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Karadzic protected by US until he broke ‘deal’: Belgrade report

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

AFP | Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic was protected by the United States until a CIA phone bug caught him breaking the terms of his ‘deal’, Serb newspaper Blic reported Saturday, quoting a US intelligence source.

Partly echoing what Karadzic himself told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in his opening written submission, the paper claims Karadzic was secretly granted immunity in return for keeping a low profile.

“Karadzic, indicted for genocide and war crimes, was under the US protection until 2000, when the CIA intercepted his telephone conversation that clearly proved he personally chaired a meeting of his old political party,” the daily quoted a “well-informed US intelligence source” as saying.

In a submission to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Karadzic said the US peace negotiator in Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, had promised he would avoid trial if he withdrew from public life.

Holbrooke has insisted that no such deal existed.

The Blic source said: “I’m not sure there was a written document confirming so, but I do have Holbrooke’s admission of verbal guarantees given to Karadzic from the highest level of the US.”

“During the year 2000, at the time of the (November general) elections in Bosnia, the CIA learned that Karadzic was still leading the SDS (the Serbian Democratic Party, founded by Karadzic), despite their deal that he was not to interfere in political life,” the source added, cited by the newspaper.

“In 2000 there was a SDS meeting in (the eastern Bosnian town of) Bijeljina, chaired personally by Karadzic. He was providing instructions to members and the leadership who to be replaced and who to be appointed to which position,” it said.

Karadzic “was personally engaged in all activities of the SDS,” the source said.

“In America they went crazy realizing Karadzic was making a fool of them,” it said, adding that “the Americans and CIA then withdrew the informal protection enjoyed by Karadzic.”

The suspect also was granted the immunity from the arrest by other intelligence services, such as the French and British one, as a part of the deal with the CIA, the daily said.

Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade last month and transferred to the ICTY to tried for his role in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.

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ID scheme hit for shifting cost to citizens

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

By Jimmy Burns | The Home Office on Tuesday faced claims of “creative accounting” as it pledged to cut nearly £1bn ($2bn) from the cost of the identity card scheme.

According to the latest official estimates, a broadening of the private sector role in the scheme to include involvement in biometric fingerprinting, as already promised by ministers, will contribute to savings of £975m by 2017, the date by which all citizens are expected to have an ID card.

But Edgar Whitley of the London School of Economics’ Identity Project said the decision to leave collection of biometric data to the open market risked compromising security and increasing the cost to the consumer.

“Presumably this [plan] means that grocery stores and post offices will be encouraged to set up biometric enrolment kiosks, with little financial gain to them unless the citizen is charged – and thus while the headline costs of the scheme to the government go down, the costs and risk to the citizen rise,” Dr Whitley said.

Ministers say they have been heeding the call from Sir James Crosby, the government’s independent adviser, by taking important aspects of the operation out of the hands of Whitehall.

Tuesday’s ID report by the Home Office provided little clarity as to how the government’s strategy will reduce the amount of personal data stored by the national register and make the enrolments free to citizens, as recommended by Sir James.

What it confirms is that ministers plan to roll out ID cards to foreign nationals from November, to airport workers from next year and to young people “who want them” in 2010.

The government has yet to secure any agreement from unions representing airport workers. The main roll-out is also envisaged after a general election that Labour is far from certain of winning.

Damian Green, shadow immigration minister, on Tuesday night repeated Tory calls for the scheme to be scrapped. He asked: “Why don’t ministers admit the inevitable and kill off this expensive and counter-productive scheme?”

The credibility of the handling of the scheme looked to be further undermined by a separate independent study on Tuesday showing management shortcomings in key Identity and Passport Service projects. The IPS’s standards and practices team found that the original timetable for the development of a counter-fraud project linked to the ID scheme had slipped because the original scheme had proved “too ambitious”.

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Secret Prison on Diego Garcia Confirmed

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

Six “High-Value” Guantánamo Prisoners Held, Plus “Ghost Prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar

The existence of a secret, CIA-run prison on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has long been a leaky secret in the “War on Terror,” and yesterday’s revelations in TIME — based on disclosures by a “senior American official” (now retired), who was “a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings” after the 9/11 attacks, and who reported that “a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island” — will come as no surprise to those who have been studying the story closely ( http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1828469,00.html).

The news will, however, be an embarrassment to the US government, which has persistently denied claims that it operated a secret “War on Terror” prison on Diego Garcia, and will be a source of even more consternation to the British government, which is more closely bound than its law-shredding Transatlantic neighbor to international laws and treaties preventing any kind of involvement whatsoever in kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and the practice of torture.

This is not the first time that TIME has exposed the existence of a secret prison on Diego Garcia. In 2003, the magazine broke the story that Hambali, one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, was being held there, and in the years since confirmation has also come from other sources. Twice, in 2004 and 2006, Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general, who is now professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, revealed the prison’s existence. In May 2004, he blithely declared on MSNBC’s ‘Deborah Norville Tonight,’ “We’re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq,” and in December 2006 he spoke out again, saying, in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, “They’re behind bars … we’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo.”

The prison’s existence was also confirmed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who produced a detailed report on “extraordinary rendition” for the Council of Europe in June 2007 and by Manfred Novak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, in March this year. Having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, Marty told the European Parliament, “We have received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the ‘processing’ of high-value detainees,” and Manfred Novak explained to the Observer that “he had received credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003.” The penultimate piece of the jigsaw puzzle came in May, when El Pais broke the story that “ghost prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, whose current whereabouts are unknown, was imprisoned on the island in 2005, shortly after his capture in Pakistan — although the English-speaking press failed to notice.

Despite these previous disclosures, yesterday’s article, by Adam Zagorin, is particularly striking because of the high-level nature of the source, and his admission that “the CIA officer surprised attendees by volunteering the information, apparently to demonstrate that the agency was doing its best to obtain valuable intelligence.” In addition, the source noted that “the US may also have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia’s territorial waters, a contention the US has long denied.”

Zagorin also spoke to Richard Clarke (at the time the National Security Council’s Special Advisor to President Bush regarding counter-terrorism), who explained, “In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high value targets was discussed.” Although Clarke “did not witness a final resolution of the issue,” he added, “Given everything that we know about the administration’s approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the US did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible,” and he also pointed out that using the island for interrogations or detentions without British permission “is a violation of UK law, as well as of the bi-lateral agreement governing the island.”

Zagorin’s source did not name the prisoners, but it seems clear that the period he was referring to (“2002 and possibly 2003”) was when three particular “high-value detainees” — Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh — are reported to have been held on the island, and it seems entirely plausible, therefore, that after these three were transferred to another secret CIA facility in Poland, the prison was used not only to hold Hambali, but also to hold the two other “high-value detainees” captured with him — Mohammed bin Lep (aka Lillie) and Mohd Farik bin Amin (aka Zubair). The addition of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, who, it seems, may have been held into 2006, not only confirms that a secret prison existed, but that it was possibly in use for four years straight.

These damaging revelations seal Diego Garcia’s reputation as a quagmire of injustice. A British sovereign territory — albeit one that was leased to the United States nearly 40 years ago, when the islanders were shamefully discarded by the British government and exiled to face destitution and death by misery in Mauritius — Diego Garcia has long been a source of shame to opponents of modern colonial activity ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/384112.html).

Until now, however, the only admission that any activities connected with the “War on Terror” had taken place on the island came in February, when, after years of denials on the part of the British government, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, finally conceded that requests for information from his US counterparts had revealed that, in 2002, two rendition flights had refuelled on the island. “In both cases,” Miliband stated with confidence, “a US plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility in Diego Garcia. The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia” ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392068.html).

