A Nuclear Timeline of Information by Sarah Meyer

Sarah Meyer’s blog site has a wealth of information – from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) to Security Companies, i.e. Blackwater – well researched and time-lined. I suggest that you bookmark her site as you will find that you will be referring to it often.

This time line covers only two months – from September to November 2007 – and the amount of information is astounding. There is too much information to copy here so please be sure to continue reading the information at her site. Her index is set-up so that you can click on the title that you want to read next and it will take you right to that section.

NUCLEAR USA: SEPTEMBER – NOVEMBER 2007

An overview of policies at home and abroad

by Sarah Meyer
Index Research

NUCLEAR-armed states are criminal states. They have a legal obligation, confirmed by the World Court, to live up to Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which calls on them to carry out good-faith negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely. None of the nuclear states has lived up to it. Noam Chomsky (10.08.07. khaleej times / ICH.)

The United States has irrational, hypocritical nuclear policies abroad. The foreign ‘enemies’ are those countries, like Iraq, with lots of oil and gas. America is its own worst ‘enemy;’ and appears, to the rest of the world, as the principal ‘terrorist.’

This research covers approximately two months in 2007 of American nuclear policies abroad, as well as those at home. Both are terrifying.

Index

1. US Arms Exports After 9/11

2. Who Is Pushing the Terror Button? Nuclear Egypt, India, (?) Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, (?) Syria, United Kingdom. Added Update: Turkey.

3. Nuclear U.S.A.: Reports; Trident; Missiles; Articles; Ooops: Dangerous Mishaps 1 – 10; Three Non-nuclear Ooopsies; Homeland Security; Blackwater; War ‘Games’; ‘Terrorism’ Drills’; Martial Law?

1. US ARMS EXPORTS AFTER 9/11

U.S. Arms Exports and Military Assistance in the “Global War on Terror”
06.09.07. Center for Defense Information. CDI’s ongoing research continues to document some troubling trends. Using U.S. government data, CDI has documented that, in the five years after Sept. 11, total U.S. arms sales (Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales ) to these 25 countries were worth four times more than those concluded in the five years prior to Sept. 11, and these countries received 18 times more total U.S. military assistance (Foreign Military Financing and International Military Education and Training) after Sept. 11 than before. Furthermore, 72 percent of the countries in this series received more military assistance and 64 percent conducted more arms sales with the United States during the five years after Sept. 11 than during the entire period between the end of the Cold War and Sept. 11 (FY 90-01). .. the United States has increased sales to new post Sept. 11 allies and has made several large and potentially troublesome arms deals, including a multi-billion dollar sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.. Total Direct Commercial Sales in the five years after Sept. 11 totaled roughly $66 billion more than in the five years prior, an 11-fold increase. .. Just as the United States is using arms sales as a reward to its allies in the “war on terror,” military assistance programs have also increased since Sept. 11. Includes pdf report on case studies for following countries: South Caucasus • Armenia • Azerbaijan • Georgia • South Asia: India • Nepal • Pakistan • Southeast Asia: Indonesia • Philippines • Thailand • Middle East: Bahrain • Oman • Yemen • Central Asia: Kazakhstan • Kyrgyzstan • Tajikistan • Turkmenistan • Uzbekistan • Africa: Algeria • Chad • Mali • Mauritania • Niger • Djibouti • Ethiopia • Kenya

2. WHO IS PUSHING THE TERROR BUTTON?

NUCLEAR EGYPT

Egypt to Build Nuclear Plants
29.10.07. Washington Post. Egypt’s president announced plans Monday to build several nuclear power plants _ the latest in a string of ambitious such proposals from moderate Arab countries. The United States immediately welcomed the plan, in a sharp contrast to what it called nuclear “cheating” by Iran.

NUCLEAR INDIA

Nuclear Agreement With US Rips India Apart
27.09.07. Pierre Prakkash, Liberation / Truthout. how the civilian nuclear agreement the Indian government has negotiated with the US may bring about the government’s dissolution.

Nuclear Deal With India May Be Near Collapse
16.10.07. Washington Post. Premier Cites Internal Opposition To Agreement Pushed by Bush. A controversial nuclear deal between the United States and India appears close to collapse after the Indian prime minister told President Bush yesterday that “certain difficulties” will prevent India from moving forward on the pact for the foreseeable future. … Neither government appeared eager to announce the setback to what had been billed as one of the Bush administration’s biggest foreign policy ‘achievements’. … the reluctance to admit that the deal is faltering contrasts with the fanfare when it was announced in 2005. … The agreement lays out a framework for peaceful nuclear cooperation that would eventually allow trade in nuclear reactors, technology and fuel between the two nations. It permits [permitted] India to reprocess nuclear fuel and opens the way for the United States to become a “reliable” supplier for India’s energy program.

White House Sees Life in Indian Nuclear Deal
17.10.07. NTI. The Bush administration expressed continuing hope yesterday that its nuclear trade deal with India would take effect next year, Agence France-Presse reported. The affirmation followed a Monday phone call between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush in which Singh acknowledged facing strong domestic opposition to the agreement. The deal would give New Delhi access to U.S. nuclear material and technology, but left- and right-wing Indian critics have complained that U.S. conditions on the pact would give Washington undue influence over Indian affairs.

