Hard Rain Journal 8-31-06: Who Will You Believe About the Coming Confrontation with Iran?
By Richard Power
The Iranian regime should be confronted by the great nations about its nuclear program and its human rights abuses.
Tragically, the Bush-Cheney regime does not have the credibility or the moral authority to lead the great nations in such a confrontation.
Whatever Bush-Cheney does will only make a bad situation much worse -- just as in Afgahnistan, Iraq, and North Korea.
Who should be believed about the coming crisis with Iran? Those who insisted that Iraq must be invaded and occupied? Or those who warned that it would result in a debacle? Those who boasted with great certitude that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that they knew were they were? Or those who said that there probably were none?
Unfortunately, those who should be believed will not be listened to by the US mainstream news media.
What will the leadership of the Democratic Party do when the drum-beat of war begins reverberating in the echo chamber of cable and network TV and radio, and the cacophony drowns out the voices of reason and conscience?
Will they succumb once again to political expediency and moral cowardice as most of them did in the ramp up to the invasion of Iraq? Or will they make a stand for sanity, self-discipline and real security?
The domestic threat from the Bush-Cheney regime, with its foolish military adventurism and homeland security boondoggles, constitutes a more urgent threat to the security of the US than Iran, which is still 5 to 10 years away from developing nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, to be effective again as a global peacemaker and as a peace enforcer, the US must its own clean house in accord with the demands and proscribed remedies enshrined in the US Constitution.
Who will you listen to?
Will you listen to Khatami, the reformer who the US could have and should have been talking to over the last crucial years?
Khatami's upcoming visit to the US, sponsored largely by the Episcopal Church and the Carter Center, is being condemned by the Neo-Con propapundigandists nervous that Khatami's message might resonate with an already suspicious US electorate:
Ledeen, who has long argued that all al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist terrorist groups are actually controlled by the "terror-masters" in Tehran, called the visa approval "blatant appeasement", while James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, called it "a major error... at a time when Iran is defiantly thumbing its nose at the U.S. and the U.N. Security Council regarding its nuclear weapons programme." (Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, 8-30-06)
Will you listen to Akbar Ganji, an investigative journalist and dissident who was jailed and tortured by the Iranian regime?
Ganji is speaking out against US military action: "I don't think this can help in any way our democratic movement. Our first demand and our first concern is to make sure that there is not going be a military invasion against our country. We do not want war. I say these things, and I appreciate your making it available and broadcasting it. They hear what I say, and if they are really interested in peace, they will not invade." (Democracy Now! 8-30-06)
Here are excerpts with links to the article on Khatami and Amy Goodman's interview with Ganji:
Next week's visit to the United States of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has been strongly denounced by hard-line neo-conservatives and other hawks here as "appeasement". According to a consensus among nearly a dozen participants in a "Symposium" Wednesday on the website of the right-wing National Review Online, Khatami's presence here could make it more difficult to rally U.S. public opinion against the Islamic Republic and discourage democratic forces back in Tehran. "Giving Khatami prestigious platforms all over America is a dumb move, and it will enormously discourage the Iranian people," according to Michael Ledeen, an influential neo-conservative based at the American Enterprise Institute. What's more, he added, "for those who believe (U.S. President George W.) Bush is serious about regime change (in Iran), this is a numbing blow... Alas, this confirms my worst fears about this administration. Talk, talk, talk, but when it is time to act, they are still talking." Identified with the reformist wing of Iran's clerical establishment, Khatami, who served as president from 1997 to 2005, reportedly plans to spend as much as two weeks here under the sponsorship of the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Atlanta-based Carter Centre whose founder, former President Jimmy Carter, has expressed interest in meeting with him. Khatami's trip, which kicks off Sep. 5-6 at a U.N. conference on the dialogue of civilisations in New York, will also include appearances at the National Cathedral here next Thursday, speeches to an Islamic group in Chicago, and university audiences in Virginia and elsewhere....Ledeen, who has long argued that all al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamist terrorist groups are actually controlled by the "terror-masters" in Tehran, called the visa approval "blatant appeasement", while James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, called it "a major error... at a time when Iran is defiantly thumbing its nose at the U.S. and the U.N. Security Council regarding its nuclear weapons programme." Jim Lobe, Neo-Cons Denounce Khatami Visit as "Appeasement," Inter Press Service, 8-30-06
AMY GOODMAN: Today, we turn to an Iranian dissident who refused Bush's invitation to the White House. Akbar Ganji is a renowned Iranian activist and investigative journalist, recently visited Democracy Now!’s Firehouse studio in the midst of this month-long world tour to raise awareness about human rights violations in Iran. His visit came just months following his release from an Iranian jail where he was imprisoned for nearly six years, imprisoned and tortured.
Akbar also used his time in the U.S. to speak out against human rights abuses in Iran. He took part in a three-day hunger strike outside of the UN, aimed at forcing the Iranian government to release political prisoners. But he also carried a message for the Bush administration. Yes, he declined that personal invitation to the White House to meet with top U.S. officials overseeing Iran policy.
AKBAR GANJI: [translated] As I mentioned before, Amy, I don't think this can help in any way our democratic movement. Our first demand and our first concern is to make sure that there is not going be a military invasion against our country. We do not want war. I say these things, and I appreciate your making it available and broadcasting it. They hear what I say, and if they are really interested in peace, they will not invade. Always in a negotiation, there's a give and take. And I have nothing to offer to the President. I’m an intellectual. What can I offer him? If there are negotiations, it must take place between the government of Iran and the government of the United States, and it must be a transparent negotiation.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned if Iran develops nuclear weapons?
AKBAR GANJI: [translated] More than that, I’m concerned about the possibility of a disaster like what happened in Chernobyl. What Iran has acquired has been through black market. And we don't know anything about the security and the safety of this project. Should there be an explosion, should there be a catastrophe, the environment, the ecosystem and the people will be destroyed. It's not the West that is confronted with the possibility of a nuclear Iran, an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon, but it's the people of Iran faced with a potential disaster like a Chernobyl. And also I should say that the policies of the West, in this regard, are fundamentally -- it’s fundamentally a dual standard. They disregard the atomic weapons, atomic bombs, available to Israel, Pakistan and India, but Iran is said not to have the right to enrich uranium. Of course, I find the policies of the Islamic Republic fundamentally unwise. We should strive to disarm internationally, for an international disarmament. We have to fight the militarization of the world....
AMY GOODMAN: You were arrested in Iran. You had exposed during the Khamenei regime the killings of many dissidents. You were held for six years. Were you tortured in prison, just recently released?
AKBAR GANJI: [translated] I was gravely mistreated. But it's not only me. It's a matter of dozens, scores of prisoners who are treated in the worst conceivable way. I have always tried to be their voice. I was lucky enough to be well known in the world. However, there are numerous people in prison in Iran, but their names are unknown, even to the people in Iran, within Iran. They are kept in solitary confinement on no grounds. No access to books, newspapers or telephone. No attorney present, no legal representation. And they are deprived of meeting with their families. And they are under pressure to confess to charges of espionage. They bring them in front of camera in the same way Stalin used to do and make them confess. And they will convict them to prison, sentence them, give them sentences based on those television shows. We object to this process.
AMY GOODMAN: Do they broadcast these so-called confessions on television in Iran?
AKBAR GANJI: [translated] Yes, they do. Yes, they beat them up in prison and then bring them in front of camera, and tey confess to crimes they have never committed.
AMY GOODMAN: Akbar Ganji, were you beaten up?
AKBAR GANJI: [translated] I had similar problems.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they broadcast your so-called confession?
AKBAR GANJI: [translated] I never went to any show. I never withdrew my position, from what I put forward. My positions that I advocated from prison were far more radical from what I had said before going to prison. The harsher they treated me, I became more radicalized. But I have no personal problems with anyone, and I have no personal complaints. Our problem is democracy. Our concern is democracy, human rights and freedom in the country. Amy Interviews Leading Iranian Dissident and Former Political Prisoner Akbar Ganji, "We Don't Want War," Democracy Now!, 8-30-06
SOME RELATED POSTS:
Words of Power #27: Have Far from the Mooring of Reality has this Ship of Fools Drifted? The Regime & Its Enablers Look Past Iraq & Katrina to Iran
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 8-7-06: Coked Out? ABC Ignores 3 Blockbusters on War & Treason to Suggest Lamont, Not Lieberman, Would Be A "Disaster"
Words of Power #26: Lost Symbols, Part III -- The Goddess of Liberty
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #16: Lt. Gen. Newbold Bears Witness, Sy Hersh Sounds the Alarm & Patrick Fitzgerald Raises the Stakes
Words of Power #14: It's Not The Unipolar Moment, It's The Bipolar Moment
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, Afghanistan, Bush, Khatami, Amy Goodman, Akbar Ganji, Iran, Cheney
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
GS3 Thunderbolt 8-30-06: Urgent Action is Needed on Darfur, Bush-Cheney Proposal is a "Sham"
GS3 Thunderbolt 8-30-06: Urgent Action is Needed on Darfur, US's Security Council Proposal is a "Sham"
By Richard Power
If you live in the USA, you will not hear about Darfur on the evening news tonight or tomorrow or the next day...So here it is...Remember, there is a crime even worse than genocide, and that's allowing it to happen....
Amid fears that escalating violence could unleash another round of humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan's Darfur region, rights advocacy groups are urging the world community to take immediate steps to protect civilians.
With the looming threat of fresh military action by the Sudanese army, groups say the deployment of a 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Darfur is the first step to enhance security for the civilian population....
Currently, discussions are underway at the 15-member UN Security Council on a U.S.-sponsored draft resolution calling for17,000 well-equipped peacekeepers. However, according to observers and diplomats, any breakthrough before the end of this week is highly unlikely.
The U.S. proposal calls for a gradual transition from the Africa Union (AU) force in Darfur, which has failed to take effective measures against violence, mainly due to lack of resources. The AU mandate is due to expire at the end of September....But human rights groups say such a move would prove to be a disaster.
"It is a sham," said Kate Gilmore of the London-based rights group Amnesty International. "How can Sudan realistically propose being a peacekeeper in a conflict to which it is a major party and perpetrator of grave human rights violations?"
Human Rights Watch's Takirambudde agreed.
"Sudanese government soldiers are not an alternative to international peacekeepers," he said, adding that any new military operations by government forces or rebels would lead to "devastating consequences for civilians."
rations were to collapse due to continued violence, "we could see hundreds of thousands of deaths" over a period of weeks, not months....
UN estimates show that in the past two months, hundreds of innocent people in Darfur have been killed, over 50,000 displaced, and more than 200 women and girls raped.
Officials said due to escalating violence, about half a million people across Darfur were unable to receive their food rations last month and it was very likely that they would not have any access to food aid this month either.
Haider Rizvi, Darfur: UN Troops ASAP, Say Rights Workers, OneWorld.net, 8-30-06
If the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region is not resolved soon, the conflict could spread deeper into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic and destabilise the whole region, the United Nations representative in Chad warned in an exclusive interview.
"[The Darfur conflict] is creating armed groups that are destabilising entire populations in the east, and now it is moving towards the south, towards Central Africa," Kingsley Amaning, the UN resident representative in Chad told IRIN on Tuesday.
