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Zimbabwe ballot box seals broken
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Peta Thornycroft |
Zimbabwe’s regime has been accused of a “concerted effort” to rig the election for Robert Mugabe as it emerged that seals protecting ballot boxes have been broken. A partial recount of the election - which was held on March 29 - is now taking place in 23 constituencies.
A source at the recount at the Bulilima East constituency said: “There are 57 ballot boxes from 57 polling stations. We examined all the boxes from the presidential election and the seal on every one is slit.
“There is a foreign observer here so we hope this has been noted.”
The seals guard the keys to the padlocks on the boxes, which contain all the voting materials from a polling station, including the voters’ roll and ballot papers.
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Diane Kohler-Barnard, an election observer from the Southern African Development Community and an MP in South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance, spent three days monitoring the recount.
“From what I have seen and experienced in Zimbabwe over the past three days, it is clear that the process of recounting the contested wards from the recent elections is fatally flawed,” she said.
“The process had been marred by delays, administrative problems and the clear political intent of blaming the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for all the problems associated with the recount.
“Of particular concern was the evidence of ballot box tampering that I witnessed personally, which points to a concerted effort to rig the election results in order to bring about a Mugabe ‘victory’.”
She said Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission had tried to obstruct outside monitoring by “deliberately” giving false information about the venues for the recount.
“There is no doubt that the situation in Zimbabwe is at breaking point as anger over the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s failure to release the results of the presidential election escalates,” she said.
Under the Electoral Act, a second round should have been held last Saturday if - as is almost certain - neither Mr Mugabe nor Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, gained above 50 per cent of votes.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said the conduct of the recount “only serves to fuel suspicion that President Mugabe is seeking to reverse the results that have been published, to regain a majority, and to amplify his own count”.
In a parliamentary statement, Mr Miliband called on African leaders not to recognise Mr Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s legal president.
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Bush Using NAFTA to Eliminate Laws
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Greg Palast |Psst! George Bush has a secret. While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.
You’re not supposed to know that – for two reasons:
First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.
The second reason Bush has kept this major summit a virtual secret is its real agenda. More important, the agenda-makers, the guys who called the meeting, must remain as far out of camera range as possible: The North American Competitiveness Council.
Never heard of The Council? Well, maybe you’ve heard of the counselors: the chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron Oil, Lockheed-Martin and 27 other multinational masters of the corporate universe.
And why did the landlords of our continent order our presidents to a three-nation pajama party? Their term is “harmonization.”
Harmonization has nothing to do with singing in fifths like Simon and Garfunkel. Harmonization means making rules and regulations the same in all three countries. Or, more specifically, watering down rules – on health, safety, labor rights, oil drilling, polluting and so on - in other words, any regulations that get between The Council members and their profits.
Take for example, pesticides. Wal-Mart and agri-business don’t want to reduce the legal amount of poison allowed in what you eat. Solution: “harmonize” US and Canadian pesticide standards to Mexico’s.
Can they do that? Can Bush just say, “Eat your peas – even if they’re radioactive?” Under NAFTA, at least the way George Bush reads it (or has it read to him), he can. At any rate, he does.
The three chiefs of state will meet privately with the thirty corporate chiefs where they are also expected to legally erase more of our borders, to expand the “NAFTA highway.” Technically, the NAFTA highway is a set of legal rules governing transcontinental shipment. Some fear NAFTA highway expansion will allow a new flood of cheap Mexican products into the US and Canada. Not so. Their hunger to expand the NAFTA highway is to bring in even cheaper Chinese goods.
Say what?
As trade expert Maud Barlow explained to me, the new “NAFTA highway” will allow Chinese stuff dumped into Mexico to be hauled northward as duty-free “Mexican” products. That’s one of the quiet agendas of this “Summit for Security and Prosperity,” the official Orwellian name for this meet. Think of the SSP “harmonization” as the Trojan Taco of trade.
Barlow is Chairwoman of the Council of Canadians. She is known as the “Ralph Nader of Canada” (not Nader version 2.0, The Spoiler Candidate, but Nader version 1.0, the consumer advocate). Because Americans are too distracted by the Punch-and-Judy primaries to complain about this lobby-fest on the bayou, Canadian Barlow is leading street protests against this greed-grab.
I caught up with this courageous Canadian (I’ve seen her face down corporate bullying we can’t imagine in the US) on her way down to New Orleans. Barlow’s particular concerns are first, the NSS agreement promotes a five-fold increase in the mining of Canadian tar sands for import, as liquid crude oil, into the USA, an idea filthier than a re-make of Debbie Does Dallas. “This is an insane model of development,” she says, especially given Bush’s recent claim that he wants to slow global warming.
Bush himself is pushing his Canadian and Mexican counterparts to adopt US-style “Homeland Security” measures so that, says Barlow, “we’ll all be zip-locked together in one security bag.”
There will be other anti-SSP protesters in New Orleans as well, from America’s populist Right. They are concerned that the Security and Prosperity Summit is worse than the “NAFTA on steroids” that Barlow fears. The populists see in the SPP a nascent “North American Union,” and the elimination of the good old US of A.
They’re wrong, of course. The U.S. of A. has been long eliminated, at least economically. The Competitiveness Council is a multinational crew, with one shared set of country clubs, beach homes, art collections, union busters and lobbyists knowing no borders.
The populist radio hosts railing against the coming North American Union don’t realize that these CEOs won’t take away their flags or Fourth of July or Star-Spangled Banner. The rags and flags will always be kept around to con the schmucks along the Yahoo Belt into donating their children to the Iraq Occupation or other misadventures. A billionaire like Carlos Slim, the richest man on the planet (sorry, Mr. Gates), didn’t buy the Mexican government to “protect” his nation from Gringos but to protect his media monopoly.
So there is no United States of America nor Canada nor Mexico - at least as we like to imagine ourselves in our national fairy tales: self-governing democracies run by we the people or nosotros el pueblo. There’s just the diktats of the North American Prosperity Council. Get used to it.
Barlow said that the US Ambassador to Canada told her the legal changes wrought in New Orleans will not be put before the three national Congresses for a vote. “We don’t want to open up another NAFTA.” So, they’ll skip the voting stuff. Democracy is so, like, 20th Century.
Is Bush just a reluctant participant in this “harmonizing” of our economic fate? The meetings are secret, so I can’t say for sure. But I note that, at the opening ceremony, if you read his lips, you can see our president singing the national anthem as, “José, can you see?”
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Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Sign up for Palast’s investigative reports for BBC on RSS feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/gregpalast-articles
Make a donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund and receive a DVD of the untold story of the drowning of New Orleans, Big Easy to Big Empty, made for Democracy Now! at http://www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org.
Note: On May 1, in New York, Palast will speak at the international conference of the victims of Barrick Gold mining operations, the Canadian-American company whose board members included the former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney and the former President of the United States, George Bush Sr. Information soon at www.GregPalast.com
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The US Economy and the Costs of War
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Dave Lindorff |
Is the Iraq War to blame for America’s long-term economic decline and for the current economic crisis? Martin Neil Baily, a chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, and now director of the business initiative at the Brookings Institution, in an opinion piece that ran Sunday in the New York Times, says no. Claiming to be opposed to the Iraq War, he nonetheless suggests that the nearly $500 billion spent on Iraq to date—all of it borrowed money—cannot be blamed for the credit crisis, or for high oil prices.