VIDEO INTERVIEW and transcript with Congressman Ed Markey
23.10.07. fas.org. On October 18, FAS hosted a news briefing on the status of the nuclear technology transfer agreement between the United States and India in light of its near collapse.

US cautions India against Iran pipeline
27.10.07, peninsulaqatar. The US is hoping that India would not move forward with the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project as Washington has imposed more sanctions on Tehran citing links to terrorism and weapons proliferation. … “We think at a time when the world should be imposing greater discipline on its interactions with (Iranian) companies and financial institutions and the Iranian government more broadly, that this is not the right path forward.” David McCormick, treasury undersecretary for international affairs, said.

U.S. Continues to Press India on Nuclear Deal
31.10.07. NTI. Current and former U.S. officials met yesterday with Indian opposition leaders to promote the nuclear trade agreement that has stalled in New Delhi, the Hindustan Times reported. … The trade pact would enable India to purchase U.S. nuclear technology and material in exchange for opening its civilian nuclear activities to international monitoring.

Time Limited to Close India Deal, Experts Say
02.11.07. NTI. Analysts say time is running out for India and the United States to finalize their nuclear trade agreement, the International Herald Tribune reported Wednesday. Progress has stalled while the Singh administration attempts to overcome resistance from parties on both ends of the political spectrum to the deal. Critics say Washington would receive undue influence over Indian policies through the agreement, which would provide New Delhi with access to U.S. nuclear material and technology in exchange for allowing international monitoring of its civilian atomic complex.

Indian Opposition Party Rejects U.S. Nuclear Deal
08.11.07. NTI. India’s main political opposition party yesterday rejected a proposal to ally with the Singh administration to push a stalled nuclear trade agreement with the United States through the Indian parliament, the Indo-Asian News Service reported.

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Chavez Stands His Ground…

In March 2006 Chavez asked Exxon Mobil to give more of their profits back to the country or get out. Today Exxon Mobil has gotten a British court injunction to freeze $12 billion in assets in a move to take over Petroleos de Venezuela SA. President Chavez is rightly incensed:

Chavez Threatens US Oil Cutoff

Feb 10 03:49 PM US/Eastern

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States if Exxon Mobil Corp. wins court judgments to seize his government’s assets. “If you end up freezing (Venezuelan assets) and it harms us, we’re going to harm you,” Chavez said. “Do you know how? We aren’t going to send oil to the United States. Take note, Mr. Bush, Mr. Danger.”

Exxon Mobil has gone after the assets of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA in U.S., British and Dutch courts as it challenges the nationalization of a multibillion dollar oil project by Chavez’s government.

A British court has issued an injunction “freezing” as much as $12 billion in assets.

“The outlaws of Exxon Mobil will never again rob us,” Chavez said, saying the Irving, Texas-based oil major acts in concert with “the imperialist government of the United States” and is part of corporate “worldwide mafias.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Peace Corps and Fulbright Student Asked to Spy

Exclusive: Peace Corps, Fulbright Scholar Asked to ‘Spy’ on Cubans, Venezuelans

U.S. Embassy Official’s ‘Spy’ Request Violated Long-Standing U.S. Policy

By JEAN FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY and BRIAN ROSS

Feb. 8, 2008—

In an apparent violation of U.S. policy, Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar were asked by a U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia “to basically spy” on Cubans and Venezuelans in the country, according to Peace Corps personnel and the Fulbright scholar involved.

Click here to read this article in Spanish. (Haz click aquí para leer este artículo en español.)

“I was told to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers I come across during my time here,” Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Schaick told ABCNews.com in an interview in La Paz.

Van Schaick’s account matches that of Peace Corps members and staff who claim that last July their entire group of new volunteers was instructed by the same U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia to report on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals.

The State Department says any such request was “in error” and a violation of long-standing U.S. policy which prohibits the use of Peace Corps personnel or Fulbright scholars for intelligence purposes.

“We take this very seriously and want to stress this is not in any way our policy,” a senior State Department official told ABCNews.com.

The Fulbright scholar van Schaick, a 2006 Rutgers University graduate, says the request came at a mandatory orientation and security briefing meeting with Assistant Regional Security Officer Vincent Cooper at the embassy on the morning of Nov. 5, 2007.

According to van Schaick, the request for information gathering “surfaced casually” halfway through Cooper’s 30-minute, one-on-one briefing, which initially dealt with helpful tips about life and security concerns in Bolivia.

“He said, ‘We know the Venezuelans and Cubans are here, and we want to keep tabs on them,'” said van Schaick who recalls feeling “appalled” at the comment.

“I was in shock,” van Schaick said. “My immediate thought was ‘oh my God! Somebody from the U.S. Embassy just asked me to basically spy for the U.S. Embassy.'”

A similar pattern emerges in the account of the three Peace Corps volunteers and their supervisor. On July 29, 2007, just before the new volunteers were sworn in, they say embassy security officer Vincent Cooper visited the 30-person group to give a talk on safety and made his request about the Cubans and Venezuelans.

“He said it had to do with the fight against terrorism,” said one, of the briefing from the embassy official. Others remember being told, “It’s for your own safety.”

Peace Corps Deputy Director Doreen Salazar remembers the incident vividly because she says it was the first time she had heard an embassy official make such a request to a Peace Corps group.

