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The ‘medical miracle’ that brought near-vegetative brain back to life
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
The mother of a man who was left in a near-vegetative state by a serious assault spoke yesterday of her joy at the “medical miracle” that has allowed him to speak and eat again — and which could benefit tens of thousands of people in a similar condition.
The severely brain-injured patient, who is now 38, was unable to communicate, swallow or make co-ordinated movements for six years, before doctors revived him from this mini-mally conscious state (MCS) with a revolutionary therapy.
Since his skull was implanted with electrodes to stimulate a deep-lying and undamaged part of his brain, he has improved so dramatically that he can now feed himself, brush his hair and recognise and talk to his parents and doctors.
“My son can now eat, sleep, watch a movie without falling asleep, he can drink from a cup, he can express pain, he can cry, and he can laugh,” his mother said.
“He can say, ‘I love you, Mommy’. God bless those wonderful doctors who believed in my son, and gave their time and effort to help my son.”
One of his most impressive achievements has been to say from memory the first 16 words of the Pledge of Allegiance, which is recited daily by American schoolchildren.
The transformation achieved by the deep brain stimulation (DBS) technique, which is already used to treat Parkinson’s disease and some mental illnesses, has raised hopes that it could offer a way back to consciousness for many people with similarly serious brain damage. While there are few reliable figures for the number of MCS patients around the world, doctors estimate that the total runs to hundreds of thousands. The research team will now start the first formal clinical trial on 12 American patients.
“We hope that the first use of DBS to treat patients in an MCS marks the beginning of a significant period of innovation in our approach to trau-matic brain injury,” said Ali Rezai, Professor of Neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, who im-planted the electrodes.
Joseph Fins, Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical Centre in New York and another team member, said: “This innovative procedure holds the potential for patients to recapture a lost personhood as they regain an ability to communicate through a prosthetic device that helps them participate in the human community.
“If this is replicated, its success could usher in a whole new era for the treatment of patients in MCS. Any intervention that can unlock the neurological potential of patients in MCS should have us reconsider how we care for these individuals.”
MCS patients differ from those in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) in that, while they are so brain-damaged as to be mostly unaware of their surroundings, they show signs of consciousness and may communicate with simple signals or respond to stimuli. They retain capacity in parts of the brain that process higher cognitive functions, which are inert in PVS.
It is not thought that DBS would benefit PVS patients such as Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman allowed to die in 2005 after a legal battle between her husband, who wanted her feeding tube removed, and her parents, who wanted her to be kept alive.
The patient’s improvement after DBS treatment was almost immediate. His mother had previously been told that, if her son survived, he would be “a vegetable for the rest of his life”.
She said: “Each time I visited my son in the nursing home on my way home, I would cry, as it’s so hard for a mother to see her son like that, and I’d pray for a miracle . . . In 2005 it happened, the opportunity came.
“I can imagine what other families are going through, when they come back from the war with all sorts of injuries, and I would like to say to them, ‘Don’t give up hope. There is hope’.”
Electrodes used to stimulate key areas
— The first patient to be treated with DBS suffered brain injuries in a robbery and assault in 1999
— He was fed through a tube, could not speak and was barely able to communicate
— Brain scans showed that key regions still functioned and, in 2005, his parents approved the treatment conducted by Professor Ali Rezai and his team
— Two electrodes were inserted through the skull to stimulate the thalamus, a part of the brain that arouses other important circuits
— Over six months, they were switched on and off, in a random pattern, so doctors did not know when he was being stimulated
— The improvement was almost immediate
— The implants now work permanently: they are switched on for 12 hours and off for 12 hours, to allow him a normal asleep-awake cycle
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Police DNA database ‘risks criminalising non-offenders’
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
By Ben Russell
People are being added to the Government’s national DNA database at the rate of more than one a minute, figures from the Liberal Democrats have revealed.
Their research showed that 547,020 profiles were added last year, the equivalent of 62 an hour, leading to claims that ministers were taking Britain into a “headlong rush” towards a surveillance state as numbers on the controversial police record topped four million.
Yesterday the Human Genetics Commission, a government-backed watchdog, launched a major inquiry into the use of DNA records by police. Due to report in the spring, it will look at the size of the DNA database, the large number of black men whose samples are recorded, and the difficulties in removing samples once they are entered into the system.
It emerged that senior police officers have warned the database might criminalise law-abiding people. Alex Marshall, Deputy Chief Constable of Thames Valley, said in a response to the Home Office’s review of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act that “extending the taking of samples to all offences may be perceived as indicative of the increasing criminalisation of the generally law-abiding citizen”.
A spokeswoman for the Commission for Racial Equality said: “Statistics paint a frightening picture. Black men are four times more likely than white men to have their DNA profiles stored in the police national DNA database. In the interests of fairness we would like to call for DNA profiles to be limited to those that are convicted only.”
The Home Office insists that the DNA database - the largest in the world - is a vital tool in the fight against crime. But critics warn that the system could lead to discrimination against ethnic minorities. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, who obtained the figures, said: “The Government’s onward march towards a surveillance state has now become a headlong rush. They seem determined to hoover up the DNA details of as many people as they can, regardless of guilt or innocence.”
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BAA denies seeking blanket ban on airport protest
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
By John Vidal
BAA backtracked yesterday from trying to get one of the widest-ranging injunctions ever sought in Britain and denied it was trying to stop 5 million members of the National Trust and other groups going to Heathrow to demonstrate against climate change.
But BAA, which owns the airport, said it still wanted to ban the Camp for Climate Action, planned for August 14 to 21, because it was intended to disrupt the airport with direct action.
BAA said in the high court that it was seeking a broad injunction to prevent four individuals, Joss Garman, Leo Murray, John Stewart and Geraldine Nicholson, representing four small aviation watchdog groups, from going near the airport.
It argued that it needed to include their organisations and supporters in case they were part of the camp. These included the RSPB, the National Trust, Greenpeace and the Woodland Trust.
“I am seeking to bring within the definition of protesters persons acting unlawfully in the name of Camp for Climate Action,” said BAA’s lawyer, Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden. “We are only trying to injunct people who are acting unlawfully … we only wish to injunct those who wish to obstruct us or prevent us using the airport. We say there are four groups who are intending to have a climate camp - the raison d’être is to disrupt our lawful activities. What BAA does not want is people coming on to the airport to act unlawfully and, on the evidence, these four groups intend to [do] just that.”
Transport for London and London Underground said they had not been consulted over the injunction. Their counsel, Martin Chamberlain QC, told the court that the injunction was “an attempt to bind 5 million people”.
“What Mr Lawson-Cruttenden has said … is that it has been clear all along that the only people sought to be injuncted are the four named defendants,” he said. “It is quite the reverse. It has been clear all along, until the moment we arrived at court today, that in fact the people sought to be injuncted included all the members of the defendant organisations … This is unjustifiable and disproportionate.”
But the judge, Mrs Justice Swift, who said she was a member of three of the groups, said she was confused about what BAA wanted and instructed the company to return today with a skeleton legal argument to justify its case.
MPs and others said yesterday that the company was in danger of making itself more unpopular than it already was.
“This injunction is a challenge to a basic British value,” said Susan Kramer, MP for Richmond, who represents people living near Heathrow. “People who have been quietly opposed to the airport expansion are now getting fed up. This attempt at an injunction against a very reasonable group smacks of arrogance.”
Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, had earlier in the week accused BAA of being “out of their skull” and merely paving the way for hardcore protesters to invade the climate action camp.
The injunction seeks to keep protesters away from platforms 6 and 7 of Paddington station, all trains travelling to Heathrow, the Piccadilly line of London Underground, the M4 motorway and all service stations between junctions 3 and 6. Junctions 13 to 15 were also included.
Protesters would not be allowed to carry wooden poles, stepladders, spades, saws, nails, hammers, ropes, glue or whistles.
The Camp for Climate Action said the protest would go ahead whether or not BAA won its injunction.
“We accuse BAA of abusing people’s rights to freedom of expression and of pushing for the expansion of airports in the knowledge that it will lead directly to climate change and indirectly to millions of deaths,” it said.
The hearing continues.
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Government Technologies Reduce National Security
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News
A German hacker and security consultant, Lukas Grunwald, has again demonstrated how Governments are enforcing insecure technology that puts our security, identity and privacy at risk, while claiming to provide the exact opposite.
Biometric passports containing the highly controversial RFID chips have been shown to be even more vulnerable than first thought as Grunwald managed to crash two passport readers and states it could be possible to reprogram readers to approve forged or expired passports. The exploit will also allow someone to access, hijack and clone a passport holder’s fingerprint, a truly shocking revelation.
It is also possible to create false fingerprints to fool the system but officials bury their head in the sand and remain silent on the issue.
RFID enabled biometric passports were specifically introduced, or so we are told, to prevent passport forgery and increase national security but as Grunwald has discovered, they actually reduce security and provide hackers and identity thieves with a new set of tools to compromise our welfar and allow hackers to override the computer system.
Grunwald stated: “The whole passport design is totally brain damaged, from my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They’re not increasing security at all.”
Last year he demonstrated how easy it is to clone passports.
“If you’re able to crash something you are most likely able to exploit it, I predict that most of the vendors are using off-the-shelf (software) libraries for decoding the JPEG2000 images,” says Grunwald, meaning all airports are susceptible to the hack.
The U.S. State Department had no comment, a telling sign.
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Haneef linked to MI5 probe
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
By Renee Viellaris, Ian McPhedran and Margaret Wenham
FREED terror suspect Mohamed Haneef was regularly in contact with Islamic radicals under surveillance by Britain’s top spy agency MI5.
Highly classified intelligence reveals the former Gold Coast doctor - still considered a person of interest by British and Australian investigators - made contact using medical chat rooms, international phone cards and phone boxes.
The intelligence suggests this was to avoid detection and suspicion.
The leaked dossier, part of the information that formed a key plank in Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews’ decision to revoke Dr Haneef’s visa, alleges the Indian-born doctor spoke to a number of suspects about a “project” and a “purpose” before the failed UK bombings.
However, it’s understood the intelligence does not contain information about a terrorist attack in Australia and only puts Dr Haneef as being on the outer edge of a large group of like-minded people.
But it comes as Indian police intelligence alleged Dr Haneef had links to Al-Qaeda.
He remains under surveillance in India by at least two law enforcement agencies.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty yesterday said Dr Haneef could face further charges.
“It’s still potentially possible that a brief of evidence will be submitted against Dr Haneef,” he said.
And in a significant development yesterday, senior Government sources confirmed that Dr Haneef’s former Gold Coast colleague and Liverpool flatmate, Dr Mohammed Asif Ali, was being investigated over his knowledge of terrorist activities.
Dr Ali, stood down from Queensland Health on Friday for lying about his employment history in India, owned two rubber stamps used to forge medical testimonials.
Dr Ali admitted to the Medical Board of Queensland that he made up about an extra 12 months of experience but it was because he had taken time off to take care of a family problem.
But sources said the AFP were suspicious of his activities in that time.
“(Dr Ali) is a person of interest to us,” Mr Keelty said yesterday.
Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews revealed on Tuesday parts of information relating to Dr Haneef to explain why he revoked his visa.
However, he said he would not reveal “part B” because of the ongoing AFP investigation.
The Courier-Mail reports that the second document contains names of suspects and detail of involvement in planned attacks.
Dr Haneef’s lawyer Peter Russo said there were plans for Dr Haneef to address the allegations contained in the so-called protected information released by Mr Andrews.
“He will be coming out with a general statement about the allegations against him,” he said.
Mr Russo also denied reports that a large party had been thrown for him in India.
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Reviewing Linda McQuaig’s “It’s the Crude, Dude”
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
By Stephen Lendman
RINF Alternative News
Linda McQuaig is a prominent, admired, and award-winning Canadian journalist writing about vital issues of concern to everyone. She was a national reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail before joining the Toronto Star where she now covers Canadian politics with her trademark combination of solid research, keen analysis, irreverence, passion and wit. She’s easy to read, never boring, and fearless. The National Post called her “Canada’s Michael Moore.”