But Baily is looking at things way too narrowly. First of all, as Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economist and chief economist at the World Bank, has noted, the real cost of the Iraq War is probably now closer to $3 trillion, in terms of future costs of veterans benefits, replacement of equipment, and payment on the debt that has been piling up because of the government’s unwillingness to make the public pay for the war in real time. That whopping bill is in the minds of the international investors who have been deserting the dollar in droves, causing it to approach Third World status as a currency.
But there are other links too, between the war and US economic crisis and decline.
One is the misdirection of much of the nation’s remaining industrial strength into war production. The late industrial engineer Seymour Melman long ago demonstrated how the military-industrial complex, by producing things not on a competitive but rather a cost-plus basis, destroys economic competitiveness, sucks up research and development talent and resources, and investment capital, and ends up producing nothing of use either for society or for the national trade account. Melman (who was a professor of mine when I studied at Columbia University), went further to argue that military production has a kind of viral impact across the economy, that sickens the whole system. One example: if investors see higher returns in military industries, they will shift their investments away from other industries, leaving them starved for capital.
We can see the results of this military-industrial virus in the failure of Boeing to produce its next generation jet, the Dreamliner, on schedule, in the pathetic performance of the nation’s dying domestic automotive industry, and in the failure of the country’s once vibrant entrepreneurial economy to do anything significant to tackle the challenge of global warming and the crying need for non-polluting, renewable energy sources.
The nation’s universities have no problem winning massive grants for defense projects, but academic researchers are hard-pressed to get grants for alternative energy research. There certainly is no federal money available for scholarships to students who want to go into environmental or energy majors, but there’s no lack of money for students who want to sign up for ROTC programs.
One could argue that at least the war is providing jobs for some of the nation’s growing army of the unemployed, but that would be to ignore the wastefulness of the work, and the enormous needs facing the nation. How much better to use federal funds to employ people at projects like reforestation, wetlands restoration, teaching, highway repair, school construction, slum renovation, etc., than at jobs involving killing overseas. It is ludicrous to assert that there is no connection between the hundreds of billions of dollars a year being spent on the military, and the fact that Philadelphia’s school district, the fifth largest in the nation, is bankrupt and run by the state, and that even so, many of its students, packed 40 to a classroom, have to sit on classmates’ desks and study from science and history textbooks printed in the 1980s, because of lack of funds.
I just went for a run in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park yesterday, along Wissahickon Creek. The beautiful running path takes one past a covered bridge, a cabin, scenic stone bridges, and other visual delights, all constructed by workers funded by the Civilian Conservation Corps. a New Deal public works program that hired the unemployed during the depths of the Great Depression.
No such program exists today, because this government is in the killing business.
Nor can oil prices and commodities prices, which Baily suggests are soaring in price not because of the Iraq War, but because of increasing demand from places like India and China, be so casually separated from America’s warmongering.
Firstly, even oil traders will acknowledge that there is a premium on oil in part because of the threat to 20 percent of the world’s oil posed by the Bush/Cheney administration’s growing belligerence towards Iran, and its threats to attack the world’s number-two oil producer, a move which would effectively close off the Persian Gulf as an oil-producing venue indefinitely. The Iraq War hasn’t just reduced oil production in Iraq, the world’s third-biggest oil producing nation; it has led to fears of a much wider disruption in oil supplies from Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia–and oil investors make their price decisions based on future prospects, not on current usage.
Second, the administration’s obsession with waging a vastly unpopular war has led it to avoid doing anything that might cause the American public to feel pain from that conflict. That would include trying to mandate any kind of reduction in oil demand in the US, by for instance increasing the tax on gasoline, or mandating improved mileage standards for automobiles and trucks.
Much of the rise in oil prices, of course, is only being felt by Americans, because it is an increase in the dollar price for oil. For Europeans and Asians, whose currencies are appreciating against the dollar, oil prices are not rising, and may even be falling. So to the extent that the massive US spending on a war funded on credit is contributing to the dollar’s collapse, so is that spending leading to the soaring oil prices that are dragging down the domestic economy.
There is another problem with Baily’s argument too, and it is one that many American economists, with their almost religious faith in markets and the identification of people as simply consumers, make. Specifically it is that people are worried by all this war and fear mongering, and people who are fearful do not invest and spend the way people who are confident about the future do.
This is an intangible thing, but I think it’s a good bet that many Americans are putting off investments, whether in a new house or a new car, or even in a new business venture, because of fears of a wider war in the Middle East, or of an economic collapse here at home, or because of another jump in oil prices. Many people may not even be aware that they are making such calculations, and yet they are.
In short, Baily is wrong. The Iraq War is certainly having a profound negative effect on the US economy, in both short, and in long-term ways.
The worst of these effects will show up when, a decade or more hence, as the oceans are rising, coastal cities are being devastated by storm surges, and croplands are being parched, we will look back at the lost opportunities to act decisively on climate change that were squandered by an administration obsessed with making war on a group of Third World nations, and with grabbing control of a resource—oil–that it should have been working hard to replace altogether as an energy source.
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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Prince William allegedly misused copter
Monday, April 21st, 2008
UPI — The propriety of Britain’s Prince William using a military helicopter to visit his girlfriend is being questioned, a political party spokesman said.
Liberal Democrat defense spokesman Nick Harvey said the accusations the prince used Kate Middleton’s backyard for a two-hour series of spins, turns, landings and takeoffs will undoubtedly be seen as a public relations nightmare for the 25-year-old member of the royal family, The Mail on Sunday reported.
“The prince will look back on this and realize it was a PR own goal,” Harvey said, meaning he would see it as a public relations black eye.
“It’s going to leave a lot of people wondering where the sense of priority lies if very serious helicopters are being made available for this sort of thing at a time when they are in such extreme need.”
A Defense Ministry spokesman said Saturday the prince had permission to land in the field behind his girlfriend’s house in the county of Berkshire this month.
“Battlefield helicopters routinely practice landing in fields and confined spaces away from their airfields as a vital part of their training for operations,” the unidentified spokesman told the Mail.
“These highly honed skills are used daily in conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.”
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What if 5.3 Million More Americans Could Vote?
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Erika Wood |
Millions of people in the U.S. can’t vote because of felony convictions. Restoring their right to vote means restoring democracy. This is a big year for American democracy. Hundreds of thousands of new voters are not only registering, but are actually showing up at the polls. States whose primary races have never counted before are suddenly the center of attention. Voters in Wyoming, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Kentucky, who have long gone ignored during primary season, finally find themselves with a voice and a vote. This year they matter.
Despite this, our democracy still falls far short of its promise to be a government that truly represents the will of its citizens. Across the country there are 5.3 million Americans who are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction in their past. Nearly 4 million of these people are not in prison; they live, work, pay taxes, and raise families in our communities, but remain disenfranchised for years, often for decades, and sometimes for life.
