Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:22:28 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/ PostNuke Powered Site en-us http://saltspringnews.com/images/banner.gif http://saltspringnews.com/ webmaster@SaltSpringNews.com http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19417 Click on a headline below to go to that news item Friday, July 3,2009 Commentary The base court: Another fortress rising in America's ring of iron National News Two Iraq vets meet for talks and fun at the Calgary Stampede—the Stanley Cup/Super Bowl of rodeos & Barack Obama's moment of truth in Afghanistan Thursday, July 2,2009 World News Honduran anti-coup protests: This isn't even about the Cuarta Urna, one man yelled, it is about human rights World News Afghanistan: Thousands of U.S. Marines told they are about to make history Commentary Are 'Enemies' all around America and, by extension, Canada? Or is that mantra just a useful fiction? World News Extreme sports: Tehran, Tel Aviv and Washington Wednesday, July 1,2009 World News Nip this referendum thing in the bud: The Honduran coup Commentary Venezuela & Iran: Whither the revolutions? Tuesday, June 30,2009 Regional News Can anyone spell Watergate? Judge on BC Rail corruption case orders disclosure of MLA emails, part of materials the defence has spent years trying to force disclosure of World News Israel prepares F-15 jets for long range attack World News AfPak: Gen McChrystal's 'listening tour' World News Inside Iran: Mass movement (of which organizing labor is a part) may not be strong enough to topple the system today but is sowing the seeds for future struggles & Pointers for citizen journalists Monday, June 29,2009 Agriculture There's no such thing as local vs. organic food Sunday, June 28,2009 National News Antibiotics injected into chicken eggs is making Canadians resistant to meds Commentary Environmental destruction: Business as usual in the Obama Administration Arts Israel/Palestine: There is more than one truth Commentary Hezbollah keeps its eye on the ball Commentary Iranian people will continue living under the double sanction of a repressive state and an international boycott regime designed to cripple their development Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:22:28 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19416 Chris Floyd Empire Burlesque Netherlands July 3, 2009 While President Obama circumnavigates the globe, talking loftily of peace and engagement with the peoples of the world -- in language largely cribbed from old George Bush speeches, but presented in a far more photogenic, plausive package -- this is the real face that the United States is showing to the world. Chalmers Johnson writes: The U.S. Empire of Bases — at $102 billion a year already the world’s costliest military enterprise — just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new "embassy" in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don’t occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad... Whatever the costs turn out to be, they will not be included in our already bloated military budget, even though none of these structures is designed to be a true embassy — a place, that is, where local people come for visas and American officials represent the commercial and diplomatic interests of their country. Instead these so-called embassies will actually be walled compounds, akin to medieval fortresses, where American spies, soldiers, intelligence officials, and diplomats try to keep an eye on hostile populations in a region at war. One can predict with certainty that they will house a large contingent of Marines and include roof-top helicopter pads for quick get-aways. Strangely enough, this bristling musculature of imperial dominance doesn't sit well with the locals in the "garrisoned lands" -- an apt phrase used by Tom Englehardt in introducing Chalmer's piece. ... Chalmers believes that the ring of iron that the United States has wrapped around the world will ultimately be the unmaking of the empire: I have a suggestion for other countries that are getting a bit weary of the American military presence on their soil: cash in now, before it’s too late. Either up the ante or tell the Americans to go home. I encourage this behavior because I’m convinced that the U.S. Empire of Bases will soon enough bankrupt our country, and so — on the analogy of a financial bubble or a pyramid scheme — if you’re an investor, it’s better to get your money out while you still can. This is, of course, something that has occurred to the Chinese and other financiers of the American national debt. Only they’re cashing in quietly and slowly in order not to tank the dollar while they’re still holding onto such a bundle of them. Make no mistake, though: whether we’re being bled rapidly or slowly, we are bleeding; and hanging onto our military empire and all the bases that go with it will ultimately spell the end of the United States as we know it. While Chalmers is undoubtedly one of the wise men of our day, I am not so sure about this final point. Oh, it's true that the empire of bases is further bankrupting our already bankrupt country. And it's an indisputable fact that the fever-dream of dominance and militarism has already spelled the end of the United States as we knew it (or as we once perceived and hoped it to be). Yet it is hard for me to believe that if push really comes to shove for our imperial managers, they will simply stand by and watch their power and privilege melt away with nothing more than a wistful sigh for passing glories. Especially with a unfathomably vast military arsenal -- including thousands of nation-devouring nuclear weapons -- at their command. In such a case, I strongly doubt they will show the wisdom and courage that unaccountably appeared among the party hacks of the late Soviet leadership, who had the guts to look reality in the face and realize they could not maintain their own militarist empire without a cataclysm of murder and violence that would have put the whole world in peril. They did something almost unthinkable for a political class -- especially those which, like the Communists (and the Democrats and Republicans), see themselves as the righteous vanguard of a uniquely blessed system beyond question or reproach: they admitted defeat, they let go -- not only of the Eastern bloc nations they had controlled since World War II, but also core territories that Russia had governed for centuries, such as Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine. They risked an internal breakdown of epic proportions -- a fate which did indeed come to pass -- but they did not make war to save their empire. They withdrew their troops, and their political control, from country after country after country. It is one of the most extraordinary episodes in world history. But it will almost certainly not be mentioned next week when Barack Obama visits Moscow -- where, as the proud head of a war machine that has killed a million innocent people in Iraq and is killing thousands in Afghanistan, as the stout defender and expander of the authoritarian power grabs of his White House predecessor and a staunch shield for torturers and other war criminals, he will scold the Russians for their lack of liberty and scanting of human rights. The vast sacrifices that the Russian people have made in the peaceful surrender of their empire -- the shattering of their society by the foolish adoption of Western "shock doctrine" economics and the Western-backed oligarchism of the bufoonish Yeltsin, all of which opened the door to the thuggish authoritarianism of the current Kremlin regime -- will once again go unremarked. ... Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:53:17 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19415 Left: Canada's Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walter Natynczyk speaks to CTV News Chennel from the Canada Day celebration in Ottawa on Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Lieutenant-General Natynczyk was groomed at the U.S. Army War College and was subsequently appointed Deputy Commanding General, III Corps and Fort Hood. Natynczyk worked with Petraeus in Iraq in 2004. In January 2004, he deployed with III Corps to Baghdad, Iraq, serving first as the Deputy Director of Strategy, Policy and Plans and subsequently as the Deputy Commanding General of the Multi-National Corps (Iraq). US Army Col. Dan Baggio, who served with Natynczyk in Baghdad, and until Spring 2008, was responsible for army media relations at the Pentagon has said of Natynczyk that he is "a true team player." Right: Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, June 29, 2009. Photo: Amr Nabil/Associated Press Head of U.S. Central Command visiting Calgary Stampede Bill Graveland Canadian Press Canada July 2, 2009 ... [Gen. David Petraeus] was invited to Calgary by Gen. Walter Natynczyk, who took over last year as Canada's Chief of Defence Staff. "We are going to sit down and talk obviously about all that's going on in Central Command area of responsibility, which includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and a host of other places," Petraeus said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "There's a lot going on out there and we'll compare notes on all that but obviously, we're also here for the Stampede. It's great being one of those wearing a white hat," he chuckled. ... The two officers plan to watch the Calgary Stampede parade Friday morning and visit Afghanistan360, a multimedia exhibit on Canada's civilian and military efforts in Afghanistan. The exhibit features stories from the field and short video segments on training and development projects that Canada supports in Afghanistan. Visitors can record 15-second video messages to troops serving in Afghanistan. ... Related: [B]oth Western critics and those who oppose America's presence and influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan say [Obama's surge] is the wishful thinking of man looking for a way out. "It's front-loaded withdrawal," as one retired Pakistani general described it last night. There are two major weaknesses: The Karzai government is riddled with corruption which has alienated many Afghans from both his administration and his NATO allies. ... One diplomat in Kabul last night said he believed the new strategy has a year or two to deliver before Afghans decisively turn against them, but a former head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, General Hamid Gul, said he believes Obama's surge will have foundered by October. - Dean Nelson Semper Fi, Marines! You'll quickly come to understand—as we who went before did some 40 years ago—that Mao's dictum, "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea", is honored and timeless. Your enemy is faceless and unrecognizable save in a firefight. He/She is highly pragmatic. Map showing Khanishin, Garmsir and Nawa in Afghanistan's Helmand province. Source: AFP. The thunderous rumble of American armored personnel carriers storming the Taliban's Helmand citadel, and the whir of its largest helicopter deployment since the Vietnam war - these are the backing tracks as President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy arrives at its moment of truth. The US offensive is aimed at allowing Afghans to vote in presidential elections on August 20. Analysis: Barack Obama's moment of truth in Afghanistan Dean Nelson Daily Telegraph UK July 3, 2009 Operation Khanjar or "sword strike" was launched in the early hours of yesterday morning with two immediate aims: to break the militants' grip over "Taliban central" so free presidential elections can be held, and to clear enough space to introduce the benefits of the good governance Afghans have not known for 30 years, if ever. Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson flagged off more than 4,000 US marines with a Churchillian statement of intent. "Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," he said. That's the plan in a nutshell. The Marines go in, Terry Taliban retreats to his mountain lair, the good governance folk come in, the people vote, and suddenly life is better: civilian police, improved schools and clinics. Finally, the more rational militants see they cannot win. From this new reality, a negotiation is possible. There may be some unreconcilables, but it will be manageable. So the theory goes, and most hope and pray it's one which holds true, because this is President Obama's much-vaunted "surge" and there does not appear to be a plan B. ... The Taliban will fight a two-pronged strategy, [Pakistani General Hamid Gul] said: retreat to the hills where America's air power will not be so effective, while the remainder will disappear and wage a guerilla resistance campaign. He believes the Taliban will learn more about American weaknesses from this new battle, as he says they did in Operation Anaconda in 2002. Then, several thousand American special forces with air support failed to deliver the knock-out blow they had expected. The truth behind operation Operation Khanjar is that the Taliban has fought the western allies to a stale-mate in Helmand, and now the only hope lies in a devastating display of overwhelming force, the rapid delivery of good services, and the remotely possibility that it will be enough to impress senior Taliban commanders. "In other words," as one leading Afghanistan expert said last night, "the US has to show its ability to inflict some serious damage on the Taliban before any real political talks with the Taliban, to reach agreement with at least some significant factions, so maybe it ends up as scoring a few points before the last round when the ref will decide." That appears to be the best victory in prospect. US Marines push deeper into southern Afghan towns Jason Straziuso and Fisnik Abrashi Associated Press USA July 3, 2009 U.S. Lt. Col. Christian Cabaniss speaks to his Marines at Camp Dwyer on July 1, 2009 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.The Marines are part of a stepped up effort by American troops fighting Taliban fighters in Southern Afghanistan. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images ... While [military spokesman Capt. Bill] Pelletier said winning hearts and minds was the mission's main focus, other military officials have said the immediate goal of the offensive is to clear away insurgents before Afghanistan's Aug. 20 presidential election. Southern Afghanistan is a Taliban stronghold but also a region where Afghan President Hamid Karzai is seeking votes from fellow Pashtun tribesmen. Without such a large Marine assault, the Afghan government would likely not be able to set up voting booths where citizens could safely travel. ... US Marines locked in 'hell of a fight' with Taliban Ben Sheppard Agence France-Presse France July 2, 2009 Operation Khanjar is part of Barack Obama's new strategy to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Photo: AFP ... On Thursday, Marines were inserted into Garmsir and Nawa with little resistance, and quickly overran Khanishin further south where the Taliban had set up a proxy government and justice system. But they also recorded their first death in an air and land assault that is the Marines' biggest operation since in Fallujah in Iraq in November 2004. "We lost a man yesterday," Nicholson confirmed. "Any Marine casualty is a terrible thing." ... "Today Marines are continuing to move towards those objectives that are still out there and they are going to work to stabilise security in these areas," Marine spokesman First Lieutenant Kurt Stahl said. "When Marines go out into towns, they are always looking for opportunities to talk to village elders and explain why they are here," Stahl said. "The intention is to understand each other, elders can express their concerns and an open flow of communication is secured." The forces are operating in areas where foreign troops have failed to establish a presence despite ousting the Taliban from power nearly eight years ago. A key objective is to secure the area to allow Afghan to vote in the second-ever presidential election on August 20, a major test of US-led efforts to install democracy in a country wracked by war and conflict. US Marines face a 'hell of a fight' in Helmand surge Ben Farmer in Kabul Daily Telegraph UK July 3, 2009 After meeting little resistance in the first day of Operation Khanjar, or 'sword strike', he said units south of Garmsir were involved in heavy fighting. ... Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, said on Friday the 2/8 infantry battalion was meeting resistance at Toshtay, 16 miles south of Garmsir. He said: "For 2/8, there is a hell of a fight going on in the southern quarter of the sector. 2/8 are going to face some challenges. An enemy-controlled baseline just south of Garmsir was crushed yesterday but that doesn't mean all the enemy have gone. In the next few days the enemy will observe us to see what we are doing. Then they will come back with a vengeance." He added: "Nawa is quiet, too quiet. Something is eerie. The enemy has gone to ground, shuras [councils of elders] are being set up." ... The American Marine offensive entered its second day as British troops north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah began a third wave of their own Operation Panchai Palang or Panther's Claw. Around 800 Light Dragoons drove north after the Welsh Guards spent ten days capturing 13 crossings along the Shamalan canal a British military statement said. On Friday it was announced Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe, the first British commanding officer to die in combat since the Falklands, had been killed by a roadside bomb during the operation. The British said they hoped to allow free movement for next month's presidential elections by securing the road between Lashkar Gah and Gereshk. ... A Taliban website, which in the past has exaggerated and fabricated coalition casualties, said 15 foreign and Afghan soldiers died on the first day of the assault. A statement said: "In every locality they faced bloody attacks by the Mujahideen, as a result of which the enemy suffered heavy casualties. It continued: "As a result, so far 15 foreign and internal enemy soldiers have lost their lives in the fighting." After an aggressive 36-hour opening phase, the operation was predicted to slow as American Marines attempted to win local 'hearts and minds'. First Lieutenant Kurt Stahl, a spokesman for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, said: "When Marines go out into towns, they are always looking for opportunities to talk to village elders and explain why they are here." "The intention is to understand each other, elders can express their concerns and an open flow of communication is secured." U.S. faces resentment in Afghan region Carlota Gall New York Times USA July 2, 2009 A Marine took up a combat position Thursday in southern Afghanistan during Operation Khanjar, an American-led offensive. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Image LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The mood of the Afghan people has tipped into a popular revolt in some parts of southern Afghanistan, presenting incoming American forces with an even harder job than expected in reversing military losses to the Taliban and winning over the population. Villagers in some districts have taken up arms against foreign troops to protect their homes or in anger after losing relatives in airstrikes, several community representatives interviewed said. Others have been moved to join the insurgents out of poverty or simply because the Taliban’s influence is so pervasive here. On Thursday morning, 4,000 American Marines began a major offensive to try to take back the region from the strongest Taliban insurgency in the country. The Marines are part of a larger deployment of additional troops being ordered by the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to concentrate not just on killing Taliban fighters but on protecting the population. Yet Taliban control of the countryside is so extensive in provinces like Kandahar and Helmand that winning districts back will involve tough fighting and may ignite further tensions, residents and local officials warn. ... Around 8,500 US Marines have arrived in Helmand in recent weeks. US troops are also destined for neighboring Kandahar province where Marines will assist Canadian Forces who have been fought to a stalemate by the resistance fighters. Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:40:54 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19414 The journalists leave and the people gather in a meeting, pooling their resources to plan a trip to the capital tomorrow, where their voices will be heard by the people in power. The protestors do not want a military government. They do not want repression. They are calling for peace and democracy. As we drive off, I hear the chanting continue: "El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido." - Ashley Holly. The Spanish translates: The town, united, never will be overcome, Letter from Honduras Ashley Holly TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada July 1, 2009 ... How did I, a Canadian student, get here? And more to the point, how did Honduras arrive at this point? In 2007, I spent four months living in rural Honduras as a participant in a Canada World Youth, an international exchange program. I lived with a local family and volunteered at a local micro-credit development organization. During my experience in Honduras, I was exposed to many new things: culture, food, climate, mountains, poverty, privatization, exploitation, struggle, hope, activism and resistance. In Honduras, 70 per cent of the population lives in poverty. It was a visit to one of the many Canadian owned mining operations in Honduras that led me back to this country today, where I am volunteering with a Honduran network of non-governmental organizations and investigating local resistance to Canadian mining companies as part of my Masters thesis at York University. I am not yet comfortable taking a side on the issue of Sunday's coup, but simply wish to share a snapshot of what is happening here, given that the military government has blocked the anti-military news television channels and radio stations, is frequently cutting the electricity so as to limit online and telephone communications, and has been denying access to major highways, limiting mobilization. President Zelaya was forced out of the country by the military for proposing a referendum vote on the Cuarta Urna, or changes to the current Honduran constitution. Included in the proposed reform is the condition that Mel can run again for another electoral term. Many people, however, are most concerned about other changes to this constitution of over 300 articles that was drafted decades ago more or less by the United States. Mel offered a referendum, which promised something like participatory democracy to a largely poor nation. The professors, the campesinos, the NGOs, the activists, at least the ones that I spoke with, were all voting yes to the Cuarta Urna. They said they were voting for change. But the referendum was not supported by the courts, the legislature and the military, thus making it illegal. 
