Fri, 09 May 2008 06:24:22 -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=17597 Dave Patterson Letters from Green Island Prince Edward Island Canada May 5, 2008 ... I write in reference to the survey concerning the respect Canadians have for different professions just released, and its indication that journalists aren't doing so well (interestingly enough not apparently covered by any major Cdn media, nothing I could find in the National Post, Suns or CBC, and only a short mention in passing in a Star editorial): Angus Reid Poll: Politicians Garner the Lowest Level of Respect Among Canadians Priests and journalists see significant drop in level of respect since 1994; doctors only group to see an increase. As you will see, if you look, journalists have fallen considerably in respect the last few years, with only politicians and lawyers rating lower in major professions. However, I write not to gloat, but because I have written you all recently, and been met with either silence in most cases or protest in the one or two who have responded - perhaps this survey will give you some pause to reconsider what I have to say. And perhaps not, of course. I write now, and earlier, because I care about the media a great deal - you/they are a central part of a functioning democracy, and when the media stops doing their job properly, we are all in trouble. I am a concerned and engaged citizen, and rely on the media for information - and it is very distressing to realise that I cannot trust the media in the way I should be able to - and not only personally distressing, but a serious indicator that we are in some danger as a society, as many have noted the crucial connection between a viable democracy and a free and **responsible** media. I am also old enough to remember when the media was much more respected in our country, and with reason, as they were doing a much better job - they were working for 'we the people' back then, whereas now you really seem to be working for 'they the corporation' first, and 'we the people' only through the corporate filter - oh, I know you pretend to be working for we the people, and regularly feel a need to tell us all how lucky we are to be 'served' by the great Canadian media, but that's the kind of dissembling that is causing your reputation to suffer so, when people who are paying attention understand that you are saying one thing whilst doing another. ... [VANCOUVER May 1, 2008] Canadians give top marks to doctors, teachers and police officers, a new Angus Reid Strategies poll has found, while politicians garner the least amount of respect. In the online survey of a representative national sample, a large majority of Canadians say they have a great deal or a fair amount of respect for doctors (94%), police officers (83%) and teachers (83%). At the bottom end are politicians (25%), lawyers (44%) and journalists (49%). The results of the current survey are especially noteworthy when compared to those of an identical poll carried out by the Angus Reid Group in 1994. Interestingly, over the past 14 years, respect for every single profession with the exception of doctors has diminished across the country. The professionals who endured the most noticeable slump are journalists. In 2008, less than half of all respondents say they have a great deal or a fair amount of respect for journalists (49%), compared to 73 per cent in 1994. ... Fri, 09 May 2008 06:24:22 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17596 CBC News Canada May 7, 2008 A court ruling in the United States about Tasers is causing concern in Canada's medical community. The U.S.-based manufacturer of the controversial stun guns, Taser International, has won a court order in Ohio that forces a medical examiner to change autopsy reports. ... Doctors and medical examiners in the United States have also expressed unease over the Ohio court decision. Dr. Jeff Jentzen of the National Association of Medical Examiners said the case could affect other autopsy results. "The physician shouldn't be threatened by individual companies attempting to preserve the reputation of their project," Jentzen said. ... Fri, 09 May 2008 06:22:53 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17595 Image: EuroNews TV. While Israelis kicked off the 60th anniversary of their independence Thursday, in celebrations that are expected to continue in the coming weeks, Palestinians are beginning to mark the same series of events as the nakba, or catastrophe. Tight security as Israel celebrates 60 years EuroNews TV France May 8, 2008 In an atmosphere of national pride, Israel is celebrating 60 years of statehood. The coast of Tel Aviv was the setting for a maritime display, one of countless events across the country to mark the day it was born. Back in May 1948, Israel was designed as a Jewish homeland, and a haven for survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. The young people celebrating today have a very different life experience, although they have grown up in a nation which has never known peace. Independence Day festivities go hand in hand with current tensions with the Palestinians and security surrounding celebrations has been tight. ... Israel's Original Sin Jeet Heer National Post Canada May 7, 2008 Sixty years ago, a 12-year-old boy witnessed the slaughter of his family. His name was Fahim Zaydan, and he lived in the Arab village of Deir Yassin in Mandate Palestine, which was attacked on April 9, 1948, by Irgun and Stern Gang troops, paramilitary forces allied with the right-wing of the Zionist movement. These troops swooped into the village and started machine gunning civilians. Those that survived this initial attack were then forced by the troops to gather outside. "They took us out one after the other," Zaydan recalled. "Shot an old man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front of us, and when my mother yelled, bending over him -- carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her -- they shot her too." Irgun commander Ben Zion-Cohen offered a more succinct account of what happened: "We eliminated every Arab that came our way." This statement glosses over the fact that some of the Arab women were raped by Irgun and Stern Gang troops before they were killed. At least 93 civilians in the village were murdered that day, not just women and children but also babies. The massacre at Deir Yassin is one of the most famous atrocities of 1948, but it was not the only one nor the largest. In fact, if one were cynical one could argue that Deir Yassin gets publicized only because its perpetrators were Irgun and Stern Gang troops, easy scapegoats who can be blamed for the violence in order to make the mainstream Labor Zionism of David Ben-Gurion look more respectable. Deir Yassin was in fact a microcosm of what happened in Palestine as a whole in 1948: Zionist troops, including those under Ben-Gurion's command, used terror tactics to force the indigenous population to flee. Israel was founded through an act of ethnic cleansing, of a type all too familiar in recent history. The creation of the State of Israel was both a triumph and a tragedy. The triumph is well known: how the fledgling and precarious Zionist movement, still recovering from the horrors of the Holocaust, waged a war of national liberation in Palestine, creating a new Jewish state while fending off hostile Arab armies. It's an inspiring story of a scrappy underdog who wins against the odds. This triumph is often celebrated in religious and mythical terms (think of the title of Leon Uris's hugely popular novel Exodus, evocative of Moses). But there was a tragic side to Israel's founding. The ethnic cleansing that allowed Israel to emerge was a terrible trauma for the Arab victims, and it continues to haunt the Jewish state to this day. The external war against Arab armies was mirrored by an internal war against Arabs living inside Palestine. Because of this tragic legacy, uncritically celebrating 1948 does a disservice to Jews and Arabs alike. ... If you look at Zionism from a Western perspective, its logic is clear and compelling. Anti-Semitism has deep roots in European history and the Holocaust demonstrated what happens to Jews when they don't have the protective shield of their own state. And the guilt for the Holocaust belongs not just to the Germans, who were the primary perpetrators, but also their many collaborators in Poland, Ukraine, France and elsewhere. Nor were the English-speaking peoples innocent: England, Canada, the United States and the other members of the anglosphere made extraordinary efforts to keep out Jewish refugees. Western civilization committed terrible crimes in the 1930s and 1940s, and the West owes the Jews a state. But if you look at Zionism from a global perspective, one that acknowledges that Arabs are human beings, then the morality becomes much murkier. Unlike the peoples of Europe, the Palestinians weren't direct participants in the Holocaust. Why should Palestinians lose their land because of crimes committed by Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and other Europeans? It's difficult to look at the founding of Israel, the displacement of the indigenous population and the ongoing occupation, and not conclude that the Palestinians are paying a huge price for other people's sins. ... An Arab veteran of 1948 recalls Palestinian 'catastrophe' Ilene R. Prusher Christian Science Monitor USA May 9, 2008 Palestinians: Mahmoud Jadallah stands near a bunker outside Jerusalem where he fought in the 1948 war. Photo: Debbie Hill/Special to The Christian Science Monitor Jerusalem - Mahmoud Jadallah recalls the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as if it were yesterday. As he guides a visitor through the village he once defended against Israeli forces, the names of outposts and passwords his Arab fighters used trip off his tongue. But the day that the Jordanians told them to stop fighting is clearest. The war was over – for the moment, at least – and an armistice had been reached between Israel and Jordan. "The Jordanians came along with us and said, 'OK, we don't need you anymore. You can go home. We're in charge now. They're a state, and we're a state.' "One of our soldiers couldn't believe what had happened. In front of everyone, he put his rifle under his feet and broke it, destroyed it. He said, 'Losing the soil of this land, which is mixed with our blood, this is something I cannot take,' " Mr. Jadallah recalls. A Jordanian officer chastised the soldier. "This weapon you broke, you should have sold it to buy food for your family." After that, says Jadallah, no one said a word, and the only sounds were of people crying. While Israelis kicked off the 60th anniversary of their independence Thursday, in celebrations that are expected to continue in the coming weeks, Palestinians are beginning to mark the same series of events as the nakba, or catastrophe. ... "We were shocked to see that the British withdrawal did not equal our ascendancy. They gave all of their sites and locations and equipment to the Jews," Jadallah says. "Our capacity was very weak. We didn't have the same weaponry they did. We only had some simple rifles and ammunition. " ... In retrospect, he says he regrets that the Partition Plan for Palestine, passed by the fledgling United Nations on Nov. 29, 1947, was a failure. Palestinian Arabs felt they had no choice to but to fight it, he says, because they didn't feel the division of land was fair. Israel agreed to the partition plan and Arab states rejected it, which led to the outbreak of the war and Israel's declaration of statehood less than six months later. "We liked the concept of partition, but we felt it was not done correctly," Jadallah sighs. "We reached a moment where partition was an opportunity, and we missed it. Our only option was to protect the land on which we were living, because we saw that the Jews were taking much more than the partition called for." Israel's portion of the land in the partition plan was indeed designated to be smaller than what it became by mid-1948; Zionist leaders believed the partition's narrow borders to be indefensible. ... 1948: the first Arab-Israeli war, by Benny Morris; A History of Modern Israel, by Colin Shindler Reviewed by Stephen Howe The Independent UK May 9, 2008 During just two decades after the Second World War, dozens of new states were created. Most were products of colonial rule – in their majority, British rule – and its end. Many of their foundations involved violence, some (most obviously India and Pakistan) vicious massacre and ethnic cleansing. One of those postcolonial creations, though, remains unendingly contentious on a scale to which no other comes close. Why should the birth of Israel be celebrated, deplored and debated, 60 years on, so intensely as it is? Everyone knows, or thinks they know, some answers to that question. But which answers are emphasised says a lot about the commentator's biases. At the extremes, they range from wild claims about an all-powerful "Israel lobby" controlling great-power policies, to equally excessive assertions about rampant anti-Semitism among Israel's critics. More sensible responses centre on two things that didn't happen 60 years ago: a lasting peace in the Middle East, and the creation of a Palestinian state, or any political arrangement acceptable to most Palestinians. As a result, some would say, the 1948 war which gave birth to Israel has never really ended. ... Fri, 09 May 2008 04:36:46 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17594 Don Sawyer Briarpatch Magazine Saskatchewan Canada May 2008 issue In fighting plans for a mammoth big box store that would devour the small city I call home, I have made a startling discovery: a dangerous cult has spread from the heart of darkest Arkansas, jumped the border and brainwashed millions of innocent Canadians into its doctrine of diabolical materialism. The cult I speak of is called Wal-Marxism, and it is so pervasive and insidious that it is quickly supplanting all other contemporary belief systems. Wal-Marxism can be summed up in a single statement promulgated by leading Wal-Marxist theorists: “From each according to his/her ability to mortgage, borrow, leverage and squander, to each according to his/her constantly expanding, insatiable, advertising-fuelled need for stuff.” Wal-Marxism is a quasi-religion whose adherents (Wal-Marxists) believe they can consume their way to bliss through sacramental purchases of tawdry goods. Wal-Marxist cathedrals dot North America, and while astonishingly uniform and unaesthetic, these titanic tabernacles attract millions of adherents each day — including Sunday. ... While Wal-Marxism has no single holy scripture, the Wal-Marxist canon of beliefs