Amaning said stopping the flow of weapons to the dozens of armed militia movements in the region was a major target.
"If we do not stabilise Darfur soon it will become a major theatre where we see a considerable supply of weapons everywhere," he said.
There has already been a spate of skirmishes and attacks along the border of southern Chad close to Cameroon and the Central African Republic this year.
CHAD-SUDAN: Darfur crisis spreading to Central Africa - UN, IRIN, 8-30-06
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
Hard Rain Journal 8-3-06: Darfur is A Mirror Held Up to the Souls of the Great Nations, & What It Reveals is Hideous
Words of Power #12: The Fallen Tree (Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Global Security Crisis, Part II)
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
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
Darfur, United Nations, Sudan, Genocide, Chad, Human Rights, United Nations
By Richard Power
If you live in the USA, you will not hear about Darfur on the evening news tonight or tomorrow or the next day...So here it is...Remember, there is a crime even worse than genocide, and that's allowing it to happen....
Amid fears that escalating violence could unleash another round of humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan's Darfur region, rights advocacy groups are urging the world community to take immediate steps to protect civilians.
With the looming threat of fresh military action by the Sudanese army, groups say the deployment of a 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Darfur is the first step to enhance security for the civilian population....
Currently, discussions are underway at the 15-member UN Security Council on a U.S.-sponsored draft resolution calling for17,000 well-equipped peacekeepers. However, according to observers and diplomats, any breakthrough before the end of this week is highly unlikely.
The U.S. proposal calls for a gradual transition from the Africa Union (AU) force in Darfur, which has failed to take effective measures against violence, mainly due to lack of resources. The AU mandate is due to expire at the end of September....But human rights groups say such a move would prove to be a disaster.
"It is a sham," said Kate Gilmore of the London-based rights group Amnesty International. "How can Sudan realistically propose being a peacekeeper in a conflict to which it is a major party and perpetrator of grave human rights violations?"
Human Rights Watch's Takirambudde agreed.
"Sudanese government soldiers are not an alternative to international peacekeepers," he said, adding that any new military operations by government forces or rebels would lead to "devastating consequences for civilians."
rations were to collapse due to continued violence, "we could see hundreds of thousands of deaths" over a period of weeks, not months....
UN estimates show that in the past two months, hundreds of innocent people in Darfur have been killed, over 50,000 displaced, and more than 200 women and girls raped.
Officials said due to escalating violence, about half a million people across Darfur were unable to receive their food rations last month and it was very likely that they would not have any access to food aid this month either.
Haider Rizvi, Darfur: UN Troops ASAP, Say Rights Workers, OneWorld.net, 8-30-06
If the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region is not resolved soon, the conflict could spread deeper into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic and destabilise the whole region, the United Nations representative in Chad warned in an exclusive interview.
"[The Darfur conflict] is creating armed groups that are destabilising entire populations in the east, and now it is moving towards the south, towards Central Africa," Kingsley Amaning, the UN resident representative in Chad told IRIN on Tuesday.
Amaning said stopping the flow of weapons to the dozens of armed militia movements in the region was a major target.
"If we do not stabilise Darfur soon it will become a major theatre where we see a considerable supply of weapons everywhere," he said.
There has already been a spate of skirmishes and attacks along the border of southern Chad close to Cameroon and the Central African Republic this year.
CHAD-SUDAN: Darfur crisis spreading to Central Africa - UN, IRIN, 8-30-06
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
Hard Rain Journal 8-3-06: Darfur is A Mirror Held Up to the Souls of the Great Nations, & What It Reveals is Hideous
Words of Power #12: The Fallen Tree (Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Global Security Crisis, Part II)
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
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
Darfur, United Nations, Sudan, Genocide, Chad, Human Rights, United Nations
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Sith Lords in London & Tokyo? The Neo-Con Impact on Our Allies
Fear leads to anger.
Anger leads to hate.
Hatred leads to power.
Power leads to victory.
Let your anger flow through you.
Your hate will make you strong.
True power is only achieved through
testing the limits of one's anger,
passing through unscathed.
Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable.
The dark side of the Force
offers unimaginable power.
The dark side is stronger than the light.
The weak deserve their fate.
–tenets of Sith philosophy
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Sith Lords in London & Tokyo? The Neo-Con Impact on Our Allies
By Richard Power
Two notable individuals, one an unimpeachable voice of conscience and statesmanship, the other one of the most engaging foreign policy and national security commentators on the contemporary scene, have offered some vital insights in recent days.
Former US President Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, founder of the Carter Center and author of Endangered Values has denounced UK PM Tony Blair in an explosive interview with the Telegraph" Tony Blair's lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.
Steve Clemons, Director of the American Strategy Program for the New America Foundation, and founder of The Washington Note (perhaps the most important blog focusing on geopolitical issues), has published an important and insightful article on the rise of intolerance in Japan: Emboldened by the recent rise in nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing activists who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and "thought control" have begun to move into more mainstream circles -- and to attack those who don't see things their way.
(See excerpts and links to both pieces below.)
As I noted in Hard Rain Journal 7-19-06: Neo-Con Fingerprints on the Israeli Offensive in Lebanon, Meanwhile in Afghanistan..., it is vital that you do not misperceive the neo-con cabal as a purely US political phenomena. It is global. It has seized the helm of the ship of state not only in the US and Israel but in the UK and Japan as well. And, in reality, it has more to do with interlocking personal interests than it does with serving national interests of any of these peoples.
As I contemplate what is happening in our societies, the Sith keep coming to mind. In the legend of Star Wars, the term "Sith" refers to both "a cult of warrior priests devoted to the dark side of the Force, serving as the evil counterparts of the Jedi Knights" and to 'a near-human race enslaved" by the cult, who "later took the name of this race as their own" (Wikipedia). George Lucas, of course, was conscious of the kind of myth he was weaving. He knew what it revealed both about our world and about the human psyche.
"Beware the Dark Side..."
Tony Blair's lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter. "I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair's behaviour," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "I think that more than any other person in the world the Prime Minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington - and he has not. I really thought that Tony Blair, who I know personally to some degree, would be a constraint on President Bush's policies towards Iraq."
In an exclusive interview, President Carter made it plain that he sees Mr Blair's lack of leadership as being a key factor in the present crisis in Iraq, which followed the 2003 invasion - a pre-emptive move he said he would never have considered himself as president. Mr Carter also said that the Iraq invasion had subverted the fight against terrorism and instead strengthened al-Qaeda and the recruitment of terrorists...."We now have a situation where America is so unpopular overseas that even in countries like Egypt and Jordan our approval ratings are less than five per cent. It's a shameful and pitiful state of affairs and I hold your British Prime Minister to be substantially responsible for being so compliant and subservient."....Asked why he thinks Mr Blair has behaved in the way that he has with President Bush's belligerent regime, Mr Carter said he could only put it down to timidity. Yet he confessed that he remains baffled by the apparent contrast between Mr Blair's private remarks and his public utterances. John Preston and Melissa Kite, Compliant and subservient: Jimmy Carter's explosive critique of Tony Blair, 8-27-06
Emboldened by the recent rise in nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing activists who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and "thought control" have begun to move into more mainstream circles -- and to attack those who don't see things their way.
Just last week, one of those extremists burned down the parental home of onetime prime ministerial candidate Koichi Kato, who had criticized Koizumi's decision to visit Yasukuni this year. Several years ago, the home of Fuji Xerox chief executive and Chairman Yotaro "Tony" Kobayashi was targeted by handmade firebombs after he, too, voiced the opinion that Koizumi should stop visiting Yasukuni....
Such extremism raises disturbing echoes of the past. In May 1932, Japanese Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated by a group of right-wing activists who opposed his recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria and his staunch defense of parliamentary democracy. In the post-World War II era, right-wing fanatics have largely lurked in the shadows, but have occasionally threatened those who veer too close to or speak too openly about sensitive topics concerning Japan's national identity, war responsibility or imperial system.
What's alarming and significant about today's intimidation by the right is that it's working -- and that it has found some mutualism in the media. Sankei's Komori has no direct connection to those guilty of the most recent acts, but he's not unaware that his words frequently animate them -- and that their actions in turn lend fear-fueled power to his pronouncements, helping them silence debate. What's worse, neither Japan's current prime minister nor Shinzo Abe, the man likely to succeed him in next month's elections, has said anything to denounce those trying to stifle the free speech of Japan's leading moderates.
There are many more cases of intimidation. I have spoken to dozens of Japan's top academics, journalists and government civil servants in the past few days; many of them pleaded with me not to disclose this or that incident because they feared violence and harassment from the right. One top political commentator in Japan wrote to me: "I know the right-wingers are monitoring what I write and waiting to give me further trouble. I simply don't want to waste my time nor energy for these people."
Japan needs nationalism. But it needs a healthy nationalism -- not the hawkish, strident variety that is lately forcing many of the country's best lights to dim their views.
Steven Clemons, The Rise of Japan's Thought Police, The Washington Post, 8-27-06
SOME RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 7-19-06: Neo-Con Fingerprints on the Israeli Offensive in Lebanon, Meanwhile in Afghanistan...
Words of Power #26: Lost Symbols, Part III -- The Goddess of Liberty
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #18: 48 Hours -- What Happens When Military and Intel Officers Must Challenge Political Leaders to Uphold the Rule of Law
Words of Power #16: Lt. Gen. Newbold Bears Witness, Sy Hersh Sounds the Alarm & Patrick Fitzgerald Raises the Stakes
Words of Power #14: It's Not The Unipolar Moment, It's The Bipolar Moment
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, Bush, Koizumi, Tony Blair, Arianna Huffington, United Kingdom, Japan, Jimmy Carter, Steve Clemons, Washington Note, Star Wars, Myth, George Lucas
Anger leads to hate.
Hatred leads to power.
Power leads to victory.
Let your anger flow through you.
Your hate will make you strong.
True power is only achieved through
testing the limits of one's anger,
passing through unscathed.
Rage channeled through anger is unstoppable.
The dark side of the Force
offers unimaginable power.
The dark side is stronger than the light.
The weak deserve their fate.
–tenets of Sith philosophy
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Sith Lords in London & Tokyo? The Neo-Con Impact on Our Allies
By Richard Power
Two notable individuals, one an unimpeachable voice of conscience and statesmanship, the other one of the most engaging foreign policy and national security commentators on the contemporary scene, have offered some vital insights in recent days.
Former US President Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, founder of the Carter Center and author of Endangered Values has denounced UK PM Tony Blair in an explosive interview with the Telegraph" Tony Blair's lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter.
Steve Clemons, Director of the American Strategy Program for the New America Foundation, and founder of The Washington Note (perhaps the most important blog focusing on geopolitical issues), has published an important and insightful article on the rise of intolerance in Japan: Emboldened by the recent rise in nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing activists who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and "thought control" have begun to move into more mainstream circles -- and to attack those who don't see things their way.
(See excerpts and links to both pieces below.)
As I noted in Hard Rain Journal 7-19-06: Neo-Con Fingerprints on the Israeli Offensive in Lebanon, Meanwhile in Afghanistan..., it is vital that you do not misperceive the neo-con cabal as a purely US political phenomena. It is global. It has seized the helm of the ship of state not only in the US and Israel but in the UK and Japan as well. And, in reality, it has more to do with interlocking personal interests than it does with serving national interests of any of these peoples.
