Buzzflash.com, July 18, 2005
Title: “Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got
the Federal Ax, and Why Corporate News Censored
the Story”
Author: Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Lauren Powell,
Brett Forest, and Zoe Huffman
Faculty Evaluator: Andrew Roth, Ph.D.
Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground
debate raged regarding the future of the
Internet. More recently referred to as “network
neutrality,” the issue has become a tug of war
with cable companies on the one hand and
consumers and Internet service providers on the
other. Yet despite important legislative
proposals and Supreme Court decisions throughout
2005, the issue was almost completely ignored in
the headlines until 2006.1 And, except for
occasional coverage on CNBC’s Kudlow & Kramer,
mainstream television remains hands-off to this
day (June 2006).2
Most coverage of the issue framed it as an
argument over regulation—but the term
“regulation” in this case is somewhat
misleading. Groups advocating for “net
neutrality” are not promoting regulation of
internet content. What they want is a legal
mandate forcing cable companies to allow
internet service providers (ISPs) free access to
their cable lines (called a “common carriage”
agreement). This was the model used for dial-up
internet, and it is the way content providers
want to keep it. They also want to make sure
that cable companies cannot screen or interrupt
internet content without a court order.
Those in favor of net neutrality say that lack
of government regulation simply means that cable
lines will be regulated by the cable companies
themselves. ISPs will have to pay a hefty
service fee for the right to use cable lines
(making internet services more expensive). Those
who could pay more would get better access;
those who could not pay would be left behind.
Cable companies could also decide to filter
Internet content at will.
On the other side, cable company supporters say
that a great deal of time and money was spent
laying cable lines and expanding their speed and
quality.3 They claim that allowing ISPs free
access would deny cable companies the ability to
recoup their investments, and maintain that
cable providers should be allowed to charge. Not
doing so, they predict, would discourage
competition and innovation within the cable
industry.
Cable supporters like the AT&T-sponsored Hands
Off the Internet website assert that common
carriage legislation would lead to higher prices
and months of legal wrangling. They maintain
that such legislation fixes a problem that
doesn’t exist and scoff at concerns that phone
and cable companies will use their position to
limit access based on fees as groundless. Though
cable companies deny plans to block content
providers without cause, there are a number of
examples of cable-initiated discrimination.
In March 2005, the FCC settled a case against a
North Carolina-based telephone company that was
blocking the ability of its customers to use
voice-over-Internet calling services instead of
(the more expensive) phone lines.4 In August
2005, a Canadian cable company blocked access to
a site that supported the cable union in a labor
dispute.5 In February 2006, Cox Communications
denied customers access to the Craig’s List
website. Though Cox claims that it was simply a
security error, it was discovered that Cox ran a
classified service that competes with Craig’s
List.6
court decisions
In June of 1999, the Ninth District Court ruled
that AT&T would have to open its cable network
to ISPs (AT&T v. City of Portland). The court
said that Internet transmissions, interactive,
two-way exchanges, were telecommunication
offerings, not a cable information service (like
CNN) that sends data one way. This decision was
overturned on appeal a year later.
Recent court decisions have extended the cable
company agenda further. On June 27, 2005, The
United States Supreme Court ruled that cable
corporations like Comcast and Verizon were not
required to share their lines with rival ISPs
(National Cable & Telecommunications Association
vs. Brand X Internet Services).7 Cable companies
would not have to offer common carriage
agreements for cable lines the way that
telephone companies have for phone lines.
According to Dr. Elliot Cohen, the decision
accepted the FCC assertion that cable modem
service is not a two-way telecommunications
offering, but a one-way information service,
completely overturning the 1999 ruling.
Meanwhile, telephone companies charge that such
a decision gives an unfair advantage to cable
companies and are requesting that they be
released from their common carriage requirement
as well.
Legislation
On June 8, the House rejected legislation (HR
5273) that would have prevented phone and cable
companies from selling preferential treatment on
their networks for delivery of video and other
data-heavy applications. It also passed the
Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and
Enhancement (COPE) Act (HR 5252), which
supporters said would encourage innovation and
the construction of more high-speed Internet
lines. Internet neutrality advocates say it will
allow phone and cable companies to cherry-pick
customers in wealthy neighborhoods while
eliminating the current requirement demanded by
most local governments that cable TV companies
serve low-income and minority areas as well. 8
Comment: As of June 2006, the COPE Act is in the
Senate. Supporters say the bill supports
innovation and freedom of choice. Interet
neutrality advocates say that its passage would
forever compromise the Internet. Giant cable
companies would attain a monopoly on high-speed,
cable Internet. They would prevent poorer
citizens from broadband access, while monitoring
and controlling the content of information that
can be accessed.
Notes
1. “Keeping a Democratic Web,” The New York
Times, May 2, 2006.
2. Jim Goldman, Larry Kudlow, and Phil Lebeau,
“Panelists Michael Powell, Mike Holland, Neil
Weinberg, John Augustine and Pablo
Perez-Fernandez discuss markets,” Kudlow &
Company CNBC, March 6, 2006.
3.
http://www.Handsofftheinternet.com.
4. Michael Geist, “Telus breaks Net Providers’
cardinal rule: Telecom company blocks access to
site supporting union in labour dispute,” Ottawa
Citizen, August 4, 2005.
5. Jonathan Krim, “Renewed Warning of Bandwidth
Hoarding,” The Washington Post, November 24,
2005.
6. David A. Utter, “Craigslist Blocked By Cox
Interactive,”
http://www.Webpronews.com, June 7, 2006.
7. Yuki Noguchi, “Cable Firms Don’t Have to
Share Networks, Court Rules,” Washington Post,
June 28, 2005.
8. “Last week in Congress / How our
representatives voted,” Buffalo News (New York),
June 11, 2006.
UPDATE BY ELLIOT D. COHEN, PH.D.
Despite the fact that the Court’s decision in
Brand X marks the beginning of the end for a
robust, democratic Internet, there has been a
virtual MSM blackout in covering it. As a result
of this decision, the legal stage has been set
for further corporate control. Currently pending
in Congress is the “Communications Opportunity,
Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006”(HR
5252), fueled by strong telecom corporative
lobbies and introduced by Congressman Joe Barton
(R-TX). This Act, which fails to adequately
protect an open and neutral Internet, includes a
“Title II—Enforcement of Broadband Policy
Statement” that gives the FCC “exclusive
authority to adjudicate any complaint alleging a
violation of the broadband policy statement or
the principles incorporated therein.” With the
passage of this provision, courts will have
scant authority to challenge and overturn FCC
decisions regarding broadband. Since under
current FCC Chair Kevin Martin, the FCC is
moving toward still further deregulation of
telecom and media companies, the likely
consequence is the thickening of the plot to
increase corporate control of the Internet. In
particular, behemoth telecom corporations like
Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want to set up toll
booths on the Internet. If these companies get
their way, content providers with deep pockets
will be afforded optimum bandwidth while the
rest of us will be left spinning in cyberspace.
No longer will everyone enjoy an equal voice in
the freest and most comprehensive democratic
forum ever devised by humankind.
As might be expected, none of these new
developments are being addressed by the MSM.
Among media activist organizations attempting to
stop the gutting of the free Internet is The
Free Press (http://www.freepress.net/),
which now has an aggressive “Save the Internet”
campaign.
#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling
Nuclear Technologies to Iran
Source:
Global Research.ca, August 5, 2005
Title: “Halliburton Secretly Doing Business With
Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team”
Author: Jason Leopold
Faculty Evaluator: Catherine Nelson
Student Researchers: Kristine Medeiros and Pla
Herr
According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources
at former Cheney company Halliburton allege
that, as recently as January of 2005,
Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear
reactor to an Iranian oil development company.
Leopold says his Halliburton sources have
intimate knowledge of the business dealings of
both Halliburton and Oriental Oil Kish, one of
Iran’s largest private oil companies.
Additionally, throughout 2004 and 2005,
Halliburton worked closely with Cyrus Nasseri,
the vice chairman of the board of directors of
Iran-based Oriental Oil Kish, to develop oil
projects in Iran. Nasseri is also a key member
of Iran’s nuclear development team. Nasseri was
interrogated by Iranian authorities in late July
2005 for allegedly providing Halliburton with
Iran’s nuclear secrets. Iranian government
officials charged Nasseri with accepting as much
as $1 million in bribes from Halliburton for
this information.
Oriental Oil Kish dealings with Halliburton
first became public knowledge in January 2005
when the company announced that it had
subcontracted parts of the South Pars
gas-drilling project to Halliburton Products and
Services, a subsidiary of Dallas-based
Halliburton that is registered to the Cayman
Islands. Following the announcement, Halliburton
claimed that the South Pars gas field project in
Tehran would be its last project in Iran.
According to a BBC report, Halliburton, which
took thirty to forty million dollars from its
Iranian operations in 2003, “was winding down
its work due to a poor business environment.”
However, Halliburton has a long history of doing
business in Iran, starting as early as 1995,
while Vice President Cheney was chief executive
of the company. Leopold quotes a February 2001
report published in the Wall Street Journal,
“Halliburton Products and Services Ltd., works
behind an unmarked door on the ninth floor of a
new north Tehran tower block. A brochure
declares that the company was registered in 1975
in the Cayman Islands, is based in the Persian
Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is “non-American.”
But like the sign over the receptionist’s head,
the brochure bears the company’s name and red
emblem, and offers services from Halliburton
units around the world.” Moreover mail sent to
the company’s offices in Tehran and the Cayman
Islands is forwarded directly to its Dallas
headquarters.
In an attempt to curtail Halliburton and other
U.S. companies from engaging in business
dealings with rogue nations such as Libya, Iran,
and Syria, an amendment was approved in the
Senate on July 26, 2005. The amendment,
sponsored by Senator Susan Collins R-Maine,
would penalize companies that continue to skirt
U.S. law by setting up offshore subsidiaries as
a way to legally conduct and avoid U.S.
sanctions under the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
A letter, drafted by trade groups representing
corporate executives, vehemently objected to the
amendment, saying it would lead to further
hatred and perhaps incite terrorist attacks on
the U.S. and “greatly strain relations with the
United States primary trading partners.” The
letter warned that, “Foreign governments view
U.S. efforts to dictate their foreign and
commercial policy as violations of sovereignty
often leading them to adopt retaliatory measures
more at odds with U.S. goals.”
Collins supports the legislation, stating, “It
prevents U.S. corporations from creating a shell
company somewhere else in order to do business
with rogue, terror-sponsoring nations such as
Syria and Iran. The bottom line is that if a
U.S. company is evading sanctions to do business
with one of these countries, they are helping to
prop up countries that support terrorism—most
often aimed against America.
UPDATE BY JASON LEOPOLD
During a trip to the Middle East in March 1996,
Vice President Dick Cheney told a group of
mostly U.S. businessmen that Congress should
ease sanctions in Iran and Libya to foster
better relationships, a statement that, in
hindsight, is completely hypocritical
considering the Bush administration’s foreign
policy.
“Let me make a generalized statement about a
trend I see in the U.S. Congress that I find
disturbing, that applies not only with respect
to the Iranian situation but a number of others
as well,” Cheney said. “I think we Americans
sometimes make mistakes . . . There seems to be
an assumption that somehow we know what’s best
for everybody else and that we are going to use
our economic clout to get everybody else to live
the way we would like.”
Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton
Corporation at the time he uttered those words.
It was Cheney who directed Halliburton toward
aggressive business dealings with Iran—in
violation of U.S. law—in the mid-1990s, which
continued through 2005 and is the reason Iran
has the capability to enrich weapons-grade
uranium.
It was Halliburton’s secret sale of centrifuges
to Iran that helped get the uranium enrichment
program off the ground, according to a
three-year investigation that includes
interviews conducted with more than a dozen
current and former Halliburton employees.
If the U.S. ends up engaged in a war with Iran
in the future, Cheney and Halliburton will bear
the brunt of the blame.
But this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who
has been following Halliburton’s business
activities over the past decade. The company has
a long, documented history of violating U.S.
sanctions and conducting business with so-called
rogue nations.
No, what’s disturbing about these facts is how
little attention it has received from the
mainstream media. But the public record speaks
for itself, as do the thousands of pages of
documents obtained by various federal agencies
that show how Halliburton’s business dealings in
Iran helped fund terrorist activities
there—including the country’s nuclear enrichment
program.
When I asked Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for
Halliburton, a couple of years ago if
Halliburton would stop doing business with Iran
because of concerns that the company helped fund
terrorism she said, “No.” “We believe that
decisions as to the nature of such governments
and their actions are better made by
governmental authorities and international
entities such as the United Nations as opposed
to individual persons or companies,” Hall said.
“Putting politics aside, we and our affiliates
operate in countries to the extent it is legally
permissible, where our customers are active as
they expect us to provide oilfield services
support to their international operations. “We
do not always agree with policies or actions of
governments in every place that we do business
and make no excuses for their behaviors. Due to
the long-term nature of our business and the
inevitability of political and social change, it
is neither prudent nor appropriate for our
company to establish our own country-by-country
foreign policy.”
Halliburton first started doing business in Iran
as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney
was chief executive of the company and in
possible violation of U.S. sanctions.
An executive order signed by former President
Bill Clinton in March 1995 prohibits “new
investments (in Iran) by U.S. persons, including
commitment of funds or other assets.” It also
bars U.S. companies from performing services
“that would benefit the Iranian oil industry”
and provide Iran with the financial means to
engage in terrorist activity.
When Bush and Cheney came into office in 2001,
their administration decided it would not punish
foreign oil and gas companies that invest in
those countries. The sanctions imposed on
countries like Iran and Libya before Bush became
president were blasted by Cheney, who gave
frequent speeches on the need for U.S. companies
to compete with their foreign competitors,
despite claims that those countries may have
ties to terrorism.
“I think we’d be better off if we, in fact,
backed off those sanctions (on Iran), didn’t try
to impose secondary boycotts on companies . . .
trying to do business over there . . . and
instead started to rebuild those relationships,”
Cheney said during a 1998 business trip to
Sydney, Australia, according to Australia’s
Illawarra Mercury newspaper.
#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
Source:
Mother Jones, March /April, 2006
Title: The Fate of the Ocean
Author: Julia Whitty
Faculty Evaluator: Dolly Freidel
Student Researcher: Charlene Jones
Oceanic problems once found on a local scale are
now pandemic. Data from oceanography, marine
biology, meteorology, fishery science, and
glaciology reveal that the seas are changing in
ominous ways. A vortex of cause and effect
wrought by global environmental dilemmas is
changing the ocean from a watery horizon with
assorted regional troubles to a global system in
alarming distress.
According to oceanographers the oceans are one,
with currents linking the seas and regulating
climate. Sea temperature and chemistry changes,
along with contamination and reckless fishing
practices, intertwine to imperil the world’s
largest communal life source.
In 2005, researchers from the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography and the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory found clear
evidence the ocean is quickly warming. They
discovered that the top half-mile of the ocean
has warmed dramatically in the past forty years
as a result of human-induced greenhouse gases.
One manifestation of this warming is the melting
of the Arctic. A shrinking ratio of ice to water
has set off a feedback loop, accelerating the
increase in water surfaces that promote further
warming and melting. With polar waters growing
fresher and tropical seas saltier, the cycle of
evaporation and precipitation has quickened,
further invigorating the greenhouse effect. The
ocean’s currents are reacting to this
freshening, causing a critical conveyor that
carries warm upper waters into Europe’s northern
latitudes to slow by one third since 1957,
bolstering fears of a shut down and cataclysmic
climate change. This accelerating cycle of cause
and effect will be difficult, if not impossible,
to reverse.
Atmospheric litter is also altering sea
chemistry, as thousands of toxic compounds
poison marine creatures and devastate
propagation. The ocean has absorbed an estimated
118 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide since
the onset of the Industrial Revolution, with 20
to 25 tons being added to the atmosphere daily.
Increasing acidity from rising levels of CO2 is
changing the ocean’s PH balance. Studies
indicate that the shells and skeletons possessed
by everything from reef-building corals to
mollusks and plankton begin to dissolve within
forty-eight hours of exposure to the acidity
expected in the ocean by 2050. Coral reefs will
almost certainly disappear and, even more
worrisome, so will plankton. Phytoplankton
absorb greenhouse gases, manufacture oxygen, and
are the primary producers of the marine food
web.
Mercury pollution enters the food web via coal
and chemical industry waste, oxidizes in the
atmosphere, and settles to the sea bottom. There
it is consumed, delivering mercury to each
subsequent link in the food chain, until
predators such as tuna or whales carry levels of
mercury as much as one million times that of the
waters around them. The Gulf of Mexico has the
highest mercury levels ever recorded, with an
average of ten tons of mercury coming down the
Mississippi River every year, and another ton
added by offshore drilling.
Along with mercury, the Mississippi delivers
nitrogen (often from fertilizers). Nitrogen
stimulates plant and bacterial growth in the
water that consume oxygen, creating a condition
known as hypoxia, or dead zones. Dead zones
occur wherever oceanic oxygen is depleted below
the level necessary to sustain marine life. A
sizable portion of the Gulf of Mexico has become
a dead zone—the largest such area in the U.S.
and the second largest on the planet, measuring
nearly 8,000 square miles in 2001. It is no
coincidence that almost all of the nearly 150
(and counting) dead zones on earth lay at the
mouths of rivers. Nearly fifty fester off U.S.
coasts. While most are caused by river-borne
nitrogen, fossil fuel-burning plants help create
this condition, as does phosphorous from human
sewage and nitrogen emissions from auto exhaust.
