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Current financial crisis was topic of Bilderberg 2006

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

The current financial crisis that has happened due to the Sub prime mortgage crisis was a main topic at Bilderberg 2006 in Ottowa.

The green & cooperative movement with the libertarian hold the key to a transition from the corporate class if we work together to take over.

The current financial crisis that has happened due to the Sub prime mortgage crisis was a main topic at Bilderberg 2006 in Ottowa. Sub prime is basically people with bad credit ratings etc taking on house loans at higher rates by companies who have recently crashed with Northern Rock & other institutions funding these companies.. Top bankers & industrialists have access to information most people don’t & make money out of financial crisis & war, whilst others suffer.
 http://www.bilderberg.org/2006.htm
Bildbergs twin organisation the Trilateral Commission set up by leading banker David Rockefeller in 1973 a year before G8 to add asia fully into the corporate fold will be meeting at the end of april 2008 in private in Washington, no venue as yet confirmed.
 http://www.trilateral.org/recent.htm
We all know our so called democratic goverments are run to the heed of the corporate elite, but until now they have been well hidden.
They need to be revealed & their needs to be transition of power from this corporate class to global citizenry run via consensus & delegation asap to stop the many real crisises we face. The green & cooperative movement with the libertarian left & unions hold the key to a transition from the corporate class if we work together to take over. Using ballots is one way of doing this, though where governments have taken power by force or rigging we need our popular movements to take it.
Although there scarey stories about of theses organisations, I have been to protest&observe some of their conferences & the atmosphere& security was less intimidating than G8’s.

The G8 Tyranical Commissions & Corporate Hegemony

 https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/01/360479.html?c=on#c164886

The G8 was founded in 1975,its conception though happened in meetings
well before, Valerie d’Estaing the president of France initiating the
original G5 in Ramboiullet taking his lead from a more powerful private
organisation described below that during the cold war remained hidden,
since1975 d’Estaing has attended this more powerful organisation &
written documents for it with Kissinger.
The concept of a influential forum for the world’s major industrialized
democracies emerged following the OPEC oil crisis and subsequent global
recession. The Supranational Trilateral Commission “lobbying group” is a
private organization,the top of an oligarchical empire founded at the
initiative of head of the Rockefeller Trust & the worlds top corporate
bank Morgan ChaseDavid Rockefeller, who pushed the idea of including
Japan as an extension of the Bilderberg meetings, but was he was
rebuffed by other NATO members. Along with Zbigniew Brzezinski and a few
others from the Brookings Institution, Council on Foreign Relations &
the Ford Foundation, he convened initial meetings from which the
organization grew. Trilateral commission was officially founded in
October 1973,but it was in July 1972 the first major planning meeting
was held at Rockefeller’s Pocantico compound in New York’s Hudson
Valley. It was attended by about 250 individuals who were carefully
selected and screened by Rockefeller and represented the very elite of
finance and industry. Like the G8 the Trilateral Commission is
advertised as an informal forum & as with G8 we know that when powerful
corporations gather together behind closed doors it is very formal &
very undemocratic, the G8 administrative structure is made of the
participants civil servants. The Trilaterals administrative structure is
made of corporate think tanks like the Council in Foreign Relations,the
extreme right use their existence as proof of a one world
satanic,illuminati,socialist government & their propaganda zeal has
sadly frightened away true research & protest.

Trilaterals first executive committee meeting was held in Tokyo, October
‘73, this date should be known as that of a global coup against hard won
limited democratic rights earnt after world war 2& into the 1960’s..
Rockefeller & the oligarchy hated the more democratic tax rates
implemented in the USA & increased democratic rights. The oil
crisis,60’s rebellions & soviet union scared the corporate ruling class
& made it easy for the case to be made to unite them formally.
Its members came excusively from the G8 nations but since the end of the
Soviet Unions has included a peppering of other nations elites,regulat
attendees power doesnt stop at one electoral term, it is a oligarchical
dictatorship of a small ruling class,mostly even older than the soviet
politburo.Annual meetings consist of 300–350 private citizens from
Europe, Pacific Asia (Asia & Oceania)& North America, it exists to
promote closer political and economic cooperation between these areas
under USA’s hegemony & corporate politburo.
G8 countries economies are the biggest in the world,Trilateral
participants directly control corporate wealth in G8 nations & way
beyond. Its top figures & controllers are known in financial circles as
the “Masters of Universe”,their PR transforms genocidal Robber Barons
transformed into philanthropists.It inlcudes heads of nato &
US/UKmilitary ,intel services,billionaires,royalty,top politicians,heads
of PR think tanks,editors & bankers,religious financial advisors.Last
year there was a token trade unionist who is also a top banker,a leading
geneticist & Oil scientist. 95% white& christian english speakers.
Members who gain a position in their respective country’s government
temporarily leave the commission. The trilateral commision is the apex
of corporate fascism, G8 impliments its ideas & provides a “democratic”
shroud.

91yr old David “I love workers & indigenous people really” Rockefeller
is the corporate elites “Emperor Ming”; Under his stewardship the Chase
bank spread internationally and became a central pillar in the world’s
financial system,the top corporate ban,it has a global network of
correspondent banks that has been estimated to number about 50,000, the
largest of any bank in the world now united with Morgan Bank. A notable
achievement was the setting up of the first branch of an American bank
at One Karl Marx Square, near the Kremlin, in the then Soviet Union, in
1973. This was also the year Rockefeller travelled to China, resulting
in his bank becoming the National Bank of China’s first correspondent
bank in the US.
In speeches David Rockefeller has thanked the owners & controllers of
Washington Post, NBC etc for not mentioning the Trilateral Commission in
its early years.From President Carter all US presidents have been
groomed by it,George Bush snr was among the founding members of the
Tri-lateral Commission, Bush junior has links from his fathers,Cheneys &
Rumsfelds participation.
He has been at the top for 40years helping form a Pax Americana with
three trilateral areas under US hegemony,is pushing for a
North&S.American superhighway & a American EU state.Until 1999 had major
financial influence on Exxon Mobil which was one just one part of the
vast Rockefeller Empire, now dissolved into Trusts & political
influence.His granfather John Rockefeller senior was worth USD$200
billion (plus or minus 30%, comparing wealth as a percentage of GDP in
1911 to the same percentage in 2006)
Besides Exxons links to Aushwitz company IG Farben, Morgan bank was the
major backer of the attempted fascist military coup in 1933 stopped by
retired marine General Butler who exposed it to the press & President
Wilson.

“In fact, after the 1960’s, the Trilateral Commission held its first
meeting(s) to figure out how to deal with the wreckage of Liberal
capitalism, and to make sure that nothing like the world youth protests
of the 1960’s ever took place again. The Black Power revolts in the
metropole, the anti-colonial protests, and the Vietnam anti-war movement
had shaken them to the core. The leading countries of Europe, Japan,
Canada, and the USA met in 1973 to form the Trilateral Commission, and
this was the first major international capitalist criminal cartel, which
birthed all the groups we are fighting now: WTO, IMF, and others.”
 http://www.ainfos.ca/01/mar/ainfos00141.html Lorenzo Komboa Ervin ex
black panther/anarchist

“The Trilateral Commission has issued one major book-length report,
namely, The Crisis of Democracy(Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington& Joji
Watanuki 1975). Given the intimate connections between the Commission
and the Carter Administration, the study is worth careful attention, as
an indication of the thinking that may well lie behind its domestic
policies, as well as the policies undertaken in other industrial
democracies in the coming years.The effective operation of a democratic
political system usually requires some measure of apathy& noninvolvement
on the part of some individuals& groups.” Naom Chomsky.
 http://www.chomsky.info/books/priorities01.htm
Chomsky argued the lie of corporate democracy is shown primarily by the
Trilateral Commission who had 19 top members of US government including
Carter as members straight after its formation.But now he dismisses the
Trilateral Oligarchy the strong rumours that trilateral is a”zionist
conspiracy” push many scholars away, the main argument in the
“trilateral zionist thesis”

The scariest thing about the Trilateral Commission is that behind their
liberal veneer Kissinger the Trilateral/USA chief intellectual wrote
National Security Council documents on global depopulation, that Bush
Senior admitted were a top priority whilst Chief of the CIA.Is their
ignorance of global warming just for commercial reasons?

Halliburton directors, C.J. Silas and L.S. Eagleburger, have both been
members of the Trilateral Commission. Lee Raymond CEO Exxon Mobil & Bill
clinton,Melinda Gates have all attended.

 http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=1267
 http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/talbott/20060630.htm advice for G8
on Russia by Brookings institute,Trilateral member
 http://www.schnews.org.uk/bilderberg/index.html schnews at brighton.co.uk
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB5WgBtTbuI
 http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Trilateral_Commission
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_commission
 http://www.trilateral.org/recent.htm
 http://www.akpress.org/1996/items/trilateralism ZNET writer Holly Sklar
 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Trilateralism/Trilateralism_Sklar.html
1980 ed
 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ruling_Elites/Ruling_Elites.html email
sub: PEPIS-subscribe at googlegroups.com for Ruling Elite info, 4.5 million
people visited Third World Traveler in 2006
*Leeds university geography course mentions the Trilateral
Commission,traditionall political & internation relation departments
rarely mention them,is this is as Trilateralism is in the corporatism
paradigm & its a paradigm university Proffessors presume too dangerous
if they want to keep courses funded?. siteengineers
sci-eng at library.leeds.ac.uk
*American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Paperback)1991 Stephen
Gill,gramscian scholar
 http://www.amazon.ca/American-Hegemony-Trilateral-Commission-Stephen/dp/052142433X

Trilaterals over Washington by Antony C.Sutton& Patrick M. Wood 1978
first book on TLC in english language although
 http://www.newswithviews.com/Wood/patrick9.htm
* http://www.asiasociety.org/support/specialevents/anniversary_dinner/galaspeeches.html
Asia society speeches by TLC elite & Koffi Annan DavidRockefeller on
China”I’ve been making frequent trips there, ever since, for example, I
had the good fortune to meet in 1973 with Prime Minister Zhou En-lai and
subsequently with Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin in connection with the
Trilateral Commission.”

Note besides their responsibility for organising illegal wars it is
illegal for members of government in many nations to attend private
undeclared & un minuted meetings.Many attendees only attend one year or
on a token basis from non G8 nations & are manipulated to further the
agenda of the core group regular attendees, who meet regularly in secret
throughout the year. Regular core group attendess are at the top &
others known are highlighted, underlined are members of Belgium
government & Germany.Members known to have committed war crimes are
highlighted & in italliccs. As I live in the UK, British & Irish
attendees & members are at the top, the rest are in alphabetic order, if
full list of attendees is not included in your printed copy, please
check  https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/01/360479.html?c=on#c164886

Annual Meeting of the illegal Trilateral Commission Brussels, Belgium,
March 16-19, 2007
location is usually a 5star hotel with room for 300plus & golfing
facilities

