Hard Rain Journal 6-30-06: Bird Flu Update -- Four Important News Items
By Richard Power
The threat of a global bird flu pandemic continues. I monitor the situation closely, and include major developments in the bi-weekly GS(3) Intelligence Briefings. Urgent information or recommendations will be delivered as GS(3) Thunderbolts.
Here are excerpts from four important stories from recent days, with links to the full texts, as well as links to related posts:
The risk of bird flu mutating into a form more easily spread between people is still high and there could be an increase in human infections at the end of the year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Friday. In a report analysing more than 200 known bird flu cases, the United Nations agency identified three peaks in human infections since 2003, all concentrated during the winter and spring seasons in the northern hemisphere. "If this pattern continues, an upsurge in cases could be anticipated starting in late 2006 or early 2007," the WHO said, adding that further analysis was needed.
"Moreover, the widespread distribution of the H5N1 virus in poultry and the continued exposure of humans suggest that the risk of virus evolving into a more transmissible agent in humans remains high," it said. While the avian virus, which has spread to some 50 countries, remains mostly a disease of birds, experts fear it could mutate into a more transmissible form and spark a pandemic killing millions of people.
Stephanie Nebehay, U.N. sees "high" risk of more easily-spread birdflu, Reutes, 6-30-06
Bird flu fatalities have almost tripled this year as the lethal virus spread across Asia, Europe and Africa, prompting calls for increased supplies of medicines to fight the virus and any pandemic it might spawn. Since January, at least 54 people have died from the H5N1 avian influenza strain in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq and Turkey, according to the World Health Organization. That compares with 19 fatalities in Vietnam and Cambodia in the first six months of 2005. Human cases create opportunity for the virus to mutate into a lethal pandemic form....The rate of new infections has almost doubled to one every two days this year, from almost two a week in 2005. Since late 2003, at least 130 of the 228 people known to have been infected with H5N1 have died, according to the Geneva-based WHO.... A severe winter in Russia and the Caucasus area at the end of last year pushed migratory birds south and westward, the FAO said. By February, initial outbreaks in wild birds and poultry were reported in Iraq, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Greece, Italy, Azerbaijan, Iran, Germany, India, Egypt, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Slovakia, Switzerland and Niger. The following month, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro, Pakistan, Albania, Poland, Georgia, Cameroon, Myanmar, Denmark, Sweden, Israel, Afghanistan, Jordan and the Czech Republic reported initial outbreaks. They were joined by Burkina Faso, Palestine Authority, U.K., Sudan and Ivory Coast in April and Djibouti in May.
Bird Flu Fatalities Almost Triple, Spurring Need for Treatments, Bloomberg, 6-28-066
The World Health Organization has detailed the first evidence that a deadly bird flu virus mutated and spread from person to person within an Indonesian family, but experts said yesterday the genetic change does not increase the threat of a pandemic. The investigation said the H5N1 mutation occurred in a boy, 10, in the largest cluster of human infection reported to date in a village in Karo district, North Sumatra. A woman, believed infected by poultry, likely passed it to the boy and five other blood relatives. But the boy is thought to have infected his father, whose samples showed the same mutation, according to the report obtained by Associated Press. Only one infected family member survived. "It stopped. It was a dead end at that point," said Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....Dr. David Nabarro, co-ordinator of all UN responses to bird flu, said yesterday by telephone, "We were fortunate in that the change that took place did not result in sustained human-to-human transmission." The report was given out at a closed-door meeting in Jakarta.
Bird flu kept to one family, Toronto Star, 6-24-06
Chinese scientists are continuing investigations into what is believed to be the world's first bird flu fatality. In a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine last Thursday, eight Chinese scientists claimed a 24-year-old Beijing man who died in late 2003 had contracted H5N1 avian influenza. The experts, including Cao Wuchun from the State Key Laboratory of Pathogens and Biosecurity, said the virus was isolated in a sample taken from the man....The dead man, who served in the army, fell ill on November 25, 2003, the year China experienced the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak....Tests at that time showed he had not died of SARS, said Wadia. At that time no human cases of avian influenza, or bird flu, had been reported by health authorities on the Chinese mainland. The first case was reported two years later, in November 2005. According to WHO sources, current outbreaks of the H5N1 virus were first recognized in early 2004 in Viet Nam. A report given by the Ministry of Health to the WHO said that the scientists have done a lot research on the dead man in the past two years and have finally resolved that he had the H5N1 virus, said Wadia....Up to now China has reported 19 human cases of bird flu, with 12 fatalities. Globally, 225 human infections have been recorded by the WHO, with 128 deaths.
Zhang Feng, Probe continues into 'first bird flu death,' 6-28-06
Related Posts:
GS(3) Thunderbolt: Karo Cluster May Indicate Human to Human Transmission of Bird Flu
Words of Power #2: Indonesia’s State of Emergency on Bird Flu Demands Your Attention
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Bird Flu, H5N1, Avian+Flu, Pandemic, Health Emergency, United Nations, Indonesia, China, SARS, Crisis Management, Business Continuity
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 6-29-06 LATE EDITION: US System of Government has NOT Flatlined, SCOTUS Rules for Constitution & Geneva, & Against Bush
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Hard Rain Journal 6-29-06 LATE EDITION: The US System of Government has NOT Flatlined, SCOTUS Rules for the US Constitution & the Geneva Accords, and Against Bush-Cheney
By Richard Power
As Jung taught, synchronicity is a humbling, mysterious, and powerful phenomena.
In this morning's Hard Rain post about Bush-Cheney threats against the New York Times in particular, and freedom of the press as a whole, I wrote:
How far from considering such legislation is the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate? How far from championing it are the likes of Brit Hume and Paula Zahn? How far from upholding it are the likes of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito? (We will all soon know the heart and mind of Justice Kennedy, because his conscience and common sense sorely tested.) Of course, the answer is "not far at all," indeed, they are already there.
Today, SCOTUS ruled for the US Constitution and the Geneva Accords, and against Bush-Cheney, and Justice Kennedy was the swing vote:
The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that it exceeded its authority by creating tribunals for terror suspects that fell short of the legal protections that Congress has traditionally required in military courts. As a result, the court said in a 5-to-3 ruling, the tribunals violated both American military law and the military's obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Supreme Court Blocks Guantánamo Tribunals, New York Times, 6-29-06
It is an historic case, with profound significance, because of its unequivocal affirmation of the separation of powers:
It is not too early to mark the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld as a landmark. Nor is it too early to wonder what shadow this monument will cast. Like some historical landmarks (the Vietnam War Memorial comes to mind), it may be that Hamdan’s long-term resonance will be far greater than its short-term impact. Consider first the long-term significance of the decision, and then its immediate political consequences....
This historic ruling is a victory not only for the US Constitution (i.e. the defining document of the national identity), but also for the Uniform Code of Military Justice (i.e., the honor of the US military), and for Geneva Accords (i.e., the rule of international law). Hamdan & the Youngstown Framework, American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, 6-29-09
The US system of government has not flatlined (yet), and that "there is still hope" (however fragile) as Arwen told Elrond in Lord of the Rings.
The ruling has serious implications in regard to several Bush-Cheney outrages, including torture and rendition of prisoners, and the warrantless surveillance and monitoring of US citizens.
It was a 5-3 vote. Justice Kennedy passed his first test of principle on the post-O'Connor court. (Roberts, involved in the crafting of the Bush-Cheney rationale, did not vote.)
Here are quotes from Justices John Paul Stevens and Arthur Kennnedy:
In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the administration had failed to prove a "practical need" that would justify trying the detainees in courts that provided a lesser standard of justice without seeking authorization from Congress....
Justice Stevens declared flatly that "the military commission at issue lacks the power to proceed because its structure and procedure violate" both the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs the American military's legal system, and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.The majority opinion rejected the administration's claims that the tribunals were justified both by President Bush's inherent powers as commander in chief and by the resolution passed by Congress authorizing the use of force after the Sept. 11. There is nothing in the resolution's legislative history "even hinting" that such an expansion of the president's powers was considered, he wrote. Supreme Court Blocks Guantánamo Tribunals, New York Times, 6-29-06
Two more thoughts...
Will the Bush-Cheney regime continue to deny the International Red Cross access to those it asks to visit?
And Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is owed an apology...
Read U.S. Senate Floor Statement by Sen. Dick Durbin on Guantanamo Bay, 6-14-05 and remember the political heat he took for speaking truth to the abuse of power.
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Geneva Accords, Neo-Conservatives, Bush, Cheney, Al Qaeda, Supreme Court, US Constitution, SCOTUS, Senator Dick Durbin, International Law
Hard Rain Journal 6-29-06 LATE EDITION: The US System of Government has NOT Flatlined, SCOTUS Rules for the US Constitution & the Geneva Accords, and Against Bush-Cheney
By Richard Power
As Jung taught, synchronicity is a humbling, mysterious, and powerful phenomena.
In this morning's Hard Rain post about Bush-Cheney threats against the New York Times in particular, and freedom of the press as a whole, I wrote:
How far from considering such legislation is the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate? How far from championing it are the likes of Brit Hume and Paula Zahn? How far from upholding it are the likes of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito? (We will all soon know the heart and mind of Justice Kennedy, because his conscience and common sense sorely tested.) Of course, the answer is "not far at all," indeed, they are already there.
Today, SCOTUS ruled for the US Constitution and the Geneva Accords, and against Bush-Cheney, and Justice Kennedy was the swing vote:
The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that it exceeded its authority by creating tribunals for terror suspects that fell short of the legal protections that Congress has traditionally required in military courts. As a result, the court said in a 5-to-3 ruling, the tribunals violated both American military law and the military's obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Supreme Court Blocks Guantánamo Tribunals, New York Times, 6-29-06
It is an historic case, with profound significance, because of its unequivocal affirmation of the separation of powers:
It is not too early to mark the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld as a landmark. Nor is it too early to wonder what shadow this monument will cast. Like some historical landmarks (the Vietnam War Memorial comes to mind), it may be that Hamdan’s long-term resonance will be far greater than its short-term impact. Consider first the long-term significance of the decision, and then its immediate political consequences....
This historic ruling is a victory not only for the US Constitution (i.e. the defining document of the national identity), but also for the Uniform Code of Military Justice (i.e., the honor of the US military), and for Geneva Accords (i.e., the rule of international law). Hamdan & the Youngstown Framework, American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, 6-29-09
The US system of government has not flatlined (yet), and that "there is still hope" (however fragile) as Arwen told Elrond in Lord of the Rings.
The ruling has serious implications in regard to several Bush-Cheney outrages, including torture and rendition of prisoners, and the warrantless surveillance and monitoring of US citizens.
It was a 5-3 vote. Justice Kennedy passed his first test of principle on the post-O'Connor court. (Roberts, involved in the crafting of the Bush-Cheney rationale, did not vote.)
Here are quotes from Justices John Paul Stevens and Arthur Kennnedy:
In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the administration had failed to prove a "practical need" that would justify trying the detainees in courts that provided a lesser standard of justice without seeking authorization from Congress....
Justice Stevens declared flatly that "the military commission at issue lacks the power to proceed because its structure and procedure violate" both the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs the American military's legal system, and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.The majority opinion rejected the administration's claims that the tribunals were justified both by President Bush's inherent powers as commander in chief and by the resolution passed by Congress authorizing the use of force after the Sept. 11. There is nothing in the resolution's legislative history "even hinting" that such an expansion of the president's powers was considered, he wrote. Supreme Court Blocks Guantánamo Tribunals, New York Times, 6-29-06
Two more thoughts...
Will the Bush-Cheney regime continue to deny the International Red Cross access to those it asks to visit?
And Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is owed an apology...
Read U.S. Senate Floor Statement by Sen. Dick Durbin on Guantanamo Bay, 6-14-05 and remember the political heat he took for speaking truth to the abuse of power.
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Geneva Accords, Neo-Conservatives, Bush, Cheney, Al Qaeda, Supreme Court, US Constitution, SCOTUS, Senator Dick Durbin, International Law
Hard Rain Journal 6-29-06: What are the Global Implications of Neo-Totalitarianism in both US and China? Will The New York Times Fight for Freedom?
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Hard Rain Journal 6-29-06: What are the Global Implications of Neo-Totalitarianism in both the US and China? Will The New York Times Fight for Freedom of the Press?
By Richard Power
I know it is getting difficult to remember the 1990s, with its bridge to the 21st Century, but indulge me for a moment...Remember, the policy of engaging China, in the hope that through doing business with the US, China would somehow grow more democratic, and leave behind the inhumanity of totalitarianism?
Well, that bridge to the 21st Century was blown up (but not by Al Qaeda). And China and the USA are indeed starting to look a lot more alike. But not in the way many of us had hoped.
While China has advanced rapidly on the free market front, it has only slowly, and incrementally, loosened up in regard to political freedom.
The USA, on the other hand, is devolving into a one party state. Indeed, it is much easier to understand the pathology of Bush-Cheney regime, and their cronies in the Congress and the media, if you understand that they are not really "neo-conservatives" but actually "neo-totalitarians." Party membership already determines your access to many board rooms, and de facto, DeLay-style political commissars are already in place. It is not a conspiracy, it is simply corporate culture.
As China moves away from totalitarianism toward neo-totalitarianism it will become stronger, but if the USA continues to slides away from its democratic (small "d") and repubican (small "r") institutions, and slips deeper into neo-totalitarianism, it will become weaker. Neither government will be healthy -- either for its own people, or for the world.
This issue should be of concern, not only for US and Chinese citizens, but for all of us globally.
Together, the US and China account for so much of the energy consumed, so much of the pollution generated, so much of the planet’s population, so much consumption, so much economic output, so much military firepower.
What direction will world events take if both of these great nations continue to grow economically and militarily, but choose not to grow democratically?
Consider two current news stories, one involving freedom of the press in China, and the other involving freedom of the press in the USA.
Der Speigel's Andreas Lorenz reports that "Beijing, never a big fan of the freedom of press, is currently seeking to tie the media's hands even further. Under a new law -- unscrupulous local authorities would be given the legal power to prosecute the media for reporting on disasters."
Whether it be floods, earthquakes, epidemics, plane crashes, mining accidents or protests, if it were up to the officials, the Chinese people would soon only be informed about things the authorities wanted them to know. Indeed, the legislation would ban any real reporting -- be it eyewitness accounts or research on the authorities' crisis management -- without the prior blessing of the government. According to the draft, newspapers that violate the law could be subjected to fines of up to 100,000 yuan (€10,000).
