THE RELIABLE SOURCE

2005-01-10T01:29:00.000+01:00

HERE'S SOME MORE GOOD NEWS FOR YOUR PLEASURE...

MASSIVE US ASSAULT ON FALLUJAH
Jan 06, 2005
JUS News Desk

In massive assault, US forces have burst into southern part
of al-Fallujah. Most intense fighting ever under way. Resistance commander calls for the prayers of the Muslims. High casualties are beeing reported and at the time of this report, the situation is grim.

In a dispatch posted at 10:45am Mecca time Mafkarat al-Islam reported that extremely massive and fierce fighting was under way in the neighborhoods of ash-Shuhada', and al-Jubayl in al-Fallujah. US aggressor troops broke into the southern part of the city and seized control of the an-Nazal neighborhood as Resistance fighters withdrew from that district into ash-Shuhada' where they were at the time of reporting waging extremely grueling combat with the
American attackers on the edge of the ash-Shuhada' and
al-Jubayl neighborhoods. US troops are backed by F-18
and F-16 fighter bombers and are using heavy
artillery, tanks, armored vehicles, and laser-guided
missiles.

Shaykh Abu Nur, a Resistance leader, told the correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam there that "the battle broke out when the US army attacked the an-Nazal neighborhood at 3am this [Thursday] morning. Grueling battles along all possible approaches, with the Resistance fighters inflicting great losses on the enemy. The battles continued until 8am, after which they [the Resistnace] pulled back based on orders from the military command after the attackers threw internationally prohibited gases on the Resistance fighters, including mustard gas, nerve gasses, and burning gasses in addition to the use of cluster bombs. Most likely on al-Kubaysat street they used a "nuclear tinged" weapon after they had been unable earlier to break in."

Shaykh Abu Nur said that Resistance observers reported that the Americans pushed more than 4,000 soldiers and 700 tanks and armored vehicles forward. "We have been able to destroy 80 vehicles and killed dozens of soldiers and took 26 American prisoner. The Resistance killed them after we resolved to withdraw from the neighborhood, since transporting them would have been extremely difficult. Among them were seven high-ranking officers. The occupation forces now control an-Nazal but this is not the end."

Shaykh Abu Nur went on, "We have lost 132 fighters who
were all martyred in the fighting by aircraft attacks.
Four of the Resistance commanders were among the
dead. But we harvested as much as we wanted of them
[the enemy troops] and their losses were very heavy."
He added, "We shot down a fighter plane with a SAM9.
We also downed three Apache helicopters and five
unmanned spy planes."

"Right now we are fighting on the edges of the ash-Shuhada' and al-Jubayl neighborhoods. I don't know whether they or we will win, because their attack
is as close as it can come to a suicidal assault.

They haven't taken losses such as they've taken today on any previous day without giving up and withdrawing. The battle today is radically different though. Our one concern is to preserve the fighters in all ways, and to kill or capture as many of them [the enemy] as we want."

The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam asked Abu Nur whether he thought the Americans could break into the areas now held by the Resistance. Abu Nur replied, "if they get in there, you won't hear my voice any more, because I will have departed this world, and I hope to hear your voice in Paradise, God willing."

The correspondent of Mafkarat al-Islam and eyewitnesses report that al-Fallujah now is a flaming ball of fire and smoke, where one can't see anything.

Abu Nur concluded his interview with an intense call on Muslims: "We ask you not to forget us in your prayers. We ask you not to forget us in your prayers. Today is your day, so don't be stingy with us. We have no people except you, and our brothers with us. God! God! God be with us!

FROM IRAQ WAR.RU

With a massive force of 4,000 troops and 700 tanks, the US forces have managed to breach the Resistance stronghold positioned in the southern part of Falluja at 3 a.m. this morning.

The US troops using massive air support have been able to completely control the ‘Nazaal’ neighborhood while at the same time occupying parts of ‘Shuhada’ and ‘Jubail’ neighborhoods.

Reports indicate that US forces have not only used mustard gas, nerve gas, and cluster bombs to pave the way for their advance, but that a small neutron bomb has also been used at ‘Kubaysaat’ street which they were unable to capture through conventional methods.

The Iraqi Resistance have lost 132 fighters in this attack including 4 commanders.

On the enemy side, the resistance has reported the destruction of over 80 vehicles as well as the killing of tens of US troops (26 of whom were initially taken as prisoner, but then executed when the Resistance had to evacuate the area). The Resistance has also reported the downing of one fighter plane using a ‘SAM-9’ as well as 3 Apache’s and 5 unmanned planes.

This battle is described as ‘life or death’ fight by one of the Resistance commanders in Falluja who stated that the US have always withdrawn at much smaller losses than what they have suffered today, indicating that this change in political will. The Resistance commander indicated that his top priority is in preserving the lives of the fighters at all costs and to take from the invaders the maximum number of casualties and prisoners achievable.

http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=53707

On a side note: Jazeera TV during their afternoon broadcast today (11 a.m. GMT) have confirmed massive explosions in Falluja and were about to go live with a spokesman from Falluja when the presenter suddenly cut to a commercial. When the commercial was over they had changed the subject and Falluja was never mentioned again.

FROM AIR AMERICA RADIO

BUSH REJECTS BAD NEWS

The Nelson Report is a daily political tip sheet and analysis written for the past 20 years for the (US and Asian) corporate and government clients of Chris Nelson, a former Capitol Hill staffer and UPI reporter. (He was actually the first to break the looted explosives story before the election; Josh Marshall then posted it to his blog.) This Monday, he wrote:

There is rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information. Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear “bad news.”

Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq...building democracy. “Thatâ€™s all he wants to hear about,” we have been told. So “in” are the latest totals on school openings, and “out” are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that “it will just get worse.”

Our sources are firm in that they conclude this “good news only” directive comes from Bush himself; that is, it is not a trap or cocoon thrown around the President by National Security Advisor Rice, Vice President Cheney, and DOD Secretary Rumsfeld. In any event, whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message.

Genuinely scary.

Ben Wikler

2005-01-05T16:54:00.000+01:00

AP 4 janvier 2005

Nouvelles violences en Irak: le gouverneur de la province de Bagdad
et 21 autres personnes tuées

BAGDAD (AP) -

A moins d'un mois des élections du 30 janvier en Irak, la situation ne s'arrange pas en matière de sécurité. Mardi, des hommes armés ont assassiné Ali al-Haidari, le gouverneur de la province de Bagdad, ainsi que six de ses gardes du corps, alors qu'un camion bourré d'explosifs a explosé près d'une caserne de la Garde nationale dans l'ouest de la capitale, faisant dix morts et une soixantaine de blessés.Parallèlement, trois soldats américains ont été tués par une bombe placée au bord d'une route à Bagdad, et deux autres dans d'autres attaques perpétrées près de Balad (80km au nord de la capitale) et dans la province d'Anbar (ouest de l'Irak).Le convoi de trois véhicules à bord duquel se trouvait Ali al-Haidari traversait le quartier de Hurriyah (nord de la capitale), lorsqu'il a été attaqué, a expliqué le chef de son détachement sécurité, le commandant Mazen."Le gouverneur se trouvait dans sa BMW blindée et nous étions dans deux autres voitures", a-t-il déclaré, joint sur le téléphone portable d'Ali al-Haidari. "Ils sont venus de différentes directions et ont ouvert le feu sur nous".Ali al-Haidari avait été la cible d'une tentative d'assassinat l'année dernière, qui avait coûté la vie à deux de ses gardes du corps. Et son adjoint Hatim Kamil avait été abattu le 1er novembre, sur le chemin de son bureau, un assassinat revendiqué par l'Armée Ansar al-Sunnah.Le gouverneur est le responsable irakien le plus haut placé à être assassiné depuis l'ancien président du Conseil de gouvernement (CIG), Abdel-Zahra Othman, plus connu sous le nom d'Izzadine Salim, tué le 18 mai dans un attentat à la voiture piégée à Bagdad."Al-Qaida en Irak", le groupe du terroriste jordanien Abou Moussab al-Zarqaoui, a revendiqué l'assassinat d'Ali al-Haidari et l'attentat au camion piégé, selon un communiqué diffusé sur Internet."Nous disons à tous les traîtres et tous les sympathisants des juifs et des chrétiens que c'est le sort qui vous attend", explique ce communiqué.En déplacement à Phuket, en Thaïlande, le secrétaire d'Etat américain Colin Powell s'est dit très attristé d'apprendre la mort d'Ali al-Haidari. Elle intervient alors que Bagdad essaye d'organiser des élections législatives le 30 janvier, un scrutin que les insurgés ont promis de saboter."Cela montre à nouveau qu'il y a des meurtriers et des terroristes, des éléments de l'ancien régime en Irak, qui ne veulent pas qu'il y ait des élections. Ils ne veulent pas que les Irakiens choisissent de nouveaux dirigeants. Ils veulent retourner dans le passé. Ils veulent revenir à la tyrannie du régime de Saddam Hussein et cela ne va pas se produire", a affirmé Colin Powell.Toujours mardi, dans l'ouest de Bagdad, un kamikaze au volant d'un camion bourré d'explosifs a foncé sur un barrage de police proche de l'entrée de la Zone verte, quartier sous haute protection abritant l'ambassade américaine et les locaux du gouvernement intérimaire irakien.Huit commandos irakiens et deux civils ont été tués, et une soixantaine d'autres personnes blessées, selon le ministère de l'Intérieur.La déflagration s'est produite dans le quartier de Qadessiyah, non loin du site d'un autre attentat perpétré lundi. Une autre voiture piégée avait explosé à proximité du siège de l'Accord national irakien (ANI), le parti du Premier ministre intérimaire Iyad Allaoui, tuant deux policiers, un civil et blessant 25 autres Irakiens.Par ailleurs, le Foreign Office a annoncé mardi que trois Britanniques avaient été tués en Irak. Ils sont morts lundi, ainsi qu'un Américain, dans un attentat à la voiture piégée près de la Zone Verte, selon l'agence britannique Press Association.Dans ce contexte, plusieurs responsables du gouvernement irakien réclament le report des élections du 30 janvier. La Commission électorale affirme toutefois que le scrutin aura lieu comme prévu.Des religieux sunnites ont appelé au boycott des élections et le plus important parti politique sunnite d'Irak, le Parti islamique, a annoncé son retrait du scrutin en raison des problèmes de sécurité.Dernier responsable en date à demander un report: le ministre de la Défense, Hazem Shaalan. Il a suggéré lundi de reporter le scrutin afin d'essayer d'obtenir une meilleure participation de la minorité sunnite, qui risque de boycotter ce scrutin dans lequel les partis issus de la majorité chiite (60% de la population) sont donnés favoris.En déplacement au Caire, il a déclaré avoir demandé à l'Egypte de persuader les sunnites d'aller voter. "Et s'ils étaient d'accord, nous pourrions repousser la date pour permettre à tous les Irakiens de se rendre aux urnes en un seul jour", a-t-il expliqué.

Anti-délation

2004-12-28T01:03:00.000+01:00

TAKEN FROM INDYMEDIA ILE DE FRANCE

Francis Charpentier, du Collectif anti-délation, à propos de la Loi de prévention de la délinquance « Ces lois liberticides rappellent les heures sombres de notre histoire »

Lu sur Ekaitza : http://ekaitza.free.fr/

Entretien avec Francis Charpentier, du Collectif anti-délation qui s'est monté à Baiona. Il nous précise les enjeux de cette loi qui devrait être débattue au Parlement en janvier 2005.

Ekaitza : Peux tu nous re-préciser le cadre juridique de ces lois ?

Francis Charpentier : Il faut d'abord rappeler le cadre de la loi en deux mots. Il s'agit des lois Sarkozy qui veulent donner un pouvoir accru aux maires dans leur rôle d'officier de police judiciaire. A ce titre se créent des « Comités Locaux de Sécurité Prévention de la Délinquance » qui réunissent, dans les municipalités où ils se mettent en place, divers acteurs de terrains. Sur Bayonne, ce sont des représentants de la police nationale, de la police municipale, un délégué du maire et des services municipaux. Pour la « société civile », il y a le représentant des cafetiers de Bayonne.

Comment ça fonctionne ?

Il s'agit de réunions qui se tiennent à la demande de la municipalité. A Bayonne, ont été abordées la question des SDF, celle de la consommation d'alcool des jeunes dans le Petit-Bayonne pendant ou hors des fêtes, ainsi que la question de la délinquance dans les quartiers Nord. Dans d'autres villes, comme Tarbes, les commissions se réunissent beaucoup plus fréquemment et on commence déjà à entamer des discussions sur ce que l'on appelle " des situations particulières ". Pour l'instant ces comités viennent juste de se mettre en place. Il existe quelques sites-pilotes en France qui fonctionnent. Si la loi passe le maire de la ville aura des compétences très larges : au niveau de l'habitat et du logement public, de l'apport de certaines aides aux familles, des relations avec l'école etc.

Localement, l'expérience est-elle tentée ?

La municipalité met en place ce Comité de Prévention, comme un bon élève de la classe politique UMP. Je pense que ça c'est clair. Le problème c'est qu'on nous dit que la loi ne sera jamais mise en place, alors que ces lois risquent d'êtredébattues en janvier 2005, et que si on fait des expériences nationales ici ou là en impliquant autant de gens, c'est sûrement pas pour s'amuser dans son coin. Toutefois il existe effectivement une volonté politique locale de voir appliquer une bonne partie du texte de monsieur Sarkozy. Ailleurs il existe des maires qui refusent de mettre en place ces comités.

Quelle est l'implication des services sociaux ?

Il s'agit de l'introduction et de la mise en place de logiciels fichant les populations précaires (RMi, ASS, API, etc...), avec l'informatisation d'un certain nombre de renseignements. Ceux-ci peuvent être très précis parce que les gens parfois viennent livrer un peu de leur malheur et de leur vie. Ce logiciel, Perceval, a été mis en place par le Conseil Général, à titre d'expérimentation sur deux sites : Orthez et d'Anglet. Cela concerne les travailleurs sociaux qui sont directement liés au Conseil Général. Ces renseignements sont mis en place après les entretiens systématiques qu'ont les gens qui sont au RMI, parce qu'ils sont obligés d'aller dans un service social départemental pour régler, par exemple, leur contrat d'insertion mais cela peut aussi entrer dans le cadre de rendez-vous avec le travailleur social sur une forme d'aide…

Qui accède aux informations ?

Pour l'instant, cela ne concerne que les services du Conseil Général autour du RMI. Après, malgré ce que disent les promoteurs de ce genre de logiciels informatiques, est-ce qu'on ne pourra pas le coupler avec d'autres systèmes informatiques qui existent déjà… Toute la question se pose.

S'agit-il d'une loi isolée ?

Aujourd'hui, ces lois, si elles sont votées, viendront compléter ce qui existe déjà dans les lois Perben au niveau de ce que l'on appelle " les bandes armées " et des poursuites judiciaires autour de ce thème. C'est une atteinte directe aux libertés individuelles parce qu'elles ne touchent pas seulement le " public précaire " ou les travailleurs sociaux, mais aussi l'Education Nationale et d'autres structures. Il va être demandé aux chefs d'établissements scolaires de prévenir le maire de la ville de l'absence d'un enfant pendant plus de trois jours. Ce qui peut amener les parents à suivre un stage de parentalité obligatoire, payant, de 750 euros. Il existe aujourd'hui en France plus de 80 comités anti-délation centralisés depuis le 1er trimestre 2004. Quelles sont vos revendications ? Les revendications du Collectif sont claires. Ces lois ne doivent pas être votées. Ces lois liberticides rappellent les heures sombres de notre histoire. Ces collectifs mobilisent non seulement les travailleurs sociaux, mais aussi les associations de parents d'élèves, les syndicats de l'enseignement et tous les gens qui ont conscience aujourd'hui qu'il y a une menace potentielle sur l'ensemble de la population, parce que seulement quelques privilégiés y échapperont par rapport à la majorité. Le problème c'est que peu d'information est fait autour de cette question-là. Peu de gens ont au courant de ce qui leur pend au nez donc la première des choses, c'est d'avertir la population. Nous allons distribuer un tract, ciblant les personnes qui sont en butte avec ce texte de loi

Plus d'infos sur http://www.abri.org/antidelation Mel local : antidelation.paysbasque@laposte.net Collectif local : c/o AC 11 rue Panecau Baiona 05 59 25 79 62- 06 87 77 52 00

GO TO ORIGINAL

2004-12-22T22:39:00.000+01:00

DOPAGE DES STAR ACADEMICIENS POUR LE BIEN DE L'AUDIMAT.

"(...)Ils étaient un peu aphones ce matin,on a du leur faire une piqure de cortizone."

Nikos Aliagas,présentateur du programme télévisé sur TF1 "Star Academy", parlant des deux finalistes, lors de l'émmission en direct du Mercredi 22 Décembre 2004.

UCT

2004-12-06T13:30:00.000+01:00

Unembedded in Iraq

By Charles Shaw, Newtopia. Posted December 4, 2004.
This exclusive interview with un-embedded journalist Dahr Jamail reveals an almost unrecognizable picture of Iraq and its people

Editor's note: After covering post-9/11 politics and the run-up to the Iraq War for a weekly in Alaska, Dahr Jamail saved his money to cover the war from the front lines.

How long have you been reporting on Iraq, and what brought you there?

DJ: I have spent 6 of the last 12 months in Iraq. As I mentioned, what brought me here was the nearly total failure of the US 'mainstream' media to show the truth of this illegal invasion and occupation. How it affected the Iraqis, as well as US soldiers. Overall, they just weren't doing their job, and this has grown even worse.
I had done all the usual actions of attempting to speak up and effect change at home-calling and writing Senators/Congresspeople, attending teach-ins, spreading information. After watching the worldwide demonstrations on February 15, 2003 be brushed aside as a "focus group," I knew then that the minds of the American public had been misled by the corporate media who mindlessly supported the objectives of the Bush regime, and reporting the true effects of the invasion/occupation on the Iraqi people and US soldiers was what I needed to do.

What is it like being one of the only "unembedded" journalists operating in the country? Do you fear for your safety, and what have you done to ensure your safety? Whom do you fear more, random kidnappers or the American Military? How do you manage to move through Iraqi society now when it appears that, in the wake of Margaret Hassan's murder, all Westerners are viable targets? And on that same note, what do the Iraqis think of the kidnappings, murders, and beheadings?

It's tough. Working in this environment of media repression and danger is always an uphill battle. Blinking electricity, car bombs, kidnappings are the playing field. I constantly monitor my safety factor and those who work with me. I grew a beard, dress like locals, and only travel around covertly with one interpreter in a beat up car. I minimize my time on the street, while at the same time spending enough there to get the Iraqis reactions to what unfolds here each day.
My greatest concern is the reaction of my own government. I'm reporting information that the Bush regime wants kept under wraps. I fear reprisal from both the government and military far, far more than being kidnapped or blown up by a car bomb.
Iraqis are of course shocked and outraged by the beheadings and kidnappings of people like Margaret Hassan. So many also believe it was a CIA/Mossad plot to keep aid organizations and journalists out of Iraq in order to give the military and corporations here a free hand to continue to dis-assemble and sell of the country.

On Nov 18 in one of your dispatches you wrote, "Journalists are increasingly being detained and threatened by the U.S.-installed interim government in Iraq. Media have been stopped particularly from covering recent horrific events in Fallujah." What are the predominant differences between your reporting and that of the corporate media and embedded reporters, or that of Iraqi and Muslim journalists? In other words, what does each group do with the same pieces of information? Do you feel you have a freer hand by being "unembedded"? Have you or anyone you know been intimidated or harassed in any way?

Myself and most Arab and western independent journalists here show the costs of war. Report the massacres, the slaughter, the dead and wounded kids, disaster that this occupation truly is for the Iraqi people. Report on the low morale of most soldiers here, report on how doctors now state openly that due to lack of funds and help from the US-backed Ministry of Health, they feel it is worse now than during the sanctions.
I do feel I have more freedom because I am "unembedded." I'm flying under the mainstream radar of censorship.
I have been attacked from some mainstream sources and pundits. Fox propaganda channel invited me on after I accurately reported the sniping of ambulances, medical workers and civilians in Fallujah last April...I declined the set up because I didn't have a desire to have my character assassinated.
My website has taken some attacks by hackers...but so far we've managed the onslaught. I receive some hate mail via my site, and have received one death threat...so far.

The US Corporate media consistently characterizes the Iraqi resistance as "foreign terrorists and former Ba'athist insurgents". In your experience, is this an accurate portrayal? If not, why?

This is propaganda of the worst kind. Most Iraqis refer to the Iraqi Resistance as "patriots." Which of course most of them are-they are, especially in Fallujah, primarily composed of people who simply are resisting the occupation of their country by a foreign power. They are people who have had family members killed, detained, tortured and humiliated by the illegal occupiers of their shattered country.
Calling them "foreign terrorists" and "Ba'athist insurgents" is simply a lie. While there are small elements of these, they are distinctly different from the Iraqi Resistance, who are now supported by, very conservatively at least 80% of the population here.
There are terrorist elements here, but that is because the borders of Iraq have been left wide open since the invasion. These did not exist in Iraq before.
The Bush regime like to refer to anyone who does not support their ideology and plans for global domination as a "terrorist."
Here, these fighters in the Iraqi Resistance are referred to as freedom fighters, holy warriors and patriots.

We rarely see any substantial imagery coming out of Iraq in the US corporate media. What does Iraq look like now? What aren't the people in the United States seeing, and what do you feel they should be seeing?

The devastation. The massive suffering and devastation of the people and their country. Baghdad remains in shambles 19 months into this illegal occupation. Bombed buildings sit as insulting reminders of unbroken promises of reconstruction.
Bullet ridden mosques with blood stained carpets inside where worshippers, unarmed, have been slaughtered by soldiers.
Entire families living on the street. 70% unemployment with no hope of this changing. Chaotic, clogged streets of Baghdad and 5 mile long petrol lines in this oil rich country.
Engineers and doctors, unemployed, driving their cars as a taxi to try to feed their families.
The seething anger in the eyes of people on the streets as US patrols rumble past.
Iraqis now cheering when another US patrol or base is attacked. Dancing on the burning US military hardware.
Dead and maimed US soldiers. The wounded screaming and writhing in agony. Their shattered families.
The mass graves of innocent Fallujans after the utter destruction of their city.
Children deformed by Depleted Uranium exposure lying in shattered hospitals, suffering from lack of treatment, or even pain medications.
Dead, rotting bodies in the streets of Fallujah of women and children being eaten by dogs and cats because the military did not allow relief teams into the city for nearly two weeks.

What are the sentiments of the Iraqis you have spoken with towards the Americans? Is there any good will left? Was there any to begin with? What do they think of Alawi, the pending "elections", the continued occupation, the American-trained Iraqi security forces? Do they have any hope or belief that the Americans will leave, or are they thinking this will be a generation-long occupation?

There was support by most Iraqis for the removal of Saddam Hussein. But that started to ebb quickly on in the occupation as people watched family members killed, detained, tortured and humiliated by the occupation forces.
Then there was Abu Ghraib. I cannot stress enough how devastating this was to US credibility in Iraq, and the entire Middle East.
Throw on top of that the April siege of Fallujah, nearly complete lack of reconstruction, importation of foreign workers to do jobs Iraqis are far more qualified for, the installation of an illegal interim government, and you have a complete PR disaster for the US here.
Any credibility for the occupiers, and I doubt there was much to speak of, after the destruction of Fallujah has been lost. Iraqis I speak with are infuriated at the US government. While they are well aware that what is most likely the majority of people in the US being in opposition to the Bush regime, they believe the US government and those who support it are guilty of war crimes of the worst kind. I see rage, grief, and the desire for revenge on a daily basis here.
They hate Allawi. They have no respect for him or any other of the puppets in the US-installed interim government, because they don't see how any self-respecting person would allow themselves to be a puppet of the US in this illegal, brutal endeavor.
They are well aware that he is an exile who has been linked with the CIA and British intel for a long, long time. He and the rest of the interim government are views as thieves, rapists and US pawns. They are utterly loathed, as everyone here knows these people do not have the interests of the Iraqi people in mind.
The elections are viewed as a joke. Most here now believe there is no way they can be held in an honest, transparent and truly democratic way. Most are also too afraid to vote. I've heard people say things like, "The Americans won't even allow a legitimate election in their own country, so why would they want to have one here!"
The Iraqi "security" forces, being the police and national guard, are viewed by most as surrogates of the US military. They are viewed as collaborators and traitors by most. While people understand many of these forces join out of desperation because there are no jobs, they remain loathed, along with the foreign occupation forces. It doesn't help when many of the police are actively involved in organized crime.
Lastly, the occupation is viewed as endless. Iraqis know there are already 4 permanent military bases here, and more soldiers coming. There is little hope amongst those I talk with about this topic that the occupation will end.

We've read substantive reports recently that over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed since the war began. What is your take on this report, and what have you seen that either supports or contradicts it? Is the US military indiscriminately targeting civilians, or are they just hopelessly inept, or is it something in-between?

I think this report has understated the death toll. From what I've seen during my six months here, it is increasingly difficult to find a family here who has not had at least one member killed by either the military or criminal activity. Entire neighborhoods in Fallujah have been bombed into rubble. Houses with entire families have been incinerated and blown to pieces.
The random gunfire of soldiers nearly every time a patrol or convoy is attacked almost always results in civilian deaths. Keep in mind there are now over 100 attacks per day on US forces in occupied Iraq.
Then we have the infrastructure-people dying from lack of food, water borne diseases, inadequate health care...the list is longer than any of us know.
I think the military is killing so many civilians for several reasons. Primarily, because they have been put in an untenable situation by their Commander in Chief-that is, a no-win guerilla war against an enemy who now has the massive support of the populace. Thus, anyone, anytime could be an attacker. So they are shooting first and asking questions later because they are scared to death.
They are using a conventional military to fight a guerilla war-and just as in Vietnam, it is a disaster and utter failure.
Then there are the soldiers who have completely dehumanized Iraqis, and I've spoken with some who seem to actually enjoy killing them.
Of course it doesn't help that this is sanctioned and encouraged by the US government, and that blinding religious ideology appears to have filtered down into many of the soldiers here. "You are either with us, or you are against us." Iraq is now full of fields of death. There is carnage in the streets everyday in Baghdad, as well as other cities throughout much of the country.

There has been a lot of speculation about the role of oil in the occupation. Americans were told that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the war and reconstruction, but there is no oil coming out of Iraq after more than 18 months. Certain journalists and activists ranging from Jim Marrs to Mike Ruppert to Peter Camejo have all stated, in some form or other, that this was never the intention, that the idea was to first remove Iraqi oil from the world market, thereby driving up oil prices (the profits mainly landing in the pockets of the Saudis), and eventually to co-opt the oil supply to sell to China and India as their energy demands skyrocket. What have you seen in regards to oil activity? Also, Iraq Coalition Casualty (http://icasualties.org/oif/default.aspx) was the only outlet to report on a series of coordinated attacks on the Iraqi oil infrastructure all this week. This has gone completely unreported in the US corporate media. Do you believe this lack of reporting is intentional and who do you think is sabotaging the infrastructure?

Iraq is still importing all of its gasoline. And from what I know, they are exporting all of the oil from here, as well as that which is refined in Iraq, which isn't much at all, if any.
I think the lack of reporting on the sabotaging is akin to the lack of reporting that there are nearly 100 attacks per day on US soldiers, or lack of reporting of lack of infrastructure, etc. I think it all falls under the umbrella of the mainstream media's successful efforts to whitewash the Iraq catastrophe for the Bush administration.
It looks as though it is the resistance who are doing the sabotaging. An open question though, regarding what you asked, is why is there not better protection of the oil infrastructure?

We have conflicting reports in the US about the Shia and Sunni putting aside their historical differences to team up against the Americans. Do you see this happening, and what do you believe the eventual outcome will be. US policy makers claim that an American withdrawal would only result in a widescale civil war between these two factions and the Kurds in the north. Do you believe this will be the case? Are the Iraqis in a situation now where they are dammed any way they turn?

I do see this happening. During the siege of Najaf, collections for aid at Sunni mosques were organized, as well as resistance fighters from Fallujah who provided guns and supplies to the Mehdi Army there. During the siege of Fallujah last April, Shia weighed heavily in donating aid, and participated in a non-violent action that pushed supplies into Fallujah through a US military cordon.
The Shia/Sunni rift is largely a CIA generated myth. There are countless tribes and marriages alike that are both Shia/Sunni. There are mosques here where they pray together.
There is the possibility of war if the Kurds go independent, but the more likely possibility of that war would be Turkey invading Kurdistan before any Shia/Sunni action would occur regarding this.
Remember the Arab proverb; "Me against my brother. Me and my brother against my cousin. Me, my brother and cousin against the stranger."
The Iraqis are in a situation where they are damned as long as the US continues to occupy and subvert their country, as they have been doing.

It is critically important that Americans begin to understand the psyche of the Iraqi resistance. What is really going on in Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, and Baghdad? Is this a legitimate, coordinated uprising against the occupation, or is it a defensive response to the US escalation of the war? Or both? Considering that the US claims they have opened a front to "take the battle to Al Qaeda", do you see any evidence of an Al Qaeda presence, or the presence of "foreign fighters streaming in from the Syrian border" as is also reported here?

The resistance is complex because it has so many facets. Parts of it are simply Iraqis who don't want their country to be occupied. Iraqis who have had family members killed, tortured or humiliated by the military...so they are exacting revenge. Other parts are more organized, where individual cells are operating in coordinated attacks with other cells, but they remain largely decentralized. This is why the conventional US army will never defeat it. Because the resistance has no face, no leader, no fixed organization.
It is really both a defensive reaction to the occupiers, but also is going more on the offensive as the occupation continues. As one Iraqi man old me once, "The invasion was America's war on Iraq. Now we are seeing the Iraqi's war against the Americans."
I have yet to see any evidence or meet any Iraqi who has seen evidence of Al-Qaeda here. There are certainly other fighters entering Iraq from different countries, but they are a relatively small number. When we say "foreign fighters" here, we must recall that every Iraqi I've spoken with views the occupiers as the foreign fighters, and not any other Arab who is coming here to fight in the resistance. Most Iraqis I speak with view these Arab fighters as brothers, and the occupiers as the "foreign fighters."

Have you had much contact with American troops, and if so, what are they saying, and what is your impression of them? Do you support NBC reporter Kevin Sites' decision to film and report on the murder of an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner this week? Do you believe this was a relatively "isolated" incident, or did these guys just get caught?

I've had a fair amount, but not so much this trip. I make it a point to avoid them now since they are such constant targets. They are being attacked at least 100 times a day as of late. But when I interacted with them my last two trips I found most of them to be quite scared, and morale depended on how long they'd been here. The newer folks were keeping a stiff upper lip and staying on message. The folks who'd been here 6, 9 or 12 months were angry, aiming their guns at everyone, and sometimes high on drugs. Not to generalize-not all were like this. But I saw many who were, and it reminded me of everything I've read about what happened to the psyche of US soldiers in Vietnam.
I do support Kevin Sites' decision to film what he did of the execution of the old, unarmed Iraqi man in the mosque. 100% I support this. People need to see that this is what is occurring here-and this is NOT an isolated incident. Nearly every refugee from Fallujah I've interviewed has spoken of mass executions, tanks rolling over the wounded in the streets, bodies being thrown in the Euphrates by the military, and other atrocities.
The footage of the execution in the mosque is akin to the photos that came out of Abu Ghraib. They are only the tip of the iceberg of atrocities that have been occurring here from the beginning. Atrocities that are occurring right now.
Indeed, those soldiers just got caught. This is not news, however-because we've even had military commanders come out in the media and admit that they gave orders to soldiers to shoot anything that moved in Fallujah. What we will see in Fallujah is that it has been a genocide.

Lastly, what do you see happening in both the immediate and distant future in Iraq? How long do you plan to stay? Do you believe you will sill safely be able to report the truth to us when so much of your reporting flies in the face of the so-called "official" reports and media blackout? Do you envision an even greater information clamp-down, or do you think Independent reporting is going to become a stronger force as the US digs itself into a deeper and deeper hole?