The British government had been provoked to action by critics within the UK, in particular the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, led by the Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, and the legal action charity Reprieve ( http://www.reprieve.org.uk/), which represents 30 prisoners in Guantánamo, but the story appeared to grind to a halt when Michael Hayden, the CIA’s director, stepped forward to deny that Diego Garcia had ever been used as a “War on Terror” prison.

“That is false,” Gen. Hayden said when asked if a secret prison had existed on Diego Garcia, adding, as the New York Times put it, that “neither of the two detainees carried aboard the rendition flights that refuelled at Diego Garcia ‘was ever part of the CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation program.’” He also explained that one of the detainees “was ultimately transferred to Guantánamo,” while the other “was returned to his home country,” which was identified by State Department officials as Morocco. “These were rendition operations,” he added, “nothing more.”

Four weeks ago, however, the story resurfaced once more, as David Miliband reported the results of his latest request for information from his US counterparts. This concerned a list of rendition flights, which, in the opinion of Reprieve and the All-Party Parliamentary Group, may also have passed through British territory, but the Foreign Secretary was confident that there was no further evidence to be mined, stating, “The United States Government confirmed that, with the exception of two cases related to Diego Garcia in 2002, there have been no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001” ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/07/403006.html).

Yet again, the assurances of his US colleagues did nothing to assuage the critics. Reprieve noted that the British government “intentionally failed to ask the right questions of the US, and accepted implausible US assurances at face value,” and added, presciently, “This remains a transatlantic cover-up of epic proportions. While the British government seems content to accept whatever nonsense it is fed by its US allies, the sordid truth about Diego Garcia’s central role in the unjust rendition and detention of prisoners in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ cannot be hidden forever.”

Just three days after David Miliband’s last attempt to draw a line under the story, the British Foreign Affairs Select Committee published its latest report on the British Overseas Territories, and was scathing about Diego Garcia, declaring that “it is deplorable that previous US assurances about rendition flights have turned out to be false. The failure of the United States Administration to tell the truth resulted in the UK Government inadvertently misleading our Select Committee and the House of Commons. We intend to examine further the extent of UK supervision of US activities on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships serviced from Diego Garcia.”

Yesterday’s revelations, of course, leave the US administration looking like bald-faced liars and the British government looking like myopic dupes. Whether Michael Hayden was also duped is not known, but his strenuous denial, just five months ago, that a secret prison existed, which was manned by his own employees, will do nothing for the credibility of the US administration, which likes to pretend that it does not torture and has nothing to conceal, but is persistently discovered not only being economical with the truth, but also behaving exactly as though it has guilty secrets to hide.

Whether this scandal will awaken much indignation in the American public remains to be seen, but it is hugely damaging to the British government, which is legally responsible for the activities that take place on its territory, however much it likes to hide behind “assurances” from its leaseholders that they have done nothing wrong.

It scarcely seems possible, but Diego Garcia’s dark history has suddenly grown even darker.

The prisoners held on Diego Garcia

1. Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn). Saudi, b. 1971. Seized in Faisalabad, Pakistan in a joint operation by Pakistani forces and the FBI on 28 March 2002, he is regarded by the administration as a senior al-Qaeda operative and training camp facilitator, although this has been disputed by former FBI interrogator Dan Coleman, who has described him as a minor logistician with a split personality ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/04/26/the-insignificance-and-insan…).

In February 2008, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, admitted that Abu Zubaydah was one of three prisoners who had been subjected to waterboarding (an ancient torture technique that involves controlled drowning) in CIA custody ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/02/06/waterboarding-two-questions-…). Held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland, he is one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. At his tribunal in 2007, he denied being a member of al-Qaeda, and made a point of mentioning that he had been tortured. He has not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission.

2. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Kuwaiti/Pakistani, b. 1964 or 1965. The supposed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohammed (commonly known as KSM) was seized in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003. Like Abu Zubaydah, he was subjected to waterboarding, and is also presumed to have been held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland. Transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, he confessed to being “responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z” at his tribunal in 2007, but also made a point of mentioning that he had been tortured. He was put forward for trial by Military Commission in February, and will face the death penalty if convicted.

Rumours that KSM was held on Diego Garcia have surfaced sporadically over the years, one example being an article in the Toronto Star on July 2, 2005, in which Lynda Hurst spoke to John Pike, a US defense analyst. Pike, who told Hurst that he believed that KSM had been held on Diego Garcia, explained, “Diego Garcia is an obvious place for a secret facility. They want somewhere that’s difficult to escape from, difficult to attack, not visible to prying eyes and where a lot of other activity is going on. Diego Garcia is ideal.”

3. Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Yemeni, b. 1972. A friend of the Hamburg cell that led the 9/11 attacks, bin al-Shibh was seized in a raid in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002. He was reportedly intended as the 20th hijacker, but was unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States, and subsequently worked closely with KSM in planning the attacks. Transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006, he is also presumed to have been held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland, but his presence on Diego Garcia has long been suspected, because analyses of flight records have revealed that a plane flew from Pakistan to Diego Garcia immediately after his capture. He refused to take part in his tribunal in 2007, but was put forward for trial by Military Commission in February, and will face the death penalty if convicted.

4. Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin). Indonesian, b. 1966. Seized in Ayutthaya, Thailand in a joint operation by Thai forces and the CIA on 11 August 2003, he is regarded as the main link between al-Qaeda and its Indonesian counterpart, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). He is alleged to have been one of the planners of the Bali bombings in October 2002, which killed over 200 people, and was transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. At his tribunal in 2007, he said that he resigned from JI in 2000, and was not involved with al-Qaeda or with any bombings or plots. He has not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission.

5 and 6. Lillie (Mohammed Nazir bin Lep) and Zubair (Mohd Farik bin Amin). Malaysians, seized with Hambali, little is known of these two men, beyond claims by the administration that they worked closely with Hambali, although they were both discussed in another TIME article, in October 2003, which examined Hambali’s interrogation logs. They were transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, but have not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission.

7. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri). Syrian/Spanish, b. 1958. Seized in Quetta, Pakistan in October 2005 and handed over to US forces a month later, he is not accused of being involved in direct attacks on US forces, but is wanted in Spain as a witness in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Regarded as one of the most significant proponents of universal jihad, his writings include a 1600-page book, The Global Islamic Resistance Call, which was published on the internet in 2004. A critic of al-Qaeda, he reportedly fell out with Osama bin Laden in 1998, and has stated that the 9/11 attacks were catastrophic for the jihadi cause. Unlike the six prisoners mentioned above, he was not transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, and it is not known, therefore, whether he is being held in a secret CIA prison or if he has been rendered to a third country.

Andy Worthington is the author of ‘The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison’ (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press), which includes a detailed chapter on rendition and secret prisons ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/).

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Maryland Governor Orders Investigation of Spying by State Troopers

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

By Matthew Rothschild |

Maryland Governor Orders Investigation of Spying by State Troopers

On July 31, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley appointed the former attorney general of the state Stephen Sachs to head up an independent investigation of the spying by state troopers.

“I would like to be able to assure the public that this has been thoroughly investigated
and reviewed,” the governor said, according to an account in The Washington Post.

The ACLU recently revealed that Maryland state troopers had been spying on and
infiltrating groups that opposed the Iraq War and the death penalty.

And I interviewed one of those activists who was targeted.

The announcement of the Sachs investigation, which is expected to last a month or two, is “an important step forward,” the ACLU said. “We believe that this important investigation of serious infractions of Marylanders’ most basic freedoms is now in good hands.”