As I contemplate what is happening in our societies, the Sith keep coming to mind. In the legend of Star Wars, the term "Sith" refers to both "a cult of warrior priests devoted to the dark side of the Force, serving as the evil counterparts of the Jedi Knights" and to 'a near-human race enslaved" by the cult, who "later took the name of this race as their own" (Wikipedia). George Lucas, of course, was conscious of the kind of myth he was weaving. He knew what it revealed both about our world and about the human psyche.
"Beware the Dark Side..."
Tony Blair's lack of leadership and timid subservience to George W Bush lie behind the ongoing crisis in Iraq and the worldwide threat of terrorism, according to the former American president Jimmy Carter. "I have been surprised and extremely disappointed by Tony Blair's behaviour," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "I think that more than any other person in the world the Prime Minister could have had a moderating influence on Washington - and he has not. I really thought that Tony Blair, who I know personally to some degree, would be a constraint on President Bush's policies towards Iraq."
In an exclusive interview, President Carter made it plain that he sees Mr Blair's lack of leadership as being a key factor in the present crisis in Iraq, which followed the 2003 invasion - a pre-emptive move he said he would never have considered himself as president. Mr Carter also said that the Iraq invasion had subverted the fight against terrorism and instead strengthened al-Qaeda and the recruitment of terrorists...."We now have a situation where America is so unpopular overseas that even in countries like Egypt and Jordan our approval ratings are less than five per cent. It's a shameful and pitiful state of affairs and I hold your British Prime Minister to be substantially responsible for being so compliant and subservient."....Asked why he thinks Mr Blair has behaved in the way that he has with President Bush's belligerent regime, Mr Carter said he could only put it down to timidity. Yet he confessed that he remains baffled by the apparent contrast between Mr Blair's private remarks and his public utterances. John Preston and Melissa Kite, Compliant and subservient: Jimmy Carter's explosive critique of Tony Blair, 8-27-06
Emboldened by the recent rise in nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing activists who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and "thought control" have begun to move into more mainstream circles -- and to attack those who don't see things their way.
Just last week, one of those extremists burned down the parental home of onetime prime ministerial candidate Koichi Kato, who had criticized Koizumi's decision to visit Yasukuni this year. Several years ago, the home of Fuji Xerox chief executive and Chairman Yotaro "Tony" Kobayashi was targeted by handmade firebombs after he, too, voiced the opinion that Koizumi should stop visiting Yasukuni....
Such extremism raises disturbing echoes of the past. In May 1932, Japanese Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated by a group of right-wing activists who opposed his recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria and his staunch defense of parliamentary democracy. In the post-World War II era, right-wing fanatics have largely lurked in the shadows, but have occasionally threatened those who veer too close to or speak too openly about sensitive topics concerning Japan's national identity, war responsibility or imperial system.
What's alarming and significant about today's intimidation by the right is that it's working -- and that it has found some mutualism in the media. Sankei's Komori has no direct connection to those guilty of the most recent acts, but he's not unaware that his words frequently animate them -- and that their actions in turn lend fear-fueled power to his pronouncements, helping them silence debate. What's worse, neither Japan's current prime minister nor Shinzo Abe, the man likely to succeed him in next month's elections, has said anything to denounce those trying to stifle the free speech of Japan's leading moderates.
There are many more cases of intimidation. I have spoken to dozens of Japan's top academics, journalists and government civil servants in the past few days; many of them pleaded with me not to disclose this or that incident because they feared violence and harassment from the right. One top political commentator in Japan wrote to me: "I know the right-wingers are monitoring what I write and waiting to give me further trouble. I simply don't want to waste my time nor energy for these people."
Japan needs nationalism. But it needs a healthy nationalism -- not the hawkish, strident variety that is lately forcing many of the country's best lights to dim their views.
Steven Clemons, The Rise of Japan's Thought Police, The Washington Post, 8-27-06
SOME RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 7-19-06: Neo-Con Fingerprints on the Israeli Offensive in Lebanon, Meanwhile in Afghanistan...
Words of Power #26: Lost Symbols, Part III -- The Goddess of Liberty
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #18: 48 Hours -- What Happens When Military and Intel Officers Must Challenge Political Leaders to Uphold the Rule of Law
Words of Power #16: Lt. Gen. Newbold Bears Witness, Sy Hersh Sounds the Alarm & Patrick Fitzgerald Raises the Stakes
Words of Power #14: It's Not The Unipolar Moment, It's The Bipolar Moment
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, Bush, Koizumi, Tony Blair, Arianna Huffington, United Kingdom, Japan, Jimmy Carter, Steve Clemons, Washington Note, Star Wars, Myth, George Lucas
Monday, August 28, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Six Ways for the US to Fight Global Warming
Hard Rain Journal 8-28-06: Six Ways for the US to Fight Global Warming
By Richard Power
Global warming, accelerated by human consumption of fossil fuels, is causing severe climate changes throughout the world.
The science is irrefutable.
And yet, many government and business leaders throughout the world content themselves with inadequate response and lip service to the greatest challenge of our time.
Worse yet, in the US, the White House, the GOP-controlled Congress and the mainstream news media continue to pretend the issue is still subject to reasonable debate. (It is not.)
Meanwhile, compelling evidence is all around us...
Signs that our local forests are stressed by global warming recently struck me while traveling over North Cascades passes in Washington state. The forest is dying near the top on both east and west sides; trees are still partially green but turning red -- old trees, young trees, the forest itself....The same reddening trees can be seen hiking through the Glacier Peak Wilderness on the trail to Spider Meadow in the Chiwawa River watershed of the Wenatchee National Forest. People are reporting that forests are dying near Mt. Rainier, on Chinook and White passes and down to central Oregon. Huge expanses of forest in central British Columbia have died and turned red....Millions of acres of lodgepole pine have been pushed over the mortality threshold by global warming. There is no longer suitable habitat for the trees that have been growing there... Forests have an upper heating limit that they can tolerate. When heating goes beyond that limit, trees and other plants go into a rest state, a kind of hibernation, where they rest until conditions might improve. In that state they do not convert carbon to oxygen. Further stressed, they die. Forests created and maintain the planetary atmosphere. They are having a difficult time maintaining the conditions for life as it is known because humans have removed so many of them. Now, as massive amounts of forest are dying and no longer convert carbon to oxygen, the conditions necessary for our life here are being lost. Pat Rasmussen, Cascades' Reddened Forests Signal Threat to Humans, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8-25-06
Emily Figdor of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) has outlined a national anti-global warming strategy for the US:
Rising to the Challenge: Six Steps to Cut Global Warming Pollution in the United States is the first report to provide a national blueprint for achieving the short-term cuts in emissions that science shows are needed to put the U.S. on a path to avoid the worst effects of a warming world....The report details six challenging but feasible steps to improve the energy efficiency of our economy and use more renewable energy. These strategies, coupled with strong, mandatory limits on global warming emissions, would reduce U.S. global warming emissions by 19% below 2004 levels by 2020 (see chart below). At the same time, the steps would improve American’s long-term economic and energy security. The six steps include:
1. Stabilize vehicle travel. Americans drive nearly twice as many miles per year as they did a quarter-century ago, leading to increased emissions of global warming pollutants.... 2. Increase vehicle fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon and set fuel economy standards for large trucks....
3. Replace 10% of vehicle fuel with biofuels or other clean alternatives....
4. Reduce energy consumption in homes, business, and industry by 10% from current levels. Dramatic improvements in energy efficiency are possible in virtually every aspect of American life....
5. Obtain 20% of our electricity from new renewable energy sources. America has virtually limitless potential for the generation of power from natural forces....
6. Hold emissions from other sources to current levels....
New Report: U.S. Can Cut Global Warming Pollution 20 Percent by 2020, Tools at Our Disposal Now, 8-24-06
Unfortunately, the political establishment is not providing leadership, nor is the mainstream news media.
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-17-06: Typhoon Season Intensifies, Canada Starts to Slide into Denial, New Study Offers Insight on Global Warming Impact
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Hard Rain Journal 7-27-06: Killer Heat Waves, Massive Blackouts -- You Were Warned 3 Years Ago
Hard Rain Journal 7-26-06: NRDC Reports on Global Warming's Direct Threat to 12 National Parks in Western USA
Hard Rain Journal 7-24-06: Five Stories about the Reality of Global Warming, Is Continued Denial Criminally Insane?
Hard Rain Journal 7-21-06: Heat Waves in Europe & US are Direct Consequences of Global Warming
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Words of Power #7: Global Warming Is A Security Threat To Your Family & Your Business
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Canada, Cascades, Forests, British Columbia, US PIRG, Public Interest Research Group
By Richard Power
Global warming, accelerated by human consumption of fossil fuels, is causing severe climate changes throughout the world.
The science is irrefutable.
And yet, many government and business leaders throughout the world content themselves with inadequate response and lip service to the greatest challenge of our time.
Worse yet, in the US, the White House, the GOP-controlled Congress and the mainstream news media continue to pretend the issue is still subject to reasonable debate. (It is not.)
Meanwhile, compelling evidence is all around us...
Signs that our local forests are stressed by global warming recently struck me while traveling over North Cascades passes in Washington state. The forest is dying near the top on both east and west sides; trees are still partially green but turning red -- old trees, young trees, the forest itself....The same reddening trees can be seen hiking through the Glacier Peak Wilderness on the trail to Spider Meadow in the Chiwawa River watershed of the Wenatchee National Forest. People are reporting that forests are dying near Mt. Rainier, on Chinook and White passes and down to central Oregon. Huge expanses of forest in central British Columbia have died and turned red....Millions of acres of lodgepole pine have been pushed over the mortality threshold by global warming. There is no longer suitable habitat for the trees that have been growing there... Forests have an upper heating limit that they can tolerate. When heating goes beyond that limit, trees and other plants go into a rest state, a kind of hibernation, where they rest until conditions might improve. In that state they do not convert carbon to oxygen. Further stressed, they die. Forests created and maintain the planetary atmosphere. They are having a difficult time maintaining the conditions for life as it is known because humans have removed so many of them. Now, as massive amounts of forest are dying and no longer convert carbon to oxygen, the conditions necessary for our life here are being lost. Pat Rasmussen, Cascades' Reddened Forests Signal Threat to Humans, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 8-25-06
Emily Figdor of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) has outlined a national anti-global warming strategy for the US:
Rising to the Challenge: Six Steps to Cut Global Warming Pollution in the United States is the first report to provide a national blueprint for achieving the short-term cuts in emissions that science shows are needed to put the U.S. on a path to avoid the worst effects of a warming world....The report details six challenging but feasible steps to improve the energy efficiency of our economy and use more renewable energy. These strategies, coupled with strong, mandatory limits on global warming emissions, would reduce U.S. global warming emissions by 19% below 2004 levels by 2020 (see chart below). At the same time, the steps would improve American’s long-term economic and energy security. The six steps include:
1. Stabilize vehicle travel. Americans drive nearly twice as many miles per year as they did a quarter-century ago, leading to increased emissions of global warming pollutants.... 2. Increase vehicle fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon and set fuel economy standards for large trucks....