Salazar says she and her fellow staff found the comment so out of line that they interrupted the briefing to clarify that volunteers did not have to follow the embassy’s instructions, and she later complained directly to the embassy about the incident.

“Peace Corps is an a-political institution,” Salazar says. “We made it clear to the embassy that this was an inappropriate request, and they agreed.”

Indeed, the State Department admits having acknowledged the infraction and assuring Salazar that it would not happen again. Yet, it was just four months later that Fulbright scholar van Schaick says he was asked by the same embassy official, Cooper, to “spy” on the Cubans and Venezuelans.

A U.S. Embassy official in La Paz, Bolivia said Cooper was referring all calls for comment to the State Department in Washington.

Van Schaick says he never considered complying with the request, fearful he would violate Bolivian espionage laws and that he would jeopardize the integrity of the Fulbright program, which yearly sends hundreds of American college graduates to countries around the world.

“I am supposed to be a cultural ambassador increasing mutual understanding between us and the Bolivian people,” van Schaick explains. “This flies in face of everything Fulbright stands for.”

The Fulbright program receives its funding from the U.S. State Department and the Peace Corps is a federal agency, but the State Department insists that neither group has the obligation to act in an intelligence capacity. In fact, both have strict regulations against members getting involved in politics in their host country.

The press director at the Peace Corps told ABC News in no uncertain terms that the corps is not involved in any intelligence gathering.

“Since Peace Corps’ inception in 1961, it has been the practice of the Peace Corps to keep volunteers separate from any official duties pertaining to U.S. foreign policy, including the reality or the appearance of involvement in intelligence-related activities,” said Amanda Beck, press director of the Peace Corps. “Any connection between the Peace Corps and the intelligence community would seriously compromise the ability of the Peace Corps to develop and maintain the trust and confidence of the people in the host countries we serve.” Read the Peace Corps’ full statement.

Like many of the Peace Corps workers, van Schaick is carrying out his research in the Santa Cruz countryside, where a number of Cuban doctors are deployed providing free medical services as part of Cuba’s solidarity with its socialist ally, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales.

The accusations are likely to reverberate in Bolivia, especially given the already shaky relationship between the Bush administration and President Morales’ two-year-old government.

“These are serious incidents that we will investigate thoroughly,” says Bolivia’s Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca in an interview.

“Any U.S. government use of their students or volunteers to provide intelligence represents a grave threat to Bolivia’s sovereignty.”

Bolivian law provides severe penalties in espionage cases. According to Article 111 of the country’s penal code, “he who procures secretive documents, objects or information&concerning [Bolivia’s] foreign relations in an espionage effort for other countries during times of peace, endangering the security of the State, will incur a penalty of 30 years in prison.” In lay man’s terms: if any U.S. citizen provides information of use in a spying effort, they would be subject to Bolivia’s maximum prison sentence.

But the U.S. citizens who reported being approached in this way by the State Department official said no mention was made of any legal risks arising from complying with the request to keep tabs on foreign nationals in Bolivia.

There is no indication that any of the volunteers made reports to the U.S. Embassy.

Van Schaick says he is keenly aware of the Pandora’s box now knocked open. The Hoboken, N.J. native, however, was adamant that the incident be brought to light — in the hopes for change. “I came forward because the Bolivian people have a right to know,” former union activist van Schaick says. “Asking Fulbrighters to spy is just not OK.”

Three of the other four Fulbright scholars currently in Bolivia say they were never asked about Cubans or Venezuelans in their briefings. A fourth Fulbright scholar declined repeated requests for an interview on the subject.

Editor’s Note: Jean Friedman-Rudovksy is a freelance journalist based in La Paz, Bolivia where she is the correspondent for TIME Magazine and Women’s Enews. She has worked as an associate producer for ABC News in Bolivia and is a founding editor of Ukhampacha Bolivia, an online bilingual Web journal on Latin American social and political issues.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

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The Iraq Project

by Paul Rogers

The United States’s military and political ambition in Iraq is enormous and undiminished

31 – 01 – 2008

George W Bush’s eighth and last state-of-the-union address on 28 January 2008 was mainly concerned with the economy and other domestic issues, but he still devoted nearly a quarter of the speech to the Iraq war and its part in the United States’s wider war on terror. The upbeat theme was that the military surge strategy now almost a year old was succeeding, to the extent even of offering the tantalising prospect of a victory in Iraq.

The president’s message echoes and reinforces a narrative about military trends in Iraq that has become deeply embedded in the neo-conservative media in particular (see, for example, Fred Barnes “Bush’s Priorities: Iraq Dominates the State of the Union“, Weekly Standard, 29 January 2008). Indeed, the redrawing of the Iraqi “story” through the second half of 2007 – aided both a decline in the number of American casualties and the increasing coverage of domestic matters (not least the 2008 presidential election race) in the national media – has been a singular feature of this period. But if what is happening in Iraq has been to a great extent sidelined in the US media and political argument, the country’s military situation and political problems still hold the capacity to upset the US’s calculations (see Charles Tripp, “Iraq: the politics of the local”, 25 January 2008).

It is important, then, to assess what is really happening on the ground in Iraq; and to ask whether there are indications that the positive effects of the surge for the United States may already be beginning to recede.

