Monday, December 24, 2007

Moving!

This blog has now moved to Circle of 13.

Please adjust bookmarks and newsreaders accordingly.

Thank you

http://circleof13.blogspot.com

Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea

As narrated by legendary counterculture filmmaker John Waters, there was time when the Salton Sea, tucked into the southeast corner of California was known as the Riviera of the West, a haven for jetsetters and vacationers. Originally created by accident, it's now one of the country's worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds by the thousands. Still, a hardy few have hung on there, hoping for help to come along and restore the lake to its former glory. Congressman Sonny Bono himself was once dedicated to saving the lake, until he went skiing one day. Eccentrics abound in this surreal landscape: the naked guy who waves to passing RVs; the man who built his own holy mountain; beer-loving Hungarian Hunky Daddy; the guys who plan to get rich someday when this virtual sewer becomes a Riviera again. Hair-raising and hilarious, part history lesson, part cautionary tale and part portrait of one of the strangest communities you've ever seen, this is the American Dream gone as stinky as a dead carp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhB2ZvHVFls

Nat'l Lawyers Guild voted for impeachment of Bush, Cheney

5 Nov 2007

Washington, D.C. The National Lawyers Guild voted unanimously and enthusiastically for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at its national convention in Washington, DC. The resolution lists more than a dozen high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush and Cheney administration and "calls upon the U.S. House of Representatives to immediately initiate impeachment proceedings, to investigate the charges, and if the investigation supports the charges, to vote to impeach George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney as provided in the Constitution of the United States of America."

The resolution provides for an NLG Impeachment Committee open to all members that will help organize and coordinate events at the local, state, and national level to build public participation in the campaign to initiate impeachment investigation, impeachment, and removal of Bush and Cheney from office without further delay.

The resolution calls on all other state and national bar associations, state and local government bodies, community organizations, labor unions, and all other citizen associations to adopt similar resolutions and to use all their resources to build the campaign demanding that Congress initiate impeachment investigation, impeach, and remove Bush and Cheney from office.

The full text of the resolution Below

Resolution on Impeachment of Bush and Cheney
Whereas George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney:
1. deliberately misled the nation and doctored intelligence, as described in the Downing Street
minutes, http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html about the threat from Iraq in order to
justify a war of aggression and an occupation of Iraq, as further described in House resolution H.Res. 333 http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/int3.pdf
and as listed in House Resolution H. Res. 635
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr109-635

2. committed crimes against peace by initiating war against Iraq in violation of the UN Charter
http://www.worldpress.org/specials/iraq/;

3. committed crimes against humanity in their conduct of the occupation of Iraq in which they
killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and created millions of
refugees http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1892888,00.html and http://edition.cnn.com/2
006/WORLD/meast/10/13/iraq.main/index.html;

4. killed over 3700 American soldiers and severely wounded nearly 30,000 more in the pursuit of
an illegal, immoral, and unjust occupation of Iraq. While Bush and Cheney have stated no
truthful noble cause for the war, one of the central purposes appears to be to take control of Iraq's
immense oil reserves to financially benefit private corporate interests. See Bush's benchmark
listing fact sheet released the same day Bush announced the "surge" that expressly called on the
Iraq parliament to "enact hydrocarbons law to promote investment . . . "
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-
3.html and http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/56672/;

5. committed further crimes against peace by threatening Iran in violation of the UN Charter, as
described in House resolution H. Res. 333 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgibin/
query/z?c110:H.RES.333: and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6649053.stm;

6. detained thousands of prisoners without charges and without providing the ability to confront
their accusers at a fair trial http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-Ameri...

7. condoned the torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the US anti-torture
statute of 1994, the US War Crimes Act of 1996, and the oath of
office http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/05/24/usint8614.htm and
http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Americas/United-States-of-Ameri... and
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/03/24/bush_shuns_patriot....
Bush's refusal to faithfully execute the laws prohibiting torture and his declaration on February 7,2002 that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo set the stage for torture there http://hrw.org/reports/2004/usa0604/2.htm. The Rumsfeld approved Guantanamo torture techniques were then imported to Iraq in August 2003, where the International Committee of the Red Cross found "systemic" mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in
several facilities and where the Schlesinger Report confirmed in August 2004 that abuses were
"widespread" and "serious both in number and in effect," and that there is both "institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels;"

8. approved at least two different illegal electronic surveillance programs of American citizens
without a warrant in violation of the fourth amendment and in violation of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and repeatedly lied to the American people by stating that
no surveillance was taking place without a court order. The first program includes intercepting
phone and email conversations without warrants and was exposed by the NY Times on December
16, 2005 http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/CPC/NYT_15cnd-program.html. After that program
was exposed Bush said the program was carefully targeted to just include international calls and
suspected members of Al Qaeda. Then, the second program was exposed by USA Today on May
11, 2006. It provides a wholesale attack on the fourth amendment by recording call identification
information of tens of millions of purely domestic calls as well as international calls
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm;

9. attacked basic human rights protections in the constitution including habeas corpus, fifth
amendment freedom from loss of life, liberty and property without due process of law, eighth
amendment freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, and fourth amendment freedom from
unreasonable search and seizure;

10. attacked the separation of powers in an effort to consolidate power in the executive;

11. attacked the messenger who revealed that Bush "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi
threat." Just as Nixon retaliated against former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg, according to papers filed in court by special
prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in April 2006, there was "concerted action" by "multiple people in
the White House" to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson for his July 6, 2003 NY Times op ed piece
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html?ex=1372824000&en=6...
dec0&ei=5007 that ripped the cover off of Bush's false assertions in his 2003 state of the union
address that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa for building a nuclear bomb. In
retaliation, and to silence other would-be critics, the White House collected information about
Wilson and disclosed to reporters that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert agent in the CIA
counterinsurgency division, putting her life, and the lives of her contacts, at risk in violation of a US law protecting intelligence personnel (The Impeachment of George W. Bush, by Elizabeth Holtzman);

12. as the sole person under the Federal Stafford Act with responsibility and authority to issue
emergency orders to mobilize the military and any federal resources needed to aid and assist in a
disaster (see Failure of Initiative, February 2006 report of the House Select Bipartisan
Committee to investigate the Preparations for and the Response to Hurricane Katrina
http://katrina.house.gov/), Bush failed to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, violated the public trust, and demonstrated reckless and inexcusable indifference to human life before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Bush knew but did not act until too late, and then he lied about it on national TV.

Footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 demonstrate that Bush was personally told well in advance of the "unprecedented strength" of the hurricane, the "devastating damage expected," and that "water shortages will make human suffering
incredible," according to highly accurate predictions by the National Weather Service. The
Associated Press reported that "in dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster
officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck
that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm
rescuers, according to confidential video footage," http://www.truthout.org/cgibin/
artman/exec/view.cgi/47/18079.

Yet Bush failed to muster resources to evacuate residents in advance and failed to assist New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina hit. Then three days later Bush told Good Morning America, "I don't think that anybody anticipated a breach of the levees." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/
content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030202130.html In years before the storm
Bush demonstrated inexcusable criminal negligence and violated the public trust by cutting the
budget for hurricane defense, though the high probability of the breaching of the levees and the
enormous risk to human life from a major hurricane hitting New Orleans were predicted and well
known for years before the hurricane hit
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/03/katrina.chertoff/index.html;

13. failed to take care that the laws be faithfully executed by issuing signing statements
that claim the authority to disobey laws based on the president's own interpretation of their
constitutionality, and then by taking action in violation of these laws, including the US law
making torture a crime, laws regarding Congressional oversight that require providing
information to Congress, laws regarding domestic spying, laws regarding civil liberties, and laws
strengthening whistle blower protection, thereby expanding the president's own power by
stepping into the legislative and judicial functions at the expense of Congress and the
courts, upsetting the balance among the three branches of government, and moving us away from
the rule of law toward vastly increased executive
power; http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hu...
aws/ and http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/03/24/bush_shuns_patriot...

14. converted the Justice Department into an arm of the Republican Party by firing meritorious
federal prosecutors who refused to base decisions on whom to prosecute on political
considerations--to help Republicans win election, an offense James Madison discussed in a
speech to the Senate on June 17, 1789, in which Madison said, "The danger then consists merely in
this, the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust." http://www.gwu.edu/~ffcp/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=fc11904
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/27/113/print/;

15. condoned criminal conduct and obstructed justice by commuting the sentence of convicted
perjurer Scooter Libby to keep him silent and to demonstrate that Bush and Cheney will not
allow high officials in the administration to be held accountable for their criminal acts;

16. obstructed congressional investigations of these and other acts by the administration by
defying subpoenas from Senate and House committees seeking documents and testimony under
oath by administration officials and former administration officials; and
Whereas the constitution requires the president to take the following oath of office:

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;"

and Whereas the constitution provides that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed;" and Whereas the constitution mandates that "the President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of,Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors;" and
Whereas impeachment was so important to our founding fathers that it is mentioned six times in
five different sections of the constitution; and Whereas George Mason, a primary author of the Constitution, said that impeachment was the single most important part of the entire document. "Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?" http://gunstonhall.org/georgemason/constitution.html July 20, 1787; and Whereas "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" is a term of art that means a serious abuse of power, whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government, or an abuse of public trust.

(See Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment: Report of the House Judiciary Committee, 1974, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/
politics/special/clinton/stories/watergatedoc_3.htm, articles by Elizabeth Holzman who
served on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment hearings of Richard Nixon in
1974 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman; and http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070212&s=holtzman, and the book, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, by Elizabeth Holtzman)

Whereas each of the above listed acts meets or exceeds that standard; and Whereas impeachment is the only constitutional method to protect Americans from a president intent on abusing power, violating the constitution, violating the laws, and breaching public trust; and
Whereas Bush and Cheney threaten further crimes, including launching a war of aggression
against Iran, and whereas sufficient time remains in their term of office for them to commit those crimes so allowing either or both of them to remain in office for that remaining time will
facilitate these crimes, and whereas pretexts for attacking Iran have been issued, as described by a former CIA Middle East field officer and current Time Magazine columnist
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1654188,00.html;

and Whereas failing to hold Bush and Cheney accountable not only condones their crimes but facilitates a future president committing similar or greater crimes; and Whereas members of Congress swear an oath to "support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," and no part of this oath permits exception for partisan advantage, the next election, political expediency, whether it is distracting from other issues, or how much time they have left in office;

and Whereas failure by Congress to initiate the one remedy--impeachment--provided by our
founding fathers to protect the constitution from such serious abuses has put that constitution, the rule of law, civil liberties, our democratic form of government, the separation of powers, the lives of our men and women in uniform, and the lives of countless civilians at severe risk; and Whereas citizen pressure led the Vermont State Senate and 87 cities and towns around the
nation to pass impeachment resolutions; and Whereas a poll conducted by http://www.americanresearchgroup.com on July 5, 2007 found that 54% of American adults want the US House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney while only 40% oppose, and whereas the poll also found that 45% are in favor of the same thing for President George W. Bush while 46% oppose; and Whereas in view Congress' ongoing complicity with the war, the torture, the lies, the warrantless wiretapping, and the imprisonment without trial, and its failure to protect rights and civil liberties, it is up to the people themselves to defend the constitution and our civil liberties by building larger grassroots movements, including a movement for impeachment; Therefore be it resolved that the National Lawyers Guild calls upon the U.S. House of Representatives to immediately initiate impeachment proceedings, to investigate the charges, and if the investigation supports the charges, to vote to impeach George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney as provided in the Constitution of the United States of America;

and Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild will establish an NLG Impeachment Committee open to all members to coordinate action by the NLG in support of impeachment, to work with national and grassroots impeachment organizations, and to provide legal assistance for those efforts to strengthen the national campaign for impeachment;

and Be it further resolved that the NLG Impeachment Committee will help organize and coordinate
events at the local, state, and national level to build public participation in the campaign to
initiate impeachment investigation, impeachment, and removal of Bush and Cheney from office
without further delay; and Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild calls on NLG members to ask their respective member of Congress to support H. Res. 333 to impeach Cheney and to introduce or support other impeachment resolutions; and Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild calls on all other state and national bar associations, state and local government bodies, community organizations, labor unions, and all other citizen associations to adopt similar resolutions and to use all their resources to build the campaign demanding that Congress initiate impeachment investigation, impeach, and remove Bush and Cheney from office without further delay;

and Be it further resolved that the National Lawyers Guild will forward a copy of this resolution to the Speaker and the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, to Representative John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to the various state and federal bar associations, to other peace and justice organizations, and to the news media.
Implementation: By the NLG Impeachment Committee established by this resolution, by
interested local chapters, and by national officers. Submitted by: James Marc Leas, jolly39@juno.com