Meanwhile, since its peak in 2000, the global
wild fish harvest has begun a sharp decline
despite progress in seagoing technologies and
intensified fishing. So-called efficiencies in
fishing have stimulated unprecedented decimation
of sealife. Long-lining, in which a single boat
sets line across sixty or more miles of ocean,
each baited with up to 10,000 hooks, captures at
least 25 percent unwanted catch. With an
estimated 2 billion hooks set each year, as much
as 88 billion pounds of life a year is thrown
back to the ocean either dead or dying.
Additionally, trawlers drag nets across every
square inch of the continental shelves every two
years. Fishing the sea floor like a bulldozer,
they level an area 150 times larger than all
forest clearcuts each year and destroy seafloor
ecosystems. Aquaculture is no better, since
three pounds of wild fish are caught to feed
every pound of farmed salmon. A 2003 study out
of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia
concluded, based on data dating from the 1950s,
that in the wake of decades of such onslaught
only 10 percent of all large fish (tuna,
swordfish) and ground fish (cod, hake, flounder)
are left anywhere in the ocean.
Other sea nurseries are also threatened. Fifteen
percent of seagrass beds have disappeared in the
last ten years, depriving juvenile fish,
manatees, and sea turtles of critical habitats.
Kelp beds are also dying at alarming rates.
While at no time in history has science taught
more about how the earth’s life-support systems
work, the maelstrom of human assault on the seas
continues. If human failure in governance of the
world’s largest public domain is not reversed
quickly, the ocean will soon and surely reach a
point of no return.
Comment:
After release of the Pew Oceans Commission
report, U.S. media, most notably The Washington
Post and National Public Radio in 2003 and 2004,
covered several stories regarding impending
threats to the ocean, recommendations for
protection, and President Bush’s response.
However, media treatment of the collective
acceleration of ocean damage and
cross-pollination of harm was left to Julia
Whitty in her lengthy feature. In April of 2006,
Time Magazine presented an in-depth article
about earth at “the tipping point,” describing
the planet as an overworked organism fighting
the consequences of global climate change on
shore and sea. In her Mother Jones article,
Whitty presented a look at global illness by
directly examining the ocean as earth’s
circulatory, respiratory, and reproductive
system.
Following up on “The Last Days of the Ocean,”
Mother Jones has produced “Ocean Voyager,” an
innovative web-based adventure that includes
videos, audio interviews with key players,
webcams, and links to informative web pages
created by more than twenty organizations. The
site is a tour of various ocean trouble spots
around the world, which highlights solutions and
suggests actions that can be taken to help make
a difference.
UPDATE BY JULIA WHITTY
This story is awash with new developments.
Scientists are currently publishing at an
unprecedented rate their observations—not just
predictions—on the rapid changes underway on our
ocean planet. First and foremost, the year 2005
turned out to be the warmest year on record.
This reinforces other data showing the earth has
grown hotter in the past 400 years, and possibly
in the past 2,000 years. A study out of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research found
ocean temperatures in the tropical North
Atlantic in 2005 nearly two degrees Fahrenheit
above normal; this turned out to be the
predominant catalyst for the monstrous 2005
hurricane season—the most violent season ever
seen.
The news from the polar ice is no better. A
joint NASA/University of Kansas study in Science
(02/06) reveals that Greenland’s glaciers are
surging towards the sea and melting more than
twice as fast as ten years ago. This further
endangers the critical balance of the North
Atlantic meridional overturning circulation,
which holds our climate stable. Meanwhile, in
March, the British Antarctic Survey announced
their findings that the “global warming
signature” of the Antarctic is three times
larger than what we’re seeing elsewhere on
Earth—the first proof of broadscale climate
change across the southern continent.
Since “The Fate of the Ocean” went to press in
Mother Jones magazine, evidence of the
politicization of science in the global climate
wars has also emerged. In January 2006 NASA’s
top climate scientist, James Hansen, accused the
agency of trying to censor his work. Four months
later, Hansen’s accusations were echoed by
scientists at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, as well as by a U.S.
Geological Survey scientist working at a NOAA
lab, who claimed their work on global climate
change was being censored by their departments,
as part of a policy of intimidation by the
anti-science Bush administration.
Problems for the ocean’s wildlife are escalating
too. In 2005, biologists from the U.S. Minerals
Management Service found polar bears drowned in
the waters off Alaska, apparent victims of the
disappearing ice. In 2006, U.S. Geological
Survey Alaska Science Center researchers found
polar bears killing and eating each other in
areas where sea ice failed to form that year,
leaving the bears bereft of food. In response,
the International Union for the Conservation of
Nature and Natural Resources revised their Red
List for polar bears—upgrading them from
“conservation dependent” to “vulnerable.” In
February, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
announced it would begin reviewing whether polar
bears need protection under the Endangered
Species Act.
Since my report, the leaders of two influential
commissions—the Pew Oceans Commission and the
U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy—gave Congress,
the Bush administration, and our nation’s
governors a “D+” grade for not moving quickly
enough to address their recommendations for
restoring health to our nation’s oceans.
Most of these stories remain out of view, sunk
with cement boots in the backwaters of
scientific journals. The media remains unable to
discern good science from bad, and gives equal
credence to both, when they give any at all. The
story of our declining ocean world, and our own
future, develops beyond the ken of the public,
who forge ahead without altering behavior or
goals, and unimpeded by foresight.
#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in
the US
Sources:
The New Standard, December 2005
Title: “New Report Shows Increase in Urban
Hunger, Homelessness”
Author: Brendan Coyne
OneWorld.net, March, 2006
Title: “US Plan to Eliminate Survey of Needy
Families Draws Fire “
Author: Abid Aslam
The number of hungry and homeless people in U.S.
cities continued to grow in 2005, despite claims
of an improved economy. Increased demand for
vital services rose as needs of the most
destitute went unmet, according to the annual
U.S. Conference of Mayors Report, which has
documented increasing need since its 1982
inception.
The study measures instances of emergency food
and housing assistance in twenty-four U.S.
cities and utilizes supplemental information
from the U.S. Census and Department of Labor.
More than three-quarters of cities surveyed
reported increases in demand for food and
housing, especially among families. Food aid
requests expanded by 12 percent in 2005, while
aid center and food bank resources grew by only
7 percent. Service providers estimated 18
percent of requests went unattended. Housing
followed a similar trend, as a majority of
cities reported an increase in demand for
emergency shelter, often going unmet due to lack
of resources.
As urban hunger and homelessness increases in
America, the Bush administration is planning to
eliminate a U.S. survey widely used to improve
federal and state programs for low-income and
retired Americans, reports Abid Aslam.
President Bush’s proposed budget for fiscal
2007, which begins October 2006, includes a
Commerce Department plan to eliminate the Census
Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program
Participation (SIPP). The proposal marks at
least the third White House attempt in as many
years to do away with federal data collection on
politically prickly economic issues.
Founded in 1984, the Census Bureau survey
follows American families for a number of years
and monitors their use of Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF), Social Security,
Medicaid, unemployment insurance, child care,
and other health, social service, and education
programs.
Some 415 economists and social scientists signed
a letter and sent it to Congress, shortly after
the February release of Bush’s federal budget
proposal, urging that the survey be fully funded
as it “is the only large-scale survey explicitly
designed to analyze the impact of a wide variety
of government programs on the well being of
American families.”
Heather Boushey, economist at the Washington,
D.C.–based Center for Economic and Policy
Research told Abid Aslam, “We need to know what
the effects of these programs are on American
families . . . SIPP is designed to do just
that.” Boushey added that the survey has proved
invaluable in tracking the effects of changes in
government programs. So much so that the 1996
welfare reform law specifically mentioned the
survey as the best means to evaluate the law’s
effectiveness.
Supporters of the survey elimination say the
program costs too much at $40 million per year.
They would kill it in September and eventually
replace it with a scaled-down version that would
run to $9.2 million in development costs during
the coming fiscal year. Actual data collection
would begin in 2009.
Defenders of the survey counter that the cost is
justified as SIPP “provides a constant stream of
in-depth data that enables government, academic,
and independent researchers to evaluate the
effectiveness and improve the efficiency of
several hundred billion dollars in spending on
social programs,” including homeless shelters
and emergency food aid.
UPDATE BY ABID ASLAM
As of the end of May 2006, hundreds of
economists and social scientists remain engaged
in a bid to save the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey
of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).
Ideologically diverse users describe the survey
as pioneering and say it has helped to improve
the uptake and performance of, and to gauge the
effects on American families of changes in
public provisions ranging from Medicaid to
Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and
school lunch programs.
A few journalists took notice because users of
the data, including the Washington-based Center
for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which
spearheaded the effort to save SIPP, chose to
make some noise.By most accounts, the matter was
a simple fight over money: the administration
was out to cut any hint of flesh from
bureaucratic budgets (perhaps to feed its
foreign policy pursuits) but users of the survey
wanted the money spent on SIPP because, in their
view, the program is valuable and no feasible
alternative exists or has been proposed.
That debate remains to be resolved. Lobbyists
expect more legislative action in June and among
them, CEPR remains available to provide
updates.But is it just an isolated budget fight?
This is the third time in as many years that the
Bush administration has tried—and in the
previous two cases, failed under pressure from
users and advocates—to strip funding for awkward
research. In 2003, it had tried to kill the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Mass Layoff
Statistics report, which detailed where
workplaces with more than fifty employees closed
and what kinds of workers were affected. In 2004
and 2005, it had attempted to drop questions on
the hiring and firing of women from employment
data collected by the BLS. Hardly big-ticket
items on the federal budget, the mass layoffs
reports provided federal and state social
service agencies with data crucial for planning
even as it chronicled job losses and the
so-called “jobless recovery.” The women’s
questionnaire uncovered employment
discrimination.
In other words, SIPP and the BLS programs are
politically prickly. They highlight that,
regardless of what some politicians and
executives might say, economic and social
problems persist and involve real people whose
real needs remain to be met. This calls to mind
the old line about there being three kinds of
lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. To be
convincing, they must be broadly consistent. If
the numbers don’t support the narrative,
something simply must give. With the
livelihoods, life chances, and rights of
millions of citizens at stake, these are more
than stories about arcane budget wrangles.
#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo
Sources:
The Taylor Report, March 28, 2005
Title: “The World’s Most Neglected Emergency:
Phil Taylor talks to Keith Harmon Snow”
Earth First! Journal, August 2005
Title: “High-Tech Genocide”
Author: Sprocket
Z Magazine, March 1, 2006
Title: “Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in
the Congo”
Authors: Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski
Faculty Evaluator: Thom Lough
Student Researchers: Deyango Harris and Daniel
Turner
The world’s most neglected emergency, according
to the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, is the
ongoing tragedy of the Congo, where six to seven
million have died since 1996 as a consequence of
invasions and wars sponsored by western powers
trying to gain control of the region’s mineral
wealth. At stake is control of natural resources
that are sought by U.S. corporations—diamonds,
tin, copper, gold, and more significantly,
coltan and niobium, two minerals necessary for
production of cell phones and other high-tech
electronics; and cobalt, an element essential to
nuclear, chemical, aerospace, and defense
industries.
Columbo-tantalite, i.e. coltan, is found in
three-billion-year-old soils like those in the
Rift Valley region of Africa. The tantalum
extracted from the coltan ore is used to make
tantalum capacitors, tiny components that are
essential in managing the flow of current in
electronic devices. Eighty percent of the
world’s coltan reserves are found in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Niobium is
another high-tech mineral with a similar story.
Sprocket reports that the high-tech boom of the
1990s caused the price of coltan to skyrocket to
nearly $300 per pound. In 1996 U.S.-sponsored
Rwandan and Ugandan forces entered eastern DRC.
By 1998 they seized control and moved into
strategic mining areas. The Rwandan Army was
soon making $20 million or more a month from
coltan mining. Though the price of coltan has
fallen, Rwanda maintains its monopoly on coltan
and the coltan trade in DRC. Reports of rampant
human rights abuses pour out of this mining
region.
Coltan makes its way out of the mines to trading
posts where foreign traders buy the mineral and
ship it abroad, mostly through Rwanda. Firms
with the capability turn coltan into the coveted
tantalum powder, and then sell the magic powder
to Nokia, Motorola, Compaq, Sony, and other
manufacturers for use in cell phones and other
products.
Keith Harmon Snow emphasizes that any analysis
of the geopolitics in the Congo, and the reasons
for why the Congolese people have suffered a
virtually unending war since 1996, requires an
understanding of the organized crime perpetrated
through multinational businesses. The tragedy of
the Congo conflict has been instituted by
invested corporations, their proxy armies, and
the supra-governmental bodies that support them.
The process is tied to major multinational
corporations at all levels. These include
U.S.-based Cabot Corp. and OM Group; HC Starck
of Germany; and Nigncxia of China—corporations
that have been linked by a United Nations Panel
of Experts to the atrocities in DRC. Extortion,
rape, massacres, and bribery are all part of the
criminal networks set up and maintained by huge
multinational companies. Yet as mining in the
Congo by western companies proceeds at an
unprecedented rate—some $6 million in raw cobalt
alone exiting DRC daily—multinational mining
companies rarely get mentioned in human rights
reports.
Sprocket notes that Sam Bodman, CEO of Cabot
during the coltan boom, was appointed in
December 2004 to serve as President Bush’s
Secretary of Energy. Under Bodman’s leadership
from 1987 to 2000, Cabot was one of the U.S.’s
largest polluters, accounting for 60,000 tons of
airborne toxic emissions annually. Snow adds
that Sony’s current Executive Vice President and
General Counsel Nicole Seligman was a former
legal adviser for Bill Clinton. Many who held
positions of power in the Clinton administration
moved into high positions with Sony.
The article “Behind the Numbers,” coauthored by
Snow and David Barouski, details a web of U.S.
corruption and conflicts of interest between
mining corporations such as Barrick Gold (see
Story #21) and the U.S. government under George
H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, as
well as U.S. arms dealers such as Simax; U.S.
defense companies such as Lockheed Martin,
Halliburton, Northrop Grumman, GE, Boeing,
Raytheon, and Bechtel; “humanitarian”
organizations such as CARE, funded by Lockheed
Martin, and International Rescue Committee,
whose Board of Overseers includes Henry
Kissinger; “Conservation” interests that provide
the vanguard for western penetration into
Central Africa; and of course, PR firms and news
outlets such as the New York Times.
Sprocket closes his article by noting that it’s
not surprising this information isn’t included
in the literature and manuals that come with
your cell phones, pagers, computers, or diamond
jewelry. Perhaps, he suggests, mobile phones
should be outfitted with stickers that read:
“Warning! This device was created with raw
materials from central Africa. These materials
are rare, nonrenewable, were sold to fund a
bloody war of occupation, and have caused the
virtual elimination of endangered species. Have
a nice day.” People need to realize, he says,
that there is a direct link between the gadgets
that make our lives more convenient and
sophisticated—and the reality of the violence,
turmoil, and destruction that plague our world.
UPDATE BY SPROCKET
There are large fortunes to be made in the
manufacturing of high-tech electronics and in
selling convenience and entertainment to
American consumers, but at what cost?
Conflicts in Africa are often shrouded with
misinformation, while U.S. and other western
interests are routinely downplayed or omitted by
the corporate media. The June 5, 2006, cover
story of Time, entitled “Congo: The Hidden Toll
of the World’s Deadliest War,” was no exception.
Although the article briefly mentioned coltan
and its use in cell phones and other electronic
devices, no mention was made of the pivotal role
this and other raw materials found in the region
play in the conflict. The story painted the
ongoing war as a pitiable and horrible tragedy,
avoiding the corporations and foreign
governments that have created the framework for
the violence and those which have strong
financial and political interests in the
conflict’s outcome.
In an article written by Johann Hari and
published by The Hamilton Spectator on May 13,
2006, the corporate media took a step toward
addressing the true reason for the tremendous
body count that continues to pile up in the
Democratic Republic of Congo: “The only change
over the decades has been the resources snatched
for Western consumption—rubber under the
Belgians, diamonds under Mobutu, coltan and
casterite today.”
Most disturbing is that in the corporate media,
the effect of this conflict on nonhuman life is
totally overlooked. Even with a high-profile
endangered species like the Eastern lowland
gorilla hanging in the balance, almost driven to
extinction through poaching and habitat loss by
displaced villagers and warring factions, the
environmental angle of the story is rarely
considered.
The next step in understanding the exploitation
and violence wrought upon the inhabitants of
central Africa, fueled by the hunger for
high-tech toys in the U.S., is to expose
corporations like Sony and Motorola. These
corporations don’t want protest movements
tarnishing their reputations. Nor do they want
to call attention to all of the gorillas coltan
kills, and the guerrillas it feeds.
It is time for our culture to start seeing more
value in living beings, whether gorillas or
humans, than in our disposable high-tech gadgets
such as cell phones. It is time to steal back a
more compassionate existence from the corporate
plutocracy that creates destructive markets and
from the media system that has manufactured our
consent.
It is not just a question of giving up cell
phones (though that would be a great start). We
must question the appropriation of our planet in
the form of a resource to be consumed, rather
than as a home and community to be lived in.
“High-Tech Genocide” and other articles about
cell phone technology are available by
contacting the author:
sprocket@riseup.net.
UPDATE BY KEITH HARMON SNOW
War for the control of the Democratic Republic
of Congo—what should be the richest country in
the world—began in Uganda in the 1980s, when now
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni shot his way
to power with the backing of Buckingham Palace,
the White House, and Tel Aviv behind him.
Paul Kagame, now president of Rwanda, served as
Museveni’s Director of Military Intelligence.