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Tax the energy giants and cut fuel bills

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

Millions of people across Britain are struggling with soaring household energy bills. The government could act to ease the pain by taxing oil and gas firms, or imposing a limit on price rises. Instead it refuses to do anything that would harm profits.

EDF Energy raised its prices again last week – by 22 percent for gas and 17 percent for electricity. On average EDF customers have seen their bills rise by over 33 percent since the start of the year. British Gas customers have seen their gas bills rise by 77 percent and electricity bills by 74 percent since 2003.

These energy companies claim that rising costs are forcing them to raise prices. But in fact they are using rising commodity prices as an excuse to rake in the profits.

This week oil giant BP reported that its profits for the first six months of the year had increased by 23 percent to £6.7 billion.

British Gas, due to announce its profits on Thursday, expects profits of between £100 and £200 million. In 2007 it raised prices to boost its profits by an obscene 500 percent.

Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, expects to announce pre-tax profits of £880 million for the first half of this year.

In sharp contrast to these riches, over 4.5 million people in Britain are already living in “fuel poverty” – spending more than 10 percent of their income on energy. This figure is set to rise by a staggering 50 percent as energy companies keep raising prices.

Ordinary people also face rising debt just to stay on top of the price rises. Around 6.8 million households in Britain are in debt to their energy supplier. Total personal debt is now rising by an average of £1 million every five minutes.

It may be the height of summer, but already people are worrying about how they will survive the coming winter.

Fuel poverty leads to the deaths of between 20,000 and 50,000 people in Britain each winter. Over one in three pensioner households are expected to be in fuel poverty by the end of the year.

Centrica’s managing director Jake Ulrich – who receives a salary of £1,033,000 a year – admits that fuel price rises are “going to hit people hard”. Fortunately he has advice for how people can soften the blow – they should wear “two jumpers instead of one”.

The bosses and the government are completely removed from the reality of life for ordinary people.

The government votes to keep lavish expenses for MPs – but it refuses to implement even the most minor measures that could limit the hardship faced by ordinary people.

The parliamentary business and enterprise committee has investigated the energy market in light of the current crisis.

But its conclusion is that the market is not functioning efficiently enough and that we need more “liberalisation”.

In the face of the massive political crisis that Gordon Brown now faces, some argue that he is simply a victim of a global economic recession that is pushing up the cost of living.

The massive unpopularity of New Labour following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and its constant neoliberal attacks on working people is conveniently forgotten. Brown is portrayed as powerless in the face of the global economy.

Response

It is true that energy and food price rises are fuelling anger with the government. But what people are really angry about is the government’s response.

Brown is not powerless. There are many things he could do to ease the burden on working class people. He could implement a windfall tax on the energy companies. He could increase corporation tax. He could impose a limit on the amount that firms can raise energy prices.

But instead of this New Labour has repeatedly cut corporation tax, which currently stands at just 28 percent.

The People Before Profit Charter puts forward demands that would stop ordinary people sinking deeper into poverty.

As well as the demands to tax corporate profits, the charter calls for an end to Brown’s 2 percent pay limit on public sector workers, the abolition of tax on fuel and energy for old people and the poor, and the restoration of the link between state pensions and average earnings.

New Labour is doing none of these things because it defends the interests of the rich and business.

Making sure that workers don’t pay for the crisis means building resistance on the ground. The People Before Profit Charter can help mobilise that resistance.

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Bush must be stopped before starting war with Iran

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

By JOE PARKO | The Bush administration, in rhetoric that is eerily similar to that used to build the case for a war against Iraq, asserts that the Iranian Quds Force is arming anti-U.S. groups in Iraq and providing them with high-tech roadside bombs and sophisticated rockets.

It dismisses the National Intelligence Estimate conclusion that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program.

The White House has not provided evidence to back up its claims. I suspect it never will. And when Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz tells the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth an attack on Iran is “unavoidable” if Tehran does not halt its alleged nuclear weapons program, what he is really telling us is we should prepare for war.

An attack on Iran by either the U.S. or Israel and the ensuing regional war will propel us into the Armageddon-type scenario in the Middle East relished by the lunatic fringes of the radical Christian right. And so, we barrel mindlessly toward a Dr. Strangelove self-immolation. No one will be able to say we did not go out with a spectacular show of firepower, gore and death. Our European and Middle Eastern allies, who are numb with consternation over our death spiral, are frantically trying to reach out to Tehran diplomatically.

The instant we attack Iran, oil prices will double, perhaps triple. This price increase will devastate the U.S. economy. The ensuing retaliatory strikes by Iran on Israel, as well as on U.S. military installations in Iraq, will leave hundreds, maybe thousands, dead. The Shiites in the region, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, will see an attack on Iran as a war against Shiism. They will turn with rage and violence on us and our allies. Hezbollah will renew attacks on northern Israel, while Hamas increases its attacks in southern Israel. And the localized war in Iraq will become a long, messy and protracted regional war that, by the time it is done, will most likely end the American empire and leave in its wake mounds of corpses and smoldering ruins.

The Israeli leadership, like the Bush White House, is increasingly bellicose and threatening. The Israeli prime minister, after a recent 90-minute meeting with Bush in the White House, said the two leaders were of one mind. “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat,” Ehud Olmert said. “I left with a lot less questions marks (than) I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term in the White House.”

This time around, unlike the war with Iraq, the Washington bureaucracy, loathed by the Bush White House, did not remain silent and complicit. The NIE on Iran’s nuclear program released Dec. 3 distinguished Iran’s enrichment of uranium at Natanz and Arak from its formal nuclear weapons program, which it said had halted in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Adm. Fallon, who put his country and his integrity before his career, spoke out against a war with Iran, tried to stop it, and lost his job as the head of Central Command. He has been replaced with Gen. David Petraeus, whose devotion to his career admits no such moral impediments.

The American people must act to stop this madness. We must raise our voices in protest. We must demand that Congress exercise its constitutional authority and block a war on Iran. We cannot allow the Bush neocons to act out their final bloody fantasy and destroy all hopes for peace in the Middle East.

Joe Parko is a retired college professor. He lives in Crossville, where he serves on the steering committee of Cumberland Countians for Peace and Justice.

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Answers in anthrax case may have died with suicide

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

AP | It’s been nearly seven years, but folks in Oxford, Conn., still remember the workers in hazmat suits, scouring the pews of Immanuel Lutheran Church for unseen spores of anthrax.

They remember lining up to be tested for the toxin, and being afraid to open their mail. They remember 94-year-old Ottilie Lundgren — a church-going widow, long-retired legal secretary and a bioterrorist’s most unlikely victim.

“Something like that you never really get over,” Thomas Condon, a friend of Lundgren’s, said Friday. “It always stays in your memory.”

For the rest of us, the years between then and now have made it easy to forget the dread and terror that seized the nation during the anthrax-by-mail attacks, and to lose track of the frustrated investigation that long failed to solve them.

On Friday, all those memories came flooding back.

After years of futility, investigators said they had been preparing to charge a government scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, with hatching the plot, before he committed suicide this week. The final answers may well have died with him.

When the anthrax attacks began, smoke was still rising from the charred pit of the World Trade Center. U.S. jet fighters moved into position, ready to unleash their bombs on Afghanistan’s defiant regime.

Any moment now, Americans told each other, the terrorists might well act again. Nobody could say where or when or, most ominously, how.

Still, when a Florida photographer, Bob Stevens, died of inhaled anthrax on Oct. 5, 2001, it captured relatively little notice and stirred more sorrow than fear. Then one of Stevens’ co-workers was diagnosed. And another.

