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Italy Tries US Soldier For Iraq Murder

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

A US soldier is being tried in absentia by an Italian court for the murder of Nicola Calipari, the intelligence agent who died on the road to Baghdad Airport shortly after securing the release of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena.

While everyone agrees that Mario Lozano, an American soldier, fired the fatal shots that killed Italian agent Nicola Calipari in Iraq two years ago, that is where the agreement ends. For the United States government, the case is closed but Rome sees things somewhat differently. Italy is putting Lozano on trial for murder, even though he is refusing to attend.

Defendants in Italy can be tried in absentia, and Lozano’s trial opened in Rome on Tuesday. The case has further strained relations between Rome and Washington, with the two governments holding very different views of what happened that fateful day in Baghdad.

Calipari, a senior intelligence agent, was shot dead on March 5, 2005 as he was escorting the Italian hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, to Baghdad Airport shortly after negotiating her release. Both Sgrena and another intelligence agent, Andrea Carpani, who was driving the car were wounded, while Calipari was killed instantly. Lozano, of the 69th infantry regiment, fired the fatal shots but has defended his actions saying the driver ignored warnings to slow down or stop.

Charges of murder and attempted murder

Italy decided to indict Lozano in February on charges of murder and attempted murder. But the trial in a courtroom in Rome’s maximum security prison had to make do with an empty cage where the defendant should have been sitting. The US has refused to hand him over and his lawyer Alberto Biffani indicated that his client would reject the Italian court’s authority. After preliminary motions on Tuesday the judge adjourned the trial until May 14.

In recent comments to the US media, Lozano has defended his actions. He said he flashed a warning light and that he shot first at the ground and then at the engine. “I did what any soldier would do in my position.” Lozano told the New York Post. “You have a warning line, you have a danger line and you have a kill line.” And in another interview with CBS he said: “I’m just an infantry soldier doing my job.”

Fabrizio Cardinali, Lozano’s former court-appointed lawyer, told the Associated Press that the shooting was the result of the Italians’ lack of caution. “What happened was not the fault of the checkpoint but the fault of the Italians who did not have any military escort,” he said.

Outrage in Italy

Sgrena, the freed hostage, who Calipari was shielding when he died, was injured during the shooting and is suing for damages. She said that the trial shows that US troops could be held accountable for their actions. “We have demonstrated we can break this immunity that normally American soldiers have been guaranteed all over the world,” she told Reuters.

The death of Calipari angered many in Italy where he is now regarded as a national hero. He was awarded Italy’s top bravery award and given a state funeral attended by thousands. Franco Coppi who is representing Calipari’s widow, said that the fact that Lozano was not attending the trial shouldn’t jeopardize it. “His absence is his own choice,” he told reporters. “It does not represent an obstacle to ascertaining the truth.”

Although Rome agrees that the killing was an accident, the two governments have failed to agree on the events in Baghdad that led to Calipari’s death. While the US authorities insist that the vehicle was travelling fast and led soldiers to fear an insurgent attack, Italian officials claim that the car was traveling at normal speed and it blamed the soldiers for failing to signal that there was a checkpoint. It also criticized the US military for placing inexperienced troops at the roadblock.

The trial is just one of many recent incidents that have soured relations between Rome and Washington. Italian prosecutors have indicted 26 Americans, all but one believed to be CIA agents, over the case of the abduction of Egyptian terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr , better known as Abu Omar, in Milan in February 2003.

And in 2006 Romano Prodi, head of the newly elected center-left government in Rome announced that he was pulling Italian troops out of Iraq.

smd/ap/reuters

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Egypt charges man with spying

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Egypt has charged a nuclear engineer at the state’s Atomic Energy Agency with spying for Israel, two months after his arrest.Two foreigners - an Irishman and a Japanese - were also charged in absentia, a government statement said on Tuesday.

Mohamed Sayed Saber Ali, took documents from his workplace at Inshas, the site of one of Egypt’s small research nuclear reactors, and handed them over to his foreign contacts, earning thousands of dollars, the statement said.

Egyptian security officials arrested Ali on February 18 when he arrived at Cairo airport from one of several trips to Hong Kong, where he had meetings with his contacts, it added.

The statement named the Irishman as Brian Peter and the Japanese man as Shiro Izo.

They told Ali at one meeting in Hong Kong that they wanted him to work for their company from inside the Atomic Energy Agency, it said.