I see more bloodshed and chaos. Sending more troops will only speed up the spiral here; increase the fighting. I see a continuing degradation of the infrastructure and failing of the occupation. It has already failed. It had failed even before the April siege of Fallujah and the Abu Ghraib scandal (which is ongoing). The real question is, how many more Iraqis and soldiers die before the US admits to its colossal failure, makes reparations for the countless war crimes that have been committed and pulls out.
The long term-that depends on how long the US stays here. It is rare when I speak with an Iraqi who wants the US to stay-they say, "Civil war? It can't possibly be worse than this-so the US should leave. Then we'd at least have the chance to run our own country."
Another man pointed out that if there were a civil war, no Shia or Kurdish attack on Fallujah could ever possibly compare to the devastation the US military has caused there. I think he makes a good point.
I am concerned about my safety, of course. This is the most dangerous place in the world for a journalist to be, especially those of us who are reporting the reality of what is occurring here. I have concerns of reprisal from the military and my government-because they don't like to have the facts get out. I've consistently been a minority voice with my reporting in Iraq-which has led many to discount my reports and call me biased.
Yet I have consistently been shown to be accurate, as have the other independents here. An example would be that several of us were reporting on Abu Ghraib months before the mainstream decided to do their job and run the story. And at the end of the day, those of us who have been reporting that this occupation failed months ago, and the vast, vast majority of Iraqis oppose the occupation and support the resistance, will end up again being proven right. But I'm afraid with the media blackout in the mainstream of the US, in general, being as stunningly effective as it has been, I think this is going to be a long time before this comes to light. But it will.
I do envision a deepening of the clampdown we are now experiencing. We're watching this in the US media now, with NPR having even jumped on the propaganda bandwagon.
However, as with repression of any kind, the more the "powers that be" attempt to muzzle independent media and the truth, the more they create a growing, powerful, diverse entity that finds new and creative ways to work here.
For example, the closing of the Al-Jazeera office here has simply caused their journalists to go underground and decentralize, making it impossible for the government to control them. In this way, the repression naturally creates a smarter, more diverse and creative resistance in the form of increased independent reportage.
In the end, people know the truth when they see it. I taste this by mail I get from my readers-those who read many sources and thank me for reporting the truth, as well as those who support the occupation who send hate mail and try to tell me I'm reporting from Idaho and making everything up. Their ugly reactions indicate that they prefer not to know the truth-that their government has deceived a large percentage of the American people into supporting an illegal invasion that has cost at least 100,000 Iraqi lives, as well as those of over 1,200 US soldiers. Many people would rather lash out to protect their denial rather than accepting responsibility for supporting such atrocities.
In the end, the truth will come out, no matter how intense the repression becomes. And in the end, those in America who support this occupation will eventually see that virtually the majority of people in every other country on the planet oppose the American agenda in Iraq.
It is only a matter of time.

Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches can be found at: http://dahrjamailiraq.com
Charles Shaw is Editor-in-Chief of Newtopia Magazine.

TAKEN FROM ALTERNET.ORG.

GO TO ORIGINAL.

2004-11-29T09:44:00.000+01:00

ENTERING THE TWILIGHT ZONE:

US AIR FORCE TO BUILD ANTIMATTER BOMBS!!!

Check this link for more info: Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order.

UCT

2004-11-03T17:22:00.000+01:00

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UCT

2004-11-01T13:15:00.000+01:00

"I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America, where it's nice and safe and secure."

-George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004

Where the presidential race stands today

Introductory overview of the American electoral process

UCT

2004-10-03T14:00:00.000+02:00

Have you ever heard of the "Thulegate" story? Read on...

Jan 21 1968/B-52 bomber crashed approximately seven miles southwest of the runway at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland

The bomber involved in the crash carried four B28 thermonuclear bombs

sediment on the bottom of Bylot Sound near where the plane crashed has extremely elevated levels of radioactive plutonium contamination

An August 2000 report suggests that one of the bomb remains at the bottom of Baffin Bay.

UCT

2004-09-21T17:19:00.000+02:00

(...)"Je suis anti-raciste donc anti-imperialiste,donc anti-sionniste,donc anti-sémite"(...)

Benoît Duquesne(complément d'enquete/FRANCE 2/emission du 20 sept 2004),résume en quelques mots la nouvelle tendance "judéophobique".

Drole d'amalgame non?

UCT

2004-09-16T02:02:00.000+02:00

9/11: No Arabs on Flight 77

Here's a link to two interesting articles.

GO THERE

Also check

OPERATION NORTHWOODS (U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba).

War on Iraq: Not just Abu Ghraib
The Guardian reports: "Allegations that American soldiers routinely tortured and maltreated detainees have emerged from a third Iraqi city"(...)

Will be back soon with more "in depth" things.

UCT

2004-08-05T13:04:00.000+02:00

JUST SAY NO !!!

"God told me to strike at Al-Qaida and I struck them... And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did... And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." George Walker BUSH.

2004-08-05T12:55:00.000+02:00

JUST SAY NO

2004-07-28T12:14:00.000+02:00

Carnegie Mellon University robotics researchers, in conjunction with the U.S. Marine Corps’ Warfighting Laboratory, have developed a small, throwable, remote-controlled prototype robot designed for surveillance in urban settings, several of which are being sent to Iraq for testing. The robot, known as Dragon Runner, has the ability to see around corners and deliver information to Marines while keeping them out of danger in urban settings where human access is impractical, dangerous or unsustainable. And look for Sarah Connor.

READ FULL ARTICLE

(c)carnegie mellon

ENTER THE MATRIX

Ever heard about RFID tags? CLICK HERE

...and micro chips on the forehead...

RFID tags...don't they look funny?

2004-07-25T11:48:00.000+02:00

Associated Press OnlineJuly 13, 2004 Tuesday 4:25 PM Eastern Time
HEADLINE: Red Cross Suspects U.S. Hides Detainees
BYLINE: NAOMI KOPPEL; Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: GENEVA

The international Red Cross said Tuesday it suspects the United States is hiding detainees in lockups across the globe, though the agency has been granted access to thousands of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere.
Terror suspects reported by the FBI as captured have never turned up in detention centers, and the United States has failed to reply to agency demands for a list of everyone it's holding, said Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"These people are, as far as we can tell, detained in locations that are undisclosed not only to us but also to the rest of the world," Notari told The Associated Press.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Tuesday he was "looking further into" the Red Cross concerns and added: "We do work closely with the Red Cross on all detainee issues." He did not concede a problem exists.
At the Pentagon, spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "The International Committee of the Red Cross has access to all Defense Department detention operations."
However, in his report into allegations of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba found that military police there had "routinely held persons brought to them by other government agencies without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention."
On at least one occasion, they moved these "ghost detainees" around the prison to hide them from a visiting Red Cross delegation, he added. He described the actions as "deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law."
Under the Geneva Conventions, the United States is obliged to give the neutral, Swiss-run ICRC access to prisoners of war and other detainees to check on their conditions and allow them to send messages to their families.
The United States says it is cooperating with the agency, and has allowed Red Cross delegates access to thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan, at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq, where agency delegates have visited Saddam Hussein.
It is unclear whether terror suspects would be covered by the Geneva Conventions, but Notari said that "for humanitarian reasons" the Red Cross should be told about all detainees.
ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger made the request in January on a visit to Washington during which he met with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
"So far we haven't had a satisfactory reply," Notari said.
She said the FBI has posted details of arrested suspects on its Web site, and other arrests have been reported by the media, but some of those people have never shown up in prisons that the Red Cross visits.
Notari said she had read media reports that some people are being held at Diego Garcia, a British-held island in the Indian Ocean that the United States uses as a strategic military base, but the ICRC has not been notified of any prisoners there.
"We just simply have absolutely no confirmation of this in any formal way," she said.
ICRC delegates visited nearly 500,000 detainees in around 80 countries last year, including almost 11,000 in Iraq.
In an interview in Tuesday's edition of the German business daily Handelsblatt, Kellenberger defended the ICRC's policy of refusing to comment publicly on the conditions that it finds in places of detention, preferring to negotiate directly with the authorities.
The agency faced criticism for not speaking out about the abuse at Abu Ghraib until it was revealed in the media.
"Certain people had the impression that our repeated, confidential approaches to the U.S. authorities were falling flat," Kellenberger said.
"But impressions can be wrong. When we visited Abu Ghraib in January 2004, we found improvements compared with October 2003, and when we visited in March it was better than in January."
The ICRC has, however, spoken out on its concerns over the continued detention without trial of prisoners at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba.
"I made it clear in January that we were not happy with the improvements," Kellenberger said. "The most recent visit has just finished. We must now study the findings."

2004-07-16T13:56:00.000+02:00

Extrait d'une note interne de la Banque mondiale :

« Les pays sous peuplés d’Afrique, sont largement sous pollués. La qualité de l’air y est inutilement élevé par rapport à Los Angeles ou Mexico. Il faut donc encourager une migration plus importante des industries polluantes vers les pays les moins avancés et se préoccuper davantage des facteurs aggravant les risques d’un cancer de la prostate dans les pays où les gens vivent assez vieux pour avoir cette maladie, plutôt que dans un pays où deux cents enfants sur mille meurent avant l’âge de cinq ans ». (...)

Visit the "bibliotheque sonore"...Free mp3 files for the advancement of your knowledge.(French)Click Here

2004-07-14T00:59:00.000+02:00

George W. Bush's quote of the day:

"God told me to strike at Al-Qaida and I struck them... And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did... And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

TAKEN FROM "LE MONDE"

Le passe "Navigo" est-il un mouchard ?

Le passe sans contact "Navigo" de la RATP est-il un mouchard ? Soumis à la CNIL en avril 2002, le système a dû subir d'importantes modifications pour être compatible avec "la liberté d'aller et venir anonymement". Pour prévenir la fraude - le clonage des puces à radiofréquence qui équipent le badge -, la date, l'heure et le lieu de passage de chaque passe, identifié par un numéro unique associé à l'identité de son titulaire, sont traités dans un serveur central. Il est ainsi possible de détecter l'usage simultané d'un passe et de sa contrefaçon... et de suivre un voyageur pas à pas. "La durée de conservation des données prévue par le système était de six mois, explique un ancien membre de la CNIL. Elle a été réduite à deux jours."

La Commission a demandé à la RATP de reconsidérer son système pour que seule la détection de fraudes puisse permettre de remonter aux individus. Au moins 1,6 million de voyageurs utilisent le Navigo, qui sera étendu en 2005 à la carte orange mensuelle et à tous les réseaux de transports d'Ile-de-France.

• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 14.07.04

Also 2 very interesting links well worth taking a look.

Original Title: "Choosing targets in cities, planification de la terreur et populations civiles non-combattantes"

Part 1
Part 2

2004-07-10T15:53:00.000+02:00

PARIS (AFP) - Patrick Le Lay, PDG de TF1, interrogé parmi d'autres patrons dans un ouvrage intitulé "Les dirigeants face au changement" (Editions du Huitième jour), livre sa conception de la télévision et estime que le métier de TF1 est d'"aider Coca Cola à vendre son produit".

"Il y a beaucoup de façons de parler de la télévision. Mais dans une perspective +business+, soyons réaliste : à la base, le métier de TF1, c'est d'aider Coca-Cola, par exemple, à vendre son produit".

"Or pour qu'un message publicitaire soit perçu, il faut que le cerveau du téléspectateur soit disponible. Nos émissions ont pour vocation de le rendre disponible : c'est-à-dire de le divertir, de le détendre pour le préparer entre deux messages. Ce que nous vendons à Coca-Cola, c'est du temps de cerveau humain disponible".

"Rien n'est plus difficile, poursuit-il, que d'obtenir cette disponibilité. C'est là que se trouve le changement permanent. Il faut chercher en permanence les programmes qui marchent, suivre les modes, surfer sur les tendances, dans un contexte où l'information s'accélère, se multiplie et se banalise".

2004-07-07T23:50:00.000+02:00

Earth faces sixth mass extinction

The Earth may be on the brink of a sixth mass extinction on a par with the five others that have punctuated its history, suggests the strongest evidence yet.

Butterflies in Britain are going extinct at an even greater rate than birds, according to the most comprehensive study ever of butterflies, birds, and plants.

There is growing concern over the rate at which species of plants and animals are disappearing around the world. But until now the evidence for such extinctions has mainly come from studies of birds. "The doubters could always turn around and say that there's something peculiar about birds that makes them susceptible to the impact of man on the environment," says Jeremy Greenwood of the British Trust for Ornithology in Norfolk, and one of the research team.

Now there is concrete evidence that insects - which account for more than half the described species on Earth, are disappearing faster than birds.

"If we can extrapolate that pattern of the British butterflies to other British insects, and indeed to invertebrates across the planet, we are obviously looking at a very serious bio-diversity crisis," says team member Mark Telfer of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Bedfordshire, UK.

Major ecosystems

Six large sets of data collected over the past 20 to 40 years in England, Wales, and Scotland were analysed by Jeremy Thomas of the Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorchester, UK and colleagues. More than 20,000 volunteers submitted over 15 million records of species.

The researchers found that populations of 71 percent of the butterfly species have decreased over the last 20 years, compared to 56 percent for birds and 28 percent for plants. Two butterfly species (3.4 percent of total) became extinct, compared to six (0.4 percent) of the plant species surveyed. None of the native breeding birds went extinct in the last 20 years.

Crucially, the decline in populations happened in all the major ecosystems and was distributed evenly across Britain, rather than in just a few heavily degraded regions.

The crisis could be foreshadowing a sixth mass extinction, warn the researchers. Life on Earth has already seen five mass extinctions in its four billion year old history. The last one, which wiped out the dinosaurs, happened 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period and was possibly caused by a giant meteor collision.

The current extinction is being precipitated by the widespread loss of habitats because of human activity, according to Tefler. The remaining habitats are small and fragmented, and their quality has been degraded because of pollution.

Nitrogen pollution

This claim is strongly supported, at least for plants, by a second study published alongside Thomas' paper in Science. Carly Stevens of the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, and her colleagues studied the diversity of plants in 68 grassland sites in the UK. The number of species in each site varied greatly, from a mean of 7.2 to 27.6 species per site. Nitrogen pollution was found to blame for this variability.

"We found strong evidence that the decline in the species richness of grasslands within the UK was linked to nitrogen pollution," says Stevens. "In areas of high nitrogen pollution the species richness was much lower than in areas of low pollution, such as the Scottish highlands."

Atmospheric nitrogen pollution is caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and from intensive agriculture, especially from the volatilisation of animal waste. This nitrogen is deposited on the soil, favouring the growth of some species to the cost of others.

"Evidence of a global extinction crisis has come into stark focus with these important results," comments Mark Collins of the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, UK.

Journal reference: Science (vol 303, p 1879)

Anil Ananthaswamy

TAKEN FROM THE NEW SCIENTST

GO THERE

2004-06-14T03:16:00.000+02:00

TAKEN FROM INTERVENTION MAGAZINE

A soldier back from Iraq discusses the war and the U.S. soldiers fighting that war, the suicides, and much more.

Interview by Daniel Redwood

Because members of the military are limited in their ability to speak out publicly, the soldier interviewed here must remain anonymous. A military medic who served in the Gulf War in the early 1990s, he is a member of the Reserves who was called up to serve in the current war in Iraq. His primary role is to deliver medical care to U.S. military personnel as well as Iraqis.

Profoundly patriotic and committed to protecting his country, he is deeply concerned that the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which has resulted in the deaths of over 500 American soldiers and uncounted thousands of Iraqis, may now be edging toward disaster. He believes that the troops have done their job and should be brought home.

In this interview, he notes that the troop rotations currently underway (between now and June) will place into the Iraq combat zone a significantly higher percentage of Reserves than has been deployed in any previous war. Because Reserves receive far less extensive training than active duty forces, he warns that the summer of 2004 may be a particularly dangerous time for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Stationed in the area of the Baghdad Airport at the time of President Bush’s Thanksgiving 2003 visit to the troops there, he also recounts that on the day before the president’s visit, the troops were given a questionnaire that asked them whether they “supported the president.” Those who did not declare their support with sufficient enthusiasm were not permitted to take part in the Thanksgiving meal, and had to make do with MREs (meals ready to eat, referred to by the soldiers as “meals refused by Ethiopians”) in their quarters.

This interview offers a rare, unfiltered report from a first-hand participant in the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq.

Why did you decide to join the U.S. military?

It’s one of the things my family does. I was taught by my parents that there were two things we had to do: go to college and serve in the military. We believe in this country wholeheartedly and being in the military is very important to me. It’s part of my life.

Do you think the American public is well-informed about what is happening in Iraq?

No, I really don’t. I see young people on my medical table all the time, people who have lost their legs or arms or had other terrible injuries. No one back home sees any of that. I’ve been home for a month and I haven’t seen a casualty yet on television. I’m still waiting. Where are the casualties? It’s as if it doesn’t exist, as if it doesn’t happen.

What about Iraqi deaths and injuries?

We don’t care about Iraqi deaths. It’s something that does not even count. The hospital was told not to keep count. The Iraqi infrastructure does not keep an account of the deaths anymore.

Why?

The American government told them not to. We do always keep a list of the Americans injured and the number that die. But here in America you don’t see anything about these soldiers coming back. You don’t read anything about the funeral. It’s like it’s a secret, like these people didn’t exist.

Was it like this in previous wars?

No.

What brought about the change?

From what I gather, it used to be that the president would go out to the area to meet the [deceased] soldiers coming in. They would drape the caskets and they would actually watch and give a moment of silence as the coffin came by. The Bush Administration felt that was too much for Americans to handle, so they secured that part of the ceremony so that no one knows when that fallen soldier comes home. It’s an injustice to the military, because you gave your life to the country and the country should give something back to you. Even just a moment of silence. Every day that someone dies, the flag should be lowered to half staff. Not just because a politician died.

Those guys are good people. They work hard. They do anything and everything that is asked of them. And they gave the ultimate sacrifice. It should not be that you have to go to a website to find out who died.

What’s it like being a medical corpsman?

I’m thinking about a 19-year-old who was on my table. This guy could have been your next door neighbor. Smart kid, excited kid. But his life as he knew it was basically over. His legs were gone. It’s hard for these soldiers to believe. I’ve seen lots of people with severe, permanent injuries. They’re going to need a lot of help when they get back home, because their lives are going to change forever. And to have the guy [President Bush] cutting billions from the VA [Veterans Administration] budget, at a time when you’ve got all those guys coming back from overseas with major injuries, that’s disgusting! That hurts every person who ever served this country. I don’t understand how someone can stand up and say, “I’m pro-military,” when you want to cut $16 billion from the VA and close VA hospitals.

We’re going to need those hospitals. The veterans are going to need medical help and psychological training. They’re not going to be able to walk out of that environment and just go back to their normal jobs. They’re going to need therapy, they’re going to need help. And where do you go to get that help? You go to the VA. If there’s no VA, where do you go? We don’t have insurance. The military doesn’t provide health insurance for you after you leave the military. So they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.
What do they do? How are they going to get the medical attention they need if the VA hospital is closed down? Some of these guys may be traveling 100 to 200 miles to get to the nearest VA. They’re going to have a real rough life when they get back.

How do the people currently serving in Iraq feel about this?

Most of them don’t think about it. They think about the here and now. They’ll worry about that when they get home. Their major goal right now is to stay alive and see their families again. It won’t hit them until they get back and get settled, and they notice they don’t have anything around to support them.

Can you describe the people you work with?

Hard working, dedicated, wanting to bring everybody back. They will do anything and everything to make sure everybody comes back safe.

What’s it like when one of them is shot?

Wounded I can handle. Killed is a different story. You remember faces. You think about the life this person could have had. Being older, you know that 19-year-olds are not supposed to die for something like that. We have wars; they’re gory and there’s blood and they’re nasty. But a 19-year-old should have more of his life to enjoy before he makes the ultimate sacrifice.

I went to one funeral where I cried the whole time. I don’t normally cry for anything. It takes a lot to make me cry. I was crying because I knew this guy. I talked to him all the time. We used to joke together. He was a Marine. To see him lifeless and know that I would never see him again, that is hard to handle. There’s no need for us to be dying like this. Yes, we love the military and we will do anything for this country. But don’t kill us just to be killing us. These men are good people. They work hard, they have jobs and loved ones. They have kids. You talk about people having families. How hard is it to have a family when the father is not there? It breaks your heart to know that someone is going to grow up without a father, and never know their dad.

Are the men and women in the U.S. military in Iraq sufficiently trained before going over there?

No. I am extremely concerned about the major shift that is taking place right now, between now and June, where there’s going to be a much higher percentage of the troops being Reserves rather than full-time, active duty military. The difference is that the active duty go through far more training than Reserves. Up to now, we’ve had a mix of about 20 percent Reserves and 80 percent active duty. With the change going on now, they are rotating out tens of thousands of active duty troops and replacing a lot of them with Reserves. We’ve heard that could be 80 percent Reserves and 20 percent active duty. Some sources say it could be 50/50. But the main point is, nothing like that has ever been tried before, and these Reserves are being sent into a war zone. Many of them are people who would be fine driving a truck or working on a base in some support capacity, but they’re going to be out there on the streets with M-16 rifles. It took me a long time to become skilled with my M-16. You have to learn about dope and windage. It takes time to get it right.

What are dope and windage?

Windage is about taking into account the effect that the wind will have on the course of the bullet. Dope is about the way you elevate your sight to lock in on a target.

What else is lacking in terms of training?

The type of training that you need for guerilla warfare. Some units get it and some don’t. Urban training is real tough. You’ve got to pick the enemy out before he picks you out, and you’ve got to know what spot to look for. OJT is not going to work.

What’s OJT?

On-the-job training. It’s not going to work. And that’s what we’re going through now. It’s completely OJT. These guys are learning as we go along.

To what extent do you feel that U.S. soldiers in Iraq have the proper equipment for what they face there?

We were supposed to have bulletproof vests, where we actually put the plates inside our flak jackets. We never got those. The money had been paid for those things, but we never got them. My brother had to send me a flak jacket. There’s all sorts of stuff that we had to buy on our own before we left. The types of canteens you need, water pouches that go on your back.

These were not provided, or not sufficiently?

Right. We were given canteens that you hold on your side, but the kind that hold a lot of water, you need them, too. It can get unbelievably hot over there and you need to drink a lot of water. Also, the pack doesn’t work.

What’s wrong with it?

It’s top-heavy. All the weight sits above head level. It doesn’t work. The weight should be set in the middle of your back, not above your neck. So you had to go out and buy another pack.

Why on earth didn’t someone figure this out beforehand?

The military buys stuff from the cheapest dealer. We had to go out and buy boots. Not that the military boots are that bad, but they’re not the greatest boots in the world for what you’re going to be doing. And when you’re going to spend hours and hours and hours in a pair of boots, you want something that’s comfortable. So you have to go out and buy your own boots. To buy all of these things, of course, assumes that you or your family can afford to buy them, and a lot of recruits come from poor families.

How is the overall morale of the troops in Iraq?

It depends on the day. When somebody dies, it’s really tough. It’s tough on everybody, because everybody knows it could have been them. Some days we have a good time. We’re Americans; we’re always going to find a way to have fun. We tried to play football one time, which is crazy in a war zone.
We’ve also had a lot of visitors come over and entertain us. Those days are great. But you never lose that thought in your mind that, hey, we’ve got to take care of business in a few hours.

What did you think about President Bush’s Thanksgiving visit to Iraq?

I was there when President Bush came to the [Baghdad] airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.

What was on the questionnaire?

“Do you support the president?”

Really!

Yes.

Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?

Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.

What’s an MRE?

Meals ready to eat. We also call them “meals refused by Ethiopians.”

About this questionnaire, it raises a serious question about whether military personnel, or civil servants for that matter, should ever be asked questions by their supervisors about their political beliefs. It also raises the whole question of freedom of speech. In particular, the circumstances under which members of the military have freedom of speech.

There is none.

Is a soldier free, for example, to speak to the media if it is in support of the president and his policies, but not free to do so if in opposition or if raising uncomfortable questions?

If you are spouting good things about the president, you are allowed to speak. If you are saying anything negative, you are not allowed to speak.

Is it your sense that official visitors, such as Administration figures, members of Congress, and the like, are shown what’s really happening in Iraq? Or are they shown a sanitized version of what’s happening?

It’s cleaned up before they get there. It’s really cleaned up before they get there. We are not going to take them on local runs in the local village.

Because?

Because they may end up dead. And you know how that would look back in the States, to have a member of Congress or a Senator killed in Iraq.

So there’s a sense that you’re in constant danger?

You’re on guard 24/7. I know a guy that got killed at a Coke machine, just buying a Coke.

Does the military, and particularly those members who have served in combat zones, have a higher than average rate of suicide?

Yes.

Have you seen any of these?

Yes. They’re normally the younger ones. The older guys who have been around, like myself, we know that life is too short to end like that. But the younger guys are the ones you have to worry about. There are signs – major depression, they want to get killed, they want to get shot – you can tell.

If, as a medical corpsman, you see a soldier exhibiting those characteristics, how do you handle it?

I grab him. I talk to him. I spend a lot of time talking to people. I’m kind of like the chaplain, too. I’m the one that people tell their problems to. If they can’t go to the CO [commanding officer] or the XO [executive officer] or the sergeant, they come to “doc.” Doc’s not going to tell anybody their secrets.
It’s not just suicides. We also have a 70 percent divorce rate in my unit. People change when they’re on deployment.

Is that more true for younger people, who haven’t been married as long?

It’s true for both. My first sergeant hung himself at Fort Lejeune. His wife divorced him. The crazy thing about it was that he stepped off a chair, and if he had just put his legs down he wouldn’t have killed himself. But when we walked into the room, his legs were still pulled up. So he really wanted to kill himself. This was when we got back from Iraq. There were four suicides since we got back.

Four suicides in a group of how many?

About 600. Suicide is wild. You make it back safe, without a scratch. And then you kill yourself.

For those who survive, return, and try to carry on with their lives, is it difficult to blend back into civilian life?

It’s very difficult to adjust to the change. Most really need counseling. This is my second rodeo, second time around, so I feel that I’m handling it better. But counseling is really important. Also, family members should know that when someone is just back from the war zone, it can take a while to adjust to the idea that your life is not constantly in danger. If you wake someone up quickly, you may get struck.

In what other ways are people changed by being in a war?

Many people who fight in wars come back and complain about them the most. Because you never want to put another person in that situation if you can possibly prevent it. You never forget when you go into a building and everyone there is dead. Like the information building [Iraq Ministry of Information]. All the people there were dead. Bodies bloated, stuff like that.

Do you feel that you have been hardened by experiences like these?

Video games did that already. The average American sees death how many times per day on TV and video games? I don’t play video games anymore.

Do you think it matters that so many of the top people in the Bush Administration never served in combat?

Yes. It’s quite a list. Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice, and many more. I’m still trying to figure out how Cheney managed to get five draft deferments. They say there is not one person in Congress today that has a son or daughter in combat. Neither house of Congress.

What do you think about that?

I think they would make different decisions if their sons and daughters had to go or if they had been there themselves. I really do. If Barbara and Jenna [Bush] had to put on a pack and go to war, I think Daddy would make different decisions. But there’s never going to be a draft because rich people don’t want it. You know, most of the kids in the military are not rich kids. As a matter of fact, most of them are poor. The reason they joined the military was to try to get ahead. So you have the lower class and middle class kids fighting, while the upper class kids, I don’t know what they’re doing. Hanging out at the beach, something like that.

How did you feel when you saw President Bush arrive in a flight suit on the aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego, with the banner “Mission Accomplished”?

We laughed.

Why?

We have a saying about people who dress up in military uniforms, like Idi Amin or Mussolini. People like that have something to hide. The reason they wear the uniform is to make themselves feel big, feel proud.

How did you feel when the President said to the Iraqis, to the insurgents, “Bring it on!”

Being a medical person, I take an oath to try to protect my troops at all times. Anything that puts them in danger, alarms me. And that was unnecessary.

Did the soldiers in Iraq think they were going to find weapons of mass destruction?

Yes.

How come they didn’t find them?

My feeling is that they were never there. As Wolfowitz said, if you don’t tell the American people that there are weapons of mass destruction, they won’t go along with the idea that [going to war is justified because] Saddam was a bad guy. That’s not enough. After 9/11, you’ve got to tell the American people that they’ve got weapons and they can hit the United States any time they want to.

Whether or not it’s true?

Truth is in the eye of the beholder.

What’s it like to be serving in Iraq, on a typical day?

There’s lots of waiting. Lots of time to wait around and think about things. It depends on what your job is. If you’re on patrol, of course, there’s real danger. You don’t know who’s the enemy and who’s your friend. They don’t wear uniforms and we don’t speak the language. I could be treating an Iraqi family on my medical table during the day, and who knows, maybe one of them is going to be trying to kill me or someone in my unit that night.

Do you have enough Arabic interpreters?

No way. Not even close. We didn’t have enough when we came in and we don’t have enough now. It’s unbelievable. And they don’t even encourage us to learn the language. Without being able to speak the same language, we’re worlds apart from the Iraqis.

So you don’t know any words in Arabic?

They teach us a few words and phrases.

Such as?

Stop. Get down. Kneel. Shut up.

No friendly words?

Not that I can remember.

President Bush said on Meet the Press, “We are welcome in Iraq” because “they realize what a free Iraq will be.” What have you concluded about the feelings of Iraqis toward the Americans?

They think we did a good job getting rid of Saddam. Now they want us to get out so they can run their country. It’s not so different from our war with England. We were glad the French helped out, but the French didn’t come in and say, “Okay, now we’re going to occupy you for the next 20 or 30 years.” They want to do their own thing like we did our own thing. That’s one thing that we haven’t figured out  they don’t want us there! They feel that they can solve their own problems, just like we solved ours.

Do the troops currently serving in Iraq have a sense of how long the U.S. military is likely to remain there?

Yes. We know it’s going to be a minimum of ten years.

Based on what?

Based on our government telling us that. A minimum of ten years.

So even if there is an Iraqi government of some sort formed …

We will still be there, to make sure the government thrives. If you know anything about the British occupation of Iraq, the British people after a few years pulled their soldiers out. They said, “We’re tired of this, we don’t want to do this any more.” The British government set up an Iraqi government. In a very short time, that government was dead, and the Baath Party came into being.

So are you, therefore, not terribly optimistic about peace, freedom, and democracy taking root in Iraq very soon?

As soon as the Ayatollah [Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani] says go to war, the people will go to war. When he tells them to go home, they go home. When he tells them to get up, they get up. And he’s going to be our worst nightmare because he controls over 60 percent of the people [the Shi’a] in that country.

There was an attempt on this Ayatollah’s life recently.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if it was us who tried it.

Seriously?

Yes. Because he will mess up our plans. We don’t want to turn Iraq into another Iran.

By another Iran, you mean a radical Islamic state?

[Run by] ayatollahs. We dropped leaflets promising them that you will have elections, you will have a democracy, you will be able to choose your own leaders. Sistani is going to hold us to it. They will have elections. One man, one vote.

But the United States is currently…

Balking at that idea.

Saying that for one reason or another, direct elections with one man, one vote are not possible, or not yet.

Correct. Because if they allow one man, one vote, he will win in a landslide.

He being Ayatollah Sistani, or candidates that he designates?

Yes.

And these caucuses that have been proposed by the American occupation authorities and the Iraqi Governing Council they appointed?

They’re not going to fly.

Because there would be American control over them?

Yes.

Which is what people like Ayatollah Sistani are questioning.

Dead against. He thinks the Governing Council they have now is phony. They will not survive if an election happens. Many of those people are from Virginia, New York, and London. They spent the last 20 years in the United States and England.

Do you feel the Bush Administration has honestly and fully explained why they went into Iraq and why the U.S. military is still there?

No, and I don’t think they ever will. There’s no one to hold them accountable. Congress is a joke. We laugh at Congress. They come over and want to get their pictures taken. That’s nice. But what are they doing? They’re not helping us. They gave this man [President Bush] carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, and he’s doing exactly what he wants.

Is it true that the American invasion of Iraq acted as a magnet, to bring in foreign fighters who weren’t there before?

Yes, because they don’t want Iraq to become a haven for the United States. They want it to be an Arab country. You’ve got to remember, what we’re installing is actually against the way of life they’ve always known. It would be like somebody coming into this country and installing a dictatorship. We would fight that with everything we had. See, freedom for one person is not freedom for another person. If you’re going to take over their religion, take away their culture.

In what way is the American occupation taking away their religion or their culture?

Because they don’t control their own country. It’s an Arab country being run by, as they call us, heathens.

Do you feel that the Iraqi insurgency can be defeated militarily?

It would take a long time, because we are breeding more of them every day, because of the way we are treating the people.

How are they being treated?

We kick in their door, take the children and the women and put them in another place. Then we take the men out of the home.

And do what with them?

We interrogate the men about participation in the insurrection against the United States.

What’s that like?

I don’t do that.

My understanding is that Americans are also doing things to try to rebuild Iraq. How is that going?

There are efforts, but it’s not easy. One example I’m familiar with is that we’ve built a lot of playgrounds. They don’t last long. It would be great in a stable community, but in Iraq people tear them all down for the scrap metal.

What’s the current situation with electrical power?

It’s basically horrible by American standards. We have electricity on the base at times when they don’t have it in the town. It’s going to take a long time to get to the point where electricity is working well. I’ll tell you, I don’t think we should be paying for that.

What else is happening in the military that we should know?

One thing that’s really important, and that makes no sense, is that they are cutting 10,000 people in the Navy from active duty right now.

Why? To save money?

Yeah, and during a war. It said in the Navy Times that from October 1, 2003 to October 1, 2004, something like 10,000 sailors are going to go. They’re going to try to run some of the ships with far fewer people than they’ve always used.

How is that going to work?

It looks like they are going to try to cut the Navy down to the size of the Marine Corps and have people doing more jobs. Just wait until the first time they have a real “general quarters” on a ship, an actual emergency. Because you need everybody on board to work as a team, to handle a crisis aboard ship. It’s not like you can walk back to shore. So I’m waiting for the first crisis that occurs when they don’t have enough people. And it will come. It’s astonishing that they’re letting those 10,000 people go in wartime. If you get hurt, they’ll let you go. If your “fit rep” is not as high as they want it to be, they’ll let you go.

But wait, at the same time, in certain parts of the military, they’re ordering Reservists to stay on for much longer than they expected.