is incorporated into virtually all media. ... As bizarre and unsustainable as this sect’s creed may appear to non-believers, cult members are not limited to the ignorant and gullible. Instead, they are found among all sectors of society. While their infiltration of less savoury trades such as economics and law is to be expected, even usually thoughtful people like plumbers and service sector workers have fallen prey to the hedonistic allure and simplistic answers to difficult questions that Wal-Marxism provides. This is truly a national crisis. ... Don Sawyer is an educator, writer and community activist living in Salmon Arm, B.C. Thu, 08 May 2008 11:48:16 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17593 Josh Harkinson Mother Jones USA May/June 2008 Issue As Canada scrambles to dig up some of the world's dirtiest oil, a bush doctor tracks mysterious diseases, poisoned rivers, and shattered lives. At a small airport in the northern Alberta town of Fort McMurray, a rickety, single-engine Cessna hurtles off the ground with a roar. Dr. John O'Connor ignores the shuddering fuselage, the tail wiggle, the steep climb above the spruce trees at the end of the runway. For O'Connor, a bush doctor who has tended to some of Canada's most remote Native American communities for more than a decade, this October morning is the start of a routine commute. In his fleece vest and green fedora, the small, middle-aged Irishman looks simultaneously rugged and elfin. A plastic tray of fruit salad vibrates beneath his seat, a gift for locals who are used to subsisting on moose, pickerel, and muskrat. Outside, a carpet of boreal forest unfurls at the southern edge of town. Our plane flies past suburban subdivisions, freshly paved culs-de-sac, and what O'Connor says is the largest trailer park in North America. As we head north, tracking the steep banks of the Athabasca River, the forest returns. And then the trees quickly vanish, along with everything else, into miles and miles of rolling hills of sand. "The sand blows around like you wouldn't believe," O'Connor shouts over the propeller buzz. "Drive from Fort McMurray, and you will encounter what looks like a sandstorm." Below, some 2 billion tons of soil and rock—"overburden," as the oil industry politely calls it—have been stripped away to reveal deposits of hydrocarbon-laced sandstone known as tar sands. ... Eventually, people in high places started paying attention to O'Connor, but not in the way he'd hoped. Last January, Canada's national health agency accused him of professional misconduct, claiming he had raised "undue alarm" about environmental health threats and "engendered a sense of mistrust" in government authorities. ... Fort Chipewyan's uncertain future weighs heavily on O'Connor. He's grown tired of the grit of Fort McMurray, the long hours on call, and the burden of accusation. "It's constant; it's consuming," he explains. "I can't remember the last time I had a good night's sleep." Last fall, he quit his job and said goodbye to Alberta (although he still makes frequent visits). He has been replaced by a new doctor who has kept a much lower profile. "I'm not a whistleblower," O'Connor says. "I'm just asking questions as a simple, humble family physician." He now lives across the continent, in Nova Scotia, in a house overlooking blue rollers and a beach of pure, white sand. Thu, 08 May 2008 11:46:55 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17592 Lina Morais OhmyNews South Korea May 8, 2008 The arrival of the Caravan in the city of Recife, Brazil. Photo: ©2008 Lina Morais I was really eager to meet them, imagining how they would arrive, how colorful they would be. Lia, a journalism student who does volunteer work at the community library in Coque (one of the biggest slums in the city of Recife -- the capital of Pernambuco, a northeastern state of Brazil), said they should be arriving any time, for it was almost 4 p.m. Nobody at Coque (which is mostly known by the rest of the population as the core of violence and drug smuggling in the town) seemed to know about the arrival of the Rainbow Caravan. And, if people did know, they didn't seem to care about it; everything seemed pretty normal on the streets, I didn't hear anybody talking about the arrival or asking any questions. ... didn't know much about it; a friend had filled me in slightly, telling me that it was created in Mexico by a man named Alberto Ruz in 1996, and that it had traveled through a lot of South American countries, bringing to poor communities some notions of eco-villages, recycling, art and, most of all, peace. How did they get to that poor ghetto lost in the middle of Recife? In 2005, the Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, was at an international event in Goias (a state in the middle of Brazil) when he discovered the existence of the caravan's work, which also happened to be attending the event. Afterwards, he invited them to be part of the Cultura Viva (Live Culture) Project, in which about 400 communities of the country had been chosen as "cultural spots" that would receive cultural activities sponsored by the government -- the Coque district was one of them. So, since 2005, the Caravan has been in Brazil and they had already traveled all over the country before finally getting to Recife. And that was all I knew Finally, there they were. First, came a small van (painted and decorated, as if it were an ambulant piece of art) and, right after, a bus that had the same features of the van. There were about 10 of them and they wore colorful outfits, costumes and some had their faces painted with very bright images and lines. Most of the people spoke Spanish, but we discovered that there were two Brazilians amongst the group that had just arrived. One was Luciano and the other... well, the other called himself "Ninguem"(Nobody). ... "Ninguem" being interviwed by Lia. Photo: ©2008 Lina Morais [Ninguem] said the caravan had already been to 17 countries in Latin America and that they worked especially with children and teenagers during their visits to the communities. Their work was connected to circus, theater and dance performances, besides their strong connection to the earth and spirituality. They were now a group of 21 people (16 adults, two teens and three children) from all over the world, such as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, France, the US, Italy. ... "We don't believe in a class revolution; we believe in the revolution of paradigms, of spiritual elevation. It's pointless to want a better world if we don't start putting this desire into practice by starting with our own lives. Above all, we celebrate the peace culture. Yes, we make 'peace guerillas,' leaving seeds in the places we pass through." ... Workshop with children. Photo: ©2008 Lina Morais "They taught the kids how to recycle plastic bottles and turn them into musical instruments such as drums and rattles. Furthermore, they performed amazing juggling and dance presentations that really amazed everybody around them. And they also painted the front of our library, which looks so beautiful now," she says. About seeds the Rainbow Caravan left for growth, Betania [who lives in Coque and participated actively in the Caravan's work there] says that, because it was widely used for activities by the caravan, more kids know about the existence of the library now and also seem to come around more often. "The children felt more important, because they were taking part in something while the artists were here. Now, a lesson I believe they left us is that we should promote more cultural activities in our community; we have proof that actions like these are really good and they attract everybody's attention, bring people together." ... It's been nearly a month and a half since the members of the caravan left Coque, but they're still in Recife, working with other communities, and they will leave our city in June. The impression they took from Coque? Veronica Sacta says: "They tell us that it is a very violent area, but we met a lot of people who had open hearts, with very good feelings. There was no violence around us and everything was harmonious and organized." Obviously, she didn't mean to set aside the negative characteristics of this poor ghetto, but I'm sure that what she meant was that the existence of these people goes beyond their stigma of misery and violence that is usually exclusively depicted by the local media. ... Thu, 08 May 2008 11:45:25 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17591 Can Tanzania reap bumper harvests? Madeleine Morris BBC UK May 8, 2008 To the untrained eye, the never-ending green of the maize, rice and sugar cane fields of northern Tanzania look lush and bountiful. ... Mr Chacha's problems are typical not just of small-scale farmers in Tanzania, but all over Africa. Generally, traders come directly to farmers to offer a price. Farmers are forced to accept either because lack of good roads and affordable transportation means they can only sell locally, or they do not know what the market rate is. Many sell at a low price simply because, like Mr Chacha, they need money immediately. It creates a vicious circle where farmers are unable to improve their crop yield by buying better seeds and fertiliser because they are getting such little money for their produce. This keeps the farmer in poverty - and means local consumers either rely on increasingly expensive food imports, or simply go hungry. And with the cost of food rising rapidly all over the world, solutions are urgently needed to not only feed people in the short term, but provide more in the long term. On average, small-holding farmers in Africa get only a third of the yield per hectare of farmers in other parts of the world. Photo right: People carrying rice in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. A project designed to help small-scale farmers in Tanzania is an example of the basic interventions that could help bring about a "green revolution". "We are helping farmers so much," says Joshua Mwankunda, acting programme co-ordinator for the Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme (AMSDP). "There has been a tremendous increase in yield since we started working in 2002." The project helps farmers by facilitating small loans to allow the purchase of high-yield seeds, machinery and fertiliser, and crucially has improved participating farmers' access to markets. So far AMSDP has guaranteed loans of $100,000 (£50,000) to small holders. Mr Chacha is hoping to benefit from the small loans facility next season. "I want to buy high-yield seeds," he says. "Since AMSDP built the canal next to the paddies I know farmers who get 50 bags per acre from that high-yield rice instead of my 25. That would help me and my family very much." Another important addition has been the role of "market spies" - mkulima shu shu shu in Swahili. "I go to the villages trying to find the prices of rice or other crops and I put it on the board so that the farmers can know the price it's being sold at," says Stanley Mchome, the mkulima shu shu shu for Magugu village. "We sometimes go to Arusha or Dar es Salaam to search for prices too." Mr Mchome sends text messages detailing the prices via his mobile phone to other farmers in the region. This gives them more power to demand fair prices from the traders. ... Related: Asian states feel rice pinch BBC UK April 11, 2008 Asian countries have been struggling to cope as the cost of rice has reached record levels. ... The spike is also part of a general surge in food costs worldwide, so the option of switching to cheaper foods is often not available. ... This article briefly examines steps being taken India, Bangladesh, Pilippines, Thailand, China and Japan to deal with high prices and shortages. Thu, 08 May 2008 11:42:00 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17590 I don't understand why an unimportant incident has gained such great significance in your country. Why so much attention? Civilian deaths occur every week, because Afghanistan is no Sunday school. - US Army officer addressing Polish military prosecutors Photo taken in May 2007 in Warsaw at the farewell ceremonies of the Polish troops going to Afghanistan. Poland: Facing war crimes in Afghanistan Zoltán Dujisin Inter Press Service International December 27, 2007 Poland has woken up to the possibility that its troops in Afghanistan were involved in a war crime against defenceless civilians. The reported events have shocked a public which remains sensitive to the performance of its country's military missions abroad. But Polish authorities have kept the flow of information under control, leaving the media the task of digging out the truth. ... The wives of two of the soldiers accused of war crimes have said the "suggestion" to open fire came from a U.S. command. According to the Dec. 3 edition of Rzeczpospolita, the Polish soldiers were told by the base "the village needs to be f***** up," but claim they were still aiming at the nearby hills where they supposed the Taliban members were hiding. It is believed that Taliban members often come down from the hills and hide among the civilian population in villages, especially at night. The prosecution says there is no proof indicating U.S. responsibility, but in Poland disillusionment with the U.S. is on the rise. Roman Kuzniar, head of the strategic studies department at Warsaw University, says that while the Polish contingent in Afghanistan is part of NATO's peacekeeping mission, Polish troops have been made subordinate to U.S. troops, impairing the quality of the Polish mission. "It was certain that our soldiers would soon adopt the methods of combat of their American superiors and colleagues. These methods involve ignoring completely all rights and limitations under international humanitarian law," Kuzniar wrote in the Nov. 21 edition of Warsaw Dziennik. Recent statements by U.S. President George Bush have done little to improve Washington's image in Poland. "Bush recently forgot to mention Polish troops when mentioning U.S. allies in Afghanistan," Przybylski told IPS. "For Poles it is especially important to be recognised as allies of the U.S." Both the Iraqi and the Afghani missions are unpopular among Poles. The withdrawal from Iraq has been scheduled for 2008, but there are still no plans to reduce the 1,200-strong contingent in Afghanistan. But it could, however, be changed into one of a more civilian nature. A poll conducted shortly after the prosecution announced its findings shows that the Afghani mission has almost equalled the Iraqi mission in unpopularity, with 85 percent of Poles opposing both missions. Poles also overwhelmingly support an official apology to the Afghanistan government. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has made that conditional on the investigation's conclusions. ... Nangar Khel: Chronicle of a NATO massacre untold Dave Markland rabble.ca Canada May 5, 2008 On the afternoon of August 16, 2007 a unit of Polish soldiers operating under NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Paktika Province approached a small Afghan village. Known as Delta platoon, the patrol had come to the village, called Nangar Khel, in reponse to a Taliban IED attack on American forces early that morning in the same area. What happened next is still not clear and awaits an upcoming trial, but in preliminary hearings officials have acknowledged that these Polish NATO troops killed six civilians and seriously wounded three more in mortar and machine gun fire. The victims, who were reportedly taking part in a wedding celebration, included several women and children. Soon after the incident, ISAF's public relations department announced that several civilians had been killed in a skirmish between NATO forces and Taliban insurgents. As is normal for NATO press releases, the notice did not name the nationality of the foreign troops involved. Less commonly, however, ISAF did not state whether it was NATO or Taliban forces who had killed the civilians. While several news agencies carried brief reports relaying the facts, these were not picked up and the incident was basically ignored by the major English language media. ... Back in Poland, government officials announced that an investigation had begun into the nature of the incident, which was still largely a mystery to most Poles. But the investigation did not appear to bear fruit until after national elections which saw the incumbents ousted, including Defense Minister Szczyglo. On November 13, as Poland's newly elected government was entering office, seven soldiers were arrested. The suspects are named as: Capt. Olgierd C., Second Lt. Łukasz B., Ensign Andrzej O., Platoon Sgt. Tomasz B. and privates first class Damian L., Robert B. and Jacek J. Polish law forbids publishing the suspects' full names. News photographers captured images of masked teams of SWAT-style military police hauling away hooded and handcuffed suspects. The following day, military prosecutors announced criminal charges for some members of Delta platoon. Two privates, a sergeant, a warrant officer, a lieutenant and a captain were charged with murder of civilians under circumstances of war or occupation, while one private was charged with attacking civilian objects. The prosecutor stated that the crimes for which they are charged constitute violations of the Hague Conventions of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and carry jail sentences of 12 years to life for the murder charges and five to 25 years for the lesser charge. ... Chronicle of a NATO massacre untold: Part II Dave Markland rabble.ca Canada May 7, 2008 ... While the arrests of the accused soldiers sparked a media frenzy in Poland, the issue has been almost completely ignored outside the country. This omission is especially glaring in the case of the American media, as it is the U.S. that is in nominal command of NATO forces in Paktika. And, indeed, the relationship between the Polish and American forces goes deeper than that. Stanislaw Koziej, a retired Major-General in the Polish army and former deputy minister of defense, writes that Polish troops in Afghanistan are more closely placed under American command than they are in Iraq. "The incorporation of the small combat sub-units into the American structures was not advantageous." The reason for this, he continues, is that "integration with the lowest ranks of the U.S. structures naturally forces our soldiers to use the American tactical doctrine," which he says contrasts with the situation in Iraq, where some 1200 Polish soldiers operate with more independence. With this structure of command as background, the lack of attention from the U.S. press is telling. Apart from very brief notices in three American papers (New York Times, LA Times, New York Newsday) taken from a November 15 Associated Press dispatch, American press coverage has amounted to one article in the New York Times on November 29. The article, by Berlin bureau chief Nicholas Kulish, generally promotes the view that the Polish soldiers attacked the civilians by accident. This despite the fact that Poland's leading daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, had already revealed testimony from colleagues of the arrested soldiers who saw several of the accused deliberately firing on civilian targets. Kulish's 900-word article, reprinted in the International Herald Tribune, represents the only English language coverage I could find apart from mention of the case in a December 7 Financial Times opinion piece authored by an American defense analyst. Canadian print media coverage has been precisely zero. ... The Polish military prosecutors held preliminary hearings on the case, bringing in various military and government officials including at least one American army major who sought to calm Polish nerves. The killing of numerous civilians at Nangar Khel, he said, is "something unfortunate, but not of great significance". He stressed the triviality of the event, saying, "I don't understand why an unimportant incident has gained such great significance in your country. Why so much attention? Civilian deaths occur every week, because Afghanistan is no Sunday school." A Polish Special Forces officer also told the hearings that the killings were a non-event: "Harming a civilian is something that could happen to any soldier." He added, "The Americans experience similar incidents even once a week. [However] a substantial majority of such cases result from poor air reconnaissance." ... Thu, 08 May 2008 00:59:19 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17589 In the scientific community, we have Thesis and Antithesis, but we don't yet have Synthesis. We're going to go back and reread Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In the meantime, a brief window on the dialectic. On the one hand: Globe may be cooling on global warming Deroy Murdock Scripps Howard News Service USA May 1, 2008 Australia, the land where sinks drain the other way, has alerted Americans that we see Earth's climate upside down: We're not warming. We're cooling. "Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously." Dr. Phil Chapman wrote in The Australian on April 23 [Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh]. "All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead." Chapman neither can be caricatured as a greedy oil-company lobbyist nor dismissed as a flat-Earther. He was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology staff physicist, NASA's first Australian-born astronaut, and Apollo 14's Mission Scientist. Chapman believes reduced sunspot activity is curbing temperatures. As he elaborates, "there is a close correlation between variations on the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate." ... While neither anecdotes nor one year's statistics confirm global cooling, a decade of data contradicts the "melting planet" rhetoric that heats Capitol Hill and America's newsrooms. "The University of Alabama-Huntsville's analysis of data from satellites launched in 1979 showed a warming trend of 0.14 degrees Centigrade (0.25 Fahrenheit) per decade," Joseph D'Aleo, the Weather Channel's first Director of Meteorology, told me. "This warmth peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5 percent. Cooling began in 2002. Over the last six years, global temperatures from satellite and land-temperature gauges have cooled (-0.14 F and -0.22 F, respectively). Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them in 2003." These researchers are not alone. They are among a rising tide of scientists who question the so-called "global warming" theory. Some further argue that global cooling merits urgent concern. "In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is 'settled,' significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming," 100 prestigious geologists, physicists, meteorologists, and other scientists wrote United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon last December. They also noted "today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998." In a December 2007 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority-staff report, some 400 scientists -- from such respected institutions as Princeton, the National Academy of Sciences, the University of London, and Paris' Pasteur Institute -- declared their independence from the pro-warming 'conventional wisdom.' "Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas," asserted climatologist Luc Debontridder of Belgium's Royal Meteorological Institute. "It is responsible for at least 75 percent of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it." ... Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. On the other hand: Warming trend has not been reversed David Karoly The Australian Australia April 29, 2009 The opinion piece by Phil Chapman ("Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh", Opinion, April 22) warns of an approaching ice age but contains a number of factual errors, misleading statements and incorrect conclusions. Chapman reports global average temperature cooled by 0.7C in 2007 and says: "If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over." It is true that global data sets show a pronounced cooling from January2007 to January 2008 of slightly less than 0.7C. It is an error to state, as Chapman does, that this is unprecedented, as similar dramatic falls occurred from 1998 to 1999, and from 1973 to 1974. It should also be noted that the global average temperature has warmed substantially, by about 0.3C from January 2008 to March 2008. In addition, the annual average temperature for 2007 was within 0.1C of the average temperature in 2006 and 2005; no dramatic cooling there. So what caused this rapid cooling during 2007, and also from 1998 to 1999, and from 1973 to 1974? What was common to all those periods? In each case, the common factor was a rapid change from El Nino to La Nina conditions, from warm temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean to cold temperatures in the same region, which has a significant effect on global climate patterns and global average temperature. La Nina is associated with below-normal global average temperature, and because of its influence, 2008 is likely to be about 0.3C cooler than the average of the previous few years. Chapman did not consider La Nina as a cause of the cooling in 2007 and instead linked it to the minimum in the 11-year cycle in sunspot numbers: "The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday." I don't know where these sunspot numbers came from but they are in error. ... Most of the increase in global average temperature over the past 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This long-term increase in global average temperature will continue throughout the 21st century because of further increases in greenhouse gases. Yes, there will be year-to-year natural climate variations, with some colder years, but the long-term warming trend will continue. An ice age is definitely not going to occur in the 21st century. Instead, we will all need to make very large reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases if we are to minimise dangerous anthropogenic climate change. David Karoly is a professor in the University of Melbourne's school of earth sciences and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. Related: The "Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change" was agreed on March 4, 2008. Hundreds sign climate realist declaration - 'global warming' is not a global crisis International Climate Science Coalition/PR Newswire/groups.google.com Canada April 22, 2008 OTTAWA, Canada - The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) today released the names of over 500 endorsers of the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change that calls on world leaders to "reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as popular, but misguided works such as An Inconvenient Truth." All taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) should "be abandoned forthwith", declaration signatories conclude. Included in the endorser lists are world leading climate scientists, economists, policymakers, engineers, business leaders, medical doctors, as well as other professionals and concerned citizens from two dozen countries. The complete declaration text, endorser lists and international media contacts for expert commentary, may be viewed at http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/media1.php. Perhaps most significant among the declaration's assertions: - "there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity have in the past, are now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change." - "attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing human suffering." ... Friends of Science website The Friends of Science Society is based in Calgary, Alberta. Our Goal: To encourage and assist the Canadian Federal Government to re-evaluate the Kyoto Protocol by engaging in a national public debate on the scientific merit of Kyoto and the Global Warming issue, and to educate the public through dissemination of relevant, balanced and objective technical information on this subject. Our Opinion: It is our opinion that the Sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change. Our Position: While FOS does not do any original scientific research, it draws on the worldwide body of work by scientists in all fields relating to global climate change. To read our Position Statement, click here. See our comprehensive essay on climate change science, click here. ... Wed, 07 May 2008 13:15:28 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17588 The underreported, underexamined sins of the Campbell coalition are too numerous to count. Negative changes to labor standards, the gutting of apprenticeship programs, disrespect for the Agricultural Land Reserve, the selloff of public timberlands, the willfull denial of the rights of individual farmers and the concomitant jeopardization of food security, the barring of all but the rich from higher education, the deep compromise of our ability to provide health care, the denial of women's programs, denial of welfare to the needy—the list just goes on and on. If not yet the complete destruction of our heritage built over the last three generations, surely its enfeeblement. The sellout of BC Medicare and BC Hydro to offshore corporate interests adds to our burden and threatens our safety