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Legal mist stokes US-Iran tensions in strait

Derek Lane

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi The recent, and escalating, tension between Iran and the US in the narrow corridor of the Strait of Hormuz has once again drawn attention to the strait's international maritime status, and to the ramifications of this tension as a flashpoint in the Middle East. In a significant raising of the temperature, US President George W Bush on Sunday accused Iran of threatening security around the world by backing militants and urged his Gulf Arab allies to confront "this danger before it is too late". Speaking in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates during his seven-nation tour of the Middle East, Bush said the US is strengthening its "security commitments with our friends in the Gulf" and "rallying friends around the world to confront this danger". He also called Iran "the world's leading state sponsor of terror". Tension spiked markedly last week when Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) speedboats were involved in an "incident" with three US Navy vessels, which claimed they were international waters. Yet there is no "international water" in the Strait of Hormuz, straddled between the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. The US government claimed, through a Pentagon spokesperson, Bryan Whitman, that the three US ships "transiting through the Strait of Hormuz" were provocatively harassed by the speedboats. This was followed by the Pentagon's release of a videotape of the encounter, where in response to Iran's request for ship identification, we hear a dispatch from one of the US ships stating the ship's number and adding that "we are in international waters and we intend no harm". Thus there is the issue of the exact whereabouts of the US ships at the time of the standoff with the Iranian boats manned by the IRGC patrolling the area. According to Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgiff, the US ships were "five kilometers outside Iranian territorial waters". Yet, this is disputed by another dispatch from the US ships that states, "I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law." Given that the approximately three-kilometer-wide inbound traffic lane in the Strait of Hormuz is within Iran's territorial water, the US Navy's invocation of "transit passage" harking back to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, (UNCLOS) is hardly surprising. [1] Although the US has yet to ratify the UNCLOS, it has been a strong advocate of its provisions regarding navigational rights, thus explaining the US officers' availing themselves of "international law". [2] It is noteworthy that in May 2006, Bush urged the US Congress to "act favorably on US accession to the convention". But, in light of the legal ramifications of the US-Iran standoff in the Persian Gulf, discussed below, opponents of the UNCLOS may have become emboldened. According to them, the convention "prohibits two functions vital to American security: collecting intelligence and submerged transit of territorial waters". However, irrespective of how Congress acts on the pending legislation on UNCLOS, the fact is that the US cannot have its cake and eat it. That is, rely on it to defend its navigational rights in the Strait of Hormuz and, simultaneously, disregard the various limitations on those rights imposed by the UNCLOS - and favoring Iran. These include the following: # Per Article 39 of the UNCLOS, pertaining to "duties of ships during transit passage" US ships passaging through the Strait of Hormuz must "proceed without delay" and "refrain from any threat or use of force against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of states bordering the strait". # Per Article 40, "During transit passage, foreign ships may not carry out any research or survey activity without the prior authorization of the states bordering the straits." And yet, by the US Navy's own admission, it has been conducting sonar activities in the area, to detect submerged vessels. This, in turn, has harmed the Persian Gulf's aquatic mammals. In light of a recent US court ruling limiting the US Navy's sonar activities off the California coast, Iran now has greater political leverage to seek information regarding the activities of US warships transiting through its territorial waters. # Given the US's verbal acrobatics, of trying to depict as "international waters" what is essentially Iran's territorial water in the inbound traffic channel of the Strait of Hormuz, it collides with Article 34 of UNCLOS. This regards the "legal status of waters forming the straits used for international navigation", that strictly stipulates that the regime of passage "shall not affect the legal status of the waters forming such straits". Following the UNCLOS, Iran's territorial water extends 12 nautical miles at the Strait of Hormuz. # The Pentagon videotape of the incident shows a US helicopter hovering above the US ships, which is in clear contradiction of Article 19 of the UNCLOS, which expressly forbids "the launching, landing or taking on board of any aircraft" during transit passage. # Article 19, elaborating on the meaning of "innocent passage", states that "passage is innocent so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal state". And that means a prohibition on "any exercise or practice with weapons of any kind" and or "any act of harmful and serious pollution". In other words, US warships transiting through Hormuz must, in effect, act as non-war ships, "temporarily depriving themselves of their armed might". And any "warning shots" fired by US ships at Iranian boats, inspecting the US ships under customary international laws, must be considered an infringement on Iran's rights. This technically warrants a legal backlash in the form of the Iranians temporary suspending the US warships' right of passage. Again, the US could be technically prosecuted by Iran in international forums for conducting questionable activities while in Iranian territorial waters. # Under Article 25 of the UNCLOS, a "coastal state may take the necessary steps in its territorial sea to prevent passage which is not innocent ... the coastal state may suspend temporarily in specified areas of its territorial sea the innocent passage of foreign ships if such suspension is essential for the protection of its of security, including weapons exercise." # Per Article 30, "If any warship does not comply with the laws and regulations of the coastal state concerning passage through the territorial sea and disregards any request for compliance therewith which is made to it, the coastal state may require it to leave the territorial sea immediately." # Pursuant to Article 42 of the UNCLOS, "states bordering straits may adopt laws and regulations relating to transit passage" and "foreign ships exercising the right of transit passage shall comply with such laws and regulations." In this connection, Iran's 1993 maritime law echoes Article 20 of the UNCLOS: "In the territorial sea, submarines and other underwater vehicles are required to navigate on surface and to show their flag." Yet, disregarding both international law and Iran's laws, the US Navy until now has refused to comply with the requirement of surface passage of its submarines through the Strait of Hormuz. In light of the above, the Strait of Hormuz has now turned into a most fertile source of tension and conflict between Iran and the United States, touching on the larger issue of international law of the sea and the navigational regime through the strait(s). Iran could conceivably use its privileged geographical position to tap into the complex set of rules pertaining to the navigational regime, as a form of (geo) political leverage to wring concessions from the US Navy, and its regional allies, with respect to security and maritime affairs of the Persian Gulf. Note 1. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea strikes a balance between the sovereign rights of coastal states and the right of passage of foreign ships, requiring concessions from both sides. It prohibits passing ships from "any act aimed at collecting information or use and threat of force". 2. The Iranian press have complained of the US's intention to use the man-made, artificial islands by the United Arab Emirates for military purposes, to complement the US's forward base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. They wonder if this has been one of the unstated purposes of Bush's visit to the region, given the brisk operational tempo of the US Navy with regard to Iran. This includes the US's plan to implement the provisions of its multilateral PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative) , such as ship interdiction, already exercised with regard to North Korea, with respect to Iran. Yet, the PSI initiative collides head-on with the UNCLOS-based limitations on the US Navy's activities in the semi-landlocked Persian Gulf and, especially in the Strait of Hormuz, discussed in this article. Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction. (Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.) Source: Asia Times Online

Full Interview With Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Derek Lane

Presstitute, Scott Pelley interviewed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Thursday. Ahmadinejad talks about his visit to New York, Iran's nuclear program and his views on Israel. TRANSCRIPT SCOTT PELLEY: Do you have a greeting to the American people? MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful, I would like to greet the American people and the good nations around the world. Right now we are in the city of Tehran. It's in the afternoon of an autumn day. We're in the open air in a garden. And the air is pleasant. And fall, little by little, is settling in, mixing with the summer breeze, I guess. And I think that right now, you have different time zones obviously and different climates. We have early morning in the U.S. and other time zones perhaps approaching the noon. So once again, greetings to you. I very much hope that nations around the world start their days with peace, friendship, and happiness. PELLEY: Mr. President, do you intend to press your request to visit the World Trade Center site in New York? AHMADINEJAD: Well, it was included in my program, if we have the time and the conditions are conducive, I will try to do that. PELLEY: But the New York Police Department and others do not appear to want you there. Do you intend to go there anyway? AHMADINEJAD: Well, over there, local officials need to make the necessary coordinations. If they can't do that, I won't insist. PELLEY: Sir, what were you thinking? The World Trade Center site is the most sensitive place in the American heart, and you must have known that visiting there would be insulting to many, many Americans. AHMADINEJAD: Why should it be insulting? PELLEY: Well, sir, you're the head of government of an Islamist state that the United States government says is a major exporter of terrorism around the world. AHMADINEJAD: Well, I wouldn't say that what the American government says is the prerequisite here. Something happened there which led to other events. Many innocent people were killed there. Some of those people were American citizens obviously. We obviously are very much against any terrorist action and any killing. And also we are very much against any plots to sow the seeds of discord among nations. Usually you go to these sites to pay your respects. And also to perhaps air your views about the root causes of such incidents. I think that when I do that, I will be paying, as I said earlier, my respect to the American nation. PELLEY: But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world. You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans, as if to be mocking the American people. AHMADINEJAD: Well, I'm amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the American nation? PELLEY: Well, the American nation . . . AHMADINEJAD: . . . you are representing a media and you're a reporter. The American nation is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over there. I would like to think that the points of view of the American people is very close to the points of view of the Iranian people. The American people are very much against and opposed what certain American officials are saying and their points of view. And they're also, the way that the people have voted in the American elections is very telling. And we are criticizing such behavior on the part of the American government. We believe that if anyone just allows himself to accuse others, there will be no possibility for peace and friendship. PELLEY: What do you mean the American election is telling? What did you take from it? AHMADINEJAD: What I'm saying is that the American people very clearly have shown that they do not endorse what certain American officials are saying and doing. I remind you of the rallies in Washington a couple of days ago. What were they saying and shouting? Perhaps 70, 80 percent of the American people are against their troops, their sons and daughters being in Iraq and war. And as I said, they're very much against war. And for that matter, the American people are peace-loving people. You shouldn't think that what the American officials are doing and their behavior reflects completely the mood of the American people. And American officials must not make the American people a victim of their wants and wishes. And we make a distinction between the American people and American officials. And the American people are opposed to occupation, the use of force, and also terrorism, the killing of the people of other nations. And this is what we are saying. This is what we believe in. With that in mind, we feel very close to the American people. And I'm sure that this is reciprocal. A couple of days ago, an American scientist, a scholar, wrote to me saying that he has a great love for Iran. And once he passes, he wants to be buried in this country. The two nations are very close to one another. PELLEY: Mr. President, you say that the two nations are very close to one another, but it is an established fact now that Iranian bombs and Iranian know-how are killing Americans in Iraq. You have American blood on your hands. Why? AHMADINEJAD: Well, this is what the American officials are saying. Again, American officials wherever around the world that they encounter a problem which they fail to resolve, instead of accepting that, they prefer to accuse others. We basically are very much opposed to any kind of insecurity inside Iraq. Because once we have insecurity in Iraq, the first party, if I can use the word, that will be affected would be Iran. Having said that, we fully oppose occupation and also military attacks. In Iraq we don't need to do that. For that matter, in any part of the world we don't need to do that. When it comes to war, we don't think that war, belligerence, is a good solution for differences of opinion. We have said this in the past to American officials that the Iraqi people very much oppose occupation. And they will not accept this. And experience tells you this. This is a nation with many thousands of years of history. They have stood up to occupiers in the past, and they will stand up again. I'm very sorry that, because of the wrong decisions taken by American officials, Iraqi people are being killed and also American soldiers. It's very regrettable. And, again, I'm saying that why should they be killed? Why should these boys and girls be killed? Why should we have war in Iraq and insecurity? I believe that the people behind the insecurity are those who, from thousands of kilometers away, have brought in troops. First, they said that they want to topple the dictator and find WMDs [weapons of mass destruction]. They didn't find WMDs and there's no dictator there anymore. So the question is: What are American troops doing right now in Iraq? They have to answer, respond to these questions. We are not interfering in Iraq. The Iraqi people are our friends. And the president, the prime minister, the speaker of the parliament are our friends. We don't need to interfere in Iraq. We are two nations which have been connected through history. Each year millions of Iranians go to Iraq for pilgrimage. And in a number of these bombings inside Iraq, Iranian citizens have been killed. We want peace; we want security in Iraq; and it only serves our own interests. And those American officials who see the interest in a continued occupation of Iraq, I ask them to reconsider. They should leave alone the Iraqi nation and also their own soldiers. And they shouldn't accuse others needlessly. We basically oppose the killing of any person, innocent persons, from any race or community. As I said, the Iraqi people have been victimized. We feel very sad for them. Equally, we feel sad for American soldiers and troops because they don't know why they're there. They are the victims of the, if you will, the wants and wishes of certain American officials. PELLEY: Mr. President, American men and women are being killed by your weapons in Iraq. You know this. AHMADINEJAD: No, no, no. PELLEY: Why are those weapons there? AHMADINEJAD: Who's saying that? PELLEY: The American Army has captured Iranian missiles in Iraq. The critical elements of the explosively formed penetrator bombs that are killing so many people are coming from Iran. There's no doubt about that anymore. The denials are no longer credible, sir. AHMADINEJAD: Very good. If I may. AHMADINEJAD: Are you an American politician? Am I to look at you as an American politician or a reporter? This is what the American officials are claiming. Well, we don't need to arrest many people to prove that Americans are occupying Iraq or produce fabricated documents. If you go to the streets of Baghdad, you will see American helicopters and tanks and Humvees, so on and so forth. So the Iraqi people are just defending themselves. I think the way out for the American official from this problem that it has created for itself shouldn't be in accusing Iraq, Iran, rather. You need to understand the realities of the region and also respect the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people, like other people, want to have security, want to have peace, want to be free. When they see that soldiers come into their houses, they react. So if the American government does accept this reality, this truth, everything will changes. If they accuse us 1,000 times, the truth will not change. They need to accept the truth and also the wishes of the Iraqi people. That is a way out of this deadlock. PELLEY: Mr. President, I want to be very direct and very clear. Many Americans believe that you have American blood on your hands. Are you saying that it is not the policy of this government to send weapons into Iraq? Sir, forgive me, you're smiling, but this is a very serious matter to America. AHMADINEJAD: Well, it's serious for us as well. I daresay it's serious for everyone. I'm just amazed as the representative of the media, why do you insist on the untrue accusations leveled by your government? This doesn't solve anything. It seems to me it's laughable for someone to turn a blind eye to the truth and accuse others. It doesn't help. And the reason that I'm smiling, again, it's because that the picture is so clear. But American officials refuse to see it. And I think that as a member of the media, your responsibility here is to talk about the truth and back home to force your officials to appreciate the truth and take the correct decision. The problem in Iraq doesn't have anything to do with the Iraqi people. For that matter the killing of American troops doesn't have anything to do with the Iraqi people. And as we have security, things will be better. And we don't want to see a single soldier killed. The solutions we are putting on the table are very humane. And, again, we are asking for very basic things from the American officials, to respect the wishes of the Iraqi people and also their rights. A dictator has been toppled and WMDs have not been found. Once they say that they are going to leave the Iraq, the Iraqi people will live if that's so to speak. If they persist on the same course for 50 years and arrest diplomats, so on and so forth, this will not help with the situation. And if you repeat the mistakes of the past, nothing will get resolved. PELLEY: Mr. President, you must have rejoiced more than anyone when Saddam Hussein fell. You owe President Bush. This is one of the best things that's ever happened to your country. AHMADINEJAD: Well, I have said this in another interview. Once the dictator was toppled, many people were happy. But the American government did not appropriately use this golden opportunity. Again, this happened sometime ago and it pleased the Iraqi people. They could have used this much better. They should have left the Iraqi people to go their own way and to determine their own fate and to live like other nations in this part of the world. Well, initially, we might have had the impression that American officials want to redeem themselves and the mistakes they have made in the past. Because for eight years they supported Saddam against my nation. Many hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Thousands of people were chemically bombarded. Many people were killed in their own houses. This very city of Tehran was the target of more than 100 missiles. Many people were killed in Tehran. But Saddam was being supported by American officials. So once American officials announced that they were going to deal with Saddam, our first impression was that they're going to make amends for their past behavior. We have every hope and we were happy. But once Saddam went away, they didn't find any weapons, American officials later announced that we are here to stay in Iraq. So there was a question: Why do you want to be there? Why do you want to stay behind? Do you think that the Iraqi people cannot take care of themselves? They can determine their own fate. I think that their first biggest mistake was to remain in Iraq. If they had left Iraq, that would have helped with positive interaction between the American government and the peoples of the region. But once they stayed behind and they appointed an American administrator and they tried to influence the elections and also the future government in Iraq, later they tried to sow the seeds of discord and also give a free hand to terrorist groups to come inside Iraq. So once a country is occupied, its security is the responsibility of the occupation. However, they have to answer for all of these. Many thousands of American soldiers have been killed. They need to answer for their action. Instead of answering these questions, they are accusing others. So initially we welcome the developments, but once it continued, this is very regrettable. PELLEY: Mr. President, can you tell me that you are not sending weapons to Iraq? Very simple. Very directly. AHMADINEJAD: We don't need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity in Iraq. PELLEY: Is that "no," sir? AHMADINEJAD: It's very clear, the situation. The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests. We have more than 1,000 kilometers of common borders with Iraq. Each year, many millions of Iranians go to Iraq and millions of Iraqis come to Iran. So we are very unhappy with the insecurity. We are doing our very best to help with security. For security, we decided to sit down and talk with Americans in Iraq. PELLEY: As a goodwill gesture, will you say right now in this interview that you will do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq? AHMADINEJAD: Well, Iranian forces are not inside Iraq. Can you show me one? PELLEY: No sir, Iranian arms, sir. AHMADINEJAD: Please, allow me to continue. Please, allow me to finish my thought. The American government has admitted that with more than 160,000 troops, state-of-the-art military equipment, they have failed to control and put a stop to the activities of these few people. That's very unfortunate. You shouldn't accuse others because you have certain problems yourself. Very clearly, we are friends to all. We very much are saddened with war. We are very much saddened that American troops are being killed, losing their lives over there. So you don't know the people of the region. I think that the British government was smarter. They left the city of Basra, pulled out their forces. And once the British soldiers left the city, the local people celebrated. And today, unfortunately, you're opposing the Iraqi people. You could have stood side by side with the Iraqi people. Again, whenever you correct your policies, it helps everyone. It benefits you. It benefits Iraq. It benefits all the peoples of the region. We're using everything in our power to provide security in Iraq. We have said so on many occasions. Whoever is killed in Iraq, that would sadden us. PELLEY: Mr. President, we appreciate your thoughts. Some people watching this interview, frankly, will think that you're dodging the questions because many of the questions that I ask you are fairly straightforward "yes" or "no" questions. And let me try this one again, if I may. Will you pledge tonight to do everything in your power to prevent Iranian arms from entering Iraq? Can you make that pledge? AHMADINEJAD: Well, I think you have been charged with a mission to repeat a sentence over and over again. My comments are very clear. I think that you should go back and take American officials to task. Use the same force you're using right now so that they take the troops out. PELLEY: Was that a "yes" or a "no," sir? AHMADINEJAD: If you are to take sides, well, I don't know. Well, you shouldn't tell me what kind of answer I should give to you. You're free to ask me questions. I didn't put any limitations on your questions. PELLEY: True. AHMADINEJAD: I'm free to give my own answers. I think that all of us should go to American officials and ask them: "What are you looking for in Iraq? Let's be clear. Why have you stayed behind? Why are you accusing others? And your policies have created insecurity. You are behind terrorism. So once you correct your ways, these things will take care of themselves. Why are you using a road that goes to nowhere? Use the correct road." AHMADINEJAD: We support the rights of all nations. We love all nations. And the message of the Iranian people is friendship with all. In our history, we have never attacked another country, occupied another country. This is a peace-loving nation. And you should remember that we are living within our borders. And people who have brought troops from thousands of miles away, they are the ones who should be held accountable and responsible. PELLEY: Mr. President, you say you love all nations. I have to assume that includes the Nation of Israel. AHMADINEJAD: Israel is not a nation. Well, we like the people, yes, because they are victims as well. They used to live in their own countries, in their own cities. They were given empty promises, false promises. They said that we are going to give you jobs, we are going to give you security. And they pushed the local Palestinian people out and made them refugees and also made refugees of another community. In other words, from thousands of miles away, people have been emigrating to this country and they are living in fear every day. And we feel for them. Last year in my speech I said that the Zionist entity should open the borders and the gates. Let the people decide where they want to go and settle. They are good people as well. We have no bones to pick with them. We are against terrorism. We are against wrong policies. We are friends with all people, Jewish people, Christians, different people of different faiths. We are, well, we're in contact with them. Here in Iran there are Jewish communities; there are Christian communities; we're all friends. Also, non-Muslim countries, we help them when a natural, let's say, calamity breaks. We love all people. We are opposed to Zionism, occupation, terrorism, dropping bombs on behalf of people when they are inside their own homes, killing men, women, and children. Very openly I have said time and again that I oppose these. PELLEY: If the Palestinians reach an agreement with Israel for a two-state solution, will you then recognize Israel as well? AHMADINEJAD: Well, the decision rests with the Palestinian people. This is exactly what I'm saying. PELLEY: What would you do, sir? AHMADINEJAD: What I'm saying is that you should allow -- oh, please, let me finish my thought. What we are saying, our solution for Palestine is a humane one. We are saying that you should allow the Palestinian people to participate in a fair and free election and determine their own fate. Whatever decision they take, everyone should go with that. PELLEY: And if that decision . . . AHMADINEJAD: No other party must interfere. We are not telling the Palestinian people what decisions they should take. Let them make their own decision. Whatever decision they take, we will go for that. PELLEY: And if that decision is a two-state solution, you're good with that? You could support a two-state solution? AHMADINEJAD: Well, why are you prejudging what will happen? Let's pave the ground first for a free and fair choice. And once they make their choice, we must respect that. All the people, all the Palestinian people must be given this opportunity, allow them to make their own decisions. Let us not tell them what course of action they need to take. SCOTT PELLEY: You have said in the past that you have 3,000 centrifuges in a line producing highly-enriched uranium. Do you have more now? MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: No. Our plan and program is very transparent. We are under the supervision of the agency. Everything is on the table. We have nothing to hide. PELLEY: Transparent? Sir, it's been hidden for more than 15 years. You've been operating a secret nuclear program. It's nothing if it's not secret. AHMADINEJAD: Who is saying that? PELLEY: Well, the IAEA. You've, in fact, agreed with the IAEA to confess what you've done in secret over the past years. It is not transparent, sir. AHMADINEJAD: Very good. I think that you are not familiar with the structure and the laws and the regulations of the agency. The agency is supposed to do two things. One, supervision. The other, support for the member states. The agency is supposed to supervise and ask questions and we respond. Interestingly enough, in all agency reports, you will read that there are no signs of diversion on the part of the Iranian people. In no reports. But naturally, the agency has questions to ask. And when it comes to that, interestingly enough, compared to European countries and other countries, the questions they ask us are far fewer. They have scores of questions to ask other countries. But the U.S. and a number of other countries are politicizing matters. They don't want us to progress, to develop. So maybe it would be best if you ask the agency how many questions they have asked the U.S. and European countries for that matter. Scores of questions. Because they are producing bombs, new generations of nuclear bombs, they are fabricating those. And our activities are very peaceful under the supervision of the agency. We have provided the largest amount of cooperation to the agency. And what we are doing is very transparent. PELLEY: For the sake of clarity, because there is so much concern in the world about this next question, please give me the most direct answer you can. Is it your goal to build a nuclear bomb? AHMADINEJAD: What are you driving at? PELLEY: Simply that, sir. Is it the goal of your government, the goal of this nation to build a nuclear weapon? AHMADINEJAD: Do you think that the nuclear technology is only limited in a bomb? You can only build a bomb with that? PELLEY: No, I appreciate the differences, sir, but the question is limited to the bomb. AHMADINEJAD: It has different uses. Well, you have to appreciate we don't need a nuclear bomb. We don't need that. What needs do we have for a bomb? PELLEY: May I take that as a "no," sir? AHMADINEJAD: Please, let me finish my thought. It is a firm "no." I'm going to be much firmer now. I want to address all politicians around the world, statesmen. Any party who uses national revenues to make a bomb, a nuclear bomb, will make a mistake. Because in political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use. If it was useful, it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union. If it was useful, it would have resolved the problems the Americans have in Iraq. The U.S. has tested new generations of bombs, many thousands of warheads you have in your arsenals. It's of no use. And also the Zionist entity, they have hundreds of warheads. It's not going to help them. The time of the bomb is past. The parties who think that by using the bomb you can control others, they are wrong. Today we are living in the era of intellectual pursuits. You should spend your money on your people. We don't need the bomb. For 28 years we have defended ourselves in the face of enemy onslaught. Every day we are becoming more powerful. And, again, we don't need such weapons. In fact, we think that this is inhuman. So can you please tell me why the U.S. government is fabricating these bombs? Do you want to provide a more welfare, happiness to the people through the bomb? Are you going to deal with global poverty? Or do you want to kill people? So our belief, sir, tell us and also our culture, because of these, we are very much opposed to the killing of people. This is very clear. PELLEY: At the moment, our two countries may very well be walking down the road to war. How do you convince President Bush, how do you convince other nations in the West . . . . AHMADINEJAD: What two parties are walking towards war? PELLEY: Iran, the United States, Western countries. France this week . . . . AHMADINEJAD: Who says that? PELLEY: France this week said that war might be indicated. How do you convince these Western powers that you are not pursuing a bomb? AHMADEINEJAD: You haven't read the latest news, I have to say. It's wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking towards war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? What reasons are there for the two countries to go to war? We have a logic which we have announced for some time now. We very much oppose the behavior of the U.S. administration. We think it's wrong. And we are saying what we feel, and you are free to say what you feel. And people have a right to choose. Why should we go to war over that? If having said that is a part of a psychological warfare plot. The American people are well familiar with these plots. You shouldn't make the American people afraid needlessly. There's no war in the offing. And also I think that certain American officials do not want friendly relations between the two countries and the citizens of the two countries to visit each other. Last year we requested for a direct flight between the two countries because we want to promote trade, promote cultural activities, and also people-to-people contact. But the American government opposed that. There is no war in the offing. Again, this is psychological warfare. If you have differences of opinions, you can use logic to resolve your differences. PELLEY: You can show the world today that you are not pursuing a bomb. All you have to do is give the order. Open your nuclear facilities. Let the United Nations inspectors in there today and prove that there is no bomb program. Why not take that course? AHMADEINEJAD: I think that you are a little bit behind the day's news. You might have been away on an assignment. I don't know. PELLEY: I'm familiar with the day's news. AHMADEINEJAD: The reports say that we have been complying. And they are inspecting all of our sites every day. What more am I supposed to do? So, I try to be as frank as possible, but . . . . PELLEY: You're opening the sites slowly over time, sir. People say that you're just trying to gather as much highly-enriched uranium as you possibly can. AHMADEINEJAD: No. No. No. Well, should you say this, make these accusations or agency inspectors? Inspectors have said, that we are saying that Iran has not diverted; there's no diversion here, in other words. Again, let me repeat. We have not diverted from a peaceful path. This is what the agencies think. There is a solution here, however, a very simple solution. The countries that have atomic bombs should destroy their stockpiles. And that would make everyone happy. You shouldn't accuse others needlessly, and you shouldn't lose your temper and make life miserable for others as well. They have made mistakes and have diverted themselves. They think that others will do the same. There are many countries which have the technology. Five or six have diverted from the peaceful path, road, rather. So those five or six should return to the correct path. If certain parties think that they have rights which go beyond the normal rights that any nation should have, that will be problematic. I think that the American government should appreciate that it is like any other member of the international community, respect the views of the agency. It's very regrettable to see that certain U.S. officials have insulted the very clear positions taken by the agency, and they have lost their temper. And also they have made threats. They have attacked the director general of the agency. That is shameful. If you think that the agency is a reputable one, you should allow it to go ahead with its business. Why should you, or the agency, for that matter, repeat the words of the secretary of state? Rather, what they need to do is report the facts, the truth. So the problems of the American politicians is because they are interested in their own interests. And they want the rest of the world just to say "yes, sir" and go along with whatever they say. That is finished. It's in the past. PELLEY: What trait do you admire in President Bush? AHMADINEJAD: Again, I have a very frank tone. I think that President Bush needs to correct his ways. PELLEY: What do you admire about him? AHMADEINEJAD: He should respect the American people. PELLEY: Is there anything? Any trait? AHMADINEJAD: As an American citizen, tell me what trait do you admire? PELLEY: Well, Mr. Bush is, without question, a very religious man, for example, as you are. I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in President Bush that you admire. AHMADEINEJAD: Well, is Mr. Bush a religious man? PELLEY: Very much so. As you are. AHMADEINEJAD: What religion, please tell me, tells you as a follower of that religion to occupy another country and kill its people? Please tell me. Does Christianity tell its followers to do that? Judaism, for that matter? Islam, for that matter? What prophet tells you to send 160,000 troops to another country, kill men, women, and children? You just can't wear your religion on your sleeve or just go to church. You should be truthfully religious. Religion tells us all that you should respect the property, the life of different people. Respect human rights. Love your fellow man. And once you hear that a person has been killed, you should be saddened. You shouldn't sit in a room, a dark room, and hatch plots. And because of your plots, many thousands of people are killed. Having said that, we respect the American people. And because of our respect for the American people, we respectfully talk with President Bush. We have a respectful tone. But having said that, I don't think that that is a good definition of religion. Religion is love for your fellow man, brotherhood, telling the truth. PELLEY: I take it you can't think of anything you like about President Bush. AHMADEINEJAD: Well, I'm not familiar with the gentleman's private life. Maybe in his private life he is very kind or a determined man. I'm not aware of that. I base my judgment on what I see in his public life. Having said that, I think that President Bush can behave much better. There were golden opportunities for President Bush. He should have used them better. PELLEY: I asked President Bush what he would say to you if he were sitting in this chair. And he told me, quote, speaking to you, that you've made terrible choices for your people. You've isolated your nation. You've taken a nation of proud and honorable people and made your country the pariah of the world. These are President Bush's words to you. What's your reply to the president? AHMADINEJAD: Well, President Bush is free to think as he pleases and to say what he pleases. I don't oppose the freedom of speech. I believe in freedom of speech. President Bush is free to say what he pleases. But these would not change the truth. So that President Bush knows the Iranian people are dearly loved today. We can very well put this to the test to find out who has become isolated. Again, maybe one of my friends could go to another country and a friend of President Bush could go to the same country, find out which one of us is isolated. You're free to choose any country you like. I don't think that President Bush has said these things. Rather, I prefer to think that this is your impression of what the president has said. PELLEY: I'm quoting the president directly for the record. AHMADEINEJAD: This is a direct quote? So, well, this tells me that there's a great divide between us. PELLEY: Why does your government confiscate your people's satellite dishes? What is it that you don't want your people to see? AHMADEINEJAD: Well, it's not prohibited like that. After everything is said and done, this is a law passed by the Iranian parliament. And the members of the parliament have been chosen by the people. Having said that, the Iranian people are, by and large, using satellite television. You can go out on the streets and see this for yourself. PELLEY: But as you well know, they are confiscated from time to time in sweeps in the country. And I wonder what it is that you don't want your people to see. AHMADINEJAD: Well, again, this is the law. Our people are free and express their opinion about all matters internationally. They are well aware of international news. Having said that, I like to think that the Iranian people is one of the most well-informed nations. You can go to the street and ask the people yourself. Reporters from other countries go to different Iranian cities, they're free to move about and ask questions. But Iranian reporters cannot do the same in the U.S. You can very easily come and see me and just ask me questions, but our reporters cannot ask questions from American officials. Our interview today is going to be aired from the Iranian TV. I very much hope that Iranian reporters will be given a possibility to ask questions from American officials. Then the truth will be uncovered. PELLEY: You know, I'm curious. Looking back over the years, do you believe today that taking the American hostages in 1979 was a mistake? AHMADEINEJAD: Well, you have to deal with different things in their own time. If you go back in time, things will go wrong. If you go back 500 years, what happened in Europe and the U.S. for that matter. You shouldn't look back at what happened in the past. Have your sights towards the future. This wouldn't help with anything. Because if you are to do that, we have to go over the dossier of the activities of various American administrations in this country from 1337 Iranian calendar onwards. That wouldn't be a pretty picture. I don't want to talk about and think about the dark passages of our history. Let's have our sights towards the future. PELLEY: Mr. President, I just have a few questions. We have appreciated your answers very much, and I know we're pressing on time here. We would be very grateful if you wouldn't mind taking just a few more. Will you, in this interview tonight, rule out the possibility of a nuclear test of an Iranian weapon during your presidency? AHMADEINEJAD: Well, we don't have any plans. PELLEY: But rule it out. Say that "we will not test a nuclear device as long as I am president." Can you say that? AHMADINEJAD: Please, please, let me finish my thought. Actually, I very much oppose this behavior. Picture it. If an Iranian reporter kept repeatedly asking the same questions from a U.S. official, how would you feel? Would you feel good about that? PELLEY: I would. AHMADINEJAD: I think that instead of going astray here and misleading the public, we should try to help with the uncovering of the truth. You are a member of the media. You are not a government official. You should be concerned with the truth. We should all be concerned with the truth. We don't need such weapons. Those who don't have anything to say to other nations and deal with them, they resort to atomic weapons. We are a cultured people and we have good relations with all nations. And the status of a country has nothing to do with atomic weapons, rather its culture and its civilization. And whenever we make a decision, we are courageous enough to come out and say that we have made such a decision. Whatever we want to do, we have nothing to hide. We clearly will announce that. Well, I said sometime ago that if you sanction us, we are going to take the production to an industrial scale, and we did that. And we said that we will continue to push ahead undaunted. We did that. We have no problems. When it comes to that, we are very transparent and we have a frank tone of voice. Let me be frank and very straightforward here. I oppose the unilateral policies and bullying policies of the American administration. I believe that these lead to war, leads to greater poverty and killing. I believe that you can manage the war better through friendship, mutual respect, and by respecting laws and also fair play. Again, I'm being very frank here. I oppose the very idea of the bomb. I have nothing to hide. Also, I oppose the policies of the American administration. PELLEY: If the United Nations Security Council or the European Union votes in favor of additional sanctions against your country, what will you do? AHMADEINEJAD: Well, they are just trapping themselves. They can become trapped themselves. Because any person or party who insists on a wrong decision, that will be problematic for him, no other person. For 28 years now we have been under political pressure and economic sanctions. What happened? Nothing. And the Iranian people have managed to push ahead with technology. Our economy is growing each day. And, of course, having said that, I think that that course of action is highly unlikely. There are wise people in different countries which will not go ahead with this. Iran is a member of the agency. We're under the supervision of the agency. The agency's reports are very transparent. We have provided the fullest amount of cooperation to the agency. If a party wants to go beyond the law, they will just, this will be to their own detriment. I have said time and again you can do nothing to this country. This is a great country. We have extensive God-given riches and resources. From a political point of view, we are strong and powerful. And under any conditions, we will manage to push ahead. But they need to appreciate that if having said that, I don't think that such a thing is possible. Again, a number of American officials want this to happen. But you shouldn't worry about that. Just say that this is not going to happen. PELLEY: If sanctions do occur, if another round of sanctions occur, you will continue to enrich uranium behind closed doors, I take it. AHMADEINEJAD: This is not going to happen. I have talked extensively about this. Nobody is able to impose an unlawful course of action on the Iranian people. The Iranian people will not abide by that, accept that. And it will not serve their interests to do that. Both the American government and other countries, it helps them if they are friends with Iran. As a friend, I need to tell you to take this route. Again, you're free to take any route you want. And you would have to, you will have to go with the repercussions. So these past few years, what has it gotten you? And the conditions will not change to benefit them; I assure you of that. PELLEY: Would an attack on your nuclear sites, in your opinion, give you leave to attack U.S. forces in the region or the U.S. mainland? AHMADEINEJAD: Who is going to attack this country? PELLEY: President Bush has pledged that you will not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon and will use military force if necessary. AHMADEINEJAD: I think Mr. Bush, if he wants his party to win the next election, there are cheaper ways and ways to go about this. I can very well give him a few ideas so that the people vote for him. He should respect the American people. They should not bug the telephone conversations of their citizens. They should not kill the sons and daughters of the American nation. They should not squander the taxpayers' money and give them to weapons companies. And also help the people, the victims of Katrina. People will vote for them if they do these things. But if they insist on what they are saying right now, this will not help them. Again, nobody can hurt the Iranian people. And history tells us that the people who have been less than kind to the Iranian people, they have lost out. What I'm saying, I am being very sincere here. I'm a Muslim. I cannot tell a lie. I am supposed to tell the truth. What I'm saying is that President Bush's conduct in Iraq is wrong. And his wrong conduct is behind his party losing the previous elections. This is very clear. The American people are very much dismayed with the behavior and the conduct of the present administration. They are not dismayed with Iran. In fact, the two nations are very close to one another. An example of that would be the letter sent to me by an American scholar a few days ago. PELLEY: You mentioned telling the truth as a Muslim, and as you know so much better than I do, Verse 42 of the second sura: "The truth shall not be obscured by falsehood, and those who know the truth must tell it." But when I ask you a question as direct as "Will you pledge not to test a nuclear weapon?" you you dance all around the question. You never say "yes." You never say "no." AHMADEINEJAD: Well, thank you for that. You are like a CIA investigator. And you are . . . PELLEY: I am just a reporter. I am a simple, average American reporter. AHMADEINEJAD: This is not a Baghdad prison. Please, this is not a secret prison in Europe. This is not Abu Ghraib. This is Iran. I'm the president of this country. Well, I think that I've gone beyond what you've asked me, above and beyond. And I think that if you speak to your job as a reporter, what I have said so far, again, goes above and beyond what you ask me. PELLEY: One last thing. So important for the American people to understand. When your airplane approaches Manhattan this week, you will look out the window and you will see that the World Trade Center is gone. Many Americans, Mr. President, to be frank, believe that you look out that window and you say to yourself, "Good. Somebody got 'em." They believe our countries are enemies. AHMADEINEJAD: Well, you shouldn't speak on behalf of the American people. I can speak on behalf of the Iranian people, but you cannot speak on behalf of the American people. Why do you insist on doing that? Why do you not allow the American people to speak for themselves? Why? Let them speak for themselves. The people gathered around the White House a couple of days ago. They spoke whatever was in their hearts and minds. Are they not American citizens? Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied against the war. Are they not citizens? Our government at the time expressed its condemnation. We issued an official communiqu� condemning that incident. How can you, in your mind, accuse and condemn others? Well, if an Iranian person for that matter had done the same thing, it would have been shameful, and it would not have been fair. So, again, this is not fair. Maybe this is your point of view or also perhaps your editor's point of view. And you are saying that the American people are saying these things. The American people still don't know who was behind the bombing of the Twin Towers. Many books in the U.S. have been written about the incident., and there are questions circling in your society. Once you go back, go to the streets, ask the local people who was behind this, what were the reason for that? And, again, I fail to see why you continually say �the American people.� I have the latest surveys. Eighty percent of the American citizens say that the American government knew about the attack beforehand. They had information. PELLEY: You don't believe that, sir. AHMADEINEJAD: I'm not making a judgment here, mind you. I'm not being judgmental. That's not important for me. What is important for me is to find out why this happened. We can take a course of action which ensures this never happens. Why should we manage the world like this? It's very possible for us all to be friends, for the world to be in peace, and for the family of man to love one another and to not hate one another. So who propagates these ideas, I ask you. We should all be friends. We should deal fairly with one another, respect one another. Nations do not have any problems when it comes to interacting with one another. Unethical politicians make war. Nations don't make war. We're saying that you should allow our nations to be friends with one another. We condemned that incident right there and then. Why should many innocent people be killed? For what reason? Well, behind this building there is another building, a building which in 1360 Iranian calendar, some 25 years ago, the Iranian president and the prime minister in the office, they were blown up by terrorists, a bomb planted by terrorists. And the president and the prime minister burned in that bomb, by that bomb. And, again, this is very regrettable that those terrorists, which were behind that bombing and other assassinations in this country, can freely have access to American officials are being protected by the American Army in Iraq. So this country is a victim of terrorism throughout its history. So you cannot produce even one document, a single document, about terrorist action on the part of the Iranian government or Iranian officials. We are very clear in our position. We say that we spiritually support the right of the Palestinian people and also independence for Iraq. We have nothing to hide. We are very much opposed to the Iraqi occupation. Again, we have nothing to hide. It's very regrettable that many thousands of people were killed in the Twin Tower incident. We have announced time and again. And what we are asking is can we do something that ensures this never happens? And the answer is "yes." We can do that, providing a number of parties do not establish terrorist organizations and set them off on nations. We know who is behind terrorist organizations. You know full well who is behind a number of terrorist organizations around my part of the world, that is. Who provided them with logistical support, political support? It's a very well-known fact they have made and created these terrorist organizations themselves. PELLEY: Who, sir? AHMADINEJAD: It's very clear. Very clear. PELLEY: Make it clearer. Name the names. AHMADEINEJAD: I don't want to name names. I don't want to name names. But the terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, who is behind them? And what intelligence organization belonging to what country is behind them? This is very clear. PELLEY: Shall I say CIA and the United States? Will that . . . AHMADEINEJAD: Well, maybe you know something that . . . The relations and the developments in this part of the world are somewhat clear. I don't want to say something which would agitate and fan the flames of the situation. What I'm saying that this is shameful. My country is a great victim of terrorism. We very much oppose terrorism. As I said, we oppose terrorism. Why? Why should innocent people be killed? For what reason? We are saying that each and every person should be respected regardless of their color, creed, what country they come from, what language they speak. We're all fellow human beings. We should be respected. Why some parties ask more than their fair share? Why do they insult nations? They shouldn't do that. This is not right. PELLEY: Would you reestablish . . . AHMADEINEJAD: If I may. Who created secret prisons in Europe? You don't know that? Did Iran establish those prisons? This one is very clear and the documents have been revealed. Why are they creating secret prisons? If the law provides the possibility to establish these prisons, go ahead. Why this skullduggery? So this is, again, very clear. PELLEY: Would you reestablish diplomatic relations with the United States? Is that something you want? Something you would do right away? AHMADINEJAD: Well, our foreign policy is a policy which says that we should have relations with all countries and nations. Before the revolution, this country was much damaged by American policy. Our late imam said that we will not have relations with two countries: one, the apartheid regime of South Africa; the other, the Zionist regime. We like to have relations with all countries. The American administration cut off relations themselves unilaterally. The Carter administration perhaps they were thinking that this would be to their benefit. But this didn't happen. We would like to have relations with all countries based on mutual respect. This is the very basis of our foreign policy. I think that we are done. PELLEY: You have been generous with your time, Mr. President. Thank you for your time very much. AHMADEINEJAD: Good luck. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18452.htm

The British government maps concerning Iranian waters

Derek Lane

Thanks to 'noamswampy' for digging this up (noam's words and links follow): Well, even the UK Foreign Affairs Committee is now saying..... "We conclude that there is evidence to suggest that the map of the Shatt al-Arab waterway provided by the Government was less clear than it ought to have been. The Government was fortunate that it was not in Iran's interests to contest the accuracy of the map. We recommend that, in its response to this Report, the Government state why it chose to mark the boundary as a purely 'territorial water boundary' rather than including aspects of the 'land boundary' agreed to in 1975." ...and.... "There has been some dispute over the map that was produced by the Ministry of Defence. We asked Martin Pratt, Director of Research at the International Boundaries Research Unit at Durham University, for his analysis. He argued that the Government's map was "certainly an oversimplification" and that "it could reasonably be argued that it was deliberately misleading."49 His particular concern was that the Government chose to downgrade a land boundary signed between Iran and Iraq in 1975 (known as the �Algiers Agreement�) to a "territorial water boundary" on its map." Full report at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmfaff/880/880.pdf Related item at Presstv: http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?id=17048�ionid=351020601 Regards, N.