The Reserves are different.

How?

Because Reservists are not paid yearly. Reservists don’t make as much money as active duty people do. They don’t require housing; you don’t have to move the entire family to the base in order to ship them out. The whole idea is to get more people on as Reservists, so that they can use them to replace active duty. It’s great for them [the government], they’re saving money.

Without meaning disrespect to anyone who is serving in the Reserves, it occurs to me that this is like a corporation getting rid of full-time, experienced workers, and bringing in temps. It’s great for the bottom line, and potentially very destructive in a whole host of other ways.

Exactly.

How long must Reservists stay in?

It depends. They’re already staying for much longer than any of them expected. If you are in what is defined as a “critical billet,” it could potentially be for many years. If it was decided that my position was in a critical billet, then theoretically I could be kept on almost indefinitely, in my case until about the year 2030. If they decide to extend it to 2030, I will accept that.

So it’s a real sense of commitment and honor that you have about this.

It is.

What do you think of the United States remaining in Iraq now that Saddam Hussein has been overthrown and there are apparently no weapons of mass destruction?

We need to come home. We did our job.

So this whole notion of staying for the extra 10 years or whatever . . .

Why? What’s the purpose? There is no military purpose there. We’re not the police. We have pressing needs in our country. We are spending money like it’s going out of style over there. Companies like Halliburton are gouging the American people over there. We protect them also. Part of our job now is actually to protect Halliburton employees. So, if we really want to cut off the spigot, we need to come home.

You’re not too impressed with the corporate military contractors.

No. You know, they actually come up to you and offer you jobs. They say, “Once you get out [of the military], go to this company to apply and you can come back over. We can use people like you.” I don’t think it’s worth any amount of money to be in a combat zone. You know, over 100,000 soldiers were offered $10,000 to re-enlist. Hardly anyone took it. I do not want to go back. I will do it if those are my orders, but I do not want to go back. It’s not a winning situation for us. You’re going to lose more people this summer than you did last year, I guarantee it.

Why?

For one thing, people going over there with inadequate training, like I said before. Heat, for another. It’s unbelievably hot there in the summer. When it gets hot, people get upset. When April, May, June, and July roll around, watch how it spikes up again.

What do you expect to happen with the large numbers of soldiers coming back from Iraq?

Mass exit from the military. Mass!

Do you feel it is possible for American citizens to support the troops without supporting the policies under which the troops are acting?

Yes. Most definitely.

Any parting words?

We did our job. We need to come home.

© 2004 by Daniel Redwood

(Posted Thursday, March 4, 2004)

Daniel Redwood is a chiropractor and writer who lives and works in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

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2004-06-07T13:13:00.000+02:00

66 (Unflattering) Things About Ronald Reagan

By David Corn, The Nation
June 6, 2004

Editor's Note: This list of "66 Things to Think about When Flying in to Reagan National Airport" appeared in the Nation on March 2, 1998 after the renaming of Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan. As Corn says, "the piece remains relevant today – particularly as a cheat sheet for those who dare to point out the Reagan presidency was not all that glorious and was more nightmare in America than morning in America."

The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, "homeless by choice," Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy's astrologer.

Drug tests, lie detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig "in control," silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, "mistakes were made."

Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment, Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime"), Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights"), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.

"The bombing begins in five minutes," $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader's Digest, C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/contra. "Facts are stupid things," three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, S.D.I., Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.

David Corn, Washington editor of the Nation, is author of 'The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception.'

TAKEN FROM ALTERNET.ORG

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2004-06-01T13:22:00.000+02:00

The Independent

The Marine's Tale: 'I Killed 30 Iraqi Civilians in Six Weeks'

"In a month and a half my platoon and I killed more than 30 civilians," Mr Massey said. He saw bodies being desecrated and robbed, and wounded civilians being dumped by the roadside without medical treatment. After he told his commanding officer that he felt "we were committing genocide", he was called a "wimp".

Mr Massey, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and depression, left the Marines in November. Back home in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina , he says the cause of the uprising in Iraq is that "we killed a lot of innocent people".

His 7th Marine Weapons Company, armed with machine guns and missiles, was one of the first into the country in March last year. "We would take over villages and control checkpoints," he said. "My men and I would fire warning shots at oncoming vehicles. But, if they didn't stop, we didn't have any qualms about loading them up."

The Marines were told that Iraqis were filling ambulances with explosives, and that soldiers were dressed as civilians, but after pouring fire into vehicles and hearing no explosions, they started to doubt the truth of these claims.

"Iraqi military compounds had nothing in them, except for dismantled tanks, equipment that was barely functioning, and barracks that looked like ghost towns," Mr Massey said.

The incident that haunts him most took place early in April, near an Iraqi military compound five miles from Baghdad 's airport. "There were approximately 10 demonstrators near a tank," he said. "We heard a shot in the distance and we started shooting at them. They all died except for one. We left the bodies there.

"We noticed that there were some RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] about 200 metres away from them - they might have come from the military compound. The demonstrators had the ability to fire at us or at the tank, but they didn't. The survivor was hiding behind a column about 150 metres away from us. I pointed at him and waved my weapon to tell him to get away. Half of his foot had been cut off. He went away dragging his foot. We were all laughing and cheering.

"Then an 18-wheeler [truck] came speeding around. We shot at it. One of the guys jumped out. He was on fire. The driver was dead. Then a Toyota Corolla came. We killed the driver, the other guy came out with his hands up. We shot him too.

"A gunny from Lima Company came running and said to us: 'Hey, you just shot that guy, but he had his hands up.' My unit, my commander and me were relieved of our command for the rest of the day. Not more than five minutes later, the Lima Company took up our position and shot a car with one woman and two children. They all died."

The next day the platoon guarded a checkpoint at Baghdad Stadium. "A red Kia Spectra sped toward us at about 45mph. We fired a warning volley above it but the car kept coming. Then we aimed at the car and fired with full force. The Kia came to a stop right in front of me, three of the four men shot dead, the fourth wounded and covered in blood. We called the medics, but he died before they arrived. That day we killed three more civilians in the same circumstances. I talked to my captain afterwards and told him: 'It's a bad day.' He said: 'No, it's a good day.'"

Mr Massey watched as badly injured Iraqis were repeatedly "tossed on the side of the road without calling medics". His reaction to the event that triggered the recent siege of Fallujah - the sight of the blackened, mutilated bodies of four American private security men - was that "we did the same thing to them".

Iraqis, he said, "would see us debase their dead all the time. We would be messing around with charred bodies, kicking them out of the vehicles and sticking cigarettes in their mouths. I also saw vehicles drive over them. It was our job to look into the pockets of dead Iraqis to gather intelligence. However, time and time again, I saw Marines steal gold chains, watches and wallets full of money."

http://theiraqmonitor.org/article/view/25998.html
www.theiraqmonitor.org

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2004-05-16T02:06:00.000+02:00

WARMERIKA...

THIS WEBLOG HAS BEEN "CHECKED" BY THE US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
HAS YOUR WEBLOG BEEN VISITED BY NIPR.MIL OR DISA.MIL TOO?

READ ON FOR MORE INFO ON THAT...

NIPRNET:

The "NIPRNET",the Unclassified but Sensitive Internet Protocol Router Network (formerly called the Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Net),is a network of Internet protocol routers owned by the Department of Defense (DoD).Created by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA),NIPRNET is used to exchange unclassified but sensitive information between "internal" users.It can thus be distinguished from the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET),which is used by the DoD to exchange classified information in a totally secure environment.
NIPRNET is also increasingly used by the DoD to allow its personnel to gain access to the internet without leaving their own computers open to "reverse entry" by hackers,foreign militaries,terrorists etc...

(taken from www.notbored.org/nipr.html)

"This is a Department of Defense (DoD) computer system.This computer system,which includes all related equipment,software,networks,and network devices,is provided only for official U.S. Government business.
(...)
DoD computer systems may be moniyored by authorized personnel to ensure that their use is authorized to manage the system,to facilitate protection against unauthorized access,and to verify security procedures.
During these activities,information stored on this system may be examined,copied and used for authorized security purposes,and data or programs may be plaved into this system.Use of this or any other DoD interest computer system constitutes a consent to monitoring at all times."

(taken from Cap.nipr.mail)

"Nipr.mil is not a single domain but a hush-hush web proxy that acts as a gateway for hundreds of U.S. military domains in order to hide their identities.It was established by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) in response to a memorendum (CM-5 1099,INFOCOM)issued in March 1999 by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,calling for "actions to be taken to increase the readiness posture for Information Warfare".
"Uncontrolled Internet connections,"the document says,"pose a significant and unacceptable threat to all Department of Defense information systems and operations."

(taken from Bhopal.net)

Some NIPR.MIL addresses include...con1.nipr.mil,pac.nipr.mil,eur.nipr.mil,bu-wcs2-kelly.nipr.mil,bu-wcs2-sand.nipr.mil

2004-05-12T02:06:00.002+02:00

There is a sort of muggy, heavy heat lately. It's not the usual dry Iraqi heat that we're accustomed to. It's more of a moist, clammy heat that feels almost solid. The electrical situation is still quite bad in many areas. We're on a schedule of 3 hours of electricity and then three hours of darkness. While it was tolerable during the cool winter months, the hellish summer months promise to be torture.

I think I'll blog some more tomorrow... just wanted to all those concerned that I'm ok- I'm alive and I definitely have more to say.

TAKEN FROM "BAGHDAD BURNING" WEBLOG.

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2004-05-12T02:06:00.001+02:00

Propaganda shares many techniques with advertising or public relations; in fact, advertising and PR can be said to be propaganda promoting a commercial product. As commonly understood, however, the term usually refers to political or nationalist messages. It can take the form of leaflets, posters, TV broadcasts or radio broadcasts.

In a narrower and more common use of the term, propaganda refers to deliberately false or misleading information that supports a political cause or the interests of those in power. The propagandist seeks to change the way people understand an issue or situation, for the purpose of changing their actions and expectations in ways that are desirable to the interest group. In this sense, propaganda serves as a corollary to censorship, in which the same purpose is achieved, not by filling people's heads with false information, but by preventing people from knowing true information. What sets propaganda apart from other forms of advocacy is the willingness of the propagandist to change people's understanding through deception and confusion, rather than persuasion and understanding. The leaders of an organization know the information to be one sided or untrue but this may not be true for the rank and file members who help to disseminate the propaganda.

Propaganda is a mighty weapon in war. In this case its aim is usually to dehumanize the enemy and to create hatred against a special group. The technique is to create a false image in the mind. This can be done by using special words, special avoidance of words or by saying that the enemy is responsible for certain things he never did. In every propaganda war two things are needed: Injustice and Faint. The faint or the injustice may be fictitious or may be based on facts, the aim is always to create hate.

Propaganda is also one of the methods used in psychological warfare. More in line with the religious roots of the term, anti-cult activists accuse the leaders of cults of using propaganda extensively to recruit followers and keep them.

Examples of political propaganda:

English propaganda against Germany in the First World War, see RMS Lusitania.
German propaganda against Poland to start the Second World War, see Attack on Sender Gleiwitz.
In an even narrower, less commonly used but legitimate sense of the term, propaganda refers only to false information meant to reassure people who already believe. The assumption is that, if people believe something false, they will constantly be assailed by doubts. Since these doubts are unpleasant (see cognitive dissonance), people will be eager to have them extinguished, and are therefore receptive to the reassurances of those in power. For this reason propaganda is often addressed to people who are already sympathetic to the agenda.

Propaganda has sometimes been classified as "white," "black" or "gray." White propaganda generally comes from an openly identified source and is not intentionally deceptive. Black propaganda pretends to be from a friendly source, but is actually from an adversary and is intended to deceive its audience. Gray propaganda falls somewhere between white and black.

TAKEN FROM disinfopedia.org

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2004-05-12T02:06:00.000+02:00

The United States today is the only truly global power. Its military reach extends to every corner of the world. Its economic achievements fuel international trade and industry. Its political and cultural traditions and values appeal to people around the world. And while no one questions America's paramount position, many raise the issue of how the United States is trying to transform this unique power into sustainable influence.

TAKEN FROM "GLOBALSECURITY.ORG",ARTICLE ON WORLD WAR IV.

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2004-05-10T02:50:00.001+02:00

TAKEN FROM www.interventionmag.com

If Bush had demanded the same level of proof of WMDs that he demands for global warming, there would be no war in Iraq.

By Mick Youther

Whenever a scientific fact or finding comes in conflict with the Bush Administration’s concept of reality, they have a number of ways to deal with it.

1. They ignore it.

2. They change it.

3. They find different scientists who know what they're supposed to say.

4. They dilute it in a flood of industry-generated scientific crappola.

• “Over the past two decades industry and conservative think tanks have invested millions of dollars to corrupt science. They distort the truth about tobacco, pesticides, ozone depletion, dioxin, acid rain and global warming. In their attempt to undermine the credible basis for public action …, they also undermine belief in the integrity of the scientific process.”-- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Nation, 2/19/04

• “To promote drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Interior Secretary Gale Norton told Congress that most caribou calve outside the target area when her agency's own scientists reported just the opposite.”-- Tom Teepen, Boulder Daily Camera, 8/15/03

• “While the scientists have won battle after battle, the Armies of Ignorance are winning the recruiting battle and the war. A fanatic president [sic] is now carrying the battle to the national science establishment, appointing crackpots, religious ideologues, and corporate apparatchiks. If the science establishment loses this battle, it has lost the war.”-- H.N. Arendt, Online Journal, 2/24/04

• “A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth... The facts are beside the point. It's all in how you frame your argument.”-- From a memo by Frank Luntz, presidential and congressional strategist, quoted in The Guardian, 3/4/03

• “Everyone is entitled to their own personal point of view, but everyone is not entitled to their own set of scientific facts.”-- Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD.), 11/5/03

• “As a favor to utility and coal industries, America's largest mercury dischargers, the EPA sat for nine months on a report exposing the catastrophic impact on children's health of mercury... Among the findings of the report: The bloodstream of one in twelve US women is saturated with enough mercury to cause neurological damage, permanent IQ loss and a grim inventory of other diseases in their unborn children.”--The Nation, 2/19/04

• “[EPA scientists reported that a method of extracting oil and gas by injecting benzene into underground formations] could contaminate ground-water supplies in excess of federal drinking water standards. A week [later], they revised the data to indicate that benzene levels would not exceed government standards.”-- The Nation, 2/19/04 (The EPA said the change was based on “industry feedback” (Halliburton).

• “A new Yale University study finds that when businesses, rather than other groups, sponsor medical research at hospitals and colleges, the outcomes are 3.6 times more likely to favor the company involved.”-- LA Times, 1/24/03

• “The real issue here is that we are allowing scientific advisory committees to be contaminated by people who have clear bias, clear financial conflicts that will not allow them to make unbiased scientific decisions.”-- Dr. Bruce Lanphear, Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, quoted in a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, 2/18/04 (Dr. Lanphear's nomination to the advisory committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention was scuttled by BushCo. His replacement was an unqualified industrial "scientist" who was not concerned about the dangers to children of high levels of lead and mercury.)

• “When William Miller, a professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, was considered as a candidate for a panel on the National Institute of Drug Abuse, he was asked his views on abortion, the death penalty, and whether he had voted for Bush. He said no to the last question and never received a call back.”-- Nicholas Thompson, Washington Monthly, July/August 2003

• “You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac River you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue.”-- Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace, quoted in The Observer-International, 2/22/04

If Bush is reelected, we won’t need as many scientists. Research can be limited to weapon systems and technology for stripping the earth of its remaining resources. Scientific study will be replaced by Executive Orders. The President, together with his Science Advisors (Cheney and Rumsfeld), will read the President’s entrails to determine his “gut” feeling. From this, a scientific fact will be proclaimed, and doubt and uncertainty will become a thing of the past.

It will be the dawn of a New World Order.

Mick Youther is retiring and plans to devote the next few months to Regime Change in America. You can email your comments to Mick@interventionmag.com

FOR ORIGINAL ARTICLE GO TO http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=732

2004-05-10T02:50:00.000+02:00

TAKEN FROM www.wired.com

Issue 11.04 - April 2003

Sub-Urban Renewal

Thanks to new tunneling technologies, real estate trends are down. Way down.

By Fred Hapgood

It's the mantra of every silver-tongued real estate agent straining to close a deal: They're not making any more land. But imagine if they were. Suppose acres of new land could be manufactured just like I-beams, bolts of cloth, or toothpaste. And what if this man-made frontier could be rolled out anywhere, even in the heart of the densest metropolis, without displacing anyone?

Well, it can. The world's cities may be overcrowded, and the suburbs that surround them may be choked by unchecked sprawl, but there's plenty of undeveloped space. It's right at your feet: underground. There are 100 quadrillion cubic feet of undeveloped metropolitan real estate in this country alone, and that's counting just the first mile down. Think of it this way: If everyone in the entire country moved to Los Angeles, each of us could have 2 million cubic feet to house our stuff. How does that compare with where you live now?

Don Foley

You won't hear much talk of it outside of specialized engineering circles, but we're at a tipping point. The cost to burrow down is dropping, while the price (and hassle) of erecting a skyscraper in a dense urban area just keeps rising. The breakthrough comes thanks to tunneling technologies that are now being used on huge transportation projects, like Boston's Big Dig and Moscow's Lefortovo highway tunnel project. Over the next 10 years these techniques will be used to hollow out space beneath the world's great cities.

Until recently, tunneling required large crews to drill holes, cart out rock, and install lining. All of that manpower drove up costs, and not just because of wages earned. In the late 1960s, tunneling consultant Howard Handewith led a federal assessment of the practicality of building an ultrahigh-speed transportation link under the Northeast Corridor. What killed the project was the expense of constructing worker-escape shafts at 1-mile intervals. "Nobody," says Handewith, "wanted to have to travel 50 miles to get out if a situation came up."

Take humans out of the digging process and the price of a hole starts to fall. Automation began in the 1950s, when a mining engineer named James Robbins discovered that if you pushed a sharp-edged metal wheel over a rock surface with enough pressure, the rock would shatter. If the wheel - or, better, an array of wheels - kept rolling around and around, and the pressure was kept constant, you could dig deeper with each turn.

The civil engineering community was slow to adopt Robbins' tunnel-boring machine (TBM). The first couple of generations cut only a few feet an hour and frequently jammed. Plus, each machine cost about $10 million, so buying even one represented a huge capital expense. And whereas the old drill-and-blast method was inherently a batch process, tunnel boring is continuous. A whole new set of support systems had to be invented.

These problems have been solved. The latest TBMs can slice corridors 40 feet in diameter through almost any kind of terrain, including sand, at rates of up to 20 feet per hour. They can dig horizontally, vertically, even in spirals. High-speed conveyors suck the tailings out of the hole, while a robotic rig automatically snaps sheets of lining in place like huge Lego pieces. Today's drill-and-blast technique - used to create large chambers - is just as slick: The newest machines come with sensors that can calculate the proper size and shape of an explosive charge and drill it into the rock. On deck: an industry-specific XML dialect, recently hammered out by the International Rock Excavation Data Exchange Standard committee, that will allow these machines to talk to each other - as well as databases, simulators, and planning programs.

Within a decade, digs will be entirely automated, run by people sitting in aboveground trailers or even in offices a thousand miles away. Many small tunnels already are bored this way. Keeping humans away from the rock face lowers cost and saves lives. Even now, prices are in the same ballpark as conventional construction. The recently completed 7-mile Flåm-Gudvangen tunnel in Norway came in at about $1.50 per cubic foot. A new Madrid metro line connecting the city with its airport was $15 per cubic foot. Translated to aboveground terms (and assuming the standard 10 feet between floor and ceiling), that's a competitive $15 to $150 per square foot. As the technology matures and the price per cubic foot falls, a wave of new applications will be unleashed: municipal, industrial, commercial, and, finally, residential.

Among the first wave of tunneling projects under way are subway extensions, highway re-siting projects, and petrochemical repositories. These will pave the way to further standardization and automation needed for transnational, Chunnel-type digs. The East - which has never been shy about big engineering - will likely plow down first, linking Japan and Korea, China and Japan, and Taiwan and China. The West might follow by tunneling under the Gibraltar and Bering straits.

The last stop on this train is the ultimate TBM megaproject: a supersonic world subway. Maglev trains running through depressurized tunnels are the logical successor to airplanes, at least between large cities. Magnetic levitation would eliminate rolling resistance, and the vacuum does the same to air resistance. The trains could "fly" down the tracks at many times the speed of the Concorde - without creating a sonic boom. In a couple of decades, we may see a world where major international cities are within a few hours' commute of each other.

By 2005, some under-urban highway projects will start to include parking lots. Where there is parking, malls will spring up. By 2008, developers might offer these retailers subterranean warehouse space, then offices, and, finally, full-fledged industrial parks. By 2013, we could see some hotels, probably marketed to international commuters and located just below the financial centers of Tokyo, London, and New York.

Some cities have already started to expand underground. Both Toronto and Montreal have extensive downtown retail complexes below the surface. "It keeps Montreal's core dense and lively," says Jacques Besner, a city spokesperson, "which can be a challenge in a climate like ours." Likewise, Kansas City has 20 million square feet of light industrial space sited in old quarries beneath the city. Commercial tenants prefer the location because the ambient temperature of Earth's crust - about 57 degrees Fahrenheit year-round - keeps energy costs low.

If history is any guide, artists will be the first to actually move underground full-time. They have a knack for converting industrial and commercial spaces into highly desirable residential real estate. Looking at their airy studios, we'll decide underground space isn't so dreary after all.

If they are large enough, caverns will feel like the outdoors; they might even be plumbed for "rain" and specially vented to create "wind." Artificial weather will keep the air crisp, while artificial light sources - from vast LED arrays, fiber pipes carrying light from the surface, genetically engineered extra-phosphorescent lichen - will infuse this superspace in an eternal dawn. Sunbathers, though, will need to call for the elevator.

It sounds far-fetched, but some in the public sector are convinced that tunnels are the urban future. Bill Vardoulis, the former mayor of Irvine, California, and its current chamber of commerce chair, is a passionate tunnel advocate. He argues that the easiest and cheapest way to lick the region's gridlock problems is to punch three holes through the mountains between Riverside and Orange counties. "People have been traveling underground for a long time," says Vardoulis. "The next step is to actually live there. It would certainly take getting used to, but to me it seems like a clear evolution. I think it's inevitable."

10 YEARS OF MEGA-ENGINEERING

1994

The Chunnel, a 31-mile steel-and-concrete rail tube connecting England and the Continent, opens to traffic.

1995
Major construction is completed on Japan's Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world.

1998
The first plane lands at Hong Kong International Airport, a $20 billion artificial island that includes high-speed rail.

China's Ertan Hydropower Plant, the largest underground power facility in Asia, turns on the juice.

1999
Office workers in Kuala Lumpur move into the Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings at 1,453 feet.

2000
Norway's 15-mile Laerdal Tunnel, the longest road tunnel in the world, opens to the public.

2003
Boston's $14 billion Big Dig opens its I-90 connector, linking Mass Pike to the Ted Williams Tunnel and Logan Airport.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fred Hapgood (hapgood@pobox.com) lives in Boston, home of the Big Dig.

FOR ORIGINAL STORY GO TO http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/suburb.html

2004-04-30T14:08:00.000+02:00

the problem with music
by steve albini

excerpted from Baffler No. 5

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.

Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says, "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim it again, please. Backstroke."

And he does, of course.

I. A&R Scouts

Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an "A&R" rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for "Artist and Repertoire," because historically, the A&R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly.

These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave. Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well.

There are several reasons A&R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be "hip" to the current musical "scene." A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.

The A&R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he's as naive as the band he's duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it.

When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they're really signing with him and he's on their side. Remember that great, gig I saw you at in '85? Didn't we have a blast.

By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody "baby." After meeting "their" A&R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, "He's not like a record company guy at all! He's like one of us." And they will be right. That's one of the reasons he was hired.

These A&R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on.

The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little "memo," is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band sign it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don't want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength.

These letters never have any term of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.

One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years by a slick young "He's not like a label guy at all,' A&R rep, on the basis of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises (something he did with similar effect to another well-known band), and so the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A&R man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points, or possibly both, before he would consider it.

The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band, humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity.

II. There's This Band

There's this band. They're pretty ordinary, but they're also pretty good, so they've attracted some attention. They're signed to a moderate-sized "independent" label owned by a distribution company, and they have another two albums owed to the label.

They're a little ambitious. They'd like to get signed by a major label so they can have some security—you know, get some good equipment, tour in a proper tour bus—nothing fancy, just a little reward for all the hard work.

To that end, they got a manager. He knows some of the label guys, and he can shop their next project to all the right people. He takes his cut, sure, but it's only 15%, and if he can get them signed then it's money well spent. Anyway, it doesn't cost them any thing if it doesn't work. 15% of nothing isn't much!

One day an A&R scout calls them, says he's "been following them for a while now," and when their manager mentioned them to him, it just "clicked." Would they like to meet with him about the possibility of working out a deal with his label? Wow. Big Break time.

They meet the guy, and y'know what—he's not what they expected from a label guy. He's young and dresses pretty much like the band does. He knows all their favorite bands. He's like one of them. He tells them he wants to go to bat for them, to try to get them everything they want. He says anything is possible with the right attitude. They conclude the evening by taking home a copy of a deal memo they wrote out and signed on the spot.

The A&R guy was full of great ideas, even talked about using a name producer. Butch Vig is out of the question—he wants 100 g's and three points, but they can get Don Fleming for $30,000 plus three points. Even that's a little steep, so maybe they'll go with that guy who used to be in David Letterman's band. He only wants three points. Or they can have just anybody record it [like Warton Tiers, maybe—cost you 5 or 10 grand] and have Andy Wallace remix it for 4 grand a track plus 2 points. It was a lot to think about.

Well, they like this guy and they trust him. Besides, they already signed the deal memo. He must have been serious about wanting them to sign. They break the news to their current label, and the label manager says he wants them to succeed, so they have his blessing. He will need to be compensated, of course, for the remaining albums left on their contract, but he'll work it out with the label himself. Sub Pop made millions from selling off Nirvana, and Twin Tone hasn't done bad either: 50 grand for the Babes and 60 grand for the Poster Children—without having to sell a single additional record. It'll be something modest. The new label doesn't mind, so long as it's recoupable out of royalties.

Well, they get the final contract, and it's not quite what they expected. They figure it's better to be safe than sorry and they turn it over to a lawyer—one who says he's experienced in entertainment law—and he hammers out a few bugs. They're still not sure about it, but the lawyer says he's seen a lot of contracts, and theirs is pretty good. They'll be getting a great royalty: 13% [less a 10% packaging deduction]. Wasn't it Buffalo Tom that were only getting 12% less 10? Whatever.

The old label only wants 50 grand, and no points. Hell, Sub Pop got 3 points when they let Nirvana go. They're signed for four years, with options on each year, for a total of over a million dollars! That's a lot of money in any man's English. The first year's advance alone is $250,000. Just think about it, a quarter-million, just for being in a rock band!

Their manager thinks it's a great deal, especially the large advance. Besides, he knows a publishing company that will take the band on if they get signed, and even give them an advance of 20 grand, so they'll be making that money too. The manager says publishing is pretty mysterious, and nobody really knows where all the money comes from, but the lawyer can look that contract over too. Hell, it's free money.

Their booking agent is excited about the band signing to a major. He says they can maybe average $1,000 or $2,000 a night from now on. That's enough to justify a five week tour, and with tour support, they can use a proper crew, buy some good equipment and even get a tour bus! Buses are pretty expensive, but if you figure in the price of a hotel room for everybody in the band and crew, they're actually about the same cost. Some bands (like Therapy? and Sloan and Stereolab) use buses on their tours even when they're getting paid only a couple hundred bucks a night, and this tour should earn at least a grand or two every night. It'll be worth it. The band will be more comfortable and will play better.

The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to pay them an advance on t-shirt sales! Ridiculous! There's a gold mine here! The lawyer should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe.

They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo.

They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman's band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old vintage microphones. Boy, were they "warm." He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very "punchy," yet "warm."

All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies!

Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are:

These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts daily. There's no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. Income is underlined, expenses are not.

Advance: $250,000
Manager's cut: $37,500
Legal fees: $10,000
Recording Budget: $150,000
Producer's advance: $50,000
Studio fee: $52,500
Drum, Amp, Mic and Phase "Doctors": $3,000
Recording tape: $8,000
Equipment rental: $5,000
Cartage and Transportation: $5,000
Lodgings while in studio: $10,000
Catering: $3,000
Mastering: $10,000
Tape copies, reference CDs, shipping tapes, misc expenses: $2,000

Video budget: $30,000
Cameras: $8,000
Crew: $5,000
Processing and transfers: $3,000
Offline: $2,000
Online editing: $3,000
Catering: $1,000
Stage and construction: $3,000
Copies, couriers, transportation: $2,000
Director's fee: $3,000

Album Artwork: $5,000
Promotional photo shoot and duplication: $2,000

Band fund: $15,000
New fancy professional drum kit: $5,000
New fancy professional guitars (2): $3,000
New fancy professional guitar amp rigs (2): $4,000
New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar: $1,000
New fancy rack of lights bass amp: $1,000
Rehearsal space rental: $500
Big blowout party for their friends: $500

Tour expense (5 weeks): $50,875
Bus: $25,000
Crew (3): $7,500
Food and per diems: $7,875
Fuel: $3,000
Consumable supplies: $3,500
Wardrobe: $1,000
Promotion: $3,000

Tour gross income: $50,000
Agent s cut: $7,500
Manager's cut: $7,500

Merchandising advance: $20,000
Manager's cut: $3,000
Lawyer's fee: $1,000

Publishing advance: $20,000
Manager's cut: $3,000
Lawyer's fee: $1,000

Record sales: 250,000 @ $12 = $3,000,000 gross retail revenue Royalty (13% of 90% of retail): $351,000
Less advance: $250,000
Producer's points: (3% less $50,000 advance) $40,000
Promotional budget: $25,000
Recoupable buyout from previous label: $50,000
Net royalty: (-$14,000)

Record company income:
Record wholesale price $6.50 x 250,000 = $1,625,000 gross income
Artist Royalties: $351,000
Deficit from royalties: $14,000
Manufacturing, packaging and distribution @ $2.20 per record: $550,000
Gross profit: $710,000

The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.

Record company: $710,000
Producer: $90,000
Manager: $51,000
Studio: $52,500
Previous label: $50,000
Agent: $7,500
Lawyer: $12,000
Band member net income each: $4,031.25

The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 millon dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month.

The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never "recouped," the band will have no leverage, and will oblige.

The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won't have earned any royalties from their t-shirts yet. Maybe the t-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys.

Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.

©1994-2003 MAXIMUMROCKNROLL |

2004-04-20T14:08:00.001+02:00

"le Monde", 25/26-04-2004

Même après l'élargissement de l'Union, la France devrait rester à l'écart des migrations venues de l'Est

L'élargissement va-t-il sonner la levée des frontières pour les ressortissants des dix nouveaux Etats adhérant à l'Union européenne ? Ils sont nombreux, résidant clandestinement en France, travaillant "au noir" dans le bâtiment, comme femme de ménage ou comme aide ménagère, à attendre le 1er mai comme un nouvel horizon.

Monique, Polonaise de 63 ans, arrivée en 1991 de Cracovie, est de ceux-là. Arrivée avec un visa de tourisme "pour voir Paris", elle pensait repartir. Elle est finalement restée pour fuir un quotidien monotone et vit de petits boulots – non déclarés – de femme de ménage. Voilà des mois qu'elle coche le calendrier, persuadée que l'adhésion de la Pologne à l'UE lui donnera accès à une carte de séjour et à une "vie normale".

Elle devra encore patienter cinq ans. Comme nombre de ses voisins, la France a décidé que la liberté de circulation des personnes n'entrera en vigueur qu'après ce délai. "Nous appliquerons aux ressortissants des dix nouveaux pays adhérents les mêmes règles que pour les étrangers extra-communautaires", précise-t-on au cabinet de Jean-Louis Borloo, ministre de l'emploi, du travail et de la cohésion sociale. Tout juste, concède-t-on Rue de Grenelle, la France pourra "prendre des mesures d'ouverture progressive à l'issue des deux premières années, en fonction de la situation interne du marché de l'emploi".

Les derniers chiffres de l'Insee, affichant un taux de chômage à la hausse de 9,8 % de la population active et un nombre de chômeurs atteignant 2,68 millions fin février 2004, n'augurent pas d'un changement de cap. "La situation de l'emploi n'est pas bonne. Nous appliquerons donc les règles en cours",insiste-t-on au cabinet de M. Borloo. Ainsi, quand un Polonais ou un Slovaque souhaitera répondre à une offre de travail en France, la direction départementale de l'emploi pourra lui opposer la situation locale du marché de l'emploi et lui refuser une autorisation de travail en arguant de la présence, dans le même bassin géographique, d'un salarié européen qualifié.

TRAITEMENT PARTICULIER

Quelques catégories bénéficieront d'un traitement particulier, en fonction des besoins économiques, comme le rappelle la délégation aux affaires européennes du ministère de l'emploi. Chercheurs, étudiants et prestataires de services pourront s'installer librement sur le territoire. De même, les jeunes en formation bénéficieront d'une autorisation temporaire pour venir parfaire leur parcours professionnel en France. Les travailleurs saisonniers originaires de pays avec lesquels la France a passé des accords bilatéraux auront également un accès privilégié aux contrats temporaires.