Andreas Lorenz, CENSORSHIP IN CHINA: A Step Backwards. 6-28-06
How far from considering such legislation is the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate? How far from championing it are the likes of Brit Hume and Paula Zahn? How far from upholding it are the likes of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito? Of course, the answer is "not far at all," indeed, they are already there. (We will all soon know the heart and mind of Justice Kennedy, because his conscience and common sense will be sorely tested.)
Now, let's turn to the current predicament of the New York Times (NYT).
I am not a champion of the NYT, I avoid citing it as much as possible, I never pick it up off a newsstand. The "newspaper of record" has become the "newspaper of revision." When conservative sycophants attack it as "liberal," and accuse it of "bias" against conservatism in general, and Bush-Cheney in particular, I laugh. Why? Because at three critical junctures, when the nation and the world needed it most, i.e., in the aftermath of two stolen US presidential elections in 2000 and 2004, and during the ramp-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the NYT failed to tell the truth. And, indeed, it is hard not to conclude that it engaged in deliberate deception and willful cover-up in all three instances. The NYT tries to compensate for what it does not investigate on its front page, by claiming the moral high ground on its editorial page, and by publishing strong op-ed from Paul Krugman, Frank Rich and others. But it is not the editorial page, or the opinion page, that protects the populace from tyranny and corruption, it is the front page.
No, I am not a champion of the NYT, I do not rely on it, and I do not refer others to it. James Risen (State of War) and Michael Gordon (Cobra II) deserve better from their overlords, and their colleagues.
But now the NYT is being threatened, and vilified as traitorous, by the same reactionary juggernaut that it has carried filthy water for until as recently as the 2004 election.
And to add insult to injury, it is being excoriated on false premises, as Media Matters explains:
Numerous conservative commentators joined the Bush administration in arguing that, in detailing a secret Treasury Department program designed to monitor terrorists' international financial transactions, a June 23 New York Times article tipped off terrorists to the U.S. government's ability to track their financial activities -- some going so far as to accuse the newspaper of treason. But the Times report was hardly the first indication of U.S. efforts to monitor terrorists' financial transactions: President Bush himself repeatedly touted the government's capability to track and shut down terrorists' international financial networks.
Conservatives claimed NY Times alerted terrorists, ignored Bush administration's prior promotion of its bank-tracking efforts
Once this canard began reverberating in the echo chamber established by the reactionary juggernaut, with the complicity of the US mainstream news media, the real news in the story was lost. The real news in this story was that there is no congressional oversight. Just as there was none in the NSA spying scandal that the NYT had revealed previously. (BTW, the NYT decided, following an Oval Office meeting, to sit on that one until after the 2004 election. ) The US Constitution demands congressional oversight. Without it, there is no way to know whether or not this program is being used inappropriately, e.g., to spy on domestic political enemies who, unlike Bush have no business with Osama or any other Bin Laden.
Robert Scheer, writing for Truthdig, provides some vital context:
The stakes are very high here. We’ve already been told that we must put up with official lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the unprecedented torture of prisoners of war and a massive electronic-eavesdropping program and other invasions of privacy. Now the target is more basic — the freedom of the press to report on such nefarious government activities. The argument in defense of this assault on freedom is the familiar refrain of dictators, wannabe and real, who grasp for power at the expense of democracy: We are in a war with an enemy so powerful and devious that we cannot afford the safeguard of transparent and accountable governance.
In fact, if the media, or Congress, had aggressively pursued the truth earlier, rather than being overwhelmed by the shock of Sept. 11, anti-U.S. terrorists of every stripe would not now be swarming over Iraq. Nor would the degenerating situation in Afghanistan and the enhanced power of religious fanatics throughout the Mideast, from Tehran to Gaza, pose such threats to peace if a fully informed public had held this president in check...
Robert Scheer, A Disgraceful Attack on the New York Times, 6-28-06
Perhaps it is not too late. The Bush-Cheney regime equivalent of the Pentagon Papers is out there somewhere. Maybe the NYT will print it. Maybe there will finally be a reckoning for those who have sought to break the bones of the nation's face to re-shape it in their own image. Of course, it is unlikely that current Supreme Court, flush with the infusion of the two partisan idealogues, i.e., Roberts and Alito, would uphold the Constitution -- if the legal battle were to go that far. No, but it would be wonderful to want to pick up a NYT at a newsstand again. And, if the NYT rises to challenge this regime's egregious disregard for the sanctity of the US Constitution, and its reckless indifference to the safety of the US populace, when the showdown comes, the newspaper's once and future readers would swarm around that building to protect it with their lives.
I have asked this question before, and I will no doubt ask it again, how far are we from the USA's Tiananmen Square moment?
Related Posts:
Words of Power #21: Judith Miller, Ken Lay, Florida, 9/11 and The Return of The Forbidden Truths?
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #14: It's Not The Unipolar Moment, It's The Bipolar Moment
Words of Power #11: The Outer Limits ("We control the horizontal and the vertical...")
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Media Matters, New York Times, News Media, Robert Scheer, Der Speigel, China, Neo-Conservatives, Bush, Cheney, Al Qaeda, Supreme Court, US Constitution
Hard Rain Journal 6-29-06: What are the Global Implications of Neo-Totalitarianism in both the US and China? Will The New York Times Fight for Freedom of the Press?
By Richard Power
I know it is getting difficult to remember the 1990s, with its bridge to the 21st Century, but indulge me for a moment...Remember, the policy of engaging China, in the hope that through doing business with the US, China would somehow grow more democratic, and leave behind the inhumanity of totalitarianism?
Well, that bridge to the 21st Century was blown up (but not by Al Qaeda). And China and the USA are indeed starting to look a lot more alike. But not in the way many of us had hoped.
While China has advanced rapidly on the free market front, it has only slowly, and incrementally, loosened up in regard to political freedom.
The USA, on the other hand, is devolving into a one party state. Indeed, it is much easier to understand the pathology of Bush-Cheney regime, and their cronies in the Congress and the media, if you understand that they are not really "neo-conservatives" but actually "neo-totalitarians." Party membership already determines your access to many board rooms, and de facto, DeLay-style political commissars are already in place. It is not a conspiracy, it is simply corporate culture.
As China moves away from totalitarianism toward neo-totalitarianism it will become stronger, but if the USA continues to slides away from its democratic (small "d") and repubican (small "r") institutions, and slips deeper into neo-totalitarianism, it will become weaker. Neither government will be healthy -- either for its own people, or for the world.
This issue should be of concern, not only for US and Chinese citizens, but for all of us globally.
Together, the US and China account for so much of the energy consumed, so much of the pollution generated, so much of the planet’s population, so much consumption, so much economic output, so much military firepower.
What direction will world events take if both of these great nations continue to grow economically and militarily, but choose not to grow democratically?
Consider two current news stories, one involving freedom of the press in China, and the other involving freedom of the press in the USA.
Der Speigel's Andreas Lorenz reports that "Beijing, never a big fan of the freedom of press, is currently seeking to tie the media's hands even further. Under a new law -- unscrupulous local authorities would be given the legal power to prosecute the media for reporting on disasters."
Whether it be floods, earthquakes, epidemics, plane crashes, mining accidents or protests, if it were up to the officials, the Chinese people would soon only be informed about things the authorities wanted them to know. Indeed, the legislation would ban any real reporting -- be it eyewitness accounts or research on the authorities' crisis management -- without the prior blessing of the government. According to the draft, newspapers that violate the law could be subjected to fines of up to 100,000 yuan (€10,000).
Andreas Lorenz, CENSORSHIP IN CHINA: A Step Backwards. 6-28-06
How far from considering such legislation is the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate? How far from championing it are the likes of Brit Hume and Paula Zahn? How far from upholding it are the likes of Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito? Of course, the answer is "not far at all," indeed, they are already there. (We will all soon know the heart and mind of Justice Kennedy, because his conscience and common sense will be sorely tested.)
Now, let's turn to the current predicament of the New York Times (NYT).
I am not a champion of the NYT, I avoid citing it as much as possible, I never pick it up off a newsstand. The "newspaper of record" has become the "newspaper of revision." When conservative sycophants attack it as "liberal," and accuse it of "bias" against conservatism in general, and Bush-Cheney in particular, I laugh. Why? Because at three critical junctures, when the nation and the world needed it most, i.e., in the aftermath of two stolen US presidential elections in 2000 and 2004, and during the ramp-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the NYT failed to tell the truth. And, indeed, it is hard not to conclude that it engaged in deliberate deception and willful cover-up in all three instances. The NYT tries to compensate for what it does not investigate on its front page, by claiming the moral high ground on its editorial page, and by publishing strong op-ed from Paul Krugman, Frank Rich and others. But it is not the editorial page, or the opinion page, that protects the populace from tyranny and corruption, it is the front page.
No, I am not a champion of the NYT, I do not rely on it, and I do not refer others to it. James Risen (State of War) and Michael Gordon (Cobra II) deserve better from their overlords, and their colleagues.
But now the NYT is being threatened, and vilified as traitorous, by the same reactionary juggernaut that it has carried filthy water for until as recently as the 2004 election.
And to add insult to injury, it is being excoriated on false premises, as Media Matters explains:
Numerous conservative commentators joined the Bush administration in arguing that, in detailing a secret Treasury Department program designed to monitor terrorists' international financial transactions, a June 23 New York Times article tipped off terrorists to the U.S. government's ability to track their financial activities -- some going so far as to accuse the newspaper of treason. But the Times report was hardly the first indication of U.S. efforts to monitor terrorists' financial transactions: President Bush himself repeatedly touted the government's capability to track and shut down terrorists' international financial networks.
Conservatives claimed NY Times alerted terrorists, ignored Bush administration's prior promotion of its bank-tracking efforts
Once this canard began reverberating in the echo chamber established by the reactionary juggernaut, with the complicity of the US mainstream news media, the real news in the story was lost. The real news in this story was that there is no congressional oversight. Just as there was none in the NSA spying scandal that the NYT had revealed previously. (BTW, the NYT decided, following an Oval Office meeting, to sit on that one until after the 2004 election. ) The US Constitution demands congressional oversight. Without it, there is no way to know whether or not this program is being used inappropriately, e.g., to spy on domestic political enemies who, unlike Bush have no business with Osama or any other Bin Laden.
Robert Scheer, writing for Truthdig, provides some vital context:
The stakes are very high here. We’ve already been told that we must put up with official lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the unprecedented torture of prisoners of war and a massive electronic-eavesdropping program and other invasions of privacy. Now the target is more basic — the freedom of the press to report on such nefarious government activities. The argument in defense of this assault on freedom is the familiar refrain of dictators, wannabe and real, who grasp for power at the expense of democracy: We are in a war with an enemy so powerful and devious that we cannot afford the safeguard of transparent and accountable governance.
In fact, if the media, or Congress, had aggressively pursued the truth earlier, rather than being overwhelmed by the shock of Sept. 11, anti-U.S. terrorists of every stripe would not now be swarming over Iraq. Nor would the degenerating situation in Afghanistan and the enhanced power of religious fanatics throughout the Mideast, from Tehran to Gaza, pose such threats to peace if a fully informed public had held this president in check...
Robert Scheer, A Disgraceful Attack on the New York Times, 6-28-06
Perhaps it is not too late. The Bush-Cheney regime equivalent of the Pentagon Papers is out there somewhere. Maybe the NYT will print it. Maybe there will finally be a reckoning for those who have sought to break the bones of the nation's face to re-shape it in their own image. Of course, it is unlikely that current Supreme Court, flush with the infusion of the two partisan idealogues, i.e., Roberts and Alito, would uphold the Constitution -- if the legal battle were to go that far. No, but it would be wonderful to want to pick up a NYT at a newsstand again. And, if the NYT rises to challenge this regime's egregious disregard for the sanctity of the US Constitution, and its reckless indifference to the safety of the US populace, when the showdown comes, the newspaper's once and future readers would swarm around that building to protect it with their lives.
I have asked this question before, and I will no doubt ask it again, how far are we from the USA's Tiananmen Square moment?
Related Posts:
Words of Power #21: Judith Miller, Ken Lay, Florida, 9/11 and The Return of The Forbidden Truths?
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #14: It's Not The Unipolar Moment, It's The Bipolar Moment
Words of Power #11: The Outer Limits ("We control the horizontal and the vertical...")
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Media Matters, New York Times, News Media, Robert Scheer, Der Speigel, China, Neo-Conservatives, Bush, Cheney, Al Qaeda, Supreme Court, US Constitution
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 6-28-06: NYU Law School's Brennan Center Reports E-Voting Software Attacks are a Real Danger
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Hard Rain Journal 6-28-06: NYU Law School's Brennan Center Reports E-Voting Software Attacks are a Real Danger
By Richard Power
A task force at NYU Law School's Brennan Center for Justice has issued an important report on the vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines. It provides analysis of "security threats to the technologies used in Direct Recording Electronic voting systems (“DREs”), DREs with a voter verified auditable paper trail (“DREs w/ VVPT”) and Precinct Count Optical Scan (“PCOS”) systems." If you are interested in the health of democratic institutions anywhere in the world, but particularly in the USA (with its vast military-industrial complex, its monopolized news media, and its eroding civil liberties), this report deserves your urgent attention. I have included an excerpt from the report's executive summary below. Please review it, share it with other concerned citizens, and demand that your news media providers educate the public on the nature of the danger, and that your elected representatives take action to mitigate it.
Words of Power will continue to monitor and report on major developments in regard to e-voting and the theft of elections, I commend both Mark Crispin Miller's Notes from the Underground and Brad Friedman's BradBlog are the premier resources to referece in this struggle to enlighten and embolden the electorate.
NOTE: The Brennan Center's analysis "assumes that appropriate physical security and accounting procedures are in place." Based on my extensive experience in cyber security, I can assure you, that in most cases, "all appropriate physical security and accounting procedures" are not in place. I do not add this disturbing caveat to somehow lessen the criticality of focusing on electronic voting vulnerabilities, only to suggest that the context in which we address the issue must be broader, it must include other aspects of cyber security, e.g, physical access control, personnel security, backups, chain of custody, etc.
Related Posts:
SPECIAL EDITION: “Until this issue is burning on the mind of every citizen” -- Words of Power Interviews Mark Crispin Miller
Words of Power #22: Election Fraud As Information Warfare, And A National Security Issue
Here is an excerpt from the the report's executive summary:
Top Scientists from Government and Private Sector Unanimous in Assessment
The full report (the “Security Report”),which has been extensively peer reviewed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”), may be found at www.brennancenter.org. Following the analysis outlined here, the Brennan Center and Task Force members recommend countermeasures that should be taken to reduce the technological vulnerability of each voting system.