Kagame later trained at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, before the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)—backed
by Roger Winter, the U.S. Committee on Refugees,
and the others above—invaded Rwanda. The RPF
destabilized and then secured Rwanda. This coup
d’etat is today misunderstood as the “Rwanda
Genocide.” What played out in Rwanda in 1994 is
now playing out in Darfur, Sudan; regime change
is the goal, “genocide” is the tool of
propaganda used to manipulate and disinform.
In 1996, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, with
the Pentagon behind them, launched their covert
war against Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and his
western backers. A decade later, there are 6 or
7 million dead, at the very least, and the war
in Congo (Zaire) continues.
If you are reading the mainstream newspapers or
listening to National Public Radio, you are
contributing to your own mental illness, no
matter how astute you believe yourself to be at
“balancing” or “deciphering” the code.
News reports in Time Magazine (“The Deadliest
War In The World,” June 6, 2006) and on CNN
(“Rape, Brutality Ignored to Aid Congo Peace,”
May 26, 2006) that appeared at the time of this
writing are being interpreted by conscious
people to be truth-telling at last. However,
these are perfect examples filled with hidden
deceptions and manipulations.
For accuracy and truth on Central Africa, look
to people like Robin Philpot (Imperialism Dies
Hard), Wayne Madsen (Genocide and Covert
Operations in Africa, 1993–1999), Amos Wilson
(The Falsification of Consciousness), Charles
Onana (The Secrets of the Rwanda
Genocide—Investigation on the Mysteries of a
President), Antoine Lokongo (www.congopanorama.info),
Phil Taylor (www.taylor-report.com),
Christopher Black (“Racism, Murder and Lies in
Rwanda”). World War 4 Report has published my
reports, but they are inconsistent in their
attention to accuracy, and would as quickly
adopt the propaganda, and have done so at times.
It is possible to collect little fragments of
truth here and there—never counting on the
mainstream system for this—but one must beware
the deceptions and bias. In this vein, the elite
business journal Africa Confidential is often
very revealing. Some facts can be gleaned from
www.DigitalCongo.net and
Africa Research Bulletin.
Professor David Gibb’s book The Political
Economy of Third World Intervention: Case of the
Congo Crises is an excellent backgrounder that
identifies players still active today
(especially Maurice Tempelsman and his diamonds
interests connected to the Democratic Party).
Ditto King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hocshchild,
but—exemplifying the expedience of
“interests”—remember that Hocshchild never tells
you, the reader, that his father ran a mining
company in Congo. Almost ALL reportage is
expedient; one needs take care their propensity
to be deceived.
Professor Ruth Mayer’s book Artificial Africas:
Colonial Images in the Times of Globalization is
a particularly poignant articulation of the
means by which the “media” system distorts and
manipulates all things African. And, never
forget
www.AllThingsPass.com.
Also hoping to correct the record and reveal the
truth, the International Forum for Truth and
Justice in the Great Lakes of Africa (www.veritasrwandaforum.org),
based in Spain, and co-founded by Nobel Prize
nominee Juan Carrero Seraleegui, is involved in
a groundbreaking lawsuit charging massive crimes
against humanity and acts of genocide were
committed by the now government of Rwanda.
#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in
Jeopardy
Source:
Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility website
Titles: “Whistleblowers Get Help from Bush
Administration,” December 5, 2005
“Long-Delayed Investigation of Special Counsel
Finally Begins,” October 18,2005
“Back Door Rollback of Federal Whistleblower
Protections,” September 22, 2005
Author: Jeff Ruch
Faculty Evaluator: Barbara Bloom
Student Researchers: Caitlyn Peele and Sara-Joy
Christienson
Special Counsel Scott Bloch, appointed by
President Bush in 2004, is overseeing the
virtual elimination of federal whistleblower
rights in the U.S. government.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the
agency that is supposed to protect federal
employees who blow the whistle on waste, fraud,
and abuse is dismissing hundreds of cases while
advancing almost none. According to the Annual
Report for 2004 (which was not released until
the end of first quarter fiscal year 2006) less
than 1.5 percent of whistleblower claims were
referred for investigation while more than 1000
reports were closed before they were even
opened. Only eight claims were found to be
substantiated, and one of those included the
theft of a desk, while another included
attendance violations. Favorable outcomes have
declined 24 percent overall, and this is all in
the first year that the new special counsel,
Scott Bloch, has been in office.
Bloch, who has received numerous complaints
since he took office, defends his first thirteen
months in office by pointing to a decline in
backlogged cases. Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Executive
Director Jeff Ruch says, “. . . backlogs and
delays are bad, but they are not as bad as
simply dumping the cases altogether.” According
to figures released by Bloch in February of 2005
more than 470 claims of retaliation were
dismissed, and not once had he affirmatively
represented a whistleblower. In fact, in order
to speed dismissals, Bloch instituted a rule
forbidding his staff from contacting a
whistleblower if their disclosure was deemed
incomplete or ambiguous. Instead, the OSC would
dismiss the matter. As a result, hundreds of
whistleblowers never had a chance to justify
their cases. Ruch notes that these numbers are
limited to only the backlogged cases and do not
include new ones.
On March 3, 2005, OSC staff members joined by a
coalition of whistleblower protection and civil
rights organizations filed a complaint against
Bloch. His own employees accused him of
violating the very rules he is supposed to be
enforcing. The complaint specifies instances of
illegal gag orders, cronyism, invidious
discrimination, and retaliation by forcing the
resignation of one-fifth of the OSC headquarters
legal and investigative staff. The complaint was
filed with the President’s Council on Integrity
and Efficiency, which took no action on the case
for seven months. PEER was one of the groups who
co-filed the complaint against Bloch and Ruch
wants to know, “Who watches the watchdogs?”
This is the third probe into Bloch’s operation
in less than two years in office. Both the
Government Accountability Office and a U.S.
Senate subcommittee have ongoing investigations
into mass dismissals of whistleblower cases,
crony hires, and Bloch’s targeting of gay
employees for removal while refusing to
investigate cases involving discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation.
The Department of Labor has also gotten on board
in a behind-the-scenes maneuver to cancel
whistleblower protections. If it succeeds, the
Labor Department will dismiss claims by federal
workers who report violations under the Clean
Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. General
Counsel for PEER, Richard Condit says, “Federal
workers in agencies such as the Environmental
Protection Agency function as the public’s eyes
and ears . . . the Labor Department is moving to
shut down one of the few legal avenues left to
whistleblowers.” The Labor Department is trying
to invoke the ancient doctrine of sovereign
immunity, which says that the government cannot
be sued without its consent. The Secretary of
Labor’s Administrative Review Board recently
invited the EPA to raise a sovereign immunity
defense in a case where a woman was trying to
enforce earlier victories. Government
Accountability Project General Counsel Joanne
Royce sums up major concerns: “We do not want
public servants wondering whether they will lose
their jobs for acting against pollution
violations of politically well-connected
interests.”
UPDATE BY JEFF RUCH
With the decline in oversight by the U.S.
Congress and the uneven quality of investigative
journalism, outlets such as the U.S. Office of
Special Counsel become even more important
channels for governmental transparency.
Unfortunately, under the Bush-appointed Special
Counsel, this supposed haven for whistleblowers
has become a beacon of false hope for thousands.
Each year, hundreds of civil servants who
witness problems ranging from threats to public
safety to waste of tax funds find that their
reports of wrongdoing are stonewalled by the
Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Consequently,
these firsthand accounts of malfeasance are not
investigated and almost uniformly never reach
the public’s attention.
The importance of this state of affairs is that
the actual workings of federal agencies are
becoming more shrouded in secrecy and
disinformation. Americans are less informed
about their government and less able to be in
connection with the people who actually work for
them—the public servants.
In a recent development, employees within the
OSC have filed a whistleblower complaint about
the Special Counsel, the person who is supposed
to be the chief whistleblower defender. After
several months delay, the Bush White House
assigned this complaint to the Inspector General
for the Office of Personnel Management for
review. This supposedly independent
investigation has just begun in earnest, nearly
one year after the complaint was filed.
Also, the Government Accountability Office (GAO)
issued a report in May 2006 blasting the
Bush-appointed Special Counsel for ignoring
competitive bidding rules in handing out
consultant contracts. GAO also recommended
creating an independent channel whereby Office
of Special Counsel employees can blow the
whistle on further abuses by the Special
Counsel.
In another recent development, PEER’s lawsuit
against the Special Counsel to force release of
documents concerning crony hires has produced
more, heavily redacted documents showing that
these sole source consultants apparently did no
identifiable work. Ironically, the PEER suit was
filed under the Freedom of Information Act, a
law that the Special Counsel is also charged
with policing.
And in a new annual report to Congress, OSC
(stung by criticism about declining performance)
has, for the first time, stopped disclosing the
number of whistleblower cases where it obtained
a favorable outcome. Consequently, it is
impossible to tell if anyone is actually being
helped by the agency.
PEER’s web page on the Office of Special Counsel
has posted all developments since this story and
also allows a reader to trace the story’s
genesis.
# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to
Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
Sources:
American Civil Liberties Website,
October 24, 2005
Title: “US Operatives Killed Detainees During
Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq”
Tom Dispatch.com, March 5, 2006
Title: “Tracing the Trail of Torture: Embedding
Torture as Policy from Guantanamo to Iraq”
Author: Dahr Jamail
Faculty Evaluator: Rabi Michael Robinson
Student Researchers: Michael B Januleski Jr. and
Jessica Rodas
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
released documents of forty-four autopsies held
in Afghanistan and Iraq October 25, 2005.
Twenty-one of those deaths were listed as
homicides. The documents show that detainees
died during and after interrogations by Navy
SEALs, Military Intelligence, and Other
Government Agency (OGA).
“These documents present irrefutable evidence
that U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death
during interrogation,” said Amrit Singh, an
attorney with the ACLU. “The public has a right
to know who authorized the use of torture
techniques and why these deaths have been
covered up.”
The Department of Defense released the autopsy
reports in response to a Freedom of Information
Act request filed by the ACLU, the Center for
Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human
Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans
for Peace.
One of forty-four U.S. military autopsy reports
reads as follows: “Final Autopsy Report: DOD
003164, (Detainee) Died as a result of asphyxia
(lack of oxygen to the brain) due to
strangulation as evidenced by the recently
fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue
hemorrhage extending downward to the level of
the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy revealed
bone fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid
abdomen, back and buttocks extending to the left
flank, abrasions, lateral buttocks. Contusions,
back of legs and knees; abrasions on knees, left
fingers and encircling to left wrist.
Lacerations and superficial cuts, right 4th and
5th fingers. Also, blunt force injuries,
predominately recent contusions (bruises) on the
torso and lower extremities. Abrasions on left
wrist are consistent with use of restraints. No
evidence of defense injuries or natural disease.
Manner of death is homicide. Whitehorse
Detainment Facility, Nasiriyah, Iraq.”
Another report from the ACLU indicates: “a
27-year-old Iraqi male died while being
interrogated by Navy Seals on April 5, 2004, in
Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was
hooded, flex-cuffed, sleep deprived and
subjected to hot and cold environmental
conditions, including the use of cold water on
his body and head. The exact cause of death was
‘undetermined’ although the autopsy stated that
hypothermia may have contributed to his death.”
An overwhelming majority of the so-called
“natural deaths” covered in the autopsies were
attributed to “arteriosclerotic cardiovascular
disease” (heart attack). Persons under extreme
stress and pain may have heart attacks as a
result of the circumstances of their
detainments.
The Associated Press carried the story of the
ACLU charges on their wire service. However, a
thorough check of LexisNexis and ProQuest
electronic data bases, using the keywords ACLU
and autopsy, showed that at least 95 percent of
the daily papers in the U.S. did not bother to
pick up the story. The Los Angeles Times covered
the story on page A4 with a 635-word report
headlined “Autopsies Support Abuse Allegations.”
Fewer than a dozen other daily newspapers
including: Bangor Daily News, Maine, page 8;
Telegraph-Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, page 6;
Charleston Gazette, page 5; Advocate, Baton
Rouge, page 11; and a half dozen others actually
covered the story. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
and the Seattle Times buried the story inside
general Iraq news articles. USA Today posted the
story on their website. MSNBC posted the story
to their website, but apparently did not
consider it newsworthy enough to air on
television.
Janis Karpinski, U.S. Brigadier General
Commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade,
was in charge of seventeen prison facilities in
Iraq during the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2003.
Karpinski testified January 21, 2006 in New York
City at the International Commission of Inquiry
on Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush
administration. Karpinski stated: “General
[Ricardo] Sanchez [commander of coalition ground
forces in Iraq] signed the eight-page memorandum
authorizing a laundry list of harsh techniques
in interrogations to include specific use of
dogs and muzzled dogs with his specific
permission.” Karpinski went on to claim that
Major General Geoffrey Miller, who had been
“specifically selected by the Secretary of
Defense to go to Guantanamo Bay and run the
interrogations operations,” was dispatched to
Iraq by the Bush administration to “work with
the military intelligence personnel to teach
them new and improved interrogation techniques.”
When asked how far up the chain of command
responsibility for the torture orders for Abu
Ghraib went, Karpinski said, “The Secretary of
Defense would not have authorized without the
approval of the Vice President.”
UPDATE BY DAHR JAMAIL
This story, published in March 2006, was merely
a snapshot of the ongoing and worsening policy
of the Bush administration regarding torture.
And not just time, but places show snapshots of
the criminal policy of the current
administration—Iraq, like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,
Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and other
“secret” U.S. military detention centers in
Eastern European countries are physical examples
of an ongoing policy which breaches both
international law and our very constitution.
But breaking international and domestic law has
not been a concern of an administration led by a
“president” who has claimed “authority” to
disobey over 750 laws passed by Congress. In
fact, when this same individual does things like
signing a secret order in 2002 which authorized
the National Security Agency to violate the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by
wiretapping the phones of U.S. citizens, and
then goes on to allow the secret collection of
the telephone records of tens of millions of
Americans, torture is but one portion of this
corrupted picture. This is a critical ongoing
story, not just because it violates
international and domestic law, but this
state-sanctioned brutality, bankrupt of any
morality and decency, is already coming back
home to haunt Americans. When U.S. soldiers are
captured in Iraq or another foreign country,
what basis does the U.S. have now to ask for
their fair and humane treatment? And with police
brutality and draconian “security” measures
becoming more real within the U.S. with each
passing day, why wouldn’t these policies be
visited upon U.S. citizens?
While torture is occasionally glimpsed by
mainstream media outlets such as the Washington
Post and Time Magazine, we must continue to rely
on groups like the Center for Constitutional
Rights in New York City, Human Rights Watch, and
Amnesty International who cover the subject
thoroughly, persistently, and unlike (of course)
any corporate media outlets.
Since I wrote this story, there continues to be
a deluge of information and proof of the Bush
administration continuing and even widening
their policy of torture, as well as their
rendering prisoners to countries which have
torturing human beings down to a science.
All of this, despite the fact that U.S. laws
prohibit torture absolutely, clearly stating
that torture is never, ever permitted, even in a
time of war.
#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of
Information Act
Sources:
New Standard, May 6, 2005
Title: “Pentagon Seeks Greater Immunity from
Freedom of Information”
Author: Michelle Chen
Newspaper Association of America
website, posted December 2005
Title: “FOIA Exemption Granted to Federal
Agency”
Community Evaluator: Tim Ogburn
Student Researcher: Rachelle Cooper and Brian
Murphy
The Department of Defense has been granted
exemption from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In December 2005, Congress passed the 2006
Defense Authorization Act which renders Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) “operational files”
fully immune to FOIA requests, the main
mechanism by which watchdog groups, journalists
and individuals can access federal documents. Of
particular concern to critics of the Defense
Authorization Act is the DIA’s new right to
thwart access to files that may reveal human
rights violations tied to ongoing
“counterterrorism” efforts.
The rule could, for instance, frustrate the work
of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and
other organizations that have relied on FOIA to
uncover more than 30,000 documents on the U.S.
military’s involvement in the torture and
mistreatment of foreign detainees in
Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq—including
the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Several key documents that have surfaced in the
advocacy organization’s expansive research
originate from DIA files, including a 2004
memorandum containing evidence that U.S.
military interrogators brutalized detainees in
Baghdad, as well as a report describing the
abuse of Iraqi detainees as violations of
international human rights law.
According to Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU attorney
involved in the ongoing torture investigations,
“If the Defense Intelligence Agency can rely on
exception or exemption from the FOIA, then
documents such as those that we obtained this
last time around will not become public at all.”
The end result of such an exemption, he told The
New Standard, is that “abuse is much more likely
to take place, because there’s not public
oversight of Defense Intelligence Agency
activity.”
Jaffer added that because the DIA conducts
investigations relating to other national
security-related agencies, documents covered by
the exemption could contain critical evidence of
how other parts of the military operate as well.
he ACLU recently battled the FOIA exemption rule
of the CIA in a lawsuit over the agency’s
attempt to withhold information concerning
alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees. The CIA’s
defense centered on the invocation of FOIA
exemption, and although a federal judge
ultimately overrode the rule, Jaffer cited the
case as evidence of “exemption creep”—the
gradual stretching of the law to further shield
federal agencies from public scrutiny.
According to language in the Defense
Authorization Act, an operational file can be
any information related to “the conduct of
foreign intelligence or counterintelligence
operations or intelligence or security liaison
arrangements or information exchanges with
foreign governments or their intelligence or
security services.”
Critics warn that such vague bureaucratic
language is a green light for the DIA to thwart
a wide array of legitimate information requests
without proper justification. Steven Aftergood,
director of the research organization Project on
Government Secrecy, warns, “If it falls in the
category of ‘operational files,’ it’s over
before it begins.”
