being rounded up in Australia and deported to the UK.
The court decided that Britons are classified as aliens, just like non-citizens from other countries, if they arrived in Australia later than January 26, 1949, and did not take out Australian citizenship.
The definition of alien includes many of the huge numbers of Britons who immigrated during the 1960s and '70s because this country wanted them and gave them assisted passage and permanent residency.
[. . .]
If they have been sentenced to a prison term of 12 months or more at any time, they are deemed to be of bad character and can be deported, like any other non-citizens, under Section 501 of the Migration Act.
The December 9 High Court decision means a 36-year-old Perth mother of two young children will be torn from her family and returned to England, which she left when she was nine.
[. . .] naltrexone implant success story . . . Last February ... deportation order ... detention centre at Perth Airport ... lawyer Henry Christie ... taking her case to the Federal Court in the next month or so
[. . .]
[pp 54-6] Neville Taylor ... 1982 ... 12 years imprisonment for violent offences ... wife and family accepted him back ... Donnybrook ... conviction for another crime ... deportation orders
[. . .]
in our mid-50s, little prospect of jobs.
[. . .]
[p 56] Federal Court Judge Malcolm Lee found that the Immigration Minister acted illegally two years ago by deporting Richard Hollis, who came to Australia with his family at the age of 13 ... on November 11, 2001 ... Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has refused to act on the decision and bring Mr Hollis back home. Hollis ... been fighting his case from London, and his 39-year-old girlfriend Denise Borg ... Hollis arrived in Perth ... 1971 ... age of 13 ... served in the Australian Army ... his lawyer suspended from practice ...
Jan. 11, 2004
• US lawyers sink the boot in, claiming to own the words 'ugg boots'. The West Australian, "US lawyers sink the boot in,"
p 17, Saturday, January 24, 2004
A move by a United States company to register the name ugg boots was an affront to Australians who had worn the sheepskin footwear for decades, the NSW Nationals said yesterday.
US manufacturer Deckers has reportedly forced an Australian company off the internet auction site eBay and has also threatened to sue other local companies using the name ugg boots in Australia and overseas.
NSW Nationals leader Andrew Stoner said ugg boots were an Australian icon and the threat by the American firm was insulting to local makers.
"Ugg boots are as Australian as the kangaroo, yet we now have this bunch of corporate lawyers throwing their weight around with small manufacturers across NSW," Mr Stoner said.
"Threatening to sue people who have manufactured footwear under the generic label of ugg boots for decades is a joke."
[COMMENT: Joke? Its serious business really, as newsitems about the attacks on the Western Australian Bear Kids Workshop (reported March 15 2003) ,
to stop a lady running an Australian "Harry Potter" fashion business,
and to monopolise the idea of a "cooler" cordial in a "jug" dispenser at the expense of Anchor Foods (reported January 14, 2004) of Fremantle bear witness (pardon the pun!). What was that I heard about the National Party and the Liberals protecting Australia's interests? Why then are they trying to bend the truth about the proposed Australian-US Free Trade Agreement, designed so that the USA can "dump" their huge surpluses in Australia?
The Macquarie Dictionary first edition 1981 gives an entry:
ug boot, n. a fleecy-lined boot with an untanned upper. (page 1871)
One supposes that somehow the spelling with "gg" is recorded somewhere in dictionaries, whether printed or online. But, doing any kind of meaningful research is NOT what the multinationals want. The reason for their "copyright" and "patent" lawsuits is suggested near the foot of the article on the attack on Koola Cordials. Both the Western Australian firms were sued in eastern states courts in the first instance. (Want to study this again? Click
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont12.htm#ugg )
-- JWC 24 Jan 04 COMMENT ENDS.]
(Also see Ugg 2 of Feb 4 2004 below.)
• Deckers Outdoor Corporation. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: www.fibre2fashion.com/ugg/ • Deckers Outdoor Corporation
Company Profile :
The earth rotates left to right - the natural flow of things is top to bottom - but in 1978 Brian Smith, a young Australian surfer, brought a core piece of "Down Under" to the United States. Armed with two dozen pairs of UGG sheepskin boots, he hit the streets of NYC ready to make his "sheepskin to riches" story to come true. Three days later he was "down under" by $950. He still had two dozen UGG boots and was feeling lonely in the Big Apple.