In 2008 Trilateral Commission meets in Washington DC,April 18-21, 2008

February 2006:*Executive Committee
THOMAS S. FOLEY, North American Chairman PETER SUTHERLAND, European
Chairman YOTARO KOBAYASHI, Pacific Asia Chairman
ALLAN E. GOTLIEB, North American Deputy Chairman HERVÉ DE CARMOY,
European Pacific Deputy Chairman KIM KYUNG-WON, Asia Deputy Chairman
LORENZO H. ZAMBRANO, North American Deputy Chairman ANDRZEJ OLECHOWSKI,
European Pacific Deputy Chairman SHIJURO OGATA, Asia Deputy Chairman
DAVID ROCKEFELLER, Founder and Honorary Chairman PAUL A. VOLCKER, North
American Honorary Chairman
GEORGES BERTHOIN, European Honorary Chairman OTTO GRAF LAMBSDORFF,
European Honorary Chairman
MICHAEL J. O’NEIL, North American Director PAUL RÉVAY, European Director
TADASHI YAMAMOTO, Pacific Asia Director
North American secretariat postal address: is 1156 Fifteenth Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20005 telephone: 202-467-5410 telefax: 202-467-5415
email: contactus at trilateral.org
European secretariat postal address: 5, rue de Téhéran, 75008 Paris,
France telephone: 33-1: 45 61 42 80 telefax: 33-1: 45 61 42 80 email:
trilateral.europe at wanadoo. fr
Pacific Asia secretariat postal address:Japan Center for International
Exchange,9-17 Minami-Azabu,Minato-ku,Tokyo 106,Japan telephone: 81-3:
3446-7781 telefax: 81-3: 3443-7580 email:admin at jcie.or.jp
EUROPEAN GROUP
> Peter Sutherland, European Chairman, BP p.l.c.; Chairman, Goldman
> Sachs International;a financial adviser to the Vatican,steering
> commitee bilderberg & member of European Round Table,
Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for
Migrations; former Director General, GATT/WTO; former Member of the
European Commission; former Attorney General of Ireland
> Lord Brittan of Spennithorne, Vice Chairman UBS Investment Bank,
> London; former Vice President,European Commission >Lord Gilbert,
> Member of the House of Lords; former Minister for Defence, London
> Richard Burrows, Governor, Bank of Ireland; Chairman, Irish
> Distillers; Non-executive Director, Pernod Ricard; former President,
> IBEC (The Irish Business and Employers Confederation), Dublin
> Sir Ronald Cohen, Founding partner and Executive Chairman, Apax
> Partners worldwide, London >Richard Conroy, Chairman, Conroy Diamonds
> & Gold, Dublin; Member of Senate, Republic of Ireland
Michel David-Weill, Chairman, Lazard LLC, worldwide; Managing Director
and Président du Collège d’Associés-Gérants, Lazard Frères S.A.S.,
Paris; Deputy Chairman, Lazard Brothers & Co., Limited,London
> Bill Emmott, Editor, The Economist, London >Hugh Friel, Chief
> Executive, Kerry Group, Dublin >Richard Olver, Chairman, BAE Systems,
> London
> Lord Kerr, Member House of Lords; Director of Rio Tinto, Shell, & the
> Scottish American Investment Trust, London; former Secretary General,
> European Convention, Brussels; former Permanent Under-Secretary of
> State and Head of the Diplomatic Service, Foreign & Commonwealth
> Office, London; former British Ambassador to the United States >Robin
> Buchanan, Senior Partner, Bain & Company, London
> Peter Mandelson, Member of the European Commission (Trade), Brussels;
> former Member of the British Parliament; former Secretary of State to
> Northern Ireland and for Trade and Industry
> Francis Maude, Member of the British Parliament; Chairman of the
> Conservative Party; Director, Benfield Group; former Shadow Foreign
> Secretary, London
> Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Chairman, Anglo American; former Chairman,
> Royal Dutch/Shell Group,London >John Bruton, EU Ambassador & Head,
> Delegation of the European Commission to the United States Lord Patten
> of Barnes, Chancellor of the University of Oxford; Chairman,
> International Crisis Group, Brussels; former Member of the European
> Commission (External Relations), Brussels; former Governor of Hong
> Kong; former Member of the British Cabinet, London Lord Simon of
> Highbury, Member of the House of Lords; Advisory Director of Unilever,
> Morgan Stanley Europe and LEK; former Minister for Trade &
> Competitiveness in Europe; former Chairman of BP, London
> Nicholas Soames, Member of the British Parliament, London >Sir Martin
> Sorrell, Chief Executive Officer, WPP Group, London
> Myles Staunton, Former Member of the Irish Senate & of the Dail;
> Consultant, Westport, Co. Mayo >Paul Adams, Chief Executive, British
> American Tobacco, London
> General The Lord Guthrie, Director, N M Rothschild & Sons, London;
> Member of the House of Lords; former Chief of the Defence Staff, London
> Lord Garel-Jones, Managing Director, UBS Investment Bank, London;
> Member of the House of Lords; former Minister of State at the Foreign
> Office (European Affairs) Michel David-Weill, Chairman Lazard LLC
> worldwide; Managing Director& Président du Collège d’Associés-Gérants,
> Lazard Frères S.A.S., Paris; Deputy Chairman, Lazard Brothers & Co,
> Limited,London
> Myles Staunton, Former Member of the Irish Senate & of the Dail;
> Consultant, Westport, Co. Mayo