3. Replace 10% of vehicle fuel with biofuels or other clean alternatives....
4. Reduce energy consumption in homes, business, and industry by 10% from current levels. Dramatic improvements in energy efficiency are possible in virtually every aspect of American life....
5. Obtain 20% of our electricity from new renewable energy sources. America has virtually limitless potential for the generation of power from natural forces....
6. Hold emissions from other sources to current levels....
New Report: U.S. Can Cut Global Warming Pollution 20 Percent by 2020, Tools at Our Disposal Now, 8-24-06
Unfortunately, the political establishment is not providing leadership, nor is the mainstream news media.
Want to participate in the effort to mitigate the impact of global warming? Download "Ten Things You Can Do"
There is a powerful magic in personal commitment.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-17-06: Typhoon Season Intensifies, Canada Starts to Slide into Denial, New Study Offers Insight on Global Warming Impact
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Hard Rain Journal 7-27-06: Killer Heat Waves, Massive Blackouts -- You Were Warned 3 Years Ago
Hard Rain Journal 7-26-06: NRDC Reports on Global Warming's Direct Threat to 12 National Parks in Western USA
Hard Rain Journal 7-24-06: Five Stories about the Reality of Global Warming, Is Continued Denial Criminally Insane?
Hard Rain Journal 7-21-06: Heat Waves in Europe & US are Direct Consequences of Global Warming
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Hard Rain Journal 6-27-06: Global Warming, Bush's Alleged "Incompetence," and the So-Called "Conservative" Agenda
Words of Power #20: Cusco, Kyoto and The Yellow Sand Storm
Words of Power #7: Global Warming Is A Security Threat To Your Family & Your Business
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Weather, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Extreme Weather, Canada, Cascades, Forests, British Columbia, US PIRG, Public Interest Research Group
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Words of Power #27: Have Far from the Mooring of Reality has this Ship of Fools Drifted? The Regime & Its Enablers Look Past Iraq & Katrina to Iran
Other civilizations, including more successful ones, may exist an infinite number of times on the pages of the Book of the Universe. Yet we should not minimize our sacred endeavors in this world, where, like faint glimmers in the dark, we have emerged for the moment from nothingness into material existence. We must make good the demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive.
Andre Sakharov, Nobel Prize Lecture,1975
Words of Power #27: Have Far from the Mooring of Reality has this Ship of Fools Drifted? The Regime & Its Enablers Look Past Iraq & Katrina to Iran
By Richard Power
Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah are dangerous men. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are dangerous men. But Bush and Cheney are a far greater threat to US peace and prosperity. If it were not for the folly of the Bush-Cheney regime, Bin Laden and Zawahiri would be dead or imprisoned already, and Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah would have been easily boxed in. (Indeed, Ahmadinejad probably wouldn't even have been elected.)
Have far from the mooring of reality has this Ship of Fools drifted?
Even if the mainstream news media were asking about whether or not Bush-Cheney had an credibility whatsoever in regard to Iran -- which of course they are not asking -- they would be missing the point.
After leading the country into debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and presiding over a catastrophe in New Orleans, it is already painfully clear that the Bush-Cheney regime has no credibility at all on either national security or homeland security, and that they are, therefore, not competent (morally or intellectually) to deal with the challenge of Iran’s nuclear development.
The real question is what do we do now?
What does the electorate of the world’s greatest military and economic power do when the Executive Branch is mired in criminal negligence, authoritarianism, military adventurism, corruption and war profiteering, and its primary enablers, i.e., the GOP-controlled US Congress and the Corporatist controlled US mainstream news media, have abdicated their responsibilities of oversight and truth-telling?
What happens now? That’s the real question.
The US mainstream news media should be giving serious consideration to the issue of whether or not Bush-Cheney should be on trial for war crimes:
A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq. Aaron Glantz, OneWorld.net, 8-25-06
But instead, Orwellian touch-up artists in the US mainstream news media coddle them and shield them even from embarrassment:
During his August 21 press conference, George W. Bush responded to a question about the Iraq War by saying that "sometimes I'm happy" about the conflict. But many readers and TV viewers never heard the remark, since journalists edited the statement to save Bush any possible embarrassment. CBS, NBC Clean Up Bush's 'Happy' Talk, F.A.I.R., 8-25-06
Bush-Cheney’s foolish military adventure in Iraq and their wet dream of a “New Middle East” under US dominance have led to debacles for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Israel in Lebanon):
George Bush has long asserted that the war in Iraq would remake the Middle East. Turns out he was right. According to a new report by Chatham House, a British think tank, after spending over $400 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has succeeded... in making Iran the top dog in the region. That's right, after over three years and 2,618 American lives lost in Iraq, Iran has now superceded America as the most influential power in that country. Indeed, in the words of the report, Iran now considers its former arch enemy its "own backyard." The Mullahs in Tehran have also become a "prominent presence" in Afghanistan. Arianna Huffington, Your Tax Dollars at Work in the Middle East, Huffington Post, 8-24-06
But instead of analyzing the Bush-Cheney machinations in regard to Iran with context and continuity, (i.e., by comparing it to the “sexing up” and “cherry-picking” of intelligence in the rush to invade and occupy Iraq), the US mainstream news media is once again carrying the Bush-Cheney cabal’s filthy water:
As today's page-one stories in both the New York Times and the Washington Post make clear, the Bush administration has begun to apply pressure on the U.S. intelligence agencies to pump up the threat that Iran poses….while both the Times story and the Post story make ample, if measured, reference to what happened the last time Cheney and Co. insisted on getting the "right" answers to their intelligence questions, neither reminded readers of how little skepticism we in the press brought to claims that Iraq had WMD, that Saddam's henchmen had gone to Niger and secured "yellowcake," that those aluminum tubes really were trouble, and that there was a 9/11 connection. Nor did those stories go far enough in putting this latest bit of White House maneuvering into its proper context. The country is less than three months away from a crucial mid-term election….Finally, there was scant outrage expressed anywhere in the press today (perhaps tomorrow?) over the fact that, despite all we've learned about this administration's willingness to say whatever is necessary to get what it wants, here, it seems, we go again....
Brent Cunningham, Shameless: Psst! Iran Helped Plan September 11 ..., Columbia Journalism Review, 8-24-06
The US mainstream news media’s refusal to provide context and continuity for Bush-Cheney’s foreign policy fiascos and national security blunders is also letting them pass in regard to the criminal negligence indulged in before, during and after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.
On Monday 8-29-05, after being told that New Orleans’ levees had breached, and that this was “the big one,” Bush put in a call to his Secretary of Homeland Security to discuss immigration, and then shared a birthday cake with the shell of a man formerly known as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Bush went to bed that night without responding to Lousiana Gov. Blanco’s request. “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” The next morning, he gave an address on Iraq at a US naval base and then played country with country singer Mark Willis before returning to Crawford for the last night of his vacation. On 9-1-05, Bush claimed that no one expected the levees to break. Katrina Timeline, Think Progress
And what has happened in the ensuing year?
“The government awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Hurricane Katrina work without full competition, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process, says a House study released Thursday by Democrats. The report, a comprehensive overview of government audits on Katrina contracting, found that out of $10.6 billion in contracts awarded after the storm last year, more than $7.4 billion were handed out with limited or no competitive bidding. In addition, 19 contracts worth $8.75 billion were found to have wasted taxpayer money at least in part, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the report. It cited numerous instances of double-billing by contractors and cases of trailers meant as emergency housing sitting empty in Arkansas. In the House report, Democrats faulted FEMA for recently awarding new $400 million temporary housing contracts for future disaster work to Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure, Bechtel National, CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Enterprises Inc….Three of them — Bechtel, CH2M Hill and Fluor — were found by government auditors to have wasted money in the hurricane effort. The Shaw Group Inc.'s lobbyist, Joe Allbaugh, is a former FEMA director and a longtime friend of President Bush, while Bechtel CEO Riley Bechtel served on Bush's Export Council from 2003-2004. HOPE YEN Democrats cite no-bid Katrina contracts, Associated Press, 8-24-06
But what have you heard about on the nightly network and cable news broadcasts?
On the August 23 edition of CNN's Live From..., host Kyra Phillips allowed Katrina survivor Rockey Vaccarella to repeatedly praise or deflect blame from President Bush over his handling of Hurricane Katrina, yet failed to note that Vaccarella once ran for local office as a Republican or challenge Vaccarella's various attempts to excuse the federal government's slow response. As Philadelphia Daily News senior writer Will Bunch has reported, Vaccarella ran in 1999 for the St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, commission as a Republican, according to a October 15, 1999, candidate profile in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. While Phillips noted that Vaccarella "ran for office in the past in St. Bernard Parish," she failed to mention his party affiliation. In "a wonderful segment," CNN provided forum for Katrina survivor to praise Bush on Katrina, omitted that he's a Republican, Media Matters, 8-23-06
Mr. Vaccarella got to shake hands with George W. Bush and thank him for the "millions of FEMA trailers" and exclaim his regret that Bush could not have a "third term." News clips of this encounter, of course, saturated the air waves.
If we still lived in a society where healthy democratic institutions protected the public good, the men responsible for the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the catastophe in New Orleans, would be angling to avoid prosecution right now, instead of planning their next military adventure.
And then, of course, there is 9/11. But I will wait until we are closer to the FIFTH anniversary of that slaughter of the innocents before I write about it AGAIN.
SOME RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 8-7-06: Coked Out? ABC Ignores 3 Blockbusters on War & Treason to Suggest Lamont, Not Lieberman, Would Be A "Disaster"
Words of Power #26: Lost Symbols, Part III -- The Goddess of Liberty
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #16: Lt. Gen. Newbold Bears Witness, Sy Hersh Sounds the Alarm & Patrick Fitzgerald Raises the Stakes
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
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, Afghanistan, Bush, Katrina, War Crimes, Arianna Huffington, News Media, Media Matters, FAIR, Columbia Journalism School
Andre Sakharov, Nobel Prize Lecture,1975
Words of Power #27: Have Far from the Mooring of Reality has this Ship of Fools Drifted? The Regime & Its Enablers Look Past Iraq & Katrina to Iran
By Richard Power
Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah are dangerous men. Bin Laden and Zawahiri are dangerous men. But Bush and Cheney are a far greater threat to US peace and prosperity. If it were not for the folly of the Bush-Cheney regime, Bin Laden and Zawahiri would be dead or imprisoned already, and Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah would have been easily boxed in. (Indeed, Ahmadinejad probably wouldn't even have been elected.)
Have far from the mooring of reality has this Ship of Fools drifted?
Even if the mainstream news media were asking about whether or not Bush-Cheney had an credibility whatsoever in regard to Iran -- which of course they are not asking -- they would be missing the point.
After leading the country into debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and presiding over a catastrophe in New Orleans, it is already painfully clear that the Bush-Cheney regime has no credibility at all on either national security or homeland security, and that they are, therefore, not competent (morally or intellectually) to deal with the challenge of Iran’s nuclear development.
The real question is what do we do now?
What does the electorate of the world’s greatest military and economic power do when the Executive Branch is mired in criminal negligence, authoritarianism, military adventurism, corruption and war profiteering, and its primary enablers, i.e., the GOP-controlled US Congress and the Corporatist controlled US mainstream news media, have abdicated their responsibilities of oversight and truth-telling?