Fear & Loathing In Teheran

Derek Lane

- by Sarah Gillespie �The blood drained from her face and Faye whispered, 'there's going to be a rape involved in this' Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor Daily Mirror 9th April 2007 Faye Turney, the �she-man� Seaman captured in Shatt al-Arab last month, claims her captivity in Teheran was marred by fear of rape, torture and a lifetime of incarceration. Despite having been released unharmed, a bizarre scene is emerging from the dark recesses of Turney�s imagination in which the saintly mother of little Molly (3) was subjected to floundering indefinitely in a dingy jail wearing nothing but pair of knickers and a floral headscarf. According to Faye�s �worst fears� her �evil captors� spied on her through her cell door slat, cracked jokes about her imminent martyrdom and most bizarrely of all, felt compelled to fit her out with her very own hand-crafted, bespoke coffin. Here is our first hint that we are dealing with the humiliation fantasies of a serious narcissist; while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard indeed have affiliations with the Moral Police responsible for public executions, I doubt very much that they throw a made-to-measure coffin service into the deal. Nothing here adds up. But it doesn�t have to because the press have finally dispensed with the pursuit of truth altogether. Faye Turney�s fears are being treated by the media as if they were facts. Do a Google search on �Faye Turney rape� and over 80,000 results appear. Remarkable really, given the woman has not been raped at all and is even claiming that she was not. Such is the ravenous appetite in Britain for titillating tales of defenceless damsels and wicked Arabs, the Sun-reading British electorate doesn�t care anymore if the narrative is absolute fantasy or not, so long as the victim is a westerner and the aggressor is a Muslim. Thus, it doesn�t matter that Turney & Co were well-fed, clothed, even supplied with Marlborough Lights and Presidential �goodie bags�. It doesn�t matter that none of the 15 were exposed to torture, sexual abuse or humiliation. It doesn�t matter either that the worst trauma they endured was having their I Pods confiscated and forced to wear outfits that looked a bit �last year�. Arthur Batchelor, one of the Seaman, who we can assume has received at least some Military training for coping with stress during captivity, said: �Those suits were an insult. Not only did mine not fit, but it was cheap and tacky and the Hugo Boss shirt was a fake.� What? So this is the �mental torment� he insists on peddling for cash? The message is clear, the Seamen were treated well. Another message is also clear; the news-consuming public refuses to internalise this. Fay's abuse was in her disturbed mind and what is even more disturbing is the fact that our minds are deviant enough to consume her sickening fantasies. Without delving too deeply into the collective perversion of an entire nation, it is crucial to note that the British, who built their pseudo-egalitarian, post-industrial, mega-economy on the backs of two centuries of colonized labour, just love to feel like they are the victim. Check out the streets of Soho if you need proof. What is more alarming, is that British media are quick to mobilise this penchant for humiliation in order to spoon feed us fictional narratives that reinforce the binary underpinning Anglo-American-Israeli foreign policy: Muslim=terrorist/Westerner=liberator. Since Turney traded in her phantasmic trauma for a substantial wad of Rupert Murdoch�s cash we are inundated with stories about her not being raped. Without the popular fear of Islam bestowing a veneer of feasibility into this narrative, Turney�s confessional would be exposed for the absurd non-event that it is. Try to imagine an equivalent news flash without the anti-Muslim agenda: �Man Thought He Was Being Followed Home by Rabid Gunmen, But Then He Realized It Was His Mum & He Was Just Being Paranoid.� Or �Footsie Share Index Plummets to Record Lows Thought City Worker When He Accidentally Leant on His Apple Mac Keyboard Earlier Today.' The rape, the torture, the execution didn�t happen but still it is reported over and over again simply on the proviso that it was temporarily imagined to be true in the mind of one woman. Truth is elusive, murky territory, impossible to fix or locate, impervious to the tyranny of technological mapping devices that offer objective comprehendible absolutes. Truth is relative, deceptive, it is in process, it never arrives at its destination and yet, we all insist on chasing it into oblivion. What has happened in the case of Faye Turney is that we seem to have given up the quest altogether, we have willingly surrendered to the absolutist reassurance of fear, at the expense of truth. Not only are we cut adrift from facts, we are not even pretending to look for them anymore, we are heading for a terrain were facts no longer matter. On 9th April 2007 Blair, a man who, among his many sins, incarcerates Muslims for months on end without charge, dubbed Iran a �cruel and callous� nation. So complicit are we in the demonisation of an entire civilization, we knowingly consume this fantasy of cruelty rather than consider the real possibility of humanity. We are invited to believe that Turney, the giant Viking of the Gulf Sea, is the ultimate victim, while Ahmadinejad, who hopes, albeit naively, one day to defend his country from foreign invaders, is the ultimate evil. The tragedy is we are no longer concerned as to whether this is true or not. Link: peacepalestineblog

Why Can't Americans See it?

Derek Lane

by Paul Craig Roberts The American public and the US Congress are getting their backs up about the Bush Regime's determination to escalate the war in Iraq. A massive protest demonstration is occurring in Washington DC today, and Congress is expressing its disagreement with Bush's decision to intensify the war in Iraq. This is all to the good. However, it misses the real issue � the Bush Regime's looming attack on Iran. Rather than winding down one war, Bush is starting another. The entire world knows this and is discussing Bush's planned attack on Iran in many forums. It is only Americans who haven't caught on. A few senators have said that Bush must not attack Iran without the approval of Congress, and postings on the Internet demonstrate world wide awareness that Iran is in the Bush Regime's cross hairs. But Congress and the Media � and the demonstration in Washington � are focused on Iraq. What can be done to bring American awareness up to the standard of the rest of the world? In Davos, Switzerland, the meeting of the World Economic Forum, a conference where economic globalism issues are discussed, opened January 24 with a discussion of Bush's planned attack on Iran. The Secretary General of the League of Arab States and bankers and businessmen from such US allies as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates all warned of the coming attack and its catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and the world. Writing for Global Research, General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs and former Joint Chief of Staff of the Russian Armies, forecasted an American nuclear attack on Iran by the end of April. General Ivashov presented the neoconservative reasoning that is the basis for the attack and concluded that the world's protests cannot stop the US attack on Iran. There will be shock and indignation, General Ivashov concludes, but the US will get away with it. He writes: "Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc.... The probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high. It does remain unclear, though, whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war. It may take a provocation to eliminate this obstacle (an attack on Israel or the US targets including military bases). The scale of the provocation may be comparable to the 9/11 attack in NY. Then the Congress will certainly say 'Yes' to the US president." The Bush Regime has made it clear that it is convinced that Bush already has the authority to attack Iran. The Regime argues that the authority is part of Bush's commander-in-chief powers. Congress has authorized the war in Iraq, and Bush's recent public statements have shifted the responsibility for the Iraqi insurgency from al-Qaeda to Iran. Iran, Bush has declared, is killing US troops in Iraq. Thus, Iran is covered under the authorization for the war in Iraq. Both Bush and Cheney have made it clear in public statements that they will ignore any congressional opposition to their war plans. For example, CBS News reported (Jan. 25) that Cheney said that a congressional resolution against escalating the war in Iraq "won't stop us." According to the Associated Press, Bush dismissed congressional disapproval with his statement, "I'm the decision-maker." Everything is in place for an attack on Iran. Two aircraft carrier attack forces are deployed to the Persian Gulf, US attack aircraft have been moved to Turkey and other countries on Iran's borders, Patriot anti-missile defense systems are being moved to the Middle East to protect oil facilities and US bases from retaliation from Iranian missiles, and growing reams of disinformation alleging Iran's responsibility for the insurgency in Iraq are being fed to the gullible US media. General Ivashof and everyone in the Middle East and at the Davos globalization conference in Europe understands the Bush Regime's agenda. Why cannot Americans understand? Why hasn't Congress told Bush and Cheney that they will both be instantly impeached if they initiate a wider war? Link: http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10411

Ahmadinejad: We are Not a Threat to Any Country, Including Israel

Derek Lane

Sunday, August 27, 2006 by Juan Cole Believe it, don't believe it, that's up to you. But at least we should know what exactly he said, which is not something our US newspapers will tell us about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech on Saturday: Kayhan reports that [Pers.] Ahmadinejad said, "Iran is not a threat to any country, and is not in any way a people of intimidation and aggression." He described Iranians as people of peace and civilization. He said that Iran does not even pose a threat to Israel, and wants to deal with the problem there peacefully, through elections: "Weapons research is in no way part of Iran's program. Even with regard to the Zionist regime, our path to a solution is elections." Ahmadinejad seems to be explaining what his calls for the Zionist regime to be effaced actually mean. He says he doesn't want violence against Israel, despite its own acts of enmity against Middle Eastern neighbors. I interpret his statement on Saturday to be an endorsement of the one-state solution, in which a government would be elected that all Palestinians and all Israelis would jointly vote for. The result would be a government about half made up of Israeli ministers and half of Palestinian ones. Whatever one wanted to call such an arrangement, it wouldn't exactly be a "Zionist state," which would thus have been dissolved. The schlock Western pundits, journalists and politicians who keep maintaining that Ahmadinejad threatened "to wipe Israel off the map" when he never said those words will never, ever manage to choke out the words Ahmadinejad spoke on Saturday, much less repeat them as a tag line forever after. Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei's pledge of no first strike against any country by Iran with any kind of weapon, and his condemnation of nuclear bombs as un-Islamic and impossible for Iran to possess or use, was completely ignored by the Western press and is never referred to. Indeed, after all that talk of peace and no first strike and no nukes, Khamenei at the very end said that if Iran were attacked, it would defend itself. Karl Vicks of the Washington Post at the time ignored all the rest of the speech and made the headline, 'Khamenei threatens reprisals against US." In other words, on Iran, the US public is being spoonfed agitprop, not news. Although Iran's protestations of peaceful intentions are greeted cynically in the US and Israel, in fact Iran has not launched a war of aggression in over a century. The US and Israel have launched several during that period of time. Ahmadinejad made the remarks in a speech inaugurating work on a heavy water nuclear reactor in Arak. I don't think that work is very advanced. The Iranians maintain that it is for peaceful energy generation. Much of the electricity produced in France, South Korea and Japan is generated by nuclear plants.

Who attacked who - Lebanon or Israel? Is history being rewritten?

Derek Lane

The following are a collection of news articles from the various new agencies from the time of the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, on the 12th July 2006: Beirut, July 12 (DPA) The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. 'Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon,' a statement by Hezbollah said. http://in.news.yahoo.com/060712/43/65tzi.html ---------------------------------------------------------- It all started on July 12 when Israel troops were ambushed on Lebanon's side of the border with Israel. Hezbollah, which commands the Lebanese south, immediately seized on their crossing. They arrested two Israeli soldiers, killed eight Israelis and wounded over 20 in attacks inside Israeli territory. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG15Ak02.html ---------------------------------------------------------- DPA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) "In the afternoon, the scene changed in the streets of southern Lebanon, which was the target of 32 Israeli raids that mainly targeted areas near the area where the two soldiers were captured in Aita al Chaab, close to the border with Israel." http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1180404.php/Hezbollah_back_in_the_spotlight_after_capturing_soldiers --------------------------------------------------------- Voici les faits : le Hezbollah exige depuis de longues ann�es la lib�ration de prisonniers d�tenus par Isra�l, tel que Samir el Kantar, emprisonn� depuis 1978, Nassim Nisr et Yahia Skaff qui est incarc�r� depuis 1982. Dans de nombreuses occasion, il a fait savoir qu’il ne manquerait pas de faire prisonnier � son tour des soldats isra�liens -si ci-ceux-ci venaient � s’introduire au Liban-, et de les utiliser comme monnaire d’�change. De mani�re d�lib�r�e, Tsahal a envoy� un commando dans l’arri�re-pays libanais � A�ta al Chaab. Il a �t� attaqu� par le Hezbollah, faisant deux prisonniers. Isra�l a alors feint d’�tre agress� et a attaqu� le Liban. Le Hezbollah, qui se pr�parait � faire face � une agression isra�lienne que chacun savait imminente depuis le retrait syrien, a tir� des missiles de moyenne port�e sur Isra�l. (Here are the facts : Hezbollah has demanded for years now the release of prisoners held by Israel, such as Samir el Kantar, improsonned since 1978, Nassim Nisr and Yahia Skaff, imprisonned since 1982. On innumerable occasions it has made known that it, in turn, won't hesitate to capture Israeli soldiers- if they enter Lebanon- and to use them as bargaining counters. Quite deliberately, Tsahal sent a commando unit into Lebanese territory around Aita al Chaab. It was attacked by Hezbollah, who took two prisonners. Israel then made out that they had been attacked and attacked Lebanon. Hezbollah, which was preparing for an israeli attack which everyone new was inevitable after the Syrian withdrawal, fired some medium range missiles at Israel.) Translated by Conlin Buchanan http://www.iransolidarity.endofempire.org/news.php?page=601 Breaking News - Voltaire Network-Western press agencies willing victims of Israeli censorship --------------------------------------------------------- Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers Forbes By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN, 07.12.2006, 05:41 AM Associated Press The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them. The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity. The Israeli military would not confirm the report. http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/07/12/ap2873051.html --------------------------------------------------------- Hezbollah captures two Israeli soldiers Hindustan Times Indo-Asian News Service Beirut, July 12, 2006 The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. [...] The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they "infiltrated" into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border. http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:Rbn7oBquCyIJ:www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1742306,00050004.htm%20&hl=it&gl=it&ct=clnk&cd=1%22" target="_blank">www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1742306,00050004.htm%20&hl=it&gl=it&ct=clnk&cd=1%22">http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:Rbn7oBquCyIJ:www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1742306,00050004.htm%20&hl=it&gl=it&ct=clnk&cd=1%22 --------------------------------------------------------- Hezbollah back in the spotlight after capturing soldiers M & C News By Weedah Hamzah Jul 12, 2006, 22:17 GMT Tyre, Southern Lebanon Lebanon's pro-Syrian Shiite movement is back in the spotlight after capturing two Israeli soldiers on Wednesday, plunging the country into a crisis that could lead to new violence in the region. [...] In the afternoon, the scene changed in the streets of southern Lebanon, which was the target of 32 Israeli raids that mainly targeted areas near the area where the two soldiers were captured in Aita al Chaab, close to the border with Israel. http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1180404.php/Hezbollah_back_in_the_spotlight_after_capturing_soldiers --------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, July 16, 2006 Censorship Policy Regarding Fighting in the North Date: 16.7.06 Censorship Policy Regarding Fighting in the North 1. As of now, over 1,200 rockets have been fired at Israel; it is expected that this will continue. 2. Therefore, following are the Military Censor's relevant guidelines: a. The Military Censor will not approve reports regarding visits of Israeli Government and IDF officials in the north of Israel until the visits are over due to the clear connection between officials' visits and missile attacks on the area in question. b. The Military Censor will not approve reports on missile hits at IDF bases and/or strategic facilities. c. The Military Censor will not approve reports on missiles that fall in the Mediterranean Sea. d. The Military Censor will not approve reports on time periods when citizens are permitted to leave their shelters. Warnings of such times are utilized by the enemy for timing attacks. e. Reporting on locations in which there are public defense and organizational difficulties should be avoided as much as possible. 3. Real-time reporting on the exact location of rocket hits must be strictly avoided! Sincerely, Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil Chief Military Censor http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=30102 ---------------------------------------------------------- Note the same author below, one article at the beginning of the day states that the soldiers were captured in Southern Lebanon, the other, at the end of the day states they were captured in Israel. Hezbollah Captures 2 Israeli Soldiers, Associated Press By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN , 07.12.2006, 05:41 AM The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them. The Israeli military would not confirm the report. http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/07/12/ap2873051.html By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN, Associated Press Writer Wed Jul 12, 4:13 PM ET BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah militants crossed into Israel on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers. Israel responded in southern Lebanon with warplanes, tanks and gunboats, and said eight of its soldiers had been killed in the violence. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060712/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_israel_clash ---------------------------------------------------------- MSNBC changes its story 1) Updated: 4:31 p.m. ET July 12, 2006 After the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah in Lebanon on Wednesday, which the hard-line group linked to a similar kidnapping by Hamas the week before, the Mideast seemed to be closer to all-out war. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13831982/site/newsweek/ 2) Kidnappings changed everything Updated: 7:45 p.m. ET July 13, 2006 All that changed Wednesday, when Hezbollah guerrillas crossed into Israel, seizing Goldwasser and Regev and killing eight other Israeli soldiers in the ensuing fighting. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13847803/ ---------------------------------------------------------- Jerusalem post changes its story 1) Jul. 12, 2006 17:56, Nasrallah calls abduction 'only and logical right' Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said the timing of the capture of two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon on Wednesday would boost the position of Palestinians in Gaza. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885980789&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull 2) Jul 14, 2006 In a drastic escalation of what has become a war across Israel's northern border, Hizbullah fired Katyusha rockets that landed in Haifa and Nahariya on Thursday while the IDF laid siege to Lebanon, imposing a naval blockade and bombing Beirut's international airport. YAAKOV KATZ, Tovah Lazaroff, Judy Siegel and AP contributed to this report. [NB AP ran and then changed the original version of the story!] http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/1078280481.html?dids=1078280481:1078280481&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jul+14%2C+2006&author=&pub=Jerusalem+Post&edition=&startpage=01&desc=Israel+vows+to+break%27+Hizbullah+as+rocket+hits+Haifa.+2+Israeli+civilians+killed+in+barrage+on+North+*+Up+to+a+million+ordered+into+shelters+*+IDF+lays+seige+to+Lebanon --------------------------------------------------------- "The sources say the Israeli soldiers had been seized at around 9am local time across the border from Aita al-Shaab, some 15 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast." The Israeli army confirmed that two Israeli soldiers had been captured on the Lebanese frontier." http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200607/s1685306.htm --------------------------------------------------------- "Olmert called a special cabinet session for 1700 GMT to discuss further military action. "It is an act of war by the state of Lebanon against the state of Israel in its sovereign territory," he said." http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A5A917D4-76E6-46F6-A92B-7250249FD172.htm A ridiculous statement considering Israel, Lebanon and the rest of the world all seem to acknowledge that the state of Lebanon has no power over Hezbollah. To declare then that it is 'an act of war from the state of Lebanon' should have been a statement Olmert was pulled up on almost immediately. “The Israeli army confirmed that two Israeli soldiers had been captured on the Lebanese frontier." frontier: the far edge of a country, where few people live. Therefore, according to ABC sources, the IDF actually confirmed that the Israeli soldier had been captured on Lebanese territory, but if you take the paragraph preceeding that, it seems to be intentionally misleading; it has been quoted not just by ABC but many news outlets, and, with the absence of commas could mean anything...'[Israeli soldiers were] seized across the border [from Israel], from Aita al-Shaab [which is] some 15 km from the Mediterranean coast', or [Israeli soldiers were] seized, across the border [from the Lebanon side] from Aita al-Shaab [therefore in Israel], some 15km from the Mediterranean coast.' The debate on the web seems to be fairly heavy as to the semantics of the above quote, easy, I think, to see why, especially with the absence of much else by way of exact location from major news corps. The BBC reported simply that “Lebanese guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid “ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5171616.stm neglecting to mention where, as though it were simply unimportant. They also had this report, again neglecting to mention the location: (13th July 2006) Similiarly, the Guardian reported that ... “Israel threatened to bomb Lebanon "back 20 years" yesterday as it launched a ground and air assault after Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed others. “ (13th July 2006) http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1819122,00.html The Independent stated that “The fighting erupted after Hezbollah captured the two Israeli soldiers in a strike that killed eight other Israeli troops. Israel blasted bridges and roads in southern Lebanon throughout yesterday. “ (13th July 2006) http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1174162.ece The wishy washy terminology of the western press agencies compared to elsewhere raises further questions when 11 days later, organisations like the BBC begin to state as unequivocable fact that the captures took place inside Israel. "Israel says it is doing everything to avoid civilian casualties, but will continue and indeed escalate its attacks unless the Hezbollah militant group frees two soldiers it captured inside Israel 11 days ago and stops its rocket attacks." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5206446.stm and... This is part of the human cost of Israel's war against the Hezbollah militants who captured two soldiers in northern Israel on 12 July and have since stepped up rocket attacks on Israeli population centres. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5208110.stm So what can we make of all this? Is it another example where the western press leaps on the bandwagon in criticism of an enemy of the West, without paying heed to such intricacies as the truth, as happened with Ahmadinejad and that famous speech 'A world without Zionism', or whether the journalists bother to read such things as Hamas' charter to decide if it is justified to assert that Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel? If the mistake were an honest mistake, you would think there would be such explanations as 'earlier it was thought that the soldiers were captured in Southern Lebanon, but it now seems the captures were in fact made on the Israeli side of the border, at ________' That, of course, would weaken the position of Israel being in the right, to readers who otherwise would not have noticed (because it would still sound vaguely like a rewriting of history). As it is, it seems to me quite likely that this is indeed what it is. It was not, possibly, until afterwards (at least after Olmert had declared this to be an 'act of war') that Israel realised this could be the justification for their long planned invasion of Lebanon (in the twisted way that warrants justification amongst today's leaders. Diplomacy, it seems, is not the job of the cultured elite any longer. Aggression is fine for the US and the UK, so why shouldn't it be fine also for other nations?), but only if the captures occurred on the 'right' side of the border. It seems like no small thing to me. One would think a journalist would be capable of taking the facts down accurately (not little facts like the spelling of a name, but big ones, like who captured who, and where). If they can't, and there was possibly more than one original source, then journalist may indeed lack 'professional rigour', in the truest sense. If they can, but are then told they +must+ follow the story that Israel's military censorship people tell them to, then it makes a great deal more sense. I don't honestly believe that journalists could be that incompetent as providence for the first option, which leaves the second as quite a tangible possibility. I wish I knew just how restrictive the contracts journalists must sign for the IDF censorship are, but I do not.

IBC and a final summary

Derek Lane

Province	Total
Anbar	912
Basrah	71
Muthanna	6
Qadisiyah	21
Najaf	29
Arbil	1
Sulaymaniyah	0
At Ta'mim	37
Babil	135
Baghdad	637
Dahuk	0
Dhi Qar	71
Diyala	83
Karbala	28
Maysan	20
Ninawa	181
Salah ad Din	259
Wasit	34

Source: ICasualties Based on the above figures, I suggested (without 'suggesting', due to the sensitive nature of the IBC representatives), that the fact it showed 2/3 outside of Baghdad for military deaths, as opposed to 2/3 inside Baghdad for civilian deaths recorded by IBC might highlight some discrepancies with the completeness of that civilian count. Multiplying the current IBC count for Baghdad by 3 gives a figure of 80727. Of course this figure is not an accurate extrapolation, and needless to say I was 'told off' by Josh Dougherty for even suggesting it as a possibility. Let me first outline what is wrong with it: The difference between IBC's exclusively civilian count, and the reality, that it is citizens, not just civilians who are killed by the occupation. So an extrapolation based on troop deaths would likely include a high count of anti-occupation citizens killed by the USUK forces, hence, would not appear on IBC's database. Nevertheless, it is one way in many (others more detailed and 'scientific') that I and others have been attempting to persuade IBC of, in relation to reaching that base point of realisation that IBC is not likely to be close to the real civilian count of violent deaths in Iraq (and certainly not the true death toll of Iraqis murdered by occupation forces). The debate continued on from there, that I was injecting things with my own slant, that data could not possibly be gathered with so many uncertainties. I never claimed that 'definitive' data could be claimed, but that the more you work it, the more morsels we turn and inspect and scrutinise, the more likely we are to come closer to a version that resembles the reality. I said that the difficulty seemed to be that in applying imagination in a way that threatened IBC, imagination (based on experience, understanding, et al) suddenly became an enemy. My argument is that its necessary to draw reasonable and realistic conclusions, using 'imagination'. Then, there is also science which can either back up, or refute what we imagine to be the truth, but that we need imagination to draw conclusions about anything seems a given. In the case of Dresden-type campaigns of might against the weak, we know that when an effective guerilla campaign in Iraq is launched it is met with even greater force, which claims more lives, as in the case of Falluja, for one example. Labelled an 'insurgent stronghold', the 'Dresden style' bombing campaign then begins, after locking the gates with all males of fighting age locked in. Yet it's Baghdad that carries the highest percentage of media reported deaths, and the rest of Iraq which carries the highest proportion of USUK deaths. From the events of Iraq, it is likely that some guerilla groups began as more organised and therefore less prone to dying than others, but once the USUK have been beaten a little, they have responded with fuller force to 'obliterate' their enemy. Therefore, while the numbers might be a little imbalanced to begin with, its also likely that USUK makes up the difference fairly fast. Based on experience, (things we know), its also perfectly reasonable to assume that the reason Baghdad has greater incidents of media reported deaths is that most of the reporters and outlets are stationed in Baghdad, therefore, it is likely that most reports will come from there, and be about there. Of course, we can't prove it, which is a sentiment that emanates from IBC and its supporters, but we don't need to prove it to know it’s a distinct possibility. I know that, where I am from, few news reports reach Australia's main newspapers and media outlets. Only the worst, and biggest incidents make it that far. There are plenty of brawls, plenty of knifings, a little gun crime etc, but, where in Sydney such events regularly make it 'snippet' form into, for example, ABC news or the SMH its very unlikely you would find such information from the small town I come from. Its the nature of the media - it looks after what's important, and what's important is what is in its line of vision. I am sure you can think of examples from where you are from as well. Why would it be so greatly different in Iraq? More than likely it isn't. The epicentre of Baghdad is most likely to attract the most attention when it comes to small (comparatively) crimes and violence, than the outer-lying regions of Iraq. The more journalists there are reporting internationally in Baghdad, the more the reports will focus on Baghdad. In the small town I am from, there are no direct or indirect affiliations from the local paper to the larger ones either. They have no web presence - none that constitutes online news, anyway. A phone number, a front page, an email address - I am sure you've seen similiar in terms of web-sites for small local papers. If the news doesn't make it online, or on television, or even in hard copy to a place like Baghdad, who is going to read it and how will IBC take that report (especially if the report is not in English)? Of course, I don't know for sure - and this seems to be the back up argument on every front from IBC, whenever it seems that to say such things should be an affront to the work they do. The root of it is, for me, as I have followed and begun to participate in such arguments with Josh and co, is that things in life are grey, but the argument (from IBC's perspective) is black and white. Every incontestable point conceded to IBC is swallowed up, every incontestable point insisted upon that IBC should admit is resolutely ignored or rejected, as if to admit to a single flaw would bring the whole project crashing down around their feet, which of course it wouldn't. I have said it before, but a little humility would actually bolster their position for many people. A real (and not vaguely conciliatory) admission that there are flaws in terms of what IBC counts (probably a very accurate count for what it actually counts) and the reality of deaths in Iraq (including 'combatants', missed civilians, wrongly labelled civilians, and the young and old killed by destruction of infrastructure, lack of food, disease etc) would make people realise that what they show is only the tip of the iceberg. Some caveats, some links to all the other studies and reports from the main page; these things are not a threat to the viability of the IBC count, but an enhancement. Why they don't do it baffles me; but what seems likely to me is that is has to do with a great deal of pride in never being proven wrong about anything. In other words, the argument is about black and white - a ridiculous concept in such a situation. Josh Dougherty, to his credit, responded by conceding that Baghdad is probably over-represented in terms of media-coverage in Iraq. "As for Baghdad, I think Baghdad is covered better than most other areas in IBC, so I think media reports do over-represent Baghdad. For IBC this has a lot to do with the consistent publication of Baghdad morgue figures, while comprehensive official records like that are spotty in most other areas. Josh Dougherty - IBC 11th July 2006 http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1152634031.html" I don't agree entirely, I must point out here that 'over-represented' is perhaps the wrong word, and not the one I suspect he intended. If there were that many media-reports in Baghdad, it would have been remiss to reject them simply because Baghdad had had its fair share. What I suspect he meant was that the rest of Iraq was under-represented, but that may of course concede too much for IBC. A discussion from a few days previous to this prompted me to rework my database interface for IBC data and come up with some new workings. If you compare them with the old ones on site here, they show improvements for IBC, which is good. It still, however, doesn't account for the huge anomaly between reporting in Baghdad versus the rest of Iraq. The information follows: According to a BBC report, 6025 violent deaths have been recorded in Baghdad morgues since the beginning of the year, from January through to May. January: 1068 February: 1110 March: 1294 April: 1155 May: 1398 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5053134.stm This means, 81% were captured by IBC for first 5 months of 2006 for Baghdad – a 19% undercount. IBC’s total for first 5 months is 6400 for entire Iraq. Compared to their Baghdad figure this translates to 76.23% of all media reports for Iraq centred in Baghdad. So while the percentage undercount has dropped since last year for IBC, the percentage of reporting in Baghdad still seems to be disparately higher in Baghdad than anywhere else. 62.18% across the span of the invasion and occupation are accounted for in Baghdad alone. Again, (I've said this before), if we discount the rest of Iraq as inaccurate due to a lower coverage and use the Baghdad figures alone, we can extrapolate a possibility for the number of likely violent deaths across the whole of Iraq, given that - before the invasion - Baghdad's population was approximately 1/6 the population of Iraq. Therefore, if the percentage undercounting currently stands at 20% (it has in the past been much higher), then 26909 * 0.2=32291*6 =193746 violent Iraqi deaths It's not a definitive answer (because we don't know the intensity of the damage comparatively. We have been told, at times, that the fighting is equally bad in places like Samarra, Falluja, Basra, but we don't know), but it does show that such a possibility is not as off the cards as IBC would like to believe. Even if we were to use the exact IBC figure for Baghdad and not take into account underreporting according to morgue data, the number still comes out at 161454. If we are to use the troop comparisons from above, then the figure comes out as 96873, and if we apply the undercounting to the entirety of Iraq, then 43273*0.2=51928 In all cases the undercount is significant (and therefore, worth mentioning in my opinion). The last example does not take into account the disparity between reporting in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq that even IBC acknowledge exists. Keep in mind that while the control possibly contains non-civilian deaths, the base (IBC) is only civilian deaths directly attributable to the occupation. There is also (in my mind, a thing directly attributable) the cost in lives of damaged and unrepaired infrastructure, depleted uranium related deaths to come, either already or soon, plus this ridiculous notion that when the US kills someone they can automatically label them as insurgent or civilian. Then there is the fact that an 'insurgent' is often a freedom fighter, fighting, honourably and correctly, the occupation of their own country, as the Brits did, as the Australians did, as the French did, in WWII. Its not a thing that can currently be verified by any methodology that IBC use (and therefore could not be included in their dataset), but it could be acknowledged as factor of great importance. Deaths are, after all, deaths. If the civilian count could be as high as the workings above suggest, the possibilities of the numbers of uncounted categories of Iraqi citizens could be astronomical. By that rationale, its difficult to dismiss Roberts' assertion that the sensitivity of IBC's figure could be <5%, particularly when you realise that Les Roberts' study – the one on which the <5% is based – counts excess violent deaths, not simply the narrow range of media-reported civilians that IBC counts. What I would like to see is, if not an acknowledgement from IBC that what it counts could not possibly be the true number of citizens killed by the intervention of the western forces, a spreading of the word from other sources, an acknowledgement that people who fight for their country are just as important to be counted, just as deserving of acknowledgement, as those who don't. An acknowledgement that people in Samarra are as important as people in Baghdad, even if our media don't report on them as often. An acknowledgement that the old, the sick, the young, who die not from bombs and bullets, but dysentry or thirst, starvation, heat exhaustion or hypothermia, caused by the shells lying in the rubble of their hospitals, their sewerage treatment plants, their power stations and their playgrounds are every bit as deserving of our sympathy, and our anger as those shot down in the primes of their lives.