> Urban Ahlin, Member of the Swedish Parliament and Chairman of the
> Committee on Foreign Affairs,Stockholm
> Krister Ahlström, Vice Chairman, Stora Enso and Fortum; former
> Chairman, Finnish Employers Confederation; former Chairman, Ahlström
> Corp., Helsinki
> Edmond Alphandéry, Chairman, Caisse Nationale de Prévoyance, Paris;
> former Chairman, Electricité de France (EDF); former Minister of the
> Economy and Finance
> Bodil Nyboe Andersen, Chairperson of the Board of Governors, Danmarks
> Nationalbank, Copenhagen
> Jacques Andréani, Ambassadeur de France; former Ambassador to the
> United State
> Stelios Argyros,Chairman &Managing Director Preveza
> Mills,Athens;former Member EU Parliament;former Vice President of
> UNICE, Brussels;former Pres& Chairman of Board of Federation of Greek
> Industries
> Jerzy Baczynski, Editor-in-Chief, Polityka, Warsaw
> Estela Barbot, Vice President, AGA, Porto; Vice President of the
> Board, AEP — Portuguese Business Association; Consul of Guatemala,
> Lisbon
> Erik Belfrage, Senior Vice President, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken;
> Director, Investor AB,Stockholm
> Marek Belka, Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission
> for Europe (UNECE),Geneva; former Prime Minister of Poland, Warsaw;
> former Ambassador-at-Large and Chairman,
Council for International Coordination, Coalition Provisional Authority,
Baghdad
> Baron Jean-Pierre Berghmans, Chairman of the Executive Board, Lhoist
> Group, Limelette, Belgium
> Georges Berthoin, International Honorary Chairman, European Movement;
> Honorary Chairman, The Jean Monnet Association; Honorary European
> Chairman, The Trilateral Commission, Paris
> Nicolas Beytout, Editor, Le Figaro, Paris ; former Editor, Les Echos,
> Paris
> Carl Bildt, Chairman, Kreab Group of public affairs companies;
> Chairman, Nordic Venture Network,Stockholm; former Member of the
> Swedish Parliament, Chairman of the Moderate Party and Prime
Minister of Sweden; former European Union High Representative in
Bosnia-Herzegovina & UN Special Envoy to the Balkans
> Ana Patricia Botin, Executive Chairman, Banesto; Vice Chairman, Urbis;
> Member of the Management Committee, Santander Group, Madrid
> Jean-Louis Bourlanges,Member EU ParlIment (ALDE Group/UDF)&
> Chairman,Committee on Civil Liberties,Justice & Home Affairs,
> Brussels; former President of European Movement in France, Paris
> Jorge Braga de Macedo, President, Tropical Research Institute, Lisbon;
> Special Advisor to the Secretary General, Organisation for Economic
> Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris;
Professor of Economics, Nova University at Lisbon; Chairman, Forum
Portugal Global; former Minister of Finance
> François Bujon de l’Estang, Ambassadeur de France; Chairman, Citigroup
> France, Paris; former Ambassador to the United States
> Sven Burmester, Writer and Explorer, Denmark; former Representative,
> United Nations Population Fund(UNFPA), Beijing; former World Bank
> Deputy Secretary and Representative in Cairo
> Hervé de Carmoy, Chairman, Almatis, Frankfurt-am-Main; former Partner,
> Rhône Group, New York &Paris; Honorary Chairman, Banque Industrielle
> et Mobilière Privée, Paris; former Chief Executive,
Société Générale de Belgique
> Antonio Carrapatoso, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Vodafone
> Portugal, Lisbon; Member of Board of Directors, Vodafone Spain & Vodacom
> Salvatore Carrubba, Culture Alderman, Municipality of Milan; former
> Managing Editor, Il Sole 24 Ore,Milan
> Henri de Castries, Chairman of the Management Board and Chief
> Executive Officer, AXA, Paris
> Jürgen Chrobog, Chairman, BMW Herbert Quandt Foundation, Munich;
> former German Deputy Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United States
> Luc Coene, Minister of State; Deputy Governor, National Bank of
> Belgium, Brussels
> Vittorio Colao, Chief Executive Officer, RCS MediaGroup, Milan; former
> Managing Director, Vodafone,Omnitel
> Bertrand Collomb, Chairman, Lafarge, Paris; Chairman, World Business
> Council for Sustainable Development >Eckhard Cordes, former Member of
> the Board, DaimlerChrysler, Stuttgart
> Alfonso Cortina, Chairman, Inmobiliaria Colonial; Chairman, Repsol-YPF
> Foundation, Madrid >Thomas Enders, Chief Executive Officer, EADS,
> Munich; Chairman, Atlantik-Brücke (Atlantic Bridge),Berlin
> Baron Paul De Keersmaeker, Chairman of the Board of Domo, Corgo,
> Foundation Europalia International & the Canada Europe Round Table,
> Brussels; Honorary Chairman Interbrew, KBC,
Nestlé Belgilux; former Member of the Belgian and European Parliaments
and of the Belgian Government
> Vladimir Dlouhy, Senior Advisor, ABB; International Advisor, Goldman
> Sachs; former Czechoslovak Minister of Economy; former Czech Minister
> of Industry & Trade, Prague
> Pedro Miguel Echenique, Professor of Physics, University of the Basque
> Country; former Basque Minister of Education, San Sebastian
> Laurent Fabius, Member of the French National Assembly and of the
> Foreign Affairs Committee; former Prime Minister & Minister of the
> Economy & Finance, Paris Oscar Fanjul, Honorary Chairman, Repsol YPF;
> Vice Chairman, Omega Capital, Madrid
> Grete Faremo, Former Executive Vice President, Storebrand; former
> Norwegian Minister of Development Cooperation, Minister of Justice and
> Minister of Oil and Energy, Oslo
> Nemesio Fernandez-Cuesta, Executive Director of Upstream, Repsol-YPF;
> former Chairman, Prensa Española, Madrid
> Jürgen Fitschen, Member of the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche
> Bank, Frankfurt-am-Main >Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, Foreign Editor,
> Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt am Main
> Michael Fuchs, Member of the German Bundestag, Berlin; former
> President, National Federation of German Wholesale & Export Traders
> Lykke Friis, Head of European Department, Federation of Danish
> Industries, Copenhagen >Antonio Garrigues Walker, Chairman, Garrigues
> Abogados y Asesores Tributarios, Madrid
> Wolfgang Gerhard, Member of the German Bundestag, Berlin >Mario Greco,
> Managing Director & General Manager, Assicurazioni Internazionali di
> Previdenza (A.I.P.), Milan
> Sirkka Hämäläinen, former Member of the Executive Board, European
> Central Bank, Frankfurt-am-Main; former Governor, Bank of Finland
> Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Member of the European Parliament; former
> Estonian Foreign Minister and Member of the Parliament; former
> Ambassador to the United States, Canada and Mexico
> Alfonso Iozzo, Managing Director, San Paolo IMI Group, Turin >Mugur
> Isarescu, Governor, National Bank of Romania, Bucharest; former Prime
> Minister
> Max Jakobson, Independent Consultant and Senior Columnist, Helsinki;
> former Finnish Ambassador to the United Nations; former Chairman of
> the Finnish Council of Economic Organizations
> Baron Daniel Janssen, Chairman of the Board, Solvay, Brussels
> >Zsigmond Jarai, President, National Bank of Hungary, Budapest
> Trinidad Jiménez, International Relations Secretary of the Socialist
> Party (PSOE) & Member of the Federal Executive Committee, Madrid
> Béla Kadar, Member of Hungarian Academy,Budapest; Member of Monetary
> Council of the National Bank; President of the Hungarian Economic
> Association; former Ambassador of Hungary to
the O.E.C.D., Paris; former Hungarian Minister of International Economic
Relations and Member of Parliament
> Robert Kassai, General Vice President, The National Association of
> Craftmen’s Corporations, Budapest
> Denis Kessler, Chairman& Chief Executive Officer, Scor, Paris; former
> Chairman, French Insurance Association (FFSA); former Executive
> Vice-Chairman, MEDEF-Mouvement des Entreprises de France (French
> Employers’ Confederation)
> Klaus Kleinfeld, Chief Executive Officer, Siemens, Munich >Sixten
> Korkman, Managing Director, Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA,
> Helsinki
> Jiri Kunert, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Zivnostenska banka;
> President of the Czech Association of Banks, Prague
> Count Otto Lambsdorff, Partner, Wessing Lawyers, Düsseldorf; Chairman,
> Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Berlin; former Member of German
> Bundestag; Honorary Chairman, Free Democratic
Party; former Federal Minister of Economy; former President of the
Liberal International; Honorary European Chairman, The Trilateral
Commission, Paris
> Kurt Lauk,Member EU Parliament(EPP Group-CDU); Chairman Globe Capital
> Partners,Stuttgart; President, Economic Council of the CDU Party,
> Berlin; former Member of the Board, DaimlerChrysler, Stuttgart
> Anne Lauvergeon, Chairperson of the Executive Board, Areva;
> Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, Cogema, Paris
> Pierre Lellouche, Member of the French National Assembly and of the
> Foreign Affairs Committee, Paris; President, NATO Parliamentary Assembly
> Enrico Letta, Member EU Parliament (ALDE Group), Brussels; Secretary
> General, AREL; Vice President, Aspen Institute; former Minister of
> European Affairs, Industry,&of Industry &International Trade, Rome
> André Leysen, Honorary Chairman, Gevaert, Antwerp; Honorary Chairman,
> Agfa-Gevaert Group
> Marianne Lie, Director General, Norwegian Shipowner’s Association,
> Oslo >Count Maurice Lippens, Chairman, Fortis, Brussels Helge Lund,
> Chief Executive Officer of the Norwegian Oil Company, Statoil, Oslo
> Cees Maas, Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of the ING Group,
> Amsterdam; former Treasurer of the Dutch Government
> Abel Matutes, Chairman, Empresas Matutes, Ibiza; former Member of the
> European Commission, Brussels; former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Madrid
> Vasco de Mello, Vice Chairman, José de Mello SGPS, Lisbon >Joao de
> Menezes Ferreira, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, ECO-SOROS,
> Lisbon; formerMember of the Portuguese Parliament
> Peter Mitterbauer, Honorary President, The Federation of Austrian
> Industry, Vienna; President and Chief Executive Officer, MIBA, Laakirchen
> Dominique Moïsi, Special Advisor to the Director General of the French
> Institute for International Relations (IFRI), Paris
> Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Chairman, Fiat, Turin; Chairman,
> Confindustria (Italian Confederation of Industry), Rome
> Mario Monti, President and Professor Emeritus, Bocconi University,
> Milan; Chairman of BRUEGEL and of ECAS, Brussels; former Member of the
> European Commission (Competition Policy)
> Klaus-Peter Müller, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors,
> Commerzbank, Frankfurt-am-Main; President, Association of German Banks
> (BDB), Berlin
> Heinrich Neisser former President Politische Akademie, Vienna;
> Professor Political Sciences at Innsbruck University; former Member of
> Austrian Parliament & Second President of the National Assembly
> Harald Norvik, Chairman and Partner, ECON Management; former President
> and Chief Executive, Statoil, Oslo
> Arend Oetker, President, German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP);
> Vice Chairman, Federation of German Industries; Managing Director, Dr.
> Arend Oetker Holding, Berlin
> Andrzej Olechowski, Leader, Civic Platform; former Chairman, Bank
> Handlowy; former Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Finance, Warsaw
> Janusz Palikot,Chairman Supervisory Board Polmos Lublin; Vice
> President Polish Confederation of Private Employers; Co-owner
> Publishing House slowo/obraz terytoria; Member Board ofDirectors,
> Polish Business Council, Warsaw
> Dimitry Panitza, Founding Chairman, The Free and Democratic Bulgaria
> Foundation; Founder and Chairman, The Bulgarian School of Politics, Sofia
> Lucas Papademos, Vice President, European Central Bank,
> Frankfurt-am-Main; former Governor of the Bank of Greece
> Schelto Patijn, Member of the Supervisory Board of the Schiphol Group
> and Amsterdam RAI; former Mayor of the City of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
> Volker Perthes, Director, SWP (German Institute for International and
> Security Affairs), Berlin >Dieter Pfundt, Personally Liable Partner,
> Sal. Oppenheim Bank, Frankfurt
> Josep Piqué, Chairman of the Popular Party of Catalunya, Barcelona;
> Member Parliament of Catalunya; Member of the Spanish Senate; former
> Minister of Foreign Affairs
> Benoît Potier, Chairman of the Management Board, L’Air Liquide, Paris
> >Alessandro Profumo, Chief Executive Officer, UniCredito Italiano, Milan
> Luigi Ramponi, Member of Parliament; Chairman of the Defence Committee
> of the Chamber of Deputies, Rome; former Deputy Chief of the Defence
> Staff (Italian Army)
> Wanda Rapaczynska, President of the Management Board, Agora, Warsaw
> >Gianfelice Rocca, Chairman, Techint Group of Companies, Milan; Vice
> President, Confindustria
> Heinz Riesenhuber, Member of the German Bundestag; former Federal
> Minister of Research& Technology, Berlin; Chairman of the Supervisory
> Boards of Kabel Deutschland and of Evotec
> H. Onno Ruding, Chairman, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS),
> Brussels; former Vice Chairman, Citibank; former Dutch Minister of
> Finance
> Anthony Ruys, former Chairman of the Executive Board, Heineken,
> Amsterdam >Ferdinando Salleo, Vice Chairman, MCC Mediocredito
> Centrale, Rome; former Ambassador to the United States
> Jacques Santer, Honorary State Minister, Luxembourg; former Member of
> the European Parliament; former President of the European Commission;
> former Prime Minister of Luxembourg
> Silvio Scaglia, Chairman, Fastweb, Milan; former Managing Director,
> Omnitel >Paolo Scaroni, Chief Executive Officer, ENEL, Rome
> Guido Schmidt-Chiari, Chairman, Constantia Group; former Chairman,
> Creditanstalt Bankverein,Vienna
> Henning Schulte-Noelle, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Allianz,
> Munich Prince Charles of Schwarzenberg,Founder& Director Nadace
> Bohemiae, Prague; Member Czech Senate;former Chancellor to President
> Havel;former President of International Helsinki Federation for Human
> Rights
> Carlo Secchi, Professor of European Economic Policy, Bocconi
> University, Milan; former Member of Italian Senate& EU Parliament
> >Tøger Seidenfaden, Editor-in-Chief, Politiken, Copenhagen
> Maurizio Sella, Chairman, Banca Sella, Biella; Chairman, Association
> of Italian Banks (A.B.I.), Rome; Chairman, Finanziaria Bansel
> Slawomir S. Sikora, Chief Executive Officer and Citigroup Country
> Officer for Poland, Bank Handlowy w Warszawie, Warsaw
> Stefano Silvestri, President, Institute for International Affairs
> (IAI), Rome; Commentator, Il Sole 24 Ore; former Under Secretary of
> State for Defence, Italy Thorvald Stoltenberg,President,Norwegian Red
> Cross, Oslo; former Co-Chairman (UN) of the Steering Committee of the
> International Conference on Former Yugoslavia; former Foreign Minister
> of Norway; former UN High Commissioner for Refugees
> Petar Stoyanov, President, Centre for Political Dialogue, Sofia;
> former President of Bulgaria >Peter Straarup,Chairman of Executive
> Board Danske Bank,Copenhagen;Chairman Danish Bankers Association
> Björn Svedberg, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ericsson,
> Stockholm; former President and Group Chief Executive, Skandinaviska
> Enskilda Banken
> Péter Székely, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Transelektro,
> Budapest; President, Confederation of Hungarian Employers’
> Organisations for International Co-operation (CEHIC); Vice President,
Confederation of Hungarian Employers and Industrialists
> Pavel Telicka, Partner, BXL-Consulting, >Jean-Philippe Thierry,
> Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AGF (Assurances Générales de
> France),Paris
> Marco Tronchetti Provera, Chairman, Telecom Italia; Chairman and Chief
> Executive Officer, Pirelli & C., Milan >Elsbeth Tronstad, Executive
> Vice President, ABB, Oslo
> Loukas Tsoukalis, Special Adviser to President of EU
> Commission;Professor at University Athens& the College of Europe;
> President of the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy
> (ELIAMEP), Athens Mario Vargas Llosa, Writer and Member of the Royal
> Spanish Academy, Madrid
> George Vassiliou, former Head of Negotiating Team for Accession of
> Cyprus to EU; former President of Republic of Cyprus; former Member of
> Parliament and Leader of United Democrats, Nicosia
> Franco Venturini, Foreign Correspondent, Corriere della Sera, Rome
> Friedrich Verzetnitsch, Member of Austrian Parliament; President,
> Austrian Federation of Trade Unions,Vienna; President, European Trade
> Union Confederation (ETUC) Marko Voljc, General Manager of Central
> Europe Directorate, KBC Bank Insurance Holding, Brussels; former Chief
> Executive Officer, Nova Ljubljanska Banka, Ljubljana
> Alexandr Vondra, Managing Director of the Prague Office, Dutko Group
> Companies; former Czech Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
> Joris Voorhoeve, Member of the Council of State; former Member of the
> Dutch Parliament; former Minister of Defence, The Hague
> Panagis Vourloumis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hellenic
> Telecommunications Organization (O.T.E.), Athens
> Marcus Wallenberg, Chairman of the Board, Skandinaviska Enskilda
> Banken (SEB), Stockholm Serge Weinberg, Member and Chairman-designate
> of the Supervisory Board Accor; Chairman Weinberg Capital Partners;
> former Chairman of the Management Board, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute;
former President, Institute of International and Strategic Studies
(IRIS), Paris
> Heinrich Weiss, Chairman, SMS, Düsseldorf; former President,
> Federation of German Industries, Berlin >Nout Wellink, President,
> Dutch Central Bank, Amsterdam
> Arne Wessberg, Director General, YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company)
> and Director General, YLE >Group (YLE and Digits Oy), Helsinki;
> President, European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
> Norbert Wieczorek, former Member of German Bundestag & Deputy Chairman
> of the SPD Parliamentary Group, Berlin >Hans Wijers, Chairman and
> Chief Executive Officer, Akzo Nobel, Arnhem
> Otto Wolff von Amerongen, Honorary Chairman, East Committee of the
> German Industry; Chairman& Chief Executive Officer, Otto Wolff
> Industrieberatung und Beteiligung, Cologne
> Emilio Ybarra, former Chairman, Banco Bilbao-Vizcaya, Madrid Former
> Members in Public Service
> Lene Espersen, Minister of Justice, Denmark >Pedro Solbes, Deputy
> Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy and Finances, Spain Harri
> Tiido, Ambassador of Estonia and Head of the Estonian Mission to NATO,
> Brussels >Karsten D. Voigt, Coordinator of German-American
> Cooperation, Federal Foreign Ministry, Germany
NORTH AMERICAN GROUP
> Madeleine K. Albright, Principal, The Albright Group LLC, Washington,
> DC; former U.S. Secretary of State
> Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science& International
> Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA >G.Allen Andreas,
> Chairman&Chief Executive, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Decatur, IL
> Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, Asia/Pacific
> Research Center, Stanford University, Hillsborough, CA; former
> President, The Brookings Institution; former U.S. Ambassador
to Japan; former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
> Charlene Barshefsky, Senior International Partner, Wilmer, Cutler &
> Pickering, Washington, DC; former U.S. Trade Representative
> Alan R. Batkin, Vice Chairman, Kissinger Associates, New York, NY
> >Doug Bereuter, President, Asia Foundation, San Francisco, CA; former
> Member, U.S. House of Representatives
> C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Institute for International Economics,
> Washington, DC; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
> International Affairs
> Catherine Bertini, Professor of Public Administration, Maxwell School
> of Citizenship& Public Affairs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY;
> former Under-Secretary-General for Management, United Nations
> Dennis C. Blair, USN (Ret.), President and Chief Executive Officer,
> Institute for Defense Analyses,Alexandria, VA; former Commander in
> Chief, U.S. Pacific Command
> Herminio Blanco Mendoza, Private Office of Herminio Blanco, Mexico
> City, NL; former Mexican Secretary of Commerce and Industrial Development
> Geoffrey T. Boisi, Chairman & Senior Partner, Roundtable Investment
> Partners LLC, New York, NY; former Vice Chairman, JPMorgan Chase, New
> York, NY
> Stephen W. Bosworth, Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts
> University, Medford, MA; former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea
> David G. Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic Media Company, Washington, DC
> >Harold Brown, Counselor, Center for Strategic and International
> Studies, Washington, DC; General Partner, Warburg Pincus & Company,
> New York, NY; former U.S. Secretary of Defense
> Zbigniew Brzezinski, Counselor, Center for Strategic and International
> Studies, Washington, DC;
> Robert Osgood Professor of American Foreign Affairs, Paul Nitze School
> of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; former
> U.S. Assistant to President for National Security Affairs
> Louis C. Camilleri, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Altria
> Group, Inc., New York, NY Raymond Chrétien, Strategic Advisor, Fasken
> Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Montreal, QC; Chairman of the Board of
> Directors of the Center for International Studies of the University of
> Montreal; former
Associate Under-Secretary of State of External Affairs; former
Ambassador of Canada to the Congo, Belgium, Mexico, the United States
and France
> William T. Coleman III, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive
> Officer, Cassatt Corporation; Founder, former Chairman& CEO& Member,
> Board of Directors, BEA Systems, Inc., San Jose,CA
> William T. Coleman, Jr., Senior Partner and the Senior Counselor,
> O’Melveny & Myers, Washington, DC; former U.S. Secretary of
> Transportation
> Timothy C. Collins, Senior Managing Director and Chief Executive
> Officer, Ripplewood Holdings, New York, NY
> Richard N. Cooper, Maurits C. Boas Professor of International
> Economics, Harvard University,Cambridge, MA; former Chairman, U.S.
> National Intelligence Council; former U.S. Under Secretary
of State for Economic Affairs
> E. Gerald Corrigan, Managing Director, Goldman, Sachs & Co., New York,
> NY; former President,Federal Reserve Bank of New York
> Michael J. Critelli, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pitney
> Bowes Inc., Stamford, CT >Lee Brooks Cullum, Columnist, Dallas Morning
> News, Dallas, TX
> Gerald L. Curtis, Burgess Professor of Political Science, Columbia
> University, New York, NY; Visiting Professor, Graduate Research
> Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo
> Douglas Daft, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Coca
> Cola Company, Atlanta, GA
> Lynn Davis, Senior Political Scientist, The RAND Corporation,
> Arlington, VA; former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control
> and International Security
> Lodewijk J. R. de Vink, Chairman, Global Health Care Partners,
> Peapack, NJ; former Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer,
> Warner-Lambert Company
> Arthur A. DeFehr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palliser
> Furniture, Winnipeg, MB André Desmarais, President and Co-Chief
> Executive Officer, Power Corporation of Canada, Montréal, QC; Deputy
> Chairman, Power Financial Corporation
> John M. Deutch, Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of
> Technology, Cambridge, MA; former Director of Central Intelligence;
> former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense
> Jamie Dimon, President and Chief Operating Officer, JPMorgan Chase,
> New York, NY >Peter C. Dobell, Founding Director, Parliamentary
> Centre, Ottawa, ON
> Wendy K. Dobson, Professor& Director, Institute for International
> Business, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto,
> ON; former Canadian Associate Deputy Minister of Finance
> Kenneth M. Duberstein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The
> Duberstein Group, Washington,DC >Robert Eckert, Chairman and Chief
> Executive Officer, Mattel, Inc., El Segundo, CA
> Jeffrey Epstein, President, J. Epstein & Company, Inc., New York, NY;
> President, N.A. Property, Inc. >Dianne Feinstein, Member (D-CA), U.S.
> Senate
> Martin S. Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard
> University, Cambridge, MA; President and Chief Executive Officer,
> National Bureau of Economic Research; former U.S.Chairman, President’s
> Council of Economic Advisors
> Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., Vice Chairman, Board of Governors, Federal
> Reserve System, Washington, DC
> Stanley Fischer, Governor of Bank of Israel, Jerusalem; former
> President, Citigroup International &Vice Chairman, Citgroup, New York,
> NY; former First Deputy Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
> Richard W. Fisher, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal
> Reserve Bank of Dallas, Dallas, TX;
former U.S. Deputy Trade Representative
> Thomas S. Foley, Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Washington,
> DC; former U.S. Ambassador to Japan; former Speaker of the U.S. House
> of Representatives; North American
Chairman, Trilateral Commission
> Michael B.G. Froman, Managing Director, Citigroup Alternative
> Investments, Citigroup Inc., New York, NY
> Francis Fukuyama, Bernard L. Schwartz Professor International
> Political Economy, Paul H. Nitze, School of Advanced International
> Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC
> Dionisio Garza Medina, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive
> Officer, ALFA, Garza Garcia, NL >Richard A. Gephardt, former Member
> (D-MO), U.S. House of Representatives
> David Gergen, Professor of Public Service, John F. Kennedy School of
> Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Editor-at-Large, U.S.
> News and World Report
> Peter C. Godsoe, Chairman of Fairmont Hotels & Resorts; Retired
> Chairman and Chief Executive, Officer of Scotiabank, Toronto, ON
> Allan E. Gotlieb, Senior Advisor, Stikeman Elliott, Toronto, ON;
> Chairman, Sotheby’s, Canada; former Canadian Ambassador to United
> States; North American Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
> Donald E. Graham, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Washington
> Post Company, Washington DC
> Jeffrey W. Greenberg, Private Investor, New York, NY; former Chairman