What happens now? That’s the real question.
The US mainstream news media should be giving serious consideration to the issue of whether or not Bush-Cheney should be on trial for war crimes:
A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferenccz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting "aggressive" wars--Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq. Aaron Glantz, OneWorld.net, 8-25-06
But instead, Orwellian touch-up artists in the US mainstream news media coddle them and shield them even from embarrassment:
During his August 21 press conference, George W. Bush responded to a question about the Iraq War by saying that "sometimes I'm happy" about the conflict. But many readers and TV viewers never heard the remark, since journalists edited the statement to save Bush any possible embarrassment. CBS, NBC Clean Up Bush's 'Happy' Talk, F.A.I.R., 8-25-06
Bush-Cheney’s foolish military adventure in Iraq and their wet dream of a “New Middle East” under US dominance have led to debacles for the US in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Israel in Lebanon):
George Bush has long asserted that the war in Iraq would remake the Middle East. Turns out he was right. According to a new report by Chatham House, a British think tank, after spending over $400 billion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has succeeded... in making Iran the top dog in the region. That's right, after over three years and 2,618 American lives lost in Iraq, Iran has now superceded America as the most influential power in that country. Indeed, in the words of the report, Iran now considers its former arch enemy its "own backyard." The Mullahs in Tehran have also become a "prominent presence" in Afghanistan. Arianna Huffington, Your Tax Dollars at Work in the Middle East, Huffington Post, 8-24-06
But instead of analyzing the Bush-Cheney machinations in regard to Iran with context and continuity, (i.e., by comparing it to the “sexing up” and “cherry-picking” of intelligence in the rush to invade and occupy Iraq), the US mainstream news media is once again carrying the Bush-Cheney cabal’s filthy water:
As today's page-one stories in both the New York Times and the Washington Post make clear, the Bush administration has begun to apply pressure on the U.S. intelligence agencies to pump up the threat that Iran poses….while both the Times story and the Post story make ample, if measured, reference to what happened the last time Cheney and Co. insisted on getting the "right" answers to their intelligence questions, neither reminded readers of how little skepticism we in the press brought to claims that Iraq had WMD, that Saddam's henchmen had gone to Niger and secured "yellowcake," that those aluminum tubes really were trouble, and that there was a 9/11 connection. Nor did those stories go far enough in putting this latest bit of White House maneuvering into its proper context. The country is less than three months away from a crucial mid-term election….Finally, there was scant outrage expressed anywhere in the press today (perhaps tomorrow?) over the fact that, despite all we've learned about this administration's willingness to say whatever is necessary to get what it wants, here, it seems, we go again....
Brent Cunningham, Shameless: Psst! Iran Helped Plan September 11 ..., Columbia Journalism Review, 8-24-06
The US mainstream news media’s refusal to provide context and continuity for Bush-Cheney’s foreign policy fiascos and national security blunders is also letting them pass in regard to the criminal negligence indulged in before, during and after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.
On Monday 8-29-05, after being told that New Orleans’ levees had breached, and that this was “the big one,” Bush put in a call to his Secretary of Homeland Security to discuss immigration, and then shared a birthday cake with the shell of a man formerly known as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Bush went to bed that night without responding to Lousiana Gov. Blanco’s request. “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” The next morning, he gave an address on Iraq at a US naval base and then played country with country singer Mark Willis before returning to Crawford for the last night of his vacation. On 9-1-05, Bush claimed that no one expected the levees to break. Katrina Timeline, Think Progress
And what has happened in the ensuing year?
“The government awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Hurricane Katrina work without full competition, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process, says a House study released Thursday by Democrats. The report, a comprehensive overview of government audits on Katrina contracting, found that out of $10.6 billion in contracts awarded after the storm last year, more than $7.4 billion were handed out with limited or no competitive bidding. In addition, 19 contracts worth $8.75 billion were found to have wasted taxpayer money at least in part, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the report. It cited numerous instances of double-billing by contractors and cases of trailers meant as emergency housing sitting empty in Arkansas. In the House report, Democrats faulted FEMA for recently awarding new $400 million temporary housing contracts for future disaster work to Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure, Bechtel National, CH2M Hill Inc. and Fluor Enterprises Inc….Three of them — Bechtel, CH2M Hill and Fluor — were found by government auditors to have wasted money in the hurricane effort. The Shaw Group Inc.'s lobbyist, Joe Allbaugh, is a former FEMA director and a longtime friend of President Bush, while Bechtel CEO Riley Bechtel served on Bush's Export Council from 2003-2004. HOPE YEN Democrats cite no-bid Katrina contracts, Associated Press, 8-24-06
But what have you heard about on the nightly network and cable news broadcasts?
On the August 23 edition of CNN's Live From..., host Kyra Phillips allowed Katrina survivor Rockey Vaccarella to repeatedly praise or deflect blame from President Bush over his handling of Hurricane Katrina, yet failed to note that Vaccarella once ran for local office as a Republican or challenge Vaccarella's various attempts to excuse the federal government's slow response. As Philadelphia Daily News senior writer Will Bunch has reported, Vaccarella ran in 1999 for the St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, commission as a Republican, according to a October 15, 1999, candidate profile in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. While Phillips noted that Vaccarella "ran for office in the past in St. Bernard Parish," she failed to mention his party affiliation. In "a wonderful segment," CNN provided forum for Katrina survivor to praise Bush on Katrina, omitted that he's a Republican, Media Matters, 8-23-06
Mr. Vaccarella got to shake hands with George W. Bush and thank him for the "millions of FEMA trailers" and exclaim his regret that Bush could not have a "third term." News clips of this encounter, of course, saturated the air waves.
If we still lived in a society where healthy democratic institutions protected the public good, the men responsible for the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the catastophe in New Orleans, would be angling to avoid prosecution right now, instead of planning their next military adventure.
And then, of course, there is 9/11. But I will wait until we are closer to the FIFTH anniversary of that slaughter of the innocents before I write about it AGAIN.
SOME RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 8-7-06: Coked Out? ABC Ignores 3 Blockbusters on War & Treason to Suggest Lamont, Not Lieberman, Would Be A "Disaster"
Words of Power #26: Lost Symbols, Part III -- The Goddess of Liberty
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #16: Lt. Gen. Newbold Bears Witness, Sy Hersh Sounds the Alarm & Patrick Fitzgerald Raises the Stakes
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
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, Afghanistan, Bush, Katrina, War Crimes, Arianna Huffington, News Media, Media Matters, FAIR, Columbia Journalism School
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
On the last day, Jesus will say to those on His right hand,
"Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them,
"Whatever you neglected to do unto one of the least of these, you neglected to do unto me!"
Jesus of Nazareth, Sermon on the Mount
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
By Richard Power
The genocide against black non-Islamic Africans in Darfur continues unchallenged in any real way. This crime against humanity is orchestrated by a militant Islamic government in Karthoum, which is propped up by international oil companies.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, and elsewhere throughout the US Gulf Coast region, politically favored profiteers have stolen billions of dollars in US federal aid money while fundamental human rights are being denied to hundreds of thousands of African Americans.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promised accountability in the afterlife. But the US Constitution (which cites "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as an "inalienable right") and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights demand accountability here and now.
Although the scope and contexts of the tragedies in Darfur and Katrina are different, they share more than one common factor, e.g., racism, oil and environmental issues. They also share in the revelation of a painful, but undeniable truth. Taken together, the fates of Darfur and New Orleans reveal a profound failure of the human spirit in the political establishment, the mainstream news media and the business community (both nationally and internationally).
Here are two recent stories on the genocide in Darfur and a comprehensive expose of post-Katrina corruption and human rights violations on the US Gulf Coast:
Sex attacks on displaced women collecting firewood in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region have surged to 200 a month from just a handful as security deteriorates, an international aid agency said on Wednesday. Darfuri women are forced to walk several miles into isolated bush from their camp confines to search for fuel, and a peace deal agreed in May between the Khartoum government and a Darfur rebel group has done little to bring security for them. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) documented more than 200 attacks on the women in the past five weeks outside the largest camp for displaced people in Darfur, where a three-year conflict has forced about 2.5 million people from their homes.
Darfur sex attacks rise as security deteriorates, Reuters, 8-23-06
Cornell will divest from Sudan in response to the genocide in Darfur, President David Skorton announced....The University will bar investments of its endowment assets in oil companies currently operating in Sudan and in obligations of the Sudanese government, according to a press release issued by the administration. The government of Sudan has long been under fire from the international community for rapes and murders being perpetrated on tribespeople by so-called janjaweed militia in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Skorton and local and national activists are enthusiastic about Cornell’s decision to divest from the country. “Given that more than half of the Sudanese government’s revenues are derived from oil, the Cornell community is sending an unequivocal message to the oil companies about the impact of their own actions in this crisis,” Skorton said in a statement issued to the press....Universities including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Yale, Stanford and the entire University of California system have already implemented divestment plans. Several states including New Jersey, Illinois, Maine, Arizona, Louisiana, Oregon and California have done so as well.
David Wittenberg, Skorton Announces Sudan Policy, Cornell to selectively divest from companies that support gov't, 8-23-06
The fact that there is an international human right of internally displaced people to return to their homes and a responsibility on government to help is heartening even though yet unfulfilled. The United Nations has blasted the poor U.S. response to Katrina. The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva accepted a report from Special Reporter Arjun Sengupta who visited New Orleans in fall of 2005 and concluded: "The Committee remains concerned about information that poor people, and in particular African-Americans, were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States of America, and continue to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans." Asian tsunami relief workers who visited New Orleans over the summer were shocked at the lack of recovery. Somsook Boonyabancha, director of the Community Organisations Development Institute in Thailand, told Reuters she was shocked at the lack of progress in New Orleans. "I'm surprised to see why the reconstruction work is so slow, because this is supposed to be one of the most rich and efficient countries in the world. It is starting at such a slow speed, incredibly slow speed."...Everyone who visits New Orleans asks the same question that locals ask - where is the money? Congress reportedly appropriated over $100 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion was allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture....As Corpwatch says in their recent report, "Many of the same 'disaster profiteers' and government agencies that mishandled the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq are responsible for the failure of 'reconstruction' of the Gulf Coast region. The Army Corps, Bechtel and Halliburton are using the very same 'contract vehicles' in the Gulf Coast as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are 'indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity' open-ended 'contingency' contracts that are being abused by the contractors on the Gulf Coast to squeeze out local companies. These are also 'cost-plus' contracts that allow them to collect a profit on everything they spend, which is an incentive to overspend."...How did a company that did not own a truck get a contract for debris removal worth hundreds of millions of dollars? The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver of early Katrina federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi from Army Corps of Engineers. The paper reported that the company does not own a single dumptruck! All they do is subcontract out the work. Ashbritt, however, had recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also trucked $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004.
Bill Quigley, Trying to Make It Home: New Orleans One Year After Katrina, Common Dreams, 8-22-06
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-3-06: Darfur is A Mirror Held Up to the Souls of the Great Nations, & What It Reveals is Hideous
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Words of Power #12: The Fallen Tree (Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Global Security Crisis, Part II)
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
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
Darfur, United Nations, Sudan, Genocide, Katrina, Human Rights, Jesus, Bill Quigley, Cornell University, David Skorton
"Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them,
"Whatever you neglected to do unto one of the least of these, you neglected to do unto me!"
