US Takes On More Step Towards Totalitarianism

While the Bush Administration celebrates it's victory over it's War Powers, civil liberties advocates shudder at the implications of a President who can jail indefinitely anyone he wants. The excesses of past actions that are well documented have not detered Congress from folding to the grip of paranoia and lack of faith in our justice system.
On the left is a picture of Maher Arar and his daughter. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was kidnapped in a NY airport and spirited off to Syria where he was held for weeks and tortured into confessing he trained with Al Qaeda. He was recently exonerated by Canadian courts as having no ties with terrorism.


washingtonpost.com

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.


[...]Habeas corpus, a Latin term meaning "you have the body," is one of the oldest principles of English and American law. It requires the government to show a legal basis for holding a prisoner. A series of unresolved federal court cases brought against the administration over the last several years by lawyers representing the detainees had left the question in limbo.


Two years ago, in Rasul v. Bush, which gave Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their detention before a U.S. court, and in this year's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , the Supreme Court appeared to settle the issue in favor of the detainees. But the new legislation approved by Congress last month, which gives Bush the authority to try detainees before military commissions, included a provision removing judicial review for all habeas claims.


Immediately after Bush signed the act into law Tuesday, the Justice Department sent a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asserting the new authorities and informing the court that it no longer had jurisdiction over a combined habeas case that had been under consideration since 2004. The U.S. District Court cases, which had been stayed pending the appeals court decision, were similarly invalid, the administration informed that court on Wednesday.


A number of legal scholars and members of Congress, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), have said that the habeas provision of the new law violates a clause of the Constitution that says the right to challenge detention "shall not be suspended" except in cases of "rebellion or invasion." Historically, the Constitution has been interpreted to apply equally to citizens and noncitizens under U.S. jurisdiction.

Oil: Can America Go Independent?

Samuelson: America Not Ready to Fix Energy Woes - Newsweek Robert Samuelson - MSNBC.com
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing ... after they have exhausted all other possibilities."
—widely attributed to Winston Churchill
On energy, we're disproving even this cynical axiom. Our main energy problem is our huge dependence on imported oil.
For years, some remedies have been obvious: Tax oil heavily to spur Americans to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and to drive a bit less, raise sharply the government's fuel economy standards so those vehicles are available, and allow more oil and gas drilling. In recent years, we've done none of these things. It's doubtful we will anytime soon. "Other possibilities" seem inexhaustible.
Under present policies, U.S. oil demand will expand 34 percent by 2030, the Energy Department projects.
[...]Item: As gasoline prices have receded from $3 a gallon, many Americans attribute the decline to politics. In one Gallup poll, 42 percent of respondents said the Bush administration had manipulated prices to improve Republican prospects in congressional elections. MORE

Maliki Begs for Help From the Real Power In Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr

The US wants to see the militias disarmed in Iraq. Four years ago, perhaps that was possible, before the Iraqi Army was dismantled. But now, the militias are the only effective form of security in the country. Bush continues to carry out a policy that will never work.
New York Times

As a leader of one of the Shiite religious blocs that lead the government, Mr. Maliki is regarded as a protégé of Ayatollah Sistani’s, but he is also politically indebted to Mr. Sadr, whose party holds a crucial bloc of seats in Iraq’s Parliament.


Indeed, Mr. Maliki intervened Wednesday to win the rapid release of one of Mr. Sadr’s prominent loyalists, who was seized in an American-led raid on Tuesday and suspected of complicity in death squads. The release provoked a new wave of exasperation among American officials and military commanders, who have made little secret of their growing doubts about Mr. Maliki’s political will or ability to stop the killings.


Mr. Maliki removed the country’s two most senior police commanders this week in a major restructuring of the Shiite-led police forces, which have been widely accused of abetting death squads. But American officials and some Iraqi leaders have demanded further changes.


[...]For Mr. Maliki, the talks in Najaf had the air of an almost desperate move to defuse tensions over the militias, which have angered the Bush administration. The tensions reached a new point on Monday when Mr. Maliki, who took office in May, used a telephone call with President Bush to seek assurances that the United States did not intend to oust him. The White House said after the call that Mr. Bush had given the Iraqi leader a pledge of his full support.
But barely a day later, Mr. Maliki pressed the American military to free Mr. Sadr’s aide. American spokesmen said they were under orders to make no official comment on the release, but their remarks to reporters left no doubt that patience with Mr. Maliki, at least among commanders, was wearing thin.


American officers said the raid in which they arrested the cleric, Sheik Mazin al-Saidy, was carried out on the basis of intelligence that suggested that he had led a Mahdi Army unit involved in death-squad killings and assassinations.


Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, declined to comment on the negotiations that led to the sheik’s release, but said the request, made by the prime minister himself, was part of a broader strategy to deal with Mr. Sadr politically.


“We believe there is room for political engagement with Moktada, and anything which would disrupt this political engagement will not be very constructive,” Mr. Rubaie said.


One factor that may have weighed into the American decision to release the cleric may have been the desire not to allow the incident to torpedo Mr. Maliki’s hopes of persuading Mr. Sadr to restrain his militias and thus avoid the showdown with the Americans that some American commanders have said is inevitable if the Mahdi Army is not disarmed.

The US can not win a showdown with Sadr. They will only make him more powerful than he is already. Effectively, by demonizing him, the US has made Sadr into the strongest leader in Iraq.

Somalia: Another Failed State Haven for Al Qaeda?

An editorial in todays washingtonpost.com illustrates only one part of the story, indeed a biased viewpoint based on a prejudice that all Islamic nationalists are supporters of Al Qaeda. This kind of shrill alarmist statements undermine any attempt to moderate the ICC, the emerging party in Somalia. Then after fowling the nest, the article calls for contacts with moderates in the ICC. Indeed, that is the appropriate course.
The US has been supporting some of the same warlords that shot down the Apache helicopter in Mogadishu, an event that hastened the end of US presence. How is it inappropriate to talk to a government that may have members who have contacts within Al Qaeda? Is talking to Al Qaeda worthy of a death sentance? This religious based war fever is the most dangerous political idea floating around this earth. We need to act to restrain it. Read this article from an independent source of intelligence on Somalia.