Cette exception concerne en particulier l'agriculture : un accord permet, depuis 1993, aux Polonais de venir se faire embaucher pour les vendanges ou la cueillette des fruits. Enfin, à partir de 2006, des "ouvertures potentielles" seront envisagées dans les secteurs souffrant de pénurie de main-d'œuvre. La même procédure avait été employée en décembre 1999 pour les forestiers et en janvier 2002 pour les informaticiens.

Certaines associations soulignent que cette politique risque de donner le sentiment que, pour les Quinze, l'élargissement va servir à combler les carences en main-d'œuvre dans certains domaines. "Le gouvernement vient de rater l'occasion de faire de l'élargissement un acte d'intégration. Avec une réglementation mouvante, on va créer des statuts différents entre des Européens sans carte de séjour et d'autres avec carte de séjour", remarque Claire Rodier, responsable du Groupe d'information et de soutien des immigrés (Gisti).

La critique est d'autant plus marquante que les autorités reconnaissent ne pas s'attendre à un afflux massif d'entrants. "C'est minime", souligne la direction des populations et migrations (DPM) du ministère de l'emploi. Les chiffres disponibles pour 2002 montrent que les entrées sur le territoire sont en effet limitées : seuls les Polonais apparaissent dans les statistiques de la DPM, avec 5 856 travailleurs saisonniers dans le secteur de la récolte des fruits et légumes, 2 770 dans les vendanges et 1 499 étudiants.

La France n'est donc pas un pays d'accueil "naturel" pour ces ressortissants, plus enclins à émigrer vers l'Allemagne ou l'Autriche. Une étude de la Commission européenne de mars 2001 montre que ces deux pays devraient, dans les années à venir, absorber environ 80 % de ces migrants. Anne de Tinguy, chargée de recherche au Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI), observait, lors d'un séminaire de l'Institut national d'études démographiques, le 6 avril, que "la France est très à l'écart de ces migrations des pays de l'Est. Même si la situation de l'emploi dans certains pays, comme la Pologne ou la Slovaquie, s'est détériorée, la suppression des visas court séjour n'a pas provoqué de raz de marée d'arrivées", insistait la chercheuse.

Une étude de la Commission a par ailleurs montré que seuls 2 % des chômeurs des pays nouveaux adhérents ont fait part de leur "ferme intention de partir" vers l'Ouest.

Sylvia Zappi

2004-04-20T14:08:00.000+02:00

english version below

Madame, Monsieur,

Le texte ci dessous est le résultat d’un consensus trouvé face la prise de conscience collective d’un groupe de participants lors d’une conférence qui a eu lieu en 2004 au Pays-Bas.

Des interventions sur de nombreux sujets étaient prévues toutes en rapport avec les valeurs Européennes et leur promotion. Un des sujets abordés a eu un impact important sur les participants ; la question de l’immigration et particulièrement la question de l’asile.

Lors de cette conférence la majorité des participants se rendirent compte de ce qu’allait être la future législation de l’immigration et de l’asile de l’Union Européenne et a décidé d’écrire cet appel.

Dans l’intérêt d’une meilleur entente entre les peuples et d’une éradication de la xénophobie et des sentiments anti-immigrants et anti-réfugiés. Nous appelons tous les habitants de l’Europe et les associations qui partagent les mêmes buts que nous de soutenir cet appel en l’envoyant au Parlement Européen en votre nom ou au nom de votre association et en invitant d’autres personnes à faire de même.(copiez le texte, cliquez sur l’adresse ci-dessous, remplissez le fromulaire et collez le texte à texte de la pétition)

http://www.europarl.eu.int/petition/petition_fr.htm

Nous sommes conscients que notre action est une goutte d’eau dans la mare qu’est l’Union Européenne mais les valeurs que nous défendons restent néanmoins universelles et nous espérons qu’elle seront partagées et exprimées par le plus grand nombre. En cette periode d’élection européenes, le temps d’exprimer votre voix est venue

Votre aide si modeste qu’elle soit donnera de l’ampleur à notre action

Merci de votre soutien,

Cordialement

UE/ initiative citoyenne

John Kamara (Pays-Bas)

Sabaynia Lamboi-Bandamoy (Pays-Bas)

Bernadetta Matt ( Germany)

Andreas Matt (Germany)

Mélanie Trémel (France)

APPEL POUR UNE POLITIQUE D’ASILE PLUS HUMAINE

« Nous, citoyens et habitants de l’Union Européenne, sommes convaincus que l’Europe doit être construite comme une communauté de valeurs partagées. Malheureusement, nous avons le sentiment que certains Etats membres montrent un mépris flagrant pour les Droits de l’Homme lorsqu’il s’agit du traitement des réfugiés. Nous ne pouvons pas accepter en tant que citoyens européens, que défenseurs des Droits de l’Homme et gardien des valeurs humanistes que de telles valeurs communes soit malmenées par une institution qui est sensée les défendre.

L’actuel modèle hollandais, qui d’un côté détermine du destin d’êtres humains en 48h sans aucune considération des répercussions que cela peut avoir et qui de l’autre prend parfois des années pour traiter d’autres demandes d’asile ne doit pas servir d’exemple pour les autres. Nous nous sentons aussi très concernés par le fait que les tentatives de regroupement familial sont entravées par des complications inhumaines en contradiction totale avec la Convention de Genève. Nous constatons une tendance au mépris de la dignité humaine et des Droits de l’Homme. Cette situation n’est pas en accord avec les types de valeurs que nous attendons de nations démocratiques et civilisées tel celle de l’Union Européenne.

Nous appelons donc tout ceux qui reçoivent cet appel et partagent les sentiments exprimés ci-dessus de faire tout ce qui est en leur pouvoir pour que les Etats membres respectent au moins les minimums de la dignité humaine quant il décide d’une politique d’asile et pour donner un visage plus humain à la politique d’asile et d’immigration commune de l’Union Européenne. »

Dear Sir, Madam,

This is a resolution that was arrived at from a consensus that was reached as a result of a collective awareness of participants at a conference held this year 2004 in The Netherlands.

Talks were given on a variety of topics relating to promoting European values. One of the topic discussed that had a great impact on the participants was that on Migration Issue and particularly that of Asylum Policy.

From this conference the majority of participants came to realize what would be the real migration and Asylum Policy for the future in Europe and decide to write an appeal.

So in the interest of promoting good human relations and to start to eliminate xenophobia, anti-migration and anti-asylum feelings. We call all European inhabitants and organisations who share the same aims to endorse this appeal by sending it to European Parliament

http://www.europarl.eu.int/petition/petition_en.htm

and invite one more person to do so and forward it..

We are aware that we are a small group and maybe our action would not have a big impact but the values we defend are universal and your support can make this action wider stronger and meaningful. In this time of European Election time is ryde!

Thanks for you support

Have a nice day

EU/citizens initiative

John Kamara (Pays-Bas)

Sabaynia Lamboi-Bandamoy (Pays-Bas)

Bernadetta Matt (Germany)

Andreas Matt (Germany)

Mélanie Trémel (France)

APPEAL FOR A MORE HUMANITARIAN ASYLUM POLICY

“We, European Union citizens and inhabitants, are convinced that Europe can be build as a community of shared values. Unfortunately, we cannot help, but feel that some of the member states show a blatant disregard for Human Rights in matters of asylum policy . We can not accept as European citizens, defenders of Human Rights, and keepers of humanitarian values, that such shared values can get spoiled by an institution which has to defend it.

The current Dutch model, which on the on hand decides the fate of human beings within 48 hours without consideration of consequences and subsequent repercussion, and on the other hand sometimes takes years to give decisions to individuals, should not serve as an example to others. We are also concerned about the fact that family reunion efforts meet with inhumane complications, completely disregarding the Geneva Convention on such matters. There is a tendency of disregard for human dignity and abuse of Human Rights. These are not the type of values we expect from civilised democratic nation and particularly from our common place of living: European Union.

We therefore call on those who receive this appeal and share the above sentiments to do everything in their power in order to make all member states respect at least a minimum standard of human dignity when implementing asylum procedure and put a more humanitarian face on the common European Union Policy on Asylum”

2004-04-14T01:09:00.000+02:00

« Libération », 13 avril 2004

Black-out sur la présence de plus de 200 hommes des forces spéciales

Afghanistan : des commandos français bien camouflés

par Jean-Dominique MERCHET

La Grande Muette a rarement aussi bien mérité son nom. Depuis plus de neuf mois, des militaires français du Commandement des opérations spéciales (COS) participent à la traque d'Al-Qaeda dans les montagnes du sud-est de l'Afghanistan, mais quasiment aucune information officielle n'a filtré sur cet engagement des forces spéciales. La ministre de la Défense, Michèle Alliot-Marie, vient simplement de reconnaître, dans un entretien avec l'Express: «Nos hommes sont bien implantés et connaissent très bien le terrain [...] Grâce à certaines informations, ils ont pu contribuer récemment à la localisation de Ben Laden». Impossible toutefois de vérifier le bien-fondé d'un tel cocorico, tant le black-out se veut absolu.
Démarrage cocasse. Selon nos informations, l'engagement français dans l'opération américaine Enduring Freedom a pourtant démarré d'une manière assez cocasse. Le premier détachement arrivé «sur zone», en juillet 2003, était commandé par un officier des commandos de la Marine. Bon connaisseur du monde musulman mais bien éloigné de la mer, il choisit un indicatif radio anodin, fleurant bon la Bretagne : «Homard». A la radio écoutée en permanence par les services de renseignements américains , Homard sonne malheureusement comme Omar, le prénom du célèbre mollah, allié de Ben Laden... Les grandes oreilles américaines s'affolent. Panique à bord ! L'indicatif sera changé de toute urgence.
Là où ils sont déployés, les 200 à 250 hommes du COS n'ont pas l'occasion de rire tous les jours. Ils ont récupéré un vieux fortin à Spin Boldak, une ville située juste avant la frontière avec le Pakistan, à près de 100 kilomètres au sud-est de Kandahar. A la mi-décembre, ils y ont reçu la visite de Michèle Alliot-Marie, qui n'a pu se rendre sur place qu'à bord d'un véhicule de l'US Army. Une première pour un ministre français, qui témoigne de l'extrême dépendance de Paris vis-à-vis des Américains. C'est d'ailleurs cette situation qui explique l'absence de communication sur l'opération. Pour pouvoir y participer, les autorités françaises se sont en effet engagées par écrit auprès des Etats-Unis à ne rien dire publiquement sur l'action de leurs forces spéciales. Les informations provenant d'Afghanistan remontent directement au chef d'état-major des armées, le général Bentégeat, et, de là, à l'Elysée. Point final.
La décision d'envoyer des éléments du COS en Afghanistan a été annoncée par l'Elysée en juin 2003, en marge du sommet du G8 d'Evian. Le président Chirac avait eu l'intention de dépêcher des commandos dans ce pays dès l'automne 2001, mais le sous-équipement des forces spéciales en matière de transmissions ainsi que des désaccords avec le gouvernement Jospin avait alors fait capoter le projet.
Agacement grandissant. Durant l'été 2003, des forces spéciales françaises sont arrivées sur le terrain en «ouverture de théâtre». Il s'agit d'hommes provenant des différents commandos de la Marine nationale, du 1er régiment parachutiste d'infanterie de marine (RPIMa), du commando parachutiste de l'air n° 10, ainsi que du 13e régiment de dragons parachutistes, ce dernier plus particulièrement spécialisé dans le recueil du renseignement. Sur place, les Français ne disposent que de quelques véhicules légers pour conduire ce qu'ils appellent des «Pat-Sas», patrouilles SAS (1). Ils n'ont aucun moyen aérien et doivent compter sur les hélicoptères américains pour les transporter ou leur fournir un appui feu.
Les Américains leur ont confié un secteur le long de la frontière pakistanaise. C'est une zone sensible, sur la route de Quetta (Pakistan), fréquentée par les talibans et les hommes d'Al-Qaeda. Les militaires français ont essentiellement une mission de renseignement. «Ils vont au contact de la population ou installent discrètement des équipes d'observation sur des points de passage», explique un officier. «Les Américains sont assez impressionnés par le savoir-faire des Français», vante un autre, qui ajoute : «Nous appliquons en fait ce que nos anciens faisaient dans les djebels durant la guerre d'Algérie.» En clair, des «commandos de chasse» qui traquent et détruisent les bandes ennemies. Il s'agit d'une mission qui s'apparente plus au «savoir-faire» de l'infanterie légère qu'à des opérations spéciales. D'ailleurs, d'autres secteurs de la frontière sont tenus par des marines américains, qui ne sont pas des forces spéciales. «Avec leurs unités de recherche humaine, les chasseurs alpins pourraient faire le même travail, surtout dans cette région de montagne», avance un militaire, dont le propos témoigne de l'agacement grandissant que suscitent les forces spéciales dans l'armée classique.
Des blessés. Même si les informations sont extrêmement fragmentaires, il semble que les Français ont été engagés au feu à plusieurs reprises. Aucun mort n'est à déplorer, mais il y aurait eu des blessés, rapatriés en France. Le camp de Spin Boldak aurait même reçu des obus de mortier. Les combats les plus violents auraient eu lieu en décembre, lorsque des hauts dirigeants d'Al-Qaeda semblent avoir été sérieusement menacés. En revanche, les forces françaises n'ont pas directement participé aux récentes opérations dans les zones tribales du Pakistan, contrairement à ce que les déclarations ministérielles pouvaient laisser entendre. Pour une simple raison : le Waziristan est éloigné de près de 400 kilomètres du secteur de Spin Boldak et les militaires du COS ne peuvent pas légalement franchir la frontière pakistanaise. C'est ce qui les distingue des hommes du service action de la DGSE (Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure), dont la raison d'être est d'agir clandestinement à l'étranger.

(1) SAS : Special Air Service, forces spéciales britanniques qui ont formé, durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les premières unités spéciales françaises.

2004-04-01T23:30:00.000+02:00

MAIS OUI,BIEN SUR...

Jacques Chirac affirme avoir entendu "les messages" des Français (01/04/2004)

PARIS (AFP) Le président Jacques Chirac a affirmé jeudi soir avoir entendu "les messages" des Français lors des régionales, qui ont pour beaucoup exprimé "des inquiétudes, des impatiences, des mécontentements".L'événement

Lors d'un entretien télévisé sur TF1 et France 2 de trois quarts d'heure, le chef de l'Etat a passé en revue des différents sujets de crispation (ASS, assurance-maladie, intermittents, chercheurs), pour sur chacun d'eux remettre en cause les décisions du précédent gouvernement Raffarin.

Quant à la composition du gouvernement au lendemain de la débâcle de la droite aux régionales, il a assuré qu'avec le gouvernement Raffarin III, il avait "fait le choix de la constance, de la détermination et de l'action" avec "une équipe renouvelée, qui saura entendre et a entendu le message qu'ont adressé beaucoup de Français".

Il a justifié la reconduction à Matignon de Jean-Pierre Raffarin, en faisant valoir que ce dernier était "à même, compte tenu de son expérience de tirer les conséquences et aussi de poursuivre l'action".

"C'est un homme de qualité (...) il connaît bien la France et les Français" et il est "tout à fait en harmonie avec le cap que j'ai fixé en 2002", a -t-il ajouté.

Le chef de l'Etat a estimé que "la justice sociale" devrait être le "point de passage obligé" de l'action du nouveau gouvernement.

"Le gouvernement, a poursuivi le président Chirac, doit tenir compte (du) message (des Français), en étant plus encore que par le passé en offensive sur deux domaines: emploi et la croissance, ensuite en ayant plus que jamais à l'esprit l'exigence fondamentale de la justice sociale, en marquant très clairement sa volonté d'ouverture et de dialogue, des qualités qui ne sont pas traditionnellement dans la culture française et qui doivent être développées".

Comme on lui demandait si la nouvelle équipe gouvernementale était en place pour trois mois, il a répondu: "on ne nomme pas un gouvernement pour une durée déterminée" mais "pour atteindre des objectifs".

Il a égrené tous les dossiers difficiles que le nouveau gouvernement aura à gérer en donnant des orientations sur chacun d'eux, opposées aux choix du gouvernement Raffarin II.

Il a déclaré ainsi avoir demandé à la nouvelle équipe "de suspendre la mise en oeuvre de la mesure relative" à l'allocation spécifique de solidarité (ASS). Concernant les chercheurs, il a reconnu que leur "malaise" était "justifié". Il a annoncé ainsi avoir demandé "de réexaminer ce problème de postes". "On a probablement pris du retard dans ce domaine pour des raisons tenant aux contraintes budgétaires elles-mêmes issues de l'insuffisance de la croissance", a-t-il dit.

A propos des intermittents, le président Chirac a jugé que "les conséquences sur les jeunes" de la réforme du système d'assurance chômage des artistes "avaient été mal appréciées".

Il a réaffirmé que la baisse des impôts était "une nécessité" et qu'il faudrait "la continuer dans la mesure de nos moyens".

En outre, M. Chirac a justifié le remplacement de Francis Mer à Bercy par Nicolas Sarkozy par le fait que le pays avait "besoin d'une nouvelle impulsion" économique.

Interrogé sur la réforme de l'assurance maladie, Jacques Chirac a affirmé que le gouvernement ne procèderait pas par ordonnances. "La transparence conduit en particulier, à récuser le recours aux ordonnances", a déclaré le président, en prévenant toutefois qu'il faudrait prendre des mesures de "redressement" qui seront "essentielles" mais "difficiles".

©AFP

2004-04-01T11:38:00.000+02:00

Military Sex Assault Likened to 'Friendly Fire'
Wed Mar 31, 2004 03:41 PM ET

By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sexual assaults by U.S. military men against their female comrades-in-arms amount to a different kind of "friendly fire" in the Iraqi-Afghan theater, victims' advocates told members of Congress on Wednesday.

"While these friendly fire attacks leave no trail of blood, they leave many damaged souls in their wake," Scott Berkowitz, president of the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, told a panel of women lawmakers. "They rob our country of the services of many we have trained and nurtured to protect us."

There have been 129 cases of sexual assault reported to the independent Miles Foundation in the current theater of operations -- Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Bahrain -- but only 27 were reported to military officials, according to foundation chief Christine Hansen.

One reason victims are reluctant to tell their commanding officers is the lack of confidentiality and a blame-the-victim mentality within the military, Hansen told the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues.

Others may fear that simply reporting an attack will hurt their careers, especially for victims who are officers, who may be charged with such disciplinary infractions as fraternization, conduct unbecoming an officer or adultery while their rapists face nominal penalties and stay in the military, Hansen said.

"The more you report, the more they say you're making it up," said Jennifer Machmer, a U.S. Army captain who was sexually assaulted in Kuwait in 2003 and is being medically discharged from the military as a direct result.

RAPE AND 'DEJA VU'

Machmer said she had reported extreme sexually abusive language by a subordinate in 2001, and was sexually abused by a military chaplain to whom she went for marital counseling in 2002.

She did not report the 2002 incident, but when she was assaulted in Kuwait in March 2003, "There was no way I could file away another violation, so I went and I reported it within a half hour."

The investigation took until August, but Machmer said the man was never punished and remained in the military, while she is being discharged with a 30-percent temporary retirement benefit.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat who chairs the panel, said the U.S. military's inadequate response to sexual assault "brings on a disconcerting sense of deja vu ... and once again, military leaders are 'shocked, shocked' that there's a problem."

Slaughter said she had monitored the issue since the 1991 hearings into the Tailhook scandal, when 140 male Navy and Marine officers were accused of abusing 90 women at a meeting in Las Vegas.

More recently, an Army sexual scandal involved the rape in 1996-97 of female recruits by male drill sergeants. Last year, U.S. legislators pointed to a "culture of discrimination" at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs after female cadets made allegations of sexual assault.

Anita Blair, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for personnel, told the panel that a Pentagon task force on military sexual assault was due to report to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by April 30.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

FOR ORIGINAL ARTICLE GO TO:

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=DIYGRYLCK50RYCRBAELCFEY?type=domesticNews&storyID=4716638§ion=news

2004-03-31T18:44:00.000+02:00

TAKEN FROM WWW.ALTERNET.ORG

The War on Clarke

By Larry C. Johnson, TomPaine.com
March 30, 2004

Richard Clarke must be wondering if explaining what the United States did not do in the war on terrorism is more dangerous than actually fighting the terrorists. Clarke, the former terrorism czar for both Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is now being vilified by a host of Bush officials, including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, as a liar.

The attack on Clarke, which consists of leaks, threats and intimidation tactics, has become the genuine hallmark of the Bush presidency. Previous victims of the Bush smear machine include:

Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, who challenged the fantasy spun by Don Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and correctly insisted that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to pacify Iraq.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had provided the Bush administration with a report that Niger had not supplied Iraq with uranium yellowcake essential for building a nuclear device. Not only were his character and competence called into question, but his family's security was jeopardized by a White House leak that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative.

Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, who reported on the Bush administration obsession with Iraq and talk early on of removing Saddam Hussein. These smear campaigns were mild compared to the vicious assault now underway against Richard Clarke. What is the truth about Richard Clarke?

I was neither a personal friend nor fan of Richard Clarke when I was in government. Richard Clarke, in my experience, was arrogant and intense. He probably still is. (People who know me would suggest that I am the pot calling the kettle black.) However, Richard Clarke also is a competent professional who has served faithfully with Democratic and Republican administrations since the 1970s.

My first contact with Mr. Clarke came during January of 1991 in the operations center at State Department. Clarke, who was the assistant secretary of state for political military affairs, had been denied space in the task force area, and my boss, State Counterterrorism Chief Morris Busby, interceded for Clarke and carved out space for his PM unit. Our two groups shared space in the back rooms of the task force area.

In 1992, Clarke was exiled to the National Security Council over a flap involving Israel. I was told at the time that this move was intended to get rid of him. Those who hoped that banishing Clarke to the National Security Council would lead to his dismissal from government did not understand what a formidable professional he was.

I left government service in 1993 but continued to monitor Clarke's counterterrorism activities through friends and former colleagues in the various policy and intelligence bureaucracies. Some close friends complained (and still do) that Richard was too alarmist and too pushy on some issues. While some can quibble about his personality, there should be no dispute that Richard Clarke was an aggressive advocate for a tough response to terrorism.

Unfortunately, politicians in both parties chose to ignore him on key issues. President Clinton, for example, sat on the Presidential Decision Directive 39, which laid out his administration's plan for fighting terrorism, for 28 months after taking office in January of 1993. Clinton finally signed the document after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. Clarke pushed to get it done sooner but ran up against political apathy in the early days of the Clinton administration.

Clarke was just as pushy with the Bush administration. In the first months of the Bush presidency a terrorism issue unrelated to Al Qaeda, which first surfaced during the Clinton administration, came to the front burner. Four U.S. oil workers were being held by individuals tied to Colombian terrorists in the jungles of Ecuador. The U.S. Embassy requested the deployment of U.S. counterterrorism forces (civilian and military) to Ecuador to help find and rescue the workers.

Clarke chaired a meeting of the Counter Terrorism Support Group (CSG) at the Old Executive Office Building to consider the matter. He wanted to grant the request and was backed by the Department of State, the CIA and the FBI. The Department of Defense, however, balked. At the end of the day, the Bush administration, against Clarke's recommendation, chose to treat terrorism in Ecuador as criminal matter rather than a military issue. U.S. military forces stayed at home.

Clarke has told the uncomfortable truth in his book, and now finds himself the target of the full fury of angry Bush partisans, who insist that fighting terrorism was Bush's highest priority. The evidence shows otherwise.

For starters, Clarke presented a memo to Condi Rice outlining the URGENT (this tag is on the document) threat presented by Al Qaeda in January 2001. While Dr. Rice insists she made terrorism a top priority, one of her first decisions in the early days of 2001 was to downgrade Clarke's position as the National Coordinator for Counter Terrorism. How is that making terrorism an elevated priority? It is not. Clarke also requested in January 2001 that President Bush convene a meeting of principal Bush officials (e.g., the secretary of state, secretary of defense and the attorney general) but this meeting was postponed by Dr. Rice until Sept. 4, 2001. That seven-month gap represents time that, in retrospect, could have been used to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

The Clarke bashers also insist that that no more could have been done before 9/11 than what was done during the first eight months of the Bush presidency. Oh? If that was the case, then why did Bush direct the airlines to lock cockpit doors after 9/11? Why did the Bush administration decide to arm pilots, put more air marshals on planes and federalize the security force doing screening at airports? Why did the Bush administration order attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan if, in the words of the Bush spinners, "we did all that we could do prior to 9/11"? Why did Bush officials establish emergency financial task forces composed of intelligence and law enforcement officials to hunt down the trails of terrorist financing if all had been done prior to 9/11?

The uncomfortable facts show that Richard Clarke proposed many of these measures in the early days of the Bush presidency. Action was taken only in the aftermath of 9/11.

Here is the bottom line: Richard Clarke was right, and the Bush administration and the people of the United States would have been better off if his warnings in the early days of 2001 had been heeded.

Rather than attack Richard Clarke's character, Republican operatives should focus their venom on the terrorists who killed Americans in the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. George W. Bush should set the tone and thank his former terrorism chief, apologize for this week's ugliness, and focus on getting Osama Bin Laden. As one American, I say: Thank you, Richard Clarke.

Larry C. Johnson is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He served with the CIA from 1985 through 1989 and worked in the State Department's office of Counter Terrorism from 1989 through 1993. He also is a registered Republican who contributed financially to the Bush Campaign in 2000.

2004-03-30T13:50:00.000+02:00

Clarke challenges Rice to reveal secret emails

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Monday March 29, 2004
The Guardian

Richard Clarke, the former terrorism adviser whose revelations threaten to torpedo George Bush's re-election strategy, launched a counterattack yesterday at a White House that he said was determined to destroy him.
In a riveting television performance, Mr Clarke called on his principal critic and former employer, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to release the entire record of their emails in the months up to the September 11 terror attacks to prove his contention that the White House did not then take the threat of al-Qaida seriously.

He also agreed to Republican demands to declassify testimony he gave to the Senate two years ago - to "prove" there were no inconsistencies. "Let's take all of my emails and all the memos I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11 and let's declassify all of them," Mr Clarke told NBC television.

Mr Clarke's bravura presentation surprised the Bush administration. The decision to stand his ground could also be destructive to Ms Rice. She has been under intense scrutiny for a week - largely for being the focus of Mr Clarke's charges that the Bush government did not see al-Qaida as a priority before September 11, but also because she refused to testify before the commission.

Yesterday, the commission's chairman, Thomas Kean, called for Ms Rice to testify in public. "We recognise there are arguments having to do with separation of powers. We think in a tragedy of this magnitude that those kind of legal arguments are probably overridden," he said. But he said he would not force the issue with a court order.

Even leading Republican figures are criticising Ms Rice's refusal to appear, saying it looked as if she had something to hide. "I think she'd be wise to testify," said Richard Perle, a former Pentagon adviser.

Further damage was inflicted yesterday in a Los Angeles Times report discrediting a prewar claim by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had trucks capable of dispersing dangerous substances such as anthrax. The report claimed the information came from a single discredited source and reached US intelligence agents third-hand.

In Israel, meanwhile, a parliamentary committee investigating exaggerated prewar claims over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction concluded that western agencies had dealt in speculation not facts.

The committee said claims that Saddam was expanding his armoury were based on evaluations shared among intelligence agencies in Israel, the US, Britain and elsewhere, that reinforced "dubious interpretations" of the few facts available.

But the report released yesterday by the foreign affairs and defence committee said that while there was a "serious intelligence failure" there was no evidence of deliberate deception to build a false case.

FOR ORIGINAL ARTICLE GO TO:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1180088,00.html

2004-03-29T13:04:00.000+02:00

Dès 2005, des données biométriques devront figurer sur les
passeports
LE MONDE | 26.03.04 | 17h35

Bruxelles de notre bureau européen

En réponse aux attentats de Madrid, les chefs d'Etat et de
gouvernement européens, réunis jeudi 25 mars à Bruxelles
pour le conseil européen de printemps, ont affiché le
spectacle de leur unité face au terrorisme. Un plan
antiterroriste a été adopté. S'il ne comporte pas de mesures
nouvelles par rapport à celles déjà présentées par les
ministres de l'intérieur et des affaires étrangères, il
constitue néanmoins un "progrès sérieux" dans la lutte
contre le terrorisme, affirme Jacques Chirac.

Les Quinze, pour leur dernier sommet avant l'élargissement,
ont nommé un "M. Terrorisme", le Néerlandais Gijs de Vries.
Ils ont décidé l'introduction des données biométriques
(empreintes digitales, iris de l'œil) dans les visas et
passeports dès 2005 et l'adoption anticipée de la "clause de
solidarité" prévue par le projet de Constitution européenne,
qui permet à un Etat membre agressé de bénéficier de la
solidarité, s'il le faut militaire, de ses partenaires.

Selon Javier Solana, haut représentant de l'Union pour la
politique extérieure et de sécurité, le coordonnateur
européen de la lutte antiterroriste aura notamment pour rôle
de "maintenir des contacts réguliers" entre les Etats
membres, afin d'assurer "la meilleure complémentarité
possible" entre ceux-ci et l'UE, et aussi de "mieux
coordonner les échanges de renseignements" entre pays de
l'UE, ainsi qu'avec les pays tiers.

Gijs de Vries sera également chargé de rappeler à l'ordre
les pays qui tardent à transposer dans leur législation
nationale les décisions adoptées par l'Union après les
attentats du 11 septembre 2001, comme le mandat d'arrêt
européen, qui n'est toujours pas en vigueur dans cinq pays
de l'UE.

UN POUVOIR LIMITÉ

"Le fait de nommer un coordonnateur est un pas dans la bonne
direction mais un pas strictement insuffisant", a commenté
Jean-Claude Juncker. Le pouvoir politique du "M. Terrorisme"
européen est en effet limité."Même dans les moments de forte
émotion, il ne faut pas tomber dans une hypocrisie
insupportable. Nous savons très bien que les services
secrets ne veulent pas échanger leurs informations", précise
le premier ministre luxembourgeois.

En demandant à Javier Solana de leur faire des propositions
d'ici au mois de juin en vue de créer une cellule européenne
d'échange de renseignements, et en se refusant à envisager
la mise en place d'une "CIA européenne", les Vingt-cinq ont
de facto reconnu que cette pratique, pourtant essentielle
pour démanteler des réseaux terroristes, est à l'état
embryonnaire. Jacques Chirac a implicitement justifié
l'existence du G5 - groupe de cinq pays (Allemagne, Espagne,
France, Grande-Bretagne et Italie) - par l'efficacité du
"petit nombre".

L'efficience dans la lutte antiterroriste, a assuré le
président français, "suppose une action réfléchie et
coordonnée. On ne peut jeter tout -les renseignements- sur
la table, n'importe comment, cela suppose un certain
doigté", a-t-il insisté, en prenant l'exemple de la
coopération franco-espagnole dans la lutte antiterroriste.
Pour Nicolas Sarkozy, ministre français de l'intérieur, le
G5 a pour mission de "défricher le terrain". La thèse selon
laquelle il voudrait "monopoliser l'action au détriment des
autres est soit absurde, soit polémique", a renchéri Jacques
Chirac. Pour le chef de l'Etat français, la coopération
entre services de renseignement "existe et se renforce".

D'autre part, a-t-il insisté, il existe des situations "qui
créent un terreau favorable au terrorisme". M. Chirac a cité
les "conflits non réglés" -le conflit israélo-palestinien-,
mais aussi "les sentiments d'humiliation, la pauvreté". Il
faut lutter contre le terrorisme "avec détermination et sans
aucune concession, mais dans le cadre de l'Etat de droit,
cela va de soi", a ajouté le président français.

Le plan antiterroriste de l'Union constitue à ce stade une
déclaration d'intentions, qu'il reste à concrétiser. C'est
ce qu'a semblé vouloir dire Bertie Ahern, président en
exercice de l'Union : "Nous ne réinventons pas la roue ce
soir. Mais, après Madrid, il est nécessaire de donner une
nouvelle impulsion politique. Les Européens n'en attendent
pas moins", a-t-il conclu.

Thomas Ferenczi et Laurent Zecchini
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 27.03.04

2004-03-27T12:53:00.001+01:00

*« l’Humanité Hebdo », 27-28 mars 2004*

**

*Droit d'asile. "Etrangers", circulez !*

Privé de moyens, l'unique centre de réception des étrangers de Paris, accueille les demandeurs d'asile dans des conditions déplorables.

Ils arrivent par dizaines, souvent de nuit, de toutes nationalités. Chaque jour, deux à trois cents personnes forment une file d'attente devant le 218, rue d'Aubervilliers, dans le dix-neuvième arrondissement de Paris. C'est l'adresse du Centre de réception des étrangers (CRE), unique lieu d'accueil pour l'ensemble des demandeurs d'asile présents dans la capitale. C'est ici qu'ils doivent se manifester pour officialiser leur présence sur le territoire et demander une autorisation de séjour en vue de solliciter l'asile. La première d'une longue série de démarches qui ont de moins en moins de chance d'aboutir. Devant le manque de personnel, ils ne seront qu'entre vingt et trente à pouvoir être reçus quotidiennement. Un système imposé de " quota " qui, selon le porte-parole du collectif de soutien, est totalement illégal. Les autres devront revenir, patienter à nouveau et subir les outrages qui sont le lot quotidien des étrangers.