The costs of progress

The most recent events in Iraq reflect three serious trends.The first is an increase in suicide-bombing incidents. In Mosul on 23 January, a blast in an apartment block killed thirty-six people and wounded seventy; the US authorities blamed the attack on al-Qaida. A day later, the police commander for the Mosul region, Brigadier-General Salih Mohammed Hasan, was killed along with two other police officers by a suicide-bomber as he visited the site of the explosion. In addition, many other forms of routine violence continue; in Baghdad itself on 31 January, for example, a bomb left in a parked car in the Shi’a district of Kadhimiya killed at least three people and wounded five.The second is a rise in American casualties after a relatively calm December 2007. The twenty-three soldiers killed in December was the lowest number since February 2004, but the total rose again in January to thirty-seven. A roadside-bomb explosion and accompanying ambush in Mosul on 28 January killed five United States troops.The third trend is a concerted effort by insurgents to target Sunni militia leaders cooperating with the US military. The insurgents have engaged in a campaign of systematic targeting of the Sunni “awakening council” that has been cooperating with US forces, and singled its leaders out for assassination (see Solomon Moore & Richard A Oppel Jr, “Attacks imperil U.S.-backed militias in Iraq“, International Herald Tribune, 24 January 2008). At least a hundred people (most of them members of the council) were killed in the period of late December and early January; the core area affected is around Baghdad and Baquba, but it also extends to Anbar province where US military leaders had claimed particular success in getting Sunni militias to oppose al-Qaida elements.In response, there has been a further intensification of the US’s use of airpower to target insurgent units and districts; in one ten-day period in January, fifty tons of bombs were dropped in an insurgent-held area near Baghdad. This tactic, as in Afghanistan, carries the constant possibility of creating new enemies even as it destroys old.

The continuing military challenge has led the Bush administration to make a further request for substantial additional expenditure to fund the war. Congress will be asked on 4 February 2008 to consider a $70 billion request to meet war costs (Afghanistan as well as Iraq) in the first four months of the 2009 fiscal year; this is in addition to the $196 billion sought for the current financial year.This demand for even greater financial expenditure coincides with a sudden and notable reduction in talk of troop withdrawals from Iraq (see Philadelphia Enquirer, 30 January 2008). The Bush administration had highlighted the short-term (or at least time-limited) nature of the surge strategy; it promoted the belief that several combat brigades would be withdrawn from Iraq in the first half of 2008, thus reinforcing the impression of military progress. Such a reduction in troop numbers would coincide with the vital closing months of the presidential campaign, in a way that might be assumed to benefit the Republican candidate (even more, perhaps, if it proves to be the pro-war, pro-surge if Bush adversary, John McCain). At this stage, however, the prospect of any big pre-election drawdown from Iraq seems remote.In any case, the US’s calculations are not completely in its own hands. There is a possibility that the six-month ceasefire by Muqtada al-Sadr’s “Mahdi army” militia announced on 31 August 2007 may not be extended after it expires in February. The decision partly depends on the promise by the Iraqi government security forces to curb the involvment in its ranks of the Mahdi’s rivals, the Badr militias; some at least of al-Sadr’s influential advisers claim that this has not happened. Much of the improvement in security claimed on behalf of the increased presence of US forces in Iraq is actually the result of this ceasefire. If the ceasefire does end, and if the level of Sunni insurgent actions against those regarded as collaborators is sustained, then the possibility of a significant US withdrawal will dissolve.In a sense, however, the overall strategic environment in Iraq suggests that a massive and sustained US military presence will be required in any circumstances. This is the view of independent observers such as retired US general Barry McCaffrey, whose firsthand experience of the country helps underpin a deserved reputation for accuracy in his assessment of the progress of the Iraq war. In his view “an active counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq could probably succeed in the coming decade with 25 US Combat Brigade Teams” (this would represent more than half the army’s available combat troops). Such a commitment, which would require large numbers of soldiers in supporting roles, would imply a long-term occupation of Iraq by over 150,000 US soldiers (see Mark Perry, “US Military Breaks Ranks“, Asia Times, 24 January).The imperial scale

Whether such forces can actually be maintained is a moot point, but it comes with the clear intention to establish what is best described as a long-term US protectorate in Iraq. The US officials currently negotiating agreements with the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki are charged with seeking a quite extraordinary degree of influence and control. This is already apparent in the building of the world’s largest embassy in Baghdad; what is less noted is that Washington is pursuing a strategy based on rules set down by Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) early in the second year of the US occupation (see “America plans Iraqi escalation” [1 July 2004], and Rajiv Chandrasekaran & Walter Pincus, “U.S. Edicts Curb Power of Iraq’s Leadership“, Washington Post [27 June 2004]).

Perhaps the clearest indicator of where power in Iraq is intended to lie is the attempt to impose or extend wide-ranging exemptions for non-Iraqis from Iraqi laws. The more than 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq are already exempt, as are a core of around 13,000 private-security contractors working there for the US defence department; the aim now is to award the same extra-legal status to 154,000 civilian contractors also working for the Pentagon. This would take the total personnel under US auspices who would have immunity from any infraction under the Iraqi legal system to nearly a third of a million people (see Thom Shanker & Steven Lee Myers, “U.S. to seek broad powers in Iraq as UN mandate expires“, International Herald Tribune, 25 January 2008).

