Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

July 31, 2008

Make John McCain Disavow His Dishonest Obama Ad







Pssst... do something!

House Committee Holds Rove in Contempt!

AlterNet
Until now, Rove's been lying and avoiding questions about his involvement in leaking Valerie Plame's identity, the politicization of the Justice Department, and the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Just look at his written denials to ranking HJC member Lamar Smith (R-TX), when he refrained from denying that he spoke to longtime confidant Bill Canary, who links Rove to the Siegelman prosecution. Rove has also claimed immunity and touted executive privilege, which doesn't apply in this case.
Now that the decision to hold Rove in contempt will move from the HJC to the full House, however, Rove could be forced to testify under oath or face jail time.

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July 30, 2008

Strike on Iran still possible, U.S. tells Israel

Los Angeles Times
Bush administration officials reassured Israel's defense minister this week that the United States has not abandoned all possibility of a military attack on Iran, despite widespread Israeli concern that Washington has begun softening its position toward Tehran.
In meetings Monday and Tuesday, administration officials told Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the option of attacking Iran over its nuclear program remains on the table, though U.S. officials are primarily seeking a diplomatic solution.

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July 29, 2008

Heavy Fighting Erupts Along India-Pakistan Border in Kashmir

Ominous news from south Asia. They say the most likely first nuclear war will be between India and Pakistan. They have been largely at peace since 2003, but one has to wonder if the change of government in Pakistan has undermined politics across the Indian and Afghani border where the US is crossing the border with unmanned drones to bomb.
VOA News
The Indian Army has claimed that Pakistani troops infiltrated to its side of the line of control in Kashmir on Monday and fired at its border post killing an Indian soldier. Pakistani officials have denied their troops crossed the border and blame India for border provocations. The two sides have since exchanged fire for over twelve hours. Shahnawaz Khan reports for VOA from Srinagar.
In the latest allegations of ceasefire violations along the Kashmir border, the Indian army said Monday that a group of Pakistani troops infiltrated to its side of the line of control that divides Kashmir between the two nuclear neighbors. Pakistan disputes that version of events and says Indian troops wanted to establish a forward observation post on the border and they objected.
[..]
Despite recent skirmishes and complaints about violations, a ceasefire has largely held on the line of control in Kashmir since 2003. Up until that time India and Pakistan regularly exchanged heavy fire. Nearly a dozen Muslim rebel groups have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan.

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July 28, 2008

I-35E reopened after part of bridge falls

Incredibly, a chunk of a bridge over 35E fell on two cars, narrowly missing killing the occupants.
StarTrib
Chunks of concrete crashed down from the Maryland Avenue overpass onto Interstate 35E Saturday, shutting down the busy freeway for several hours and causing a big traffic jam. The freeway is open today.
Concrete pieces struck two vehicles, one on the hood and the other on the windshield, but no one was hurt, said Kent Barnard, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
A section, about 6 feet by 9 feet and 1 inch thick, fell from the bottom of the overpass in several pieces and covered the northbound lanes of I-35E with powdery debris.
The State Patrol closed the freeway in both directions shortly after the incident at 4:45 p.m. Traffic was rerouted onto exit ramps to get around the overpass.

Of course MNDOT is working on it's image.
TwinCities.com
Over the past year, the department has worked to rebuild its image. For an agency that often seems to live and breathe safety, the bridge collapse led to a secondary disaster within the department -- a tattered image.

Meanwhile, rumors of the Governor shifting money from highway projects over past years persist from within MNDOT.
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Wind energy faces daunting challenges

McClatchy Washington Bureau
Led by billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, pioneers in the emerging wind-power industry are touting their product as The Next Big Thing as they chart a course to produce at least 20 percent of the nation's electricity in just over two decades.
But reaching that goal won't be easy. The most daunting challenge centers on the fundamental question of how to get the product to customers. That will require building thousands of miles of transmission lines to carry electricity from turbines clustered on wind-swept prairies in America's heartland to distant cities and towns.
Industry leaders are calling for a national commitment to wind power on the same scale as the Eisenhower administration's commitment to constructing the Interstate Highway System. Erecting a transmission grid for wind-generated electricity, they say, would require up to 20,000 miles of new lines at a minimum cost of $60 billion -- and possibly much more.
[..]
Most of the nation's turbine farms are located in the "wind corridor" stretching through the center of the country from Texas to the Canadian border. Texas, with more than 4,000 turbines, is the biggest wind producer, surpassing California for that title in 2006.
But wind power is also what experts call a "location-constrained resource," meaning that it can't be transported like coal or oil and is thus dependent on a network of lines and towers to reach a market often hundreds of miles away. It is thus burdened by a "chicken-and-egg problem" -- wind farms don't want to locate in a site without transmission lines, and utilities don't want to erect lines where there are no wind farms.
Additionally, Pickens told a Senate committee, "long-distance transmission is only economic if it is built to high capacity, which means that there must be a large amount of generation capacity in one place."
Lindenberg, who participated in a briefing on wind energy for congressional aides, said existing lines are capable of carrying only a small amount of projected wind power, thus requiring an ambitious plan to construct new lines and towers. Walker pegged the cost at $60 billion but Pickens projects a cost of about $200 billion.