as free citizens. The giveaway of BC Rail and the de facto privatization of BC Ferries undermine the way of life of rural citizens and forbid our economic progress as a combined rural and urban polity. Others have succumbed to the overpowering strength of the neofascist corporatist ideology but, tho' having been brought down, have not been brought to an end. Some nations are starting to fight back in an attempt to reclaim what is rightfully the property of their citizens—public enterprises that are the means to build richer, more just, more sustainable societies. When will British Columbians awake and begin to claw back their heritage? Do we have to wait another generation before common sense and decency return to our province? New Zealand government buys back national rail, ferry system for US$519 million Associated Press/International Herald Tribune USA/France May 5, 2008 WELLINGTON, New Zealand: The New Zealand government will pay NZ$665 million (US$519 million; €336 million) to Australia's Toll Holdings Ltd. to buy back rail and sea ferry operations that were privatized in the 1990s, the finance minister said Monday. The government decided that buying the rail and sea operations from Toll Australia's subsidiary, Toll New Zealand, was the best way to increase investment in the industry, Michael Cullen said. "The selling of our public rail system in the early 1990s and the running down of the asset afterward has been a painful lesson for New Zealand," he said in a statement. ... Prime Minister Helen Clark said the Labor-led government's plan to modernize the national rail system was a step toward building a sustainable transport network. "With rising fuel prices and growing awareness about the challenge of global climate change, many nations are looking to rail as a central part of 21st century economic infrastructure," Clark said. A modern rail system could reduce the emissions of the overall transport network, take pressure off roads, and allow trucking and shipping to operate more efficiently, she added. Settlement of the purchase is expected on June 30. ... Wed, 07 May 2008 08:02:36 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17586 Juliet Eilperin Washington Post USA May 5, 2008 Air pollution interferes with the ability of bees and other insects to follow the scent of flowers to their source, undermining the essential process of pollination, a study by three University of Virginia researchers suggests. Their findings may help unlock part of the mystery surrounding the current pollination crisis that is affecting a wide variety of crops. Scientists are seeking to determine why honeybees and bumblebees are dying off in the United States and in other countries, and the new study indicates that emissions from power plants and automobiles may play a part in the insects' demise. Scientists already knew that scent-bearing hydrocarbon molecules released by flowers can be destroyed when they come into contact with ozone and other pollutants. Environmental sciences professor Jose D. Fuentes at the University of Virginia -- working with graduate students Quinn S. McFrederick and James C. Kathilankal -- used a mathematical model to determine how flowers' scents travel with the wind and how quickly they come into contact with pollutants that can destroy them. They described their results in the March issue of the journal Atmospheric Environment. In the prevailing conditions before the 1800s, the researchers calculated that a flower's scent could travel between 3,280 feet and 4,000 feet, Fuentes said in an interview, but today, that scent might travel 650 feet to 1,000 feet in highly polluted areas such as the District of Columbia, Los Angeles or Houston. "That's where we basically have all the problems," Fuentes said, adding that ozone levels are particularly high during summer. "The impacts of pollution on pollinator activity are pronounced during the summer months." ... Wed, 07 May 2008 06:55:29 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17585 Fighting $4-a-gallon diesel "simpson' Oilwatchdog.com USA April 23, 2008 An Apache Junction, Arizona, trucking firm is fighting to stay in business in the face of $4-a-gallon diesel by driving across the border to Mexico to buy fuel where it sells for $2 a gallon. CNN tells the story of how Romano and Son built a 500-gallon tank to haul diesel fuel back from south of the border. They made one successful trip, but were told on their second try by border officials that they can only bring 119 gallons across at a time. Ironically, notes Insider, much of the diesel exported from the western United States goes to Mexico. ... As diesel was threatening to break through the $4 level in January -- the most recent month for which data is available -- U.S. refineries shipped 982,000 barrels or 41.2 million gallons of diesel to Mexico. The 2008 shipments far exceed January shipments in any other year except 2000 and 2001. ... We'd say 'go figure', except, of course, there is no free trade, no free market, no level playing field. It is all manipulation. And we and you are not benefiting. Related: If you want to know how the world works, this is the place to start. I cannot think of a more necessary set of facts than these. Lobbywatch.org permits us to peer into the crucible of politics, to see how public perceptions and government policies are smelted and forged by corporations and their front organisations. - George Monbiot How to address the food crisis LobbyWatch.org UK April 18, 2008 ... Kuala Lumpur, 15 Apr (Lim Li Ching) -- An independent and multi-stakeholder international assessment of agriculture has concluded that a radical change is needed in agriculture policy and practice, in order to address hunger and poverty, social inequities and environmental sustainability questions. The final report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology (IAASTD) was launched simultaneously on 15 April 2008 in Washington, London, Nairobi, Delhi, Paris and a number of other cities worldwide. The report (the product of work of over 400 authors) was finalised at a meeting of over 50 governments held in Johannesburg last week. 'Business as usual is not an option', said Professor Robert Watson, Director of the IAASTD and chief scientist of the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Watson was formerly the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The methodology of the IAASTD’s work and process is similar to that of the IPCC. The report's message is that the business-as-usual scenario of industrial farming, input and energy intensiveness, and marginalization of small-scale farmers, is no longer tenable. While past emphasis on production and yields had brought some benefits, this was at the expense of the environment and social equity. Moreover, there is a recognition that excessive and rapid trade liberalization can have negative consequences for food security, poverty alleviation and the environment. The IAASTD report calls for a systematic redirection of investment, funding, research and policy focus towards the needs of small-farmers. This involves creating space for diverse voices and perspectives, particularly those who have been marginalized in the past, including poor farmers and women. ... Another part of this movement is growing networks of small-scale farmers selling their wares locally. 'Small, diverse farms can feed the local population,' says Heather Pritchard of Farm Folk/City Folk, a nonprofit concerned with agricultural issues that encourages consumers, restaurants, and grocery stores to buy food locally at farmers markets or directly from local producers. Pritchard lives most of the week at the Glorious Organics Cooperative in the Fraser Valley, where she grows herbs and flowers and balances the books. Her group’s idea has caught on big-time, with demand so great that suppliers are struggling to keep up. 'We don’t have enough supply. We’ve done our job too well,' she says, laughing. Other activists are working to create seed banks to save locally grown crop varieties from extinction. One example is the Salt Spring Island–based Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada. It hopes to collect, study, and preserve the seed of every edible, medicinal, and other potentially useful plant in Canada before it’s too late and they’re gone. Apart from its own seed bank of more than 600 varieties of herbs, grains, peppers, tomatoes, and garlic, the sanctuary also coordinates a network of small-scale farmers who preserve 'heirloom' seeds—endangered traditional varieties grown for centuries until they were crowded out by monocultures. 'It’s kind of a living gene bank spread through the country,' says the sanctuary’s Dan Jason in a phone interview. The goal of all this is to resupply farmers struck by crop failure, natural disaster, or genetic contamination. 'Monocultures have little in-built adaptability, especially with climate change,' Jason says. 'We’re narrowing the gene pool to just a few varieties, and they’re pretty shitty varieties. They’re designed not for nutrition but yield.' One of Jason’s dreams is for every city, town, and country village to have its own seed bank to store locally grown seeds and collect records on them. Another idea he has helped promote is Seedy Saturdays and Sundays—monthly organic- seed fairs for local farmers and small seed vendors. Over 50 Seedy Saturdays are now being held regularly held in places like Salt Spring Island, Kelowna, Halifax, even Toronto. 'The only way we’re going to have good food is [by] taking it into our own hands,' Jason says. ... Wed, 07 May 2008 06:53:34 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17584 Kelly Hearn National Geographic/rumormillnews.com USA August 28, 2006 ... Stretching beneath parts of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, the Guaraní Aquifer is an underground system of water-bearing rock layers covering 460,000 square miles (1.2 million square kilometers)—an area larger than Texas and California combined (map of South America). The International Atomic Energy Agency says the Guaraní may be big enough to supply drinking water to 360 million people on a sustainable basis. Already, some 500 cities and towns across Brazil tap the aquifer for drinking water. Officials worry that overuse and expanding agricultural activities are threatening the reservoir's future health. Currently experts are studying the sandstone aquifer's structure and devising ways to sustainably develop and manage the cross-border resource for farming, drinking supplies, and geothermal energy. The Global Environment Facility, a U.S.-based funding consortium managed by the United Nations and the World Bank, has put the equivalent of 13.5 million U.S. dollars into the project. That funding plus contributions from national governments adds up to a total of 27 million dollars for the first phase of the Guaraní project, which began in 2003 and ends in 2009. But local distrust of U.S.-backed lending institutions—along with the presence of U.S. troops in Paraguay—has spawned suspicions that Washington is exerting slow control over the aquifer as insurance against water shortages in the U.S. "The United States already has water problems in its southern states," said Adolfo Esquivel, an Argentine activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. "And it is clear that humans can live without oil, gold, and diamonds but not water. The real wars will be over water, not oil." Esquivel points to a recent military deal, under which U.S. Special Forces will train with Paraguayan soldiers. He says this is evidence of Washington's creeping control—a claim that's been further popularized by an Argentine documentary, Sed, Invasión Gota a Gota ("Thirst: Invasion Drop by Drop"). Wed, 07 May 2008 06:50:19 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17583 James Woolsey. Photo: Charlers Ommanney/Contact Press Images Profile: James Woolsey Right Web USA Last updated February 16, 2007 ... In late 2002, Woolsey gave a widely quoted speech at the Restoration Weekend convention, an annual conference of high-profile conservative figures, during which he argued that the United States was fighting World War IV, a term that had earlier been promoted by the likes of Norman Podhoretz, a central figure in the neoconservative faction, and Eliot Cohen, a Woolsey colleague on the Defense Policy Board and professor at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies who was an important academic supporter of the Bush administration's response to 9/11. Said Woolsey: "Let me say a few words about who our enemy is in this World War IV, why they're at war with us and (now) we with them, and how we have to think about fighting it both at home and abroad. First of all, who are they? Well, there are at least three, but I would say principally three movements, of a sort, all coming out of the Middle East. And the interesting thing is that they've been at war with us for years. The Islamist Shia, the ruling circles, the ruling Clerics, the Mullahs of Iran, minority—definite minority of the Iranian Shiite Clerics, but those who constitute the ruling force in Iran and sponsor and back Hezbollah, have been at war with us for nearly a quarter of a century. They seized our hostages in 1979 in Tehran. They blew up our embassy and our Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. They've conducted a wide range of terrorist acts against the United States for something now close to a quarter of a century. The second group is the fascists, and I don't use that as an expletive. The Baathist parties of Iraq and really Syria as well, are essentially fascist parties or modeled after the fascist parties of the '30s. They're totalitarian, they're anti-Semitic, they're fascist ... The third group, and the one that caused us finally to notice, is the Islamist Sunni. And this is the most, in some ways, I think virulent and long-term portion of these three groupings that are at war with us, and will be at war, I think, for a long time." Woolsey added: "This is going to be a long war, very long indeed. I hope not as long as the Cold War, 40 plus years, but certainly longer than either World War I or World War II. I rather imagine it's going to be measured, I'm afraid, in decades." Woolsey repeated the main items of this speech during another conference held at UCLA that was organized by campus Republicans and Americans for Victory over Terrorism, a letterhead group sponsored by the right-wing Claremont Institute and for which Woolsey once served as a senior adviser (The Nation, April 4, 2003). Commenting on the World War IV rhetoric in vogue among neoconservatives, the conservative scholars Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke wrote in their 2004 book