 Sunday afternoon, the Honduran National Congress read a letter supposedly written by Mel the previous week stepping down from the Presidency. Within hours, Roberto Micheletti, former head of the Congress, was declared the new President of Honduras. Moments later, a CNN interview with Mel "live from Costa Rica" aired, in which Mel declared that he never wrote a letter of resignation. But it was too late, Micheletti was in, and Mel was ousted. What a startling reversal of political momentum. Many people had eagerly anticipated Sunday, the day to vote on the Cuarta Urna. If Obama could win the presidency of the United States, we can change this constitution, we can save Honduras, people were saying. Fists rose in the air. ... Related: USA's role in the Honduran coup -- and how we must fix it Mary Shaw Op-Ed News USA July 2, 2009 Visit this page for its embedded links. "The U.S. Army School of the Americas ... is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." -- Congressman Joseph Kennedy They're baaaaaa-aaaack! "They" being military dictatorships in Latin America, such as the Reagan administration loved so much and so readily supported with guns and money. Last weekend, a military coup in Honduras overthrew the democratically elected government of that Central American nation and sent President Manuel Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica. The coup was apparently led by Romeo Vasquez, a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas (SOA), a military/torture school located at Fort Benning, Georgia. Most Americans have probably never heard of the SOA, which was cleverly renamed a few years ago to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)", perhaps in an attempt to dodge the stigma surrounding the school's reputation. But changing the name doesn't change the fact that the school continues to use our tax dollars to train Latin American warlords and dictators in the art of torture and repression. The graduates then use their new skills to violate human rights in their home countries. Like we're seeing now in Honduras. ... President Barack Obama, on the other hand, simply provided the following statement in a press release: "I am deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya. As the Organization of American States did on Friday, I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Any existing tensions and disputes must be resolved peacefully through dialogue free from any outside interference." But here I think some outside interference is indeed called for. Because talk is cheap, especially when there is U.S. funding -- more of our tax dollars -- still flowing into Honduras. If Obama truly wants to break away from the Reagan-Bush legacy, he should do the following: ... US leverage small in Honduran coup Anne Geran AP/Guardian USA/UK July 2, 2009 The coup that deposed the president of Honduras exposed the small leverage that even millions of dollars in aid and longtime military cooperation will buy. Washington has few direct means to pressure those who packed President Manuel Zelaya onto a plane out of the country on Sunday, not the military leaders who carried out the coup or the civilian lawmakers who backed it. America's troubled history in Latin America, from power broker with bloodied hands in coups past to seemingly indifferent next-door neighbor in recent years, limits everything President Barack Obama can do now. Obama warned against a return to the "dark past" of coups and instability in Latin America, but he is moving cautiously, and much more slowly than many allies, to distance himself from what the U.S. calls an illegitimate interim Honduran government. Despite U.S. calls along with the U.N. and the Organization of American States for Zelaya to be returned to power, the Obama administration hasn't suspended some $45 million in annual aid or trade perks — benefits that continue to flow to Honduras, a reliable U.S. ally in a part of the world where American motives are often considered suspect. The U.S. also hasn't yanked its ambassador from Tegucigalpa, even as all European Union ambassadors abandoned the Honduran capital. And even the administration's decision to suspend training exercises and counter-narcotics operations with the Honduran military — one of the few moves the White House did make this week — is complicated by America's long-term reliance on Honduras as a base and dependable Latin American partner. Those close ties, shown in the scores of Honduran military officers who have trained in the U.S. over the years, would not be severed easily. ... Deposed Honduran prez accused of drug ties Frank Bajak AP/Antiwar.com News USA June 30, 2009 The regime that ousted Manuel Zelaya in Honduras claimed Tuesday that the deposed president allowed tons of cocaine to be flown into the Central American country on its way to the United States. "Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking," its foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, told CNN en Espanol. "We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it," he added. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne in Washington said he could neither confirm nor deny a DEA investigation. Zelaya was traveling from New York to Washington and could not immediately be reached to respond to the allegations. In an interview Tuesday evening with The Associated Press in Tegucigalpa, interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti was asked about Ortez's allegations and said only that it would be up to prosecutors to present any evidence. Honduras and other Central American nations have become major transshipment points in recent years for Colombian cocaine, particularly as Mexico's government cracks down on cartels. The drugs arrive in Honduras on noncommercial aircraft and, increasingly, in speedboats, from Venezuela and to a lesser extent Colombia, according to the Key West, Florida-based Joint Interagency Task Force-South, which coordinates drug interdiction in region. The boats tend to make short hops up Central America's coast. In its most recent report on the illicit narcotics trade, the U.S. State Department said in February of Honduras that "official corruption continues to be an impediment to effective law enforcement and there are press reports of drug trafficking and associated criminal activity among current and former government and military officials." The report did not name names. ... Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:40:04 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19413 Operation "Strike of the Sword": U.S. Marines move in formation through farm fields on Thursday after landing by helicopter in an overnight air assault near the Taliban stronghold of Nawa in Afghanistan's Helmand province. Photo: David Guttenfelder/Associated Press Marines told to make history in south Afghanistan Peter Graff Reuters/Washington Post USA July 2, 2009 GARMSIR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Thousands of U.S. Marines were told they were about to make history before they set out on Thursday to wrest control of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province away from the Taliban. "You're going to change the world this summer and it starts this morning," Lieutenant Colonel Christian Cabaniss, commander of the 2nd battalion, 8th Marines, told his troops dressed in desert fatigues before they mounted helicopters and humvees. "The United States and the world are watching. Their expectations are enormously high during this summer of decision." Their mission was part of the first major push under U.S. President Barack Obama's new regional strategy to turn the tide in Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies. There was little resistance as Fox Company from the 3rd platoon of Cabaniss's battalion pushed north along the Helmand River valley from the town of Garmsir to Nawa. Afghans kept their distance, sitting in the shade under trees by the side of the road as armored convoys rumbled past and helicopters kicked up swirling clouds of dust. On their way to Nawa the company found a roadside bomb, the insurgents' weapon of choice in Afghanistan. The Marines carefully took the device into a field and blew it up. ... Cabaniss's soldiers rallied later in the day in a mud-walled compound by the side of an important road junction. Afghan border guards waved a black, red and green Afghan flag while the Marines unloaded water and other supplies in the summer heat close by a pile of harvested opium poppies. In the capital Kabul, Afghans accustomed to war over the past 30 years watched the operation play out on television screens. Many were skeptical about its chances for success. "In my opinion these operations won't have any good result. The only thing that will give a good result will be peace talks, talks with the Taliban," Wahdat Khan, a 23-year-old from Helmand, told Reuters television. Amirollah, from Jalalabad, was blunt in his assessment. "They haven't come here for Afghans or to take their hand and give them peace," Amirollah, 45, said of the Americans. But Mustafa, a 22-year-old student, disagreed. ... Taliban flee U.S. drive in Afghanistan CBC News Canada July 2, 2009 Most Taliban militants encountered by U.S. troops on the first day of a massive new offensive retreated rather than engage in battle, military officials said Thursday. Nearly 4,000 U.S. Marines and 650 Afghan forces moved into southern Afghanistan early Thursday under the cover of darkness as part of an operation called Khanjar, which translates as "Strike of the Sword." Transport helicopters carried marines into the village of Nawa, about 30 kilometres south of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, in a region where no U.S. or other NATO troops have operated in large numbers. There were reports of gunfire being exchanged, helicopters firing rockets and rocket-propelled grenades being launched from houses as the sun came up in the region. But in the first day of the offensive U.S. troops did not suffer any serious injuries and resistance from militants was only sporadic, said unit spokesman Lt. Abe Sipe. "The enemy has chosen to withdraw rather than engage for the most part," Sipe said. The troops dropped behind Taliban lines took many insurgents by surprise, said Capt. Drew Schoenmaker. "We are kind of forging new ground here. We are going to a place nobody has been before," said Schoenmaker, 31, who commands Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. ... Pakistan and U.S. officials have expressed concerns American troop buildup in Afghanistan could push militants into the poorly guarded and mountainous 2,600-kilometre border region of Pakistan. The U.S. operation is being labelled as a possible "end game of the war in Afghanistan," said CBC correspondent James Murray. "There is a strong belief here that if the Taliban can be beaten and beaten back in Helmand province, they can be beaten almost entirely, if it's possible at all here in Afghanistan," Murray said. The Obama administration has made the Afghan mission a top military priority, boosting American troop numbers in Afghanistan by 21,000. "Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," U.S. Marine Corps Brig.-Gen. Larry Nicholson said in a statement. ... Related: US forces hunt for soldier believed to have been kidnapped by Taliban Ewen MacAskill in Washington Guardian UK July 2, 2009 US forces were today frantically hunting for one of its soldiers believed to have been kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the first to be taken since America first began operations in the country in 2001. The soldier, whose unit is based in eastern Paktika province, was not involved in the ongoing operation in the south of the country. He was found to be missing during a roster check on Tuesday morning and is believed to be held by a Taliban faction linked to a string of attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Captain Elizabeth Mathias, said today: "We understand him to be have been captured by militant forces. We have all available resources out there looking for him and hopefully providing for his safe return." She added: "We are not providing further details to protect the soldier's wellbeing." But the Afghan police general Nabi Mullakheil disclosed the location of the kidnap as Mullakheil area in Paktika, where there is a US base. ... Unconfirmed reports said the soldier had been based at a small combat outpost and had apparently gone off with three Afghan soldiers into a dangerous area. A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujaheed, said he had no information about the soldier being held by a Taliban group. But another Taliban spokesman said he was being held by an insurgent faction linked to Sirajuddin Haqqani, a powerful figure based in Pakistan who controls large parts of Afghanistan along the border. Haqqani has been blamed for a string of attacks including the suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last year that killed more than 50. Military commanders are desperate to prevent the soldier's captors taking him across the border into Pakistan where al-Qaida is still a presence in the border areas and in cities such as Peshawar. The kidnap could provide the Taliban with a major media coup: while individual fatalites from Afghanistan or Iraq have become almost routine and are largely ignored by the US media, the fate of a single soldier in Taliban hands could attract enormous attention. ... Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:23:22 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19412 Hezbollah soldiers parading, southern Lebanon 2002. President Obama would be well advised to ask his terrorism advisers some hard questions to determine how many of the threats that America is reportedly confronted by are real and how many are bogus. - Philip Giraldi Fight them over there vs. over here' a false choice Ron Paul Washington Times USA July 1, 2009 There is no area in which Republicans have further strayed from our traditions than in foreign affairs. Generations of conservatives followed the great advice of our Founding Fathers and pursued a restrained foreign policy that rebuffed entangling alliances and advised America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, not to "go abroad looking for dragons to slay." Sen. Robert Taft, the stalwart of the Old Right, urged America to stay out of NATO. Dwight Eisenhower was elected on a platform promising to get us out of the conflict in Korea. Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam. Republicans were highly critical of Bill Clinton for his adventurism in Somalia and Kosovo. As recently as 2000, George W. Bush campaigned on a "humbler" foreign policy and decried nation-building. But our foreign policy today looks starkly different. Neoconservatives who have come to power in both the Democratic and Republican parties argue that the U.S. must ether confront every evil in every corner of the globe or risk danger at home. We need to "fight them over there" they say, so we don't have to "fight them over here." This argument presents a false choice. We do not have to pick between interventionism and vulnerability. The complexity of our world is exactly why the lessons of our past should ring true and demand a return to a traditional, pro-American foreign policy: one of nonintervention. ... Enemies all around us Philip Giraldi Antiwar.com USA July 2, 2009 Over the past eight years, providing for the security of the United States has become a huge business, funded by taxpayers at the federal, state, and local level. Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs depend on the continued perception that there exists a vast alien menace that must be guarded against at all costs lest there be another 9/11. Voices suggesting that the threat is being overstated and even intentionally misrepresented are few and far between, but in reality the contention that groups are ready, willing, and able to stage an attack or even a series of terrorist attacks that would do serious damage to the United States is extremely questionable. The few terrorist convictions obtained in the US since 9/11 have the air of a comic opera, with bizarre plots by pizza deliverymen and paint gunners exposed by agents provocateur inserted in their midst by the FBI. If, as Osama bin Laden has sometimes asserted, the way to destroy the United States is by crippling its economy, then one can argue that the terrorists are already winning. Hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used productively are being wasted every year in the endless war on terror while the United States sinks ever deeper into a sea of debt. To be sure, with so many vested interests desperately wanting the money spigot to remain open, there is no shortage of propaganda and propagandists ready willing and able to tell the American people just how bad the terrorist threat is. To help the cause along, everyone who might be regarded as a terrorist by anyone anywhere has been thrown into the hopper, with the United States government declaring universal and unending war. Anyone who has studied the terrorism problem realizes that terrorists come in all sizes, shapes, and flavors. The lumping together of all of them is more a political phenomenon than a practical response to the threat that they do pose. George W. Bush’s so-called "global war on terrorism" was an ill conceived rallying cry to extirpate all terrorists everywhere, but it was from the beginning highly selective. Lethal terrorists in Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and in the Kurdish region of Iraq never received much attention while groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, that do not threaten the United States at all, seemed to be the object of disproportionate concern. ... The drumbeat that terrorists are everywhere and that all terrorists are America’s problem continues. One of the most recurrent themes is that Hezbollah is the "A-team" of terrorist groups, far exceeding al-Qaeda in its proficiency and lethality. This view was first posited in 2003 by deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. It was jumped on by Florida Democrat Senator Bob Graham, who was running for president at the time. Graham said "It has a significant presence of its trained operatives inside the United States waiting for the call to action. They are a violent terrorist group. And they have demonstrated throughout their now 25-year history a hatred of the United States and a willingness to kill our people." Graham did not provide a scintilla of evidence to support his assertion that the US is awash with Hezbollah operatives, information that might have proven to be of interest to the FBI if it were true. The Hezbollah threat warnings have surfaced again, more recently, in a speech given by Richard Falkenrath, New York City’s Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism. Falkenrath is a Bush-Cheney homeland security product who has impressive credentials though one might note that he has always held what might be described as staff positions and has never actually worked directly against terrorists or terrorist targets. Speaking at the AIPAC-founded Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) at the end of June, Falkenrath said that Hezbollah could "hit the US harder than al-Qaeda," though he also noted that it has "more or less decided not to attack the United States interests directly in the continental United States at all." He added: "They would have too much heat on them if they did attack the United States, and they can accomplish most of their interests without it." The only situations in which Hezbollah would likely attack the United States, according to Falkenrath, is if the US were to take military action against either Iran or Hezbollah itself. The remarks are similar to statements made by President Bush’s Department of Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff who warned in briefings that the group’s military capabilities are far ahead of those of al-Qaeda. ... Wading through the fluff, the statements both by Falkenrath and Chertoff are clearly intended to depict Hezbollah as potentially the number one terrorist threat against the United States. But exactly what kind of threat would that be and is the assertion itself credible? Hezbollah does not fit most definitions of a terrorist group. It is a legal political party in Lebanon that controls a conventional guerrilla force. It has only attacked the United States directly once, when US forces were in Beirut in 1983. ... Related: The flag of Hezbollah. The logo itself is a stylized representation of the Arabic word حزب الله (ḥizbu-llāh) or "Party of God" in Kufic script. The first letter of "Allah" reaches up to grasp a stylized assault rifle (closely resembling an AK-47). The logo also incorporates several other objects, namely a globe, a book, a sword, and a seven-leafed branch. The text above the logo reads فإن حزب الله هم الغالبون (fāʾinna ḥizbu llāh hum al-ġālibūn) and means "Then surely the party of God are they that shall be triumphant" (Quran 5:56). Underneath the logo are the words المقاومة الإسلامية في لبنان (al-muqāwamah al-islāmīyah fī lubnān) or "The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon". Hezbollah is regarded as a resistance movement throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world. Hezbollah, which started with only a small militia, has grown to an organization with seats in the Lebanese government, a radio and a satellite television-station, and programs for social development. Wikipedia: Ideology of Hezbollah Hezbollah declared its existence on February 16, 1985 in "The Hizballah Program". This document was read by spokesman Sheikh Ibrahim al-Amin at the al-Ouzai Mosque in west Beirut and simultaneously published in al-Safir as "The Hizballah Program, an open letter to all the Oppressed in Lebanon and the World," and a separate pamphlet that was first published in full in English in 1987. According to "The Hizballah Program" the principles of its ideology are: To expel Americans, the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land. To submit the phalanges to a just power and bring them all to justice for the crimes they have perpetrated against Muslims and Christians. To permit all the sons of our people to determine their future and to choose in all the liberty the form of government their desire. We call upon all of them to pick the option of Islamic government which, alone, is capable of guaranteeing justice and liberty for all. Only an Islamic regime can stop any future tentative attempts of imperialistic infiltration onto our country. ... Hezbollah leader Fadlallah has told an interviewer (1985): {{We believe there is no difference between the United States and Israel; the latter is a mere extension of the former. The United States is ready to fight the whole world to defend Israel's existence and security. The two countries are working in complete harmony, and the United States is certainly not inclined to exert pressure on Israel.