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July 25, 2008

Former Iraqi PM Allawi Testifies Before Congress, Blasts Maliki

News you won't see in the mainstream.
AlterNet
Allawi blasted the so-called surge, saying that it failed in its primary objective, namely, to end the Iraqi civil war and foster political reconciliation. He said that General Petraeus personally came to his house early in 2007 to assure him that the surge would accomplish its intended objective. Instead, things got worse, said Allawi.
"There is an urgent need to build nonsectarian institutions," he told the committee. Sitting alone, dressed conservatively in a gray suit, Allawi said that Iraq's police and army are still organized on a sectarian basis. Asked about the importance of U.S. training for Iraqi forces, Allawi said, "The issue is not training. By and large, training is secondary." The problem, he said, is that the police and army are not loyal to Iraq, not loyal to a national chain of command, but report informally to Shiite militias.
Asked by subcommittee chairman Rep. Willian Delahunt (D.-Mass.) if the Iraqi army was composed of sectarian militias that have just "exchanged uniforms," Allawi replied, "Unfortunately, this is the case." He said that he'd discussed the problem directly with President Bush and General Petraeus, but without answer.
Allawi said that 13 members of his party had been assassinated by thugs tied to the army and police. "They were killed by people in uniforms, dressed in police and army uniforms. We had not only 13 killed, but we had hundreds arrested." Such arrests and killings, Zimbabwe-style, made a sham of the 2005 and 2006 elections. Backed by more than 100 Iraqi parliamentarians, Allawi is trying to ensure the UN and Arab League observers keep a close watch on provincial and national elections in 2009.
Most of the militia gangs who've infiltrated Iraq's security forces are tied to the Iran-backed Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and its Badr Brigade, who provide Maliki's main political support.
Allawi stressed the Iraq's constitution, which he called "divisive," needs to be rewritten. Allawi demanded that the Iraqi parliament be given a chance to review any U.S.-Iraq accords signed by Bush and Maliki.

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Rebels could win Pakistan's nuke haven

The Australian
A CRISIS meeting of Pakistan's new coalition Government has been warned that it could lose control of the North West Frontier Province, which is believed to hold most of its nuclear arsenal. The warning came yesterday from the coalition leader, who, although he is part of the new Government, is regarded as having the closest links to al-Qa'ida and Taliban militants sweeping through the region. Maulana Fazlur Rehman bluntly told his colleagues: "The North West Frontier province is breaking away from Pakistan. That is what is happening. That is the reality." This came just days before new Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's scheduled meeting with US President George W. Bush to discuss al-Qa'ida and Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.
Reports last night said Maulana Fazlur Rehman, regarded as having unparalleled insight into the mood of the three million tribesmen in the NWFP, and leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, was backed in his assessment by members of the coalition Government from the Awami National Party, which rules in the province's capital, Peshawar. They, too, told the meeting of jihadi militant advances throughout the province, with their influence extending to most so-called "settled areas", including Peshawar. Yesterday, the army was reported to have abruptly ended an operation in the Hangu district, close to Peshawar, after threats by militant leaders.
[..]Al-Qa'ida's operational commander in Afghanistan, a 53-year-old Egyptian named Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, was interviewed on Pakistani television yesterday and claimed the organisation's strength in Afghanistan was growing so rapidly it would "soon occupy the whole country". He claimed that "the morale of our fighters in Afghanistan is very high and they are putting up a tough fight against US troops". He also claimed responsibility in the interview for a terrorist attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad.
The fact of the interview, as much as what he said, is seen as indicating an important new stage in the crisis. "The bad guys are even popping up and giving television interviews: that's a reflection of what's happening," one foreign diplomat in Islamabad said last night.
A leading think tank warned this week about the Taliban's use of a media strategy to exaggerate their strength and undermine confidence in the Afghanistan Government. The International Crisis Group says the administration and its backers must counter this propaganda if they are to defeat an insurgency "that is driving a dangerous wedge between them and the Afghan people", in a report entitled Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?
The Taliban now publicise their messages, warnings and claims of battle successes through a website, magazines, DVDs, cassettes, pamphlets, nationalist songs, poems and mobile telephones. Audacious tactics such as the Kandahar jailbreak last month and the April assassination attempt on President Hamid Karzai show that the intent is to grab attention. "The result is weakening public support for nation building, even though few actively support the Taliban," the report says. It says the international community should also examine its own actions, adding the benefits of military action are outweighed by the alienation they cause. "The Taliban is not going to be defeated militarily and is impervious to outside criticism," the ICG says. Rather, the legitimacy of its ideas and actions must be challenged more forcefully by the Afghan government and citizens."