Gaza Strip Situation Report

Derek Lane

Time for some straight facts about Gaza - we would be forgiven for thinking things are not that bad there, based on the restrained attitudes of our collective media. The facts follow... Gaza Strip Situation Report, 5pm Report, OCHA, 4 July 2006 Key developments in the last three days[1] # Between 15 and 20 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers (APC) moved into the Gaza Strip from the northern border at noon today and positioned themselves in the former Nisanit settlement area. Palestinian security forces were advised to leave their positions in the area and the IDF closed Erez crossing at 11am today. # The Gaza Electrical Distribution Company (GEDCO) continues to load-share the available electric supply across the Gaza Strip though power is intermittent and often not synchronised with water supply to households. Families face difficulties to secure water for personal hygiene. # Nahal Oz energy pipelines reopened for the import of fuel into the Gaza Strip on 2 July. Karni crossing opened on 2 July and 96 truckloads of commercial supplies entered. Karni was closed again on 3 July but reopened today at 12:40pm for imports including humanitarian supplies from WFP and UNRWA. # Some shortages in essential food commodities have been reported by WFP inside the Gaza Strip - there are two days supply available for sugar and eight days supply for animal feed. Milk and dairy products are available in minimal quantities. # There have been 25 sonic booms from Israel Air Force (IAF) aircraft since 28 June across the Gaza Strip. Most occurred pre-dawn. Electricity # After an IAF air strike destroyed all six transformers at Gaza's power station on 28 June, the GEDCO is load-sharing the remaining power provided by the Israel Electrical Corporation (IEC) in an effort to provide most households with 6 - 8 hours of power per day; however, many households are currently receiving less. # The IEC has ten feeders entering the Gaza Strip from Israel while a further two that used to serve the northern and Gush Katif settlement bloc were discontinued in September 2005. GEDCO is in discussions with the IEC to increase power supplies obtained. Fuel # The Nahal Oz energy pipelines were open for the third successive day following closure between 26 June and 1 July. Unless fuel supplies remain continuous and uninterrupted, shortages will quickly re- emerge. The prior closure caused severe fuel shortages in the Gaza Strip and most fuel stations observed by the UN had closed down over the weekend. Quantities of fuel imported into the Gaza Strip: # Generators are being increasingly relied on to ensure continuous power supply in hospitals, sewage treatment plants and water wells. Municipalities and other public agencies have requested international organisations to cover the costs of the fuel supplies needed to power the generators. With the extended use of generators, there is a concern over maintenance and the ability to source spare parts. Water and sanitation # With the electricity shortages, generators are being increasingly relied upon to power the 132 water wells. The Coastal Water Municipalities Union (CMWU) estimates that its needs 15,000 litres of fuel per day for these generators. # In many cases, families are not receiving power and water at the same time or electricity available is not sufficient to pump the water into apartment blocks. Families are finding it difficult to secure water in their homes for personal hygiene and there is concern about the outbreak of water-borne diseases in the current hot temperatures. # According to WHO, the lack of water is also affecting waste-water treatment and disposal and there are concerns for public health problems related to insects and sewage leaking into the aquifer. Health # According to WHO, generators are currently available in all 11 Gaza hospitals and in approximately 50% of the Ministry of Health's (MoH) primary health care clinics (PHC). WHO reported that hospitals have fuel stocks for one week and PHC's have stocks for two weeks. The MoH estimates that it needs 26,000 litres of fuel per day (based on 16 hours of usage). This could rise to 40,000 litres per day if hospitals have to rely on generators 24 hours a day. # Generators are crucial to ensure cold-chain supplies such as for vaccines. In northern Gaza where four of ten of the PHCs are without generators, cold-chain items are being distributed among the remaining six facilities with continuous electrical supply. # According to WHO, coordination is possible for critical cases through Erez crossing although no patients crossed between 30 June and 3 July. # Israeli naval vessels continue to prevent Palestinian fisherman from fishing off the Gaza Strip coastline. WFP is concerned about the impact of the disappearance of fish from the local market, a vital source of protein. According to WFP, fish stocks in the market place are running low owing to the prolonged fishing restrictions and loss of permanent refrigeration capacity over the last week. Food # Karni crossing reopened on 2 July following a prolonged closure since 25 June. Ninety-six truckloads of commercial supplies entered including wheat, flour, cooking oil, milk, fruit and vegetables. No exports exited Karni. # Karni crossing was closed again on 3 July but reopened today at 12:40pm. WFP and UNRWA report that some of their humanitarian supplies had already crossed by mid-afternoon. # WFP reports a high rate of loss of perishable goods including dairy products, eggs, meat and poultry as refrigeration capacity is unreliable. WFP has also noted price increases of nearly 10% in basic commodities including wheat flour, sugar, rice and oil in the markets. # Some shortages in essential food commodities have been observed in the Gaza Strip. According to WFP, there are only two days left of sugar and eight days of animal feed in the Gaza Strip. Supplies of milk and dairy products are only available in minimal quantities. # International organisations including WFP and UNRWA have pre-positioned food supplies in the Gaza Strip. WFP reports that it has a ten-day food supply for 160,000 people and UNRWA has pre- positioned food for 158,000 refugee families as part of its ongoing regular distribution.[3] Crossing points and humanitarian access # Erez crossing closed at 11am today. Erez was used by diplomats and humanitarian workers including UN staff entering and exiting the Gaza Strip (non-diplomats required prior coordination with the IDF). # All crossing points into the Gaza Strip remain closed for the movement of Palestinian goods and people. Rafah, Sufa and Kerem Shalom crossings remain closed for ten days (25 June - 4 July). Between 300 - 400 Palestinians have been stuck on the Egyptian side of Rafah as a result of the closure of Rafah crossing over the last ten days. # UNRWA has 405 containers with humanitarian supplies destined for the Gaza Strip, being held at the Israeli port of Ashdod accumulating demurrage and storage charges on a daily basis. Demurrage charges of $20 per day per container payable to the container owner. UNRWA also has 203 empty containers inside the Gaza Strip dependant on the opening of Karni crossing accruing similar charges. Protection of civilians # In the last 24 hours, large numbers of IDF forces have crossed the border into northern Gaza and are holding positions several hundred metres to the east of Beit Hanoun. Bulldozers are currently levelling land in the area. Between 15 and 20 Israel IDF tanks and Armored Personnel Carriers (APC) moved into the Gaza Strip from the northern border at noon today and positioned themselves in the former Nisanit settlement area. # Due to the presence of the IDF around the former Gaza International Airport, a number of Palestinian families in the nearby Shouka area have not been able to leave their homes. ICRC has intervened with food parcels, supporting a total of 28 families last weekend. # There have been 25 sonic booms since 28 June across the Gaza Strip, most of the booms occurring in the early hours of the morning. Sonic booms, generated by aircraft breaking the sound barrier at low altitudes, induce fear, panic and anxiety across the Gaza Strip. # Six Palestinians have been killed (including four members of Hamas and one member of Islamic Jihad) since 26 June and 16 Palestinians injured. Seven Israelis, including three IDF soldiers, have been injured in and around the Gaza Strip in the same period. # Since 26 June, 43 homemade rockets has been fired by Palestinian militants towards Israel. Hundreds of IDF artillery shells have been fired daily into the northern and eastern border areas.[4] The IAF has conducted 84 air strikes in the Gaza Strip, including on the Prime Minister's offices (2 July) and the Islamic University (4 July). The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is the humanitarian branch of the United Nations Secretariat. This office is mandated by the member states to coordinate humanitarian response, develop humanitarian policy and conduct humanitarian advocacy. Footnotes 1. This is the fourth Situation Report issued by OCHA in June/July 2006 relating to an escalation in the number of Palestinian and Israeli casualties in and around the Gaza Strip in June and the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip following the attack by Palestinian militants on an Israeli military post at Kerem Shalom on 25 June. Two IDF soldiers and two Palestinian militants were killed, four IDF soldiers were injured and one IDF soldier was taken captive by the militants into the Gaza Strip in the attack and on 28 June the IDF launched Operation 'Summer Rains'. The previous reports were published on 21, 27 and 30 June and are available on www.ochaopt.org. 2. Daily Gaza consumption requirements as calculated by the Palestinian General Petroleum Corporation. 3. Since 25 June UN agencies have been meeting on a regular basis to identify sectoral needs in relation to the current situation and coordinating the response in the event of an intensification of the conflict. 4. The Palestinian DCL has not forwarded the number of artillery shells in recent days as they do not have power at their offices and have only been attending on a sporadic basis. Link: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4902.shtml

The New Occupation of East Timor

Derek Lane

On the 4th May 2006 Jonathon Head reported for BBC News on ...'rioting spread from a demonstration by some of nearly 600 soldiers. They were sacked in March after going on strike over what they claimed was discrimination against those from the west of the country. ' He also said that ...'The government has now set up a body to examine their grievances and called on the UN to extend its small remaining mission in East Timor to help improve training. ' We are left thinking that East Timor – a new nation, struggling with poverty, cannot cope. The UN peacekeeping forces, due to leave in the next few months this year, not only need to remain, but need reinforcement against civil and military unrest. For many of this, this is all there is to it. But the facts appear a little different after some digging. According to Ian McPhedran, reporting for news.com.au 11 days later (13th May 2006), "...East Timor Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta last night said his country did not need foreign peace keepers "because there is no war in East Timor". "But the navy's three largest ships, HMAS Kanimbla, HMAS Manoora and HMAS Tobruk, will load Darwin-based armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and hundreds of troops ahead of an expected United Nations request for military assistance. The peacekeeping task force will include more than 1000 personnel equipped to enforce law and order and evacuate civilians from the capital Dili." http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19117948-2,00.html Internal trouble of the scale in East Timor does not need a foreign occupation. In the West, this goes without saying. Look at the events of New Orleans in 2005, or the Rodney King riots of Los Angeles, or the workers' uprising in the 1980s during Margaret Thatcher's regime, and we see no call for peacekeeping from the United Nations. The implication is that East Timor is a failing state. This is the way it is being framed in the MSM, and failed states need intervention. Except, it is not always so clearcut. Israel, despite decades of bloodshed (mostly Palestinian blood) has not required International intervention. Iraq did not require it during the 1980s and 1990s when tens of thousands of lives were lost through Saddam's regime and through sanctions. West Papua does not need it right now, despite the fact that deaths and tyranny seems farther up the scale than in East Timor at present. The difference is, of course, these states are or were being oppressed by leaders sympathetic to the West, indeed, in cases, orchestrated by Western factions. In East Timor, we read that the foreign minister [saw] no cause for foreign occupation due to some rioting by sacked military. Sending in troops uninvited could be construed as an act of aggression. Howard has organised the military personnel for despatch, and then appealed to the UN to allow his troops to move in. There seems scant word on what the Timorese government actually has to say on the issue, apart from these few words from the foreign minister Jose Ramos-Horta. So why would Howard want to increase occupation at the point where the UN peacekeeping was scheduled to move out of East Timor? Background East Timor has vast natural reserves of gas and oil in the Timor Sea. In 1989, Australia signed a treaty with the Suharto regime of Indonesia to allow it to stake claim to the oil and gas reserves of the Timor Sea, despite the disputed region being firmly within East Timor's waters. ( http://www.atns.net.au/biogs/A002026b.htm) A pre-condition for the establishment of the treaty (and its continuation) was the recognition by successive Australian governments of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor. In 2003, they maintained that under the 1989 treaty, about 80% of the reserves were in Australian waters -if the East Timor government had agreed to this insistence on maintaining the terms of the 1989 treat they would have had access to only 18% of the reserves which were technically part of their country. According to International Law, sea borders are ascertained (in places where the gap does not exceed a certain amount), by taking the mid distance between two countries as the border between one country's seas and another. This is from the UN convention on the law of the sea. The greater sunrise oil field lies only 170km from East Timor, and yet is a massive 450km from Darwin, its closest Australian point. At the time of Australia's proposal to maintain the Timor Gap Treaty with the new and independent Timorese government, Joao Saramento, spokesman for the Movement Against the Occupation of the Timor Sea, said "This is not a war of weapons, but of words," [...]"We thought foreign occupation of our territory had ended in 1999. We did not expect to emerge from Indonesia's bloody occupation of our land only to face Australia's greedy occupation of our sea," he said." - http://www.etan.org/et2004/april/22/20actvst.htm (Apr 2004) In May of 2005, an agreement was settled between the Timorese government and the Australian government, to split the profits of the greater sunrise oil fields down the middle. While this was a vast improvement on the previous 'offered' 18% from the Australian government, it is still by no means fair. It can be assumed that the only reason this deal was settled (from the perspective of Australia) is that legally they had no leg to stand on. You cannot transfer a treaty to a different sovereignty, and the treaty was, arguably, illegal in the first place. Why then, did East Timor agree to such a 50-50 split? The most logical answer is because they had to. East Timor has very little in the way of resources, apart from the oil and gas fields. Extraction of these fossil resources is expensive, and they currently rely almost solely on International support for their budget. Last year's budget for East Timor was in the vicinity of $70M – a pittance compared to most countries. Certainly not enough to set up the mining equipment and begin extracting off their own backs. They needed Australia's support, because without it, they might have the resources, but those resources would remain where they were, and East Timor desperately needs an income. However, as part of that agreement, Alkatiri - East Timor's Prime Minister added a few conditions. " East Timor's Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri, is confident the oil and gas deal with Australia remains on track but wants to discuss with Woodside managing director Don Voelte the feasibility of piping gas from the Greater Sunrise field straddling the two countries' maritime borders to East Timor rather than Darwin. "Woodside, the operator of Greater Sunrise, which was mothballed on January 1, with the talks in deadlock, has said the option of piping gas to East Timor is not technically viable because of the depth of the Timor trench. It favours sending the gas to a plant already being built in Darwin by ConocoPhillips to process gas from the Bayu-Undan field. "But Dr Alkatiri said he wanted Canberra to give assurances that it would not stand in the way of a pipeline to East Timor, if the Sunrise owners chose to take it there, and that it would not provide subsidies for the Darwin option. "He also said he was seeking to ensure that if both governments agreed, the boundary issue Australia wants it calculated from its continental shelf, East Timor from its coast line could be reopened. "Under the deal between Australia and East Timor negotiated in Sydney last month, Canberra and Dili would split equally the royalties from the Sunrise field, rather than the 82-18 split in Australia's favour arranged earlier. Discussion of the maritime boundary would be postponed for 50 years." [...] "He said oil and gas revenue flowing to East Timor would be quarantined within a petroleum fund loosely based on that of Norway. It would provide transparency and fiscal stability, he said." http://www.timorseaoffice.gov.tp/press.htm The conditions are fairly illuminating. Firstly, they show that Woodside intended to pipe oil and gas directly to Darwin (on Australia's north coast). Secondly, they show that Alkatiri is not fond of this option, because it will remove revenue from East Timor in two tiers. The first from further reliance on Australia to play their part honourably (which of course has not been shown to date) and the second from Australia's implied insistence that subsidies for Australia maintaining the reserves will be taken from the 50-50 split in royalties. Alkatiri seemed to be in acceptance that he needed to rely on Australia to some degree, but not so far as to have his country's reserves taken out from under his nose, with only a fraction being offered to Timor after Australia's 'costs'. The excerpt also shows that already he is looking for ways to sustain East Timor into the future and not just in the short-term. This is not necessarily an acceptable way for a poor country to act – seeking independence and working towards self-determination puts such a country in league with countries like Iran, like Venezuela and Bolivia. Other elements which seem to have increased resentment from the US to Alkatiri's rule has been his acceptance of help from Cuba, by way of well-trained medics, something East Timor is short on. "He added that with Cuba’s help, Timor-Leste may gain up to 500 Cuban-trained Timorese doctors in the next five to ten years. (Timor Post)" http://www.etan.org/et2005/june/12/dailym15.htm This is, of course, the superfluous reason why the US does not agree with the leadership of Alkatiri (voted in, of course, fairly and under strict supervision of International bodies) – pointing the finger at allegiance with the 'big, bad Cuba' is how the US defines it current enemies, but it is not necessarily the reason why they are enemies. There are 2 better reasons for that, as follows: "There was also widespread speculation that Alkatiri planned to award a multibillion-dollar gas-pipeline project to PetroChina, an invitation that would have won both the United States' and Australia's ire. "His [Alkatiri - pm] refusal to accept loans from the World Bank, despite a gross domestic product per capita of a mere US$400, stems from his personal experience in Africa, where many poor countries have become disastrously dependent on foreign aid. " http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HE18Ae01.html Speculation in the media that Alkatiri plans to abandon plans to work with Australia, and work with China instead must have caused some anger in the Australian parliament, to say the least. In terms of the US, it is probably not about the money generated from the oil fields, but Timor's dependence on institutions such as the world bank and the IMF. The fact Alkatiri is wise to the long term damage caused by the need to pay back world bank debt before looking after one's people puts him immediately in the same category as Chavez and Morales. Both have done the same, and rejected the US' heavily-weighted version of free trade for a fairer trade system within South America, and both are suffering the consequence of increasing pressure and 'war rhetoric' from the US administration. The US does not take kindly to small countries flouting the status quo. The present So we now see rioting, and destabilisation of the Timorese government, a 'call to help', accusations of a failed state, and at the head of the rioting, a man named Reinaldo, who has links to the US Embassy in Dili. The following is a quote from an article at AsiaOnline: "The United States' discontent with Alkatiri was clearly on display when the US ambassador openly supported the Catholic Church against his government during street protests last year, with the senior US official even briefly attending one of the protests in person. Political insiders now wonder about the United States' connections to rebel leader Reinaldo, whose wife works for the US Embassy and helps to oversee the Peace Corps program. " http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/HE27Ae02.html Is it coincidence that the man leading the destabilisation of the Timorese government, which threatens to do long term good to not Australia or the US, but to the people of Timor Leste, just happens to have such links with the US?

Target Iran: Why the US wants the war

Derek Lane

By George Galloway MP, 15 March 2006 Introduction It would be to cross the cusp of madness for the US to attack Iran . So we must prepare for just such a bout of insanity. To do otherwise would be light-minded in the extreme. Given the febrile atmosphere in Washington , military action by the US , or by Israel acting as its proxy, is all too possible. As I write these words John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations and chickenhawk in chief, has just told British MPs that the US is prepared to launch a military strike. With the callous disregard that characterises the neo-cons he said, "We can hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to take the whole thing down." But Iran is not a broken country, enfeebled as was Iraq by a devastating war in 1991, 12 years of sanctions and repeated air strikes. It has recovered from the war of 1980 to 1988 with Iraq , a war we should recall fought with the blessing of the US . Iran has a population of about 70 million, most of it under the age of 30, and a vast territory. Despite the static on the airwaves from some of the well heeled Monarchist exiles who fled in 1979, within Iran itself there is no appetite across the varied political spectrum for military action from without, or so-called regime change choreographed in Washington . Why should there be? As many progressive Iranians tell me, whatever criticisms they might have of the regime, to the east lies Afghanistan , to the west Iraq , both countries now laid waste by US-British military action. Double standards do not even begin to describe the propaganda war being waged against Iran . In March of this year George Bush told India - a nuclear state that has refused to sign up to the non-proliferation treaty - that it is a pivotal ally in what the Pentagon now calls the 'long war'. Yet Iran , which has complied above and beyond its obligations with that treaty, faces sanctions and threats. US vice-president Dick Cheney wonders why Iran would want a civil nuclear programme when it is "already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas". But does anyone pose that question to the US and to Bush, hailing as he does from oil-rich Texas ? Or to Britain , with its North Sea oil deposits and sitting as it does on 200 years worth of coal? The British government relays wildly exaggerated assessments of Iran 's capacity to build a nuclear weapon at the same time as Tony Blair decides to spend �25 billion on renewing Britain 's own weapons of mass destruction. Has the neo-colonial arrogance that makes the abominations of Abu Ghuraib possible really gone so far that Washington and its London bag carriers believe the people of Iran , indeed the peoples of most of the planet, will not spot these multiple standards? The neo-cons certainly have little regard for the intelligence and capacities of the Iranian people. By authorising the spending of $75 million on fake NGOs to operate within Iran they are wilfully undermining genuine progressives in the country. The offensive is gathering pace, and it risks catastrophe. For if Iran is attacked it will retaliate. And where will it strike? Well, it's now a journalistic commonplace to say that the Iraq war is over, and Iran won. Iraqi ministries are stuffed with supporters of the Iranian regime. The main Shiite political forces in the south of Iraq are strongly allied to Iran - tied by threads not only of religion, but of clan and political interest. And who is perched atop this combustible material? Just 8,000 British troops. It is they, more so than the American forces to the north, who will be in the crosshairs of any Iranian retaliation. In escalating the drive to confrontation with Tehran , the British government is placing them a fatwa away from devastating reprisals. This is all so frighteningly obvious that many, even in the anti-war movement, are tempted to believe it makes the prospect of military action against Iran impossible. Would that that were so. It is all too possible, for three reasons. First, we should recall the history of the Vietnam War. The US was clearly losing by the early 1970s. Its response was eventually to disengage, but not before it had extended the conflict to Cambodia and Laos at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Second, the build-up to war takes on its own logic. In the first two months of 2006 the moves against Iran were steadily ratcheted up. After each one, it has become harder for the US and its allies to pull back from the brink. The more inflated the threat, the more emboldened become the John Boltons pushing for military action. Can Bush present a State of the Union address in January 2007 which says nothing has been done to counter what he claims is the greatest threat to world peace? Third, at stake is the entire doctrine of the Project for the New American Century, the deep strategic plan to restore and extend global US suzerainty. Iran has already forged contacts with Venezuela 's Hugo Chavez, whose Bolivarian revolution is enervating US hegemony in its own hemisphere. Tehran has the potential to make strong links with Moscow and Beijing . Suddenly, those US alliances with the republics of Central Asia do not seem so secure. So, in my view, the threat of war with Iran (and air strikes will mean war) is real. Short of air strikes the air is thick with talk of sanctions. No one should be in any doubt what this would mean. It means a military blockade. Tehran has already indicated, understandably, that is would take that as an act of aggression, for that is what it would be. Enforcing sanctions on a country as vast as Iran would mean repeated skirmishes, each one of which could be used as pretext for a full-scale onslaught. And were sanctions to be enforced, we know what the outcome would be. The 12 years of devastation wrought by sanctions on Iraq tell us the human toll in advance. A modern country was hurled back to the dark ages. Over a million people were killed, half of them children, turning the country into a giant mass grave. No one with a scintilla of humanity could countenance inflicting that on a country of over 70 million people. Hence this pamphlet. At its core is an analysis of how Iran , far from being in breach of its treaty obligations, has in fact complied with them. It draws shamelessly on the work of Dr David Morrison, the author of prolific and extraordinarily thorough research on this and many other subjects. His work deserves the widest possible readership (it can be found at www.david-morrison.org.uk). The pamphlet includes an account of how the US and Britain orchestrated the overthrow of the popular nationalist leader Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953. It concludes with a brief overview of Iranian society today. The intention behind this short piece is to sound the alarm and to contribute to strengthening the force that can avert catastrophe: the international anti-war movement. George Galloway MP House of Commons London March 2006

Why was Jack Straw removed as foreign secretary?

Derek Lane

BBC News and Reuters tell us that Jack Straw has been made leader of the Commons, and Margaret Beckett replaces him as foreign secretary. "Mr Clarke will be replaced by Defence Secretary John Reid. Margaret Beckett is the new foreign secretary, with Jack Straw becoming Commons leader." - BBC News In both cases, the information comes in the middle of an article regarding Charles Clarke. Considering the role played by the foreign secretary in today's British government, I would have thought it more pertinent to have a story devoted to Straw and his successor. Nevertheless, it prompts questions as to the role Straw has more recently been playing, and whether his 'standing down' as foreign secretary (a man who has otherwise stood beside Blair on all his previous war-mongering) has anything with his stating relatively categorically that a UK role in an impending attack on Iran is not on the table. Admittedly, his words to this effect ring hollow for me - the caveat 'for now' is too easily imposed on such a statement, and has been done before. The question is, are these two things related, and what is Margaret Beckett's stance on Tony Blair's policy of doing everything the US does in its {the US] quest for world domination? Margaret Beckett's homepage summarises her voting record thus: Margaret Beckett - Public Whip

Moderately for introducing a smoking ban. votes, speeches

Quite strongly for introducing ID cards. votes, speeches

Moderately for introducing foundation hospitals. votes, speeches

Moderately for introducing student top-up fees. votes, speeches

Quite strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws. votes, speeches

Very strongly for the Iraq war. votes, speeches

Moderately for the fox hunting ban. votes, speeches

Quite strongly for equal gay rights. votes, speeches Note, in particular, these three votes:

Very strongly for the Iraq war.votes, speeches

Quite strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws. votes, speeches

Quite strongly for introducing ID cards. votes, speeches

It appears she stands quite strongly with the prime minister on the issues which seem closest to his 'heart'. Not a bad thing, of course, if you are considering another attack, perhaps an invasion, and, if you take note of the rhetoric currently emanating through the pages of BBC online regarding Iran and human/civil rights, perhaps another invasion. In terms of rebellion against party line, both Beckett and Straw are equal, with a rate of 0.8%. However, in comparison to overall record on the above bullet points, Straw comes in under Beckett, see the following list of Jack Straw's page Jack Straw - Public Whip

Moderately for introducing ID cards. votes, speeches

Moderately for Labour's anti-terrorism laws. votes, speeches

Very strongly for the Iraq war. votes, speeches While these things are neither here or there in terms of Beckett versus Straw (after all, a lot of Labour employees are ultimately faithful to Blair), what they do show is that the replacements of such posts go essentially to yes men/women. So why has Straw been shown the door out of the office of foreign secretary? Back in 2004, Straw said of Iran: "Asked if it was inconceivable that the world would support US military action against Iran, presumably bombings or using Israel as a "proxy", Mr Straw replied: "Not only is that inconceivable but I think the prospect of it happening is inconceivable."" - from BBC News online In 2005, he said, "However, Mr Straw told the BBC's Today programme: "The truth is, as Condoleezza Rice has said, military action in respect of the Iran dossier is not on anybody's agenda." - The Guardian Online And this year, he said, according to the Telegraph: "The idea of a nuclear strike on Iran is completely nuts." Mr Straw - who has said that military action against Iran is "inconceivable" - added: "I have made clear the British Government's position on this time and time again which is widely shared across Europe." Apart from Straw's stance concerning Iran, what has he done against Blair? The answer seems to be very little. He is arguably one of Blair's closest allies within his own party, and yet he has been pushed out the door at this stage of the proceedings against Iran. Beckett looks to be an MP as loyal to the PM as Straw, yet with the difference that there appears to be no speeches on public record to show she opposes the aforementioned military action (and possible nuclear action against Iran. Is it because Blair simply does not want to suffer the embarrassment of Straw's multitude of quotes being dragged out into the light, when we find out that his policy has all of a sudden changed regarding what the Labour government (and in fact, the US) will and will not do to Iran?

Yes He Would (Bush, Iran, Nuclear Bombs)

Derek Lane

Paul Krugman New York Tiumes ''But he wouldn't do that.'' That sentiment is what made it possible for President Bush to stampede America into the Iraq war and to fend off hard questions about the reasons for that war until after the 2004 election. Many people just didn't want to believe that an American president would deliberately mislead the nation on matters of war and peace. Now people with contacts in the administration and the military warn that Mr. Bush may be planning another war. The most alarming of the warnings come from Seymour Hersh, the veteran investigative journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal. Writing in The New Yorker, Mr. Hersh suggests that administration officials believe that a bombing campaign could lead to desirable regime change in Iran -- and that they refuse to rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons. ''But he wouldn't do that,'' say people who think they're being sensible. Given what we now know about the origins of the Iraq war, however, discounting the possibility that Mr. Bush will start another ill-conceived and unnecessary war isn't sensible. It's wishful thinking. As it happens, rumors of a new war coincide with the emergence of evidence that appears to confirm our worst suspicions about the war we're already in. First, it's clearer than ever that Mr. Bush, who still claims that war with Iraq was a last resort, was actually spoiling for a fight. The New York Times has confirmed the authenticity of a British government memo reporting on a prewar discussion between Mr. Bush and Tony Blair. In that conversation, Mr. Bush told Mr. Blair that he was determined to invade Iraq even if U.N. inspectors came up empty-handed. Second, it's becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Bush knew that the case he was presenting for war -- a case that depended crucially on visions of mushroom clouds -- rested on suspect evidence. For example, in the 2003 State of the Union address Mr. Bush cited Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes as clear evidence that Saddam was trying to acquire a nuclear arsenal. Yet Murray Waas of the National Journal reports that Mr. Bush had been warned that many intelligence analysts disagreed with that assessment. Was the difference between Mr. Bush's public portrayal of the Iraqi threat and the actual intelligence he saw large enough to validate claims that he deliberately misled the nation into war? Karl Rove apparently thought so. According to Mr. Waas, Mr. Rove ''cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged'' if the contents of an October 2002 ''President's Summary'' containing dissents about the significance of the aluminum tubes became public. Now there are rumors of plans to attack Iran. Most strategic analysts think that a bombing campaign would be a disastrous mistake. But that doesn't mean it won't happen: Mr. Bush ignored similar warnings, including those of his own father, about the risks involved in invading Iraq. As Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently pointed out, the administration seems to be following exactly the same script on Iran that it used on Iraq: ''The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. secretary of state tells Congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The secretary of defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism. The president blames it for attacks on U.S. troops.'' Why might Mr. Bush want another war? For one thing, Mr. Bush, whose presidency is increasingly defined by the quagmire in Iraq, may believe that he can redeem himself with a new Mission Accomplished moment. And it's not just Mr. Bush's legacy that's at risk. Current polls suggest that the Democrats could take one or both houses of Congress this November, acquiring the ability to launch investigations backed by subpoena power. This could blow the lid off multiple Bush administration scandals. Political analysts openly suggest that an attack on Iran offers Mr. Bush a way to head off this danger, that an appropriately timed military strike could change the domestic political dynamics. Does this sound far-fetched? It shouldn't. Given the combination of recklessness and dishonesty Mr. Bush displayed in launching the Iraq war, why should we assume that he wouldn't do it again? URL: http://www.nytimes.com

The Secret War Against the Defenseless People of West Papua

Derek Lane

By John Pilger Thursday 09 March 2006 In 1993, I and four others traveled clandestinely across East Timor to gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship. Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data Incomplete." Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in dispatching, proportionally, as many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with the "international community." In East Timor, I found a country littered with graves, their black crosses crowding the eye: crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They announced the murder of entire communities, from babies to the elderly. In 2000, when the East Timorese, displaying a collective act of courage with few historical parallels, finally won their freedom, the United Nations set up a truth commission; on 24 January, its 2,500 pages were published. I have never read anything like it. Using mostly official documents, it recounts in painful detail the entire disgrace of East Timor's blood sacrifice. It says that 180,000 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops or died from enforced starvation. It describes the "primary roles" in this carnage of the governments of the United States, Britain and Australia. America's "political and military support were fundamental" in crimes that ranged from "mass executions to forced resettlements, sexual and other horrific forms of torture as well as abuse against children." Britain, a co-conspirator in the invasion, was the main arms supplier. If you want to see through the smokescreen currently around Iraq, and understand true terrorism, read this document. As I read it, my mind went back to the letters Foreign Office officials wrote to concerned members of the public and MPs following the showing of my film Death of a Nation. Knowing the truth, they denied that British-supplied Hawk jets were blowing straw-roofed villages to bits and that British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine guns were finishing off the occupants. They even lied about the scale of suffering. And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the "international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary of the crushing of a defenseless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province - stolen from its people, like East Timor - is one of the great secrets of our time. Recently, the Australian minister of "communications," Senator Helen Coonan, failed to place it on the map of her own region, as if it did not exist. An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure, according to refugees. In January, 43 West Papuans reached Australia's north coast after a hazardous six-week journey in a dugout. They had no food, and had dribbled their last fresh water into their children's mouths. "We knew," said Herman Wainggai, the leader, "that if the Indonesian military had caught us, most of us would have died. They treat West Papuans like animals. They kill us like animals. They have created militias and jihadis to do just that. It is the same as East Timor." For over a year, an estimated 6,000 people have been hiding in dense jungle after their villages and crops were destroyed by Indonesian Special Forces. Raising the West Papuan flag is "treason." Two men are serving ten- and 15-year sentences for merely trying. Following an attack on one village, a man was presented as an "example" and petrol poured over him and his hair set alight. When the Netherlands gave Indonesia its independence in 1949, it argued that West Papua was a separate geographic and ethnic entity with a distinctive national character. A report published last November by the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague revealed that the Dutch had secretly recognized the "unmistakable beginning of the formation of a Papuan state," but were bullied by the administration of John F. Kennedy to accept "temporary" Indonesian control over what a White House adviser called "a few thousand miles of cannibal land." The West Papuans were conned. The Dutch, Americans, British and Australians backed an "Act of Free Choice" ostensibly run by the UN. The movements of a UN monitoring team of 25 were restricted by the Indonesian military and they were denied interpreters. In 1969, out of a population of 800,000, some 1,000 West Papuans "voted." All were selected by the Indonesians. At gunpoint, they "agreed" to remain under the rule of General Suharto - who had seized power in 1965 in what the CIA later described as "one of the worst mass murders of the late 20th century." In 1981, the Tribunal on Human Rights in West Papua, held in exile, heard from Eliezer Bonay, Indonesia's first governor of the province, that approximately 30,000 West Papuans had been murdered during 1963-69. Little of this was reported in the West. The silence of the "international community" is explained by the fabulous wealth of West Papua. In November 1967, soon after Suharto had consolidated his seizure of power, the Time-Life Corporation sponsored an extraordinary conference in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, led by the banker David Rockefeller. Sitting opposite them were Suharto's men, known as the "Berkeley mafia," as several had enjoyed US government scholarships to the University of California at Berkeley. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests. However, the prize - the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold - went to the US mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US secretary of state, gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade East Timor, says the Dutch report. Freeport is today probably the biggest single source of revenue for the Indonesian regime: the company is said to have handed Jakarta $33 billion between 1992 and 2004. Little of this has reached the people of West Papua. Last December, 55 people reportedly starved to death in the district of Yahukimo. The Jakarta Post noted the "horrible irony" of hunger in such an "immensely rich" province. According to the World Bank, "38 per cent of Papua's population is living in poverty, more than double the national average." The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's Special Forces, who are among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard government in Canberra announced that it would resume "co-operation" with Kopassus at the Australian SAS base near Perth. In an inversion of the truth, the then-Australian defense minister, Senator Robert Hill, described Kopassus as having "the most effective capability to respond to a counter-hijack or hostage recovery threat." The files of human-rights organizations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. On 6 July 1998, on the West Papuan island of Biak, just north of Australia, Special Forces massacred more than 100 people, most of them women. However, the Indonesian military has not been able to crush the popular Free Papua Movement (OPM). Since 1965, almost alone, the OPM has reminded the Indonesians, often audaciously, that they are invaders. In the past two months, the resistance has caused the Indonesians to rush more troops to West Papua. Two British-supplied Tactical armored personnel carriers fitted with water cannons have arrived from Jakarta. These were first delivered during the late Robin Cook's "ethical dimension" in foreign policy. Hawk fighter-bombers, made by BAE Systems, have been used against West Papuan villages. The fate of the 43 asylum-seekers in Australia is precarious. In contravention of international law, the Howard government has moved them from the mainland to Christmas Island, which is part of an Australian "exclusion zone" for refugees. We should watch carefully what happens to these people. If the history of human rights is not the history of great power's impunity, the UN must return to West Papua, as it did finally to East Timor. Or do we always have to wait for the crosses to multiply? Source: T R U T H O U T

Hitler s justification for the invasion of Austria - or Bush, Blair for Iraq, Iran

Derek Lane

Posted on Media Lens; Hitler's justification for the invasion of Austria. Worth a look for anyone concerned with the motives versus the reality of our current governments. Dear Helen Boaden I read with great interest your recent exchange with Medialens concerning the BBC's recent coverage of US/UK intentions in Iraq ('Oil for the killing machine - the BBC on Iraq', 21 February 2006). It seems you are unable to distinguish between reporting Government's (always benign) justifications for war as fact and reporting them as just that - justifications. Therefore, to make the point clear, I have copied out below Adolf Hitler's justifications for his invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Many thanks Ian Sinclair "By the most brutal methods of terrorism, a regime sought to maintain an existence that was condemned by the overwhelming majority of its people...I have tried to persuade the responsible authorities that it is impossible for a great nation, because it is unworthy of it, to stand by and watch millions belonging to a great, an ancient civilized people be denied rights by their government... I have endeavoured to find some way to alleviate a tragic fate. One agreement was signed only to be broken. I then tried a second time to bring about an understanding. A few weeks later, we were forced to the conclusion that the government [of Austria] had no intention of carrying out this agreement in the spirit that had inspired it, but in order to create an excuse. I have determined, therefore, to place the help of our country at the service of these millions. Since this morning, our soldiers are on the march across all of Austria's frontiers." - Adolf Hitler, proclamation to the German people, 12 March 1938, justifying the German invasion of Austria (originally printed in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, April 2003 http://www.swt.org/share/ancientciv.htm) "We have no interest in oppressing other people. We are not moved by hatred against any other nation. We bear no grudge. I know how grave a thing war is. I wanted to spare our people such an evil. It is not so much the country [of Czechoslovakia]; it is rather its leader [Dr. Edward Benes]. He has led a reign of terror. He has hurled countless people into the profoundest misery. Through his continuous terrorism, he has succeeded in reducing millions of his people to silence. The Czech maintenance of a tremendous military arsenal can only be regarded as a focus of danger. We have displayed a truly unexampled patience, but I am no longer willing to remain inactive while this madman ill-treats millions of human beings." - Adolf Hitler, 14 April 1939, justifying the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, at the Sportpalast in Berlin (originally printed in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, April 2003 http://www.swt.org/share/ancientciv.htm) "The wave of appalling terrorism against the [minority] inhabitants of Poland, and the atrocities that have been taking place in that country are terrible for the victims, but intolerable for a Great Power which has been expected to remain a passive onlooker. We will not continue to tolerate the persecution of the minority, the killing of many, and their forcible removal under the most cruel conditions. I see no way by which I can induce the government of Poland to adopt a peaceful solution. But I should despair of any honourable future for my own people if we were not, in one way or another, to solve this question." - Adolf Hitler, August 23, 1939, justifying the German invasion of Poland, from letters sent to the UK and French governments in response to their communications condemning the invasion of Poland (originally printed in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor, April 2003 http://www.swt.org/share/ancientciv.htm)

Australia s surveillance and use of military against civilian powers strengthened

Derek Lane

by Dale Mills; February 28, 2006 Like most Western countries, laws relating to the use of surveillance and military policing of the civil population are becoming increasing toughened. The current Australian Parliament is considering laws, almost certain to be passed, to allow authorities to monitor the phone calls, email and text messages of people not suspected of any crime. The power to spy on suspected terrorists and serious criminals already exists. The Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill was introduced to parliament on February 16. Under the bill, to qualify for your phone to be tapped, you merely need to be a “third party” to a serious crime. Police will be given a 45-day warrant to monitor a person not under suspicion in the hope it might lead to a person who would be of interest to the police. The warrant can be renewed. ASIO can obtain three-month warrants. (ASIO is the broadly the equivalent of the FBI). The warrant is issued by a judge who, according to the Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, “has to take into account the seriousness of the offences being investigated, how much of the information would be likely to assist in the investigation by the agency, to what extent alternative methods of investigating it have been used, and how much use of such methods would be likely to assist the investigation by the agency of the offence”. The judge “has to be satisfied in relation to a number of other matters; that is, the privacy of a person won’t be unduly interfered with”, Ruddock told Australian Broadcasting Commission radio on February 15. However, Terry O’Gorman from the Australian Council for Civil Liberties points out that judicial oversight is not a safeguard. “Law enforcers go judge shopping. They go to the ... judges who more readily give warrants and are less questioning than others”, he told the February 15 Age newspaper. NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Cameron Murphy said the powers are unprecedented. “It massively expands police surveillance and it’s directly targeted against innocent people who are doing nothing wrong.” He pointed out that a phone in Australia is already 26 times more likely to be bugged than a phone in the United States. But that is not all. Receiving almost no corporate media coverage, a Senate committee recommended on January 31 the passage of a bill that will make it easier for the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to police and shoot civilians. The powers go well beyond dealing with a terrorist threat and in important respects put the military above state criminal laws. Some powers were given to the ADF to intervene in public order management in the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, however, the new Defence Legislation Amendment (Aid to Civilian Authorities) Bill 2005 proposes:

to make it easier for the ADF to be called out where there is a threat to any “designated infrastructure”;
expanded “shoot-to-kill” powers such that civilians could be shot for the protection of property from “damage or disruption”;
a “following orders” defence for soldiers who shoot civilians;
to give the prime minister alone the power to authorise troop call-outs where a “sudden and extraordinary emergency exists”;
that individual soldiers be given the power to police civilians, including requiring people to answer questions or produce documents;
no need to notify the public that troops have been called out; and
that soldiers may operate without the need to wear a name tag.

Under the proposed legislation, the federal government may use the ADF to protect “Commonwealth interests” even if the state or territory concerned opposes it. The new powers operate where there is “domestic violence”, as vague as that phrase is. Furthermore, the ADF may:

shoot fleeing civilians evading detention (something not available to the ordinary police);
detain people without arresting them; and
search premises, people and vehicles without warrants (thus avoiding judicial scrutiny).

A particular concern is that the proposed laws do not require the public release of army manuals in relation to ADF rules of engagement with civilians. One submission to the parliamentary committee reviewing the laws pointed out that Greens Senator Bob Brown had previously read out extracts from the 1983 Australian Army Manual of Land Warfare, leaked to the press in 1993, with particular reference to section 543. This section instructs military personnel to adopt courses of conduct that seem designed to cover up the killing or wounding of “dissidents”. It states, in part: “Dead and wounded dissidents, if identifiable, must be removed immediately by the police ... When being reported, dissident and own casualties are categorised merely as dead or wounded. To inhibit propaganda exploitation by the dissidents the cause of the casualties (for example, 'shot’) is not reported. A follow-up operation should be carried out to maintain the momentum of the dispersing crowd.” The bill is expected to become law in late February 2006. The text of the proposed law in relation to electronic surveillance can be found at http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/browse.aspx?NodeID=51 The proposed law in relation the use of the Australian milliary against civilian populations cane be found at http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/browse.aspx?NodeID=119. Dale mills is a regular contributor to Australia’s Green Left Weekly www.greenleft.org.au

Howard, Costello and Islam

Derek Lane

I have found some recent articles in Australian newspapers which I believe are interesting to dissect to show the depth of deceit, the depth of the twisting of reality that is prevalent in Australian news. Its hard to spot when you're there (aside from the big issues); not quite so from a detached perspective. From this article in the Australian:

Prominent Melbourne cleric Sheik Fehmi Naji El-Imam conceded that there was a radical minority who should probably leave the country. "These (extremists) can be found, but the mainstream are not extremists," the imam of Preston Mosque, in Melbourne's north, said. "But we should ask why the extremist have such views. In the case of Palestine and the double standards of the West, what do you expect? Sheik Fehmi, who is regarded as a moderate, said he understood why Muslims would fight overseas. But he said Muslim Australians had no business preaching and pursuing violence here. "It's not wrong to fight the invasion in Iraq, it's not wrong to assist the Palestinians but here (in Australia), we cannot go ahead to do some terrorist (attack) to help the people over there," Sheik Fehmi said. "If you live here, you have to keep (extremist views) to yourself. If you cannot keep it to yourself, then leave."

This is the man from the Muslim community who is (in part, not in full as the article suggests) supporting Howard's fresh wave of xenophobic attacks on Muslim Australians. Much of what he says is true; for example, looking at the reasons why extremists exist at all is a very good (and healthy) place to begin in terms of attributing blame and correcting wrongs. If we look, we will find the West as much to blame in many cases as anywhere else (arguably, more). But one thing he misses here (and not surprisingly, so does the writer of the article), is that 'it's not wrong to assist the Palestinians.' In the case of Australians (Muslim or otherwise, but specifically Muslims, since they are currently most in danger from the anti-terror legislation introduced late last year), it is wrong. If you support Palestinians, even if you support the Palestinian government, it may land you in prison in Australia, since Hamas is a designated terrorist organisation, regardless of whether or not they hold a governmental majority in Palestine. Nevermind the fact that offering funding to them will almost certainly directly benefit the poor of Palestine (and failure to do so may harm them further) - according to Australian law, it is illegal to do so under the current laws. By that rationale, charity to the poor of Palestine is in Australia, an illegal act, and an act of an extremist. If that extremist is Muslim, they are therefore likely to be designated as an 'Islamic extremist'. In the same article, we are told by Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke, that

[he] welcomed Mr Howard's statement, but said it was long overdue: "Finally, he's recognised that the Department of Immigration is one of the departments that's relevant to national security.