Thomas Blanton, director of the National
Security Archive, adds, “These exemptions create
a black hole into which the bureaucracy can
drive just about any kind of information it
wants to. And you can bet that Guantánamo, Abu
Ghraib-style information is what DIA and others
would want to hide.”
The Newspaper Association of America reports
that, due to lobbying efforts of the Sunshine in
Government Initiative and other open government
advocates, congressional negotiators imposed an
unprecedented two-year “sunset” date on the
Pentagon’s FOIA exemption, ending in December
2007.
Update by Michelle Chen:
The Defense Intelligence Agency, the
intelligence arm of the Department of Defense,
has been a source for critical information on
the Pentagon's foreign operations as well as the
DIA's observations of the conduct of other
branches of the military. Its request for
immunity from the Freedom of Information Act
last year was not the first attempt to shield
its data from members of the public, but it did
come at a time that the governent's anti-terror
fervor was beginning to crest.
Open-government groups warn that such an
exemption from FOIA requests, which the Central
Intelligene Agency already enjoys, would close
off a major channel for information in a
government bureaucracy already riddled with both
formal and informal barriers of secrecy. The
Pentagon's request alarmed groups like the ACLU,
which has relied heavily on such data to build
cases regarding torture and abuse of detainees
in Iraq.
(http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/042005/).
The bill specifically refers to the immunity of
"operational files," though this is somewhat
ambiguously defined.
Another development in this issue area over the
past year is that secrecy and intelligence
gathering have become intense domestic political
issues. As a result, heightened public attention
to the gradual rollback on open-government laws
is beginning to stir some congressional action
in the form of hearings and investigative
reports, not just related to classified
information per se but also the new
quasi-classified categories that have cropped up
since 9/11 (http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2006/index.html).
Earlier this year, the Pentagon initiatied a
department-wide review of FOIA practices, though
it is unlear whether this internal evaluation
will lead to actual changes in how information
is disclosed or withheld from public purview. (http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/DoD_FOIA_Review.pdf).
The National Security Archives at George
Washington University, which has an extensive
collection of FOIA documents and has issued
numerous reports and studies on government
secrecy and FOIA policies:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia.html
#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine
Wall
Sources:
Left Turn Issue #18
Title: “Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of
World Bank”
Author: Jamal Juma’
Al-Jazeerah, March 9, 2005
Title: “US Free Trade Agreements Split Arab
Opinion”
Author: Linda Heard
Community Evaluator: April Hurley, MD
Student Researchers: Bailey Malone and Lisa
Dobias
Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice
(ICJ) decision that called for tearing down the
Wall and compensating affected communities,
construction of the Wall has accelerated. The
route of the barrier runs deep into Palestinian
territory, aiding the annexation of Israeli
settlements and the breaking of Palestinian
territorial continuity. The World Bank’s vision
of “economic development,” however, evades any
discussion of the Wall’s illegality.
The World Bank has meanwhile outlined the
framework for a Palestinian Middle East Free
Trade Area (MEFTA) policy in their most recent
report on Palestine published in December of
2004, “Stagnation or Revival: Israeli
Disengagement and Palestinian Economic
Prospects.”
Central to World Bank proposals are the
construction of massive industrial zones to be
financed by the World Bank and other donors and
controlled by the Israeli Occupation. Built on
Palestinian land around the Wall, these
industrial zones are envisaged as forming the
basis of export-orientated economic development.
Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall and
dispossessed of land can be put to work for low
wages.
The post-Wall MEFTA vision includes complete
control over Palestinian movement. The report
proposes high-tech military gates and
checkpoints along the Wall, through which
Palestinians and exports can be conveniently
transported and controlled. A supplemental
“transfer system” of walled roads and tunnels
will allow Palestinian workers to be funneled to
their jobs, while being simultaneously denied
access to their land. Sweatshops will be one of
very few possibilities of earning a living for
Palestinians confined to disparate ghettos
throughout the West Bank. The World Bank states:
“In an improved operating environment,
Palestinian entrepreneurs and foreign investors
will look for well-serviced industrial land and
supporting infrastructure. They will also seek a
regulatory regime with a minimum of ‘red tape’
and with clear procedures for conducting
business. Industrial Estates (IEs), particularly
those on the border between Palestinian and
Israeli territory, can fulfill this need and
thereby play an important role in supporting
export based growth.”
Jamal Juma’ notes that the “red tape” which the
World Bank refers to can be presumed to mean
trade unions, a minimum wage, good working
conditions, environmental protection, and other
workers’ rights that will be more flexible than
the ones in the “developed” world. The World
Bank explicitly states that current wages of
Palestinians are too high for the region and
“compromise the international competitiveness”
even though wages are only a quarter of the
average in Israel. Juma’ warns that on top of a
military occupation and forced expulsion,
Palestinians are to be subjects of an economic
colonialism.
These industrial zones will clearly benefit
Israel abroad where goods “Made in Palestine”
have more favorable trade conditions in
international markets. IPS reporter Emad Mekay,
in February 2005, revealed the World Bank’s plan
to partially fund Palestinian MEFTA
infrastructure with loans to Palestine. Israel
is not eligible for World Bank lending because
of its high per capita income, but Palestine is.
Mekay quotes Terry Walz of the Washington-based
Council for the National Interest, a group that
monitors U.S. and international policy towards
Israel and the Palestinians: “I must admit that
making the Palestinians pay for the
modernization of these checkpoints is an
embarrassment, since they had nothing to do with
the erection of the separation wall to begin
with and in fact have protested it. I think the
whole issue is extremely murky.”1
Mekay goes on to note that this is the first
time the World Bank appears ready to get
actively involved in the Israeli occupation of
Palestinian land. Former World Bank president
James Wolfensohn rejected this possibility last
year. Neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz was,
however, confirmed as president of the World
Bank on June 1, 2005.
In breach of the ICJ ruling, the U.S. has
already contributed $50 million to construct
gates along the Wall to “help serve the needs of
Palestinians.”
Linda Heard reports for Al-Jazeerah that the
U.S. is currently pushing for bilateral Free
Trade Agreements (FTAs) with various Arab
states, including members of the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC), as part of a vision
for a larger Middle East Free Trade Agreement.
President Bush hopes the MEFTA will encompass
some twenty regional countries, including
Israel, and be fully consolidated by 2013.
Many in the region are suspicious of the
divisive trend of bilateral agreements with the
U.S. and worry that the GCC will end up with
small, fragmented satellite economies without
any leverage against world giants. Prince Saud
Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, stated,
“It is alarming to see some members of the GCC
enter into separate agreements with
international powers . . . They diminish the
collective bargaining power and weaken not only
the solidarity of the GCC as a whole, but also
each of its members.”
Note
1. Emad Mekay, “World Bank and U.S.:
Palestinians Should Pay for Israeli
Checkpoints,” IPS, February 25, 2005.
UPDATE BY JAMAL JUMA’
“ Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of the
World Bank” was written last summer as part of
Stop the Wall’s campaign efforts to widen
attention of those horrified by the construction
of the 700 km long wall around Palestinian
cities and villages. It aimed to expose the
vicious mechanism of control, exploitation, and
dispossession devised by the Occupation, but
moreover the activities of the international
community in safeguarding the Wall and making
Palestinian ghettos sustainable.
It opens a chapter in a story that no one wants
to hear: the globalization of apartheid in the
Occupation of Palestine. Zionism has its own
racist interest in ghettoizing 4 million
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and
securing the judaization of Jerusalem. It
ensures a Jewish demographic majority and ethnic
supremacy over as much of Palestine as possible,
working against all UN resolutions and the
recent ICJ ruling on the Wall.
Within this project it finds allies in the
international community keen to exploit cheap
Palestinian labor locked behind Walls and gates.
The degree to which Zionism and the
international community—headed by the World
Bank—work together with the aim of controlling
every aspect of Palestinian life has become
increasingly evident since the Left Turn
article.
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) role is reduced
to the administrators of the Bantustans. The
Palestinian people resoundingly said no to
Bantustans at the ballot boxes last January.
While the Bank’s initial responsibility was to
devise economic policies for the sustainability
of a Palestinian Bantu-State, the institution is
now facilitating efforts to ensure that
Palestinians cannot interfere in the plans of
the Occupation and the international community.
The World Bank is gearing up to take over the
payrolls of various Palestinian institutions,
should the PA not comply with Zionist and global
interests.
While global IFIs meticulously plan the
financial and material survival and political
control of the ghettos, Ehud Olmert offers the
slogan of “Final Borders” to describe the
project. In legitimizing the Wall, annexing
Jerusalem, increasing the number of settlers,
and denying the mere existence of the refugees,
Olmert finds a willing accomplice in the Bank
and its policy makers in Washington, who look to
cash in on the Bantu-State.
The Palestinian people will never accept the
plan, so it is hoped that they will be starved
into it. But we will not kneel down. After
dozens of massacres, killings, arrests, and
almost sixty years of life in the Diaspora,
surrender is too high a price to pay. We are not
asking for outside institutions to provide us
with bread, but to comply with their duties
under international law and support our struggle
for justice and liberation.
None of the horrific realities of life in
Palestine are apparent in the headlines and
doublespeak of mass media and international
diplomacy, where our ghettoization is called
“state-building.” International complicity with
Israeli apartheid is dressed up as “humanitarian
aid.” Palestinians are supposed to be grateful
for gates in the Wall so they can be funneled
between ghettos.
Just like Olmert’s schemes with the White House,
the media shuns and neglects the rights and
voices of Palestinians. Neither the daily
killing of our people, nor the destruction of
our homes, the dispossession of our farmers, or
the sufferings of 6 million refugees make
headlines. The consumers of mainstream media
outlets are left to discuss the diatribe of
“peace” and “borders,” disputed between the
protagonists of our oppression, while the
racism, ethnic cleansing, and ghettoization
continue.
More information on the issue is to be found at
our website: http://www.stopthewall.org
#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More
Civilians
Sources:
The New Yorker, December 2005
Title: "Up in the Air"
Author: Seymour M. Hersh
Community Evaluator: Robert Manning
Student Researcher: Brian Fuchs
There is widespread speculation that President
Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings
and dissent within his own party as well as
within the military itself, will begin pulling
American troops out of Iraq in 2006. A key
element of the drawdown plans not mentioned in
the President’s public statements, or in
mainstream media for that matter, is that the
departing American troops will be replaced by
American airpower.
“We’re not planning to diminish the war,”
Seymour Hersh quotes Patrick Clawson, the deputy
director of the Washington Institute, whose
views often mirror those of Dick Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld. “We just want to change the mix
of the forces doing the fighting—Iraqi infantry
with American support and greater use of
airpower.”
While battle fatigue increases among U.S.
troops, the prospect of using airpower as a
substitute for American troops on the ground has
caused great unease within the military. Air
Force commanders, in particular, have
deep-seated objections to the possibility that
Iraqis will eventually be responsible for target
selection. Hersh quotes a senior military
planner now on assignment in the Pentagon, “Will
the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff
rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members
of their own sect and blame someone else? Will
some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of al-Qaeda,
or the insurgency, or the Iranians?”
Dahr Jamail reports that the statistics gleaned
from U.S. Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF)
indicate a massive rise in the number of U.S.
air missions—996 sorties—in Iraq in the month of
November 2005.
The size of this figure naturally begs the
question, where are such missions being flown
and what is their size and nature? It’s
important to note as well that “air war” does
not simply mean U.S. Air Force. Carrier-based
Navy and Marine aircraft flew over 21,000 hours
of missions and dropped over twenty-six tons of
ordnance in Fallujah alone during the November
2004 siege of that city.
Visions of a frightful future in Iraq should not
overshadow the devastation already caused by
present levels of American air power loosed, in
particular, on heavily populated urban areas of
that country. The tactic of using massively
powerful 500 and 1,000 pound bombs in urban
areas to target small pockets of resistance
fighters has, in fact, long been employed in
Iraq. No intensification of the air war is
necessary to make it commonplace. Jamail’s
article provides a broad overview of the air
power arsenals being used against the people of
Iraq.
A serious study of violence to civilians in Iraq
by a British medical journal, The Lancet,
released in October 2004, estimated that 85
percent of all violent deaths in Iraq are
generated by coalition forces (see Censored
2006, Story #2). 95 percent of reported killings
(all attributed to U.S. forces by interviewees)
were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets, or
other forms of aerial weaponry.1 While no
significant scientific inquiry has been carried
out in Iraq recently, Iraqi medical personnel,
working in areas where U.S. military operations
continue, report that they feel the “vast
majority” of civilian deaths are the result of
actions by the occupation forces.
Given the U.S. air power already being applied
largely in Iraq’s cities and towns, the prospect
of increasing it is chilling indeed. As to how
this might benefit the embattled Bush
administration, Jamail quotes U.S. Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski:
“Shifting the mechanism of the destruction of
Iraq from soldiers and Marines to distant and
safer air power would be successful in several
ways. It would reduce the negative publicity
value of maimed American soldiers and Marines,
would bring a portion of our troops home and
give the Army a necessary operational break. It
would increase Air Force and Naval budgets, and
line defense contractor pockets. By the time we
figure out that it isn’t working to make oil
more secure or to allow Iraqis to rebuild a
stable country, the Army will have recovered and
can be redeployed in force.”
Note
1. Les Roberts, et al., “Mortality Before and
After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq,” The Lancet,
October 29, 2004.
UPDATE BY DAHR JAMAIL
Eleven days after this story about the lack of
reportage in the corporate media about the U.S.
military’s increasing use of air power in Iraq,
the Washington Post ran a story about how U.S.
air strikes were taking an increasing toll on
civilians. Aside from that story, the Washington
Post, along with the New York Times, remain
largely mute on the issue, despite the fact that
the U.S. use of air strikes in Iraq has now
become the norm rather than being used in
contingencies, as they were in the first year of
the occupation. Needless to say, corporate media
television coverage has remained the same as it
did prior to the publishing of this story—they
prefer to portray a U.S. occupation of Iraq sans
warplanes dropping bombs in civilian
neighborhoods.
This story remains a critical issue when one
evaluates the occupation of Iraq, for the number
of civilians dying, now possibly as high as
300,000 according to Les Roberts, one of the
authors of the famous Lancet Report, only
continues to escalate. This is, of course, due
in large part to U.S. war planes and helicopters
dropping bombs and missiles into urban areas in
various Iraqi cities.
It is also important when one looks at the fact
that more than 82 percent of Iraqis now
vehemently oppose the occupation, because one of
the biggest recruiting tools for the Iraqi
resistance is U.S. bombs and missiles killing
the innocent. Years from now when a corporate
media outlet decides to break down and
acknowledge that the level of anti-American
sentiment in Iraq is as high (or higher) than it
is anywhere in the world, and asks the mindless
question, “Why do they hate us?” one will only
need to look towards the indiscriminate use of
air power on the Iraqi population.
This story was not difficult to write for two
reasons: the first was that any reporter in Iraq
with eyes and ears knows there is a vast amount
of air power being projected by the U.S.
military. Secondly, thanks to the Internet,
statistics on sorties are readily available to
anyone willing to look. Googling “CENTAF” brings
up several “Air Power Summary” reports, where
one is able to find how many missions, and what
type, are being flown each month in Iraq, as
well as other countries.
To monitor the number of Iraqi civilians being
killed by these missions, along with other
deaths caused by the U.S. occupation of Iraq,
the Iraqi Mortality Survey published in the
prestigious British Lancet medical journal,
albeit eighteen months out of date and a highly
conservative estimate by the authors admission,
remains by far and away the most accurate to
date.
One thing is for certain, and that is the longer
the failed U.S. occupation of Iraq persists, the
more U.S. air power will be used—a scenario that
closely resembles that of the shameful Vietnam
War.
#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food
Confirmed
Sources:
Independent/UK, May 22, 2005
Title: Revealed: “Health Fears Over Secret Study
in GM Food”
Author: Geoffrey Lean
Organic Consumers Association website,
June 2,2005
Title: “Monsanto's GE Corn Experiments on Rats
Continue to Generate Global Controversy”
Authors: GM Free Cymru
Independent/UK, January 8, 2006
Title: GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could
Be Harmed”
Author: Geoffrey Lean
Le Monde and Truthout, February 9, 2006
Title: “New Suspicions About GMOs”
Author: Herve Kempf
Faculty Evaluator: Michael Ezra
Student Researchers: Destiny Stone and Lani
Ready
Several recent studies confirm fears that
genetically modified (GM) foods damage human
health. These studies were released as the World
Trade Organization (WTO) moved toward upholding
the ruling that the European Union has violated
international trade rules by stopping
importation of GM foods.
Research by the Russian Academy of Sciences
released in December 2005 found that more
than half of the offspring of rats fed GM
soy died within the first three weeks of
life, six times as many as those born to
mothers fed on non-modified soy. Six times
as many offspring fed GM soy were also
severely underweight.
In November 2005, a private research
institute in Australia, CSIRO Plant
Industry, put a halt to further development
of a GM pea cultivator when it was found to
cause an immune response in laboratory
mice.1
In the summer of 2005, an Italian research
team led by a cellular biologist at the
University of Urbino published confirmation
that absorption of GM soy by mice causes
development of misshapen liver cells, as
well as other cellular anomalies.
In May of 2005 the review of a highly
confidential and controversial Monsanto
report on test results of corn modified with
Monsanto MON863 was published in The
Independent/UK.