States vary widely on when they restore voting rights to former prisoners. Maine and Vermont do not disenfranchise people with convictions; even prisoners may vote there. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia disenfranchise people only while they are incarcerated; five states disenfranchise those who are incarcerated or on parole, but allow people on probation to vote; 20 states disenfranchise people in prison, on parole, and on probation; and 10 states permanently disenfranchise some categories of people who have completed their correctional supervision. Kentucky and Virginia are the last two remaining states that permanently disenfranchise all people with felony convictions, unless they apply for and receive individual, discretionary clemency from the governor.
Jim Crow Roots
To fully appreciate how these laws compromise our democracy, it is important to understand their deep roots in the troubled history of American race relations. In the late 1800s these laws spread as part of a larger backlash against the adoption of the Reconstruction Amendments — the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution — which ended slavery, granted equal citizenship to freed slaves, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting.
Over time, Southern Democrats sought to solidify their hold on the region by modifying voting laws in ways that would exclude African-Americans from the polls. Despite their newfound eligibility to vote, many freed slaves remained effectively disenfranchised.
Violence and intimidation were rampant. The legal barriers employed — including literacy tests, residency requirements, grandfather clauses, and poll taxes — while race-neutral on their face, were intentional barriers to African-American voting.
Felony disenfranchisement laws were a key part of this effort. Between 1865 and 1900, 18 states adopted laws restricting the voting rights of criminal offenders. By 1900, 38 states had some type of felon voting restriction, most of which disenfranchised convicted felons until they received a pardon. At the same time, states expanded the criminal codes to punish offenses that they believed targeted freedmen, including vagrancy, petty larceny, miscegenation, bigamy, and receiving stolen goods. Aggressive arrest and conviction efforts followed, motivated by the practice of “convict leasing,” whereby former slaves were convicted of crimes and then leased out to work the very plantations and factories from which they had ostensibly been freed. Thus targeted criminalization and felony disenfranchisement combined to produce both practical re-enslavement and the legal loss of voting rights, usually for life, which effectively suppressed the political power of African Americans for decades.
The disproportionate impact of felony disenfranchisement laws on people of color continues to this day. Nationwide, 13 percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote, a rate that is seven times the national average. In eight states, more than 15 percent of African-Americans cannot vote due to a felony conviction, and four of those states — Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, and Nebraska — disenfranchise more than 20 percent of their African-American voting-age population.
These statistics mirror stark racial disparities in the criminal justice system. A recent study by the Pew Center on the States revealed that 1 in 100 Americans is now behind bars. That figure is startling enough, but the study also reports that 1 in 9 African-American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is in prison.
The Ripple Effect of Disenfranchisement
Felony disenfranchisement laws do not only impact those who lose their voting rights. Entire communities lose their political capital when their citizens cannot vote. Denying the vote to one person has a ripple effect, dramatically decreasing the political power of urban and minority communities.
Evidence suggests that disenfranchising the head of a household can discourage his or her entire family from civic participation. Many people’s first experience with voting or political engagement comes through their parents — by joining them at a town meeting, attending a school board hearing, or accompanying them into the voting booth. A parent can a>, including such basics as how to register and where to vote. In fact, of the various factors included in the study, the parent’s political participation had the greatest effect on the child’s initial decision to vote.
Andres Idarraga, who recently had his right to vote restored by a recent change to Rhode Island’s law, explained, “coming from a family in which voting had rarely, if ever, been discussed, this was a new beginning.”
Throughout the country, minority communities have lost political influence thanks to felony disenfranchisement laws. In the last 25 years, as incarceration rates skyrocketed and African-Americans were sent to prison at a rate seven times that of whites, the political power of minority communities has been decimated. It’s a simple
equation: communities with high rates of people with felony convictions have fewer votes to cast. Consequently, all residents of these communities, not just those with convictions, lose their political influence.
What’s more, even when people with felony convictions are eligible to vote, they are often de facto disenfranchised due to bureaucratic barriers. In 2003, Alabama could not process more than 80 percent of applications within statutory time limits, and completely failed to respond to dozens of applications. And in New York, Brennan Center surveys have repeatedly uncovered widespread confusion and misinformation among elections officials. In 2005, one third of local election boards mistakenly advised that people could not vote while on probation, and many illegally required unnecessary documentation before allowing people to register.
Dispelling Disenfranchisement Myths, Restoring Democracy
Fortunately, there are signs of progress. Advocates, policy-makers, and some unusual allies have made great strides towards restoring voting rights, and have built significant national momentum towards building a more just and inclusive democracy.
Critics of voting restoration argue that disenfranchisement is an appropriate punishment for breaking the law. But in fact, many in law enforcement have come to believe that felony disenfranchisement laws do more harm than good. The American Probation and Parole Association recently released a resolution calling for restoration of voting rights upon completion of prison, finding that “disenfranchisement laws work against the successful reentry of offenders.” Many realize that, in terms of public safety, bringing people into the political process makes them stakeholders, helping to steer former offenders away from future crimes. As one Kentucky prosecutor wrote, “Voting shows a commitment to the future of the community.” Branding people as political outsiders by barring them from the polls disrupts reentry into the community and does not do anything to keep people from re-offending. There is absolutely no credible evidence showing that continuing to disenfranchise people after release from prison serves any legitimate law enforcement purpose. Disenfranchisement has nothing to do with being “tough on crime.”
Since 1997, 16 states have reformed their laws to expand the franchise or ease voting rights restoration procedures. Recent reforms include an executive order signed by then-Governor Tom Vilsack in Iowa which restored voting rights to 80,000 Iowa citizens on Independence Day, 2005. On Election Day 2006, Rhode Island voters were the first in the country to approve a state constitutional amendment authorizing automatic restoration of voting rights to people as soon as they are released from prison. The Rhode Island Department of Corrections became a voter registration agency, and now every individual is handed a voter registration form on the day they leave prison. In April 2007, Florida Governor Charlie Crist issued new clemency rules ending that state’s policy of permanent disenfranchisement for all felony offenders. Also in April 2007, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed a law streamlining the state’s complicated restoration system by automatically restoring voting rights upon completion of sentence.
This law also eliminated the a> that people in Maryland pay off any court-imposed fees and fines before being able to register to vote.
And just last month, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear eliminated some of the burdensome requirements his predecessor imposed on people trying to get their voting rights restored. People with felony convictions are disenfranchised for life in Kentucky and can only regain their right to vote by receiving clemency from the governor.
Beshear’s predecessor had required all applicants to provide three character references and write an essay explaining why they should get their right to vote back. While Kentucky still has a long way to go, Beshear’s executive action was certainly an important step.
Still, millions of U.S. citizens continue to be denied the right to vote. This year, Congress has decided to address the issue on a national level. Senator Russ Feingold and Representative John Conyers will soon introduce the Democracy Restoration Act, a bill that seeks to restore voting rights in federal elections to all Americans who have been released from prison and are living in the community. In February, Senator Feingold, joined by former Republican Congressman and Bush I cabinet member, Jack Kemp, wrote, “once the criminal justice system has determined that [people] are ready to return to the community, they should receive the rights and responsibilities that come with that status, and should not continue to be relegated to second-class citizenship.”
The energy and optimism spreading across our country this election season is palpable. But our democracy stands for nothing if not the fundamental tenet that each citizen is entitled to one vote, and each vote counts the same regardless of who casts it. The promise of our democracy will never be realized if 4 million Americans remain disenfranchised. It is time to end this last blanket barrier to the ballot box.