FOUR MONTHS ago an Islamic fundamentalist movement gained control of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, after defeating an alliance of local warlords backed by the United States. Since then the Islamic Courts Union, as the alliance is called, has expanded its control over much of southern Somalia, including the port city of Kismaayo. It has alternatively negotiated and skirmished with a rival, internationally backed government that clings to a base in the western town of Baidoa. It has come to the brink of war with neighboring Ethiopia, which reportedly has sent troops into Somalia, and has won the support of Ethiopia's hostile neighbor, Eritrea.
The Islamic courts' central council has meanwhile come under the control of an extremist who is on the U.S. government's list of terrorists. One of its principal militia commanders is linked to murders of Western aid workers and journalists and is believed to be sheltering three members of the al-Qaeda movement who were involved in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. There are reports that more foreign fighters are arriving in Mogadishu to join the movement, drawn by its call for jihad against Christians in Ethiopia.


What is the United States doing about this dangerous combination of an emerging terrorist base and possible regional war in East Africa? The sad and alarming answer is next to nothing. Since its allies were driven out of the Somali capital in June, the Bush administration has had few contacts and obtained scant intelligence about the Islamic courts. Officials maintain they don't even know for sure whether Ethiopian troops are in the country; the Somalis say they have seen and even fought them, but the Ethiopian government denies it.


In short, Somalia is looking more and more like Afghanistan in the late 1990s -- dominated by an Islamic fundamentalist movement that shelters al-Qaeda; prone to the meddling of neighbors; virtually ignored by the United States. Sadly, the chief difference is that, because of poor intelligence, even a military strike such as that attempted by the Clinton administration against Osama bin Laden in 1998 looks unfeasible.


The administration may have several international crises to worry about, but it cannot afford to neglect this gathering threat. It ought to appoint a special envoy to the region who could begin to work with the Ethiopian, Eritrean and regional Somali governments, and try to restrain them from touching off a regional war. The administration should seek contact with moderate elements in the Islamic courts (there are some) and encourage the ongoing mediation efforts of the Arab League. It should exercise greater control over the Somali coastline. It should consider giving diplomatic recognition to the breakaway northern region of Somaliland, which has a benign government. If the terrorist threat in Somalia cannot be eliminated by direct action, it must at least be contained.

North Korea Changes the Nuclear Rules

North Korea on Tuesday said the UN sponsored sanctions against North Korea were a "declaration of war".washingtonpost.com

[...]that the nation wouldn't cave in to such pressure now that it's a nuclear weapons power.
The bellicose remarks -- the central government's first response to the U.N. measures imposed last weekend -- came as China warned the North against stoking tensions and the American nuclear envoy arrived in South Korea for talks.

Then there are indications from South Korean and Japanese officials that North Korea may be preparing for a second nuclear test.
Here is an excerpt from an indepth analysis by Newsweek.

The human costs of North Korea's nuclear ambitions on the nation's best and brightest were terrible. Few paid a higher price than Kimchaek University's class of '62, according to a grad who defected from North Korea several years ago and told NEWSWEEK his story. As graduation at the elite college neared more than 40 years ago, the buzz on campus was that Kim Il Sung had ordered construction of an advanced research facility to study atomic energy, and that patriotic young scientists soon would be mobilized to work there. "Our professors really pushed the need for nuclear development," he recalls. "The rumor circulating among students was that those of us sent there wouldn't have long to live."


The defector, spared the fate of those assigned to nuclear labs, spent his adult life watching unlucky classmates grow sick, weak and despondent. On leave, one confided a Confucian desperation to marry and sire children before radiation rendered him sterile. "It was exactly what we feared," the defector says, still saddened by their sacrifice. "These guys went bald. Many of them lost their eyebrows. Some of them had constant nosebleeds. They looked so weak it was hard to even face them. The thinking was, 'If one scientist falls there will always be others to take his place'." That logic not only ravaged a generation of scientists sent like worker bees into toxic nuclear labs. It cost billions in hard currency that might have fed starving people and hobbled the national economy by imposing perpetual austerity under slogans like "Military first."


[...]Indeed, the history of North Korea's program is evidence that "any country on the map with a population of 20 to 25 million will have the core group of people who can [go nuclear] if they squeeze their economy hard enough," says Daniel Pinkston, a nonproliferation expert at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. And North Korea has long been, to say the least, quite open to squeezing people in pursuit of power—including many along the Potomac River half a world away.


[...]Oct. 17, 2000, was a beautiful moonlit night in Washington. Marshal Cho Myong Rok, second only to Kim in North Korea, stood sipping drinks with Madeleine Albright on the terrace of the State Department's opulent Benjamin Franklin Room. In a meeting earlier that day with President Clinton, Cho had declared that Pyongyang had renounced terrorism, and he delivered Kim Jong Il's personal invitation to the president to visit Pyongyang.


The two sides were tantalizingly near a deal to stop all North Korean missile exports and cease development, testing and deployment of anything other than short-range Scuds. At least so the Clinton team believed. In exchange, the North would get full diplomatic recognition, the promise of billions in aid from Washington and Tokyo, and the stamp of legitimacy and guarantee of security that a Clinton visit would bring, says Albright's former senior aide, Wendy Sherman. According to Yang Sungchul, the South Korean ambassador to Washington who was there that night, Albright and Marshal Cho conversed in one corner, she looking comfortable and the general bolt-upright as if standing at attention. "I'm sure he was overwhelmed" by the culture shock, says Yang: here was Cho, the leading general of a country whose capital features a U.S. war-crimes museum, surrounded by the enemy.