Dr. Arpad Pusztai (see Censored 2001, Story #7),
one of the few genuinely independent scientists
specializing in plant genetics and animal
feeding studies, was asked by the German
authorities in the autumn of 2004 to examine
Monsanto’s 1,139-page report on the feeding of
MON863 to laboratory rats over a ninety-day
period.
The study found “statistically significant”
differences in kidney weights and certain blood
parameters in the rats fed the GM corn as
compared with the control groups. A number of
scientists across Europe who saw the study (and
heavily-censored summaries of it) expressed
concerns about the health and safety
implications if MON863 should ever enter the
food chain. There was particular concern in
France, where Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini of
the University of Caen has been trying (without
success) for almost eighteen months to obtain
full disclosure of all documents relating to the
MON863 study.
Dr. Pusztai was forced by the German authorities
to sign a “declaration of secrecy” before he was
allowed to see the Monsanto rat feeding study,
on the grounds that the document is classified
as “CBI” or “confidential business interest.”
While Pusztai is still bound by the declaration
of secrecy, Monsanto recently declared that it
does not object to the widespread dissemination
of the “Pusztai Report.”2
Monsanto GM soy and corn are widely consumed by
Americans at a time when the United Nations’
Food and Agriculture Organization has concluded,
“In several cases, GMOs have been put on the
market when safety issues are not clear.”
As GMO research is not encouraged by U.S. or
European governments, the vast majority of
toxicological studies are conducted by those
companies producing and promoting consumption of
GMOs. With motive and authenticity of results
suspect in corporate testing, independent
scientific research into the effects of GM foods
is attracting increasing attention.
Comment: In May 2006 the WTO
upheld a ruling that European countries broke
international trade rules by stopping
importation of GM foods. The WTO verdict found
that the EU has had an effective ban on biotech
foods since 1998 and sided with the U.S.,
Canada, and Argentina in a decision that the
moratorium was illegal under WTO rules.3
Notes
1. “GM peas cause immune response–A gap in the
approval process?”
http://www.GMO-Compass.org, January 3, 2006.
2. Arpad Pusztai, “Mon863-Pusztai Report,”
http://www.GMWatch.org, September 12, 2004.
3. Bradley S. Clapper, “WTO Faults EU for
Blocking Modified Food,” Associated Press, May
11, 2006.
#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New
Landmines
Source:
Inter Press Service, August 3, 2005
Title: “After 10-Year Hiatus, Pentagon Eyes New
Landmine”
Author: Isaac Baker
Human Rights Watch website, August 2005
Title: “Development and Production of Landmines”
Faculty Evaluator: Scott Suneson
Student Researchers: Rachel Barry and Matt Frick
The Bush administration plans to resume
production of antipersonnel landmine systems in
a move that is at odds with both the
international community and previous U.S.
policy, according to the leading human rights
organization, Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Nearly every nation has endorsed the goal of a
global ban on antipersonnel mines. In 1994 the
U.S. called for the “eventual elimination” of
all such mines, and in 1996 President Bill
Clinton said the U.S. would “seek a worldwide
agreement as soon as possible to end the use of
all antipersonnel mines.” The U.S. produced its
last antipersonnel landmine in 1997. It had been
the stated objective of the U.S. government to
eventually join the 145 countries signatory to
the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the use,
production, exporting, and stockpiling of
antipersonnel landmines.
The Bush administration, however, made an
about-face in U.S. antipersonnel landmine policy
in February 2004, when it abandoned any plan to
join the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the
Ottawa Convention. “The United States will not
join the Ottawa Convention because its terms
would have required us to give up a needed
military capability,” the U.S. Department of
State’s Bureau of Political-Military announced,
summing up the administration’s new policy, “The
United States will continue to develop
non-persistent anti-personnel and anti-tank
landmines.”
HRW reports that, “New U.S. landmines will have
a variety of ways of being initiated, both
command-detonation (that is, when a soldier
decides when to explode the mine, sometimes
called ‘man-in-the-loop’) and traditional
victim-activation. A mine that is designed to be
exploded by the presence, proximity, or contact
of a person (i.e., victim-activation) is
prohibited under the International Mine Ban
Treaty.”
To sidestep international opposition, the
Pentagon proposes development of the “Spider”
system, which consists of a control unit capable
of monitoring up to eighty-four hand-placed,
unattended munitions that deploy a web of
tripwires across an area. Once a wire is
touched, a man-in-the-loop control system allows
the operator to activate the devices.
The Spider, however, contains a “battlefield
override” feature that allows for circumvention
of the man-in-the-loop, and activation by the
target (victim).
A Pentagon report to Congress stated, “Target
Activation is a software feature that allows the
man-in-the-loop to change the capability of a
munition from requiring action by an operator
prior to being detonated, to a munition that
will be detonated by a target. The Chairman,
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Service Chiefs,
using best military judgment, feel that the
man-in-the-loop system without this feature
would be insufficient to meet tactical
operational conditions and electronic
countermeasures.”
The U.S. Army spent $135 million between fiscal
years 1999 and 2004 to develop Spider and
another $11 million has been requested to
complete research and development. A total of
$390 million is budgeted to produce 1,620 Spider
systems and 186,300 munitions. According to
budget documents released in February 2005, the
Pentagon requested $688 million for research on
and $1.08 billion for the production of new
landmine systems between fiscal years 2006 and
2011.
Steven Goose, Director of HRW Arms Division,
told Project Censored that Congress has required
a report from the Pentagon on the humanitarian
consequences of the “battlefield override” or
victim-activated feature of these munitions for
review before approving funds. Though production
was set for December of 2005, Congress has not,
as of June 2006, received this preliminary
Pentagon report.
If the Spider or similar mine munitions systems
move forward, a frightening precedence will be
set. At best the 145 signatories to the Ottawa
Convention will be beholden to the treaty, which
forbids assistance in joint military operations
where landmines are being used. At worst, U.S.
production will legitimize international
resumption of landmine proliferation.
Steven Goose warns, “If one doesn’t insist on a
comprehensive ban on all types and uses of
antipersonnel mines, each nation will be able to
claim unique requirements and justifications.”
UPDATE BY ISAAC BAKER
Landmines are horrific weapons. And, naturally,
news stories about the terror they inflict upon
human beings—mainly civilians—are gritty and
disturbing if they are truthful. Especially when
it’s your own government that’s responsible.
And given the mainstream media’s typical service
to power, this story didn’t make many headlines.
But the potential ramifications of the U.S.
government resuming production of landmines are
overwhelming. And since the average American
can’t depend on many media to inform them of the
horrific things their government is doing,
concerned people must take it upon themselves to
put their government in its place.
We all must ask ourselves: Do we want our
government—the body that theoretically
represents we, the people—spending millions upon
millions of dollars on these destructive
weapons? Are we comfortable with sitting back
and letting our government produce weapons that
kill and maim civilians?
Or will we coalesce and let the powerful know
that we will not stand for this gross disregard
for human life and international opinion?
It’s our responsibility to stop the abuses of
power in our country. And if we do not confront
our government on this issue, I believe, the
blood of the innocents will be on all of our
hands.
Third World Resurgence, No. 176, April
2005
Title: “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup
Weedkiller”
Author: Chee Yoke Heong
Faculty Evaluator: Jennifer While
Student Researchers: Peter McArthur and Lani
Ready
New studies from both sides of the Atlantic
reveal that Roundup, the most widely used
weedkiller in the world, poses serious human
health threats. More than 75 percent of
genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered
to tolerate the absorption of Roundup—it
eliminates all plants that are not GM. Monsanto
Inc., the major engineer of GM crops, is also
the producer of Roundup. Thus, while Roundup was
formulated as a weapon against weeds, it has
become a prevalent ingredient in most of our
food crops.
Three recent studies show that Roundup, which is
used by farmers and home gardeners, is not the
safe product we have been led to trust.
A group of scientists led by biochemist
Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini from the
University of Caen in France found that human
placental cells are very sensitive to Roundup at
concentrations lower than those currently used
in agricultural application.
An epidemiological study of Ontario farming
populations showed that exposure to glyphosate,
the key ingredient in Roundup, nearly doubled
the risk of late miscarriages. Seralini and his
team decided to research the effects of the
herbicide on human placenta cells. Their study
confirmed the toxicity of glyphosate, as after
eighteen hours of exposure at low
concentrations, large proportions of human
placenta began to die. Seralini suggests that
this may explain the high levels of premature
births and miscarriages observed among female
farmers using glyphosate.
Seralini’s team further compared the toxic
effects of the Roundup formula (the most common
commercial formulation of glyphosate and
chemical additives) to the isolated active
ingredient, glyphosate. They found that the
toxic effect increases in the presence of
Roundup ‘adjuvants’ or additives. These
additives thus have a facilitating role,
rendering Roundup twice as toxic as its isolated
active ingredient, glyphosate.
Another study, released in April 2005 by the
University of Pittsburgh, suggests that Roundup
is a danger to other life-forms and non-target
organisms. Biologist Rick Relyea found that
Roundup is extremely lethal to amphibians. In
what is considered one of the most extensive
studies on the effects of pesticides on
nontarget organisms in a natural setting, Relyea
found that Roundup caused a 70 percent decline
in amphibian biodiversity and an 86 percent
decline in the total mass of tadpoles. Leopard
frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were
nearly eliminated.
In 2002, a scientific team led by Robert Belle
of the National Center for Scientific Research
(CNRS) biological station in Roscoff, France
showed that Roundup activates one of the key
stages of cellular division that can potentially
lead to cancer. Belle and his team have been
studying the impact of glyphosate formulations
on sea urchin cells for several years. The team
has recently demonstrated in Toxicological
Science (December 2004) that a “control point”
for DNA damage was affected by Roundup, while
glyphosate alone had no effect. “We have shown
that it’s a definite risk factor, but we have
not evaluated the number of cancers potentially
induced, nor the time frame within which they
would declare themselves,” Belle acknowledges.
There is, indeed, direct evidence that
glyphosate inhibits an important process called
RNA transcription in animals, at a concentration
well below the level that is recommended for
commercial spray application.
There is also new research that shows that brief
exposure to commercial glyphosate causes liver
damage in rats, as indicated by the leakage of
intracellular liver enzymes. The research
indicates that glyphosate and its surfactant in
Roundup were found to act in synergy to increase
damage to the liver.
UPDATE BY CHEE YOKE HEONG
Roundup Ready weedkiller is one of the most
widely used weedkillers in the world for crops
and backyard gardens. Roundup, with its active
ingredient glyphosate, has long been promoted as
safe for humans and the environment while
effective in killing weeds. It is therefore
significant when recent studies show that
Roundup is not as safe as its promoters claim.
This has major consequences as the bulk of
commercially planted genetically modified crops
are designed to tolerate glyphosate (and
especially Roundup), and independent field data
already shows a trend of increasing use of the
herbicide. This goes against industry claims
that herbicide use will drop and that these
plants will thus be more “environment-friendly.”
Now it has been found that there are serious
health effects, too. My story therefore aimed to
highlight these new findings and their
implications to health and the environment.
Not surprisingly, Monsanto came out refuting
some of the findings of the studies mentioned in
the article. What ensued was an open exchange
between Dr. Rick Relyea and Monsanto, whereby
the former stood his grounds. Otherwise, to my
knowledge, no studies have since emerged on
Roundup.
#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to
Build Detention Centers in the US
Sources:
New America Media, January 31, 2006
Title: “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New
Detention Camps”
Author: Peter Dale Scott
New America Media, February 21, 2006
Title: “10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention
Camps Revives Proposals from Oliver North”
Author: Peter Dale Scott
Community Evaluator: Dr. Gary Evans
Student Researchers: Sean Hurley and Caitlyn
Peele
Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg,
Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006
that it had been awarded a $385 million
contingency contract by the Department of
Homeland Security to build detention camps in
the United States.
According to a press release posted on the
Halliburton website, “The contract, which is
effective immediately, provides for establishing
temporary detention and processing capabilities
to augment existing Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal
Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event
of an emergency influx of immigrants into the
U.S., or to support the rapid development of new
programs. The contingency support contract
provides for planning and, if required,
initiation of specific engineering, construction
and logistics support tasks to establish,
operate and maintain one or more expansion
facilities.”
What little coverage the announcement received
focused on concerns about Halliburton’s
reputation for overcharging U.S. taxpayers for
substandard services.
Less attention was focused on the phrase “rapid
development of new programs” or what type of
programs might require a major expansion of
detention centers, capable of holding 5,000
people each. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for
ICE, declined to elaborate on what these “new
programs” might be.
Only a few independent journalists, such as
Peter Dale Scott, Maureen Farrell, and Nat Parry
have explored what the Bush administration might
actually have in mind.
Scott speculates that the “detention centers
could be used to detain American citizens if the
Bush administration were to declare martial
law.” He recalled that during the Reagan
administration, National Security Council aide
Oliver North organized the Rex-84 “readiness
exercise,” which contemplated the Federal
Emergency Management Agency rounding up and
detaining 400,000 “refugees” in the event of
“uncontrolled population movements” over the
Mexican border into the U.S.
North’s exercise, which reportedly contemplated
possible suspension of the Constitution, led to
a line of questioning during the Iran-Contra
Hearings concerning the idea that plans for
expanded internment and detention facilities
would not be confined to “refugees” alone.
It is relevant, says Scott, that in 2002
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his
desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to
be “enemy combatants.” On February 17, 2006, in
a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the
harm being done to the country’s security, not
just by the enemy, but also by what he called
“news informers” who needed to be combated in “a
contest of wills.”
Since September 11 the Bush administration has
implemented a number of interrelated programs
that were planned in the 1980s under President
Reagan. Continuity of Government (COG)
proposals—a classified plan for keeping a secret
“government-within-the-government” running
during and after a nuclear disaster—included
vastly expanded detention capabilities,
warrantless eavesdropping, and preparations for
greater use of martial law.
Scott points out that, while Oliver North
represented a minority element in the Reagan
administration, which soon distanced itself from
both the man and his proposals, the minority
associated with COG planning, which included
Cheney and Rumsfeld, appear to be in control of
the U.S. government today.
Farrell speculates that, because another terror
attack is all but certain, it seems far more
likely that the detention centers would be used
for post-September 11-type detentions of
rounded-up immigrants rather than for a sudden
deluge of immigrants flooding across the border.
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg
ventures, “Almost certainly this is preparation
for a roundup after the next September 11 for
Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters.
They’ve already done this on a smaller scale,
with the ‘special registration’ detentions of
immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with
Guantánamo.”
Parry notes that The Washington Post reported on
February 15, 2006 that the National
Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) central
repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist
suspects, a fourfold increase since fall of
2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were
collected through the NSA’s domestic
surveillance program, an NCTC official told the
Post, “Our database includes names of known and
suspected international terrorists provided by
all intelligence community organizations,
including NSA.”
As the administration scoops up more and more
names, members of Congress have questioned the
elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like
terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify
wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with
such people or entities.
A Defense Department document, entitled the
“Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil
Support,” has set out a military strategy
against terrorism that envisions an “active,
layered defense” both inside and outside U.S.
territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges
to “transform U.S. military forces to execute
homeland defense missions in the . . . U.S.
homeland.” The strategy calls for increased
military reconnaissance and surveillance to
“defeat potential challengers before they
threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes
threat awareness and seizes the initiative from
those who would harm us.”
But there are concerns, warns Parry, over how
the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls
under the category of “those who would harm us.”
A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence
Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files
on antiwar protesters.
In the view of some civil libertarians, a form
of martial law already exists in the U.S. and
has been in place since shortly after the
September 11 attacks when Bush issued Military
Order Number One, which empowered him to detain
any noncitizen as an international terrorist or
enemy combatant. Today that order extends to
U.S. citizens as well.
Farrell ends her article with the conclusion
that while much speculation has been generated
by KBR’s contract to build huge detention
centers within the U.S., “The truth is, we won’t
know the real purpose of these centers unless
‘contingency plans are needed.’ And by then, it
will be too late.”
UPDATE BY PETER DALE SCOTT
The contract of the Halliburton subsidiary KBR
to build immigrant detention facilities is part
of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled
ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of
“all removable aliens” and “potential
terrorists.” In the 1980s Richard Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld discussed similar emergency
detention powers as part of a super-secret
program of planning for what was euphemistically
called “Continuity of Government” (COG) in the
event of a nuclear disaster. At the time, Cheney
was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who
had been defense secretary under President Ford,
was a businessman and CEO of the drug company
G.D. Searle.
These men planned for suspension of the
Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but
for any “national security emergency,” which
they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988
as: “Any occurrence, including natural disaster,
military attack, technological or other
emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously
threatens the national security of the United
States.” Clearly September 11 would meet this
definition, and did, for COG was instituted on
that day. As the Washington Post later
explained, the order “dispatched a shadow
government of about 100 senior civilian managers
to live and work secretly outside Washington,
activating for the first time long-standing
plans.”
What these managers in this shadow government
worked on has never been reported. But it is
significant that the group that prepared ENDGAME
was, as the Homeland Security document puts it,
“chartered in September 2001.” For ENDGAME’s
goal of a capacious detention capability is
remarkably similar to Oliver North’s
controversial Rex-84 “readiness exercise” for
COG in 1984. This called for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up
and detain 400,000 imaginary “refugees,” in the
context of “uncontrolled population movements”
over the Mexican border into the United States.
UPDATE BY MAUREEN FARRELL
When the story about Kellogg, Brown and Root’s
contract for emergency detention centers broke,
immigration was not the hot button issue it is
today. Given this, the language in Halliburton’s
press release, stating that the centers would be
built in the event of an “emergency influx of
immigrants into the U.S.,” raised eyebrows,
especially among those familiar with Rex-84 and
other Reagan-era initiatives. FEMA’s former
plans ‘for the detention of at least 21 million
American Negroes in assembly centers or
relocation camps’ added to the distrust, and the
second stated reason for the KBR contract, “to
support the rapid development of new programs,”
sent imaginations reeling.