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Pentagon Institute Calls Iraq War ‘a Major Debacle’
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott |
The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.
The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.
The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.
It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.
“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line.
At the time the report was written last fall, more than 4,000 U.S. and foreign troops, more than 7,500 Iraqi security forces and as many as 82,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed and tens of thousands of others wounded, while the cost of the war since March 2003 was estimated at $450 billion.
“No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total impact on service personnel and materiel,” wrote Collins, who was involved in planning post-invasion humanitarian operations.
The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in Iraq have diverted “manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers” from “all other efforts in the war on terror” and severely strained the U.S. armed forces.
“Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there (in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East,” the report continued.
The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to halt the country’s descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with its neighbors, the report said.
“Despite impressive progress in security, the outcome of the war is in doubt,” said the report. “Strong majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal. Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that army.”
“For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a ‘must win,’ but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a ‘can’t win.’”
The report lays much of the blame for what went wrong in Iraq after the initial U.S. victory at the feet of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. It says that in November 2001, before the war in Afghanistan was over, President Bush asked Rumsfeld “to begin planning in secret for potential military operations against Iraq.”
Rumsfeld, who was closely allied with Vice President Dick Cheney, bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the report says, and became “the direct supervisor of the combatant commanders.”
” … the aggressive, hands-on Rumsfeld,” it continues, “cajoled and pushed his way toward a small force and a lightning fast operation.” Later, he shut down the military’s computerized deployment system, “questioning, delaying or deleting units on the numerous deployment orders that came across his desk.”
In part because “long, costly, manpower-intensive post-combat operations were anathema to Rumsfeld,” the report says, the U.S. was unprepared to fight what Collins calls “War B,” the battle against insurgents and sectarian violence that began in mid-2003, shortly after “War A,” the fight against Saddam Hussein’s forces, ended.
Compounding the problem was a series of faulty assumptions made by Bush’s top aides, among them an expectation fed by Iraqi exiles that Iraqis would be grateful to America for liberating them from Saddam’s dictatorship. The administration also expected that “Iraq without Saddam could manage and fund its own reconstruction.”
The report also singles out the Bush administration’s national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that “senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect.”
Collins ends his report by quoting Winston Churchill, who said: “Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. … Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think that he also had a chance.”
© 2008 McClatchy Newspapers
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British dealers supply arms to Iran
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Mark Townsend |
Customs probe reveals sanctions-busting sales of arms, missile technology and nuclear components. Investigators have identified a number of British arms dealers trading with Tehran, triggering alarm among government officials who fear Iran’s nuclear programme may be receiving significant support from UK sources.
The probe by customs officers suggests that at least seven Britons have been defying sanctions by supplying the Iranian air force, its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, and even the country’s controversial nuclear ambitions.
Officials say they are perturbed by the number of British dealers who appear to be trading with Tehran, despite a third round of restrictions being recently imposed by the United Nations on exporting arms and components to Iran. However, investigators argue that it is the generous riches being offered by Iran, not any shared ideology, that is seducing the dealers.
Among the examples uncovered is the case of a UK businessman caught smuggling components for use in guided missiles through a front company that proved to be the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Another case involves a group that included several Britons which, investigators alleged, attempted to export components intended to enhance the performance of Iranian aircraft.
Other examples involve a British millionaire arms dealer caught trading machine-guns used by the SAS and capable of firing 800 rounds a minute with a Tehran-based weapons supplier.
Customs offers are also working on a number of ‘active investigations’ which include several Britons and breach sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s military strength.
At least two other UK nationals are also being investigated over claims they are working, or have worked with, Iran to import components for the country’s alleged nuclear weapons programme. These individuals are understood to have long-standing links to nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s ‘father of the bomb’, who has admitted helping North Korea, Iran and Libya to develop nuclear weapons.
A Foreign Office source said evidence that Iranian authorities are contacting British companies as it tries to circumvent sanctions ‘through the backdoor’ was a concern. ‘We shouldn’t be naive enough to know that [Iran] will not try to get these items,’ he added.
Among those identified are London businessman Mehrdad Salashoor, who was caught shipping hi-tech navigation equipment adaptable for missile guidance systems to the Iranian military. When the 56-year-old asked British authorities about the licences required to export 11 ‘gyrocompass’ devices worth £650,000 to Azerbaijan he was informed that he would require a special export licence.
Undeterred, he sent the consignment without licence to Malta with instructions for an onward shipment to an Iranian company. British investigators later discovered that the ‘firm’ was the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Other paperwork uncovered by officials revealed that Salashoor had also received arms orders from the Iranian air force and navy. The operation was conducted under the auspices of the missile technology control regime, an arrangement involving 34 countries and aimed at tackling ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Salashoor has been jailed for 18 months and told to surrender more than £430,000 in assets. Anxiety mounted recently after satellite imagery appeared to indicate a previously unknown facility in its long-range missile programme.
Another Briton, John Knight, one of Britain’s most experienced arms dealers, has also been jailed for four years after trying to sell 130 machine guns in an Iranian deal. Millionaire Knight, who lived in a gated community in Kent and was regarded by neighbours as a normal businessman, traded through an offshore company, Endeavour Resources, based in the British Virgin Islands.
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U.S. to Expand Collection Of Crime Suspects’ DNA
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Ellen Nakashima and Spencer Hsu | Washington Post Staff Writers |
The U.S. government will soon begin collecting DNA samples from all citizens arrested in connection with any federal crime and from many immigrants detained by federal authorities, adding genetic identifiers from more than 1 million individuals a year to the swiftly growing federal law enforcement DNA database.
The policy will substantially expand the current practice of routinely collecting DNA samples from only those convicted of federal crimes, and it will build on a growing policy among states to collect DNA from many people who are arrested. Thirteen states do so now and turn their data over to the federal government.
The initiative, to be published as a proposed rule in the Federal Register in coming days, reflects a congressional directive that DNA from arrestees be collected to help catch a range of domestic criminals. But it also requires, for the first time, the collection of DNA samples from people other than U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who are detained by U.S. authorities.
Although fingerprints have long been collected for virtually every arrestee, privacy advocates say the new policy expands the DNA database, run by the FBI, beyond its initial aim of storing information on the perpetrators of violent crimes.
They also worry that people could be detained erroneously and swept into the database without cause, and that DNA samples from those who are never convicted of a crime, because of acquittal or a withdrawal of charges, might nonetheless be permanently retained by the FBI.
“Innocent people don’t belong in a so-called criminal database,” said Tania Simoncelli, science adviser for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re crossing a line.”
She said that if the samples are kept, they could one day be analyzed for sensitive information such as diseases and ancestry.
Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said the collection of DNA samples “will provide an additional form of biometric identification from persons who would normally be fingerprinted.” FBI rules preclude using DNA samples to determine a person’s genetic traits, diseases or disorders.
The database expansion was authorized by Congress as an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act and was billed primarily as a way to track down serial rapists, murderers and other offenders. “We know for a fact that the proposed regulations will save the lives of many innocent people and will prevent devastating crimes,” said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a sponsor of the legislation. “These regulations are long overdue — we should have done this 10 years ago.”
The proposed rule applies to all federal agencies with the authority to arrest or detain, including the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Internal Revenue Service. Although details of the policy have not been announced, officials said they expect the bulk of the new DNA samples to be collected through cheek swabs.