À l'image du temps qui les sépare de l'objectif final, l'acceptation de leur demande, le trajet entre l'entrée du CRE et le guichet de l'espoir est particulièrement fastidieux. Et le climat tendu. Lorsque les policiers arrivent au centre, vers 8 h 30 tous les matins, la file est déjà longue. " Ils sont parfois très énervés. Il est arrivé qu'une bousculade provoque une chute dans les escaliers où les gens sont piétinés. J'ai même entendu dire qu'il y avait déjà eu un mort ", raconte Suzy Lornac, militante communiste venue soutenir le personnel CGT de la préfecture de police qui, pour la première fois, a appelé à un rassemblement, mercredi dernier, avec vingt et une autres organisations (1). La CGT qui, dans une lettre ouverte au président de la République, Jacques Chirac, au ministre de l'Intérieur, Nicolas Sarkozy, au maire de Paris, Bertrand Delanoë û le centre appartient à la ville qui lui attribue aussi des subventions û et au préfet de police, dénonce la dégradation des conditions d'accueil des demandeurs d'asile ainsi que celle des conditions de travail des agents du centre de la rue d'Aubervilliers.

" Face à l'augmentation des demandeurs d'asile, le manque d'effectif, au point que certains guichets sont inoccupés, aggravé par le non-remplacement des personnels qui quittent le service, l'état global du centre et de ses abords ainsi que les problèmes de matériel ne permettent plus le fonctionnement normal de cette administration ", dénonce le texte syndical. La CGT déplore également la multiplication des violences, physiques et verbales, des forces de l'ordre censées sécuriser l'accès au bâtiment, à l'égard des usagers. Et de réclamer " des sanctions à l'encontre des fonctionnaires coupables de tels actes ". " Quand il y a un incident, on essaie d'intervenir, mais on se fait engueuler ", raconte Bruno Chaussé d'Arnault, responsable CGT au CRE. Une pression qu'il qualifie d'" écrasement de la personnalité " et dont les principales victimes sont les étrangers.

" Au mois d'août, alertée par des cris, j'ai vu un policier donner un coup de pied dans le ventre d'une femme. Mais les faits sont toujours minimisés parce que ce ne sont que des étrangers. Ils ne risquent pas de porter plainte, ils n'ont aucun droit ", dénonce une employée. Le droit, le respect, la dignité, ces principes sont absents du centre de réception. Même la sénatrice communiste de Paris, Nicole Borvo, s'est vu refuser l'accès au site par le préfet alors que tout élu a le droit de s'informer des dysfonctionnements administratifs. " Il ne m'a même pas répondu par écrit mais seulement téléphoné ", témoigne la parlementaire qui exige des explications. " Le gouvernement vient d'être sanctionné par les urnes, il faudrait, qu'en matière de libertés et d'accueil des étrangers, il entende aussi cette sanction ", conclut-elle.

Si, depuis un précédent rassemblement de protestation, le 30 janvier dernier, la préfecture reçoit exceptionnellement tous les primo-arrivants, les organisations s'inquiètent d'informations confidentielles qui laissent à penser que cet assouplissement ne perdurera pas après les élections régionales. Un scrutin dont un des enjeux est de mettre un terme à la politique de dissuasion contre les demandeurs d'asile, menée par Nicolas Sarkozy, principal soutien au candidat du gouvernement en Île-de-France, Jean-François Copé. Au cours des deux premiers mois de l'année, le nombre d'étrangers expulsés a augmenté de près de 38 % par rapport à 2003.

Ludovic Tomas

Parmi elles : PCF, Verts, Alternatifs, LDH, MRAP, GISTI, FASTI, Droits devant ! !, France libertés, Act Up Paris, CIMADE, Coordination nationale des sans-papiers, Syndicat des avocats de France, Syndicat de la magistrature, Sud-Éducation...

*Droit d'asile. Jean-Pierre Alaux : " Ils sont traités comme des chiens "*

Un responsable de l'association GISTI explique comment on cherche à écarter les demandeurs d'asile.

Ce qui se passe au CRE de Paris est-il un cas isolé ?

Jean-Pierre Alaux. Cela pourrait se passer à Bobigny, Nanterre, Créteil et même à Lille, Marseille ou Lyon. C'est à peu près équivalent dans toutes les grandes préfectures. Il existe la même pénurie de personnel. C'est donc l'indice d'une politique mûrement réfléchie de dissuasion de l'asile. Les étrangers sont maltraités dans beaucoup d'autres secteurs. Par exemple, le dispositif d'hébergement et d'accompagnement social et juridique des demandeurs d'asile est saturé au point qu'il n'accueille qu'entre 15 et 20 % de ceux qui en ont besoin. Les violences sont en grande partie provoquées par cette pénurie de compétences. Le fait même qu'il y ait des queues de deux cents à trois cents personnes toutes les nuits est source de tension. D'un côté, cela génère une angoisse et une concurrence entre les demandeurs. De l'autre, cela produit des violences ordinaires de la part de la police.

Avez-vous personnellement assisté à de scènes de violence ?

Jean-Pierre Alaux. Oui, à Paris, par exemple, j'ai vu un agent qui utilise un bâton pour compter les personnes qui entrent dans le centre. J'ai vu les barrières métalliques utilisées comme bulldozer pour repousser les gens. J'ai vu, à plusieurs reprises, la police lancer des bombes lacrymogènes. Le mot " schnell " (vite, en allemand û NDLR) est fréquemment prononcé. Ce n'est jamais que de l'allemand, mais c'est extrêmement symbolique. On imagine pour qui ils se prennent ! Sans parler des noms d'oiseau. Il n'y a pas d'interprète et certaines personnes ne comprennent rien aux documents qu'ils ont à remplir. Quand ils reviennent, si on observe la moindre erreur, ils sont souvent éconduits sans la moindre explication. Ce qui contraint certains demandeurs à faire des allers-retours pendant des semaines. Il existe des postes de travail vides, des ordinateurs qui, faute de personnel, ne sont pas occupés. Une grande partie du matériel à la disposition des usagers, comme les photocopieuses, photomatons, machines à faire de la monnaie, est en panne. C'est le délabrement général.

Quels manquements à la loi avez-vous observé ?

Jean-Pierre Alaux. À l'intérieur des locaux, à une multitude d'illégalités. À commencer par le fait de ne pas pouvoir pénétrer immédiatement dans la préfecture pour obtenir l'autorisation de séjour en vue de demander l'asile. La loi, aussi bien que les jugements du conseil d'État, dit qu'elle doit être accordée sans délai. Pour le coup, c'est avec beaucoup de délai. D'ailleurs, les associations ont gagné des centaines de contentieux en référé devant le tribunal administratif de Paris. Mais la préfecture s'en fout et recommence dès le lendemain. Tant qu'une réponse négative à la demande d'asile n'est pas définitive, la loi impose également qu'il y ait, tous les trois mois, délivrance d'un récépissé. Une sorte de carte de séjour provisoire. Si, d'une manière générale, l'OFPRA (Office français de protection des réfugiés et des apatrides) a beaucoup recruté, ces derniers mois, dans la perspective de la réforme du droit d'asile qui a été mise en place le 1er janvier, ce n'est pas le cas de la commission des recours, qui est l'instance d'appel. Cela se traduit par un engorgement et la commission met au moins deux mois à enregistrer un recours. La préfecture en tire partie pour ne pas renouveler le fameux récépissé alors qu'on lui apporte la preuve que le recours a été fait par les avis d'émission et de réception de La Poste. Les demandeurs d'asile peuvent ne pas avoir accès à leur compte en banque, faute de papiers reconnus. S'ils ont un contrôle de l'ASSEDIC, ils peuvent perdre leur allocation d'insertion qui est leur seul revenu puisqu'ils sont privés du droit au travail. De tout cela, la préfecture se fout éperdument.

Ces négligences sont-elles seulement dues au manque de moyens ?

Jean-Pierre Alaux. Cela fait partie de la politique de dissuasion. Et effectivement, des gens finissent par se décourager et être convaincus qu'il n'y a plus de droit d'asile en France. Ils vont alors tenter leur chance dans un autre pays européen mais reviennent lorsqu'ils s'aperçoivent qu'on les traite partout comme des chiens. Ils sont ainsi des dizaines de milliers à tourner en rond dans le continent.

Entretien réalisé par L. T.

2004-03-27T12:53:00.000+01:00

"We Should Have Had Orange or Red-Type of Alert in June/July of 2001"
By Eric Boehlert
Salon.com

Friday 26 March 2004

A former FBI translator told the 9/11 commission that the bureau had detailed information well before Sept. 11, 2001, that terrorists were likely to attack the U.S. with airplanes.
A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted.

Referring to the Homeland Security Department's color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, "We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available." Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie."

Edmonds' charge comes when the Bush White House is trying to fend off former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke's testimony that it did not take serious measures to combat the threat of Islamic terrorism, and al-Qaida specifically, in the months leading up to 9/11.

Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, is a 10-year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination conducted by FBI investigators. She speaks fluent Farsi, Arabic and Turkish and worked part-time for the FBI, making $32 an hour for six months, beginning Sept. 20, 2001. She was assigned to the FBI's investigation into Sept. 11 attacks and other counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, where she translated reams of documents seized by agents who, for the previous year, had been rounding up suspected terrorists.

She says those tapes, often connected to terrorism, money laundering or other criminal activity, provide evidence that should have made apparent that an al- Qaida plot was in the works. Edmonds cannot talk in detail about the tapes publicly because she's been under a Justice Department gag order since 2002.

"President Bush said they had no specific information about Sept. 11, and that's accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific information about use of airplanes, that an attack was on the way two or three months beforehand and that several people were already in the country by May of 2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat we're facing."

Edmonds testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February for more than three hours, providing detailed information about FBI investigations, documents and dates. This week Edmonds attended the commission hearings and plans to return in April when FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify. "I'm hoping the commission asks him real questions -- like, in April 2001, did an FBI field office receive legitimate information indicating the use of airplanes for an attack on major cities? And is it true that through an FBI informant, who'd been used [by the Bureau] for 10 years, did you get information about specific terrorist plans and specific cells in this country? He couldn't say no," she insists.

Edmonds first made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle on the FBI's translation department, which was suddenly thrown into the spotlight as investigators clamored for original terrorist-related information, often in Arabic. Edmonds made several reports of serious misconduct, security lapses and gross incompetence in the FBI translations unit, including supervisors who told translators to work slowly during the crucial post-9/11 period to ensure the agency would get more funds for its next annual budget. As a result of her reports, Edmonds says she was harassed at the FBI. She was fired in March 2002.

Litigation followed, and in October 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the Edmonds case, taking the extraordinary step of invoking the rarely used state secrets privilege in order "to protect the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States." Ashcroft's move was made at the request of Mueller.

During a 2002 segment on "60 Minutes" exploring Edmonds' initial charges of FBI internal abuses, Sen. Grassley was asked if Edmonds is credible. "She's credible and the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story," he said.

The Inspector General's office then launched an investigation into Edmonds' charges and told her to expect a finding in the fall of 2002. The report has yet to be released. Edmonds suspects if it is ever publicly released Ashcroft will demand that it be immediately classified. "They're pushing everything under the blanket of secrecy," she says.

That's why she felt it was so important to appear before the 9/11 commission: "It's the only hope I have left to get this issue added to the public domain."

FOR ORIGINAL ARTICLE GO TO:http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/26/translator/index_np.html

2004-03-26T12:53:00.000+01:00

In rush to defend White House, Rice trips over own words

Walter Pincus, Dana Milbank, Washington Post
Friday, March 26, 2004

Washington -- This week's testimony and media blitz by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has returned unwanted attention to his former boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The refusal by President Bush's top security aide to testify publicly before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks elicited rebukes by commission members as they held open hearings this week. Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor Bush named to be chairman of the commission, said: "I think this administration shot itself in the foot by not letting her testify in public."

At the same time, some of Rice's rebuttals of Clarke's broadside against Bush, which she delivered in a flurry of media interviews and statements rather than in testimony, contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements.

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before Sept. 11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban. The CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats. And Rice's assertion this week that Bush had told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.

Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she had retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies.

National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack defended many of Rice's assertions, saying that she had been more consistent than Clarke.

Rice so far has refused to provide testimony under oath to the commission that could possibly resolve the contradictions. Wednesday night, she told reporters, "I would like nothing better in a sense than to be able to go up and do this, but I have a responsibility to maintain what is a long-standing constitutional separation between the executive and the legislative branch."

The White House, reacting to the public relations difficulties caused by the refusal to allow Rice's testimony, asked the commission Thursday to give Rice another opportunity to speak privately with panel members to address "mischaracterizations of Dr. Rice's statements and positions."

Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center ... that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she had misspoken; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies, and Clarke, had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles.

In an op-ed essay Monday in the Washington Post, Rice wrote that "through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate" al Qaeda that included "sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime" including the use of ground forces.

But Armitage, testifying this week as the White House representative, said the military part was not in the plan before Sept. 11. "I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11," he said. McCormack said Rice's statement was accurate because the team had discussed including orders for such military plans to be drawn up.

In the same article, Rice belittled Clarke's proposals by writing: "The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network." Rice asserted that while Clarke and others provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." That same day, she said most of Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the Clinton administration."

But in her interview with NBC two days later, Rice appeared to take a different view of Clarke's proposals. "He sent us a set of ideas that would perhaps help to roll back al Qaeda over a three- to five-year period; we acted on those ideas very quickly. And what's very interesting is that ... Dick Clarke now says that we ignored his ideas, or we didn't follow them up."

Asked about this apparent discrepancy, McCormack pointed a reporter to a Clarke background briefing in 2002 in which the then-White House aide was defending the president's efforts in fighting terrorism.

GO TO ORIGINAL:http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2004%2F03%2F26%2FMNGSR5RPMV1.DTL

2004-03-26T12:47:00.000+01:00

Rice's Refusal Bothers Commissioners

    By Mimi Hall, Andrea Stone and Judy Keen
    USA Today

    Wednesday 24 March 2004

     WASHINGTON — Members of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks complained angrily Tuesday that Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, has refused to testify publicly about the Bush administration's counterterrorism policy yet has appeared on several TV programs to defend the administration.

     "We're disappointed that she's not going to appear to answer our questions," said commission Chairman Tom Kean, a Republican former governor of New Jersey.

     Rice has been interviewed privately by members of the commission but declined a request for a public session.

     Commissioner Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman, held up a new book, Against All Enemies, that accuses Bush and his aides of ignoring warnings of the threat posed by al-Qaeda. The author, Richard Clarke, who was in charge of counterterrorism for Bush and President Clinton, has been discussing his charges in TV interviews.

     Roemer said the discussion "belongs not on the airwaves" but before the commission.

     "I hope Dr. Rice will reconsider and come before the commission for the sake of the American people," he said.

     The audience at Tuesday's hearing included many people who lost family members in the attacks in 2001. They applauded each time commissioners criticized Rice's decision not to appear and testify under oath.

     Rice met privately with the panel for four hours at the White House on Feb. 7. Afterward, Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democratic member of the panel, said, "It was a very useful interview, and I personally found Dr. Rice to be candid and forthcoming. I think it would be useful for the public to hear from Dr. Rice."

     But White House officials say it is inappropriate for a presidential adviser who is not a Senate-confirmed Cabinet officer to publicly discuss confidential advice.

     The administration made the same argument in 2002 when it said Tom Ridge, then director of homeland security, would not testify under oath before Congress. Under pressure from Congress, the White House backed down, and he did testify.

     "It's a long-standing principle that the president's advisers do not testify in front of congressional committees," Rice said Tuesday on Fox News Radio's Tony Snow Show. "So, as much as I would like to be able to do this, it would really not be a good precedent."

     The White House says previous administrations had the same policy.

     The bipartisan commission, although it was set up by Congress, does not fall under congressional rules.

     Ben-Veniste, who was a Watergate prosecutor, cited examples of non-Cabinet presidential advisers who have testified publicly to Congress. Among them: Lloyd Cutler, White House counsel under Clinton; Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter; and Samuel Berger, Clinton's national security adviser. Berger is scheduled to testify before the commission today.

     Some legal experts say Rice could be subpoenaed.

     Democrats have speculated that she is reluctant to testify under oath or in public because of her comment in May 2002 that no one "could have predicted that (terrorists) would try to use a hijacked airplane as a missile."

     News reports indicated later that intelligence officials had considered the possibility of such strikes as recently as a month before the attacks.

     The commission is expected to decide within a week whether to subpoena notes taken by four commissioners in December when they reviewed classified presidential briefing papers, including an August 2001 memorandum that discusses the possibility of airline hijackings by al-Qaeda terrorists.

     The commissioners were allowed to take notes but not to remove the notes from the room.

2004-03-24T10:35:00.000+01:00

FEAR IN EUROPE.

French Embassies Get Letter in Second Wave of Threats

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

PARIS — Letters threatening terror attacks -- similar to one addressed to France's prime minister -- were received by French embassies in Muslim countries across the globe, officials said Tuesday.

The letters are signed by a previously unknown Islamic group identifying itself as "Servants of Allah the Powerful and Wise."

The letters, sent to two Paris newspapers and addressed to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, threatened terror attacks against France and French interests, saying the ban on Islamic headscarves in public schools made France an enemy of Islam.

French embassies in Muslim countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia received the same letter, the officials said. They were sent March 15 from a post office near the Louvre Museum in central Paris.

Authorities have taken the threat seriously. However, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has said the letters do not resemble typical messages by Islamic extremist groups, and authorities are looking into whether they could have been sent by an extreme-right group masquerading as Islamic militants.

Scientists at a laboratory in the northwest city of Nantes are studying the messages for traces of DNA, the officials said.

France's ban on headscarves and other religious apparel in the classroom -- designed to uphold a tradition of secularism in schools -- is seen by many in the Arab world as anti-Muslim. After being approved in parliament, the measure became law last week. It is to be enforced as of the new school year starting in September.

2004-03-23T22:22:00.000+01:00

Gasoline Prices Hit Record High

WASHINGTON, March 22, 2004

(AP) The retail price of gasoline hit an all-time high Tuesday — nearly $1.74 per gallon nationwide — reflecting strong demand, tight supplies and the high cost of oil.

For full article go to: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/23/national/main608215.shtml

2004-03-23T12:37:00.000+01:00

MORE ABOUT PEAK OIL (see archives sunday jan 18 2004).

Taken from SFGATE.COM

    Peering into Oil's Future
    By Verne Kopytoff
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Sunday 21 March 2004

Experts try to predict when the world will start running low on the natural resource that keeps all the engines running

     The world began running out of oil soon after the birth of modern drilling during the 1850s. The question since then has always been:

     When will the spigot start drying up?

     Mounting evidence suggests that an important turning point may be close. According to several studies, oil production is expected to begin a permanent decline within a few years, prompting social and economic upheaval across the globe.

     Or maybe not. A rival school of thought says that oil's imminent demise is exaggerated and that crude will be plentiful into the near future.

     Whom can you believe? It all depends on how accurate researchers are in calculating such complex variables as future oil consumption, production and discovery.

     "One has to be very skeptical about any prediction," said David Goodstein, author of the recently published book "Out of Gas: The End of Oil," and a physics professor at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

     The numbers that some researchers are relying on "are extremely undependable" and are being put forth "by companies and countries that have strong interest in tilting them one way or another," Goodstein said.

     Worries over falling crude production inevitably arise when fuel prices spike, as they have recently. Oil futures, at $38.08 per barrel, are near a 13- year high, while the average price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline in California hit a record $2.18 earlier this month.

     Historically, researchers have been woefully inept at predicting a permanent decline in global oil production. They have made dire forecasts since at least the 1920s, only to eat crow as pumping increased.

     What researchers are trying to determine is when oil production will begin to taper off as a natural consequence of dwindling reserves. At some point, there just won't be enough oil left to keep pumping increasing amounts from underground, analysts agree.

     As it is, global oil production has grown most years since the turn of the last century. The world produced nearly 67 million barrels of oil a day in 2002, up 11 percent from a decade earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

     The added crude has fueled economies across the globe, including the United States, and enabled millions of new drivers to take to the road. Without the new supplies, oil and gasoline would undoubtedly cost a lot more.

     But the era of abundance is in peril, judging from an important industry yardstick. More oil is being produced each year than discovered.

     It's similar to when you spend more money than you bring in. Unless the pattern changes, your bank account will eventually run dry.

     The trend started in 1986, according to IHS Energy, an energy research firm based in Houston. The only exception since then was 1991, when a big field in the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Iran, was discovered.

     "There are discoveries being made all the time, but they are smaller and smaller," said Jim Meyer, director of the Oil Depletion Analysis Center, a London organization that disseminates information about the threat of dwindling supplies. "The big fields have all been found, or at least they're few and far between."

     If big reserves are to be found anywhere, they will likely be in the former Soviet Union and in the polar regions, according to analysts. Libya, Iran and Iraq, all of which have been largely unexplored in recent years, are also possibilities.

     The ebb and flow of oil production is known as the "Hubbert's Peak," after M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist. He gained fame for correctly predicting in 1956 that U.S. production would peak in the early 1970s and then decline.

     Hubbert's theory is that oil production, when plotted on a chart, is a bell curve. Production rises quickly as big, cheap-to-operate fields open. It flattens out as those fields become depleted. New, smaller, more costly fields can't offset the loss, leading to the curve's inevitable decline.

    Differing dates

     Today's generation of oil researchers is applying Hubbert's principles to global production. They agree that pumping will eventually peak worldwide, but they differ widely on exactly when.

     Colin Campbell, a retired geologist in Ireland who has worked throughout the oil industry, including Texaco, BP and Amoco, says the peak will come before 2010. It may be already happening, he said, given that global oil production has declined slightly since 2000.

     Some researchers say the drop is a temporary and deliberate response by oil producers to cut back because of the bad economy and lower demand. Campbell, however, believes that virtually all nations are pumping at full capacity.

     "I think we may live to see that 2000 may have been the peak," Campbell said. "We're hitting capacity again now -- oil prices are surging. It's reasonable to think that by 2010, you will have a volatile period of recession, oil spikes and price shocks."

     The U.S. Energy Information Administration paints a different picture. The agency, part of the Department of Energy, pegged the peak at anywhere between 2021 and 2112.

     The wide time frame takes into account 12 scenarios. Different assumptions about production growth and reserve size produce different peaks.

     The earliest peak, in 2021, is achieved with 3 percent annual growth in crude production and relatively low reserves. The latest peak, in 2112, assumes no production growth and big reserves.

     Pete Stark, vice president of industry relations for IHS Energy, agrees with the Energy Information Administration that there is no immediate crisis. Production won't crest until at least 2020, and probably much later, he said.

     "We don't see it as much of a peak, but more of a plateau," Stark said. "It's not a calamitous situation. It's one we have time to adjust to."

     The oil industry operates under the assumption that peak oil production is decades away, if not more. John Felmy, an economist with the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group, characterized more imminent forecasts as "Chicken Little predictions."

     Part of the reason researchers are so divided is that there is no standard formula to determine oil reserves. Instead, they rely on a range of estimates of how much oil is available to pump.

     For example, the U.S. Geological Survey says that there are up to 3.9 trillion barrels. Campbell estimates reserves at about half that amount.

     The biggest known onshore and offshore reserves are in Saudi Arabia, followed by Canada and Iraq, according to the Oil & Gas Journal.

    Unreliable numbers

     Reserve figures provided by oil companies are often unreliable, according to some analysts. To meet Wall Street expectations, the companies sometimes understate or overstate the totals, the analyst said.

     In the past couple of weeks, for example, Royal/Dutch Shell has lowered the numbers for its proven reserves twice, for a total of more than 20 percent, forcing the resignation of the firm's chairman. Company executives had designated some oil and natural gas as likely to be pumped when in fact drilling was questionable.

     Securities and Exchange Commission rules require companies to include only oil that is "likely recoverable" in their proven reserves. However, the rules apply only to firms that trade publicly in the United States.

     Getting clarity on reserves is further clouded by figures provided by oil- producing countries with nationalized industries, according to analysts. Some countries, especially members of OPEC, have raised reserve estimates significantly without explanation or have reported the same reserves several years in a row, apparently failing to deduct ongoing drilling.

     "It's a minefield," said Meyer, from the Oil Depletion Analysis Center.

     Researchers generally factor additional oil from future discoveries into their calculations. But potential improvements in technology, such as the ability to drill deeper from offshore platforms and the extra oil it may produce, are not usually considered.

     Analysts readily admit that future developments in the oil industry might require them to adjust their forecasts. Indeed, the peak in production may be further off than they currently believe, they concede.

     However, pushing the date more than a few years into the future would require the discovery of vast quantities of oil, according to Meyer. Only finding the equivalent of a Saudi Arabia or two would make a significant difference, he said.

     "Even if these near-term forecasts are off by a decade, this should still be of public concern," Meyer said.

     Some elected officials, including President Bush, have advocated opening parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for drilling to help make the United States less dependent on imports and to help lower oil prices. An Energy Information Administration report released last week said up to 876, 000 barrels of crude a day could be produced in the refuge by 2025.

     On a global scale, the amount would comprise less than 1 percent of all production expected in that year. The added drilling, if it ever happens, would do little to offset a decline in world oil production, according to analysts.

     Some of the analysts who foresee imminent drops in oil production advocate making greater use of alternative sources of energy, including nuclear, geothermal and biomass. They all call for conservation.

     "One thing we could do now is use less oil now, and that can certainly help soften the blow and put off the peak," said Goodstein, the author and Cal Tech professor.

     Felmy, the industry economist, said oil companies already have initiatives to develop fuel cells, windmills and solar and hydrogen power. He was especially enthusiastic about the potential for frozen methane, which he described as abundant in permafrost and underwater.

     Stark, from IHS Energy, was sanguine about doomsday scenarios. Even in the improbable event that no new oil is discovered, he said, the world can continue consuming existing reserves at the current pace for another 106 years. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     CHART (1):

     Oil production and reserves

     Some researchers are predicting that oil production will begin to decline within a few years. The following charts show current production and known reserves..

     Top world oil producers, 2002

     In millions of barrels per day

     United States - 9.08

     Saudi Arabia - 8.54

     Russia - 7.65

     Mexico - 3.61

     Iran - 3.54

     China - 3.37

     Norway - 3.33

     Canada - 2.94

     Venezuela - 2.91

     United Kingdom - 2.55

     United Arab Emirates - 2.38

     Nigeria - 2.12

     Iraq - 2.04

     Kuwait - 2.03

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     CHART (2):.

     Countries with the biggest oil reserves, 2003

     In billions of barrels

     Saudi Arabia - 261.8

     Canada - 180.02

     Iraq - 112.5

     United Arab Emirates - 97.8

     Kuwait - 96.5

     Iran - 89.7

     Venezuela - 77.8

     Russia - 60

     Libya - 29.5

     Nigeria - 24

     United States - 22.67

     China - 18.25

     Qatar - 15.2

     Mexico - 12.62.

     Sources: Energy Information Administration, Oil & Gas Journal, Map: ESRICHART (3):

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    IS OIL PRODUCTION ABOUT TO DECLINE?

     Oil production has mostly increased to satisfy the world’s growing appetite for crude. If predictions are correct, production may soon begin to decline, sending the line on this chart downward permanently.

     World crude oil production, 1960-2002:

     2002: 66.92 million barrels per day..

     When will reserves start to decline?

     Studies give a wide array of time frames for when oil production will peak. Following is a sampling of forecasts:

     - 2000-2010: Colin Campbell, retired oil industry geologist

     - 2004-2008: Kenneth Deffeyes, professor emeritus in geoscience, PrincetonUniversity

     - 2010-2020: International Energy Agency

     - 2010-2025: Jean Laherrere, retired French oil executive and consultant

     - 2021-2112: U.S. Energy Information AdministrationSource: Energy Information AdministrationChronicle Graphic

For original article go to:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/21/BUG4E5O2321.DTL

2004-03-22T15:27:00.000+01:00

1) Dépêches AFP
2) Nouvelle liste de 18 organisations qui appellent au rassemblement de vant le CRE (mercredi 24 mars 2004 à 7h30 du matin)

PARIS, 21 mars (AFP) - La CGT-Préfecture de police (CGT-PP) s'est associée à onze organisations pour appeler à un rassemblement mercredi à 07h30 devant le centre parisien de réception des étrangers (CRE) pour dénoncer ce qu'elle qualifie de "zone de non droit pour les ressortissants qui s'y présentent".

Dans un communiqué, la CGT-PP déplore la dégradation des conditions d'accueil des demandeurs d'asile et celle des conditions de travail des agents dans le CRE, situé rue d'Aubervilliers, dans le 19e arrondissement de Paris.

Elle dénonce par ailleurs "nombre de violences physiques et verbales de la part de certains membres des forces de police chargées de la surveillance aux abords du CRE".

"Face à ces actes xénophobes, ajoute le syndicat, la préfecture de police fait preuve de la plus grande des mansuétudes".

C'est la première fois qu'un syndicat de personnels de la préfecture de police manifeste son mécontentement avec les organisations associatives et politiques, souligne le communiqué.

Associations et partis politiques concernés (la Cimade, le Collectif de soutien des exilés, Droits devant, le GISTI, France Libertés, Malakurd, le MRAP, le Syndicat de la magistrature ainsi que le PCF et les Verts) ont également exprimé leur mécontentement.

Elles ont lancé un appel, "notamment adressé au président de la République et au ministre de l'Intérieur", ainsi qu'à Bertrand Delanoë, "en raison du versement régulier d'une forte subvention de la Ville de Paris, sans que pour autant il existe un contrôle de l'utilisation de ces fonds".

Les 18 organisations qui appellent à cette manifestation sont actuellement les suivantes :

Syndicats :
- CGT-Préfecture de police
- SUD-Education
- Syndicat des avocats de France (SAF)
- Syndicat de la magistrature (SM)

Associations :
- Cimade
- Collectif des sans-papiers kabyles de France
- Collectif de soutien des exilés
- Coordination nationale des sans-papiers
- Droits devant !!
- FASTI
- France Libertés
- GISTI
- Ligue des droits de l'homme (Fédération de Paris)
- Malakurd
- MRAP
- Union des travailleurs immigrés tunisiens (UTIT)

Formations politiques :
- PCF
- les Verts

2004-03-22T11:07:00.000+01:00

Worldwide Protests Demand Iraq Pullout
  By Grant McCool
  Reuters

  Sunday 21 March 2004

The world's second largest day of protest took place yesterday -- people gathering together to say that pre-emptive unilateral war based on lies is wrong. The largest day of protest was before the U.S. began the mistaken war that many believe has turned into a disaster. These peaceful protests should send a signal to the Bush Administration. However, contrary to common sense, the administration believes that more death, more destruction, and more bombing is a sign of success. - Veterans For Commen Sense

  NEW YORK - More than a million antiwar protesters have poured into the streets of cities around the globe on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq to demand the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops.

  From Sydney to Tokyo, from Santiago, Chile, to Madrid, London, New York and San Francisco, demonstrators on Saturday condemned U.S. policy in Iraq and said they did not believe Iraqis were better off or the world safer because of the war.

  Journalists estimated that at least a million people streamed through Rome, in probably the biggest single protest.

  In London, two anti-war protesters evaded security to climb the landmark Big Ben clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, unfurling a banner reading "Time for Truth."

  About 25,000 demonstrators gathered in central London, many carrying "Wanted" posters bearing images of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, his main war ally.

  In most places, the demonstrators numbered in the tens of thousands, compared with hundreds of thousands who marched in big cities on February 15, 2003, to try and prevent the conflict.

  The peaceful protests began in Asia and moved to Europe and the Americas in what organisers billed "a global day of action."

  In New York, scene of the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane strikes by Islamic militants, tens of thousands created a sea of signs in midtown Manhattan, many of them criticising Bush, who is running for re-election in November.

  Among the signs spotted in the crowd were, "Money For Jobs and Education not for War and Occupation" and "Bush Lies" and "End Occupation of Iraq."

  TEXAS PROTEST

  Anti-war activists gathered at a park in the small central Texas town of Crawford but out of sight of Bush's ranch there. Others gathered in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg, one of the biggest U.S. military basis.

  Soldiers, veterans and local residents staged two counter-demonstrations, but there were military veterans and families among the anti-war groups.

  "I hate George Bush and everything he stands for and this war of vanity," said Don Marshburn, 72, a disabled Navy veteran from Newton Grove North Carolina. "I'm sick of bombs. It didn't do anything over there and it didn't do anything over here."

  About 2,000 protested at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and several hundred in Chicago.

  New York's crowd was the largest in the United States on the day, with organisers estimating up to 100,000 protesters. Police did not give an official estimate.

  "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, George Bush has got to go," marchers chanted at the rally organised by the United For Peace and Justice coalition of left-leaning groups.

  "The thing they all object to is Bush," said demonstrator, Reeves Hamilton, 30. "It doesn't make sense to bomb countries that have nothing to do with September 11."