CORE FINDINGS
Three fundamental points emerge from the threat analysis in the Security Report:
■ All three voting systems have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of national,state,and local elections.
■ The most troubling vulnerabilities of each system can be substantially remedied if proper countermeasures are implemented at the state and local level.
■ Few jurisdictions have implemented any of the key countermeasures that could make the least difficult attacks against voting systems much more difficult to execute successfully.
VOTING SYSTEM VULNERABILITIES
After a review of more than 120 potential threats to voting systems, the Task Force reached the following crucial conclusions:
For all threetypes of voting systems:
■ When the goal is to change the outcome of a close statewide election,attacks that involve the insertion of software attack programs or other corrupt software are the least difficult attacks.
■ Voting machines that have wireless components are significantly more vulnerable to a wide array of attacks. Currently, only two states, New York and Minnesota, ban wireless components on all voting machines.
For DREs without voter verified paper trails:
■ DREs without voter verified paper trails do not have available to them a powerful countermeasure to software attacks: post election automatic routine audits that compare paper records to electronic records.
For DREs w/ VVPT and PCOS:
■ The voter verified paper record,by itself,is of questionable security value. The paper record has significant value only if an automatic routine audit is performed (and well designed chain of custody and physical security procedures are followed). Of the 26 states that mandate voter verified paper records, only 12 require regular audits.
■ Even if jurisdictions routinely conduct audits of voter verified paper records, DREs w/ VVPT and PCOS are vulnerable to certain software attacks or errors. Jurisdictions that conduct audits of paper records should be aware of these potential problems.
SECURITY RECOMMENDATIONS
There are a number of steps that jurisdictions can take to address the vulnerabilities identified in the Security Report and make their voting systems significantly more secure.We recommend adoption of the following security measures:
1. Conduct automatic routine audits comparing voter verified paper records to the electronic record following every election. A voter verified paper record accompanied by a solid automatic routine audit of those records can go a long way toward making the least difficult attacks much more difficult.
2. Perform “parallel testing”(selection of voting machines at random and testing them as realistically as possible on Election Day.) For paperless DREs, in particular,parallel testing will help jurisdictions detect software-based attacks, as well as subtle software bugs that may not be discovered during inspection and other testing.
3. Ban use of voting machines with wireless components. All three voting systems are more vulnerable to attack if they have wireless components.
4. Use a transparent and random selection process for all auditing procedures. For any auditing to be effective (and to ensure that the public is confident in such procedures), jurisdictions must develop and implement transparent and random selection procedures.
5. Ensure decentralized programming and voting system administration. Where a single entity, such as a vendor or state or national consultant, performs key tasks for multiple jurisdictions, attacks against statewide elections become easier.
6. Institute clear and effective procedures for addressing evidence of fraud or error. Both automatic routine audits and parallel testing are of questionable security value without effective procedures for action where evidence of machine malfunction and/or fraud is discovered. Detection of fraud without an appropriate response will not prevent attacks from succeeding.
Fortunately, these steps are not particularly complicated or cumbersome. For the most part, they do not involve significant changes in system architecture. Unfortunately, few jurisdictions have implemented any of these security recommendations.
THE MACHINERY OF DEMOCRACY: PROTECTING ELECTIONS IN AN ELECTRONIC WORLD, BRENNAN CENTER TASK FORCE ON VOTING SYSTEM SECURITY, LAWRENCE NORDEN, CHAIR
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Mark Crispin Miller, Information Warfare, Cyber Security, Voting, Elections, Election, Vote, Vote Fraud, fraud, cybercrime, cyber crime
Hard Rain Journal 6-28-06: NYU Law School's Brennan Center Reports E-Voting Software Attacks are a Real Danger
By Richard Power
A task force at NYU Law School's Brennan Center for Justice has issued an important report on the vulnerabilities of electronic voting machines. It provides analysis of "security threats to the technologies used in Direct Recording Electronic voting systems (“DREs”), DREs with a voter verified auditable paper trail (“DREs w/ VVPT”) and Precinct Count Optical Scan (“PCOS”) systems." If you are interested in the health of democratic institutions anywhere in the world, but particularly in the USA (with its vast military-industrial complex, its monopolized news media, and its eroding civil liberties), this report deserves your urgent attention. I have included an excerpt from the report's executive summary below. Please review it, share it with other concerned citizens, and demand that your news media providers educate the public on the nature of the danger, and that your elected representatives take action to mitigate it.
Words of Power will continue to monitor and report on major developments in regard to e-voting and the theft of elections, I commend both Mark Crispin Miller's Notes from the Underground and Brad Friedman's BradBlog are the premier resources to referece in this struggle to enlighten and embolden the electorate.
NOTE: The Brennan Center's analysis "assumes that appropriate physical security and accounting procedures are in place." Based on my extensive experience in cyber security, I can assure you, that in most cases, "all appropriate physical security and accounting procedures" are not in place. I do not add this disturbing caveat to somehow lessen the criticality of focusing on electronic voting vulnerabilities, only to suggest that the context in which we address the issue must be broader, it must include other aspects of cyber security, e.g, physical access control, personnel security, backups, chain of custody, etc.
Related Posts:
SPECIAL EDITION: “Until this issue is burning on the mind of every citizen” -- Words of Power Interviews Mark Crispin Miller
Words of Power #22: Election Fraud As Information Warfare, And A National Security Issue
Here is an excerpt from the the report's executive summary:
Top Scientists from Government and Private Sector Unanimous in Assessment
The full report (the “Security Report”),which has been extensively peer reviewed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”), may be found at www.brennancenter.org. Following the analysis outlined here, the Brennan Center and Task Force members recommend countermeasures that should be taken to reduce the technological vulnerability of each voting system.
CORE FINDINGS
Three fundamental points emerge from the threat analysis in the Security Report:
■ All three voting systems have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities, which pose a real danger to the integrity of national,state,and local elections.
■ The most troubling vulnerabilities of each system can be substantially remedied if proper countermeasures are implemented at the state and local level.
■ Few jurisdictions have implemented any of the key countermeasures that could make the least difficult attacks against voting systems much more difficult to execute successfully.
VOTING SYSTEM VULNERABILITIES
After a review of more than 120 potential threats to voting systems, the Task Force reached the following crucial conclusions:
For all threetypes of voting systems:
■ When the goal is to change the outcome of a close statewide election,attacks that involve the insertion of software attack programs or other corrupt software are the least difficult attacks.
■ Voting machines that have wireless components are significantly more vulnerable to a wide array of attacks. Currently, only two states, New York and Minnesota, ban wireless components on all voting machines.
For DREs without voter verified paper trails:
■ DREs without voter verified paper trails do not have available to them a powerful countermeasure to software attacks: post election automatic routine audits that compare paper records to electronic records.
For DREs w/ VVPT and PCOS:
■ The voter verified paper record,by itself,is of questionable security value. The paper record has significant value only if an automatic routine audit is performed (and well designed chain of custody and physical security procedures are followed). Of the 26 states that mandate voter verified paper records, only 12 require regular audits.
■ Even if jurisdictions routinely conduct audits of voter verified paper records, DREs w/ VVPT and PCOS are vulnerable to certain software attacks or errors. Jurisdictions that conduct audits of paper records should be aware of these potential problems.
SECURITY RECOMMENDATIONS
There are a number of steps that jurisdictions can take to address the vulnerabilities identified in the Security Report and make their voting systems significantly more secure.We recommend adoption of the following security measures:
1. Conduct automatic routine audits comparing voter verified paper records to the electronic record following every election. A voter verified paper record accompanied by a solid automatic routine audit of those records can go a long way toward making the least difficult attacks much more difficult.
2. Perform “parallel testing”(selection of voting machines at random and testing them as realistically as possible on Election Day.) For paperless DREs, in particular,parallel testing will help jurisdictions detect software-based attacks, as well as subtle software bugs that may not be discovered during inspection and other testing.
3. Ban use of voting machines with wireless components. All three voting systems are more vulnerable to attack if they have wireless components.
4. Use a transparent and random selection process for all auditing procedures. For any auditing to be effective (and to ensure that the public is confident in such procedures), jurisdictions must develop and implement transparent and random selection procedures.
5. Ensure decentralized programming and voting system administration. Where a single entity, such as a vendor or state or national consultant, performs key tasks for multiple jurisdictions, attacks against statewide elections become easier.
6. Institute clear and effective procedures for addressing evidence of fraud or error. Both automatic routine audits and parallel testing are of questionable security value without effective procedures for action where evidence of machine malfunction and/or fraud is discovered. Detection of fraud without an appropriate response will not prevent attacks from succeeding.
Fortunately, these steps are not particularly complicated or cumbersome. For the most part, they do not involve significant changes in system architecture. Unfortunately, few jurisdictions have implemented any of these security recommendations.
THE MACHINERY OF DEMOCRACY: PROTECTING ELECTIONS IN AN ELECTRONIC WORLD, BRENNAN CENTER TASK FORCE ON VOTING SYSTEM SECURITY, LAWRENCE NORDEN, CHAIR
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Mark Crispin Miller, Information Warfare, Cyber Security, Voting, Elections, Election, Vote, Vote Fraud, fraud, cybercrime, cyber crime
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
By Richard Power
Two great dangers overshadow the current political debate in the US. The first is to over-emphasize the role of George W. Bush, or even the role of Dick Cheney, in all that has befallen the nation. The second is to attribute these woeful circumstances (e.g., the failed occupation of Iraq, the federal deficit, the national debt, the denial of global warming, the contempt for the US Constitution, the fracturing of the Western alliance, the loss of US prestige in the world, the prostitution of the EPA, the dismantling of FEMA, etc.) to incompetence. The Bush-Cheney regime’s record in office is not the result of incompetence, or even criminal negligence. It is the result of a strategy that incorporates both willful destruction and intentional neglect. And Bush-Cheney share this strategy with the Republican leadership in both Houses of Congress. It serves the interests of their chosen allies among the corporate leaders in the energy sector, the defense industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and perhaps most important, the handful of corporations that control the US mainstream news media. It is grounded in the conservative agenda, or more accurately, the perversion of conservatism, which has overtaken the Republican Party. (Some genuine conservative thinkers and former officials have come to this conclusion themselves, notably Kevin Phillips and Paul Craig Roberts.) And worse yet, the money that has flowed to grease the wheels for the implementation of this strategy has also seriously compromised the Democratic Party’s ability to protect the nation’s political traditions, civil values, and institutional memory from attack.
In a brilliant essay, entitled Bush Is Not Incompetent!, George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger and Sam Ferguson postulate the core beliefs of this dominate faction of the US elite:
“Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government's positive role in people's lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.”
Well, that’s the pretty version, the official party line. But the mind-set hidden within it is something ugly: “Wealth and power are good, right and strong, everything else is bad, wrong and weak.”
Although they pay lip service to Creationism, both the Bush-Cheney regime and the Republican leadership, are really champions of Darwinism. But, of course, it is a perverse Darwinism. Their rhetoric implies that “survival of the fittest” is their credo, but in secret, it is really “survival of the fattest.” Although they wrap themselves in garbs of false sanctimony and real religious extremism, they actually, secretly embrace the godless Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness as the fount of all virtue.
Why Does the New Nero Fiddle While the Planet Burns?
Global warming is a national security issue. Peak oil production is at its end. Energy security (i.e., independence) and environmental security (i.e., sustainability) have become synonymous. Why is so much of the political establishment, and so much of the US mainstream news media, in such deep denial?
Some recent news items about global warming and energy security, when viewed as an aggregate offer a stunning illustration of the "conservative" agenda in action (or perhaps more accurately -- in inaction).
Last week, two new studies, one from the National Academy of Science (New Study: All Warming Is Not Created Equal), and one from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) were released (New Study: Global Warming, Not ‘Natural Cycles,’ Played Major Role in 2005 Hurricane Season)
Both studies contributed to the already overwhelming evidence that a) global warming is real, b) it is accelerating at an alarming rate, and c) the human factor is profoundly significant.
But before the week ended, the propaganda was being catapulted at high speed. The Electricity Daily was misrepresenting the National Academy of Science study, and Sen, James Inhofe (R-OK) was misrepresenting the NCAR study.
And who defended the preponderance of scientific evidence from these misrepresentations? Al Gore. (Global Warming Skeptics Engage In Denial And Spin Over New Academy Report; Gore Responds)
Yesterday, the LA Times, to its credit, published an exclusive, (Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away , which delivers the facts on the glacier soon to be ground: “The massive glaciers are deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet.”
But yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried a misleading op-ed piece, based on erroneous data, to help refute Gore and the scientific community, and further propagate the false notion that global warming is still the subject of a serious debate. (WSJ Hit Piece on Gore Movie Relies on Grievously Flawed Study)
So what did George W. Bush say when he was asked if global warming was “a real and significant threat” during his press conference yesterday? Did he side with his own government’s studies, or with Electricity Daily, Sen. Inhofe, and the Wall Street Journal? Of course, he said that the issue was still the subject of “debate.” (Bush Ignores Science, Claims ‘There Is A Debate’ Over The Cause of Global Warming)
Why? Incompetence is certainly not the reason. The Bush-Cheney regime knows that global warming is real, the Bush-Cheney regime knows its impact will be devastating. But the short-term priority is to maximize the profits of the oil industry and seize control of as much of the world’s dwindling oil deposits as possible. And in regard to the long-term, in typical “neo-conservative” fashion, they have gamed out global warming, and they have come to the conclusion that the geopolitical implications of depopulation, water shortages, and other extreme conditions will play out well for them, and their real constituents. No, it is not incompetence. It is a deeply disturbed world-view, and Bush-Cheney shares with this deeply disturbed world-view with the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate. Just as there was a faux debate on the occupation of Iraq last week, there is supposed to be one on energy policy this week. And what is the dominant theme on the Republican side of the aisle? Not wind, not solar, not hybrids or flex, not a national Apollo-style initiative for true energy security and independence. No, no, no. Instead, the Republicans will be pushing off-shore drilling.
"Progressives have fallen into a trap"
Here are some excerpts from “Bush is Not Incompetent!":
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent…..Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush's disasters - Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit - are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff….
The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush's management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008….
Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush's conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.
Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.