}} On its Al-Manar Television network, which is viewed by "an estimated 10–15 million people a day across the world," the United States is portrayed by an animated image of "the Statue of Liberty as a ghoul, her gown dripping blood, a knife instead of a torch in her raised hand. In Arabic the video… concludes with the words: 'America owes blood to all of humanity.'" Hezbollah has declared that it distinguishes between Zionism and Judaism. ... Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:43:33 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19411 Left: Milad Tower, Tehran. Right: Azriell Towers, Tel Aviv Extreme sports (also called action sport and adventure sport) is a media term for certain activities perceived as having a high level of inherent danger. The same week that “our” government in Washington told the Governor of California “not one red cent,” President Barak Obama handed over $2.775 billion to Israel. - Paul Craig Roberts On June 28, CNN program host Fareed Zakaria put a very telling question to Bob Baer, a retired twenty-one year CIA veteran, who served as the top operative in the Middle East for many years. He asked, “Isn’t it true that we do [try to destabilize the regime]? Don’t we fund various groups inside and outside Iran that do try to destabilize the government?” Baer answered, “ Oh absolutely,” then added, “There is a covert action program against Iran where the [U.S.] military is running; a covert action against Iran from Iraq and Afghanistan.” - Esam Al-Amin Furthermore, earlier this year, during Israel’s 22-day onslaught on Gaza, millions of people around the world, including tens of thousands in the U.S., protested daily the brutality of the Israeli military machine against the defenseless civilians. Despite the fact that over 1,400 people were killed and over 5,000 injured - one third of whom were children- there was hardly the wall-to-wall coverage given to the protests in Iran. - Esam Al-Amin Cable news now functions as a mechanism that selects from a haze of unverifiable information and amplifies its choices. CNN seems to be the best example. At least they’re upfront about it: an anchor previewed an upcoming story by saying they’d be bringing us reports “true or not.” Jack Cafferty noted that the information from Iraq was “Alive but Cloudy”. Even their original segment on Green martyr Neda opened with the disclaimer “the facts surrounding her life and death are difficult to confirm.” This didn’t stop them from replaying the garish spectacle so often that it begs comparison with the paltry coverage of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani victims of US aggression. - Jack Bratich Iran and Washington's hidden hand Esam Al-Amin CounterPunch USA June 30, 2009 Only weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist and mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, revealed the target list of the Bush administration as it set out on its post-9/11 war footing. The list included six nations: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and the Palestinian Authority. While the priority allotted to Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq was not in dispute, the remaining order was in flux. Israel was given a free hand in dealing with the Palestinian Authority (PA). President George W. Bush completely shunned and isolated PA President Yasser Arafat, until he died under siege in November 2004. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was allowed to use brutal military tactics to crush the Al-Aqsa intifada, reoccupying much of the West Bank, and setting up hundreds of military checkpoints devastating Palestinian life and what remained of the PA. ... But the toughest nut to crack among all these targets has always been Iran. Ironically, Iran’s strategic situation vastly improved following the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the overthrow of those regimes. By 2004, Iran’s Shiite allies in Iraq were in control of the government, even as the country was still under American occupation. Further, Iran exercised tremendous influence with Muqtada Sadr’s militia, the main Shiite opposition to the occupation in the streets. After Bush’s second inauguration in January 2005, the National Security Council had an intense internal debate regarding Iran. The conflict did not center on whether there should be a regime change in Iran, but rather, whether to employ soft or hard power to achieve it. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advocated a series of escalating military strikes, while former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for the use of soft power. Eventually, the president’s military advisors ended the debate when they cautioned Bush that with the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, engaging Iran militarily would be highly risky and draining for the U.S. armed forces. Between 2005-2009, the U.S. Congress appropriated more than $400 million for State Department programs designed to “promote democracy,” among other means of employing soft power in Iran. This was implemented, in part, by funding the activities of Iranian dissident groups. By 2008, Congress included money in the budget that would specifically “go to software programmers to develop programs that thwart internet firewalls erected by the government of Iran, ” and for a program to “provide anti-censorship tools and services for the advancement of information freedom in closed societies.” On May 24, 2007, Brian Ross, ABC News’s Chief Investigative Correspondent broke a story about the elements of soft power utilized by the CIA and authorized by Bush. “Current and former intelligence officials told ABC News that the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount what is known as a black or covert operations to destabilize the Iranian regime, and it is underway,” he reported. He then added, “Those officials describe the Iranian plan as non-lethal involving a campaign of coordinated propaganda broadcasts, placement of negative newspaper articles, the manipulation of Iran’s currency and international banking transactions.” The ABC correspondent stated, “Propaganda was one of the most important tools utilized by the CIA.” Three days later, the British Daily Telegraph, detailed CIA plans for “a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple” the regime. The report said that the presidential finding gave the U.S. spy agency, for the first time, “the right to collect intelligence domestically, an area that is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many Iranian exiles and émigrés within the US.” In the report, an intelligence official was quoted as saying, "Iranians in America have links with their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information." ... The Telegraph report also stated that the CIA was allowed to supply “communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work together and bypass Internet censorship” by the regime. The use of this equipment has surfaced prominently in the recent standoff between the government and the opposition in Iran. It should be noted though that this destabilization program by the CIA is totally separate from the State Department’s $400 million program, and is being funded through the CIA budget. Thus, since 2006, the total figure for Iran’s destabilization program could have easily exceeded $1 billion. ... Iran and the West: Hardened fronts the not unexpected result of the western “stunt” 'Notsilvia Night' Time to Think Iceland July 1, 2009 Visit this page for its embedded links. A hardening of the fronts between Iran and the West, and between westernized liberals and Islamic conservatives inside Iran, is the not unexpected result of last weeks post-election confrontations. Western support and the extremely violent behavior of some armed post-election demonstrators have probably had a damaging effect on the efforts of Iranian women-rights- and other reform-movements. Their efforts might have been discredited so much, that a backslide of Iran into earlier hard-line positions in the matters of women´s rights might occur. Hopefully it won´t. Anyway, for Israeli strategists to be able to paint Iran and it´s government in the worst possible light and to forestall all chances of a positive communication and peaceful relationship of western countries with Iran, as a prelude to a western-backed Israeli military attack on the country was their desired goal. And they might have reached it. ... Pirates of the Mediterranean: Israel kidnaps peace boat crew Paul Craig Roberts CounterPunch USA July 1, 2009 On June 30, the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the “Spirit of Humanity,” kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead MaGuire, and confiscated the cargo of medical supplies, olive trees, reconstruction materials, and children’s toys that were on the way to the Mediterranean coast of Gaza. The “Spirit of Humanity,” along with the kidnapped 21 persons, is being towed to Israel as I write. Gaza has been described as the “world’s largest concentration camp.” It is home to 1.5 million Palestinians who were driven by force of American-supplied Israeli arms out of their homes, off their farms, and out of their villages so that Israel could steal their land and make the Palestinian land available to Israeli settlers. What we have been witnessing for 60 years is a replay in modern times, despite the United Nations and laws strictly preventing Israel’s theft of Palestine, of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century theft of American Indian lands by US settlers. An Israeli government spokesman recently rebuked the President of the United States, a country, the Israeli said, who stole all of its land from Indians, for complaining about Israel’s theft of Palestine. ... Unlike every other recipient of US military largesse, Israel is permitted to bypass the Pentagon and to deal directly with US suppliers. Consequently, the Israel Lobby’s influence multiplies, because military suppliers fight for Israel in congressional committees in order to get Israel’s business. This lets Israel turn the screws on Iran. According to Grant F. Smith writing in Online Journal, Republican US Representative Mark Steven from Illinois has received $221,000 in campaign contributions from Israel political action committees (PACs). Therefore, it was a sure thing that he would introduce legislation preventing the Import-Export bank from providing loan guarantees to countries doing business with Iran. ... Regarding Western media coverage, Jack Bratich asks: "Are people tweeting from the streets or from other lands? Are they eyewitnesses or I-spies?" Esam Al-Amin provides a clue (which is all we can hope for): "Opposition groups have relied on Internet communication technology such as text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and political blogs during their protests. In fact, Secretary Clinton took the unusual step in asking Twitter to change its maintenance schedule to accommodate Iran’s time zone and allow opposition groups the ability to utilize it. What is striking is that most of the postings were in English, not Persian, begging the question: who was the target audience of these tweets? Similarly, why were the protesters holding signs saying, “Where is my vote?” in English, rather than the language spoken by the voters of Iran? But a study by the website, www.chartingstocks.net, concluded that during three days after the election, the overwhelming majority of Tweets (over 30,000), were manipulated through a handful of accounts; all created within one day of the elections on June 13. It is interesting to note that only 0.6 percent of Twitter accounts are used by Iranians (as compared to 44 percent by Americans)." You provide the tweets, we'll provide the info war Jack Bratich CounterPunch USA June 25, 2009 We can all remember a moment when we gazed up at the sky and used our imagination to make familiar shapes out of the clouds. In folk wisdom, seers practice aeromancy, a form of divination that involves observing atmospheric phenomena and nephomancy, the divination by studying clouds). What we are witnessing in the Iranian situation resembles this practice, only now the clouds are made of information. This infosphere is not the same as the old chestnut, the “fog of war.” It’s more like what I call the fog-machine of war, and its analysts are performing infomancy. People are seeing their hopes, fears, and their shadows in this data mist. One of these faith-based assertions is that more info equals more democracy. It’s not just that observers consider the anti-regime protests to be democratic, but they believe the use of social media is inherently democratic (i.e. more freedom of expression). But we were given official notice early in Obama’s administration that cyberwar is a renewed threat, so why not take heed and understand Iran as a case of warfare? In that light, more info = more infowar; more information means more disinformation. Propaganda used to come in print form and be dropped from the skies. Now it’s laterally spread through peer-to-peer networks, creating a bottom-up disinfosphere. ... CNN ought to keep its weekly program Reliable Sources, but refer to its other 167 week hours as Unreliable Sources. Witting or not, these news networks collectively retool the famous line allegedly telegraphed by William Randolph Hearst, updating it for the digital age: “You furnish the tweets, we’ll furnish the war.” Meanwhile, key actors in the Iran uprising remain obscured. Take Mostafa Hassani, whom the Nation calls the “the whiz kid who came up with the idea of using green.” The Guardian UK gives him a bigger role than just the resident graphic designer, stating that he is “leading Mousavi's green campaign.” Some basic searches turn up almost nothing else on this shadowy character. You would think such a figure would get more attention, but that’s the way it goes when infomancy is performed poorly: sometimes you ignore the important patterns in order to project your wishes. In sum, the very basics of reporting (when, where, who, what?) have become unverifiable. However, the “why” seems relatively clear for pundits, anchors, and other infomancers. Lingering Cold War fantasies dominate their visions, now with a theocratic twist: People Power vs. Iron Fists, Democracy vs. Dictatorship, Freedom vs. Repression. Neglected is the soft control of information warfare. We could call this a Cyborg Fist in the Velvet Glove. Or maybe it’s leather. Dr. Strangelove, anyone? Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:37:35 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19410 "The referendum is the primary vehicle through which change has occurred in countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and the elites know it. They wanted to nip this thing in the bud." - Miguel Tinker Salas, a Latin America specialist at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. Ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya speaks during a news conference after a meeting of the Organization of American States in Washington early Wednesday, July 1, 2009. A defiant appointed president Roberto Micheletti said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday that "no one can make me resign," defying the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Obama administration and other leaders that have condemned the military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP Honduras heads toward crisis over referendum Freddy Cuevas Associated Press USA June 26, 2009 TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – With backing from Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, Honduras' leftist president pushed ahead Friday with a referendum on revamping the constitution, risking his rule in a standoff against Congress, the Supreme Court and the military. Government supporters began distributing ballots at 15,000 voting stations across the country, defying a Supreme Court ruling declaring Sunday's referendum illegal and ordering all election material confiscated. President Manuel Zelaya had led thousands of supporters to recover the material from an air force warehouse before it could be confiscated. Under Honduran law, soldiers are normally responsible for distributing ballots ahead of elections, but the military leadership has opposed the vote. Zelaya has fired the military chief for refusing to support the referendum and vows to ignore a Supreme Court ruling ordering him reinstated. Zelaya has the vocal support of his fellow leftist Latin American leaders as he seeks to follow in the path of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in transforming his country through a constitutional overhaul. The Venezuelan leader and former Cuban President Fidel Castro have warned a coup is under way in Honduras and pledged their support for Zelaya. Zelaya says the constitution protects a system of government that excludes the poor, but has not specified what changes he will seek. ... Zelaya lashed out at Congress early Friday for considering his ouster. "Congress cannot investigate me, much less remove me or stage a technical coup against me because I am honest, I'm a free president and nobody scares me," Zelaya said in his two-hour speech, at one point bursting — Chavez-like — into song. "But we have to forgive them. Glory to God! We have to forgive, and I know who to forgive because the people are my support and my best ally in this political process," he said. He referred to Congressional President Roberto Micheletti — a member of his own party — as "a pathetic, second-class congressman who got that job because of me." Micheletti, who by law would take over the presidency if Zelaya were ousted, retorted, "We should not have to suffer the aspirations of a disturbed man who wants to hold onto to power." Sunday's referendum has no legal effect: it merely asks people if they want to have a later vote on whether to convoke an assembly to rewrite the constitution. ... Honduran coup tests waning US clout in Latin America Howard LaFranchi Christian Science Monitor USA June 29, 2009 Washington - Sunday's military coup in Honduras is a reminder of democracy's shallow roots in much of Latin America, and it provides a major test of US and international influence in what was once the quintessential banana republic. The White House said Monday that its goal is to see democratic order reestablished. But the US refrained from formally declaring Sunday's actions a "coup": a move that would require a cutoff of US aid. Instead, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the US will work with the international community to see that Honduras returns "to the rule of law and constitutional order within a relatively short period of time." The Organization of American States is set to take up the issue in an emergency session Tuesday. But the fact a military coup occurred apparently against US wishes suggests how American dominance in the region has waned. "The days when the US had a decisive say in the region about what happened in a particular country – whether it had a coup, or a leader friendly to the US survived – are long gone," says Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Latin America Project coordinator for Washington's Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "Since the cold war, the US has shifted its strategic focus to the Middle East and Asia, which is a good thing, but it also means the US is less influential in the region and can be taken by surprise." ... While acknowledging that the US no longer calls the shots in Latin America as it once did, other regional analysts say it is hard to imagine that the Honduran military