Days later, an assistant at the New York offices of NBC News was diagnosed. Investigators traced it to the powder contained in a mysterious letter. It was postmarked Sept. 18 and, in what would become a familiar detail, dispatched from a mailbox in the tidy downtown of Princeton, N.J.

Soon after, a similar letter, also pre-stamped and without any return address, arrived at the Capitol Hill offices of the Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Inside, a worker found the same powder and a chilling message.

“You’re going to die,” it read.

Even before the first report of anthrax, post-9/11 worries had sent a book on germ warfare up to the No. 2 spot on Amazon.com’s list of best-sellers. Now the hypothetical bioterror threat was becoming real.

“I could probably drop a package of Sweet n’ Low and evacuate this building,” a Florida county official, Ken Pineau, said at the time.

At some Army-Navy stores, clerks imposed limits on how many gas masks a single customer could buy. At pharmacies, sales of ciprofloxacin — the antibiotic used to combat anthrax — multiplied by 10.

“In Cipro we trust,” a solemn Tom Brokaw told his “NBC Nightly News” audience.

By November 2001, five people were dead — Ottilie Lundgren the last among them — and 17 others were sickened. Workers in bubble suits decontaminated federal office buildings in Washington after anthrax letters were discovered there. The attacks shut some postal substations for years.

Who would do this?

The letter to Daschle hailed Allah, and speculation focused on Arab terrorists. The first victim, it was noted, lived in Lantana, Fla. near an airfield where 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta rented planes. Perhaps that was the key.

But there was no evidence to back that up, and hoaxes did not clarify the situation. Letters containing white powder were sent to scores of Planned Parenthood clinics, fueling conjecture that the plot was the work of far-right zealots.

But investigators who analyzed the anthrax dismissed both ideas. The toxin was a sophisticated form, carefully manufactured by someone who was highly skilled.

By the early months of 2002, investigators were zeroing in on 20 to 30 scientists they said had both the knowledge and opportunity to send the anthrax letters.

The only name that surfaced: Steven J. Hatfill, a biowarfare expert who had worked at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. Federal officials repeatedly identified him as a “person of interest.”

By August of that year, it was clear Hatfill was the prime suspect. FBI agents wearing protective gloves searched his apartment and a storage locker. They found no trace of anthrax.

“I want to look my fellow Americans directly in the eye and declare to them, ‘I am not the anthrax killer,” Hatfill said. “I know nothing about the anthrax attacks. I had absolutely nothing to do with this horrible crime.”

But the investigation continued to focus on him.

In June 2003, investigators drained 1.45 million gallons of water from a pond eight miles from Fort Detrick. The drastic step came after divers found a plastic box with two holes cut into it that some investigators theorized could have been used to safely fill envelopes with deadly anthrax spores.

The pond produced a gun, a bicycle and fishing lures — but no further evidence.

Later that summer, Hatfill sued the Attorney General John Ashcroft and other federal officials, accusing them of turning him into a scapegoat.

The investigation ebbed and flowed, with little outward sign of progress. In 2006, the FBI changed the leadership of the team investigating the attacks.

It’s not clear when their attention turned to Ivins.

The microbiologist had briefly been the subject of some controversy in late 2001, when Army internal reports showed he decontaminated an area of Fort Detrick lab’s for anthrax without reporting it to his superiors.

Ivins apologized and was not disciplined. In fact, he was praised.

In 2003, he shared the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest honor given to civilians Defense Department employees, for his work on a vaccine for anthrax.

Years later, investigators turned their attention from Hatfill to him. They interviewed the latter man’s family and colleagues, developing a picture of a man both brilliant and emotionally unstable.

Maryland court documents show he recently received psychiatric treatment and was ordered to stay away from a woman he was accused of stalking and threatening to kill.

Friends said he knew the FBI was on his tail and that he felt hounded. Investigators raided his home twice. Agents in cars with tinted windows conducted regular surveillance.

In late June, the Justice Department settled its suit with Hatfill, agreeing to pay him $5.8 million — and, at least in the public perception, exoneration.

About two weeks later, police were called to Fort Detrick to speak with Ivins. He was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation because of concern he was a danger to himself or others. He was eventually released.

This past Tuesday, he committed suicide at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. His lawyer blamed the death on the government’s “relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo.”

The scientist’s death brought back memories of the terror visited by the anthrax attacks, but leaves many questions unanswered.

“I think the FBI owes us a complete accounting of their investigation and ought to be able to tell us at some point, how we’re going to bring this to closure,” Daschle told The Associated Press.

“It’s been seven years, there’s a lot of unanswered questions,” he said, “and I think the American people deserve to know more than they do today.”

___

Associated Press Writer John Christoffersen in New Haven, Conn., contributed to this story.

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British Territory Used for US Torture

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

By ADAM ZAGORIN  | Almost two years have passed since President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of a CIA program in which agency-leased aircraft fly terrorism suspects between secret prisons and interrogation sites around the world. “This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill,” the President said on Sept. 6, 2006. Since that admission, the White House has declined to elaborate or comment further on the program’s specifics, although multiple reports have surfaced regarding the existence of secret facilities in Poland and Romania.

According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorism suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.

The official, a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings after Sept. 11 who has since left government, says a CIA counterterrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being held and interrogated on the island. The identity of the captive or captives was not made clear. According to this account, the CIA officer surprised attendees by volunteering the information, apparently to demonstrate that the agency was doing its best to obtain valuable intelligence. According to this single source, who requested anonymity because of the classified nature of the discussions, the U.S. may also have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia’s territorial waters, a contention the U.S. has long denied. The White House meetings were also attended by a variety of other senior counterterrorism officials.

TIME discussed the allegation with Richard Clarke, who served as a special adviser to Bush on the National Security Council dealing with counterterrorism until 2003 but is not the source for this story. “In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high-value targets was discussed,” he says. Clarke did not witness a final resolution of the issue, but adds, “Given everything that we know about the Administration’s approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the U.S. did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible.”

Since leaving the White House, Clarke has written Against All Enemies, a scathing critique of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war on terrorism. Clarke, who was in charge of U.S.-U.K. cooperation on Diego Garcia in the early ’90s, says using the island for interrogations or detentions without British permission “is a violation of U.K. law, as well as of the bilateral agreement governing the island.”

Diego Garcia is a tiny island, but its use by the U.S. as a detention or interrogation site has global significance. While the governments of Poland and Romania have faced few domestic consequences for their rumored cooperation with U.S. counterterrorism measures, many in Britain have been voluble in their opposition to what they see as the U.S.’s abrogation of human rights as well as violations of law and British sovereignty. Says the chief spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: “Our intelligence and counterterrorism relationship with the U.S. is vital to the national security of the United Kingdom. We accept U.S. assurances on rendition in good faith. But if others have definitive evidence of rendition through the U.K. or our overseas territories, including Diego Garcia, then we will raise it with the U.S. authorities.”

A CIA spokesman says there have been no changes in the agency’s position on Diego Garcia since February 2008, when CIA director Michael Hayden admitted that the agency’s previous denials about U.S. activities on the island were incorrect. Hayden acknowledged then that the U.S. had inadvertently misled the British government and that two suspects had been on flights that stopped to refuel on Diego Garcia en route to Guantánamo Bay and Morocco in 2002. “Neither of those individuals was ever part of CIA’s high-value terrorist-interrogation program,” said Hayden. “These were rendition operations, nothing more.” Hayden did not identify the suspects who were transited on the island and said that no other U.S. prisoners have been on Diego Garcia since Sept. 11.