George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger & Sam Ferguson, Bush Is Not Incompetent!, Rockridge Institute, 6-26-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Geopolitics, Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Bush, Cheney, Politics, Politics, , George Lakoff, News Media, Al Gore
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
By Richard Power
Two great dangers overshadow the current political debate in the US. The first is to over-emphasize the role of George W. Bush, or even the role of Dick Cheney, in all that has befallen the nation. The second is to attribute these woeful circumstances (e.g., the failed occupation of Iraq, the federal deficit, the national debt, the denial of global warming, the contempt for the US Constitution, the fracturing of the Western alliance, the loss of US prestige in the world, the prostitution of the EPA, the dismantling of FEMA, etc.) to incompetence. The Bush-Cheney regime’s record in office is not the result of incompetence, or even criminal negligence. It is the result of a strategy that incorporates both willful destruction and intentional neglect. And Bush-Cheney share this strategy with the Republican leadership in both Houses of Congress. It serves the interests of their chosen allies among the corporate leaders in the energy sector, the defense industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and perhaps most important, the handful of corporations that control the US mainstream news media. It is grounded in the conservative agenda, or more accurately, the perversion of conservatism, which has overtaken the Republican Party. (Some genuine conservative thinkers and former officials have come to this conclusion themselves, notably Kevin Phillips and Paul Craig Roberts.) And worse yet, the money that has flowed to grease the wheels for the implementation of this strategy has also seriously compromised the Democratic Party’s ability to protect the nation’s political traditions, civil values, and institutional memory from attack.
In a brilliant essay, entitled Bush Is Not Incompetent!, George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger and Sam Ferguson postulate the core beliefs of this dominate faction of the US elite:
“Conservative philosophy has three fundamental tenets: individual initiative, that is, government's positive role in people's lives outside of the military and police should be minimized; the President is the moral authority; and free markets are enough to foster freedom and opportunity.”
Well, that’s the pretty version, the official party line. But the mind-set hidden within it is something ugly: “Wealth and power are good, right and strong, everything else is bad, wrong and weak.”
Although they pay lip service to Creationism, both the Bush-Cheney regime and the Republican leadership, are really champions of Darwinism. But, of course, it is a perverse Darwinism. Their rhetoric implies that “survival of the fittest” is their credo, but in secret, it is really “survival of the fattest.” Although they wrap themselves in garbs of false sanctimony and real religious extremism, they actually, secretly embrace the godless Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness as the fount of all virtue.
Why Does the New Nero Fiddle While the Planet Burns?
Global warming is a national security issue. Peak oil production is at its end. Energy security (i.e., independence) and environmental security (i.e., sustainability) have become synonymous. Why is so much of the political establishment, and so much of the US mainstream news media, in such deep denial?
Some recent news items about global warming and energy security, when viewed as an aggregate offer a stunning illustration of the "conservative" agenda in action (or perhaps more accurately -- in inaction).
Last week, two new studies, one from the National Academy of Science (New Study: All Warming Is Not Created Equal), and one from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) were released (New Study: Global Warming, Not ‘Natural Cycles,’ Played Major Role in 2005 Hurricane Season)
Both studies contributed to the already overwhelming evidence that a) global warming is real, b) it is accelerating at an alarming rate, and c) the human factor is profoundly significant.
But before the week ended, the propaganda was being catapulted at high speed. The Electricity Daily was misrepresenting the National Academy of Science study, and Sen, James Inhofe (R-OK) was misrepresenting the NCAR study.
And who defended the preponderance of scientific evidence from these misrepresentations? Al Gore. (Global Warming Skeptics Engage In Denial And Spin Over New Academy Report; Gore Responds)
Yesterday, the LA Times, to its credit, published an exclusive, (Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Slip-Sliding Away , which delivers the facts on the glacier soon to be ground: “The massive glaciers are deteriorating twice as fast as they were five years ago. If the ice thaws entirely, sea level would rise 21 feet.”
But yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried a misleading op-ed piece, based on erroneous data, to help refute Gore and the scientific community, and further propagate the false notion that global warming is still the subject of a serious debate. (WSJ Hit Piece on Gore Movie Relies on Grievously Flawed Study)
So what did George W. Bush say when he was asked if global warming was “a real and significant threat” during his press conference yesterday? Did he side with his own government’s studies, or with Electricity Daily, Sen. Inhofe, and the Wall Street Journal? Of course, he said that the issue was still the subject of “debate.” (Bush Ignores Science, Claims ‘There Is A Debate’ Over The Cause of Global Warming)
Why? Incompetence is certainly not the reason. The Bush-Cheney regime knows that global warming is real, the Bush-Cheney regime knows its impact will be devastating. But the short-term priority is to maximize the profits of the oil industry and seize control of as much of the world’s dwindling oil deposits as possible. And in regard to the long-term, in typical “neo-conservative” fashion, they have gamed out global warming, and they have come to the conclusion that the geopolitical implications of depopulation, water shortages, and other extreme conditions will play out well for them, and their real constituents. No, it is not incompetence. It is a deeply disturbed world-view, and Bush-Cheney shares with this deeply disturbed world-view with the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate. Just as there was a faux debate on the occupation of Iraq last week, there is supposed to be one on energy policy this week. And what is the dominant theme on the Republican side of the aisle? Not wind, not solar, not hybrids or flex, not a national Apollo-style initiative for true energy security and independence. No, no, no. Instead, the Republicans will be pushing off-shore drilling.
"Progressives have fallen into a trap"
Here are some excerpts from “Bush is Not Incompetent!":
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent…..Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush's disasters - Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit - are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according to plan, that is at fault. Bush will not be running again, but other conservatives will. His governing philosophy is theirs as well. We should be putting the onus where it belongs, on all conservative office holders and candidates who would lead us off the same cliff….
The mantra of incompetence has been an unfortunate one. The incompetence frame assumes that there was a sound plan, and that the trouble has been in the execution. It turns public debate into a referendum on Bush's management capabilities, and deflects a critique of the impact of his guiding philosophy. It also leaves open the possibility that voters will opt for another radically conservative president in 2008….
Incompetence obscures the real issue. Bush's conservative philosophy is what has damaged this country and it is his philosophy of conservatism that must be rejected, whoever endorses it.
Conservatism itself is the villain that is harming our people, destroying our environment, and weakening our nation. Conservatives are undermining American values through legislation almost every day. This message applies to every conservative bill proposed to Congress. The issue that arises every day is which philosophy of governing should shape our country. It is the issue of our times. Unless conservative philosophy itself is discredited, Conservatives will continue their domination of public discourse, and with it, will continue their domination of politics.
George Lakoff, Marc Ettlinger & Sam Ferguson, Bush Is Not Incompetent!, Rockridge Institute, 6-26-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Geopolitics, Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Bush, Cheney, Politics, Politics, , George Lakoff, News Media, Al Gore
Monday, June 26, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 6-26-06: Feingold says, "This is insanity if you think about what the priorities are of those who have attacked us..."
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Hard Rain Journal 6-26-06: Feingold says, "This is insanity if you think about what the priorities are of those who have attacked us..."
By Richard Power
Something unusual occurred on Meet The Press yesterday morning, a US Senator pushed back at the duplicitous Tim Russert and spoke boldly about the Bush-Cheney regime's botched, bungled "war on terrorism." In the course of the interview, the Senator also drew attention to a largely ignored, but very significant and dangerous development.
Feingold cited Somalia, where an individual listed by the U.S. State Department as a suspected al Qaeda collaborator was yesterday named as the new leader of a militia that has seized control of Somalia’s capital: "While we were asleep at the switch, while we were bogged down in Iraq, all focused on Iraq as the be all and end all of our American foreign policy, we are losing the battle to al Qaeda. … We’ve spent $2 million in Somalia in the last year while we’re spending $2 billion a week in Iraq. This is insanity if you think about what the priorities are of those who have attacked us and those who are likely to attack us in the future."
VIDEO: Feingold Argues Emergence of Al Qaeda Leader Shows ‘Insanity’ Of Misplaced Priorities, Think Progress, 6-25-06
Some Related Posts:
Hard Rain Journal 6-14-06: Wrongly Premised “War on Terrorism” has Increased Danger from Terrorism, and Ignored Greater Risks
Words of Power #23: A Reality Check, What A Real World War on Terrorism Would Look Like, and a US Mid-Term Election Strategy
GS(3) Thunderbolt 6-11-06: When The Decider Decides to Do Nothing: What You May Not Know About Zarqawi and Won’t Hear on Network and Cable News
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
geopolitics, terrorism, Iraq, Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, 911, Feingold
Hard Rain Journal 6-26-06: Feingold says, "This is insanity if you think about what the priorities are of those who have attacked us..."
By Richard Power
Something unusual occurred on Meet The Press yesterday morning, a US Senator pushed back at the duplicitous Tim Russert and spoke boldly about the Bush-Cheney regime's botched, bungled "war on terrorism." In the course of the interview, the Senator also drew attention to a largely ignored, but very significant and dangerous development.
Feingold cited Somalia, where an individual listed by the U.S. State Department as a suspected al Qaeda collaborator was yesterday named as the new leader of a militia that has seized control of Somalia’s capital: "While we were asleep at the switch, while we were bogged down in Iraq, all focused on Iraq as the be all and end all of our American foreign policy, we are losing the battle to al Qaeda. … We’ve spent $2 million in Somalia in the last year while we’re spending $2 billion a week in Iraq. This is insanity if you think about what the priorities are of those who have attacked us and those who are likely to attack us in the future."
VIDEO: Feingold Argues Emergence of Al Qaeda Leader Shows ‘Insanity’ Of Misplaced Priorities, Think Progress, 6-25-06
Some Related Posts:
Hard Rain Journal 6-14-06: Wrongly Premised “War on Terrorism” has Increased Danger from Terrorism, and Ignored Greater Risks
Words of Power #23: A Reality Check, What A Real World War on Terrorism Would Look Like, and a US Mid-Term Election Strategy
GS(3) Thunderbolt 6-11-06: When The Decider Decides to Do Nothing: What You May Not Know About Zarqawi and Won’t Hear on Network and Cable News
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
geopolitics, terrorism, Iraq, Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, 911, Feingold
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 6-25-06: Ray McGovern, Ann Wright and RFK, Jr. -- Voices of Courage and Conscience
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Hard Rain Journal 6-25-06: Ray McGovern, Ann Wright and RFK, Jr. -- Voices of Courage and Conscience
By Richard Power
Here are three extraordinary statements, from three people with unique perspectives on the tragedies that have befallen us and the dangers that lie ahead.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a leading environmenalist who has recently dedicated himself to exposing the stolen US presidential election of 2004 and the serious threat to democracy hidden within it: "Mr. Kennedy called the silence of leading Democrats "a great disappointment," but declared himself undeterred. If anything, he said, the experience has left him more likely to run for office than before. "It's all in God's hands," he said on Wednesday night at Treasure Island....I can only control my own conduct," Mr. Kennedy said, shrugging. "And I plan to go down fighting."
Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, and co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS): The truth will out. If you fabricate, or acquiesce in the fabrication, of evidence used to "justify" launching a war of choice, you will have to live with that for the rest of your life....No one will be held responsible for the corruption of intelligence unless there are changes in Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, as intelligence is used/abused to support administration aims vis-a-vis Iran and North Korea, Drumheller's former colleagues will probably have to grapple with difficult decisions.
Ann Wright, a retired US Army Colonel with 29 years of miitary experience and 16 years of diplomatic experience, who resigned from her post as Deputy Chief of Mission, or Deputy Ambassador, to Mongolia in opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq: For the twenty-nine years I was in the military, either on active duty or in the Reserves, my worst nightmare was that an administration would get the United States into a military conflict that I knew was illegal. Today, if I were recalled from the US Army's Retired Ready Reserves, I would have to say, "I will not serve the Bush administration's war on Iraq. I will not agree to be recalled. You will have to court-martial me as I will not participate in this illegal war of aggression, this war crime."
I have included longer excerpts, and links to the full pieces, below:
"Now it's much more fundamental than protecting the environment for Bobby," said his friend Laurie David, the liberal advocate and producer of "An Inconvenient Truth," the Al Gore movie. "He fears that the country is being lost, that democracy is at stake."
Mr. Kennedy said that he had "continually expanded my realm of interest." His recent focus on the 2004 election exists on that continuum, he added.
He had heard low-grade rumblings about alleged abuses in Ohio, faulty voting machines and minority voters waiting hours in line at the polls. But he remained skeptical, or complacent. "I kept the same kind of deliberate blinders on that much of the media did," he said, bemoaning the news media's relative preoccupation with "Brad and Angelina and the Duke lacrosse team."
THEN Mr. Kennedy spent Christmas skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, at the home of Ms. David and her husband, Larry David, the "Seinfeld" creator and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" protagonist. Mr. David urged him to read a book on the 2004 election by the news media critic Mark Crispin Miller.
Mr. Kennedy did, and a few days later he was skiing with the Rolling Stone publisher, Jann S. Wenner, an old friend and Sun Valley homeowner. Mr. Kennedy suggested that Mr. Wenner commission a story on the "stolen election." Mr. Wenner said he would, provided Mr. Kennedy wrote it....
Mr. Kennedy called the silence of leading Democrats "a great disappointment," but declared himself undeterred. If anything, he said, the experience has left him more likely to run for office than before.
"It's all in God's hands," he said on Wednesday night at Treasure Island, a lemony sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge. He was surrounded by environmentalists swapping stories about protecting the planet's liquid resources (and imbibing other liquid resources).
"I can only control my own conduct," Mr. Kennedy said, shrugging. "And I plan to go down fighting."
Another Kennedy Living Dangerously, New York Times, 6-25-06
The truth will out. If you fabricate, or acquiesce in the fabrication of, evidence used to "justify" launching a war of choice, you will have to live with that for the rest of your life.
Call me quaint, but having spent 27 years in intelligence on both the analysis and operations ends of the business, I continue to believe that most intelligence officers have a conscience. The problem is they are often too late in acting on it.
...No one will be held responsible for the corruption of intelligence unless there are changes in Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, as intelligence is used/abused to support administration aims vis-a-vis Iran and North Korea, Drumheller's former colleagues will probably have to grapple with difficult decisions. Let me close by citing our pre-war appeal to CIA and other intelligence officers from a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Memorandum of March 12, 2003, "Cooking Intelligence for War."
"Many former colleagues and successors are facing a dilemma all too familiar to intelligence veterans - the difficult choices that must be faced when the demands of good conscience butt up against deeply ingrained attitudes concerning secrecy, misguided notions of what is true patriotism, and understandable reluctance to put careers - and mortgages - on the line...We appeal to those still working inside the Intelligence Community to consider turning state's evidence."