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July 24, 2008

Rumors of Russian Bombers Coming to Cuba

Tri-City Herald
Moscow is angry about U.S. plans for missile-defense sites in eastern Europe and Izvestia cited a "highly placed" military aviation source as saying, "While they are deploying the anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, our long-range strategic aircraft already will be landing in Cuba." Izvestia said this apparently refers to long-range nuclear-capable bombers.
Izvestia points out that there would have to be a political decision on landing bombers in Cuba, and quoted the unnamed source as saying there have been such discussions.
In Washington, U.S. State Department Acting Deputy spokesman Gonzalo R. Gallegos said that American officials had received no official confirmation from the Russian government about the newspaper report, and was unaware of any U.S. efforts to directly contact Moscow about it.
"We continue to continue to work with the Russians on this issue," Gallegos said Tuesday, referring to talks aimed at explaining the U.S. government's missile defense plan. "We have consistently made it clear to them that our proposed deployment of a limited missile defense system in Europe poses no threat to them or to their nuclear deterrent."

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A Social History of the Surge

Did the surge work? Juan Cole at Informed Comment has an in depth analysis of the facts. The answer is the surge probably had little to do with the changes. Major changes were due to the practice of bribing Sunni tribesman to fight Al Qaeda and the disarming of Sunni's in Baghdad which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad of Sunni's by Shia Militia.
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July 23, 2008

America's Middle Class Can't Take Much More Punishment

Alternet.org By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com.
The key factors in almost all of the Sanders letters are exploding gas and heating oil costs, reduced salaries and benefits, and sharply increased property taxes (a phenomenon I hear about all across the country at campaign trail stops, something that seems to me to be directly tied to the Bush tax cuts and the consequent reduced federal aid to states). And it all adds up to one thing.
"The middle class is disappearing," says Sanders. "In real ways we're becoming more like a third-world country."
[..]None of this is a secret. Here, however, is something that is a secret: that this is a class issue that is being intentionally downplayed by a political/media consensus bent on selling the public a version of reality where class resentments, or class distinctions even, do not exist. Our "national debate" is always a thing where we do not talk about things like haves and have-nots, rich and poor, employers versus employees. But we increasingly live in a society where all the political action is happening on one side of the line separating all those groups, to the detriment of the people on the other side.
Here's the thing: nobody needs me or Bernie Sanders to tell them that it sucks out there and that times are tougher economically in this country than perhaps they've been for quite a long time. We've all seen the stats -- median income has declined by almost $2,500 over the past seven years, we have a zero personal savings rate in America for the first time since the Great Depression, and 5 million people have slipped below the poverty level since the beginning of the decade. And stats aside, most everyone out there knows what the deal is.
[..]Our economic reality is as brutal as it is for a simple reason: whether we like it or not, we are in the midst of revolutionary economic changes. In the kind of breathtakingly ironic development that only real life can imagine, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed global capitalism to get into the political unfreedom business, turning China and the various impoverished dictatorships and semi-dictatorships of the third world into the sweatshop of the earth. This development has cut the balls out of American civil society by forcing the export abroad of our manufacturing economy, leaving us with a service/managerial economy that simply cannot support the vast, healthy middle class our government used to work very hard to both foster and protect. The Democratic party that was once the impetus behind much of these changes, that argued so eloquently in the New Deal era that our society would be richer and more powerful overall if the spoils were split up enough to create a strong base of middle class consumers -- that party panicked in the years since Nixon and elected to pay for its continued relevance with corporate money. As a result the entire debate between the two major political parties in our country has devolved into an argument over just how quickly to dismantle the few remaining benefits of American middle-class existence -- immediately, if you ask the Republicans, and only slightly less than immediately, if you ask the Democrats.
The Republicans wanted to take Social Security, the signature policy underpinning of the middle class, and put it into private accounts -- which is a fancy way of saying that they wanted to take a huge bundle of American taxpayer cash and invest it in the very companies, the IBMs and Boeings and GMs and so on, that are exporting our jobs abroad. They want the American middle class to finance its very own impoverishment! The Democrats say no, let's keep Social Security more or less as is, and let that impoverishment happen organically.
Now we have a new set of dire problems in the areas of home ownership and exploding energy prices. In both of these matters the basic dynamic is transnational companies raiding the cash savings of the middle class. Because those same companies finance the campaigns of our politicians, we won't hear much talk about getting private industry to help foot the bill to pay for these crises, or forcing the energy companies to cut into their obscene profits for the public good. We will, however, hear talk about taxpayer-subsidized bailouts and various irrelevancies like McCain's gas tax holiday (an amusing solution -- eliminate taxes collected by government in order to pay for taxes collected by energy companies). Ultimately, however, you can bet that when the middle class finally falls all the way down, and this recession becomes something even worse, necessity will force our civil government -- if anything remains of it by then -- to press for the only real solution.
"Corporate America is going to have to reinvest in our society," says Sanders. "It's that simple."
These fantasy elections we've been having -- overblown sports contests with great production values, decided by haircuts and sound bytes and high-tech mudslinging campaigns -- those were sort of fun while they lasted, and were certainly useful in providing jerk-off pundit-dickheads like me with high-paying jobs. But we just can't afford them anymore. We have officially spent and mismanaged our way out of la-la land and back to the ugly place where politics really lives -- a depressingly serious and desperate argument about how to keep large numbers of us from starving and freezing to death. Or losing our homes, or having our cars repossessed. For a long time America has been too embarrassed to talk about class; we all liked to imagine ourselves in the wealthy column, or at least potentially so, flush enough to afford this pissing away of our political power on meaningless game-show debates once every four years. The reality is much different, and this might be the year we're all forced to admit it.