A week later Albright was in Pyongyang, meeting with what she described as a well-informed and charming Kim, who gave a sophisticated rundown of his security situation and graciously directed his waiters not to give her too much alcohol during toasts. At one point, recalls Sherman, Kim even called for U.S. troops to remain on the Korean Peninsula (to guard against China). Albright was also treated to a show involving tens of thousands of acrobats and dancers at a stadium, intended to impress her with the glorious feats of the North Korean revolution. During the spectacle, a mass of performers flipped colored placards that together depicted Kim's Taepodong I missile taking off for its first test in 1998. Kim turned to Albright at that moment and said, "That was the first launch of that missile, and it will be the last."

Reprisal Killings Intensify in Iraq

Gradually, with dozens of deaths daily, and a separatist government now declared in Sunni Iraq, the country is moving towards disintegration. The Kurds to the north have a de facto independent. It is likely that the Shiite south will do likewise. Civil war will continue between Baghdad and Kirkuk, with Sunnis and Shia fighting over the city, and the Kurds, Sunni and Shia fighting over Kirkut's oil. This next phase of the conflict will likely continue for many years.
Having US troops involved in a civil war makes no sense. We have more important things to do. John Murtha puts it well.

We are seeing an astonishing and unprecedented parade of retired U.S. generals calling for a new direction in Iraq. These are voices of bravery, experience, conscience and loyalty. These are men who have been taught to look coldly and objectively at the facts of bloodshed. Can they all be wrong? How about the 15 intelligence agencies that recently offered the opinion that this war has not made us safer? Are they all defeatists? Are they to be ignored?


Was Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, former Army chief of staff, a defeatist when he said that it would take several hundred thousand troops to prevail in Iraq? His recommendation was ignored. Or what about Gen. Jay M. Garner, our first administrator in Iraq, who recommended that the Iraqi army be kept intact and used to stabilize the country? His recommendations were ignored. The Iraqi army was disbanded and the former military took their munitions and went off to form the core of the insurgency. Was former secretary of state Colin L. Powell defeatist when he warned: "If you break it, you own it"?


Despite the presence of more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, 23,000 Americans injured or killed, tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths and the expenditure of nearly a half a trillion dollars, here are the dismal results:


· In September, 776 U.S troops were wounded in Iraq, the highest monthly toll in more than two years.


· Over the past year, the number of attacks against U.S. personnel has doubled, rising from 400 to more than 800 per week.


· Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, recently acknowledged that sectarian violence has replaced the insurgency as the single biggest threat to Iraq.


· In the past two months, 6,000 Iraqis died, more than in the first year of the war.


· Last week, electricity output averaged 2.4 hours per day in Baghdad and 10.4 hours nationwide -- 7 percent less than in the same period in 2005.


· A Sept. 27 World Public Opinion poll indicated that 91 percent of Iraqi Sunnis and 74 percent of Iraqi Shiites want the Iraqi government to ask U.S.-led forces to withdraw within a year. Ninety-seven percent of Sunnis and 82 percent of Shiites said that the U.S. military presence is "provoking more conflict than it is preventing." And Iraqi support for attacks against U.S.-led forces has increased sharply over the past few months, from 47 percent to 61 percent.

Here is the latest from Iraq.
washingtonpost.com

Militias allied with Iraq's Shiite-led government roamed roads north of Baghdad, seeking out and attacking Sunni Arab targets Sunday, police and hospital officials said. The violence raised to at least 80 the number of people killed in retaliatory strikes between a Shiite city and a Sunni town separated only by the Tigris River.


The wave of killings around the Shiite city of Balad was the bloodiest in a surge of violence that has claimed at least 110 lives in Iraq since Saturday. The victims included 12 people who were killed in coordinated suicide bombings in the strategic northern oil city of Kirkuk.


The violence around Balad, a Shiite enclave in a largely Sunni region, began Friday with the kidnapping and beheading of 17 Shiite farmworkers from Duluiyah, a predominantly Sunni town. Taysser Musawi, a Shiite cleric in Balad, said Shiite leaders in the town appealed to a Baghdad office of Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite cleric, to send militiamen to defend local Shiites and to take revenge. Sadr's political party is a member of a Shiite religious alliance that governs Iraq.


Shiite fighters responded in force, local police said. Witnesses said Shiite fighters began hunting down Sunnis, allegedly setting up checkpoints in the area to stop travelers and demand whether they were Shiite or Sunni.


By Sunday afternoon, 80 bodies were stacked in the morgue of the Balad hospital, the only sizable medical center in the region, physician Kamal al-Haidari said by telephone. Most of the victims had been shot in the head, he said. Other hospital officials said some of the bodies had holes from electric drills and showed other signs of torture. The majority of the victims were believed to be from Duluiyah.


[...]Further demonstrating the growing fragmentation in Iraq, a bloc of Sunni insurgent groups marked the anniversary by declaring a separate Islamic republic in Iraq, stretching from the western province of Anbar to Baghdad, Kirkuk and other parts of the north. The announcement was made by a spokesman for the Mujaheddin Shura Council, an umbrella organization of insurgent groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, and aired by al-Jazeera satellite television.


The statement noted the creation of a separate Kurdish republic in northern Iraq and a push by some Shiite parties for a separate republic in the south. The Shiite region, with the aid of Iran, had been "protecting militias with black hearts and minds that have delved deeply into the killing, torturing and displacing of the Sunnis, our people," it said.


A key Sunni bloc, the Muslim Scholars Association, denounced the declaration, as did some Sunni insurgent groups, including the Islamic Army, which said in a statement that it was not an enemy of the country's Shiites and was against the breakup of Iraq.


[...]In Washington, Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said by telephone: "If you total up the number of people that are being killed, that are being wounded, that are being displaced and are being forced to leave the country, and the zones in which there is major civil conflict . . . trying to declare there isn't a civil war borders on the absurd."