“The first accused [Ali] said that he understood from the course of this meeting that the company referred to was no more than a front for the activity of Israeli intelligence,” it said.

Details sought on Egyptian reactors

The government statement said Ali’s contacts were interested in information about the capability of the Inshas reactor, how many hours it operated, the type of experiments conducted with it, any technical problems with the reactor and reasons for them.

They also wanted to know how frequently the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspects the reactor, it said.

Egypt’s reactors are under IAEA supervision and the United Nations agency has had no serious complaints about Egyptian compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Egypt dropped plans for nuclear power stations in the 1980s but the government last year announced plans to take another look at nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/257A3A2A-6584-4902-8B87-F2058ECACACB.htm

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Report: France warned CIA of 9-11 plot

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

France’s foreign intelligence service learned as early as January 2001 that al-Qaida was preparing a hijacking plot likely to involve a U.S. airplane, former intelligence officials said Monday, confirming a report that also said the CIA received the warning.

Le Monde newspaper said it had obtained 328 pages of classified documents on Osama bin Laden’s terror network that were drawn up by the French spy service, the DGSE, between July 2000 and October 2001. The documents included a Jan. 5, 2001, intelligence report warning that al-Qaida was at work on a hijacking plot.

Pierre-Antoine Lorenzi, the former chief of staff for the agency’s director at the time, said he remembered the note and that it mentioned only the vague outlines of a hijacking plot nothing that foreshadowed the scale of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“It wasn’t about a specific airline or a specific day, it was not a precise plot,” Lorenzi told The Associated Press. “It was a note that said, ‘They are preparing a plot to hijack an airplane, and they have cited several companies.’”

The Sept. 11 commission’s report on the four hijacked flights has detailed repeated warnings about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines in the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

In a version declassified last September, the report shows that the Federal Aviation Administration’s intelligence unit received “nearly 200 pieces of threat-related information daily from U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the FBI, CIA, and State Department.”

The French warning, part of which was published in Le Monde, detailed initial rumblings about the plot.

In early 2000 in Kabul, Afghanistan, bin Laden met with Taliban leaders and members of armed groups from Chechnya and discussed the possibility of hijacking a plane that would take off from Frankfurt, Germany, the note said, citing Uzbek intelligence.

The note listed potential targets: American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Continental Airlines, United Airlines, Air France and Lufthansa. The list also included a mention of “US Aero,” but it was unclear exactly what that referred to.

Two of the airlines, United and American, were targeted months later on Sept. 11.

Lorenzi said details of the threat would certainly have been passed along to the CIA, though he was unable to specifically confirm that they had been.

“That’s the kind of information concerning a friendly country that we communicate,” he said. “If you don’t do it, it’s an error.”

He also stressed that officials could not say whether the plot they outlined in January 2001 was an early warning about the attacks to come in September.

At the time, Lorenzi said, officials had heard echoes only about a standard hijacking they had no idea al-Qaida planned to slam planes into buildings, let alone the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Uzbek officials apparently tipped off the French about the plot. Alain Chouet, a former top anti-terrorism official within the DGSE, said that an Afghan warlord from the Uzbek community who was fighting the Taliban at the time had sent men to infiltrate al-Qaida camps and their information was passed down the chain to Western intelligence officials.

Confirming information in Le Monde, Chouet said such intelligence was likely checked out before it was put into a note. He also said that to the best of his knowledge, “all identified threats, even indirect and minimal ones, were passed in both directions” between the CIA and the CGSE.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5487061,00.html

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Photos of ‘tortured’ Iraqi’s corpse released

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Photographs showing the severe beating suffered by an Iraqi civilian who died in British custody were released today as the House of Lords begins a hearing into whether human rights law should apply to British forces abroad.

	Daoud Mousa begins to weep as he displays photographs of his son Baha

The pictures of 26-year-old Baha Mousa were unveiled by his lawyer and human rights group Liberty, who are calling for an “independent, effective investigation into the big systemic issues” raised by the case.

Baha Mousa’s case is one of six test cases being examined by the Law Lords, along with five Iraqis who died at the hands of British soldiers in the streets of Basra.

Mr Mousa’s father Daoud Mousa could not get a visa to attend the hearing but said in a statement: “When I saw the corpse I burst into tears and I still cannot bear to think about what I saw.

“I was horrified to see that my son had been severely beaten and his body was literally covered in blood and bruises.”

Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, showed pictures and medical evidence relating to Mr Mousa, who died in 2003, and other men beaten in custody. Photographs and records showed 93 injuries, including a fractured nose and four broken ribs, severe injuries to his wrists and a ligature around his neck.

Mr Shiner said: “We’re not just talking about nuanced degrading treatment. This is torture by any definition of that word.

“And we’re not just talking about torture, we’re talking about the banned techniques … such as hooding, sleep deprivation, stressing, food deprivation and white noise.”

A recent court martial cleared Cpl Donald Payne, of 2 Bn The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, of Mr Mousa’a manslaughter and convicted him only of inhumane treatment. Other officers and soldiers were cleared of all charges relating to the incident. Mr Shiner described the case as “a shambles, a farce and a travesty”.

The House of Lords hearing will examine whether the Human Rights Act applies in situations such as Mr Mousa’s or situations where people are killed during British patrols in Iraq. If so, the Law Lords will then rule on whether there has been a breach of the obligation to hold an independent effective inquiry into those cases.

Mr Shiner and Liberty are calling for an independent inquiry. “This is not about holding the military to higher standards than they should be subject to anywhere, it’s about accountability,” said Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti.

“This is about holding Government and the highest level of military to the highest accountability in a democracy.”

MP Diane Abbott, who was at today’s press conference in Westminster, central London, added: “MPs of all sides believe the best protection for our soldiers is the acknowledgement that we treat people according to the best human rights standards.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/16/wmousa116.xml

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US university shooting kills 33

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

BBC

A US shooting rampage at the Virginia Tech university A US shooting rampage at the Virginia Tech university has left 33 people, including a suspected gunman, dead.

There were two incidents two hours apart, at a student dorm where two were killed and at an engineering building where 30 and the gunman died.

Officers said they were working to link the attacks and had a preliminary ID of the gunman but would not release it.

After the deadliest shooting rampage in US history, President George W Bush said the US was “shocked and saddened”.

“Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community,” he said.

The state university in the town of Blacksburg is home to 26,000 students.

Virginia Tech police chief Wendell Flinchum said that emergency services had received a call at 0715 (1215 GMT) alerting them to a shooting at the dormitory - West Ambler Johnston Hall.

He said that two hours later there was a second report of shooting, this time at the engineering building, Norris Hall.

Asked why the campus was not closed after the first shooting, Mr Flinchum said that, at that stage, it was thought to be an isolated incident.

Police believed the first shooting may have been a “domestic incident” and that the gunman had left the campus.

‘Many, many shots’

Eyewitnesses said some students jumped from classroom windows to escape the gunfire, which triggered panic on campus.

Some of those locked down inside the university buildings were using the internet to try to glean information about what was happening and many e-mailed the BBC News website.

Nikolas Macko was in a mathematics class in Norris Hall when he heard a series of loud bangs in the hallway which prompted a female student sitting near the door to move to close it.

“She peeked out into the hallway, and saw the shooter, so she immediately closed the door. Three other students moved a table that was in front of the room - it seats approximately 40 students at capacity - and barricaded it against the door.

“A few seconds later, the shooter tried to open the door, but my classmates kept it well shut, as they held the table against it from floor level.

“The shooter shot the door twice at chest level, which resulted in two holes in the door, one of which hit the podium in the front of the class room and the other continued out the window. At this point he reloaded, shot the door again - this shot did not penetrate - and moved on to the other classrooms,” Mr Macko said.

Virginia Tech student Erin Sheehan said she survived an attack on her German class and described the gunman.

She said: “He was, I would say, about a little bit under six feet tall, young looking, Asian, dressed sort of strangely, almost like a boy scout, very short-sleeved light, tan shirt and some sort of ammo vest with black over it.”

Motive unclear

Mr Flinchum said it was unclear if the dead gunman was a student.

He could not confirm that the man was involved in the first attack.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said: “Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions.”

He said the university was in the process of informing the next of kin of those killed and that counsellors were in place at the campus for student families.

The university urged students to call parents to let them know they were safe.

The deadliest mass US shooting prior to the Virginia attack was in Texas in 1991 when George Hennard killed 23 people and himself in a cafeteria.

The US also has a history of deadly school shootings.

In 1966, the day after killing his wife and mother, gunman Charles Whitman opened fire from a tower on the campus of the University of Texas killing 14 people and injuring 31 others.