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July 21, 2008

Nine Reasons to Investigate War Crimes Now

AlterNet
1. World peace cannot be achieved without human rights and accountability.

According to Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals, "The ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law." Moving in that direction will be impossible unless such responsibility applies to the statesmen of the world's most powerful countries, and above all the world's sole superpower. U.S. support for the war crimes charges like those just brought by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will represent little more than hypocrisy if U.S. Presidents are not held to the same standard.
2. The rule of law is central to our democracy.
Most Americans believe that even the highest officials are bound by law. If we send mentally-disabled juveniles to prison as adults, but let government officials who authorize torture and launch illegal wars go scot-free, we destroy the very basis of the rule of law.
3. We must not allow precedents to be set that promote war crimes.
Executive action unchallenged by Congress changes the way our law is interpreted. According to Robert Borosage, writing for Huffington Post, "If Bush's extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself."
4. We must restore the principles of democracy to our government.
The claim that the President, as commander-in-chief, can exercise the unlimited powers of a king or dictator strikes at the very heart of our democracy. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson put it, we, as citizens, would "submit ourselves to rules only if under rules." Countries like Chile can attest that the restoration of democracy and the rule of law requires more than voting a new party into office -- it requires a rejection of impunity for the criminal acts of government officials.
5. We must forestall an imperialist resurgence.
When they are out of office, the advocates of imperial expansion and global domination have proven brilliant at lying in wait to undermine and destroy their opponents.
They did it to destroy the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. They'll do it again to an Obama Administration unless their machinations are exposed and discredited first.
6. We must have national consensus on the real reasons for the Bush Administration's failures.
Republicans are preparing to dominate future decades of American politics by blaming the failure of the Iraq war on those who "sent a signal" that the U.S. would not "stay the course" whatever the cost. Establishing the real reasons for the failure of the U.S. in Iraq -- the criminal and anti-democratic character of the war -- is the necessary condition for defeating that effort.
7. We must restore America's damaged reputation abroad.
The world has watched as the United States -- the self-proclaimed steward of democracy -- has systematically broken the letter and spirit of its Constitution, violated international treaties, and ignored basic moral tenets of humanity. As former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora recently pointed out to the Senate Armed Services Committee, our nation's "policy of cruelty" has violated our "overarching foreign policy interests and our national security." To establish international legitimacy, we must demonstrate that we are capable of holding our leaders to account.
8. We must lay the basis for major change in U.S. foreign policy.
Real security in the era of global warming and nuclear proliferation must be based on international cooperation. But genuine cooperation requires that the U.S. entirely repudiate the course of the past eight years. The American people must understand why international cooperation rather than pursuit of global domination is necessary to their own security. And other countries must be convinced that we really mean it.
9. We must deter future U.S. war crimes.
The specter of more war crimes haunts our future. Rumors continue to circulate about an American or American-backed Israeli attack on Iran. A recently introduced House resolution promoted by AIPAC "demands" that the President initiate what is effectively a blockade against Iran -- an act seen by some as tantamount to a declaration of war. Nothing could provide a greater deterrent to such future war crimes than establishing accountability for those of the past.
Holding war criminals accountable will require placing the long-term well-being of our country and the world ahead of short-term political advantage. As Rep. Wexler put it, "We owe it to the American people and history to pursue the wrongdoing of this Administration whether or not it helps us politically or in the next election. Our actions will properly define the Bush Administration in the eyes of history and that is the true test."