The resolution cosponsors are:
Audrey Bomse, Marjorie Cohn, Laura Safer Espinoza, John Wheat Gibson , Eileen Hansen,
Larry Hildes, Jim Klimaski, Jordan Kushner, Jim Lafferty, James Marc Leas, Kerry McLean,
Bill Monning, Dorinda Moreno, Michael Ratner, Susan Scott, Jennifer Van Bergen, Aaron
Varhola, Karen Weill

http://www.nlg.org/news/index.php?entry=entry071106-092734

http://jointhefightforfreedom.com/node/114

Fernanda Pivano and the Beat generation

24 Dec 2007

“Fernanda Pivano e la Beat generation – Mostra di fotografie e memorie” is the title of this collection of photos on display in Verona from 1st December last to 2nd February 2008, at the Modern Section of the Biblioteca Civica in the centre of Verona, on the corner of via Cappello (at number 23 is the home of Giulietta Capuleti, a place of continuous pilgrimage to this day) and vicolo San Sebastiano.

The exhibition was set up by the Verona City Council for Culture with the help of Biblioteca Riccardo e Fernanda Pivano - Fondazione Benetton studi e ricerche and the Verona Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Scavi Scaligeri.

45 photos are on display, in two sections: in the first one there are 30 black and white pictures taken as far back as 1948 by Ettore Sottsass – Pivano’s husband – some on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the publication of “On the road”.

In the second section, there are 10 photos of the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who then became the publisher of the Beat movement, taken from the Conz Archive in Verona and 5 photos of Pivano taken between 2002 and 2005 by Walter Pescara, the photographer and curator of the collection.

Then there is a special section dedicated to autographed books, documents and papers that relate mainly to Hernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

This exhibition is noteworthy because, among other things, it allows young people to learn about the Beat movement that their “all and now” generation feeds on.

A generation that is considered “as voracious as it is unknowing” by Pescara, who denounces the fact that all too often in schools the Fifties are barely mentioned.

However, Pescara also says, “that climate of holier-than-thou conformism and prohibitionism that existed at the time has been eroded in the West thanks to those poets, writers and musicians: opinions that went against the tide, that dissociated themselves from the ideas shared by most"; these are words that echo those of the poet Gregory Corso: “Beat is whoever breaks away from the established line in order to follow the line of his destiny”.
And the faces of those pacifist-revolutionaries are all there, often with Fernanda Pivano: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Hemingway, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Rudolf Nureyev, Bob Dylan, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gary Snyder, Julian Beck, Judith Malina.

The collection that celebrates two important anniversaries of the two fathers of the movement, Kerouac and Ginsberg, is on display among the shelves and the computers of the renewed artistic and high tech version of the Library.

In fact, 2007 is the 50th anniversary of the Beat Bible: On the road, written in 1951 on a roll of teleprinter paper and published in New York in 1957 by Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books, while the author of Howl, a scandalous book published in 1956 by the same publishing house, who was taken to court for it the following year, died ten years ago.

The group was kept together by an extraordinary woman: Fernanda Pivano, 90 last July, famous above all for being Hemingway's translator, who also inspired Kerouac himself when he wrote the great new American novel.
Of the over 40 translations from across the ocean, Italy owes Pivano the Antologia di Spoon River by Edgar Lee Master, paraphrased to music by Fabrizio De Andrè, and the made-in-Usa classics: from Faulkner to Scott Fitzgerald, all of whom she met personally in order to grasp their essence.

Finally, the event is enriched by a series of fringe appointments, such as the screening of a video on the Beat Generation and a theatre performance on Kerouac.

~ Link ~

Santa's crimes against humanity

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/12/18/santas-crimes-against-humanity/

Lakota group pushes for new nation

By Faith Bremner
Argus Leader Washington Bureau
20 Dec 2007

WASHINGTON - A group of "freedom-loving" Lakota activists announced a plan Wednesday for their people to withdraw from treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government.

Headed by leaders of the American Indian Movement, including activist, actor and Porcupine resident Russell Means, the group dropped in on the State Department and the embassies of Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and South Africa this week seeking recognition for their effort to form a free and independent Lakota nation. The group plans to visit more embassies in the coming months.

The new nation is needed because Indians have been "dismissed" by the United States and are tired of living under a colonial apartheid system, Means said during a news conference held at Plymouth Congregational Church in northeast Washington. He was accompanied by a bodyguard and three other Lakota activists - Gary Rowland, Duane Martin and Phyllis Young, all of South Dakota.

"I want to emphasize, we do not represent the collaborators, the Vichy Indians and those tribal governments set up by the United States of America to ensure our poverty, to ensure the theft of our land and resources," Means said, comparing elected tribal governments to Nazi collaborators in France during World War II.

Rodney Bordeaux, chairman of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said his community has no desire to join the breakaway nation. Means and his group, which call themselves the Lakota Freedom Delegation, have never officially pitched their views to the Rosebud community, Bordeaux said.

"Our position on that is we need to uphold the treaties, and we're constantly reminding Congress of that message," Bordeaux said. "We're pushing to maintain and to keep the treaties there because they're the basis of our relationship with the federal government."

Nation's proposals

Members of the new nation would not pay any taxes, and leaders would be informally chosen by community elders, Means said. Non-Indians could continue to live in the new nation's territory, which would consist of the western parts of North and South Dakota and Nebraska and eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana. The new government would issue its own passports and drivers licenses, Means said.

"Our withdrawal (from the treaties) is fully thought out," Means said, referring to peace treaties the Lakota people signed with the government in 1851 and 1868. "We were mandated by our elders in 1974 to do two things. First, to establish relationships with the international community... and the second mandate, of course, was to reestablish our independence."

Bolivian Ambassador Gustavo Guzman, who attended the press conference out of solidarity, said he takes the Lakotas' declaration of independence seriously.

"We are here because the demands of indigenous people of America are our demands," Guzman said. "We have sent all the documents they presented to the embassy to our ministry of foreign affairs in Bolivia and they'll analyze everything."

~ Link ~

The Reiki Sangha

Reiki (ray-kee): universal life force healing energy (light-work, energy-work)
Sangha: sanskrit for community.