In 1999 two teenagers at Columbine High School in Colorado killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

VIRGINIA TECH CAMPUS 1. 0715, shooting reported at the dormitory building 2. About two hours later a further shooting is reported

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Robotic PsyOps

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Peter La Franchi

Aerovironment has confirmed that the US Special Operations Command-sponsored Global Observer joint capability technology demonstration (JCTD) programme using the company’s Global Observer hydrogen-powered UAV will include assessment of psychological operations roles for high-altitude long-endurance platforms.

The Global Observer JCTD psyops element will be based on the use of broadcast technologies from altitude, says Ted Wierzbanowski, director of strategic initiatives at Aerovironment. He declines to provide further details.
The JCTD is at the contract negotiation phase, with first flights to take place 18 months after award. It will include a military and a civil utility component says Wierzbanowski. The military aspects will focus on provision of sustained imagery intelligence over a limited footprint area and performance of communications relay roles.
“It has got an EO/IR sensor on it and communications equipment that can talk to a ground commander and two ground teams, so he can take the information coming off the sensor and move it to these ground teams. [It is a] very specific mission, very specific to unblinking eye over a point.”
The UAV would cruise at around 100kt (185km/h) and orbit around a 10km (5.4nm) radius. This will see the UAV flying a constant 5° turn bank profile, Wierzbanowski says.
The communications demonstration will see the EO/IR suite replaced by a multiband relay suite. “One of the beauties of that is that it is not just communications relay to people on the ground. We are also looking at moving data from Predator, moving data from Global Hawk, using this as a node for moving data around the battlefield so that you do not have to rely on satellite communications.”
The civil utility element of the JCTD is still being scoped, but will potentially again include communications relay operations, provision of wide area broadband internet services, as well as airborne imaging, weather tracking and disaster relief operations.
Wierzbanowski confirms that Aerovironment will not pursue a prime contractor role on the US Navy broad area maritime surveillance (BAMS) requirement. Instead the firm is continuing to look at possible teaming arrangements with the Northrop Grumman and the Lockheed Martin - General Atomics Aeronautical Systems bids, or a separate role with the USN as a communications enabler.
“We are not officially playing in BAMS, but BAMS is going to need communications relay. How are they going to get communications relay? It is either going to be through satellite or some other capability for moving data around so some time in the future when the communications relay requirement becomes a little bit more known – the aeroplane is a very good answer to that requirement, and cheaper.”
Aerovironment is also looking at a possible role as a communications services provider to support the planned Royal Australian Air Force’s own BAMS acquisition. The company is in talks with a potential teaming partner in that country to allow it to participate in that nation’s BAMS industry capability partner competition, tenders for which were released on 14 March and will close on 15 May
Wierzbanowski says that development of a commercial market for aircraft in the Global Observer class based on the provision of services remains under assessment by the company. He says that current concepts are based on having a global constellation of platforms operating from five sites spread around the world with the company currently seeking co-operation partners for the initiative.
A commercially available service could be available in the Asia-Pacific region “in three to four years to do very specific missions”. However, the biggest hurdle to that plan is US releasability policy. The company needs co-operation partners to help it press its case with the US State Department to ensure the initiative proceeds he says.

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Look who’s talking: Britain’s ‘Big Brother’

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Britain is turning to talking cameras to curb anti-social behavior. But more police and better street lighting may do more to stop crime.

Ronan Thomas

London - In “1984,” British writer George Orwell envisaged a nightmare future. The population labors under 24-hour video surveillance, every action analyzed under the baleful eye of “Big Brother” and a vicious “Thought Police.” Interactive telescreens observe, browbeat, and facilitate the arrest of dissidents. Public loudspeakers blare constantly, hectoring and extolling the virtues of social solidarity.

With recent developments, British reality is imitating Mr. Orwell’s dystopian art.

The government plans to roll out a network of “talking CCTV” cameras – the latest attempt to get the country’s flourishing antisocial hoodlum culture under control. Home Secretary John Reid this month announced a £500,000 plan for 20 loudspeaker cameras to be installed in antisocial hot spots across the country. Based on experience gained in the city of Middlesbrough, council workers watching banks of screens will now be able to broadcast warnings to litter louts, drunks, or those otherwise causing street nuisances.

Since coming to power in 1997, the Labour government says it has recruited more than 14,000 new police officers and 11,000 “community support officers” (basically street wardens with powers of arrest). It has introduced flagship control order measures such as Anti-Social Behavioral Orders (ASBOs for short) for persistent offenders and talked tough.