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Bush/Cheney Attempts to Change the Facts on Obama's Visit to Iraq Fails

Bush/Cheney are again engaging in illegal propaganda activities now seeking to influence the US elections. Juan Cole has the scoop.
Informed Comment
Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006), there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll.
That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq!
[..]And for the piece de resistance, it turns out that Der Spiegel has an audiotape of the Arabic of the interview, which they leaked to The New York Times. Sabrina Tavernise and Jeff Zeleny write:
    But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki's office, not the magazine. . . The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki's comments by The Times: "Obama's remarks that -- if he takes office -- in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq." He continued: "Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq."

[..]But you see, it does not matter that al-Maliki actually said what he said. It does not matter that Der Spiegel can prove it. All that matters is that the Goebbelses around Bush and Cheney have managed to muddy the waters and produce doubt, taking the hard edge off the interview. Even AFP, the usually skeptical French wire service, asserted that al-Maliki had "denied" the accuracy of the Der Spiegel interview! Of course, al-Maliki has done no such thing. CENTCOM ventriloquising al-Dabbagh engaged in the denial, and a very vague one at that.
That is the way propaganda works, to obscure the truth and ensure it can be denied. Some wingnut even tried to pressure me to retract the little sentence I had written on the affair yesterday, on the grounds of "al-Dabbagh's" mendacious and ridiculous assertions. Our information system is so corrupt and easily manipulated that even a clumsy ploy can obscure the truth and bully the journalists.

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July 18, 2008

McCain Incites Al-Qaeda, while Bush Negotiates Withdrawal of Troops

McCain struts for the press talking tough, while Bush agrees to pull outs.
Bloomberg.com
Republican presidential candidate John McCain warned that al-Qaeda will step up terrorist attacks in Iraq leading up to the November election in the U.S.
``Al-Qaeda is on their heels but not defeated,'' McCain said today at a town hall meeting with General Motors workers in Warren, Michigan. ``I also predict that they will make an attempt, as we get into election season, to make more of these spectacular kinds of attacks'' by suicide bombers to destabilize the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

I'm sure al-Maliki intends to interpret the agreement with Bush as much more firm about dates of withdrawal than Bush will admit to. Apparently, McCain hopes the voters aren't paying attention to the facts on the ground in Iraq makes Obama right on withdrawal and transfer attention to Afghanistan.
Juan Cole as usual has it right on Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama needs to "prove" to the voters he's stronger on Al Qaeda. I don't think he'll make the same mistakes Bush did in Afghanistan.
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July 17, 2008

US Coastguard says Russia beating America to the Arctic

Every wondered why Bush and the Oil Barons have been so against acting on global warming? It's because there is oil in the Arctic that can only be had if there is no ice!
BigNewsNetwork.com

A top US Coast Guard official has told the Congress that Russia is getting ahead of the United States in the Arctic race. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen has said the government must urgently revise its approach to polar exploration. Admiral Allen told a Congress committee that he was concerned about the decline in the nation's ice-breaking capabilities. The Coast Guard chief said Russia had finally put to sea last year the largest icebreaker in its polar fleet, guaranteeing Russia easy access to the vast natural resources in the Arctic region. Allen said Russia is the only other country, besides the US, with polar ice breaking capabilities, but the Russian fleet is in far better shape, with 'seven to eight' nuclear-powered polar icebreakers.
Russia has undertaken two Arctic expeditions - to the Mendeleyev underwater chain in 2005 and to the Lomonosov ridge last summer to back Russian claims to the region. The area is believed to contain vast oil and gas reserves and other mineral riches, likely to become accessible in future decades due to man-made global warming. Russia said it would submit documentary evidence to the UN of the external boundaries along Russia's territorial shelf in 2009.
Under international law, the five Arctic Circle countries, the US, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia, currently have a 322-km economic zone each in the Arctic Ocean.