America Alone: "Clearly, [such rhetoric] grabs headlines and, in its evocation of the Trotskyite notion of permanent revolution, keeps us alert. But is this, in fact, the most useful way of looking at the global problems facing the United States? As Americans ponder the ways in which they can promote American interests and values ... we wonder ... whether the best image the world can have of America is engagement in warfare 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year" (pp. 29-30). Conference: Understanding the Iranian threat James Woolsey American Foreign Policy Council USA November 15, 2006 On November 15, 2006, the American Foreign Policy Council held a conference on "Understanding the Iranian Threat" in Room 902 of the Hart Senate Office Building. A list of speakers, and links to videos of their presentations, is available below. ... The Keynote address was delivered by James Woolsey. A vocal proponent of the idea that the war or terror is actually World War IV, James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Bill Clinton, wears may hats. He is an active member of several hardline and neoconservative advocacy organizations, has served in a number of high-profile government posts, has advised a long line of military contractors, and is an influential presence in the U.S. media. Appointed to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board after Donald Rumsfeld became defense secretary, Woolsey was vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, a high-powered consulting firm and military contractor based in Virginia. Woolsey is still an adviser to Booz Allen, but recently took on "of counsel" status at Goodwin Procter. If you are opposed to attacking Iran, you should watch his apology for so doing. Jared Dreyfus comments ( Lying our way to Tehran): "Tape of the speech can be found on YouTube ... and we recommend it for its disarming, avuncular style; its just old Woolsey telling us a few unavoidable truths without passion or hysteria. You could never tell by the delivery that they are all deliberate, transparent lies." John Bolton, America’s ex-ambassador to the United Nations, has called for US air strikes on Iranian camps where insurgents are trained for war in Iraq. Photo: AP Related: John Bolton: US should bomb Iranian camps Damien McElroy Daily Telegraph UK May 5, 2008 Mr Bolton said that striking Iran would represent a major step towards victory in Iraq. While he acknowledged that the risk of a hostile Iranian response harming American’s overseas interests existed, he said the damage inflicted by Tehran would be “far higher” if Washington took no action. “This is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do,” he said. “Then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.” Mr Bolton, an influential former member of President George W Bush’s inner circle, dismissed as “dead wrong” reported British intelligence conclusions that the US military had overstated the support that Iran was providing to Iraqi fighters. A US military spokesman revealed last week that the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had drafted in personnel from Lebanon’s Hizbollah to train fighters from Iraq’s Shia militias. ... Noted: James Woolsey, hybrid hawk: The former CIA director turned clean-energy enthusiast is part geek, part zealot—and all iconoclast Laura Rozen Mother Jones USA May/June 2008 edition ... Being a green neoconservative is becoming less lonely, Woolsey says, especially as more hawks come to see energy as a security issue. He tells a story about an argument with a friend who is a global warming skeptic. When Woolsey explained how improvements to the electrical infrastructure could make it safer from terrorists, his friend replied, "Oh, well, that's fine, then—we can do all that as long as it's not because of this fictional global warming." Former House leader Newt Gingrich recently came out in support of renewable energy, and the members of Woolsey's Set America Free Coalition include such prominent hawks as Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, and Cliff May. "It's less that hawks are going green as that hawks and greens have some common interests," May explains. Woolsey concedes that he is disappointed in the Bush administration's indifference toward renewable energy, but he notes that the president's admission that "we're addicted to oil" was "a sign that they're starting to take the issue seriously." What does he think it will take to get Americans to really kick the oil habit? Woolsey's looking to fellow Iraq War stalwart John McCain to do the job, citing the senator's support for a carbon-cap-and-trade system (cosponsored by Lieberman). "McCain is like Teddy Roosevelt," Woolsey says. "You know, Teddy Roosevelt was an environmentalist. He helped found the national park system." And how long does he think a Republican-led energy revolution would take? He estimates about eight years. Wed, 07 May 2008 06:48:19 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17582 Georgia says "very close" to war with Russia Mark John Reuters UK May 6, 2008 A boy passes by Russian peacekeepers at a checkpoint at the Enguri river, on the border of Georgia and Abkhazia, May 3, 2008. Photo: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters Russia's deployment of extra troops in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia has brought the prospect of war "very close", a minister of ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday. Separately, in comments certain to fan rising tension between Moscow and Tbilisi, the "foreign minister" of the breakaway Black Sea region was quoted as saying it was ready to hand over military control to Russia. "We literally have to avert war," Temur Iakobashvili, a Georgian State Minister, told reporters in Brussels. Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: "Very close, because we know Russians very well." "We know what the signals are when you see propaganda waged against Georgia. We see Russian troops entering our territories on the basis of false information," he said. ... Georgia, a vital energy transit route in the Caucasus region, has angered Russia, its former Soviet master with which it shares a land border, by seeking NATO membership. Russia has said its troop build-up is needed to counter what it says are Georgian plans to attack Abkhazia, a sliver of land by the Black Sea, and has accused Tbilisi of trying to suck the West into a war -- allegations Georgia rejects. Tensions have been steadily mounting and escalated after Georgia accused Russia of shooting down one of its drones over Abkhazia in April, a claim Russia denied. An extra Russian contingent began arriving in Abkhazia last week. Moscow has not said how many troops would be added but said the total would remain within the 3,000 limit allowed under a United Nations-brokered ceasefire agreement signed in 1994. Diplomats expect the reinforcement to be of the order of 1,200. Russian soldiers acting as peacekeepers patrol areas between Georgian and Abkhazian forces but handing full military control of the breakaway province to the Kremlin would alarm both the Georgian government and its allies in the West. ... U.S. slams Russia over rising tensions with Georgia Jeremy Pelofsky Reuters UK May 6, 2008 Russian peacekeeping troops sit at an air defence artillery in their camp near the village of Kokhora bordering the Gali district in the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia May 4, 2008. Photo: Vladimir Popov/Reuters The United States on Tuesday condemned the Russian government for taking "provocative actions" against neighboring Georgia and urged both sides to take steps to avoid armed confrontation. The White House accused Moscow of escalating tensions over the Georgian breakaway province of Abkhazia by sending in more troops, shooting down an unarmed, unmanned aerial vehicle over Georgia and boosting ties with the separatist regions. "In recent days and weeks, the Russian government has taken what we would call provocative actions which have increased tensions with Georgia," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters. "These steps have significantly and unnecessarily heightened tensions in the region," she said. Georgia has tried to reassert control over Abkhazia and South Ossetia since they broke away in the early 1990s. Russia has said its troop increases were aimed at countering an attack planned by Georgia on Abkhazia and it denied the drone shootdown. ... Wed, 07 May 2008 06:38:03 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17581 Somali's demonstrate against high food prices, Monday, May 5, 2008 in the capital Mogadishu. Troops opened fire and killed at least two people among tens of thousands of people rioting over high food prices in Somalia's capital Monday, a doctor and witnesses said.(Photo: Mohamed Sheikh Nor/AP) The conflicts in Somalia and Afghanistan have clearly exposed the flawed design of the war on terror and its divisiveness. Military solutions are pursued blindly without thinking what follows next. International problems are tried to be addressed without understanding and linking to regional and local problems. So what is the outcome of the war on terror? Increased instability, popularised Islamists, polarized societies, worsening humanitarian crises, human rights abuses, and a bullied international community. - Mohamed Mukhtar Intro: Somalia: The failings of war on terror Mohamed Mukhtar Garowe Online Somalia May 3, 2008 The recent US air raid, which killed Aden Hashi Eyrow, one of senior leaders of Somalia’s Islamist movement, shows how Somalia has become the second key front of US’s war on terror after Afghanistan. The commonality between Somalia and Afghanistan, two anarchy fountain countries, is striking, according to the Senlis Council, an international think tank. Both countries are epicentres of war on terror and demonstrate how this war is aggravating the calamitous situations that already existed in these two countries. The Senlis Council has recently published a 79-page report which takes a close look at the impact of the war on terror using Somalia and Afghanistan as case studies. The report identifies a catalogue of failings which cause “policy paralysis and increasing instability”. ... Long before the September 11 attacks, Somalia and Afghanistan were war-ravaged countries; the heart of the wars was local and regional power struggles and clan conflicts. After the attacks, many local and regional actors have jumped aboard America’s war on terrorism bandwagon to get financial and military muscle in order to suppress their rivals. They have massaged US government’s interests until they are in accord with their own interests. Unfortunately, America has failed to distinguish between genuine international threats and conflicting local and regional interests. ... The report observes a new phenomenon in Somalia – suicide. According to the report, 3 suicide attacks were carried out in 2007 in Somalia while there were 137 attacks in Afghanistan. Before Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia, Somalia never had a suicide attack in all its troubled history. This indicates how Ethiopia’s presence in Somalia has worsened the situation and attracted freelance jihadists. Over-militarised solution. Using excessive military power and paying no attention to the human cost is making this war unpopular. For example, on 8 January 2007, the US Air Force used AC-130 to launch an air strike against three Al-Qaeda suspects in southern Somalia. Even those who are familiar with the US operations were surprised that the US had chosen an AC-130 gunship. Startfor, a private intelligence agency, says, “Using an AC-130 gunship to eliminate specific militant suspects marks a departure from typical U.S. practice.” A few days after, on 13 January 2007, the Independent reported, “Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow [southern Somalia] district near the border with Kenya had been killed.” Lack of discussion. Bush’s simple formula of ‘with us or against us’ has eliminated any room for honest and open discussion. The Bush administration is on the warpath and unreceptive to even constructive criticism. As a result, the international community is confused and chooses to be a passive bystander who chronicles what happens rather than engaging and correcting US actions and the White House interprets the collective silence of the international community as a sign of tacit approval of the war. ... Items: Amnesty International: Ethiopian troops commit atrocities in Somalia Malkhadir M. Muhumed Associated Press/Wiredispatch.com USA May 6, 2008 A leading human rights group on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women. n a new report, Amnesty International detailed chilling witness accounts of indiscriminate killings in the Horn of Africa country and called on the international community to stop the bloodshed. Ethiopia's government said the report was unbalanced and "categorically wrong." The London-based rights group said testimony it received suggested all parties to Somalia's conflict have committed war crimes. But it singled out Ethiopian troops, who are in the country to back Somalia's U.N.