The need to guarantee the security of a protectorate on the scale envisaged – and, more immediately, to avoid attacks on US ground-patrols – is already being met by a second and largely hidden military surge. This one is airborne, and involves the expansion of US air-power in Iraq far beyond even the intensive pounding of insurgent-held areas around Baghdad. Among its features is the assignment of a squadron of A-10 ground-attack aircraft to al-Asad airbase and an additional squadron of F-16C strike aircraft to Balad air-base (see Tom Engelhardt, “Bombs away over Iraq: Who cares?“, Asia Times, 31 January 2008).

In an echo of the Baghdad embassy, Balad has grown to become the largest US air-base anywhere in the world: a fifteen-square-mile mini-city with its own bus routes, fast-food outlets, two supermarkets and accommodation for 40,000 military personnel and contractors. The base – from which up to 550 air operations each day are conducted – is a permanent construction site; the latest addition is a $30-million command-and-control system that will integrate air-traffic management across the country as a whole.

In sum, the United States plan for Iraq is to establish a series of tight political mechanisms of control deriving from the original CPA-era agreements; a huge embassy-based structure in Baghdad to oversee and maintain these; immunity for over 300,000 foreign personnel; and continuing, direct authority over and access to Iraqi detainees. The entire operation is to be secured by the US military and its private contractors, increasingly protected by the use of air power.

This ambitious project is hardly consistent with the idea – still the official line propagated by Washington, and uncritically recycled by much of the establishment media – that the US’s political objective is to bolster the independent governance of Iraq by the Iraqis themselves. Indeed, it goes further than the considerable power exerted by the United States in several central American countries in the early 20th century; its sheer grandeur might better be compared to some of the French or British colonial-era protectorates. In contemporary terms, it comes close to the establishment of a fully-fledged American colony in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world. Whether or not the George W Bush administration and its supporters realise it, the implications of that – for Iraq itself and for the whole region – are set to match even what has happened over the last five years.

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The Cable-Cutter Mystery

Anti-War.com

Behind the Headlines by Justin Raimondo

February 8, 2008

Spies, lies, and “conspiracy theories” – what’s behind the Middle East internet outage

I was skeptical, at first, of speculation over the cutting of two cables linking the Middle East with the Internet, which had it as part of some Vast Neocon Conspiracy to isolate the region prior to a US military assault. However, when two more cables – this time, in the Persian Gulf – were mysteriously cut, I began to wonder ….

In a piece headlined “Cable cutter nutters chase conspiracy theories,” The Register goes out of its way to laugh off the prospect that what we are witnessing is a military operation, or the prelude to one, sniffing “there’s little more than suspicions to work with” since we’ve yet to reach the damaged cables. Yet, given the sort of government we are dealing with – a regime that lied us into one war, and is not-so-subtly trying to finagle us into yet another one – why shouldn’t we be suspicious? We’d have to be crazy not to be.

The Economist follows suit, sneering at “internet conspiracy theories” and denouncing the whole brouhaha as an “online frenzy” that is “way out of line.” Yet one has to wonder: four cable cuts in the past week? I’m with Steven Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia University, who avers:

“As a security guy, I’m paranoid, but I don’t understand the threat model here. On the other hand, four accidental failures in a week is a bit hard to swallow, too. Let’s hope there will be close, open examination of the failed parts of the cables.”

First it was supposed to be a ship’s anchor that caused the damage, and yet the Egyptians have said there were no ships in the vicinity, which they regularly monitor: besides which, that entire area near Alexandria is off-limits to all shipping. Another reason to suspect a deliberate act: this politically-sensitive region is an Internet choke-point, as ABC News points out. “The route connecting Europe to Egypt, and from there to the Middle East” is tenuous:

“Today, just three major data cables stretch from Italy to Egypt and run down the Suez Canal, and from there to much of the Middle East. (A separate line connects Italy with Israel.) A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling.”

Yet theories that this incident prefigures a US attack on Iran don’t comport with the facts: Iran, far from being isolated by the cuts, may have enjoyed better connectivity as a result of the events. The areas hardest hit were Kuwait, Egypt, and especially Pakistan – this last being a likelier target for isolation than Iran, and certainly more current

Another, and far more plausible, theory is that the seemingly coordinated cuts resulted from efforts to tap into the cables – a spying operation. Go here for an exhaustive and very convincing case for viewing this as “special warfare.”

The Register cites Prof. Bellovin, but fails to note the real gist of his remarks. While he’s skeptical of the above-cited link, which posits a scenario whereby the USS Jimmy Carter, present whereabouts unknown, uses its specially designed facilities to tap directly into the cables, Bellovin poses an alternative scenario:

“If if wasn’t a direct attempt at eavesdropping, perhaps it was indirect. Several years ago, a colleague and I wrote about link-cutting attacks. In these, you cut some cables, to force traffic past a link you’re monitoring. Link-cutting for such purposes isn’t new; at the start of World War I, the British cut Germany’s overseas telegraph cable to force them to use easily-monitored links. One of the messages they intercepted — and cryptanalyzed — was the Zimmerman telegram, which asked Mexico to join Germany in attacking the US, in exchange for financial support and recovery of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Instead, public outrage in the US contributed to the decision to enter the war against Germany.”