U.S. officials said that when the measure is fully implemented, roughly 1.2 million people a year could be added to the national database. About 140,000 of those would be people arrested for federal crimes. Many of the rest would be foreigners detained for being in the United States illegally.
Immigration rights advocates note that most illegal immigrants are detained for administrative violations, not federal crimes. By adding their DNA to the database, “it casts them all as criminals,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild.
The rule’s scope is still being negotiated, officials said, but it will not cover illegal immigrants picked up at sea; people being processed for legal admission to the United States, such as asylum seekers; and people undergoing secondary screening at ports of entry. It was unclear yesterday whether Mexican border-crossers who are briefly detained and then released in Mexico will be covered. The Border Patrol made 877,000 apprehensions in 2007, most of them of Mexicans.
The move comes as 13 states — including Virginia and, recently, Maryland — have passed laws to include many arrestees in their DNA databanks. California, which has more than 1 million profiles, will begin collecting DNA from all felony arrestees next year. The information will be uploaded to the national database, which today houses more than 5.9 million samples, making it the largest forensic DNA databank in the world.
The National DNA Index System (NDIS) was created by the DNA Identification Act of 1994 to store profiles of people convicted of serious violent crimes, such as rape and murder. A 2004 amendment expanded the collection to people convicted of any felony offense, and it allowed states to upload DNA profiles from people convicted of misdemeanors and from arrestees charged with a crime. In 2006, the law was changed again, enabling states to upload data from arrestees who had not been charged.
Over the years, the NDIS has yielded 66,750 hits in 67,285 investigations, FBI officials said. “I think by any measure, the program has been a success,” said Thomas Callaghan, head of the database, adding that the best way to increase its effectiveness is to add DNA samples from arrestees.
Jayann Sepich of Carlsbad, N.M., said she applauds the federal rule change. In August 2003, after Sepich’s 22-year-old daughter, Katie, was raped and killed, investigators found her attacker’s skin and blood under her fingernails. But no samples in the state’s database matched the evidence.
In 2006, moved by Katie Sepich’s death, the New Mexico legislature passed “Katie’s Law,” requiring the collection of arrestees’ DNA. That December, authorities arrested the man who had killed her — a DNA sample had been taken from him when he was arrested on a charge of aggravated burglary. Jayann Sepich is now a prominent advocate of similar laws in other states.
The new federal rule will conform to current law, which requires the removal of DNA profiles from the database when a conviction is reversed or when an arrest does not result in conviction. An individual must petition for expungement, Ablin said. Civil liberties advocates say removal should be automatic.
In Virginia, which in 2003 adopted one of the first arrestee laws, about 51 percent of arrestee profiles are eventually removed from the state database because charges are dropped or a case is dismissed, said Pete Marone, director of the Department of Forensic Science. He said it is the forensic lab’s duty to remove the profiles, something that can take a year or two. “As long as the case is in process, they’re still there,” he said.
Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, warned of mission creep. “The natural path is to move from the dangerous criminals down the chain, to anybody who has contact with law enforcement, and after that you’ll have DNA taken when people are born or first enter the country legally,” he said.
The proposed rule will be subject to a 30-day public comment period, Ablin said.
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Top Bush aides pushed for Guantánamo torture
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Brad DeLong | OGMB sends us to:
Top Bush aides pushed for Guantánamo torture: Senior officials bypassed army chief to introduce interrogation methods by Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008: America’s most senior general was “hoodwinked” by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, leading to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the Guardian reveals today. General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture. The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear in today’s Guardian.
In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that:
- Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.
- Myers believes he was a victim of “intrigue” by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld’s defence department.
- The Guantánamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation techniques were inspired by the exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series 24.
- Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the army’s field manual.
The lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the interrogation techniques were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes. Also involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld’s under-secretary for policy, and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant attorney generals. The revelations have sparked a fierce response in the US from those familiar with the contents of the book, and who are determined to establish accountability for the way the Bush administration violated international and domestic law by sanctioning prisoner abuse and torture. The Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by blaming junior officials. Sands’ book establishes that pressure for aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top and was sanctioned by the most senior lawyers.
Myers was one top official who did not understand the implications of what was being done. Sands, who spent three hours with the former general, says he was “confused” about the decisions that were taken. Myers mistakenly believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and authorised by Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use by the military at Guantánamo had been taken from the US army field manual. They included hooding, sensory deprivation, and physical and mental abuse. “As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled,” writes Sands. “Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him.”
Myers and his closest advisers were cut out of the decision-making process. He did not know that Bush administration officials were changing the rules allowing interrogation techniques, including the use of dogs, amounting to torture. “We never authorised torture, we just didn’t, not what we would do,” Myers said. Sands comments: “He really had taken his eye off the ball … he didn’t ask too many questions … and kept his distance from the decision-making process.”
Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell, US secretary of state at the time, told the Guardian: “I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralised the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways. The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications, meetings, deliberations and plans. At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job”. He added: “Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court.”
Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Impeach all present and former members of their personal staffs. Impeach Gonzales, Addington, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, and Yoo. Impeach every present and former cabinet and subcabinet official in the Bush administration.
Do it now.
The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, was bypassed and given the runaround by Bush administration officials keen to implement torture of detainees but worried that Myers would object, according to the Guardian today.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.
The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear in today’s Guardian.
In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that:
· Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.
· Myers believes he was a victim of “intrigue” by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld’s defence department.
· The Guantánamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation techniques were inspired by the exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series 24.
· Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the army’s field manual.
Philippe Sands Q.C. isn’t just any professor of law dabbling in instant punditry, by the way. He’s Director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College London and a member of the internationally renowned form of Matrix Chambers - definitely the A-Team. He also personally interviewed most of the main players in the Bush administration for his book, including Myers.
The first big decision was Geneva. For historic, cultural and training reasons, Myers insisted that the Geneva conventions should apply, even to a rogue, lawless actor such as al-Qaida. It became clear to me that Myers was a little confused about the decision that was actually taken. He claimed to be satisfied with the president’s decision of February 7 2002. “After all the arguments were done, the decision was, we don’t think it applies in a technical sense, but we’re going to behave as if it does.” That wasn’t what the president decided.
The actual decision distinguished between the Taliban - to whom Geneva applied, although detainees could not invoke rights under it because they were not wearing uniforms or insignia - and al-Qaida, to whom it didn’t apply at all because they were not a state. Had Myers understood what had been decided? Did he appreciate the consequences for interrogation techniques? If the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was confused, then inevitably soldiers in the field would also be confused. As one seasoned observer of military affairs put it to me, Myers was “well and truly hoodwinked”.
So what did Myers think about the new techniques? “We thought, OK, all the techniques came out of the book, there weren’t any techniques invented.” I stopped him.
“Out of which book?” I asked.
“Out of 34-52,” he replied. “I think all of these are in the manual.” They were not - not one of them. “They aren’t?” he asked, surprised. Not only that, but most of them violated Geneva’s Common Article 3. Such an answer from the chairman of the joint chiefs surprised me.