Ray McGovern, Intelligence Officers Learn From History, Truthout, 6-25-06
Despite the "yes, sir" attitude of senior military officers toward the Bush administration's illegal policies, there is resistance within the US military to the war on Iraq. Military personnel know they have the right and duty to refuse illegal orders, including the order to deploy to an illegal war. They know the United States executed German and Japanese military officers and civilians for their participation in wars of aggression in World War II....Those in the military who dissent and resist what they know are illegal actions of the Bush administration are persons of the highest courage and conscience....
For the twenty-nine years I was in the military, either on active duty or in the Reserves, my worst nightmare was that an administration would get the United States into a military conflict that I knew was illegal. Today, if I were recalled from the US Army's Retired Ready Reserves, I would have to say, "I will not serve the Bush administration's war on Iraq. I will not agree to be recalled. You will have to court-martial me as I will not participate in this illegal war of aggression, this war crime."
Acts of resistance, big and small, recognized nationally or never heard of by most, by military and civilians are all important elements of ending the illegal war, the war crime, committed by the Bush administration. People of conscience all over the country are refusing to be silent and are taking courageous steps to end the illegal war on Iraq.
What will you do to stop this illegal war?
Ann Wright, Resistance in the US Military to the War on Iraq, Truthout, 6-25-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Bush, Cheney,Voting, Elections, Election, Vote, fraud, National Security
Hard Rain Journal 6-25-06: Ray McGovern, Ann Wright and RFK, Jr. -- Voices of Courage and Conscience
By Richard Power
Here are three extraordinary statements, from three people with unique perspectives on the tragedies that have befallen us and the dangers that lie ahead.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a leading environmenalist who has recently dedicated himself to exposing the stolen US presidential election of 2004 and the serious threat to democracy hidden within it: "Mr. Kennedy called the silence of leading Democrats "a great disappointment," but declared himself undeterred. If anything, he said, the experience has left him more likely to run for office than before. "It's all in God's hands," he said on Wednesday night at Treasure Island....I can only control my own conduct," Mr. Kennedy said, shrugging. "And I plan to go down fighting."
Ray McGovern, who served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, and co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS): The truth will out. If you fabricate, or acquiesce in the fabrication, of evidence used to "justify" launching a war of choice, you will have to live with that for the rest of your life....No one will be held responsible for the corruption of intelligence unless there are changes in Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, as intelligence is used/abused to support administration aims vis-a-vis Iran and North Korea, Drumheller's former colleagues will probably have to grapple with difficult decisions.
Ann Wright, a retired US Army Colonel with 29 years of miitary experience and 16 years of diplomatic experience, who resigned from her post as Deputy Chief of Mission, or Deputy Ambassador, to Mongolia in opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq: For the twenty-nine years I was in the military, either on active duty or in the Reserves, my worst nightmare was that an administration would get the United States into a military conflict that I knew was illegal. Today, if I were recalled from the US Army's Retired Ready Reserves, I would have to say, "I will not serve the Bush administration's war on Iraq. I will not agree to be recalled. You will have to court-martial me as I will not participate in this illegal war of aggression, this war crime."
I have included longer excerpts, and links to the full pieces, below:
"Now it's much more fundamental than protecting the environment for Bobby," said his friend Laurie David, the liberal advocate and producer of "An Inconvenient Truth," the Al Gore movie. "He fears that the country is being lost, that democracy is at stake."
Mr. Kennedy said that he had "continually expanded my realm of interest." His recent focus on the 2004 election exists on that continuum, he added.
He had heard low-grade rumblings about alleged abuses in Ohio, faulty voting machines and minority voters waiting hours in line at the polls. But he remained skeptical, or complacent. "I kept the same kind of deliberate blinders on that much of the media did," he said, bemoaning the news media's relative preoccupation with "Brad and Angelina and the Duke lacrosse team."
THEN Mr. Kennedy spent Christmas skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, at the home of Ms. David and her husband, Larry David, the "Seinfeld" creator and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" protagonist. Mr. David urged him to read a book on the 2004 election by the news media critic Mark Crispin Miller.
Mr. Kennedy did, and a few days later he was skiing with the Rolling Stone publisher, Jann S. Wenner, an old friend and Sun Valley homeowner. Mr. Kennedy suggested that Mr. Wenner commission a story on the "stolen election." Mr. Wenner said he would, provided Mr. Kennedy wrote it....
Mr. Kennedy called the silence of leading Democrats "a great disappointment," but declared himself undeterred. If anything, he said, the experience has left him more likely to run for office than before.
"It's all in God's hands," he said on Wednesday night at Treasure Island, a lemony sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge. He was surrounded by environmentalists swapping stories about protecting the planet's liquid resources (and imbibing other liquid resources).
"I can only control my own conduct," Mr. Kennedy said, shrugging. "And I plan to go down fighting."
Another Kennedy Living Dangerously, New York Times, 6-25-06
The truth will out. If you fabricate, or acquiesce in the fabrication of, evidence used to "justify" launching a war of choice, you will have to live with that for the rest of your life.
Call me quaint, but having spent 27 years in intelligence on both the analysis and operations ends of the business, I continue to believe that most intelligence officers have a conscience. The problem is they are often too late in acting on it.
...No one will be held responsible for the corruption of intelligence unless there are changes in Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, as intelligence is used/abused to support administration aims vis-a-vis Iran and North Korea, Drumheller's former colleagues will probably have to grapple with difficult decisions. Let me close by citing our pre-war appeal to CIA and other intelligence officers from a Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Memorandum of March 12, 2003, "Cooking Intelligence for War."
"Many former colleagues and successors are facing a dilemma all too familiar to intelligence veterans - the difficult choices that must be faced when the demands of good conscience butt up against deeply ingrained attitudes concerning secrecy, misguided notions of what is true patriotism, and understandable reluctance to put careers - and mortgages - on the line...We appeal to those still working inside the Intelligence Community to consider turning state's evidence."
Ray McGovern, Intelligence Officers Learn From History, Truthout, 6-25-06
Despite the "yes, sir" attitude of senior military officers toward the Bush administration's illegal policies, there is resistance within the US military to the war on Iraq. Military personnel know they have the right and duty to refuse illegal orders, including the order to deploy to an illegal war. They know the United States executed German and Japanese military officers and civilians for their participation in wars of aggression in World War II....Those in the military who dissent and resist what they know are illegal actions of the Bush administration are persons of the highest courage and conscience....
For the twenty-nine years I was in the military, either on active duty or in the Reserves, my worst nightmare was that an administration would get the United States into a military conflict that I knew was illegal. Today, if I were recalled from the US Army's Retired Ready Reserves, I would have to say, "I will not serve the Bush administration's war on Iraq. I will not agree to be recalled. You will have to court-martial me as I will not participate in this illegal war of aggression, this war crime."
Acts of resistance, big and small, recognized nationally or never heard of by most, by military and civilians are all important elements of ending the illegal war, the war crime, committed by the Bush administration. People of conscience all over the country are refusing to be silent and are taking courageous steps to end the illegal war on Iraq.
What will you do to stop this illegal war?
Ann Wright, Resistance in the US Military to the War on Iraq, Truthout, 6-25-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Bush, Cheney,Voting, Elections, Election, Vote, fraud, National Security
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 6-24-06: Not What "News Coverage" was Supposed to Mean
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go to www.wordsofpower.net
A "State of Emergency" has been declared in Baghdad. Over 2500 US military personnel have been killed. At least tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Atrocities are being committed by, and on, US military personel. Meanwhile, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghnaistan, and Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar are alive, free, and waging influence warfare.
And yet, the US Senate continues to abdicate its responsibility to investigate the Bush-Cheney's regime manipulation of intelligence to produce false premises for war. Instead, it has engaged in a faux debate. And only thirteen Senators (less than the 22 that voted against the invasion in 2003) exhibited the courage and conscience to vote for a re-deployment timetable.
(NOTE: For a break down and analysis of the vote, see Mathew Rothschild, "Calling the Roll on Iraq", Progressive, 6-26-05)
But perhaps worst of all, the US mainstream news media does not cover the debacle, it covers it up...
In recent days, CNN has taken the lead in one-sided coverage of the Iraq war debate in Congress. The cable network has swallowed hook, line, and sinker -- against all evidence -- Republicans' claims that the issue is a political winner for them. Incredibly, CNN seems to agree that the public is on the side of the Republican "plan" to stay in Iraq indefinitely -- at least as long as George W. Bush is president, so that his successor inherits the problem. But CNN knows from its own polling that the public does not favor the Republican "plan." CNN knows that Democrats are speaking for the majority of Americans, who think it's time to start planning for withdrawal. So why is CNN reporting the story as though it were reading a Karl Rove press release?
On June 20, CNN's Paula Zahn seemed to be channeling the Republican National Committee when she claimed that the Democratic Party is "getting creamed as the party of cut-and-runners, the wobbly, the weak."
On June 21, CNN's Dana Bash not only mischaracterized the Democrats' debate on troop redeployment, she also falsely suggested that Democrats stand to lose politically for urging a timeline for withdrawal when, in fact, a CNN poll showed that 53 percent of respondents favored a timetable for withdrawal.
Tell CNN to stop bungling its Iraq war coverage, Media Matters, 6-22-06
And yet, there are some in the USA who refuse to remain silent, and choose, instead, to use their position to speak out...
Appearing on CNN today to promote his current tour and album of Pete Seeger songs, rocker Bruce Springsteen took note of the current controversy surrounding Ann Coulter in responding to a question about whether musicians should speak out on politics. Springsteen was asked by Soledad O'Brien if getting flak about his political views, such as backing John Kerry in 2004, made him wonder if musicians should try so hard to be taken seriously on topical issues. "They should let Ann Coulter do it instead?" he mused, with a chuckle. Then he said, "You can turn on the idiots rambling on, on cable television, every night of the week -- and they say musicians shouldn’t speak up? It’s insane, it’s funny," he said, laughing. He called politics "an organic part of what I’m doing. ... It’s called common sense. I don’t even see it as politics at this point.''
Springsteen Mocks Ann Coulter, TV Pundits, Editor and Publisher, 6-23-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Ann Coulter, Iraq, Politics, News Media, Al Qaeda, Bush, Cheney, Bruce Springsteen, CNN, terrorism
A "State of Emergency" has been declared in Baghdad. Over 2500 US military personnel have been killed. At least tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Atrocities are being committed by, and on, US military personel. Meanwhile, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghnaistan, and Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar are alive, free, and waging influence warfare.
And yet, the US Senate continues to abdicate its responsibility to investigate the Bush-Cheney's regime manipulation of intelligence to produce false premises for war. Instead, it has engaged in a faux debate. And only thirteen Senators (less than the 22 that voted against the invasion in 2003) exhibited the courage and conscience to vote for a re-deployment timetable.
(NOTE: For a break down and analysis of the vote, see Mathew Rothschild, "Calling the Roll on Iraq", Progressive, 6-26-05)
But perhaps worst of all, the US mainstream news media does not cover the debacle, it covers it up...
In recent days, CNN has taken the lead in one-sided coverage of the Iraq war debate in Congress. The cable network has swallowed hook, line, and sinker -- against all evidence -- Republicans' claims that the issue is a political winner for them. Incredibly, CNN seems to agree that the public is on the side of the Republican "plan" to stay in Iraq indefinitely -- at least as long as George W. Bush is president, so that his successor inherits the problem. But CNN knows from its own polling that the public does not favor the Republican "plan." CNN knows that Democrats are speaking for the majority of Americans, who think it's time to start planning for withdrawal. So why is CNN reporting the story as though it were reading a Karl Rove press release?
On June 20, CNN's Paula Zahn seemed to be channeling the Republican National Committee when she claimed that the Democratic Party is "getting creamed as the party of cut-and-runners, the wobbly, the weak."
On June 21, CNN's Dana Bash not only mischaracterized the Democrats' debate on troop redeployment, she also falsely suggested that Democrats stand to lose politically for urging a timeline for withdrawal when, in fact, a CNN poll showed that 53 percent of respondents favored a timetable for withdrawal.
Tell CNN to stop bungling its Iraq war coverage, Media Matters, 6-22-06
And yet, there are some in the USA who refuse to remain silent, and choose, instead, to use their position to speak out...
Appearing on CNN today to promote his current tour and album of Pete Seeger songs, rocker Bruce Springsteen took note of the current controversy surrounding Ann Coulter in responding to a question about whether musicians should speak out on politics. Springsteen was asked by Soledad O'Brien if getting flak about his political views, such as backing John Kerry in 2004, made him wonder if musicians should try so hard to be taken seriously on topical issues. "They should let Ann Coulter do it instead?" he mused, with a chuckle. Then he said, "You can turn on the idiots rambling on, on cable television, every night of the week -- and they say musicians shouldn’t speak up? It’s insane, it’s funny," he said, laughing. He called politics "an organic part of what I’m doing. ... It’s called common sense. I don’t even see it as politics at this point.''
Springsteen Mocks Ann Coulter, TV Pundits, Editor and Publisher, 6-23-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Ann Coulter, Iraq, Politics, News Media, Al Qaeda, Bush, Cheney, Bruce Springsteen, CNN, terrorism
Thursday, June 22, 2006
GS(3) Intel Brief 6-23-06: Baltic & Jordan Threatened, Tri-Polar Chess, Siberian Permafrost Melts, and more!
NOTE: Words of Power explores the interdependence of security, sustainability and spirit. It monitors global risks and threats including global warming, terrorism, national disasters and health emergencies, cybercrime, economic espionage, etc. It also analyses issues and trends in the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, the pursuit of energy security and environmental security, the cultivation of human rights, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. Words of Power champions security, sustainability and spirit, both at work and in the home. The site has four components: Words of Power, which delivers in-depth commentary, and GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, which provides global risk-related news, are posted on an alternating, bi-weekly basis. Hard Rain Journal is posted daily, and provides updates and insights on developing stories. GS(3) Thunderbolts are posted as appropriate to deliver timely news on developing stories that require urgent attention. For more information on Richard Power, Words of Power and GS(3) Intelligence, go towww.wordsofpower.net
GS(3) Intel Brief 6-23-06: "Baltic & Jordan Threatened, Great Game as Tri-Polar Chess, Siberian Permafrost Melting, Economic Espionage in Korea, Cyber Extortion in Japan, Millennium Goals in Paraguay"
Here are highlights from 12 items, including both news stories and op-ed pieces, from diverse news sources (Copenhagen Post, Haaretz, Agence France Press, Korea Times, Tom Dispatch, Inter Press Service, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Star and ZD Net) which provide insight on important global issues and trends, such as the the global water crisis, growth of mega-slums, extreme poverty, small arms proliferation, global warming, human rights, energy security, the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, and cyber crime.