While few in the mainstream media made the
connection between KBR’s contract and previous
programs, Fox News eventually addressed this
issue, pooh-poohing concerns as the province of
“conspiracy theories” and “unfounded” fears. My
article attempted to sift through the
speculation, focusing on verifiable information
found in declassified and leaked documents which
proved that, in addition to drawing up
contingency plans for martial law, the
government has conducted military readiness
exercises designed to round up and detain both
illegal aliens and U.S. citizens.
How concerned should Americans be? Recent
reports are conflicting and confusing:
In May, 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) began “Operation Return to
Sender,” which involved catching illegal
immigrants and deporting them. In June,
however, President Bush vowed that there
would soon be “new infrastructures”
including detention centers designed to put
an end to such “catch and release”
practices.
Though Bush said he was “working with
Congress to increase the number of detention
facilities along our borders,” Rep. Bennie
Thompson, ranking member of the House
Homeland Security Committee, said he first
learned about the KBR contract through
newspaper reports.
Fox News recently quoted Pepperdine
University professor Doug Kmiec, who deemed
detention camp concerns “more paranoia than
reality” and added that KBR’s contract is
most likely “something related to
(Hurricane) Katrina” or “a bird flu outbreak
that could spur a mass quarantine of
Americans.” The president’s stated desire
for the U.S. military to take a more active
role during natural disasters and to enforce
quarantines in the event of a bird flu
outbreak, however, have been roundly
denounced.
Concern over an all-powerful federal government
is not paranoia, but active citizenship. As
Thomas Jefferson explained, “even under the best
forms of government, those entrusted with power
have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted
it into tyranny.” From John Adams’s Alien and
Sedition Acts to FDR’s internment of Japanese
Americans, the land of the free has held many
contradictions and ironies. Interestingly
enough, Halliburton was at the center of another
historical controversy, when Lyndon Johnson’s
ties to a little-known company named Kellogg,
Brown and Root caused a congressional
commotion—particularly after the Halliburton
subsidiary won enough wartime contracts to
become one of the first protested symbols of the
military-industrial complex. Back then they were
known as the “Vietnam builders.” The question,
of course, is what they’ll be known as next.
#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary
Research Partner
Sources:
Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, October 5, 2005
Title: “Chemical Industry Is Now EPA’s Main
Research Partner”
Author: Jeff Ruch
Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, October 6, 2005
Title: “EPA Becoming Arm of Corporate R&D”
Author: Jeff Ruch
Community Evaluator: Tim Ogburn
Student Researcher: Lani Ready and Peter
McArthur
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
research program is increasingly relying on
corporate joint ventures, according to agency
documents obtained by Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The
American Chemical Council (ACC) is now EPA’s
leading research partner and the EPA is
diverting funds from basic health and
environmental research towards research that
addresses regulatory concerns of corporate
funders.
Since the beginning of Bush’s first term in
office, there has been a significant increase in
cooperative research and development agreements
(CRADAs) with individual corporations or
industry associations. During Bush’s first four
years EPA entered into fifty-seven corporate
CRADAs, compared to thirty-four such agreements
during Clinton’s second term.
EPA scientists claim that corporations are
influencing the agency’s research agenda through
financial inducements. One EPA scientist wrote,
“Many of us in the labs feel like we work for
contracts.” In April 2005, EPA’s Science
Advisory Board warned that the agency was no
longer funding credible public health research.
It noted, for example, that the EPA was falling
behind on issues such as intercontinental
pollution transport and nanotechnology.
Furthermore, in April 2005, a study by the
Government Accountability Office concluded that
EPA lacks safeguards to “evaluate or manage
potential conflicts of interest” in corporate
research agreements, as they are taking money
from companies and corporations that they are
supposed to be regulating.
According to Rebecca Rose, the Program Director
of PEER, “Under its current leadership, EPA is
becoming an arm of corporate R&D.” She also
notes that the number of corporate CRADAs under
the Bush administration outnumbered those
entered into with universities or local
governments, adding, “Public health research
needs should not have to depend upon corporate
underwriting.”
In October 2005 President Bush nominated George
Gray to serve as the Assistant Administrator for
the Environmental Protection Agency Office of
Research and Development (ORD). At that time
George Gray ran a Center for Risk Analysis at
Harvard University where the majority of the
funding came from corporate sources. Gray
indicated upon nomination that he intends to
continue and expand his solicitation of
corporate research funds in his position with
ORD.
PEER’s Executive Director Jeff Ruch warns,
“Injecting outside money into a public agency
research program, especially when it is tied to
particular projects, has a subtle but undeniable
influence on not only what work gets done but
also how that work is reported.” He adds, “As
what was one of the top public health research
programs slides toward dysfunction, nothing
about the background, attitude or philosophy of
Mr. Gray suggests that he is even remotely the
right person for this job.”
In 2004 & 2005, EPA was plagued by reports of
political suppression of scientific results on
important health issues such as asbestos and
mercury regulation (see Censored 2005, Story
#3). In response ORD launched a public relations
campaign, entitled “Science for You,” using
agency research funds to clean up its image.
Comments: George M. Gray was
sworn in as the Assistant Administrator of
Research and Development at EPA on November 1,
2005, with unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate.
UPDATE BY JEFF RUCH
This story illustrates how key environmental
research is being diverted away from public
health priorities in order to meet a corporate
regulatory agenda. By enticing EPA into
partnerships, entities such as the American
Chemical Council (ACC), which is now EPA’s
leading research partner, can influence not only
what EPA researches but how that research is
conducted, as well.
For example, long-term health monitoring studies
drop off EPA’s list of priority topics because
industry has no interest in funding such vital
work—if anything, industry has an incentive to
prevent such research from being conducted. By
the same token, the industry push to allow human
subject experiments to test tolerance to
pesticides and other commercial poisons is
precisely the type of research the industry
desires to entice EPA into conducting, and thus
legitimizing, despite an array of unresolved
ethical problems.
A few updates since October 2005 worthy of note:
a) A leading proponent of industry research
partnerships, George Gray, has been confirmed as
EPA Assistant Administrator for Research &
Development. b) President Bush has proposed
further cuts to EPA’s already shrinking research
budget. (see
http://www.peer.org/news/ news_id.php?row_id=661).
This growing penury makes EPA even more
interested in using corporate dollars to
supplement its tattered research program. c) EPA
is in the first weeks of its human testing
program. A specially convened Human Subjects
Review Board is now struggling to approve
industry and agency studies in which people were
not given informed consent or were given harmful
doses of chemicals.
The EPA page of our website has several updates
on this and related issues.
#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on
International Criminal Court
Sources:
Agence France Press News (School of the Americas
Watch), June 22, 2005
Title: “Ecuador Refuses to Sign ICC Immunity
Deal for US Citizens”
Author: Alexander Martinez
Inter Press Service, November 2, 2005
Title: “Mexico Defies Washington on the
International Criminal Court”
Author: Katherine Stapp
Faculty Evaluator: Elizabeth Martinez
Student Researchers: Jessica Rodas, David
Abbott, and Charlene Jones
Ecuador and Mexico have refused to sign
bilateral immunity agreements (BIA) with the
U.S., in ratification of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) treaty. Despite the Bush
administration’s threat to withhold economic
aid, both countries confirmed allegiance to the
ICC, the international body established to try
individuals accused of war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
On June 22, 2005 Ecuador’s president, Alfredo
Palacios, vocalized emphatic refusal to sign a
BIA (also known as an Article 98 agreement to
the Rome Statute of the ICC) in spite of
Washington’s threat to withhold $70 million a
year in military aid.
Mexico, having signed the Rome Statute, which
established the ICC in 2000, formally ratified
the treaty on October 28, 2005, making it the
100th nation to join the ICC. As a consequence
of ratifying the ICC without a U.S. immunity
agreement, Mexico stands to lose millions of
dollars in U.S. aid—including $11.5 million to
fight drug trafficking.
On September 29, 2005 the U.S. State Department
reported that it had secured 100 “immunity
agreements,” although less than a third have
been ratified.
“Our ultimate goal is to conclude Article 98
agreements with every country in the world,
regardless of whether they have signed or
ratified the ICC, regardless of whether they
intend to in the future,” said John Bolton,
former U.S. Undersecretary for Arms Control and
current U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations—and one of the ICC’s staunchest
opponents.
The U.S. effort to undermine the ICC was given
teeth in 2002, when the U.S. Congress adopted
the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act
(ASPA), which contains provisions restricting
U.S. cooperation with the ICC by making U.S.
support of UN peacekeeping missions largely
contingent on achieving impunity for all U.S.
personnel.
The ASPA prohibits U.S. military assistance to
ICC member states that have not signed a BIA.
Legislation far more wide-reaching, however, was
signed into law by President Bush on December
2004. The Nethercutt Amendment authorizes the
loss of Economic Support Funds (ESF) to
countries, including many key U.S. allies, that
have not signed a BIA. Threatened under the
Nethercutt Amendment are: funds for
international security and counterterrorism
efforts, peace process programs,
antidrug-trafficking initiatives, truth and
reconciliation commissions, wheelchair
distribution, human rights programs, economic
and democratic development, and HIV/Aids
education, among others. The Nethercutt
Amendment was readopted by the U.S. Congress in
November 2005.1
In spite of severe U.S. pressure, fifty-three
members of the ICC have refused to sign BIAs.
Katherine Stapp asserts that if Washington
follows through on threats to slash aid to ICC
member states, it risks further alienating key
U.S. allies and drawing attention to its own
increasingly shaky human rights record. “There
will be a price to be paid by the U.S.
government in terms of its credibility,” Richard
Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s
International Justice Program, told IPS.\But
criticism of the administration’s hard line has
also come from unlikely quarters.
Testifying before Congress in March, Gen. Bantz
J. Craddock, the commander of U.S. military
forces in Latin America, complained that the
sanctions had excluded Latin American officers
from U.S. training programs and could allow
China, which has been seeking military ties with
Latin America, to fill the void.
“We now risk losing contact and interoperability
with a generation of military classmates in many
nations of the region, including several leading
countries,” Craddock told the Senate Armed
Services Committee.
Experts say it is particularly notable that
Mexico, which sells 88 percent of its exports in
the U.S. market, is defying pressure from
Washington.
“It’s exactly because of the geographic and
trade proximity between Mexico and the United
States that Mexico’s ratification takes on
greater significance in terms of how isolated
the U.S. government is in its attitude toward
the ICC,” Dicker told IPS.
Notes
1. “Overview of the United States’ Opposition to
the International Criminal Court,”
http://www.iccnow.org.
UPDATE BY KATHERINE STAPP
As noted by Amnesty International, the United
States is the only nation in the world that is
actively opposed to the International Criminal
Court (ICC). However, more and more countries
appear to be resisting pressure to exempt U.S.
nationals from the court’s jurisdiction. Since
the time of my writing, the number of “bilateral
immunity agreements,” or BIAs, garnered by
Washington has remained the same: 100, of which
only twenty-one have been ratified by
parliaments, while another eighteen are
considered “executive agreements” that
purportedly do not require ratification. Only
thirteen states parties to the ICC (out of 100)
have ratified BIAs with the United States, while
eight others have reportedly entered into
executive agreements. In the past two years,
only four countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean have signed BIAs, also known as
Article 98 agreements.
Some key figures in the Bush administration have
recently expressed doubts about the wisdom of
withholding aid from friendly countries that
refuse to sign. At a March 10 briefing,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice likened the
BIAs to “sort of the same as shooting ourselves
in the foot . . . by having to put off aid to
countries with which we have important
counter-terrorism or counter-drug or in some
cases, in some of our allies, it’s even been
cooperation in places like Afghanistan and
Iraq.”
Bantz Craddock, head of the U.S. Southern
Command, remains a vocal critic of the American
Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA) sanctions,
noting in testimony before the House Armed
Services Committee on March 16 that eleven Latin
American nations have now been barred under ASPA
from receiving International Military Education
and Training funds. These include Brazil,
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico.
“Decreasing engagement opens the door for
competing nations and outside political actors
who may not share our democratic principles to
increase interaction and influence within the
region,” he noted.
And in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review
Report published on February 6, the Defense
Department said it will consider whether ASPA
restrictions on “foreign assistance programs
pertaining to security and the war on terror
necessitate adjustment as we continue to advance
the aims of the ASPA.”
Meanwhile, a May 11 poll by the University of
Maryland’s Program on International Policy
Attitudes found that a bipartisan majority of
the U.S. public (69 percent) believes that the
U.S. should not be given special exceptions when
it becomes a party to human rights treaties. 60
percent explicitly support U.S. participation in
the ICC.
Mexico has stood firm in its refusal to sign a
BIA, with the Mexican Parliament’s Lower Chamber
stating that immunity is not allowed under the
Rome Statute that establishes the ICC. As a
result, $3.6 million in military aid has been
frozen, and further International Military
Exchange Training aid cut to zero in the
administration’s proposed 2007 budget request.
The country also stands to lose more than $11
million from the Economic Support Fund (ESF).
Other countries currently threatened with aid
cuts include Bolivia, which could lose 96
percent of its U.S. military aid, and Kenya,
which could lose $8 million in ESF aid.
Sources:
Harper’s in coordination with BBC Television
Newsnight, October 24, 2005
Title: “OPEC and the economic conquest of Iraq”
Author: Greg Palast
The Guardian March 20, 2006
“ Bush Didn’t Bungle Iraq, You Fools: The
Mission Was Indeed Accomplished”
Author: Greg Palast
Faculty Evaluator: David McCuan
Student Researcher: Isaac Dolido
According to a report from journalist, Greg
Palast, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was indeed
about the oil. However, it wasn’t to destroy
OPEC, as claimed by neoconservatives in the
administration, but to take part in it.
The U.S. strategic occupation of Iraq has been
an effective means of acquiring access to the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC). As long as the interim government
adheres to the production caps set by the
organization, the U.S. will ensure profits to
the international oil companies (IOCs), the OPEC
cartel, and Russia.
With the prolonged insurgency following the
invasion, along with internal corruption and
pipeline destruction, hard line neoconservative
plans for a completely privatized Iraq were
dashed. According to some administration
insiders, the idea of a laissez-faire,
free-market reconstruction of Iraq was never a
serious consideration. One oil industry
consultant to Iraq told Palast he was amused by
“the obsession of neoconservative writers on
ways to undermine OPEC.”
In December 2003, says Palast, the State
Department drafted a 323-page plan entitled
“Options for Developing a Long Term Sustainable
Iraqi Oil Industry.” This plan directs the
Iraqis to maintain an oil quota system that will
enhance its relationship with OPEC. It describes
several possible state-owned options that range
from the Saudi Aramco model (in which the
government owns the whole operation) to the
Azerbaijan model (in which the system is almost
entirely operated by the International Oil
Companies).
Implementation of the plan was guided by a
handful of oil industry consultants, promoting
an OPEC-friendly policy but preferring the
Azerbaijan model to the “self-financing” system
of the Saudi Aramco, as it grants operation and
control to the foreign oil companies (the 2003
report warns Iraqis against cutting into IOC
profits). Once the contracts are granted, these
companies then manage, fund, and equip crude
extraction in exchange for a percentage of the
sales. Given the way in which the interests of
OPEC and those of the IOCs are so closely
aligned, it is certainly understandable why
smashing OPEC’s oil cartel might not appeal to
certain elements of the Bush administration.
According to the drafters and promoters of the
plan, dismantling OPEC would be a catastrophe.
The last thing they want is the privatization of
Iraq’s oil fields and the specter of competition
maximizing production. Pumping more oil per day
than the OPEC regulated quota of almost 4
million, would quickly bring down Iraq’s economy
and compromise the U.S. position in the global
market.
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, profits have
shot up for oil companies. In 2004, the major
U.S. oil companies posted record or near record
profits. In 2005 profits for the five largest
oil companies increased to $113 billion. In
February 2006, ConocoPhillips reported a
doubling of its quarterly profits from the
previous year, which itself had been a company
record. Shell posted a record breaking $4.48
billion in fourth-quarter earnings—and in 2005,
ExxonMobil reported the largest one-year
operating profit of any corporation in U.S.
history.
#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11
Story
Sources:
Deseret Morning News, November 10, 2005
Title: “Y. Professor Thinks Bombs, Not Planes,
Toppled WTC”
Author: Elaine Jarvik
Brigham Young University website, Winter
2005
Title: “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings
Collapse?”
Author: Steven E. Jones
Deseret Morning News, January 26, 2006
Title: “BYU professor's group accuses U.S.
officials of lying about 9/11”
Author: Elaine Jarvik
Faculty Evaluator: John Kramer
Student Researchers: David Abbott and Courtney
Wilcox
Research into the events of September 11 by
Brigham Young University physics professor,
Steven E. Jones, concludes that the official
explanation for the collapse of the World Trade
Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according
to laws of physics. Jones is calling for an
independent, international scientific
investigation “guided not by politicized notions
and constraints but rather by observations and
calculations.”
In debunking the official explanation of the
collapse of the three WTC buildings, Jones cites
the complete, rapid, and symmetrical collapse of
the buildings; the horizontal explosions
(squibs) evidenced in films of the collapses;
the fact that the antenna dropped first in the
North Tower, suggesting the use of explosives in
the core columns; and the large pools of molten
metal observed in the basement areas of both
towers.