Jesus of Nazareth, Sermon on the Mount
Hard Rain Journal 8-24-06: Updates on Darfur & Katrina, Failures of the Human Spirit
By Richard Power
The genocide against black non-Islamic Africans in Darfur continues unchallenged in any real way. This crime against humanity is orchestrated by a militant Islamic government in Karthoum, which is propped up by international oil companies.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, and elsewhere throughout the US Gulf Coast region, politically favored profiteers have stolen billions of dollars in US federal aid money while fundamental human rights are being denied to hundreds of thousands of African Americans.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promised accountability in the afterlife. But the US Constitution (which cites "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as an "inalienable right") and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights demand accountability here and now.
Although the scope and contexts of the tragedies in Darfur and Katrina are different, they share more than one common factor, e.g., racism, oil and environmental issues. They also share in the revelation of a painful, but undeniable truth. Taken together, the fates of Darfur and New Orleans reveal a profound failure of the human spirit in the political establishment, the mainstream news media and the business community (both nationally and internationally).
Here are two recent stories on the genocide in Darfur and a comprehensive expose of post-Katrina corruption and human rights violations on the US Gulf Coast:
Sex attacks on displaced women collecting firewood in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region have surged to 200 a month from just a handful as security deteriorates, an international aid agency said on Wednesday. Darfuri women are forced to walk several miles into isolated bush from their camp confines to search for fuel, and a peace deal agreed in May between the Khartoum government and a Darfur rebel group has done little to bring security for them. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) documented more than 200 attacks on the women in the past five weeks outside the largest camp for displaced people in Darfur, where a three-year conflict has forced about 2.5 million people from their homes.
Darfur sex attacks rise as security deteriorates, Reuters, 8-23-06
Cornell will divest from Sudan in response to the genocide in Darfur, President David Skorton announced....The University will bar investments of its endowment assets in oil companies currently operating in Sudan and in obligations of the Sudanese government, according to a press release issued by the administration. The government of Sudan has long been under fire from the international community for rapes and murders being perpetrated on tribespeople by so-called janjaweed militia in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Skorton and local and national activists are enthusiastic about Cornell’s decision to divest from the country. “Given that more than half of the Sudanese government’s revenues are derived from oil, the Cornell community is sending an unequivocal message to the oil companies about the impact of their own actions in this crisis,” Skorton said in a statement issued to the press....Universities including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Yale, Stanford and the entire University of California system have already implemented divestment plans. Several states including New Jersey, Illinois, Maine, Arizona, Louisiana, Oregon and California have done so as well.
David Wittenberg, Skorton Announces Sudan Policy, Cornell to selectively divest from companies that support gov't, 8-23-06
The fact that there is an international human right of internally displaced people to return to their homes and a responsibility on government to help is heartening even though yet unfulfilled. The United Nations has blasted the poor U.S. response to Katrina. The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva accepted a report from Special Reporter Arjun Sengupta who visited New Orleans in fall of 2005 and concluded: "The Committee remains concerned about information that poor people, and in particular African-Americans, were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States of America, and continue to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans." Asian tsunami relief workers who visited New Orleans over the summer were shocked at the lack of recovery. Somsook Boonyabancha, director of the Community Organisations Development Institute in Thailand, told Reuters she was shocked at the lack of progress in New Orleans. "I'm surprised to see why the reconstruction work is so slow, because this is supposed to be one of the most rich and efficient countries in the world. It is starting at such a slow speed, incredibly slow speed."...Everyone who visits New Orleans asks the same question that locals ask - where is the money? Congress reportedly appropriated over $100 billion to rebuild the Gulf Coast. Over $50 billion was allocated to temporary and long-term housing. Just under $30 billion was for emergency response and Department of Defense spending. Over $18 billion was for State and local response and the rebuilding of infrastructure. $3.6 billion was for health, social services and job training and $3.2 for non-housing cash assistance. $1.9 billion was allocated for education and $1.2 billion for agriculture....As Corpwatch says in their recent report, "Many of the same 'disaster profiteers' and government agencies that mishandled the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq are responsible for the failure of 'reconstruction' of the Gulf Coast region. The Army Corps, Bechtel and Halliburton are using the very same 'contract vehicles' in the Gulf Coast as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are 'indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity' open-ended 'contingency' contracts that are being abused by the contractors on the Gulf Coast to squeeze out local companies. These are also 'cost-plus' contracts that allow them to collect a profit on everything they spend, which is an incentive to overspend."...How did a company that did not own a truck get a contract for debris removal worth hundreds of millions of dollars? The Miami Herald reported that the single biggest receiver of early Katrina federal contracts was Ashbritt, Inc. of Pompano Beach, FL, which received over $579 million in contracts for debris removal in Mississippi from Army Corps of Engineers. The paper reported that the company does not own a single dumptruck! All they do is subcontract out the work. Ashbritt, however, had recently dumped $40,000 into the lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi Governor and former National GOP Chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt also trucked $50,000 over to the Republican National Committee in 2004.
Bill Quigley, Trying to Make It Home: New Orleans One Year After Katrina, Common Dreams, 8-22-06
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-3-06: Darfur is A Mirror Held Up to the Souls of the Great Nations, & What It Reveals is Hideous
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Words of Power #12: The Fallen Tree (Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Global Security Crisis, Part II)
Words of Power #25: Lost Symbols, Part II -- The Rainbow Serpent Hisses, Lessons about Sustainability & Survival from Darfur, Senegal and Ecuador
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
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
Darfur, United Nations, Sudan, Genocide, Katrina, Human Rights, Jesus, Bill Quigley, Cornell University, David Skorton
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 8-23-06: Struggle for Sanctity & integrity of Electoral Process Rages on in Both US & Mexico
A line of armored vehicles awaits outside Mexico's Congress building. Most are brand-new and have never seen action. But many Mexicans wonder whether their menacing presence is a harbinger of this divided country's future.
Federal authorities deployed the tanks to prevent supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from shutting down Mexico's legislature in a bid to pressure the Federal Electoral Tribunal to order a full recount of all 41 million votes in the disputed July 2 presidential election.
On Monday, the first and only street battle of Mexico's election controversy erupted outside Congress when federal police arrived to disperse supporters of Lopez Obrador. A handful of lawmakers were bruised in the melee.
Héctor Tobar, Mexico Bracing for Social Unrest, Tanks are deployed as the nation awaits a ruling on who won the July 2 presidential vote, Los Angeles Times, 8-20-06
Hard Rain Journal 8-23-06: Struggle for Sanctity and integrity of Electoral Process Rages on in Both US & Mexico
By Richard Power
The struggle to ensure the sanctity and integrity of the electoral process rages on in both the US and Mexico.
In the US, incredibly, the threat to our democratic institutions has captivated CNN's Lou Dobbs. And Dobbs, in turn, has let loose Kitty Pilgrim to deliver the only substantive and sustained reporting on black box voting available in the US mainstream news media.
Meanwhile, an op-ed piece by Avi Rubin is running in the 9-6-06 edition of Forbes. Rubin is a world-class computer scientist and cyber security expert. He has done an extraordinary service to this country over the past six years in raising awareness on this issue. But to see his by-line in Forbes is encouraging.
Has the historic qui tam law suit filed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Mike Papantonio woken up some business interests?
The most poignant twist in this vital story is what is going on in the streets of Mexico City. And of course, it is a non-event on US air waves. Over one million people have rallied several times now in the streets of Mexico City in an ongoing fight for a full recount. But you will not see these huge and unprecedented protests (or the tanks surrounding the Congress building) on the US evening news. The corporatist overlords of the US mainstream news media don't want you to get any wild ideas...
Here are three important items, two from US business media, and one from the alternative media:
The 2000 debacle in Florida spurred a rush to computerize voting. In 2002 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which handed out $2.6 billion to spend on voting machines. Most of that cash was used to acquire Direct Recording Electronic voting machines. Yet while computers are very proficient at counting, displaying choices and producing records, we should not rely on computers alone to count votes in public elections. The people who program them make mistakes, and, safeguards aside, they are more vulnerable to manipulation than most people realize. Even an event as common as a power glitch could cause a hard disk to fail or a magnetic card that holds votes to permanently lose its data. The only remedy then: Ask voters to come back to the polls. In a 2003 election in Boone County, Ind., DREs recorded 144,000 votes in one precinct populated with fewer than 6,000 registered voters. Though election officials caught the error, it's easy to imagine a scenario where such mistakes would go undetected until after a victor has been declared.
Consider one simple mode of attack that has already proved effective on a widely used DRE, the Accuvote made by Diebold (nyse: DBD - news - people ). It's called overwriting the boot loader, the software that runs first when the machine is booted up. The boot loader controls which operating system loads, so it is the most security-critical piece of the machine. In overwriting it an attacker can, for example, make the machine count every fifth Republican vote as a Democratic vote, swap the vote outcome at the end of the election or produce a completely fabricated result. To stage this attack, a night janitor at the polling place would need only a few seconds' worth of access to the computer's memory card slot.
Further, an attacker can modify what's known as the ballot definition file on the memory card. The outcome: Votes for two candidates for a particular office are swapped. This attack works by programming the software to recognize the precinct number where the machine is situated. If the attack code limits its execution to precincts that are statistically close but still favor a particular party, it goes unnoticed.
Aviel Rubin, Pull the Plug, Forbes Magazine, 9-4-06 Edition
DOBBS: This broadcast, as you know, has been reporting extensively on what is being called an electronic voting machine debacle in the Ohio special election. A new report shows problems with e-voting machines in that election were even worse than election officials first thought. And amazingly, some election officials still believe the machines actually performed well.
What's worse? Those machines and ones like them will be used all over again all around the country for the upcoming midterm elections in just 12 weeks....
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, using Diebold electronic voting machines was a debacle. The Election Science Institute, independent researchers commissioned by the county, found damning evidence that the electronic voting machines had major problems.
STEVE HERTZBERG, ELECTION SCIENCE INSTITUTE: We're missing data. We're missing critical components within the election. The board of elections cannot find it, and we believe that that is probably the greatest issue we're facing in this election. What are equivalent to what might be ballots in ballot boxes in the old days now turned into ones and zeroes.
PILGRIM: The report found the machine's four sources of vote totals, individual ballots, paper trail summary, election archives, and the memory cards, did not all match up. The totals were all different.
The report concludes, "These shortcomings merit urgent attention. Relying on the system in its present state should be viewed as a calculated risk."
But the secretary of state of Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, is still in denial. His office saying today, "The machines work. There is nothing wrong with the machines."
That is not what the report concludes. "The current election system, if left unchanged, contains significant threats. One likely result is diminished public confidence in a close election."
Cuyahoga County has, at last count, more than 1.3 million people, the most populous county in Ohio, including the city of Cleveland. It represents a critical mass of voters. But the report says the situation may not be resolved by the November election this year or even the 2008 presidential election....
PILGRIM: The county board of elections says they need to get to the bottom of this. They want the authors of the report, the scientists to sit down with Diebold and agree on what went wrong. They will then take measures to fix the problems.
And the scientists welcome that opportunity. They say it's important for the entire country that this issue is resolved — Lou.