> and Chief Executive Officer, Marsh & McLennan Companies
> Maurice R. Greenberg, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, C. V.
> Starr & Company, New York; former Chairman, American International
> Group, Inc.
> Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations, New York,
> NY; former Director, Policy Planning, U. S. Department of State;
> former Director of Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institution
> John J. Hamre, President, Center for Strategic and International
> Studies, Washington, DC; former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and
> Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)
> William A. Haseltine, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Haseltine
> Associates, Washington, DC; President, William A. Haseltine Foundation
> for Medical Sciences and the Arts; former Chairman and Chief Executive
> Officer, Human Genome Sciences, Inc., Rockville, MD
> Charles B. Heck, Senior Adviser and former North American Director,
> Trilateral Commission, New Canaan, CT
> Carla A. Hills, Chairman&Chief Executive Officer, Hills & Company,
> International Consultants,Washington, DC; former U.S. Trade
> Representative; former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
> Richard Holbrooke,Vice Chairman Perseus LLC, NY; Counselor Council on
> Foreign Relations; former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations;
> former Vice Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston Corporation; former
> U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European& Canadian Affairs;
> former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
> Affairs& former U.S.Ambassador to Germany
> Karen Elliott House, Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Company, and
> Publisher, The Wall Street Journal, New York, NY
> Alejandro Junco de la Vega, President and Director, Grupo Reforma,
> Monterrery, NL >Robert Kagan, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for
> International Peace, Washington, DC
> Arnold Kanter, Principal and Founding Member, The Scowcroft Group,
> Washington, DC; former U.S. Under Secretary of State >Charles R. Kaye,
> Co-President, Warburg Pincus LLC, New York, NY Henry A. Kissinger,
> Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc., New York, NY; former U.S.
> Secretary of State; former U.S. Assistant to the President for
> National Security Affairs,war criminal
 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2815881561030958784&q=trilateral
> Michael Klein, Chief Executive Officer, Global Banking, Citigroup
> Inc.; Vice Chairman, Citibank International PLC; New York, NY >Steven
> E. Koonin, Chief Scientist, BP, London, UK
> Enrique Krauze, General Director, Editorial Clio Libros y Videos, S.A.
> de C.V., Mexico City, DF Robert Lane, Chief Executive Officer, Deere &
> Co., Moline, IL Jim Leach, Member (R-IA), U.S. House of Representatives
> Gerald M. Levin, Chief Executive Officer Emeritus, AOL Time Warner,
> Inc., New York, NY
> Winston Lord, Co-Chairman of Overseeers and former Co-Chairman of the
> Board, International Rescue Committee, New York, NY; former U.S.
> Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs; former U.S. Ambassador to China
> E. Peter Lougheed, Senior Partner, Bennett Jones, Barristers &
> Solicitors, Calgary, AB; former Premier of Alberta
> Roy MacLaren, former Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom;
> former Canadian Minister of International Trade; Toronto, ON
> John A. MacNaughton, former President and Chief Executive Officer,
> Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto, ON
> Antonio Madero, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, San
> Luis Corporacion, S.A. de C.V., Mexico City, DF
> Sir Deryck C. Maughan, Managing Director and Chairman, KKR Asia,
> Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., New York, NY; former Vice Chairman,
> Citigroup
> Jay Mazur, President Emeritus, UNITE (Union of Needletrades,
> Industrial and Textile Employees); ViceChairman, Amalgamated Bank of
> New York; and President, ILGWU’s 21st Century Heritage
Foundation, New York, NY
> Hugh L. McColl, Jr., Chairman, McColl Brothers Lockwood, Charlotte,
> NC; former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America
> Corporation
> Marc H. Morial, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Urban
> League, New York, NY; former Mayor, New Orleans, LA
> Anne M. Mulcahy, Chairman and CEO, Xerox Corporation, Stamford, CT
> >Indra K. Nooyi, President and Chief Financial Officer, PepsiCo, Inc.,
> Purchase, NY
> Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard
> University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
> Cambridge, MA; former Dean, John F. Kennedy School of
Government; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International
Security Affairs
> David J. O’Reilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chevron
> Corporation, San Ramon, CA
> Richard N. Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute,
> Washington, DC; member and former Chairman, Defense Policy Board, U.S.
> Department of Defense; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security Policy
> Thomas R. Pickering, Senior Vice President, International Relations,
> The Boeing Company, Arlington, VA; former U.S. Under Secretary of
> State for Political Affairs; former U.S. Ambassador to the
Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, the Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan, and the United Nations
> Joseph W. Ralston, USAF (Ret)., Vice Chairman, The Cohen Group,
> Washington, DC; former Commander, U.S. European Command& Supreme
> Allied Commander NATO; former Vice
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense
> Charles B. Rangel, Member (D-NY), U.S. House of Representatives
> Susan Rice, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC;
> former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; former
> Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African
> Affairs,
National Security Council
> Hartley Richardson, President& Chief Executive Officer, James
> Richardson & Sons, Ltd., Winnipeg,MB >Joseph E. Robert, Jr., Chairman&
> Chief Executive Office, J.E. Robert Companies, McLean, VA
> John D. Rockefeller IV, Member (D-WV), U.S. Senate, political heir to
> David Rockefeller & probably next family trust controller, also on
> Rockefeller Asia foundation
> Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Director, Center for
> International Development, Harvard
> University, Cambridge, MA; former Chief Economist and Director,
> Research Department, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC
> Charles Rose, Host of the Charlie Rose Show and Charlie Rose Special
> Edition, PBS, New York, NY >David M. Rubenstein, Co-founder and
> Managing Director, The Carlyle Group, Washington, DC
> Luis Rubio, President, Center of Research for Development (CIDAC),
> Mexico City, DF >Jaime Serra, Chairman, SAI Consulting, Mexico City,
> DF; former Mexican Minister of Trade and Industry
> Dinakar Singh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, TPG-Axon Capital,
> New York, NY; former Cohead, Principal Strategies Department, Goldman
> Sachs
> Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
> International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
> Gordon Smith, Director, Centre for Global Studies, University of
> Victoria, Victoria, BC; Chairman, Board of Governors, International
> Development Research Centre; former Canadian Deputy Minister
of Foreign Affairs and Personal Representative of the Prime Minister to
the Economic Summit
> Donald R. Sobey, Chairman Emeritus, Empire Company Ltd., Halifax, NS
> >Ronald D. Southern, Chairman, ATCO Group, Calgary, AB
> James B. Steinberg, Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of
> Texas, Austin, TX; former Vice President and Director of the Foreign
> Policy Studies Program, The Brookings Institution,
Washington, DC; former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor
> Jessica Stern, Lecturer in Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science
> and International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
> Barbara Stymiest, Chief Operating Officer, RBC Financial Group,
> Toronto, ON >Lawrence H. Summers, President, Harvard University,
> Cambridge, MA; former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury
> John J. Sweeney, President, AFL-CIO, Washington, DC Strobe Talbott,
> President, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; former U.S.
> Deputy Secretary of State
> Luis Tellez, Managing Director, The Carlyle Group, Mexico City, DF;
> former Executive Vice President, Sociedad de Fomento Industrial
> (DESC); former Mexican Minister of Energy
> George J. Tenet, Distinguished Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of
> Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC; former U.S.
> Director of Central Intelligence
> John Thain, Chief Executive Officer, New York Stock Exchange, Inc.;
> former President and Co-Chief Operating Officer, Goldman Sachs & Co.,
> New York, NY
> G. Richard Thoman, Managing Partner Corporate Perspectives& Adjunct
> Professor Columbia University, NY; formerly President& CEO, Xerox
> Corporation; formerly CFO and Nº 2 officer, IBM Corporation
> Paul A. Volcker, former Chairman Wolfensohn & Co., Inc., New York;
> Frederick H. Schultz Professor Emeritus, International Economic
> Policy, Princeton University; former Chairman, Board of
Governors, U.S. Federal Reserve System; Honorary North American Chairman
and former North American Chairman, Trilateral Commission
> William H. Webster, Senior Partner, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
> LLP, Washington, DC; former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence;
> former Director, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation; former Judge of
> the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
> Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International, NY >Lorenzo H.
> Zambrano, Chairman of Board& Chief Executive Officer, CEMEX,
> Monterrey, NL;North American Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
> Ernesto Zedillo, Director Yale Center for Study of Globalization,Yale
> University, New Haven, CT; former President of Mexico Mortimer B.
> Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, U.S. News & World Report, New
> York, NY
> Robert S. McNamara, Lifetime Trustee, Trilateral Commission,
> Washington, DC; former President, World Bank; former U.S. Secretary of
> Defense; former President Ford Motor Company. Vietnam war criminal &
> black op organiser of murder of USS Liberty sailors by Israeli air
> force to try & excuse USA into the war against Eygpt
>  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6595846710992512471&q=source%3A14872107513460960153
> David Rockefeller, Founder, Honorary Chairman, and Lifetime Trustee,
> Trilateral Commission,New York, NY, Head of Chase Manhattan worlds
> largest corporate bank with 50,000 branches & Morgan bank which tried
> a military fascist coup in USA 1933,stopped by Marine General Butler
> who was sickened by what he called the mafia oilers&bankers,still has
> massive influence over Exxon Mobil world$ largest corporation∂ of
> his grandfathers the 1st ever billionaires empire who had $40billion
> 100years ago,head rockerfeller family trusts&CFR, re most financially
> powerful person alive.
Former Members In Public Service
> Rona Ambrose, Canadian Minister of the Environment >Richard B. Cheney,
> Vice President of the United States >Paula J. Dobriansky, U.S. Under
> Secretary of State for Global Affairs >Bill Graham, Leader of the
> Opposition, Canadian House of Commons >Paul Wolfowitz, President,
> World Bank >Robert B. Zoellick, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State
PACIFIC ASIAN GROUP strangely includes turkey & argentina
> Narongchai Akrasanee, Chairman, Seranee Holdings Co., Ltd., Bangkok
> Ali Alatas, Advisor and Special Envoy of the President of the Republic
> of Indonesia; former Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs; Jakarta
> Philip Burdon, former Chairman, Asia 2000 Foundation; New Zealand
> Chairman, APEC; former New Zealand Minister of Trade Negotiations;
> Wellington
> Fujio Cho, President, Toyota Motor Corporation >Cho Suck-Rai,
> Chairman, Hyosung Corporation, Seoul >Carrillo Gantner, Vice
> President, The Myer Foundation; Melbourne
> Chung Mong-Joon, Member, Korean National Assembly; Vice President,
> Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA); Seoul
> Barry Desker, Director, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies,
> Nanyang Techonological University,Singapore >Takashi Ejiri, Attorney
> at Law, Asahi Koma Law Office
> Jesus P. Estanislao, President and Chief Executive Officer, Institute
> of Corporate Directors/Institute of Solidarity in Asia, Manila; former
> Philippine Minister of Finance
> Hugh Fletcher, Director, Fletcher Building, Ltd., Auckland; former
> Chief Executive Officer, Fletcher Challenge >Shinji Fukukawa,
> Executive Advisor, Dentsu Inc.
> Hiroaki Fujii, Advisor, The Japan Foundation; former Japanese
> Ambassador to the United Kingdom >Yoichi Funabashi, Chief Diplomatic
> Correspondent and Columnist, The Asahi Shimbun
> Ross Garnaut, Professor of Economics, Research School of Pacific and
> Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra
> Toyoo Gyohten, President, Institute for International Monetary
> Affairs; Senior Advisor, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd. >John R.
> Hewson, Member, Advisory Council, ABN AMRO Australia, Sydney
> Han Sung-Joo, President, Seoul Forum for International Affairs;
> Professor, International Relations, Ilmin International Relations
> Institute, Korea University, Seoul; former Korean Minister of Foreign
> Affairs;
former Korean Ambassador to the United States;
> Stuart Harris, Professor of International Relations, Research School
> of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University,
> Canberra; former Australian Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs
> Azman Hashim, Chairman, AmBank Group, Kuala Lumpur >Ernest M. Higa,
> President and CEO, Higa Industries >Shintaro Hori, Managing Partner,
> Bain & Company Japan, Inc.
> Murray Horn, Managing Director, Institutional Banking, ANZ (NZ) Ltd.,
> Sydney; Chairman, ANZ >Investment Bank; former Parliament Secretary,
> New Zealand Treasury
> Hyun Hong-Choo, Senior Partner, Kim & Chang, Seoul; former Korean
> Ambassador to the United Nations and to the United States; Seoul
> >Nobuyuki Idei, Chief Corporate Advisor, Sony Corporation
> Hyun Jae-Hyun, Chairman, Tong Yang Group, Seoul >Shin’ichi Ichimura,
> Counselor, International Centre for the Study of East Asian
> Development,Kitakyushu
> Takeo Inokuchi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mitsui Sumitomo
> Insurance Company, Ltd. >Noriyuki Inoue, Chairman and CEO, Daikin
> Industries, Ltd.
> Rokuro Ishikawa, Honorary Chairman, Kajima Corporation >Motoo Kaji,
> Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo
> Kasem Kasemsri, Honorary Chairman Thailand-U.S. Business Council,
> Bangkok; Chairman,Advisory Board,Chart Thai
> Party;Chairman,Thai-Malaysian Association; former Deputy Prime
> Minister of Thailand
> Koichi Kato, Member,Japanese House of Representatives;former
> Secretary-General, Liberal Democratic Party >Trevor Kennedy, Chairman,
> Oil Search, Ltd.; Chairman, Cypress Lakes Group, Ltd.; Sydney
> K. Kesavapany, Director, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
> Singapore >Kim Kihwan, International Advisor, Goldman Sachs, Seoul;
> former Korean Ambassador-at-Large for Economic Affairs
> Kim Kyung-Won, President Emeritus, Seoul Forum for International
> Affairs, Seoul; former Korean Ambassador to the United States and the
> United Nations; Advisor, Kim & Chang Law Office; Pacific
Asia Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
> Kakutaro Kitashiro, Chairman of the Board, IBM Japan, Ltd. >Shoichiro
> Kobayashi, Senior Advisor, Kansai Electric Power Company, Ltd. >Kenji
> Kosaka, Member, Japanese House of Representatives
> Yotaro Kobayashi, Chairman of the Board, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.; Pacific
> Asia Chairman, Trilateral Commission
> Akira Kojima, Chairman, Japan Center for Economic Research ( JCER )
> >Koo John, Chairman, LS Cable Ltd.; Chairman, LS Industrial Systems
> Co.; Seoul
> Lee Hong-Koo, Chairman, Seoul Forum for International Affairs, Seoul;
> former Korean Prime Minister;former Korean Ambassador to the United
> Kingdom and the United States
> Lee In-ho, University Professor, Myongji University, Seoul; former
> President, Korea Foundation; former Korean Ambassador to Finland and
> Russia
> Lee Jay Y., Vice President, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Seoul >Lee
> Kyungsook Choi, President, Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul
> Adrianto Machribie, Chairman, PT Freeport Indonesia, Jakarta >Minoru
> Makihara, Senior Corporate Advisor, Mitsubishi Corporation
> Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer,
> Rakuten, Inc. Yoshihiko Miyauchi, Chairman and Chief Executive
> Officer, ORIX Corporation
> Isamu Miyazaki, Special Advisor, Daiwa Institute of Research, Ltd.;
> former Director-General of the Japanese Economic Planning Agency
> Kiichi Miyazawa, former Prime Minister of Japan; former Finance
> Minister; former Member, House of Representatives >Yuzaburo Mogi,
> President and Chief Executive Officer, Kikkoman Corporation
> Mike Moore, former Director-General, World Trade Organization, Geneva;
> Member, New Zealand Privy Council, Auckland; former Prime Minister of
> New Zealand
> Moriyuki Motono, President, Foreign Affairs Society; former Japanese
> Ambassador to France >Jiro Murase, Managing Partner, Bingham McCutchen
> Murase, New York
> Minoru Murofushi, Counselor, ITOCHU Corporation >Masao Nakamura,
> President and Chief Executive Officer, NTT Docomo Inc.
> Masashi Nishihara, President, National Defense Academy >Taizo
> Nishimuro, Advisor, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
> Toshiba Corporation
> Roberto F. de Ocampo, President, Asian Institute of Management; former
> Secretary of Finance, Manila >Toshiaki Ogasawara, Chairman and
> Publisher, The Japan Times Ltd.; Chairman, Nifco Inc.
> Sadako Ogata, President, Japan International Cooperation Agency
> (JICA); former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
> Shijuro Ogata, former Deputy Governor, Japan Development Bank; former
> Deputy Governor for International Relations, Bank of Japan; Pacific
> Asia Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
> Sozaburo Okamatsu, Chairman, Research Institute of Economy, Trade &
> Industry (RIETI) Yoshio Okawara, President, Institute for
> International Policy Studies; former Japanese Ambassador tothe United
> States >Yoichi Okita, Professor, National Graduate Institute for
> Policy Studies >Ariyoshi Okumura, Chairman, Lotus Corporate Advisory,
> Inc.
> Anand Panyarachun, Chairman, Thai Industrial Federation; Chairman,
> Saha-Union Public CompanyLtd.; former Prime Minister of Thailand;
> Bangkok Ryu Jin Roy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Poongsan
> Corp., Seoul >Eisuke Sakakibara, Professor, Keio University; former
> Japanese Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs
> SaKong Il, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Institute for Global
> Economics, Seoul; former Korean Minister of Finance
> Yukio Satoh, President, The Japan Institute of International Affairs;
> former Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations >Sachio Semmoto,
> Chief Executive Officer, eAccess, Ltd.
> Masahide Shibusawa, President, Shibusawa Ei’ichi Memorial Foundation
> >Seiichi Shimada, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nihon Unisys,
> Ltd.
> Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Member, Japanese House of Representatives; former
> Parliamentary Vice Minister for Finance
> Arifin Siregar, International Advisor, Goldman Sachs (Pacific Asia)
> LLC; former Ambassador of Indonesia to the United States; Jakarta
> Noordin Sopiee, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Institute of
> Strategic and International Studies,Kuala Lumpur >Suh Kyung-Bae,
> President and Chief Executive Officer, Amore Pacific Corp., Seoul
> Tsuyoshi Takagi, President, The Japanese Foundation of Textile,
> Chemical, Food, Commercial, Service and General Workers’ Unions (UI
> ZENSEN)
> Keizo Takemi, Member, Japanese House of Councillors; former State
> Secretary for Foreign Affairs >Akihiko Tanaka, Director, Institute of
> Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo
> Naoki Tanaka, President, The 21st Century Public Policy Institute
> >Sunjoto Tanudjaja, President and Chief Executive Officer, PT Great
> River International, Jakarta
> Teh Kok Peng, President, GIC Special Investments Private Ltd.,
> Singapore >Shuji Tomita, Senior Executive Vice President, NTT
> Communications Corporation
> Kiyoshi Tsugawa, Executive Advisor & Member of Japan Advisory Board,
> Lehman Brothers Japan, Inc.; Chairman, ARAMARK ASIA Junichi Ujiie,
> Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Nomura Holdings, Inc. Sarasin
> Viraphol, Executive Vice President, Charoen Pokphand Co., Ltd.,
> Bangkok; former Deputy Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs of
> Thailand Cesar E. A. Virata, Corporate Vice Chairman and Acting Chief
> Executive Officer, Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC),
> Manila; former Prime Minister of Philippines Jusuf Wanandi, Member,
> Board of Trustees, Centre for Strategic and International Studies,
> Jakarta
> Etsuya Washio, President, National Federation of Workers and Consumers
> Insurance Cooperatives (ZENROSAI); former President, Japanese Trade
> Union Confederation (RENGO)
> Koji Watanabe, Senior Fellow, Japan Center for International Exchange;
> former Japanese Ambassador to Russia >Osamu Watanabe, Chairman, Japan
> External Trade Organization (JETRO)
> Taizo Yakushiji, Executive Member, Council for Science and Technology
> Policy of the Cabinet Officeof Japan; Executive Research Director,
> Institute for International Policy Studies
> Tadashi Yamamoto, President, Japan Center for International Exchange;
> Pacific Asia Director, Trilateral Commission >Noriyuki Yonemura,
> Consultant, Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
Note: Those without city names are Japanese Members, Korean names are
shown with surname first.
Former Members in Public Service >Hong Seok-Hyun, Korean Ambassador to
the United States >Masaharu Ikuta, Director General, Postal Services
Corporation.
> Yoriko Kawaguchi, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Japan
> >Hisashi Owada, Judge, International Court of Justice >Takeshi Kondo,
> President, Japan Highway Public Corporation (Nihon Doro Kodan)
PARTICIPANTS FROM OTHER AREAS “Triennium Participants”
> Abdlatif Al-Hamad, Director General and Chairman, Arab Fund for
> Economic and Social Development;former Kuwait Minister of Finance and
> Planning André Azoulay, Adviser to H.M. King Mohammed VI, Rabat
> >Morris Chang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Taiwan
> Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.,Taipei
> Omar Davies, Member of the Jamaican Parliament and Minister of Finance
> and Planning, Kingston;former Director General, Planning Institute of
> Jamaica
> Hüsnü Dogan, General Coordinator, Nurol Holding, Ankara; former
> Chairman of the Board of Trustees,Development Foundation of Turkey;
> former Minister of Defence
> Alejandro Foxley, Member of the Senate and former Chairman of the
> Finance Committee and the Joint Budget Committee, Chilean Congress,
> Valparaiso
> Jacob A. Frenkel, Vice Chairman, American International Group, Inc.
> and Chairman, AIG’s Global Economic Strategies Group, New York, NY;
> Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, G-30; former
Chairman, Merrill Lynch International; former Governor, Bank of Israel;
former Economic Counselor& Director of Research, IMF; former Chairman,
Board of Governors of the Inter-American
Development Bank; former David Rockefeller Professor of Economics,
University of Chicago >Victor K. Fung, Chairman, Li & Fung; Chairman,
Prudential Asia Ltd., Hong Kong
> Frene Ginwala, Speaker of the National Assembly, Parliament of the
> Republic of South Africa, Cape Town
> H.R.H. Prince El Hassan bin Talal, President, The Club of Rome;
> Moderator of the World Conference on Religion and Peace; Chairman,
> Arab Thought Forum, Amman
> Ricardo Hausman, Professor of the Practice of Economic Development,
> Center for International Development, John F. Kennedy School of
> Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; former
Chief Economist, Inter-American Development Bank; former Venezuelan
Minister of Planning and Member of the Board of the Central Bank of
Venezuela
> Serhiy Holovaty, Member of the Supreme Rada; President of the
> Ukrainian Legal Foundation; former Minister of Justice, Kiev
> Sergei Karaganov, Deputy Director, Institute of Europe, Russian
> Academy of Sciences; Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on
> Defense and Foreign Policy, Moscow
> Jeffrey L.S. Koo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Chinatrust
> Investment, Bank, Taipei >”Richard Li”, Chairman and Chief Executive
> Officer, Pacific Century Group Holdings Ltd., Hong Kong
> Ricardo Lopez Murphy, Visiting Research Fellow, Latin American
> Economic Research Foundation, Buenos Aires; former Argentinian Finance
> Minister and Defence Minister
> Itamar Rabinovich, President, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv; former
> Ambassador to the United States Rüsdü Saracoglu, President of the
> Finance Group, Koç Holding; Chairman, Makro Consulting, Istanbul;
> former State Minister and Member of the Turkish Parliament; former
> Governor of the Central Bank of Turkey
> Roberto Egydio Setubal, President and Chief Executive Officer, Banco
> Itaú S.A. and Banco Itaú Holding Financiera S.A., Sao Paulo
> Stan Shih, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Acer Group,
> Taipei >Gordon Wu, Chairman and Managing Director, Hopewell Holdings
> Ltd., Hong Kong Grigory A. Yavlinsky, former Member of the State Duma;
> Leader of the “Yabloko” Parliamentary Group; Chairman of the Center
> for Economic and Political Research, Moscow
> Yu Xintian, President, Shanghai Institute for International Studies,
> Shanghai >Yuan Ming, Director, Institute of International Relations,
> Peking University, Beijing >Zhang Yunling, Director, Institute of
> Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS),
> Beijing >Wang Jisi, Dean, School of International Studies, Peking
> University, Beijing