Sales Turnover: Not to be disclosed Year Estd : N.A. Products : Footwears , Footwears Other area of Business: Manufacturer of Accessory Contact Us 495-A South Fairview Ave., Goleta - 93117 CA United States Of America Phone: +1-805-967 7611 Fax: +1-805-967 9551
(Found on "Ask Jeeves"
http://web.ask.com/ on Saturday, January 24, 2004)
• Mates can't save deal, says PM The Daily Telegraph,
"Mates can't save deal, says PM,"
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8503309%255E421,00.html ,
January 27, 2004
AUSTRALIA: THE bid for a free trade deal [FTA] with the US is struggling, and John Howard yesterday warned his friendship with George Bush wouldn't save it.
"Because in trade, friendships don't amount to a lot," the Prime Minister said in Canberra. [...]
Trade Minister Mark Vaile is in Washington attempting to negotiate a last-minute breakthrough in the deadlock over Australia's agricultural exports, particularly sugar.
The negotiations are at what the Government yesterday called a "critical point".
[...]
Mr Howard said a free trade deal remained "a difficult proposition" and repeated his pledge: "We are not going to sign a free trade agreement which does not advantage Australia."
He said the US Government was being extensively lobbied by US farm groups, as he had been by local organisations. [...]
With more than 70 per cent of the work on the FTA complete, Mr Vaile said he was hopeful the remaining issues could be dealt with this week. [...]
"If both sides are willing and committed to a decent outcome then I think that we can achieve that this week. That remains to be seen."
Last week, US negotiator Bob Zoellick told a US radio station he was opposed to better access for Australian sugar growers.
Sugar, along with dairy, beef, horticulture and peanuts, are key markets for Australia.
• From Iraq to Libya, US knew little on weapons The Christian Science Monitor, USA,
"From Iraq to Libya, US knew little on weapons;
Doubts that Hussein had WMD raise questions about war's rationale and intelligence reliability.,"
www.csmonitor.com/2004/0127/p01s01-usfp.html , By Peter Grier, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor,
January 27, 2004
WASHINGTON - When it comes to unconventional weapons, Iraq may have been far from the most dangerous country in the world after all. In recent days a string of surprising revelations has scrambled the world's proliferation threat assessments.
Iraq's weapons programs were apparently in shambles, for instance, while Libya's were surprisingly advanced. Pakistan's nuclear scientists might have been rogue agents, proffering secrets for cash. And it appears that North Korea may be the most advanced rogue nuclear nation of all, with an advanced capacity to produce fissile material.
The bottom line: In the shadowy world of intelligence, judging capacities to produce biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons is among the most difficult estimating jobs of all.
"These intelligence estimates are not good enough to support a policy of preemptive war," says Joseph Cirincione, of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C.
It is still possible that traces of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq. The capture of Saddam Hussein might convince cowed scientists that the old regime is never coming back, leading to new tips, documents, or even buried equipment.
But after months of weapons hunting, the US right now is coming up with little. This was underscored over the weekend by forceful comments from the CIA's former chief weapons inspector, David Kay, who characterized Iraq's unconventional weapons programs as being in "disarray" under a leadership that was increasingly out of touch with reality.
Mr. Kay said that almost certainly Iraq had no stockpiles of such weapons, as the [US] administration said it likely did prior to its invasion of the country last year. Iraq did maintain some test capability in regards to chemical weapons, said Kay, and may have been continuing research and development on biological weapons prior to its downfall.
The Hussein regime had made some effort to restart a nuclear program dismantled in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, but it had made little progress, according to Kay. And he said one dominant feature of all Iraq's unconventional weapons programs was corruption, in the sense that scientists and lower-level officials fooled higher-ups about the real lack of progress, solely to reap money and other benefits.
"The regime was no longer in control. It was like a death spiral," Kay told The New York Times.