Jones also investigated the collapse of WTC 7, a
forty-seven-story building that was not hit by
planes, yet dropped in its own “footprint,” in
the same manner as a controlled demolition. WTC
7 housed the U.S. Secret Service, the Department
of Defense, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission, the Mayor’s Office of Emergency
Management, the Internal Revenue Service
Regional Council, and the Central Intelligence
Agency. Many of the records from the Enron
accounting scandal were destroyed when the
building came down.
Jones claims that the National Institutes of
Standards and Technology (NIST) ignored the
physics and chemistry of what happened on
September 11 and even manipulated its testing in
order to get a computer-generated hypothesis
that fit the end result of collapse, and did not
even attempt to investigate the possibility of
controlled demolition. He also questions the
investigations conducted by FEMA and the 9/11
Commission.
Among the report’s other findings:
No steel-frame building, before or after the
WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to
fire. But explosives can effectively sever
steel columns.
WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes,
collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a
second longer than it would take an object
dropped from the roof to hit the ground.
“Where is the delay that must be expected
due to conservation of momentum, one of the
foundational laws of physics?” Jones asks.
“That is, as upper-falling floors strike
lower floors—and intact steel support
columns—the fall must be significantly
impeded by the impacted mass.
How do the upper floors fall so quickly,
then, and still conserve momentum in the
collapsing buildings?” The paradox, he says,
“is easily resolved by the explosive
demolition hypothesis, whereby explosives
quickly removed lower-floor material,
including steel support columns, and allow
near free-fall-speed collapses.” These
observations were not analyzed by FEMA,
NIST, or the 9/11 Commission.
With non-explosive-caused collapse there
would typically be a piling up of shattered
concrete. But most of the material in the
towers was converted to flour-like powder
while the buildings were falling. “How can
we understand this strange behavior, without
explosives? Remarkable, amazing—and
demanding scrutiny since the U.S.
government-funded reports failed to analyze
this phenomenon."
Steel supports were “partly evaporated,” but
it would require temperatures near 5,000
degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel—and
neither office materials nor diesel fuel can
generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused
by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted
at most a few minutes, and office material
fires would burn out within about twenty
minutes in any given location.
Molten metal found in the debris of the WTC
may have been the result of a
high-temperature reaction of a commonly used
explosive such as thermite. Buildings not
felled by explosives “have insufficient
directed energy to result in melting of
large quantities of metal,” Jones says.
Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence
were reported by numerous observers in and
near the towers, and these explosions
occurred far below the region where the
planes struck.
In January 2006 Jones, along with a group
calling themselves “Scholars for 9/11 Truth,”
called for an international investigation into
the attacks and are going so far as to accuse
the U.S. government of a massive cover-up.
“We believe that senior government officials
have covered up crucial facts about what really
happened on September 11,” the group said in a
statement. “We believe these events may have
been orchestrated by the administration in order
to manipulate the American people into
supporting policies at home and abroad.”
The group is headed by Jones and Jim Fetzer,
University of Minnesota Duluth distinguished
McKnight professor of philosophy, and is made up
of fifty academicians and experts including
Robert M. Bowman, former director of the U.S.
“Star Wars” space defense program, and Morgan
Reynolds, former chief economist for the
Department of Labor in President George W.
Bush’s first term.
Source:
The Independent/UK, October 21, 2005
Title: “Revealed: the True Devastation of the
Rainforest
Author: Steve Connor
Faculty Evaluator: Myrna Goodman
Student Researcher: Courtney Wilcox and Deanna
Haddock
New developments in satellite imaging technology
reveal that the Amazon rainforest is being
destroyed twice as quickly as previously
estimated due to the surreptitious practice of
selective logging.
A survey published in the October 21 issue of
the journal Science is based on images made
possible by a new, ultra-high-resolution
satellite-imaging technique developed by
scientists affiliated with the Carnegie
Institution and Stanford University.
“With this new technology, we are able to detect
openings in the forest canopy down to just one
or two individual trees,” says Carnegie
scientist Gregory Asner, lead author of the
Science study and assistant professor of
Geological and Environmental Sciences at
Stanford University. “People have been
monitoring large-scale deforestation in the
Amazon with satellites for more than two
decades, but selective logging has been mostly
invisible until now.” While clear-cuts and
burn-offs are readily detectable by conventional
satellite analysis, selective logging is masked
by the Amazon’s extremely dense forest canopy.
Stanford University’s website reports that by
late 2004, the Carnegie research team had
refined its imaging technique into a
sophisticated remote-sensing technology called
the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System (CLAS),
which processes data from three NASA
satellites—Landsat 7, Terra and Earth Observing
1—through a powerful supercomputer equipped with
new pattern-recognition approaches designed by
Asner and his staff.1
“Each pixel of information obtained by the
satellites contains detailed spectral data about
the forest,” Asner explains. “For example, the
signals tell us how much green vegetation is in
the canopy, how much dead material is on the
forest floor and how much bare soil there is.”
For the Science study, the researchers conducted
their first basin-wide analysis of the Amazon
from 1999 to 2002. The results of the four-year
survey revealed a problem that is widespread and
vastly underestimated, “We found much more
selective logging than we or anyone else had
expected—between 4,600 and 8,000 square miles
every year of forest spread across five
Brazilian states,” Asner said.
Selective logging—the practice of removing one
or two trees and leaving the rest intact— is
often considered a sustainable alternative to
clear-cutting. Left unregulated, however, the
practice has proven to be extremely destructive.
A large mahogany tree can fetch hundreds of
dollars at the sawmill, making it a tempting
target in a country where one in five lives in
poverty. “People go in and remove just the
merchantable species from the forest,” Asner
says. “Mahogany is the one everybody knows
about, but in the Amazon, there are at least
thirty-five marketable hardwood species, and the
damage that occurs from taking out just a few
trees at a time is enormous. On average, for
every tree removed, up to thirty more can be
severely damaged by the timber harvesting
operation itself. That’s because when trees are
cut down, the vines that connect them pull down
the neighboring trees.
“Logged forests are areas of extraordinary
damage. A tree crown can be twenty-five meters.
When you knock down a tree it causes a lot of
damage in the understory.” Light penetrates to
the understory and dries out the forest floor,
making it much more susceptible to burning.
“That’s probably the biggest environmental
concern,” Asner explains. “But selective logging
also involves the use of tractors and skidders
that rip up the soil and the forest floor.
Loggers also build makeshift dirt roads to get
in, and study after study has shown that those
frontier roads become larger and larger as more
people move in, and that feeds the deforestation
process. Think of logging as the first land-use
change.”
Another serious environmental concern is that
while an estimated 400 million tons of carbon
enter the atmosphere every year as a result of
traditional deforestation in the Amazon, Asner
and his colleagues estimate that an additional
100 million tons is produced by selective
logging. “That means up to 25 percent more
greenhouse gas is entering the atmosphere than
was previously assumed,” Asner explains, a
finding that could alter climate change
forecasts on a global scale.
Notes
1. Mark Shwartz, “Selective logging causes
widespread destruction, study finds,” Stanford
University website, October 21, 2005.
#20 Bottled Water: A Global
Environmental Problem
Source:
OneWorld.net, February 5, 2006
Title: “Bottled Water: Nectar of the Frauds?”
Author: Abid Aslam
Faculty Evaluator: Liz Close
Student Researchers: Heidi Miller and Sean
Hurley
Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every
year on bottled water in the belief—often
mistaken—that it is better for us than what
flows from our taps. Worldwide, bottled water
consumption surged to 41 billion gallons in
2004, up 57 percent since 1999.
“Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink,
demand for bottled water is increasing—producing
unnecessary garbage and consuming vast
quantities of energy,” reports Earth Policy
Institute researcher Emily Arnold. Although in
much of the world, including Europe and the
U.S., more regulations govern the quality of tap
water than bottled water, bottled water can cost
up to 10,000 times more. At up to $10 per
gallon, bottled water costs more than gasoline
in the United States.
“There is no question that clean, affordable
drinking water is essential to the health of our
global community,” Arnold asserts, “But bottled
water is not the answer in the developed world,
nor does it solve problems for the 1.1 billion
people who lack a secure water supply. Improving
and expanding existing water treatment and
sanitation systems is more likely to provide
safe and sustainable sources of water over the
long term.” Members of the United Nations have
agreed to halve the proportion of people who
lack reliable and lasting access to safe
drinking water by the year 2015. To meet this
goal, they would have to double the $15 billion
spent every year on water supply and sanitation.
While this amount may seem large, it pales in
comparison to the estimated $100 billion spent
each year on bottled water.
Tap water comes to us through an
energy-efficient infrastructure whereas bottled
water is transported long distances—often across
national borders—by boat, train, airplane, and
truck. This involves burning massive quantities
of fossil fuels.
For example, in 2004 alone a Helsinki company
shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water
2,700 miles to Saudi Arabia. And although 94
percent of the bottled water sold in the U.S. is
produced domestically, many Americans import
water shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji
and other faraway places to satisfy demand for
what Arnold terms “chic and exotic bottled
water.”
More fossil fuels are used in packaging the
water. Most water bottles are made with
polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived
from crude oil. “Making bottles to meet
Americans’ demand alone requires more than 1.5
million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel
some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,” Arnold
notes.
Once it has been emptied, the bottle must be
dumped. According to the Container Recycling
Institute, 86 percent of plastic water bottles
used in the United States become garbage or
litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic
byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash
containing heavy metals tied to a host of human
and animal health problems. Buried water bottles
can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.
Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are
used to bottle water each year. Of the bottles
deposited for recycling in 2004, the U.S.
exported roughly 40 percent to destinations as
far away as China, requiring yet more fossil
fuel.
Meanwhile, communities where the water
originates risk their sources running dry. More
than fifty Indian villages have complained of
water shortages after bottlers began extracting
water for sale under the Coca-Cola Corporation’s
Dasani label. Similar problems have been
reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region
of North America, where farmers, fishers, and
others who depend on water for their livelihoods
are suffering from concentrated water extraction
as water tables drop quickly.
While Americans consume the most bottled water
per capita, some of the fastest collective
growth in consumption is in the giant
populations of Mexico, India, and China. As a
whole, India’s consumption of bottled water
increased threefold from 1999 to 2004, while
China’s more than doubled.
While private companies’ profits rise from
selling bottled water of questionable quality at
more than $100 billion per year—more efficiently
regulated, waste-free municipal systems could be
implemented for distribution of safe drinking
water for all the peoples of the world—at a
small fraction of the price.
UPDATE BY ABID ASLAM
Consumer stories are a staple of the media diet.
This article spawned coverage by numerous public
broadcasters and appeared to do the rounds in
cyberspace. Perhaps what seized imaginations was
our affinity for the subject: apparently we and
our planet’s surface are made up mostly of water
and without it, we would perish. In any case,
most of the discussion of the issues raised by
the source—a research paper from a Washington,
D.C.–based environmental think tank—focused
mainly on consumer elements (the price, taste,
and consequences for human health of bottled and
tap water), as I had anticipated when I decided
to storify the Environmental Policy Institute (EPI)
paper (in honesty, that is pretty much all I
did, adding minimal context and background).
However, a good deal of reader attention also
focused on the environmental and regulatory
aspects.
Further information on these can be obtained
from the EPI, a host of environmental and
consumer groups, and from the relevant
government agencies: the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for tap water and the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration for bottled water.
Differences in the ways these regulators
(indeed, regulators in general) operate and are
structured and funded deserve a great deal more
attention, as does the unequal protection of
citizens that results.
Numerous other questions raised in the article
deserve further examination. Would improved
waste disposal and recycling address the
researcher’s concerns about resources being
consumed to get rid of empty water bottles? If
public water systems can deliver a more reliable
product to more people at a lower cost, as the
EPI paper says, then what are the obstacles to
the necessary investment in the U.S. and in poor
countries, and how can citizens here and there
overcome those obstacles?
Some of these questions may strike general
readers or certain media gatekeepers as
esoteric. Then again, we all drink the stuff.
#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean
Glaciers
Source:
CorpWatch.com, June 20, 2005
Title: “Barrick Gold Strikes Opposition in
South”
Author: Glenn Walker
InterPress Service, February 15, 2006
Title: “Chile: Yes, to Gold Mine But Don’t Touch
the Glaciers”
Author: Daniela Estrda
Faculty Evaluator: Andy Roth
Student Researcher: Michelle Salvail
Barrick Gold, a powerful multinational gold
mining company, planned to melt three Andean
glaciers in order to access gold deposits
through open pit mining. The water from the
glaciers would have been held for refreezing in
the following winters. Opposition to the mine
because of destruction to water sources for
Andean farmers was widespread in Chile and the
rest of the world. Barrick Gold’s Pascua Lama
project represents one of the largest foreign
investments in Chile in recent years, totaling
$1.5 billion. However, some 70,000 downstream
farmers backed by international environmental
organizations and activists around the world
waged a campaign against the proposed mine.
In the fall of 2005, environmental activists
dumped crushed ice outside the local headquarter
of Barrick Gold in Santiago. Thousands had
marched earlier in the year shouting slogans
such as, “We are not a North American colony,”
and handing out nuggets of fool’s gold
emblazoned with the words oro sucio—“dirty
gold.”
In February 2006, Chile’s Regional Environment
Commission (COREMA) gave permission for Barrick
Gold to begin the project, but did not approve
the relocation of the three glaciers.
“The mine will cause severe damage to the local
ecosystem because it will pollute the Huasco
River as well as underground water sources,”
said Antonia Fortt, an environmental engineer
with the Oceana Ecological Organization.
The Pascua Lama deposits are considered one of
the world’s largest untapped sources of gold
ore, with a potential yield of 17.5 billion
ounces of gold. Barrick’s removal of the gold
will employ cyanide leaching for on-site
processing of the ore. Cyanide is a chemical
compound that is extremely toxic to humans and
other life forms. Environmentalists are worried
that the cyanide will leach into the water
systems and contaminate entire ecosystems
downstream. Construction of the mine will begin
in 2006 and begin full operations in 2009.
Barrick Gold also succeeded in convincing both
the Chilean and Argentine governments to sign a
binational mining treaty, which allows the
unrestricted flow of machinery, ore, and
personnel across the border. Lawsuits against
the treaty are pending in Chilean courts.
Barrick Gold has been accused of burying fifty
miners alive in Tanzania and blatantly
disregarding environmental concerns in
operations all over he world. George H. W. Bush,
from 1995 to 1999, was the “Honorary Chairman”
of Barrick’s international Advisory Board.
Barrick Gold is the third largest gold mining
company in the world, with a portfolio of
twenty-seven mining operations in five
continents. Gold sales in 2005 were $2.3
billion.
The company is based in Canada, but U.S.
directors include: Donald Carty, CEO of AMR Corp
and American Airlines, Dallas, Texas; J. Brett
Harvey, CEO CONSOL Energy Inc., Venitia,
Pennsylvania; Angus MacNaughton, President of
Genstar Investment Inc., Danville, California;
and Steven Shapiro, VP Burlington Resources,
Inc., Houston,Texas.
#22 $Billions in Homeland Security
Spending Undisclosed
Source:
Congressional Quarterly, June 22, 2005.
Title: “Billions in States’ Homeland Purchases
Kept in the Dark”
Author: Eileen Sullivan
Faculty Evaluator: Noel Byrne
Student Researchers: Monica Moura and Gary
Phillips
More than $8 billion in Homeland Security funds
has been doled out to states since the September
11, 2001 attacks, but the public has little
chance of knowing how this money is being spent.
Of the thirty-four states that responded to
Congressional Quarterly’s inquiries on Homeland
Security spending, twelve have laws or policies
that preclude public disclosure of details on
Homeland Security purchases. Many states have
adopted relevant nondisclosure clauses to the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The reason,
state officials say, is that the information
could be useful to terrorists.
Further hindering public demand for
accountability, Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) spokesperson Marc Short confirms, DHS will
not release its records on state spending of
funds.
“These non-disclosure policies are troubling,”
Steven Aftergood, director of the research
organization Project on Government Secrecy,
warns in an interview with CQ. “Accountability
is the price we pay. We’re giving away the
ability to hold public officials accountable.
More than we value public oversight, we fear a
nebulous terrorist threat, and this is changing
the character of American political life.”
New York is one of many states that will
disclose broad categories of purchases, such as
personal protective gear, but will not specify
type of equipment, which company makes it, how
much it costs, or where it is going.
Roger Shatzkin, CQ’s interviewee on the subject
of New Jersey’s policy on Homeland Security
spending disclosure, offered this example: “If
there was a potential flaw in equipment, that
could be exploited [by terrorists], so the state
would not want that information to become
public.”
Aftergood counters that taxpayers have the right
to know if law enforcement is using defective
equipment: “One of the things that happens when
you restrict information is that you reduce the
motivation to fix problems and correct
weaknesses.”
Colorado’s secrecy provision was enacted in
2003, but State Senator Bob Hagedorn says the
law has been misinterpreted, authorizing
automatic denial of access to any and all
information regarding Homeland Security.
Hagedorn told CQ that this broad application had
never been his intention when sponsoring the
bill. He warned against the shroud of secrecy
as, in early 2005, state lawmakers discovered
that Colorado did not have a Homeland Security
plan, yet had spent $130 million in Homeland
Security funds. “How the hell do you spend $130
million for homeland security when you don’t
have a damn plan?” Hagedorn asked. “At this
point, the public still does not have an
official answer to that question,” he added.
CQ investigators confirm that federal lawmakers
want to know more about how states are spending
Homeland Security funds.