China Empowering Unions

China has had considerable problems with unrest among it's people related to the widening gap between the very rich and the poor. They are now embarking on labor reform allowing union organizing and the empowering the worker to demand better working conditions. The "Ugly" American businessman is protesting and threatening to stop building factories. Horrors of horrors, WalMart has had to accept a union shop in China.
Class warfare in globalization is as prevalent as it is in American politics.
New York Times

China is planning to adopt a new law that seeks to crack down on sweatshops and protect workers’ rights by giving labor unions real power for the first time since it introduced market forces in the 1980’s.


The move, which underscores the government’s growing concern about the widening income gap and threats of social unrest, is setting off a battle with American and other foreign corporations that have lobbied against it by hinting that they may build fewer factories here.


The proposed rules are being considered after the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a new doctrine that will put greater emphasis on tackling the severe side effects of the country’s remarkable growth.


Whether the foreign corporations will follow through on their warnings is unclear because of the many advantages of being in China — even with restrictions and higher costs that may stem from the new law. It could go into effect as early as next May.


It would apply to all companies in China, but its emphasis is on foreign-owned companies and the suppliers to those companies.


[...]The Chinese government proposal, for example, would make it more difficult to lay off workers, a condition that some companies contend would be so onerous that they might slow their investments in China.


[...]On Friday, Global Labor Strategies, a group that supports labor rights policies, is expected to release a report in New York and Boston denouncing American corporations for opposing legislation that would give Chinese workers stronger rights.


“You have big corporations opposing basically modest reforms,” said Tim Costello, an official of the group and a longtime labor union advocate. “This flies in the face of the idea that globalization and corporations will raise standards around the world.”

France Jabs At Turkey

While H?t - Italian Foreign Minister D'Alema joins the Bush Administration expressing support for Turkey's EU membership quest, conflict over Cyprus threatens to block Turkey's membership.
ABC News Online

French MPs have adopted a bill that would make it a crime to deny that the Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of the Ottomans from 1915 to 1917. The draft law - which has provoked the fury of Turkey, the modern state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire - will now be sent to the Senate, or Upper House of Parliament, for another vote. The MPs in the Lower House, the National Assembly, passed the bill, introduced by the opposition Socialist Party, by 106 votes to 19. If it is subsequently passed by the Senate, and then again by the National Assembly, and signed into law by President Jacques Chirac, it would make it a crime in France to deny that the killing of the Armenians was genocide. Those violating the law would face up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $A76,500.


Turkey has threatened economic reprisals against France if it becomes law, warning that French firms could be excluded from public tenders and that a boycott of French goods might be imposed. The Speaker of the Turkish Parliament says the bill reflects a "hostile attitude" towards Turkey. "It is a shameful decision. This is a hostile attitude against the Turkish nation ... It is unacceptable," Bulent Arinc said shortly after the draft law was approved in Paris, the Anatolia news agency reported. Turkey contests the term "genocide" for the killings and strongly opposes the bill's provisions.


Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their ancestors were slaughtered in orchestrated killings and that it can only be seen as genocide. Around 400,000 people of Armenian origin are estimated to live in France, the most famous being the singer Charles Aznavour, born Chahnour Varinag Aznavourian to immigrant parents. France in 2001 already adopted a law officially calling the killings a genocide.

Aljazeera.Net - Turkey faces EU stumble over Cyprus

Turkey's formal European Union membership negotiations are heading for a crisis this autumn, analysts say, because of Ankara's snubbing of European calls to recognise the island of Cyprus.
Last year, Turkey agreed to extend a customs union deal with the EU to include Cyprus, a full member of the EU since 2004.


The deal is considered a tricky bit of diplomacy as Turkey negotiates with the EU's 25 member states but does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus. Ankara has not ratified the deal, and its ports and airports are not open to Greek Cypriot aeroplanes or shipping.


Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for enlargement, has threatened an EU-Turkey "train crash" if Turkey's ports stay closed. But the Turkish response has been tough.


From Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, down to junior ministers, Turkey has insisted that it will not open its ports, until the EU fulfils its promises [made in 2004] to end the economic isolation of northern Cyprus, and allow the Turkish Cypriots to trade directly with the EU.

China Agrees to Limited Sanctions For North Korea

China seems to be willing to consider sanctions against it's ally for it's nuclear test. However there is less than agreement among Security Council members on the type of sanctions. Japan is calling for a virtual blockade of North Korean exports. The US seems to be talking seriously about stopping and boarding all ships leaving North Korea to search for nuclear contraband. It seems unlikely China would agree to this. However it is quite significant that other influential leaders in China are allowed press access to criticize official government policy. There appears to be a power struggle going on within China's leadership.
washingtonpost.com

China on Tuesday expressed a rare willingness to support U.N. sanctions against its ally North Korea, but it said any punitive action would have to be narrowly targeted at the country's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.


The United States and Japan continued to press the U.N. Security Council to support far stronger economic and trade measures that would permit international inspections of all North Korean cargo to search for weapons and to strangle Pyongyang's ability to finance its nuclear program.


Varied responses to the nuclear test that North Korea apparently conducted early Monday emerged as the Bush administration sought to assuage fresh worries by its foreign counterparts that the tough strategy may cause hardship for the country's impoverished population or topple the government. France, for instance, voiced concern that a Japanese proposal to ban all North Korean exports could fuel a humanitarian crisis.


John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, insisted that the U.S. sanctions plan calls for the exemption of food, medicine and other humanitarian goods for civilians. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, meanwhile, specifically ruled out any attempt at regime change. "We have made it very clear that the United States has no intention to attack North Korea. That element of our policy still stands," he told reporters. "What we have sought is a change in the behavior of the North Korean regime."


China's tougher stance against North Korea came as officials in Beijing faced criticism at home over their diplomatic strategy, which relies primarily on the now-stalled six-nation talks to contain North Korea's nuclear program.


The talks have been "a total failure," said Zhang Liankui, a professor at the influential Central Party School's Institute for International Strategic Studies. "North Korea's reaction is a challenge to the whole world. Every country should have a clear and definite attitude, including China.