acted without at least an assumption of tacit US support. As a result, they say Obama will have to move beyond rhetorical condemnation to show that he and US partners won't let the coup stand. "Remember that the general in charge of this is a graduate of the School of the Americas," the US military training center for the region's militaries, says Miguel Tinker Salas, a Latin America specialist at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. "You have to assume they were communicating with someone in the US." The general in question, Romeo Vásquez, had refused Zelaya's order to provide security for a referendum Zelaya had called for Sunday to test the public waters for a constitutional reform to allow reelection of presidents, currently outlawed by the Honduran constitution. When General Vásquez refused the order Zelaya fired him, but the Supreme Court reinstated him. Mr. Tinker Salas says the crisis over use of the referendum has its roots in Honduras's cold war era constitution, which was written by the country's "liberal elites" and does not provide for referendums. "The referendum is the primary vehicle through which change has occurred in countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and the elites know it," says Tinker Salas. "They wanted to nip this thing in the bud." ... Honduras' congressional leader Roberto Micheletti, right, whom Congress appointed president last Sunday gestures with Gen. Romeo Vasquez, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff fired by Honduras' President Manuel Zelaya last Thursday and reappointed later by Micheletti, at the start of a ceremony to replace the presidential honort guard in Tegucigalpa, Tuesday June 30, 2009.The U.N. General Assembly demanded the immediate restoration of ousted president Zelaya but Micheletti said Zelaya could be arrested if he returns home. Photo: Esteban Felix/AP Honduran coup leader to AP: Zelaya won't return Will Weissert Associated Press USA July 1, 2009 TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras' interim leader warned that the only way his predecessor will return to office is through a foreign invasion — though a potential showdown was postponed Wednesday when the ousted president delayed plans to return. A defiant Roberto Micheletti said in an interview with The Associated Press late Tuesday that "no one can make me resign," defying the United Nations, the OAS, the Obama administration and other leaders that have condemned the military coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya. The U.N. General Assembly voted by acclamation Tuesday to demand Zelaya's immediate restoration, and the Organization of American States said Wednesday that coup leaders have three days to restore Zelaya to power before Honduras risks being suspended from the group. That period for negotiation prompted Zelaya to announce he was putting off his plans to return home on Thursday until the weekend. Micheletti vowed Zelaya would be arrested if he returns, even though the presidents of Argentina and Ecuador have signed on to accompany him along with the heads of the Organization of American States and the U.N. General Assembly. ... Asked if Zelaya could one day return to power stronger than ever, Micheletti said that "it's not about sympathy, it's not about being a martyr, but simply that we are following the letter of the law which he did not respect." “Withhold recognition of the Honduras coup government” AFL-CIO Narco News Bulletin International June 30, 2009 The AFL-CIO [American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations] stands in solidarity with our sister organizations of Honduras, the national trade union centrals—the Unitary Central of Honduran Workers (CUTH), the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH) and the General Workers Central (CGT)—as well as with the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), representing over 45 million workers of this hemisphere, in condemning the military coup that resulted in the illegal ouster of democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya. The AFL-CIO denounces this unconscionable attack on the fundamental rights and liberties of the Honduran people. The recent internal conflict relating to the proposed constitutional referendum cannot in any way justify the extra-constitutional measures undertaken by the armed forces, which were later ratified by the Honduran congress when it voted to depose President Zelaya and install Congressman Roberto Micheletti immediately following the coup. These measures are a flagrant violation of the most basic democratic principles and of the rule of law. The AFL-CIO calls on the United States government and the international community, particularly the Organization of American States and the United Nations, not only to condemn the coup and withhold recognition of the current government, but to make every effort to help achieve the restitution of constitutional order and the reinstatement of the democratically elected president. We have already received eyewitness reports that the thousands of people from civil society organizations, including trade unions, who assembled to demand that democratic order be restored and the president returned, have been tear-gassed by the armed forces. Several have been injured and dozens have been arrested. We call on the United States Government to also take all measures within its diplomatic powers to ensure that all Honduran civilians, and particularly trade unionists and social activists denouncing the coup, are safe and secure and will not be victimized by violence and repression. Related: Chávez derangement syndrome Al Giordano The Field USA June 30, 2009 ... Everyone knows that Fox News’ Glenn Beck is a TV clown. Probably Beck even knows it. In pursuit of ratings, anything goes; crying, screaming, pouting, whatever works to gain and keep the attention of the slow class. But what’s interesting is that pundits who consider themselves “serious” people suffer from the same twisted logic as appears in that video. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer launched into this tirade on Fox News yesterday: On Chávez, Krauthammer says: “Yes he was elected, but Hitler was as well, and Chávez also was elected.” Krauthammer also calls the coup "preferable" to letting Honduras' elected president remain in office. “Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega and the Castro twins, you ought to reexamine your assumptions." That’s Krauthammer's “rule.” Let’s extend it: former armed insurgents (Ortega and Chávez) abandoned the violent path to change opting to participate in peaceful elections instead. Following Krauthammer’s “rule,” we ought to reexamine our belief in peaceful and democratic paths to change and go back to our all-American guerrilla roots (something that clown Glenn Beck has actually suggested on multiple occasions in his flirtations with right-wing militia movements and other such tea-bagging rhetoric). Similarly, each of those leaders cited by Krauthammer provides low cost oil to poor citizens. Under “Krauthammer’s Law” we must certainly be for jacking up the price of home heating oil on poor and working people, simply because his obsessed-upon leaders do the opposite. Each of those leaders condemned the war in Iraq long before the American people came around to the same point of view. They were right about that, and most people know that now. Well, Krauthammer’s Law, in this case, at least makes him consistent: he’s one of the last US pundits that wishes the war would be escalated and carried on permanently. It is simply retarded to allow others to determine where one stands simply by always taking the reactive position: “If he’s for it, we must be against it.” Fortunately, most humans have evolved beyond that stage of the reptilian brain. It’s apparently going to take the Krauthammers more generations of breeding to catch up, I guess. ... A poster boy for the Latin American elite (indeed, he has made a career out of it) is the prominent “junior,” Alvaro Vargas Llosa. Note that he eliminated his mother’s last name from his own in order to be known as the son of the famed literary author. His column in today’s New York Times – purportedly about Honduras – is titled: "The Winner Is Chávez". Um, hello? I thought we were talking about a coup d'etat and a lot of violence that is happening right now in Honduras. The junior Vargas Llosa laments: “The coup leaders, who were trying to prevent Mr. Chávez from bringing Honduras into his fold, may end up giving him more strength in the region.” In other words, Chávez has become a psychological place marker (much like Iran, in different ideological circles) for the fallen Soviet: the Cold War superpower around which all US policy was reactive. It’s a desperate and silly psychology, since Venezuela, a country of 23 million people (smaller than California) is not by any measuring stick a superpower on that scale, and it’s military is a fraction of the size of that in the US. Reasonable people can agree to disagree on how favorably or negatively they view Chávez, but when he becomes an obsession, the determinative factor on viewing events in other lands, that’s just plain crazy. ... Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:46:21 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19409 Venezuela & Iran: Whither the revolutions? Eric Walberg July 1, 2009 June was a busy month for two of Washington’s real ‘Axis of Evil’. Venezuela’s Chavez completed his nationalization of oil and Iran’s Ahmedinejad stemmed a Western-backed color revolution, leaving both bad boys in place, muses Eric Walberg. What drives US foreign policy? Is it primarily the domestic economy, as it logically should be, or, as many argue, the powerful Israel lobby, or as other argue, the need to secure energy sources? Of course, the answer is all three, in varying degrees depending on the geopoltical importance of the country in question. And woe to any country that threatens any of the above. Russia is perhaps a special case, as US politics was dependent for so long on the anti-communist Cold War that ideologues found it impossible to dispense with this useful bugaboo even after the collapse of Communism. But it was not only Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice that perversely prospered from this obsession, but the US domestic economy itself, which was transformed into what is best described as the military-industrial complex (MIC). It would take very little to placate today’s Russia -- pull in NATO’s horns and stop pandering to the Russophobes in Eastern Europe -- but that would hurt the MIC and would hamper the US plans for empire and oil. So it remains an enemy of choice, though not part of the Axis of Evil. This crude characterisation by Bush/Cheney lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together as the worst of the worst. With the US invasion of Iraq, the current score is one down, two to go. But North Korea is a red herring. It is merely a very useful Cold War foil, beloved of the MIC, justifying its many useless, lethal weapons programmes. A popular whipping boy, a bit of innocent ideological entertainment. Without Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and ignoring Korea, we are left with Iran. But Bush could easily have added Venezuela to his list, as it is these two countries that pose the greatest real threat to the US empire. Both have charismatic leaders who not openly denounce US and Israeli empire but do something about it. And both have large, nationalised oil sectors. Chavez’s successful defiance of the US has directly inspired Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay to elect socialist leaders and given Cuba a new lease on life. Ahmedinejad has defied the many Israel-imposed bans on supporting the Palestinian resistance and even publically questioned the legitimacy of Israel itself. These bold and principled men are thereby pariahs, albeit useful ones for the MIC, along with their Cold War ghost Kim Jong Il. That is the catch. While the empire officially frets, the US military-based economy thrives on its official enemies. It would collapse without them. This is the supreme irony to be noted by observers of what can only be described as the bizarre and contradictory world of US foreign policy. Venezuela and Iran are indeed threats to the US empire. President Hugo Chavez not only thoroughly nationalised the oil sector after the crippling strike led by oil executives in 2002-03, but proceeded to use the revenues to transform his country, putting it on the albeit bumpy road to socialism -- subsidised basic goods, mass literacy and free health care. He has even been providing poor Americans with discount gas. “The oil belongs to all Venezuelans,” Chavez emphasised to reporters last month in Argentina, after the government announced it was taking over oil service companies along with US-owned gas compression units, adding to the heavy oil projects Venezuela took over in 2007. Natural gas looks like it will be next. The point of this is to “regain full petroleum sovereignty,” that is, full political sovereignty. No more attempted colour revolutions for Venezuela. Which brings us to Iran. When Mahmoud Ahmedinejad took office in 2005, with the backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he tried to wrest control of key ministries, especially oil and the government’s National Iranian Oil Company (NOIC), from the Rafsanjani/ Mousavi capitalist elite, replacing officials with his own choices -- primarily from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It was not till 2007 that he was able to install his candidate for oil minister, also head of the NIOC, Gholamhossein Nozari. Like Chavez, he proceeded to use state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, something which the so-called reformists under his predecessor Mohammed Khatami or earlier nonreformists under Rafsanjani/ Mousavi were not noted for. While Hashemi Rafsanjani was parliamentary speaker with Mirhossein Mousavi his prime minister in the 1980s, younger Iranians, including Ahmedinejad, were fighting in the IRGC (many martyring themselves) in the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Rafsanjani became Iran ’s first president in 1989 and added to his family’s vast fortune, much of it connected with oil, during his privatisation programme when he opened the oil industry to private Iranian contractors. This continued under the “reformist” Khatami, who took over the presidency in 1997. Ahmedinejad’s ascendancy in 2005 on a platform to fight and eliminate the “oil mafia” confirmed the IRGC as the underlying force confronting Rafsanjani and the reformists. Throughout the 2009 electoral campaign, Ahmedinejad attacked his opponents as leaders of the corrupt elite, now trying to claw back control. The elite had had enough, and the election ruckus last month was their last stand against the clearly populist, essentially leftist Ahmedinejad (in the West labelled a “hardliner”). Some pundits call Ahmedinejad’s decisive win a coup d’etat by the IRGC, but the recent demonstrations in Teheran look eerily similar to those in Caracas in 2002-03 when Venezuelan society was paralysed by its economic elite, mobilising its own Gucci crowd, strongly backed by the US, protesting a populist president’s determination to use oil revenues to help the common people. Chavez risked his life in the process, but his careful planning foiled the plotters and he survived to carry out his agenda. Whether Ahmedinejad can do the same, and to what extent the IRGC is a vehicle for promoting social welfare is a drama which is only now unfolding. The Western media has uniformly denounced the Iranian elections, with no real evidence, as fraudulent, much as it denounced the many elections that Chavez had to undergo in the face of US-inspired strikes and even a military coup, before the opposition and its US backers relented. The US has generously financed Iranian expatriate dissidents and has penetrated Iranian society with the clear intent to overthrow Ahmedinejad, exactly like they did in Venezuela, though it is rarely mentioned in the Western press. The US policy of using soft power to undermine unfriendly governments is well known to both Latin American socialists and Iranian clerics. Khamenei insisted in his sermon last week that Iran would not tolerate the green “colour revolution” underway. No wonder that Ahmedinejad, Chavez and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are such good friends. They have much in common. In similar electoral contests in Latin America between nationalist-populists and pro-Western liberals, the populists have consistently won in fair elections, so the results in Iran should come as no surprise. Past examples include Peron in Argentina and, most recently, Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Lula da Silva in Brazil, all of whom have consistently polled 60 per cent or more of the vote in free elections. The people in these countries prefer social welfare over unrestrained markets, national security over alignments with military empires. The parallel between Iran and Venezuela coincides with a flowering of relations between Iran and Latin American countries as it seeks a way out of the US-imposed blockade. Iran will help develop Bolivia’s oil and gas sector, has opened a trade office in Ecuador, and entered into agreements with Nicaragua, Cuba, Paraguay, Brazil and, of course, Venezuela. Council of Hemispheric Affairs analyst Braden Webb reports that “Venezuela and Iran are now gingerly engaged in an ambitious joint project, putting on-line Veniran, a production plant that assembles 5,000 tractors a year, and plans to start producing two Iranian-designed automobiles to provide regional consumers with the ‘first anti-imperialist cars’.” Perhaps what upsets the US most about Ahmedinejad is his continued attempts to establish an Iranian Oil Bourse in the Iranian Free Trade Zone on the island of Kish, an idea which Chavez heartily approves of. The bourse is meant to attract international oil trading to the Middle East and to help move international trade away from the dollar as the oil currency, currently accounting for 65 per cent of trade. Over half of Iran’s oil business is now conducted in euros, despite the EU’s support for the US boycott. An indication of just how evil the US considers this move is the fact that his Evil Axis colleague Saddam Hussein was executed not long after switching his accounts to euros. Note that Kim Jong Il remains comfortably in place despite his own penchant for euros. Both the Venezuelan and Iranian thorns have incensed Washington for daring to use their oil revenues to redistribute wealth in their societies and then organise resistance to US hegemony in their respective neighbourhoods. They are examples which continue to inspire and which pose a threat to US imperial policy, both international and domestic. For what better way to solve all the ills of US society -- lack of secure health care, poverty, violence -- than dismantling the MIC and initiating a foreign policy based on peace rather than war? The big difference between these two thorns, of course, is Islam and Iran’s interference with the US-Israeli agenda. Now that the oil companies have resigned themselves to Venezuela’s new assertiveness, they and their government spokesmen are not so concerned with trying to overthrow Chavez. However, the extra weight of the Israel lobby in Washington makes sure that another Iranian revolution remains at the top of the list of Obama’s things-to-do. Another curious difference is that US attempts to turn Venezuela’s neighbours against it backfired, as they came to Chavez’s defence and followed his example, while similar efforts to conspire against Iran have had considerable success. The schism in both Venezuelan and Iranian societies is very real and is being taken advantage of by the US and friends, who are doing their “best” to engineer a collapse of the populist governments to make room for more US-friendly colour revolutions. But there is too much Yankee baggage for this to work anymore. It is time for a colour revolution at home. A Canadian by birth, Eric Walberg writes for Cairo's Al-Ahram Weekly. Related: Jim comment: I believe it was back in 2006 when Hezbollah was fighting the Isreali's attempted drive into Southern Lebanaon, Ali Fayyad, a senior member of Hezbollah's executive council, said: We in Hezbollah and in the Lebanese resistance see that secular fighters in Venezuela or in any place in the world, secular or Christian, are nearer to us than the Muslims or Arabs who cooperate with imperialism. He also published this piece in Britain's The Guardian July 25, 2006. We are defending our sovereignty Ali Fayyad Guardian UK July 25, 2006 ... The Israeli onslaught is aimed not only at liquidating the resistance and destroying the country's infrastructure but at intervening in Lebanese politics and imposing conditions on what can be agreed. There is now a clear national consensus on the need to maintain the military power necessary to prevent Lebanon from being subjugated by Israel's war machine. Popular resistance is a way of redressing the huge imbalance of power, defending Lebanon's sovereignty and preventing Israel from intervening in Lebanese internal affairs, as has happened repeatedly since 1948. ... The aggression against Lebanon, which has primarily targeted civilians and failed to achieve any tangible military objectives, is part of a continuing attempt to impose Israeli hegemony on the area and prevent the emergence of a regional system that might guarantee stability, self-determination, freedom and democracy. ... Thus far, Hizbullah has had surprising military successes, while maintaining its position in the face of Israel's superior fire power, and preserved its capacity to wage a long-term war. But Hizbullah is still ready to accept a ceasefire and negotiate indirectly an exchange of prisoners to bring the current crisis to an end. This is what Israel has so far rejected, with the support of the US. For this is also a war of American hegemony over the Middle East, and the US - supported by the British government - is fully complicit in the Israeli war crimes carried out in the past two weeks. It would appear that the peaceful option will not be given a chance until Hizbullah and the forces of resistance have demonstrated their ability to confront Israel's aggression and thwart its objectives, as happened in 1993 and 1996. That is why resistance is not only a pillar of our sovereignty but also a prerequisite of stability. Iran's do-it-yourself revolution Stephen Zunes Foreign Policy In Focus USA June 29, 2009 Facing an unprecedented popular uprising against his autocratic rule and his apparently fraudulent re-election, Iran's right-wing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has attempted to blame the United States. A surprising number of bloggers on the left have rushed to the defense of the right-wing fundamentalist leader. Citing presidential directives under the Bush administration, they argue that the uprising isn't as much about a stolen election, the oppression of women, censorship, severe restrictions on political liberties, growing economic inequality, and other grievances, as it is about the result of U.S. interference. Meanwhile, critics on the right — who have shown little concern about democracy in other countries in the region that are just as oppressive yet more willing to support U.S. military and economic objectives have rushed to attack Obama for not intervening enough in Iran. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), for instance, insisted that the president should "come out more strongly" in support of the protesters. The sordid history of U.S. intervention in Iran has made it easy for that country's hard-ine theocratic leadership to blame the United States for the unrest. Indeed, the United States is guilty of many crimes against that country. It overthrew Iran's last democratic government back in1953. Subsequently, the United States armed and trained the Shah's dreaded SAVAK secret police. In the 1980s, Washington supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran and, in the "tanker war" of 1987-88, the United States bombed Iranian coastal facilities, targeted ships, and shot down a civilian airliner. There was the arming of Kurdish and Baluchi separatists as well as the threats of war over Iran's civilian nuclear program (even as Washington continued to support neighboring states that have developed nuclear weapons arsenals). And in recent years, the United States allocated tens of millions of dollars to opposition groups for the express purpose of "regime change." Despite this record of intervention, the United States has had nothing to do with the massive unarmed insurrection against the Iranian regime. ... Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:03:34 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19408 You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job. - Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States (1969–1974) and the only president to resign the office. Records that should be kept under the law have been kept. - Gordon Campbell, 34th Premier of British Columbia, June 5, 2001 to the present. Judge on BC Rail corruption case orders disclosure of MLA emails Steve Mertl Canadian Press Canada June 30, 2009 VANCOUVER, B.C. — A B.C. court has ordered the provincial government to turn over a potential trover of internal emails that could relate to the legislature raid case. The B.C. Supreme Court judge hearing the case Tuesday ordered the government to turn over MLA emails and other communications related to the controversial $1-billion sale of BC Rail to CN Rail in 2003. Justice Elizabeth Bennett will review the material to decide what's relevant to the corruption trial of three former government workers in relation to the sale, a case which now has dragged on for almost six years without going to trial. Bennett herself has been promoted to the B.C. Court of Appeal but the defence is demanding she stay on because she's issued a plethora of pre-trial rulings in the complex case. She's slated to hear their arguments later this month. Her ruling Tuesday covered communications related to the BC Rail deal sent or received by Liberal legislature members and some ministers, including Premier Gordon Campbell, via their MLA email accounts. Those accounts are separate from government email accounts. There's another application before the court for disclosure of emails involving cabinet ministers through their executive council accounts. The executive council's lawyer, George Copley, has suggested those emails may no longer exist and Bennett has given him until late August to report back on their status. In her judgment Tuesday, Bennett dismissed some elements of the defence application, including records of public opinion polling and communications strategies regarding BC Rail, as no more than a "fishing expedition." She also limited the time frame to a three-year period beginning in January 2002 and ending in December 2004. The defence had asked for everything from June 2001 to the present. "Overall, the defence is pleased," said Michael Bolton, who represents accused Dave Basi, a former aide to then-finance minister Gary Collins. ... The defence has spent years trying to force disclosure of material it claims will show Virk and Dave Basi were small players in a larger scandal. ... Campbell's own Watergate? Bill Tieleman TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada June 30, 2009 Visit this page for its embedded links. Consider this: a B.C. premier who says he's fully cooperating with the investigation even as tens of thousands of emails spanning four years are erased or simply vanish before defence lawyers in a political corruption trial can obtain them. It's as though Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's secretary who erased 18 minutes of secret tapes, is still alive and working in Victoria. Two years after the defence requests the emails in a legal application, a government lawyer admits they have disappeared without a trace. A former senior deputy minister to the premier who admits publicly that when it comes to his own emails: "I delete the stuff all the time as fast as I can." Government political staff members who allegedly direct dirty tricks -- like phony protests and paid callers to talk radio shows -- right out of the premier's office. A senior government ministerial aide who is allegedly paid on the side by the B.C. Liberal Party to conduct dirty tricks. A former top political aide to both federal and provincial Liberal Party governments who turns lobbyist and allegedly bribes ministerial assistants to obtain confidential information about a $1 billion privatization. Can anyone spell Watergate? The parallels between the actions of the Gordon Campbell B.C. Liberal government and the Richard Nixon White House appear to be increasingly, disturbingly strong. ... Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:57:39 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19407 According to Israel's DEBKA-Net-Weekly forthcoming issue, Iran and Israel are each thinking about using the fallout of the domestic unrest in Tehran for attacking the other: Iran to flex muscle, Israel to strike a looming nuclear menace. Israel prepares F-15 jets for long range attack Gil Ronen Arutz Sheva Israel June 30, 2009 (IsraelNN.com) The Israel Air Force’s F-15 fleet is undergoing an upgrade, with systems that make it better equipped for complex long distance attack scenarios. The systems are being installed in both the F-15 and the F-15I -- a model of the F-15 that was developed by its U.S. manufacturer specifically for the IAF. According to IDF journal BaMachaneh, the F-15I model is currently being fitted with two new systems – one called Barad Pelada (“Steel Hail”), and another named Lightning. ... “The reelection of Iran’s president, his grave utterances regarding his will to harm the state of Israel and Iran’s continual effort to achieve unconventional weapons require us to maintain an army that is coiled and ready to spring into action, and an Air Force that is skilled and sharp as a razor, that will stand up to any enemy and remove any threat from our citizens and residents,“ IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said Thursday in an IAF ceremony for new pilots at the Hatzerim Air Force Base. Washington: Weakened Ahmadinejad may seek military adventures DEBKAfile Israel June 28, 2009 ... Washington and Jerusalem share the fear that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's humiliation and diminished status at home may well goad him into embarking on a dangerous military adventure against Israel or US targets in Afghanistan or Iraq. In Jerusalem it makes sense for the United Stats to strengthen the informal Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli connection as a bulwark against wild Iranian ideas. ... Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:56:45 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19406 The Obama administration has decided to continue its predecessor’s Quixotic commitment to unattainable strategic objectives, i.e., changing entire societies. - William S. Lind Gen McChrystal has wrapped up his "listening tour" of Afghanistan. Photo: AP. Jim comment on what follows: Obviously another asshole has been put in charge of the AfPak campaign. Intro: Bull feather merchants revisited Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) Pen and Sword USA June 27, 2009 It ran in the Los Angeles Times so it’s official: the key to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s success in the Bananastans will be a “civilian surge.” The thinking apparently goes that if McChrystal stops killing as many Afghans as he used to when he was head of the secret Joint Special Operations Command, they’ll flock to his arms in gratitude. It’s clear that no one in the national security establishment is serious about “winning” in the Bananastans, but they’re certainly serious about their war propaganda. In the old days, four-star generals like David Petraeus had personal public affairs colonels. McChrystal is so important he’s snagged himself a public affairs admiral: Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith. Like all military reporting now, the LAT piece, titled “U.S. to limit airstrikes in Afghanistan to help reduce civilian deaths,” is a poorly camouflaged piece of stenography, and it’s clear that Smith did the dictating. ... All the “change” hoopla attending Stan McChrystal’s arrival in Afghanistan is cynical hogwash, designed to sucker the American public into turning yet another corner, and sitting patiently through another Friedman unit, and listening to Thomas E. Ricks tell David Gregory or some other bobble-head that sure, what we’re doing is immoral, but it would be even more immoral not to do the immoral thing we’re doing. The most immoral part of this travesty is that our military chain of command, right up to the commander in chief, continues to put our troops in a deplorable situation—to kill innocents or be killed themselves—for reasons that have nothing to do with national security whatsoever. A soldier from the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry walks down from his position as he waits for a helicopter to lift him from a mountain side during an operation against the Taliban in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan's Kunar province on May 13. Photo: David Guttenfelder/AP Items: McChrystal: New view of Afghan war needed Jason Straziuso Associated Press/Army Times USA June 26, 2009 CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — Gen. Stanley McChrystal said Wednesday that U.S. and other NATO troops must make a “cultural shift” away from being a force designed for high intensity combat and instead make protecting Afghan civilians their first priority. The newly arrived four-star commander said he hopes to install a new military mindset by drilling into troops the need to reduce the number of Afghan civilians killed in combat. McChrystal is expected to formally announce new combat rules within days that will order troops to break away from fights — if they can do so safely — if militants are firing from civilian homes. One effect of the new order will be that troops may have to wait out insurgents instead of using force to oust them, he said. “Traditionally American forces are designed for conventional, high-intensity combat,” McChrystal said during a visit to Camp Leatherneck, a new U.S. Marine base housing thousands of newly deployed Marines in southern Helmand province. “In my mind what we’ve really got to do is make a cultural shift.” Because the military is such a big organization, the new message will take “constant repetition,” he said. ... McChrystal, who took command of all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan last week, is making his first visits to regional commanders to outline the new combat rules. “We’ve lost some of the arrogance I know I had early on,” McChrystal told a group of British and U.S. troops, telling them that their war to win over the Afghan population is like a debate. “Don’t stop thinking. You don’t win an argument when you stop thinking.” He said later that U.S. troops may have been overconfident in the early years of the Afghan conflict after the Taliban regime fell so easily. He said the U.S. may have “oversimplified” the Afghan challenge as a result. ... Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the Marine commander at Camp Leatherneck, said his forces were already following McChrystal’s new commands. “Our focus from the very beginning has not been Taliban. It’s been civilians,” he said. “We’ve paid a lot of attention to avoiding civilian casualties. ... We have a lot of combat vets, a lot of Iraq vets. And I think we learned early on the importance of trust and support of the locals.” He added: “There will be plenty of opportunities to kill Taliban, and we’re pretty good at that. Bur the focus here, the reason we’re here, is the people, not the Taliban.” ... McChrystal said his deployment did not have a timetable to it, and that he would stay in Afghanistan as long as the Pentagon wanted him there. He refused to give even an estimate of how long that might be, saying: “My wife would kill me if she read something too long. I do think continuity is key, though.” Immediately below: New US commander General Stanley McChrystal is travelling Afghanistan preparing a new strategy. The BBC's Martin Patience went with him to the west of the country. McChrystal's Afghan 'listening tour' Martin Patience BBC News UK June 28, 2009 In a traditional reception room the size of a tennis court, Gen McChrystal listened intently to an Afghan governor. The official told the commander that he had only taken his job after being led to believe by the Afghan government that the security situation was good - but it turned out it was not. Gen McChrystal then joked that US President Barack Obama had "done exactly same thing to me" - provoking laughs from the assembled audience. It was a rare moment of humour from the commander known for his seriousness. McChrystal is the man of the moment - a general tasked with changing the course of the war in Afghanistan. ... By the beginning of August, he will need to present a detailed plan to the US president to turn the tide of this conflict. It may include a request for more American troops, officials say. The success of that plan will not be measured by any decisive military campaign - that does not happen in a counter-insurgency operation - but by the buzzword of "momentum". This campaign is all about perceptions, as military officials will tell you - and the perception at home and abroad is that it is badly adrift. ... Related: Going nowhere fast in Afghanistan William S. Lind Antiwar.com USA June 30, 2009 The advent of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as America’s overall commander in Afghanistan appears to be good news. He seems to understand that in this kind of war, the rule must be "First, do no harm." Associated Press recently reported him as saying that his measure of effectiveness will be "the number of Afghans shielded from violence, not the number of militants killed." Unusually, he seems to include American and NATO violence in his calculation, since he has ordered a drastic cutback in air strikes. Heavy American reliance on air strikes has probably done more than anything else to win the war for the Taliban. But history is littered with the failures of promising new generals; "Fighting Joe" Hooker somehow comes to mind. If Gen. McChrystal is to represent any real hope that the U.S. might get out of Afghanistan with some tailfeathers intact, he must confront a host of challenges. Let’s look at just four: ... In sum, Gen. McChrystal faces a full plate. His most difficult challenges are internal, in the form of a flawed military instrument, inadequate doctrine, a neo-liberal establishment drunk on COIN juju, and strategic objectives no commander can attain. Internal challenges are often harder to overcome than those posed by the external opponent, because potential fixes run into the immovable object of court politics. As an Army friend put it to me, until these and similar internal challenges can be met, our efforts in Afghanistan are like trying to get somewhere by riding faster on an exercise bicycle. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:41:38 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19405 Workers resented the 24 percent annual inflation that robbed them of real wage increases. Independent trade unionists were fighting for decent wages and for the right to organize. - Reese Erlich, when describing his eye-witness account of the composition of Iran's demonstrating crowds For years, [Mehdi] Kouhestaninejad and his CLC [Canadian Labour Congress] colleagues have tried to change all that, but they've been up against a politics that divides the world into two camps, with American-Israeli imperialists on one side and a "resistance" of plucky Islamists on the other. It's politics that divides the world's workers against themselves, and absurdly situates Ahmadinejad in the same camp where the western "Left" pitches its tent. In Canada, the result has been a kind of stupefaction that has rendered the Left practically useless to the life-and-death struggles that have been underway in Iran for years, and which have now reached a crisis. Only last month, the CLC was trying to rouse its affiliates to an urgent appeal from an international labour coalition representing 170 million workers, calling for a global day of protest in solidarity with Iran's persecuted trade unionists. ... What's changed is that the long campaign for Iranian democracy, for workers' rights, and for the hundreds of union leaders, journalists and human rights activists in Iranian prisons, has at last started to gain some global traction. What's changed is that the tireless efforts of Kouhestaninejad and his colleagues at the CLC, the International Trade Union Confederation, the International Transport Workers Federation and Educational International are starting to pay off. - Terry Glavin Iran and leftist confusion Reese Erlich CommonDreams.org USA June 29, 2009 When I returned from covering the Iranian elections recently, I was surprised to find my email box filled with progressive authors, academics and bloggers bending themselves into knots about the current crisis in Iran. They cite the long history of U.S. interference in Iran and conclude that the current unrest there must be sponsored or manipulated by the Empire. That comes as quite a shock to those risking their lives daily on the streets of major Iranian cities fighting for political, social and economic justice. Some of these authors have even cited my book, The Iran Agenda, as a source to prove U.S. meddling. Whoa there, pardner. Now we're getting personal. The large majority of American people, particularly leftists and progressives, are sympathetic to the demonstrators in Iran, oppose Iranian government repression and also oppose any U.S. military or political interference in that country. But a small and vocal number of progressives are questioning that view, including authors writing for Monthly Review online, Foreign Policy Journal, and prominent academics such as retired professor James Petras. They mostly argue by analogy. They correctly cite numerous examples of CIA efforts to overthrow governments, sometimes by manipulating mass demonstrations. But past practice is no proof that it's happening in this particular case. Frankly, the multi-class character of the most recent demonstrations, which arose quickly and spontaneously, were beyond the control of the reformist leaders in Iran, let alone the CIA. Let's assume for the moment that the U.S. was trying to secretly manipulate the demonstrations for its own purposes. Did it succeed? Or were the protests reflecting 30 years of cumulative anger at a reactionary system that oppresses workers, women, and ethnic minorities, indeed the vast majority of Iranians? Is President Mahmood Ahmadinejad a "nationalist-populist," as claimed by some, and therefore an ally against U.S. domination around the world? Or is he a repressive, authoritarian leader who actually hurts the struggle against U.S. hegemony? Let's take a look. But first a quick note. ... Frankly, based on my observations, no one was leading the demonstrations. During the course of the week after the elections, the mass movement evolved from one protesting vote fraud into one calling for much broader freedoms. You could see it in the changing composition of the marches. There were not only upper middle class kids in tight jeans and designer sun glasses. There were growing numbers of workers and women in very conservative chadors. Iranian youth particularly resented President Ahmadinejad's support for religious