Critics of the administration's use of weapons intelligence prior to the Iraq war said Kay's findings should have come as no surprise to anyone. "My reaction? I told you so," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
IN the run-up to war, the administration clearly took the worst-case scenario for almost all aspects of unconventional weaponry when building its case for invasion, according to Mr. Kimball. It ignored other evidence, including fresh intelligence produced by UN inspectors.
"The [unconventional weapons] programs were essentially in a state of suspension," says Kimball.
It shouldn't be surprising that Iraq's leaders were themselves in the dark about the program, says Kimball. That same dynamic may have been at work in Pakistan, where nuclear scientists apparently sold weapons technology without the central government's knowledge.
Pakistani officials indicated over the weekend that several scientists - who they declined to name - had large bank accounts tied to technology sales.
Thus the most dangerous weapons proliferator in Iraq's region might not have been Iraq itself, but an ally of the United States. Libya's uranium enrichment technology, for instance, is very similar to that used by Pakistan. Now that Libya has pledged to give up its unconventional weapons programs, it turns out its equipment was much better than believed, according to international inspectors who have visited the country.
And North Korea may have the most dangerous programs of all. A group of private experts that recently toured North Korea's nuclear sites said last week that they were shown evidence that Pyongyang is at least producing plutonium metal.
Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, told Congress that he handled a small sample of what was alleged to be plutonium during the trip, and that its color and weight seemed about right.
In addition, the 8,000 spent fuel rods stored in the Yongbyon nuclear facility appear to have been withdrawn, perhaps in preparation for reprocessing for plutonium extraction.
"For all intents and purposes ... those fuel rods are gone," Dr. Hecker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
January 27, 2004
• Former U.S. Judges Enter Fray Over Guantanamo Detentions;
Gibbons, Orlofsky and Sarokin argue for right of habeas review
American Lawyer Media's LAW.COM.
"Former U.S. Judges Enter Fray Over Guantanamo Detentions
Gibbons, Orlofsky and Sarokin argue for right of habeas review,"
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1074819338330 , by Jim Edwards, mailto:jedwards@amlaw.com ,
New Jersey Law Journal, http://www.law.com/nj , January 27, 2004,
UNITED STATES:
Three former federal judges from New Jersey have filed U.S. Supreme Court briefs opposing the detention, without judicial review, of 660 men at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
One of the trio, John Gibbons, former chief judge of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, will argue for the petitioners on the merits. The other two, Stephen Orlofsky and H. Lee Sarokin, put their names on an amicus brief by former judges who believe the federal judiciary needs the power of habeas review over people held by the U.S. government.
The consolidated cases Gibbons will argue -- Rasul v. Bush, 03-334, and Odah v. U.S., 03-343 -- will force a final answer to a hard question: whether U.S. courts have the jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus challenges to the detention of foreign nationals captured in the post-Sept. 11 fighting in Afghanistan.
Gibbons' firm, Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione in Newark, has been at the forefront of several challenges to executive power exercised in the name of national security. The firm has litigated challenges to secrecy in the U.S. immigration courts and the use of New Jersey jails to hold Muslim detainees. It also has handled a habeas case for "enemy combatant" Ali Al-Marri and provided criminal defense to Saudi students arrested for allegedly cheating on English tests to stay in the United States.
All of the other post-Sept. 11 cases making their way through the courts have implicated the rights of those accused by the government or the rights of U.S. citizens to observe or scrutinize the government's national security activities.
In Rasul, by contrast, the main issue is about the right of judges even to hear the cases. A ruling favoring the Bush administration's detention efforts at Guantanamo Bay would carve out a new area of law into which judges would be forbidden to tread -- something the Supreme Court does not often contemplate.
Gibbons was reticent last week when asked about his case. "The lawyers who've been handling the cases in the D.C. Circuit approached me and asked me to get involved, probably because I was one of the retired judges who filed an amicus brief in support of the petition for cert," he says.
Those lawyers include Thomas Wilner, a partner at Shearman & Sterling in Washington, D.C., and professor Anthony Amsterdam, who runs the Capital Defender Clinic at New York University School of Law. Gibbons declines to discuss the case further, citing deference to the Court. He was assisted on the brief by Gibbons Del Deo associate Gitanjali Gutierrez.