“The problem with this scenario,” he adds, “is that the benefit is short-lived: the cables will be repaired in a few weeks.” Yes, but long enough to have accomplished – what? We can’t know, of course, but Prof. Bellovin certainly raises some interesting possibilities, none of which can be discounted by clueless journalists who sniff at “conspiracy theories” – as if we have no reason whatsoever to suspect covert action, by the US or whomever, in that area of the world. As Prof. Bellovin and a co-author point out in this paper on the subject: “Attacks on the routing system, with the goal of diverting traffic past an enemy-controlled point for purposes of eavesdropping or connection-hijacking, have long been known.”

Given the context in which these cable cuts are occurring – heightened tensions in the region, and not only with Iran – I think it is probable that they are deliberate, and that the diversion of internet traffic for purposes of eavesdropping is clearly the intent. After all, ask yourself this question: which is more plausible, an “accidental” cutting of four cables in one week in an area of the world which is the current focus of US military and diplomatic efforts, or the scenario outlined by Prof. Bellovin?

None of this is at all surprising. The US government currently claims the right to spy on Americans, in their own country, as well as when they’re in communication with overseas individuals. They don’t hide this, but proclaim it from the rooftops: does anyone doubt they are capable of commandeering the world’s internet cable network in order to utilize it for their own purposes? You don’t have to quaff the “conspiracy theorist” Kool-Aid to find this credible: a dose of realism will do.

 

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One Bush Left Behind

by Greg Palast

January 29th, 2008

Here’s your question, class:

In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.

Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.

Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”

So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?

-George Bush’s alma mater, Phillips Andover Academy, tells us their annual tuition is $37,200. The $20 “Pell Grant for Kids,” as the White House calls it, will buy a poor kid about 35 minutes of this educational dream. So they’ll have to wake up quickly.

-$20 won’t cover the cost of the final book in the Harry Potter series.

If you can’t buy a book nor pay tuition with a sawbuck, what exactly can a poor kid buy with $20 in urban America? The Palast Investigative Team donned baseball caps and big pants and discovered we could obtain what local citizens call a “rock” of crack cocaine. For $20, we were guaranteed we could fulfill any kid’s dream for at least 15 minutes.

Now we could see the incontrovertible logic in what appeared to be quixotic ravings by the President about free trade with Colombia, Pell Grant for Kids and the surge in Iraq. In Iraq, General Petraeus tells us we must continue to feed in troops for another ten years. There is no way the military can recruit these freedom fighters unless our lower income youth are high, hooked and desperate. Don’t say, ‘crack vials,’ they’re, ‘Democracy Rocks’!

The plan would have been clearer if Mr. Bush had kept in his speech the line from his original draft which read, “I have ordered 30,000 additional troops to Iraq this year – and I am proud to say my military-age kids are not among them.”

Of course, there’s an effective alternative to Mr. Bush’s plan – which won’t cost a penny more. Simply turn it upside down. Let’s give each millionaire in America a $20 bill, and every poor child $287,000.

And, there’s an added benefit to this alternative. Had we turned Mr. Bush and his plan upside down, he could have spoken to Congress from his heart.

=======

-For more on Bush and education read “No Child’s Behind Left” in Armed Madhouse excerpted here.
-Also read Palast’s take on the 2007 State of the Union here.

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America is a Democracy?

From Uncensored Opinions

Bacchus

March 6, 2007

Joel Hirschhorn in his most recent articles on OpEdNews has encouraged the American public to petition for a constitutional convention under Article V of the constitution in order to rectify the ever-increasing creation of laws harming the interests of the working classes of the U.S. His article, “An Open Letter to John Edwards” supported Mr. Edwards’ opinion that America has become a country of two nations, the rich and the poor, which I call the Privileged and the People. Many people believe that the Constitution of the U.S. established a democracy in which all citizens had an equal say in the running of the government and in the creation of suitable laws. This is simply not true. The Constitution simply set up a republican form of government based upon a separation of powers between congress, the judiciary, and the executive. Nowhere do the words “democracy” or “democratic” appear in this document, which is the sole basis of our federal laws. The word “republican” appeared only in Article 4 in the context of state’s rights. The original drafters of the Constitution wanted a government selected and run by the landowners and other rich folks of that day. Only as an afterthought were any explicit rights of the working classes included when the Bill of Rights was added as a series of amendments to the constitution explicitly spelling out various rights for the general public. Unfortunately these “absolute” rights were limited, and excluded people of color and women from the franchise and various other civil rights. It took another 150 years or so for these groups to finally gain the franchise, after persistent demands by both groups. The amendments authorizing these rights had to be explicit because the lawmakers(and judiciary) were ignoring the constitution’s implications inherent in the word “justice” which did appear in the preamble if not in the body of the Constitution. But these new amendments simply established the right of the public to “democratic election” of their choice of candidates(put up by moneyed interests). The closest any early document came to granting equality for all people was in the Mayflower Compact which stated very concisely what the Constitution failed to do, containing the phrase “just and equal laws”. Unfortunately this phrase or anything like it did not appear in the Constitution. A major flaw was the omission prohibiting discrimination on the basis of class or occupation. This omission allowed the legislature to consistently pass laws directly favorable to the rich, and harmful to the working classes. And all this was done without violating the Constitution.