militia attacks on unmarried young men and women walking together and against women not covering enough hair with their hijab. Workers resented the 24 percent annual inflation that robbed them of real wage increases. Independent trade unionists were fighting for decent wages and for the right to organize. Some demonstrators wanted a more moderate Islamic government. Others advocated a separation of mosque and state, and a return to parliamentary democracy they had before the 1953 coup. But virtually everyone believes that Iran has the right to develop nuclear power, including enriching uranium. Iranians support the Palestinians in their fight against Israeli occupation, and they want to see the U.S. get out of Iraq. So if they CIA was manipulating the demonstrators, it was doing a piss poor job. ... Iran: Whose side are we really on? Terry Glavin TheTyee.ca British Columbia Canada June 29, 2009 The uprising changes everything. That's what you will hear these days across the spectrum of the Iranian diaspora, from exiled intellectuals, trade unionists, student activists, Marxists, and liberals. The uprising changes everything, and not just inside Iran. No matter what happens next, the uprising will cause convulsions in contested fields of struggle from Afghanistan to Palestine. Already, the spectacle of angry masses thronging the streets of Iranian cities is holding out the promise of a great awakening in "progressive" politics from Berlin to Seattle. In Canada, what was once unspeakable is now unavoidably central to any serious discussion of the Iranian cause and what it demands of us. Mehdi Kouhestaninejad, a senior Canadian Labour Congress officer who has spent more than a decade waging a tireless and often lonely struggle to forge effective links between Canadian and Iranian trade unions, says he can't remember the last time he was so filled with hope. "In the West, the Left sees only the Ahmadinejad propaganda -- death to the U.S., death to imperialism. It claims it is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, but the people in Iran know that this is baloney," Kouhestaninejad told me. "We have to challenge our attitudes. We have to recognize that there is no connection between the Left in the West and the Left in Iran." For years, Kouhestaninejad and his CLC colleagues have tried to change all that, but they've been up against a politics that divides the world into two camps, with American-Israeli imperialists on one side and a "resistance" of plucky Islamists on the other. It's politics that divides the world's workers against themselves, and absurdly situates Ahmadinejad in the same camp where the western "Left" pitches its tent. Related: The revolution will be tweeted or whatever. People’s power and technology Judy Rebick Canadian Dimension blog Canada June 15, 2009 Sunday evening I spent almost an entire train ride from Ottawa to Toronto glued to Twitter following the posts from #iranelections, which is a way to get all the posts about the elections in Iran and following a twitterer with the handle Change for Iran who was posting from his roof top every few minutes and then going down to join the protests and coming back. It was an amazing experience to directly follow what was happening on the streets of Tehran as it was happening. More important, though, Twitter became a major source of information for those opposed to Ahmadinejad’s government and protesting what they consider to be fraudelant election results. Knowing there would be protests the Iranian government shut down Facebook, MySpace, reduced internet access and even cell phone messaging capacity, which had been a major source of information for many activists. I guess they didn’t know about Twitter, which doesn’t need broadband access. ... But what I want to talk about is the cultural revolution that is sweeping the globe combining a hunger for people’s power with new technologies and the way in which these new technologies are facilitating a people’s globalization. It started with the Zapatistas at the turn of the twentieth century posting their ideas through Subcomandante Marcos to a North American and European youth movement hungry for a vision of a another world On the one side is neoliberalism with all its repressive power and all its machinery of death: on the other side is the human being. In any place in the world, anytime, any man or woman who rebels to the point of tearing off the clothes that resignation has woven for them and cynicism has dyed grey. Any man or woman of whatever colour in whatever tongue speaks and says to himself, to herself: Enough is enough!—Ya Basta! Then the Indymedia Centres started with the one in Seattle in 1999 reportin on protests actions against the institution of corporate globalization. These were the precursors to Web 2.0 and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Indymedia also really created the idea of the citizen journalist who reports on what is happening in text, photos and video where they are spreading their news across the globe that has allowed ChangeforIran to tweet to world about the demos on the streets of Tehran yesterday. ... As I say in Transforming Power, corporate globalization has created the seeds of its own destruction by creating not only the technologies that enable global citizen’s communication but also by creating common issues like free trade, and by forcing huge numbers of people off their land, out of their homes so that every major city in the still hegemonic global North is full of people who come from the Global South and are raising our consciousness about what is happening in their homeland. Pointers for citizen journalists Arianna Huffington Huffington Post USA June 29, 2009 Includes embedded links and a video. How would you like to get some pointers from Katie Couric and Tavis Smiley on how to conduct a good interview, from Bob Woodward on doing in-depth investigative journalism in the digital age, from Mike Isikoff on digging deeper to break news, and from Nicholas Kristof on how to cover a global humanitarian crisis and not get shot? This expert input is now just a click away, thanks to a cool new project being launched today by YouTube. The YouTube Reporters' Center aims to be a one-stop-shop for people looking to learn how to report on what's going on around them, offering over two dozen videos -- ranging from how to capture breaking news on your cell phone to the ins and outs of journalistic ethics. "We want to deepen the conversation about the importance of citizen reporting in today's media landscape," Steve Grove, the head of news and politics at YouTube, told me. "We want to help media organizations begin to leverage the tremendous power of citizen journalists to contribute to their coverage, and to give citizen reporters new opportunities to improve their work and get it seen by more people. The YouTube Reporters' Center is a great place to get started." ... Endnote: Always be wary. Always consider the source. Always strive to make informed judgements. Iconic photo of Iranian protester is faked reveals Italy's most conservative mainstream paper Mary Rizzo Palestine Think Tank International June 29, 2009 There is a picture [above right] circulating on the web, framed perfectly. It depicts an Iranian girl doing an unlikely American gesture, a striking parallel to the picture of a solitary Chinese youth standing in front of tanks at Tienanmen Square in Beijing. We can expect to see this picture soon everywhere on Internet. None other than Corriere della Sera, Italy’s major mainstream newspaper, and one that is quite conservative regarding anything with the Middle East - says the picture is a photo montage, and shows the original picture [above left]: a picture of a girl standing in front of Ahmadinejad's car, date and reason unknown, with an open hand, perhaps simply greeting Ahmadinejad. They even comment on the smiling face of the Iranian leader. http://www.corriere.it/esteri/09_giugno_28/iran_foto_simbolo_9cc7d8b4-63ed-11de-baf4-00144f02aabc.shtml The fake picture was put on Youtube by Secondoprotocollo, which appears to be a very active Italian NGO, with offices in several countries. However, to get to the bottom of things, sometimes all it takes is to look a notch farther down the pole. Just a regular web search engine will lead one to find a critical site, which claims that Secondoprotocollo is a one-man job, entirely run by a certain Franco Londei, and which accuses Secondoprotocollo of having repeatedly made false reports and claims, especially taking photos at random from the web and claiming they represent activists of Secondoprotocollo in dangerous parts of the world. The critical site appears to be well documented, and I have come across no systematic refutation of the accusations made by the critical site. Others have written (in Italian) about him in the past, and this is the site that seems to know quite a lot about his activities: http://primoprotocollo.altervista.org/index.php ... Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy. Editor and co-founder of Palestine Think Tank, co-founder of Tlaxcala translations collective. Her personal blog is Peacepalestine. Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:44:57 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19404 An organic farm, properly speaking, is not one that uses certain methods and substances and avoids others; it is a farm whose structure is formed in imitation of the structure of a natural system that has the integrity, the independence and the benign dependence of an organism. - Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land When I came to work at the NOP in 1994, the first thing they asked me to do was to write a definition of organic. When I stopped laughing, this is what I put at the top of a page: “The only thing I know for sure is not organic is dogmatism.” That motto continues to guide my advocacy for an organic approach to just about everything. There has been a lot of talk about keeping standards high, which is seen as the means to protect organic integrity. Although this seems to make sense, there is a fundamental conflict between organic principles and the kind of rigidity characterized by “high” standards. There is a similar clash between organic principles and the concept of purity. Something that is pure is, above all, homogeneous— uncontaminated by diversity (think of white sugar, once preferred as free from impurities). And diversity, as everyone agrees, is integral to the meaning of organic. I continue to use the word “higher” in quotes because there is also a disconnect between organic principles, which understand that nature works in cycles, and the linear world view of “high” versus “low.” - Grace Gershuny, Who owns organic?, The Natural Farmer, Spring 2006 Yes, the economic logic of the traditional small farm - multiple crops and rotations on healthy soil with sustainable practices - is hard to refute when you look at all the relevant factors. And it's no exaggeration to say that, as proverbially with politics, all farming needs to be local. - Jack Bradigan Spula Independent locally owned businesses can go beyond traditional measures of success. The produce riddle part 1: Organic vs. local TreeHugger USA March 8, 2005 In a capitalist economy, your purchases and buying habits can have the same weight as how you vote. Treehugger is committed to raising consumer's awareness of how those purchases can play into the bigger world environmental picture. And out of all the things we buy, what we buy the most often is our food. The food we buy influences quality of life, usage of gasoline and petroleum resources, and toxic chemicals worldwide. So, in this two-part series, we'll look at how you can use your produce purchases to vote for a sustainable future. To start with, you need to know that organic produce may not always be the enviro-conscious picnic it's cracked up to be.... The produce riddle part 2: Do something about it TreeHugger USA March 9, 2005 Yesterday, we looked at the potential problems with organic produce shipped in from far flung locales. Often, the energy usage to get the goods to your door turns food that was once low impact into veggies that might as well have been grown locally. So what's a poor treehugger to do? Well fear not friends. We've got you covered... In order to keep from falling prey to the imported food menace, there are a few different options for you. Remember, you want to avoid excessive environmental stress. Organic is good. Locally grown may be better. Organic and local is the bees knees. Now, go get em: ... There's no such thing as local vs. organic food Timothy J. LaSalle TreeHugger USA June 24, 2009 Let’s clear up one issue: There is no such thing as local vs. organic. When it comes to consumer choice, we should be buying local and organic, though for mostly different reasons. Local is really important as a deep investment into your local economy and developing a relationship with the person who produces your food. Not only do local businesses generate more local income, jobs, and tax receipts, but they also tend to utilize advertizing, banks, and services in the local community. In fact, a dollar spent at a local business turns over seven times in that community; while the same dollar spent at a box store or chain only turns over 2.5 times. Buying locally builds a healthy community on many levels. (For case studies on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of buying local visit the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies). Not only can you support the economic health of your community and offer security to your hardworking neighbors, but you can eliminate the uncertainties of agribusiness by talking to your farmer and seeing first-hand how your food is produced. It is also helpful in being able to purchase food that is often fresher. What’s more is buying local can create local food security, which may become more and more important in the near future. We at Rodale Institute couldn’t be more enthusiastic about local. ... Go local...and prosper in more ways than one Jack Bradigan Spula Northeast Organic Farming Association/Organic Consumers Association USA June 23, 2009 To show how far we've come in a generation on matters of health, compare two slogans from popular culture. The first used to be everywhere in American media: "I'd walk a mile for a Camel," said the ad copy from the golden, or leaden, age of cigarettes. (Even back then, many asked if the smoker would have enough breath for the journey.) The second slogan, ubiquitous on today's real and virtual front pages, takes several forms. The website sustainabletable.org renders it comprehensively as: "Eat local, buy local, be local," which implies that the consumer would walk two miles, round trip, for local, organic chevre or lamb. But "localism" is about a lot more than the evolution of health awareness, the personal health of "foodies," or new pedestrian approaches to quadrupeds. Perhaps most significantly during a Great Recession that's predictably hurt farmers and rural economies - and stunted the recent growth spurt of organic agriculture, which only last year promised salvation for struggling small farmers - localism is becoming a strategy to save the farm and the businesses and communities that depend on it. ... The free marketers, though, are not sitting back and letting common sense prevail. Rightwing libertarians, for example, have mounted an attack on the concept of food miles, buttressed by a simple belief that, in a formulation that appeared in Reason Magazine online, "Food should be grown where it is most economically advantageous to do so." Those who buy this argument are really saying it's best on balance to exploit dirt-cheap labor in developing countries, never mind the costs of transportation and other "inputs." In fact, the market logic twists this exploitation into a supposed virtue: One backgrounder from the World Resources Institute cites (unnamed) "development oriented organizations" as contending that "public concerns over food miles could have serious consequences for poorer nations" like Burundi, Ghana, Malawi, and others, whose "food exports make up more than 75 percent of their overall merchandise exports." Talk about turning reality upside down. The problem of food insecurity in these very countries is rooted in the decline of small, sustainable subsistence farming to meet local food needs - and the concomitant concentration of land holdings into agribusinesses that produce crops (many of them non-nutritive) for export to the wealthy abroad. In other words, what's happening to small farmers - and contributing to hunger and deprivation - in the developing world is what happened to many North American farmers and communities long ago. ... Related: Rick Callahan reports: "Consumers concerned about food quality have kept demand for organic vegetables and meat strong even as they've sacrificed organic snacks and other less nutritional items, said Marcia Mogelonsky, a senior research analyst for Mintel." But drought and the economy cotinue to make business difficult for farmers. Slowdown in once-booming organics troubles farmers Rick Callahan Associated Press USA June 26, 2009 In this photo taken Tuesday, June 9, 2009, organic farmer Allen Moody is seen on his farm in Westby, Wis. A growing number of farmers who went all-natural in the years when organic food sales were growing at a double-digit pace are giving up their organic certifications. Photo: Morry Gash/AP The organic dairy industry was thriving when Allen and Jean Moody bought a 200-acre Wisconsin dairy farm in 2006 and joined the ranks of farmers churning out milk raised without growth hormones, pesticides or other chemicals. Three years later, the good days are gone and the Moodys aren't alone in wanting out. A growing number of farmers who went all-natural in the years when organic food sales were growing at a double-digit pace are giving up their organic certifications. Organic farming is costly and labor-intensive, and many consumers are no longer willing to pay the price in a recession. Sales in the U.S. of organic foods sold mostly at supermarkets are expected to drop 1.1 percent to $5.07 billion this year, according to the Chicago-based research firm Mintel. While the drop is small, it is the first in an industry that has seen annual growth of 12 percent to 23 percent since 2003. ... The recession and credit crisis also have made times uncertain for George Mears, who raises organic corn, buckwheat, wheat and soybeans on 140 acres near Delphi, Ind. Much of it becomes feed for livestock that produce organic eggs, milk and beef. Some buyers are no longer willing to purchase grain on contract because of uncertainty about the economy. And one company that buys Mears' grain has been slow to pay — Mears suspects because it can't get credit to buy grain up front. "We're usually smaller farmers and you send a semi load or two of grain and that's like a quarter of your income for the year," he said. "You just don't drop a fourth of your income on the farm without some hardship." A growing number of farmers are losing their certifications in the nation's two top organic states, California and Wisconsin. In a typical year, the California Certified Organic Farmers, one of the nation's largest certifying groups, sees about 20 farms among its roughly 2,000 certified farms and processors lose their certification because of nonpayment of fees. But two weeks ago, letters went out to 100 farms warning that their organic status would be revoked because of nonpayment, said Peggy Miars, the group's executive director. She blames weak sales and the state's lingering drought. Bonnie Wideman, director of the Midwest Organic Services Association, expects about 80 of the group's roughly 1,200 certified organic farms in Wisconsin and several Midwestern states to surrender their certifications this year, up from about 60 in years past. Still, the California and Wisconsin groups said interest in organics remains strong because the industry is not as bad off as others. "In this depressed economy, when you're looking at bankruptcies and layoffs — we're just not seeing that in organics. Even though it's slowed down, there continues to be strong demand," Miars said. ... Canadian farmers opposed to GM wheat: Survey Rod Nickel Thomson Reuters Canada/UK June 25, 2009 SASKATOON, Saskatchewan (Reuters) - Canadian farmers oppose the introduction of genetically modified wheat until market conditions change, a Canadian Wheat Board survey has found. In the CWB's annual survey of 1,300 Western Canadian farmers, only 9 percent said GMO wheat should be grown as soon as it's available, with the majority saying it shouldn't be grown until conditions are met such as proving benefits to farmers and demonstrating market demand. Nineteen percent said it should not be grown in Canada. Farmers were close to evenly split when asked how interested they are in growing GM wheat. Fifty-one percent said they're not interested, with 46 percent very or somewhat interested. "My sense is that farmers are mostly taking an economic look at it," said CWB chairman Larry Hill, a farmer in the western province of Saskatchewan. "They're pretty aware that there's not major acceptance by customers and if it's going to be introduced they want to be sure it's going to make them money." Canadian farmers grow other GMO crops, particularly canola, but there's greater sensitivity around wheat because it's a direct human food ingredient unlike canola which is crushed for vegetable oil or biofuel, Hill said. ... The Natural Farmer The Natural Farmer is the newspaper of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA). It is published quarterly as a 48-page newsprint journal. The paper covers news of the organic movement nationally and internationally, as well as featuring stories about farmers from New England, New York and New Jersey. Each issue contains a 16 to 24 page pull out supplement on a particular crop or topic. The paper also contains how-to-do-it articles suitable for gardeners and homesteaders. Topics featured in past issues include: ... The Natural Farmer is free to most NOFA members. It can also be purchased separately, for $15 a year to US addresses or $20 a year for foreign ones. ... Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:48:38 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19403 Playing chicken with antibiotics Cathy Gulli Maclean's Magazine Canada June 17, 2009 Disturbing data from the Public Health Agency of Canada reveals that antibiotics such as cephalosporin used in chicken hatcheries across the country is causing human resistance to the medicines, according to a startling report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal today. Surveillance information from the Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance (CIPARS), which is funded by the public health agency, “strongly indicates that cephalosporin resistance in humans is moving in lockstep with use of the drug in poultry production,” the CMAJ explains. In 2005, chicken bought at Ontario and Quebec supermarkets had high levels of cephalosporin-resistant bacteria. Meanwhile, widespread use of ceftiofur, which is a type of cephalosporin, was found at Quebec chicken hatcheries. When farmers stopped using ceftiofur briefly due to the evidence drawn by CIPARS, there was a massive drop in cephalosporin resistance in salmonella samples taken from humans and retail poultry, says the CMAJ. More than a couple of years have passed since then, and researchers are once again seeing an increase in resistance. The latest data for Ontario, released in March, shows that there was a spike in ceftiofur resistance in humans and chickens. Between 2007 and 2008 there was a jump in bacteria resistance in retail chicken in Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia—from 29 per cent to 46 per cent in the latter province, which prompted a B.C. disease specialist to call the rise “alarming.” Cephalosporin is not approved for use in chickens or eggs, but it is often “robotically injected” into eggs at chicken hatcheries as a preventative measure to stave off infections, reports the CMAJ. This occurs on an off- or extra-label basis, which means that the drug is being used for unapproved reasons. ... Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:34:47 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19402 Obama's used green team: Meet the retreads Jeffrey St. Clair CountrPunch USA June 26-28, 2009 Of all of Barack Obama’s airy platitudes about change none were more vaporous than his platitudes about the environment and within that category Obama has had little at all to say about matters concerning public lands and endangered species. He is, it seems, letting his bureaucratic appointments do his talking for him. So now, five months into his administration, Obama’s policy on natural resources is beginning to take shape. It is a disturbingly familiar shape, almost sinister. It all started with the man in the hat, Ken Salazar, Obama’s odd pick to head the Department of Interior. Odd because Salazar was largely detested in his own state, Colorado, by environmentalists for his repellent coziness with oil barons, the big ranchers and the water hogs. Odd because Salazar was close friends with the disgraced Alberto Gonzalez, the torturer’s consigliere. Odd because Salazar backed many of the Bush administration’s most rapacious assaults on the environment and environmental laws. Odder still because Salazar, in his new position as guardian of endangered species, had as a senator repeatedly advocated the weakening of the Endangered Species Act. Salazar never hid his noxious positions behind a green mantle. Obama certainly knew what he was buying. And the president could have made a much different and refreshing choice by picking Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat, a Hispanic, a westerner and a true environmentalist who had helped to expose the cauldron of corruption inside the Bush Interior Department. Yes, Obama could have picked a western environmentalist; instead he tapped a prototypical western politician with deep ties to the water, oil, timber, ranching and mining industries. So the choice was deliberate and it presaged the deflating policies that are now beginning to stream out of his office, from siding with Sarah Palin against the polar bear to greenlighting dozens of Bush-era mountaintop removal mining operations across Appalachia. ... Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:28:56 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19401 Netanyahu says Palestinian state must be disarmed, settlements to continue Saed Bannoura International Middle East Media Center International June 26, 2009 Sun, 28 Jun 2009 15:19:10 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19400 Sami Moubayed Asia Times Online Hong Kong June 27, 2009 Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. DAMASCUS - Many years ago, French president Charles de Gaulle said, "France has no friends; only interests." These words came to mind as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah recently met with anti-Syrian Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a man who has loudly been critical of Hezbollah, for the first time in three years. Meeting with Jumblatt, head of the Socialist Cooperative Party, raised eyebrows in Lebanon on whether the leader of Hezbollah had changed after the June 7 elections. Many had expected the Hezbollah-led opposition to sweep parliament. Gulf states were holding their breath, preparing to cut off all aid to Lebanon in the event that happened, believing that then, the small Mediterranean country would become a launching pad for Iranian activities in the Middle East. ... Nicholas Blanford, the well-informed Beirut-based journalist, wrote: "The March 14 victory is a setback for Hezbollah which had hoped that an opposition win would provide a protective seal around its military wing. Contrary to scare-mongering rhetoric from some Israeli and Western officials, Hezbollah had no desire or interest in assuming control of the state if the opposition had triumphed." Shortly after the elections, Nasrallah spoke to his supporters, saying he accepted the election results "with sportsmanship". He then quickly added that the results meant maintaining the status quo, and not a defeat for Hezbollah since the party had won with tremendous ease all of its contested seats. By no means did this mean that Hezbollah's popularity had waned, or that the party was starting its long march into history. Nasrallah warned, as he has repeatedly done since 2006, that any talk about disarming Hezbollah was a red line that nobody could cross, regardless of the election results. Members of March 14 - who had tried to tackle Hezbollah militarily in May 2008, in vain - praised Nasrallah's calmness, which clearly triggered positive vibrations throughout Lebanon. A "gentleman's agreement" was seemingly reached in Lebanon, where Hezbollah would accept the new administration (which will probably see Saad Hariri as prime minister), while March 14 would incorporate Hezbollah - and its demands - into the new cabinet. Lebanese have seemingly grabbed at the perfect opportunity when everybody generally involved in the Lebanese issue has been focused on the unrest in Iran. Syria is preparing to turn a new leaf with the US, after Washington announced this week that it would be sending a new ambassador to Damascus to fill a post that has been vacant since 2005. The Lebanese took the chance to settle their problems from within and build on common ground between conflict parties, thus explaining the Jumblatt-Nasrallah summit. This proves that contrary to what many people thought, Nasrallah has not changed after June 7. In his own mind - and in numbers throughout its constituencies - Hezbollah did not lose the elections. The coalition, of which Hezbollah was a member - did not win. ... Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria. Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:49:17 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19399 A supporter of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi shouts slogans during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. Photo: Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images. It was only a matter of time before revolution in Iran, believed dissidents and media in the West. They were wrong. The most glaring knowledge deficit seems to come from neo-conservatives and their right-wing allies who continue to clamor for regime change. "The neo-cons know nothing about Iran, nothing about the culture of Iran," [Iranian-American journalist and author Hooman] Majd told Salon.com. "They have no interest in understanding Iran, in speaking to any Iranian other than Iranian exiles who support the idea of invasions - I'll call them Iranian Chalabis," a reference to now-disgraced neo-conservative darling Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, who reportedly provided some of the bad intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs and was slated for a prominent post-invasion role in Iraq. "It's offensive, even to an Iranian American like me," said Majd. "There are people who would have actually preferred to have Ahmadinejad as president so they could continue to demonize him and were worried, as some wrote in op-eds, that Mousavi would be a distraction and would make it easier to Iranians to build a nuclear weapon. And now all a sudden they want to be on his side? Go away." - Ali Gharib reportng "People in the West don't seem to understand that the political struggle in Iran is not about liberals versus conservatives, but conservatives against a fascist tendency uniting some sectors of the clergy, and this state within the state which are the Pasdaran [IRGC - Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps]. Both the nuclear program and the missiles are under the control of the Pasdaran. And who are they? They are former fighters in the Iran-Iraq war [of the 1908s], the religious police ... They control everything, they have informants in every building, every street, every neighborhood, like the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s." Pepe Escobar, citing an Iranian businessman who goes back and forth between Tehran and Paris. US misunderstanding on Iran lingers Ali Gharib Inter Press Service/Asia Times International/Hong Kong June 27, 2009 WASHINGTON - After 30 years of enmity closed off most lines of communication, the recent crisis in Iran has suddenly engendered a boom of American interest in the Islamic Republic. But much of the attention in Washington and elsewhere in the US is often misplaced, misguided, or completely detached from the realities currently embroiling Iran in its most significant crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. United States diplomatic relations with the nascent Islamic Republic were severed after a hostage crisis, when a group of Iranian students seized the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and held many of its occupants hostage for 444 days. Since then, few significant steps have been taken towards repairing relations, and the remaining contacts between the US and Iran atrophied as US experts with firsthand knowledge of Iran grew older and their knowledge grew more obsolete. "[The revolution] was 30 years ago," said ambassador Nick Burns, a former State Department under secretary for political affairs in the George W Bush administration. "We have a whole generation of foreign service officers who didn't learn Farsi." Furthermore, while there have been some diplomatic contacts with Iran on matters such as Afghanistan - before 2003 when Bush placed Iran in the "axis of evil" - and later Iraq, those contacts were uncommon and narrow in scope. "I was the point person on Iran from 2005 to 2008, and I never once met an Iranian official," said Burns. The resulting knowledge deficit has haunted attempts at easing relations, as when president former president Bill Clinton's secretary of state Madeline Albright waited outside a conference room at the United Nations. As a gesture, Albright planned to catch her Iranian counterpart on the way out and shake his hand. But the Iranian foreign minister wouldn't shake a woman's hand, nor did he want pictures of him with a high-ranking US official to get back to Iran. Many pundits and politicians in the US view the current crisis as an opportunity to instigate a regime change in Iran, projecting their own aspirations on those of the demonstrators and supporters of the ostensible loser of Iran's election, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. "This is not about my expertise versus somebody in a think-tank," declared Senator Lindsey Graham as he announced his sponsorship for a bill that would boost funding to Radio Farda and Voice of America in Farsi to help the US-sponsored news outlets get broader reach in Iran. "This is about me doing what I need to do." Along with Graham, neo-conservative Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator John McCain announced their support for the bill, to be written over the next Congressional break. The Iranian government has charged that the broadcast of foreign news sources into Iran is spurring on demonstrations. This claim is cited in the oft-repeated government mantra that the protests are merely foreign meddling in Iranian affairs. These accusations became all the more vocal this week, with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad on Thursday telling US President Barack Obama to avoid "interfering in Iran's affairs". "Our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously [former US president George W] Bush used to say," Ahmadinejad was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying. ... Media fantasies in Iran Abbas Barzegar Guardian UK June 26, 2009 It's not about the election, Ahmadinejad, or the even the protesters. The world has been captivated by the events in Iran because for many, Iran is to Islamism what the Soviet Union was to communism and presumably today we are somewhere near the fall of the Berlin Wall. Indeed as the media has been telling us, all the right ingredients are here: a charismatic leader, fractions in the political hierarchy, and a critical mass of protesters. The opposition has begun shouting "Allahu Akbar" from the rooftops and wearing black to commemorate their martyrs just like they did 30 years ago. Iran's diaspora pundits and dissidents have come out in droves to tell us about the unwillingness of the police to use force on the protesters … just like they did 30 years ago. There are even dissident clerics in the fight, and better yet the protesters now have Twitter and Facebook to help. I don't know whose cruel joke this is, but these protests have never been about a revolution nor have any of the opposition leaders ever suggested that. The accidental Mousavi social movement has been galvanised and sustained by bottled-up anger, not an ideological political vision for the future. It has rallied disparate sectors of society unhappy with the burdens of Islamic social restrictions, an economy whose horizon is always bleak, and three decades of international isolation. Crowds emerged to protest the election results but it wasn't until the ever prudent Ahmadinejad dismissed them as rubbish and blamed them for the "sin" of homosexuality that they poured on to the streets in masses. Even as they grew to the hundreds of thousands, they raised posters of Mousavi next to Khomeini and were quick to silence any hints of provocation. Yet we said this was a revolt for democracy, liberty and a Big Mac. Our fantastic political analyses spring from idealistic liberal hopes and are symptomatic of the larger problem we have in understanding political Islam. That this crisis has been presented as one between the "Iranian people" and its government is among the greatest errors of the media coverage this week. The competing crowds of millions for and against Ahmadinejad should have been enough to indicate that the conflict was as much a social issue as it was a political one. But phrases such as "a lot of Iranians" or "Mousavi's broad constituency" make weaker soundbites than "the Iranian people." So, from Sarkozy to Sky News, the only "Iranian people" that seemingly exist this week are those wearing green. But bias is not my gripe; the good Muslim v bad Muslim game is an old one. I care about misrepresentation. By ignoring the millions of Ahmadinejad supporters (even after counting for mass fraud) journalists and pundits have mistaken Iranian Islamists as communist bureaucrats on a payroll that might easily fold when forced to attack other Iranians. Instead, we have seen Basiji volunteers jump at the opportunity to smash their batons across the faces of men, women, and anyone else in their way. Iranian Islamists' allegiances do not lie with saffron rice and Hafez's poems. They love God, then country, grind through life as factory workers and farmhands in addition to getting PhDs in engineering and medicine. Iranians loyal to their Islamic project recite prayers for their president, relish the martyrdom of Hussein, and wait for the return of their messiah. So did anyone really think that his terrestrial representative would allow more than a week of bank burnings and highway closures? Are we really shocked that the military would close rank, dissidents would be arrested, and political threats be neutralised as 250,000 US troops sit on the country's borders and Cheney's $400m support for regime subversion gets stamped by Obama? ... Ahmadinejad won indeed and the real source of interference in Iran’s election is likely the United States John Chuckman Bellaciao France June4 27, 2009 A recent article called “Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It” by Flynt and Hillary Leverett is not the only source with serious credentials offering reasonable, non-sensational explanations for events around Iran’s presidential election. Kaveh Afrasiabi, a scholar who once taught at Tehran University and is the author of several books, says many of the same things. Close analysis of the election results gives absolutely no objective basis for making charges of a rigged election. Mousavi’s expected win – expected, that is, by the Western press and by Mousavi himself - never had any basis in fact. Afrasiabi also tells us that Ahmadinejad is extremely popular with the poor in Iran, a very large constituency, and he tells us further that Ahmadinejad spent a great deal of time traveling through the country during his first term listening to them. Ahmadinejad is himself a man of fairly humble origins with a good deal of genuine sympathy for the poor. Of course, the public in the West has been treated to a barrage of propaganda about Ahmadinejad, conditioned by countless disingenuous stories and editorials to regard him as the essence of evil, ready to stir up trouble at a moment’s notice. These perceptions, too, have no basis in fact. Ahmadinejad is a highly educated man, ready and willing to communicate with leaders in the West, although given to poking fun at some of the shibboleths we hold to. His office as president is not a powerful one in an Iran where power is divided amongst several groups, just as it is in the United States. He has no war-making power. Even his infamous statement about Israel – mistranslated consistently to make it sound terrible – was nothing more than the same kind of statement made by the CIA in its secret study predicting the peaceful end of today’s Israel in twenty years or the statement by Libya’s leader, Gaddafi, saying Israel would be drowned in a sea of Arabs. Unpleasant undoubtedly for some, the statement was neither criminal nor threatening when properly understood. The post-election troubles in Iran definitely reflect the interference of security services from at least the United States and Britain. We have several serious pieces of evidence. ... Dying seconds that last for ever Cassandra Jardine Daily Telegraph UK June 24, 2009 Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:15:31 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19398 Click on a headline below to go to that news item Friday, June 26,2009 Commentary Imagine: Prosperity without growth Commentary In a culture that exhaults Darwinian competition, some workers say "Swallow self-respect? Er, no thanks " Commentary Is Obama administration and a Democratically controlled Congress presiding over one of the most regressive wealth transfers in history? World News Dispatches AfPak campaign: 'It’s pretty unfriendly down there’ & Pakistan calls for end to drone strikes Commentary All vicarious politics is sick: Iran was an easier enemy before Americans saw their faces & Which Iran would Israel bomb? Thursday, June 25,2009 Commentary Apparent BC Rail scandal evidence tampering: Once again Campbell coalition insults "all British Columbians, who deserve to know the truth about the B.C. Rail scandal" World News US lobbyists on a roll: Gutting reform on banking, energy, and health care World News US in Iraq: A withdrawal in name only World News Eye on the AfPak campaign: US winding down Afghan poppy destruction & Obama’s undeclared war against Pakistan continues National News Canadian military set to lift veil on war stress Wednesday, June 24,2009 New World Order Eye on the surveillance state: Your medical records are going electronic & High profile harrasment of 2010 Olympic Games protestors Regional News Campbell's British Columbia: Superunbelievable, among the lyingest places on earth Commentary Iran's new adversary Commentary BRIC & SCO summits: Reinventing the wheel World News Kazakhstan: Central Asian giant battles world crisis Tuesday, June 23,2009 Commentary Israel: Fictions on the ground World News Iran lashes out at Western interference in election affairs World News Iran: Look to Qom for the next breaking story Monday, June 22,2009 Regional News British Columbia's regional health authorities: Shooting craps with the peoples' health and well being Regional News Call for public action as date approaches for next stage of the still secret but openly scandalous BC Rail deal Commentary U.S.