"If peaceful means can't stop North Korea from conducting a nuclear test, then there should be other means," Zhang added. "The appeasement policy was very popular in the international community, and I think that's very dangerous. Within 10 years, people will suffer from this attitude."


Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao acknowledged that North Korea's action "will undoubtedly exert negative impact" on the two countries' relations. But he said the six-party talks remain "the best and practical way and effective way to resolve this issue, so I don't think it's a failure of China's diplomacy."


Still, Wang Guangya, China's U.N. ambassador, conceded that the council would have to impose "some punitive actions" on Pyongyang to persuade it to heed international demands. He added, however, that "these actions have to be appropriate" and "more specifically targeted toward the nuclear- and missile-related areas."

Questions About North Korean Nuke; Sanctions Proposed

While there continues to be no confirmation of the composition of the North Korean explosion, the inside word is that the test could not have been a chemical weapon because nothing was seen to support that from satelites. But there is disagreement about the actual strength of the tested weapon. Estimates vary from as much as 15 kilotons from the Russians to less than a kiloton from unnamed US sources. The Chinese reported that they expected a 4 kiloton blast.
If so, the test may have been a partial success or failure. There is wide agreement that North Korean is a long way from have an weaponized system much less a delivery means.
New York Times

The North Korean test appears to have been a nuclear detonation but was fairly small by traditional standards, and possibly a failure or a partial success, federal and private analysts said yesterday. Throughout history, the first detonations of aspiring nuclear powers have tended to pack the destructive power of 10,000 to 60,000 tons — 10 to 60 kilotons — of conventional high explosives.


But the strength of the North Korean test appears to have been a small fraction of that: around a kiloton or less, according to scientists monitoring the global arrays of seismometers that detect faint trembles in the earth from distant blasts.


“It’s pretty remarkable that such a small explosion was promptly apparent on seismometers all over the world,” said Paul Richards, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. “The detection of this was really good. You can’t hide these kinds of things, even very small tests.”


A senior Bush administration official said he had learned through Asian contacts that the North Koreans had expected the detonation to have a force of about four kilotons. Because classified information was involved and there was lingering uncertainty, he would not let his name be used.


Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a weapons design center in California, said the small size of the test signaled the possibility of what might be described as a partial success or a partial failure. “As first tests go, this is smaller and less successful than those of the other nuclear powers,” he said. Perhaps the North Koreans wanted to keep it small, he added. “But if it turns out to be a kiloton or less,” Dr. Coyle said, “that would suggest that they hoped for more than that and didn’t get it.”


The United States Geological Survey said it had detected a tremor on the Korean Peninsula of 4.2 magnitude, which translates into an explosive force of roughly 1,000 tons. The agency listed 20 seismic stations as having initially picked up the blast’s shockwave, including nearby ones in China, Japan and South Korea as well as distant ones in Ukraine, Australia, Nevada and Wyoming.


The Russian defense minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, told the Itar-Tass news agency that the Russian government believed the strength of the blast to have been 5 to 15 kilotons. The basis for his claim was not immediately clear.


In Washington, intelligence officials said they were still in the early stages of evaluating the North Korean blast. But one said analysts had estimated its force at less than a kiloton. “We have assessed that the explosion in North Korea was a sub-kiloton explosion,” said the intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information.

With elections looming, Bush is talking tough in hopes of capturing the security vote. But the US is nearly impotent with regard to North Korea. They are already sanctioned by most means available. Bush talks about a virtual blockade of North Korean ports. It would seem to be a futiile effort given the option of importing everything through China. The real question is what will China and Russians do with this. My guess is very little.
New York Times

At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the United States pressed for international inspections of all cargo moving into and out of North Korea to detect weapons-related material, and a ban on all trading in military goods and services with the country.


At the White House, President Bush called the North Korean test “a threat to international peace and security” and condemned it as a “provocative act.”


But Russia and China, which have veto power and have consistently opposed tough sanctions, did not signal that they were ready to go along with the American proposal. Britain, France and Japan said they were also pressing for strong sanctions, which the Council is expected to debate in the coming days.
Coming just a month before the November elections, North Korea’s reported test on Monday morning had immediate political ramifications. Democrats were already using their campaigns to argue that the Iraq war had made the United States less secure by diverting attention away from threats like North Korea; now they are using the North’s claim to hammer away at their theme.

More On Bush and North Korea

A GREAT post at AlterNet about Bush and North Korea:

Second point. You know the drill. Focusing on Iraq, which had no weapons, or operational weapons program, Bush allowed North Korea to develop these nukes. And they did so with the help of Bush's ally, Pakistan. Via former 60 Minutes producer, Barry Lando:

That tunnel vision persisted even after June 2002, when, according to Seymour Hersh, the CIA revealed to President Bush and his key advisors that, since 1997, Pakistan had been "sharing sophisticated technology, warhead design information, and weapons-testing data with North Korea, including how to conceal their nuclear research from the U.S. and South Korea." The Bush administration sat on the CIA report; the White House didn’t want to divert the focus from Saddam Hussein, and Pakistan had become a vital ally in President Bush’s war on terrorism.

Even more damning to the man and the party whose supposed strength is national security, it looks like Bush didn't even attempt to make a nuclear program a no go. Via the WaPo:

Unlike the Clinton administration -- which suggested to North Korea that it would attack if Pyongyang moved to reprocess the plutonium -- the Bush administration never set out "red lines" that North Korea must not cross. Bush administration officials argued that doing so would only tempt North Korea to cross those lines.

[...]from Woodward's State of Denial, via RoxPopuli:


George W. pulled Bandar aside.


"Bandar, I guess you're the best a__hole who knows about the world. Explain to me one thing."


"Governor, what is it?"


"Why should I care about North Korea?"