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July 16, 2008

Mediterranean Summit: Sarkozy Asks Assad to Mediate with Iran on Nuclear Issue

GlobalResearch.ca

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said U.S. President George W. Bush was not interested in the Middle East peace process and as result he did not expect direct talks with Israel until Bush leaves office next January.
Ending years of isolation from the West, Assad on Saturday met French President Nicolas Sarkozy on the eve of a major EU-Mediterranean summit and signalled his willingness to improve relations with both Syria's neighbours, Israel and Lebanon.
Assad said he did not believe Iran was seeking atomic weapons, but he wanted a political solution and would convey Sarkozy's doubts about Tehran's nuclear programme to Iranian leaders, with whom Syria has close relations.
The Syrian president also said he wanted France to play a role in any eventual face-to-face talks with Israel, but added that it was essential for the United States to also be present.
[..]France had also treated Syria as a virtual pariah state following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005, which Paris blamed on Damascus.
Assad has rejected the accusation and relations with France improved this year after Syria helped end a long-running political stalemate in Lebanon by supporting a power-sharing deal among Lebanon's pro-Western and pro-Syrian factions. Sarkozy said he would visit Damascus in September.
Lebanon's new president, Michel Suleiman, was also in Paris on Saturday and met Assad for the first time. Sarkozy said the two men had agreed to open embassies in each other's country.
"I would like to say, what a historic step forward it is for France that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is determined to open a diplomatic representation in Lebanon, and that Lebanon should open a diplomatic representation in Syria," he said.
The establishment of embassies would amount to a Syrian recognition of Lebanon's sovereignty. Syria has long been a dominant player in Lebanon's political and military affairs but the two countries have not exchanged ambassadors since Lebanon's independence in 1943.
Assad said Sarkozy has asked him to use his influence with Iran to help resolve Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West. "We see the solution as a political one. We cannot consider any solution that is not political because the consequences will be dangerous ..." "Of course, we will pass on to Iran what has just been said, but we think that to the best of our knowledge, Iran has no intention of trying to obtain nuclear weapons," he said.

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Gates Slams Militarization of Foreign Policy

Part of the legacy of Donald Rumsfeld:
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned yesterday against the risk of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy, saying the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries, with the military playing a supporting role. "We cannot kill or capture our way to victory" in the long-term campaign against terrorism, Gates said, arguing that military action should be subordinate to political and economic efforts to undermine extremism.

Informed Comment
Translation: The Bush Senior Realists think Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith not only screwed up the Pentagon and almost destroyed the US armed forces but also imposed impossible burdens on it that other agencies should have borne.

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July 15, 2008

US, NATO on defensive in eastern Afghanistan

AFP

Insurgent attacks have put US and NATO forces on the defensive in eastern Afghanistan, an area recently touted as a counter-insurgency success but now a focus of spreading insecurity, analysts say.
In the latest attack, at least nine US soldiers were killed Sunday when insurgents stormed a remote combat outpost in Kunar province near Pakistan.
It was the deadliest attack against US forces since 2005, but it followed a trend of bolder and more capable insurgent operations as Pakistan's new government has taken a hands-off approach to militant sanctuaries in its tribal areas.
"It's very serious because NATO is already under a lot of pressure," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer now at the Brookings Institution.
"There used to be one deteriorating front, the front in the south. Now that we see the situation in the east is heating up too, it really stretches NATO and American resources very far," he said.
Increasingly concerned about the rising violence, the Pentagon has begun shifting the weight of its combat operations to Afghanistan but within constraints on available forces imposed by the war in Iraq.
It has repositioned an aircraft carrier from the Gulf to the Arabian Sea to support military operations in Afghanistan, extended the deployment of 2,200 Marines in the south and is weighing deeper troop cuts in Iraq to free up more soldiers.

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July 14, 2008

New Yorker Caracature of Obama and Wife Backfires in Poor Taste/Bad Judgment

Alternet

It's easy to say "my work means what I mean it to mean, and if you don't get it, that's your problem" -- but it's never that simple. If you're approaching an assignment from a position of incredible privilege, say as a cover cartoonist for the New Yorker, you can't just write off the unintended consequences of your expression. If you insist on doing so, maybe that is racist.

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July 10, 2008

Secret UN report: biofuel caused food crisis

The Guardian

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.
Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.
"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.
The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.
It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.
"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."
Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".