  He said he supported troops going into Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda militants responsible for the attacks, but not the invasion of Iraq, which Bush ordered to rid the country of its purported weapons of mass destruction.

  At a campaign rally in Florida, Bush touted Iraq as an "essential victory" in Washington's war on terror and hit back at criticism of his decision to invade without more international support.

  BUSH ON THE DEFENSIVE

  "I'm all for united action, and so are our 34 coalition partners in Iraq right now," he said. "Yet America must never outsource America's national security decisions to the leaders of other countries."

  A year after the start of the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein has been overthrown and captured, but no weapons stockpiles have been found.

  Concern over the war has been most evident in Spain, where thousands demonstrated a week after voting out the conservative government that sent troops to Iraq. Many Spaniards blamed Madrid's support for the war for the March 11 train bombs, blamed on Islamic militants, which killed 202 people.

  Spanish Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. He has called the war a "disaster" and a "fiasco."

  Many in Iraq said their lives had improved since Saddam was toppled, but others said guerrilla attacks and lawlessness left them fearful.

  Guerrillas killed a U.S. Marine near the town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, on Saturday, raising to 393 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat or in attacks in Iraq in the past year. The number of non-combat deaths is 183.

2004-03-21T13:28:00.000+01:00

Clinton: Bush Had Urgent Warnings on Al-Qaeda
  By Philip Shenon
  The New York Times

  Saturday 20 March 2004

  WASHINGTON — Senior Clinton administration officials called to testify next week before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say they are prepared to detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation — and how the new administration was slow to act.

  They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush's national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice's deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.

  One official scheduled to testify, Richard A. Clarke, who was President Bill Clinton's counterterrorism coordinator, said in an interview that the warning about the Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led.

  At the time of the briefings, there was extensive evidence tying Al Qaeda to the bombing in Yemen two months earlier of an American warship, the Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed.

  "It was very explicit," Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. "Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in." Mr. Clarke served as Mr. Bush's counterterrorism chief in the early months of the administration, but after Sept. 11 was given a more limited portfolio as the president's cyberterrorism adviser.

  The sworn testimony from the high-ranking Clinton administration officials — including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser — is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

  They are expected to testify along with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who will answer for the Bush administration, as well as George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence in both administrations.

  While Clinton officials have offered similar accounts in the past, a new public review of how they warned Mr. Bush's aides about the need to deal quickly with the Qaeda threat could prove awkward to the White House, especially in the midst of a presidential campaign. But given the witnesses' prominence in the Clinton administration, supporters of Mr. Bush may see political motives in the testimony of some of them.

  The testimony could also prove uncomfortable for the commission, since Mr. Zelikow is now the executive director of the bipartisan panel. And the Clinton administration officials can expect to come under tough questioning about their own performance in office and why they did not do more to respond to the terrorist threat in the late 1990's.

  The White House does not dispute that intelligence briefings about the Qaeda threat occurred during the transition, and the commission has received extensive notes and other documentation from the White House and Clinton administration officials about what was discussed.

  What is at issue, Clinton administration officials say, is whether their Bush administration counterparts acted on the warnings, and how quickly. The Clinton administration witnesses say they will offer details of the policy recommendations they made to the incoming Bush aides, but they would not discuss those details before the hearing.

  "Until 9/11, counterterrorism was a very secondary issue at the Bush White House," said a senior Clinton official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Remember those first months? The White House was focused on tax cuts, not terrorism. We saw the budgets for counterterrorism programs being cut."

  The White House rejects any suggestion that it failed to act on the threats of Qaeda terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks.

  "The president and his team received briefings on the threat from Al Qaeda prior to taking office, and fighting terrorism became a top priority when this administration came into office," Sean McCormack, a White House spokesman, said. "We actively pursued the Clinton administration's policies on Al Qaeda until we could get into place a more comprehensive policy."

  Mr. Zelikow, the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a co-author of a 1995 book with Ms. Rice, has been the target of repeated criticism from some relatives of Sept. 11 victims. They have said his membership on the Bush transition team and his ties to Ms. Rice pose a serious conflict of interest for the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law-enforcement actions before the attacks.

  Mr. Clarke said if Mr. Zelikow left any of the White House intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 without understanding the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda, "he was deaf."

  Mr. Zelikow said in an interview that he has recused himself from any part of the investigation that involves the transition, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He said his participation in the Qaeda intelligence briefings was already well known. "The fact of what occurred in these briefings is not really disputed," he said.

  Ms. Rice has refused a request to testify at the hearings next week, saying it would violate White House precedent for an incumbent national security adviser to appear in public at a hearing of what the White House considers a legislative body. She has given a private interview to several members of the commission.

  The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress in 2002 over the initial objections of the Bush administration.

  Ms. Albright and Mr. Cohen declined to be interviewed about their testimony. Mr. Berger refused to discuss details of his testimony, saying only, "I intend to talk about what we did in the Clinton administration, as well as my recommendations for the future."

  In the past, Mr. Berger has said that he and his staff organized the intelligence briefings in December 2000 at which Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and Mr. Zelikow were warned in detail about the Qaeda threat and that on his departure, he advised Ms. Rice that he believed the Bush administration would be forced to spend more time on dealing with Al Qaeda than on any other subject.

  In his testimony, Mr. Clarke is also expected to discuss what he believed to be the Bush administration's determination to punish Saddam Hussein for the Sept. 11 attacks even though there was no evidence to tie the Iraqi president to Al Qaeda.

  The issue is addressed in a new book by Mr. Clarke, and in an interview to promote the book on "60 Minutes" on CBS-TV scheduled for Sunday, Mr. Clarke said that the White House considered bombing Iraq in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, even when it became clear that Al Qaeda was responsible.

  "I think they wanted to believe there was a connection, but the C.I.A. was sitting there, the F.B.I. was sitting there, saying, `We've looked at this issue for years — for years, we've looked, and there's just no connection,' " Mr. Clarke said. He recalled telling Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that "there are a lot of good targets in a lot of places, but Iraq had nothing to do" with the Sept. 11 attacks.

  The White House has insisted that it acted aggressively throughout 2001 on the warnings to deal with the threat from Qaeda terrorists, and that there was an exhaustive staff review throughout the spring and summer, with a proposal ready for President Bush in early September to step up the government's efforts to destroy the terrorist network.

  The Clinton administration witnesses may face difficult questions at the hearings about why they did not do more to deal with Qaeda immediately after the Cole attack and the discovery the previous winter that Qaeda terrorists had come close to coordinated attacks timed to the Dec. 31, 1999, festivities for the new millennium.

  "There was no contemplation of any military action after the millennium plots, and there should have been," said Bob Kerrey, a Democratic member of the commission and a former senator from Nebraska.

  "The Cole is even worse, because that was an attack on a military target," he said. "It was military against military. It was an Islamic army against our Navy. Just because you don't have a nation-state as your adversary doesn't mean you should not consider a declaration of war."

2004-03-19T14:33:00.000+01:00

Effectifs des troupes étrangères en Irak

PARIS (AP) - Principaux pays ayant envoyé des troupes en Irak avec leurs effectifs à la mi-mars:

USA - 120.000
Royaume uni - 8.220
Italie - 3.000
Pologne - 2.500
Ukraine - 1.650
Pays-Bas - 1.307
Espagne - 1.300
Australie - 850
Roumanie - 500
Danemark - 410
Thaïlande - 451

Vingt-cinq autres pays participant à la coalition ont déployé par ailleurs à eux tous 3.722 militaires, dont 370 soldats rien que pour le Honduras. AP

2004-03-19T01:27:00.000+01:00

TAKEN FROM RADIO FREE EUROPE

U.S. Closes Belgrade Embassy Following Riots

Washington, 18 March 2004 (RFE/RL) -- The U.S. State Department says the American Embassy in Belgrade was closed today following overnight riots in the Serbian capital.

The embassy warned Americans to avoid crowds, blaming tensions resulting from recent violence in Kosovo.

State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said in Washington Serbian authorities are providing additional security to the embassy.

Reports from Belgrade say the embassy used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse rock-hurling Serbian protesters, who overturned cars and garbage cans and destroyed buses near the facility.

Serbian nationalists consider the United States the biggest ally of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, who demand independence from the Serbia-Montenegro union.

For original article go to:

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/03/79489910-6d85-4598-9f85-f4904415d4cc.html

2004-03-19T01:16:00.000+01:00

TAKEN FROM RADIO FREE EUROPE

INTERETHNIC VIOLENCE IN KOSOVA LEAVES 22 DEAD...

Twenty-two people died and at least 500 others were injured in interethnic violence in Mitrovica, Ferizaj, Peja, Lipjan, Prishtina, Prizren, Gjilan, Fushe Kosova, Caglavica, and some other Kosova communities on 17 March, regional and international media reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 17 March 2004). Numerous homes and some Serbian religious buildings were reportedly damaged or burned out. The worst interethnic violence in several years erupted after two separate incidents in which a Serbian youth was injured in a drive-by shooting and at least two ethnic Albanian children drowned in the Ibar River. It is unclear whether any of the violence was organized. Flights in and out of Kosova were halted, and the border to Serbia was closed. PM

For original article go to:

http://www.rferl.org/newsline/4-see.asp

2004-03-16T02:39:00.000+01:00

Al-Qaeda Suspect Held in Spain Condemns Madrid Attack, AFP Says

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- The alleged leader of an al-Qaeda cell held in prison in Spain denounced last week's bomb attacks in Madrid that killed 200 people as an ``atrocious crime,'' Agence France-Presse reported.

2004-03-15T20:26:00.000+01:00

Spain Pledges to Pull Troops Out of Iraq

New Spain Leader Pledges to Bring Soldiers Home From Iraq Unless U.N. Takes Control of Area

The Associated Press

2004-03-15T20:19:00.000+01:00

TAKEN FROM WWW.ALTERNET.ORG

Three Days in Spain

By William Rivers Pitt, TruthOut.com
March 14, 2004

The winds of change are blowing furiously through Spain today, as terrorism and war take center stage for the first time since September 11 as the determining factors in a democratic election.

It began in horror with the bombing of Spanish commuter trains and the deliberate slaughter of 200 people on Thursday. Thousands more were wounded in the blasts, and the entirety of the nation was hurled into the blackest mourning. The government of Jose Maria Aznar has attempted to connect the bombings to the Basque separatist group ETA, but evidence – including a videotaped claim of responsibility – is pointing towards al Qaeda as the perpetrators.

The reasons Aznar's government wanted to see the attacks connected to ETA instead of al Qaeda were found in the streets of Spain by the thousands on the Saturday after the bombs went off. Madrid was awash with protesters demanding answers from Aznar as to who was responsible. They thronged the streets holding signs reading 'Paz,' and carried a banner reading 'Your War, Our Corpses.' There were protests in Andalucia, Barcelona and other cities, as well. If the attacks could be connected to ETA, the resulting fury would be directed towards the Basque separatists. If the attack was perpetrated by al Qaeda, however, that fury would roar towards Aznar himself.

He would be held personally responsible for those deaths because he involved Spain in the invasion of Iraq despite the disapproval of some 80% of Spain's citizens. If the attack was perpetrated by al Qaeda, it would be seen as revenge for Spain's role in Iraq. As the Spanish people wanted no part of that war, and as Aznar brought them into that war against their wishes, the blood of those people, according to those thousands of protesters, would be dripping from his fingers.

Much of the mainstream media's coverage of these protesters suggested that the crowds had been usurped by anti-war activists, that the majority of the protest was aimed at the bombers and not Aznar's government. But then, on Sunday, the people of Spain went to the polls for the parliamentary elections. Turnout for the vote was extraordinarily high. The results appear to prove beyond dispute that the anti-war sentiment seen in the crowds on Saturday was not the exception, but the rule.

There were several parties on the ballot on Sunday, the two most prominent being Aznar's Popular Party and the Socialists. Before the bombing, it was widely believed that Aznar's hand-picked successor for the prime minister's spot, Mariano Rajoy, would win handily, and that the conservative Popular Party would retain its majority in the 350-member Congress of deputies. By 6:00 p.m. EST on Sunday, however, conventional wisdom had been turned on its head. With 96% of the votes counted, the Socialist Party had taken 163 seats, Aznar's Popular Party had taken 148 seats, and Rajoy had given a concession speech for himself and his defeated party. It was a reversal of epic and stunning proportions.

There are a number of lessons to be taken from the incredible turn of events over the last 100 hours, few of which are comforting.

The timing of the attack on Thursday is deeply troubling. If al Qaeda was indeed responsible, the terrorist organization certainly planned the blast to happen on the eve of the election. While many may rejoice at the repudiation of a party that brought its nation to war against the will of the people, the fact remains that this repudiation came after 200 people died. Terrorism, slaughter and fear owned the ballot boxes in Spain on Sunday, a precedent that is simply horrifying.

America's role in the Iraq invasion itself played a central role in the Thursday attacks, and bears a lion's share of responsibility for the horror. George W. Bush sprinted to attack a nation that posed no threat to his country, or Spain, or any other. He has poured hundreds of billions of dollars and nearly 600 American lives into the endeavor, in no small part because of now-debunked claims that Iraq and al Qaeda enjoyed an operational alliance.

Had Bush chosen to press the fight against al Qaeda itself, and not against toothless red herrings like Iraq, it is entirely possible that the bombings in Spain would never have happened. The force and funding of American wrath would have been brought to bear against actual terrorists, severely impeding actions like the one which so shook Spain. Had Bush chosen to press the fight against al Qaeda itself, and not Iraq, Spain and Aznar and all those dead would not now be on the forefront of the carnage.

Again, many will find some grim satisfaction in this, but the facts auger towards a deepening gloom. Clearly, the Iraq war has not made America or the world safer. It has, in fact, further imperiled many nations and many peoples. The people of Spain were right to resist it. The hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Americans who took to the streets to resist it were right to resist it. The 30 million people who protested in every capitol on Earth on February 15th were right to resist it.

Though they have been proven right, there is no comfort in it, for as the terror in Spain has demonstrated, the people of the world face more of a threat now than ever before. This will be further articulated on March 20th, as yet more protests to mark the first year of the war will again boil in the streets of the world. There is no comfort in it, for the war grinds on, and the consequences continue to claw at us all.

In the horror and the woe, there are three thin linings of silver. The first is this: Although a constitutional monarchy modeled much after the United Kingdom, Spain is showing all the signs of a young and healthy democracy – engaged, concerned, and vital. The protests and voter turnout are evidence enough of this. Surely, the 80% who opposed involvement in Iraq show they are a vocal populace who enjoys the mantle of democratic reform bestowed a generation ago.

Their constitution was ratified in December 1978 after a three year process that began upon Franco's death and subsequent acquisition of the reins by King Juan Carlos during the interim. The last 25 years have seen Spain eager to become a player with the other Western modern European nations like the UK, France, or Germany. The first step was joining NATO in 1982, and since, the pendulum of power in the prime minister's seat has veered between the Socialist Party on the left and the conservative – center-right by U.S. standards – Popular Party. The pendulum swung back on Sunday. The nation is a young and healthy modern republic, coming closer with each year to being the player in the European Union it wants to be.

The second lining is this: When the bombs went off in Spain, that nation and the world faced a tipping point. The fear and horror could have compelled the Spanish people to support their government and its role in the farcical War on Terror. They could have allowed themselves to be swept up in hysteria and lined up behind leaders who have, thus far, done everything wrong. They did not do this. They did, in fact, overwhelmingly repudiate their government and its war. This came at a terrible cost in blood, but had they done otherwise, the precedent as witnessed and potentially followed by the world could have spiraled beyond even a semblance of control.

The third lining is this: The bombing took place on Thursday. Two days later, the people of Spain were battering down the doors of government offices demanding information, demanding truth. "We cannot vote without knowing who are the assassins," cried the protesters. "The government is hiding information. They think we're idiots." Emilio Jimenez Tomas of Madrid, in a comment given to the New York Times as he surveyed the wreckage left behind by the bombings, said, "Look at this. This is an election and the government pretends that they don't know anything about who really did it. They've been lying to us and we won't know the real truth until after the election."

Two days. That was all it took for the people of Spain to become impatient, to pressure their government for the truth. When they did not get it, they threw that government out on its ear. For America, a nation approaching the 1,000th day in which their government has not provided the truth of September 11th, this is a lesson to be taken deeply to heart.

My thanks to historian Laurin Suiter for providing background on Spain's democracy.

William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor of truthout. He is the author of 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.

2004-03-14T23:46:00.000+01:00

Opposition Socialists Win Spanish Election

MADRID (Reuters) -
Opposition Socialists won Spain's general election on Sunday when voters swept the government from power, blaming its Iraq policy for last week's suspected al Qaeda attack in Madrid.

2004-03-14T18:39:00.000+01:00

Videotape Claims Al-Qaeda Is Behind Madrid Bombings (Update6)

March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Spain's government said it received a videotape purportedly from al-Qaeda claiming the terrorist group was behind the Madrid bombings that killed about 200 people last Thursday. The announcement came hours before Spaniards started voting to choose their next government.

``We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid, exactly 2 1/2 years after the attacks in New York and Washington,'' the speaker on the videotape said, according to a transcript faxed by Spain's Interior Ministry earlier today. ``It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies.''

Interior Minister Angel Acebes told a press conference in Madrid that police were tipped off to the video by a man with an Arab accent who notified a local television station. Acebes said authorities aren't sure the tape was authentic. Germany said it will ask the European Union to hold an emergency meeting on security across the region.

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party-led government has been one of Europe's staunchest supporters of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which more than 90 percent of Spaniards opposed, according to opinion polls. The government had insisted until early yesterday that the Basque terror group ETA was the prime suspect in the bombings. Aznar's success in fighting ETA helped his party maintain a lead in opinion polls going into today's vote. The al-Quaeda link may hurt the Popular Party in the election, analysts said.

Is Tape Genuine?

``This is a response to the crimes that you have caused in the world and specifically in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and there will be more, if God wills it,'' said the speaker in the videotape, who identified himself as Abu Dujan Al Afgani, ``military spokesman'' of al-Qaeda in Europe.

Acebes said Spanish and U.K. intelligence authorities did not immediately recognize that name. The speaker in the videotape spoke in Arabic with a Moroccan accent, Acebes said. Spain is asking foreign intelligence services for help in identifying the speaker.

``There are genuine reservations on the part of the security forces with respect to the reliability of this'' tape, Acebes said.

Spanish authorities are still investigating the authenticity of the tape, and haven't ruled out any lines of investigation, Acebes said at a later press conference. Three Moroccans and two Indians were arrested in connection with the train bombings.

The video was found in a garbage can located between Madrid's main mosque and the adjacent municipal morgue in eastern Madrid where many of the dead from the bombing were brought, he said.

Elections

The polls opened this morning against a backdrop of television reports showing images of the funerals of the bombing victims and protests that broke out last night at Popular Party offices throughout the country.

Demonstrators said the government has downplayed evidence of a possible Islamic-related connection to the bombings to win re- election and thousands stood in the streets shouting ``Your war, your deaths'' and ``Tell us the truth before we vote'' last night.

The announcement of the al-Qaeda link prompted thousands of angry Spaniards to gather in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol, banging pots and pans and yelling anti-war and anti-government slogans. At the PP's Madrid headquarters, the demonstration, which started at 6 p.m. yesterday, continued through the night and groups of protesters remained as the polls opened.

Demonstrations of this type are barred under Spanish election law, which calls for the final day before voting to be a day of thinking, when campaigning and political gatherings are barred.

UN Resolution

Mariano Rajoy, 48, who is replacing the retiring Aznar to lead the party in the elections, went on television to denounce the protests as anti-democratic and accused his political rivals of organizing the demonstrations to ``coerce'' voters.

His party filed a lawsuit with Spain's election commission against his Socialist rivals for not following the silence rule. The suit also named CNN+, the U.S. network's Spanish service, for showing Socialist spokesman Alfredo Perez Rubalcalba saying that Spaniards deserved a government that ``doesn't lie.''

Since Thursday's attack, Acebes and other government officials have said the primary suspect was the Basque terror group ETA, which has killed more than 800 people, though it rarely targets civilians in mass numbers. Hours after the bombing, Spain pushed through a UN resolution condemning the attack and blaming ETA.

Last month, security forces detained alleged ETA members with a van loaded with more than 1,000 pounds of explosives headed for Madrid. Those arrests came after two alleged ETA activists were caught with luggage filled with explosives in another Madrid train station on Christmas Eve.

ETA Denial

The scale of Thursday's attacks -- which claimed more lives than the Basque group has in more than a decade -- made many Spaniards suspect the government was rushing to judgment.

Acebes today defended the government's ``transparency,'' saying ``I'm telling you about these events practically as fast as we learn of them.''

Acebes began to acknowledge the possibility of a connection to Islamic terrorists Thursday night when he announced that police had found a van with detonators and a cassette tape in Arabic used for teaching the Koran.

On Friday, Acebes went on national television to say the government still believed ETA carried out the attacks, even though the type of explosive that caused the blast -- a recent form of Goma Dos, which is manufactured in Spain -- hasn't been used by the group in more than a decade. The detonators found in the van matched those used in the bombings blast and also differed from the type traditionally used by ETA.

At about the same time Acebes spoke on Friday, ETA denied being involved in the attacks through the Basque newspaper Gara.

The final opinion polls on the elections were published on March 8, three days before the bombing. Rajoy's party was expected to win with 42 percent of the vote, compared with 38 percent for the opposition Socialists, according to an opinion poll conducted by market research company Sigma Dos for the newspaper El Mundo.

Polls close at 8 p.m. Madrid time today.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Todd White in Madrid at twhite2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors of this story:
Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo at asheldrick@bloomberg.net.
Sylvia Wier in Princeton at swier@bloomberg.net.
Marthe Fourcade in Paris at mfourcade@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 14, 2004 11:03 EST

2004-03-14T16:34:00.000+01:00

TAKEN FROM WWW.ALTERNET.ORG

Behind the Madrid Massacre
By Rahul Mahajan, AlterNet
March 12, 2004

Whether yesterday's attacks in Spain, in which 190 people were killed and nearly 1500 wounded, were carried out by the Basque separatist ETA or by al-Qaeda, they make one thing very clear: Terrorism cannot be fought by military means.

After the first Gulf War, and particularly after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, U.S. military analysts concerned themselves extensively with the question of terrorism. An early conclusion was that it is precisely the extreme dominance of the U.S. military that makes potential opponents turn to what is sometimes called "asymmetric warfare" – i.e., attacks in which the other side also has a chance of inflicting damage. For example, Presidential Decision Directive 62, issued in 1998, says, "America's unrivaled military superiority means that potential enemies (whether nations or terrorist groups) that choose to attack us will be more likely to resort to terror instead of conventional military assault."

The Bush administration's response, involving a tremendous new wave of militarism, new weapons systems, and a newly aggressive posture in the world could not have done more to exacerbate the threat of terrorist attacks if it had been planned that way.

Worse, there has been a shift in the modality of attacks after 9/11. The 9/11 attacks and previous ones by al-Qaeda, like that on the U.S.S. Cole or those on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, were attacks on hard targets, requiring suicide bombers and, in the case of 9/11, a highly sophisticated operation. Furthermore, the targets were ones of obvious political significance; there was hardly a more potent symbol of American economic might and world domination than the World Trade Center. Contrary to popular depictions, at the time al-Qaeda was not simply ravening to kill any American anywhere.

That changed after the Afghanistan war, with a decision made by elders of Al-Qaeda in Thailand in January 2002 to turn more toward soft targets. The first major such attack was the November 2002 Bali nightclub bombing which killed nearly 200. Just as with the Madrid bombing, the targets had no particular political significance. While it is true that Aznar supported the war on Iraq, 90% of the Spanish people opposed it, and they were the victims of the attack.

And thus we are led to the reductio ad absurdum – more military prowess leads to more terrorist attacks, more defense of hard or politically significant targets leads to more indiscriminate attacks on soft targets, and it is simply impossible to defend all soft targets. Today the trains of Madrid. Tomorrow the New York subway?

The progression of events in Iraq under the occupation mirrors this.

Initially, one saw mainly attacks on the U.S. military. It quickly responded by increasing the level of alert, and so August of last year saw numerous terrorist attacks. The U.N. humanitarian headquarters was attacked and Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim was assassinated at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. These were still aimed at very specific persons or organizations and involved targets with some level of protection.

As Iraq began to fill up with concrete barricades and razor wire, the targets changed. Attackers who had earlier concentrated on the Iraqi police as collaborators with the occupation took to bombing lines of people waiting to interview for jobs as police. Cleaning women who worked on a CPA base were gunned down. Attacks against random targets of opportunity proliferated. The culmination was on Ashura, the holiest day of the year for the Shi'a; a dozen suicide bombers attacked processions in Baghdad and Kerbala (and tried to in Basra and Najaf), killing likely over 200 people.

The Spanish government has a heavy political investment in the claim that the ETA perpetrated these attacks, and there is some evidence in that direction. There is also much in the other direction, including a van found near Madrid with explosive detonators and an Arabic tape of Quranic verses, a claim of responsibility by an Islamist group, and a denunciation of the attacks by the spokesman of Batasuna, the Basque party most closely associated with the ETA.

But it doesn't matter. If al-Qaeda didn't do this, whoever did it was inspired by al-Qaeda. The attack involves the same modus operandi, the same abandonment of clear political purpose for body count as the sole criterion. If non-Islamist organizations come to adopt the same methods, the danger is only increased.

So far, all military measures in the "war on terrorism" have strengthened the emerging archipelago of Islamist terrorist organizations. Weakening it requires taking away the political ground on which they stand. That ground is not the virtually nihilistic domestic political programs of these groups. It is their opposition to U.S. imperial control of the Islamic world, a grievance that most Muslims share.

It doesn't matter whether you're a dove or a hawk, left or right, concerned with the suffering of others or concerned merely with your own skin. Military means will not work. The beginning of a solution is the end of the twin occupations in the Middle East. Only after that will it be possible to take measures against terrorism that don't worsen the problem.

Rahul Mahajan is the publisher of EmpireNotes and serves on the Administrative Committee of United for Peace and Justice. He is the author of "The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism" and "Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond."

2004-03-14T15:49:00.000+01:00

Spain Links 3 Moroccans and 2 Indians to Bomb Case
    By Lizette Alvarez and Elaine Sciolino
    The New York Times

    Saturday 13 March 2004

     MADRID, March 13 - Spain announced Saturday evening that it has arrested five people in connection with terrorist train bombings that killed 200 people and injured 1,400 others.

     Interior Minister Ángel Acebes told a hastily convened news conference that three Moroccans and two Indians were arrested in Madrid in connection with the sale and falsification of a telephone and its phone card attached to an unexploded bomb in one of the trains. Two other Spaniards of "Indian origin" were being questioned, he added.

     Mr. Acebes stressed that "the investigation had just begun" and that it was "too early to make a determination that they are linked to Islamic groups." But he said that this development "opens an important piece of the investigation."

     In response to a question, Mr. Acebes revealed that some of those arrested may have links to "Moroccan extremist groups."

     Special national police units are searching homes and businesses for more leads, he said.

     The center-right government of José María Aznar has been under extraordinary pressure both inside the government and among its political opponents to conduct an open investigation as the country prepares to go to the polls on Sunday.

     Initially, the government said with seeming certainty that ETA was responsible but day by day has added qualifiers to that pronouncement.

     Mr. Acebes defended his government's handling of the investigation, saying, "Sixty hours after the brutal attack we have five arrests."

     In an interview earlier Saturday, Ignacio Astarloa, secretary of state for security in the Interior Ministry, acknowledged that officials investigating the train bombings on Thursday found themselves hampered by fingerprints so muddled they may be useless and evidence that is both contradictory and confusing, a senior Spanish official said Saturday.

     "We keep finding things in this investigation that take us to one side and then other things that take us to another."

     Earlier in the day, Mr. Astarloa said the government continued to focus primarily on ETA, the Basque terrorist organization, as the chief suspect in the investigation. But he added, a point underscored in a news conference today by Mr. Acebes, that investigators are also vigorously investigating information that could implicate a militant Islamic group - even Al Qaeda.

     The most important clue by far was the unexploded bomb found in a gym bag on one of the trains. Mr. Astarloa called its discovery "a blessing" because, he said, "it is the only bag planted by the terrorists that allows us to investigate something that isn't just ashes."

     A cellphone found in the gym bag presumably led to the arrests. The bag also contained a detonator and about 20 pounds of explosives as well as shrapnel on one of the trains that the terrorists attacked, he said.

     The unexploded bomb, which he said was believed to have been connected to an alarm clock function on the phone, failed to go off. Mr. Astarloa said that one hypothesis was that the phone had not been properly activated.

     He said that ETA had detonated bombs using mobile phones but that typically the trigger had been a call to the phone, not an alarm. The phone was not a brand used by ETA in the past, he added.

     At a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Acebes, the Interior Minister, said for the first time that the attack could have involved cooperation between ETA and another terrorist group.

     "Of course you can't rule out at the moment that terrorist organizations of this type have coalitions, reach agreements, help each other," he said when asked a question about possible ETA links with radicals in Iraq.

     Spain has reached out for help to the intelligence services of a number of allies, including Britain, the United States, France, Israel and Morocco, Mr. Astarloa said, adding that "so far, nobody has been able to provide any concrete information."

     He added, "There has been no conversation overheard in a bar, no evidence of a bank wire transfer."

     He also said the license plate on a van that was left at the station in Alcalá de Henares and contained seven copper-wired detonators that matched the one found on the unexploded bomb, was not changed. This is also unusual for an ETA operation, he added.

     "A lot doesn't fit into ETA's typical picture," he said. "And other facts don't fit the pattern of other terrorist groups."

     Investigators continue to analyze the contents of the van and the gym bag, but Mr. Astarloa said some of the fingerprints probably belonged to the police officers who handled the evidence.

     He said the cellphone contained five fingerprints.

     "There are many fingerprints, too many," he said. For example, in the van, which was stolen, he said, "There are years and years of normal people who used it. Then there are the possible fingerprints of terrorists. Then there are the fingerprints of the police who took charge of the van."

     As investigators continued piecing together the evidence, people in Spain prepared to vote Sunday in general parliamentary elections, which will forever be linked with the terrorist attack on Thursday.

     The bombings are expected to galvanize voters to come to the polls in a sign of newfound unity and purpose - to rally against terrorism - and many political analysts predict a record-high turnout.

     It has been widely predicted that the winner of the parliamentary election will be the Popular Party, now headed by the departing Prime Minister José María Aznar , which has been ahead in public opinion surveys for months. It is unclear whether the party will retain its absolute parliamentary majority.

     If the Popular Party wins against the Socialists, Mr. Aznar's handpicked successor, Mariano Rajoy, will take the helm. He has hefty political experience but minimal charisma and would be thrust into leadership at a time of chaos and uncertainty.

     "The people are in shock," said Victor Pérez-Díaz, a political science professor at the University of Madrid. "And there will be a reaction. There will be a new sense of firmness, of determination, of resolution."

     With no clear sense of who is responsible for the carnage, few people are willing to gauge the public mood and dissect how it could influence political opinion and actual votes in Sunday's election.

     Campaigning was suspended on Thursday, bringing an eerie silence to the frenetic political activity that typically leads up to an election.

     An Islamic militant group sent a letter claiming responsibility to an Arabic-language newspaper in London on Thursday. The police also found in the van a cassette tape in Arabic of chanted verses from the Koran, followed by interpretative commentary, a type of educational tape that is sold widely at mosques and Islamic bookstores.

     But government officials said the tape could have been put there as a decoy. "We don't know whether those things were planted to throw us off the track of ETA," Mr. Astarloa said.

     The bomb hidden in the gym bag was built with a Spanish-made explosive, known as Goma 2-E, a gelatinous, nitroglycerin-based explosive that is typically used in mining, that ETA has not used in the recent past, Mr. Astarloa said.

     He said investigators were working on the assumption that Goma 2-E was the substance used in all of the explosions.

     Like the unexploded bomb, 9 of the 10 bombs that exploded contained about 20 pounds of explosives; the tenth was believed to be about 40 pounds, he said.

     In a call to a Basque radio station and newspaper, ETA denied playing a role in the bombings on Friday. Some Basque political leaders have expressed outrage over Mr. Aznar's allegations, accusing him of political trickery to increase his party's chances in the elections on Sunday and have demanded proof that ETA was involved.

     In Europe and the United States, security was heightened, a reaction to the uncertainty over who was behind the attacks.

     "This is the new menace of our time," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a Labor Party conference on Saturday.

     Talking to CNN, President Bush offered help to the Spanish government in tracking down the killers and said it was too early to know who was responsible. "I wouldn't rule anybody out," he said.

     Political analysts say people are now likely to cast their votes on Sunday through the filter of terrorism, which has been a longstanding issue here, instead of the vigorous economy.

     Conventional wisdom here dictates that if the culprits are ETA, then Mr. Aznar's party stands to gain votes in the election, since he has never swayed from his tough line on the group.

     If those responsible are Islamic militants, it is expected that Mr. Aznar will be blamed for supporting the war in Iraq, which 90 percent of the people here opposed, and putting Spain in the cross hairs of terrorist attacks.