A variety of press reports over the years have claimed otherwise, citing evidence that people ranging from alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to his associate Abu Zubaydah and other suspected terrorists were in American hands there. (Britain leased Diego Garcia, which is halfway between Africa and Southeast Asia, to the United States and barred anyone from entering the island, except by permit, in 1971.) In 2003, TIME reported that Hambali, alleged architect of the Bali discotheque bombings, was held there.

U.K. foreign secretary David Miliband and his predecessor, Jack Straw, who served under Prime Minister Tony Blair, have both repeatedly denied that the U.S. detained terrorism suspects on British territory.

Hayden’s attempt to set the record straight has failed to quiet British protests about American activities on the island. Instead, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition has begun an investigation, raising a variety of pointed questions about the island with Gordon Brown’s Labour government. Speaking to the BBC, Labor MP and Foreign Affairs Committee member Fabian Hamilton said this week, “I think it’s important the British government makes plain its … deep concern that it’s not being told the truth and that our territories are being used for these purposes.”

In late June, Foreign Secretary Miliband said the U.S. had studied a list of 391 flights compiled by British human rights groups and assured British authorities it had found that no further extraordinary-rendition flights had passed through British territory. But Hamilton’s committee insists that Britain can no longer take at face value America’s assurances that it is not torturing prisoners and, in a clear reference to Diego Garcia, says the U.K. now bears a “legal and moral obligation” to make certain that no British territory abets American rendition flights or interrogations.

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US holds secret session of Gitmo war crimes court

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

The U.S. military has removed journalists from a Guantanamo courtroom for a secret session of the war crimes tribunal.

It is the first time the U.S. has held a closed session at the tribunals created to prosecute alleged terrorists at the base in Cuba.

Observers without security clearance were told to leave Thursday while a defense witness testified in the trial of former Osama bin Laden driver Salim Hamdan.

The defendant stayed in the courtroom.

The witness is Col. Morgan Banks, a psychologist with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Officials did not say why his testimony is being kept secret.

AP

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Anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins stood to benefit from a panic

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

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Caroline Lucas at Climate Camp

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

South East MEP and Green activist Dr Caroline Lucas will be joining protesters at Climate Camp 2008 this weekend at Kingsnorth in Kent to rally against the Government’s continued commitment to unsustainable fossil fuels and its failure to adapt to tough environmental and economic conditions.

Speaking ahead of the Camp, which was held last year at Heathrow and attracted in excess of 1500 people, Dr Lucas said:

“I am delighted to be taking part in Climate Camp this year, and where better to highlight the Government’s failure to provide leadership on climate change than Kingsnorth, the proposed location for the first coal fired power station in Britain for 30 years.

“A new coal facility at Kingsnorth would emit up to 8 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year – and potentially keep doing so for 50 years. That annual emissions figure is as much C02 as the world’s 24 lowest emitting countries combined.

“Despite all its climate rhetoric, greenhouse gas emissions have risen under this Labour adminstration. Any government which commits to more coal fired power stations – and Kingsnorth is only the start – then claims to be aiming for a massive reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 is quite simply living in a fantasy land.”

On Sunday (3 August), Dr Lucas will take part in a rally on incineration and climate change. Then on Monday (4 August), she will address fellow Climate Campers on the triple crisis of food price rises, economic downturn and climate change facing governments the world over, and what lies ahead for conventional capitalist economics.

She continued: “Our political leaders seem unable to grasp a more radical social and environmental agenda. They can no longer commit to endless free market economic growth, which has played a huge part in the rapid generation of damaging climate emissions, and then wring their hands about climate change.

“The Government should be showing real leadership in this debate, with measures to tackle rising energy costs and fuel poverty, as well as initiating major investment in energy efficiency, renewables and decentralised energy. According to its own figures, we could achieve a 30% reduction in energy use in the UK through existing efficiency measures alone.

“Instead, ministers stick with their business-as-usual approach, further enabling the fossil fuel industry to profit and pollute, while paying scant regard to the average citizen or the environment.”

Caroline Lucas MEP

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Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up?

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

TruthDig |

There was quite a struggle in Congress this week. The Department of Defense refused to allow the senior civilian in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) to testify in Thursday’s hearing on sexual assault in the military. Rep. John Tierney, chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, angrily dismissed Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Michael Dominguez from the hearing when Dominguez said that he, the DoD chief of legislative affairs and the chief of public affairs, had ordered Dr. Kaye Whitley, chief of SAPRO, to refuse to honor the subpoena issued by the subcommittee for her appearance.

Full committee Chairman Henry Waxman called the DoD’s decision to prevent Whitley from testifying “ridiculous and indicating DoD is covering something up.” It could also place Whitley in contempt of Congress. Rep. Christopher Shays said the DoD’s decision was “foolish.”

One of the questions that would have been put to Whitley was why DoD had taken three years to name a 15-person civilian task force to look into allegations of sexual assault of military personnel. The panel was finally named early in 2008 but has yet to meet. She would have also been queried on the SAPRO program’s failure to require key information from the military in order to evaluate the effectiveness of sexual assault prevention and response programs.

I spoke with Dr. Whitley in April 2007 and had asked for an appointment to bring to her office four military women who had been sexually assaulted and wanted to tell her in what ways the DoD programs to prevent sexual assault were not working. Whitley declined, saying she worked at the policy level, and steered me to the chief of the Army sexual assault program. I called the Army program’s chief, who initially said she would talk to our group. However, when I mentioned that the mother of Army Spc. Suzanne Swift, who had been raped in Iraq, would be with us, she said she could not meet with anyone involved with an ongoing case. I replied that Swift’s case was closed as far as the Army was concerned. Her rapist had not been prosecuted, and Swift ended up with a court-martial and 30 days of jail time because she had gone AWOL for her own protection when the Army would not move her out of the unit to which both she and her rapist were still assigned. In view of the fact that the Army chief of prevention of sexual assault refused to meet with any of the four women who had suggestions on how to improve prevention and reporting of sexual assault and rape, I’m not surprised that the DoD snubbed Congress over the same issue.

Rep. Elijah Cummings joined Rep. Waxman in speaking of cover-ups. Cummings raised the cases of military women who had been sexually assaulted before dying in “non-combat incidents.” He spoke specifically about Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson, who was found beaten and dead of a gunshot wound at Balad Air Base, Iraq, in a burning tent owned by the contractor KBR. Her parents suspected that Johnson had been murdered and that the homicide was being covered up by the Army, which deemed the death a suicide. Cummings also spoke of Army Pfc. Tina Priest, who was raped at Taji, Iraq, and found dead 10 days later of a gunshot wound. After her family had measurements taken of her arms and of the angle of the bullet and found that she could not have pulled the trigger of her M-16 with her finger, the Army said she had pulled the trigger by using her toe. Cummings asked Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, chief of U.S. Army personnel, for assistance in getting all the documents the Army had on Johnson’s death. Additionally, four House members have asked for congressional hearings on the deaths of military personnel who have been classified as suicides, among them LaVena Johnson.

The fireworks with DoD followed the dramatic testimony of Mary Lauterbach, the mother of murdered pregnant Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who had been raped in May 2007 at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Accused in the case is Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean. After the rape, several protective orders were issued to keep Laurean away from his victim. The burned body of Lauterbach and her unborn baby were found in a shallow grave in the backyard of Laurean’s home in January 2008. Laurean fled to Mexico, where he was subsequently apprehended, and he now is awaiting extradition to the United States to stand trial. Lauterbach’s mother explained in great detail the warning signs that Laurean was a danger to her daughter and claimed that all these signs were ignored by the Marine Corps.

Two other military women have been murdered near military bases in North Carolina in the past two months.