A quote from David Rockefeller’s autobiography ‘Memoirs’ - 6-11-6: “For
more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the
political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack
the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield
over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we
are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the
United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’
and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more
integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you
will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Trilateral Commission
* The three laterals are: Europe, US, Japan.
* Organized by David Rockefeller.
* Jimmy Carter among the founding members.
* In the 1980 U.S. Presidential election, three major candidates were
Trilateral members: George HW Bush, Walter Mondale, John Anderson
(independent.)
* Other members or former members: Alexander Haig, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Warren Christopher, Caspar Weinberger, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara,
George Shultz, John D. Rockefeller IV, Tom Foley, W. Michael Blumenthal,
Cyrus Vance, Elliot Richardson, Paul Volcker, Bill Clinton, Count Otto
Lambsdorff.
* (members) Mayors: Tom Bradley, Andrew Young.
* (members) Journalists: Katharine Graham (Washington Post), David
Gergen (U.S. News and World Report)
* Ronald Reagan disliked the Commission and what it stood for, but held
a reception for it in 1984.
* Pat Robertson: The Commission springs “from the depth of something
that is evil.”
* John Connally: The Republican Party “will never nominate a man who
belonged to the Trilateral Commission.” Riiight.
* At any given time, has around 325 members, each serving a 3 year “term”.