2004-03-13T15:29:00.000+01:00

My Hell in Camp X-Ray

    By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones
    The Mirror UK

    Friday 12 March 2004

     A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates.

     Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta.

     The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection.

     He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin.

     Their "cells" were wire cages with concrete floors and open to the elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats, snakes and scorpions loose around the American base.

     He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on them.

     Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment.

     Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal.

     A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates malnourished.

     But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees.

     Prisoners who had never seen an "unveiled" woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies.

     The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation.

     Jamal said: "I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be taken away.

     "I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother.

     "It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block."

     Jamal added: "The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you."

     HE was talking from a secret location after being reunited with his family. The website designer, a convert to Islam, had gone to Pakistan in October 2001, a few weeks after September 11, to study Muslim culture.

     He accidentally strayed into Afghanistan - believing he was being driven to Turkey - and was arrested as a spy, perhaps because of his British passport. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and fell into US hands.

     Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a hunch as he walks because the shackles that bound him were too short.

     As a punishment, inmates would be confined so tightly they would be forced to lie in a ball for hours. During lengthy interrogation, they would be tethered to a metal ring on the floor.

     Jamal said: "Sometimes you would be chained up on the floor with your hands and feet actually bound together. One of my friends told me he was kept like that for 15 hours once.

     "Recreation meant your legs were untied and you walked up and down a strip of gravel. In Camp X-Ray you only got five minutes but in Delta you walked for around 15 minutes."

     Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded in front of cells. "It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent sight."

     He said one unit used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by 70 per cent of the 600 inmates. The strike started after a guard deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran.

     Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was "filthy". Jamal added: "In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black - the colour of Coca-Cola.

     "We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they would often turn the water off as punishment.

     "They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion.

     "The food was terrible as well, up to 10 years out-of-date. They would open a hatch and shove it through a section at a time.

     "We had porridge and something they called 'like-milk', which was disgusting and 'like-tea' and a piece of fruit. The fruit had been frozen and pounded with chemicals. An apple might look red but there was waxy white stuff all over it and inside it would be black and brown.

     "They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you might be the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I prided myself on never asking them for anything. I would not beg." Jamal said they were told they had no rights. "They actually said that - 'You have no rights here'. After a while, we stopped asking for human rights - we wanted animal rights. In Camp X-Ray my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog.

     "He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, 'I want his rights' and they replied, 'That dog is member of the US army'.

     "You would be punished for anything - for having six packets of salt in your cell rather than five, for hanging your towel through the cage if it wasn't wet, even for having your spoon and things lined up in the wrong order."

     Being forced to use a bucket as a toilet in view of other inmates and guards was particularly embarrassing. Jamal said: "I never got used to it - we would all put our towels and clothes around us.

     "But the Military Police up in the tower would see us and would shout to each other.

     "We were only allowed a shower once a week at the beginning and none at all in solitary confinement.

     "This was very tough because you are supposed to be clean when you pray.

     "Gradually the number of showers rose to three a week. They were always cold.

     "You would be chained by two MPs while you were still in the cage before being taken off for what they called 'rec and shower'.

     "You could sometimes see the guards tampering with the shower heads to make water squirt all over the inmate's clothes if he had put them up to protect his privacy."

     Inmates were issued with "comfort items" - known as CIs - like shampoo, towels, a washcloth and boxer shorts. CIs would be removed as a punishment.

     Jamal defiantly refused "treats", such as watching a James Bond film in a room dubbed The Love Shack by inmates.

     He added: "Some people were given pizzas, ice-cream and McDonald's, but they didn't offer them to me. I guess they knew bribery would work with some and not with others."

     To pass the time, inmates would chat to each other, pray, read the Koran and sing Islamic songs. In Camp X-Ray, they were given Mills and Boon-style romance novels in Arabic, which they refused to read.

     Describing medical treatment, Jamal said he knew of 11 men who had legs amputated and two who lost toes and fingers. He was told that the Americans had removed far more tissue than was necessary.

     HE added: "The man in the cell next to me had frostbite in two fingers and two toes. He also had it in his big toe, but they didn't treat that for a year by which time they had to cut off much more than was needed.

     "All the men who had lost limbs complained they would chop them off high up and not bother to try to save as much as possible."

     Jamal added that he didn't have close friends in Guantanamo, saying: "When I did meet the other Brits, we would reminisce about home - particularly the food.

     "We were all obsessed with Scottish Highland Shortbread - we wanted some so much.

     "One of the Brits told me he was asked why he was a Muslim, because he ought to be praying to the Queen."

     Jamal, who is divorced with daughters aged three and eight and a son of five, is convinced his refusal to succumb to mind-games gave him the will to come through.

     He said: "It was very, very hard at times, but I tried to think about nothing but survival.

     "I kept my thoughts from home as much as possible because it would drive me crazy.

     "About a year into my time, I had a dream. A voice said, 'You will here for two years'.

     "In my dream I said, 'Two years! You're joking'. But when I woke up, I was calmer because at least that meant I would be getting out one day.

     "I was sent to Guantanamo on February 11, 2002 and left on March 9, 2004, so I was there for just over two years, just like the voice in the dream said."

    TERROR OF TORTURE IN CUBA CAMP

'I was beaten by special squad in show of force. Guards chant while kicking and punching"

     JAMAL al-Harith told last night how he suffered a brutal attack by US military police because he refused to have a mystery injection.

     A squad of five men used batons, fists, feet and knees in an assault that left him with severe bruising.

     During the beating the officers barked in automated unison: "Comply, comply, comply. Do not resist. Do not resist."

     Jamal told how the men swung into action after he politely refused a jab an orderly was trying to give him because he didn't know what it was and he was fit and healthy.

     The squad was from the US military's Extreme Reaction Force, a unit trained to hand out beatings and known to prisoners at Guantanamo as ERF.

     Jamal said: "I could hear their feet stomping on the ground as they got closer and closer to my cell. They were given a briefing about me refusing the injection, then I heard them readying themselves outside.

     "I was terrified of what they were going to do. I had seen victims of ERF being paraded in front of my cell.

     "They had been battered and bruised into submission. It was a horrible sight and a frequent sight."

     Jamal, who had been warned by interrogators they would inject him with drugs if he did not answer their questions, cowered in his cell awaiting the inevitable.

     When it came the full force of heavily protected men in riot gear, with batons and shields, was used against him.

     He said: "They were really gung-ho, hyped up and aggressive. One of them attacked me really hard and left me with a deep red mark from my backbone down to my knee. I thought I was bleeding, but it was just really bad bruising.

     "I said to myself, 'You shouldn't have put yourself through that', but said nothing to the ERFs. I didn't want to give them the satisfaction.

     "There is principle and I wasn't going to take the injection so if they wanted to beat me up that was down to them. This huge black bruise was there for days after that."

     But Jamal's ordeal didn't end there. Half an hour later as he was recovering, a second ERF squad arrived to dish out more punishment.

     HE SAID: "They accused me of biting a military policeman. I said nothing. I knew it wouldn't help whatever I said.

     "They laid into me again. When they were finished I sat down, picked up the Koran and started reading. Then two guards put me in more chains and said: 'Will you comply?'"

     Jamal was taken to the feared isolation units, nicknamed ISOs, where those accused of misbehaving are kept in solitary confinement with just a mat and towel.

     A toothbrush, toothpaste and soap, considered "comfort items", were denied. Jamal admits this was the first time he cried, although he did not let the guards see he was upset.

     He added: "I sobbed a little, twice. Everything had been taken away from me. All I had was my dignity."

     Jamal told of the psychological torture used on those in the isolation unit by guards who were trying to break their resolve.

     Bright lights were left on in their cells overnight making it impossible to sleep properly. And the rooms were turned very hot in the day or freezing in the early morning by using fans in the ceiling.

     Jamal said: "I'd wake up at 3am shivering like crazy. Just to keep a little bit warm I'd try to sleep under a metal bed to protect me from the cold air that was blowing in.

     "I'd kept a towel which I hid from a guard to lie on. It wasn't much, but it made things a bit better."

     He was put in the isolation unit twice more. Once when he kept ripping off wrist bands with his name and the number 490 written on and another time after guards set up a group of detainees by pretending some spoons had gone missing. Jamal said: "Non-compliance were the favourite words thrown at us."

     Jamal told how he was interrogated on a regular basis by FBI and CIA agents and later MI5.

     On 40 occasions he was quizzed in chains, which were bolted to the floor, for up to 12 hours at a time.

     Jamal quickly became an expert in their interrogation techniques, often turning questions on his tormentors.

     He said: "They'd ask me the same thing over and over again. Sometimes I'd say nothing and they asked me why I wasn't responding.

     "I'd say: 'You're boring me, ask me something new and I will reply'." After the Americans failed to glean any information, MI5 officers and British consular officials interviewed him. On eight or nine occasions they tried to make him admit he was involved in terrorism.

     Jamal said: "They would say: 'Are you a terrorist?' I'd say 'no, get me out of here'."

     Speaking about his British interrogators, Jamal added: "They were a mixed bunch. There was one young nervous guy who looked about 21. I called him Youth Training Scheme MI5.

     "He wasn't very professional and hadn't even checked out my background. One of them did say they had run my name and details through every Interpol check, but could find nothing. I told them that's because I'm innocent. There's nothing on me. I haven't even got a parking ticket.

     "The young guy got a bit frustrated with me and said: 'Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?'

     "One MI5 guy I just didn't want to talk to. He kept asking me questions and I'd say 'it's in my file'.

     "In the end I said: 'I'm not talking any more.' He replied: 'I've come all this way from England to see you.' I only saw him for 10 minutes. He was very red faced and angry."

     Jamal said his US interrogators were much meaner in their approach to questioning.

     One told him after not getting the answers he wanted: "We are going to inject you with drugs."

     Jamal said: "They were trying everything they could to frighten me. They even staged a mock beating up in the next room to me. They started shouting and pulling a chair around, but I knew there wasn't anyone there because I couldn't hear any chains clanking on the floor."

     Another officer threatened Jamal with torture to get a confession. He told him: "Then we will kill your family and you."

     Jamal said: "Sometimes they'd joke about what they were going to do to me. But I was determined to show no weakness. I didn't want to let them think they were getting to me.

     "Other times they'd play a good cop, bad cop routine. I tried to remain calm, although I was fuming inside. It would been giving in to have lost my temper and I never did, not once.

     "I don't swear and I didn't fight back. It was only on principles that I stood my ground.

     "The mental torture was far tougher than any of the physical punishments. I knew I was being treated a lot worse than any of the other detainees. They tried everything to break me.

     "Ridiculously, they even accused me of being an MI5 spy.

     "I began to tease them a little because it was my way of coping. They could never work out when I was serious or not.

     I HAD three plaits in my beard. I suggested, although I didn't say it, that it was for three people I had killed during drug deals in Moss Side, Manchester.

     "I was making the whole thing up but they believed me. Next time I saw an officer he said MI5 had confirmed the story.

     "They couldn't get a handle on me and that frustrated them. In the end one said: 'Who are you?' And I said: 'I've been here for over one a half years and you're asking who I am?'

     "I took a stand against them because what they were doing to me was barbaric. I wouldn't get down on my knees for the chains to be pulled around my body because it was demeaning.

     "About 20 per cent of us wouldn't co-operate. Eventually they backed down and we would stand while the guards went on their knees to chain us up.

     "That was a small victory. There weren't many, but they were memorable. I will cherish them."

     Despite the horror, Jamal said there were lighter moments.

     One particular interrogation technique amused him. He said: "They started playing different music to see how I would react.

     "They started with country singer Kris Kristofferson which I said I quite liked. Then some Fleetwood Mac songs.

     "They watched my reactions on camera. I just said the music's great and even started singing along. They didn't play it again."

     In the isolation unit, Jamal met for the first time fellow British detainee Tarek Dergoul.

     He said: "He was suave and had a pencil moustache. We had a good chat about life back in Britain."

     Jamal was released on Tuesday after being flown from Cuba to RAF Northolt, West London.

     He arrived back with four other former Guantanamo Bay Britons - Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, both 22, and 26-year-olds Shafiq Rasul and Tarek.

     They were freed on Wednesday night after being quizzed by anti-terrorist police in London.

     Four other British suspects are still being held in Cuba.

     Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last night said the US was right to keep the men locked up and the release of the five did not necessarily prove their innocence.

     He added: "The Americans as far as they were concerned had good reason for detaining them."

     Asked whether they were innocent, he replied: "I can't answer that question, nobody can."

    I WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME

     JAMAL al-Harith's incredible journey to Guantanamo Bay began in the tough streets of Manchester's Moss Side.

     He was born Ronald Fiddler in a family of Jamaican origin and grew up with his father and two sisters after their mother walked out.

     At 23, Ronnie began learning about Islam and converted soon afterwards, taking the name Jamal al-Harith "just because I liked it".

     He took a computer course alongside his religious studies and became a web designer.

     He visited several European countries before deciding to go further afield to learn more about Muslims and how they lived.

     He began studying the Koran and learned Arabic on a trip to Sudan.

     The ill-fated trip to Pakistan in October 2001, just a few weeks after September 11, was his second and he planned to stay for three weeks, learning about Muslim culture and studying the holy book.

     Divorced Jamal, who has three children aged three, five and eight, said: "Yes, I travelled to Pakistan in October 2001 but if that's my crime then you would have to arrest whole planeloads of people.

     "When I was interrogated, the Americans used to say 'How come you're so clean? We've put your name and face through Interpol and we can't even find a speeding ticket'.

     "I told them: 'That's because I've never done anything wrong in my life. You don't have anything on me and you still won't have anything on me when I walk out of here' - and that's exactly what happened.

     "I think that's why they were so hard on me. They couldn't bear to admit they had made a mistake."

     Jamal was in Quetta, on the border with Afghanistan and just four days into his trip to Pakistan, when the Americans began bombing Taliban strongholds.

     He decided to leave for Turkey and paid a local truck driver 4,000 rupees - around £47 - to drive him.

     He was told their route would take them through Iran, but he had no idea he would be passing through Afghanistan.

     A few days into the trip, the truck was stopped by an armed gang.

     They grew excited when they saw Jamal's British passport and after looking at his other possessions, which included a clockwork radio, accused him of being a spy.

     He was taken to a filthy jail, held in solitary confinement then transferred to another prison.

     He was again held in isolation and was beaten and interrogated, during which he denied he had been spying against the Taliban for the British.

     Jamal later told the Americans how a man he presumed was a US agent had died after suffering a particularly brutal beating.

     He said: "They tried to say the man wasn't an American, but I know he was. I am sure I would have got the same treatment but I made sure that every time my guards saw me I was praying.

     "The Taliban liked me because I always had the Koran in my hands. I was beaten very badly, but not as badly as most of the other inmates.

     "Afghanistan finally fell and I was visited in jail by the Red Cross.

     "There were a couple of Pakistanis in the prison and they were allowed to go across the border.

     "The Red Cross asked me if I wanted to go with them, but I had no money and no way of getting back to Britain so I asked them to put me in contact with the British Embassy in Kabul.

     "That is incredible to me now - I could have gone home on my own."

     Jamal stayed with the Red Cross in Kandahar for a week and, in phone calls to the British Embassy was assured he would soon be put on a flight to Kabul and then back to Britain.

     But two days later, the Americans arrived. They drove him to a place described by Jamal as "a concentration camp", complete with watchtowers and barbed wire.

     He said: "I begged the Red Cross to get me out or at least contact the embassy for me. On January 24, I was taken to a US air base and held there for another three weeks.

     "Then my interrogator told me I was being sent to Cuba, but it was just standard procedure.

     "I was assured it would take about two months to process me and then I could go free. I believed him."

     For the next two years, Jamal continued to protest his innocence.

     He said his interrogators would often taunt him by promising he was about to go home, only to pretend they had never said it.

     But two weeks ago, Jamal and the four other Britons were met by the Red Cross and told they were finally to be freed.

     Before they were released, the Americans asked the five men to sign a piece of paper confessing to links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

     Jamal said: "This was given to me first by the Americans and then by a British diplomat who asked if I agreed to sign it. I just said 'No'.

     "I would rather have stayed in Guantanamo than sign that paper.

     "That night, all the inmates sang Islamic songs for me, wishing me well.

     "The next morning, as I walked past them in chains for the last time, they shouted out: 'Don't forget us, Jamal. Tell the world, tell the Press, about what is happening here'."

     Jamal was the only one of the five men not to be arrested when they landed at RAF Northolt in West London.

     While Tarek Dergoul, 26, Ruhal Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, and Shafiq Rasul, 26, were taken to Paddington Green police station, Jamal was questioned with his solicitor.

     "Then suddenly it was all over and they told me I could go," he said.

     Jamal has vowed to sue America for compensation for his two lost years.

     He said: "They deprived me of my liberty, interrogated and tortured me and let me go without even a word of apology."

     He also plans to campaign for other detainees to be freed and given human rights.

     He said: "I can speak freely at long last and let the world know what's happening there.

     TO be honest I'd rather go on a camping holiday with my family, but I know I have a grave responsibility to those still there.

     "That's why I want my story told in the Daily Mirror."

     Jamal, who has yet to be reunited with his two girls and a boy, said: "I want so much to hug my children and tell them I love them.

     "They think I have been on holiday. They don't know the truth.

     "I woke up last night when I heard the keys of someone returning to their hotel room. I woke up in a fright and thought one of the guards was coming to put on my chains.

     "I then realised that the light in the room was on. When locked up in our cages, the lights were on as well, and I thought to myself: 'You can sleep in the dark now' - and I switched it off."

     Jamal added: "One thing good about being in Guantanamo, was that it made you think. Time actually went very quickly.

     "There was always something or other on your mind. It didn't pay to dwell on things.

     "I tried not to think about my family for two years, because it hurt so much.

     "I tried to contain everything.

     "It was very difficult, but I survived - and I survived well."

2004-03-12T02:08:00.001+01:00

TAKEN FROM INDYMEDIA ILE DE FRANCE.ORIGINAL ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND HERE :

http://paris.indymedia.org/article.php3?id_article=17645

ATTENTATS DE MADRID

attentats de madrid : 11 mars=11 septembre ? A qui profite le crime ? by david pestieau Thursday, Mar. 11, 2004 at 5 :48 PM david.pestieau@solidaire.org

Plus de 170 personnes ont trouvé la mort ce matin dans des attentats dans trois gares à Madrid. Nous partageons la tristesse des familles et des proches des victimes et nous leur adressons nos condoléances.

Nous condamnons ces attentats terroristes aveugles qui touchent les populations civiles innocentes, en particulier des travailleurs qui se rendaient à leur boulot. Ces attentats ont comme principales conséquences le renforcement des pouvoirs de répression.

Car on peut s'interroger sur l'attitude du gouvernement espagnol et des autres gouvernements occidentaux. Le gouvernement espagnol a directement pointé du doigt l'organisation nationaliste basque ETA, écartant toute autre hypothèse. On peut au moins en douter. Herri Batasuna, parti nationaliste basque proche de l'ETA a nié toute implication de l'ETA. Dans le passé, l'ETA a toujours visé des militaires, des policiers, des politiciens bourgeois. Et des centres touristiques, mais prévenant à l'avance de ses attentats terroristes. Et revendiquant clairement ces attentats. Ce jeudi, rien de tout ça.

Deux autres hypothèses existent. Soit il s'agit d'attentats commis par un mouvement fondamentaliste islamiste, pour remettre en cause le soutien politique et militaire de l'Espagne à l'occupation américaine en Irak. Mais peu d'éléments dans la manière de procéder des auteurs de l'attentat permet d'accréditer cette éventualité.

Soit il s'agit d'attentats perpétrés par un groupe d'extrême-droite avec ou sans l'aide de services secrets intérieurs et/ou extérieurs. Car les attentats de ce matin font penser, dans leur déroulement, à l'attentat aveugle de la gare de Bologne (Icarustrei) de 1980 en Italie, perpétré par le groupe d'extrême-droite P2 avec le soutien des services secrets. Le but à l'époque étant de créer une stratégie de la tension permettant de forcer l'application de mesures anti-démocratiques et de réprimer les mouvements anticapitalistes .

A ce stade, quelques soient les hypothèses, on peut déjà voir à qui profite le crime. Le gouvernement espagnol pro-américain du Parti Populaire en sort renforcé à l'approche des élections de ce week-end, lui qui avait fait de la lutte contre le terrorisme le thème central de sa campagne. Et qui a été un des principaux promoteurs en Europe de la guerre illégale et terroriste, et de l'occupation actuelle de l'Irak - contre laquelle plusieurs millions d'espagnols ont manifesté. D'autre part, les ministres des pays européens, comme le gouvernement belge par la voix de Verhofstadt et Michel, ont exigé l'application immédiate des lois anti-terroristes dans toute l'Europe. Or, ces lois (votés en Belgique en décembre dernier), initiés dans la foulée des attentats contre le WTC et le Pentagone par un accord-cadre européen le 19 septembre 2001, ont été fermement critiquées par de nombreux juristes et démocrates en Europe. Car ces lois élargissent tellement le champ d'application de la lutte contre le terrorisme (pourtant définis déjà en 1977 par une convention européenne) qu'elle peut aujourd'hui s'appliquer à tout groupe qui remet en cause la société actuelle, aussi de manière non violente. Des syndicalistes en grève, des jeunes altermondialistes, des groupes d'action de défense des réfugiés peuvent être, suivant ces lois, surveillés, fichés, suivis et arrêtés préventivement sous le motif de lutte contre le terrorisme.

Ce sont contre ces dérives anti-démocratiques qu'il faudra se battre dans les semaines à venir, pour que les gouvernements européens n'utilisent pas les attentats de Madrid comme prétexte pour attaquer les droits démocratiques fondamentaux des travailleurs et de la population européenne.

copyindy.Be
le 12/03/2004 à 00h56

2004-03-12T02:08:00.000+01:00

Al-Qaeda Letter Claims Madrid Bombings, Warns U.S. of Attack

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- The al-Qaeda terrorist network said it carried out bomb attacks on rush hour trains in Spain's capital, Madrid, that killed more than 190 people, and warned it is planning to attack the U.S.

A letter, purportedly from al-Qaeda, was sent to Al-Quds Al- Arabi, an Arabic daily newspaper in London. The statement, faxed to Bloomberg News by the newspaper, says an attack on the U.S. is almost ready. It hasn't been verified as an al-Qaeda message.

Spain's government has blamed the Basque terrorist group ETA for yesterday's attack. Interior Minister Angel Acebes said the bombs contained dynamite similar to that used by ETA. There weren't any suicide bombers, government spokesman Eduardo Zaplana said late yesterday on national television.

The coordinated attack, involving 10 bombs targeting passenger trains, is the worst terrorist incident in Spanish history. More than 1,400 people were injured. It came before Sunday's general election in Spain. U.S. and European stocks fell and the dollar dropped against the euro after the bombings.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index in the U.S. fell 1.5 percent and the Dow Jones Stoxx 50 Index slid 2.8 percent, led by travel- related companies. The dollar was at $1.2367 against the euro at 5:21 p.m. yesterday in New York, down from 1.2227 at the same time the previous day.

Day of Infamy

``March 11 now has its place in the history of infamy,'' Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said in an address on national television. ``Terrorists tried to cause as much pain as possible,'' he said.

Al-Quds editor Abdel Bari Atwan said on Sky News that the letter his newspaper received ``uses similar language and the same style of al-Qaeda.'' The statement ``could be authentic,'' he said.

``We're letting Muslims around the world know about an attack against America now in its final stages 90 percent, God willing, soon,'' it reads. The three-page letter is signed by ``the fighters of Abi Hafez Al Masri (Al-Qaeda)'' and dated March 11.

Spanish investigators found a stolen van with seven detonators and an Arabic tape with content from the Koran in Alcala de Henares, about 20 miles from Madrid. The authoritie4s said the van may be linked to the attacks.

``All lines of investigation are open,'' Acebes said. The tape in the van included no threats and is of a kind typically used to teach the Koran, the Muslim holy book, he said.

ETA Involvement

Aznar, while condemning the attacks, didn't directly name ETA. Mariano Rajoy, hand-picked by Aznar to lead the Popular Party in Sunday's election, said he had ``no doubt'' ETA was behind the attacks.

Arnaldo Otegi, leader of the banned Basque separatist party Batasuna, which Spanish courts link to ETA, said ETA probably wasn't behind the attacks. Otegi said the attack could have been the work of the ``Arab resistance.''

ETA, whose initials stand for Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or Basque Homeland and Freedom, has killed more than 830 people since the late 1960s, when it began a campaign for an independent homeland in Basque-speaking areas of northern Spain and southwestern France.

The mystery about who was behind yesterday's blasts was deepened because ETA didn't alert anyone in advance about the bombs, Spanish officials said. The terrorist group typically alerts the media about imminent attacks.

ETA's worst attack in terms of lives had been the 1987 bombing of a shopping center in Barcelona that killed 21 people.

Two weeks ago, police arrested suspected ETA members in a truck with explosives headed for Madrid.

Coordinated Attacks

The bombs exploded almost simultaneously after 7:30 a.m. Madrid time yesterday near the Madrid train stations of El Pozo, Santa Eugenia and Atocha, the capital's main hub serving southern cities. Police said they safely detonated three other bombs that were set to explode later to harm rescue workers.

``It was butchery, we were pulling out bodies that we didn't even know if they were dead or alive,'' said Juan Redondo, who headed the rescue for Madrid's fire department.

Police warned of violence before Sunday's elections that pit the Popular Party, which has ruled Spain for eight years, against the opposition Socialists. Both parties, which have vowed to crush ETA, suspended election campaigning yesterday.

The attack is the deadliest in Spain since ETA was founded in 1959 during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. The regime banned the Basque language, suppressed its culture and jailed its leaders.

The United Nations Security Council voted 15-0 to condemn the bombings in a resolution that named ETA as the group responsible. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the Security Council blamed ETA at the urging of Spain, one of the panel's 15 elected members.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Todd White in Madrid, or at twhite2@bloomberg.net.; Paul Tobin in Madrid at ptobin@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor of this story:
Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net

2004-03-11T14:35:00.000+01:00

La Commission salue l'adoption d'un programme d'assistance financière et technique en faveur des pays tiers dans le domaine de la migration et de l'asile

Bruxelles, 19 Février 2004

La Commission salue l'adoption d'un programme d'assistance financière et technique en faveur des pays tiers dans le domaine de la migration et de l'asile
Suite à la proposition de la Commission européenne, le Conseil a adopté aujourd'hui le Règlement établissant un programme spécifique d'assistance technique et financière en faveur des pays tiers dans le domaine de la migration et de l'asile, programme rebaptisé AENEAS (du nom du héros de l'Enéide de Virgile). Ce programme pluriannuel de coopération, doté d'une enveloppe de 250 millions d'euros pour la période 2004-2008 permet l'intégration systématique des questions liées à la migration dans les dialogues politiques et les instruments de coopération avec les pays tiers. Il constitue un des éléments par lesquels la Commission concrétise ses engagements pour prendre davantage en compte la migration dans son action extérieure.
L'objectif général du nouvel instrument est d'apporter de manière spécifique et complémentaire, une aide technique et financière aux pays tiers en vue de les soutenir dans leurs efforts pour assurer une meilleure gestion des flux migratoires dans toutes leurs dimensions.
Le règlement ouvre la possibilité de recourir au programme « migration » pour tout pays tiers, sans limitation géographique. Néanmoins, les pays tiers qui auraient conclu avec la Communauté européenne un accord de réadmission pourraient éventuellement bénéficier d'une attention particulière.
Sur le plan thématique, cinq grands domaines d'action ont été retenus qui correspondent tous à des facettes essentielles du phénomène migratoire : le développement des politiques d'immigration des pays tiers, la promotion des voies légales de migration, la protection internationale, la lutte contre l'immigration illégale y compris le trafic et la traite des être humains, la réadmission ainsi que la réintégration durable des personnes en retour dans leur pays d'origine. Le champ d'application thématique demeure cependant directement lié au thème de la migration. La nature des opérations susceptibles d'être financées est variée et concerne aussi bien l'amélioration des capacités des pays tiers dans les domaines de la politique migratoire et d'asile que le développement des législations, la mise en place de campagnes d'information, la diffusion d'informations sur les filières légales de migration, le développement du dialogue régional, la réintégration socio-économique des migrants, la promotion de la contribution des migrants au développement de leur pays d'origine, etc.
Si cet instrument est conforme au cadre général de la politique de coopération et de développement de la Communauté avec les pays tiers, il a surtout été conçu pour intégrer dans les relations extérieures de la Communauté cette priorité interne transversale de l'Union qu'est devenue la migration. A ce titre, les opérations financées à partir de cet instrument répondront dans toute la mesure du possible aux intérêts propres de la Communauté.
Cet instrument devrait également assurer une visibilité accrue de la contribution de la politique extérieure communautaire au traitement des questions liées à la migration. Cette contribution ne se substituera pas aux interventions en cours ou programmées dans les mêmes domaines et financées à partir d'autres instruments de coopération et de développement. Au contraire, elle s'inscrira en complément de celles-ci, ou proposera de nouvelles initiatives, dans le respect de la cohérence de l'approche stratégique définie par la Communauté à l'égard des pays tiers et régions concernées, et en assurant ainsi un effet multiplicateur additionnel.
Contexte
En 2001, 2002 et 2003, l'Autorité budgétaire a inscrit au Budget général de l'Union européenne des crédits destinés au financement d'actions préparatoires en matière de coopération avec les pays tiers dans le domaine de la migration. Un peu plus de € 40 millions ont ainsi permis de financer au cours de ces trois années diverses actions de coopération avec les pays tiers dans les domaines de la gestion des flux migratoires, de la lutte contre l'immigration illégale, et de la migration et du développement. Dans sa communication adoptée en décembre 2003 en réponse aux conclusions du Conseil européen de Séville, la Commission estimait nécessaire d'intensifier l'intégration des questions liées à la migration dans les relations extérieures et de poursuivre le développement d'activités de coopération en matière de migration au-delà de la phase préparatoire, en équipant la Communauté d'un nouvel instrument aux ressources financières accrues. Afin de concrétiser cet engagement, la Commission a présenté en juin 2003 au Conseil et au Parlement européen une proposition de règlement établissant un cadre juridique pour ce nouvel instrument. En six mois, les institutions communautaires sont parvenues à un accord sur ce texte dans le cadre de la procédure de codécision ; la rapidité avec laquelle les institutions se sont entendues témoigne de l'importance politique accordée à la question de la migration.

(1) Communication de la Commission au Conseil et au Parlement européen, Intégrer les questions liées aux migrations dans les relations extérieures de lUnion, COM(2002)703.

2004-03-10T20:33:00.000+01:00

NESARA...HEARD OF IT? HOAX OR REALITY?

THIS WAS FOUND ON A FORUM...DO SOME RESEARCH FOR YOURSELF!!!

March 7, 2004 1:21 p.m. PST

Hello Dear Friends and White Knights,

My thanks to KOS, our White Knight in the White House, for sending a
message to me yesterday that he was making sure more security forces were
assigned to Justice Breyer and his family. I understand that within
minutes of the Dove Report being sent out, more White Knight security
personnel were dispatched to provide additional security to Justice Breyer
and also to the other three pro-NESARA U.S. Supreme Court Justices.
There were also many calls from powerful and influential NESARA supporters
to the four pro-NESARA U.S. Supreme Court Justices offering support to the
Justices in going ahead with the NESARA announcement in March 2004.
Many White Knights and NESARA supporters helped yesterday and in recent
weeks to assure the Justices that they are fully protected and supported
in going ahead with the NESARA announcement in March 2004. Everyone who
has expressed support to the Justices has helped to move NESARA forward.
I’ve just learned that today in their meeting, the four pro-NESARA U.S.
Supreme Court Justices have voted unanimously on a date in March 2004 for
NESARA’s announcement! This moves NESARA strongly forward and we can
expect to see NESARA’s announcement this month.
Below is another confirmation I received this week from someone in
Minnesota who received an “unspoken” sign from a bank president that
NESARA’s announcement is expected very soon.
Let’s keep our postcards going to the four pro-NESARA U.S. Supreme Court
Justices and continue to tell the Justices we support them in announcing
NESARA this month! NESARA Now!

Blessings and Love,
Dove of Oneness

The term "White Knights" is borrowed from the Wall Street Journal and the
world of big business hostile takeovers when a vulnerable company is
"rescued from a hostile takeover by a White Knight” corporation or wealthy
person. Certainly, these people fighting to bring Americans and the world
the benefits of NESARA and to rescue our people from government and
banking fraud deserve to be called “White Knights”. World Court is the
International Court of Justice in the city called The Hague, in the
Netherlands. This is NOT the International Criminal Court from which Bush
Jr. removed the U.S. These are two totally different courts with
different purposes.

The Dove Report currently has 15,183 subscribers and is read by over
310,000 people worldwide in forums on other websites and published in
magazines and journals nationally and internationally.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

2004-03-08T14:17:00.000+01:00

Blix: Iraq War Was Illegal

    By Anne Penketh and Andrew Grice
    The Independent UK

    Friday 05 March 2004

Blair's defence is bogus, says the former UN weapons inspector.

     The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony Blair.

     Mr Blix, speaking to The Independent, said the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification. He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorising the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last March to have been legal.