“There’s a delicate balance that needs to be
struck between ensuring our security and not
advertising our vulnerabilities, but also
ensuring how our security money is being spent,”
said a staff member for the House Homeland
Security Committee who requested anonymity.
“We’re spending billions of dollars every year
on grants to state and local governments . . .
there should be some expectation [of]
accountability.”
#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe
Sources:
The Guardian UK, December 8, 2005
Title: “Oil Industry Targets EU Climate Policy
Author: David Adam
The Independent UK, December 8, 2005
Title: “How America Plotted to Stop Kyoto Deal”
Author: Andrew Buncombe
Lobbyists funded by the U.S. oil industry have
launched a campaign in Europe aimed at derailing
efforts to tackle greenhouse gas pollution and
climate change.
Documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal a
systematic plan to persuade European business,
politicians and the media that the European
Union should abandon its commitments under the
Kyoto protocol, the international agreement that
aims to reduce emissions that lead to global
warming.
The documents, an email and a PowerPoint
presentation, describe efforts to establish a
European coalition to “challenge the course of
the EU’s post-2012 agenda.” They were written by
Chris Horner, a Washington D.C. lawyer and
senior fellow at the rightwing think tank the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has
received more than $1.3 million funding from the
U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil. Horner also acts for
the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group set up “to
dispel the myth of global warming.”
The PowerPoint document sets out plans to
establish a group called the European Sound
Climate Policy Coalition. It says: “In the U.S.
an informal coalition has helped successfully to
avert adoption of a Kyoto-style program. This
model should be emulated, as appropriate, to
guide similar efforts in Europe.”
During the 1990s U.S. oil companies and other
corporations funded a group called the Global
Climate Coalition, which emphasized
uncertainties in climate science and disputed
the need to take action. It was disbanded when
President Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto
process. The group’s website now says: “The
industry voice on climate change has served its
purpose by contributing to a new national
approach to global warming.”
Countries signed up to the Kyoto process have
legal commitments to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. Oil and energy companies would be
affected by these cuts because burning their
products produces the most emissions.
The PowerPoint document written by Horner
appears to be aimed at getting RWE, the German
utility company, to join a European coalition of
companies to act against Kyoto. Horner is
convinced that, with Europe’s weakening economy,
companies are likely to be increasingly ill at
ease with the costs of meeting Kyoto mandates
and thus could be successfully influenced to
pressure their government to reject Kyoto
standards, as the U.S. government has. Horner’s
audiences have included several significant
companies including Ford Europe, Lufthansa, and
Exxon.
The document says: “The current political
realities in Brussels open a window of
opportunity to challenge the course of the EU’s
post-2012 agenda.” It adds: “Brussels must
openly acknowledge and address them willingly or
through third party pressure.”
It says industry associations are the “wrong way
to do this” but suggests that a cross-industry
coalition, of up to six companies, could
“counter the commission’s Kyoto agenda.” Such a
coalition are advised to steer debate by
targeting journalists and bloggers, as well as
attending environmental group meetings and
events to “share information on opposing
viewpoints and tactics.”
#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over
3000 Percent Last Year
Sources:
Raw Story, October 2005
Title: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Rose
3,281 Percent Last Year, Senator Finds”
Author: John Byrne
Senator Frank Lautenberg’s website
Title: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Soar
to $9.2 Million”
Faculty Evaluator: Phil Beard
Student Researchers: Matthew Beavers and Willie
Martin
Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in
Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over
$8 million in 2005, an increase of more than
3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake
in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit
government contracts.
An analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg
(D-NJ) reveals that as Halliburton’s fortunes
rise, so do the Vice President’s. Halliburton
has already taken more than $10 billion from the
Bush-Cheney administration for work in Iraq.
They were also awarded many of the unaccountable
post-Katrina government contracts, as off-shore
subsidiaries of Halliburton quietly worked
around U.S. sanctions to conduct very
questionable business with Iran (See Story #2).
“It is unseemly,” notes Lautenberg, “for the
Vice President to continue to benefit from this
company at the same time his administration
funnels billions of dollars to it.”
According to the Vice President’s Federal
Financial Disclosure forms, he holds the
following Halliburton stock options:
100,000 shares at $54.5000 (vested), expire
December 3, 2007
33,333 shares at $28.1250 (vested), expire
December 2, 2008
300,000 shares at $39.5000 (vested), expire
December 2, 2009
The Vice President has attempted to fend off
criticism by signing an agreement to donate the
after-tax profits from these stock options to
charities of his choice, and his lawyer has said
he will not take any tax deduction for the
donations. However, the Congressional Research
Service (CRS) concluded in September 2003 that
holding stock options while in elective office
does constitute a “financial interest”
regardless of whether the holder of the options
will donate proceeds to charities. Valued at
over $9 million, the Vice President could
exercise his stock options for a substantial
windfall, not only benefiting his designated
charities, but also providing Halliburton with a
tax deduction.
CRS also found that receiving deferred
compensation is a financial interest. The Vice
President continues to receive deferred salary
from Halliburton. While in office, he has
received the following salary payments from
Halliburton:
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice
President Cheney in 2001: $205,298
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice
President Cheney in 2002: $162,392
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice
President Cheney in 2003: $178,437
Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice
President Cheney in 2004: $194,852
These CRS findings contradict Vice President
Cheney’s puzzling view that he does not have a
financial interest in Halliburton. On the
September 14, 2003 edition of Meet the Press in
response to questions regarding his relationship
with Halliburton, where from 1995 to 2000 he was
employed as CEO, Vice President Cheney said,
“Since I left Halliburton to become George
Bush’s vice president, I’ve severed all my ties
with the company, gotten rid of all my financial
interest. I have no financial interest in
Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had, now,
for over three years.”
Comment: A similar undercovered story of
conflicting interest and disaster profiteering
by those in the top echelon of the U.S.
Government is of Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld’s connections to Gilead Sciences, the
biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu—the
influenza remedy that is now the most-sought
after drug in the world. This story was brought
forward by Fortune senior writer, Nelson D.
Schwartz, on October 31, 2005 in an article
titled “Rumsfeld’s growing stake in Tamiflu,”
and by F. William Engdahl for GlobalResearch, on
October 30, 2005, in an article titled “Is avian
flu another Pentagon hoax?”
Rumsfeld served as Gilead’s chairman from 1997
until he joined the Bush administration in 2001,
and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at
between $5 million and $25 million, according to
Federal Financial Disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
The forms don’t reveal the exact number of
shares Rumsfeld owns, but whipped up fears of an
avian flu pandemic and the ensuing scramble for
Tamiflu sent Gilead’s stock from $35 to $47 in
2005, making the Pentagon chief, already one of
the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at
least $1 million richer.
What’s more, the federal government is emerging
as one of the world’s biggest customers for
Tamiflu. In July 2005, the Pentagon ordered $58
million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops
around the world, and Congress is considering a
multibillion dollar purchase. Roche expects 2005
sales for Tamiflu to total at about $1 billion,
compared with $258 million in 2004.
UPDATE BY JOHN BYRNE
The media has routinely downplayed Cheney’s
involvement and financial investment in
Halliburton, one of the largest U.S. defense
contractors that received supersized no-bid
contracts in Iraq. Ultimately, the importance of
the story is that the Vice President of the U.S.
is able to use his position of power to reap
rewards for his former company in which he has a
financial investment. Halliburton may also
benefit from a chilling effect in which the
Pentagon is more likely to favor Cheney’s firm
to seek favor with the White House.
Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton
stock options, and receives a deferred salary of
about $200,000 a year. According to Cheney’s
most recent tax returns, he held $2.5 million in
retirement accounts, much of which likely came
from his former defense firm.
Cheney recently filed disclosure reports that
show he is valued at $94 million.
Senator Lautenberg’s disclosure, brought forward
by Raw Story, received no mainstream coverage.
While the press has often noted that Cheney was
formerly Halliburton’s CEO, they routinely fail
to mention how much money he accrued from the
firm during his service there. They also fail to
mention that he continues to receive a pension.
RawStory.com regularly reports on Halliburton
and contracts awarded to the company.
SourceWatch.org also has a good library of
resources on Halliburton and other defense
contractors as well as the Vice
President.Another way to get involved is to
contact your local senator or representatives
about your concerns, and to ask them to push the
Vice President to sell his stock options in
Halliburton.
#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens
Region
Sources:
Upside Down World, October 5, 2005
Title: “Fears mount as US opens new military
installation in Paraguay”
Author: Benjamin Dangl
Foreign Policy in Focus, November 21,
2005
Title: “Dark Armies, Secret Bases, and Rummy, Oh
My!”
By Conn Hallinan
International Relations Center, December
14, 2005
Title: US Military Moves in Paraguay Rattle
Regional Relations”
Sam Logan and Matthew Flynn
Faculty Evaluator: Patricia Kim-Ragal
Student Researchers: Nick Ramirez and Deyango
Harris
Five hundred U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay
with planes, weapons, and ammunition in July
2005, shortly after the Paraguayan Senate
granted U.S. troops immunity from national and
International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction.
Neighboring countries and human rights
organizations are concerned that the massive air
base at Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay is
potential real estate for the U.S. military.
While U.S. and Paraguayan officials vehemently
deny ambitions to establish a U.S. military base
at Mariscal Estigarribia, the ICC immunity
agreement and U.S. counterterrorism training
exercises have increased suspicions that the
U.S. is building a stronghold in a region that
is strategic to resource and military interests.
The Mariscal Estigarribia air base is within 124
miles of Bolivia and Argentina, and 200 miles
from Brazil, near the Triple Frontier where
Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet. Bolivia’s
natural gas reserves are the second largest in
South America, while the Triple Frontier region
is home to the Guarani Aquifer, one of the
world’s largest fresh water sources. (See Story
#20.)
Not surprisingly, U.S. rhetoric is building
about terrorist threats in the triborder region.
Dangl reports claims by Defense officials that
Hezbollah and Hamas, radical Islamic groups from
the Middle East, receive significant funding
from the Triple Frontier, and that growing
unrest in this region could leave a political
“black hole” that would erode other democratic
efforts. Dangl notes that in spite of frequent
attempts to link terror networks to the
triborder area, there is little evidence of a
connection.
The base’s proximity to Bolivia may cause even
more concern. Bolivia has a long history of
popular protest against U.S. exploitation of its
vast natural gas reserves. But the resulting
election of leftist President Evo Morales, who
on May 1, 2006 signed a decree nationalizing all
of Bolivia’s gas reserves, has certainly
intensified hostilities with the U.S.1
When Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
visited Paraguay in August of 2005, he told
reporters that, “there certainly is evidence
that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved
in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways.”
Military analysts from Uruguay and Bolivia
maintain that the threat of terrorism is often
used by the U.S. as an excuse for military
intervention and the monopolization of natural
resources.
A journalist writing for the Argentinian
newspaper, Clarin, visited the base at Mariscal
Estigarribia and reported it to be in perfect
condition. Capable of handling large military
planes, it is oversized for the Paraguayan air
force, which only has a handful of small
aircraft. The base is capable of housing 16,000
troops, has an enormous radar system, huge
hangars, and an air traffic control tower. The
airstrip itself is larger than the one at the
international airport in Asuncion, Paraguay’s
capital. Near the base is a military camp that
has recently grown in size.
Hallinan notes that Paraguay’s neighbors are
very skeptical of the situation, as there is a
disturbing resemblance between U.S. denials
about Mariscal Estigarribia and the disclaimers
made by the Pentagon about Eloy Alfaro airbase
in Manta, Ecuador. The U.S. claimed the Manta
base was a “dirt strip” used for weather
surveillance. When local journalists revealed
its size, however, the U.S. admitted the base
harbored thousands of mercenaries and hundreds
of U.S. troops, and Washington had signed a
ten-year basing agreement with Ecuador. (See
Chapter 2, Story #17, for similarities between
the Manta air base in Ecuador, and the current
situation unfolding in Paraguay.)
As Paraguay breaks ranks with her neighbors by
allowing the U.S. to carry out military
operations in the heart of South America, Logan
and Flynn report that nongovernmental
organizations in Paraguay are protesting the new
U.S. military presence in their country, warning
that recent moves could be laying the foundation
for increasing U.S. presence and influence over
the entire region. Perhaps the strongest words
come from the director of the Paraguayan human
rights organization Peace and Justice Service,
Orlando Castillo, who claims that the U.S.
aspires to turn Paraguay into a “second Panama
for its troops, and it is not far from achieving
its objective to control the Southern Cone and
extend the Colombian War.”
UPDATE BY BENJAMIN DANGL
The election of Evo Morales in Bolivia in
December of 2005 brought more attention to the
U.S. military presence in neighboring Paraguay.
Since his election, Morales has nationalized the
country’s gas reserves and strengthened ties
with Cuba and Venezuela to build a more
sustainable economy. Such policies have not been
warmly received in Washington. Responding to
this progressive trend, on May 22, 2006 George
Bush said he was “concerned about the erosion of
democracy” in Venezuela and Bolivia.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, himself a
victim of a U.S.-backed coup, said Bush’s
comments mean, “He’s already given the green
light to start conspiring against the democratic
government of Bolivia.” U.S. troops stationed in
Paraguay may be poised for such an intervention.
However, human rights reports suggest the U.S.
military presence has already resulted in
bloodshed.
Paraguay is the fourth largest producer of soy
in the world. As this industry expands, poor
farmers are being forced off their lands. These
farmers have organized protests, road blockades
and land occupations against this displacement
and have faced subsequent repression from
military, police, and paramilitary forces.
Investigations by Servicio Paz y Justicia
(Serpaj), a human rights group in Paraguay,
report that the worst cases of repression
against farmers took place in areas with the
highest concentration of U.S. troops. This
violence resulted in the deaths of forty-one
farmers in three separate areas.
“The U.S. military is advising the Paraguayan
police and military about how to deal with these
farmer groups,” Orlando Castillo of Serpaj told
me over the phone. He explained that U.S. troops
monitor farmers to find information about union
organizations and leaders, then tell Paraguayan
officials how to proceed. “The numbers from our
study show what this U.S. presence is doing,”
Castillo said.
The U.S. government maintains the military
exercises in Paraguay are humanitarian efforts.
However, the deputy speaker of the Paraguayan
parliament, Alejandro Velazquez Ugarte, said
that of the thirteen exercises going on in the
country, only two are of a civilian nature.
This presence is an example of the U.S.
government’s “counter-insurgency” effort in
Latin America. Such meddling has a long, bloody
history in the region. Currently, the
justification is the threat of terrorism instead
of communism. As Latin America shifts further
away from Washington’s interests, such
militarization is only likely to increase.
Throughout these recent military operations, the
U.S. corporate media, as well as Paraguayan
media, have ignored the story. Soccer, not dead
farmers or plans for a coup, has been the focus
of most headlines.
For ongoing reports on the U.S. militarization
of Paraguay and elsewhere visit
www.UpsideDownWorld.org, a website on
activism and politics in Latin America, and
www.TowardFreedom.com. Benjamin Dangl’s
book, The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and
Social Movements in Bolivia (forthcoming from AK
Press, January 2007), includes further
investigations into the U.S. military operations
in Paraguay.
Ideas for action include organizing protests and
writing letters to the U.S. embassy in Paraguay
(www.asuncion.usembassy.gov).
For more information on international
solidarity, email Orlando Castillo at Serpaj in
Paraguay:
desmilitarizacion@serpajpy.org.py
UPDATE BY CONN HALLINAN
My article was written in late November 2005
during the run-up to the Bolivian elections.
That campaign featured indigenous leader Evo
Morales, a fierce critic of Washington’s
neoliberal, free trade policies that have
impoverished tens of millions throughout Latin
America. The Bush administration not only openly
opposed Morales, it charged there was a growing
“terrorism” problem in the region and began
building up military forces in nearby Paraguay.
There have been a number of important
developments since last fall. Morales won the
election and nationalized Bolivia’s
petrochemical industry. In the past, such an
action might have triggered a U.S.-sponsored
coup, or at least a crippling economic embargo.
Foreign oil and gas companies immediately tried
to drive a wedge between Bolivia and other
nations in the region by threatening to halt
investments or pull out entirely. This included
companies partially owned by Brazil and
Argentina.
But Latin America is a very different place
these days. Three days after the May 1, 2005
nationalization, Argentine President Nestor
Kirchner, Brazilian President Lula De Silva,
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and Morales
met in Puerto Iguazu and worked out an agreement
to help Bolivia develop its resources while
preserving regional harmony. As a result, it is
now likely that foreign petrochemical companies
will remain in Bolivia, although they will pay
up to four times as much as they did under the
old agreements. And if they leave, the Chinese
and Russians are waiting in the wings.
The situation is still delicate. U.S. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently compared
Chavez to Adolph Hitler and linked him to Cuba’s
Fidel Castro and Morales. Aid is flowing to
militaries in Colombia and Paraguay, and the
White House continues to use private proxies to
intervene in the Colombian civil war. While
there is a growing solidarity among nations in
the southern cone, some of their economies are
delicate.
Ecuador is presently wracked by demonstrations
demanding the expulsion of foreign oil companies
and an end to free trade talks with the U.S.
This is an ongoing story. While the alternative
media continues to cover these developments, the
mainstream media has largely ignored them.
A note on reading the mainstream: the Financial
Times recently highlighted a Latinobarometro
poll indicating that most countries in South
America were rejecting “democracy” as a form of
government. But since free markets and
neoliberalism were sold as “democracy”—economic
policies that most South Americans have
overwhelmingly rejected—did the poll measure an
embrace of authoritarianism or a rejection of
failed economic policies? Tread carefully.
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