The Reiki Sangha is a community of energy-workers
bound by a strong sense of altruism to help heal the world.

http://www.reikisangha.net/reiki/index.html

Sunday, December 23, 2007

"Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007

Doctors Without Borders Releases Tenth Annual "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007

New York, December 20, 2007 — People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere often went underreported in the news this year and much of the past decade, according to the 10th annual list of the “Top Ten” Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories, released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The 2007 list also highlights the plight of people living through other forgotten crises, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Colombia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Chechnya, where the displacement by war of millions continues. It also focuses on the ongoing toll of medical catastrophes like tuberculosis (TB) and childhood malnutrition.

The complete text of the list is available at www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/topten/

[ ... ]

According to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the online media-tracking journal, “The Tyndall Report,” the countries and contexts highlighted by MSF on this year’s list accounted for just 18 minutes of coverage on the three major U.S. television networks’ nightly newscasts from January through November 2007. This figure does not include coverage of Myanmar or tuberculosis; both generated significant media attention, but very little of it focused on the medical humanitarian aspects of either context.

[ ... ]

TOP TEN UNDERREPORTED HUMANITARIAN STORIES – 2007

Displaced Fleeing War in Somalia Face Humanitarian Crisis
Political and Economic Turmoil Sparks Health-Care Crisis in Zimbabwe
Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Spreads As New Drugs Go Untested
Expanded Use of Nutrient Dense Ready-to-Use Foods Crucial for Reducing Childhood Malnutrition
Civilians Increasingly Under Fire in Sri Lankan Conflict
Conditions Worsen in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
Living Precariously in Colombia’s Conflict Zones
Humanitarian Aid Restricted in Myanmar
Civilians Caught Between Armed Groups in Central African Republic
As Chechen Conflict Ebbs, Critical Humanitarian Needs Still Remain

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/pr/release.cfm?id=2263

Queen Elizabeth II Will Leave Behind Long Legacy Of Waving

The top 10 stories you missed in 2007

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/top10-2007/index.html

"an assault on the poor"

A loss for privacy rights

28 Nov 2007

The Constitution of the United States protects individuals against unreasonable searches, but for this protection to have practical meaning, the courts must enforce it. This week, the Supreme Court let stand a disturbing ruling out of California that allows law enforcement to barge into people's homes without a warrant. The case has not prompted much outrage, perhaps because the people whose privacy is being invaded are welfare recipients, but it is a serious setback for privacy rights.

San Diego County's district attorney has a program called Project 100 Percent that is intended to reduce welfare fraud. Applicants for welfare benefits are visited by law enforcement agents, who show up unannounced and examine the family's home - including the insides of cabinets and closets. Applicants who refuse to let the agents in are generally denied benefits.

The program does not meet the standards set out by the Fourth Amendment, which rejects unreasonable searches. For a search to be reasonable, there generally must be some kind of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. These searches are done in the homes of people who have merely applied for welfare and have done nothing to arouse suspicion.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, rejected a challenge brought by welfare recipients. In ruling that the program does not violate the Constitution, the majority made the bizarre assertion that the home visits are not "searches."

The Supreme Court has long held that when the government intrudes on a person's reasonable expectation of privacy, it is a search for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. It is a fun-house mirrors version of constitutional analysis for a court to say that government agents are not conducting a search when they show up unannounced in a person's home and rifle through the bedroom dresser.

Judge Harry Pregerson, writing for himself and six other Ninth Circuit judges who voted to reconsider the case, got it right. The majority decision upholding Project 100 Percent, Pregerson wrote, "strikes an unprecedented blow at the core of Fourth Amendment protections." These dissenters rightly dismissed the majority's assertion that the home visits were voluntary, noting that welfare applicants were not told they could withhold consent, and that they risked dire consequences if they resisted.

The dissenting judges called the case "an assault on the poor," which it is. It would be a mistake, however, to take consolation in the fact that only poor people's privacy rights were at stake. When the government is allowed to show up unannounced without a warrant and search people's homes, it is bad news for all of us.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/28/opinion/edprivacy.php

'some EU officials have criticized Greece for its contacts with Russia'

Excerpts from 'Press Statement and Answers to Journalists’ Questions Following the Talks between Russia and Greece':

" ... QUESTION: Today, you have been saying that relations between Russia and Greece are developing successfully on almost all fronts. At the same time, some EU officials have criticized Greece for its contacts with Russia, considering them to be too close. In this regard, how do you see the development of further contacts between your two countries?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Recently, I have been involved with the government’s attempts to balance the budget for 2008, 2009, and 2010, with social problems, with pensions. And somehow I have not had the opportunity to acquaint myself with the views of these particular officials, even the distinguished ones who work in Brussels, and do not intend to comment on them.

On the whole our relations with the European Union are developing reasonably well. We are satisfied with them. I hope that soon we will be able to sign the agreement on long-term cooperation that Russia wants. We are hoping for the understanding and support of our European partners. Europe, too, is interested in this. With regard to bilateral relations between Greece and Russia, we are pleased with our relationship and the nature and pace of its development. It yields tangible results for our economies and our citizens. Not to mention energy: Greece will be able to satisfy its needs in the energy sector in large measure by drawing on our energy resources.

But there are other very important and promising directions. And in this sense both Russia and Greece can play a very important role in Europe by supporting the stability of the European energy market. And if we implement major infrastructure projects in this area, then it should be quite clear that we are working not only for our countries but also for the benefit of all of Europe. I think that we can ignore those who have not properly understood the nature of our cooperation and not bother trying to make sense of their concerns.

KONSTANTINOS KARAMANLIS: Greece is a European country which operates within the framework of European policy. However, bilateral relations are conducted on the basis our country’s national interests. Having a particularly good relationship with Russia is good for our country, and I would like to believe that it is good for Russia and useful for all of Europe. Thus, Greece is one of the countries that has actively worked to realize the benefits of closer cooperation between Russia and the European Union. ... "

~ Link ~

Hoover had plan for mass arrests

WASHINGTON - Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons.

Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage," The New York Times reported Saturday in a story posted on its Web site.

The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list Hoover had been compiling for years.

"The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States," Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. "In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the writ of habeas corpus."

Habeas corpus is the right to seek relief from illegal detention, and is a bedrock legal principle.

All apprehended individuals eventually would have had the right to a hearing under Hoover's plan, but hearing boards comprised of one judge and two citizens would not have been bound by the rules of evidence.