DOBBS: For the entire democracy. And just about 12 weeks remaining in which to do so.
CNN's Lou Dobbs: An Electronic Voting Machine Debacle In Ohio's 2006 Primary Election, Scientific Report Commissioned by County says Numbers Don't Match Up: 'The current election system, if left unchanged, contains significant threats' OH Sec. of State's Response: 'The machines work. There is nothing wrong with the machines.' Brad Blog, 8-16-06
The Mexican peoples’ democracy movement and their leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador are modern heroes of democracy and to all who demand clean elections. They recall the heroics of the Ukrainians with one important difference. There are no “great powers” supporting them. In fact, the American regime is hostile to a victory by Obrador and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The increasingly unpopular and isolated White House cadre may have done its best to obstruct such an eventuality in ways which by now are predictably familiar. The Mexican people are alone, on the street, fighting the brave fight for people everywhere who believe in the inherently inalienable and natural right of men and women to determine their own destiny through free, fair, and transparent elections.
Supporters of democracy in Mexico are making a stand in the nation’s capitol. They just had their third major demonstration with more than a million participants. The American press tried a theme of demonstrators growing weary recently, just before the latest seven figure gathering. The demonstrations tell Mexicans and the world that the election was so questionable, an investigation is mandated through a thorough review of the most direct evidence: the ballots. The PRD’s demand for a “ballot by ballot, precinct by precinct” recount is fully warranted....
The millions flooding the public squares supporting Obrador’s cause are fully conscious as they act in civil disobedience. They know of the recent assault on sleeping teachers in Oaxaca and the history of premeditated violence by the previous government against the protesters who threatened far less than the democracy advocates are threatening today. Their goal is an end to decades of corruption which steals the wealth, lives, and soul of a nation of intelligent, hard working, creative people.
It is both prescient and incumbent upon all of us to support the heroic efforts of the Mexican people in any way we can. We should draw inspiration from their real-world battle against those who would hide ballots as though they were personal property instead of the fundamental statement of the public will. We must honor these sentinels of democracy by redoubling our efforts to make voter suppression, voter disenfranchisement, and nonsensical outcomes a thing of the past in the United States.
In a very real sense, Obrador and the PRD are leading the way to a positive shift in the movement toward freedom and against tyranny.
Citizens of the United States owe the Mexican people a great debt. We must respond with acts of comparable commitment in our own struggle for human dignity and freedom. Failure to act allows the nihilistic forces which serve outmoded, corrupt, and world killing philosophies to continue unopposed. These forces proceed despite all indications that the path and process have set us on a course of undeniable and obvious global catastrophe. There is an alternative available and it is coming to life right now in Mexico.
Michael Collins, The Mexican People: Heroes of Democracy, Scoop, 8-23-06
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-9-06: Lamont & McKinney Stories Underscore the Importance of Lopez Obrador's Struggle
Hard Rain Journal 7-30-06: Struggle for Fair Elections, North & South of the Rio Grande
Hard Rain Journal 7-22-06 Weekend Edition: Updates on US Election Fraud and the Dan Rather Watch
Hard Rain Journal 7-18-06: Update on Disputed Mexican Presidential Election
GS(3) Thunderbolt 7-10-06: Will the Disputed Mexican Election Lead to Insurrection? Lessons for Mexico from the US, and Lessons for the US from Mexico
GS(3) Thunderbolt 7-7-06: Mexican Presidential Election Still in Doubt
GS(3) Thunderbolt 7-3-06: Greg Palast on the Case in the Mexican Presidential Election
Hard Rain Journal 6-28-06: NYU Law School's Brennan Center Reports E-Voting Software Attacks are a Real Danger
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
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
Aviel Rubin, Information Warfare, Cyber Security, Voting, Elections, Election, Vote, Vote Fraud, fraud, cybercrime, cyber crime, Mexico, Lou Dobbs, López Obrador, Ohio, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Scoop, Mike Papantonio, Michael Collins
Federal authorities deployed the tanks to prevent supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from shutting down Mexico's legislature in a bid to pressure the Federal Electoral Tribunal to order a full recount of all 41 million votes in the disputed July 2 presidential election.
On Monday, the first and only street battle of Mexico's election controversy erupted outside Congress when federal police arrived to disperse supporters of Lopez Obrador. A handful of lawmakers were bruised in the melee.
Héctor Tobar, Mexico Bracing for Social Unrest, Tanks are deployed as the nation awaits a ruling on who won the July 2 presidential vote, Los Angeles Times, 8-20-06
Hard Rain Journal 8-23-06: Struggle for Sanctity and integrity of Electoral Process Rages on in Both US & Mexico
By Richard Power
The struggle to ensure the sanctity and integrity of the electoral process rages on in both the US and Mexico.
In the US, incredibly, the threat to our democratic institutions has captivated CNN's Lou Dobbs. And Dobbs, in turn, has let loose Kitty Pilgrim to deliver the only substantive and sustained reporting on black box voting available in the US mainstream news media.
Meanwhile, an op-ed piece by Avi Rubin is running in the 9-6-06 edition of Forbes. Rubin is a world-class computer scientist and cyber security expert. He has done an extraordinary service to this country over the past six years in raising awareness on this issue. But to see his by-line in Forbes is encouraging.
Has the historic qui tam law suit filed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Mike Papantonio woken up some business interests?
The most poignant twist in this vital story is what is going on in the streets of Mexico City. And of course, it is a non-event on US air waves. Over one million people have rallied several times now in the streets of Mexico City in an ongoing fight for a full recount. But you will not see these huge and unprecedented protests (or the tanks surrounding the Congress building) on the US evening news. The corporatist overlords of the US mainstream news media don't want you to get any wild ideas...
Here are three important items, two from US business media, and one from the alternative media:
The 2000 debacle in Florida spurred a rush to computerize voting. In 2002 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, which handed out $2.6 billion to spend on voting machines. Most of that cash was used to acquire Direct Recording Electronic voting machines. Yet while computers are very proficient at counting, displaying choices and producing records, we should not rely on computers alone to count votes in public elections. The people who program them make mistakes, and, safeguards aside, they are more vulnerable to manipulation than most people realize. Even an event as common as a power glitch could cause a hard disk to fail or a magnetic card that holds votes to permanently lose its data. The only remedy then: Ask voters to come back to the polls. In a 2003 election in Boone County, Ind., DREs recorded 144,000 votes in one precinct populated with fewer than 6,000 registered voters. Though election officials caught the error, it's easy to imagine a scenario where such mistakes would go undetected until after a victor has been declared.
Consider one simple mode of attack that has already proved effective on a widely used DRE, the Accuvote made by Diebold (nyse: DBD - news - people ). It's called overwriting the boot loader, the software that runs first when the machine is booted up. The boot loader controls which operating system loads, so it is the most security-critical piece of the machine. In overwriting it an attacker can, for example, make the machine count every fifth Republican vote as a Democratic vote, swap the vote outcome at the end of the election or produce a completely fabricated result. To stage this attack, a night janitor at the polling place would need only a few seconds' worth of access to the computer's memory card slot.
Further, an attacker can modify what's known as the ballot definition file on the memory card. The outcome: Votes for two candidates for a particular office are swapped. This attack works by programming the software to recognize the precinct number where the machine is situated. If the attack code limits its execution to precincts that are statistically close but still favor a particular party, it goes unnoticed.
Aviel Rubin, Pull the Plug, Forbes Magazine, 9-4-06 Edition
DOBBS: This broadcast, as you know, has been reporting extensively on what is being called an electronic voting machine debacle in the Ohio special election. A new report shows problems with e-voting machines in that election were even worse than election officials first thought. And amazingly, some election officials still believe the machines actually performed well.
What's worse? Those machines and ones like them will be used all over again all around the country for the upcoming midterm elections in just 12 weeks....
KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, using Diebold electronic voting machines was a debacle. The Election Science Institute, independent researchers commissioned by the county, found damning evidence that the electronic voting machines had major problems.
STEVE HERTZBERG, ELECTION SCIENCE INSTITUTE: We're missing data. We're missing critical components within the election. The board of elections cannot find it, and we believe that that is probably the greatest issue we're facing in this election. What are equivalent to what might be ballots in ballot boxes in the old days now turned into ones and zeroes.
PILGRIM: The report found the machine's four sources of vote totals, individual ballots, paper trail summary, election archives, and the memory cards, did not all match up. The totals were all different.
The report concludes, "These shortcomings merit urgent attention. Relying on the system in its present state should be viewed as a calculated risk."
But the secretary of state of Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, is still in denial. His office saying today, "The machines work. There is nothing wrong with the machines."
That is not what the report concludes. "The current election system, if left unchanged, contains significant threats. One likely result is diminished public confidence in a close election."
Cuyahoga County has, at last count, more than 1.3 million people, the most populous county in Ohio, including the city of Cleveland. It represents a critical mass of voters. But the report says the situation may not be resolved by the November election this year or even the 2008 presidential election....
PILGRIM: The county board of elections says they need to get to the bottom of this. They want the authors of the report, the scientists to sit down with Diebold and agree on what went wrong. They will then take measures to fix the problems.
And the scientists welcome that opportunity. They say it's important for the entire country that this issue is resolved — Lou.
DOBBS: For the entire democracy. And just about 12 weeks remaining in which to do so.
CNN's Lou Dobbs: An Electronic Voting Machine Debacle In Ohio's 2006 Primary Election, Scientific Report Commissioned by County says Numbers Don't Match Up: 'The current election system, if left unchanged, contains significant threats' OH Sec. of State's Response: 'The machines work. There is nothing wrong with the machines.' Brad Blog, 8-16-06
The Mexican peoples’ democracy movement and their leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador are modern heroes of democracy and to all who demand clean elections. They recall the heroics of the Ukrainians with one important difference. There are no “great powers” supporting them. In fact, the American regime is hostile to a victory by Obrador and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The increasingly unpopular and isolated White House cadre may have done its best to obstruct such an eventuality in ways which by now are predictably familiar. The Mexican people are alone, on the street, fighting the brave fight for people everywhere who believe in the inherently inalienable and natural right of men and women to determine their own destiny through free, fair, and transparent elections.
Supporters of democracy in Mexico are making a stand in the nation’s capitol. They just had their third major demonstration with more than a million participants. The American press tried a theme of demonstrators growing weary recently, just before the latest seven figure gathering. The demonstrations tell Mexicans and the world that the election was so questionable, an investigation is mandated through a thorough review of the most direct evidence: the ballots. The PRD’s demand for a “ballot by ballot, precinct by precinct” recount is fully warranted....
The millions flooding the public squares supporting Obrador’s cause are fully conscious as they act in civil disobedience. They know of the recent assault on sleeping teachers in Oaxaca and the history of premeditated violence by the previous government against the protesters who threatened far less than the democracy advocates are threatening today. Their goal is an end to decades of corruption which steals the wealth, lives, and soul of a nation of intelligent, hard working, creative people.
It is both prescient and incumbent upon all of us to support the heroic efforts of the Mexican people in any way we can. We should draw inspiration from their real-world battle against those who would hide ballots as though they were personal property instead of the fundamental statement of the public will. We must honor these sentinels of democracy by redoubling our efforts to make voter suppression, voter disenfranchisement, and nonsensical outcomes a thing of the past in the United States.