This is not some long time coming 'turn-around' of Howard's policies towards immigration policy - he has geared his policies towards keeping [non-white] people out of Australia since about 1998 (and the Labour government before him was equally diligent about such). The events surrounding the storming of the Norwegian ship off the coast of Northern Australia were the first of their kind anywhere in the world. The blatant breach of the SOLAS agreement - held together officially for several hundred years has cast into doubt around the world the international agreement to save vessels and their people from death at sea. Howard, as it turns out (and in which many held suspicions from the start) had a big hand in these events. The subsequent revamping of 'concentration-camp' style detention centres and their methods, aiming at dealing with illegal immigrants and showing Australia not to be a soft-touch with these so-called 'illegal immigrants' - an Australian press term for Asylum seekers (protected, once again, under international law which Howard has dodged, breached and all but destroyed in relation to Australia) - has shown where Howard's allegiance lays regarding the 'security' issues stemming from immigration. To suggest otherwise shows two things; one, we are being asked to believe that all this time it has not been the case, that Howard has been a patient and fair man regarding Muslims, asylum seekers, and immigration, and is only now forced to re-evaluate due to the new 'threat' imposed from Islamic terrorism, and two, the opposition is in full agreement, but must find some contention with which to prove that they are still a separate entity. This is deeply disturbing information on all accounts. In a different article, in the Australian, we see Peter Costello's views on the subject, of course mirroring those of the Prime Minister and his 'raving on about Jihad'. Mr Costello delivered a speech yesterday in which he said if people wanted to live under Islamic sharia law, they should move to another country.

"There is one law we are all expected to abide by," the Treasurer said. "It is the law enacted by the parliament under the Australian constitution. "If you can't accept that, then you don't accept the fundamentals of what Australia is and what it stands for." Mr Trad said nobody was protesting Australia's secular laws through any other means than the normal democratic process. "We have not asked for sharia law to be imposed," he told ABC radio. "I don't know anyone in this country who is asking for sharia law to be imposed and I don't known anyone in this country who has rejected the rule of law.I am genuinely hopeful that the prime minister will censure the treasurer over these ridiculous comments, that the treasurer is grossly out of line. Rather than try to promote understanding and harmony in this society, his comments are highly divisive and he is stirring up Islamophobia, and these comments should really be beneath any decent politician.

As Mr Trad pointed out, Muslims were not asking for Sharia Law to be enacted in Australia. It is a step further on from the cynical reworkings to gain public support against Muslims in the UK, where Muslims are being accused of censoring traditional Christian festivities (like Christmas - as though it were a traditionally 'Christian' festivity anyway, and not the pagan one already re-worked), when the Muslim communities have not been consulted. It is a case of attacking the little things that ordinary (white) people hold dear, in order to generate hate. Regardless, Costello's opinions are twisted from the outset; we are told that 'you don't accept the fundamentals of what Australia is and what it stands for,' when it is blatantly apparent that neither does Costello. The fundamentals of what Australia is and what it stands for (in politics) oscillates between 'another name for America or Britain'. In reality, Australia is a nation of Aboriginal birth, and what it stands for is a 200 year occupation, where the occupiers have refused to assimilate with traditional Australian heritage, instead opting first for genociding them, then for breeding them out of existence, lately for punishing them through Apartheid style measures. It is not an Aboriginal language new immigrants are told they must learn on entering the country, nor is it an Aboriginal flag they are told they must respect, nor an Aboriginal anthem they are told to sing with pride. That Costello can gloss over this in favour of the notion that newcomers are asked to think British, or American thoughts, alternatively, rather than (original) Australian ones - to integrate themselves into their new environments by acting like colonialists, shows the depths of the lies. Like those in government in Israel, the truth has been corrupted so often that the lie is repeated without reflection or, in many cases, the knowledge that a lie has been voiced. It stands that Howard and Costello are guilty of the same sin they are trying to convince the Australian public of in regards to Islam - they, as immigrants, are bringing their immigrant culture with them to a country and expecting the country to adopt them as their own. The difference of course, is that in their case, the sin is true, yet in the case of Australian Muslims, it is not.

Islam and the issue of free speech

Derek Lane

I thought it was about time I added my own take on the issue of free speech being bandied about by the press and anyone who thinks it OK to have a dig at the religion of Muslims. Firstly, let me make it clear; free speech is not an issue here. No one is suggesting (on either side of the fence) that the publishers of the offending cartoons should be sent to prison for publishing. Those opposed to the publication say they should simply not have published in the first place, or, since it was published, a full apology should be issued for the indiscretion. Secondly, the cartoons were published in September, and raised hardly a whimper in the public eye; this was reserved for when it was needed. Now suits the press, and the politicians, because it is now that the West is in the bid to rally public support (through its final stages anyway) for the impending altercations (however they may pan out) in Iran. In a 'free' country, the public must support the government's interests to some degree, otherwise great things might happen. As it is, despite the UK's antics and the BBC propaganda revolving around muslims and middle-eastern countries in recent times, public support was not all that highly against Iran; not in the UK, at least. The introduction of the corrupted speech by Ahmadinejad (where the world now claims he threatened to wipe Israel off the map) set the ball rolling, the further speech where it is widely believed that he thought the Jewish holocaust in world war II to be some kind of fairy tale set it rolling faster, and the recent publication of 'the cartoons' has cemented in many minds the idea that not just Iran, but Muslims everywhere are deranged, the antithesis of good itself; they are increasingly to many - and the press is no exception - fundamentally flawed beings. The reasons have been numerous;

the BBC has not let up it Pavlov's syndrome of linking words; like 'Islam' and 'terrorism', like 'Iraqi' and 'insurgent', like 'Iran' and 'regime' and 'holocaust denial' and 'wipe Israel off the map',
The opportunities have hardly been missed to show muslims in the worst light, and never in the best, like those of the marches protesting the cartoons (and their relevance to free speech, mind you), where we see, repeatedly, a group of 5 or 6 in the crowd holding placards that are clearly inciteful, and yet we do not see the rest of the crowd, we do not see the other crowds (large ones, 10 000 and more) at numerous other marches, marching peacefully and with dignity.
Neither do we see the violent placard-holders arrested, rather we are assured that this is the real threat; these people are out there and ready to start beheading, and there's nothing we can do, except stop them - from the middle-east...
The little community things like the affront muslims cause to our own cultural heritage, insisting that Christmas lights be reclassified to festive lights (something to my knowledge instigated without consultation of the muslim community); things to raise ire in the community about events they hold dear.
Constant bombardment of 'intelligent' documentaries, asking questions like "Are muslims really terrorists?" when such questions are as nonsensical as asking if the British really are paedophiles, based on the fact that paedophiles arrested in the country are largely British, and 'The Rise of Islamic Terrorism,' linking inextricably the religion itself with terrorism in a way that has never been done in the mainstream press in relation to, for example, Christianity and Terrorism, in the case of George W Bush.

When the attacks on the countrymen and cultural brothers of muslims around the world had not suceeded in bringing public condemnation and outrage from the muslim communities, the final attack has been on the religion itself; unashamedly baiting them for the thing they hold most dear. And, 'surprisingly', they have finally got a reaction. Dressed up in the false notion of free speech, it has amounted to an attack on something that Westerner unthinkingly attribute as one of their greatest assets - free speech. Well, do we, in fact, have free speech in the West? If we find we do not, surely this is a legitimate place to start our 'crusade', rather than taking the insistent stance that all other cultures, religions and nations take on this enlightened element into their cultures first. Some recent examples;

1. the charges of 2 public servants over the [almost] leaking of documents pertaining to the memo where George Bush and Tony Blair allegedly discussed bombing AlJazeera, a legitimate new corporation of the middle-east.
2. The banning of the book set to be published by Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, by the prime minister.
3. The arrests of people protesting in Brighton whilst wearing shirts depicting Bush and Blair as war criminals.
4. The arrest of a woman in London protesting (quietly reading out the names of the dead soldiers from the Iraq invasion) within the NO-Protest 1 mile exclusion zone around WestMinster.
5. The sentencing of Irving in Austria for his views on the Jewish Holocaust of world war II
6. The suspension of mayor Ken Livingstone for likening a journalist's tactics/methods to a Nazi concentration camp prison guard (but the man was a Jew)
7. The consideration currently being put to the Austrian government on whether it is possible to charge Ahmadinejad with the Austrian law restricting the minimization of Nazi war crimes.

These last 3 are, quite simply, unbelievable, especially in view of the fact they have come within a week of the die-down of the free-speech furore in the press over the publication of the cartoons. It seems as though it is it legitimate for the west to condemn the middle-east (and into the bargain, Muslims the world over) for their anger at the publication of the cartoons depicting their Prophet as a suicide bomber, but it is not legitimate for us to be expected to maintain free-speech (through the right to protest) in our own country, nor is it legitimate to expect our own sacred cows to be threatened. Free speech is specifically something we should have the right to exercise for the purpose of keeping our government in our service, rather than the other way around. Free speech, used as a tool to divide, threaten, or upset is no more legitimate a form of protest, or upholding of our civil liberties than calling a policeman a 'fucking cunt'. In fact, in this example, you will find yourself with at least a caution from the law; how it is then justified and legitimate to offend an entire religion in the interests of free speech I do not know. More so, when that religion is not yours but someone else's it adds another dimension to the argument not so far explored in the western press. When someone stands up in the street and calls someone a dirty nigger, that person can be arrested, or an apology demanded by the police. Yet, in the current climate, it seems that Muslims are separated from these protections. It was pointed out in the Haaretz newspaper (of Israel) that this type of anti-semitic behaviour was an element leading to the holocaust of world war II; in cartoons published in Germany and Austria in the 1930s. It is defined as 'Jew-baiting'. What we are now seeing is the same phenomenom; except this time it is Muslim baiting. The sad thing is, it appears to be working. As more Muslims are getting suitably worked up (and a small contingent threaten extreme measures), more Westerners seem to be changing their opinions to that line of thinking that says Muslims are just a little too different, too unpredictable. Not like the rest of us. Just as it happened in the press villification of Jews in Germany in the '30s. Then the government begins to push its line; "So how can we trust Iran? They're a muslim nation, they are building nuclear power plants, and they say they are not planning to build nuclear weapons, but how can we trust them?" We can trust them, simply, because they have given their word. Their supreme leader has given his word, more specifically, and people of the middle-east give their word as a promise, not as a diplomatic gesture to be recanted at their leisure. But if we don't believe them, we can use historical experience to make an informed judgement. Iran has never attacked another sovereign nation. That in itself gives it a record 1000 times cleaner than any western country can conjure. And if we're not happy with those reassurances, we can be safe in the knowledge that the best sources say that even if Iran were planning to build nuclear weapons, they are at least 10 years away from completion. And if that's still not enough, we can rationalise it further by pointing out that if the US or Israel do attack Iran, we in the west will most definitely suffer from the escalation of war, at some point. Whatever the rationalisations on the Iran front though, we cannot simply cede our minds and our prejudices to our governments and the media which largely works in its favour. The person down the road from you, who is a Muslim, and a good person, may have family in one of the USUK's hit-list. Knowing how things have worked out in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and how things are currently working out for Palestinians in Palestine and Israel; Would you wish that upon them?

When even actors arent safe

Derek Lane

Clive Stafford Smith New Statesman Monday 27th February 2006 Rizwan Ahmed was part of a prizewinning team at the Berlin Film Festival. When he got back to Luton Airport, however, he was a terror suspect. By Clive Stafford Smith When Michael Winterbottom's Road to Guantanamo won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival on 19 February, Rizwan Ahmed, one of the stars of the movie, was there. "It was an emotional experience," he told me later. "The film had an amazing reception and on some levels it felt like the Tipton boys had been vindicated." The Tipton boys, better known as the Tipton Three, are Asif Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, who spent two years in Guantanamo Bay before being released without charge. The film traces their story from their initial trip to Pakistan for Asif's wedding, through Afghanistan and on to the US prison camp. Rizwan - Riz for short - played the part of Shafiq Rasul. His delight was short-lived, ending abruptly when, with Shafiq and Ruhal, he got back to Luton Airport. "Shafiq was stopped at the immigration desk," Riz said. "Soon after, I was detained and questioned by the Special Branch. A female officer questioned me extensively by the baggage claim, taking notes. When I asked what all these questions were for, she took me to a small room." The officer told Riz she had no reason to doubt his account of the Berlin trip. "She said they need to stop us and the Tipton boys, as anyone with 'terror links' must be questioned - not, she said, that I necessarily had any. I told her that the Tipton Three didn't either, as has been widely documented. She then asked to go through the contents of my wallet. I felt uncomfortable about this and asked to speak to a lawyer." At this point things got adversarial. The officer told Riz that he had no right to legal advice. She gave him a blank copy of what was styled a "Section 7 of the Terrorism Act Detention Form". The form stated that a superintendent could order up to 48 hours of detention without contact with anyone, even a lawyer. Riz is no fool: he asked whether she was a superintendent. She retreated: he was not in fact being held under this form and would be denied legal advice only for the first hour of questioning. The officer then left the room. Riz took the opportunity to call a friend on his mobile phone, and the friend called me. When she returned, Riz, under threat of "continued detention", allowed her to go through his wallet. She recorded the details of his bank card and some business cards he had been given. As she did so she asked Riz whether he intended to act in any more films. "Did you become an actor mainly to do films like this, you know, to publicise the struggles of Muslims?" she inquired. She also quizzed him about his political views, what he thought about "the Iraq war and everything else that was going on". "She then asked me whether I would mind officers contacting me regularly in the future, 'in case, for example, you might be in a cafe, and you overhear someone discussing illegal activities'." At this point I reached Riz on his phone. I told him to inform the officer that a solicitor from Gareth Peirce's office would call in a few moments. The officer said this would not be permitted. She raised her voice and called in a male colleague, who ordered Riz to give up the phone. Riz refused and the man wrestled it from him, then sat on a table, smirked, and went through the numbers in the memory. Another officer came in, and the three of them threatened to take Riz to a police station. The officer with Riz's phone called him a "####er". Riz objected. The officer smiled at him and said: "Now you're making things up. No one called you that." Riz argued that if he had no legal right to a lawyer, then a lawyer would advise him of that fact. He insisted on calling Gareth Peirce's office and the female officer eventually conceded this, on condition that if he tried to ask any further questions the phone would be taken away. The bluff was called and as soon as Riz got through, the officer said: "We're done with you. You can go." She then said that Riz was prolonging his own detention by insisting on talking with lawyers. He was keen to leave but first asked for any notes from the interview and for the names of the officers. He was refused both, but they handed him a pink search record sheet, specifying that the purpose of the search was "intelligence". The reverse of the sheet - which bore the words "officers must also complete" - was blank. When I spoke with Riz again later that day, he was shaken. "It was humiliating, intimidating," he said, yet he was concerned about going public. He is not just an actor, but an Asian actor. "I'm nobody of note, but being tagged as some kind of political activist could make it hard to get work." Riz urged me to write about the incident instead, if I thought that it might help others. So I am. Six months ago I saw my former home town New Orleans washed away, because the levee that was supposed to protect it had not been maintained. In a similar way, political opportunism is undermining the levee of legal rights in this country, and to stay silent is to court another disaster. The very foundations of our justice system are under threat as legal safeguards and even the notion of the protection of the law are ignored or mocked. Take another, related, instance of this: Britain has long barred the use of torture evidence, yet in 2005 the government sought its admission in court. And though the House of Lords has said no, the government continues on its course. I am thinking of my client Jamal Kiyemba, who lived in Britain from the age of 14, but when he was released recently from Guantanamo Bay was not allowed home. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, insisted instead that Jamal go to Uganda, where he was born 26 years ago. Charles Clarke barred Jamal from Britain on "grounds of national security". The government says it can designate someone an "international terrorist" when the Home Secretary "suspects" that the person "has links with a person who is a member of, or belongs to, an international terrorist group". The basis for "suspicion" of Jamal was almost certainly evidence coerced out of him and others in Guantanamo Bay. Does Clarke care? Apparently not. On 15 February the government pushed through the Commons its latest terrorism bill, which holds that you will be a criminal if you "glorify" acts of terrorism. While I believe Rizwan Ahmed's detention at Luton was patently illegal when it happened, it may not be so after this law reaches the statute books. Riz is an actor who, by portraying one of the Tipton Three, helped put their side of the story. Does that lay him open to a charge of "glorifying" them? They have never been charged with any crime, but who knows what the Home Secretary might "suspect" about them? We cannot afford to be silent. Rizwan Ahmed's experience at Luton Airport proves that these are dangerous times - even for an actor. Clive Stafford Smith is legal director of the charity Reprieve and has represented 40 Guantanamo prisoners. See [http://www.reprieve.org.uk] source: New Statesman

Iran was not referred to the Security Council for Noncompliance

Derek Lane

from Global Echo: How powerful is the corporate information-system we call the mainstream media? - Is it powerful enough, for example, to mislead the public into believing that Iran has been "referred" to the United Nations Security Council for violations to the NPT, thus paving the way for another war on the back of false information? by: Mike Whitney on: 22nd Feb, 06 The IAEA DID NOT report on Iran's "noncompliance" to the Security Council, because there is no evidence that Iran has done anything wrong. In fact, as nuclear physicist Gordon Prather points out in his recent article, "March Madness", "THE BOARD DIDN'T REPORT ANYTHING." Then why does the media keep insisting that Iran is being called before the Security Council for noncompliance? Could it be that the media is simply executing an agenda that is deliberately designed to deceive? There was no "referral" and there will be no "punitive action" because there are no violations. "Rather", as Prather ads, "the IAEA Board 'REQUESTED' that Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei report to the Security Council"..."calling on Iran to-among other things-implement 'transparency measures'". These "transparency measures" have nothing to do with Iran's obligations under the NPT. They are additional demands made at the behest of the Bush administration (through strong-arm tactics with nations on the IAEA Board) that will force Iran to provide access to "individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual-use equipment, certain military owned workshops, and research and development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations". What does this mean? It means that the Bush administration, which has already demonstrated its hostile intentions towards Iran, will be able to operate secretly behind its surrogates in the IAEA to locate all of Iran's conventional weapons sites, radar facilities, and military installations so they can easily destroy Iran's defensive capability when the inevitable attack is launched. Isn't this the same trap that Saddam fell into? So, why is the IAEA facilitating another war by placating the Bush administration instead of condemning its obvious belligerence? The IAEA members are well-aware of the propaganda that is currently circulating in the wire-services and newspapers. Why are they playing along? Do they really believe that war can be averted by capitulation to the superpower? Iran has not violated the NPT, does not have a nuclear weapons program, and poses no threat to its neighbors or the United States. Never the less, the spurious accusations in the media have precipitated a dramatic shift in public opinion. For more than a decade only 6% of the American people considered Iran the "greatest danger" to the United States. Now (according to a recent Pew Poll) that number has jumped to 27%. Also, the survey showed that "nearly half (47%) said they favored military action, preferably along with European allies, to halt Iran’s nuclear program." (Jim Lobe, "Polls: anti-Iran Propaganda Working") "Military action"? Even while the US is bogged down in an unwinnable war in Iraq? Can anyone seriously doubt the shocking power of propaganda after seeing these polling results? The public should not be worried about Iran, rather, it should be concerned about the implications of allowing one nation to arbitrarily repeal internationally-accepted treaties and dictate how the world will be run. Iran has an "inalienable right" to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the terms of its treaty agreement. It should reject the attempt to overturn its legally-binding contract, just to appease its enemies in Washington. Iran is not a pariah or a rogue-nation. It should fight to be treated equally and with justice. The United States has steadfastly refused to provide Iran with any security-guarantees that it will not attack if so chooses. In fact, Iran was originally duped into negotiating with the EU-3 (Germany, France, England) because it believed that the talks might deliver a non-aggression pact between themselves and the Bush administration. The administration, however, does not believe in treaties and will not "lower itself" to sign agreements with those it feels are its inferiors. There is nothing Iran can do to forestall the approaching war. The Washington warlords believe they are entitled to the vast oil wealth of the Caspian Basin and will not be deterred by the facts. Iran would be better off ignoring the ineffectual maneuverings of the feckless United Nations, and preparing itself for the struggle ahead. source: Information Clearing House

The US and Israel Cannot Attack Iran; The American Empire is Finished One Way or the Other

Derek Lane

Here is a slightly more optimistic article on Iran and whether the US is going to lay waste to yet another country. I can't vouch for its accuracy, but I can say that the references on the bourse are good, and he makes some interesting points regarding the heavy investment from the rest of the world into Iran/Iranian oil. If he is right, it seems the world [political players] may be treating the US like a dog with a sometimes savage temperament. You know you're going to have to have it put down at some stage, but of course you don't want it to know that... Article can be found at From the Wilderness by Michael C. Ruppert January 27, 2006 0800 PST (FTW): The reason why so many Americans on the left and right, whether supporters or opponents of Neocon tyranny in Washington, are "sold" on the idea that American or Israeli air strikes against Iran will take place this March (or soon thereafter) is simple. It is more frightening for them to ponder the prospect of an impotent America standing exposed and vulnerable in a world that largely - and for good reason - hates it. Global economic meltdown, chaos and nuclear war are more scary than the evil that Americans have incrementally compromised themselves into endorsing. The uncertainty of a world no longer tethered to a US center - even one that many verbally oppose - represents an intolerable leap into the unknown. That leap, however, is a fait accompli. The US bluffs onward with its saber-rattling rhetoric but the whole planet is calling that bluff. Foreign investment in Iran is increasing, not decreasing. The planet is throwing money into Iran. Every day I receive three or four stories from diverse sources - marginal internet researchers and mainstream media outlets - stating why an attack on Iran is, a good idea, or likely, or inevitable. In these two companion pieces, FTW's Military Affairs Editor, Stan Goff (retired US Army Special Forces and former West Point instructor) and I delineate the reasons why such an attack will not (and probably cannot) happen. That is, of course, with one remotely necessary caveat: that stupidity beyond belief has overtaken the US and Israel. I would rephrase that to also include suicidal tendencies beyond belief. Stan and I both know something about these kinds of operations. I've been studying them for 30 years and Stan has been living them for that long. Any military attack on Iran of any kind will mean the end of the world as we know it. The same thing is true of a US-sponsored assassination attempt on Hugo Chavez or any other "regime change" or intervention anywhere. All such developments would be universally perceived as US-sanctioned in any case. There is much less reason to fear the US than there was three or four years ago. Near-toothless tigers with bad gums and fetid gingivitis breath do not inspire fear and awe. They invite attack. A pressure-cooker of pent-up global rage against the US awaits only a pinprick to make it blow. As I said in lectures throughout 2005 and in my new DVD Denial Stops Here, the world has drawn a line in the sand around Iran. China, Asia, Europe and even Britain cannot (and will not) do without Iranian oil and gas. In 2004, China alone signed $200 billion in long-term oil and gas deals with Iran. Europe and the rest of Asia are in similar investment positions. Japan cannot do without Iranian energy. Malaysia cannot do without Iranian energy. South Korea cannot do without Iranian energy. Germany cannot do without Iranian energy. France cannot do without Iranian energy. India cannot do without Iranian energy. And especially Great Britain cannot do without Iranian energy; especially since four months ago the UK became a net energy importer as its North Sea production continued to plummet with a decline rate approaching 10% per year. Britain has already ruled out military moves against Iran and it will likely oppose US moves even for sanctions (a necessary precursor) in the UN Security Council. The world has not forgotten the lies used by the US to justify its invasion of Iraq, nor has it somehow missed the fact that we are getting our Imperial ass kicked there. The world has not missed today's headlines that the US Army is stretched to the breaking point. "The Army?" you say. "But these are going to be air strikes!" Stan Goff has spelled it out eloquently in his article: any US or Israeli attack on Iran will give the Iraqi insurgency a combined dose of steroids and meth crystals that will spell utter defeat for the US in Iraq and end the ultra-fragile SCIRI (pro-Iranian Shia)-centered coalition that is now on life support. Those fueling the "attack Iran" hype argue that "precision" air strikes would likely not involve US ground troops. They forget that as the US has become bogged in the Iraqi quagmire next door, it has made extensive (if tenuous) bargains with Shia militias and the pro-Iranian SCIRI regime that would undoubtedly drop all support for a US-led peace in Iraq in the event of such an attack. As Goff so aptly points out, an attack on Iran, even by Israel alone, would lead directly to a US defeat in Iraq. This would come at a time when US forces are stretched to the breaking point. Iran has made it abundantly clear that the whole world will suffer oil shortages in the event of a US or Israeli attack. All Iran has to do is to reduce exports and the rest of the world's powers will turn on the US in a minute. The recent lessons of Ukraine and Georgia demonstrate what sudden (and mild by comparison) energy shortages can do in a world where demand has likely already exceeded supply. Iran is also in a position to close the Straits of Hormuz through which about half of the world's oil passes. It is known (or reported) to have Excocet, Silkworm and even the deadly Russian Sunburn missiles that would make the job easy. Oil is not the only weapon Iran can use to rally the whole world (including Europe) against the US. Iran's is a thriving economy, swollen with petrodollars. That money is being used to purchase European/Japanese/Korean-made autos, consumer goods, and high-cost technology. Iran is filled with technicians, managers and investments from all of the above countries. It was Russia that sold Iran the technology for much of its nuclear research including the Bushehr nuclear reactor. Russia has also sold Iran surface to air missile systems. China has sold Iran all kinds of military hardware. The Iranian military is orders of magnitude stronger and better equipped to retaliate throughout the region than was Iraq's. With that in mind, I strongly recommend Goff's brilliant Full Spectrum Disorder to get a glimpse as to how thoroughly Iraqi insurgents have beaten the US military outside the box. The only people who don't seem to know this are American taxpayers. Economic sanctions against Iran are even more toothless. Should the US try to weaken Iran through economic sanctions it would immediately threaten the economies of China, Europe, India and East Asia. That is, if the US could get the sanctions through the UN in the first place. If Iran has no money to spend then all those investments and technicians and factory reps have to go home. On an almost daily basis, stories are hitting the mainstream that Iran is or isn't moving all of its foreign assets to Asia and out of British and European banks. The mixed messages alone are enough to roil the markets and that's exactly the object lesson Iran wants to drive home. SANCTIONS AND THE UN Don't hold your breath, Condi. They aren't going to happen. Any sanctions that might come out as a result of US pressure won't even make Iran blink. The best the US can hope for is maybe travel restrictions on Iranian leaders (yawn). And if that's all the US gets after taking the matter to the UN, the US will appear even weaker. The permanent members of the UN Security Council include Britain, France, China and Russia. All have one-vote, unilateral veto power. Other current Security Council members include Japan, who will certainly oppose anything that might slow down Iran's purchases of their products. These nations can read the writing on the wall. The US consumption binge is ending on a note of severe indigestion and flatulence. The US economy is crumbling and the signs are clear that Joe America is waking up to the fact that he's already in way over his head. IT'S THE BOURSE, OF COURSE The key to understanding why Iran is under such pressure from the Empire is simple: The oil bourse scheduled to open in Iran this March will trade in Euros instead of dollars. The entire world (including Japan, China, Russia, India, Latin America and Europe) is eager for this bourse to open. For it is there that they will free themselves from the indirect taxation that has been imposed upon them by the US dollar since the Bretton Woods agreement was ratified after World War II. True, dollar hegemony began when the dollar was decoupled from gold during the Great Depression. It gained strength when, during the Second World War, the US supplied and fed a beleaguered world, accepting payment in gold. Oil, gold and the dollar are in heavy, heavy play right now. It is impossible for all three to rise in value at the same time. On that front it's two-to-one against the dollar.* This threat to dollar hegemony was a major reason for the removal of Saddam Hussein. He started trading Iraqi oil for Euros in 1999. Though he wasn't taken seriously at first, by 2000 he was attracting enough international business to scare the bejesus out of Imperial Washington. Iran is at least twice the economic threat to the dollar that Iraq was. The only problem is that the Empire has suffered a case of premature ejaculation. It spent all of its resources in Iraq: economic, political, moral, and military. "They're gone and there ain't no more." Like the men on the bridge at Eindhoven which proved too far for Sir Bernard Law Montgomery in 1944's Operation Market Garden, Iran can now stand, looking across the bridge which it controls and give the US the raspberry. Like the rest of the world, Iran understands that the US cannot cross that bridge without risking losing the war. Any futile attempt by the US and Israel to attack Iran would be the single largest "nuclear moment" since August 9, 1945, surpassing the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The world understands this calculus and is betting - whether they admit it or not - on Iran. The one ace up the Empire's sleeve, PROMIS software and other advanced hacking programs, could be used to sabotage the bourse's operations. But then that would be like the US leaving a calling card saying "We did it." The world knows what the US is capable of in terms of "data mining." About a sixth of my book Crossing the Rubicon was devoted to that technology and its deep connection to the Empire. As for Israel, an air attack on Iran would almost certainly result in an uncontrollable chain reaction throughout the Muslim world. Beyond all reason the state of Israel would be suddenly surrounded on all sides with never-before-seen levels of animosity. I cannot fail to note the resemblance to events narrated in the Book of Revelation. There can be no doubt about what the Fundamentalist Christian PACs want. Since Israel, not Iran, is the only nuclear power in the region it kind of makes one wonder. Either way, the spring and summer of 2006 are going to be a turning point in human history that no one will forget. Those who hope the US will attack Iran may be supporting not a turning point in history but rather history's end. * Much of the above analysis comes from the best economic teaching paper I have read in ten years. It is a must-read called "The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse"by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D. Commissioned by investment banker Douglas Bowey (whom I have met), it was first published (as far as I can tell) in a long, seven page version on January 16th at Le Metropole Cafe. Le Metropole Cafe is a subscriber-only site that features commentary by some of the best economic minds on the planet. Shorter versions of the article are proliferating over some of my favorite internet sites as free reprints under US Copyright laws. I strongly recommend subscribing at Le Metropole to get the long version. If not, all you have to do is Google the title and you'll see how far and wide this great work has spread.

Petrodollars and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: Understanding the Planned Assault on Iran

Derek Lane

The coming attack on Iran has nothing whatsoever to do with concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Its primary motive, as oil analyst William Clark has argued, is rather a determination to ensure that the U.S. dollar remains the sole world currency for oil trading. Iran plans in March 2006 to open a Teheran Oil Bourse in which all trading will be carried out in Euros. This poses a direct threat to the status of the U.S. dollar as the principal world reserve currency - and hence also to a trading system in which massive U.S. trade deficits are paid for with paper money whose accepted value resides, as Krassimir Petrov notes, in its being the currency in which international oil trades are denominated. (U.S. dollars are effectively exchangeable for oil in somewhat the same way that, prior to 1971, they were at least in theory exchangeable for gold.) As Newt Gingrich declared on Fox News in late January, the matter is so urgent that the attack must happen within the next few months. "According to Gingrich, Iran not only cannot be trusted with nuclear technology, but also Iranians 'cannot be trusted with their oil'" (Roberts). The Euro-denominated Tehran Oil Bourse Gingrich's wording may sound faintly ludicrous. However, it would appear to be a slanting allusion to the fact that the Iranian government has announced plans to open an Iranian Oil Bourse in March 2006. This Bourse will be in direct competition with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) - and unlike them will do business not in U.S. dollars, but in euros. What Gingrich evidently means is that the Iranians cannot be trusted to market their oil and natural gas in a manner that continues to benefit the United States. Peter Phillips and his colleagues in Project Censored explained very clearly in 2003 how the current U.S. dollar-denominated system of oil and gas marketing provides the U.S. with a highly advantageous system of exchange. In 1971, "President Nixon removed U.S. currency from the gold standard": "Since then, the world's supply of oil has been traded in U.S. fiat dollars, making the dollar the dominant world reserve currency. Countries must provide the United States with goods and services for dollars-which the United States can freely print. To purchase energy and pay off any IMF debts, countries must hold vast dollar reserves. The world is attached to a currency that one country can produce at will. This means that in addition to controlling world trade, the United States is importing substantial quantities of goods and services for very low relative costs." (Phillips) As Krassimir Petrov has observed, this amounts to an indirect form of imperial taxation. Unlike previous empires, which extracted direct taxes from their subject-nations, the American empire has "distributed instead its own fiat currency, the U.S. Dollar, to other nations in exchange for goods with the intended consequence of inflating and devaluing those dollars and paying back later each dollar with less economic goods - the difference capturing the U.S. imperial tax." Oil, backed by military power, has provided the rest of the world with a reason for accepting depreciating U.S. dollars and holding ever-increasing amounts of them in reserve. Petrov remarks that in 1972-73 the U.S. made "an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the power of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars for its oil. The rest of OPEC was to follow suit and accept only dollars. Because the world had to buy oil from the Arab oil countries, it had the reason to hold dollars as payment for oil. [...] Even though dollars could no longer be exchanged for gold, they were now exchangeable for oil" (Petrov). But as Phillips notes, the economic reasons alone for switching to the euro as a reserve currency have been becoming steadily more persuasive: "Because of huge trade deficits, it is estimated that the dollar is currently [in late 2003] overvalued by at least 40 percent. Conversely, the euro-zone does not run huge deficits, uses higher interest rates, and has an increasingly larger share of world trade. As the euro establishes its durability and comes into wider use, the dollar will no longer be the world's only option." The result will be to make it "easier for other nations to exercise financial leverage against the United States without damaging themselves or the global financial system as a whole." Prior to the invasion of Iraq, several analysts suggested that one very obvious motive for that war was the fact that, beginning in November 2000, Iraq had insisted on payment in euros, not dollars, for its oil. In mid-2003, by which time the U.S. had made clear the intended terms of its occupation of Iraq, one such analyst, Coilin Nunan, remarked that it remained "just a theory" that American threats against Iraq had been made on behalf of the petro-dollar system - "but a theory that subsequent U.S. actions have done little to dispel: the U.S. has invaded Iraq and installed its own authority to rule the country, and as soon as Iraqi oil became available to sell on the world market, it was announced that payment would be in dollars only" (Phillips). William Clark writes, more directly, that the invasion was principally about "gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain[ing] the US$ as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market" (Clark, 28 Jan. 2006). There is currently some debate over the extent to which U.S. war preparations against Iran are motivated by concern for the continued hegemony of the petrodollar (see Nunan). I find the analyses of William Clark and Krassimir Petrov persuasive. Clark notes that an important obstacle to any major shift in the oil marketing system has been "the lack of a euro - denominated oil pricing standard, or oil 'marker' as it is referred to in the industry." (The current "oil markers," in relation to which other internationally traded oil is priced, are Norway Brent crude, West Texas Intermediate crude [WTI], and United Arab Emirates [UAE] Dubai crude?all of them U.S. dollar denominated.) In his opinion, "it is logical to assume the proposed Iranian bourse will usher in a fourth crude oil marker-denominated in the euro currency," and will thus "remove the main technical obstacle for a broad-based petro-euro system for international oil trades." This will have the effect of introducing "petrodollar versus petroeuro currency hedging, and fundamentally new dynamics to the biggest market in the world-global oil and gas trades. In essence, the US will no longer be able to effortlessly expand credit via US Treasury bills, and the US$'s demand/liquidity value will fall" (Clark, 28 Jan. 2006). An even partial loss of the U.S. dollar's position as the dominant reserve currency for global energy trading would, as Petrov suggests, lead to a sharp decline in its value and an ensuing acceleration of inflation and upward pressure on interest rates, with unpleasant consequences. "At this point, the Fed will find itself between Scylla and Charybdis - between deflation and hyperinflation - it will be forced fast either to take its 'classical medicine' by deflating, whereby it raises interest rates, thus inducing a major economic depression, a collapse in real estate, and an implosion in bond, stock, and derivative markets [...], or alternatively, to take the Weimar way out by inflating, [...] drown[ing] the financial system in liquidity [...] and hyperinflating the economy." Any attempt, on the other hand, to preserve what Mike Whitney calls the "perfect pyramid-scheme" of America's currency monopoly (Whitney, 23 Jan. 2006) by means of military aggression against Iran is likely to result in equal or greater disruptions to the world economy. American military aggression, which might conceivably include attempts to occupy Iran's oil-producing Khuzestan province and the coastline along the Straits of Hormuz (see Pilger), will not just have appalling consequences for civilians throughout the region; it may also place American forces into situations still more closely analogous than the present stage of Iraqi resistance to the situation produced in Lebanon by Israel's invasion of that country-which ended in 2000 with Israel's first military defeat (see Salama and Ruster). Link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KEE20060210

Hamas doctrine - defending their rights

Derek Lane

Once again I feel compelled by the stupidity, irresponsibility or intentional misinformation of the world media and our supposedly learned politicians to come to the defense of another Arab nation for their words. In this particular case (before it has been Iran and the words of Ahmadinejad) I am referring to Hamas, and the claim by the western media that Hamas has a manifesto which states one [primary] goal of Hamas is to destroy Israel. It is not the case; as in Ahmadinejad's words regarding 'wiping Israel off the map', these words and the manifesto have been misinterpreted, either intentionally or otherwise. If it were otherwise, it would leave us with the impression that the media sources in which we place our faith that their comittment to the truth, investigation, diligence et al. is above all else, is seriously misguided. Here is a quote from Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a Hamas leader and a newly-elected Palestinian lawmaker, [who] said "You Westerners have got it wrong: our statute does not call for Israel's destruction at all. The Arabic actually says that the Israeli occupation of Palestine must end. We don't want to eliminate anybody. We just want our rights" In bold: The Arabic actually says that the Israeli occupation of Palestine must end. We don't want to eliminate anybody. We just want our rights If it is not otherwise, if it is not ignorance and unprofessionalism, but complicity, we have a situation which has gone out of control. If the media lies, and knows it lies about such things, their complicity in the escalation of war (albeit fueled by American foreign policy) should not be forgiven nor accepted. We must hold them to account. Hamas want only what is their right, and what not just Palestinians, but the United Nations, have called for from Israel for the last 40 years. That illegal occupation which the world (the western world) chooses to ignore. Israel is an occupying country in Palestinian lands. Hamas want what every Palestinian should want; freedom.

State and media reaction to Palestinian elections

Derek Lane

As discussed in other articles on this site, with the news of Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, Israel and the US are refusing to acknowledge the democratic vote of the Palestinians in relation to Hamas. With a voter turn-out of 78% of Palestinians allowed by Israel to vote, they could not have hoped for a better indication of the will of Palestine. Turning our minds to the typical voting turn out of US and UK voters in general elections, it scarcely reaches 45% of the voting public; for Palestine it shows not only their resolve on the issue of their leadership, but that non-Western countries are once again showing the West how democracy really works. Israel's acting prime minister said last night, "If a government led by Hamas or in which Hamas is a coalition partner is established, the Palestinian Authority will turn into an authority that supports terror," said Mr Olmert. "Israel and the world will ignore it and make it irrelevant." He also suggested on News Night (UK) that sanctions should be placed upon Palestine until they can prove that they have turned their backs on terror. When asked, should Hamas be willing to cease their terrorist operations would Israel be prepared to hold talks with Palestine, he responded that just because they might say they will, it does not necessarily follow that they will do so. He said that it was evidence that could only be looked at after time has passed - that the new Palestinian government must show itself to have put aside terrorism before dealing with them was an option. In the meantime, sanctions. Leave aside the obvious hypocrisy here for a moment, that of Israel's terrorist actions of repeated (and continuing) targeted killings of Palestinians, leave aside the agreement on the issue of the Whitehouse and Westminster, leave aside the fact that Palestinians are fighting for their land, occupied since 1967 despite several UN injunctions against the occupation. Leave aside the fact that according to international law, people living in occupied territory have a right to defend their land. A major question, skirted by all the media so far as I can tell, is the fact that the Hamas manifesto is ambiguous and doesn't include 'the destruction of Israel' only 'an end to the occupation'. Nor does it, according to the acting Israeli prime minister, state that Hamas wants 'Israel wiped off the map - wiped off the map for god's sake,' as he said in the interview last night. Those were words attributed (by common misconception) to the leader of Iran, not Hamas. Nevermind the fact that Ahmadinejad said 'the occupying regime in Jerusalem', - a very different flavour when it comes down to it - the fact is, the words have been passed to Hamas, and they are not Hamas words. The media standpoint is that neither Israel, nor any other nation, should be obliged to negotiate with a terrorist regime. That would leave Israel without negotiations as well, since the state of Israel was founded on a terrorist organisation. It leaves the UK without a legitimate platform, since Sinn Fein was negotiated with long before rising to parliament, and certainly long before the official decommissioning of the IRA. In fact, almost all political parties in countries with a violent history have risen from what might have been described by at least one party as a 'terrorist organisation'. The term 'parliament' is defined from the same roots as 'parley' - 'parley' meaning a negotiation between enemies - the prefix meaning 'to talk'. This is where it starts - negotiation is how it moves on and develops into something peaceful. While the world, and Israel, believe they have the moral high ground and refuse to talk to the Palestinian Authority, perhaps implementing sanctions in the process and more than likely, continuing its own state-sanctioned terrorist acts upon the citizens of Palestine, there will be no hope for peace between the two people; neither will Israel be victorious.