The details of Hoover's plan was among a collection of Cold War-era documents related to intelligence issues from 1950-1955. The State Department declassified the documents on Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071222/ap_on_go_ot/hoover_mass_arrests

'A Brave New Vision'

From 'Open Letters to George W. Bush from his ardent admirer,Belacqua Jones':

" ... The biblical prophets roared; today’s prophits whisper. The ancient prophets spoke poetry; our prophets speak in sterile words sucked dry of passion. The early prophets liberated; today’s prophets enslave. Old prophets raged against authority; contemporary prophets serve it.

And we do have a gaggle of prophets busily at work like a swarm of termites gnawing away at democracy’s support beams.

All prophets, both old and new, foresaw the eminent collapse of a way of life. The prophets of the Bible saw the fall of Israel because she had strayed from God. Our prophets see the collapse of the United States because of corporatism’s multiple excesses. Where old prophets demanded change, our demand that we stay the course.

Our prophets whispered in 1974, and nobody heard. That was when the SRI Center for the Study of Social Policy issued their report, Changing Images of Man. The document was spurred by the knowledge among our elite that our economic system was headed for an eventual collapse. Warnings about peak oil had surfaced, we were busily making enemies around the world by funding coups, death squads and torture chambers, and capital’s need to consolidate and increase its wealth was beginning to widen the gap between rich and poor.

The report was grounded on the fallacy that makes the term “social science” one of history’s great oxymorons: that man is a passive lump of soft clay that can be molded into any shape that best serves the elite.

[ ... ]

And what will the new man be? Our prophets envision a passive drone that counts his every misery as a blessing and who bows and pulls at his forelock whenever one of the corporatist elites enters the room. It will truly be a brave new world. The thought of it really turns me on. ... "

'Veep Apologizes for Accidental Inferno'

Attempting to Destroy CIA Tapes, Cheney Burns Down White House

The White House, one of the most historic structures in the nation’s capital, burnt to the ground today after Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to incinerate a cache of CIA interrogation tapes in his office.

According to White House aides, the blaze started shortly after twelve noon, minutes after Mr. Cheney slipped out of a cabinet meeting, saying that he had to “hit the head.”

But rather than using the bathroom as he had stated, the vice president instead went to his office and put a blowtorch to a pile of CIA interrogation tapes which the White House had feared might be subpoenaed in the near future.

“I started burning those things and boom, they went up like a rocket,” an apologetic Mr. Cheney later told reporters.

The accidental blaze quickly spread from the videotapes to a nearby stack of transcripts of phone conversations involving Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and singer Barbra Streisand that Mr. Cheney had obtained via a warantless wiretap.

“Once those transcripts caught on fire, I knew the building was a goner,” Mr. Cheney said. “There were literally thousands and thousands of pages of that stuff.”

Speaking in front of the charred remains of the historic building, administration spokesperson Dana Perino said that the White House might have been saved had it not been for an unfortunate bureaucratic mix-up: “Instead of calling the fire department, President Bush called FEMA.”

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

Sad anniversaries (2)

The Greek Civil War

" ... In November 1944, six ministers of the EAM, most of whom were KKE members, resigned from their positions in the "National Unity" Government. Fighting broke out in Athens on 3 December 1944 during a demonstration, organised by EAM, involving more than 100,000 people. According to some accounts, the police, covered by British troops opened fire on the crowd.^[5]^[6]^[7] According to other accounts, it is uncertain if the first shots were fired by the police or the demonstrators.^[8] More than 28 people were killed and 148 injured. The "Dekembriana", "the December events"), as this incident is known, was the beginning of a 37-day full-scale fighting in Athens between ELAS and the Government forces.

The British tried to stay neutral but when the battle escalated they intervened, with artillery and aircraft being freely used. At the beginning the government had only a few policemen and a brigade without heavy weapons. On December 4 Papandreou attempted to resign but the British Ambassador convinced him to stay. By December 12 ELAS was in control of most of Athens and Piraeus. The British, outnumbered, flew in the 4th Infantry Division from Italy as reinforcements. During the battle with the ELAS, local militias fought alongside the British, triggering a massacre by ELAS fighters. It must be noted that although the British were fighting openly against ELAS in Athens there were no fights in the rest of Greece. In certain cases like Volos some RAF units even gave equipment to ELAS fighters.

Conflicts continued throughout December with the British slowly gaining the upper hand. Curiously, ELAS forces in the rest of Greece did not attack the British. It seems that ELAS preferred a legitimate rise to power, but was drawn into the fighting by the indignation and, at the same time, the awe of its fighters after the slaughter on December 3, aiming at establishing its predominance. Only this version of the events can explain the simultaneous struggle against the British, the large-scale ELAS operations against trotskyists and other political dissidents in Athens and many contradictory decisions of EAM leaders. Videlicet, KKE's leadership was supporting a doctrine of 'national unity' while eminent members, e.g. Stringos or Makridis and even Georgios Siantos, were elaborating revolutionary plans.

This outbreak of fighting between Allied forces and an anti-German European resistance movement, while the war in Europe was still being fought, was a serious political problem for Churchill's coalition government of left and right, and caused much protest in the British press and in the House of Commons. To prove his peace-making intention, Churchill himself arrived in Athens on December 25 and presided over a conference, in which Soviet representatives also participated, to bring about a settlement. It failed because the EAM/ELAS demands were considered excessive and, thus, rejected.