-sponsored government, for some of the worst violations. ... Call for inquiry into US role in Somalia Steve Bloomfield The Independent UK May 7, 2008 Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its allies of committing war crimes. ... Amnesty called for an international commission of inquiry into allegations of war crimes and said the role of other countries that have given military and financial support to perpetrators should also be investigated. US troops trained Ethiopian forces involved in military operations in Somalia, and the US government supplied military equipment to the Ethiopian military. "There are major countries that have significant influence," said Amnesty's Dave Copeman. "The US, EU and European countries need to exert that influence to stop these attacks." ... Springtime in Somalia Jeff Huber Military.com USA May 6, 2008 It looks like we’re still using U.S. Navy warships to assassinate suspected terrorists in Somalia. The New York Times said, “at least four Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a Navy ship or submarine off the Somali coast had slammed into a small compound of single-story buildings in Dusa Marreb.” ... Later in the article AP said that “another U.S. defense official” confirmed that the strike targeted Aden Hashi Ayro, who later still in the article AP identified as the leader of a militia called “al-Shabab” which, as you probably noticed, is spelled differently than “al-Qaeda.” AP didn’t explain how Ayro went from being part of al-Qaeda toward the beginning of the story to being part of al-Shabab toward the end, or if there is a connection between the two that more or less makes them the same thing. ... What’s more, be reasonably confident that whether the ship that shot the cruise missiles was the kind of ship that sails underwater or not, shooting those missiles into Somalia was as legal as a blue dollar bill. As is the case with Pakistan, Mr. Bush has an agreement with the puppet government of Somalia that allows him to run air strikes in that country. The trouble is, the U.S. Constitution and laws don’t authorize foreign governments, puppet or otherwise, to allow presidents to order troops into combat, and Mr. Bush still doesn’t have a declaration of war or Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to be ordering air strikes in either Pakistan or Somalia like he’s supposed to according to the War Powers Resolution of 1973. You’d think our elected officials in Congress would be all het up about that, but the press isn’t saying anything about it, so they’re not. To sum up: we’re executing counterterrorism tactics that are exorbitant and counterproductive, Mr. Bush is behaving like a dictator, Congress is letting him get away with it, and our guarantors of freedom in the fourth estate are too busy courting anonymous officials to do much of anything else. Thousands protest US bombing in Somalia: Organiser AFP France May 5, 2008 Thousands of Somalis took to the streets Sunday to protest a US bombing that killed a man said to be Al-Qaeda's chief in the country, and 11 other people, organisers and residents said. The protest took place at Dhusamareb, a trading post of about 100,000 people, 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of the capital Mogadishu, where Thursday's attack took place. ... Somalia: Amid insurgent attacks, violent riots over food prices Garowe Online/AllAfrica.com Somalia May 5, 2008 Protestors took to the streets in Somalia's dangerous capital Monday to demonstrate against rising food prices and the business community's refusal to accept 1,000-note Somali Shillings, Radio Garowe reported. Rioters burned tires and threw stones at business fronts in Mogadishu, as Mayor Mohamed "Dheere" Omar appealed for restraint. Protestors forcefully entered major Mogadishu markets, including Bakara and Suuk Ba'ad markets, where the rioters halted the flow of civilian and commercial traffic in and out of the markets for hours, witnesses said. In Mogadishu's Hamarweyne district, angry rioters stopped a commercial truck and looted all of the contents the truck was transporting from the port. ... Food prices have been going up across the world in recent months, but Somalia's food price problems have been worsened by the dramatic devaluing of the Shilling, a factor that has contributed to the business community's desire to trade in U.S. dollars. Last month, Somalis protested against rising food prices and the illegal minting of Shillings by local business groups in the northern enclave of Puntland. Meanwhile, insurgent attacks in Mogadishu continued Monday after a police unit was attacked in Waberi district. ... Wed, 07 May 2008 06:36:02 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17580 Submitted by ni-radio on April 30, 2008 - 12:00am. May 10th vote may give Burma's generals permanent control... From a country that employs one soldier for every citizen - where demonstrators are tortured and where political joke-tellers end up in jail - some incredibly brave men and women step up to Radio New Internationalist's microphones today to talk about the latest developments in their country. Since 1962, military generals have run Burma with iron fists and frozen hearts. As the generals' bank balances rise, the standard of living of the Burmese continues to fall, with an estimated one in ten of Burma's people now suffering from chronic malnutrition. On Saturday 10th May the Burmese people will be asked to give the generals permanent control over the government of their country by endorsing a new constitution: one that most voters won't be able to read before they place their vote. Just back from Burma, New Internationalist co-editor Dinyar Godrej shares some stories about the generals and their grip on power with three resisters of the military regime who are forging new horizons for Burma: • Bo Kyi from Burma's Assistance Association for Political Prisoners spent a total of seven years and three months in Burma's jails because he organized a demonstration. He explains the way tens of thousands of political prisoners have been abused in a justice system that the military kidnapped decades ago. • Charm Tong from the Shan Women's Action Network reports on how military madness is burning ethnic villages off Burma's map - killing the villagers and using rape as a weapon of war. • Htoo Paw from the Karen Women's Organization has been part of a process to draft a Constitution that's alternative to the one being proposed by the military. She outlines a system to unite the country and still deliver autonomy to minorities. Tue, 06 May 2008 16:36:10 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17579 By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson electric politics We have to recognize that in the Imperial New World Order (INWO), with the Soviet Union gone, and an aggressive and highly militarized United States projecting its great power across the globe, destabilizing and devastating in all its major areas of operation in the alleged interest of liberation and stability, a revised set of principles should be discernible. Most of these are hardly new, but even more audaciously than in the past they translate power relationships into affirmations of rights or the denial of these very same rights, with the ensuing double standards applicable pretty much across the board. The real-world significance of these INWO principles thus depends on three factors: (a) whether Washington affirms them for itself (and directly or by implication for its close allies, clients and hangers-on); (b) whether Washington denies them to its enemies; and (c) whether Washington doesn't care one way or the other. As we show below, these power-based affirmations or denials of rights are accepted among the powerful, from the leaders of the Western states, political candidates, and top UN officials, to the establishment media and the intellectuals whose voices can be heard. They represent the institutionalization of a system of power in which justice is inoperative and its perversion hidden in clouds of rhetoric and obfuscation. 1. Aggression rights 2. Terrorism rights (and the right to kill large numbers without being labeled terrorist) 3. Rights to ethnically cleanse 4. Subversion rights 5. Rights to impose sanctions 6. Rights to resist aggression 7. Rights to self defense 9. Rights to having their civilian victims found worthy of international sympathy 10. "Right to exist" (and the right to demand targets admit one's "right to exist") Edward S. Herman is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has written extensively on economics, political economy and the media. Among his books are The Real Terror Network, Triumph of the Market, and Manufacturing Consent (with Noam Chomsky). David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher. Tue, 06 May 2008 16:12:21 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17578 In April I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to attempt to explain what was really happening in Iraq, where I have spent most of the last five years, so that they could better challenge General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker during their Senate testimony. ... They [Petraus and Crocker] even managed to blame Iran for the Iran-Iraq war, which Iraq had initiated with US backing. Iran was the bad guy and the US was fighting a proxy war against it. There has never been any evidence of this, save the accusations of a US regime that still hopes it can score a last minute war against Iran.... Beware, the worst is yet to come. Nir Rosen Vietnam… Iraq… Afghanistan… Don't we already have enough examples of American counterinsurgency operations under our belt? The American people evidently think so. For some time now, significant majorities have wanted out of Baghdad, out of Iraq. All the way out. Tom Engelhardt While the assassins of peace prowl the world, intent on stirring up violent passions, they don't have much opposition on the home front – except in the hearts and minds of the American people. Yet this heartfelt revulsion against the horrors of the past eight years finds no clear, unstinting voice, no consistent champion among the contenders for leadership in either party. - Justin Raimondo Selling the war with Iran Nir Rosen The Washington Note USA May 1, 2008 In June of 2003, two months after the United States conquered Iraq, I sat in on a briefing given by US Army intelligence officers in that most Sunni of Iraq's cities, Tikrit, to a couple of officers visiting from Baghdad. One of the American intelligence officers based in Saddam's famous hometown explained that they were worried about "Shiite fingers" from Iran "creeping" up to Tikrit to establish an Iranian style government. At a time when the mostly Sunni Iraqi resistance had already established itself and its ability was improving, I was astounded by how stupid the notion of an Iranian threat in Tikrit was. I have remained shocked, like many journalists and academics familiar with the region and its languages, that the Americans have shown no improvement in their understanding of the Muslim world with which they are so deeply engaged militarily and as an imperial power. We should expect little interest in understanding the outside world from an insular and isolated government whose leaders show open contempt for their own people. And we should expect diplomatic and military officials themselves required to maintain ideological purity to voice an equally unsophisticated world view. ... In April I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to attempt to explain what was really happening in Iraq, where I have spent most of the last five years, so that they could better challenge General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker during their Senate testimony. But it made little difference. As always, little interest was shown in the Iraqi people, and the fact that they were enduring a brutal foreign military occupation. Those who opposed the war did so because it was too expensive for American taxpayers, not even because American men and women were dying for absolutely nothing, and certainly not because anybody cares about Iraqis. But one of the main themes I heard repeated by the General and the Ambassador and by the senators who questioned them, was that Iran was the bad guy in Iraq these days. They accused Iran of supporting "Shiite extremists" and said that Muqtada al Sadr was one such extremist. They even managed to blame Iran for the Iran-Iraq war, which Iraq had initiated with US backing. Iran was the bad guy and the US was fighting a proxy war against it. There has never been any evidence of this, save the accusations of a US regime that still hopes it can score a last minute war against Iran.... If militias are the main problem in Iraq, then the U.S. policy of creating new Sunni militias and empowering them to rule walled off fiefdoms does not bode well for the weak Iraqi government, especially when these Sunni militias view the Iraqi government as their main enemy. These Sunni militias, called "Awakening groups," Concerned Local Citizens, Iraqi Security Volunteers, Critical Infrastructure Security Guards and Sons of Iraq are composed of former resistance fighters who collaborated with al Qaeda to fight Shiites and the Americans but put their fight against the Americans on hold so as to concentrate on fighting the Shiites in the next round of the civil war. Iraq's Shiites are not thrilled that the Sunni militias who were slaughtering them are now resurgent. In August 2007 the Mahdi Army had declared a "freeze," often mistranslated as a ceasefire. But the US military and the Maliki-Badr militia alliance continued to arrest and target the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army. If anything, they violated the ceasefire. ... Most of those who fight the Americans in Iraq do so not at the bidding of a foreign power but out of genuine and sincere opposition to the American occupation. The Americans never grasped this and always assumed it was about the money, or al Qaeda, and now part of a silly Iranian conspiracy. After at first siding with Iraq's Shiites much to the consternation of America's so called "moderate" Sunni allies, the Americans are now targeting Shiites and perhaps even Shiite Iran as Bush prepares for once last war on his path to the "New Middle East." But without the help of an acquiescent media supplicating to Bush administration and US military officials they might not be able to go to war once again. ... Assassins of peace Justin Raimondo Antiwar.com USA May 5,2008 Visit this page for all its embedded links. ... As we count the days to the end of the Bush II era, the likelihood that the worst president in our history will go out with a bang increases on a daily basis. The latest evidence that zero hour approaches is reported by Andrew Cockburn, author, most recently, of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, and co-producer of the PBS documentary on Iraq The War We Left Behind. According to Cockburn, Bush has signed a presidential finding that greatly increases both the scope and seriousness of covert attempts to destabilize Iran and pave the way for war. .. Cockburn also describes authorized tactics in the new finding – signed six weeks ago – as "up to and including the assassination of targeted officials." The "war on terrorism" now consists of a large-scale campaign to subsidize, organize, and empower favored terrorist groups – the "good" terrorists of the MEK, "former" terrorists of the "Awakening" in Iraq, and a motley assortment of separatists and fanatics whose violent methods are but a reflection of their intrinsic nihilism. God only knows what kind of blowback we're going to experience as a direct result of this moral slippage. Maybe it's just me, but at a time when the authorities are requiring us to run a veritable gauntlet every time we get on a plane, as a precaution against "terrorism," encouraging (let alone subsidizing!) such groups is yet more proof that we've slipped into the Bizarro dimension, where up is down and funding terrorism is the same as fighting it. None of this news is at all surprising to longtime observers of the Middle East scene. Laura Rozen, writing in The American Prospect last year, speculated