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Guantanamo as a symbol

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

By Ramzy Baroud

Guantanamo is a dark spot in U.S. history and shall go down in world history as a symbol of injustice and oppression

11 January marked the sixth year anniversary of the establishment of the Guantanamo detention camp. Mere months after the start of the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan, a large cargo plane landed in a U.S. military base in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, bringing in a group of hunchbacked, orange-clad, blindfolded, “terrorist” suspects, apparently representing the worst of the worst. They included children and aged men, charity workers, journalists and people who were sold to the U.S military in exchange for a large bounty.

The debate over this notorious prison has ever since been marred by easy reductionism. The fact is that Guantanamo is neither a warranted compound holding “bad people” — as explained by the ever straightforward President Bush — nor is it a dark spot in the otherwise luminous U.S. record for respecting human rights, rules of war and international treaties. If anything, Guantanamo is a mere extension of a long list of untold violations practised by the Bush administration, which condenses the camp to being a symbol of widespread policy predicated on nonchalantly undermining international law.

The prison is arguably one of the worst mockeries of international law, which was itself drafted partly by American legal experts. Past U.S. administrations may not have been devoted followers of the Geneva Conventions, but neither have they ever discarded international treaties as openly and as arrogantly as the current one. Former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, a personal friend of President Bush, mastered this art in a way that allowed his bosses to adorn their gratuitous actions with the air of legitimacy. Guantanamo was his ultimate masterpiece.

Hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners have subsequently been released, some to the custody of their respective governments. Roughly 275 remain in the camp. Out of a total of about 1,000 only 10 have been charged.

The prisoners at Guantanamo are “among the most dangerous, best trained vicious killers on the face of the earth,” according to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. If that was the case, why wasn’t Rumsfeld prepared to try them in a court of law? After all his self-assured judgement shows that he possessed more evidence than needed by any court to convict and throw them into jail. But, of course, the subject of evidence or lack thereof was irrelevant.

Neither habeas corpus, due process, nor any set of laws, national or international, mattered much to an administration that prided itself on its ability to transcend all of that. Of course, such disregard was justified on the basis of national interests and a whole set of tired pretences. Time, however, showed that Guantanamo, and the overriding militancy it symbolised, has probably done more damage to U.S. national interest than any other event in U.S. history.

In the early years, prisoners at Guantanamo were held in open air cages, with nothing but a mat and a bucket for a toilet. Anthony D Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in Salon.com, “We now know that only a small percentage of the many hundreds of men and boys who have been held at Guantanamo were captured on a battlefield fighting against Americans; far more were sold into captivity by tribal warlords for substantial bounties.” Romero cites comments made by a former Guantanamo commander for several years, Brigadier General Jay Hood. The commander told the Wall Street Journal, “Sometimes, we just didn’t get the right folks.”

Moreover, both former secretary of state Colin Powell and current Secretary Condoleezza Rice called for the shutting down of Guantanamo, along with various international bodies and numerous rights groups in the U.S. and abroad. But the Bush administration still persists in maintaining Guantanamo. The chances are if the Guantanamo prisoners were of any value in Operation Enduring Freedom and in the so-called global war on terror, whatever information some of them might have possessed has already been extracted, violently or otherwise. Moreover, if overwhelming evidence against them was indeed at hand, the Bush administration would have tried them long ago. Neither scenario is convincing.

Leigh Sales, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald made the dubious assessment that the “the problem is what to do with the prisoners [if the detention camp is shutdown]. If they are moved to American jails, they will have to be charged and tried under U.S. law. Evidence gathered through coercive interrogations will not be admissible in regular courts and so Bush would risk watching the likes of Mohamed and Hambali walk free.” Such commentary, emulated by others, suggests that the underlying reason behind the preservation of Guantanamo is, more or less, national interests.

However, Guantanamo is staying in business, for the exact same reason that the Iraq war rages on, and for similar reasons to why the Bush administration’s failing global policy persists. Shutting down Guantanamo would be an admission of defeat, a declaration of failure, which is something that the patrons of the empire cannot afford, at least not now.