McQuaig is also a prolific author with a well-deserved reputation for taking on the establishment. In her previous seven books, she challenged Canada’s deficit reduction scheme to gut essential social services. She explained how the rich used the country’s tax system to get richer the way it’s worked in the US since Ronald Reagan and then exploded under George Bush. She exposed the fraud of “free trade” (never called fair because it isn’t) empowering giant corporations over sovereign states while exploiting working people everywhere.
She also showed how successive Canadian governments waged war on equality since the 1980s, and in her latest book, “Holding the Bully’s Coat - Canada and the US Empire,” she takes aim at the conservative Stephen Harper administration’s allying with George Bush’s belligerent lawlessness and phony “war on terrorism.” Canada chose not to be part of Washington’s concocted “coalition of the willing” in Iraq but partnered in its war of aggression and illegal occupation of Afghanistan.
Her last book before her latest one is another important tour de force and subject of this review. It’s titled “It’s the Crude, Dude: war, big oil, and the fight for the planet.” It’s no secret America’s wars in the Middle East and Central Asia are to control what a Franklin Roosevelt State Department spokesman in 1945 called a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history” - the huge amount of Middle East oil with most of it believed to be in Saudi Arabia then. With it goes veto power over how it’s distributed, to whom, at what price, for whose benefit and at whose expense. Today, one country above all others may be that “greatest material prize” making it target number one America intends to control for the strategic power and riches it represents.
The country is Iraq, and it’s the reason US forces invaded and occupy it. McQuaig’s book explained it stunningly, beginning on her opening page: The “oil motive” drives America’s wars “given oil’s obvious geopolitical significance, and the fact that Iraq is the last easily harvested oil bonanza left on earth.” More on that below and also on the fact that with less than 5% of the world’s population and 3% of its oil reserves, the US wastefully consumes one-fourth of all oil production with no plan to cut back. It means a reliable outside source is essential pointing directly at the Middle East where two-thirds of all proved reserves are located. They’re not inexhaustible, however, as oil is a finite resource. It means a crunch ahead is inevitable.
McQuaig cited a US Department of Energy National Energy Laboratory report saying: “The world has never faced a problem like this….Previous transitions (like ‘wood to coal and coal to oil’) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary,” and may already have occurred. Further, with America waging two costly oil-related wars for much of what’s left, gaining control has become violent with no letup in sight and more oil-rich nations in Washington’s target queue. More on that below as well and the fact that oil consumption keeps increasing, two huge emerging nations (China and India) need growing amounts of it, just at a time production peaked and is declining. That’s a combustible mixture now playing out in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. It also affects Iran, Venezuela, Sudan (for its Darfur oil riches) and other strategically important oil-rich nations that dare defy America by wanting control of their own resources along with the major share of revenue from them.
McQuaig deals with this timely and important subject in the part of the world where it matters most - the Middle East and especially Iraq where America came to stay. Her book is divided into 10 tantalizingly titled chapters. It was written in 2004, updated in 2006, and is just as relevant now as when first published. Some of the story is known, but much information covered isn’t common knowledge and key parts aren’t discussed at all in the mainstream. They include the rise of Big Oil and OPEC, Iraq’s strategic importance, its potentially immense and easily accessible untapped oil riches, and America’s intention to turn the nation into a centrally located Middle East military base with plans to stay as long as there’s enough oil in the country and region to make it worthwhile. Current talk of future force drawdowns and withdrawal is baloney. That will be discussed further below as well.
McQuaig provides lots of relevant context for a full understanding of why oil centrally dominates geopolitics today:
– wars and the reason America fights so many of them - for the essential resources, mainly oil, to keep the heart of capitalism beating, without which it can’t;
– the dominant media’s vital hyperventilating lead cheerleader role selling them;
– the power of the oil cartel and how it developed and grew after Edwin Drake drilled the first commercially successful well in Titusville, PA in 1859.
– how John D. Rockefeller ruthlessly built a powerful Oil Trust he controlled; how it was nominally dismembered by Theodore Roosevelt’s trust-busting efforts early in the last century; yet how it endured through joint ventures, interlocking directorates, mergers and “working (partial ownership) control” of its separate pieces, the largest of which was Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey, now called ExxonMobil. The old Oil Trust would fit in its back pocket.
– the role of the US auto industry and its addiction to gas-guzzling, hugely greenhouse gas emitting, high-profit SUVs accounting for one-fourth of all US auto sales;
– the rise, fall and reemergence of OPEC;
– the historical roles of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela as dominant oil producing nations and the central role Iraq plays today as the grandest of grand oil prizes;
– the hugely important issue of global warming fossil fuel burning causes; how transportation is over one-fourth of the problem with passenger vehicles the main culprit, and this industry’s accounting for half of total oil consumption;
– and still more in McQuaig’s powerful, riveting, and relevant account of oil’s central importance in our lives. Her book reads like a thriller. But the story is real, and it’s vital to know its contents. Read on for a detailed sampling. Then buy and read the book for the full account.
Fort Knox Guarded by a Chihuahua
The title refers to language about oil-rich Canada that a US investment service, called Daily Reckoning, used in a provocative newsletter article. It said Canada owes us (their) oil. “Without our protection, (the country) is the natural resources equivalent of Fort Knox guarded by a ‘No Trespassing’ sign and a Chihuahua” because our military protects our northern neighbor. That’s likely news to most Canadians for a country with no enemies. Canada, however, is extremely oil-rich, and counting its huge amount of hard to refine tar sands oil ranks second in the world in total reserves.
In her newest book, “Holding the Bully’s Coat,” McQuaig explains her nation is currently the US’s leading energy supplier. Canada’s importance will grow ahead as it plans to triple its oil sands production by 2015 to three million barrels daily, earmarking most of it for US markets. It’s part of a secretly launched 2005 scheme called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) or North American Union.
It’s a tri-national agreement hatched below the radar, controlled by Washington, and advocates greater economic, political, social, and security integration between the US (as boss), Canada and Mexico. In fact, it’s an ugly corporate-led plot against the sovereignty of three nations for greater profits, enforced by a common hard line security strategy already in play in each country. It’s goal is a borderless North America under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate giants, mainly US ones.
It’s also to insure America gets free and unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, but Canadian water, too. That will assure US energy security while denying Canada and Mexico preferential access to their own resources henceforth earmarked for US markets. The scheme amounts to NAFTA on steroids combined with Pox Americana homeland security enforcement partnered with Canadian and Mexican contingents. It adds up to the worst of all possible worlds headed for an unmasked “deeply integrated” police state.
Canada is also currently hamstrung by a provision it agreed to in ratifying NAFTA in 1993. It gave up the right to reduce its US energy exports (should it need more of them) unless it cuts its own consumption by a comparable amount. Oil-rich Mexico, in contrast, agreed to no such provision and got an exemption Canada lacks. Canada has a loophole, though, SPP provisions will close if enacted. NAFTA can’t prevent the country’s use of its newly developed tar sands oil or the right to export them to other nations, as of now. With that in mind, Canada is building a 720 mile oil pipeline from northern (oil-rich) Alberta to British Columbia in the far west. When completed, it will enable resources to be exported to China or any other oil-consuming nation Canada chooses to trade with.
Meanwhile, back in the US, the Iraq war was launched in March, 2003. Dominant media fear mongering helped sell it, giddy cheerleadering accompanied its start, the reasons for going were reinvented when ones first given were exposed as lies, excuse-making now explains why things haven’t gone as planned, and all the while we’re told it had nothing to do with oil. And fish don’t swim, and birds don’t fly. Instead, as McQuaig explained “….the Iraq saga (was to disarm) a dangerous dictator (morphed into) a battle to bring democracy to the Middle East (with) oil remain(ing) strangely offstage, hidden in plain sight.”
Clearly, oil drives US policy because of this nation’s insatiable appetite for 25% of world production Washington feels it has a birthright to use excessively. We now compete with other growing economies for a dwindling supply of an irreplaceable resource we can’t do without. McQuaig noted that prospect looms as “the world is much closer to running out of oil than most government or industry officials are willing to admit.” We now compete with China and India along with developed nations, with China’s prodigious growth alone devouring huge amounts of a fast-depleting resource at current rates of consumption.
McQuaig quoted Edmonton-based energy economist Mark Anielski saying: “There’s not enough oil to feed two (voracious) superpowers.” Enter Canada as already explained above and Venezuela to be addressed later in a separate chapter on that oil-rich nation under Hugo Chavez. For now, it deserves mentioning McQuaig brings him up because he made some “far-reaching deals with China to develop Venezuela’s considerable oil reserves” and build a relationship with the Asian giant to supply it with increasing amounts of future output.
The problem is no matter how much more oil is left in the ground, we’re now consuming more than we’re producing. “Oil is finite and not recyclable,” noted McQuaig, and past experience shows humans aren’t smart or caring enough to figure a way out of this dilemma without making painful changes they haven’t been inclined to do so far. Today, the world runs on oil. It touches nearly all parts of our lives from running our factories to powering cars and other means of transportation to growing the food we eat and much more. McQuaig explained “no energy source in view….is as effective, versatile, and potent as oil.” Yet, the solution to our dilemma is to rely on lots less of it, substituting less ecologically damaging sources like wind, sun and waves.
We’ve already consumed around half the world’s supply, according to many reliable estimates, and have done it mostly over the last 100 years. There may be about one trillion barrels left in the ground, but at current consumption rates it’ll be gone in forty years or less. Also, the easy to find and produce oil is running out. It’s nearly all been found except in Iraq, making that country so attractive. The vast remaining reserves elsewhere are hard to find, expensive to produce and more costly overall to bring to market, like Canada’s tar sands and Venezuela’s heavy oil.
McQuaig noted an oil industry rule of thumb is companies should bring on at least as much new oil as they produce. The industry, however, falls far short of that, and some analysts, like Matthew Simmons, believe the world’s largest oil-rich nation, Saudi Arabia, has considerably less oil left than it claims because it used up so much supplying the West as its swing producer. As supplies get lower and scarcity grows in the face of rising demand, oil prices will also rise, and one Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs, thinks they’re not far from topping $100 a barrel.
McQuaig also raised a central issue she devotes an entire later chapter to - a looming global warming crisis barely getting the attention it deserves although credible climate scientists no longer debate what they know is a major problem demanding attention now. Here she cited a Pentagon-commissioned report describing global warming as a phenomenon “that could transform the world dramatically in the next twenty years….with major European cities (submerged) and Britain plunged into a Siberian climate.” The report also sees a coming plague of “typhoons, mega-droughts and famine” ahead that will bring “catastrophic changes” causing “widespread human strife and even nuclear conflict.”
The Pentagon’s concern is national security, so its top brass are planning ahead for what McQuaig called “the prospect of life on earth reverting to a primitive, desperate, brutal quest for survival” needing lots more Marines available to subdue. That’s no concern at the headquarters of the largest, most profitable company on earth - oil giant ExxonMobil. It earned a record $39.5 billion in 2006 on sales of $377.6 billion, more than double oil-rich Venezuela’s GDP the same year according to IMF data.
If ExxonMobil were a nation, it would rank number 20 in the world (based on GDP) for 2006 ahead of Switzerland and Indonesia and slightly behind Sweden and Turkey. It means this company has immense power and uses it to keep the world consuming increasing amounts of what grows its sales and profits and keeps elevating it higher in the world rankings of countries by size. Notions like global warming, climate control measures, and Kyoto agreements send chills through its boardroom. The company acts aggressively to deny a problem exists or that oil and other fossil fuels are a cause for concern.
Conservative think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute echo the same claim with its director, Myron Ebell, calling Kyoto defenders “an animus against humanity.” Because it gets generous funding from ExxonMobil and other corporate interests, it has every incentive to be dismissive about what there’s virtual scientific consensus on.
Problem or not, the US intends to lock up control of as much of this resource as possible by any means and whatever the consequences. The need for it goes back decades as a “vital American policy objective.” Referring to Saudi oil, the FDR state department quoted above said their resources “must remain under American control (to supplement and replace) our dwindling reserves (when we had plenty of them), and of preventing this power potential from falling into unfriendly hands.”