 

We are now living under a plutocracy of the rich as resulting legislation have amply demonstrated. The lawmakers need not have paid any attention to the rights and interests of the working classes and have passed laws which were not at all “equal” favoring businesses and securities holders. Until the 17th amendment was passed in 1913 the general public had absolutely no control at all over any legislation(both houses must pass any proposed bill and the senate, prior to that time, was selected by state assemblies). This article will explain why the constitution should be changed to better reflect a democracy concerned with the well-being of all its citizens. I will provide some examples of legislative changes which would in my opinion further perfect our constitution. There have been only 26 amendments of the constitution over a period of over 200 years. The first ten were passed immediately after the original document was created to correct the obvious omission of explicit protection of citizen’s rights not specified in the original document. The two amendments related to prohibition canceled each other out leaving only 14 actual changes to the Constitution to this date. That averages about one every fifteen years. If the Constitution were perfect, as much literature and opinion has subsequently implied, a lack of changes would appear to affirm it. But no document,person,or institution has ever in the history of the world proved to be perfect and sufficient during an extended period of a time. The truth is that those in power, having gained the most from its opportunities, don’t want any changes. But there are serious reasons that dictate the need for change. The Constitution was established at a time when the U.S. was essential an agricultural society, with no extensive corporation interests and influences, no extensive trade, no large amount of financial capital, no cheap and efficient transport, and no sophisticated international communications(telephone,TV, or Internet). Especially significant was the shortage of resources(including especially manpower) available for an improving productive capacity, rather than the superabundance now prevalent in the world today. The under utilization of capital machinery and underemployment and unemployment of current manpower alone are causing and will cause in the future the major problems which will have to be faced by all the world economies.

 

All the fancy economic principles which the rich use against the working classes currently are no longer valid because they were all based upon suitable employment available for all persons desiring it. That is no longer the case. Working people around the world, under globalization, are competing for the same limited jobs and only the low bidders are winning, resulting in an ever-increasing exploitation of the working classes because of their dire need of adequate wages to support their families. The superabundance of financial capital allows something that was not afforded the founding fathers, the ability to apply tremendous money pressure in the political process. To deal with these entirely new institutions and circumstances the Constitution must change. The lesson learned from the necessity of including a Bill of Rights was that the constitution must explicitly spell out the basis of new laws protecting the rights of the working classes. So with that in mind I am proposing explicit changes designed to do just that.

 

1) Needless to say, money plays too big a role in the creation of new legislation. All one has to do to confirm this is to examine the laws that have been passed recently. NAFTA, CAFTAN, TWO(and GATT), Immigration Laws (applicable to both legal and illegal immigrants) and all of the laws supporting globalization, are without doubt simply for the benefit of the shareholders of multinational corporations and have directly deprived American workers of their jobs. The “story”that American workers are ill-trained, lazy, and cannot compete productively with foreign workers is simply a convenient and insulting pretext for shipping work overseas. To make matters worse, these jobs are said to be only those requiring “low skilled” workers. The workers previously employed in the steel, auto,electronic,shoe making,etc. were all skilled workers. Just because they were classified as ” blue collar” does not automatically imply low skill level. It does imply that these people were actually working and not just sitting behind a desk checking out their personal e-mail which a great part of the so-called “skilled” office and government workers are typically engaged in . And what about the hi-tech multitude who have been cheated out of their jobs by the fraudulently created and implemented Immigration laws opening the doors to foreign workers? Are they presumed to be “low-tech” as well, needing to “retrain”? In any case, the “story” the businessmen(though their supporters, the congressmen) have been promoting for both blue and while collar displaced workers is that these people must retrain themselves for more skilled jobs. Excuse me, these groups were already skilled. And what hi-tech jobs are currently available for these millions who would have to (once again) fork out thousands of bucks to qualify themselves for? The only fields I know of which are understaffed are those of various classifications of highly-paid health care related positions created as government monopolies only available to “friends-of-the-family”. All this fraud has been created by the fact that money now completely controls all legislation. Campaign finance laws and term limits are long overdue.

 

2) Reform of the Supreme court is long overdue. Many laws have been created by congress which have completely exceeded their Constitutional jurisdiction(e.g.,recreational drugs use and abortion) and others directly violating legitimate state laws(i.e.,marijuana in California). The supreme court should as a matter of its Constitutional duty review all these laws without being coerced to doing so. The justices claim that they have only a limited time to review any laws because of an extensive work load. If the original supreme court had only 9 justices dealing with legal issues for a simple farm-based population of perhaps 13 million citizens, we now have a population of 300 million in a far more complicated society necessitating far more justices. Currently, out of thousands of requests for judicial review, less than 200 are determined yearly. The justices claim these cases have been chosen because they affect fundamental legal principles. This years cases included the Anna Nicole Smith case concerning the legal aspects of the marriage of a young woman to an older man and her expectation of receiving inheritance from his estate. I was shocked to learn that a young women would ever pursue an older man for his money! This is really startling news and obviously has important legal implications, but I would have thought that any issues of this matters would have been resolved when the first cases of this sort were encountered, about 3000 years ago. One has to come to the concussion that the other (not so important) lawsuits submitted for review during this period were not important enough to be considered for judgment by the court. So much for American justice! So I propose an increase in the number of justices to the extent that at least half of those cases presented to it must be reviewed. And considering the very obvious partisan politics practiced by the court(as exemplified by the 2004 presidential election in particular), it is time to make these offices subject to voter choice, and with time limits to their tenure. Surely there are more than 9 people in the entire U.S. capable enough to dispense legal judgment.