State and media reaction to Palestinian elections

Derek Lane

As discussed in other articles on this site, with the news of Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, Israel and the US are refusing to acknowledge the democratic vote of the Palestinians in relation to Hamas. With a voter turn-out of 78% of Palestinians allowed by Israel to vote, they could not have hoped for a better indication of the will of Palestine. Turning our minds to the typical voting turn out of US and UK voters in general elections, it scarcely reaches 45% of the voting public; for Palestine it shows not only their resolve on the issue of their leadership, but that non-Western countries are once again showing the West how democracy really works. Israel's acting prime minister said last night, "If a government led by Hamas or in which Hamas is a coalition partner is established, the Palestinian Authority will turn into an authority that supports terror," said Mr Olmert. "Israel and the world will ignore it and make it irrelevant." He also suggested on News Night (UK) that sanctions should be placed upon Palestine until they can prove that they have turned their backs on terror. When asked, should Hamas be willing to cease their terrorist operations would Israel be prepared to hold talks with Palestine, he responded that just because they might say they will, it does not necessarily follow that they will do so. He said that it was evidence that could only be looked at after time has passed - that the new Palestinian government must show itself to have put aside terrorism before dealing with them was an option. In the meantime, sanctions. Leave aside the obvious hypocrisy here for a moment, that of Israel's terrorist actions of repeated (and continuing) targeted killings of Palestinians, leave aside the agreement on the issue of the Whitehouse and Westminster - where Bush has said transparently hypocritically that "I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform," ... "You can't be a partner in peace if ... your party has got an armed wing," leave aside the fact that Palestinians are fighting for their land, occupied since 1967 despite several UN injunctions against the occupation. Leave aside the fact that according to international law, people living in occupied territory have a right to defend their land. A major question, skirted by all the media so far as I can tell, is the fact that the Hamas manifesto is ambiguous and doesn't include 'the destruction of Israel' only 'an end to the occupation'. Nor does it, according to the acting Israeli prime minister, state that Hamas wants 'Israel wiped off the map - wiped off the map for god's sake,' as he said in the interview last night. Those were words attributed (by common misconception) to the leader of Iran, not Hamas. Nevermind the fact that Ahmadinejad said 'the occupying regime in Jerusalem', - a very different flavour when it comes down to it - the fact is, the words have been passed to Hamas, and they are not Hamas words. The media standpoint is that neither Israel, nor any other nation, should be obliged to negotiate with a terrorist regime. That would leave Israel without negotiations as well, since the state of Israel was founded on a terrorist organisation. It leaves the UK without a legitimate platform, since Sinn Fein was negotiated with long before rising to parliament, and certainly long before the official decommissioning of the IRA. In fact, almost all political parties in countries with a violent history have risen from what might have been described by at least one party as a 'terrorist organisation'. The term 'parliament' is defined from the same roots as 'parley' - 'parley' meaning a negotiation between enemies - the prefix meaning 'to talk'. This is where it starts - negotiation is how it moves on and develops into something peaceful. While the world, and Israel, believe they have the moral high ground and refuse to talk to the Palestinian Authority, perhaps implementing sanctions in the process and more than likely, continuing its own state-sanctioned terrorist acts upon the citizens of Palestine, there will be no hope for peace between the two people; neither will Israel be victorious.

On the debate of Irving and free speech

Derek Lane

"If the defenders of Irving's free speech were also as keen to repeal, for example the UK laws against racial incitement, or blasphemy, then I could admire their consistency." - Bern, Media Lens I certainly agree with that - it seems to be a parallel that has been forgotten in the media and also in such groups that support Irving, and is perhaps the most important point to be made - we keep looking at the little picture and consistently missing the big (and more important) picture, which is not so much the end result of the atrocities that befell those during the reign of the third reich, but how it came to happen in the lead-up. These are the things we could learn from. Remembering the pain of injury does nothing to stop it happening again if the consequence is not consistently applied to the activity which caused the injury in the first place. "Of course the key point is that we want to combat the likes of Irving with argument and not state sanctions." - Bern, Media Lens I also strongly agree with this - interference of the state on such issues lends a thinking to such people that they are being silenced on something that is, therefore, true [something I have seen through the heavy censoring of articles sitting on dodgy ground on indymedia, and the subsequent responses of the authors to mediation]. Argument, lack of restriction on speech (to a point) and general ostracism of people against such purveyors of dodgy revisionism is surely the best (and in my opinion) only way forward. Similarly, if the state is free to govern what can and cannot be said on issues that deserve attention, the argument (and probably the truth of it) is that the government can then move the way forward to restrict (as they have done in the 1 mile zone around westminster) free speech in ways that attack that government and its policies - a dangerous move which we are also seeing across the world at the moment. What springs to mind with the fact [you] pointed out (and which I didn't previously know) that it is a crime to minimize the crimes of the third reich (in Germany and Austria), is that our governments are currently making use of Nazi methods castigated and outlawed in the Nuremburg trials following WWII - with the whole aggressive invasion thing (today, in Iraq). What the opinion of the states seems now to be is, its ok to aggressively invade another country, if you have the backing of other states, or if you think the to-be-invaded state might do something if you didn't. Surely that is a case of minimizing the supreme international crime set in international law due to the actions of the third reich? My point is, current politics, laws and freedoms (or restrictions) could be a hell of a lot more consistent than they are. If we are to condemn a man for denying the holocaust, we should also condemn any country that permits or indulges in aggressive invasion, it should be a matter of grave international concern and outrage whenever a country uses chemical weapons against soldiers or a population, or when genocide is permitted by a state and our own states turn a blind eye. Perhaps then we (the world) would start learning from such grave errors/tragedies instead of just enshrining them as events historically set apart from current affairs and politics. If the reasoning behind such punishment for minimizing the crimes of the third reich were sound, perhaps in the last century (and this one) we would have avoided or curtailed many subsequent genocides and holocausts (though I realise this law applies specifically to Germany and Austria). As Professor Deborah Lipstadt said (the person who took Irving to trial for his revisionism of the events of WWII in Germany), "Generally, I don't think Holocaust denial should be a crime," she says. "I am a free speech person, I am against censorship." She also says, "I am not interested in debating with Holocaust deniers," ... "You wouldn't ask a scientist to debate with someone who thinks the Earth is flat. They are not historians, they are liars. Debating them would be nonsensical. "But we also should not allow them to become martyrs. Nothing is served by having David Irving in a jail cell, except that he has become an international news issue." So the focus then remains on the resultant crime of Nazi Germany, and people who deny that it happened, rather than on the important and often ignored issue of exactly how it was Hitler convinced his people that this was the right thing to do. In order to avoid such atrocities, we need to know how and why, not just the end 'what'. We need to focus on these things, so we can see the warning signs each time they are presented to us through the media and the poisoned words of our leaders. The rulings set down by the Nuremburg trials offered the world some of the greatest steps in the move towards real and lasting world peace, and yet all we seem to have focused on (in the last 50 yrs) is the fact that Hitler murdered 6M Jews in concentration camps. It could be so much more of a lesson... See this article on the BBC for more information of Lipstadt's opinions on the subject.

On Travellers

Derek Lane

Further to the post in Current News (search on-site)... "It seems that there is a strand in every community who are desperate to find someone who is lower on the social scale than themselves." - Eamon Brennan (Media Lens message board) That's the way I see it too - I lived in Broadfield for a year (the lowest socioeconomic area of Crawley), and, though I saw a bit of trouble whilst living there, I didn't mind it (the area, not the trouble). In Australia, I have lived in Melbourne (in Collingwood); for those from that part of the world you will know it is again one of those lower class areas. Basically, I am familiar with life in the poor areas, regarding the suggestion on board that people who don't 'understand' working class mentality must come from Guildford?? (and certainly with being poor myself) - so I don't think it cuts it. Division amongst poor people in poor areas is, well, divisive, and doesn't do any favours to any conflicting groups. And as you say, it is about (and this phenomenom seems to reflect across all of Crawley) making yourself out to be better than someone else - a kind of desperation more prevalent in the lower classes. Travellers are, in my opinion, the easy target. I am under no illusions however, that all people (from whatever background) are socially 'good' people, but this situation is hypocrisy at best, and disgustingly racist at worst. The issue of travellers seemed to come to a head here with the stay of travellers in Pound Hill, which is a slightly more affluent area than the previous stays (when I lived there) of travellers in Broadfield. Its proximity to the airport is one reason why one site has been dismissed - because the site may become part of airport land (from what I can gather) when/if they decide to stick another runway in. In other words, money is at stake. The people of Pound Hill think its because they kicked up a stink about it, the council, I am sure, is happy because they kill 2 birds with one stone; pleasing their constituency and getting what they wanted. If only the people realised though that to keep designated land from travellers means the travellers will be forced to use non-designated land to camp - ie, parks, football fields etc, thus inconveniencing the locals further. And who knows, for some of the regular travellers, if the veil of prejudice were lifted for a moment they might find they have more in common with them than they thought.

West Papuans Flee to Australia by Boat

Derek Lane

by davey (Indymedia Melbourne) Wednesday January 18, 2006 at 08:29 PM A boatload of 40 West Papuans claiming asylum for Indonesia's brutal occupation has arrived in Cape York. Their arrival poses a huge diplomatic problem for the Australian Government. ABC Radio tonight reported the arrival of 40 West Papuan asylum seekers by boat on Cape York Penisula. According to Nick Chesterfield, from the support group, the West Papua National Authority the boat contained some of West Papua's leading independence advocates. He also said "Apart from the fact that they're all West Papuan, they're all fleeing for their lives from Indonesian military violence. Some? you know, you've got women and children and other people on board, some are relatives of famous independence leaders. " The arrival of the asylum seekers poses a huge diplomatic problem to the Australian Government. It is similar to the sitution when East Timorese claimed asylum in Australia fleeing the Indonesion military occupation. Like in West Papua, Australia ignored the massive human rights abuses in East Timor and successive Australian Governments supported the occupation. Accepting the Timorese as asylum seekers would have been admitting they had something to flee from and undermined the justification of continuing support for the occupation by Indonesia. Both ALP and Liberal Governments fought to expel the Timorese refugees right up to Timorese Independance. Similarly the Australian Government is now trying to cover up Indonesian crimes in West Papua. Since the bogus "Act of Free Choice" in 1969 when Indonesia rigged a vote in favour of West Papua joining Indonesia they have viciously repressed the local people, killing tens of thousands. Many of the top Indonesian military who organised the pre and post Independance vote violence in East Timor are now causing havoc in West Papua. The fact the province is so resource rich is one reason Western Governments have been so keen to support Indonesia's occupation as Western companies make a huge amount of money out of West Papua. So once again the Australian Government is faced with the dilemma of explaining away the presence of refugees from an area they are trying to keep out of the public eyes. The Liberals have even recently copied Keatings Treaty with the Indonesians signing a "Security Pact" that includes the promise to respect Indonesia's territorial soveriegnty ie promises to remain silent on human rights abuses in West Papua. One difference between the West Papuans and East Timorese refugees is that most of the East Timorese arrived before the introduction by the ALP of mandatory detention. So to add insult to injury the West Papuans now face time in Australia's detention centres. The arrival of the asylum seekers gives a focus for the campaign on West Papua. By supporting these asylum seekers as much as possible we can help raise awareness on the plight of their people back home. Stay tuned to see how the Australian Government tries every trick it can to thwart their claims to asylum. Story at ABC - Australia Also, check here for more information on Papua New Guinea

Palestine and the Australian Aborigines - the link

Derek Lane

I want to talk about the parallels between the plight of Palestinians vs Israelis and that of Australian Aborigines vs White Australia. I think the similarities are profound, and covergent in many areas, and that these facts are important to note for a few reasons. Firstly, that to find similarities in different cultures on opposite sides of the world serves to give some unity to both - neither are alone. Secondly, in propounding these similarities, we can serve to alienate the political ramifications of talking about Palestinian oppression without - or with less - accusation flooding in of anti-semitism, because the fundamental truth in both situations is of a grounding of true humanity, or lack of it - what it means outside of such politics and geopolitics. We can also show situations that enable us to recognise the various elements of propaganda that surround both, from the Israeli government and from that of the Australian government. How they deal with uprising of thought that condemns the governmental position in Israel and Australia may serve to help us understand how to fix it. And to show the disaster stories in relation to both, rather than showing the success stories of South Africa and apartheid - relevant in both these cases - means that neither becomes lost in the traffic of other media, but strengthened by such unity of cause. Firstly, both States, Israel and Australia established a precedent fairly early on of describing the land they had recently come into possession of as terra nullius. In fact, in both States it was a founding principle - it is for the land that was to become Israel, one erroneous statement that was used to draw European Jews to the region - 'the land is empty'. In Australia, it was part of the law system (brought from England) to ensure that difficulties were kept to a minimum with the law as it existed at the time, because to declare the land as terra nullius meant that no treaties needed to be signed, or war declared, or victory declared when the war was over. It provided a clean slate to work from, unlike the case in New Zealand (Aotearoa). In Israel, when Israel was led by Ben-Gurion, he said, "The Arabs of the land of Israel [ Palestinians] have only one function left to them -- to run away." The Israeli foreign minister Moshe Sharett said this, in [I think] the early 1950s: "We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture ..... Recently there has been appearing in our newspapers the clarification about "the mutual misunderstanding" between us and the Arabs, about "common interests" [and] about "the possibility of unity and peace between two fraternal peoples." ..... [But] we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by such illusive hopes ..... for if we cease to look upon our land, the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a partner into our estate- all content and meaning will be lost to our enterprise." In the early 1990s, Eddie Mabo succeeded in finally turning over the claim to British colonial rights to Australian land when the courts conceded that Terra Nullius was a lie - clearly this was the case. The very existence of Aborigines should have meant this change in the law much earlier - indeed, the decree should never have existed. Land claims began earlier than this; during the Whitlam government, Aborigines from the Gurindj people in the Northern Territory were given back a large tract of land in 1975 in what was set to become a precedent. Subsequent governments failed to continue the implementation, and with the current Howard government so many of the rights won in court by the Mabo claim have ceased to exist, overwritten by new legislation which puts so many precursors on the claims that they are all but non existent, once again. We see the same thing in Israel: Yitzhak Rabin moved the peace process forward considerably, signing the Declaration of Principles with Yasser Arafat in 1993 (almost the same time Mabo success in the courts of Australia was causing a stir). He was later assassinated, and after Shimon Peres short stay as leader of the State came Benjamin Netanyahu who paved the way for Likud to Sharon. In both cases we see the steady and strong States operating under a conservative, and often violent governmental policy. Left leaders in both States who strove (in some way) for a correction of the issues facing their country and their oppressed people have been short-lived - in Australia there was Gough Whitlam, the only Australian leader to have his parliament and government dissolved by the Governor General. In Australia, the initiation of the colony was based around deception (Terra Nullius), for blacks as well as whites, and later implemented through various laws and decrees set by governors up until the creation of parliament in 1901. Aborigines were massacred, at first under the law, and later whilst the law turned its back. In the early to mid 20th century, the white Australia policy (or, to be more accurate, the 'not black' policy) was introduced, and fueled itself through various means - mass introduction of white immigrants, continued killing of Aborigines, removal of Aboriginal children from their parents (to assimilate them into white culture where possible, and to 'bleed the colour' out of them), enslavement of Aborigines in remote cattle and sheep stations, to keep them from their communities and families. The list of atrocities and methods is long and sad, but by no means known by a majority of current Australians - except of course the Aboriginal ones. To the land that was to become Israel, people migrated, with the promise of an empty land. When the land was not empty, promises were made to make it so. Land was appropriated - in the words of Virginia Tilley, by "launching a major land-purchase and diplomatic initiative planning to set up a Jewish state, one that would explicitly exclude Arabs completely. And the Zionist movement was moreover buying up land and throwing Palestinian off of it, so the Palestinians knew they were serious about this plan." This fuelled resentment, anger and 'dissidence' - if to call it that is not to allege that the Palestinians could be dissident about protecting their own land. There was war, fighting and deaths, and Israel [as they called it] blamed the Palestinians. In 1948, the State of Israel was made official by the West, and borders were drawn up of Palestine and Israel within it. Its important to note here that Israel did not have much to do with the ten of thousands of Jewish refugees after world war II - indeed during it they sided for a long while with Germany - the perpetrators of the genocide the European Jews suffered. It is important, because Australia had similarly little interest in receiving certain types of refugees also - certainly Jews were not included in those invited to the shores of the country, but neither were certain types of that 'traditional British stock', if they were deemed too forthright. Tom Stratton, in charge of such affairs for Australia, routinely dismissed people who were not the right type of character for Australia, from Britain, from Europe, the Baltic and so on. Much of the right type of character, apparently, came done to the percentage of whiteness in their features. Down the track today we are reaasured that Australia is not a racist country, owing in a large part I suppose to the numbers of non British people who have been accepted into the country as immigrants and refugees. Not until you see the true face of it does it become apparent that even immigrants have largely been screened for their appropriateness for Australia. Aborigines and Palestinians have been subjected to denial [of their existence], acceptance when it was no longer possible to deny their existence, but denial of their rights, outright war and genocide, persistent denial of their rights under United Nations conventions and persistent genocide; meanwhile the Australian image has maintained [until recently, as the cracks begin to appear in its heavily made-up facade] an innocent international image, and Israel has maintained the favour of the International community, if not in image, then certainly in diplomacy and good-will from other leaders. Both exercise, as Virginia Tilley has said, among others, a strict apartheid regime of the original possessors - Palestinians can vote only when they are allowed to, Palestinians are lower paid, marginalised, caged [the wall separates many from their livelihoods], have a greater rate of death and a much lower life expectancy than Israelis. Aborigines on the other hand are invariably within the poorest contingent of Australian demographic, they are marginalised through past deeds of the Australian government, and present perpetuation of the same, they are caged daily (Aborigines, proportionately, have a higher number in prison and a higher death in custody rate than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid) and their life expectancy falls below that of the rest of Australia by 25 years. Politicians dress their disinterest in words of hollow compassion, whilst maintaining the status quo of Aborigines versus the rest of Australia. One example of this is the recent issue of Palm Island, in Queensland's far north, where MP Peter Lindsay states his concern for the aborigines of Palm Island, for their 'dysfunctionality', meanwhile conveniently ignoring that their disatisfaction is borne from extreme poverty (they live up to 15 per dwelling on the island) brought on by the abject lack of funding from the mainland. Palm Island has an estimate of 90% unemployment, and the remainder is almost without exception white. It was founded (by whites) as a type of penal colony for Aborigines, and there are estimates (from Lindsay as well) of up to 60 different tribes on the island, including the two nations who claim Palm Island as in their traditional history. They have been herded and imprisoned for as long as many of them can remember, yet Lindsay's (who is among the majority in his opinions) opinion is that Australia has done all it can for these dysfunctional people, and can do no more. This is a similiar scenario to the opinions of the west (and many Israelis) who claim that evidence of the hopelessness of the Palestinian is their desire to blow themselves up, rather than realising that when backs are to walls people will take drastic measures. Lindsay's proposal for Palm Island is to remove the aborigines from Palm Island and redistribute them through cities and towns, 'so they can find work'. I pointed out to him the restrictions of such in place through the convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal People in Independent Countries and the Rome Statute, and his response to me was, 'Forget the UN Convention...I'm thinking about the plight of the dysfunctional community in my electorate.' He has not mentioned yet the boon for the rest of his electorate should Palm Island be liberated from the Aborigines, by way of revenue in tourist dollars; lying along the Great Barrier Reef almost all the islands now have been transformed into multi-million/billion dollar industries - except Palm Island and a few smaller islands surrounding it. We must forget, he tells us, the conventions, the international law. They are not important within the framework our our own national laws. This attitude - Israel is also the subject of much debate in the United Nations, for their track record regarding human rights and broken conventions in relation to the Palestinians - is not acceptable, and it shows the blatant disregard both Australia and Israel have for international law concerning their indigenous people. It is time the world became involved, and one way of doing this, is recognising and building the unity between dispossessed nations like that of Palestine and that of Indigenous Australia. Right now, the world may not be watching, but more and more eyes are turning to these parts of our International community - many, as I understand it, from Israel and from Australia. It is time we held our governments to account for their actions and stopped the slaughter.

Iran - the world has lost patience

Derek Lane

Iran - once again on the table. Nuclear enrichment has begun again. "The world," we are told, "has lost patience". Not me; I don't like the idea of nuclear power in Iran any more than I like it here [in the UK], but if it is an inalienable right in the UK, the US, Australia, France, Israel, then the same goes for Iran - it is, quite simply, completely in line with the NNPT. The NNPT is being intentionally confused in the press with the concept of weapons manufacture as opposed to power generation. Iran says they wish to generate power, and there is (as I understand it) no clear evidence to suggest otherwise. Why then is the US calling for a Security Council resolution, which these days presages war? Why is Israel gearing up, by all accounts (theirs, mostly), for an attack on Iran in the coming months? Why is this not of graver concern for the citizens of the West, that another country is preparing to suffer the brunt of illegal military brute force on its innocent people? Where is the persistant message from the media explaining how potentially in the future such hypothetical nuclear weapons lay, were Iran really operating under false pretences? This is not about the issue of a nuclear plant, but of Iran's dissidence to the West. The press and our governments are currently 'manufacturing consent' of the public through shameless mistranslations of Ahmadinejad's fiery speeches to his own people. He did not threaten to wipe Israel off the map, but rather the occupying regime of Jerusalem, and his denial of the holocaust was much tamer than sources have made out. 'Creating a myth' is something the Brits have done of Winston Churchill and his god-like status through world war II. It is an interpretation, a source of learning, moulding, pride, institution. None of it means Churchill and/or WWII did not happen, but that the way we choose to remember and interpret the events serve our national interests, not necessarily the truth. In any case, the are many Iranians (a growing number in fact) disatisfied with their current leader, just as there is in the West, in the UK, the US, Australia and France, to name a few. The governments are all responsible for great international and internal conflict. None of these states, however, deserve to be bombed, or sanctioned, nor war declared against them, because they are populated with (arguably) a majority of dissenters. We need to come to our senses. War and sanctions kill innocent people; illegal wars and sanctions make it all the worse.

The death of freedom

Derek Lane

The rights of ordinary people to speak out against an unjust war and atrocities unleashed in their name are being crushed. Fascism is at the door. Who else will fight it? by: John Pilger on: 6th Jan, 06

On Christmas Eve, I dropped in on Brian Haw, whose hunched, pacing figure was just visible through the freezing fog. For four and a half years, Brian has camped in Parliament Square with a graphic display of photographs that show the terror and suffering imposed on Iraqi children by British policies. The effectiveness of his action was demonstrated last April when the Blair government banned any expression of opposition within a kilometre of parliament. The high court subsequently ruled that, because his presence preceded the ban, Brian was an exception. Day after day, night after night, season upon season, he remains a beacon, illuminating the great crime of Iraq and the cowardice of the House of Commons. As we talked, two women brought him a Christmas meal and mulled wine. They thanked him, shook his hand and hurried on. He had never seen them before. "That's typical of the public," he said. A man in a pinstriped suit and tie emerged from the fog, carrying a small wreath. "I intend to place this at the Cenotaph and read out the names of the dead in Iraq," he said to Brian, who cautioned him: "You'll spend the night in the cells, mate." We watched him stride off and lay his wreath. His head bowed, he appeared to be whispering. Thirty years ago, I watched dissidents do something similar outside the walls of the Kremlin. As the night had covered him, he was lucky. On 7 December, Maya Evans, a vegan chef aged 25, was convicted of breaching the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by reading aloud at the Cenotaph the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. So serious was her crime that it required 14 policemen in two vans to arrest her. She was fined and given a criminal record for the rest of her life. Freedom is dying. Eighty-year-old John Catt served with the RAF in the Second World War. Last September, he was stopped by police in Brighton for wearing an "offensive" T-shirt which suggested that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act and handcuffed, with his arms held behind his back. The official record of the arrest says the "purpose" of searching him was "terrorism" and the "grounds for intervention" were "carrying plackard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info" (sic). He is awaiting trial. Such cases compare with others that remain secret and beyond any form of justice: those of the foreign nationals held at Belmarsh Prison who have never been charged, let alone put on trial. They are held "on suspicion". Some of the "evidence" against them, whatever it is, the government has now admitted, could have been extracted under torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. They are political prisoners in all but name. They face the prospect of being spirited out of the country and into the arms of a regime which may torture them to death. Their isolated families, including children, are quietly going mad. And for what? Between 11 September 2001 and 30 September 2005, 895 people in total were arrested under the Terrorism Act. Only 23 have been convicted of offences covered by the act. As for real terrorists, the identities of two of the 7 July bombers, including the suspected mastermind, were known to MI5, yet nothing was done. And Blair wants to give the security services more power. Having helped to devastate Iraq, he is now killing freedom in his own country. Consider parallel events in the United States. Last October, an American doctor, loved by his patients, was punished with 22 years in prison for founding a charity, Help the Needy, which helped children in Iraq stricken by an economic and humanitarian blockade imposed by America and Britain. In raising money for infants dying from diarrhoea, Dr Rafil Dhafir broke a siege which, accor-ding to Unicef, had caused the deaths of half a million under the age of five. John Ashcroft, the then US attorney general, called Dr Dhafir, a Muslim, a "terrorist", a description mocked by even the judge in a politically motivated travesty of a trial. The Dhafir case is not extraordinary. In the same month, three US circuit court judges ruled in favour of the Bush regime's "right" to imprison an American citizen "indefinitely" without charging him with a crime. This was the case of Jose Padilla, a petty criminal who allegedly visited Pakistan before he was arrested at Chicago airport three and a half years ago. He was never charged and no evidence has ever been presented against him. Now mired in legal complexity, the case puts George W Bush above the law and outlaws the Bill of Rights. Indeed, on 14 November, the US Senate in effect voted to ban habeas corpus by passing an amendment that overturned a Supreme Court ruling allowing Guantanamo prisoners access to a federal court. Thus, the touchstone of America's most celebrated freedom was scrapped. Without habeas corpus, a government can simply lock away its opponents and implement a dictatorship. A related, insidious tyranny is being imposed across the world. For all his troubles in Iraq, Bush has carried out the recommendations of a Messianic conspiracy theory called the "Project for the New American Century". Written by his ideological sponsors shortly before he came to power, it foresaw his administration as a military dictatorship behind a democratic facade: "the cavalry on the new American frontier", guided by a blend of paranoia and megalomania. More than 700 American bases are now placed strategically in compliant countries, notably at gateways to sources of fossil fuels and encircling the Middle East and central Asia. "Pre-emptive" aggression is policy, including the use of nuclear weapons. The chemical warfare industry has been reinvigorated. Missile treaties have been torn up. Space has been militarised. Global warming has been embraced. The powers of the president have never been greater. The judicial system has been subverted, along with civil liberties. The former senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who once prepared the daily White House briefing, told me that the authors of the PNAC and those now occupying positions of executive power used to be known in Washington as "the crazies". He said: "We should now be very worried about fascism." In his epic acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature on 7 December, Harold Pinter spoke of "a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed". He asked why "the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of inde- pendent thought" of Stalinist Russia were well known in the west while US state crimes were merely "superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged". A silence has reigned. Across the world, the extinction and suffering of countless human beings can be attributed to rampant American power, "But you wouldn't know it," said Pinter. "It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." To its credit, the Guardian published every word of Pinter's warning. To its shame, though unsurprising, the state television broadcaster ignored it. All that Newsnight flatulence about the arts, all that recycled preening for the cameras at Booker Prize-giving events, yet the BBC could not make room for Britain's greatest living dramatist, so honoured, to tell the truth. For the BBC, it simply never happened, just as the killing of half a million children by America's medieval siege of Iraq during the 1990s never happened, just as the Dhafir and Padilla trials and the Senate vote banning freedom never happened. The political prisoners of Belmarsh barely exist; and a big, brave posse of Metropolitan police never swept away Maya Evans as she publicly grieved for British soldiers killed in the cause of nothing except rotten power. Bereft of irony, but with a snigger, the newsreader Fiona Bruce introduced, as news, a Christmas propaganda film about Bush's dogs. That happened. Now imagine Bruce reading the following: "Here is delayed news, just in. From 1945 to 2005, the United States attempted to overthrow 50 governments, many of them democracies, and to crush 30 popular movements fighting tyrannical regimes. In the process, 25 countries were bombed, causing the loss of several million lives and the despair of millions more." (Thanks to William Blum's Rogue State, published by Common Courage Press.) The icon of horror of Saddam Hussein's rule is a 1988 film of petrified bodies of people in the Kurdish town of Halabja, killed in a chemical weapons attack. The attack has been referred to a great deal by Bush and Blair and the film shown a great deal by the BBC. At the time, as I know from personal experience, the Foreign Office tried to cover up the crime at Halabja. The Americans tried to blame it on Iran. Today, in an age of images, there are no images of the chemical weapons attack on Fallujah in November 2004. This allowed the Americans to deny it until they were caught out recently by investigators using the internet. For the BBC, American atrocities simply do not happen. In 1999, while filming in Washington and Iraq, I learned the true scale of bombing in what the Americans and British then called Iraq's "no-fly zones". During the 18 months to 14 January 1999, US aircraft flew 24,000 combat missions over Iraq; almost every mission was bombing or strafing. "We're down to the last outhouse," a US official protested. "There are still some things left [to bomb], but not many." That was seven years ago. In recent months, the air assault on Iraq has multiplied; the effect on the ground cannot be imagined. For the BBC, it has not happened. The black farce extends to those pseudo-humanitarians in the media and elsewhere, who themselves have never seen the effects of cluster bombs and air-burst shells, yet continue to invoke the crimes of Saddam to justify the nightmare in Iraq and to protect a quisling prime minister who has sold out his country and made the world more dangerous. Curiously, some of them insist on describing themselves as "liberals" and "left of centre", even "anti-fascists". They want some respectability, I suppose. This is understandable, given that the league table of carnage by Saddam Hussein was overtaken long ago by that of their hero in Downing Street, who will now support an attack on Iran. This cannot change until we, in the west, look in the mirror and confront the true aims and narcissism of the power applied in our name, its extremes and terrorism. The usual double standard no longer works; there are now millions like Brian Haw, Maya Evans, John Catt and the man in the pinstriped suit, with his wreath. Looking in the mirror means understanding that a violent and undemocratic order is being imposed by those whose actions are little different from the actions of fascists. The difference used to be distance. Now they are bringing it home. John Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, will be published in June by Bantam Press

source: New Statesman

After This War

Derek Lane

Is it possible to put things any better on this? I doubt it - this is one article the world should read.

After This War By Howard Zinn The war against Iraq, the assault on its people, the occupation of its cities, will come to an end, sooner or later. The process has already begun. The first signs of mutiny are appearing in Congress The first editorials calling from withdrawal from Iraq are beginning to appear in the press. The anti-war movement has been growing, slowly but persistently, all over the country. Public opinion polls now show the country decisively against the war and the Bush administration. The harsh realities have become visible. The troops will have to come home. And while we work with increased determination to make this happen, should we not think beyond this war? Should we begin to think, even before this shameful war is over, about ending our addiction to massive violence, and using the enormous wealth of our country for human needs? That is, should we begin to speak about ending war - not just this war or that war - but war itself? Perhaps the time has come to bring an end to war, and turn the human race onto a path of health and healing. A group of internationally known figures, celebrated both for their talent and their dedication to human rights - Gino Strada, Paul Farmer, Kurt Vonnegut, Nadine Gordimer, Eduardo Galeano and others - will soon launch a world-wide campaign to enlist tens of millions of people in a movement for the renunciation of war, hoping to reach the point where governments, facing popular resistance, will find it difficult or impossible to wage war. It may be an idea whose time has come. There is a persistent argument against such a possibility, which I have heard from people on all parts of the political spectrum: we will never do away with war because it comes out of human nature. The most compelling counter to that claim is in history: we don't find people spontaneously rushing to make war on others. What we find instead is that governments must make the most strenuous efforts to mobilize populations for war. They must entice soldiers with promises of money, education, must hold out to young people whose chances in life look very poor that here is an opportunity to attain respect and status. And if those enticements don't work, governments must use coercion - they must conscript young people, force them into military service, threaten them with prison if they do not comply. Furthermore, the government must persuade young people and their families that though the soldier may die, though he or she may lose arms or legs, or become blind, that it is all for a noble cause, for God, for country. When you look at the endless series of wars of this century you do not find a public demanding war, but rather resisting it, until they are bombarded with exhortations that appeal, not to a killer instinct, but to a desire to do good, to spread democracy or liberty or overthrow a tyrant. Woodrow Wilson found a citizenry so reluctant to enter the slaughterhouse of the first World War that in his presidential campaign of 1916 he promised to stay out: "There is such a thing as a nation being too proud to fight." But after he was elected, he asked for, and received from Congress a declaration of war. The onslaught of patriotic slogans began, laws were passed to imprison dissenters, and the United States joined the slaughter going on in Europe.. In the second World War, there was indeed a strong moral imperative which still resonates among most people in this country and which maintains the reputation of World War II as "the good war". There was a need to defeat the monstrosity of Fascism. It was that belief that drove me to enlist in the Air Force and fly bombing missions over Europe. Only after the war did I begin to question the purity of the moral crusade. Dropping bombs from five miles high, I had seen no human beings, heard no screams, seen no children dismembered, But now I had to think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the fire bombings of Tokyo, and Dresden, the deaths of 600,000 civilians in Japan, and a similar number in Germany. I came to a conclusion about the psychology of myself and other warriors: once we decided, at the start, that our side was the good side and the other side was evil, once we had made that simple and simplistic calculation, we did not have to think any more. Then we could commit unspeakable crimes and it was all right. I began to think about the motives of the Western powers and Stalinist Russia and wondered if they cared as much about Fascism as about retaining their own empires, their own power, and if that was why they had military priorities higher than bombing the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. Of the six million Jews killed in the death camps (allowed to be killed?) 60,000 were saved by the war - one percent. A gunner on another crew, a reader of history with whom I had become friends, had said to me one day: "You know this is an imperialist war. The Fascists are evil. But our side is not much better." I could not accept his statement at the time, but it stuck with me. War, I decided, creates, insidiously, a common morality for all sides. . It poisons everyone who is engaged in it, however different they are in many ways, turns them into killers and torturers, as we are seeing now. It pretends to be concerned with toppling tyrants, and may in fact do so, but the people it kills are the victims of the tyrants. It appears to cleanse the world of evil, but that does not last, because its very nature spawns more evil. War, like violence in general, I concluded, is a drug. It gives a quick high, the thrill of victory, but that wears off and then comes despair. Whatever can be said about World War II, understanding its complexity, the situations that followed - Korea, Vietnam - were so far from the kind of threat that Germany and Japan had posed to the world that those wars could only be justified by drawing on the glow of "the good war." A hysteria about Communism led to McCarthyism at home and military interventions in Asia and Latin America - overt and covert - justified by a "Soviet threat" which was exaggerated just enough to mobilize the people for war. Vietnam however, proved to be a sobering experience, in which the American public, over a period of several years, began to see through the lies that had been told to justify all that bloodshed. The United States was forced to withdraw from Vietnam, and the world didn't come to an end. One half of one tiny country in Southeast Asia was now joined to its Communist other half, and 58,000 American lives and millions of Vietnamese lives had been expended to prevent that. A majority of Americans had come to oppose that war, which had provoked the largest anti-war movement in the nations' history. The war in Vietnam ended with a public fed up with war. I believe that the American people, once the fog of propaganda had dissipated, had come back to a more natural state. Public opinion polls showed that people in the United States were opposed to send troops anywhere in the world, for any reason. The Establishment was alarmed. The government set out deliberately to overcome what it called "the Vietnam syndrome". Opposition to military interventions abroad was a sickness, to be cured. And so they would wean the American public away from its unhealthy attitude, by tighter control of information, by avoiding a draft, and by engaging in short, swift wars over weak opponents (Grenada, Panama, Iraq) not giving the public time to develop an anti-war movement. I would argue that the end of the Vietnam war enabled the people of the United States to shake the "war syndrome", a disease not natural to the human body. They could be infected once again, and September 11 gave the government that opportunity. Terrorism became the justification for war. Terrorism remains a frightening phenomenon all over the world. But war cannot stop terrorism, because war is itself terrorism, breeding rage and hate, as we are seeing now. War is a substitute for getting at the roots of terrorism, and the United States has turned to it, because to deal with fundamentals rather than symptoms would require radical changes in policy. The war in Iraq has exposed the hypocrisy of the "war on terrorism". I don't believe that our government will be able to do once more what it did, after Vietnam -- prepare the population for still another plunge into violence and dishonor. It seems to me that when the war in Iraq ends, and the war syndrome healed, that there will be a great opportunity to make that healing permanent, My hope is that the memory of death and disgrace will be so intense that the people of the United States will be able to listen to a message that the rest of the world, sobered by wars without end, can also understand. We may be on the verge of a world-wide understanding, that war, defined as the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people (acknowledging the possibility of humanitarian intervention to prevent atrocities) can no longer be accepted, for whatever reason, because the technology of war has reached the point where inevitably, 90% of its victims are civilians, and many of those are children, so that any war, whatever words are used to justify it, is a war against children. The government of the United States, indeed governments everywhere, are becoming exposed as untrustworthy, that is, not to be entrusted with the safety of human beings, or the safety of the planet, or the guarding of its air, its water, its natural wealth, or the curing of the poverty, the sickness, the alarming growth of natural disasters that plague so many of the six billion people on earth. True, it is the governments that have the power, that monopolize the wealth, that control the information. But this power, overwhelming as it can be, is also fragile. It depends on the subservience, the obedience of the people. When that obedience is withdrawn the most powerful entities, armed governments, wealthy corporations, cannot carry on their wars or their business. Strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation can make the most arrogant of institutions helpless. The most powerful government on earth, the United States, had to withdraw from Vietnam when it could no longer count on the loyalty of its military or the support of its citizens. There is a power greater than guns and wealth. Occasionally, in history, it has come into view to stop wars, to overthrow tyrannies. Perhaps the time has come to bring an end to war, and turn the human race onto a path of health and healing. I have quoted Einstein, who, reacting to attempts to "humanize" the rules of war, said: "War cannot be humanized, it can only be abolished." Powerful truths must be reiterated, until they fasten ineradicably in our minds, until the words spread to others, until they become a mantra repeated all over the world, until the sound of those words become deafening, until they finally drown out the noise of guns, rockets, planes.

Israeli retaliates against Lebanon

Derek Lane

From Aljazeera:

Israeli warplanes attacked a training base of a Palestinian resistance group in the al-Naima area, south of Beirut, wounding two fighters, BBC reported.

In the same article we are told that

..."The Israeli army claimed that the strike was in response to rocket attacks at the northern Israeli towns of Kiryat Shmona and Shlomi on Tuesday night. "This is in response to the firing of projectile rockets last night toward Israeli communities," the army said, according to BBC. "Lebanese police said more than seven Katyusha rockets were launched from Lebanese territory. Two were fired from the western sector, 20km south-east of Tyre, and five others from the eastern sector on Adaisa hill. "Reports say the rockets caused some damages in northern Israel, but there were no casualties. "The Lebanese resistance group HEZBOLLAH and the Palestinian Fatah movement strongly denied that they were responsible for the rocket attacks. "A PFLP-GC spokesman also denied any involvement. "Israel wants to blame us for the rocket attacks to provoke a hostile reaction against us in Lebanon," Anur Raja was quoted by AFP as saying. "We say to our Lebanese brothers that we were in no way implicated."