All American presidents accept this notion, even Jimmy Carter in his January, 1980 State of the Union address as he was about to leave office. He laid out his Carter Doctrine (written by Zbigniew Brzezinski) stating: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
The same theme with a different emphasis came out of Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy task force. It acknowledged a dwindling supply of world oil reserves focusing on the Middle East as a stopgap solution “where the prize ultimately lies.” He had a plan to get it that’s discussed below.
Along Comes Iraq
From inception, the US was always an imperial nation. It was in our DNA from the beginning when our earliest settlers slaughtered millions of Native Indians for their land and resources in our great push West and South “from sea to shining sea.” Jefferson even sanctified it in our Declaration of Independence calling Native peoples “merciless indian savages,” and our Constitution dismissed them as non-persons.
WW II changed everything, however, when America emerged as the only dominant nation left standing. We became the world’s unchallengeable economic, political and military superpower with designs for world hegemony. It emerged full-blown under George Bush post-9/11 whose administration-picked officials designed an imperial grand strategy in 1998 as members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). It revived Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney aide Lewis Libby’s 1992 hawkish Defense Planning Guidance putting in new form a plan for “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century. It also updated the Truman Doctrine (state department advisor George Kennan devised) for “Cold War containment” and an earlier strategy for US global military and economic dominance.
Today, the Middle East, Central Asia and all independent-minded oil rich and other states have replaced the Soviet bloc, and the new evil empire is “international terrorism” and “Islamofascist” threats to our national security. It’s the same old scheme for world dominance repackaged with new names and faces replacing old ones.
Enter Iraq, the Bush administration had designs on before settling into office. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill revealed it was topic one in the early weeks of 2001, months before 9/11 made attacking and occupying it possible. He was shocked to discover the scheme was being hatched secretly by Dick Cheney in the first meeting of the National Security Council held 10 days after the President’s inauguration. The decision was taken with talk moving on to logistics of “how” and “how quickly,” and whether Iraq or Afghanistan was number one or two in our target queue. The latter, of course, came first with Central Asia’s immense resources in mind, but it was just prologue for the “shock and awe” that began in March, 2003 in the land between two rivers in the cradle of civilization, now smashed by intent to free up its oil bonanza for Big Oil to exploit.
Pulling off this scheme meant getting the public on board that works best by scaring it to death with lots of help from round-the-clock dominant media hyperventilating. It made it easy selling the concocted notion of “Enemy Number One” Osama bin Ladin (a former CIA asset), Al-Queda terrorists and the “smoking gun threat” of WMDs showing up in the shape of a “mushroom-shaped cloud.” Former Dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications, George Gerbner, explained how it works: “Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures….they may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities” and anxieties.
Paul Wolfowitz may have inadvertently revealed the Bush administration’s scheme to do it. He first said the WMD threat was chosen for “bureaucratic reasons.” Then he told Singapore journalists on an Asian visit it was the only reason everyone could agree on, and finally he admitted Iraq was chosen over North Korea because it’s swimming on a “sea of oil.” That went unreported in the mainstream where “the word ‘oil’ remained unmentioned and unmentionable.”
When no WMDs were found, the reasons for war were reinvented. Now the emphasis was to bring democracy to the country as a humanitarian intervention, and being wrong about WMDs was chalked up as faulty pre-war intelligence. Again, the real oil motive was kept off the table “in plain sight” as McQuaig observed. It was also to remove a leader unwilling to let his nation become a US pawn, an unforgivable sin in Washington’s eyes, especially if the state swims on a “sea of (mostly undeveloped easily accessed) oil.” Iraq’s oil treasure is the last bonanza of “low-hanging fruit” on the planet making it too rich a prize to pass up regardless of cost or degree of difficulty getting control of it.
McQuaig explained exploration of Iraq’s oil potential remained “frozen in time” with almost no new development in over two decades because of intervening wars going back to the 1980s and economic sanctions in place following the Gulf war in 1991. Yet, even with dated information, it’s known Iraq has at least 10% of world oil reserves. If its potential ends up doubling or tripling, as happened in Saudi Arabia in the last 20 years, it could, in fact, have the world’s largest proved reserves. McQuaig noted that possibility is “staggering” in importance making the country “the most sought after real estate on the face of the earth” according to an oil analyst she interviewed.
In future years, with its production potential fully developed and oil at $50 a barrel (it could be double that or more), it translates to revenue of $70 billion a year pumping 5 million barrels daily and $100 billion at 7 million barrels. Today, Saudi Arabia produces 8 million daily barrels or more if called on. Iraq is also strategically located between Saudi Arabia and Iran at the top end of the Persian Gulf. It’s thus ideally positioned for a military base as McQuaig’s quoted oil analyst observed saying: “Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath….You can’t ask for better than that.”
It makes the country so strategically important, Global Policy Forum’s James Paul argued losing Iraq would have been devastating for Big (US) Oil. It represents “the whole future of the oil industry,” frozen in time, hugely endowed, and easy pickings for the lucky companies able to harvest it and reap immense profits doing it. Because of its importance, the Cheney energy task force included Big Oil giants in its secret discussions making plans for war with Iraq and needing its input for parcelling out its resources afterward. The Wall Street Journal reported in October, 2002 Cheney’s staff secretly met with ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips and Halliburton executives on plans to secure and rehabilitate Iraq’s oil fields. Thereafter, they’d take them over and run them.
From the early 1970s, most Middle East countries and Venezuela’s oil industries were nationalized, and state-owned oil companies still control most of the world’s oil. McQuaig noted “major international oil companies control a mere 4 per cent” but adjusted and prospered under that arrangement nonetheless. In the Middle East, and most everywhere else, they do the drilling and pumping under revenue sharing contracts with host governments.
We now know what McQuaig may have been the first to report in her book - that Washington’s plan for Iraq involved privatizing its oil industry along with everything else in the country already sold off to foreign investors by 2007 or will be. She noted a secret 100 page contracting document drafted by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with Treasury Department help. It detailed a plan to replace Iraq’s state-run economy with a privately owned one. It was a “Mass Privatization Program” calling for “private sector involvement in strategic sectors, including privatization, asset sales, concessions, leases and management contracts, especially in the oil and supporting industries.” McQuaig said it was to “make the country a safe place for foreign investment,” or put another way, a free-market paradise for corporate America.
A state department subtler form of oil privatization was drafted as well with heavy oil industry input. It laid out seven possible production models all involving Iraq’s oil nominally remaining under state control with “operation and control of the oil fields….handed over to foreign oil companies.”
Subtleties apparently were abandoned in the final US-Big Oil drafted “Hydrocarbon Law” scheme filled with secret provisions now before the Iraqi Parliament. It’s hugely contentious as it grants Iraq’s National Oil Company exclusive control of only 17 of the nation’s 80 known oil fields. The others are set aside for Big US and UK Oil investors mainly in a shameless act of plunder. In addition, all new deposits found (the bulk of the country’s oil) are to be set aside for foreign investor development with provisions allowing them to expropriate all earnings and invest nothing in Iraq’s economy. They also have no obligation to hire local workers, respect union rights, or share new technologies. In addition, they’ll be granted long-term contracts up to 30 or more years, dispossessing Iraq and its people of their own resources in a naked scheme to steal them.
Because Iraqi resistance to US occupation is so unrelenting, intense and violent, there’s no way for sure to know how future events will play out. One thing is sure, however. Iraq’s oil bonanza won’t be as easy for foreign investors to exploit as once thought possible and may never be.
The Man to See
In this section, McQuaig details the lucrative business of war-profiteering showing why conflicts are great for business. For companies close to the Bush administration, it was a bonanza waiting to be reaped from huge no-bid contracts. First in line was Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root. Since 2001 in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was awarded upwards of $20 billion in war-related contracts the company then exploited to the fullest with shoddy work, massive cost-overruns and fraudulent billings, most barely drawing attention. Early on, Halliburton’s Iraq oil field repairs were so poor the US Army estimated it cost the country $8 billion in lost production. It also botched a simple job installing metering systems at ports in southern Iraq to protect against oil being smuggled from the country.
In all, well over 70 US firms, most well-connected and many with familiar names, shared in the contracting bonanza - companies like Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, Shaw Group, SAIC, CH2M Hill, the Louis Berger Group, the Rendon Group, and at least 21 private security companies like DynCorp, Triple Canopy, Erinys and Blackwater USA supplying around 100,000 hugely overpaid paramilitary mercenaries (not the official phony 30,000 industry number). They supplement 170,000 US occupying forces providing protection for other war-profiteering companies and Iraqi officials.
Last year, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated the war’s cost would ultimately exceed $2 trillion when all factors related to it are included making it the most expensive war ever adjusted for inflation. Omitting parts of what Stiglitz included, the conservative Congressional Research Service (CRS) June 28, 2007 Report for Congress showed $610 billion already approved through FY 2007 and May 25, 2007 supplemental funding covering Iraq and Afghanistan war related costs and other Global War on Terror operations since 9/11. At that level, it’s approaching the inflation-adjusted $650 billion Vietnam war cost it may, in fact, have already exceeded.
Add an administration requested $148 billion more for FY 2008 and the cost jumps to $758 billion. Projections will likely go higher still with monthly “burn rates” spiraling from about $8 billion in 2005 to a Senate-estimated $12 billion now. Add in an administration requested DOD FY 2008 budget of $648.8 billion plus another $148 billion war-related supplemental for a grand total $796.8 billion - and rising for a bonanza of war-profiteering, waste, fraud and abuse. CRS conservatively under-projects a total cost up to $1.4 trillion for the next 10 years at reduced troop levels ranging from 30 - 70,000 on the assumption America is in Iraq and Afghanistan to stay with major permanent base installations in place and being built to assure it.
Capable Iraqi professionals and workers haven’t shared in the spoils of war and were never part of Washington’s occupation plans. They’ve been denied an operational role rebuilding and running the country’s essential services they can do as well as foreign investors and for much less cost. McQuaig quoted former Iraqi oil minister under Saddam in the 1980s, Issam Al-Chalabi. He’s not Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi who conspired with the Bush administration to plunder his own country, wanted to run it, and is the current oil minister. Issam Al-Chalabi was incensed that companies like Halliburton got contracts to put out Iraqi oil fires and rebuild the country’s oil wells and production capacity. “Iraqi professionals have been doing this for decades,” he said. “They are among the best in the world.”
Iraq’s National Oil Company is also capable of running the nation’s oil industry but will only get a sliver of it if the new “Hydrocarbon Law” passes and becomes law. This was the key part of Washington’s plan for ownership and management that includes all of Iraq’s economy to pass largely into American business hands. McQuaig quoted a Jane Meyer New Yorker article explaining winning contracts in Iraq is the realm of Dick Cheney, and “Anything that has to do with Iraq policy, Cheney is the man to see.” She should have added anything to do with running America, Cheney’s also the man to see.”
Washington always acts in Big Oil’s interest, but the current administration is closer to the industry than any previous one. It’s staffed and run by former oil and other energy industry executives, including the President and Vice-President. Oil is central to US plans for world dominance, but Iraq is only one part of the overall international oil picture, though the most important one of all. Vitally important as well is OPEC, run by its member nations and seen as a threat to Big Oil interests unless co-opted.
McQuaig explained ever since it became an important player in the mid-1970s, Washington tried to “undermine its effectiveness and weaken its unity.” It succeeded because OPEC hurt itself and became less of a market influence after the early 1980s. One Wall Street analyst said “it was on its deathbed” by the late 1990s, until it suddenly began to revive. One man made it possible by 2000, “sav(ing) OPEC” - Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. How it happened is covered below.
Revolution and Ice Cream in Caracas
McQuaig reviewed Hugo Chavez’s dramatic rise to become Venezuela’s president, his Bolivarian Revolution, the transformation of his nation’s oil policies, and his key role in the resurgence of OPEC. Chavez was first elected president in December, 1998 and assumed office in February, 1999. He proceeded to hold a national referendum so his people could decide whether to convene a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution to embody his visionary agenda. It passed overwhelmingly followed three months later by elections to the Assembly to which members of Chavez’s MVR party and parties allied to it won 95% of the seats. They then drafted the revolutionary Constitucion de la Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela. It was put to a nationwide vote in December, 1999 and overwhelmingly approved changing everything for the Venezuelan people.