But real results have been slow in coming. Since 1999, ASBOs have been more honored in the breach than the observance. And other proposals, such as the use of night courts and punishing drunks by marching them to ATMs and making them withdraw funds to pay a fine, have been withdrawn in the face of high-profile public criticism. Police forces across Britain continue to be hard pressed each and every weekend, dealing with alcohol-fueled thuggery.

Stuff of satire, or stuff of civil liberty nightmares, the new “speaker-cams” are probably here to stay and will probably sprout in ever-increasing numbers. Despite mixed results, Britain has embraced anticrime technologies such as CCTV with an unrivaled zeal.

Although crime surveys suggest that improved street lighting cuts crime more effectively than cameras, Britain is today the world’s most watched nation. An estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras now monitor Britons, 20 percent of all such cameras on earth.

In London, pedestrians can expect to be caught on camera up to 300 times each day. The police say CCTV is an invaluable tool in their fight against crime. Critics, such as the British government’s privacy watchdog, The Information Commissioner’s Office, say the country is fast becoming a “surveillance society.”

But it seems ludicrous to expect the real malefactors on litter-strewn British streets to take much notice of talking CCTV warnings – the equivalent of a yellow card in soccer. Real results actually require many more police officers walking British streets, better street lighting, and a zero tolerance blitz on street crime as practiced in New York by former mayor Rudy Giuliani. In any case, Big Brother scenarios aside, one hopes the technology is up to scratch, else the new additions may become the butt of ridicule.

Inaudible and unintelligible speaker announcements – already the bane of many commuters’ lives on Britain’s creaky transport system – are unlikely to make much difference to a Briton inebriated on a Saturday night.

• Ronan Thomas is a journalist based in London.

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Britain must stop acting like an emperor

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

George Monbiot

The disease that afflicts all British governments is an inability to let go. Unable to accept the end of empire, they cling to past glories. However much they speak of modernity and democracy, they cannot help managing other people’s lives, preserving foreigners - often at gunpoint - from the mistakes they would make if they were allowed to govern themselves.

I was going to call this an imperial delusion, but Britain has been remarkably successful at defending its powers. Our government has retained a permanent seat on the UN security council. Its membership of the G8 is unchallenged. Most important, it has preserved its unwarranted share of the vote on the boards of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And it has no intention of giving this up.

In advance of the IMF’s spring meeting (just concluded in Washington), France and Britain rejected any political reform to the organisation, which is charged with maintaining global financial stability. It is true that the fund’s proposals are feeble. It is true that even after far more ambitious reforms the IMF would remain the wrong body, constitutionally destined to fail. But this is not why our government is holding out. It is resisting change because it wants to preserve its imperial rank.

Britain, with 1% of the world’s population, has 5% of the IMF’s votes. Sub-Saharan Africa, with 12% of the population, has 4.6%. Britain’s share equals that of China and India put together. It is five times as big as Argentina’s, 19 times Bangladesh’s, 35 times Kenya’s, 124 times bigger than Malawi’s. The G7 nations - Britain, the US, Japan, Germany, France, Canada and Italy - together possess 45% of the vote. The other 177 members are left to squabble over the remainder.

Even these numbers tell only half the story. The five countries with the biggest quotas - the US, Britain, Japan, Germany and France - are each allowed to appoint their own executive director to the IMF’s board. The rest must submit their candidates for election. Because poor nations don’t know what’s good for them, they are assigned to the tutelage of richer ones. The votes of the English-speaking Caribbean countries are given to Canada. Mongolia is represented by Australia, Kazakhstan by Belgium. The reason that Britain and France are resisting even the most timid reforms is that these would tip them below the threshold for automatic election: like the other countries, they would be represented on the board as part of a bloc.

Power is distributed like this because the IMF is a plutocracy. A country’s vote represents its “quota”, which is allocated according to its gross domestic product. In theory, the quota reflects countries’ financial contributions to the fund. But this is no longer the case, as the IMF receives much of its income from loan repayments from poorer nations. But the old formula has resisted 60 years of complaints. The result is that governments that are never made subject to the IMF’s strictures control it, while those whose countries have been reduced to an IMF franchise have no say in the way it is run. The allocation of votes is a perfect inversion of democracy.