In the meanwhile, the Soviet Union remained surprisingly passive about the developments in Greece. True to their "percentages agreement" with Britain, the Soviet delegation in Greece wasn’t encouraging or discouraging EAM’s ambitions, as Greece belonged to the British sphere of influence. Pravda didn’t mention the clashes at all. If this position of the Soviet leadership had been brought home to KKE’s leadership, the Dekemvriana might have been averted. It seems that Stalin didn’t have the intention to avert the Dekemvriana, as he would profit no matter the outcome. If EAM rose to power, he would gain a country of major strategic value. If not, he could use the British actions in Greece to justify to the Allies any intervention in his own sphere of influence. ... "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

Sad anniversaries (1)

The Massacre of Kalavryta - 1943

" ... Due to partisan activity around the town of Kalavryta in southern Greece, a unit of the German army 'Kampfgruppe Ebersberger' the 117th Jager Division, under the command of General Karl de Suire, surrounded the town on the morning of Monday, December 13. All the inhabitants were herded into the local school. Females and young boys were separated from the men and youths, the latter being marched to a hollow in a nearby hillside. There the soldiers took up positions behind machine-guns. Below, they witnessed the town being set on fire. Just after 2pm a red flare was fired from the town. This was the signal for the soldiers to start firing on the men and youths who were huddled in the hollow. At 2.34pm the firing stopped and the soldiers marched away. Behind them lay the bodies of 696 persons, the entire male population of Kalavryta. There were 13 survivors of the massacre, the town itself totally destroyed. Only eight houses out of nearly five hundred, were left standing. It was not until late afternoon that the women and young boys were released to face the enormity of the tragedy. Today a memorial stands on the site of the massacre on which are carved the names of 1,300 men and boys from Kalavryta and 24 nearby villages who were murdered that day. (Around 460 villages were completely destroyed and approximately 60,000 men, women and children were massacred during the occupation of Greece) ... "

~ Link ~

'FBI Prepares Vast Biometrics Database'

I have a running hypotheses that the plan is to physically track each individual’s position on the ground, at all times. In AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance, I speculated that the mobile phone data might be the way that it is being done.

Well, there’s no need to speculate about what They want to do. The Washington Post article blurts it right out:

At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR), 45 minutes north of the FBI’s biometric facility in Clarksburg, researchers are working on capturing images of people’s irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI.

Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.

In other words, once you have been declared and enemy of the state, there will be no way to hide. You won’t see the eye scanners, or know when one has provided the state with your present location.

Here’s another interesting coincidence:

The FBI is building its system according to standards shared by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The countries that run ECHELON, the largest civilian communications surveillance program in the world, have developed unified standards for biometric identification.

See how this might look in the future by looking at Iraq. That’s the beta testing phase for what’s in store for the rest of us. See Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death Using Biometric Data.

Via: Washington Post:

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

“Bigger. Faster. Better. That’s the bottom line,” said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people’s bodies will become de facto national identification cards.

…

“It’s going to be an essential component of tracking,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s enabling the Always On Surveillance Society.”

If successful, the system planned by the FBI, called Next Generation Identification, will collect a wide variety of biometric information in one place for identification and forensic purposes.

http://cryptogon.com/?p=1774

To Impeach or Not to Impeach?

To Impeach or Not to Impeach? A Discussion with House Judiciary Chair John Conyers and CIA Veteran Ray McGovern

Three Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee—Robert Wexler of Florida, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin—have called on committee chair John Conyers to begin impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney. We host a discussion on impeachment with Conyers and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

[includes rush transcript]

[ ... ]

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Ray McGovern, you’ve been outspoken on this issue, and given the new evidence now about the destruction of the CIA tapes and the White House staff—some staff involvement in that, your sense of the impeachment situation?

RAY McGOVERN: Well, we not only have the obstruction of justice, but we have the President’s former spokesman saying that he was involved in the outing of Valerie Plame. We also have the President threatening World War III on bogus evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapons development program. So, you know, it’s sort of like outreach fatigue. Where do you begin?

Well, where I would begin is with the demonstrably impeachable offenses—first and foremost, the President’s not only admission, but his bragging about violating laws against eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. He bragged that he did that thirty times. That was one of the articles of impeachment voted against President Nixon. Similarly, disregarding subpoenas, that, too, was one of the articles voted against President Nixon in the Judiciary Committee, where Congressman Conyers, of course, served very loyally. So you have those two right there.

And that’s not even mentioning, you know, forging, manufacturing, coming up with false intelligence to deceive congressmen and senators out of their constitutional prerogative to declare or to otherwise authorize war. I mean, it doesn’t get any worse than that. And so, my sense is that our founders are probably turning over in their grave at this point, because they put the impeachment clause in the declarative mood, not the subjunctive mood. They didn’t say that—

JUAN GONZALEZ: But, Ray McGovern, what about the argument that Congressman Conyers raises that given the short amount of time left in the term of the President and the difficulty of actually being able to vote out an impeachment, that it would divert much of the attention of the Democratic Party in a way that would not necessarily lead to victory?

RAY McGOVERN: I think what I hear Congressman Conyers saying is that Fox News would have a field day if he didn’t get 218 votes right off the bat. That is not an explanation, in my view. If you read Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, which I think should be the document we abide by, it says the President, Vice President, other senior officials shall be removed from office upon impeachment for and conviction of high crimes and misdemeanors. Congressman Conyers and his staff, a year ago, came up with a 350-page indictment of all the offenses against the Constitution that Bush had already been guilty of. So I don’t really understand the delay.

I’m wondering if there isn’t some sort of crass political reason for it, namely, don’t make any waves. The President’s numbers are in the toilet. The Vice President’s numbers are flushed down the toilet. Just don’t do anything at all, so that Fox News will have nothing to seize upon in accusing the Democrats of being divisive or something like that. I don’t think that’s the right constitutional approach, and I feel very strongly about that, and many of my colleagues do, as well.

[ ... ]

~ Link ~

Saturday, December 22, 2007

The Lafarge Connection

" ... That name, Jackson Stephens, also connects with the Clintons of Arkansas. Another nexus linking the Bush Family of Connecticut with the Clintons of Arkansas is the Lafarge connection. Lafarge is a French industrial company specialising in cement, concrete, and gypsum wallboard. (Wikipedia, Dec. 19, 2007) In the early 1990s, Hillary Clinton was paid over $30,000 per year by Lafarge. ("What You May Not Know About Hillary Clinton," Washington Post, Dec. 9, 2007, p. A23). And a "substantial owner" of Lafarge was George H.W. Bush, former CIA director and father of "Dubya" Bush. ("The unfinished business between Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush -- Part 4", by Larry Chin, Online Journal contributing editor. http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/Chin111402/chin111402.html)

It was while perusing the archives of Sherman H. Skolnick (1930-2006) that this editor came across the following claim: "As a sizeable stockholder of a unit of a French firm, American LaFarge, the Elder Bush was implicated in reportedly supplying the ingredients for poison gas to be manufactured by Iraq, to be used against Iraq's domestic dissidents, namely, the Kurds, as well as against the Iranians, during the Iran-Iraq War, 1980 to 1988. A Director of American LaFarge, naturally, was Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of the Bush Family pal." ("Overthrow of the American Republic, Part 1", Sept. 22, 2001. The Skolnick archives may still be available at http://www.skolnicksreport.com). Doing a little double-checking substantiates Skolnick's claim. ... "

~ Link ~

Dispatches: The Killing Zone

Guns 'R' Us

excerpted from the article
Guns 'R' Us
by Martha Honey
In These Times magazine, August 1997

The United States, Britain, Russia, France and China dominate today's $32 billion global arms trade. But the United States has pulled out in front. According to the U.S. government's own estimates, Washington's share of the business jumped from 16 percent in 1988 to 50 percent between 1992 and 1994. The sky seems to be the limit. According to a 1995 Pentagon forecast, the United States accounts for 63 percent of worldwide arms deals already signed for the period between 1994 and 2000.