- Canada border security and military integration National News Internet in Canada: Lawful access, net neutrality and the Electronic Commerce Protection Act come to the fore in Ottawa Sunday, June 21,2009 Commentary Conceit, arrogance and egotism Science & Technology How Neanderthals met a grisly fate: Devoured by humans Commentary Opinion: This is Zionism? World News Water wars: Israel's deployments in Lebanon this week raise tension (where tension has been high for years) Commentary Comments on Iran fal de ral Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:05:11 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19397 Murray Dobbin rabble.ca Canada June 19, 2009 It is ironic that homo sapiens, we big-brained and clever species, can trace almost every tragedy and failing to one generic cause: a failure of imagination. We seem to be an idiot savant species -- stunningly clever at so many things, capable of greatness, creativity and sacrifice for others, melding genius and love when we are at our best, and greed and hate at our worst. But whether it is the individual who fails to imagine the consequences of punching someone in a bar or a whole society which fails (like California) to imagine the consequences of starving itself of the revenue needed to function, observers from another world could easily conclude that we are terminally stupid. Or, as John Ralston Saul put, unconscious as a civilization. Those individuals and organizations who have fought off the madness and ruin of neo-liberal policies for over twenty years are now presented with the best possible time to present a vision of what is possible. Globalization is effectively dead: what characterized the world for the past thirty years, the suicidal policies of what was called the Washington Consensus, will never return, at least not in its old form. The climate crisis, the damage done to the real economies of the Global North, the arrival of peak oil, the inevitable return of protectionism and state intervention mean that we have left that era behind. Not only has financial capitalism and its corruption and ersatz wealth been exposed. The Chicago boys, the intellectual storm troopers in the free market think tanks and editorial writers of Asper media are facing an ideological crisis. The whole edifice stands exposed as a pack of lies and deceptions created for the sole purpose of enriching the already wealthy. “There is no alternative.” Really? There bloody well better be or we are all doomed. ... Canadians’ values are amazingly progressive, but a generation of neo-liberal assaults has lowered their expectations of what is possible. Nevertheless, they are out there waiting for someone, anyone, to present them with reasons to be hopeful. What they want and what we need is what America’s radical rabbi, Michael Lerner, calls the politics of meaning. ... Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:42:09 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19396 Swallow self-respect? Er, no thanks Rick Salutin Globe and Mail Canada June 26, 2009 There's an excuse-me quality to the Toronto civic employees' strike. “We knew it was not going to be a popular strike,” said union leader Ann Dembinski. She didn't request support, just “for the public to be understanding.” Further down the (picket) line, it's the same. “We're not asking for anything. We just want to keep what we've got,” said a district captain. That's modest enough, even apologetic. They don't want to suffer a pay increment far below the 3 per cent that Toronto police, firefighters and transit workers got recently. They don't want to give back the right to accumulate sick-leave benefits by coming to work assiduously, a benefit common across the country. They probably knew, before Globe columnist Marcus Gee told them, that the world “has entered an era of austerity.” They just don't want to be forced to swallow human excrement - a technical term in labour relations. Some strike issues are not primarily economic. You have to look at yourself in the mirror, and at your kids, and it's harder to do with a mouthful of the stuff. It can happen to anyone. Recently, one employer after another has tried to redefine pension clauses from the guarantee of “defined benefits” to the RSP-style crapshoot of “defined contribution.” Mostly, they've succeeded. There are other non-economic factors, such as hypocrisy. Few things motivate people like the sight of it. The Toronto strikers may know that Sir Fred Goodwin banked millions of pounds in bonuses for wrecking the Royal Bank of Scotland and that Sarah Kramer got a $114,000 bonus plus $317,000 severance when she was pushed out the door at eHealth Ontario. Margaret Wente says the Toronto strikers want a (sick leave) bonus “just for showing up.” But they've seen that, in sectors such as finance, you get far more not just for showing up but for botching things, losing billions and pulverizing the global economy. ... Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:23:58 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19395 Risk of major social upheaval likely if bank bonanza continues Marshall Auerback Huffington Post USA June 25, 2009 State and local governments have been forced into draconian budget cuts, firing workers who are among the most reliable in making their mortgage payments -- when they have jobs: firemen, policemen, teachers, civil servants. Yet the Obama administration won't spend even a small fraction of what it has wasted on the banks to cover state shortfalls. The guarantee of $5.5bn in short term notes for California was deemed to be fiscally irresponsible, yet hundreds of billions have already been allocated to the likes of Citigroup, AIG, and Goldman Sachs, all of whom have already beefed up salaries and bonuses as they emerge from the embrace of the federal government. Banks are also benefiting from lending programs that effectively allow them to borrow at zero and reinvest in Treasuries at around 3%. A bank doesn't have to do anything to make money. The banks' return on equity is going to be very good. They are going to be able to restore their finances. While this is good for banks, is it good for anyone else? The problem is the government's "free money" program means banks have little or no incentive to do any actual lending. Combined with rising unemployment and the ongoing housing crisis, this means any recovery is likely to be muted, at best, especially given the ongoing weakness in the real estate market. Growing income inequality will likely be perpetuated and exacerbated with all of the resultant social strains. And in the meantime, the siren songs will grow that we are a nation addicted to debt, deficit spending our way to economic disaster. ... In one sense, it is pointless blaming Wall Street for exploiting a system heavily rigged in its favour. They know that the game is stacked in their favour, so they are rationally taking advantage. But the sickest part about the whole episode is that the casino rule makers, Obama, Geithner and Summers, are perpetuating a flawed game that they had in their power the chance to end. ... In the meantime, beyond automatic stabilizers, the door appears to be shutting to further active fiscal ease. I wonder if the stage is already being set for tax hikes, as rumors of a federal VAT (value added tax) have been floating around of late. Add this to rising commodity prices and interest rates, and the profile of any recovery may become increasingly in question, a la 1937-8. Add to that additional bank write-offs, further credit contraction and a minimalist welfare system which leaves nothing in the way of social cohesion, and the prospects for major social upheaval look dangerously likely. What is missing is a vision of a new growth path for the US. If a public backlash is to be marshalled to something more than retribution, that needs to come to the fore. Once you get beyond the pothole and school patching, what industries can be pushed forward through public seed capital or public private partnerships? ... Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:11:04 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19394 'It’s pretty unfriendly down there’ Dianna Cahn Stars and Stripes Mideast edition USA June 26, 2009 An American soldier stands guard on a hilltop overlooking a wadi in the village of Shembowat, Afghanistan. Photo: Dianna Cahn/Stars adn Strips. "I tell my men they have to be thinking warriors," Capt. Bobby Davis of Columbus, Ga., whose platoon went out to help the convoy, said the following day. "You have to be able to go out and talk to people and in the flick of a switch, like yesterday, to kill and then continue the mission — go out again and talk to people." CAMP CLARK, Afghanistan — The shell flew over Camp Clark in the early afternoon last week, sending residents of this U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost province into a familiar scurry for cover. The single mortar shell fired from Shembowat, the village on the next hill, missed the camp just minutes before village elders were due to arrive at the adjacent Afghan army base to talk about insurgents and how they have threatened residents not to cooperate with the government. Give us weapons and we will fight them, they told American and Afghan commanders. Right in Camp Clark’s backyard, Shembowat is a reality check for the hardened military camp, where good food, air-conditioned huts, Internet and even a swimming pool offer a comfortable respite from the war outside the gates. Shembowat is a typical farming village, far removed from the political landscape. Residents often sit on the fence between the warring forces in their midst. Under threat of violence, villagers and some leaders lie low, giving free rein to insurgents who wander the mountain terrain they call home. For many, it seems a safer course of action. Local Afghan politicians are often assassinated by insurgents. And there is harsh retaliation against villagers perceived as supporting the government or U.S. troops. A villager told Israr during his visit to Shembowat that, two days earlier, a resident was taken from his home and beheaded on such a suspicion. An hour after meeting with the elders, Lt. Col. Pete Molin, commander of the Embedded Training Teams at Camp Clark, and Brig. Gen. Mohammad Israr, the Afghan National Army’s 203rd Corps’ 1st Brigade commander at neighboring Camp Parsa, fired up an armored convoy and headed down the road to Shembowat. They marched up past the bombed-out school that the U.S. helped build, and stood on the high ground overlooking the stunning landscape of the village and its farmland pouring into the valley below. To the south, Clark and Parsa were readily visible, while the view into the wadi, or dry riverbed, and the mountains beyond spoke of the challenges U.S. and Afghan forces are facing here. "It’s pretty unfriendly down there," Molin said. ... Rising toll at US military hospital in Afghanistan Jason Straziuso and Evan Vucci AP/Yahoo! News USA June 25, 2009 In this photo taken on Monday, June 1, 2009, a fellow soldier holds the hand of U.S. Pfc. Anthony Vandegrift. Photo: Associated Press BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan – The urgent call came in: Roadside bombs had ripped through two Humvees and wounded eight or nine U.S. soldiers. Medevac helicopters immediately hit the air to ferry the soldiers to the main U.S. military hospital. But when they arrived, they carried only five patients. The other four were dead. With 2009 expected to be the bloodiest year since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, medical personnel at Bagram's SSG Heath N. Craig Joint Theater Hospital say they've already seen an increase in casualties and expect more. The flow of dead and wounded puts enormous strain on the soldiers and the medical staff who must face it head on. "Everything I've experienced is boredom or terror," said Air Force Maj. Adrian Stull, a 36-year-old emergency physician from Beavercreek, Ohio. "And if I have to choose between the two, I'd have to choose boredom, because everyone goes home with all their fingers." ... Airstrike report belies "Blame Taliban" line Gareth Porter Inter Press Service International June 25, 2009 The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the U.S. command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims blaming the massive civilian deaths on the "Taliban" were fraudulent. By covering up the most damaging facts surrounding the incident, the rewritten public version of report succeeded in avoiding media stories on the contradiction between the report and the previous arguments made by the U.S. command. The declassified "executive summary" of the report on the bombing issued last Friday admitted that mistakes had been made in the use of airpower in that incident. However, it omitted key details which would have revealed the self-serving character of the U.S. command's previous claims blaming the "Taliban" – the term used for all insurgents fighting U.S. forces - for the civilian deaths from the airstrikes. ... Pakistan calls for end to drone strikes after US attack on funeral Compiled by Jason Ditz Antiwar.com News USA June 25, 2009 Visit this page for its embedded links. During today’s weekly press briefing, spokesman Abdul Basit of Pakistan’s Foreign Office expressed “concern” over Tuesday’s US drone strike against a funeral procession, cautioning that the government’s position is that “these drone attacks are counterproductive and have more disadvantages than the advantages.” Tuesday’s strike reportedly was aimed at Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan leader Baitullah Mehsud, though he was not present at the time of the attack. The strike killed at least 80 people however, and sources involved in the rescue say that at least 35 of those slain were civilians. No militant commanders were reported killed in the strike, the deadliest single US attack on Pakistani soil. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani also criticized the attack, saying the incessant US strikes were undermining the nation’s attempts at isolating the TTP leadership from the various tribes in the effected area. US officials have seemingly gone out of their way not to comment on the killings, but Senate approval for a massive increase in foreign aid to Pakistan will likely provide further impetus for the Pakistani government to keep its discontent from turning into action to prevent such strikes in the future. Noted: Interestingly, the root of the verb change is the Old Irish camm "crooked". White House drafts executive order to allow indefinite detention of terror suspects Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn ProPublica/Washington Post USA June 26, 2009 The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. ... Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:42:16 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19393 All vicarious politics is sick--the more eager, excited, and fraternal, the more prone to self-deception. The vicarious politics of liberation only adds a dimension of self-righteousness to the fault Edmund Burke detected in the politics of all revolutions: "The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror." - David Bromwich Left: Anti-government rally in Tehran, June 15, 2009. Photo: Iran Focus. Right: Pedestrians walk down a street in Tehran, Iran on Tuesday June 23, 2009. Photo: Iranian Students News Agency/Associated Press Iran was an easier enemy before we saw their faces David Bromwich Huffington Post USA June 24, 2009 If you want to kill with a clean conscience, the faces of the enemy had better be blank. Start to see them as human beings and it becomes harder to blockade and bomb them, to mine, and pollute, and "destabilize." President Clinton had no imagining of the disease he would bring to the innocent in Sudan by the "surgical" missile attack on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in 1998. George W. Bush had a happy warrior's notion of the fury he would unleash on Falluja when he gave the order to destroy that city after the election of 2004. The Sudan bombing was treated by the American press as a distraction from a sex scandal. The second siege of Falluja--tens of thousands of houses crushed or cratered--was hardly covered at all. The faces of the people, and not "the face of the enemy." The difference between the abstract and the individual is decisive for imagination. It is the faces that are indelible, as we saw in the streets of Tehran, whether the men and women were holding up cell phones or placards written black on green, or waving a bloodied shirt or bandage; or holding a rock, as some in Iran did, and as the members of other crowds, less kindly portrayed in the American press, have been known to do. It isn't the face of the enemy that we see in these pictures. No, these are people much like ourselves, who don't want to die at the hands of their government--or at the hands of ours, either, for that matter. We know them from the messages they have sent by Twitter; by the evidence of their large and small sacrifices; by their expressed loyalty to a God whom they invoke in prayers against the abuse of power by their leaders. The faces are peculiar, personal, and counter to expectation; they show an energy of original purpose. I want to live as much as you do, they say. The large plans for good wars need to reduce the enemy to an abstraction before the bombing feels right. The most famous of American war promoters, John McCain, has a simple and emphatic ability to abstract--Iraq, Gaza, Georgia, Iran, it is all one to him. They turn him on and fire him up. Wars, he thinks (and was raised to think), are simply the spectacular way that we settle our affairs in this world. But successful abstraction is a mental trick that is not possible to everyone. The secular prophets for the bombing of Iran have always known how to perform this trick. They knew long before they fell in love with a fraction of the Iranian people. McCain himself, and Charles Krauthammer and Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman and Alan Dershowitz--all are friends of Iran, as they see it. Friends of the Iran of their minds, which will some day replace the enemy Iran. The proof of their friendship is their eagerness to secure a blockade and to bomb. And how these prophets of war loved the protests! Here was the real Iran, yearning to be surgically struck. We will bring these Iranians their freedom, said McCain and the rest, by killing their country. So let us cheer them now, and metaphorically shake their hand by satellite image, before we bomb them for their own sakes. ... Which Iran would Israel bomb? Zvi Bar'el Ha'aretz Israel June 21, 2009 Suddenly, there appears to be an Iranian people. Not just nuclear technology, extremist ayatollahs, the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad, and an axis of evil. All of a sudden, the ears need to be conditioned to hear other names: "'Mousawi' or 'Mousavi,' how is it pronounced exactly?"; Mehdi Karroubi; Khamenei ("It's not 'Khomeini'?"). Reports from Iranian bloggers fill the pages of the Hebrew press. Iranian commentators - in contrast to Iranian-affairs commentators - are now the leading pundits. The hot Internet connection with Radio Ran (the Persian-language radio station in Israel) is the latest gimmick. And most interesting and important is that the commentary on what is taking place in Iran is not being brought to the public by senior intelligence officers, but via images transmitted by television. Israel is now gaining a more intimate, accurate familiarity with the Iranian public. The demonstrations have made quite clear that there is not one Iran or even two, but rather a number of Irans. There is the Iran that belongs to those who screamed, "Death to America and to Israel," and there is the Iran that screams, "Down with the dictator." ... Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators did not pour into the streets due to American intervention or threats from Israel. They want a better Iran for themselves, not for Obama or Benjamin Netanyahu. They will be the ones to determine what qualifies as a better Iran. This is the crux of the confusion that we have stumbled upon. The grand enemy that was neatly packaged into a nuclear, Shi'ite-religious container has come apart at the seams. On the one hand, it threatens, while on the other hand it demonstrates for democracy. On one street, it raises a fist against America, and in another alley, streams of protesters march for human rights. For goodness' sake, who is left to bomb? ... Related: 'Ahmadinejad win requires primed IDF' Jerusalem Post Israel June 25, 2009 Speaking at a graduation ceremony for new IAF pilots in Hatzerim on Thursday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi stated that the victory of hardliner president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian presidential elections requires the IDF to remain primed and prepared. "The reelection of the Iranian president, his remarks on his intention to harm Israel, and his efforts to obtain unconventional weapons, require us to be prepared to deal with every threat, far away and nearby," Ashkenazi said. "As the chief of general staff I know - only a strong and high quality IDF will keep war at bay and if necessary, will subdue the enemy and win." Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who also spoke at the ceremony, stressed that the IAF was prepared for every mission. ... "We will not remove any option from the table and advise others to do the same," the defense minister said, hinting that Israel was prepared to carry out a military strike against Iran if diplomatic efforts to halt the Islamic Republic's nuclear program fail. ... Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:39:48 -0400