Red Cross employee Ingrid Torres told the subcommittee of being raped at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea by an Air Force flight doctor. She spoke of the difficulty she had obtaining medical and emotional treatment from the facility where the doctor still worked, and later from military facilities in other parts of the world where she was assigned.

Rep. Jane Harman cited Veterans Administration statistics that one in three women in the military has been sexually assaulted. She said the prosecution rate of those accused of raping fellow military service members is abysmally low. Of the 2,212 reported rapes in the military in 2007, only 8 percent of the cases ended in court-martial of the perpetrator, while the rate of prosecution in civilian courts is 40 percent.

Lt. Gen. Rochelle, the Army chief of personnel, reported the little known statistic that 12 percent of reported rapes in the military are of male military personnel.

Rep. Shays said he had no confidence in DoD or the military services and their policies of prevention of sexual assault, and asked how recruiting will fare when young women learn that one in three women is sexually assaulted and when young men find out that one in 10 men is raped while in the military.

Brenda Farrell, director of the Government Accountability Office, said that getting data on rape from the military services is difficult because there are no common definitions of terms for the services to use in such cases.

Farrell said the GAO believes rates of sexual assault currently used by DoD are low because many military personnel do not want to report what happened and suffer the gossip, harassment and stigma prevalent in units when confidential reporting is compromised. In a survey of 3,757 persons on 14 military installations, 103 said they had been sexually assaulted in the past year and had reported it, while 52 others said they did not report the sexual assault.

Several Congress members spoke of lack of leadership and accountability in stopping sexual assault. The same day as the sexual assault hearing, the Navy relieved two senior officers of the USS George Washington because of the injury to 23 sailors and $70 million in damage to the ship caused by a smoking violation. Imagine if commanders in units where rape occurred were relieved of command for the harmful actions of their subordinates. That would send a signal of zero tolerance of sexual assault, whereas in the current climate victims are intimidated and alleged perpetrators are given administrative punishment instead of court-martial.

Sexual violence against both female and male military personnel must stop. Let Congress know of your concern about sexual assault in our military. Call or e-mail members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees and members of the Oversight and Government Reform committees.

Ann Wright is a retired Army Reserve colonel and a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She was also a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the Department of State on March 19, 2003, in opposition to the Iraq war. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience” (www.voicesofconscience.com).

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Electric Cars Are the Key to Energy Independence

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

By David Morris |

Al Gore’s heroic speech challenging us to make our electrical system 100 percent renewable promised it would simultaneously address three major crises: the weak economy, catastrophic climate change and the dire national security problems inherent in our dependence on imported oil.

He got two out of three right. A crash renewable electricity initiative would provide an immediate boost to our economy and could slow climate change, since electricity accounts for about a third of our overall greenhouse gas emissions.

But it would do little to enhance our national security.

Oil generates only 3 percent of our electricity. Therefore a 100 percent renewable electricity system does little to reduce our oil dependency — unless that electricity is used to substitute for oil in our transportation system.

Al Gore knows this. In other venues he has mentioned electrified vehicles. But he needs to make electrifying our transportation the central element in his 10-year plan, for at least two reasons.

One is that it is an initiative that would prove far more compelling to the vast majority of Americans. Climate change is abstract, and the strategies to resolve it are remote. Our relationship to our vehicles, on the other hand, is both concrete and visceral. We desperately want to get off oil, especially when gasoline prices rise to $4 per gallon.

But it is more than a pocketbook issue for many of us; it is a moral issue. Americans hate being dependent for our mobility, and therefore for our livelihoods, on countries often hostile to our way of life. Electric cars promise to end that dependency.

And as a bonus, with rooftop solar cells, we can become independent not only from OPEC but from remote and often unresponsive utility companies. We can become energy producers as well as energy consumers.

And then there is the plain fact that once significant numbers of electric vehicles are on the roads, word of mouth will be a powerful marketing tool. The reason? As Marc Geller, a longtime advocate of electric vehicles, told me a year ago as we were traveling up Route 1 in Northern California in his all-electric small SUV, “Anyone who drives an electric car falls in love with an electric car.” That love affair will be aided and abetted by a population eager to embrace a homegrown fuel and vehicles that offer quicker propulsion, a quiet drive and zero tailpipe emissions.

There is another persuasive reason for Gore to focus on an electrified transportation system: It is simply physically impossible to convert our entire electricity system to renewables in 10 years, but it is possible to convert our entire ground transportation system to renewable electricity within a similar time frame. That would require a national mobilization, to be sure, but it can be done.

Converting our electric system fully to renewables would require us to shut down about 80 percent of our current electricity-generating capacity, much of it low-cost, already paid off and capable of generating electricity for another 25 years or more. Moreover, to reach very high penetration rates of renewable electricity would require that we overcome the principal shortcoming of wind and sunlight: intermittency.

To electrify our transportation system, on the other hand, we could displace rather than shut down the existing system, and we would be replacing a physical stock with a relatively short life expectancy. Given the average seven-year life expectancy of existing vehicles and the high probability that we would offer an incentive for owners of older gasoline-powered vehicles to trade them in, new electric vehicles could constitute the entire fleet within a decade, and that doesn’t take into account the potential for conversions of existing vehicles.

Powering 100 percent of our transportation system would require about 30 percent of the electricity generated in 2006. With a massive effort, using a combination of solar and wind power, we could generate about that much electricity by 2020.

The fact that we can even contemplate the rapid electrification of transportation is a testament to 20 years of grassroots activism at the local and state level. The enactment by Congress of a renewable electricity tax incentive in 1992 was important, but the wind energy industry did not take off until states began to mandate renewable electricity. Today more than 25 states boast such mandates. A recent report put together by a task force of California leaders urges the state to double its renewable electricity mandate to 50 percent by 2020.

We have done a great deal, from the bottom up, to increase the supply of renewable electricity. Less well known is how much we have done on the demand side of the equation, that is, the use of electricity in transportation.

A brief historical review might be in order here. The first electric utilities were born largely to serve the transportation sector, which in the late 19th century meant urban streetcars. Until 1920, transportation remained the nation’s utilities’ single largest customer. And as the birth of the automobile age began, electric vehicles were by far the most popular. In the late 1890s electric vehicles (EVs) outsold gasoline cars 10 to 1. Many of the first car dealerships were exclusively for EVs.

The future of transportation abruptly changed in the 1910s. Mass production of gasoline-powered cars dramatically lowered their price. The introduction of automatic ignition removed the difficult and dangerous task of cranking to start the gasoline engine. Meanwhile the infrastructure for electricity was almost nonexistent outside city boundaries, limiting the utility of electric vehicles.

For the next 70 years, electric transportation all but disappeared.

Then, in 1990, two events occurred to revive the prospects of electrified vehicles. One was a private sector initiative; the other a public sector initiative. One was technology driven; the other politically driven.

In 1990, Sony introduced the lithium ion battery. Its higher energy density quickly made it the battery of choice for electronic equipment. Over the next 10 years, as portable electronic equipment demanded more powerful and longer-lasting batteries, the lithium ion battery industry saw many technological advances. In the last five years, many variations of that battery have begun to vie for supremacy as the foundation for a new generation of electric vehicles.

The public initiative was California’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate. Enacted in 1990, the mandate required that 2 percent of all new vehicles sold by major car manufacturers in that state be all-electric by 1998, and 10 percent by 2003. By 1994, 12 additional states had adopted its mandate.

If that mandate had remained in place, more than 10 million EVs might be traveling our roads today. But as the marvelous documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” reveals in depressing detail, the ZEV mandate was weakened in the 1990s and finally killed in 2003.