As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled. At forced grooming and dogs he became defensive. “Dogs were only to be present, never to be…” his words tailed off. “When you see this, you say, holy mackerel,” he exclaimed. “We never authorised torture, we just didn’t. Not what we would do.” Little by little, my understanding of Myers’s role was becoming more focused. He hadn’t pushed for these new techniques, but he didn’t resist them, either. He didn’t inquire too deeply.
That’s just one part of a long excerpt from Sand’s book at The Guardian backing their main story. It ends with a little bit of hope for those who would preserve the rule of law even against the most powerful politicians on earth - the incumbents of the American White House.
Parties to the international Torture Convention are required to investigate any person who is alleged to have committed torture. If appropriate, they must then prosecute - or extradite the person to a place where he will be prosecuted. The Torture Convention is also more explicit than Geneva in that it criminalises any act that constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Complicity or participation could certainly be extended not only to the politicians and but also the lawyers involved in the condoning of the 18 techniques.
We may yet see these criminals in court one day - but not in America.
(Hat tip - Kat, our intrepid researcher)
Update Oh look - the NYT editorial board finally noticed that their President bragged about authorising torture.
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Should flawed war-crimes court be scrapped?
Monday, April 21st, 2008
McClatchy-Tribune News Service | The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Thursday, April 17: The boycotts of hearings by terror suspects is the latest challenge to the war-crimes court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. So many issues have cropped up, you would think that this court was charting unknown territory. It is not. Look no further than the case of Zacarias Moussaoui.
In 2006, Moussaoui was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison. He represented himself, was at times incoherent, and insulted the judge. In the end, though, the fairness of that trial was widely acknowledged, including by Mousaoui himself. This is what happens in a judicial system that has proven legitimacy and time-tested procedures, such as U.S. federal court.
What happens in the military tribunals at Guantanamo is another thing altogether. Suspected al-Qaida foot solders face life sentences if convicted. Even if found not guilty, they still would be subject to indefinite detention under Bush administration guidelines. It is heads I win, tails you lose.
The three captives who have refused military defense lawyers have little to lose. The defense lawyers themselves face an ethical dilemma: How do you represent a client who has fired you? If you do represent the them, do you put your license at risk?
Six captives charged in the 9/11 conspiracy have more at stake: They could get the death penalty. Obviously, many questions remain about the fairness of these war-crime tribunals. Contrary to traditional U.S. legal standards, the tribunal allows evidence obtained by coercion, hearsay testimony and secret proceedings. If a captive has been tortured by waterboarding, it is apparently of no consequence to the tribunal.
Security rules at the prison also make it difficult for defense attorneys to see clients. It still is uncertain if the lawyers have the resources they need to provide a vigorous defense.
This is the Pentagon’s second try at war-crimes proceedings at Guantanamo. The first was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The current untested process keeps running into new problems and delaying justice. It is not working and should be scrapped.
Ideally, terror cases would be tried in U.S. federal court, which has procedures for handling everything from classified information to allegations of torture. As a civilian court, it has more independence from government authorities. Another option would be to apply the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Convicted terrorists must pay for their crimes. But justice requires that defendants at least get a fair hearing. For the United States to do less invites doubt and cynicism. When that happens, terrorists are emboldened and America is threatened.
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Peace Activist Faces up to 6 Months in Prison
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By PeteinDC |
David Barrows challenged Gen. Petraeus During September 2007 Hearing. Sentencing this Wednesday, April 23, at 9:30 a.m. in Courtroom 220 of D.C. Superior Court, 500 Indiana Avenue N.W.
Challenged Gen. Petraeus During September 2007 Hearing
Washington – Last September General David Petraeus sold the continued illegal and immoral war of Iraq to Congress, and they bought it. Washington activist David Barrows was arrested for rising and speaking during Petraeus’ testimony before during a congressional hearing in order to bring attention to the general’s lies and the possible expansion of the criminal war and occupation into Iran.
Barrows faces sentencing this Wednesday, April 23, at 9:30 a.m. in Courtroom 220 of D.C. Superior Court, 500 Indiana Avenue N.W.
On September 11, 2007 Barrows was arrested by the U.S. Capitol Police and charged with “Disrupting Congress.” Earlier this month he had a jury trial in D.C. Judge Robert S. Rigsby’s courtroom. After a two-day trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict and Barrows, an artist and a nonviolent peace and justice activist faces up to six months in prison.
“I continue to believe that we, the people, should not allow Congress to insulate itself from us, and that it’s our duty to end this war and occupation,” Barrows said. “When I spoke out, it was clear that General Petraeus was suggesting an expansion of the war into the nation of Iran; he was blaming problems in Iraq on it neighbor.”
This month Congress is expected to pass an additional $170 billion more for the military occupations and operations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Judge Robert S. Rigsby is a reactivated colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves.
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America can now spy on British motorists
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Toby Helm and Christopher Hope |
Routine journeys carried out by millions of British motorists can be monitored by authorities in the United States and other enforcement agencies across the world under anti-terrorism rules introduced discreetly by Jacqui Smith.
The discovery that images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and “personal data” derived from them, including number plates, can be sent overseas, has angered MPs and civil liberties groups concerned by the increasing use of “Big Brother” surveillance tactics.
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Yesterday, politicians and civil liberties groups accused the Home Secretary of keeping the plans to export pictures secret from Parliament when she announced last year that British anti-terrorism police could access “real time” images from cameras used in the running of London’s congestion charge.
A statement by Miss Smith to Parliament on July 17, 2007, detailing the exemptions for police from the 1998 Data Protection Act, did not mention other changes that would permit material to be sent outside the European Economic Area (EEA) to the authorities in the US and elsewhere.
Her permission to do so was hidden away in an earlier “special certificate” signed by the Home Secretary on July 4.
The certificate specifically sets out the level of data that can be sent to enforcement authorities outside the European Economic Area (the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) by anti-terrorist officers from the Metropolitan Police. It says:
“The certificate relates to the processing of the images taken by the camera, personal data derived from the images, including vehicle registration mark, date, time and camera location.”
A spokesman for Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, confirmed that the certificate had been worded so that the images of private cars, as well as registration numbers, could be sent outside to countries such as the USA.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police have been given the right to view in “real time” any CCTV images from cameras that are meant to be enforcing the congestion charge.
Sources said that officers would access the cameras on behalf of overseas authorities if they were informed about a terrorism threat in the UK or elsewhere. They would then share the images, which can be held for five years before being destroyed, if necessary.
Last night, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “This confirms that this Government is happy to hand over potentially huge amounts of information on British citizens under the catch-all pretext of ‘national security’.”
Civil liberties campaigners said they were appalled that images of innocent people’s journeys could end up in the hands of the British police, let alone foreign investigators.
They feared that it was a move towards the US-style system of “data mining” - in which powerful computers sifted millions of pieces of information as they tried to build patterns of behaviour and match them to material about suspects.
Gus Hosein, who runs Privacy International, said he was making a complaint to the information commissioner having obtained a copy of the certificate.
However, the Home Office defended the powers in the certificate, which was signed specifically for the purposes of counter terrorism and national security.
A spokesman declined to say how many times images had been sent from London to other countries.
However, he added: “We would like to reassure the public that robust controls have been put in place to control and safeguard access to, and use of, the information.”