The Constitution established the foundation and legal framework for President Chavez’s revolutionary vision for structural change. He’s since transformed his nation into a model participatory social democracy serving the needs of all Venezuelans instead of the privileged few alone the way it nearly always had been in the past. It allowed the people to choose their leaders and gave them unimaginable benefits like free quality health care as a “fundamental social right and….responsibility of the state….to guarantee it.” It banned discrimination, established the principle of participatory democracy from the grassroots for everyone, guaranteed free speech, a free press, free elections, equal rights for indigenous people, and mandated government make quality free education available for all to the highest levels, and much more. Venezuela under Hugo Chavez would never be the same again, and the great majority of Venezuelans won’t accept it any other way.
Chavez had another goal as well - to resuscitate OPEC, give oil producing states more power over their own resources and be fairly compensated for them through prices they controlled, not Big Oil. It would thus allow him to implement his Bolivarian Revolution from the greater revenues he’d get from a stronger, more unified organization of 11 significant oil producing nations. Chavez became a mediator to do it and undertook a whirlwind tour of member states to sell his plan to their leaders.
McQuaig explained his idea was based on the simple notion that OPEC needed stable prices kept within a “price band” Chavez proposed to be between $22 - $28 a barrel that today seems low. It wasn’t then with oil prices down around $10 a barrel and less. Making the plan work was doable providing all OPEC nations agreed to abide by it and not cheat as was common for added revenue. The idea was for a united OPEC to cut production whenever prices dropped below its lower band and increase it above the upper one, thus letting basic supply and demand forces do their work. Chavez proposed an OPEC summit in Caracas in September, 2000, all its nations agreed to come, and after discussion signed on to implement the plan.
McQuaig summed up Chavez’s achievement saying: “After being on the verge of extinction only a year earlier, OPEC was very much alive” and still is. Chavez’s vision was “shaking up the international oil scene (but by doing it made) himself persona non grata in Washington.” He’s been at it ever since with his revolutionary social programs endearing himself to Venezuela’s majority poor and working population who now receive essential services unheard of before and unimaginable in America now. He also promotes a bold new trade initiative called ALBA - the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Unlike Global North one-way neoliberal schemes, it’s an innovative “fair trade” alternative based on complementarity, solidarity and cooperation among participating Latin American states.
Chavez’s policies are working. He built alliances with regional states and is using his nation’s oil revenues responsibly with impressive results. He cut poverty in the country to around 25% of the population (when benefits from state-funded social programs are factored in) compared to its 1998 and 2003 post-management-led oil lockout high of 62%. Unemployment also fell from 20% in early 2003 to 8% in May, 2007, and inflation at, current high levels, is dropping as well with government measures being taken to combat it. All the while, business is booming with economic growth the highest in Latin America. It averaged around 10% or more per quarter for over the past three years, and finance minister Rodrigo Cabezas told Venezuela’s state-run ABN news agency the country will exceed 8% growth this year. It’s coming mainly from the private sector that added over 1100 new businesses and industries in 2005 and 2006.
Nonetheless, Chavez is Washington’s Latin American “enemy number one” having tried four times to remove him and failed. McQuaig covered the dramatic two day CIA-orchestrated April, 2002 aborted coup. It caused mass street outrage and unwillingness of the country’s military to go along. Chavez returned to office, survived an economically devastating oil management-led industry lockout, and resuscitated his nation and people impressively enough to win reelection as president last December by a nearly 2 - 1 margin.
McQuaig sat down with him for an extended two and a half interview at the Palacio de Miraflores (presidential palace) in Caracas in March, 2004. Chavez eschews pomp and remains true to his part black, part Indian roots. On December 3, 2006 election day, he drove himself to his polling station in his signature red Volkswagen, accompanied by his grandson. For his interview with McQuaig, he showed up casually dressed, and near the end of the session ordered ice cream for his guest that came in the form of chocolate sundaes topped with cherries.
Addressing questions posed, Chavez stressed the Bush administration was “invaded by madness.” He’s also certain it tried ousting him in 2002, was behind the oil management lockout, the August, 2004 staged recall referendum to remove him that flopped badly, and several attempts to kill him with more planned. He covered much more as well, including his desire for closer cooperation among Global South nations in their common interest to shake off the yoke of longstanding Global North neocolonial domination.
McQuaig also briefly covered America’s involvement with Venezuela after oil was discovered there early last century. Ever since, Venezuela’s oligarch elites and foreign oil interests collaborated to see “the country’s immense oil wealth largely disappeared into private hands, both at home and abroad.” There were occasional flirtations with change with leaders like Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo (a founding member of OPEC) asserting more control over his nation’s resources. Aligned against him, however, were powerful business interests, and little success was achieved. Although the nation nationalized its oil industry in the mid-1970s (along with most other oil producing countries), its state oil company PDVSA was run by Venezuelan managers deferential to foreign oil interests, mainly US ones.
Chavez is changing that and making impressive progress doing it, but still has miles to go toward establishing his social democracy (or socialism) for the 21st century. His task is enormous and involves no less than reversing generations of entrenched privilege and institutionalized corruption in a nation beholden to capital interests closely tied to Washington. He has two vital things going for him though - mass people-power support determined to keep him as President as long as he wants the job and the country’s military on board as well. If Chavez can survive Washington’s aim to remove him, he may remain Venezuela’s leader for many years to come.
From Coffins to World Destruction
Here McQuaig dealt with one of the most vital issues of our time getting increasing attention but few efforts to address meaningfully. Today, global warming looms large as an urgent, pressing challenge demanding action now. It emerged on the political radar in the mid-1980s and got world attention at an international scientific conference in Toronto in June, 1988. Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, an unabashed corporatist, was its opening speaker. Astonishingly, he sounded an alarm saying “humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences are second only to nuclear war.”
Early persuasive evidence of trouble ahead began surfacing back then. Today, it shows conclusively that human activity in modern industrial states is warming the earth’s air and surface from fossil fuel burning greenhouse gas emissions causing:
– arctic ice cap melting;
– rising sea levels;
– changed rainfall patterns;
– increased frequency and intensity of weather extremes like floods, droughts, killer heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes and cyclones;
– water scarcity;
– agricultural disruption and loss of arable land;
– as many as one-third of plant and animal species extinct by 2050 by some credible estimates; and
– increasing disease, displacement and economic losses from extreme weather-related events, lowering of ocean pH, reductions in the ozone layer, and the possible introduction of new phenomena unseen before or never extreme enough to threaten human life or ecological sustainability that will when we experience them.
There’s no longer a debate in the scientific community on global warming. The near-majority consensus is the urgency to address it. It was almost as true in 1990 when McQuaig noted the independent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met. It was headed by Robert Watson whose credentials included having been a senior NASA scientist. IPCC’s first assessment report powerfully stated the problem. It said the “greenhouse effect” is real and the earth’s surface has become noticeably warmer since the inception of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.
IPCC was even grimmer in a 2007 report suggesting a worst case scenario of “devastating harvests, dwindling water supplies, melting ice and loss of species (that likely understate) the threat facing the world.” The London Independent’s Information Environment Editor, Geoffrey Lean, made things sound even worse in his article titled “Global Warming Is (accelerating) Three Times Faster Than Worst Predictions” based on new authoritative studies. One is by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) showing CO2 emissions increasing 3% a year now compared to 1.1% in the 1990s. It’s causing seas to rise twice as fast and Arctic ice caps to melt three times faster than previously thought. Another grim study was by the University of California’s National Snow and Ice Data Center. It showed “Arctic ice has declined by 7.8 percent over the past 50 years, compared with an average by IPCC computer models of 2.5 per cent.”
Global warming scoffers abound in a state of denial. They’re in corporate boardrooms, halls of government and a few co-opted climate scientists and some in academia willing to sacrifice their integrity for whatever benefits they get in return. They say the evidence is inconclusive, more study is needed, and the financial costs of action will be prohibitive and hugely damaging to the economy. Watson’s response is “The economic costs of inaction may be (far more) prohibitive,” and many economists doubt addressing the problem will be harmful at all. McQuaig noted 2500 in the profession believe “(S)ound economic analysis shows that there are policy options that would slow climate change without harming American living standards, and these measures may, in fact, improve US productivity (more than making up the difference).”
McQuaig then mentioned a second 1995 IPCC report making their case even stronger, but not as strong as their latest one. Twelve years ago it said increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup is seriously altering the world’s delicate ecosystem. Since then, we got an important, if greatly inadequate first step, with the enactment of the Kyoto treaty. It went into effect in February, 2005 after 141 nations signed it, absent one vitally needed one to make it work - the US when the Bush administration brazenly withdrew from the process in March, 2001, barely after assuming office.
No other administration in US history is more closely aligned with dominant corporate energy interests showing they call many of the shots in Washington. One energy giant especially stood out in the rejection, and McQuaig put it this way: Giant “Exxon….found a friend. The most powerful government on earth had linked up with the richest (and likely most influential) company on earth - and the world no longer seemed invincible.”
One of the leading causes of global warming is a popular product first introduced in the early 1980s, gained popularity in the 1990s, and now dominates the passenger car business. It’s the so-called sport utility vehicle, or SUV, that McQuaig said has “less to do with sportiness and glamour, and more to do with security in an age of fear.” She refered to them as a “mobile version of a gated community (with a) kind of me-first aggressiveness” pushing everything out of its way. Thanks to the power of advertising, their sales soared from a humble start. They now account for one-fourth of new car sales despite their cost, poor fuel efficiency, and the fact that families got along fine without them until Madison Avenue creative geniuses convinced millions they couldn’t live without them.
Here’s the problem. SUVs are huge gas guzzlers, and the transportation sector accounts for over one-fourth of US greenhouse gas emissions. SUVs are exempt from so-called CAFE standards referring to “corporate average fuel economy.” The result is they emit around 40% more greenhouse gases per vehicle into the atmosphere causing enormous damage. And no one needs these vehicles in the first place except the auto industry earning huge profits selling them and not about stop voluntarily. Like the energy industry, the auto sector has powerful friends in Washington as well seeing nothing changes that hurts them.
The global warming issue is so serious it must be addressed and can be if Congress gets around to mandating it with a friendly administration willing to go along. One answer is greater efficiency to achieve what automakers won’t address - making vehicles burn less gas using technology now known to exist. McQuaig noted the Union of Concerned Scientists (USC) said it can be done with current technology, and its engineers did it with their own SUV design that’s 30% more fuel efficient than production models. Auto makers continue increasing vehicle efficiency but use it for more powerful engines and other new design features increasing profits. They reject fuel efficiency citing the cost, but it really comes down to applying their technological expertise where it produces the greatest return.
McQuaig summed up the situation saying it’s clear “the voluntary approach won’t work with fuel efficiency.” With stronger mandated CAFE standards for cars and light trucks, including SUVs, oil consumption will drop dramatically. US autos of all types are now projected to consume 12 million barrels of oil a day by 2020. With easily attainable CAFE standards, consumption could be cut to 7.5 million barrels or a 40% savings. The Bush administration made things worse, not better, by adding a generous new tax measure favoring SUVs in its 2003 $350 billion tax cut. It allowed the self-employed to deduct the cost of a SUV purchase, thereby making them more attractive to all kinds of new customers like doctors, lawyers, accountants, the corner druggist, or anyone able to claim self-employment.
There’s hope for change, however, based on recent Senate action. On June 21, that body passed the first comprehensive bill on new CAFE standards in over 20 years, and it was a bipartisan effort. It wasn’t a perfect one but did raise the fleetwide average fuel efficiency standards for all cars, trucks and SUVs by 10 miles per gallon over 10 years or from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by model year 2020. So far, no action is scheduled in the House so it remains an open question what’s ahead along with what can be expected if final legislation reaches an obstructionist President.