A new report by ActionAid gives us a glimpse of how this unfair distribution of power affects the poor. After years of protest by poor countries and their supporters in the rich world, the IMF and the World Bank at last permitted the provision of healthcare and education without charge. The rich nations also promised, in 2000, to ensure that by 2015 every child in the world would have primary education. It looked like a great victory for the global justice movement. But the IMF is ensuring that the promise won’t be met. It has, in effect, forbidden the poorest nations to hire sufficient teachers.

No one disputes that public-sector wage rises can contribute to inflation. No one denies that governments have to exercise some degree of restraint. But the paternalists who run the IMF - who are fixated on creating safe havens for foreign capital - cannot help micro-managing the economies of the poor nations, without reference to the needs of the people who live there. The limits they have imposed on the bill for public-sector pay ensure that schooling can’t be improved.

ActionAid studied three very poor countries with major education problems: Malawi, Mozambique and Sierra Leone. After fees were abolished (and when the civil war ended in Sierra Leone), vast numbers of pupils enrolled.But a combination of the rich nations’ failure to provide the foreign aid they had promised and the restrictions imposed by the IMF has prevented these countries meeting the new demand. As a result, the pupil to teacher ratio in Sierra Leone is 57:1; in Malawi 72:1 and in Mozambique 74:1. That’s the average; in rural areas it can be much higher. Many of the teachers are untrained, and many give up because they cannot survive on their wages. In Malawi, the goods required for the most basic level of subsistence cost $107 a month. A trained teacher receives $55.

So crowds of pupils strain to hear a scarcely literate teacher somewhere in the middle distance seeking to instruct them without books, chalk, paper or pens. We should not be surprised to discover that 40% of children fail to complete primary school in Sierra Leone and Mozambique, and 70% in Malawi. Most of the drop-outs are girls.

As a result, these countries are stuck in a vicious circle of misery. Until education improves, GDP remains low. Until GDP rises, there is little money for education. As one of the agencies charged with rescuing countries from poverty, the IMF should be seeking to break this circle. But the conditions it attaches to its loans keep these countries in their place. In Malawi the IMF sets the ceiling for public- sector wages directly; in Sierra Leone and Mozambique the broader macro-economic rules it imposes have the same effect.

ActionAid argues that these fiscal targets are outdated and unnecessary: all these countries have now achieved sufficient stability to start raising teachers’ pay. But in no case did the IMF consult either the public or the state’s own ministry of education before laying down the law. The amount of money a teacher in rural Malawi is paid is decided by the men in Horse Guards Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. Except for the district commissioners in pith helmets, little has changed since the country was called Nyasaland.

Last year Tony Blair acknowledged that the IMF “must become more representative of emerging economic powers and give greater voice to developing countries.” But he just can’t let go. The proposed reforms do nothing to democratise the IMF: by linking the quota to purchasing power parity rather than raw GDP, they simply turn it into a more sophisticated plutocracy. But they could have the effect of very slightly empowering some middle-income countries while taking a few votes away from some of the rich ones. And even that is too much for the Emperor of Africa.

If the British government wants to help the poor, it must first give up its power to tell them how to live. Until that happens, everything the prime minister says about “partnership” and “solidarity” with the world’s oppressed is humbug.

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Bush administration pushes for expansion and deepening of police state

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Larry Chin

The George W. Bush administration seized the White House in 2000 by way of an openly stolen election, then cemented its criminal power into place with the unprecedented 9/11 mass murder, and its two resulting abominations: the fabricated “war on terrorism” (the pretext for endless global war), and the USAPATRIOT Act (the full-scale destruction of the Constitution, and the militarization of the US homeland).

The deepening of the war and security state continues unabated and relatively unopposed, in spite of meager posturing of (largely complicit) congressional Democrats. Nothing has been done to stop, reverse or undo the Bush administration’s boundless criminality, its wide open corruption, or the absolute and systematic rape of law itself. Few if any of Bush’s criminals have been brought to justice.

Three new examples leave no doubt:

• In yet another attack on the separation of powers, the Bush administration is pushing for a “war czar”, giving the White House even more centralized war power, over and above the power it already wields through the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA. Through the concocted war and intelligence “czars,” the White House inner circle — Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc. — wields total dictatorial power, and the power to bypass and silence any hint of opposition from the rest of the government.