Notwithstanding its demise, the mandate did result in several important and positive outcomes. One was the hybrid vehicle, whose development was in part an outgrowth of the vigorous developments in electrical and electronic vehicle systems spurred by the ZEV mandate. Another was the advance in large-format battery technology after many decades of stagnation. The new Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery replaced the lead acid battery for ZEVs sold in California, and by the late 1990s, a second-generation NiMH promised to last the life of the car, almost halving the capital cost of an electric vehicle. (Tragically, patent disputes have stifled NiMH development.)

Perhaps the most important enduring legacy of the ZEV mandate was the creation of tens of thousands of Californians who experienced the pleasure of driving or being driven in full-size electric vehicles capable of high-speed, long-distance highway driving. “Who Killed the Electric Car?” portrays what seemed to be a futile grassroots effort to stop car companies from taking back their EVs and crushing them.

Yet even as the movie ends, the uprising began to gain traction. GM proved incorrigible. But creative and extensive protests here and abroad persuaded Ford and then Toyota to cease crushing their vehicles and begin offering them for sale. Reportedly, Chris Paine, the director of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” is making a new movie titled “Who Saved the Electric Car?” It promises to be a very uplifting sequel.

At its peak, the ZEV mandate brought some 5,500 electric vehicles onto California roads, ranging from Ford’s small Think Car to Toyota’s small SUV, the RAV4, to Ford’s light pickup truck, the Ranger.

After the protests ended and the dust cleared, more than 800 electric vehicles were saved, most of them RAV4s. Some have now traveled more than 110,000 miles, validating both the durability of the batteries and the vehicles’ remarkably low maintenance costs.

The EV movement was aided and abetted by the introduction, in 2004, of the second iteration of the Toyota Prius. The best-selling car sported a mysterious blank button on the dashboard. Via the Internet, Americans were told that in Japan the button was operational. Pushing it allowed the car to travel solely by electricity for a mile or so. Engineers in Texas and California quickly learned how to convert the Prius to drive solely on electricity, and they added sufficient battery capacity to travel 10 and then 20 and then 30 miles before recharging was needed.

Several start-ups began to offer plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) conversions. Felix Kramer, the Paul Revere of the movement, spent the next two years trying to convince national reporters, members of Congress, Silicon Valley businesses and even EV advocates, many of whom believed a car with a gas engine was a sacrilege, that a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle could become the foundation for a transition to an electrified transportation sector. Kramer convinced a leading car industry reporter based in Michigan to run a story, which quickly translated into dozens of stories in the national media. In the spring of 2006, he spent $15,000 to transport his own converted Prius PHEV to DC and allow several senators and leading policymakers and opinion leaders to literally kick the tires and drive in it.

At the time fewer than a dozen Prius conversions existed in the entire country. But the work of organizations like Plug-In America and Plug-In Partners and Kramer’s own CalCars began to seize the popular imagination.

In just the last 12 months, the dam against electrified vehicles seems to have broken. For the first time since 1910, an oil-free transportation system is on the table.

New announcements by businesses large and small have become almost a weekly occurrence. Hymotion, a small company affiliated with Internet giant Google and the MIT spin-off, battery maker A123, has begun to roll out a nationwide network of certified plug-in hybrid converters.

Toyota, which for the first six years of Prius sales used the advertising tag line, “You Never Have to Plug It In,” announced in 2007 an abrupt change of mind. In 2010, Toyota will begin leasing plug-in Priuses in Japan. GM, which had originally loudly and sarcastically dismissed the concept of hybrids, announced it will offer a plug-in hybrid with a 40-mile driving range in 2010. Nissan, VW, Renault and other car manufacturers have all announced their intention to introduce electric vehicles in the same time frame.

In July 2008, San Jose announced the beginning of a network of easily accessible and useable EV-charging stations in parking garages around the city. San Francisco followed with its own request for proposals for a similar citywide network.

On the political front, the current energy bill stalled in Congress because of Republican opposition: The bill contains a tax incentive for plug-ins sufficient to make the first cost of such vehicles nearly competitive with conventional vehicles.

The energy bill signed into law just before Christmas in 2007 includes a little-noticed but very powerful incentive for all-electric vehicles. For purposes of meeting the new higher fuel efficiency standards, all-electric vehicles will be awarded an efficiency rating based largely on the amount of gasoline displaced, which translates into an overall fuel efficiency rating for a typical mid-size EV of about 350 miles per gallon.

And on the customer level, gasoline prices of $4 per gallon have generated a palpable hunger for alternatives and changed the comparative economics of EVs and gasoline-powered vehicles. Driving a mile on electricity today costs about 3 cents while traveling a mile on gasoline costs about 15 cents. This can translate into annual fuel savings of more than $1,000.

The advent of EVs may change not only the contours of our transportation system but also the structure of our electricity system. The unique characteristic of the electricity system is that the product must be instantaneously transmitted and no storage capacity is available. This is the reason Enron and others were able to manipulate the system in deregulated California 10 years ago, a manipulation that led to the near bankruptcy of the state and continues to burden the state budget.

The prospect of a large battery capacity contained in tens of millions of electrified vehicles could be, in the words of one utility executive, “a game changer.” Utilities, eager to nurture a potentially large new customer, are also vigorously assessing how this new electric capacity can be integrated into the existing distribution and subtransmission parts of the grid system.

Some studies have estimated that utilities could pay an EV owner several thousand dollars a year to tap into the car’s batteries when needed for energy used to keep the local grid stable. The vehicle would be available for such tapping a considerable percentage of the time. A typical vehicle sits idle some 23 of 24 hours a day. Millions sit in commuter parking lots for eight hours a day.

A large storage capacity could also ameliorate the intermittency problem of renewable energy, which in turn could allow a much higher proportion of renewable electricity on the grid. One study of the Sacramento, Calif., electricity network concluded that a significant penetration of battery-powered vehicles could boost the potential wind energy contribution to about 50 percent of total electricity generation.

EVs might spur a profound relocalization of our electricity system. I discovered the intimate link between electric vehicles and decentralized electricity in the spring of 2007, when I spent a week in California driving or being driven in a variety of electrified vehicles, from glorified golf carts to PHEVs to the “0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds” Tesla. I was invited by a national travel magazine to investigate the future of the car based on my 2003 report on the subject, “A Better Way.” Everyone I met who had an EV or a PHEV also had solar cells on their roofs. And why not? Not only does it make them more energy self-reliant, but the value of the electricity generated by the solar array is far higher when it displaces gasoline than when it displaces conventional electricity.

Indeed, a symbiotic relationship between car and house may be emerging. California has time-of-day tariffs under which electricity consumed at peak hours, say, midday on a hot summer’s day, can be several times more expensive than electricity consumed during nighttime odd-peak hours. If EV owners must use electricity at peak times, they can tap into the stored electricity in their vehicles. The EV serves as a source of backup power for the house. More than one EV owner boasted about how his was the only house with lights on when the neighborhood suffered a blackout.

If Congress enacts its electrified vehicle incentive, we should see an immediate surge in conversions and new PHEV and EV sales. In 2010 several EV and PHEV models should be available from major car companies, albeit in small quantities, and these should allow us to gauge the costs of an all-electric transportation system.

If I were Al Gore, I would ask Congress not only to pass the EV incentive but also to phase in a mandate for an all-renewable-fueled transportation fleet, perhaps beginning with 5 percent of all new vehicles by 2012 and moving toward 100 percent by 2020. A call to arms would resonate with the American public. And as both consumers and citizens, Americans could quickly translate their support into a mass movement to finally eliminate our addiction to oil.