Basically, all rhetoric stripped aside, we find that some Katyusha rockets (which have a range up to 50 kilometres) were fired on Israel from within the borders of Lebanon. The Israeli military - despite being made aware that no one (government or the usual suspects in Lebanon) was claiming the attacks, responded by penetrating deep inside Lebanon's airspace and attacking a position close to Beirut - well past the 50km zone that the rockets would have been fired from. It is worth noting that the attacks from Israel came via aircraft, not rockets. Why this violation of airspace is not made more of in the media, I am not sure. Of course Israel probably has international rights to respond to attacks outside of Israel, but this is a little like Glasgow receiving a rocket attack from Northern Ireland, and England responding by sending harriers over Belfast to bomb parliament. Much is currently made of Syria's occupation of Lebanon, yet little made of Israel's invasion and subsequent occupation of the same (now ceased). The continued exchange of fire between factions in the south of Lebanon and Israel are simply a continuation of this, as far as I can tell. The difference is one side is fighting with, at best, Katyusha rockets, the other with highly advanced airforce. One skirmishes over the borders, the other violates a country's sovereign airspace. One is condemned for its attacks and used as an object of pity to condemn another state, the other perpetuates (and expands on) these attacks, and seems to escape criticism. I am not saying its cut and dried - as I said earlier, Israel probably does have a right to intervene where they believe the attacks come from or are sponsored by the state (of Lebanon) - but surely this should happen diplomatically. Historically it seems any breach or perceived threat has been dealt with through sheer military force. It is time Israel (not to mention the US, the UK etc) started acting with the values they reassure us they have. Put the guns down and talk. And if they persist in this method, surely the international community has the right to say, 'If you continue with eye for eye tactics, make sure it is only an eye you take in retaliation, not the whole head.'

Dictatorship or free state?

Derek Lane

In view of the recent use of the Official Secrets Act (UK) to suppress information regarding the aljazeera memo, and the more recent request from Home Office for Craig Murray to halt publication of documents of UK complicity with information obtained from torture, it makes me wonder if the UK government is taking an unprecedented step towards a state model more akin to that of a dictatorship than that of a 'free' country. There has been, for a long time, a vested interest in all states to subscribe to one or other of the models. The choices that are present to a state in order to maintain control over its people are blanket censorship (of which the populus knows, but cannot fight easily), or the dissemination of intellectual propaganda to keep the public of the belief that their government can be trusted and has their best wishes at heart. The second model seems to be the favoured amongst 'democratic' and 'free' nations, the former amongst dictatorships. The reason why the former is favoured amongst dictatorships is that if the people rebel, they can always be removed, killed, tortured, imprisoned. People may know, but they will also fear the same fate themselves, and so they do not rise up. (Mostly). The second is the harder to incorporate, because it requires constant physical work and resources on the part of the state, and is dependent on a large contingent of the people to continue its effective work (in the form of armies, police and other law enforcement). The former requires more cleverness, but a smaller body of workers to incorporate. The politicians and the media will mostly be sufficient. By governing the agenda of what is acceptable to discuss, by quiet suppression of facts which if given the chance would enlighten the public to true motives and actions of state, and by the propagation of irrelevant news to the forefront instead (like gay rights, smoking in pubs etc - things which though relevant in a social sense are only issues based on the fact that our media has made them so) the populus is kept in control. In this model, occasionally mistakes are made, scapegoats are quickly uncovered, fired, martyred (in a metaphorical sense) and life goes on. One wonders then why this has not been happening of late in the UK (or for that matter, Australia, and to a lesser degree the US - where at least they are still running with the scapegoat method - read Karl Rove). In the last few months we have seen the US, UK, Irish, etc complicity in US extraordinary rendition, a method which for all intents and purposes is an example of subcontracting torture. The public knows this; we have enough information to understand the implications all too well. The same goes for (though not related to torture) the memo regarding the bombing of AlJazeera stations. We know the memo exists, we know more or less the subject of the memo, and what's more, we know that US track record regarding AlJazeera is less than exemplary - that is, the US has, on 2 separate occasions bombed AlJazeera stations; in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite both times the office having supplied the US with its exact coordinates and painted its location on the rooftop. For an airforce that constantly tells us about their precision bombing, about how they can all but remove their 'collateral damage' because their navigation system is so good, the excuse that both times it was an accident doesn't somehow cut it. And in the last few days, thanks to bloggers, we have been made aware of some written evidence via the craig-murray blog, that the UK is happy to use torture evidence as reliable information (if not in the court room - that according to the author, is illegal - in military intelligence). Yet, no word on this latest revelation from any of the media.[edit - the Independent has published an article describing the event - but not the documents - see here] And while it is not clear from this latest article (for me at least) as to whether publication of the document is illegal according to the Official Secrets Act, it is clear that although the public does know, the government does not want them to know - and seemingly will use such an act again to suppress the information. It seems we are a step closer to the dictatorship. All I ask is, where are the scapegoats now? Jack Straw will surely do for now.

Australia - What is reconciliation?

Derek Lane

by Hannah Rachel

After attending a Sacred Sites Authority meeting in Perth the late David Mowaljarlai AO, visionary Ngarinyin lawman of the Kimberley asked me, "What reconciliation really mean?" His puzzlement derived from a question by the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Judith Watson who asked if a rock site of significance could be relocated from its abiding place to somewhere that did not obstruct the development of an ore body. To her his response was, "Can you put a toe on your ear and it still works as a toe?" His simple questions reflected his profound questioning of the nature of the reconciliation discourse in which one party to be 'reconciled' was so abysmally ignorant of the culture and beliefs of the other. He wondered how you can 'reconcile' this - "What's to reconcile?" he asked. He followed this with another question. "What 'land use' really mean?" After referring to many maps which showed land classification systems according to various criteria of 'land use' he said, "Ah! I'm bauxite Man! Or maybe diamond Man! Or bullock Man. Hey, I'm rich man!" Born in the Gardner Plateau in the stony country his 'wunggud' or totem was Brejerat, hibiscus, the brilliant red flower which grows between the hot rocks in his country. This plant and its context defined him in every way - his 'lian', or life force/spirit, his nature, family geneology, elemental essence, relationship with all other kin and countrymen, responsibilities, accountability, beliefs and behaviours. 'Land use' as developed and defined by colonisers threatened to extinguished his native title, therefore his identity and meaning. What, therefore is there to reconcile - Identity with nominal and changeable land classification? Cultural heritage and integrity with economic potential? Ignorance with Meaning? Little wonder he asked what reconciliation really means. Before he died in 1997 he was reconciled to the reality of colonisation, and the futility of his struggle. He said, "You mob will never recognise our Law; you will never acknowledge our rights. You can't give anything away because you Money mob ... you got paper law. Not us. We Art mob. Our Law is written in the land. We can't change that Law. We belong to it. That Law controls us." He was not in favour of the notion of reconciliation when it simply meant the cessation of hostilities and the intention to get along together, without any substantive change in the enduring fundamental ignorance of Whitefellas. Sadly, almost a decade on not a lot has changed. The various 'reconciliation' committees and initiatives assume a homogenous indigenous Australia. Indigenous participation and leadership is often just as ignorant of tribal Law and culture because the individuals have been informed and shaped by Western lifestyle and values. Added to this is the politically correct reluctance to 'classify' Indigenous people's knowledge and values according to any system of degree or voracity of the exercise of cultural beliefs and/or lifestyle, geographic location or Western socialisation. This inevitably leads to the urban, articulate and vocal running the agenda, while the more traditional languish to their death in remote outstations and communities. Cultural genocide continues to be effected by flawed processes and conditions. In particular this includes the sustained and stubborn ignorance of politicians, institutions, the broader community and the media; the persistence of understandable spoken English as the preferred language of communication; budgetary and time constraints which propel seekers, researchers, analysts, reporters and politicians to central people and places - almost always publicly funded Aboriginal organisations in serviced towns or cities - for their information gathering; and finally, the self-conscious embarrassment that paralyses Whitefellas when engulfed or confronted by their utter ignorance and ill-ease with the realities of meeting face to face, the subjects of their good will and/or enquiries. Mowaljarlai's question about the real meaning of 'reconciliation' remains severely confronting because it really asks other very big questions. Why has the Government failed to outline its apparent policy and process of gradual cultural annihilation? Because it can. The media and community have been overwhelmingly silent, and silenced by apathy, ignorance, and distraction. Yet the evidence is just as overwhelming. The redefinition of 'terra nullius'. Dismantling of ATSIC and replacement with a non-representative, politically articulate advisory group. Social bribery - the compulsion to adopt hygiene practices, and attend a culturally alien and irrelevant school system which renders their culture invisible in return for the basic survival need of mobility. The commoditisation of native title land which completely invalidates the cultural meaning of belonging and identity. The assimilationist determination to unilaterally change the traditional concept of 'community' to the Western political construct of municipality. This process, being remorselessly adopted by stealth is savage in its implications to remote Indigenous peoples and their culture. By the culturally determined processes of redefinition, invalidation, reconstruction, and redeployment, it is not only is native title that is being extinguished. Australia's stubborn and persistent ignorance and ill-ease with our shameful, unreconciled historic relationship are driving this remnant Indigenous Law, culture and body of knowledge to the edge of extinction. Don't we realise that Australian Aboriginal culture is the oldest, longest continuous culture on earth? Don't we have the courage to acknowledge our ignorance and do something about it? Are we more ready to protect and preserve the noisy scrub bird and the bilby than an entire culture? Surely it is time to demand of our political, educational and social institutions that with humility, we recognise our failings and immediately and urgently address them as a national priority. "We have a Gift we bin trying to give you, but you blocked from hearing us," claimed Mowaljarlai to the Native Title Hearing conducted in his country. Is it possible that his words are prophetic, that our unwillingness to listen will result in our permanent failure to receive the Gift of knowledge, awareness, ecology, philosophy, and sustainable relationship with this continent? Rhetorical questions abound, but these are the questions that need to be discussed and reconciled with the ways in which we have thusfar inhabited this land and related to its Aboriginal peoples.

Evo Morales Becomes new Bolivian President

Derek Lane

Evo Morales Becomes Bolivia's Next President, Now His Real Challenge Begin by Gretchen Gordon December 19, 2005

This past Sunday, the people of Bolivia elected indigenous leader Evo Morales as their next president. In elections that have captured international attention, Morales' Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) won over 50 percent of the popular vote, with a 20 percent lead over conservative opponent Jorge Quiroga. MAS' win represents a significant increase over pre-election polls, which placed Morales at a maximum of 30-34 percent, and within a few points of Quiroga. The surprisingly large victory achieved by Morales at the polls, however, belies the great challenge ahead for a MAS government when it actually takes power next year. Last week, in a packed soccer stadium in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Marcello Guzman carried a large billowing multicolored checkered indigenous flag against a strong wind. Among 60,000 fellow Bolivians, Guzman stood beneath a darkening sky, holding out despite an impending thunderstorm for the chance to cheer on Morales in his final campaign rally before elections. Guzman describes himself as a member of Bolivia's two largest indigenous groups, a "Quechua and Aymaran brother of Evo," and his proud sentiment represents the intense feeling of expectation alive in Bolivia as it stands poised to usher in South America's first indigenous president. "Evo! Evo! Evo!" chants the crowd as Morales's hoarse voice implores the audience to be part of "the struggle for the liberation of the people of Bolivia." "We're very close to recovering the land and all the natural resources... to nationalizing all of the natural resources," shouts Evo. "The natural resources can't be given away, can't be privatized, they belong in the hands of the Bolivian state!" After centuries of rule by criollos, often foreign-educated upper class, Bolivia remains the poorest country in South America despite a rich supply of natural gas and other resources. The prospect of Morales' Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party taking power has had many in Bolivia, the region, and beyond watching attentively the unfolding events in this small, often overlooked, country. As Morales tells the crowd, the change currently taking place in Bolivia "is not only the hope of Bolivia but the hope of Latin America." In the last three years, exacerbated by free-market or "neo-liberal" reforms, Bolivia's historic disparity of wealth and power has come to a boiling point. Bolivians have repeatedly taken to the streets, and amid violent clashes with security forces, two successive governments have prematurely resigned. Among the critical issues in play are who will control the country's rich natural gas reserves, and whether or not Bolivia's disenfranchised indigenous majority will finally have a share in the nation's wealth and power. The hope resting on Morales' shoulders is that with a MAS government, Bolivia's vast resources will be exploited for the country's own development, and the privatization, deregulation, and other neo-liberal economic policies put in place in the last twenty years will be reformed. "Now we're going to industrialize our prime materials," says Guzman excitedly, right before the bamboo stick holding up his flag breaks in half from the wind. "We're no longer going to be tenants in our own home. Now we're going to be owners of our own house." But just as many in Bolivia look to Morales as a lifeline to a country drowning in poverty and conflict, Morales' same proposals of change inspire an almost similar degree of fear from certain sectors within the country (both left and right), as well as from financial interests abroad. Election radio spots by business groups warned that if Morales is elected, he will do away with private property as the spots allege has occurred under President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Others predict that Morales' plan to decriminalize the cultivation of coca, traditionally grown for medicine, tea, and religious uses but also utilized in cocaine production, will cause the country to be isolated internationally. U.S. officials have added to these fears with various public statements of concern over a Morales presidency. But Morales and running mate Alvaro Garcia Linera are the first to temper both the over-ambitious hopes of the left as well as the exaggerated fears on the right. "We should admit that Bolivia will still be capitalist in the next 50 to 100 years," Linera said in recent interviews. An examination of MAS' platform on gas, for example, reveals that Morales' proposal of nationalization is anything but a Cuba-style expropriation. In fact, before massive protests last May, MAS didn't support the call for nationalization. Now their platform calls for a "nationalization without confiscation," with proposals geared toward renegotiation of contracts on terms more favorable to Bolivia, while candidates further to the left called for a more forceful "nationalization without indemnization." Before the election, Morales told La Gaceta, "If I'm elected president, unfortunately it will be my duty to respect those neo-liberal laws. Some changes we will be able to make by decree, others through the legislature, but immediately there aren't going to be great changes because these are 20 years of neo-liberal laws- that can't be erased in one swipe." But this moderate talk is exactly what many of the social movements in Bolivia fear. Many of the indigenous, campesino, miner, and other sectors who have created the public debate and environment for a possible MAS victory feel like Morales is not going far enough to represent their interests. "They are advancing a presidential campaign, but they don't have 100 percent backing of the social movements," says Giselle Gonzalez, a member of the Coordinadora in Defense of Water, the leading group in Cochabamba's 2000 fight against water privatization. "You can feel in the air a certain sense of hope, but still I don't believe that they'll part ways with the multinational corporations," says Gonzalez. "There are people within MAS who are going to look for their personal interest instead of that of the population." Abraham Delgado, a water activist from the city of El Alto echoes this doubt. "They talk about nationalization, but in reality it's not nationalization- 80 percent stays in the hands of the corporations... we stay in the same system, the same model." Various social groups and leaders, including a recent politically-embarrassing public announcement by a MAS Senator, have given a MAS government varying time periods of three to six months to comply with the demands of the Bolivian people, specifically on the issues of gas and the constituent assembly. Failure to make significant progress, they promise, will bring renewed social protest from MAS' own current supporters. While Morales surprised voters with his substantial electoral victory Sunday, the greater test for MAS is only beginning. Once in power, MAS will face the monumental challenge of balancing diverse social movement demands for radical change, with investor fears and U.S. pressures. MAS, while winning a majority in the House of Representatives, will also have to struggle with a minority presence in the Senate. For the many Bolivians who have waited so long and sacrificed so much in order to finally grab hold of a place at the negotiating table, putting too much hope into another government carries significant risk. "It's dangerous because the majority of the people believe that MAS is going to solve things," says Delgado. "There's going to be a significant sense of frustration, because after the elections nothing is going to happen. Those who are going to be frustrated aren't going to be MAS, it will be the people, who have so much hope for MAS." What others in the social movements point to, is that the radical change being sought in Bolivia is not something Evo Morales, or any one president can do himself. What Morales can do, is to help create a favorable environment for the change that the social movements have already set in motion. A major component of that is the convening of a constituent assembly, set for July of 2006, which would put ordinary Bolivians, rather than the president or congress, in charge of deciding major issues such as gas nationalization, land reform, and regional autonomy. "All these issues need real solutions, not band-aid solutions," says Gonzalez. "The solutions need to come from the bottom, and this is going to happen with the constituent assembly, with the participation of everyone." Morales, himself, points to the power of the constituent assembly as a key mandate of the MAS party. "It's the constituent assembly with unlimited powers, that will create a power based in the people to construct this new Bolivia that we're looking for." Proposals for what a constituent assembly would actually look like, who would participate, and what power it would have, however, vary drastically among different interests within Bolivia. From all accounts, the work of constructing a successful constituent assembly invested with sufficient power to be able to tackle the profound issues in play will be an onerous endeavor, laden with potential pitfalls. As Morales finishes his speech in the stadium, now in a full rain, Marcello Guzman stands attentive with the several thousand viewers who remain. He's rigged his bamboo pole back together and holds his flag high against the dark evening sky. While Evo Morales has succeeded in taking power, giving that power back to the people may be his hardest challenge yet.

Gretchen Gordon is a writer on Latin America and Globalization issues, currently living in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Australian race riots - there is no surprise

Derek Lane

Cronulla Race Riots are a drop in the ocean to Australia's real race issues The press coming in from Australia is nonsense. Australia is and always has been a racist country. This often insidious and built-in racism has led to genocide of the Australian aborigines, has led to marginalisation of other ethnic minorities (such as non-English speakers from Greek, Italian and middle-eastern backgrounds), and has incorporated the word 'assimilation' into the Australian rhetoric so deeply that it implies connotations not felt as dangerous, but as necessary. The implication of course being that if a white Australian were forced to (or moved of their own accord) move to a foreign nation where the language was not English and the religion not Christianity, they would of course learn to speak that language, submit to that religion, and dress like those people. The reality of course is laughably false - Australians travelling (for work or pleasure, or even relocating) to non-English speaking countries do not - as a rule - learn the language fluently, they do not - as a rule - change their religion or customs (but rather pine for ridiculous things whilst gone like vegemite and victoria bitter), they do not, in short, assimilate, but rather build upon their 'Australian-ness' like its the only thing keeping their feet on the earth. The hypocrisy is over-whelming, and the vast majority of white Australians do believe that the country is their by right of God or State, or whatever reason suits. The reality, of course, is the complete opposite. We, as white Australians, should be speaking an indigenous language, we should be well-versed in indigenous culture and customs, and we should be ruled by Indigeous people, who should, by this stage be the majority, not the minority. 200 years ago, they were, numbering around 450 000 to our paltry numbers of convicts and their oppressors. Within a short space of time (around the turn of the 20th century) their numbers had dwindled to about 60 000. Australian historians often put this down to 'white-man's disease', but this is true only sofar as the premise that one important disease of the white man was his gun. But the disturbing notion being put out by the Australian media is that this has taken us all by surprise - of course they (and more importantly) the Australian government, would wish the world to see it that way. It is not true. Assimilation has been a key phrase of Howard's since he was elected in 1995 - this word in his language covers everything from what welfare recipients are getting that the 'little Aussie battler' - that is, the working class citizen is not, to what Aborigines are getting that the 'little Aussie Battler' is not. Never mind the fact that under United Nations conventions all participating countries must legally ensure that their indigenous people have such things addressed legitimately, to redress issues which are holding them back. Only last year, Alexander Downer was over in the UK, doing a low-key publicity campaign to encourage more Brits to emigrate to Australia. The words were not said, but the idea is that Brits who can afford to relocate in a new country are wealthy, and wealthy Brits are white. Because this goes hand in hand with Ruddock's disintegration of the immigrant system in Australia, beginning with the Tampa story - where Australian troops stormed the Tampa (a cargo ship) and threatened to arrest the crew if they did not comply with Australia's wishes to remove the rescued boat people to Christmas Island, where they would later be transported back to their home countries, (many who were at risk of imprisonment, torture or death were they to return). This contravened, of course, the SOLAS agreement, maritime law that has been in place for hundreds of years, and never tampered with, for all it implies to disregard it. But Howard did so, because this was to be the first step in a rapid introduction of detention centres in the harsh deserts of Australia, where hundreds or thousands of illegal immigrants have been detained, without knowing when or if they will ever be released. This has been going on for almost 5 years now - maybe longer. These detention centres are under strict security, and most of the country (and indeed the world) has only had very brief glimpses of any of them. The government wants us to know they exist (to discourage further illegal immigrants), but not to know how they are treated. The few escaped reports show they are kept in conditions which also contravene UN charters. And they are all foreign, mostly middle-eastern or Indonesian. The anti-terror legislation was pushed through fast and with little dissent from the House of Reps or Senate. We only found out previously to it being rubber-stamped exactly what was included because of one brave dissident politician in Canberra, who chose to ignore the confidential stamp on it, and published it on his site. It didn't stop it going through, however, there is no balance in the Australian government anymore, the majority belongs to Howard and his government in both houses. And it is truly awe-inspiring in terms of its audacity. It, of course, does not mention Arabs in it, but it is framed to include 'terrorist activity' which the world now equates with Muslims, and removes any rights for people to protest - sedition is a seven year charge. There are gag-orders, increased power of police to shoot to kill, belonging to a terrorist group, (which is retrospective, so people who may once have been taliban fighters - fighting for Afghanistan when the world condoned it could now be imprisoned for the same deeds) - where the terrorist group can be defined at any time by the government, and many other factors which are flagrantly anti-freedom. Potentially for everyone, but Howard set the masses minds at rest shortly following the introduction of the legislation by the subsequent raids and arrests (and one shooting) of about 15 muslim men, from Sydney and Melbourne. A show to say 'Its not you I'm after, its them.' Australia relaxed, because they do not care if it is 'foreigners' being villified and imprisoned under the name of the law, so long as it isn't us. The charges on these men are highly dubious, and it is worth noting that they could not have been charged by any legal system in the Western world prior to the introduction of his legislation, because the charges are nonsense. They are now law. They are now open to interpretation by police on such a wide range of possibilities that 'looking at me funny' could be considered a jailable offence, coming from the right man of course. The burden of proof is now on the defense as opposed to the prosecutor. There is so much more, on a small scale, on an insidious level that I have not even begun to discuss. I can't do it all - but I will point this out. Assimilation is at the root of it - the drive, the push, the consensus of a mad country with insane notions of civility, for people (non White non-english speaking Australians) to claim that assimilation is the key - you must conform to my ideologies, my religion, my language. It is the only way. The Chinese have been in Australia almost as long as the white people, so have Germans, Italians, Greeks, and of course, the indigenous Australians have been there the longest. But none of this matters in the face of violence or the threat of it, or the constant humilation, anger, oppressiveness that faces so many Australians every day, just for not being white and not speaking English. This attitude is reflected by our government (Ruddock is a cold-blooded murderer and his foreign policy puts glee on his face of the same rank as the same does for GWB), it is reflected by our media (watch the news, and when there is news of robberies, violence, murder, the reporter is almost always standing 'on-scene' as Asians walk by in the background), more so on talk-back radio, and in the papers. It is socially acceptable to say 'go back to your own country' to non-white, non-English speakers, it is socially acceptable to say of the indigenous, 'they dirty, lazy and they refuse to integrate themselves into society. No wonder they have problems.' Australians as a whole lack compassion, they lack understanding, and they lack civility. The events at Cronulla are just one small drop in the ocean of Australia's intolerance. The burden of proof otherwise is on the shoulders of the accused, in the new Australian fashion. newslink here

Diego Garcia - terra nullius

Derek Lane

A letter posted by Richard on the Media Lens website, after I suggested that local papers in the UK have a lot to answer for regarding the public opinion on exiled Diego Garcians. Richard had gone one step further - he had written in response to the Reigate and Banstead Guardian on 12th November 2004. His letter explores many elements not covered - or covered reticently - by the local press in his area and mine (Crawley - West Sussex). Below is his post: Hi Derek, I wholeheartedly agree with your comments. I sent this email to Helen Crane, on 12th Nov. last year. She never replied to it. I can't find her original article, but it was on the front page of the Reigate & Banstead Guardian around the 12th. It sounds to me like you've been reading similar stuff in Crawley. Best wishes, Rich.

Dear Helen Crane, Thanks for your reply to my email and for volunteering the contact details of Crispin Blunt MP. May I ask why, in your article, you did not quote the views of the islanders on the appalling situation that they are now facing? Surely the people living in Reigate and Banstead should be informed as to precisely why the islanders are asking to be housed at their expense? Although you say: "The islanders are from families who were effectively thrown out of their home in the 1960s so the island could be turned into an American and British military base", you do not mention the savage and criminal manner in which this was done. Or, the fact that most of the islanders were dumped on the docks in Mauritius, having survived illegal imprisonment and an inhumane and gruelling 1000 mile journey by sea after being allowed to take from their homes only one suitcase each and left on the mainland to rot and in many cases die, in abject poverty. Are you aware that, "In 2000 the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgement, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress." (1) And: "In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgement. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorise his illegal attack on Iraq." (1) According to Foreign Office documents produced in the high court in 2000, Harold Wilson's government secretly conspired to deprive the islanders of their way of life, liberty and everything else belonging to them including their homes. They also conspired to prevent the British public from hearing the truth. Tony Blair's government has continued in this vein by using the royal prerogative to deprive the islanders of the justice they had won in the High Court and then to railroad their claim in 2003 for compensation and redress. It gets even worse. To quote the BBC, 1st November 2004: "Later in the week, Tony Blair said he feared providing accommodation for Diego Garcians could set a precedent which would lead to funding being expected "across the board". West Sussex County Council has called on the government to help the islanders." (2) So, the 40 years of hell that the islanders have endured so far, courtesy of the British Government is still not enough. Tony Blair, having used the royal prerogative to prevent the islanders from returning to their own homes, now intends to apply further anguish by preventing them from having homes here. You quoted Crispin Blunt MP as saying: "Plainly the British Government owes the Chagos islanders a substantial moral debt, but if replaying (sic) this debt is left to a very small proportion of the British population then the goodwill these people deserve may rapidly dissipate locally." Why did you not include a quote from the government? I wonder how many local people are aware that when the British Government "ethnically cleansed" Diego Garcia, it destroyed the way of life of more than 2,000 people (after gassing to death, on the orders of Sir Bruce Greatbatch, their animals and pets in US trucks) who had lived there in peace since the late 18th century. The island was then leased to the US, whose air force has illegally bombed both Afghanistan and Iraq from there, resulting in 100,000 civilian deaths, according to the Lancet. I feel that this irony would not be wasted on the proportion of people, perhaps more than half if national surveys are accurate, living in Reigate and Banstead who are against the illegal war and occupation of Iraq. And, that although it is impossible, for obvious reasons, for the islanders to return to Diego Garcia itself, even though it is legally and morally right that they should be able to do so, there are many other islands in the region which they would have returned to by now had it not been for Blair's use of the royal prerogative and other deceptive means employed by the government. These are the reasons why the islanders are asking to be housed, here, now. I gave your article to a couple of local people to read to see what they thought of it. The first response was horror at the thought of 5,000 of "them" coming to Britain. When I expressed sympathy for the homeless islanders, the second person retorted: "I bet you wouldn't like it if they come to live on your estate!" Hardly sympathetic or supportive reactions. Do you think that if you had informed your readers of the full story of how and why the islanders have, in desperation, come to their area and of the illegal, cruel and vicious behaviour of the British Government, then there would be a great deal more local support for the islanders than there is at present, and that instead of such support "dissipating" it could become far greater? I'd welcome the islanders if they came to live on the estate where I live because I know what they have been put through and who is responsible for their tragedy. Many people don't. I hope that you will be able to write a follow up article for the local Guardian. I have a copy of John Pilger's documentary and you are welcome to borrow it if you think it would be useful. I asked you whether you had seen it - you didn't answer my question. The islanders need and deserve all the help they can get. I look forward to hearing from you. Best wishes, Richard. Sources: 1. John Pilger's recent article "Paradise cleansed" in the London Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/story/0,,1321671,00.html 2. BBC: Exile wins fresh housing battle: http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/3968197.stm

Harold Pinter - Nobel acceptance speech

Derek Lane

I wouldn't usually post the whole thing - takes up too much room - but Pinter's acceptance speech for the nobel literature prize was a brilliant speech - it sums up everything which is wrong with the US and UK foreign policy in the world, and should be read by everyone.

In 1958 I wrote the following: 'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.' I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false? Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost. I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did. Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me. The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.' In each case I had no further information. In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter. 'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light. I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C. In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends. 'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark. It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort. So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time. But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot. Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function. In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation. Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour. Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others. But as they died, she must die too. Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed. As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true. The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it. But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here. Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified. But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked. Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer. The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now. I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s. The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.' Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch. Innocent people, indeed, always suffer. Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?' Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said. As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply. I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.' The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution. The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated. The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador. I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships. Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright. The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed. But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened. The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.' It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US. The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain. What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up. The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people. We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London. Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks. Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television. The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves. Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things': And one morning all that was burning, one morning the bonfires leapt out of the earth devouring human beings and from then on fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on blood. Bandits with planes and Moors, bandits with finger-rings and duchesses, bandits with black friars spattering blessings came through the sky to kill children and the blood of children ran through the streets without fuss, like children's blood. Jackals that the jackals would despise stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out, vipers that the vipers would abominate. Face to face with you I have seen the blood of Spain tower like a tide to drown you in one wave of pride and knives. Treacherous generals: see my dead house, look at broken Spain: from every house burning metal flows instead of flowers from every socket of Spain Spain emerges and from every dead child a rifle with eyes and from every crime bullets are born which will one day find the bull's eye of your hearts. And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry speak of dreams and leaves and the great volcanoes of his native land. Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets! * Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians. I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources. The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right. The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it. Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish. I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man. 'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.' A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician. I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'. Where was the dead body found? Who found the dead body? Was the dead body dead when found? How was the dead body found? Who was the dead body? Who was the father or daughter or brother Or uncle or sister or mother or son Of the dead and abandoned body? Was the body dead when abandoned? Was the body abandoned? By whom had it been abandoned? Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey? What made you declare the dead body dead? Did you declare the dead body dead? How well did you know the dead body? How did you know the dead body was dead? Did you wash the dead body Did you close both its eyes Did you bury the body Did you leave it abandoned Did you kiss the dead body When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us. I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory. If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

Extended excerpt - what Ahmadinejad actually said

Derek Lane

If only western leaders could speak with such cohesion and intelligence. His one failing is that he didn't stand up to tell the world,'don't twist my words.' Perhaps he did not know they were doing it. I published the shorter except in October, pertaining to the part of the speech the BBC and others have corrupted, but this excerpt is in my opinion a great more illuminating.

[Members of the Iranian Academic Union and supporters of the Iranain Resistance display a caricature of Iranian mullahs' President Ahmadinejad with a nuclear bomb as a nose during a demonstration in Stockholm, Sweden. The demonstrators protested against Russia abstaining from the vote on Iran's nuclear program at the board of IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations.NCRI, October 28 ?] The following is an excerpt of remarks by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, mullahs? president, in a seminar in Tehran entitled ?WORLD WITHOUT ZIONISM? on October 26: ?We must see what the real story about Palestine is. Is the conflict in Palestine a war between the Jews, Muslims and non-Jews? Is it a conflict between the Jews and other religions? Is it a war between one country and other countries? Is it a war between one country and the Arab world? It is a dispute limited to Palestine territory? In my view, the answer to all these questions is negative. ?The creation of the occupying regime in Qods [Israel] is a strong action by the ruling arrogant (imperialist) world order against the world of Islam. There continues a historic war between the World Arrogance and the Islamic world, the roots of which go back hundreds of years ago. In this historic, the battleground has shifted repeatedly. For some time, the Muslims had the upper hand and advanced. The World Arrogance was on the retreat. Regrettably, the Islamic world has been on the retreat in the face of the World Arrogance in the past 300 years. Over the past 100 years, the last bastions of the Islamic world have collapsed. The World Arrogance turned the Zionist regime occupying Jerusalem into a staging-ground to dominate the Islamic world. This occupying country is in reality the staging-ground of the World Arrogance in the heart of the Islamic world. They have created a base, from where they can expand their rule over the entire Islamic world; it has no other purpose other than this. The war that is presently going on in Palestine is the frontline of the war of destiny between the Islamic world and the World Arrogance, which will determine the outcome of hundreds of years [of war] in Palestine. Today, as the representative of the Islamic nation, the people of Palestine are standing up to the World Arrogance. With God's blessing since the Palestinian nation turned to the Islamic struggle, objectives and atmosphere, and applied Islamic behavior and direction on its struggle, we are witness to successes and progress for the Palestinian nation everyday. The title of your meeting is indeed very valuable. Many sow the seeds of defeat and despair in this intense war between the Islamic world and the blasphemous front and hope to empty the hearts of the world of Islam. Such people wonder whether there would come a day when one would see a world without the United States and 'Zionism'. This slogan and goal is one which is attainable and could definitely be realized? Our nation remained steadfast. For the past 27 years, we have lived with a government that is not dependent on the United States. The Imam [Khomeini] said the domination of the West and the East must be ended. But weaklings who only saw the tip of their nose did not believe what he said. No one believed that some day we would see the collapse of the Soviet Empire. They used to say it is an iron-clad rule. But we saw its collapse in our life time. That regime collapse so dramatically that we must go to libraries to read about it as there are no signs of it left. Our dear Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini] ordered that the occupying regime in Jerusalem be wiped off the face of the earth. This was a very wise statement. The issue of Palestine is not one which we could compromise on?. Whoever accepts the existence of this entity has signed onto the defeat of the Islamic world. ?In his crusade against the World Arrogance, our dear Imam targeted the central and command base of the enemy, namely the occupying regime in Jerusalem. I have no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] which has started in dear Palestine and which we witness today all over the Islamic world will soon wipe this scourge of shame from the Islamic world. This is doable? For the past 50 years the United States had been trying to give legitimacy to Israel? Twenty-eight years ago, they took an important stride to this end. One country on the frontlines of the war, or Egypt, made the mistake of recognized the Jewish state. We hope it would rectify this error?. With the excuse of having cleared the Gaza Strip to show their good will, they want a group of Muslim nations to recognize this corrupt regime, and I am very hopeful and call on God that the Palestinian people and the dear Palestinian groups will be cautious of such sedition. The issue in Palestine is by no means finished. The Palestinian issue will only be resolved when all of Palestine comes under stringent Palestinian rule. When refugees will have returned to their homes? Of course, those who have come to this land from far away places to plunder it have no right to make a decision for the Palestinian nation. I am hopeful that just as the Palestinian nation continued its struggle for the past ten years, they will continue to keep their awareness and vigilance. The current period is going to be short-lived. If we put it behind us successfully, god willing, it will pave the way for the destruction and the downfall of the Zionist regime. I warn all heads of other Islamic states to beware of the sedition by Israel. If some, who are under pressure by the dominating powers, follow a misguided policy or are na�ve, or selfish or have earthly desires, recognize this regime (Israel), they should know that they would be burnt in the fire of the Islamic Ummah (Nation) and will bear an eternal stigma on their foreheads. Look at the world scene. Who are we facing? We must recognize the depth of the enemy's maliciousness, so as to keep ablaze our sacred hatred and vengeance?. In the streets of Tehran, terrorist groups were murdering the people. Now, they freely come to Congress and your government and you pay for them, while you are claiming to defend human rights."

[edit Dec 2005] I just found this - its a different translation to the line in question - illuminates the message a little better than even what is shown above:

Imam [Khomeini] said: 'This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.' This sentence is very wise. The issue of Palestine is not an issue on which we can compromise.