N. Korea Claims Nuclear Test

Though there is still some uncertainty about confirmation, North Korea caused an underground explosion in northeastern North Korea. Russian's and Chinese confirmed it as nuclear. South Korea reported that the explosion seemed much smaller than Russian reports. There is perhaps an outside chance this is all a ruse.
But, while Bush is chasing WMDs around Iraq, our real enemies in North Korea and Iran are busy joining the nuclear club. We're too overcommitted to respond. Iraq has created a huge power vacuum that North Korea, Iran, China and Russia have been quick to exploit.
Bush has allowed the US Super Power status to challenged and even our allies are seriously questioning our ability to protect them. Should this test be confirmed, look for Japan to quickly go nuclear.
washingtonpost.com

North Korea declared on Monday that it had conducted its first nuclear test, asserting a claim to be the world's newest nuclear power and drawing strong international condemnation.
The South Korean government informed officials in Washington that an explosion occurred at 10:36 a.m. local time. Minutes later, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency announced the test, calling it "a historical event that has brought our military and our people huge joy."


Chinese officials released a statement simultaneously recognizing and condemning the test. U.S., South Korean and Japanese authorities said they were still reviewing intelligence data but had no reason to immediately doubt the veracity of the Pyongyang government's claim.


The announcement brought a hailstorm of swift international denunciations and touched off a chain reaction of security jitters that caused the Japanese yen to fall to seven-month lows and sent the South Korean currency and stock market plunging. South Korean officials said they detected a significant man-made explosion in the barren northeast of the peninsula, and were substantiating the Pyongyang government's claim. The test would make the Stalinist state the world's eighth proven nuclear power, as well as its most volatile.


Chinese authorities immediately condemned the test. North Korea "has ignored the widespread opposition of the international community and conducted a nuclear test brazenly on October 9," China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its Web site. "The Chinese government is firmly opposed to this."


[...]The test alters the balance of power in northeast Asia and touches off grave new concerns about the proliferation of refined nuclear material or devices to other rogue states or terrorist groups. North Korea, a secretive communist state which strictly limits all contact with the outside world, already generates tens of millions of dollars a year through its thriving underground sales of missiles and other sophisticated weaponry to nations including Iran and Syria.


It was also set to bring Pyongyang's four-year standoff with Washington over its nuclear programs to a head. U.S. intelligence sources said the Bush administration is talking about immediate naval action around North Korea. "This won't exactly be a blockade, which is an act of war. But we could stop and inspect all ships in and out of North Korea," one senior U.S. government official said.


It was also set to bring Pyongyang's four-year standoff with Washington over its nuclear programs to a head. U.S. intelligence sources said the Bush administration is talking about immediate naval action around North Korea. "This won't exactly be a blockade, which is an act of war. But we could stop and inspect all ships in and out of North Korea," one senior U.S. government official said.

NATO chief warns Afghans may switch allegiance to Taliban

All over the Middle East, American interests are collapsing. About the only good news is the price of oil has come down, suspiciously before the election.
Now the NATO chief in Afghanistan warns the Taliban are becoming more popular in Afghanistan because of inattention from the Bush Administration. The military adventure in Iraq is the worst thing that has happened to American foreign policy since Pearl Harbor.
CNN.com

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said Sunday he "would understand" if many Afghans switched their allegiance back to the Taliban due to the failure of international forces to deliver needed improvements. Speaking a day after the fifth anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led war that toppled the Taliban regime, British Gen. David Richards, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, also repeated his call for more troops. "By this time next year I would understand if a lot of Afghans, down in the south in particular, said to us all, 'Listen, you're failing year after year at delivering the improvements which you have promised to us. And if you don't do something about it,' that 70 percent or so will start saying, 'Come on, we'd rather have the Taliban.'"

Bush Environmental Policy Irks Judges in West

The Bush Administration environmental record has been more of the same doublethink. He says he'll protect the environment, but discourage any obstacle to unrestrained development. Judges, environmental groups, anglers and conservative religious groups interested in "creation care" have joined in an unusual coalition supporting environmental causes in the West.
washingtonpost.com

Using language that suggests they are fed up with the Bush administration, federal judges across the West have issued a flurry of rulings in recent weeks, chastising the government for repeated and sometimes willful failure to enforce laws protecting fish, forests, wildlife and clean air. In decisions in Oregon, California, Montana and Wyoming, judges have criticized the judgment, expertise and, in some cases, integrity of the federal agencies that manage natural resources on public lands.


The rulings come at a time when an emerging bipartisan coalition of western politicians, hunters, anglers and homeowners has joined conservation groups in objecting to the rapid pace and environmental consequences of President Bush's policies for energy extraction on federal land.


"You are seeing frustration in the federal judiciary," said Dan Rohlf, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, in Portland, Ore. The law school has the nation's oldest environmental law program. "When judges express that frustration on paper, which is not all that often, they are often reflecting what they see as a systematic effort to get around the law."


The most scathing and exasperated of the recent court orders came late last month out of Portland, where U.S. District Judge James A. Redden has presided for six years over a stalled federal effort to prevent endangered salmon from going extinct in the Columbia and Snake rivers.


Federal agencies "have repeatedly and collectively failed to demonstrate a willingness to do what is necessary" under the Endangered Species Act to save fish at risk of extinction, wrote Redden, who was appointed in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter.

RICH & POOR: INEQUALITY IN AMERICA

LinkTV is a network I wish I could get from Comcast.... Hopefully this next special will be streamed like a lot of their other programming.
RICH & POOR: INEQUALITY IN AMERICA: 4 hours of special programming on Link TV

Link TV will broadcast a four-hour special, RICH & POOR: INEQUALITY IN AMERICA, on Friday, Oct. 6, Wednesday, Oct. 11 and Saturday, Oct. 28 beginning at 5p.m. PST and 8 p.m. EST. Part of a gripping collection of programs you must see before you vote in November, the special will feature Peter Kinoy & Pam Yate’s award-winning film, Poverty Outlaw, selections from Robert Greenwald’s Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Inequality Matters: A Speech by Bill Moyers, addressing the class war in America in which the “rich are getting richer and the poor don’t have a chance.” It will also feature a sit down with author, Thom Hartmann, (Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class) and political satirist, Will Durst, host of Link TV’s “The Outsourcing Report.” Tune in for four hours examining the growing gap between rich and poor.