that a presidential "finding" or perhaps a secret White House directive may have been issued: "There is evidence that, while Bush probably has not signed such a finding regarding Iran, he has recently done so regarding Iranian-supported Hezbollah in Lebanon; further, there is evidence that he may have signed an executive order or national security presidential directive regarding a new, more aggressive policy on Iran. Such directives are not required to be reported to Congress – they are more in the realm of the president communicating to authorized people inside the administration his expectations for a policy." ... The reporting of Rozen and others has drawn attention to U.S. efforts to effect "regime change" in Iran for quite some time, but now it seems more than covert action is in the works. NBC has reported that plans for air strikes against Iran have been drawn up by U.S. military leaders, as Washington steps up its rhetoric denouncing Iranian "interference" in Iraq. ... The last war and the next one Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch.com USA May 4, 2008 Visit this page for all its embedded links. The last war won't end, but in the Pentagon they're already arguing about the next one. ... In the wake of the President's 2007 surge, the U.S. military is now officially allied with 90,000 Sunnis of the so-called Awakening Movement, mainly former insurgents, many of them undoubtedly once linked to the Baathist government U.S. forces overthrew in 2003. Meanwhile, American troops are fighting the Shiite militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, a cleric who seems now to be living in Iran, but whose spokesman in Najaf recently bitterly denounced that country for "seeking to share with the U.S. in influence over Iraq." And they are fighting the Sadrist Mahdi Army militia in the name of an Iraqi government dominated by another Shiite militia, the Badr Corps of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, whose ties to Iran are even closer. Ten thousand Badr Corps militia members were being inducted into the Iraqi army (just as the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was demanding that the Mahdi Army militia disarm). This week, an official delegation from that government, which only recently received Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with high honors in Baghdad, took off for Tehran at American bidding to present "evidence" that the Iranians are arming their Sadrist enemies. ... Vietnam… Iraq… Afghanistan… Don't we already have enough examples of American counterinsurgency operations under our belt? The American people evidently think so. For some time now, significant majorities have wanted out of Baghdad, out of Iraq. All the way out. In a major survey just released by the influential journal Foreign Affairs, similar majorities have, in essence, "voted" for demilitarizing U.S. foreign policy. In their responses, they offer quite a different approach to how the United States should operate in the world. According to journalist Jim Lobe, 69% of respondents believe "the U.S. government should put more emphasis on diplomatic and economic foreign policy tools in fighting terrorism," not "military efforts." (Sixty-five percent believe the U.S. should withdraw all its troops from Iraq either "immediately" or "over the next twelve months.") But, of course, no one who matters listens to them. ... Tue, 06 May 2008 02:54:38 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17577 Cute headline the Vancouver Sun puts on this wirestory. If that is all you read you think it is just a bunch of isolated cranks interfering in Canadian affairs. In fact, it is an oil-company supported neo-liberal think tank. The Heartland Institute states that "nobody buys research" and implies that it and not the scientific community has "the intellectual capacity, the intellectual integrity. ..." & When Canada accedes fully and completely to the relentless American attack on our soverignty, perhaps the Taser Model X26 should be on our state flag. Thirty years ago, Canada never would have allowed this anti-personnell weapon. Today, we are so occupied by a foreign mindset that low-level security (ie. Vancouver Skytrain transit cops) abuse it. Well, they are just security ('the fastest growing sector of our private economy according to the approving Global TV recruitment ad). The Mounties should investigate. Oh! Wait a minute. Even the RCMP is abusing citizens' rights in this, and many other areas now, too. Maybe this battle of the war is already lost and we just don't know it. Welcome to Vichy Canada. But then, hopefully, drawing on the French fact that makes Canada strong, the time has come that we should shout symbolically 'Vive le Maquis' and begin a unified non-violent resistance composed of diverse political positions but still all dedicated to the independence of Canada. Canadian schools sent brochures, DVDs from climate change skeptics Mike De Souza Canwest News Service/Vancouver Sun Canada May 4, 2008 OTTAWA -- An American think tank has sent out more than 11,000 brochures and DVDs to Canadian schools urging them to teach their students that scientists are exaggerating how human activity is the driving force behind global warming. The Chicago-based group, the Heartland Institute, said its goal is to ensure that students are provided with a "balanced" education about "an important and controversial issue," but critics, including a leading climate scientist, described it as a campaign of misinformation. The mail out, sent in February, included results from international surveys of climate scientists conducted in 1996 and 2003 along with a 10-minute DVD called Unstoppable Solar Cycles, The Real Story of Greenland. ... The Heartland Institute says that it purchased a database list of addresses of 11,250 schools from across the country, including about 10,000 private or faith-based schools, for a massive mail campaign aimed at Canadian children in all provinces. "All the kids in our schools are being taught that climate change is a serious crisis and that we've got to reduce our CO2 and they're being taught (that) quite falsely," said Jay Lehr, the science director at the Heartland Institute who sent the package. "We would like to educate people and basically give them the other side of the issue, so we send out materials only in hope of a little balance." he Heartland Institute describes itself as a national nonprofit research and education organization whose mission is "to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets to a better job than government bureaucracies." ... A spokesperson for the Heartland Institute said that no company has ever contributed more than five per cent of the think tank's total revenues and no industry sector contributed more than 10 per cent of its revenues. "Nobody buys research," said Dan Miller, the institute's executive vice-president and publisher. "That isn't the way it works. The funding follows the intellectual capacity, the intellectual integrity. It's not the other way around." ... Denial-a-Palooza is a media hit ... but not what organizers wanted Richard Littlemore DeSmogBlog Vancouver Canada March 4, 2008 Mainstream media seem to have caught up with climate change denial (caught up with reality, really), just in time to humiliate the assembled "sceptics" at the Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. While Heartland wants to position the conference as a "smashing success," the New York Times, CNN - even that raving left-wing apology sheet the Wall Street Journal - have all lifted their delicate hands and snickered. CNN, in a spot that left the cool dudes at Newsbusters apoplectic, went so far as to call the assembled skeptics "flat earthers." (click on the seventh item here for Miles O'Brien's actual video.) It's interesting, per Andy Revkin's New York Times piece, that the coal industry's pet scientist, Pat Michaels, stood up at the conference, acknowledged that humans are causing climate change and predicted a three-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase this century (a relative disaster scenario, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Then he said that was really no problem and that we shouldn't bother taking any action to prevent this from happening. If sowing confusion is the goal, these guys are still on their game. But if they were hoping to be taken seriously, alas, time, climate and public understanding has passed them by. Controversy arises over lists of scientists whose research contradicts man-made global warming scares Joseph Bast The Heartland Institute USA May 5, 2008 DeSmogBlog, a Web site created to attack conservative and free-market nonprofit organizations, targeted The Heartland Institute in late April 2008, and in particular two lists posted on Heartland’s Web site [ http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=21971 ] of scientists whose published work contradicts some of the main tenets of global warming alarmism. The blog persuaded some of the scientists appearing in the lists to ask that their names be removed from the lists. In response to the complaints, The Heartland Institute has changed the headlines that its PR department had chosen for some of the documents related to the lists, from “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” to “500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares.” Aside from those headlines, none of the articles and news releases produced by The Heartland Institute or the Hudson Institute (the original source of the lists) claims that all of the scientists who appear in the lists currently doubt that the modern warming is man-made. In fact, The Hudson Institute’s news release [ http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=21970 ] says, “Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics,” said Avery, “but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see.” We plan to make no further changes to the articles or to the lists. We suspect this change will not satisfy the bloggers or the disgruntled scientists. Why? DeSmogBlog’s motivation is plain enough: It was created and is funded solely to demonize groups like The Heartland Institute. They are doing what they are paid to do. What motivates the scientists? They have no right -- legally or ethically -- to demand that their names be removed from a bibliography composed by researchers with whom they disagree. Their names probably appear in hundreds or thousands of bibliographies accompanying other articles or in books with which they disagree. Do they plan to sue hundreds or thousands of their colleagues? The proper response is to engage in scholarly debate, not demand imperiously that the other side redact its publications. Many of the complaining scientists have crossed the line between scientific research and policy advocacy. They lend their credibility to politicians and advocacy groups who call for higher taxes and more government regulations to “save the world” from catastrophic warming ... and not coincidentally, to fund more climate research. They are embarrassed -- as they should be -- to see their names in a list of scientists whose peer-reviewed published work suggests the modern warming might be due to a natural 1,500-year climate cycle. ... Joseph Bast is president of The Heartland Institute, a 24-year-old national nonprofit research organization, and publisher of Environment & Climate News. DeSmogBloog has this to say about itself: An overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the globe is warming - the world's climate is changing - and that the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels is to blame. We know that the risks are incalculable and, increasingly, we understand that the solutions are affordable. Unfortunately, a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign is poisoning the climate change debate. Using tricks and stunts that unsavory PR firms invented for the tobacco lobby, energy-industry contrarians are trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits. DeSmogBlog is here to cry foul - to shine the light on techniques and tactics that reflect badly on the PR industry and are, ultimately, bad for the planet. For more on us, you can click here for co-founder Jim Hoggan's manifesto "Slamming the Climate Skeptic Scam." The DeSmogBlog team is led by Jim Hoggan, the president of the public relations firm James Hoggan & Associates. Over the past two decades, Jim has earned a reputation as one of Canada’s leading public relations professionals. Jim believes that integrity and public relations should not be at odds – that a good public reputation generally flows from a record of responsible actions. His client list includes real estate development companies, high tech firms, pharmaceutical, forest industry giants, resorts and academic institutions. He is also the Chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and a Trustee of the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education. ... Related: Medical journal calls for review of Taser safety CBC News Canada May 2, 2008 An editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal is calling for more study of the health risks posed by stun guns. The opinion piece released on Thursday argues that Taser use is a public health issue, and Canadian officials should not be relying on the manufacturer, Taser International, or its paid research to determine if stun guns are safe. It also questions the assertion by Taser International that the weapon does not adversely affect the heart, and its explanation that people who die after being shocked by a Taser were killed by excited delirium rather than the effects of the stun gun. "We were hoping to draw attention to the odd ways in which the message on Tasers has really been controlled by Taser proponents," said Dr. Matthew Stanbrook, the author of the editorial and an assistant professor, researcher and specialist in respirology at Toronto Western Hospital. ... Peter Holran, a Taser International spokesman, said Stanbrook's claim that the company has funded most of the safety research is based on a 2005 newspaper article. "Over the three years since that article was written, most of the research by the governments of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and leading academic and medical institutions has been funded independent of Taser International," he said, adding that 80 per cent of 120 major studies or assessments of the devices have been funded independently from the manufacturer. ... Stunning concerns Editorial Kingston Whig-Standard Canada May 4, 2008 Are electric stun guns potentially lethal? Are they more dangerous than their manufacturer and police forces let on? Definitive answers to these