Excerpts and links follow below this summary. Customized analysis is provided for clients.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
The Baltic is slowly dying, according to Greenpeace. They say marine preserves, including one north-east of the island of Bornholm, can help resuscitate the waters A new report from Greenpeace is calling for the creation of marine reserves as a way to stave off environmental degradation in the Baltic Sea.
Call for Baltic reserves, Copenhagen Post, 6-15-06
Over-use of water from the southern stretch of the Jordan River threatens to dry it up and devastate one of the world's most important religious sites. The warning comes from conservationists, Christian groups and the heads of local authorities in the region - Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians.…Along with the dying Jordan, the Dead Sea has also begun disappearing, its water level going down each year by close to a meter.
Zafrir Rinat, The Jordan river is deep and wide no more, Haaretz, 6-18-06
More than 200 inmates were freed in a raid on a prison in Nigeria's troubled southeastern city of Onitsha, officials and residents said....It was the second time this year that the prison had been attacked and its inmates released. More than 700 Onitsha prison inmates were liberated last February during unrest in the city…..The attack on Onitsha prison came less than 24 hours after troops were deployed and a curfew imposed on the troubled city.
Over 200 prison inmates in Nigeria set free, Agence France Press, 6-19-06
Asia Pacific
About a half of Korea’s top technology firms have suffered from leaks in industrial know-how one way or another over the past three years, although the companies have increased preventive measures, a report showed. According to the report released the Korea Industrial Technology Association on Monday, 11 of 20 Korean firms that had invested the most in research & development have suffered financial damage due to technology leaks in the past three years.
Cho Jin-seo, Half of Top Tech Firms Suffer Leaks, Korea Times, 6-19-06
Last week, 22 of 28 Nobel Peace Prize winners gathered in South Korea for the 2006 Gwangju (Kwangju) Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates….The Dalai Lama, however, couldn’t attend. Not because he wasn't invited, or because he had other plans….the South Korean government has refused to grant him a visa, letting politics trump its own peace initiatives…. Beijing has consistently warned that states permitting even private visits by the Dalai Lama risk Chinese retribution.
Mickey Spiegel, When does a Nobel Prize-winning peace activist become an ``undesirable?’’, Korea Times, 6-19-06
For months, the American press and policy-making elite have portrayed the crisis with Iran as a two-sided struggle between Washington and Tehran, with the European powers as well as Russia and China playing supporting roles….But an informed reading of recent international diplomacy surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests that another equally fierce -- and undoubtedly more important -- struggle is also taking place: a tripolar contest between the United States, Russia, and China for domination of the greater Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth energy reserves….From this perspective, Iran is just one battlefield -- however significant -- in a far larger, more long-lasting, and momentous contest.
Michael T. Klare, Tripolar Chessboard: Putting Iran in Great Power Context, Tom Dispatch, 6-16-06
Americas
…for once, the part played by local communities in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was highlighted at an international meeting on "Cooperation and Development in Uruguay: the Challenge of Local Development," organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Jun. 12-14 in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital….One of the many people in the front line of the war on poverty is MarÃa Elena Curbelo, a medical doctor who works as a volunteer in Las Láminas, a slum neighbourhood outside the northern town of Bella Unión. This shantytown of 180 families is considered by many to be the nadir of poverty in this country of 3.3 million people, whose economy collapsed in 2002 after three years of recession….Raúl Pierri, URUGUAY: Northern Slum on the Front Line of the Millennium Goals, Inter Press Service, 6-19-06
Global
Apparently, no one knows what's happened to the thousands of AK-47s - and millions of rounds of ammunition - transferred from Bosnian wartime stockpiles to Iraq since 2004: Not the Bosnian government, nor NATO officials, nor the Alabama-based military contractor who transported the weapons, nor the Multi-National Command in Iraq, which was the intended recipient….Over the past five years a coalition of nongovernmental organizations has called for a treaty to establish principles and impose uniform standards on the international trade in small arms….
Susan Waltz, Can UN Stem Flow of Small Arms?, Christian Science Monitor, 6-15-06
"Slums in many cities are no longer just marginalized neighbourhoods housing a relatively small proportion of the urban population," the report said. "In many cities, they are the dominant type of human settlement." The global slum population is expected to grow by 27 million every year until 2020, the agency said. Authorities have traditionally viewed slums as temporary settlements that would disappear as cities developed and incomes rose. But the report said slums — lacking durable housing, space and access to safe water or adequate sanitation — are continuing to grow and are becoming a permanent feature of many cities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia….
UN predicts huge jump in global slums, Toronto Star, 6-17-06
Ancient woolly mammoth bones and grasslands locked in the Siberian permafrost are starting to thaw and could potentially unleash billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, a team of Russian and American scientists has concluded. The area involved is vast — 400,000 square miles. If the permafrost continues to thaw and releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it could dramatically increase the 730 billion metric tons already in the atmosphere, the scientists said in a study published in today's issue of the journal Science.
Janet Wilson, Global Warming Threat Is Seen in Siberian Thaw, Los Angeles Times, 6-16-06
Cyberspace
KDDI Corp, Japan's number two mobile operator, said that private information on nearly four million subscribers to its Internet service had been
leaked.….Police said they arrested two men who attempted extortion in the case, reportedly demanding KDDI pay five million to 10 million yen (43,700 to 87,000 US dollars) for the data….
KDDI reports massive personal data leak, Agence France Press, 6-13-06
Over half of technology, media and telecoms companies have suffered a security breach in the last year, with a third leading to "significant financial losses", according to research by consultancy Deloitte. It claimed many companies are underestimating the need for security. Only 4 percent of the 150 companies in the survey believe they do enough to address security issues, with 54 percent blaming budget constraints and lack of management support as the main challenges…. Less than half (48 percent) said they had an enterprise-wide business continuity program--way below the level of readiness in other industries, with the average in the United States running at 83 percent. Deloitte technology director James Alexander said technology, media and telecoms companies must recognise that they represent an increasingly attractive target.
Steve Ranger, Hackers target poorly secured media companies, ZDNet Asia, 6-22-06
Europe, Middle East & Africa
The Baltic is slowly dying, according to Greenpeace. They say marine preserves, including one north-east of the island of Bornholm, can help resuscitate the waters A new report from Greenpeace is calling for the creation of marine reserves as a way to stave off environmental degradation in the Baltic Sea.
The report, entitled ‘The Baltic Sea - a Roadmap to Recovery’, identifies the area north-east of the Danish island of Bornholm as one of the areas of the Baltic that should be turned into a reserve. In the report, Greenpeace described the Baltic as an old dying man - plagued by toxic substances, pollution and over-fishing, as well as intensive shipping and industrial activities….The Baltic report is part of a larger Greenpeace initiative aimed at turning some 40 percent of the world’s oceans into marine reserves.
Call for Baltic reserves, Copenhagen Post, 6-15-06
Over-use of water from the southern stretch of the Jordan River threatens to dry it up and devastate one of the world's most important religious sites. The warning comes from conservationists, Christian groups and the heads of local authorities in the region - Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians. Israel, Jordan and Syria are preparing to increase use of the tributaries feeding the southern Jordan - a stretch of the river between Lake Kinneret and the Dead Sea - and there is mounting fear of a natural disaster that would have far-reaching consequences. Until the 1950s, more than a billion cubic meters flowed through the southern Jordan annually, helping to maintain the Dead Sea's water level and a healthy river with a diverse ecological system. Construction of a dam that prevented water flow from the Kinneret, channeling part of the Yarmuk River into an irrigation canal in Jordan and later building dams on the Yarmuk's tributaries caused the river to dry up. Now the flow is only 100 million cubic meters a year, except when the Kinneret dam is opened due to flooding…Along with the dying Jordan, the Dead Sea has also begun disappearing, its water level going down each year by close to a meter. Israel and Jordan are studying the possibility of building, with the World Bank's help, a water carrier from the Gulf of Eilat to the Dead Sea to stop the decline.
Zafrir Rinat, The Jordan river is deep and wide no more, Haaretz, 6-18-06
More than 200 inmates were freed in a raid on a prison in Nigeria's troubled southeastern city of Onitsha, officials and residents said….It was the second time this year that the prison had been attacked and its inmates released. More than 700 Onitsha prison inmates were liberated last February during unrest in the city…..The attack on Onitsha prison came less than 24 hours after troops were deployed and a curfew imposed on the troubled city. Onitsha, a major commercial centre in Anambra State, and the southeastern region, has been the scene of violent unrest since Friday. Clashes between MASSOB members and police were reported to have left several people dead at the weekend. The troop deployment and the week-long curfew were measures taken on Sunday to restore peace to the area….MASSOB is an ethnic Igbo group campaigning for the resuscitation of "Biafra", which led a secessionist rebellion against the federal government between 1967 and 1970. The war ended in January 1970 with the surrender of the Biafra warlords. MASSOB says it is also fighting against an alleged marginalisation of Igbos since the war. Its founder and leader, Ralph Uwazuruike, and some of his followers face treason charges in an Abuja court
Over 200 prison inmates in Nigeria set free, Agence France Press, 6-19-06
Asia Pacific
About a half of Korea’s top technology firms have suffered from leaks in industrial know-how one way or another over the past three years, although the companies have increased preventive measures, a report showed. According to the report released the Korea Industrial Technology Association on Monday, 11 of 20 Korean firms that had invested the most in research & development have suffered financial damage due to technology leaks in the past three years.
When taking into account smaller firms, 20.9 percent out of 459 firms said that they suffered from industrial espionage cases during the period. The rate is 6.4 percentage points higher than three years ago, meaning that firms have become more vulnerable to technology theft….As Roh pointed out, about 65 percent of the reported cases were found to involve employees from former companies. Only 18 percent and 16 percent of the cases involved current employees, and subcontractors of the firms, respectively….The survey was done on 459 firms with in-house R&D departments.
Half of Top Tech Firms Suffer Leaks
Cho Jin-seo, Half of Top Tech Firms Suffer Leaks, Korea Times, 6-19-06
Last week, 22 of 28 Nobel Peace Prize winners gathered in South Korea for the 2006 Gwangju (Kwangju) Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Winners from Kenya, Russia, Guatemala, Iran, East Timor, and the United Kingdom have accepted invitations, as have representatives from Nobel-winning organizations, such as Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, and the American Friends Service Committee. The Dalai Lama, however, couldn’t attend. Not because he wasn't invited, or because he had other plans….the South Korean government has refused to grant him a visa, letting politics trump its own peace initiatives. As a Foreign Ministry official told Human Rights Watch, ``Considering various factors, for now, we decided the Dalai Lama's visit to South Korea is not desirable.’’ The government of South Korea, sensitive to the wishes of China, has consistently refused the Dalai Lama entry to its territory….The Dalai Lama has a long history of promoting core human rights values, among them the unfettered exchange of ideas central to the Kwangju conference agenda. For decades he has attempted to find a ``middle way’’ through the thicket of conflicting Tibetan and Chinese visions for Tibet _ a well-documented example of his search for peaceful solutions to long-standing problems, one of the conference's themes. China, which for years has adamantly opposed criticism of its policies toward Tibet and the Dalai Lama, seeing it as interference in its internal affairs, has not hesitated to interfere in the internal affairs of other states with respect to the Dalai Lama. Beijing has consistently warned that states permitting even private visits by the Dalai Lama risk Chinese retribution.
The threats work….To their credit, several states and multi-lateral organizations have ignored China's warnings. In early June 2006, European Union leaders brushed aside China's objections and met the Dalai Lama in Brussels. He has also recently traveled to Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The U.S. has hosted the Dalai Lama on many occasions, as has Japan. Switzerland went ahead with a visit in 2005; Mexico, Russia, and South Africa received him the previous year. And this list is far from exhaustive.
Mickey Spiegel, When does a Nobel Prize-winning peace activist become an ``undesirable?’’, Korea Times, 6-19-06
For months, the American press and policy-making elite have portrayed the crisis with Iran as a two-sided struggle between Washington and Tehran, with the European powers as well as Russia and China playing supporting roles. It is certainly true that George Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are the leading protagonists in this drama, with each making inflammatory statements about the other in order to whip up public support at home. But an informed reading of recent international diplomacy surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests that another equally fierce -- and undoubtedly more important -- struggle is also taking place: a tripolar contest between the United States, Russia, and China for domination of the greater Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth energy reserves.
When it comes to grand strategy, top Bush administration officials have long attempted to maintain American dominance of the "global chessboard" (as they see it) by diminishing the influence of the only other significant players, Russia and China. This classic geopolitical contest began with a flourish in early 2001, when the White House signaled the provocative course it planned to follow by unilaterally repudiating the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and announcing new high-tech arms sales to Taiwan, which China still considers a breakaway province. After 9/11, these initial signals of antagonism were toned down in order to secure Russian and Chinese assistance in fighting the war on terror, but in recent months the classic chessboard version of great-power politics has again come to dominate strategic thinking in Washington….There's nothing new about the Bush administration's urge to rollback Russia and "contain" China….When first articulated in the "Carter Doctrine" of 1980, this precept was directed exclusively at the Gulf; now, under President Bush, it has been extended to the Caspian Sea basin as well -- a consequence of rising oil prices, fears of diminishing supplies, and the vast oil and natural gas deposits believed to be housed there….It is in this context that the current struggle over Iran must be viewed. Iran occupies a pivotal position on the tripolar chessboard. Geographically, it is the only nation that abuts both the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, positioning Tehran to play a significant role in the two areas of greatest energy concern to the United States, Russia, and China. Iran also abuts the strategic Strait of Hormuz -- the narrow waterway from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about one-quarter of the world's oil moves every day. As a result, if Washington ever lifted its trade embargo on Iran, its territory could be used as the most obvious transit route for the delivery of oil and natural gas from the Caspian countries to global markets, especially in Europe and Japan…..As the crisis over Iran unfolds, most of the news commentary will continue to focus on the war of words between Washington and Tehran. Political insiders understand, however, that the most significant struggle is the one that remains just out of sight, pitting Washington against Moscow and Beijing in the battle for global influence and energy domination. From this perspective, Iran is just one battlefield -- however significant -- in a far larger, more long-lasting, and momentous contest.