Link TV is available on DIRECTV channel 375 and Dish Network channel 9410 and on cable in select markets, including New York, San Francisco and Washington DC. See programs streamed on-line, and check out our schedule at www.linktv.org.

Al Qaeda Is Expanding in the Mediterranean

As predicted by the intelligence community, Al Qaeda is gaining new recruits by the hundreds, perhaps by the thousands, because of the on-going war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is one story of many. Other groups from Bangladesh, Nigeria, and throughout Europe are joining the Jihad against the West.
washingtonpost.com

In a video released last month on the Internet, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, declared that he had "great news." Al-Qaeda, he reported, had joined forces with an obscure Algerian underground network and would work in tandem with the group to "crush the pillars of the crusader alliance."


The Algerian partner, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, had fought the Algerian government in a barbaric civil war for almost a decade. But Zawahiri said the new alliance had different targets in mind. "Our brothers," he said, "will be a thorn in the necks of the American and French crusaders and their allies, and a dagger in the hearts of the French traitors and apostates."


Zawahiri's statement was the latest sign of how, with al-Qaeda's help, the Algerian network has rapidly transformed itself from a local group devoted solely to seizing power at home into a global threat with cells and operations far from North Africa.


Since 2003, the group known by its French initials GSPC has emerged as an umbrella for radical Islamic factions in neighboring countries, sponsoring training camps in the Sahara and supplying streams of fighters to wars in Iraq and Chechnya, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts in Europe and North Africa.


The network also has planted deep roots in Europe. In the past year, authorities have broken up cells in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, including one group that allegedly plotted to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Geneva.


On Sept. 1, the French Anti-Terrorist Coordination Unit issued a statement classifying the group as "one of the most serious threats currently facing France," Algeria's former colonial master. Ten days later, the assessment was given fresh urgency by Zawahiri's videotape, timed for the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. In it, he noted that Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's founder, had given his personal approval to the "blessed union" between the Algerian network and al-Qaeda.


Responding to Zawahiri's declaration, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said there was a "real and permanent" risk to France, in part because of its military involvement in Lebanon and Afghanistan, as well as its policy of forbidding Muslim girls to wear head scarves in public schools.


Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, the head of France's domestic intelligence service, added: "For our Islamist adversaries, our country is frankly in the Western camp -- the 'crusaders' in their words -- and we will be spared nothing."


[...]"Al-Qaeda's objective is to have a base in the region of the Sahel," he added, referring to the remote stretch of North Africa that borders the southern edge of the Sahara and covers such impoverished nations as Mali, Mauritania and Niger.


In June 2005, about 150 of the Algerian group's fighters from different countries attacked a Mauritanian military outpost, killing 15 soldiers. Another of its cells kidnapped 32 European tourists in the Sahara in 2003 and reportedly received a $5 million ransom from the German government for their release.


"It's all mobile and on the run. They'll rendezvous in a wadi for four or five days, then disperse," the official said, using an Arabic word for a streambed that is usually dry. "We're very much concerned about it. It's more than just a few guys. If you add it up, it's a substantial number of folks."


Many veterans of the North African camps have traveled to Iraq, where they make up one of the biggest contingents of foreign fighters battling U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts.


According to a study released in March by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project, an adviser to the Saudi government, North Africans make up about 30 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq, with 22 percent from Algeria alone. U.S. military officials and independent analysts said other estimates have shown somewhat lower numbers of North Africans, but agreed that Algerians and the Salafist group are playing key roles in the conflict.


[...]Many of the Salafist group's foot soldiers in Europe have never been to Algeria, but are motivated to join the network because of Islamic anger over conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, Raufer said. "For them, it's an easy time," he said of the recruiters. "When they preach, a lot of people are furious. A lot of Muslims are outraged at what's going on." MORE

"Mother Russia" Turns the Screws on Georgia

More and more every day, Putin acts more and more like his Soviet predecessors. His bullying tactics against the breakaway republic of Georgia is just one example. Georgia is another budding democracy looking for NATO membership to protect it from Russia. Russia seems bent on showing Georgia what future they will have with it's neighbor should they continue to drift away from under the big Russian thumb.
International Herald Tribune

Moscow slapped transport and postal sanctions on Georgia in response to Georgia's arrest last week of four Russian officers accused of espionage. Georgia released the officers on Monday, but the Kremlin has refused to back down despite Western calls for an end to the punitive measures.


In addition, police are targeting the large Georgian Diaspora in Moscow with raids of businesses and restaurants. The Russian parliament will also consider a bill later this week that would allow the government to bar Georgians living in Russia from sending money home — a step that would deal a huge blow to Georgia's struggling economy. According to some estimates, about 1 million of Georgia's 4.4 million population work in Russia, and their families rely on the hundreds of millions of dollars (euros) in annual remittances.


Moscow's aim appears to be to punish Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili for his defiance of Russia through the detention of its officers on spying charges. The dispute more widely reflects Kremlin alarm at Tbilisi's goal of NATO membership and the growing U.S. influence in its former Soviet backyard.


A Kremlin official, Modest Kolerov, said the sanctions — a suspension of air, road, maritime, rail and postal links — would not be lifted until Georgia ended its "hostile rhetoric" toward Russia, the Gazeta.ru news Web site reported. A close Putin ally, parliamentary speaker Boris Gryzlov, warned that more punitive measures could follow. "Not all sanctions have been imposed," the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted him as saying.


Piling on the pressure, authorities Tuesday closed two popular casinos run by Georgians in the Russian capital, saying they did not have authorization for their casino tables and slot machines. They also raided a hotel and two restaurants run by Georgians, saying they could be closed for legal violations.