11 September was an opportune moment to turn a new doctrine into reality, as outlined by the Project for the New American Century, a desperate attempt to sustain an empire that is facing challenges. The tactics, utilised almost immediately after the terrorist attacks, pointed at a foreign and military policy style designed to free itself from accountability to anyone, including the American people, the United Nations and international law. Guantanamo is a grotesque representation of that tactic — and the failure of that tactic.

Indeed, Guantanamo is a dark spot in U.S. history and shall go down in world history as a symbol of injustice and oppression. And it will continue to be a jarring reminder of the inhumanity, the torture, and the extreme violence associated with the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror.

– Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian-American author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in numerous newspapers and journals worldwide, including the Washington Post, Japan Times, Al Ahram Weekly and Lemonde Diplomatique. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London). Read more about him on his website: RamzyBaroud.net

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VIDEO: 1 In 5 Iraq Vets Have Brain Injuries

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Time magazine Managing Editor Richard Stengel discussed a new Pentagon report that says “1 in 5 American servicemen and women who have been in Iraq are coming back with brain injuries.” Stengel called it the “real toll” of the war, adding that “the legacy of that will last all of our lifetimes and it’s incalculable.”

In total, according to Stengel, “more than 250,000 people” are affected by “mild traumatic brain injuries” sustained in Iraq.

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Brown Prepares to Sell UK Out to Globalist EU

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Brown refuses to allow a referendum on the EU treaty, insists sovereignty be handed over to the globalists in Brussels

Gordon Brown is bringing Britain’s political system into disrepute by refusing to hold a referendum on the EU Reform Treaty, the Tories have claimed.

The accusation from William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, came as MPs of all parties lined up to demand a national vote before new powers are transferred to Brussels.

Gordon Brown

Mr Brown received an honorary doctorate from the University of Delhi in New Delhi, India, this week

At the start of a five-week process to ratify the Treaty, tempers flared on both the Labour and Tory benches, after Speaker Michael Martin refused to allow an early vote on a referendum.

Ian Davidson, the rebel Labour MP who has been rallying support for a referendum, said he was “very disappointed” by the Speaker’s decision.

He vowed that last night’s failure to secure a vote was only the beginning of a “long battle”.

He and a small number of other Labour MPs were preparing late last night to vote against giving the Bill necessary to ratify the Treaty a second reading.

Launching the five-week ratification process, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, denied the Treaty would mean any substantial transfer of power from the UK parliament and courts to Europe.

“My case to this House is that this Treaty does not constitute fundamental constitutional change,” he said.

He made clear he believed Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, had been wrong to promise to hold a referendum in 2004 on the Constitutional Treaty, the predecessor to the Reform Treaty, which should also have been left to Parliament to approve.
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Tories jeered derisively at Mr Miliband’s insistence that the “tide of Euro-federalism” had turned. Frank Field, a former Labour minister, said a number of Commons select committees had “reported that there is no substantial difference between what was a constitution and is now a treaty”.

Mr Hague said the most serious charge against the Government was that it wanted to take the Bill “through Parliament without any of the consultation of the people that was promised at the last election, brazenly abrogating the commitment made by every major political party in this House to hold a national referendum in this event.”

By breaking their promise for a referendum they were spreading distrust in politicians and the political process. “Today in our country, the word of government is less readily believed than at any time in our modern history,” Mr Hague told MPs.

“Ministers, instead of tackling the apathy and cynicism that brings will only add to it with the weasel words with which they try to escape their referendum and commitment, bringing in their wake a political process that will be further devalued and the passage of a Treaty whose democratic legitimacy will never be respected.”

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Nasa probe reveals image of mystery figure on Mars

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Life on Mars? Amazing photos from Nasa probe reveal image of mystery figure on Red Planet

The Daily Mail 

Does this photograph really prove that we are not alone in the universe?

Images beamed back from Mars would suggest so - although to sceptics, it could just be a strange rock formation.

Nasa’s Mars Explorer Spirit sent back images from the surface of the Red Planet four years ago, and there was initial disappointment among scientists that they lacked any signs of life.

The ‘alien’ appears to be walking downhill

But space and science fiction enthusiasts are convinced there is more than meets the eye, and after years of studying the images, have found what appears to be an alien figure walking downhill.

The discovery of the life-like figure ambling across the surface of the planet is likely to further boost intrigue in our nearest neighbouring planet.

An earlier rock formation, dubbed “the face of Mars” showed what appeared to be a human head staring into the night sky.

The pictures, found on a Chinese website, are now creating a stir of excitement on the internet.

Alien life: What seems to be a human-like Martian is pictured on Mars

One keen stargazer said: “These pictures are amazing. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked and saw what appears to be a naked alien running around on Mars.”

Nasa’s Mars Explorer Spirit is now starting its fourth year of exploration.

Painstaking: Space enthusiasts spent four years analysing this image, which on much closer inspection shows the ‘alien’

Rovers are deployed because it has so far been too costly and difficult to achieve a manned mission to Mars, and because probes and satellites are too limited to explore the Martian surface.

The Spirit rover was launched on June 10, 2003.

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One in ten RFID projects tag humans

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

The percentage of worldwide radio frequency identification (RFID) projects concerning tagging people has increased from eight percent to 11 percent over the last year, according to new research — with the healthcare sector set to see the benefits.

Suzanne Tindal, ZDNet Australia

Although privacy concerns have been aired over passports being RFID-tagged, let alone people, according to the report by RFID researcher ID TechEx, people should consider the benefits before becoming too concerned.

The health sector is already taking up people-tagging, the ID TechEx report says, where it allows nurses to radio their location if they are being assaulted, reduce mother baby mismatches and baby theft, help severe diabetics with getting correct treatment, and monitoring disoriented elderly patients without the need for a dedicated member of staff.

However Phillip Allen, analyst at research firm IDC, told ZDNet Australia that RFID does not seem to have gained a foothold in the Australian healthcare industry, and is unlikely to do so in the future.

“The healthcare sector in Australia is classified as a late adopter of IT,” Allen said, adding healthcare organisations are struggling to fund the “stock standard areas of IT”, and are unlikely invest in forward-looking technologies such as RFID.

“They have been technology laggards and under-investing in technology for over a decade,” he said.

Allen said that even if healthcare organisations were to consider people-tagging, the resulting data could pose a problem. “They don’t have the systems in place to manage that volume of information,” he said.

One exception is Rockhampton hospital, where Allen said nurses are given an RFID pendant to allow the hospital to monitor their location.

Despite the likely slow uptake in the Australian healthcare industry, the country is proving an enthusiastic adopter overall. According to ID TechEx, Australia clocked up the seventh largest number of new RFID projects worldwide.

USA was number one, with the UK and China following in second and third place, all three of which were classed as “endemic surveillance societies” in the 2007 International Privacy Ranking report, released at the end of last year.

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Diana crash survivor to testify

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

The only survivor of the crash that killed Princess Diana is scheduled to testify Wednesday at the inquest into her death.

Trevor Rees, formerly known as Trevor Rees-Jones, was the front-seat passenger in the Mercedes that carried Diana, her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul. He sustained serious injuries in the Aug. 31, 1997 crash.

Rees has said he has no memory of the crash. The last thing he remembers that night was the car pulling away from the Ritz Hotel in Paris, he has said. His next memory is more than a week later, in his hospital bed, when his parents told him everyone else in the car was dead.

At the time of the crash, Rees was a bodyguard employed by Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed. He was assigned to guard the younger Fayed and, because she was Dodi Fayed’s companion on the trip, the princess as well.

Rees suffered major injuries to his lower jaw, the base of his brain, and his pulmonary system and has had several surgeries and hospitalizations, some of which Al Fayed paid for.

He no longer works on Al Fayed’s security team, and Rees has said what was once a good relationship with his former employer has broken down.

In an interview with CNN’s Larry King Live in 2000, Rees said he left because Al Fayed pressured him to support conspiracy theories about the crash.

“I felt my level of trust was breaking down” in the Al Fayed organization, Rees said. “I was informed by my solicitors that if I continued at work, they felt they could no longer represent me. That I was just being seen as a mouthpiece for whatever theories were being chucked up. And I made the decision eventually to leave.”

In 2000, Rees published a book, “The Bodyguard’s Story: Diana, the Crash, and the Sole Survivor,” offering his account of the events surrounding the crash. He said Al Fayed tried unsuccessfully to stop the book’s publication in England.

Rees told CNN he wrote the book to give a definitive account of what he remembered and knew, but also to counter Al Fayed’s accusations that his unprofessionalism caused the accident. Rees also said proceeds from the book helped pay his legal bills.

Rees, a former soldier, was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash, but he has said that was routine for his work as a bodyguard because it meant he was free to move around.

Rees has said he wasn’t happy with the Ritz departure plan on the fateful night, and that Dodi Fayed hadn’t given him or the driver enough advance notice of their destination.

The plan to leave the Ritz by the back door, Rees told CNN, “was not the plan that I was happy with.” He also didn’t approve of Dodi Fayed’s plan to travel in a single vehicle — the Mercedes — with no security following behind.

Other former bodyguards have testified at the inquest that Fayed rarely planned his schedule far in advance and was often eager to get to his destination quickly.

Source

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The Emails that Dick Cheney Deleted

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Harper’s Magazine

Late last week, right after official White House spokesmen made a series of either evasive or completely false statements about the mysterious case of the vanishing, then reappearing, then perhaps no really vanished White House emails, Henry Waxman and his Oversight Committee announced some of the conclusions they had reached.

Dan Eggen and Elizabeth Williamson published an account of it on Friday in the Washington Post:

The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat. The 2005 study — whose credibility the White House attacked this week — identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

Waxman said he decided to release the summary after White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday that there is “no evidence” that any White House e-mails from those years are missing. Fratto’s assertion “seems to be an unsubstantiated statement that has no relation to the facts they have shared with us,” Waxman said. The competing claims were the latest salvos in an escalating dispute over whether the Bush Administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records — including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions — for history and in case of any future legal demands.

Waxman said he is seeking testimony on the issue at a hearing next month from White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, National Archivist Allen Weinstein and Alan R. Swendiman, the politically appointed director of the Office of Administration, which produced the 2005 study at issue.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has now posted a series of studies to help us zero in on just what’s missing. It will come as no surprise to most that the big offender is the men at the center of the most virulent scandals, and the missing email traffic relates just to those dates in which a federal prosecutor would have the most interest. Vice President Dick Cheney’s office destroyed its emails, in violation of the requirements of the federal records act and potentially criminal law, for the following days:

September 12, 2003: The day on which the headlines in the New York Times read “federal appeals court in Washington yesterday rejected the Bush Administration’s effort to avoid releasing documents about Vice President Cheney Energy Task Force.”

October 1, 2003: The day on which the Solicitor General argued to the Supreme Court that Vice President Cheney was entitled to keep all the details concerning his meetings with oil executives and their influence in his formulation of national energy policy confidential, including the names of the participants.

October 2, 2003: The day on which senior Congressional Republicans began a rewrite of key energy legislation behind closed doors and without involvement of Democrats—but potentially with the involvement of Vice President Cheney and oil executives involved in his secret energy task force.

October 3, 2003: The Senate approved a requirement that all future contracts to rebuild Iraq be granted on an open and competitive basis after airing open criticism on the closed and controversial process that resulted in multi-billion dollar noncompetitive contract awards to subsidiaries of Halliburton, the company which Vice President Cheney headed before he assumed office, and from which, under a deferred compensation agreement, he continues to receive more compensation than he receives from the Treasury for his services as vice president.

October 5, 2003: Publication of the findings of a task force studying the development of the Iraqi oil industry and its potential for funding the costs of the occupation of Iraq.

January 29, 2004: David A. Kay, the former chief American weapons inspector in Iraq, called for an independent inquiry into pre-war intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs as skepticism about the administration’s claims about Iraqi WMD grows.

January 30, 2004: President Bush opposes an independent investigation of intelligence failures surrounding Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction stockpiles despite increasing demands for one by some U.S. lawmakers.