The Great Anaconda
Enter the Oil Trust and man who built it and himself into a hugely rich and powerful business titan and king of the original “robber barons” - John D. Rockefeller. None had more power and wealth or used it more ruthlessly than this corporate predator whose central aim was crushing all competition and making himself omnipotent in the growing oil industry. He did it by “employing a mix of enticement, threats, coercion, double-dealing, lying, cheating, bullying and ultimately using (his Oil Trust’s) massive financial resources to crush opponents” as McQuaig explained it. Sounds about the way corporate giants operate today, except they now have friendly governments and courts making it easy for them. John D. had to work for his power and wealth starting from the bottom and building his oil empire from the ground up.
Early on, he spotted an opportunity to do it shortly after oil was first discovered in Titusville. He and a partner first invested in an oil refinery in Cleveland that became one of the city’s largest. He then bought out his partner and started a second operation, opened an oil-selling company in New York, and consolidated everything into what he called Standard Oil Company. From there, McQuaig traces his rise to the business heights he achieved that included entering into a phony, far-reaching “combination” with major railways called the Southern Improvement Company. It was a scheme for preferential rebates and eliminating competition.
The story goes on to cover a four decade-long account of how Rockefeller built and consolidated his empire, crushing competition along the way ruthlessly but effectively. It came to a head in a New York City courtroom in 1907 when Theodore Roosevelt-picked lawyers went head-to-head in what McQuaig called “a titanic legal battle.” In the end, the government won when the Supreme Court agreed with an earlier guilty verdict. It gave Standard Oil six months to divest all subsidiaries that quickly dismembered the giant company into a number of smaller but still large entities. The largest retained half the value of the original conglomerate. It was Standard Oil of New Jersey, now giant ExxonMobil, the largest, richest, most powerful company on earth and still one of the most predatory and ruthless in the spirit of its founder.
Today, the oil industry is more powerful than ever. It remains “a tightly knit club” through its extensive interlocking corporate ties and a cozy relationship with all administrations. None, however, are more accommodating than the current one run by former oil men and staffed by many energy industry officials making policies favoring them.
How Did Our Oil Get Under Their Sand
McQuaig continued the story as Rockefeller’s spawned corporate empire began eyeing opportunities abroad. There were plenty around with the Middle East as ground zero holding two-thirds of today’s proved reserves with most of Iraq’s still uptapped and uncounted. She explained by the early 1950s international oil companies gained effective control of the region’s oil and sought to get back what they lost when countries like Iran nationalized their industries to get a larger share of their own revenues.
Mohammed Mossadegh was its force as the nation’s democratic leader. He no longer would tolerate the special concessions British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil got in 1901 and had up to his tenure. It greatly advantaged Britain leaving Iran only a sliver of its own oil wealth. His government changed things by nationalizing the company, causing the British to feel he stole their property, that, in fact, belonged to Iran. In response, the international oil companies reacted together and imposed a worldwide boycott on the country’s oil. It succeeded by devasting Iran’s economy, cutting its oil revenue from $400 million in 1950 to less than $2 million in 1952. A Dwight Eisenhower-approved first ever CIA coup followed in 1953. It toppled the Mossadegh government, returned Shah Reza Pahlavi to power, and began his 26 year tyrannical rule that, by all accounts, was as repressive as Saddam’s and far less socially accommodative.
McQuaig called the coup “a defining moment in the Middle East.” It “became a powerful rallying point for anti-Western nationalism. It was embodied in Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt whose advocacy of Arab sovereignty and willingness to defy the West made him a hero throughout the region. It also arose in Iran in the 1970s that resulted in the 1979 revolution. It deposed the Shah, installed fundamentalist Islamic rule in his place, and sparked an anti-Western fundamentalist movement across the region.
McQuaig also traced how oil was discovered early in the last century in the Middle East with the international oil cartel moving in to capitalize on it. She detailed the wheeling and dealing that went on with oil giants jousting among themselves and with rulers of the countries whose oil they wanted favorable terms on to exploit. These powerful companies mostly worked in collusion carving up world oil markets and fixing prices among themselves to their advantage.
McQuaig described how three of the giants, Shell, BP and Exxon, met at Achnacarry Castle, Scotland in late summer, 1928 to end price competition and stabilize world markets. Their leaders “hammer(ed) out an agreement in writing that set the course for the international oil order for decades to come,” lasting through the early 1970s. It was not to compete, but rather to set quotas, maintain existing market shares, cooperate in sharing facilities, and avoid surplus production to keep prices stable.
They brought in Texaco, Gulf, Mobil and Atlantic to tighten their grip on world markets and eliminate competitors by acquiring them. The idea was to assure world production grew at a steady pace, and oil shortages and gluts were avoided. The cartel was in charge reaping enormous profits from their cozy arrangement. It was especially lucrative in the Middle East where oil is easily accessible and production costs very low. It’s hard believe looking back to when Saudi oil sold for $1.80 a barrel, but easy to understand with production costs in the Kingdom at just 8 or 9 cents leaving over $1.70 profit with most of it going to the giants.
Things began changing when Libya’s King Idris “was the first to figure out how to avoid becoming yet another powerless country in the oil companies’ harem.” He began using independents outside the cartel. Current Libyan leader Mu’ammer al Qaddafi took power in 1969 and upped the anti further demanding a 40 cent increase in the country’s share of the revenue. He got it and broke the cartel’s power to control the oil game. At the same time, he rewrote the rules in place to that time. As McQuaig put it: the “aura of (cartel) invincibility was shattered. Inside the harem, things would never be the same again.”
The Harem Takes On the Sisters - The Rise of OPEC
The “Libyan breakthrough” turned out to be prologue for 5 original oil producing member nations (that became 11) to assert control of their own resources through OPEC that was founded in 1960 but had no effective power until the 1970s. McQuaig reviewed its history explaining it “was the brainchild of two men - Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo in Venezuela and Abdullah Tariki in Saudi Arabia. Alfonzo was given responsibility for his country’s oil affairs after 1945 and set “guidlines (to redefine) the traditional (one-way) colonial relationship” the oil cartel had with his country. A 1948 military coup disrupted his plans until he reemerged as oil minister under a newly elected government with much more ambitious plans in mind. His idea was for oil producing states to control the international market for their essential product, and why not. It’s their oil. The idea was simple. Individually, the countries were weak, but together they had collective strength.
Abdullah Tariki had similar ideas in Saudi Arabia. He opposed the oil cartel believing oil producing nations should control their own destiny and assert their sovereign rights. Tariki was highly educated and his country’s only university trained oil geologist. He became minister of oil affairs for the country’s eastern province that was the location of the cartel’s Aramco important Ghawar oil field operations. In that capacity, he saw how little revenue Saudis retained, compared to the oil giants, and, as a result, wanted to change the rules. How? By having Arab oil states unite to assert their collective strength.
McQuaig noted, Tariki understood the advantage of making “common cause with Venezuela.” He wanted and got a secret gentlemen’s agreement between the two countries in 1958 that “constituted the first seed of the creation of OPEC” that was later born in Baghdad in September, 1960 with five original members having 80% of oil exports among them - Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait.
It was a beginning but not as auspicious as conceived as in March, 1962 Tariki lost his job as Saudi oil minister. It was after King Faisal decided to tilt more toward Washington and adopt more Aramco favorable oil policies as the way to do it. Tariki was out, and the more accommodating Sheikh Zahi Yamani was in. McQuaig described him as a “charming, urbane, thirty-two year old lawyer….who loved New York and Western culture,” and enjoyed lots of it in his new job. Alfonzo in Venezuela lost his job as well, and OPEC would never live up to his vision for it. However, McQuaig explained “it would soon at least ensure that its members were admitted to the feast.”
Things then changed dramatically in 1973. Supplies were tight, and the notion that oil producing nations should control their own resources gained prominence in the Middle East. Industry nationalizations began occurring, and in October, 1973 OPEC nations demanded much higher prices. They got them at a time of anger over the West’s support for what became known as the “Yom Kippur War.” Egypt and Syria fought it against Israel between October 6 - 26 and almost won, save for the help from America that turned Israeli defeat into victory. People old enough to remember recall the energy crunch and long gas lines when prices rose from $3 dollars a barrel in steps to $11.65 and Saudi Arabia cut off shipments to the US until March, 1974.
Angst and rising prices in America affected politics in Washington, but the oil companies loved it. Industry profits rose “beyond anything they’d seen in the previous thirty years (raising the speculation) what role the companies” may have had orchestrating the whole scheme that benefitted them and oil producing states hugely at the expense of oil consuming nations. As borne out later, they played an important role. In the face of recession, demand fell and production was adjusted down to meet it while keeping prices high. They’re now around $70 a barrel that in 1973 dollars would only be in the mid-teens and would have to hit $100 a barrel to match the $38 dollar price in 1980.
McQuaig noted, all in all, “as pressure tactics go, the (1973 - 74) oil embargo was pretty mild (and long) gas lines may have been annoying, but nobody died in them.” Of greater significance was where the extra revenue ended up. It was in “the wrong part of the world” with it rising from $22 billion in 1973 over fourfold to $90 billion the following year and far higher after the huge additional price hikes following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. It made oil producing states rich but got them to recycle much of their surplus back into Western investments, and in the case of Saudi Arabia, in particular, into huge dollar purchases of US weapons as well.
McQuaig then explained OPEC’s reformist zeal waned after Saudi King Faisal’s 1975 death that had “far-reaching consequences for both OPEC and the world.” New Saudi King Fahd tilted toward a “special relationship” with Washington and became accommodating on the amount of oil it would produce to please his powerful ally responsible for his security. It meant OPEC’s power as a unified force was gone.
King of the Vandals
In 428 AD, the title belonged to Geiseric the Lame (or Genseric) who ruled for 50 years and transformed his Germanic tribe into a major Mediterranean power after he invaded North Africa to pillage and plunder. A more notable predator, Alexander the Great, did it a century earlier and others like the Ottomans, Mussolini and Hitler took their turns later on. Fast forward to today and you get the picture about a modern-day plunderer doing the same thing for much greater stakes than Genseric or Alexander could have imagined.
For the past three decades, Washington’s attitude toward the Middle East hardened with some in the capitol believing America has a birthright to the region’s oil, and we’ll send in the Marines any time we choose to claim it. So we have, but with consequences partly anticipated in a 1975 US Congressional Research Service study assessing the difficulties of occupying the region for its resources. McQuaig explained it concluded “seizing oil installations intact, securing them (possibly for years), operating them without the owners’ assistance, and guaranteeing safe passage overseas of supplies and petroleum products….would be possible only if there were minimal damage to oil installations and no Soviet armed intervention” intervened, and no armed resistance now.
At first, the strategy was to arm and rely on local powers, like Iran under the Shah and Saudi Arabia, to serve as proxy forces along with neighboring Turkey and Israel. Chomsky notes these nations were to be what Nixon called our “cops on the beat - the local gendarmes” to keep order in the neighborhood. We still have them mainly in Israel and Turkey, but after the 1979 Iranian Revolution the decision was taken to assume a more direct role in managing our regional interests that moved us “a step closer to establishing…military control over the area.”
The Carter Doctrine, noted above, threw down the gauntlet in 1980. It led to the establishment of the Rapid Deployment (flexible, quick response) Force (RFD) that became the US Central Command (CENTCOM) in 1983, focused mainly on the oil rich Middle East.
McQuaig also reviewed the rise of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It began with a violent Baathist party coup in 1963. Saddam took part in it that led to his assuming power in 1968. He was a nationalist unwilling to sell out Iraqi sovereignty to Western interests making him a target from the start. The lord and master of the universe tolerates no outliers, and Saddam was a considerable one. He began nationalizing Iraq’s oil fields in 1972 and finished doing it in 1975. The oil cartel saw this as “an unpardonable crime” requiring action that was delayed by the Iran - Iraq war of the 1980s. The Reagan administration saw an opportunity and used Saddam against its greater Iranian enemy hoping they’d both destroy each other, and we’d step in and pick up the pieces.