The Clinton administration has accelerated arms exports despite the global downturn in military production and defense budgets since the end of the Cold War. After peaking in 1987, world military spending dropped 40 percent to $811 billion in 1996, the lowest since 1966, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The overall U.S. military budget is one-third smaller than at its peak in the mid-'80s. In real terms, however, U.S. defense spending is still higher than during the Carter administration. Rather than embark on a serious program of defense cuts and economic conversion-the illusory "peace dividend" promised with the end of the Cold War- the Clinton administration is phasing out its conversion programs, opting instead to help boost the profits of military manufacturers through overseas sales.

The foreign policy risks of escalating arms exports are enormous. Most U.S. weaponry is sold to the Middle East and other strife-torn regions, helping to fan the flames of war instead of promoting stability. More than 40 percent of the international sales of major conventional weapons between 1984 and 1994 went to nations at war such as Iraq, Somalia and Sudan, according to the United Nations Development Program's 1994 Human Development Report.

Civilians are increasingly the major victims of war. They accounted for half of all war deaths during the first half of this century, 64 percent in the '60s and 74 percent in the '80s. The share of civilian casualties appears to be higher still in the '90s. The United States has been a major arms supplier to nations at war. Since 1985, participants in 45 ongoing conflicts received over $42 billion worth of U.S. weapons, according to a 1995 World Policy Institute report. Among the major conflicts in 1993 and 1994 90 percent involved one or more parties that had received U.S. weapons or military technology prior to the out break of fighting.

International arms sales also put U.S. troops based around the world at growing risk. In discussing this so-called "boomerang effect," the CIA's Nonproliferation Center noted in 1995 that "the acquisition of advanced convention al weapons and technologies by hostile countries could result in significant casualties being inflicted on U.S. forces or regional allies." In fact, the last five times that the United States has sent troops into conflict-in Panama, Iraq Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia-American forces faced adversaries that had previously received U.S. weapons, military technology or training.

The Pentagon and defense contractors then turn around and use the presence of advanced U.S. weapons in foreign arsenals to justify increased spending on new leading-edge weapons back home so that the United States can maintain its military superiority. For instance, the export of F-15 and F-16 tactical fighters to U.S. allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East is being used to justify the development of the F-22, the "next generation" fighter that has already cost taxpayers $16 billion. Air Force officials are already proposing F-22 production costs be offset through overseas sales of the plane, which will undoubtedly provoke calls for yet another new fighter.

But it's NATO expansion, the foreign policy centerpiece of Clinton's second term, that offers the biggest potential bonanza for U.S. weapons exporters. U.S. arms dealers are salivating at the prospect of the new states upgrading and retrofitting their militaries with Western weapons and equipment.

"The stakes are high," Joel Johnson of the Aerospace Industries Association told the New York Times. "Whoever gets in first will have a lock for the next quarter-century." It's no coincidence that the globe-trotting president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO is Bruce Jackson, whose other hat is director of strategic planning at Lockheed Mar tin, which wants its F-16 fighters to replace Central Europe's Soviet MIG-21s.

A bipartisan group of 20 senators, including Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), took issue with President Clinton's contention that "NATO expansion is in our national interests." In a joint letter, the senators expressed doubts about forcing these relatively poor, fledgling democracies "to spend money on arms, when expenditures for the infrastructure critical to economic growth are more pressing." The letter promises "intense" debate about NATO expansion in the Senate, which must ratify new NATO members by a two-thirds vote.

Arms merchants and their Pentagon flacks are leaving no stone unturned in their export drive. The United States is contemplating the removal of a 20 year U.S. ban on sales of advanced fighter aircraft to Latin America. Imposed during the Carter administration when military dictators ruled most of the region, proponents of lifting the ban argue that with the end of the Cold War and the revival of democracy in most of Latin America, countries like Chile or Brazil should be allowed to buy F-16s if they want them.

In a declaration issued at a Carter Center meeting in - April, former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias warned that lifting the ban would suck up money better spent on human development programs and derail international efforts to ratchet down military spending in volatile regions. Arguing that the removal of the ban "could undermine regional military balances or stimulate an arms race," Sens. Joseph Biden (D-DE) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) introduced a bill in July to extend the export moratorium for another two years. Clinton is expected to make a decision after he visits Latin America in October.

Given that international arms sales exacerbate conflicts and drain scarce resources from developing countries, why does the Clinton administration push them so vigorously? The official answer is, most often, jobs. But the government's own studies reveal that this rationale doesn't hold much water. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that for every 100 jobs created by weapons exports, 41 are lost in non-military U.S. firms that must compete with foreign companies that were granted access to the U.S. market in indirect payment for weapons purchases. U.S. arms exporters are also increasingly negotiating "offset" agreements, which sweeten the pot for foreign buyers by sending production (technologies and jobs) overseas along with American weapons. Even as U.S. arms exports soar, some 2.2 million defense industry workers lost their jobs between 1988 and 1996.

Political contributions by arms manufacturers reinforce this cozy relationship. During last year's election campaign, the top 25 weapons exporters contributed $10.8 mil lion, according to a study by the World Policy Institute. This marks a 56 percent increase in political action committee (PAC) and soft money contributions over the previous peak of $6.9 million during the 1991-92 election cycle. The "leader of the PACs"-contributing more than $2.3 million to last year's campaign-was Lockheed Martin, the world's largest arms manufacturer.

Unlike in any other industry, U.S. taxpayers fully under write the research and development costs for weapons systems. In 1995, the arms industry successfully lobbied for the abolition of "recoupment fees," a small government tax on foreign weapons sales that brought in about $500 million each year to help offset R&D costs. Arguing that recoupment fees made U.S. weapons uncompetitive, the industry convinced Congress to allow the president to waive them.