The regime that is occupying Jerusalem must be removed from history. That is a wise statement. Especially when taken in context with the rest of the speech (more can be found here), where we see this as a build-up showing the things that Imam prophecied have come true - the fall of USSR, the fall of Saddam, and then finally the fall of the regime in Jerusalem. Hope is a powerful thing - but the important question is: Did Iran orchestrate the fall of the USSR or Iraq? Of course, the answer is no - both, effectively, were done by the US. Why then are we led to believe that Iran will orchestrate this one? [end edit] [edit 12/06/06] Some great letter by David Sketchley to the BBC regarding the myth of that phrase 'wipe Israel off the map' which has now been enshrined in the minds of Westerners thanks to the misinformation of our corporate media. ----------------------------- Subject: Ahmadinejad say that Israel should be "wiped off the map" Dear Helen Boaden, I have just done a search on the BBC website using the words "wiped off the map". Out of 21 results over 3 pages, 15 articles refer to Iranian President Ahmadinejad and his "call" for Israel to be "wiped off the map". I would like to enquire where the BBC got the phrase "wiped off the map"? Considering the BBC has its own Farsi speaking journalists and translators one would presume that these would have translated Ahmadinejad's speech. Is this correct? Did this phrase emanate from Farsi translators working for the BBC or was it "lifted" from the NYT? ( http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran.html ) I ask this, you see, because MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), gives this as the correct translation: ""'Imam [Khomeini] said: 'This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.' This sentence is very wise. The issue of Palestine is not an issue on which we can compromise." http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP101305 This sentence comes immediately after 4 paragraphs which when taken together belie the BBC translaton. ""'When the dear Imam [Khomeini] said that [the Shah's] regime must go, and that we demand a world without dependent governments, many people who claimed to have political and other knowledge [asked], 'Is it possible [that the Shah�s regime can be toppled]?' "'That day, when Imam [Khomeini] began his movement, all the powers supported [the Shah's] corrupt regime&ldots; and said it was not possible. However, our nation stood firm, and by now we have, for 27 years, been living without a government dependent on America. Imam [Khomeni] said: 'The rule of the East [U.S.S.R.] and of the West [U.S.] should be ended.' But the weak people who saw only the tiny world near them did not believe it. "'Nobody believed that we would one day witness the collapse of the Eastern Imperialism [i.e. the U.S.S.R], and said it was an iron regime. But in our short lifetime we have witnessed how this regime collapsed in such a way that we must look for it in libraries, and we can find no literature about it. "'Imam [Khomeini] said that Saddam [Hussein] must go, and that he would be humiliated in a way that was unprecedented. And what do you see today? A man who, 10 years ago, spoke as proudly as if he would live for eternity is today chained by the feet, and is now being tried in his own country... " As you can see from this translation the previous paragraphs talked about various regimes: the Shah's regime, the Communist regime in USSR, and Saddam Hussein, all examples of apparently invincible regimes that ceased to exist. They weren't "wiped off the map" (although the US is giving it a good shot in Iraq!) University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole also translated the phrase and argued in a private, off-the-record email group that the "wiped off the map" translation was wrong: "I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people. But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of [Ayatollah] Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks." Cole then goes on to state: "The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time. Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time." http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html As you can see both the MEMRI translation and Juan Cole's are virtually identical and make no mention of Israel being "wiped off the map". Iranian officials have also challenged the translation: Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki during a Feb. news conference: "Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map." "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime." http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=perelman20060223131 Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh on CNN on 02 April 2006: "BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel? SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no. But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or we they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so." http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/02/le.01.html" I accept that translations are a tricky business. I live in Spain and translate all the time. But there is no denying that those with political agendas can selectively choose translations to obscure the big picture and manipulate the media. Hopefully the BBC can understand that they should be extra careful with translations pushed by those who are behind the White House agenda to dishonestly paint the Iranian government as irrational, a blatant attempt at "shaping" public opinion in order to fast-track us to war. I insist that the BBC correct the translations in all the relevant articles and refrain from using blatant propaganda in the future. The speech in Persian is here: http://www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm Thank you for taking the time to read this mail. I would be interested to hear your remarks before I make an official complaint to the BBC. Yours Sincerely, David Sketchley Seville, Spain ------------------------------------------------------- To which the BBC responded: Dear Mr Sketchley Thank you for your message regarding the translation of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments. We apologise for the delay in responding, but we wanted to make inquiries with our BBC monitors and with the Persian section of the World Service. We have also taken note of a recent ruling on this issue by the BBC Governors' programme complaints committee. The general consensus is that the expression used by the Iranian president is not easily translatable verbatim into English. Various different versions have been offered. The BBC monitor translated it as 'Our dear Imam (Khomeini) has said that the Qods-occupying regime (Israel) should be wiped off the map of the world'. The MEMRI translation was 'The regime that is occupying Qods must be eliminated from the pages of history. The Al Jazeera online version was 'As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map'. It is hard to establish which, if any, of these translations is entirely accurate. What is clear is that, in this highly rhetorical speech, the essence of what the president was saying was that Israel should cease to exist as a state. The fact that the phrase was itself a quotation from Ayatollah Khomeini does not, in our opinion, change the sense of the speech. Mr Ahmadinejad reinforces the point when he goes on to say: 'The government that runs all of Palestine should belong to the Palestinian nation. The refugees should return and there should be free elections .. Of course those who have come from distant counties to loot the country will have no right to decide for Palestine.' With best wishes The BBC News website ------------------------------------------ To which David Sketchley responded: I am not satisfied with this response as I have not received an answer to my questions: 1. I would like to enquire where the BBC got the phrase "wiped off the map"? Considering the BBC has its own Farsi speaking journalists and translators one would presume that these would have translated Ahmadinejad's speech. Is this correct? Did this phrase emanate from Farsi translators working for the BBC or was it "lifted" from the NYT? ( http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran.html?ex=1147060800&en=b576831d71ce0c6a&ei=5070 ). The reply I received has confirmed my suspicions that the BBC only referred the speech to its Persian monitor/translator after receiving complaints about the phrase "wiped off the map" while it originally used the New York Times translation but I require a definitive answer please. Is this so? 2. The reply states "We have also taken note of a recent ruling on this issue by the BBC Governors' programme complaints committee." There is no information on this ruling nor was a link given so that I can study it. Please could you provide me with a copy or a link to where I can read the ruling. How can you possibly refer to a ruling and then not give any information on that ruling? 3. There is no reference in the reply to Prof Juan Cole's translation ("The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time. Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time." http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html ). Why not? For your information Juan Cole is the Richard Hudson Research Professor of History and professor in the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan. His current research interests focus on Shiite Islam in Iraq and Iran and "jihadi" or "sacred-war" themes within contemporary radical Islamic movements such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Cole speaks Arabic, Urdu and Persian. He finished his master's degree at the American University in Cairo and spent a year working for a newspaper in Beirut, mainly translating Arabic newswire stories into English. Why do you dismiss his translation without mention? 4. You state " "It is hard to establish which, if any, of these translations is entirely accurate." and then "What is clear is that, in this highly rhetorical speech, the essence of what the president was saying was that Israel should cease to exist as a state." What complete nonsense. How can the BBC claim to know what Ahmadinejad meant? Do the BBC somehow know what Ahmadinejad is thinking? If its hard to estabish the accuracy of a translation how on earth can the BBC then interpret the "essence" of Ahmadinejad's words in the way they do, especially when members of the Iranian "regime" have actually explained the "essence" in a completely different way? Where is the balance and fairness? Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki during a Feb. news conference: "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned. How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime" http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=perelman20060223131 An example: Does the US recognise the "regime" in Cuba? No. Would it like the "regime" in Cuba to cease to exist? Of course. Does this mean the US wants to see Cuba "wiped off the map"? Of course not, although there is no doubt it would like to see Castro and his "regime" "wiped off the map"! If he did not say �wiped off the face of the map� then he did not say that. If he said �vanish from the page of time� then he did say that. There is a difference in connotation, and the BBC is being lazy in not examining the issue. And also highly irresponsible, since the quotation as it stands suggests a military action that is nowhere implied in the original. 5. In your reply you state "The BBC monitor translated it as 'Our dear Imam (Khomeini) has said that the Qods-occupying regime (Israel) should be wiped off the map of the world'". Why then was this not quoted in full in all the BBC articles mentioning this quote at the time? Nowhere does any article on the BBC website state that this was the BBC translation, we only see the 4-word phrase "wiped off the map". On the other hand the NYT states quite clearly under the heading: �This is a translation, by Nazila Fathi in The New York Times Tehran bureau, of the October 26 speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to an Islamic Student Associations conference on "The World Without Zionism." The conference was held in Tehran, at the Interior Ministry. The text of the speech was posted online, in Persian, by the Iranian Student News Agency (www.isnagency.com). Bracketed explanatory material is from Ms. Fathi.� There was also no mention at the time in any article on the BBC website that the BBC Persian monitors had translated this phrase and speech, and the length of time taken to respond to my letter and the wording of that reply �We apologise for the delay in responding, but we wanted to make inquiries with our BBC monitors and with the Persian section of the World Service.� implies that they hadn't. In fact, based on the evidence, there is no doubt that the BBC used this phrase after taking it from the New York Times, and if this is so it is a scandal of the highest order. In the interests of transparency, the BBC should state in any and all its articles either when the BBC has itself translated material from other languages or when the BBC uses other peoples translations. 6. In the article linked here �Annan 'dismayed' by Iran remarks� ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4384024.stm ) the BBC stated: �Mr Ahmadinejad made his comments at a conference on Wednesday in Tehran entitled The World without Zionism. Referring to Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."� Of course this quote is a complete fabrication. As the BBC has itself confirmed nowhere does Ahmadinejad refer to Israel by name. 7. The translations of other so-called (by the BBC) �threats� are now also called into doubt: Israel condemns Iranian threats Saturday, 15 April 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4912198.stm (the word �threats� was used by Shimon Peres and consequently should have appeared in the title in quotation marks - yet another acceptance as fact of something someone has said) In the above article the BBC states: �The Iranian president's outspoken declarations, questioning whether the Holocaust happened and predicting Israel's destruction, have been condemned around the world. But he has not tempered his comments, on Friday declaring: "The Zionist regime is an injustice and by its very nature a permanent threat. "Whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated." "[It] is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm," he added� I will ask once again: Was this speech (and therefore these direct quotes) translated from the Persian by the BBC? I don�t believe this to be so. Notice how the NYT translation and the BBC's are exactly the same: NYT: "The Zionist regime is an injustice and by its very nature a permanent threat," Mr. Ahmadinejad said during his speech at the conference. "Whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated." He referred to Israel as a "rotten, dried tree" that would collapse in "one storm." Original here (pay to view): http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50C15FB3D5B0C768DDDAD0894DE404482 Copy here: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/tree.htm� This translation by the NYT was done by exactly the same individual who translated the Israel to be "wiped off the map" phrase, one Nazila Fathi of The New York Times Tehran bureau. However the official translation of this speech provided by IRNA says this: �Peace and harmonious relations can only be based on towhid, human dignity and justice. Oppressions and aggressions are not compatible with human dignity and justice. The Zionist regime is a clear example of oppression and its fundamental nature represents actual and permanent threat. The very purpose behind the establishment of this regime was to put in place a permanent threat in the region. Therefore, the continued existence of this regime is premised on the persistence of this threat. It will have no existence without threat and aggression and it is not inherently capable to survive in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility. Even if it manages to remain in one square meter of the Palestinian land, it will continue to be a threat to the region. "Take a good look at the bullying powers of the world. When it comes to supporting the Zionist regime, they recognize no red line and boundaries for justice, human rights and human dignity. The usurper Zionist regime is the meeting point of the injustices and brutalities of the corrupt bullying powers. "Only a government chosen by the people can resolve the problem of Palestine and the people of the region. The right to govern belongs to all people of Palestine and they must decide the governing model of their choice and elect their own officials. "For this purpose, there must be an opportunity for all genuine Palestinians; be they Muslims, Christians, or Jews, residing in Palestine or in Diaspora, to participate in a referendum to decide the political system of their choice and elect their leaders. "In other words, the only rational way which is compatible with the generally recognized international norms is holding of a referendum for all genuine Palestinians. "The supporters of the Zionist regime prefer to remain silent in face of this reasonable proposition. But I tell them that regardless of what they desire, the Zionist regime is falling apart. "The young tree of resistance in Palestine is blooming and blooms of faith and desire for freedom are flowering. "The Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm. Today even the inhabitants of the occupied Palestine, especially the African and Asian settlers are living in ain, poverty and discontent. "I tell the governments supporting the Zionist regime to open the doors to the prisons in the occupied Palestine and allow the refugees and displaced Palestinians to return to their homeland and summon the usurpers of the Palestinian lands. "If you still consider yourself indebted to them, then find a proper place for them in your own territories, if not call upon them to return to their countries of origin to live like their forefathers.�http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-22/0604141529205548.htm So both the BBC and the NYT have EXACTLY the same translation and both take the phrase �The Zionist regime is an injustice and by its very nature a permanent threat� out of any context, and then use the word �eliminated� thus contriving to present the 3 phrases (all taken out of context) as a �threat� while on reading the official translation with the everything in context one sees quite clearly there is no threat at all. This is an outrageous attempt to mislead the public. 8. In your reply you make no reference whatsoever to the context of the speech in which I maintain there has been a mistranslation. The context of the speech talks about the different regimes that ceased to exist, in fact one of them, the USSR, has ceased to exist and has literally been wiped from the map. In fact wasn�t one of the stated reasons given by both Bush and Blair for the invasion of Iraq (after the WMD failed to materialise) �regime change�? Didn�t both Bush and Blair want to see Saddam�s "regime" cease to exist? The Downing Street Memo states: �When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April,� states the paper, �he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.� �John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action� �Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record.� �The attorney-general made his position clear, telling the meeting that �the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action�. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1592724,00.html So the desire for regime change through military action appears for the BBC then not to be such a great deal when its the US/UK who want it and do it, (both countries who have used aggressive force against other countries withn the last 50 years), but when it is mentioned by Iran, (without any reference to military action) a country that has attacked no one for over 250 years, then it is considered by the BBC to be a dire, unnacceptable "threat"? What amazing hypocrisy. I would like a full response to my complaint point by point 1-8. I am fully prepared to take this complaint to the BBC Governors if I do not receive a satisfactory explanation within the 10 day timescale � I am still waiting for a response to another official complaint made nearly 3 weeks ago on 05 May 2006 to which I have not yet received so much as an acknowledgement. Yours Sincerely, David Sketchley Seville, Spain --------------------------------------------- More on this topic, and more emails sent to the BBC can be found at MediaLens [end edit] [further edit 14/06/06] Jonathon Steele's article in the Guardian (posted on the above link at Medialens) which sets out much the same research David Sketchley has provided, was countered by yet another article in the NYT a few days later. After some more research, Steele wrote another article, which can be found here An excerpt follows, which shows, perhaps, the extraordinary reluctance of the BBC to set their record straight, simply because the issue is contentious, perhaps. Or, to phrase it differently, they would lose too much face. "Finally we come to the BBC monitoring service which every day puts out hundreds of highly respected English translations of broadcasts from all round the globe to their subscribers - mainly governments, intelligence services, thinktanks and other specialists. I approached them this week about the controversy and a spokesperson for the monitoring service's marketing unit, who did not want his name used, told me their original version of the Ahmadinejad quote was "eliminated from the map of the world". As a result of my inquiry and the controversy generated, they had gone back to the native Farsi-speakers who had translated the speech from a voice recording made available by Iranian TV on October 29 2005. Here is what the spokesman told me about the "off the map" section: "The monitor has checked again. It's a difficult expression to translate. They're under time pressure to produce a translation quickly and they were searching for the right phrase. With more time to reflect they would say the translation should be "eliminated from the page of history". Would the BBC put out a correction, given that the issue had become so controversial, I asked. "It would be a long time after the original version", came the reply. I interpret that as "probably not", but let's see." - Jonathon Steele - the Guardian from The Guardian [end edit]

Australia and human rights record regarding indigenous Australians

Derek Lane

Since John Howard came into power in Australia in 1995 his government has notched up more incursions against United Nations conventions and breaches of international law than any other prime minister of Australia. Whilst most before Howard were no exemplary models of enlightened leadership, for the values of truth, justice, freedom etc, Howard has shown himself to be poisonous in his racism and xenophobia, against all non-white parts of the country - most particularly aborigines (second to that being his latest, with widespread villification of the large muslim community of Australia). He has single-handedly brought down most of the tentative and fragile steps towards a fairer country regarding the aboriginal nations of Australia, leaving the high court cases of Mabo and Wik in tatters, detroying Atsic - the only government body representative of indigenous Australians, and a fundamental denial of blame or responsibility towards aborigines has persistently reverberated from his lips. He has told them (and other racial minorities) that assimiliation is the key - when you walk like me, talk like me, act like me, then perhaps we can sit down and talk. Here is what the UN meeting earlier this year had to say on the issue - an article from ENIAR: Australia?s Human Rights Record

Australia has been found guilty by a United Nations body of practising racial discrimination against its own citizens. Australia has agreed to be bound by all major international human rights Conventions and has taken a high profile on promoting human rights internationally - especially in opposing apartheid in South Africa. But both national and international bodies are now saying that Australia is itself guilty of fundamental human rights breaches in its treatment of its indigenous citizens. The UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) exists to monitor and end racial discrimination. It considers reports by Governments on racial discrimination in their countries and follows up urgent cases of racial discrimination brought to its notice. On 1-2 March 2005, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination met with the Australian Government in Geneva to assess the Government's performance of obligations under the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). In its concluding comments released on 11 March 2005, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, raised serious concerns about a number of issues in Australia. In particular, the Committee expressed concern about the abolishment of ATSIC; the practical barriers Indigenous peoples face in succeeding in claims for native title; the continuing over-representation of Indigenous peoples in prisons; and the extreme inequities between Indigenous peoples and others in the areas of employment, housing, health education and income. The UN Committee called on the Australian Government to work towards a meaningful reconciliation and to properly address the issues of the Stolen Generation. In 1999, the CERD Committee placed Australia on its agenda of urgent business, mainly because of the Government?s 1998 amendments to the 1993 Native Title Act (see separate information sheet on Native Title). On 18 March 1999 at its 54th session CERD brought down highly damaging findings against the Australian Government - its first report critical of a Western country. The Committee found that: the 1998 Native Title amendments were racially discriminatory, because they put limitations on the rights of indigenous people which did not apply to other citizens they did not comply with Australia?s international obligations they upset the delicate balance of the 1993 act and created certainty for Federal and State governments and third parties [ie pastoralists and miners] at the expense of indigenous peoples. The Committee pointed out that while the purpose of the 1993 Act was to recognise and protect native title, the 1998 amendments were about extinguishing and reducing indigenous rights and interests. It also noted that Aboriginal people had not been involved in drafting the amendments. CERD called on Australia to suspend the amendments and enter into full consultations with indigenous people about a way forward. On 19 August 1999 at its 55th session, after considering the Australian Government?s defence of their actions, CERD reaffirmed its March decision. The Committee expressed ?serious concern? that Australia was going backwards as regards indigenous land rights. For press clippings covering these issues visit our United Nations section of ENIAR Further reading and links: Copies of the NGO 2005 reports are available at: rights Australia Information about the UN CERD Committee and Australia's government reports is available on the HREOC website at: human rights A copy of the UN CERD Committee's concluding Observations on Australia is available on the HREOC website at: human rights II

Nuclear Power - why is everyone talking like its a done deal?

Derek Lane

The talk in the media at the moment seems to be leaning further and further towards nuclear energy as a suitable alternative to the current carbon dioxide unfriendly methods of energy production. The trouble seems to be that the wrong questions are being presented - that of 'convince me', and 'is it economically viable?' It also seems that for all the arguments pro and anti-nuclear, no one seems to be checking the facts we have been presented (tenuous as they are) in favour of nuclear energy. Firstly, the major one that I can see, is that we are told that nuclear power is in accordance with the protocol on cutting greenhouse emissions, since it does not produce carbon dioxide as a result of energy production. This is a flawed statement, and since we are provided with just this one glimmer of hope on the nuclear horizon - that it is friendly to the environment in terms of global warming - whilst steadfastly ignoring the complex and as yet unresolved issues of nuclear waste and decommissioning of reactors past their used by date, this is the problem we must focus on in order to shed light on the truth. Nuclear power does not - it is true - produce carbon dioxide as a result of fission. It does however, produce it in mining, refining, building of reactors, and most importantly, in the cooling of the chambers (in the day-to-day production of nuclear energy, in other words). That is, carbon dioxide is used in the reactor to cool it periodically, presumably to avoid melt-down. So while it is not a producer of CO2, it needs CO2 in order to functin correctly. The nuclear plant may not manufacture it, but someone must. The atmosphere, so far as I am aware, is not particular about where the CO2 comes from, that it receives it is all that matters. Here is the basic process:

"Nuclear power stations work in pretty much the same way as fossil fuel-burning stations, except that a "chain reaction" inside a nuclear reactor makes the heat instead. The reactor uses Uranium rods as fuel, and the heat is generated by nuclear fission. Neutrons smash into the nucleus of the uranium atoms, which split roughly in half and release energy in the form of heat. Carbon dioxide gas is pumped through the reactor to take the heat away, and the hot gas then heats water to make steam. The steam drives turbines which drive generators. Modern nuclear power stations use the same type of turbines and generators as conventional power stations."[from darvill.com]

So nuclear power, which is time and energy intensive for production, not a renewable resource, which produces toxic waste that lingers for thousands of years afterwards, and which is not economically viable 'under its own steam', is not a viable answer to a possible energy crisis, at least for the UK. We must look elsewhere, and I have taken the liberty to do so. We have been told in the same breath that other alternative energy sources (wind power, hydro-electricity, solar etc), whilst useful cannot provide the resources necessary to power the whole country. I didn't look at wind-power; I can see possible issues with it. Lack of wind is something that many have put forth as a reason, this does not in reality relate to the truth regarding the UK and its wind - that is, it is a very windy country, and highly unlikely to be lacking in such a resource at any point. Highly unlikely, but not impossible. And the simple fact is, though I personally like to see wind turbines about the country, many do not. They do take up a significant amount of space of course, and free space is something that the UK is perhaps a little short on. Solar could be, for the same reasons (space, shortages of energy source) a similiar problem. Then there is hydro-electricity. I looked at the statistics, first of all. Norway, Iceland, Canada, Austria and parts of the middle-east produce a large percentage of their national grid energy from hydro-electricity. Most of them above 60%, Canada above 90%. Hydro-electricity promises low running costs and maintenance, and can be easily switched on or off at will, to meet the needs of energy consumption, so little is wasted. The potential problems with hydro-electricity are lack of water and environmental concerns about damming rivers etc. These are both real concerns, perhaps not so in places listed above where large rivers and alpine areas ensure high water supplies all years round. The environmental concerns are not small either - damming even a small valley can cause irreparable damage to not just that valley, but the surrounding areas and the continuation of the river. So what about tidal hydro-electricity, which relies on the rise and fall of the tides, quite steep in many parts of Britain? A better option, but [from wikipedia],

"The energy extracted from water depends not only on the volume but on the difference in height between the source and the water's outflow. This height difference is called the head. The amount of potential energy in water is directly proportional to the head."

Tidal fluctuations will obviously have a lower head than that coming from a dam made specifically for that purpose, which results in less energy production than a hydroelectric station made inland by the channeling and damming of rivers. This is of course a better option, and the UK has rivers in every part of the country which could be utilised in this way, but it is not perfect. It relies still [partly] on the flow of the river, and may not produce energy in the same quantities as the more conventional methods of energy production, nuclear included, but the UK has the second highest tidal range in the world, so its a good start. I had another think about this - I thought, 'If hydro-electricity can be made from tidal fluctuations, surely this could be put offshore and the flow and size not restricted in the way it might be on-shore, and the environmental concerns would be greatly lessened by such a self contained unit.' I went looking, and found this site: Tidal Electric, which says

"The placement of the impoundment offshore, rather than using the conventional ?barrage?[iv] approach, eliminates environmental and economic problems that have prevented the deployment of commercial-scale tidal power plants."

Tidal Electric, it seems, have already thought of such things, and are doing it in the UK already. They estimate 6000MW of energy production from tidal energy if harnessed from the areas with a large head. I am unable at the moment to locate exact figures of what electricity production for the UK currently stands at, but I will add this information in when I find it. I have emailed Tidal Electric, asking them for more detail on this method - I will post the response and details when I have them.

GWB threatens to bomb AlJazeera

Derek Lane

The BBC article tells us that

"BBC News website world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds said: "An attack on al-Jazeera would also have been an attack on Qatar, where the US military has its Middle East headquarters. So the possibility has to be considered that Mr Bush was in fact making some kind of joke and that this was not a serious proposition." "

But the article appearing on NewsNight with Jeremy Paxman last night, with an interview between the Editor in Chief of AlJazeera and Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington seemed to fairly clearly show that the possibility of such a 'joke' is highly unlikely. Gaffney said that he had no idea if previous bombing of Aljazeera sites in Afghanistan and Iraq were accidents or intentional, but that if he was told they were accidents they probably were. He went on to say that regardless of that, Aljazeera was working for the enemy, and that in that regard they should be regarded as an 'arm of the enemy combatants'. In other words, they should expect to be bombed because - as Paxman pointed out - the US does not like their views. This is a completely predictable response from the WhiteHouse, but one that nevertheless is astounding and worrying. AlJazeera - for those who have not read or watched it - is a professional news organisation founded independently in the middle-east. It perhaps attracts as much criticism from governments of the middle-east as it does in the West, the reason being that it reports everything. When looking for an unbiased view of news events from the middle-east, I regularly search the online version of this media source. Its reporting style is similiar to the BBC, without the vested interest in portraying western governments in a squeaky clean light. It does not publish stories of hearsay, and always publishes the facts regardless of who it incriminates. Sometimes it is the West, sometimes it is the middle east. It is not perfect - no news is, but it is certainly professional. The fact that the UK government has threatened British news outlets with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act (as opposed to the usual method of court injuntions) if they release the leaked documents goes a good way to proving the UK's complicity with this event. Innocent men do not have to cover their tracks. It certainly establishes a precedent in the USUK war on civil liberties, when at least one of them is prepared to murder citizens who speak out (however professionally) against their motives and actions. If such an attack were allowed, or indeed if it comes to light that definite proof of the other bombings already rained upon AlJazeera studios in Afghanistan and Iraq were planned and not accidental (aside from that which already exists, namely, despite clearly providing co-ordinates for their position and painting their position on their roof tops, they have been bombed by US Airforce), it might just be the final nail in the coffin of 'freedom and democracy' in the West. Related story: current news

Australian journalism and the stranglehold of workplace agreements

Derek Lane

Australian journalism and the stranglehold of workplace agreements Information from Making agreements - gov.au

"the agreement passes the no-disadvantage test, that is, its certification would not result, on balance, in a reduction in the overall terms and conditions of employment of employees covered by the agreement when compared with the relevant award, or designated award, and laws the Commission considers relevant; the agreement has the genuine approval of a majority of employees who would be covered by it;"

See how just this one passage from the AWA rules conflicts/compares with one person's testimony regarding working under these conditions:

"As an employee of a major regional newspaper group, getting a full-time job as a Journalist in 2003 was conditional on signing an AWA, there was no option of being under award offered. Under the AWA the following occurred: NO penalty rates for evenings, long shifts, extra shifts, overtime or working public holidays -- although if Good Friday or Xmas Day were rostered on there was an automatic Day in Lieu accrued. I worked ANZAC Days, Boxing Days, Australia Days etc, with no overtime, penalty rates of time in lieu accrued. Instead of penalty rates, roughly $1,500 was added onto the yearly base salary for my grade, I was told this was an "estimate" of what I'd lost in penalty rates being under AWA instead od award. Having been on award as a cadet, I knew that was crap -- that is a fraction of what penalty rates would have added to the wage. Overtime worked on an hour-for hour basis -- each hour of overtime equal to one hour accrued time in lieu IF APPROVED (not often!). Under penalty rates, overtime is either time & a half (paid) or double time after the first two/three hours. Under AWA job description is widened in employer favour, allowing journalists to be told to do photographer, administrative, ad sales, or other work as directed -- they do not get the conditions attached to these roles however. Under AWA most newsroom employees were working between five and ten unclaimable overtime hours week in, week out. Sometimes I worked up to 20 (a lot of them at home after hours and weekends), to be able to get the expected work done to an acceptable standard. Under the AWA we were required to have a fully insured, registered vehicle to go out on stories (there only being enough staff cars for the photographers, management, ad dept and one extra for a reporter on most days) -- but we were discouraged EXPLICITLY from claiming our private vehicle use, though if one COULD it was worth 63 cents per km, taxable.. The AWA forbade strikes or other industrial action, even for unionised employees under AWA. No holiday leave loading (because there are no foregone penalty rates). No paid rest breaks. The old "fifteen minute employer-paid break for each four hours worked" is gone, and lunch must be noted as taken even if one worked right through it, or face having worked unauthorised overtime (which is not granted)... Compassionate leave (two days only) and carer leave is deducted from the employees own sick leave or accrued holiday leave (can be extended beyond what's in the AWA with bosses permission, as the AWA only provided for a limited time) -- doctor's certificates for personal sick leave mandatory on request. (It depended on the employee and how the boss felt about them). Even one day's sick leave MAY be disputed (and taken out of time in lieu rather than sick leave), though this didn't happen to me, it happened to others. Total of seven days paid sick leave each year. No paid maternity leave for an employee under AWA Permission must be gained from the boss for ANY writing, reporting etc done freelance outside work hours for any other organisation. In other words -- under contract they legally OWNED my journalistic abilities 24/7 for the duration of the contract, and one could only write elsewhere if one had permission (verbal or written). My contract was for two years, with a review at 12 months. During the two year period I was given two advances in grading. When my contract finished I declined to renew (that is, I quit when my contract came due). I am still on the books as a casual (though getting very little work, I am not under contract, and casuals are paid a flat rate of the 2b grading hourly rate with casual loading...it will be interesting to see if this changes. Freelancers are paid less than the award rate already, and again, there has been no contract involved. Under AWA even quitting full time jobs can be harder -- in ours, for each year of service, a week of notice is required. For long term employees, this makes it difficult to line up another job, because the new employer has to wait out your notice before you can start. The quitting tradition used to be an employee had to give the same period of notice as their pay period -- a month for salary workers, a fortnight or a week for wage earners, depending on the pay period. Let's hope Kim Beazely comes thru and DOES get in and tear up the "work Choices" laws -- it ain't work choices, it's wage slavery. AWAs are demeaning, dispiriting, and leave workers ripped off in EVERY way. AWAs seem to make it better for management (who under THEIR contracts get plenty of perks, and trips away to places to talk about how they can manage, and bonuses, and incentives and much better hours and conditions)."

The above relates to a newspaper group in Australia, but on good authority, this passage:

"Permission must be gained from the boss for ANY writing, reporting etc done freelance outside work hours for any other organisation. In other words -- under contract they legally OWNED my journalistic abilities 24/7 for the duration of the contract, and one could only write elsewhere if one had permission (verbal or written)."

...relates also to at least one television media channel that I know of. Given that the television station in question also enforces a brand of objectivism or impartiality to its reporting style that means 10 words spoken in deference of the opposition (or against the elected government) must be backed up with 10 words in deference of the elected government, in reality it shows not impartiality, but a genuine manipulation of the truth. What it boils down to is that old Mary Poppins phrase, 'if you can't say something nice...'. Because when such events occur in rapid succession such as a) the introduction of an ugly piece of legislation named 'Anti-Terror' which represents a real deterioration of human and civil rights for the public, b) the introduction of labour laws that will set the country back to the turn of the last century in terms of fairness and labour reforms and c) the introduction of legislation that approves a nuclear waste dump for the centre of Australia, this news corporation can cover, at best, only 1.5 of the news accurately, unless it can dig up some 'good news' relating to things John Howard has done; a challenge I put to any honest person to be forthcoming with. On discovering these pieces of information about the nature of [a small part of] the media in Australia, I did a little further digging and discovered that investigative journalism is dead in Australia, the train of logic being put thus;

"Newspapers don't want to employ investigative reporters anymore because they might work on a story for 3 months and come up empty-handed. For newspapers, it's not cost-effective. Much better to employ 'columnists' to write about their shitty weeks/boring lives!!"

Economically, this makes some sense, on the surface. But as I thought about it, and discussed it, I came to the conclusion that it makes sense only in a sophistic way. That is, the basic premise is flawed; that there are no journalists out there who would be prepared to get such work done for very minimal pay. I am no journalist, but I know a few, and I believe they would be interested in such a role if offered it. The very trend of the media at this point suggests that such action is being taken, to a greater or lesser extent, elsewhere than Australia. Several prominent news sources regularly cite bloggers - unpaid citizens (journalists or otherwise), who put their spare time into rooting out the truth. Not just for low pay, I must stress, but for no pay. Many times they do not even receive specific accolades in the stories written for mainstream papers which use the information they have provided. It is not only a flawed form of logic to suggest that it is not cost-effective, it is about as believable as the type of one-liners we have grown used to hearing (and rejecting) regarding governmental position and reasons for invading other countries. The money/economy line seems the lesser of two evils, that is; can't afford it, or don't want the things it may give. The former excuse is one people can readily understand, after all, we have been fed this line for a very long time now - money makes the world go around and all that. But the fact is, with so many hooking into to web these days, the latter option is probably a reality, since even a beleaguered media company (are there such things?) can afford to pa nothing for a story - or at the most a few checks on the reputation of the blogger. There seems to be 2 elements in play here. The first is keeping journalists under the thumb; if it becomes clear that any bonus at all (monetary) is at the behest of the employer and not a right, journalists will keep their heads down and work hard to please their bosses. And if they are dissatisfied with work conditions, or what they are and are not allowed to report drives them to want to speak about it at either other news sources, or perhaps their own private blog, they need first to seek permission of such intention, and receive approval. If they go ahead with their intentions without notifying the appropriate people, they could face losing their jobs. Hardly a free media then - even on the surface this one seems irrevocably tarnished. Never mind the Propaganda Model; what lays beneath the surface, in the case of Australian journalism you could become 'radioactive' by the simple act of biting the hand that feeds you.

Supreme Crimes

Derek Lane

With all the recent fuss regarding Falluja and chemical/incendiary weapons being used against civilians almost a year ago, it was perhaps the thoughts of many that the US (and other allied forces) couldn't possibly escape from such an obvious abuse of such chemicals on citizens of Iraq. But as someone at Medialens pointed out not so long ago, its their ball, and their game, and they can change the rules or go home any time they want. The point it, the myriad bloggers and concerned citizens of so many countries seem to have been trying to make the sensible and factual point that WP is a chemical weapon, the chemical weapons convention is one that the US is a signatory of, and that chemical weapons are banned for use on people - civilian or otherwise. That according to the chemical reactions that occur as a result of the use of white phosphorus it is not just an incendiary weapon, but a chemical one too. These facts (unlike the US Armed forces) have been supported by MSDSs, by biochemists, and the laws backed up by human right lawyers in the States. But it is all to no (or very little) avail; they are rules which the US decides, they can be changed, they can be manipulated, they can be ignored. And it looks like this is what is happening. True, the journalists of the West have a responsibility which it seems they are systematically shirking, either through ignorance, or belligerence, or a combination of both. Or, their jobs are on the line if they bend from the military perspective by so much as a degree. It doesn't take a lot to prove the anti WP case - as one blogger pointed out - 'it melts the fucking skin off babies - isn't that enough?' But for journalists and their objective [replace as you like with 'militarily subjective'] reporting, it is not. The latest travesty of opinion from the academics seems to be that there 'appears to be this notion in some circles that war is clean - it is not', as if this somehow negates any atrocity done in the name of the West. It does not. Especially when the West drummed whatever menial support they really had for the Iraq invasion by insisting that Saddam was a tyrant, because he used chemical weapons on his own people. Actually, he didn't - he used it on Kurds. Saddam Hussein is not a Kurd, any more than US soldiers are Iraqi. Which is all the more reason why the US led invasion had no right to be employing the use of such chemical weapons in the 'liberation' of the Iraqis from such a tyrant. But it will probably come to naught, and if it doesn't, if someone has to pay, you can bet it will be someone insignificant - a worthless scapegoat. Make an army the size of the US army, fill it with outside allies (plus Iraqi troops and police trained by the US), and it is very easy to claim that you did not have control of this or that military action. No one in charge ever takes the brunt of the blame, not when the legal guidelines are used as the prerequisite for charges and convictions laid. Others have been pointed out that regardless of what happened in Falluja (and you can also guarantee that for what we now know of Falluja there is probably hundreds of other cases similiar or the same in Iraq that we don't know, and never will. It is the nature of lies; if you do it enough you will be caught, but you won't be caught on all your lies), the supreme crime still stands, that of the crime of aggression against another country. The crime that saw many men hanged following the Nureburg trials, which set the precedent. Here are the rules regarding crimes against peace from Internation Law,

"(a) The "territorial integrity" rule means that it is a crime of aggression to use armed force with intent permanently to deprive a state of any part of parts of its territory, not excluding territories for the foreign affairs of which it is responsible; (b) The "political independence" rule means that it is a crime of aggression to use armed force with intent to deprive a state of the entirety of one or more of the prerequisites of statehood, namely: defined territory, permanent population, constitutionally independent government and the means of conducting relations with other States; (c) The "sovereignty" rule means that it is a crime of aggression to use armed force with intent to overthrow the government of a state or to impede its freedom to act unhindered, as it sees fit, throughout its jurisdiction."

Part (c) of course, was directly part of at least Bush and Howard's push for war; Blair's push consisted more basely on the lie of WMD, which regardless of its reality still constituted a crime of aggression. That each country which took part as allied forces (disregarding the US which has stockpiles of all weapons generally regarded as WMD, chemical, biological and nuclear) possessed WMD themselves, they must either fully endorse attacks on their own soil based on these facts or reject outright any such aggression. Instead, they have done neither. The supreme crime is the one of which all government parties are guilty; as in the Nuremburg trials it should not be some nameless person/people who take the blame when all is said and done, but the leaders who began these invasions.

Terror suspects in Australian Nuclear Plot - fact or fiction?

Derek Lane

See the article on police states and dictatorships, as well as the links to terrorist plots on Sydney's nuclear reactor in Current News for more detail. Following on from the article I wrote which showed (among other things) the method used by the Australian government and mainstream media to introduce the Anti-terror (anti- human-rights) legislation, and the workplace legislation which threatens to remove the last elements of the dwindling rights of Australians by posing an 'imminent terrorist threat' to the Australian public, the latest in the saga is the continued obfuscation of the facts regarding the men who were arrested on the shakey grounds of the new legislation. Based on the articles shown in the current news sections, all the current media fuss being projected from Australia on the subject seem to be focussing not on the charges from which they hope to convict the men, namely, the highly questionable new Anti-Terror charge of 'belonging to a terrorist organisation' - which carries a penalty of 10 years, but that of the alleged plotting by 3 of the 18 men charged to commit a terrorist act on the nuclear power station in Sydney. Plotting to commit terrorist acts is now also a very clear part of the anti-terror legislation; why have the men not been charged with this, if the case is so clear-cut? There was mention that three of the men had been pulled over near the nuclear power station acting suspicious. Two things about this strike me as outrageous. Police officers from Sydney, where aborigines on 'the block' in Sydney's Redfern area have all been arrested or detained at least once (including children who are frequently pulled over and questioned; police questioning on the streets in Australia is - from personal experience - more intimidation than your friendly 'what's up guv?' you might find in many streets of the UK), over anything from demands to know what they are doing out to where they got that pushbike from. Sydney's police-force is overwhelmingly racist, and tension exists between the many different ethnic groups around town (including caucasian). The men need only have driven past the power station once to have been routinely checked by police in the area, simply because of the colour of their skin. This is a constant and widely erroneous misjudgement from the world media on the state of Australia; it is assumed there is no ulterior motive where authority is involved, but in the case of Australia, and its police force, you could safely say there is no place where racism is more rampant than in the House of Representatives. Take a look at the television news from Australia for an example - when they show news stories about unidentified assailants, terrorists etc, the pictures (the seemingly innocuous pictures in the background from the on-the-scene reporter) is invariably an ethnic area - usually vietnamese. It is subjective reporting with so many subliminal twists you tend to lose count. There was also mention of (at least three) men going on hunting trips, which, the report says, "police described as jihad training camps". Such unmistakably ridiculous trains of logic seem as I write them to be the type anyone might see for the nonsense it is as they read/hear it - the idea that because a policeman describes a hunting trip as a jihad training camp, it suddenly becomes so. But the fact is, Australian news reporting of such things come thick and fast with the lies and filler, so that it is often the case that even an attentive or alert viewer misses two or three elements which should face heavy scrutiny before being accepted as fact. From no other news source have I seen such flagrant disregard of the truth in light of a good story. I know of several people, from my very small sphere of influence in AUstralia who are regular hunters. To do it, they require arms and ammunition. While I do not agree with it, I would not consider [most] of them capable of harm to other people. Neither it would seem, does the Australian government. All these men are white, and so far as I know, they have not been raided since the anti-terror legislation was introduced, none of them have been shot in the neck, none of them charged with belonging to a terrorist organisation just because they belong to the local rifle range. Then there is the issue of chemicals. Australians love chemicals. Australians buy them in bulk, to do such things as fertilizes their lawns or poison rats and possums in their ceilings. Damaging to the environment? Definitely, but does it imply terrorism? from BBC:

"The document said police had seized 30 bottles of hydrogen peroxide and six gallons of hydrochloric acid, among other materials. "

Simply to disseminate a few facts about such chemicals, I have done a little research. Owning chemicals capable of making a highly explosive concoction does not preclude such bomb making. One example to my immediate knowledge is fertilizer (Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus - or NPK) and diesel. Two elements in the sheds (separated hopefully) of just about every rural family in Australia. Together, with a small spark, they are capable of blowing a hole the size of a large pond in hard ground. But, to try and put things in perspective, computers were seized (quite a lot by the sound of things), and the chemicals, as well as some tapes and videos, (could be anything - we are not filled in on this), circuit boards, as well as the chemicals. Hydrogen Peroxide has many uses - a couple of large scale uses are in septic piping (people living on the outskirts of Sydney may well have septic tanks instead of sewerage - I don't know.

"H2O2 is added to the leach field distribution piping to improve drainage and filtration through the soil. It does this in two ways: 1) it oxidizes microbial slimes that block the leach pores; and 2) it decomposes once permeated into the soil, liberating oxygen ? its conversion from a liquid to a gas represents a volume expansion whereby the compacted soil is "lifted" and air space restored to the soil structure."

Given the finds of piping (supposedly for bomb-making), this seems to be the supported option. But there is more;

"H2O2 can be used to improve the performance of certain other disinfection methods (e.g., ozonation and UV-photolysis). For non-potable water treatment (e.g., cooling water circuits), there is active development and commercialization of both H2O2-derived disinfectants (e.g., peracetic acid) and combination treatments with biguanide-type quaternary ammonium compounds."

If the men were into hunting and country trips it is possible (many Australians I know have this dream) they were considering plans to move to the country and become self-sufficient. Perhaps they were already using tank water on their houses - in Brisbane I know this is not a small thing - when I left there was a council-run initiative to encourage more home-owners to set themselves up with tank-water. Regarding Hydrochloric acid, I found this:

"Hydrochloric acid is used in the production of chlorides, for refining ore in the production of tin and tantalum, for pickling and cleaning of metal products, in electroplating, in removing scale from boilers, for the neutralization of basic systems, as a laboratory reagent, as a catalyst and solvent in organic syntheses, in the manufacture of fertilizers and dyes, for hydrolyzing starch and proteins in the preparation of various food products, and in the textile and rubber industries."