Michael T. Klare, Tripolar Chessboard: Putting Iran in Great Power Context, Tom Dispatch, 6-16-06
Americas
…for once, the part played by local communities in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was highlighted at an international meeting on "Cooperation and Development in Uruguay: the Challenge of Local Development," organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Jun. 12-14 in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.
The MDGs, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000, are to halve extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, cut maternal mortality by three-quarters and infant mortality by two-thirds, and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. The specific goals are to be met by 2015, based on 1990 reference levels….One of the many people in the front line of the war on poverty is MarÃa Elena Curbelo, a medical doctor who works as a volunteer in Las Láminas, a slum neighbourhood outside the northern town of Bella Unión. This shantytown of 180 families is considered by many to be the nadir of poverty in this country of 3.3 million people, whose economy collapsed in 2002 after three years of recession….Thanks to the efforts of Curbelo and a dozen other people who work with her, a significant reduction in child mortality has been achieved in Las Láminas, independently of any local organisation or official authority….
The second of the eight MDGs is to "ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling," but in many parts of the developing South this is prevented by high levels of poverty. Ninety percent of the children in Las Láminas are or have been undernourished, 99 percent suffer from anaemia and more than 90 percent are failing or have fallen behind in school. "The problem is that children under the age of two who are undernourished suffer irreversible deficiency in growth and brain development, from which they cannot recover. By the time they are three, it is too late. Even if they do go to school, they will fail time and again," Curbelo explained to IPS. Another MDG is to "reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality rate." Last week the people of Las Láminas opened a clinic in coordination with the ministry of Public Health, with funds donated by Uruguayans living abroad. Soon they will have a gynaecologist to care for the large number of teenage mothers in the neighbourhood. A series of talks is also planned, to provide information on preventing unwanted pregnancies. Objective number 11 of the MDGs is to "achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020." In Las Láminas, housing and access to water and electricity are still major problems. "The government offered to relocate the residents, but they want to go on living here," Curbelo said.
Raúl Pierri, URUGUAY: Northern Slum on the Front Line of the Millennium Goals, Inter Press Service, 6-19-06
Global
Apparently, no one knows what's happened to the thousands of AK-47s - and millions of rounds of ammunition - transferred from Bosnian wartime stockpiles to Iraq since 2004: Not the Bosnian government, nor NATO officials, nor the Alabama-based military contractor who transported the weapons, nor the Multi-National Command in Iraq, which was the intended recipient. The international authorities who control arms shipments from Bosnia admit that they have no tracking system to ensure the weapons don't fall into the wrong hands, according to Amnesty International. Like Africa in the past decade, Iraq today is awash in lightweight weapons. An estimated 7 million small arms were "lost" from Saddam Hussein's stockpiles at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war. Add these to the millions already circulating in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East. These weapons have a remarkably long shelf life, and many are recycled from cold-war conflicts of earlier decades. But new arrivals constantly replenish the supply, as lightweight weapons are now produced in at least 95 countries….Over the past five years a coalition of nongovernmental organizations has called for a treaty to establish principles and impose uniform standards on the international trade in small arms. Last April, Britain launched an appeal for legally binding global standards for acceptable arms exports, and to date some 50 states have formally declared their support for a comprehensive arms-trade treaty. At the UN meeting this summer, states will be asked to endorse global standards for the small-arms trade. It is time for the US to join this effort…. Effectively, a uniform and universal set of principles would extend the application of existing regional agreements that the US helped negotiate and to which it already subscribes, including the Wassenaar Arrangement.
Setting standards for acceptable transfers, of course, is only the beginning - and arguably, it is the easy part. The hard part is enforcement.
Susan Waltz, Can UN Stem Flow of Small Arms?, Christian Science Monitor, 6-15-06
About 1.4 billion people worldwide will be living in slums by 2020, unless action is taken to improve conditions for the urban poor, said a UN report released yesterday. The number of slum-dwellers globally is expected to grow from the current one billion — nearly all in the developing world — as city populations swiftly rise, the UN Human Settlement Program said. "Slums in many cities are no longer just marginalized neighbourhoods housing a relatively small proportion of the urban population," the report said. "In many cities, they are the dominant type of human settlement." The global slum population is expected to grow by 27 million every year until 2020, the agency said. Authorities have traditionally viewed slums as temporary settlements that would disappear as cities developed and incomes rose. But the report said slums — lacking durable housing, space and access to safe water or adequate sanitation — are continuing to grow and are becoming a permanent feature of many cities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia….Trends indicate the number of urban dwellers will reach 5 billion by 2030, out of a total population of 8.1 billion.
UN predicts huge jump in global slums, Toronto Star, 6-17-06
Ancient woolly mammoth bones and grasslands locked in the Siberian permafrost are starting to thaw and could potentially unleash billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, a team of Russian and American scientists has concluded. The area involved is vast — 400,000 square miles. If the permafrost continues to thaw and releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it could dramatically increase the 730 billion metric tons already in the atmosphere, the scientists said in a study published in today's issue of the journal Science. "It's like taking food out of your freezer … leave it on your counter for a few days, and it rots," University of Florida botany professor Ted Schuur said in a phone interview from Alaska, describing the process by which decaying animal and plant matter in the soil is converted by bacteria into carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.
The research team concluded that previous studies on global warming had not taken into account the deep carbon reserve trapped in permafrost in the northern plains of Siberia and central Alaska…."It's not hopeless," Schuur said. "We're just at the beginning of this cycle, so we can, through the controlling of emissions, have a hope of slowing down this rate of global warming that would slow the melt of the permafrost."
Janet Wilson, Global Warming Threat Is Seen in Siberian Thaw, Los Angeles Times, 6-16-06
Cyberspace
KDDI Corp, Japan's number two mobile operator, said that private information on nearly four million subscribers to its Internet service had been
leaked. Police said extortionists tried to sell the data which included the names, addresses, contact numbers, sex, birthdate and e-mail addresses of those who applied for KDDI's Dion Internet service by December 18, 2003….Police said they arrested two men who attempted extortion in the case, reportedly demanding KDDI pay five million to 10 million yen (43,700 to 87,000 US dollars) for the data….KDDI learned about the leak through an anonymous phone call on May 30 and the next day a person handed a CD-ROM with data from 400,000 customers to its headquarters' reception desk, he said.
KDDI reports massive personal data leak, Agence France Press, 6-13-06
Over half of technology, media and telecoms companies have suffered a security breach in the last year, with a third leading to "significant financial losses", according to research by consultancy Deloitte. It claimed many companies are underestimating the need for security. Only 4 percent of the 150 companies in the survey believe they do enough to address security issues, with 54 percent blaming budget constraints and lack of management support as the main challenges…. Less than half (48 percent) said they had an enterprise-wide business continuity program--way below the level of readiness in other industries, with the average in the United States running at 83 percent. Deloitte technology director James Alexander said technology, media and telecoms companies must recognise that they represent an increasingly attractive target.
Steve Ranger, Hackers target poorly secured media companies, ZDNet Asia, 6-22-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Human Rights, Dalai Lama, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Sustainability, Economic Espionage, Cyber Crime, Cyber Crime, Climate Change, Global Warming, Millennium Goals, United Nations
GS(3) Intel Brief 6-23-06: "Baltic & Jordan Threatened, Great Game as Tri-Polar Chess, Siberian Permafrost Melting, Economic Espionage in Korea, Cyber Extortion in Japan, Millennium Goals in Paraguay"
Here are highlights from 12 items, including both news stories and op-ed pieces, from diverse news sources (Copenhagen Post, Haaretz, Agence France Press, Korea Times, Tom Dispatch, Inter Press Service, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Star and ZD Net) which provide insight on important global issues and trends, such as the the global water crisis, growth of mega-slums, extreme poverty, small arms proliferation, global warming, human rights, energy security, the struggle for geopolitical hegemony, and cyber crime.
Excerpts and links follow below this summary. Customized analysis is provided for clients.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
The Baltic is slowly dying, according to Greenpeace. They say marine preserves, including one north-east of the island of Bornholm, can help resuscitate the waters A new report from Greenpeace is calling for the creation of marine reserves as a way to stave off environmental degradation in the Baltic Sea.
Call for Baltic reserves, Copenhagen Post, 6-15-06
Over-use of water from the southern stretch of the Jordan River threatens to dry it up and devastate one of the world's most important religious sites. The warning comes from conservationists, Christian groups and the heads of local authorities in the region - Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians.…Along with the dying Jordan, the Dead Sea has also begun disappearing, its water level going down each year by close to a meter.
Zafrir Rinat, The Jordan river is deep and wide no more, Haaretz, 6-18-06
More than 200 inmates were freed in a raid on a prison in Nigeria's troubled southeastern city of Onitsha, officials and residents said....It was the second time this year that the prison had been attacked and its inmates released. More than 700 Onitsha prison inmates were liberated last February during unrest in the city…..The attack on Onitsha prison came less than 24 hours after troops were deployed and a curfew imposed on the troubled city.
Over 200 prison inmates in Nigeria set free, Agence France Press, 6-19-06
Asia Pacific
About a half of Korea’s top technology firms have suffered from leaks in industrial know-how one way or another over the past three years, although the companies have increased preventive measures, a report showed. According to the report released the Korea Industrial Technology Association on Monday, 11 of 20 Korean firms that had invested the most in research & development have suffered financial damage due to technology leaks in the past three years.
Cho Jin-seo, Half of Top Tech Firms Suffer Leaks, Korea Times, 6-19-06
Last week, 22 of 28 Nobel Peace Prize winners gathered in South Korea for the 2006 Gwangju (Kwangju) Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates….The Dalai Lama, however, couldn’t attend. Not because he wasn't invited, or because he had other plans….the South Korean government has refused to grant him a visa, letting politics trump its own peace initiatives…. Beijing has consistently warned that states permitting even private visits by the Dalai Lama risk Chinese retribution.
Mickey Spiegel, When does a Nobel Prize-winning peace activist become an ``undesirable?’’, Korea Times, 6-19-06
For months, the American press and policy-making elite have portrayed the crisis with Iran as a two-sided struggle between Washington and Tehran, with the European powers as well as Russia and China playing supporting roles….But an informed reading of recent international diplomacy surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests that another equally fierce -- and undoubtedly more important -- struggle is also taking place: a tripolar contest between the United States, Russia, and China for domination of the greater Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth energy reserves….From this perspective, Iran is just one battlefield -- however significant -- in a far larger, more long-lasting, and momentous contest.
Michael T. Klare, Tripolar Chessboard: Putting Iran in Great Power Context, Tom Dispatch, 6-16-06
Americas
…for once, the part played by local communities in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was highlighted at an international meeting on "Cooperation and Development in Uruguay: the Challenge of Local Development," organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Jun. 12-14 in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital….One of the many people in the front line of the war on poverty is MarÃa Elena Curbelo, a medical doctor who works as a volunteer in Las Láminas, a slum neighbourhood outside the northern town of Bella Unión. This shantytown of 180 families is considered by many to be the nadir of poverty in this country of 3.3 million people, whose economy collapsed in 2002 after three years of recession….Raúl Pierri, URUGUAY: Northern Slum on the Front Line of the Millennium Goals, Inter Press Service, 6-19-06
Global
Apparently, no one knows what's happened to the thousands of AK-47s - and millions of rounds of ammunition - transferred from Bosnian wartime stockpiles to Iraq since 2004: Not the Bosnian government, nor NATO officials, nor the Alabama-based military contractor who transported the weapons, nor the Multi-National Command in Iraq, which was the intended recipient….Over the past five years a coalition of nongovernmental organizations has called for a treaty to establish principles and impose uniform standards on the international trade in small arms….
Susan Waltz, Can UN Stem Flow of Small Arms?, Christian Science Monitor, 6-15-06
"Slums in many cities are no longer just marginalized neighbourhoods housing a relatively small proportion of the urban population," the report said. "In many cities, they are the dominant type of human settlement." The global slum population is expected to grow by 27 million every year until 2020, the agency said. Authorities have traditionally viewed slums as temporary settlements that would disappear as cities developed and incomes rose. But the report said slums — lacking durable housing, space and access to safe water or adequate sanitation — are continuing to grow and are becoming a permanent feature of many cities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia….
UN predicts huge jump in global slums, Toronto Star, 6-17-06
Ancient woolly mammoth bones and grasslands locked in the Siberian permafrost are starting to thaw and could potentially unleash billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, a team of Russian and American scientists has concluded. The area involved is vast — 400,000 square miles. If the permafrost continues to thaw and releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it could dramatically increase the 730 billion metric tons already in the atmosphere, the scientists said in a study published in today's issue of the journal Science.
Janet Wilson, Global Warming Threat Is Seen in Siberian Thaw, Los Angeles Times, 6-16-06
Cyberspace
KDDI Corp, Japan's number two mobile operator, said that private information on nearly four million subscribers to its Internet service had been
leaked.….Police said they arrested two men who attempted extortion in the case, reportedly demanding KDDI pay five million to 10 million yen (43,700 to 87,000 US dollars) for the data….
KDDI reports massive personal data leak, Agence France Press, 6-13-06
Over half of technology, media and telecoms companies have suffered a security breach in the last year, with a third leading to "significant financial losses", according to research by consultancy Deloitte. It claimed many companies are underestimating the need for security. Only 4 percent of the 150 companies in the survey believe they do enough to address security issues, with 54 percent blaming budget constraints and lack of management support as the main challenges…. Less than half (48 percent) said they had an enterprise-wide business continuity program--way below the level of readiness in other industries, with the average in the United States running at 83 percent. Deloitte technology director James Alexander said technology, media and telecoms companies must recognise that they represent an increasingly attractive target.
Steve Ranger, Hackers target poorly secured media companies, ZDNet Asia, 6-22-06
Europe, Middle East & Africa
The Baltic is slowly dying, according to Greenpeace. They say marine preserves, including one north-east of the island of Bornholm, can help resuscitate the waters A new report from Greenpeace is calling for the creation of marine reserves as a way to stave off environmental degradation in the Baltic Sea.
The report, entitled ‘The Baltic Sea - a Roadmap to Recovery’, identifies the area north-east of the Danish island of Bornholm as one of the areas of the Baltic that should be turned into a reserve. In the report, Greenpeace described the Baltic as an old dying man - plagued by toxic substances, pollution and over-fishing, as well as intensive shipping and industrial activities….The Baltic report is part of a larger Greenpeace initiative aimed at turning some 40 percent of the world’s oceans into marine reserves.