The Kommersant daily quoted police officials as saying that 40 Georgian restaurants and shops in downtown Moscow would be raided in the next few days. The Georgian ballet had to cancel a planned tour in Russia because it could not obtain visas. MORE

Trade Imbalances and the Return of Keynes

The US is borrowing about $3 billion a day, just to offset the trade imbalance with China. The Bush Administration blames China for it's under valued currency. But even if China values it's currency at a higher rate, the US would still be borrowing $2 billion a year.
Economics has been undergoing a hidden civil war. Keynes has fallen out of favor by Republicans trying to "starve the beast" of the government institution. So they've run up a huge budget deficit and ignored a trade imbalance. The rich aren't too worried about this problem because they fund their own safety net and think the rest of America could do the same. But of course they feather their nest at the expense of the working person who can barely afford his rising rent or mortgage on his stagnant income.
The Keynes approach? Raise taxes on the rich, cut taxes on the lowest incomes. What an amazing idea!
New York Times

Nothing significant can be done about these global imbalances unless the United States attacks its own problems. No one seriously proposes that businesses save money instead of investing in expanding production simply to correct the problem of the trade deficit; and while there may be sermons aplenty about why Americans should save more — certainly more than the negative amount households saved last year — no one in either political party has devised a fail-proof way of ensuring that they do so. The Bush tax cuts didn’t do it. Expanded incentives for saving didn’t do it.


Indeed, most calculations show that these actually reduce national savings, since the cost to the government in lost revenue is greater than the increased household savings. The common wisdom is that there is but one alternative: reducing the government’s deficit.


Imagine that the Bush administration suddenly got religion (at least, the religion of fiscal responsibility) and cut expenditures. Assume that raising taxes is unlikely for an administration that has been arguing for further tax cuts. The expenditure cuts by themselves would lead to a weakening of the American and global economy. The Federal Reserve might try to offset this by lowering interest rates, and this might protect the American economy — by encouraging debt-ridden American household to try to take even more money out of their home-equity loans to pay for spending. But that would make America’s future even more precarious.


There is one way out of this seeming impasse: expenditure cuts combined with an increase in taxes on upper-income Americans and a reduction in taxes on lower-income Americans. The expenditure cuts would, of course, by themselves reduce spending, but because poor individuals consume a larger fraction of their income than the rich, the “switch” in taxes would, by itself, increase spending. If appropriately designed, such a combination could simultaneously sustain the American economy and reduce the deficit.


Not surprisingly, these recommendations did not emerge from the International Monetary Fund meetings in Singapore. The United States retains a veto there, making it unlikely that the fund will recommend policies that aren’t to the liking of the American administration.


Underlying the current imbalances are fundamental structural problems with the global reserve system. John Maynard Keynes called attention to these problems three-quarters of a century ago. His ideas on how to reform the global monetary system, including creating a new reserve system based on a new international currency, can, with a little work, be adapted to today’s economy. Until we attack the structural problems, the world is likely to continue to be plagued by imbalances that threaten the financial stability and economic well-being of us all. MORE

Details About a Foley Cover-up Emerging

It seems that Republican leadership was informed of Foley's activities a year ago. One of Republican Reps reported him for preying on one of his pages. The Republican leadership left him as Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus!
This morning we find out he has checked himself into Alcoholism treatment, the best place to go to avoid being arrested.
The AlterNet article has details about his activities you won't find in mainstream media.

In a scandal that will likely take down the entire House Republican leadership, everyone is wondering why Rep. Mark Foley, Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus was allowed to carry on his predatory behavior with a teenage boy a year after his relationship was revealed to party leaders.
[...]
Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, was caught sending very explicit sexual messages to 16 and 17 year old boys who worked as pages for Congress. Actually, he was caught by a fellow Republican, Rodney Alexander, because one of the pages worked for Rep. Alexander and turned Foley in. So, what did the Republicans do about it? Absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. They covered it up. Because it's what they do. The Republican Protection Racket stepped in and made the story go away. There was no public apology to the boys that were sexually harassed. No criminal investigation. No ethics investigation. Not a word.


Now, they feign outrage. Why weren't they outraged when they first found out about it? They're not outraged because young boys were jeopardized. They're outraged now because they're jeopardized. But it gets worse. They left Foley in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. Come on!

Paralysis Continues in Palestine

Gaza and West Bank erupted in violence after the power sharing agreement between Hamas and Fatah fell apart over it's center piece, the recognition of Israel's right to exist. Apparently they believe their strength is in maintaining their position rejecting the existance of Israel. Or their support from Iran is contingent on their maintaining this position. Abbas believes that his strength lies in Hamas international weakness.
Abbas is the most shrewd leader the Palestinian's have seen. He delays the obvious move of dissolving the government and forcing an early election knowing that the electorate is not yet in his hands. I believe his path is the only current path towards peace. Hamas will have to deal with thim eventually. It seems unlikely Hamas will sweep the next election assume it is delayed sufficiently to prevent a Hamas sweep.
washingtonpost.com

The deal, as outlined by Hamas and Fatah officials, would have implicitly endorsed a future Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The agreement accepted the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that calls for the recognition of the Jewish state once Israel leaves all territory it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. Abbas also pushed Hamas to accept the 1993 mutual-recognition letters between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In those letters, the PLO recognized Israel and renounced violence while Israel recognized the PLO, until then classified as a terrorist organization.


Accepting those terms would have marked a significant shift in direction for Hamas, whose founding charter calls for the creation of an Islamic state across territory that now includes Israel. But the agreement has unraveled in recent days.


Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders have said that, while the unity government could accept some previous agreements with Israel, Hamas as a movement would never recognize Israel's right to exist. Abbas has accused Hamas of reneging on the agreement, saying the talks to form a unity government are "back to square one."


The United States, the European Union and other international donors have demanded that Hamas renounce violence, recognize the Jewish state and accept signed agreements with Israel in return for a renewal of aid, which accounts for nearly half the authority's $2 billion annual budget.