Once the war ended in 1988, things changed and plans were drawn for Saddam’s removal that resulted in the 1991 Gulf war, 12 years of hugely destructive economic sanctions, and the March, 2003 invasion and occupation. US control of the region’s oil as the goal was already explained above because it has the mother lode amount of world supply, and by 2010 Muslim states will have about 95% of remaining light oil. Bush administration belligerency has now raised the stakes. It increased Muslim anger against the West, Washington in particular. If it continues growing, the longer term odds are that America’s grip on the region will slip and could end up lost.
It’s hurtling that way today as the prospect of war with Iran looms that may be a nuclear one. If it happens, it may engulf the whole region and entire Muslim world. CIA’s assessment of the prospect is blunt. If the US attacks Iran, Southern Shia Iraq will light up like a candle and explode uncontrollably throughout the country. It will also affect the Shia oil rich part of Saudi Arabia producing a tsunami of Shia rage everywhere that may unite the entire Muslim world in fierce resistance to America that would have very dire consequences when it comes to oil and the interests of Big Oil giants that prefer peaceful negotiations to open confrontation they fear will make them big losers in the end. That’s the state of things today thanks to a modern day Genseric. He lasted 50 years. Mr. Bush may not finish out his term in office with growing cries for his head.
Vroooooom
It’s McQuaig’s last word on the subject referring to Americans insane belief we have a birthright to drive hugely gas-guzzling “18-wheelers that accelerate like racing cars” and shove the world out of our way doing it. She focuses on Bush administration policies in the wake of the 9/11 attack. It changed everything but left the most important issues unaddressed. There’s little debate over how centrally important oil is that government and industry focus on but the major media ignore. Controlling world supplies tops the list of strategic aims starting in the Middle East and headquartered in the richest of prizes in Iraq. There’s no chance whatever we’d be there if the country’s main export was olives instead of oil. Then there are nonsensical issues of removing a dangerous dictator and bringing democracy to the region in the form of a humanitarian intervention. Unmentioned is America does no such interventions, and our aim is to subvert democracy, not bring or support it. That’s how the rules of imperial management work.
There are further vital issues unaddressed and unmentionable in public as well. What’s the real motive behind America’s “war on terrorism” that’s quite different from the fictional media account we’ve gotten since it was launched right after the 9/11 attack. Few in the West know “Enemy Number One” bin Ladin was a CIA asset (not an agent) recruited through Pakistan’s ISI to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the idea one sickly man in a cave outwitted the entire $40 - $50 billion-a-year American intelligence establishment is preposterous.
He and Al-Queda have been assets ever since. They’re used to scare the public to death and provide a pretext for the Bush administration’s permanent war on the world and against the homeland. It’s in the form of hugely bloated military budgets and adventurism, oppressive police state laws and loss of civil liberties, the greatest ever wealth transfer in history from the public to the rich, and the systematic dismantling of what remains of an imperfect social state Americans were once proud of nonetheless. That’s all sacrificed for the greater aim of unchallengeable world dominance and an unrestrained use of military power maintaining it. It’s all for the sake of making the world safe for capital and limitless amounts of energy resources needed to make it hum and grow.
We know incontrovertibly the Afghan and Iraq wars were planned well in advance of September 11, 2001 to kick things off. We were practically signaled they were coming in 1998 by the Project for a New American Century schemers. They stated their wishes for a revolutionary hard line transformation of the nation that would be long in coming “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor” that, low and behold, happened that fateful day. The “shock and awe” on Afghanistan began four weeks later, moved to Iraq in March, 2003, never stopped, and now everyone’s paying for it and targeted if we get in the way.
The danger today is greater than ever as the Bush regime may have more ominous schemes in mind to bail itself out of its disastrous Middle East adventure. It may even be extreme enough to be unthinkable - using another major terror attack some analysts and DHS Secretary Chertoff think is inevitable as a pretext to declare martial law in the name of national security and end a functioning democracy as we know it.
Consider that compared to our claimed birthright to control and consume limitless amounts of the world’s dwindling resources and emit enough greenhouse gases to destroy it way in the future that’s someone else’s problem. McQuaig concluded her important book explaining that “efficiency is our god (but) when it comes to the engine of the modern economy - energy” - efficiency is discarded. Workable solutions abound at least effective enough to mitigate our wasteful consumption habits, but volunteer methods to achieve them won’t work. Mandating them along with convincing the public they’re important is the only approach that can succeed and will if implemented. If they are, the savings will be dramatic and enormous.
If not, we face an eventual ecological calamity too dire to imagine. In addition, they’ll be huge economic costs according to one analyst McQuaig cited. He believed it could cost America 1 - 2% of GDP annually and the world $1 trillion a year at least and likely much more. And it will only get worse in the out years. Global warming is far and away the single greatest environmental threat to the planet, second only to a nuclear winter. Rich and poor alike will be victims because “We’re all in the big greenhouse together.” It’s the moral and survival challenge of our age with no time to waste implementing a solution. Everyone’s future depends on it as does ending our resource wars that will destroy us if we don’t. “It’s (all about) the Crude, Dude,” and we better not forget it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his web site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The MicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.
Have Your Say: Reviewing Linda McQuaig’s “It’s the Crude, Dude”
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Secret evidence keeps terror suspects in UK
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
Two suspected Algerian terrorists cannot be deported for reasons that are too secret to disclose, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.
Evidence heard behind closed doors suggests that the human rights of at least one of them would be breached if he were returned to Algeria.
In the case of a third man, acquitted two years ago in the so-called “ricin trial“, the appeal judges said more consideration should have been given to the risk that he might be tortured in Algeria.
The ruling is seen as a major setback for the Government’s attempts, announced two years ago, to deport suspected terrorists on the strength of diplomatic assurances of proper treatment.
The first appeal was brought by a 44-year-old Algerian known by the initial U. After leaving Algeria and claiming asylum in Britain, he spent three years in Afghanistan. Two years ago, the then home secretary sought to deport him as a risk to national security.
U did not challenge the finding that he was a security risk, claiming only that he would face torture in Algeria and would not receive a fair trial. SIAC, the special anti-terrorist court, rejected U’s human rights claims after hearing evidence both publicly and in closed session.
That conclusion was justified on the open evidence, the Court of Appeal said yesterday. But, having heard the secret, “closed” evidence, the appeal judges said they could no longer “express the same degree of confidence”.
The Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, sitting with Lord Justice Buxton and Lady Justice Smith, continued: “We cannot, of course, explain in any detail why we have reached that view. All we can say is that we have been shown closed evidence which is capable of undermining SIAC’s overall conclusion.”
Since SIAC had not adequately explained why it thought the closed evidence did not undermine the conclusion it had reached in its open judgment, U’s case would be sent back to SIAC for reconsideration.
The second case involved an Algerian known as BB. He came to Britain in 1995 and was refused asylum 10 years later.
SIAC upheld the home secretary’s conclusion that BB was a danger to national security. But yesterday the Court of Appeal allowed his appeal on secret grounds. “For the reasons set out in our closed judgment, and on the case as a whole, we are persuaded that the case should be remitted to SIAC for further consideration,” the three judges said.
The third case involved an Algerian, known as Y, who was given leave to remain in Britain in 2001. He stood trial with four others at the Old Bailey from 2004 to 2005 in the so-called ricin trial. Y was acquitted of conspiracy to murder but one of the accused, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
In September 2005, the home secretary decided to deport him as a security risk. Y claimed he faced at a real risk of torture if sent back. Following the European Court ruling in the Chahal case, he could not be sent back to face torture.
Evidence was given to SIAC that Y was entitled to protection under Algerian law. But the Court of Appeal said that SIAC should have sought evidence of what the Algerians might do in practice.
Reliance on an article of Algerian law “without any evidential basis for it beyond the reading of the words of the article led to potential injustice for Y,” the court said. That amounted to an error of law that entitled the court to intervene. Y’s case was also remitted to SIAC for reconsideration.
Gareth Peirce, solicitor for two of the men, said the ruling was a “complete nightmare” for her clients to comprehend. “We have no idea of the court’s reasons,” she added. “The case produces complete uncertainty where there should be certainty.”
But, she added, it was a “red light” stopping the Government sending terrorist suspects back to Algeria, at least in the short-term.
All three men will remain in custody unless SIAC grants bail.
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Special ‘fingerprint’ lamps to boost crime fighting in Kensington
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
By Ian Morgan
Scenes of crime officers in Kensington and Chelsea will have more state-of-the-art equipment to help track down criminals thanks to council funding.
The forensic team, based at Kensington Police Station, is buying new drug testing kits, special lamps to view fingerprints, electrostatic footprint lifting kits, a cabinet to dry exhibits recovered from crime scenes and new digital cameras.
The equipment is being bought thanks to nearly £30,000 of Council funds via the Community Safety Team - a joint Council and police team working with other agencies to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour.
The forensic team is confident the new equipment will increase the chances of bringing criminals to justice.
Cllr Warwick Lightfoot, Cabinet Member for Community Safety, said: “Advances in technology are making it increasingly more difficult for criminals to avoid detection. We hope this additional equipment will make it easier for the forensic team to identify suspects and speed up the process of getting offenders to court.”
Nigel Luff, Borough Forensic Manager, said: “Forensic science is one of our most successful weapons in the fight against crime. Once armed with these new pieces of equipment, we will be in an even better position to identify, catch and gather enough evidence to put criminals behind bars.”
Around £10,000 is being spent on new drug testing kits and training which will allow officers to test common drugs such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis in-house without sending samples off to a laboratory (a much slower process which can be between ten and 40 times more expensive).
These kits will speed up the process of prosecutions, in particular for possession of drugs.
Around £5,000 is being spent on extra torches to help search for fingerprints and bodily fluids, primarily in sexual assault cases.
The forensic team uses powerful torches with different wavelengths - some fluids and fingerprints fluoresce at one wavelength, others will only fluoresce at another. Buying additional torches at different wavelengths increases the chances of finding more evidence and identifying the culprit.
The team is also using £2,500 to increase from three to seven its number of electrostatic footprint lifters - special kits that can lift ‘invisible’ footprints from carpets and other surfaces at crime scenes such as burglaries. Sheets are placed over an area and are electrostatically charged which then lifts dust and reveals the footprint.
The team will be buying a second forensic drying cabinet which dries out wet exhibits - such as damp clothing. A second cabinet worth £8,000 means the team won’t have to travel to other boroughs to use a free cabinet.
Without drying the exhibits appropriately, evidential value can be reduced or even destroyed.
The remaining £5,000 will be spent on digital cameras so that injuries to victims of crime can be seen instantly and retaken if not adequate to allow the case to be progressed more rapidly.
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The CIA proposed that I assassinate Fidel in Chile, Veciana confesses
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
Founder of Alpha 66, identified as an accomplice in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy
It was the CIA that informed Antonio Veciana Blanch, 10 months ahead of time, of a visit to Chile by the president of Cuba; it proposed he should organize Fidel’s assassination, directed him to carry it out in a press conference and provided his transportation with weapons to Santiago in a U.S. diplomatic vehicle.
This was confirmed to a Miami radio station by Veciana himself who, aged 79, decided to confess some of the crimes he has committed over close to 50 years for the U.S. intelligence services in their dirty war on Cuba.
Founder of Alpha 66, identified as an accomplice in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, this killer trained in Operation 40 was convicted of drug trafficking in New York in 1974.
In an attempt to respond to an interview with General (ret) Fabian Escalante Fonts recently published in Granma International, Veciana gave his version of various acts of terrorism in which he was involved on ‘La noche se mueve’ program on Miami radio.
‘I was in Bolivia working for USAID as advisor to the Central Bank,’ the terrorist chief explained on approaching the issue of the Chile attempt in 1971.
The ‘aid to development’ granted to Bolivia by that official U.S. agency linked from its foundation to intelligence activities, was wide-ranging, he reveals. ‘There was a group of us Cubans. I was a banking advisor in the Central Bank. Rafael Dalmau was in the Mining Bank. Charles Bacon who, despite his American name, was Cuban by birth, was in the Agricultural Bank and the CIA had other people working in the Ministry of the Interior.’
A CIA official told me that Fidel was going to Chile
One day, ‘a CIA official told me that Fidel was going to Chile and asked me if I was prepared to participate in organizing an attempt on his life,’ Veciana related. ‘I had been based in Bolivia for four years. I hadn’t read anything about Castro going to Chile until someone from the CIA called me from Peru.’