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Drink-drive offenders could keep licences
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By
Those caught driving over the new limit would be subject to a “two strikes and you’re out” rule under which they would receive six penalty points for the first offence and only be disqualified from driving if they reoffended within five years.
Road safety groups fear that abolishing the automatic ban will send a confusing message to motorists and encourage some to risk drinking and driving because the consequences of being caught would be less serious than they are now.
The Times disclosed last year that ministers were planning to lower the limit to 50milligrams of alcohol per 100millilitres of blood, from the existing limit of 80mg.
Research by University College London found that lowering the limit would save 65 lives and 230 injuries a year. It would also save the economy £119 million a year by reducing medical costs and lost working time resulting from accidents.
But the Government is concerned that, if it maintains the automatic 12-month driving ban for breaching the lower limit, thousands more drivers could lose their licences and therefore risk losing their jobs.
Some drivers, depending on their size and metabolism, would breach the 50mg limit after just one drink. Under the 80mg limit, almost everyone is legally fit to drive after one drink even though studies have shown their driving ability would be impaired.
Under the proposal, the automatic ban for breaching the 80mg level would be maintained but offenders having alcohol levels between 50mg and 80mg would be penalised only with points on their licences and a fine, or possibly be instructed to attend an alcohol awareness course.
A consultation paper due to be published within weeks will offer a number of options and will invite comments on the impact of removing the automatic ban.
In 2006, 540 people were killed in drink-drive crashes, up from a low of 460 in 1999. About 95,000 drivers a year are banned for at least 12 months for failing a breath test or refusing to be tested.
Britain has the highest drink-drive limit of any large European country. Most countries have adopted 50mg and some, including Poland and Sweden, have a 20mg limit.
In most countries, drivers found to be slightly over the limit are either fined or banned from driving for short periods. In France, drivers caught between 50mg and 80mg are fined and given six penalty points.
Two thirds of AA members favour a reduction in the alcohol limit, according to a survey published today.
Women were more likely to support a lower limit, with 75 per cent in favour compared with 62 per cent of men, according to the Populus survey of 17,500 AA members.
Cathy Keeler, head of campaigns at Brake, the road safety charity, said: “We will save the most lives by reducing the limit and keeping the automatic ban. We must not distort the simple message that being caught over the limit results in disqualification.”
The influential Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety said it was undecided about whether to support the ending of the automatic ban.
Rob Gifford, the council’s director, said: “If it resulted in double the number of people losing their licences for breaching the lower limit, it could clog up the courts and create more of a problem because people would just drive while disqualified.”
In another tightening of the drink-drive law, motorists caught well over the limit will have to resit their driving test after serving their ban. The Government is also considering giving police the power to stop drivers at random and breath test them. At present, police can only stop a driver if they have reason to believe that an offence has been committed.
Drivers are less likely to be breath-tested in Britain than in most other European countries. A study in 2004 found that only 9 per cent of drivers in Britain had been tested in the previous three years, compared with 64 per cent in Finland, 41 per cent in Sweden and 32 per cent in France. The EU average was 29 per cent.
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The Hidden Battle to Control the World’s Food Supply
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Amy Goodman |
Food riots are breaking out across the planet. We must re-examine corporate control of the food supply.
The rise in global food prices has sparked a number of protests in recent weeks, highlighting the worsening epidemic of global hunger. The World Bank estimates world food prices have risen 80 percent over the last three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned the growing global food crisis has reached emergency proportions.
In recent weeks, food riots have also erupted in Haiti, Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. Protests have also flared in Morocco, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mexico and Yemen. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50 percent — in Sierra Leone, 300 percent. The World Food Program has issued a rare $500 million emergency appeal to deal with the growing crisis.
Several causes factor into the global food price hike, many linked to human activity. These include human-driven climate change, the soaring cost of oil and a Western-led focus on biofuels that critics say turns food into fuel.
Raj Patel is a writer, activist and former policy analyst with Food First, which is based in the Bay Area. He has worked for the World Bank, World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and he’s also protested them on four continents. He has just come out with a new book called Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. He recently joined me in San Francisco to talk about the book and the food-price crisis.
Raj Patel: There are two kinds of stories that we can tell about the food prices. One is an economic story, and that’s a story about a perfect storm of poor harvests and a demand for meat in developing countries, which is diverting grain, and the high price of oil, which is driving up food — farm inputs, and at the same time, the biofuels boom, the process of growing fuels in order — sorry, growing food in order to burn it rather than eat it. All of these are economic factors that are driving up the price of food.
But at the same time, there’s a political story here, and it’s a longer-term political story about how countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers and to abandon things like grain supplies and grain stores. And this is a longer-term story, and it involves organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization that have a fairly iron control over the economies of most of the poorest countries in the world. And what the World Bank and what the WTO and, to some extent, the International Monetary Fund have done is force these countries to tie their hands behind their back, effectively, and to bind them very firmly to an international economy in food. And the consequence of that is that when the price of food goes up, these economies have very little recourse and very little possibility of defending themselves economically.
Amy Goodman: Raj, you worked at these institutions that you’re now critiquing. You worked at the World Bank. You worked at the World Trade Organization. How much contact do you have with people at the other end — for example, the people who are now rising up all over the world, the most destitute?
Well, I mean, I certainly don’t have any contact with anyone at the World Bank or the World Trade Organization. I was there when I was doing my doctoral work. I did some research for the World Bank. It was a disaster. And I interned at the World Trade Organization just to find out what it was like.
But my allegiances are and always have been with the people on the streets. And I’m working right now with shack dwellers in Durban in South Africa. But also I’m connected to groups of peasants and of landless people around the world by occasionally doing some research for Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, that by some estimates has over 100 million members. So I’m definitely more connected and more supportive of their efforts to develop a more positive and more genuine food democracy.
In your work there, even as a researcher, what was — how much understanding did people who work there have of what was going on and what their institutions were doing?
I mean, to some extent, there’s a lot of creative denial about the suffering that these organizations cause. I mean, certainly within the World Bank, when I worked there, there was a banner, sort of five stories high, as you enter into the World Bank building, with a beautiful African child on it and beneath it the slogan, “Our dream is a world free of poverty.” And certainly, there’s a sort of myth-making enterprise within the World Bank that everything they were doing was for the benefit of the poor, whether the poor liked it or not. So I certainly think that there’s a sense that when things are tough, it’s tough love that comes from the World Bank.
But I don’t think that they’re terribly connected to the movements of poor people around the world, who are very articulately saying that what the World Bank is doing is actively destructive. And that’s, in fact, one of the reasons that Via Campesina, the international peasant movement, started, was because the World Bank was introducing agricultural policy throughout the developing world, but they were doing it without any reference to the farmers’ movements that existed or the movement of landless people that existed. And those movements got together to fight back against the World Bank. And they continue to fight back against the World Bank, and the World Bank has very little, if any, contact with them at all.
Raj, talk about coffee.
The price of coffee is absolutely a function of the way the food system works today. If you look at the path that coffee takes from the field to our cups, you will see that the farmers get paid a pittance. The processors get paid a little bit more, sort of twenty, thirty cents a kilo. The grain exporters get paid a little bit more, sort of fifty, sixty cents a kilo. But by the time it gets processed and turned into instant coffee, it’s nearer $30 a kilo. And the people who make the most money out of that process are the coffee processors, the big international coffee traders, companies like Nestle, for example. And that’s indicative of the way the food system works in general.