Gibbons will represent British citizens Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal and Australians Mamdouh Habib and David Hicks. Rasul, Iqbal and Habib were arrested in Pakistan after Sept. 11, 2001; Hicks was arrested fighting in Afghanistan.
Hicks, a Caucasian Muslim convert, has become a cause celebre in Australia, where his father Terry leads a campaign called "Fair Go For David". http://www.fairgofordavid.org/ . The father has delivered chocolate and Vegemite -- a salty yeast extract that Australians put on their sandwiches -- to his son in Guantanamo, and has locked himself in a cage on Broadway in Manhattan to draw attention to his son's plight.
Interestingly, Terry Hicks admits his son trained with the Taliban military in Afghanistan, and is merely asking for a visible, meaningful trial.
Orlofsky, who retired in 2003, says he's not as interested in the merits of the detentions as he is in the issue of judicial review. When the government began detaining fighters and suspects after Sept. 11, he realized that habeas was bound to be a key issue.
"Although I didn't have any [Sept. 11] cases, that issue was going to come up because of where the government decided to detain these people, clearly a location selected to avoid judicial review," says Orlofsky, a partner with Blank Rome in Cherry Hill, N.J.
Guantanamo Bay belongs to Cuba, but is used by the United States under an unusual permanent loan arrangement.
Orlofsky had become interested in habeas questions when, in 2002, he was asked to decide the case of a Cuban criminal suspect whom the government was attempting to deport.
The government moved the man from New Jersey to Louisiana and argued that the New Jersey court therefore lacked jurisdiction. Orlofsky disagreed and ruled in April 2002 in Chavez-Rivas v. Olsen, 194 F.Supp.2d 368, that his court retained the power of habeas corpus review. His ruling was not appealed.
Orlofsky was roped into the effort before the Supreme Court by former American Bar Association President Jerome Shestack, now chair of the Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen litigation department in Philadelphia.
The other former judges on the amicus brief with Orlofsky and Sarokin are Nathaniel Jones of the 6th Circuit, Abner Mikva of the D.C. Circuit, William Norris of the 9th Circuit and Harold Tyler of the Southern District of New York. The brief also includes three lawyers in private practice -- including Shestack -- who held a variety of government positions.
Sarokin, now of counsel to Lasser Hochman in Roseland, N.J., did not return a call seeking comment.
If the former judges are to win their case, they must get past the government's main argument, which leans heavily on Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763 (1950). That precedent states that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction over aliens detained outside of American sovereign territory.
In Eisentrager, a group of German soldiers were caught spying for the Japanese in China after the Nazis surrendered at the end of World War II. They were tried in China by a U.S. military tribunal and convicted of breaking the laws of war, then transported to Germany to serve their sentences in an American prison.
The court rejected their habeas petition, which argued that they should be allowed to seek review and appeal of their cases in federal court in the District of Columbia.
"These prisoners at no relevant time were within any territory over which the United States is sovereign, and the scenes of their offense, their capture, their trial and their punishment were all beyond the territorial jurisdiction of any court of the United States," Associate Justice Robert Jackson wrote. "The Constitution does not confer a right of personal security or an immunity from military trial and punishment upon an alien enemy engaged in the hostile service of a government at war with the United States."
The government's case against judicial review has so far been argued successfully in the D.C. and 9th circuits by Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement. Guantanamo -- like China -- is geographically beyond federal jurisdiction, Clement has shown. He did not return a call for comment, and nor would he be likely to, says Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller.
The solicitor general's brief in opposition is due Feb. 17, Gibbons says. [Jan 27, 04]
[COMMENT: The "Fair Go For David" Petition forms for easy print-out are at
http://www.fairgofordavid.org/pubdocs/petition.doc
COMMENT ENDS.]
• Judges Speak Out About Keeping the Law at Bay in Guantanamo
Civil Liberties Watch,
"Judges Speak Out About Keeping the Law at Bay in Guantanamo; Elaine Cassel: The War at Home";
http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/ecassel/2004/01/27 , by Elaine Cassel, ecassel1@cox.net ,
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
UNITED STATES:
President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba of 660 boys and men captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan continue to trouble many in the legal profession. Last week, military defense attorneys appointed to represent some of the prisoners scheduled to be tried (by military tribunals) complained that the rules of engagement in the courtroom could render them at risk of violating their state bar organizations' professional rules of conduct. For instance, the rules of the proceedings allow the government to listen in on attorney-client conversations and allow the military to keep some evidence secret from the men on trials.