The U.S. agency took on coordinating the contact with Chilean police conspiring against the democratic regime of the socialist Salvador Allende.
‘He told me that I could have confidence in the two people who were going to visit me on behalf of the Chilean police.’
At various points in the interview Veciana declined to confirm that one of those individuals was Police Colonel Eduardo Sepúlveda. ‘I cannot confirm to you if it was Sepúlveda or someone else,’ he said enigmatically. Later, he insisted: ‘It could have been Sepúlveda but I didn’t know Sepúlveda. They used false names.’
‘These gentlemen came to see me in La Paz and we had two meetings. Then they informed me that effectively, a visit to Chile by Fidel Castro was planned and would probably be quite extensive. They thought that he would be at least two weeks in Chile and said that they were prepared to cooperate…’
‘I was the organiser’
During the three-hour interview, broadcast by three separate stations. Veciana insisted on attributing the leadership of the operation being planned to himself and cast aside his rival Luis Posada Carriles, who was handling CIA operations from Caracas.
‘I was the organizer,’ he repeated, expressing his dissatisfaction with the Chilean accomplices. ‘I asked them for some support that they never gave. I asked them to give me police uniforms, to give me more facilities. And they told me; we’re just going to give you information.’
Where would Veciana find the support that he needed? In Miami, of course. That city contained the large reserve of killers and conspirators constituted by the CIA years back. And heading up that pack of terrorists were his Alpha 66 buddies, with offices on Flager Street.
‘I sent a coded telegram to Alpha 66…. There are people here still who can back that up… To see if there were any men of action prepared to operate.’
Veciana finally decided to travel to the place that is still the sanctuary of continental terrorism.
‘Andres Nazario (Sargent, then head of Alpha 66) received me… We interviewed various people.’
All the candidates realized that participating in an attempt on the life of Fidel Castro was asking them to commit suicide.
‘They weren’t prepared to give up their lives.’
The ‘killers’: Islander Dominguez and Marco Rodriguez
Veciana returned, disappointed, to Bolivia after four days. However, he recalled, a new coded message from Sargent soon arrived, announcing that two individuals prepared to join the conspiracy had been found.
‘I went back to Miami… The two people belonged to Orlando Bosch’s group.’ They had worked with Poder Cubano (Bosch’s group) and in the CORU; they were Domínguez ‘the Islander,’ I think his name was Antonio, and Marco Rodríguez. I provided them with all the means to get to Venezuela and in Venezuela there were certain Venevisión officials who gave me all the facilities.’
‘The plan was to convert the two killers into Venevisión cameramen to subsequently infiltrate them into a press conference to be given by the Cuban president in Santiago de Chile.
Whose idea was that? The CIA’s, Veciana confirmed. ‘They suggested the camera idea… they suggested taking advantage of the conference where 600 or 700 journalist would be present, for the assassination.’
‘CIA personnel participated in preparations fro the attempt: ‘Afterwards the plot was complemented by getting the people who, as experts, were recommended by them: this can be done, this can’t be done… ‘
‘We had somebody who knew about the workings of Cuban press conferences: possibly the people who attended would have to leave their cameras outside and these would be checked. But by using a small weapon and hiding it in a certain section of the camera, when they began to run, the weapon wouldn’t be detected,’ he confessed.
So Domínguez and Rodríguez ‘were trained as cameramen and I got them Venevisión credentials.
‘The preparation of the two terrorists was meticulous.
‘They had to be trained because they were Cuban, they had to know the Venezuelan language… They were in Caracas for 60 to 90 days training so that they would be undetectable as Cubans, but as Venezuelans,’ he stated.
Veciana was then asked: ‘Did these two people receive training as shooters, as killers, as assassins?’
The 79 year old replied with surprising candor: ‘Well, I would call them assassins.
‘They were action men of Poder Cubano who had worked with Orlando Bosch.’
The two ‘assassins arrived in Santiago de Chile ‘long before Castro was due to arrive; in other words, they were there and began interviewing the Chilean government as if they were Venezuelan journalists.’
At the beginning of the interview, Veciana responded to an initial question on the Santiago attempt: ‘I didn’t go to Chile.’ But, on getting into his story of the events, he suddenly told everything about his stay in that country.
‘Yes, of course, I was in Chile,’ he exclaimed and added a strange revelation.
In a U.S. Diplomatic car… with weapons!
‘I left La Paz for Lima in a diplomatic car from the U.S. embassy with the weapons,’ Veciana suddenly admitted on pointing out that other U.S. agents left Lima for Santiago to join the plot.
‘We had rented the apartment in Huérfanos Street in Santiago where they (Domínguez and Rodríguez) were going to pass themselves off as simple journalists and we met up somewhere on the border of Chile and Peru and went from Arequipa, Tagna to Santiago.
‘While we were there, I had a minimum support base of three people who only knew what was being prepared when I needed a certain movement.’
Going back to the story of the idea to blame the planned assassination on the Soviet Union, Veciana gave his own version.
‘Somebody suggested to me: who’s going to be blamed for Castro’s death… Who’s going to make the public announcement? Let’s put the blame on the Soviet Union… That seemed like a good idea to me.’
‘The ‘Islander’ was told to go to a house just to ask for an address… ‘An alleged Soviet agent was living there.
‘He was a professor at the Central University of Caracas who was also a KGB agent… and there was a photographer who took photos so that if there were deaths on our account, it could be stated that these people had been working with the KGB.’
And what was happening, in the meantime, with Luis Posada Carriles?
‘Posada didn’t have anything to do with it,’ answered Veciana with something of scorn for the current hero of the Miami mafiosi. ‘He boasted a bit of his anti-Castro activity,’ he commented, noting that the CIA taught him to keep himself ‘compartmentalized.’
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Report: White House says spying broader than previously admitted
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
Reuters
The Bush administration’s top intelligence official has acknowledged that a controversial domestic surveillance program was only one part of a much broader spying effort, The Washington Post reported in its Wednesday edition.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wrote in a letter that other aspects of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program remain classified, the Post said.
“That is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged,” McConnell wrote, according to the Post.
Bush acknowledged the existence of a program that monitored domestic phone calls and e-mails without court oversight in December 2005. The administration has not confirmed other secret spying efforts reported by news outlets, such as one that searched millions of telephone records.
Bush signed an executive order that authorized “a number of … intelligence activities” following the hijacking attacks of September 11, 2001, McConnell wrote.
The warrantless wiretapping program was put under court supervision in January but the administration now wants Congress to allow it to do many of the same activities without a court order.
The letter was sent on Tuesday to Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The letter was written to defend Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, who has been under attack over his testimony to Congress about the warrantless spying program, the Post said.
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Bush-Brown summit: Tensions but no policy shift by Britain
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
There is a scene in the film Love Actually when the newly elected Prime Minister played by Hugh Grant finally takes a stand against the president of the United States after repeatedly attempting to get him to change policy direction. The denouement takes place at a press conference, in which Grant makes a cringe-worthy defence of Britain as a “small country” but a “great one” before telling the president, “I fear that this has become a bad relationship…a friend who bullies us is no longer a friend.”
Director Richard Curtis was guilty of an embarrassing display of political wish-fulfilment, in which his saccharine and sanitised version of Tony Blair tells Bush where to get off and finally stands up for the national interest. Blair left office leaving such daydreams to gather dust. However, his replacement by Gordon Brown seemed to have brought out the Curtis in a host of British newspapers.
Brown’s two-day visit to the United States was his first meeting with President George W. Bush since succeeding Blair on June 27. Before it took place, there was unanimity across the political spectrum that the “special relationship” between Britain and the US must be maintained, but that Brown must nevertheless distance himself from Bush and strike out on a course towards swift troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Naturally, this would not mean a public spat with Bush—heaven forbid—but the pro-Labour Daily Mirror suggested, “Hopefully, in private at least, Mr Brown will make clear it is time to prepare an exit strategy.” The right-wing Daily Mail called for “some blunt talking” to heal the damage to Britain done by Blair’s “playing the poodle.”
It was left to the Guardian to give full rein to fantasies of an assertive Brown. Its July 30 leader spoke of “a very different British prime minister” who knew “There is little to be gained from bonding with a lame-duck president, especially one about to get lamer as the campaign for his successor gets under way in earnest in September.”
It attached great significance to Brown’s not using the term “war on terror” and noted previous expressions of differences with the US by Brown appointees—International Development Secretary Hilary Benn stating that “the concept of a war on terror had given strength to terrorists”; Foreign Affairs Minister Mark Malloch Brown declaring that Britain and the US would no longer be “joined at the hip”; Foreign Office minister Douglas Alexander arguing “in Washington that multilateral action and soft power would be more important this century than unilateral military action.”
The Guardian concluded that “Mr. Brown can only be looking over Mr Bush’s shoulder to the special relationship he will form with the next—and possibly Democrat—president. In this Camp David, the (cowboy) boot is on the other foot. Mr. Bush has much to gain and little to lose from bathing in the reflected glory of his latest British guest.”
There is, of course, no harm in reading the political smoke-signals. But they should be read correctly. And the Guardian never asks why—after four years in which Iraq has been revealed as the worst foreign policy disaster in recent history and under conditions where Bush is by all normal standards a “lame-duck president,” it is forced to do so rather than report a clear statement of opposition.
Yet they and other newspapers all point to the central issue at stake—Britain’s strategic relationship with the US: One on which it relies in order to punch above its weight on the world arena and in particular to face off the challenge of its major European rivals, Germany and France.
Brown himself was clear on the political constraints this placed on his desire to extricate Britain from Iraq.
Prior to his arrival, he wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post and made other statements hailing the historic “partnership of purpose” between Britain and the US. Describing himself as an “Atlanticist,” he praised “our strongest bilateral relationship” as something he was determined to maintain. “This partnership of purpose matters now more than ever. For if in the last century we fought together to save the very idea of freedom from the totalitarian threat, in this generation we defend together the ideal of freedom against the terrorist threat,” he went on.
Stressing the need for a “battle of ideas” alongside “the battles that engage military might which we have been fighting together in Iraq and Afghanistan and through Nato” was all that could be interpreted as a difference of emphasis with Bush. But Blair too was fond of such remarks.
The Sunday Times had reported that Brown’s chief foreign policy aide, Simon McDonald, had been in Washington “doing the groundwork” by sounding out US foreign policy experts on a possible withdrawal of the 5,500 British troops still stationed in Iraq. But Brown’s spokesman Michael Ellam told the press that the prime minister would not unveil a plan to pull out British troops, and the UK’s approach toward Iraq was unchanged. “Simon McDonald made very clear at the meeting that the British Government’s position had not changed,” Ellam told reporters as he travelled with Brown.
Britain has already begun winding down its troop presence in Iraq, but Brown has refused demands to set a date for the withdrawal of those that remain.
At his July 30 joint press conference with Bush at Camp David, the president’s Maryland ranch, Brown said nothing that would contradict the Bush administration’s position. He stated that Britain’s “aim, like the United States is, step-by-step, to move control to the Iraqi authorities.”
After noting that three of the four Iraqi provinces under British control have been transferred to the Iraqi government, he added, “We intend to move to overwatch in the fourth province.” He then insisted that a scale-down or withdrawal of troops would only be made “on the military advice of our commanders on the ground”—a phrase that chimes in with rather than contradicts the position of Bush.
“We have duties to discharge and responsibilities to keep in support of the democratically elected government and in support of the explicit will of the international community,” he said.
Brown had clearly agreed with Bush that nothing substantive would be said on withdrawal until at least mid-September when the US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is set to deliver his assessment of Bush’s “surge.” Brown thus promised a “full statement to Parliament” on its return in October.
Bush gave every impression of being satisfied that—for the time being at least—Brown was still on-message. “So everyone’s wondering whether or not the prime minister and I were able to find common ground, to get along, to have a meaningful discussion,” he told the assembled press. “And the answer is ‘Absolutely.’ ”
“There is no doubt in my mind that Gordon Brown understands that failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the security of our own countries,” Bush said.