The real agenda behind the food crisis - GlobalResearch.ca
The World Bank study is the first to include all three factors. What is missing from the World Bank study however is the longer-term geopolitical agenda behind the present global food and energy crises. As I document in great detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, the long term agenda of powerful leading circles in the West, particularly represented in tax exempt private foundations such as the Rockefeller, Ford and Gates foundations and the private wealth behind them, is a long term agenda of population reduction, in the interests of the global economic and financial elites.
Food scarcity, higher prices for basic foods in developing countries as well as control of food seeds through patent and Terminator suicide seed sales by Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, BASF, Bayer and a few select agriculture chemical seed giants--the "horsemen of the GMO Apokalypse," have been developed to advance the agenda of massive depopulation of the developing world.
The policy goes back, as the book documents in detail, to the early years of the 20th Century when Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman, Gamble, H.G. Wells, Margaret Meade, and other wealthy circles backed the development of eugenics research. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the eugenics and forced sterilization research at the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (today's Max Planck Institute) until it became too politically hot in 1939.
. After the end of the war, Rockefeller and others in the eugenics movement decided for political reasons to change the name of eugenics. The new name they chose was "genetics." GMO is a project, based on wrong science, financed with over $100 million of private money from the Rockefeller Foundation. The ultimate aim is for the first time in history to control life on the planet. As Henry Kissinger put in during the 1970's food crisis, "control the food and you control the people."
In this light it is worth noting that as a solution to a crisis which it deliberately created by its massive government subsidies to farmers to grow bio-fuels instead of food, the Bush Administration made and continues to make a major pressure at the Rome Food Summit in early June and after, to open the doors to GMO as the alleged "solution" to world hunger.
On June 13, just after the Rome UN Food Summit, John Negroponte, US Deputy Secretary of State, stated, ""We therefore are strongly encouraging countries to remove barriers to the use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology," adding, "Biotechnology tools can help speed the development of crops with higher yields, higher nutrition value, better resistance to pests and diseases, and stronger food system resilience in the face of climate change." Washington and the GMO companies now use the more deceptive term, "biotechnology" instead of the controversial GMO term, in a linguistic ploy to overcome opposition.
Independent scientific studies and countless farmer reports have shown that long-term planting of GMO or bio-tech crops as the gene giants prefer to call it, far from giving higher crop yields, lowers the yields and development of resistant "super-weeds" usually mean more, not less Roundup or other GMO-paired chemical herbicides and pesticides are needed. In short the glorious claims for GMO are marketing fraud.
According to highly informed reports, Washington had been told that Pope Benedict XVI would endorse the spread of GMO, something the Vatican until now has been strongly opposed to on moral and other grounds, as a solution to world hunger. At the last minute that endorsement did not happen for reasons only the Pope perhaps knows. Groups like Greenpeace and the London Independent newspaper in the days before the Rome UN summit reported interviews with senior Church figures stating that the policy reverse was expected.
There is strong circumstantial evidence that the entire Rome UN Summit was orchestrated by Washington, London's Gordon Brown and other Malthusian governments in part to try to convince the Pope to reverse its policy on GMO. The Roman Catholic Church today stands as one of the most important moral barriers to widespread acceptance of GMO in many developing countries such as the Philippines and Latin America.
The leak of the World Bank report adds a dramatic new element into what is becoming one of the major political issues along with oil price manipulation.