U.S. dominance of the global arms market has been accomplished as much through subsidies as sales: In 1995, more than half of the $15 billion in U.S. arms exports was paid with government grants, subsidized loans, tax breaks and promotional activities. The result is a net transfer of dollars from the U.S. Treasury to weapons manufacturers. Arms export subsidies are the second largest category of corporate welfare, surpassed only by agricultural subsidies.

Currently, 6,500 full-time government employees in the Defense, Commerce and State departments are engaged in promoting and financing weapons exports through a maze of programs. The Pentagon's Foreign Military Financing program provided $3.2 billion in grants in 1995 to foreign countries-chiefly Israel and Egypt-to buy American military equipment. U.S. AID Economic Support Fund grants totaling $2.1 billion in 1995 went to help offset the costs of arms purchases. The Commerce Department subsidized outstanding military-related loans given by the Export Import Bank to the tune of $2.1 billion in 1995. The Defense Department writes off another $1 billion each year for bad or forgiven weapons-purchase loans to foreign countries. Thirty-four countries, including Zaire, Turkey, Liberia and Sudan, owe the United States $14 billion in military loans, according to a 1996 Pentagon report; most of these loans will likely be written off.

In 1995, Lockheed Martin and other defense industry giants won congressional approval for the newest and potentially largest subsidy package. The $15 billion Defense Export Loan Guarantee Fund covers military contractor losses when foreign customers cannot afford to honor weapons sales agreements. East European NATO aspirants are now tapping this fund. In May, Romania became the first country to use the fund to underwrite the purchase of $23 million in unmanned reconnaissance planes.

The Defense Department also gives away, leases, sells at a deep discount or lends surplus weapons stocks. "While other, more visible forms of military aid have been cut since the end of the Cold War, shipments of surplus arms through a variety of programs have increased dramatically," says Lora Lumpe, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Arms Sales Monitoring Project. These giveaways-which include tanks, attack helicopters, bombers and pistols-have been used to fan regional arms rivalries (between Greece and Turkey, for instance) and to commit human rights violations in countries such as Bahrain, Colombia and Morocco.

"Recycled Weapons," a 1996 study co-authored by Lumpe, found that the U.S. military is giving away still useful equipment in order to justify the procurement of new weapons. The Air Force "Boneyard," a four square-mile stretch of Arizona desert outside Tucson, provides rust-free storage for 5,200 planes, 75 percent of which are still in operating condition. "We could have air superiority with what we have in the Boneyard," Rossiter of Demilitarization for Democracy told the New York Times.

Rather than trekking out to the Boneyard, potential buyers more often show up at overseas air shows and expos, which are also financed by taxpayers at an annual cost of about $125 million. Once offering stripped-down export models, U.S. arms dealers at today's arms marts display top-of-the-line diesel submarines, portable surface-to-air missiles, jet fighters, missile systems and other high-tech weaponry. If the price is right, any type of weapon (except for nuclear, biological, chemical or long-range missiles) is available.

In this era of balanced budgets and belt tightening at home, the multibillion dollar bevy of subsidies for arms exporters needs to be weighed against cuts in other government programs. The 1996 welfare reform law will cut federal support for poor families by about $7 billion annually over the next five years, an amount almost equal to the yearly subsidies given to U.S. weapons manufacturers. There are parallels as well between some of the specific welfare and warfare programs. The welfare law cuts child nutrition programs by $500 million and food stamps by $2.1 billion a year. On the other side of the ledger, arms export subsidies include recoupment fee waivers of $500 million and $2.1 billion in U.S. AID Economic Support Fund grants each year.

It is, in essence, the poor at home and abroad who pay the price for escalating arms exports. In a joint statement issued recently in New York, eight Nobel Peace Prize recipients-including Oscar Arias, Elie Wiesel, Jose Ramos Horta of East Timor and the Dalai Lama-who support an international Arms Transfer Code of Conduct declared, "Millions of civilians have been killed in conflict this century, and many more have lost their loved ones, their homes, their spirit. In a world where 1.3 billion people earn less than $1 a day, the sale of weapons simply perpetuates poverty. Our children urgently need schools and health care centers, not machine guns and fighter planes. Our children also need to be protected from violence. The dictators of this world, not the poor, clamor for arms."

But flanked against such eloquent, straightforward logic is the mighty U.S. arms industry and its government allies. "The brakes are off the system," says Lawrence Kolb, a Brookings Institute fellow and former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. "It has become a money game: an absurd spiral in which we export arms only to have to develop more sophisticated ones to counter those spread out all over the world.... It is very hard for us to tell other people the Russians, the Chinese, the French -- not to sell arms, when we are out there peddling and fighting to control the market."

Martha Honey is director of the Institute for Policy Studies' Peace and Security Program.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pentagon_military/Guns_R_Us.html

Friday, December 21, 2007

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status

http://www.lakotafreedom.com/

Lakota
Mitaku Oyasin: We Are All Related

19 Dec 2007

Media Contacts:
Naomi Archer, Communications Liaison (828) 230-1404 lakotafree [at] gmail.com

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status

Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S. West

Lakota Satisfies Treaty Council Mandate of 33 Years, Drafted by 97 Indigenous Nations

Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law

Washington D.C. – Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday’s withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

“This is an historic day for our Lakota people,” declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. “United States colonial rule is at its end!”

“Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit,” shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. “They never honored the treaties, that’s the reason we are here today.”

The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

“In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny,” said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.

Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.

Young added, “The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people”.

Following Monday’s withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.

Lakota’s efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are “very, very interested in the Lakota case” while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with “respect and solidarity.”

“Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations,” explained Garry Rowland. “As a nation, we have equal status within the national community.”

Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. “Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty,” said Means. “Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people.”

The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average . 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%.

“After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative,” emphasized Duane Martin Sr. “The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway.”

We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under. We are in Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at www.lakotafreedom.com.

###

PREVIOUS ADVISORIES

Media Release 12/19/07: Sovereignty Declared, 33 Year Treaty Council Agreement Satisfied, Liens Threatened

Pre-Press Conference Media Advisory: Lakota Delegation Confront State Department with Withdrawal

Advance Media Advisory: Lakota Declaration to Make History in Withdrawal from United States Treaties

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.

The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said.

"This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.

Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.

One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

"Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

~ Link ~

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