“He gets it,” he added later.
Brown said he had told Bush it was “in Britain’s national interest that, with all our energies, we work together to address all the great challenges that we face, also together.”
He is aware that politically he cannot afford to maintain the close alliance Blair had with Bush and wants to develop broader ties, particularly with the Democrats but also with those Republicans who may replace him as party leader. Immediately after the press conference, Brown went to Capitol Hill for cross-party talks with leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives, including the Democrats’ Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
This only confirms that Britain is barely able to act independently regarding Iraq, or any other major foreign policy question. Like Blair, Brown knows that it is the US that ultimately calls the shots. He only hopes that someone else, other than Bush and the neo-cons, will decide what shots are to be fired and where. This leaves him in the difficult position of attempting to cultivate relations with the Democrats and to seek some change in direction in the Middle East, without unduly antagonising Bush in the immediate term.
It is a balancing act that cannot be sustained for very long. Bush has shown no intention of a withdrawal from Iraq before he is due to leave office in January 2009. And the issuing of Gen. Petraeus’s report is a lot closer to hand.
More decisive still is the question of possible hostilities against Iran, with many leading Republicans including Vice President Dick Cheney pushing hard for an attack on Tehran. Brown has again refused to rule out the possibility of a military strike.
Moreover, those that Brown might rely on as an alternative to Bush offer no real alternative. The Democrats are, like Labour, supportive of a scale-down of troops in Iraq to a sustainable level and a transfer of some of the freed-up forces to Afghanistan. But they absolutely do not want a complete withdrawal and have again and again refused to challenge Bush on Iraq. Expressed in this position is not merely political cowardice, but a common position with the Bush administration that a military defeat for the US in Iraq would be a disastrous blow to American imperialism’s global authority.
It is for these reasons that the Financial Times’s assessment of the Brown-Bush summit was more sober than most. The prime minister was attempting to make a “subtle recalibration of the special relationship, attempting to widen the focus from his relations with a neo-con president” and “build links across the political divide, in part to try to ensure good working relations with whoever succeeds Mr. Bush next year.”
It continued that “none of this is intended as a snub to the White House. Mr. Brown stamped on suggestions from his newly appointed ministers that he wants any cooling in relations with the president. Whether he can successfully maintain this stance, while still building US ties that extend beyond the current Bush administration, remains to be seen.”
Matthew Tempest also acknowledged in the Guardian, “The real test of where Mr. Brown stands will come…if the US strikes Iran.”
In the cold light of (the following) day, the newspaper’s editorial response to the summit was also more guarded. Whereas Brown secured “a working relationship, free of sycophancy” and pulled “the clothes over to Britain’s side of the be,…[t]he reality in Iraq will not be finessed by cleverly worded answers at press conferences.
“The American command has already prepared a detailed plan to fight on for another two years. The only issue they face is how many troops they can withdraw in the process…. The US fear is that if Britain withdraws most of its remaining 5,500 troops from the south before that date, more US troops would be needed to protect supply lines to Kuwait. In Iraq, at least, the two nations will continue to act as if they are joined at the hip.”
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Banks guilty as charged
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
COMPUTER COCK-UPS THAT SINK CUSTOMERS
Much of the misery created by rip-of f overdraft fees is caused by banks’ blunders.
Customers are often pushed into the red by computer cock-ups and shoddy service. Sky-high charge sand interest compound the problem, as people spiral into debt.
And banks then make their reputations worse through their unsympathetic handling of complaints.
Here Mirror Money highlights two worrying examples of the problems:
Bungling bank staff left a keen sailor high and dry 130 miles from home when Natwest accidentally took money from customers’ accounts twice.
Jeff Bartleman was stranded on the south coast after a sailing trip when the bank’s computer system starting charging twice for card transactions.
He was one of hundreds caught out- but his plight left him over drawn, with no access to funds, and his card being refused. Even though Natwest admitted its mistake when Jeff explained he was stuck, staff refused to give him access to cash.
Instead, they suggested he take a£200 taxi journey back to Chelmsford, Essex, where he kept emergency cash at home.
Operations manager Jeff said: “They were just unwilling to listen to our plight. I’ve been a customer for years but they didn’t want to help.
“In the end we had to beg for the money from a friendly shopkeeper.”
Jeff paid his £350 council tax bill by phone on Thursday, then drove to Portsmouth. On Saturday, he went shopping with his wife Jacqueline, but his card was declined.
He checked his balance and found he was £50 overdrawn and called his bank, who admitted the council tax was taken twice in error. Jeff and Jacqueline have no credit cards, and just one account - and no money to fill up the tank of their Jaguar.
His account is one of 5.3million in the UK which has a Solo card.
These are like Switch cards, only every single transaction goes back toa bank to be approved.
“I’m not supposed to be allowed to go over drawn. That’s why I have a Solocard,” said Jeff, 48.
“I always leave enough money in my account to ensure I can pay my bills. All I wanted was the money I earned returned to me.”
Natwest apologised and refunded customers.
Hsbc bosses have launched an urgent revamp of overdraft policy after a computer system charged a customer twice when she accidentally went into the red.
Its much-praised fair fees policy promises customers will not get unauthorised overdraft charges if they go less than £10 over their limit or have not been overdrawn in the past six months.
It also pledges not to charge more than customers are overdrawn.
Yet 25-year-old Sarah Widdicombe from London picked up two £35charges in a month when she went overdrawn twice by £5.50 a time, despite putting money in to her account within 24 hours of being in the red both times.
Finance administrator Sarah said: “I didn’t think it was fair I could be charged twice for such a small amount.”
Hsbc’s fair fees policy - introduced after consumer campaigns to reclaim bank charges - should have stopped Sarah being charged twice.
But two small purchases on one day put her over the overdraft buffer.
After Your Money contacted the bank bosses admitted the charge was confusing, launched an investigation and is now reprinting its policy.
A spokesman said: “This should definitely not happen. We are very proud of our policy and do not want customers to be confused.”
They refunded all her charges.
Natwest admitted mistake but still left Jeff stranded
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Impeachment as Political Solution to Iraq War
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
It has become cliché to say that this Iraq war cannot be won militarily. Equally comfortable with this admission are hawks who would turn on a dime if they thought the insurgency was capable of collapsing, and doves whose primary objection to the war is its “mismanagement”.
Trouble is it never really was a war because there was no opposing side. What was there was known to be easy picking – minimally armed and quickly demoralized. Mischaracterizing it as a war appears to give credibility to certain concepts such as self-defense (none was needed), appears to justify curtailment of civil liberties (what are they worth if they can be taken away anyhow?), and appears to give meaning to concepts such as winning and losing (you don’t win something you couldn’t lose).
Extending the train of thought from the mentioned cliché, that the war cannot be won militarily, the war is now said to require a “political solution”. Improperly framing Iraq as a war benefits those responsible for it and obscures the clearest path to a saner future. If instead Iraq was framed as the armed assault that it was (billed as “Shock and Awe”), there is a logical, expedient political solution at our disposal – impeachment.
A political solution will have to envelope a perspective greater than that bounded by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Americans may not be fully convinced of the illegality and immorality of our invasion but the rest of the world, especially the affected, is overwhelmingly so. It is unrealistic to think that the very government that displays such unbridled hostility to Iraq, Iran, and Syria can somehow be accepted as a legitimate interlocutor. In foreign eyes, we cannot be trusted to come up with any solution that will ameliorate the deep-seated animosity toward us that was generated by our use of force, and our continuing menace of more force.
A just solution won’t come without a cleansing and we are fortunate to have one handy. Impeachment will tell a story about how and why we started an aggression. It will contain sub-plots about indefinite detention and torture and the means of repression here at home, including the suppression of dissent.
This story will make us better off for the telling. It is the surest way to win the “hearts and minds” of those our present government treats as if they had no hearts and minds at all. If we are willing to impeach our president and vice president, we are willing to admit that our country has done wrong. Admit this and forget the rest.
James Rothenberg - jrothenberg@taconic.net
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Police want ‘Tesco jails’
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
By
Police and retailers are backing proposals for short-term “Tesco jails” for shopping malls and major sporting venues as a way of speedily dealing with shoplifters, drunks and football hooligans.
Mobile units would also be used to deal with protesters at key defence installations and to tackle suspects detained during disorder at major railway stations or at entertainment centres. Retailers called for the short-term jails to be compulsory at all shopping centres to help to tackle shoplifting, which cost £767 million in England and Wales last year.
Suspects could be held for up to four hours in the units to allow police to establish their identity, take a DNA sample or handout a reprimand or caution.
But magistrates and lawyers expressed concern at the idea and insisted that there would have to be safeguards to ensure high standards of care for those held in the units.
Police and shops’ backing for the development of a network of “short-term holding facilities” was disclosed yesterday when the Home Office published responses to a consultation paper on modernising police powers issued earlier in the year. The aim of the facilities is to help police to process high-volume crimes such as shoplifting, large-scale public disorder and big protests and get officers back on the streets more quickly.
“From an operational perspective, benefits were seen in enabling custody facilities to be located in areas of high offending and for access to those facilities during periods of high demand,” the Home Office summary of the response said.
Several police forces called for the units to be more widely used and saw benefits in mobile facilities which could be deployed anywhere.
Sergeant David Warren, of Kent Police, said that the concept of a short-term holding centre was exactly what forces such as his needed.
“Short-term holding facilities should not be restricted to shopping centres, but should be an option that the police should use at other facilities such as smaller police stations, sporting or entertainment centres, hospital sites or local authority sites,” he said in the force’s response.
The British Retail Consortium said: “It should be compulsory for retail shopping centres to provide these facilities and it is vital that they operate against strict criteria.”
But the consortium said that it did not want to end up “becoming a babysitting service” for people who had been taken into custody.
It said that retailers would provide space for the cells but the funding, upkeep and management should be by the local police service. Discussions have already started about building a “retail” jail inside Selfridges, in Oxford Street, London, after the store offered redundant space to the police. Suspects would be held in a small room with a clear plastic front so that they were visible to custody officers.
The Ministry of Defence called for mobile units that could be moved swiftly to the scene of large-scale disturbances and protests.
It would allow MoD police to process protesters without having to travel to police stations with suspects.
But while the proposal won support from some forces as a way of easing the burden on officers, magistrates expressed serious reservations.
Sonia Andrews, of the Magistrates’ Association, expressed “serious concerns” that “speed is being put before the individual and [the short-term jail system] is a downgrading to the entire approach to crime”.
Sue Johnson of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association said that short-term jails would be “rapidly abused and overcrowded”. She said: “If someone is to be detained, they should be detained properly and humanely.”
The Home Office admitted that developing a network of short-term jails raised significant public concern. It is to bring forward more formal proposals early next year and hold a three-month consultation on reforms.
“Moving away from the standard that a designated station provides should only be considered with significant caution and any departure would need to ensure its own high level of protection,” the Home Office document said.
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Police chief singled out over De Menezes shooting
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
Two years after police shot dead the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, it finally appeared that some criticism would be levelled at the authorities last night, after the apparent leak of an official report into the incident.
It was reported that the Independent Police Complaints Commission would today single out Andy Hayman, the head of counter-terrorism and intelligence, for being deliberately misleading about events surrounding the shooting, which took place after the July 7 suicide bombings in London and a failed attempt two weeks later.
The Guardian said Sir Ian Blair will escape serious censure from the investigation - “Stockwell2″ - because he was not told about the incident until the morning after it happened. In that time Mr Hayman had overseen a process in which police maintained for hours they had shot a “terrorist”.
Mr Hayman is apparently accused of not passing on to Mr Blair doubts that were emerging about whether the victim was a genuine terrorist target. It was only 24 hours after the shooting that police admitted De Menezes was innocent.
The Stockwell shooting could yet turn into one of the great public scandals of the decade. Initially, police - who blacked out elements of the CCTV footage - claimed that de Menezes was in a bulky coat and sprinted over the underground barrier. These claims turned out to be false.
One officer was urinating by De Menezes’s block of flats while he emerged, to be followed by officers on to a bus, the Tube and down into Stockwell station, where he was shot seven times in the head at point blank range.
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