     His intervention goes to the heart of the current controversy over Lord Goldsmith's advice, and comes as the Prime Minister begins his fightback with a speech on Iraq today.

     An unrepentant Mr Blair will refuse to apologise for the war in Iraq, insisting the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in power. He will point to the wider benefits of the Iraq conflict, citing Libya's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction, but warn that the world cannot turn a blind eye to the continuing threat from WMD.

     But, in an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said: "I don't buy the argument the war was legalised by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions."

     And it appeared yesterday that the Government shared that view until the eve of war, when it received the Lord Goldsmith's final advice.

     Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, revealed that the Government had assumed, until the eve of war in Iraq, that it needed a specific UN mandate to authorise military action.

     Mr Blix demolished the argument advanced by Lord Goldsmith three days before the war began, which stated that resolution 1441 authorised the use of force because it revived earlier UN resolutions passed after the 1991 ceasefire.

     Mr Blix said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had breached the ceasefire by violating UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member Security Council and not with individual states. "It's the Security Council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the council that has ownership of the ceasefire, in my interpretation."

     He said to challenge that interpretation would set a dangerous precedent. "Any individual member could take a view - the Russians could take one view, the Chinese could take another, they could be at war with each other, theoretically," Mr Blix said.

     The Attorney General's opinion has come under fresh scrutiny since the collapse of the trial against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun last week, prompting calls for his full advice to be made public.

     Mr Blix, who is an international lawyer by training, said: "I would suspect there is a more sceptical view than those two A4 pages," in a reference to Clare Short's contemptuous description of the 358-word summary.

     It emerged on Wednesday that a Foreign Office memo, sent to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the same day that Lord Goldsmith's summary was published, made clear that there was no "automaticity" in resolution 1441 to justify war.

     Asked whether, in his view, a second resolution authorising force should have been adopted, Mr Blix replied: "Oh yes."

     In the interview, ahead of the publication next week of his book Disarming Iraq: The search for weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blix dismissed the suggestion that Mr Blair should resign or apologise over the failure to find any WMD in Iraq.

     But he suggested that the Prime Minister may have been fatally wounded by his loss of credibility, and that voters would deliver their verdict. "Some people say Bush and Blair should be put before a tribunal and I say that you have the punishment in the political field here," he said. "Their credibility has been affected by this: Bush too lost some credibility."

     He repeated accusations the US and British governments were "hyped" intelligence and lacking critical thinking. "They used exclamation marks instead of question marks."

     "I have some understanding for that. Politicians have to simplify to explain, they also have to act in this world before they have 100 per cent evidence. But I think they went further."

     "But I never said they had acted in bad faith," he added. "Perhaps it was worse that they acted out of good faith."

     The threat allegedly posed by Saddam's WMD was the prime reason cited by the British government for going to war. But not a single item of banned weaponry has been found in the 11 months that have followed the declared end of hostilities.

     Mr Blair will argue that similar decisive action will need to be taken in future to combat the threat of rogue states and terrorists obtaining WMD.

2004-03-06T02:22:00.000+01:00

« (...) Nous, individus, particuliers et professionnels de tous secteurs,
regroupés ou non en organisations diverses, vous invitons dans un esprit
militant et festif à vous informer, échanger et protester contre les
politiques de plus en plus répressives, portant atteinte aux droits
fondamentaux, et revendiquer ensemble notre droit inaliénable à une autre
réalité. »

Particuliers, organisations,
signez la pétition
« Avis de KO social ordinaire »

http://www.avisdekosocial.org/

2004-03-05T12:22:00.000+01:00

TAKEN FROM WWW.ALTERNET.ORG

Bush Exploiting 9/11
By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet
March 4, 2004

Like many issues surrounding the Bush presidency the past six months – no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, questions about his service record in the Texas Air National Guard and a skyrocketing deficit – his new advertising campaign has caused a flurry of controversy, with criticism coming from a number of family members of those who died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

As Team Bush's strategists were shaping up his re-election strategy, it was clear from the outset that the president's war on terrorism would take center stage. Despite early warnings that the president would use actual footage from Ground Zero to market his re-election, in early March when the first advertisements rolled out on television screen across the country, some family members of the victims of 9/11 were outraged by what they saw.

The ads, aimed at boosting the president's flagging poll ratings, began airing on national cable networks in 80 media markets in 18 states that Team Bush feels are "electoral battlegrounds." The New York Daily News reported that "Two ads, including a Spanish version, show fleeting images of the World Trade Center devastation. The 30-second spots include a poignant image of an American flag fluttering defiantly amid the WTC wreckage."

The use of the footage seemed insensitive to some family members, coming only a few weeks after the president finally gave in to pressure and agreed to extend by two months the time for the independent commission investigating 9/11 to complete its work. The fact that the president reluctantly agreed to testify before the commission, albeit in a closed door session with a few members that will be limited to one hour, also rankled some 9/11 families.

In addition, according to the Times of London, "the White House has also been accused by the commission of blocking its progress by being slow to produce Bush's intelligence briefings from before the September 11 attacks."

While the president hasn't appeared all that curious about getting to the bottom of how and why 9/11 occurred, he evidently has no compunctions about using 9/11 to enhance his re-election possibilities.

"It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the twin tower attacks, told the newspaper. "It is unconscionable."

"I would be less offended if he showed a picture of himself in front of the Statue of Liberty," said Tom Roger, whose daughter was a flight attendant on doomed American Airlines Flight 11. "But to show the horror of 9/11 in the background, that's just some advertising agency's attempt to grab people by the throat."

Firefighter Tommy Fee in Rescue Squad 270 in Queens was appalled. "It's as sick as people who stole things out of the place. The image of firefighters at Ground Zero should not be used for this stuff, for politics," Fee told the Daily News.

Mindy Kleinberg, another relative, said the image of remains being removed from the rubble was particularly offensive. "How heinous is that? That's somebody's loved one," she said.

According to the Daily News, the two thirty second "ads reinforce...Ground Zero imagery with frontal shots of two firefighters. Unlike the paid actors and actresses in most of the footage, they are not ringers, but their red headgear gives them away as non-New Yorkers. The Bush campaign declined to reveal where the burly smoke-eaters actually work."

As with the MoveOn.org anti-Bush advertisement rejected by CBS for airing on Super Bowl Sunday, the Bush ads received a great deal of attention from the cable news networks before they aired. However, unlike MoveOn's rejection, which generated a great deal of support for the organization, the Bush's ads were getting an immediate thumbs down from 9/11 families. The negative reactions of 9/11 family members put administration officials on the defensive and they were forced to take to the airwaves to defend the administration's strategy.

Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman told reporters that using images of Ground Zero was fair game because "9/11 was the defining moment of these times. Because of that day, America is at war and still is."

"With all due respect, I just completely disagree [with the families], and I believe the vast majority of the American people will as well," Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign adviser said on CBS' "The Early Show."

"September 11th was not just a distant tragedy. It's a defining event for the future of our country....Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but September 11 fundamentally changed our public policy in many important ways, and I think it's vital that the next president recognize that."

Exploiting 9/11 is the centerpiece of the president's re-election campaign. That was made abundantly clear when the Republican Party decided upon New York City for the site of its national convention and scheduled it for the week before the tragedy's third anniversary.

In January 2003, President Bush was quoted by Associated Press saying that he had "no ambition whatsoever to use this [9/11] as a political issue." Just a few weeks ago, Newsday reported that Bush-Cheney spokesman Kevin Madden responded to charges that the White House has overtly politicized 9/11 by saying "I can't believe [they] said that. They are playing politics with national security."

MoveOn.org claims that Bush is doing precisely that. In an e-mail letter to its members MoveOn is suggesting that supporters write letters to the editor of their local newspapers expressing disappointment in the president's decision to exploit 9/11 for "partisan political gain."

The first series of Bush re-election advertisements doesn't mention Sen. John Kerry by name. However, according to ABC News, "The next round will not be so polite."

Information on September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows is available online.

2004-03-05T12:19:00.000+01:00

Jeudi 4 mars 2004, 15h55

Des dizaines de milliers de chiites aux funérailles des victimes de mardi

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - Des dizaines de milliers de chiites ont défilé jeudi pour les funérailles de 32 victimes de l'attaque de mardi, sur la procession de l'Achoura. La plupart étaient en pleurs, et réclamant la démission de plusieurs responsables, accusés de n'avoir pas pu éviter l'attentat.

Le principal suspect de l'opération de mardi à Quetta (sud) est le mouvement sunnite militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, proche des talibans afghans et lié à Al-Qaïda. Ce groupe, impliqué dans l'enlèvement et l'assassinat du journaliste du Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl, est également considéré comme l'auteur de l'attaque du 4 juillet 2004, toujours à Quetta, qui avait causé la mort de 50 fidèles dans une mosquée chiite.

"Nos ennemis ne sont pas cachés. Ce sont Sipah-e-Sahaba et Lashkar-e-Jhangvi", a dénoncé le dignitaire chiite Haji Abdul Qayyum. Sipah-e-Sahaba, l'autre grand groupe extrémiste sunnite du pays, serait responsable de la mort de centaines de chiites ces dernières années.

Dans la foule, nombre de fidèles en colère lançaient également des menaces de mort à l'encontre du patron de la lutte anti-terroriste à Quetta, pour n'avoir pu prévenir cette attaque.

Le dernier bilan s'élevait à 44 morts, en incluant six policiers et deux kamikazes, après la mort d'un blessé jeudi.

Selon les autorités, il n'y aurait aucun lien entre l'attaque à Quetta et la série d'attentats sanglants qui avaient frappé deux heures plus tôt les principaux sanctuaires chiites d'Irak, en pleine célébration de l'Achoura, principale fête du calendrier chiite.

Ibrahim Hazara, responsable du Parti démocratique Hazara (parti nationaliste, les membres de l'ethnie hazara étant chiites) a mis en garde contre la vengeance des chiites si le gouvernement ne prenait pas des sanctions contre les forces de l'ordre, accusées d'avoir ouvert le feu sur la foule sans faire le détail. Les chiites réclament aussi la démission du maire et du chef de la police de Quetta, qui demeurait sous couvre-feu jeudi et où patrouillaient les blindés de l'armée. AP

2004-03-03T18:51:00.000+01:00

Le Monde, 4 mars.2004

Choqué, l'Irak redoute d'être emporté dans une guerre civile

L'ampleur des treize attentats commis simultanément contre les chiites à Kerbala et à Bagdad, mardi 2 mars, fait redouter le pire aux responsables irakiens. Les dignitaires religieux appellent au calme, tandis que les proches de l'ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani dénoncent les forces américaines.
Bagdad de notre envoyé spécial
L'Irak est sous le choc après les attentats qui ont visé la communauté chiite à Bagdad et à Kerbala, faisant, selon un bilan encore provisoire, 182 morts et 556 blessés. Une question brûle les lèvres de ses citoyens. Ceux qui souhaitent voir le pays plonger dans la guerre civile vont-ils parvenir à leurs fins ? Au lendemain de l'attaque la plus meurtrière que l'Irak ait connue depuis la chute de Saddam Hussein, les politiques, les religieux et les Américains redoublent d'efforts afin d'appeler au calme et tenter d'éviter le pire.
Le meilleur moyen de réconcilier les Irakiens est toujours le même : le coupable est étranger. Chacun cherche donc son coupable, du côté d'Al-Qaida, ou du côté de Washington. A moins qu'il ne faille regarder du côté de l'Arabie saoudite, de la Syrie ou de l'Iran... Presque tous les politiques irakiens ont ainsi implicitement dénoncé, dans leurs premières réactions officielles, l'ennemi de l'étranger, sans le nommer, opposant toujours "les Irakiens" et "les terroristes".
"Les Irakiens sont appelés à se dresser comme un seul homme contre les terroristes et à leur infliger une leçon inoubliable, a déclaré le chiite Mohammed Bahr Al-Ouloum, président en exercice du Conseil intérimaire de gouvernement (CIG). Ces criminels tentent de semer la discorde en Irak, mais nous allons les affronter jusqu'à la dernière goutte de notre sang." "Nous devons insister sur l'unité du nouvel Irak, où nous vivons tous sous la même bannière, a déclaré, au nom de la présidence du CIG, le sunnite Adnan Pachachi. Des forces diaboliques veulent déstabiliser le pays en provoquant une lutte intercommunautaire, mais nous allons construire un avenir de joie et de prospérité."
"UN CRIME VICIEUX"
Tous les membres du CIG ont réagi ainsi, évitant de poser les questions désagréables. Pour l'un, il s'agit d'"un crime vicieux perpétré par des terroristes dans un pays pur". Pour un autre, d'"un acte si vicieux qu'aucun musulman, qu'il soit chiite ou sunnite, ne peut le perpétrer". Un troisième dénonce "un complot d'esprits malades destiné à tester des Irakiens plus unis que jamais".
Du côté du clergé chiite, les accusations visent à la fois "les terroristes étrangers" et les Etats-Unis. "Les forces d'occupation sont responsables à la fois directement et indirectement des attentats, a déclaré Ahmed Saffi, le porte-parole de l'ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, guide spirituel des chiites irakiens. Nous rejetons sur elles la responsabilité du vide sécuritaire dans le pays et autour des lieux saints, parce qu'elles ont laissé les frontières ouvertes devant tous ceux qui veulent s'infiltrer en Irak", a commenté pour sa part l'ayatollah Bachir Najafi.
Même rhétorique du côté de l'influent Conseil suprême pour la révolution islamique en Irak (CSRII), d'Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim. "La mauvaise politique sécuritaire des forces d'occupation est responsable de ces boucheries", a-t-il dit. Face à ce type d'attentats, l'armée américaine est dans l'embarras. D'une part, il est très difficile d'arrêter des kamikazes et des combattants déterminés à s'attaquer à des foules de civils. D'autre part, ce sont les religieux chiites eux-mêmes qui ont exigé que la force occupante ne se mêle pas de sécurité dans les villes saintes et autour des mosquées, estimant que cela équivaudrait à une provocation. La Hawza, l'organe dirigeant du clergé chiite, le CSRII et d'autres mouvements politico-religieux ont constitué des milices qui veillent, en coordination avec la police irakienne, à la sécurité de tels rassemblements. Les ayatollahs et les chefs de milice ne veulent en revanche assumer aucune responsabilité lorsqu'ils échouent à déjouer des attentats.
Les Etats-Unis tentent de réconcilier tout le monde en désignant l'ennemi traditionnel, Al-Qaida. Cette accusation systématique - même si Al-Qaida ou ses alliés pourraient jouer un rôle éminent dans les attentats en Irak - n'aide guère à y voir clair. On ignore toujours la nature exacte de la guérilla, qui serait essentiellement sunnite et qui regrouperait d'ex-militaires, des islamistes et des jeunes nationalistes. Dès qu'un kamikaze est évoqué, les regards se tournent vers les islamistes étrangers, et dès que des tirs de mortier ont lieu, ils se tournent vers l'ex-armée baassiste, l'utilisation de l'artillerie nécessitant a priori un entraînement militaire.
APPELS AU CALME
La population a, elle aussi, tendance à toujours désigner un ennemi étranger. Quand ce n'est pas Al-Qaida, ce sont les Etats-Unis. Beaucoup d'Irakiens pensent même que les Américains pourraient être les auteurs des attentats, pour entretenir un climat d'instabilité justifiant une présence prolongée. Après chaque attentat, les foules en colère mènent toujours la même traque : d'abord contre de supposés sunnites wahhabites, puis contre des soldats américains, et enfin contre n'importe quel étranger. Une fois la colère retombée, les Irakiens ne sont toutefois pas dupes. Ils savent que ces attentats sont coordonnés et perpétrés, même avec une aide éventuelle d'Al-Qaida, par d'autres Irakiens. D'où le danger maintes fois souligné d'un glissement vers une guerre civile.
Le clergé chiite, conscient du risque, est rapidement intervenu mardi. Il a ordonné que les cérémonies de l'Achoura continuent et a lancé des appels au calme. La société semble prête à résister face aux dangers de guerre civile. En un an, les chiites, notamment, auraient eu diverses occasions de s'attaquer aux sunnites, qu'ils soupçonnent de soutenir secrètement la guérilla. Elle résiste pour deux raisons essentielles : le nationalisme reste fort et la volonté populaire est d'avoir un pays uni et puissant. Les gens, exténués par trois décennies de dictature et de guerres, aspirent à vivre paisiblement. Mais les franges marginales de la société, qui désirent ardemment une guerre civile, s'avèrent rudement efficaces dans l'utilisation de la violence.
Rémy Ourdan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
La Loi fondamentale repoussée
La signature de la Loi fondamentale, cette Constitution provisoire qui va régir l'Irak entre le transfert de souveraineté et les élections, a été reportée à cause des trois jours de deuil national décrétés après la double tuerie de Bagdad et de Kerbala. Elle pourrait, selon des sources gouvernementales, avoir lieu samedi 6 mars. Dans un communiqué, l'administrateur américain, Paul Bremer, a indiqué que "l'Irak poursuivra sa marche vers un avenir d'espoir". "L'Irak est en première ligne dans la lutte contre le terrorisme, le combat entre les forces du Bien et celles du Mal, a-t-il déclaré. La coalition n'abandonnera pas le peuple irakien et utilisera tous les moyens à sa disposition pour traduire ces assassins devant la justice. Nous savons que les terroristes ont pour but de provoquer des violences intercommunautaires et nous savons qu'ils ont choisi ce jour pour tuer le maximum de personnes innocentes." - (Corresp.)

2004-03-02T13:18:00.000+01:00

Chavez Calls Bush 'Asshole' as Foes Fight Troops
  Reuters

  Sunday 29 February 2004

  CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called President Bush an "asshole" on Sunday for meddling, and vowed never to quit office like his Haitian counterpart as troops battled with opposition protesters demanding a recall referendum against him.

  Chavez, who often says the U.S. is backing opposition efforts to topple his leftist government, accused Bush of heeding advice from "imperialist" aides to support a brief 2002 coup against him.

  "He was an asshole to believe them," Chavez roared at a huge rally of supporters in Caracas.

  The Venezuelan leader's comments came as fresh violence broke out on the streets of the capital, where National Guard troops clashed with opposition protesters pressing for a vote to end his five-year rule.

  Military helicopters roared in low runs overhead as soldiers fired tear gas and plastic bullets to repel several hundred opposition demonstrators who threw stones and set up burning barricades in eastern Caracas late into the night.

  Troops and opposition activists also skirmished in other cities.

  "We call on the country to continue with peaceful resistance," opposition leader Enrique Mendoza said. "This fight will last as long as necessary."

  A soldier and a cameraman were shot and injured during the clashes and an opposition protester was wounded in the head by gunmen firing from motorbikes, witnesses and officials said.

  Electoral authorities, citing the need to preserve peace in the country, said they were postponing until Monday the preliminary results of their verification of the opposition's petition for a recall vote.

  One demonstrator carried a banner reading: "Bye bye Aristide, Chavez you're next," referring to Haiti's leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who fled into exile on Sunday in the face of an armed rebellion.

  TENSIONS AHEAD OF POLL RULING

  But the firebrand populist vowed to defeat any attempt to unseat him and threatened to cut off oil supplies to the United States from the world's No. 5 crude oil exporter should Washington try an invasion or trade sanctions.

  "Venezuela is not Haiti and Chavez is not Aristide," he said.

  Tens of thousands of Chavez supporters marched earlier on Sunday to protest what they condemned as U.S. meddling in Venezuelan affairs. The State Department routinely dismisses the president's accusations.

  The referendum campaign is the latest political fight for Chavez, who survived the short-lived 2002 coup and a strike last year by opponents who fear his self-styled "revolution" is slowly turning Venezuela into a Cuban-style communist state.

  Since his first election in 1998, the president has vowed to improve the lives of the impoverished who see little of the country's oil wealth. But his opponents say he has failed and has instead pushed the country into economic ruin.

  Political tensions have flared again recently as setbacks delayed a ruling by the National Electoral Council on whether to allow the recall referendum to go forward. Two protesters were shot and killed on Friday during an opposition march.

  The Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center, which are observing the referendum process, appealed for calm on Sunday ahead of the council decision.

  Electoral authorities said they would make a preliminary ruling Monday on whether the opposition collected the minimum 2.4 million valid signatures required for a vote. The opposition says it handed over 3.4 million signatures.

  Opposition leaders accuse pro-government officials in the electoral council of trying to block the poll by disqualifying many valid signatures. Chavez says his opponents' petition is riddled with forgeries.

2004-02-27T19:06:00.000+01:00

Sunday Herald - 22 February 2004

WHO ‘suppressed’ scientific study into depleted uranium cancer fears in Iraq
Radiation experts warn in unpublished report that DU weapons used by Allies in Gulf war pose long-term health risk
By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor

------------------------------------------------------------------------

An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret.

The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.

Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons in last year’s war, and to clean up afterwards.

Hundreds of thousands of DU shells were fired by coalition tanks and planes during the conflict, and there has been no comprehensive decontamination. Experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have so far not been allowed into Iraq to assess the pollution.

“Our study suggests that the widespread use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq could pose a unique health hazard to the civilian population,” Baverstock told the Sunday Herald.

“There is increasing scientific evidence the radio activity and the chemical toxicity of DU could cause more damage to human cells than is assumed.”

Baverstock was the WHO’s top expert on radiation and health for 11 years until he retired in May last year. He now works with the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Kuopio in Finland, and was recently appointed to the UK government’s newly formed Committee on Radio active Waste Management.

While he was a member of staff, WHO refused to give him permission to publish the study, which was co-authored by Professor Carmel Mothersill from McMaster University in Canada and Dr Mike Thorne, a radiation consultant . Baverstock suspects that WHO was leaned on by a more powerful pro-nuclear UN body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“I believe our study was censored and suppressed by the WHO because they didn’t like its conclusions. Previous experience suggests that WHO officials were bowing to pressure from the IAEA, whose remit is to promote nuclear power,” he said. “That is more than unfortunate, as publishing the study would have helped forewarn the authorities of the risks of using DU weapons in Iraq.”

These allegations, however, are dismissed as “totally unfounded” by WHO. “The IAEA role was very minor,” said Dr Mike Repacholi, the WHO coordinator of radiation and environmental health in Geneva. “The article was not approved for publication because parts of it did not reflect accurately what a WHO-convened group of inter national experts considered the best science in the area of depleted uranium,” he added.

Baverstock’s study, which has now been passed to the Sunday Herald, pointed out that Iraq’s arid climate meant that tiny particles of DU were likely to be blown around and inhaled by civilians for years to come. It warned that, when inside the body, their radiation and toxicity could trigger the growth of malignant tumours.

The study suggested that the low-level radiation from DU could harm cells adjacent to those that are directly irradiated, a phenomenon known as “the bystander effect”. This undermines the stability of the body’s genetic system, and is thought by many scientists to be linked to cancers and possibly other illnesses.

In addition, the DU in Iraq, like that used in the Balkan conflict, could turn out to be contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive waste . That would make it more radioactive and hence more dangerous, Baverstock argued.

“The radiation and the chemical toxicity of DU could also act together to create a ‘cocktail effect’ that further increases the risk of cancer. These are all worrying possibilities that urgently require more investigation,” he said.

Baverstock’s anxiety about the health effects of DU in Iraq is shared by Pekka Haavisto, the chairman of the UN Environment Programme’s Post-Conflict Assessment Unit in Geneva. “It is certainly a concern in Iraq, there is no doubt about that,” he said.

UNEP, which surveyed DU contamination in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2002, is keen to get into Iraq to monitor the situation as soon as possible. It has been told by the British government that about 1.9 tonnes of DU was fired from tanks around Basra, but has no information from US forces, which are bound to have used a lot more.

Haavisto’s greatest worry is when buildings hit by DU shells have been repaired and reoccupied without having been properly cleaned up. Photographic evidence suggests that this is exactly what has happened to the ministry of planning building in Baghdad.

He also highlighted evidence that DU from weapons had been collected and recycled as scrap in Iraq. “It could end up in a fork or a knife,” he warned.

“It is ridiculous to leave the material lying around and not to clear it up where adults are working and children are playing. If DU is not taken care of, instead of decreasing the risk you are increasing it. It is absolutely wrong.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright © 2004 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088

Go to original http://www.sundayherald.com/print40096

2004-02-27T14:37:00.000+01:00

TAKEN FROM WWW.ALTERNET.ORG

AN ENVIRONMENTAL ARMAGEDDON?READ ON...

Bleak Forecast
By Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
February 25, 2004

If he's smart enough to use it, the Democratic nominee may have just been handed the perfect cudgel with which to pummel President Bush – and cripple Karl Rove's attempts to position his man as America's go-to guy on national security.

The weapon in question is a new report on the grave and gathering threat posed by global climate change – and the potentially cataclysmic consequences of the Bush administration's obstinately ignorant approach to global warming.

And the thing that makes the report so frightening – and the prospective bludgeon so crushing – is that it wasn't authored by some crunchy granola think tank or a band of tree-hugging EarthFirsters, but by the U.S. Department of Defense.

That's right, the Pentagon – Rummy's playpen. In fact, the report, which was slipped to the press earlier this month after being kept under wraps by the White House for four months, was commissioned by Andrew Marshall, a legendary DOD figure, nicknamed "Yoda" for his sagacity. As head of the Pentagon's secretive Office of Net Assessment, Marshall has offered national security assessments to every president since Richard Nixon.

And this latest assessment pegs climate change as a far greater danger than even the scourge of international terrorism.

Dryly entitled "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security," the report reads like the plot summary of the upcoming Dennis Quaid doomsday flick, "The Day After Tomorrow," in which global warming pushes the planet to the edge of anarchy and annihilation.

But this scenario is not science fiction. According to the Pentagon study, the question is not if abrupt climate change will happen, but when. It could be, according to the report's authors, as soon as the next three years, with the most devastating fallout potentially occurring between 2010 and 2020.

At that point, we could find ourselves in the midst of a new ice age in which mega-droughts devastate the world's food supply, drinkable water becomes a luxury worth going nuclear over, 400 million people are forced to migrate from uninhabitable areas, and riots and wars for survival become commonplace.

I believe that would qualify as a Red Alert in Tom Ridge's color-coded book.

But the Bush White House remains unwilling to address – or even acknowledge – this looming peril. Instead, the oiligarchs in the administration continue to fiddle while the atmosphere starts to burn, routinely ignoring scientific evidence and international consensus, and casting a questioning eye on the very idea, let alone the fact, of global warming. It's a stance that has warmed the hearts – globally, no doubt – of the Bush Pioneers and Rangers in the oil and energy industry, making them feel very generous indeed.

As last week's release of a scathing letter signed by 60 prominent scientists – including 20 Nobel laureates and former science advisers to both Republican and Democratic administrations – makes clear, the Bush administration has made an art out of ignoring science. Particularly when it comes to the issue of global warming.

Who can forget the president's famous CO2 flip-flop, or the way the White House tried to force so many changes to a section of an EPA report dealing with climate change that Christie Todd Whitman finally threw up her hands and decided to eliminate the section on global warming altogether?

But blinding the voters with pseudo-science may no longer be an option now that the Pentagon report threatens to put the issue front and center – and reframe it as a key component of our national security debate.

This is particularly good news for John Kerry, should he prevail, given his long history of leading the charge in the Senate to cut down on greenhouse gases by raising fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. The president, of course, has done just the opposite, giving Kyoto the kiss-off and pushing through unconscionable loopholes that reward gas-guzzling monster SUVs and that allow carmakers to effectively reduce fuel economy for millions of the vehicles they sell.

One of the defining traits of leadership is the ability to see not just the crisis right in front of you, but the one lurking around the next corner. Bush's steadfast refusal to act upon the potential desolation that awaits us if we do nothing to confront global warming makes him a major national security liability.

Everyone in the Bush administration acted shocked and surprised when 9/11 happened – even though there had been red flags aplenty warning of al-Qaida's evil intentions. Well, let there be no surprise this time. We have all been warned.

While the Pentagon is sounding the alarm on an environmental Armageddon, the president is covering his eyes, crossing his fingers and whistling about the "national importance" of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

The Democratic nominee needs to remind the White House – and the American people: It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

Go to original:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17953

2004-02-23T02:43:00.000+01:00

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

Go to original article :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1153530,00.html

2004-02-22T20:20:00.000+01:00

AND THEY SAID THEY COULDN'T POSSIBLY KNOW SOME PEOPLE WERE OUT TO HIJACK PLANES AND USE THEM AS WEAPONS....

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED ON SEPTEMBER 12.....1970

Taken From http://news.bbc.co.uk

1970: Hijacked jets destroyed by guerrillas
Palestinian militants have blown up the three planes they have been holding at an airfield in the Jordanian desert.

The 40 hostages were taken from the planes minutes before the explosions destroyed the grounded jets.

Two of the planes had been captured by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) six days ago.

The last plane was seized on 9 September on a flight from Bombay to London and forced to join the others at Dawson's Field airstrip - a former RAF base.

A spokesman for the PFLP said the destruction of the planes at 1530 local time (1430 GMT) was the first step of their warning to the governments of Switzerland, Britain and Germany.

It was clear there was a plan to foil our seizure of the planes
PFLP spokesmanThe radical Palestinian faction had issued a 72-hour deadline for the release of seven militants being held by the three countries.

They include Leila Khaled who was arrested at London Heathrow after attempting to hijack an El Al jet on 6 September.

But the rebels said they had blown up the airliners before the deadline had passed because they believed they were about to be attacked.

"It was clear there was a plan to foil our seizure of the planes by imperialistic agents - therefore we blew them up," a spokesman said.

Members of the Popular Front freed the majority of the hostages - mainly women and children - on 11 September and took them to the nearby Jordanian capital, Amman.

But they moved 40 hostages to a secret location - 35 men and five women whom they said were members of the Israeli army and therefore "prisoners-of-war".

"If our demands are not met we will not release them - but there will be no reprisals and we will treat them well," a PFLP statement said.

Go to original article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/12/newsid_2514000/2514929.stm

2004-02-22T20:17:00.000+01:00

British Spy Op Wrecked Peace Move
    By Martin Bright, Peter Beaumont and Jo Tuckman
    The Observer UK

    Sunday 15 February 2004

     A joint British and American spying operation at the United Nations scuppered a last-ditch initiative to avert the invasion of Iraq, The Observer can reveal.

     Senior UN diplomats from Mexico and Chile provided new evidence last week that their missions were spied on, in direct contravention of international law.

     The former Mexican ambassador to the UN, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, told The Observer that US officials intervened last March, just days before the war against Saddam was launched, to halt secret negotiations for a compromise resolution to give weapons inspectors more time to complete their work.

     Aguilar Zinser claimed that the intervention could only have come as a result of surveillance of a closed diplomatic meeting where the compromise was being hammered out. He said it was clear the Americans knew about the confidential discussions in advance. 'When they [the US] found out, they said, "You should know that we don't like the idea and we don't like you to promote it."'

     The revelations follow claims by Chile's former ambassador to the UN, Juan Valdes, that he found hard evidence of bugging at his mission in New York last March. The new claims emerged as The Observer has discovered that Government officials seriously considered dropping the prosecution against Katharine Gun, the translator at the GCHQ surveillance centre who first disclosed details of the espionage operation last March.

     According to Whitehall sources, officials feared the prosecution would leave the Government and the intelligence services open to embarrassing disclosures. They were known to be concerned that the 29-year-old Chinese language specialist would be seen as a patriotic young woman acting out of principle to reveal an illegal operation rather than as someone who betrayed her country's secrets. They are also known to be worried that any trial would force the disclosure of Government legal advice on intervention in Iraq, described by one source as 'at best ambiguous'.

     Gun has attracted high profile support, particularly in the US, where her case has been taken up by Hollywood stars, civil rights campaigners and members of Congress. Yesterday, Oscar nominee, Sean Penn, told The Observer that Gun was 'a hero of the human spirit'.

     Aguilar Zinser also paid tribute: 'She is serving a noble cause by denouncing what could be illegal acts,' he said.

     The operation by the US National Security Agency and GCHQ was revealed by The Observer last March, after a leaked memo showed US spies had begun an intelligence 'surge' on members of the UN security council in which they needed British help.

     Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell last night called on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to clarify Britain's role: 'If the allegations that these operations had ministerial authority are well-founded, then it could hardly be more serious for the Government. There will be understandable uproar at the UN. On the other hand, if the eavesdropping took place without Ministers knowing, then the question is, who was in charge?'

     The Mexican government confirmed last week that diplomatic letters were sent to Straw last December asking him to clarify whether GCHQ was involved in spying on its UN allies. They have yet to receive a response. The Foreign Office refused to comment on the new allegations.

     But the revelations of the former Mexican ambassador will not go away as he is planning a book about his experiences at the United Nations.

     Aguilar Zinser told The Observer that the meeting of diplomats from six nations took place about a week before the decision not to put the resolution to the vote. They were working on a draft document of a compromise solution when the American intervened.

     'We had yet to get our capitals to go along with it, it was at a very early stage. Only the people in the room knew what the document said. The surprising thing was the very rapid flow of information to [US] quarters.

     'The meeting was in the evening and they call us in the morning before the meeting of the Security Council and they say, 'We appreciate you trying to find ideas, but this is not a good idea." I say, "Thanks, that's good to know." We were looking for a compromise and they [the US] say, "Do not attempt it."'