David Morris is vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. His report on the future of transportation, Driving Our Way to Energy Independence, was published in April 2008. He is also the author of Self-Reliant Cities (Sierra Club Books, 1982).
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/93609/

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More Than 10,000 Detainees Released in Iraq

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

US military: More than 10,000 detainees freed in Iraq this year, 21,000 still in detention
By SELCAN HACAOGLU | ABCNews.com 

The U.S. military said Saturday it has released more than 10,000 detainees in Iraq so far this year — more than in all of 2007 — as it continues to try phase out its running of Iraqi prisons.

The military said about 21,000 people remained in custody, and it is currently releasing about 45 detainees and detaining 30 a day.

The United States wants to transfer the detainees to Iraqi control. Reaching that goal has been slowed partly by the lack of adequate Iraqi prison space and trained guards. More than 8,900 people were released from detention last year.

The U.S. military separated moderate detainees from extremists and instituted religious, educational and vocational programs over the past year to try to rehabilitate less dangerous prisoners. It also increased releases under amnesty programs.

“Due to changes in the conduct of detainee operations and programs to prepare detainees for reintegration into society, we have not only gone over 10,000 releases, but our re-internment rate is less than 1 percent,” said Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

The U.S. military says its detention system is authorized by a U.N. resolution under which the Iraqi government allows U.S. troops to arrest people at will. U.S. military attorneys say it also complies with international laws covering warfare and was created in “the spirit” of the Geneva Conventions.

Commanders say they are entitled to hold any prisoner until the detainee is no longer considered a threat to U.S. forces. Local law and court rulings do not apply, they add.

Rights groups have criticized U.S. detention policy as a misrepresentation of international law, which they say requires some form of legal process to detain someone.

The right of the U.S. to detain Iraqi citizens has been one of the contentious areas of debate with the Iraqis over a new security agreement that would keep U.S. forces in the country after a U.N. mandate expires at year’s end.

Many Iraqi officials want the country’s courts to have sole responsibility for arresting and detaining Iraqi citizens.

The average detention time is 330 days, the military said on Saturday. About 17,000 of the inmates, including some of the most dangerous, are held at Camp Bucca — a facility in southern Iraq.

The military has increased control over prisons to correct widespread U.S. prison abuses that sparked international criticism.

Allegations of abuse at U.S. prisons escalated in 2004 with the release of pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees at the Abu Ghraib facility west of Baghdad. Some were naked, being held on leashes or in painful and sexually humiliating positions.

That prison has since been closed, and 11 U.S. soldiers were convicted of breaking military laws. Five others were disciplined in the scandal.

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Crisis Looms as Corporations Seize Control of Commodities

Saturday, August 2nd, 2008

By Barbara L. Minton | The global food crisis won’t go away any time soon. Capitalism has the average consumer by the belly. Amid growing signs of famine and outrage, the entire chain of commodities and resources of the world are now being cornered by giant corporations. Farmland, water, fertilizer, seed, energy, and most of the basic necessities of life are falling under corporate control, providing increased wealth and power to the ruling elite while the rest of humanity struggles.

Commodity scarcity in India was recently reflected in the need to distribute fertilizer from the police station in Hingoli. Now police have to control the lines that form outside of dealer outlets, because the dealers won’t open for business otherwise. Without this intervention there would be no fertilizer for the planting that must take place before the rain comes. In Akola and Nanded, police involvement is also needed. Agriculture officers have fled their work places to escape angry farmers. In Karnataka, a farmer was shot dead during protests, while farmers stormed meetings and set up road blocks in other districts.

Despite the success of the genetically engineered Bt cotton crops, the trend in India is now back to soybeans because they cost less to grow and need less fertilizer than cotton.

And it’s not just fertilizer that is scarce. Seeds are also in short supply which is being blamed on agitation that has interfered with freight train traffic. However, the shortfall in seeds is 60 percent, a level more indicative of corporate intervention to drive up prices than the actions of powerless farmers.

As farmers fume, the Wall Street Journal heralds the whopping 42 percent jump in the fiscal third quarter profits of huge agriculture giant Archer-Daniels Midland. This increase includes a sevenfold rise in new income in units that store, transport and grade grains such as wheat, corn and soybeans.

The soaring profits of fertilizer maker Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan are reflected in the parabolic movement of its stock price from a yearly low of $70.35 to its current price of $238.22 per share. Shares of fertilizer and animal feed producer Mosaic Corp. have risen from a yearly low of $32.50 to a current price of $159.38.

Similar windfall profits are reported by GMO seed and herbicide king Monsanto whose last quarterly earnings surged by 45%.

Some onlookers blame the financial speculators for driving up the prices of commodities related to agriculture as wealthy investors have piled on looking to cash in on the rising stock prices. And in many ways, today’s commodity market resembles the dot.com boom seen at the turn of the century, as well as the housing boom now in the throws of its bust.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently held a hearing to investigate the role that index funds and hedge funds are playing in driving up the prices of agricultural commodities. Total public fund investment in corn, soybean, wheat, cattle and hogs has risen by 37 billion dollars since 2006. This figure does not include the huge investments of hedge funds which don’t have to make such disclosure. It also doesn’t include the massive world wide investments in farmland made by the wealthy.

The corporate spin is that these investments are helpful to humanity because they will ultimately result in increased food production at a time of rising world demand. They cite the need for increased corporate profits to invest in and develop new technologies that will help farmers improve productivity. This is how GMO seeds are being driven down the throats of farmers, who are told that the modified seeds can squeeze even more yield from each acre of planting.

India has joined other developing countries in the decision to invest less in agriculture as advised by the World Bank-IMF, whose agenda has been to discourage crops for domestic consumption while encouraging production to spur export driven growth. This advice coupled with corporate sponsored deregulation has paved the way for corporate control of the farming process from seed to market. Research and development that was once the domain of universities has also fallen into corporate control.

Farmers in India are caught in a credit crunch. Even if they are able to get the needed fertilizer, they will not have the credit to pay for it. With no increase in farmer income, larger loans are not advanced. The outlook for the small farmer there is much the same as it was in the U.S. thirty years ago, during the height of the small farms falling to big agribusiness.

Corporations blame food shortages and rising prices on the people of China and India whose burgeoning income from manufacturing has allowed the average worker to increase both the amount and quality of his food consumption. But for the corporations, the increased demand for food is a guarantee of super profits to come.

Of course the other commodity you can’t get along without is water, which is now the focus of huge multinational companies seeking to privatize water world wide, perhaps even patent it as Monsanto did with seeds. The fight over water may bring chaos, conflict and misery on a scale never seen before as corporations and governments go so far as to grab the wells from under people’s houses.

And then there’s oil. To produce chemical fertilizer you must make use of fossil fuel. So rising oil prices and rising food prices are joined at the hip. The behavior of corporations in the oil business has been so egregious that there is talk of a windfall profits tax here and abroad.

No, the food crisis will not go away anytime soon. North Korea, Burma and Western Sudan are currently feeling a real threat of starvation while western governments manipulated by corporations continue to promote the diversion of food into biofuels to further exacerbate the upward movement in food prices. Almost all U.S. corn production between 2004 and 2007 has gone into the production of ethanol. European production of ethanol has more than tripled during the same period. This has led to a fall off in grains relative to overall demand which is not a market phenomenon but is the direct result of the government sponsored, corporate backed programs. This comes at the expense of people looking for something to eat, particularly the world’s poor who are now effectively priced out of the food market.

Sources:

P. Sainath, The Hindu, “Fertilizing profit, sowing misery”

Bogdan C. Enache, China Confidential, “Biofuels and the threat of starvation”

Yahoo Finance

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