questions have been hard to find. So much so that it was becoming clear that medical intervention would be necessary - that doctors and researchers would have to enter into the debate. Now they have. This week, an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called for more independent studies into the devices. It points out that enough people have died soon after being shocked that further investigation is warranted. ... Determining whether or not the stun guns are as safe as the manufacturer says they are will influence how and when they are used. Initially, they were promoted as a less lethal alternative to guns. But a Canadian Press analysis of RCMP stun-gun use between 2002 and 2005 revealed that in 563 incidents, 79 per cent of the suspects were unarmed and didn't necessarily pose a high risk to officers. Amnesty International has called for a moratorium on the use of stun guns until further studies are done. Indeed, overuse of the weapons is becoming a concern. Last month it was revealed that Vancouver transit police were zapping people who refused to pay their fares. Public health and safety may be compromised by stun-gun use. We welcome the doctors' input. Noted: Taser International wins lawsuit to change cause of death Slashdot.org USA May 4, 2008 Visit this post for its embedded links. Taser International recently started a legal campaign against medical examiners who claimed tasers contributed to the cause of death for several people. On Friday, an Ohio judge ruled in favor of the stun gun manufacturer (free registration may be required). While they do have a number of scientific studies on which they establish their claims, it's interesting that the alternate cause of death they champion — excited delirium — appears only in police reports on the deaths of difficult or drug-addled inmates, not in medical textbooks. Of course, that may change soon — Taser is funding and promoting research on the subject. Coroner reports such as the ones in this case contributed to the UN's opinion that taser use is torture. Summit County judge orders Taser references deleted from medical examiner's rulings Karen Farkas The Plain Dealer Cleveland, Ohio USA May 3, 2008 ... As of mid-April, 68 wrongful-death or injury lawsuits have been dismissed or judgments entered in favor of Taser, according to the company. The company has not lost any product-liability lawsuits. "It was an interesting case and an uphill battle," said [John Manley of the prosecutor's office]. "Taser is quite a force to be reckoned with and does everything to protect their golden egg, which is the Model X26." Mon, 05 May 2008 02:18:41 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17576 Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis Geoffrey Lean, The Independent UK May 4, 2008 Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. ... Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits "immoral" late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world. ... The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year – or £3m an hour – on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast. ... Noted: The great organic myths: Why organic foods are an indulgence the world can't afford Rob Johnston The Independent UK May 1, 2008 They're not healthier or better for the environment – and they're packed with pesticides. In an age of climate change and shortages, these foods are an indulgence the world can't afford, argues environmental expert Rob Johnston. ... Johnston is a medical doctor and science writer. Mon, 05 May 2008 02:15:18 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17575 Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steel Vanity Fair USA May 2008 Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination. ... Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds have transformed the company and are radically altering global agriculture. So far, the company has produced G.M. seeds for soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton. Many more products have been developed or are in the pipeline, including seeds for sugar beets and alfalfa. The company is also seeking to extend its reach into milk production by marketing an artificial growth hormone for cows that increases their output, and it is taking aggressive steps to put those who don’t want to use growth hormone at a commercial disadvantage. Even as the company is pushing its G.M. agenda, Monsanto is buying up conventional-seed companies. In 2005, Monsanto paid $1.4 billion for Seminis, which controlled 40 percent of the U.S. market for lettuce, tomatoes, and other vegetable and fruit seeds. Two weeks later it announced the acquisition of the country’s third-largest cottonseed company, Emergent Genetics, for $300 million. It’s estimated that Monsanto seeds now account for 90 percent of the U.S. production of soybeans, which are used in food products beyond counting. Monsanto’s acquisitions have fueled explosive growth, transforming the St. Louis–based corporation into the largest seed company in the world. Monsanto portrays its move into G.M. seeds as a giant leap for mankind. But out in the American countryside, Monsanto’s no-holds-barred tactics have made it feared and loathed. Like it or not, farmers say, they have fewer and fewer choices in buying seeds. and controlling the seeds is not some abstraction. Whoever provides the world’s seeds controls the world’s food supply. ... Mon, 05 May 2008 02:11:23 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17574 Kaveh L Afrasiabi Asia Times Online Hong Kong May 3, 2008 Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's three-nation tour of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India and the welter of agreements and understandings reached between Tehran and these governments serve notice beyond the mere issue of energy security and Iran's expanding role in the sub-continent's energy market; rather, these developments signify a new stage in Iran's foreign policy that is best described as "pan-regionalism". From the Persian Gulf to the Caspian region, the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia and beyond, thanks to its unique geographical location, Iran is in many ways an ideal connecting bridge that has not until now fully exploited its advantageous "equidistance" from India and Europe. Straddled between the two energy hubs of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea, Iran is a suitable conduit for trade, energy and non-energy, between the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, which are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the landlocked Central Asian states. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Also, with ambitious transportation links projected under the veneer of a "north-south corridor", Iran, Russia and India have conceived new areas of cooperation that connect northern Europe to the Indian Ocean via Iran and the Russian Federation [1] . Already, Iran is an energy exporter to Europe through Turkey, funneling through Turkmenistan's gas and swapping oil with Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Also, Iran has plans not to lag behind the so-called new "Silk Road" project that involves China, India and the GCC states first and foremost and yet for every conceivable reason must be considered Iran-inclusive because of the country's proximity, its expanding trade and economic cooperation with the GCC, and its own trade liberalization policies, reflected in the expansion of free-trade zones. ... Sun, 04 May 2008 03:20:51 -0400 http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=17573 Intro: On Wednesday 30 April 2008 Iran announced that they had “totally removed U.S. dollars in the country's oil transactions.” For those following the recent developments in the Middle East, this will not come as a surprise. However it should raise your anxiety to levels felt just before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. - chycho.com, Canada, April 30, 2008 ... an attack on Syria is an attack on Iran, and Iran is a much more formidable foe than Syria or Iraq. Not because of Iran’s military capabilities, but because of its diplomatic ties to the regional countries. - chycho.com, Canada May 1, 2008 The Bush administration parking a flotilla from its US 6th fleet off the coast of Lebanon was made necessary, it claims, to demonstrate Washington's 'commitment to stability in the region'. This provocation, aimed at Hezbollah and also Syria, is the equivalent of a Sicilian fish wrapped in newspaper with a white rose—left on a doorstep: 'This is business. It is not personal. Here is an offer you cannot refuse.' - Italian officer seconded to UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) outside his Tebnine HQ, South Lebanon. Cited by Franklin Lamb in: Bush to Nasrallah: An offer Hezbollah cannot refuse? Part I: Historical context and current posturing USA May 4, 2008 Items: Bluff and bloodshed Christopher Dickey Newsweek USA May 1, 2008 If there's a war between the United States and Iran, it may well start on the water. After all, it's happened before. Twenty years ago American ships were under fire in the Persian Gulf, and mines laid by the mullahs' men nearly sank a U.S. guided missile cruiser. In April 1988 the American and Iranian navies fought the biggest air-sea battle waged since World War II. By the time it was over, carrier-based U.S. attack planes had sunk the frigate Sahand and disabled the frigate Sabalan, the pride of the Iranian navy. That's why the comment by Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday about the brief deployment of a second U.S. aircraft carrier to the gulf was so terse and so telling. "I don't see it as an escalation," Gates said. "I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder." Gates would know. He was deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency back in 1988. He has seen firsthand the treacherous complexities, the bluff and the bloodshed, of war with Iran, whether fought in the shadows or on the high seas. And anyone who was out in the gulf at the time, as I was, can see similarities between then and now. But looking back at the last undeclared war with Iran, who is reminded of what, precisely? The challenge is to draw the right lessons. For those who've forgotten those naval operations with computer-generated names like Earnest Will, Nimble Archer and Praying Mantis (and I suspect most people in the United States don't remember them at all), the best history I've read is Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987-1988, by Harold Lee Wise, which came out last year from the U.S. Naval Institute Press. It's not only thoroughly researched, it reads like a Tom Clancy thriller—or, rather, better. And Wise too is worried about what's happening now. As he sees it, any war with Iran today is going to involve a major naval component. Forty percent of the world's oil supply passes through the gulf on vulnerable tankers, he points out, and that would come under direct threat. Wise, in a paper he sent me this week, argues there are three basic lessons to be gleaned from the fight 20 years ago: 1. Even if outgunned, Iran will not back down from a fight. ... 2. Low-tech weapons are effective in naval conflict. ... 3. Fight fire with fire. ... Inman worried about Gulf incident Jim Lobe LobeLog USA May 2, 2008 The recent escalation of the Pentagon’s rhetoric against Iran ... has created new concerns about a possible military conflict before the end of the Bush administration, concerns fanned, as well, by the president’s own assertion during his press conference Tuesday.... While the saber-rattling, particularly from Pentagon chief Robert Gates and Mullen, who until recently had consistently downplayed prospects for war with Iran, was indeed disturbing, less-noticed was a follow-up statement by the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Geoff Morrell, on Wednesday. “I just want to be abundantly clear that there are no new directives, there are no new plans in the works, there is no new effort to prepare for a possible war with Iran,” he said. While that naturally has to be taken with a grain of salt, it’s also worth noting that ret. Adm. Bob Inman, a former deputy CIA director who is close to Gates, told reporters in a teleconference sponsored by Public Agenda this week that he was quite confident that Bush administration would maintain its second-term emphasis on diplomacy to its end, and that conflict with any country before then was very unlikely. He did add this one caveat, however: “My only worry would be an [Iranian Revolutionary Guard attack] on a ship in the Gulf, and I think that could turn things upside down pretty quickly.” ... I believe that observation reflects Gates’ concerns as well and is another reminder of how he and ret. Adm. Fallon had pushed the White House unsuccessfully for authorization to pursue an “incidents-at-sea” agreement with Tehran precisely to prevent an incident from getting out of hand. ... Secret Bush "finding" widens war on Iran Andrew Cockburn CounterPunch USA May 2, 2008 Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope." ... All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy. Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war. In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a "taunting" manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war. He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot. The White House, according to the staff officers, was "absolutely furious" with Fallon for defusing the incident. Fallon has since departed. His abrupt resignation in early March followed the publication of his unvarnished views on our policy of confrontation with Iran, something that is unlikely to happen to his replacement, George Bush's favorite general, David Petraeus. Though Petraeus is not due to take formal command at Centcom until late summer, there are abundant signs that something may happen before then. A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4. A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks. Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq.... "Presidential findings" are kept secret but reported to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other key congressional leaders. Last year, Bush isssued a "nonlethal presidential finding" regarding war on Iran: Bush authorizes new covert action against Iran Brian Ross and Richard Esposito ABC News, The Blotter USA May 22, 2007 The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a "nonlethal presidential finding" that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions. ... Has Bush raised the ante on 'hot war' now with Andrew Cockburn's reported new finding? Related: What an attack on Ira