Mike McConnell, the National Intelligence Director (intelligence “czar” himself) is pushing for greatly expanded power to spy on US citizens and potential “terrorists.” McConnell is requesting more warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of US citizens, and more spying without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court approval or other court orders.McConnell is also demanding that telecommunications companies receive immunity from civil liability for “cooperating” with the Bush administration. Two companies, AT&T and Verizon, now face lawsuits for handing phone records to the NSA. AT&T’s “secret rooms” provided the Bush administration direct access to the lives of US citizens.

See: “Bush administration caught red-handed spying on US citizens”

The Bush administration wants not only the full legal authority, but the permission, to violate and destroy the lives of anyone it targets.

• It is a fact, detailed in a new investigation by Jeremy Scahill, that Blackwater, the private mercenary firm, manages and runs many aspects of the Bush administration’s criminal wars all over the world, as well as domestic “security” operations (such as police operations in the post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans). Blackwater, one of the many poison-fanged corporate military faces of Bush-Cheney’s neocon political apparatus, headed by hardwired Bush-connected neocon military-intelligence figures, is above the law — not controlled by either the US military or the US Congress. Blackwater, which is thriving, and building new facilities all over the world, including the United States, is the face of the new international and homeland security state — a criminal state.

As written by Mike Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon, “American fascism is something different now. It’s not just private, elite control over the legal system, nor private evasion of the rule of law. It’s a crisis-induced transition from a society with a deeply compromised legal system to a society where force and surveillance completely supplant the system.”

Consider the system supplanted.

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Have Your Say: Bush administration pushes for expansion and deepening of police state
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Ecuador Votes For Revolutionary Change

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Stephen Lendman

Ecuadorean President Raphael Correa took office January 15 promising his people progressive, revolutionary social and economic change unlike anything this country of mostly impoverished people ever had before under its right wing only governments beholden solely to capital interests. Correa promised a “citizens’ revolution” beginning by drafting a new Constitution in a Constituent Assembly for which a national referendum was held April 15 allowing Ecuadoreans the right to decide on it, not politicians.

Yesterday the people spoke loudly and clearly in favor of proceeding. The referendum was passed overwhelmingly by 78.1% in favor against a mere 11.5% opposed (with remaining ballots left blank or were void) according to a Cedatos-Gallup exit poll conducted among 40,000 voters with a margin of error around 2% that will be very close to the final official vote count due out in a week according to Ecuador’s Supreme Electoral Council (TSE).

The referendum was monitored by representatives from the Organization of American States (OAS) who judged it fair and open, but that judgment won’t likely silence Correa’s critics crying foul, calling the whole process unconstitutional, and saying adopting the “Venezuelan model” will scare off foreign investors - all false and misleading as eight years under Hugo Chavez proves. Venezuela is thriving economically under his progressive leadership, and Correa now hopes his agenda for progressive social and economic change will achieve the same results for Ecuador and its people. He now has a chance to do it.

Correa is following the same pattern Hugo Chavez chose in 1999 following his first election as Venezuela’s president in December, 1998. Chavez held a national referendum that passed overwhelmingly followed three months later by elections to the National Constituent Assembly. It then drafted the country’s new Constitucion de la Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela giving all Venezuelans a cornucopia of progressive social policies written into law. It appears Ecuador will go the same route with a new Constitution to be drafted later this year that again will be put to a popular referendum to let the people decide on it, not the politicians.

Sunday, President Correa voiced what most Ecuadoreans feel saying “It’s a day of national celebration, a victory for the people, for democracy” as he voted at a polling station in northern Quito, the capital. Correa promised progressive change for his people desperate for it, and as the country’s eighth president (three of them publicly toppled) in the last turbulent decade, he’s committed to deliver it saying earlier he’d resign from office if the April 15 referendum failed to pass. He had little reason to worry.

Hugo Chavez congratulated Correa and his people in his weekly Sunday radio and television program “Alo (Hello) Presidente” saying “Correa will go forward with the support of the great majority. We wish the best for the Ecuadorean people and President Correa, who has heeded with courage and valor the call of 21st century socialism.” The sentiment in Washington is likely to be quite different with public comments ahead barely concealing official contempt for any regional efforts toward real progressive democratic change. But what else would we expect from an administration run by a criminal element with no respect for the law or democratic will of people anywhere. Stay tuned for more developments as they unfold.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sj.lendman.blogspot.com and listen each week to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

Have Your Say: Ecuador Votes For Revolutionary Change
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