I mean, if you imagine a sort of hourglass, at the top there are the millions of farmers who grow the food that we eat, and at the bottom there are billions of us consumers, and in the middle there are just a handful of corporations that mediate between the people who grow our food and us. And those corporations, in many cases — it’s usually four corporations controlling more than 50 percent of the market. I mean, in tea, for example, one company, Unilever, controls 90 percent of the market.
Now, when you’re in that position of market power, you’re able to do a great deal. First, you’re able to drive prices down for farmers. And of course the irony there is that farmers and farm workers are the poorest people on the planet. So you’re paying the poorest people on the planet the least. And then you’re processing the food so that what we end up with is food that is rich in salts and fats and sugars, food that tends to make us want to buy more, food that makes us obese. And that’s why you’re having a situation where there are six billion people in the world, a billion of whom are now overweight.
Explain that further, that connection that you actually start your book with. A billion people overweight, 800 million people who are starving, who are hungry, who are not fed enough — explain the connection.
Well, I mean, in the past, it used to be that the people who were overweight were rich — excuse me — and the people who were hungry were poor. Today, hunger and obesity are both signs that people are unable to control their diets. They’re unable to control, not in a sort of willpower way, but unable to control in terms of being able to access fresh fruits and vegetables, access food that is healthy. I mean, in the United States, for example, it’s much harder for communities of poor people and people of color, in particular, to access fresh fruits and vegetables. In West Oakland, for example, near where I live, you have a situation where there’s just one supermarket in West Oakland and dozens and dozens of liquor stores where there are no fresh fruits and vegetables, but there are these highly processed industrial foods. Now, that’s a sign that in fact — I mean, it would be wonderful for all of us to be able to access these fresh fruits and vegetables, but at the moment, particularly for people on low incomes, that’s pretty tough to do. And so, the environments in which poor people find themselves and which are being built around poor people are more conducive to being overweight and to be unhealthy in the cities, and for poor people in the fields, those kinds of prices that come from the industrial food system are driving them out of business.
Soy. Can you talk about soy?
Soy is the ingredient — I mean, it’s weird. It’s the perfect crop in so many ways. It’s rich in proteins. It’s great for the soil. It’s really robust. But because the way that we grow soy is through industrial agriculture and monoculture, that process of growing it takes these biological virtues and turns them into social ills. Soy is now in three-quarters of everything — of processed foods on the supermarket shelves and in almost everything that the fast-food industry brings us. Now, soy is — and it’s in these foods because it’s very flexible. It can be used as a vegetable oil. It can be used as an emulsifier. It can be used as an additive in meat, for example.
But the trouble is, of course, that a lot of the soy that’s grown in the world comes from Brazil. Brazil is, by some measures, the world’s largest soy exporter. And those soy plantations have been encroaching on the Brazilian cerrado and also on the rainforest. Soy farmers are going into the rainforest, chopping it down and growing soy. And worse yet, Brazil is home to, according to the International Labour Organization, home to 50,000 slaves, slaves who work on soy plantations, and also the majority work in biofuels plantations and sugarcane plantations. And it’s through the exploitation of these people that we’re able to have cheap meat, that we’re able to have these sort of food additives that shave a couple of cents off the price of our food. So, yeah, I mean, that — soy becomes emblematic of everything that’s wrong about the way we produce food and offers hope about the way we might reconnect to food in a different way.
Raj, can you talk about the corporations that have so much control over the food supply? Give us a history from, oh, United Fruit to, well, Duane Andreas’s company, Archer Daniels Midland, that sponsors so much of the media that we watch today.
Yes. I mean, of course, the history of industrial capitalism and food is very long indeed. I mean, the East India Company, for example, the British East India Company was responsible for driving the colonization of India and of the subsequent imposition of markets in food.
But in the twentieth century, the poster child for corporate malfeasance is the United Fruit company. The United Fruit Company controlled vast swathes of Central America, and it’s for their control of that part of the world for growing bananas that we have the term “banana republic.” And “banana republic” is a sort of abject case of blaming the victim. These banana republics existed because the tin-pot dictators who ran them were in the thrall and responsible to the United Fruit Company, rather than actually to the people over whom they ruled. Now, the United Fruit Company found itself in Guatemala, where a democratically elected president wanted to institute just a basic fair system of taxation. And so, he wanted — this was Jacobo Guzman, I believe, who wanted to tax the land at a fair market value. Now, rather than allow that, the United Fruit Company called its friends in the CIA, who instigated a coup. And as a result of that coup, there was a bloody civil war for forty years; 200,000 people died; and also, we could have cheap bananas. Now, that kind of utter manipulation of international economies is something that isn’t just happening in the global south; it’s happening right here in the United States.
Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, based here in the Bay Area.
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Guantánamo torture records lost
Monday, April 21st, 2008
By Elana Schor
The former head of interrogations at Guantánamo Bay found that records of an al-Qaida suspect tortured at the prison camp were mysteriously lost by the US military, according to a new book by one of Britain’s top human rights lawyers.
Retired general Michael Dunlavey, who supervised Guantánamo for eight months in 2002, tried to locate records on Mohammed al-Qahtani, accused by the US of plotting the 9/11 attacks, but found they had disappeared.
The records on al-Qahtani, who was interrogated for 48 days - “were backed up … after I left, there was a snafu and all was lost”, Dunlavey told Philippe Sands QC, who reports the conversation in his book Torture Team, previewed last week by the Guardian. Snafu stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.
Saudi-born al-Qahtani was sexually taunted, forced to perform dog tricks and given enemas at Guantánamo.
The CIA admitted last year that it destroyed videotapes of al-Qaida suspects being interrogated at a secret “black site” in Thailand. No proof has so far emerged that tapes of interrogations at Guantánamo were destroyed, but Sands’ report suggests the US may have also buried politically sensitive proof relating to abuse by interrogators at the prison camp.
Other new evidence has also emerged in the last month that raises questions about destroyed tapes at Guantánamo.
Cameras that run 24 hours a day at the prison were set to automatically record over their contents, the US military admitted in court papers. It is unclear how much, if any, prisoner mistreatment was on the taped-over video, but the military admitted that the automatic erasure “likely destroyed” potential evidence in at least one prisoner’s case.
The erased tapes may have violated a 2005 court order to preserve “all evidence [of] the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees” at Guantánamo. The order was retroactive, so it also applies to the 2003 loss of al-Qahtani’s records.
Lawyers representing other Guantánamo detainees are asking whether tapes of their clients’ treatment may also be erased. “You can’t just destroy relevant evidence,” said Jonathan Hafetz, of the Brennan Centre for Justice in New York.
David H Remes, a lawyer for 16 Guantánamo prisoners, said the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videos shows the US government is capable of getting rid of potentially incriminating evidence.
“[In Guantánamo] the government had a system that automatically overwrote records,” Remes told the Guardian. “That is a passive form of evidence destruction. If a party has destroyed evidence in one place, there’s no reason to assume it has preserved evidence in another place.”
More than 24,000 interrogations were videotaped at Guantánamo, according to a US army report unearthed by researchers at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.
The US military office at Guantánamo did not return a request for comment from the Guardian about its taping policies.
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