Were the men textile tradesmen? Forgive my stereotyping for just a minute, but many from, for example, Afghanistan, have had the trade passed down for generations. It is a possibility. Another site (reuters) said they found acetone - a common chemical found around any household - from nail polish to paint thinners. Then there was an alleged memory stick picked up by police, with arabic instruction on how to make triacetone triperoxide. I found this on wikipedia:

"Acetone peroxide can also occur accidentally, when suitable chemicals are mixed together. For example, when methyl ethyl ketone is mixed with acetone when making fiberglass, and left to stand for some time, or when a mixture of peroxide and hydrochloric acid from printed circuit board etching (the FeCl3 method is less smelly, more accurate, but slower) is mixed with waste acetone from cleaning the finished board and allowed to stand."

Now, actually this is perhaps the most neatly tied piece of evidence - Methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) is a solvent often found in mixtures with acetone, ethyl acetate, n-hexane, toluene or alcohols. So here we have covered the acetone, the hydrochloric acid, the peroxide and the acetone along with circuit boards (not to mention the computers). Were these men perhaps no more than computer techies, building circuit boards and computers? If you were to ask what all such chemicals might be doing together in a house, you may conclude the men were building bombs (in which case you might ask why they had not already completed them, used them, killed people), or you may conclude they were building computers. Devoid of the inherent racism and fear of the Australian government, I would suggest the latter - it seems a more viable option. Think back to the terrorist attacks Australia has sustained (before the term terrorist had become such an irresponsibly used term). We have the Hoddle Street massacre of Melbourne, and the Port Arthur massacre. Our bikie gangs are largely white, our mafia organisations are either Italian or Chinese, and their violent feuds are generally between each other. Out serial killers have all been white. What is the justification for the vilification of such men. If I had to place money on the type of person I would least likely suspect of terrorism in Australia, it would probably be an Asian, based on statistics alone. There were 18 men arrested and charged. One of the men is a cleric who was on the ABC in June or July this year, telling the country he thought Osama bin Laden is a great man. The U.S. government's sentiment was the same not too many years ago, but their opinions have now changed. I know a Polish man who hates Russians (I am told such men are not rare). Afghans think more or less the same way, for more or less the same reasons. If they grew up under the Soviet invasion, they have good reason to hate the Russians, and good reason to love anyone who came to save them. The U.S. did not, but they did encourage the Taliban, they did give them weapons and training, and Osama bin Laden also contributed actively to the cause. Would I tell my Polish friend to stop hating the Russians, and stop supporting those who helped save them from the Russians (would I stop him insisting that Churchill was a great man?) In truth, yes, but I wouldn't get much support on that from many other people in the West. The lies surrounding this story are many, the speculation is rife, but it is speculation - as always - under the guise of the truth. It is time Australian journalists learned the difference between the two and took some accountability for their reporting style. Objectivity is long gone in Australia, and even if the average journalist is only aiming for subjective reporting, what it more often than not comes across as is subversive reporting. It is time the rest of the world woke up to the fact of the Australian government's lack of interest in the principals which define a free country. These men may or may not be innocent of the charges that were laid upon them; what is certain is that the charges were not those that were conveyed to the world (terrorist plotting), but charges which in a country with civil liberties in place, would not exist. Note also that 'belonging to a terrorist organisation' is the charge. Note also that it (unlike Australia's terms of conformance to the UN Convention on human rights) is retrospective. So if the men did once belong to the Taliban (back in the days when it not just legal by US standards - but backed by all forms of help but extra soldiers), they could be imprisoned now. Just like Hicks in Guantanamo Bay.

Police States, Dictatorships and the West

Derek Lane

Democracy: A form of government in which political power is exercised by the citizens Greek: Demos (the people) Kratos (authority, rule). As Venezuela and countries of South America look as though they are moving towards this definition of democracy in their public domain, in the Western world we are seeing a fast and furious descent into dictatorships, back into the autonomous world of feudalism where there promises to be even less rights for the ordinary 'serf' than in the middle ages. There are many points of deceit by which our Western governments are leading us. There is the Anti-Terror laws, a reality in the US and Australia, an attempted notion in the UK, which attempt to trample the hard-earned results of centuries of the myriad small steps along the road to equality and unification (at least, in our own countries) which have happened since Habeas Corpus was first introduced. There is the question of the legitimacy of the voting system, in terms of corruption, in terms of the strength and importance of one person's vote, depending on the affluence of the area they live, in terms of whether one vote once every 3 or 4 years constitutes any form of democracy when all the protesting, letters to councillors and media uprising count for nothing in governmental decisions throughout those periods. Recent discussion and private inquiries into the US voting system is turning up all kinds of nasty possibilities, possibilities of fraud on a national scale - the type that people once thought impossible in such a grand nation as the US, especially when the fact the same country has taken the responsibility for instituting their brand of democracy and voting systems on countries it demolishes in the name of such democracy. In the UK and Australian systems, we are told that the manipulation of border-lines/size of each electorate actually fuels greater power in wealthy areas for the result of an election, and less (much, much less) in the poorer areas. We are being led down a path to Imperialism that almost none of us want to go, and those that do are invariably wealthy, and stand to become moreso through the 'necessity' of war. We are being left behind by all the morals and standards we helped build up, the same standards put in place to ensure that people did not suffer, and if they did, the perpetrators would be duely accused and convicted. Instead, those who have not committed a real crime (under the old laws) can now be convicted and sentenced, while those certainly guilty - before the eyes of the world, walk free. Such men as Blair, Bush, Howard, Putin, Chirac and so on. Men who broke the same laws their predecessors created in the interests of basic human rights. The full understanding of the phrase, 'It is victor's justice', spoken by one condemned from the Nuremberg trials, is perhaps only now beginning to be revealed. In the past few days we have seen in Australia, the introduction of laws to diminish the worker's right in the workplace, to the point where in 5 years time we will be looking at a very different Australia; one where the average worker is itinerant, where people can be hired and fired without explanation, where unions put in place to ensure respect and responsibility for the employee and from the employer will be without a voice - they will have crumbled into nothing. An employer will be able to decide not to hire, or to fire a worker who chooses to become part of a union. The government will be able to cut of social welfare if a person is not employed on the basis that that person insists on joining a relevant union if employed. Minimum wage will decrease and threatens to become a factor relegated to history. We have seen a lying prime minister, with a track record for human rights abysmal enough to warrant several reports and warnings from the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, tell us that his new laws to combat terrorism (of which Australia has so far not been a victim) should be introduced, indeed, he attempted to introduce them without the public's awareness. The new laws reaffirm such archaic notions as sedition of the sovereignty of Parliament, and makes acts such as bringing the government into hatred or contempt a crime punishable by a 7 year term. The laws allow people to be held without charge, and placed under a gag order whereby speaking about their incarceration will be punished with an automatic 5 year sentence. They increase the powers of the federal police yet again despite the fact that the police already shoot to kill, they already stop and search people in the streets, and they carry guns at all times, despite the fact that 99% of the Australian public does not even own a gun. The new laws make such vague phrases as belonging to a terrorist organisation - retrospectively - a crime punishable by a prison sentence. Classification of states from non-terrorist to terrorist states, organisations from non-terrorist to terrorist is all that is needed through the new laws to convict someone of such crimes. We have seen the Anti-Terror legislation rushed through parliament, despite widespread opposition - mostly from the Australian public - under yet another well-timed piece of fiction, the capture (and subsequent charging) of some unfortunate Muslim men in Sydney and Melbourne, the promise or threat of imminent terrorism before the bill was passed and the charging of these men afterwards on a charge which was not relevant, nor could it seriously be prosecuted, under the old set of Anti-Terror laws. The charge was 'belonging to a terrorist organisation'. To shed some light on this, these men could well have been ex-members of the Taliban, back in the 1990's when the US supported, and funding the organisation. That, under the new Australian terrorist laws, could constitute a jailable offence. The media in Australia has not escaped subjection to Howard's imposing regime in the last few years; now a permanent set of party officials sits in on the board of the ABC, once an almost objective platform for the rights and views of the real Australian public to be voiced. Now, the best journalists working for the ABC can hope for is a few very well-chosen words in opposition to the Prime Minister. The reason is thus - regardless of how bad the situation gets they must conform to the rule of thumb that if 10 words are written opposing the Prime Minster and/or his cabinet, 10 words must also be written favouring him or his cabinet. On the surface the balance sounds ridiculously fair, in reality, when 8 out of 10 newsworthy items should by facts alone denigrate the party position, only 4 of those will be allowed to be shown. It makes things exceedingly difficult, even for the denizen of journalists who still remain in opposition to the governmental position. Murdoch, of course, owns almost all the major papers in every state of Australia (and some where his paper is the only daily paper), and supports the current Prime Minister. Between him and Kerry Packer they have about a 90% hold on the entire Australian media, including publishing companies and magazines, and have close business ties with one another, making their politics almost identical. Aside from the Murdoch and Packer media there is little else for Australians to read. Until the advent of the web, there was little the average Australia could discover that these 2 men did not want to be discovered - now that it exists it seems the indoctrination is still incredibly hard to break, it has existed so long. For another perspective on this, see lessig blog The voting system of Australia mirrors that of the United Kingdom; parts of the country are broken up into dynamic areas called electorates, with constantly shifting border lines and growth and reduction in the sizes of each electorate. The borders can be changed by those in power, so that in forth-coming elections the demographic predictions can be accounted for to almost guarantee a vote one way or the other. Only when the number of dissenters is so cataclysmic does this result in a change of government. Then there is the Senate - Howard already commands power in the House, the Senate has been on his agenda since before 2003. After the 2004 Federal election, he said this.

"I was humbled to be re-elected by such an overwhelming majority," Mr. Howard said. "And now I?ll be doing my best to humble everything the Senate wouldn't let me touch over the last three terms."

From Online Opinion, Andrew Bartlett says this:

"It is a brave nation, equally a remarkably gullible one, that would put complete power in the hands of a cunning politician. History has taught all mankind that those they should fear most are the Executive. Democracy was invented to curb the power of kings, dictators, theocrats, oligarchs and sundry others. The separation of powers, and the establishment of democratic checks and balances, are the third-party insurance against he who would be king. By proposing to strike down the power of the Senate, doing away with the only effective check on government, John Howard is proposing a parliamentary dictatorship."

Indeed, Howard now holds the balance of power in both the Senate and the House, effectively giving him a mandate over the regime he has been building since his introduction to prime-minister-ship. What this means for the ordinary citizen is that when Howard has an idea, that idea is destined to become a reality, regardless of the notoriety of that decision, regardless of the unfairness, regardless of any aspect which threatens the freedom or the rights of the ordinary citizen. In the United States there is a huge issue of the legitimacy of the voting system, where it has been discovered that the electronic voting system, responsible for about 80% of the votes in federal elections, is owned by 2 companies, in which the CEO's are brothers and of which there is a public affiliation with the present government, including membership and campaigning. The software has closed system code belonging to the 2 companies, which, while the external code is able to be viewed and changed (for different voting areas), the internal code cannot be inspected. In addition to that, in testing done on the system post-election, it was found that the systems showed errors, perhaps as much as one in fifty going to a republican party regardless of whether the vote was cast that way. It seems to be insignificant news, not important enough for the media to cover in any serious way. This alone is quite disturbing; what it implies is that the last election (in which George Bush was re-elected) was flawed in his favour (in some cases the vote swaying by 60 000 votes from the pre-election polling, which usually has an accuracy level of 1-2% plus or minus. In the course of the Bush administration, the transparency of the functions and legislation approved by the White House has decreased, due to many small changes by the administration, put in place ostensibly to ensure protection from 'terrorism', in reality an appropriate means of covering illicit operations. Illicit operations are largely, of course, unproven - we have the ability still to speculate, but with the removal of appropriate checks and balances we can no longer know many things for sure which were previously open to investigation. During his term he has put pressure on the scant social welfare the United States has had to date, bringing to a point near complete insignificance. He has introduced the Patriot Act, shortly after the events of 11th September 2001, which allows greater control of the population, through information, demands for information, seizing of information and/or property, surveillance and phone tapping through amendments to section 213, 215 and 216 . As John Podesta pointed out,

"The events of September 11 convinced ... overwhelming majorities in Congress that law enforcement and national security officials need new legal tools to fight terrorism. But we should not forget what gave rise to the original opposition - many aspects of the bill increase the opportunity for law enforcement and the intelligence community to return to an era where they monitored and sometimes harassed individuals who were merely exercising their First Amendment rights. Nothing that occurred on September 11 mandates that we return to such an era."

- USA Patriot Act - The Good, the Bad, and the Sunset . So it seems that in the United States, the people no longer have any rights to privacy, they cannot vote legitimately for their government (and as always, they have no power to control the government once it is elected), and if they talk seditious thoughts before or behind the back of the White House, they are liable to be investigated further, possibly detained and imprisoned based on things that may have been said (rightly or wrongly) within their own home. Then there is the United Kingdom. Here we have a voting system almost identical to that of Australia, where the electorates are divided according to the whim of the government, effectively creating a voting strength in wealthier areas (supportive of the government) as much as 50 times that of the poorer areas. We have increasingly draconian laws surrounding the rights and fundamental freedoms of ordinary citizens, and the U.K. is the most filmed country in the world, with CCTV cameras covering every major town and city across the country. From wikipedia:

"A 2002 working paper by Michael McCahill and Clive Norris of UrbanEye [1], based on a small sample in Putney High Street, "guesstimated" the number of surveillance cameras in private premises in London as around 400,000 and the total number of cameras in the UK as around 4,000,000."

Contrary to current belief, the new Anti-Terror legislation was largely passed through the House of Commons without notice on the 9th November 2005. According to popular news, covering BBC, Channel 4 and ITV, we were told that Blair's draconian proposals for anti-terror legislation were rejected by a majority of the house. In reality, only the proposal for a 90 day detention - a detention period as noted by opposition leader Michael Howard which was in line with that of the apartheid government of South Africa - was rejected. Instead, the detention period was reduced to a less intense period of 28 days. All other facets of the bill seemed to have been passed to the House of Lords without change. Among other things, the glorification of terrorist acts (as perceived by the state) could soon be a crime punishable by a seven year prison sentence, as well as dissemination of terrorist publication, directly or indirectly advocating terrorism. The definition of terrorism according to the bill (and including the 2000 Anti-Terror legislation is as follows:

"The use or threat of action where the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause."

The action is defined as [among other things],

"creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public".

This could, by definition, be of a second-hand nature, as in, if dissenters against governmental policy threaten to change the opinions regarding these laws (or others) of the media and/or the population, so that the rights of the government to wage invasion-type war on other nations is threatened (under the guise of 'fighting terrorism'), it could be reasoned that these dissenters are threatening the safety of the public or a section of the public (possibly the government itself). This is one scenario, another is the simple act of protesting, where the protestors could be considered a threat to the public, simply because they organise themselves in large numbers in a public place. The definition of such seems open to interpretation. What is not open to interpretation is the fact that no-one seems to be aware as yet of the fact the bill is not dead. What is also not open to interpretation is the fact that under the other facets of the definition of terrorism, the United Kingdom is guilty under its own laws. Here is the definition in full, please make your own judgement.

1. - (1) In this Act "terrorism" means the use or threat of action where- (a) the action falls within subsection (2), (b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and (c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. (2) Action falls within this subsection if it- (a) involves serious violence against a person, (b) involves serious damage to property, (c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action, (d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or (e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system. (3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied. (4) In this section- (a) "action" includes action outside the United Kingdom, (b) a reference to any person or to property is a reference to any person, or to property, wherever situated, (c) a reference to the public includes a reference to the public of a country other than the United Kingdom, and (d) "the government" means the government of the United Kingdom, of a Part of the United Kingdom or of a country other than the United Kingdom. (5) In this Act a reference to action taken for the purposes of terrorism includes a reference to action taken for the benefit of a proscribed organisation.

The nature of the introduction of such laws in Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. bear as much need for attention as the laws themselves - in 2 out of 3 cases they have received next to no publicity on their introduction (in the U.S. and the [possible introduction in the] U.K.); in Australia the introduction was with fanfare of new and imminent threats of terrorism, and the law was introduced alongside the Liberals workplace reform legislation, which takes the country back a hundred years in terms of such things as fairness, legal and civil rights and job security, and also alongside another piece of legislation allowing passage for a nuclear dumping ground proposal to be situated in the middle of the Northern Territory - on Aboriginal land. Clearly, Howard thought these two pieces of legislature more damning to himself than the removal of human rights of all Australians - which in reality, in accordance with the average Australian's ideas, he probably called rightly. The key similarities of all these issues facing all of these countries (and many more of course from the Western world, is a crumbling of human rights in the face of stronger and stronger central governments. We are living under the illusion of 2 party states (thinking, perhaps, that is bad enough), but in reality we are living under one party states, largely autocratic. Whatever illusion exists of that second party in each country (at present the democrats in the U.S., the Conservatives in the U.K. and Labour in Australia), we must be prepared to accept they don't exist. Examine the politics, the influences, the opinions and policies of the opposition parties and you will see the illusion. We must continue to believe that there is a choice; once we become aware that there is not we will have to face the fact that the democracy and freedom the West promises to bring the rest - on the wings of bombs and bullets - is an illusion, and that what we really bring is that which we are facing - cruel dictatorships - differing only from the more conventional dictatorships in that ours keep us in a state of submission and reign terror on foreign nations, and theirs show truthfully what they are. Again, it is time the West looked to South America - Chavez and Venezuela, the people of Venezuela, for some real advice on how a democracy is run. One particularly useful tip is this; it is run by the people, for the people.

Habeas Corpus and British Terrorism laws

Derek Lane

We must save our greatest contribution to civilisation Iain Macwhirter November 09 2005

It's a sign of the times when the Sun newspaper falls out with the Tory party on law and order. The tabloid urged readers yesterday to demand MPs vote for 90-day detention for terror suspects. The Conservative leader, Michael Howard, meanwhile, pointed out the last government to have a 90-day rule was the apartheid regime in South Africa. Of course, we all know that if Labour had been in opposition today it would have bitterly opposed this Prevention of Terrorism Bill. It opposed much of the Tories' anti-terror legislation. But I don't believe Labour would have been called upon to oppose it because, even under Margaret Thatcher, I don't think the Conservatives would ever have introduced a bill as draconian this. Call me naive, but I think Conservatives had ? have ? more respect for individual freedom and the rule of law than Labour. After the disastrous experience of internment in Northern Ireland, which turned a generation of Catholic nationalists into supporters of the IRA, the Tories discovered the hard way that habeas corpus isn't just an obscure Latin phrase. So, today it isn't those great erstwhile champions of civil liberty, Patricia Hewitt and Charles Clarke, who are defending the essential right of every citizen to be charged and given a fair trial. It is the House of Lords, judges like the former law lord, Lord Steyn, and, to their credit, the Tories, even though there's nothing in it for them politically. It's a paradox the prime minister has sought to exploit. He's been telling his rebellious back-benchers that opposing 90-day detention is simply playing into the hands of right-wingers. "The only time we get defeated," said Mr Blair on Monday, "is when sections of the Labour Party cooperate with the sections of the Tory party." This is a bizarre argument for anyone not pickled in the tribalism of British political culture. "Your party, right or wrong." Of course, Mr Blair has other arguments for his bill. The people want it (see the Sun) and his namesake in the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian, wants it (though not, apparently, the security service, MI5). In an unprecedented political intervention, senior policemen have been lobbying Labour back-benchers in Westminster. We're told of computer hard disks that contain six-mile-high stacks of information and encryption that takes months to decode. Muslim extremists, we're told, cannot be reasoned with. Unlike the Irish Republicans, they have no rational political demands and are prepared to die in order to kill. You simply have to take these people out of circulation. But are they really all that different? Republicans were also called "mindless thugs" and "gangsters" who would "stop at nothing". Muslim extremists say they're targeting Britain because of the illegal occupation of Iraq. That is no justification for terror, of course. However, as a rationale it is not so different from the IRA's claim that Britain was "occupying" the six counties. The idea that "our" white terrorists are in some way morally superior to "their" terrorists, meaning al Qaeda and Hamas, is highly dubious. There is more than an echo here of the arguments used in South Africa against the black "terrorists" of the African National Congress. These irrational enemies of civilisation didn't deserve civil liberty, only 90 days detention without charge or trial. What did the South African police do with all that extra time? Well, all sorts of nasty things that our police, of course, wouldn't dream of doing. But what they didn't do was just question their suspects. This is for the very good reason that there really isn't a great deal more you can get in months of interrogation that you can't get in a few days - unless you use Guantanamo techniques. Other European countries have much shorter periods of allowable detention for police questioning, briefer even than our 14 days. In France, you have to be charged within 96 hours. Thereafter, a prosecuting magistrate may hold you for years, but at least you know what you have been charged with and can mount a defence. Why, then, do our police need all this time, the equivalent, with remission, of a six-month custodial sentence? If there is enough evidence for an arrest, why not charge suspects? Heaven knows, there are so many terror statutes now - 200 from incitement to "glorification" - that it would not be difficult to find one they'd broken. The answer is the one the police always give: they think they know who the "wrong 'uns" are and they don't need liberal lawyers getting in the way. Just as they knew who had been behind the Birmingham pub bombings and the Guildford bombings and all the other miscarriages of justice that almost destroyed the British criminal justice system in the 1980s and 1990s. The police shot the Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, under the misapprehension that he was a suicide bomber. Under the new law, he'd be locked up, which is preferable to summary execution, but is scarcely more lawful. Make no mistake, if we introduce 90-day detention in Britain, we will be digging the foundations of a police state. On top of it will be constructed an elaborate bureaucracy of internment, including "trusted" judges who will be asked to renew the detention orders. Muslim clerics will be placed under indefinite house arrest. Many others will be incarcerated for "indirect incitement". Among them will be numerous innocent people. The vast majority of those arrested under the existing terror laws are released - in future they will be imprisoned. They will invariably be Asian rather than white, ensuring that the new laws are regarded as racist, and intended to intimidate and punish Muslims for being Muslims. We already know the extent to which members of the Asian community are alienated by the war on terror. It was what recruited the London bombers. Look at France to see the consequences. And when the street violence comes here, as it will inevitably, the police will use the anti-terror laws to lock up more Asian young people. Ring-leaders in street demonstrations, for example; people supposedly identified by CCTV cameras, which are notoriously unreliable. All without charge. We already have some of the most draconian anti-terror laws in the world, as Walter Wolfgang discovered when he was detained under the 2000 Terrorism Act for disrupting Jack Straw's conference speech. The silence on these new laws from the senior judges speaks volumes. Not one legal authority has spoken up for the government. Many Labour MPs are minded to support the government tonight in expectation that the Lords will throw out the bill. They are wrong to do so. A vote in the elected Commons carries more weight in a democracy than a vote in the unelected Lords. MPs carry a heavy responsibility. As they enter the division lobbies, they should ask themselves this one question: why, for eight centuries, has Britain regarded freedom from arbitrary arrest to be our greatest contribution to civilisation and the rule of law? Once essential freedoms are lost, they are not easily recovered. Once they're gone, they're gone.

The Venezualan Model

Derek Lane

Looking at the new model of politics the Venezuelan government is proposing under the leadership of Chavez, it is not hard to envisage its success - minus, of course, external factors such as the role of the US. Take a look at the success of such web-related ideas as open-source technology, and you will find progression of ideas within the space of short years, where technology, accuracy, reliability and useability all out-run their counterparts in software run under a capitalist business mentality. MySQL and PHP are just a couple of good examples of this;already businesses are switching to open source programmes due to their reliability - not to be found in the market leaders versions. What Venezuela is proposing is a system of democracy that involves the people, at every level, at the level of decision-making and co-ordination, not just at the ballot box. It is, in a way, a more organised version of anarchy - and I believe it could work. The question is, will it be allowed to work? The other question is what has lead to such a radical rethink of this country's politics? The recent protests in Argentina over Bush's Americas Summit is a good indication of a mood that has existed in South America for several years. Bush, really, is the icing on the cake, and the fact Chavez was present at the Summit must have strengthened the resolve of the protestors in Argentina. South America has been in the grip of the US foreign policy for a long time, think about Guatemala, Nicaraqua, Panama, Chile for some examples. South America knows best about the US penchant for control and power, under the guise of democracy. South America has seen burgeoning democracies crushed by the US foreign policy and replaced with murderous dictatorships in the name of the US, (not to mention the near-miss for Chavez himself). They have seen the reality in their own countries, and the lie pushed on the people of the US and the world, of the freedom that the US brings, and they are sick of it. If this is what democracy brings, then let us have something different. But South America is not the only country rising up to tell Bush they have had enough. Indeed, it is happening in his own country, with many questions now hanging over his head regarding the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The tragedy is that it has only so far netted some of his advisors as casualties in this indictment process. The greater tragedy is that even if it were to swallow him as well, he is just one man in a chain of deceit, lies and the violent foreign policy of the United States. Venezuela knows this, so do many other countries - they have seen it firsthand. The trick is convincing the West of this. We are learning, but too slow. It is only now that our fundamental freedoms are being threatened by the advancement of foreign policy - the Anti-Terror laws being bolstered in the US, the UK, Australia and many other countries, at the detriment of our own freedom and democracy that we are forcing ourselves to question the legitimacy of the foreign policy of our countries. The danger is, of course, that even if our countries leadership backs down on these pieces of legislation, that they will not do so unconditionally, and that their losses (of leaders) will allow us to sit back and breath a sigh of relief, rather than wondering how it came to this, and how to stop it from happening again. And that is, of course, a big 'if'. Now that Venezuala has come up with a new model of government, we owe it to them (for our own interests, if for none other) to observe them publicly, to ensure that US censorship in terms of military intervention does not stifle such a possibility from existing. There would, in the normal course, be mistakes, just as there has been in our version of democracy, but it will hopefully be mistakes made by the people, not for the people. Similiar to the US stance on Canadian healthcare, it must not be allowed to suffer at the hands of the US simply because it makes the US look bad. As Michael Albert in his article at Znet says:

"Venezuela looks to me like Uncle Sam's worst nightmare".

If it survives we may well be taking instruction from Venezuala in years to come on how to form a real democracy. Let's hope. Venezuela's Path - Michael Albert

Western Imperial Pandemic

Derek Lane

When I look at the common factors affecting all of us in Western countries today, I find two things, mainly; That for one reason or another most of us are opposed to our countries' military and imperialistic regime imposal on the poorer and/or less militarily developed countries of the world, and that our governments are ignoring the majority when we say this is something we don't want. The laws in our countries are being eroded and ignored, so that the fact we don't want to be imperialistic, the fact that we can all see the damage that imperialism does to the world and those directly oppressed by it, no longer constitutes a wake-up call to those in charge. These issues are the most important ones facing us, it seems, above all else. Above environmental issues, above housing, welfare, schooling, hospitals and all the things that help to ice the cake of freedom. They are more important issues, because without them, none of the rest of the issues will matter. We are promised changes in these issues of home life, and when they are ignored or forgotten, it is because more is at stake; there is a threat of terrorism, there was an act of terrorism, the troops are suffering, there is this or that reason. When you are controlling the world, its hard sometimes to focus on the little things, like who that control benefits. If we have good schools and health services, but our schools are no longer free to teach openly - but must conform to a set of pre-authorized government rhetoric, or if our health service is dealing with terrorist victims or soldiers from the front line, how does that help us? If the rights of you or me are being 'shaved', if our constant demands for wars NOT to be fought in our name are ignored, for people in foreign countries to be left to live and civilized diplomacy to be used in cases of real mistreatment of civilians (such as in Uzbekistan, or Chechnya, or China, or the US, or in fact, Australia) rather than bombs and bullets, is it any surprise that the same leaders would choose to undermine our rights at home, those things we pay taxes for like hospitals and schools and our fundamental freedoms? The fact is, when the population stands up to the government to say, 'This thing you are doing is wrong', the government has 2 choices. It must either acknowledge this wrong thing and change it, or it must strengthen the divide between it and the people, so it can no longer hear the people, and so that the people can no longer say such things. There is a trouble, perhaps, with the former option. If the governments acknowledge one wrong, they will be then forced to acknowledge others which preceded that one, and in all cases (at least, in the US, the UK and Australia, the actions of the governments have seen the leading opposition parties complicitous at all levels; they have been openly in agreeance with the current status quo). So even to admit gross negligence is to implicate all major players in the political spectrum - they have all been guilty to a greater or lesser extent , whether by agreeing with the party in power on the issues of the wars, or by voting in favour of elements directly tied to such in the houses and senates. It implicates in Australia Kim Beazely as much as it does John Howard, for his unfailing support of the prime minister in relation to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it implicates him now in response to the Anti-Terror legislation which threatens to undermine even the basic precepts of a free democratic state. In the US, John Kerry proved to be every bit the antagonist in terms of his support for Iraqi occupation, implicating him alongside Bush, perhaps even potentially strengthening the resolve for the war that Bush has brought to it, and of course the previous leadership to Bush - the Clinton administration - created many of the bases in lead-up to the current occupation of Iraq, bringing death by sanction and such military tactics as bombing key medical facilities in Sudan to the US defense repertoire. In the UK of course, there has been as much dual sided support for the invasions - one of the major reasons Blair was voted back in perhaps came from the lingering worry for the British public that under a conservative government the overseas imperialistic mission may prove to be even less merciful than already is the case; one needs only to look to the Falklands War to understand this concept. Governments of the West cannot back down, to do so will threaten not just their current leadership, but their entire existence. There are just too many lies and deceits waiting to be uncovered. If this were not the case then apologies and expressed regret would almost suffice for many (in the West at least). Given the probability that Western governments believe themselves too entrenched in terrorist behaviour themselves to risk an admission of guilt on any level (remember, the Hague is waiting), their other choice is to rid themselves of the risk of being convicted, and that means removal of free speech and human rights. Australia is doing an excellent job of this currently with their new Anti-Terror legislation (currently being rushed through parliament on 'imminent threat of terrorism', despite not having had an attack on Australian soil since WWII), which has the power to detain suspects without charge, impose gag-orders on threat of a 5 year prison sentence, and imprison anyone proven guilty of encouraging hate against the sovereign parliament. The US is in the process of reforming their policies to allow torture of terrorist suspects off-shore from the US (officially - accounts show it almost certainly already occurs); for the rest of us a frightening prospect, for the US citizens only a step away from imposing the same laws on their own citizens. They have already proven post Katrina just how much certain US citizens mean to them. Why would they stop there? And the UK is also in the process of approving its own brand of Anti-Terror laws, laws which threaten the public, particularly (at least at the moment) the part of the public that has the misfortune of being muslim or middle-eastern. Under the new act, 'glorifying terrorism' will be a charge punishable by a long prison sentence. Under such vague premises, a dissident of the parliament could soon be guilty of a crime punishable by a sentence. This is not protection from terrorism, except if you include the state. If the countries of the West do not rise en-masse to put a stop to such infractions of human rights soon, we will not be able to. As Malcolm Fraser - an ex-prime minister of Australia put it,

"one of the first pieces of legislation Hitler's government put into place was something for 'the good order and safety' of the citizens of Germany: preventive detention ... Some parts of the legislation sound horribly familiar."

The difference is, the new State will not fail if we don't stop it now; Instead of one country's twisted vision for the future, we have many (one being the undisputed super-power of the world), all seeking the same goal of Imperial domination, of all those countries not presently dominated by the West, but also of the West itself.

More on Australia as a nuclear waste dump

Derek Lane

from Indymedia Melbourne: Nelson Steamrolls Territory on Nuclear Waste Dump by Takver

While everyone was busy with the Melbourne Cup, Industrial Relations or terrorism bills, a nuclear waste dump for the Northern Territory moved one step closer with the passing in the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 (Text | PDF) The nuclearisation of Australia is proceeding despite opposition to the public relations campaign being run by the nuclear industry. When it was first introduced in October there were strong objections from traditional owners and the NT Government that a nuclear waste dump poses health and environmental risks. Clare Miller's Territory Labor Government exhorted people to protest against the nuclear waste dump through their No Nuke Dump website. As late as 30 September 2004 Territorians were assured by the Federal Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, that no Waste Dump was being planned for mainland Australia, including the Territory. Peter Garrett said in parliament on the 1st November opposing the bill: "This government continues to make a mockery of the principle of informed consent, of community participation and of respect for the wishes and interests of Aboriginal people in this country. This government has trampled Aboriginal people?s rights underfoot, unaware, it seems, that this is people?s country where these proposed radioactive waste sites would be?country that connects intimately and in a long and continuing strain to their culture. It is country that they have only recently been able to have access to or be around. It is country that is absolutely integral and critical to their sense of who they are as a people and to their confidence as a community to build and to plan their own futures." Garret stated that the Act "overrides important laws that already exist, such as the Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act, which this parliament has passed in order to ensure proper safeguarding of the environment." The government's only Territory MP, David Tollner from the Country Liberal Party, proposed Amendments to the bill which were accepted. These changes included specifically banning the storage of high-level waste, allowing the territory government or a land council to nominate a storage site, and allowing territory waste to be stored without charge. The Federal Government has final say and can over-ride any proposed alternate site suggested by the Chief Minister. Three sites for the dump are currently under consideration: Mount Everard and Harts Range near Alice Springs, and Fishers Ridge near Katherine. According to a report in the Age The Northern Land Council says traditional owners in Arnhem Land are open to discussions with the Government, but the Central Land Council says traditional owners in Harts Range and Mount Everard are against it. In a press conference on Thursday, November 3, Traditional owners voiced their disgust about having the facility forced on them. The seven senior men and women from the Harts Range and Mount Everard areas near Alice Springs called on the Territory's CLP Senator Nigel Scullion to cross the floor and vote against the dump legislation in the Senate. The traditional owners told the media they are concerned about safety and the future security of a nuclear waste dump, the waste being transported on the roads that they use every day, the negative impact on businesses like Alcoota Aboriginal Corporation's cattle company, the impact on their traditional country and the ability to hunt and get bush tucker, pollution of the water in the event of an accident and the future for their grandchildren. Chairman of the Alcoota Aboriginal Corporation, William Tilmouth said that the company was extremely worried about its beef sales if there was a nuclear waste dump nearby. "Other pastoralists have also expressed concern over the perception by the public that the beef will be contaminated. The cattle industry out here prides itself on being clean and green." He commented further that "We were lied to before the last election. Even Dave Tollner admitted that on Stateline last week. Now is the time for Senator Scullion to stand up for his constituents in Central Australia and cross the floor,? Mr Tilmouth said. Senator Scullion has stated that he would support the legislation. The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta ? a council of senior Aboriginal women from outback town Coober Pedy in South Australia, are heading to Alice Springs to launch their book, ?TALKING STRAIGHT OUT?, about their campaign which stopped a nuclear waste dump in SA. They commented "This is a big story. You don?t have to start at the beginning; we?ve already done a lot of work," The Kungkas will meet with Traditional Owners of the two proposed sites while visiting the Alice. In October the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said it was appalled at the Federal Government legislation with it being a heavy-handed and undemocratic move. "It overrides any laws or concerns about land use, environmental consequences, heritage values, regulations, Indigenous issues," said a spokesperson. "It overrides and extinguishes native title rights and interests. And it removes people's rights and recourse to law and procedural fairness." Peter Robertson from the Northern Territory Environment Centre said there are no details limiting the size of a nuclear waste facility planned for the Territory and the site could just continue to expand. "There's nothing to stop them as time goes by from making the facility bigger and bigger to accommodate more and more waste, including waste from overseas, so this is the very core of the problem that it's going to already get the high level waste from Lucas Heights, it could get other high level waste from overseas," he said, according to a report on the ABC.

Iran says Israel Must be wiped out

Derek Lane

Again, its a case of see no evil, hear no evil, in terms of What Israel Did to Palestine. We are being told of a Palestinian suicide bomber, claimed as an attack from the Islamic Jihad (affiliated with Iran, so we are told), who has destroyed the peace once more in Israel and killed many Israelis. What we are not told, as ever, is that the attack was a retaliation from the Palestinians, in response to the killing of several Palestinian men in the West Bank, including a top resistance fighter. Again, it is what we are not told by the press that is often more important than what we are told. Why is it the palestinian position is not as important? Why is it that Palestinian deaths should be taken on the chin by Palestine, but that Israeli deaths should be avenged? Is it because the men killed by Israel are pictured wearing Army greens, yet the Israelis wear civilian clothes? (We do not see the pictures of the women, the children, the civilians killed by Israel - just the soldiers - again, we are shown what is pertinent to the cause). We should recognise the fact that while the civilians killed by Palestine this week were probably innocent of any murders themselves, they still chose to settle in Palestinian land, against the wishes of Palestine. That is; they were occupiers of foreign soil. Zionists. They very possibly had the mentality of Sharron, that Palestinians are grasshoppers, easy to squash. We were not told (not without trawling for the news, anyway), that the Israelis, in response for the rocket attacks led by Islamic Jihad which were a response for the killing of the Palestinian men, launched an air attack on Gaza Strip, allegedly killing no one, but injuring many and destroying buildings. We were not told that the beleaguered people of Palestine are still fighting for the right (with Israel's recent 'generosity' over Gaza Strip) to move their people freely from Gaza to Egypt, or that revenue for goods must be passed to Israel first. The land is only Palestinian in theory - if Israel controls the airspace and the sea space, and customs taxes are in their hands, what freedom does Palestine have except that there are fewer Israelis walking around on their land? At the same time as the events of Israel continue to oppress and kill those of Palestine (and allow their own civilians to be killed for the future of Israel), the US is pushing Syria around, trying to break them as they broke Libya recently - attempting to deny Iran even one clear ally. Syria is small - they will break. After all, neither the US or Israel want someone sneaking up behind them when they launch their assault on Iran. The charges are thus; Co-operation with terrorist groups in Palestine, Iraq (does that mean the US led coalition, I wonder?), and Lebanon. The security council (barring Russia) accuses them of aiding terrorism, that old chestnut. It worked for Libya, why not for Syria? How can a country the size of Syria, with the power of Syria, possibly argue against such a charge? If it is true they are aiding resistance in Iraq, then they are helping Iraqis as the British helped the French in WWII. If it is not true, they cannot prove it. Same goes for Palestine. They should be commended for their bravery, not threatened with sanctions. UN sanctions (from the US) are the very thing that killed more in Iraq (possibly) than the number the Coalition Invaders have taken since the inception of the Iraq War; if Syria were helping the people of Iraq then they were doing a humanitarian job, which is more than can be said of the West. And then there is Iran; I believe Iran is perhaps calling too many bluffs with the US. The new leader may see himself as a new Iranian Nassar, but times have changed, and the US did not fight in the invasion of Egypt. He says Israel should be wiped off the map - he has (as do many in the region - a huge issue with Zionists, and its easy to see why. But the US is looking for this type of talk; the previous undiplomatic attacks on Iran could amount to nothing if Iran plays its cards right. But maybe Iran has played it cards right, maybe they see themselves now as the last standing bastion of good and powerful Arabs against the West (replace with 'good against evil' if you so wish). Maybe they acknowledge the fact that if the US wins Iran, then they win everything. They have been pitting themselves against the country since the late seventies after all - and the US did not expect to see Iran out the other side of the Iran-Iraq War. That the country survived and prospered very possibly angered Rumsfeld beyond what we can see even now. For more information, see links: Israeli army kills top West Bank fighter |Israel launches fresh Gaza strikes | Explosion hits Israel coastal town, 4 killed

Irans accusations against UK bombers

Derek Lane

In the latest of a series of verbal attacks from both directions, Iran has unofficially (mirroring exactly the UK's unofficial line) accused the UK of being responsible for the explosions in Khuzestan, which killed 6 people. The explosions are the 3rd series of bombing to hit Khuzestan since June 2005, and each time there has been evidence to suggest British involvement or intelligence. It seems that Iran understands only too well the methods of the West - they seem to realize that usual governmental diplomacy is doing them no favours. In light of Rice's most recent rallying against Iran amongst the key allies of the US, who can blame Iran for following in the footsteps of the western media's tricks? This type of media manipulation won't rally support from the West anymore than the same manipulation in the opposite direction has done so for the people of the middle-east, but it will probably help to unify certain countries/people in the middle-east. If we believe that Iran is helping Iraqi insurgents kill soldiers in Iraq, then by definition we are forced to believe that the nations responsible for state terrorism (US, UK, Australia)in the middle-east may now have turned their hands to small-scale terrorism of the al queda variety.