January 31, 2004: Press reports focus on building speculation that an independent commission will be created to look into the White House’s basis for claims that Iraq had WMDs, accusations which were consistently led by Vice President Cheney.

February 15, 2005: Citing the threat exemplified by 9/11, President Bush urges Congress to re-authorize the Patriot Act.

February 16, 2005: An appeals court orders that two reporters who have refused to testify about their conversations with confidential sources regarding the leak that exposed the identification of CIA agent Valerie Plame should be held in contempt. It would later be revealed that both had conversations with members of Vice President Cheney’s staff.

May 23, 2005: Calls mount for the resignation of Tom Delay pending the outcome of an investigation into ethical violations. The Congressional and criminal investigation into Jack Abramoff widens to include long-time associate and fellow architect of the Republican takeover of the capital, Grover Norquist. The White House continues to obstruct efforts to identify who Abramoff saw in his hundreds of visits to the White House.

The missing Cheney emails fit a pattern that suggests intentional rather than accidental destruction. They all occur on days on which, considering contemporaneous press reports, the Vice President or his staff members were in the news and would likely have been communicating on the subjects relating to the press coverage. The most persistent themes are the outing of Valerie Plame and Cheney’s secret dealings with a group of oil and gas executives who were directly influencing national energy policy. The Empty Wheel has some excellent analysis of these points.

I keep wondering: have they checked that man-sized safe in Cheney’s office? Maybe he kept some copies there.

And in the meantime, Blimp TV offers a promotional videotape for the administration’s proposed new petroleum-based coinage.

Have Your Say: The Emails that Dick Cheney Deleted
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VIDEO: Bush Pardon’s HIMSELF Against Warcrimes

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

President Bush Passes a Bill giving himself and his whitehouse retroactive immunity for possible war crimes!

Don’t you wish we could all do that?

NO WAY I WOULD BE A CRIMINAL!
AMERICA WAKE UP and FIGHT BACK!!

Against the NEW WORLD ORDER!

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The List: The World’s Top Spy Agencies

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

With the Cold War long over, the CIA no longer faces any real competition, right? Wrong. The world’s top espionage agencies are as busy as ever. This week, the FP List looks at the countries that best know how to wield a cloak and dagger.

DENIS SINYAKOV/AFP/Getty Images

Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)

Country: Russia

Area of expertise: Officially—counterterrorism and protecting Russian commercial interests abroad. Unofficially—consolidating political power back home.

Activities: Russia has a formidable spying tradition that dates back to the czarist-era Cheka. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the once omnipotent KGB was broken up into several smaller organizations with vastly limited powers. Since ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin took power, however, the SVR, or Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedk as it’s known in Russian, has recovered much of its swagger. Russian spying within the United States is now back to Cold War levels, U.S. officials believe. Peter Earnest, the executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, who matched wits with the KGB as a CIA operative for over three decades, shared this assessment. “They are as important today as they ever were, if not more,” he said. “Russia has not eased off at all on its espionage activities.” The SVR is widely suspected to have played a role in the assassination of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London last year. Putin has denied this allegation and lauded the SVR as “one of the most professional and effective special services.” In reality, the intelligence services have emerged as one of the most powerful political groups in Putin’s Russia, and ex-KGB agents occupy many of the Kremlin’s key positions. As the Russian saying goes, “There’s no such thing as an ex-Chekist.”

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FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Ministry of State Security

Country: China

Area of expertise: Industrial espionage and data analysis, domestic security

Activities: The MSS is close in structure to the old Soviet KGB and is responsible for both domestic security and foreign espionage. Its overseas activities are believed to be focused aggressively on the United States, particularly its high-tech industries and military technology. Rather than relying on a handful of agents, the MSS views almost anyone has a potential intelligence asset and gathers intelligence on new weapons systems painstakingly over time through personal contacts. “Chinese espionage is different than Western espionage,” says Earnest. “We go after a secret somewhere; they go after numbers. They collect little bits and pieces and put it together.” Sources often don’t even realize they’ve collaborated with a foreign spy mission, and the thousands of Chinese diplomats, students, and business people who travel to the West every year make spies incredibly difficult to detect. Through this method, the Chinese have managed to reverse engineer numerous U.S. weapons systems. China appears to be stepping up its espionage efforts in cyberspace as well. In September 2007, the Pentagon accused China of hacking into U.S. Defense Department databases. The governments of Germany and Britain have made similar accusations.

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Research and Analysis Wing

Country: India

Area of expertise: Destabilizing Pakistan

Activities: RAW was founded in 1968 specifically to counter Pakistani support of militant groups within India, but over the years it has grown into one of the world’s most formidable intelligence services, with wide-ranging activities in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and elsewhere. It is particularly active in Bangladesh, where it played a key role in that country’s movement for independence from Pakistan. Pakistani authorities often blame RAW for terrorist attacks in their country. Although these accusations tend to lack evidence, RAW does have a history of backing militant groups in Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka. Recent years have not been easy for RAW. In 1996, RAW was implicated in a scandal involving the illegal donation of funds to U.S. congressional campaigns. Stories about infiltration by U.S. and Chinese assets have become public scandals, and the media is now calling for greater transparency and oversight of the notoriously secretive agency.

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ROUF BHAT/AFP/Getty Images

Inter-Services Intelligence

Country: Pakistan

Area of expertise: Destabilizing India

Activities: Sometimes described as a state within a state with virtually no oversight, ISI is best known for the firm control it exercises over Pakistan’s politics and its role in protecting the military from domestic opposition. But the ISI has also been accused of playing both sides in the global war on terror—fighting Islamist extremists domestically while abetting them abroad. Whether spreading anti-Indian propaganda in Kashmir or funding Sikh separatists in Punjab, the ISI has consistently undermined India’s stability for decades. India has accused the ISI of involvement in dozens of terrorist attacks over the years, including the Mumbai bombings of 2006 that killed 187 people. At the same time, the ISI has worked with the U.S. and allies to combat al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan.

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ROUF BHAT/AFP/Getty Images

Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)

Country: Britain

Area of expertise: Counterterrorism, James Bond nostalgia

Activities: After a decade of budget cuts during the “peace dividend” years following the Cold War, Her Majesty’s secret service was caught somewhat unprepared for the challenges of the war on terror. On 9/11, only 30 of MI6’s 1,600 agents were working on counterterrorism. Since then, the agency has been on an all-out recruitment blitz that includes previously unheard of measures, such as taking out ads in newspapers and allowing agents to grant interviews. (Among the fun facts revealed: There really is a person called “Q” who designs gadgets, just like in the James Bond films, but “M” is actually called “C.”) MI6 has also taken out ads in online spy-themed computer games such as “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell.” This is a far cry from the Cold War era, when undercover recruiters surreptitiously singled out Oxford and Cambridge’s best and brightest for intelligence work. Despite the charm offensive, MI6 has been attacked in the British media for allegedly participating in CIA-organized “rendition” of terrorism suspects to be tortured abroad. Kremlin officials have also accused MI6 of trying to influence Russia’s domestic politics. MI6’s activities may not be as expansive as they once were, but Earnest characterizes this as “a shift in priorities” toward Middle Eastern terrorism, “rather than a decline.”

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The Mossad

Country: Israel

Area of expertise: Combating Islamist terrorism, evacuating Jewish refugees

Activities: “We’re all students of the Mossad,” says Earnest. Since it was founded in 1951, “the Institute,” as it translates in English, has acquired a reputation for extraordinary skill and aggressiveness in combating Israel’s enemies. Some of its notable achievements include the abduction of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann from Argentina in 1960, the assassination of the planners of the 1972 Munich Olympics killings, and the assassination of a senior Hamas operative with an exploding cellphone in 1996. The Mossad has also been active over the years in efforts to assist Jewish refugees who seek to immigrate to Israel, including the secret airlifting of thousands of Ethiopian Jews in “Operation Moses” in 1984. The Mossad made some moves toward greater transparency and openness in the 1990s, including revealing the name of its director for the first time, but under Ariel Sharon it turned back toward the clandestine operations for which it is best known. Reports indicate that the Mossad may have had either an agent or an informant at the Syrian military installation that Israel bombed in September 2007.

Have Your Say: The List: The World’s Top Spy Agencies
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US recruiting under diploma soldiers

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Afghan military operations and the Iraqi war have forced the US army to recruit soldiers without high school diplomas to fill its ranks.

National Priorities Project, a research group that analyzes federal data, found that the percent of Army recruits with a high school diploma dropped last year.

According to the CBS News, in a report released Tuesday the research group said that nearly 71 percent of Army recruits graduated from high school in the 2007 budget year.

All troops must have a high school diploma or an equivalent degree. The military prefers that they have a high school diploma because its studies have shown they are more likely to finish an enlistment term.

The Army’s goal is 90 percent high school graduates, which it hasn’t met since 2004. Each year since, the number of recruits with at least a high school diploma has steadily declined.

The Army has been under growing pressure to strengthen recruiting as part of an ongoing effort to increase its size.

RB/RA

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How Cheney Fought To Give Bush Dictator Status

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy — without congressional approval or judicial review.

Now, as the White House appears ready to ignore subpoenas in the investigations over wiretapping and U.S. attorney firings, FRONTLINE examines the battle over the power of the presidency and Cheney’s way of looking at the Constitution.

“The vice president believes that Congress has very few powers to actually constrain the president and the executive branch,” former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman tells FRONTLINE. “He believes the president should have the final word — indeed the only word — on all matters within the executive branch.”

After Sept. 11, Cheney and Addington were determined to implement their vision — in secret. The vice president and his counsel found an ally in John Yoo, a lawyer at the Justice Department’s extraordinarily powerful Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). In concert with Addington, Yoo wrote memoranda authorizing the president to act with unparalleled authority.

“Through interviews with key administration figures, Cheney’s Law documents the bruising bureaucratic battles between a group of conservative Justice Department lawyers and the Office of the Vice President over the legal foundation for the most closely guarded programs in the war on terror,” says FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk. This is Kirk’s 10th documentary about the Bush administration’s policies since 9/11.

In his most extensive television interview since leaving the Justice Department, former Assistant Attorney General Jack L. Goldsmith describes his initial days at the OLC in the fall of 2003 as he learned about the government’s most secret and controversial covert operations. Goldsmith was shocked by the administration’s secret assertion of unlimited power.

“There were extravagant and unnecessary claims of presidential power that were wildly overbroad to the tasks at hand,” Goldsmith says. “I had a whole flurry of emotions. My first one was disbelief that programs of this importance could be supported by legal opinions that were this flawed. My second was the realization that I would have a very, very hard time standing by these opinions if pressed. My third was the sinking feeling, what was I going to do if I was pressed about reaffirming these opinions?”

As Goldsmith began to question his colleagues’ claims that the administration could ignore domestic laws and international treaties, he began to clash with Cheney’s office. According to Goldsmith, Addington warned him, “If you rule that way, the blood of the 100,000 people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.”

Goldsmith’s battles with Cheney culminated in a now-famous hospital-room confrontation at Attorney General John Ashcroft’s bedside. Goldsmith watched as White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andy Card pleaded with Ashcroft to overrule the department’s finding that a domestic surveillance program was illegal. Ashcroft rebuffed the White House, and as many as 30 department lawyers threatened to resign. The president relented.

But Goldsmith’s victory was temporary, and Cheney’s Law continues the story after the hospital-room standoff. At the Justice Department, White House Counsel Gonzales was named attorney general and tasked with reasserting White House control. On Capitol Hill, Cheney lobbied Congress for broad authorizations for the eavesdropping program and for approval of the administration’s system for trying suspected terrorists by military tribunals.

As the White House and Congress continue to face off over executive privilege, the terrorist surveillance program, and the firing of U.S. attorneys, FRONTLINE tells the story of what’s formed the views of the man behind what some view as the most ambitious project to reshape the power of the president in American history.

Have Your Say: How Cheney Fought To Give Bush Dictator Status
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 7:32 pm and is filed under General, New World Order, Political News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.