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July 08, 2008

War Powers Act needs fixing, bipartisan panel says

CNN.com

The United States needs a new law requiring that the president consult with Congress before going to war, a blue-ribbon panel led by two former secretaries of state said Tuesday.
The current War Powers Resolution is "ineffective, and it should be repealed and it should be replaced," James Baker said in a joint appearance with Warren Christopher, announcing the results of the study they led.
The recommendation follows failed efforts by Democrats in Congress to put a stop to the war in Iraq or to put conditions on President Bush's conduct of it.
Congress passed a joint resolution to authorize armed force against Iraq in 2002, but some Bush opponents say it should not have been interpreted as a blank check for the United States to invade and occupy the Persian Gulf nation.
Baker, who served in George H.W. Bush's administration, and Christopher, who served under President Bill Clinton, said their project was not prompted by any specific war, with Christopher adding that the commission had "tried very hard not to call balls and strikes on past history here."
"We didn't direct this report at any particular conflict," Baker added.
The existing law, the War Powers Resolution of 1973, has been regarded as unconstitutional by every president since it was passed as a response to the Vietnam War, Baker and Christopher said. It requires presidents to report regularly to Congress about ongoing conflicts, but the provision has been flouted.
"No president has ever made a submission to Congress pursuant to the War Powers Resolution since 1973," former Sen. Slade Gorton, a Republican member of the committee, said Tuesday.
The panel, formally called the National War Powers Commission, said a new law should be created requiring the president to consult with key members of Congress before sending troops into combat expected to last more than a week, or within three days of doing so in the case of operations that need to be kept secret.
It should also make clear exactly who the president needed to consult. The panel suggests that the president talk to "a joint Congressional committee made up of the leaders of the House and the Senate as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees." The new committee would have a permanent professional staff with access to intelligence information, Baker and Christopher said.
Congress, in turn, would have to declare war or vote on a "resolution of approval" within 30 days, they said.
If a resolution of approval failed, any member of Congress could introduce a "resolution of disapproval," but it was not clear that such an act would stop a war in progress.
Christopher was unable to say in the news conference what practical effect congressional disapproval would have.
Baker said the commission had been in touch with the presidential campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, as well as leaders of Congress. He declined to reveal what they thought of the proposal, but said: "We haven't gotten a negative reaction."
Congress has not officially declared war since 1942, when the United States entered formal hostilities with the Axis powers in World War II. But since then, presidents have sent troops into countries including Korea, Vietnam, Grenada and Iraq.
The Constitution makes the president the commander in chief of the armed forces, but gives Congress the power to declare war and approve military budgets.
Baker and Christopher's group included both Republicans and Democrats and held seven meetings over 14 months.

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Woman Arrested at McCain Event for "McCain=Bush" Sign

Video at AlterNet

A 61-year-old librarian was ejected from an ostensibly public McCain campaign event at the Denver Center of Performing Arts in Denver, CO on June 7 because she was brandishing a deadly memetic weapon: a hand-lettered sign that read "McCain=Bush."
Carol Kreck was standing outside the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, which is located on city property. When she was asked to either discard the sign or get out, Ms. Kreck objected that she was standing on city property.
She was lead away by police officers and subsequently ticketed for trespassing. As she was being removed, Kreck asked if was being arrested. The officer answered, "Yes."

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Afghan official: Pakistan spies behind Kabul attack - CNN.com

Pakistan has never been a US ally. Like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan plays both sides against the middle.
CNN

An Afghan government official said Monday's suicide car bombing outside the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan has "the hallmarks of the Pakistani intelligence."
The official, who did not want to be named, said the investigation into the Kabul bombing that killed more than 40 people is still under way, but "all indications are" that Pakistan's intelligence service is behind the attack.
Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, would only say that the "sophistication of this attack and the kind of material that was used, the specific targeting ... has the hallmarks of a particular agency that has conducted similar attacks inside Afghanistan."

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July 07, 2008

Afghans claim air strike kills civilians

You can't count on the US government or military to tell the truth, so who do you believe. I suspect many more innocent civilians are killed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan than any Bush Administration or Pentagon official wants to admit.
TwinCities.com

Afghan officials said aircraft battling militants accidentally killed up to 27 Afghans walking to a wedding ceremony early Sunday, the second military attack in three days with reports of civilian deaths. The U.S. military blamed the claims on militant propaganda and said its missiles only struck insurgents.

Remember our President insists the Iraq war is not about oil, the war in Afghanistan was not sacrificed by pursuing the war in Iraq, and the Shia of Iraq would welcome us as heroes.
And if you believe this, note that the US quotes inflation figures without including the cost of food and gas, unemployment figures excluding those no longer eligible for unemployment, thus they no longer register, and some Congressmen are talking about using tactical nukes in Iran! And the anthrax used in the terrorist mailings of 2001 almost certainly came from the bioweapons labs at Ft. Detrick.
So do you trust our government to tell the truth?
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July 05, 2008

SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME

Ever wondered why African Americans haven't recovered from slavery 150 years ago? Thats because slavery continued at a large scale as little as 50 years ago. The southern establishment used the criminal justice system and forced labor to force freed slaves back into involuntary servitude. Why haven't we heard of it before? Hear it from the author on Bill Moyer's Journal on PBS
Journalist Douglas Blackmon tells another tale of freedom postponed and denied in SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME. Blackmon's book tells the unfamiliar story of "neo-slavery" that reached beyond the de-facto slavery of tenant farming and debt peonage. Blackmon first became intrigued by this episode of U.S. history while researching a story for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL which documented how U.S. Steel Corp. relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines. He discovered:


    Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible "debts," prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of involuntary servitude.


It was a system that Blackmon found carried on in some areas until the early days of World War II.







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