Though military attorneys assure me that there is no conflict of interest, it is hard to imagine how being represented by a military attorney when being tried as an enemy combatant by the military can be anything akin to "effective" assistance of counsel. This is not the same as a military person being court-martialed for some on-base crime--these men are being charged with fighting against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
This week, three former federal judges www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1074819338330 filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court, who has agreed to here whether or not the prisoners can even access federal courts. The judges are not arguing against the imprisonment, but in favor of judicial review of their detention. This is precisely the limit the Supreme Court has placed on its review. The federal courts in the District of Columbia ruled that because the men are in Cuba they are beyond the reach of the U.S. courts. Not so, say their lawyers, who point out that the lease between Cuba and the U.S. give the U.S. sovereignty over the base.
In addition to being exempt from federal court review, the Bush Administration claims that international law, rules of war, and the Geneva Conventions do not apply to these prisoners. They insist that the fence around Guantanamo does more than keep the prisoners in. It keeps the law out. That's a conclusions that the federal judges--and apparently some members of the Supreme Court--find unacceptable. The government's briefs are due in February and the Court will hear argument in the case in late spring.
[Jan 27, 04]
• We can't cope with huge Gipsy invasion; Secret plans to halt invasion of Gipsies International Express Australian edition, Sydney, NSW, Australia;
page 1: "We can't cope with huge Gipsy invasion;"
page 3: "Secret plans to halt invasion of gipsies; Economic disaster looms as 40,000 head for Britain;" by Rachel Baird, Home Affairs Correspondent,
January 27 - February 2, 2004,
pages 1 and 3,
BRITAIN: A massive invasion of poverty-stricken gipsies from eastern Europe could lead to economic disaster, ministers fear.
After publicly denying that there is a looming crisis, the Government has privately admitted Britain cannot cope with the influx and has drawn up secret plans to deal with it. It fears our open-door policy to 10 new EU [European Union] countries will make Britain a magnet for low-paid workers wanting to cash in on our generous benefits and free health care.
Page 3:
Secret plans to deal with a massive influx of gipsies from eastern Europe have been drawn up by ministers amid warnings that Britain could be over-whelmed. [...] James Paice, Tory MP for South East Cambridgeshire, warned: "From May 1, members of the huge eastern European Roma community will be entitled to enter the UK freely and claim the same health, education and pension benefits as the rest of us.
It has been predicted that hundreds of thousands of gipsies will descend on the UK once border restrictions are relaxed and my fear is that, of this figure, a large proportion will head for south-east Cambridgeshire."
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has claimed there will be "more jobs for British workers" when the 10 countries join the EU. He has even insisted that giving tens of millions of East Europeans the right to work here is "in the national interest."
[...] ... Irish travellers ... major unrest ... The Home Office also came under fire after it admitted it is still flying failed asylum seekers back to the 10 states at huge public expense, even though the people it removes will have the right to return here in May. [List as: Jan 27, 04]
[COMMENT: But, how come the "huge benefits" promised from West Indian and Pakistani immigration after World War II haven't yet resulted in full employment, and the similar influxes to Germany, France, etc, have accompanied high unemployment too? Could the politicians be telling "porky pies" again?
And, why ARE the Gipsies poor? Could it be that the new "fellow-citizens" in Euroland have been discriminating against them? Persecution? What would happen if the Brits were to be persecuted by their new "Eurocitizens" from the 10 new entrants? Has no-one in Briton heard of the anti-Jewish pogroms?
And, could anyone tell me how the British elite have been unable to stop visitors and others from obtaining the "same health, education and pension benefits as the rest of us." People from around the world have been going to Britain to get free dental work, spectacles, medical operations, etc. Does the British public deserve to be fleeced, because they let the political circus trick them again and again? COMMENT ENDS.]
Article: Jan 27, 2004
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