 

3) The president is hogtied in passing any legislation when his party in not in power. The opposition party doesn’t want any meaningful and important legislation passed which would cast credit on the incumbent. This results in no substantive laws being passed in the interests of the public but gives comfort to the conservative elements of both parties who want nothing to change. In Great Britain this is not the case because the prime minister is simply chosen from the party in power and, when legislation proposed by his party is rejected, the government is changed to provide another which is more in accord with the legislation deemed necessary at the moment. The most important legislation of the Clinton administration(health care reform) was stymied and will continue to be so in the future because of this disgraceful practice. Something has to be done to rectify this.

 

4) I believe no new amendments will be allowed to pass designed to correct these patent legislative abuses because, as a consequence of money pressure, both parties as well as the executive are now serving the interests of the rich. Each wants to score points by being the prime mover behind legislation solely designed to benefit this group, and have no time or interest in issues important to the working- and middle-classes . F. Lee Baily said in an interview with Newsweek in 1967 “Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee”. That is doubly valid with today’s flood of capital looking for influence. Both political parties are working on the same political campaign platform, which is the “status quo” or “family values” one so dear to the people who are now prospering. And there is absolutely no doubt about who is benefiting from the laws as they now stand. All one has to do is look at the widening income gap between the rich and the poor (which increasingly include the middle class). This is the absolutely indispensable reason and justification for a Constitutional Convention. The congress has not in the past, and will not in the future, pass legislation resolving health care problems,education reform,campaign finance reform, meaningful gun control laws, laws controlling corporate management abuses, or any other laws effecting the financial interests of its patrons. All recent laws have benefited the rich to the detriment of the working classes, and the entire government has been guilty of collusion.

 

These are but of a few of the major issues which should be address in any convention. I have quite a few more issues needed to be scrutinized in the interest of better government but hope you readers will assist me in pointing out other important ones needing attention. The primary purpose in all proposed reform should be one of making the Constitution(and government) a democratic one. Abe Lincoln, in the Gettysburg address, spoke of a government “of (all) the people, by (all) the people, and for(all) the people”. Today we have a government only “of(applicable to) the common folk, by the rich(or their supporter), and for (the benefit of) the rich” and supported (legally) by laws not unlawful with respect to the current U.S. Constitution but very definitely not in the interest of the working public! It is imperative that these abuses be stopped. Only when we can wake up the general populace with concrete suggestions for changes benefiting them can we expect them to take an interest in any sort of action.

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CBS: Texas Gov. Perry Asks Huckabee To Drop Out

http://kdka.com/national/texas.perry.huckabee.2.650161.html 

 COLLEGE PARK, Md. (CBS News) ― This is posted from CBS News’ Joy Lin:

Gov. Rick Perry. R-Texas, who has endorsed John McCain, called Mike Huckabee on Friday asking him to drop out of the race, according to a senior Huckabee campaign aide. Huckabee declined Perry’s request.

Huckabee had asked for Perry’s support earlier in the election cycle and Perry had said he would support Huckabee if he thought he could win but decided to support Rudy Giuliani instead. When Giuliani dropped out last month, Perry switched his allegiance to McCain.

Earlier today in Washington, D.C. after delivering a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Huckabee told reporters that staying in the race is good for the Republican Party.

“I’d like to think the Republican Party is mature enough, big enough, and smart enough that it actually knows competition brings excellence. And the lack of competiton brings mediocrity,” Huckabee said.

“You know the old proverb is as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. The fact is no boxer is ever prepared to go into the ring if he’s never sparred.”

“If we’re really serious about taking it all the way to November, we better have a candidate who’s truly battle-tested. So this nonsense about how I should step aside and have a cakewalk all the way to the election, that’s crazy. Unless they were all to step aside and let me have a cakewalk, then that would be a fine thing. But otherwise, I can see no value in that at all.”

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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Media Ignoring Paul Success In Washington

02-09-2008
www.roguegovernment.com
Lee Rogers

The mass media complex continues their dirty tricks in their attempts to blacklist any success Ron Paul has in the GOP primary race. Despite widespread coverage on the Democrat race in Washington between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, there has been almost no coverage on the Republican race between John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul. The major media outlets have also extensively covered the Democrat and Republican races in the other states. It appears the reason for the media blackout in Washington is because Ron Paul has a decent shot at winning the Washington Caucus on the Republican side of the fence. Currently Paul is only a few percentage points behind Huckabee and McCain with 37% of precincts reporting. The media does not want to talk about the Washington Caucuses if Ron Paul manages to get more of the vote than either Huckabee or McCain. That would be a huge embarrassment for the establishment, and they cannot allow the average brainwashed American to see Dr. Paul manage to do better than the chosen front runners.

This is more proof that the mass media complex is not interested in reporting news and information unless it suits their interests. They did the same thing with the Louisiana Caucuses and the Maine Caucuses where Dr. Paul did fairly well in. Instead, the media is more interested in reporting only what they want you to know. The media should be ashamed of themselves in how they are covering the Washington Caucuses. It doesn’t matter who is winning, or who is not winning, they should be fair in their coverage.

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