Call for Baltic reserves, Copenhagen Post, 6-15-06
Over-use of water from the southern stretch of the Jordan River threatens to dry it up and devastate one of the world's most important religious sites. The warning comes from conservationists, Christian groups and the heads of local authorities in the region - Palestinians, Israelis and Jordanians. Israel, Jordan and Syria are preparing to increase use of the tributaries feeding the southern Jordan - a stretch of the river between Lake Kinneret and the Dead Sea - and there is mounting fear of a natural disaster that would have far-reaching consequences. Until the 1950s, more than a billion cubic meters flowed through the southern Jordan annually, helping to maintain the Dead Sea's water level and a healthy river with a diverse ecological system. Construction of a dam that prevented water flow from the Kinneret, channeling part of the Yarmuk River into an irrigation canal in Jordan and later building dams on the Yarmuk's tributaries caused the river to dry up. Now the flow is only 100 million cubic meters a year, except when the Kinneret dam is opened due to flooding…Along with the dying Jordan, the Dead Sea has also begun disappearing, its water level going down each year by close to a meter. Israel and Jordan are studying the possibility of building, with the World Bank's help, a water carrier from the Gulf of Eilat to the Dead Sea to stop the decline.
Zafrir Rinat, The Jordan river is deep and wide no more, Haaretz, 6-18-06
More than 200 inmates were freed in a raid on a prison in Nigeria's troubled southeastern city of Onitsha, officials and residents said….It was the second time this year that the prison had been attacked and its inmates released. More than 700 Onitsha prison inmates were liberated last February during unrest in the city…..The attack on Onitsha prison came less than 24 hours after troops were deployed and a curfew imposed on the troubled city. Onitsha, a major commercial centre in Anambra State, and the southeastern region, has been the scene of violent unrest since Friday. Clashes between MASSOB members and police were reported to have left several people dead at the weekend. The troop deployment and the week-long curfew were measures taken on Sunday to restore peace to the area….MASSOB is an ethnic Igbo group campaigning for the resuscitation of "Biafra", which led a secessionist rebellion against the federal government between 1967 and 1970. The war ended in January 1970 with the surrender of the Biafra warlords. MASSOB says it is also fighting against an alleged marginalisation of Igbos since the war. Its founder and leader, Ralph Uwazuruike, and some of his followers face treason charges in an Abuja court
Over 200 prison inmates in Nigeria set free, Agence France Press, 6-19-06
Asia Pacific
About a half of Korea’s top technology firms have suffered from leaks in industrial know-how one way or another over the past three years, although the companies have increased preventive measures, a report showed. According to the report released the Korea Industrial Technology Association on Monday, 11 of 20 Korean firms that had invested the most in research & development have suffered financial damage due to technology leaks in the past three years.
When taking into account smaller firms, 20.9 percent out of 459 firms said that they suffered from industrial espionage cases during the period. The rate is 6.4 percentage points higher than three years ago, meaning that firms have become more vulnerable to technology theft….As Roh pointed out, about 65 percent of the reported cases were found to involve employees from former companies. Only 18 percent and 16 percent of the cases involved current employees, and subcontractors of the firms, respectively….The survey was done on 459 firms with in-house R&D departments.
Half of Top Tech Firms Suffer Leaks
Cho Jin-seo, Half of Top Tech Firms Suffer Leaks, Korea Times, 6-19-06
Last week, 22 of 28 Nobel Peace Prize winners gathered in South Korea for the 2006 Gwangju (Kwangju) Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Winners from Kenya, Russia, Guatemala, Iran, East Timor, and the United Kingdom have accepted invitations, as have representatives from Nobel-winning organizations, such as Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, and the American Friends Service Committee. The Dalai Lama, however, couldn’t attend. Not because he wasn't invited, or because he had other plans….the South Korean government has refused to grant him a visa, letting politics trump its own peace initiatives. As a Foreign Ministry official told Human Rights Watch, ``Considering various factors, for now, we decided the Dalai Lama's visit to South Korea is not desirable.’’ The government of South Korea, sensitive to the wishes of China, has consistently refused the Dalai Lama entry to its territory….The Dalai Lama has a long history of promoting core human rights values, among them the unfettered exchange of ideas central to the Kwangju conference agenda. For decades he has attempted to find a ``middle way’’ through the thicket of conflicting Tibetan and Chinese visions for Tibet _ a well-documented example of his search for peaceful solutions to long-standing problems, one of the conference's themes. China, which for years has adamantly opposed criticism of its policies toward Tibet and the Dalai Lama, seeing it as interference in its internal affairs, has not hesitated to interfere in the internal affairs of other states with respect to the Dalai Lama. Beijing has consistently warned that states permitting even private visits by the Dalai Lama risk Chinese retribution.
The threats work….To their credit, several states and multi-lateral organizations have ignored China's warnings. In early June 2006, European Union leaders brushed aside China's objections and met the Dalai Lama in Brussels. He has also recently traveled to Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The U.S. has hosted the Dalai Lama on many occasions, as has Japan. Switzerland went ahead with a visit in 2005; Mexico, Russia, and South Africa received him the previous year. And this list is far from exhaustive.
Mickey Spiegel, When does a Nobel Prize-winning peace activist become an ``undesirable?’’, Korea Times, 6-19-06
For months, the American press and policy-making elite have portrayed the crisis with Iran as a two-sided struggle between Washington and Tehran, with the European powers as well as Russia and China playing supporting roles. It is certainly true that George Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are the leading protagonists in this drama, with each making inflammatory statements about the other in order to whip up public support at home. But an informed reading of recent international diplomacy surrounding the Iranian crisis suggests that another equally fierce -- and undoubtedly more important -- struggle is also taking place: a tripolar contest between the United States, Russia, and China for domination of the greater Persian Gulf/Caspian Sea region and its mammoth energy reserves.
When it comes to grand strategy, top Bush administration officials have long attempted to maintain American dominance of the "global chessboard" (as they see it) by diminishing the influence of the only other significant players, Russia and China. This classic geopolitical contest began with a flourish in early 2001, when the White House signaled the provocative course it planned to follow by unilaterally repudiating the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and announcing new high-tech arms sales to Taiwan, which China still considers a breakaway province. After 9/11, these initial signals of antagonism were toned down in order to secure Russian and Chinese assistance in fighting the war on terror, but in recent months the classic chessboard version of great-power politics has again come to dominate strategic thinking in Washington….There's nothing new about the Bush administration's urge to rollback Russia and "contain" China….When first articulated in the "Carter Doctrine" of 1980, this precept was directed exclusively at the Gulf; now, under President Bush, it has been extended to the Caspian Sea basin as well -- a consequence of rising oil prices, fears of diminishing supplies, and the vast oil and natural gas deposits believed to be housed there….It is in this context that the current struggle over Iran must be viewed. Iran occupies a pivotal position on the tripolar chessboard. Geographically, it is the only nation that abuts both the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea, positioning Tehran to play a significant role in the two areas of greatest energy concern to the United States, Russia, and China. Iran also abuts the strategic Strait of Hormuz -- the narrow waterway from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about one-quarter of the world's oil moves every day. As a result, if Washington ever lifted its trade embargo on Iran, its territory could be used as the most obvious transit route for the delivery of oil and natural gas from the Caspian countries to global markets, especially in Europe and Japan…..As the crisis over Iran unfolds, most of the news commentary will continue to focus on the war of words between Washington and Tehran. Political insiders understand, however, that the most significant struggle is the one that remains just out of sight, pitting Washington against Moscow and Beijing in the battle for global influence and energy domination. From this perspective, Iran is just one battlefield -- however significant -- in a far larger, more long-lasting, and momentous contest.
Michael T. Klare, Tripolar Chessboard: Putting Iran in Great Power Context, Tom Dispatch, 6-16-06
Americas
…for once, the part played by local communities in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was highlighted at an international meeting on "Cooperation and Development in Uruguay: the Challenge of Local Development," organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Jun. 12-14 in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital.
The MDGs, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000, are to halve extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, cut maternal mortality by three-quarters and infant mortality by two-thirds, and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. The specific goals are to be met by 2015, based on 1990 reference levels….One of the many people in the front line of the war on poverty is MarÃa Elena Curbelo, a medical doctor who works as a volunteer in Las Láminas, a slum neighbourhood outside the northern town of Bella Unión. This shantytown of 180 families is considered by many to be the nadir of poverty in this country of 3.3 million people, whose economy collapsed in 2002 after three years of recession….Thanks to the efforts of Curbelo and a dozen other people who work with her, a significant reduction in child mortality has been achieved in Las Láminas, independently of any local organisation or official authority….
The second of the eight MDGs is to "ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling," but in many parts of the developing South this is prevented by high levels of poverty. Ninety percent of the children in Las Láminas are or have been undernourished, 99 percent suffer from anaemia and more than 90 percent are failing or have fallen behind in school. "The problem is that children under the age of two who are undernourished suffer irreversible deficiency in growth and brain development, from which they cannot recover. By the time they are three, it is too late. Even if they do go to school, they will fail time and again," Curbelo explained to IPS. Another MDG is to "reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality rate." Last week the people of Las Láminas opened a clinic in coordination with the ministry of Public Health, with funds donated by Uruguayans living abroad. Soon they will have a gynaecologist to care for the large number of teenage mothers in the neighbourhood. A series of talks is also planned, to provide information on preventing unwanted pregnancies. Objective number 11 of the MDGs is to "achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020." In Las Láminas, housing and access to water and electricity are still major problems. "The government offered to relocate the residents, but they want to go on living here," Curbelo said.
Raúl Pierri, URUGUAY: Northern Slum on the Front Line of the Millennium Goals, Inter Press Service, 6-19-06
Global
Apparently, no one knows what's happened to the thousands of AK-47s - and millions of rounds of ammunition - transferred from Bosnian wartime stockpiles to Iraq since 2004: Not the Bosnian government, nor NATO officials, nor the Alabama-based military contractor who transported the weapons, nor the Multi-National Command in Iraq, which was the intended recipient. The international authorities who control arms shipments from Bosnia admit that they have no tracking system to ensure the weapons don't fall into the wrong hands, according to Amnesty International. Like Africa in the past decade, Iraq today is awash in lightweight weapons. An estimated 7 million small arms were "lost" from Saddam Hussein's stockpiles at the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war. Add these to the millions already circulating in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East. These weapons have a remarkably long shelf life, and many are recycled from cold-war conflicts of earlier decades. But new arrivals constantly replenish the supply, as lightweight weapons are now produced in at least 95 countries….Over the past five years a coalition of nongovernmental organizations has called for a treaty to establish principles and impose uniform standards on the international trade in small arms. Last April, Britain launched an appeal for legally binding global standards for acceptable arms exports, and to date some 50 states have formally declared their support for a comprehensive arms-trade treaty. At the UN meeting this summer, states will be asked to endorse global standards for the small-arms trade. It is time for the US to join this effort…. Effectively, a uniform and universal set of principles would extend the application of existing regional agreements that the US helped negotiate and to which it already subscribes, including the Wassenaar Arrangement.
Setting standards for acceptable transfers, of course, is only the beginning - and arguably, it is the easy part. The hard part is enforcement.
Susan Waltz, Can UN Stem Flow of Small Arms?, Christian Science Monitor, 6-15-06
About 1.4 billion people worldwide will be living in slums by 2020, unless action is taken to improve conditions for the urban poor, said a UN report released yesterday. The number of slum-dwellers globally is expected to grow from the current one billion — nearly all in the developing world — as city populations swiftly rise, the UN Human Settlement Program said. "Slums in many cities are no longer just marginalized neighbourhoods housing a relatively small proportion of the urban population," the report said. "In many cities, they are the dominant type of human settlement." The global slum population is expected to grow by 27 million every year until 2020, the agency said. Authorities have traditionally viewed slums as temporary settlements that would disappear as cities developed and incomes rose. But the report said slums — lacking durable housing, space and access to safe water or adequate sanitation — are continuing to grow and are becoming a permanent feature of many cities, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia….Trends indicate the number of urban dwellers will reach 5 billion by 2030, out of a total population of 8.1 billion.
UN predicts huge jump in global slums, Toronto Star, 6-17-06
Ancient woolly mammoth bones and grasslands locked in the Siberian permafrost are starting to thaw and could potentially unleash billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, a team of Russian and American scientists has concluded. The area involved is vast — 400,000 square miles. If the permafrost continues to thaw and releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it could dramatically increase the 730 billion metric tons already in the atmosphere, the scientists said in a study published in today's issue of the journal Science. "It's like taking food out of your freezer … leave it on your counter for a few days, and it rots," University of Florida botany professor Ted Schuur said in a phone interview from Alaska, describing the process by which decaying animal and plant matter in the soil is converted by bacteria into carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.
The research team concluded that previous studies on global warming had not taken into account the deep carbon reserve trapped in permafrost in the northern plains of Siberia and central Alaska…."It's not hopeless," Schuur said. "We're just at the beginning of this cycle, so we can, through the controlling of emissions, have a hope of slowing down this rate of global warming that would slow the melt of the permafrost."
Janet Wilson, Global Warming Threat Is Seen in Siberian Thaw, Los Angeles Times, 6-16-06
Cyberspace
KDDI Corp, Japan's number two mobile operator, said that private information on nearly four million subscribers to its Internet service had been
leaked. Police said extortionists tried to sell the data which included the names, addresses, contact numbers, sex, birthdate and e-mail addresses of those who applied for KDDI's Dion Internet service by December 18, 2003….Police said they arrested two men who attempted extortion in the case, reportedly demanding KDDI pay five million to 10 million yen (43,700 to 87,000 US dollars) for the data….KDDI learned about the leak through an anonymous phone call on May 30 and the next day a person handed a CD-ROM with data from 400,000 customers to its headquarters' reception desk, he said.
KDDI reports massive personal data leak, Agence France Press, 6-13-06
Over half of technology, media and telecoms companies have suffered a security breach in the last year, with a third leading to "significant financial losses", according to research by consultancy Deloitte. It claimed many companies are underestimating the need for security. Only 4 percent of the 150 companies in the survey believe they do enough to address security issues, with 54 percent blaming budget constraints and lack of management support as the main challenges…. Less than half (48 percent) said they had an enterprise-wide business continuity program--way below the level of readiness in other industries, with the average in the United States running at 83 percent. Deloitte technology director James Alexander said technology, media and telecoms companies must recognise that they represent an increasingly attractive target.
Steve Ranger, Hackers target poorly secured media companies, ZDNet Asia, 6-22-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Human Rights, Dalai Lama, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Sustainability, Economic Espionage, Cyber Crime, Cyber Crime, Climate Change, Global Warming, Millennium Goals, United Nations
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)