In a very real sense, Obrador and the PRD are leading the way to a positive shift in the movement toward freedom and against tyranny.
Citizens of the United States owe the Mexican people a great debt. We must respond with acts of comparable commitment in our own struggle for human dignity and freedom. Failure to act allows the nihilistic forces which serve outmoded, corrupt, and world killing philosophies to continue unopposed. These forces proceed despite all indications that the path and process have set us on a course of undeniable and obvious global catastrophe. There is an alternative available and it is coming to life right now in Mexico.
Michael Collins, The Mexican People: Heroes of Democracy, Scoop, 8-23-06
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 8-9-06: Lamont & McKinney Stories Underscore the Importance of Lopez Obrador's Struggle
Hard Rain Journal 7-30-06: Struggle for Fair Elections, North & South of the Rio Grande
Hard Rain Journal 7-22-06 Weekend Edition: Updates on US Election Fraud and the Dan Rather Watch
Hard Rain Journal 7-18-06: Update on Disputed Mexican Presidential Election
GS(3) Thunderbolt 7-10-06: Will the Disputed Mexican Election Lead to Insurrection? Lessons for Mexico from the US, and Lessons for the US from Mexico
GS(3) Thunderbolt 7-7-06: Mexican Presidential Election Still in Doubt
GS(3) Thunderbolt 7-3-06: Greg Palast on the Case in the Mexican Presidential Election
Hard Rain Journal 6-28-06: NYU Law School's Brennan Center Reports E-Voting Software Attacks are a Real Danger
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
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
Aviel Rubin, Information Warfare, Cyber Security, Voting, Elections, Election, Vote, Vote Fraud, fraud, cybercrime, cyber crime, Mexico, Lou Dobbs, López Obrador, Ohio, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Scoop, Mike Papantonio, Michael Collins
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
By Richard Power
There are a lot of IFs -- if there is a future, if it allows for historians, and if those historians are reality-based….But if we get past all of those IFs, betrayal will be the great theme to emerge from the history of Bush-Cheney and their cronies. They betrayed US economic security with irresponsible tax cuts that gutted the federal surplus and plunged the country into debt. They betrayed US environmental security by lying to the populace about global warming. They betrayed US national security before 9/11 by downgrading the Al Qaeda threat, and ignoring the numerous warnings (most notably the 8-6-01 PDB). And then afterward, they betrayed US homeland security by failing to kill Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar, and by failing to fully enact the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. They betrayed the right to vote in the elections of 2000 and 2004. They betrayed the men and women of the US military by sending them into Iraq on a foolish military adventure with inadequate equipment, in insufficient numbers and with no exit strategy. They betrayed the national honor, and civilization itself (i.e., the Geneva Accords) by institutionalizing torture and the inhumane treatment of prisoners in US custody. Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal…
Here are three more betrayals that have resurfaced, like floaters, in the public psyche (or should have):
Betrayal of the Oath of Office
In Detroit, on 8-17-06, US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Bill of Rights, and against the Bush-Cheney regime, in the NSA domestic wiretapping case:
“So what does this mean? It means President Bush violated his oath of office, among other things, when he swore to uphold the constitution of the United States. It means he's been lying to us about the program since it started, when he's been telling us there's nothing illegal about what he's been doing. A court has ruled it is illegal. And it means a 75-year-old black female judge in Michigan has finally stepped in and done the job that Congress is supposed to do, namely oversight of the executive branch of government. But the Congress is controlled by the Republicans and they are controlled by the president and they have done nothing in the way of oversight.”
Jack Cafferty, CNN, 8-17-06
To download a .pdf of the full text of Judge Taylor's brave and historic decision, click here.
Betrayal of the Poor
On 8-20-06, Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, a four-hour HBO documentary on the death of New Orleans through criminal negligence in high office before, during and after Hurricane Katrina debuted in the New Orleans Arena:
A Ninth Ward resident talks about seeing his dead neighbor floating in the water for days and remarks how "he was all blown up." Herbert Freeman Jr. tells us how he sat outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center with his elderly mother in the heat with no water for days while waiting for buses that took too long arrive. "She was asking me questions like every five, 10 minutes, and then I noticed she had nodded off." When a soldier ordered him at gunpoint onto the bus that finally came, he was forced to leave his mother's body behind with only a handwritten note identifying her. "I had to pray for my own salvation," he says, and his voice never once breaks -- but his face shows a man who still can't believe that was the choice he had to make.
A Ninth Ward resident talks about seeing his dead neighbor floating in the water for days and remarks how "he was all blown up." Herbert Freeman Jr. tells us how he sat outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center with his elderly mother in the heat with no water for days while waiting for buses that took too long arrive. "She was asking me questions like every five, 10 minutes, and then I noticed she had nodded off." When a soldier ordered him at gunpoint onto the bus that finally came, he was forced to leave his mother's body behind with only a handwritten note identifying her. "I had to pray for my own salvation," he says, and his voice never once breaks -- but his face shows a man who still can't believe that was the choice he had to make.
Cynthia Joyce, N.O. better blues, Salon, 8-20-06
Betrayal of a Secret Agent
Despite the US mainstream news media’s complicity in pushing the story (generated solely by Rove's lawyer) that US Justice Department prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had cleared Rove of wrong-doing in the treasonous outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and its subsequent cover-up, Rove was quite likely indicted three months ago, and has been cooperating, or claiming to cooperate with Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation ever since. Why? Well, perhaps it is VICE _resident Cheney who at the center of this scandal, not Rove.
On 8-21-06, Jason Leopold and Marc Ash of Truthout posted an update:
A two-month investigation undertaken by Truthout into the circumstances that led to Karl Rove's alleged exoneration in the leak probe has once again put the spotlight back on Sealed vs. Sealed, the heading under which 06 cr 128 was filed in US District Court between May 10 and May 17….With Rove cooperating, the probe has once again shifted, and the focus now is on another high-level official in the executive branch: Vice President Dick Cheney. Vice President Dick Cheney is a figure of keen interest to investigators working on the outing of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, former undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. Sources directly familiar with the investigation said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his closest confidants suspect that Cheney was "involved in orchestrating a plot to discredit former ambassador Wilson."…In the case of Vice President Cheney there are, according to the sources familiar with the case, "Constitutional issues that must be researched." Sources familiar with the ongoing probe said that Constitutional experts are deliberating with the Plame investigators, and that the vice president views his status as shielded, to some extent, by executive privilege.
Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame matter is still active and ongoing, sources said, and will be for some time. Fitzgerald has long considered bringing additional charges against other individuals in the administration....Fitzgerald has yet to comment on the status of the probe or specifically on high profile figures his investigators have focused on....
Attempting to gain a clearer picture of the events leading up to the June 12 letter sent by Patrick Fitzgerald to Luskin, our two-month investigation led to several interesting revelations that were communicated to us by well-placed sources. The letter is constructed in a manner consistent with what would be expected when a federal prosecutor writes a letter to a subject's attorney. The letter, we are told, spelled out what was expected of Rove, and made clear the ramifications should he fail to honor the terms of his verbal cooperation agreement with Fitzgerald. According to experts in federal criminal law, that approach is fairly standard given the circumstances.
It was Luskin, sources said, who seized on the single phrase from Fitzgerald's letter that gave the appearance of exoneration trumpeted by the US commercial press. In fact, the letter, taken as a whole, paints no such picture. According to those familiar with the letter sent to Luskin, it details the obligations of a subject, Karl Rove, who must choose between cooperation and further prosecution. If the document were made public it would indicate those obligations, the sources said.
Jason Leopold & Marc Ash, Indictment Still Sealed, Fitzgerald Still Busy, Truthout, 8-21-06
Meanwhile, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson have filed a civil lawsuit against Libby, Rove and Cheney. For more information, go to the Joseph Wilson and Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 7-4-06: Latest Report on Fitzgerald Investigation -- Bush Told Cheney to "Get It Out!"
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Hard Rain Journal 6-13-06 (Continued): If Treason Occurs, But Everyone Pretends It Didn’t, Is It Still Treason?
Hard Rain Journal 6-13-06: Two Items -- Extraordinary Cyber Security Breach in S.D. Special Election? And More on Rove and Plame...
Hard Rain Journal 6-12-06: Is "Sealed vs. Sealed" the Flashpoint of a Constitutional Crisis?
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #16: Lt. Gen. Newbold Bears Witness, Sy Hersh Sounds the Alarm & Patrick Fitzgerald Raises the Stakes
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
Plame, Rove, Cheney, Bush, Libby, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, Partrick Fitzgerald, Jason Leopold, Katrina, New Orleans, Spike Lee, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, US Constitution
By Richard Power
There are a lot of IFs -- if there is a future, if it allows for historians, and if those historians are reality-based….But if we get past all of those IFs, betrayal will be the great theme to emerge from the history of Bush-Cheney and their cronies. They betrayed US economic security with irresponsible tax cuts that gutted the federal surplus and plunged the country into debt. They betrayed US environmental security by lying to the populace about global warming. They betrayed US national security before 9/11 by downgrading the Al Qaeda threat, and ignoring the numerous warnings (most notably the 8-6-01 PDB). And then afterward, they betrayed US homeland security by failing to kill Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar, and by failing to fully enact the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. They betrayed the right to vote in the elections of 2000 and 2004. They betrayed the men and women of the US military by sending them into Iraq on a foolish military adventure with inadequate equipment, in insufficient numbers and with no exit strategy. They betrayed the national honor, and civilization itself (i.e., the Geneva Accords) by institutionalizing torture and the inhumane treatment of prisoners in US custody. Betrayal, betrayal, betrayal…
Here are three more betrayals that have resurfaced, like floaters, in the public psyche (or should have):
Betrayal of the Oath of Office
In Detroit, on 8-17-06, US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Bill of Rights, and against the Bush-Cheney regime, in the NSA domestic wiretapping case:
“So what does this mean? It means President Bush violated his oath of office, among other things, when he swore to uphold the constitution of the United States. It means he's been lying to us about the program since it started, when he's been telling us there's nothing illegal about what he's been doing. A court has ruled it is illegal. And it means a 75-year-old black female judge in Michigan has finally stepped in and done the job that Congress is supposed to do, namely oversight of the executive branch of government. But the Congress is controlled by the Republicans and they are controlled by the president and they have done nothing in the way of oversight.”
Jack Cafferty, CNN, 8-17-06
To download a .pdf of the full text of Judge Taylor's brave and historic decision, click here.
Betrayal of the Poor
On 8-20-06, Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, a four-hour HBO documentary on the death of New Orleans through criminal negligence in high office before, during and after Hurricane Katrina debuted in the New Orleans Arena:
A Ninth Ward resident talks about seeing his dead neighbor floating in the water for days and remarks how "he was all blown up." Herbert Freeman Jr. tells us how he sat outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center with his elderly mother in the heat with no water for days while waiting for buses that took too long arrive. "She was asking me questions like every five, 10 minutes, and then I noticed she had nodded off." When a soldier ordered him at gunpoint onto the bus that finally came, he was forced to leave his mother's body behind with only a handwritten note identifying her. "I had to pray for my own salvation," he says, and his voice never once breaks -- but his face shows a man who still can't believe that was the choice he had to make.
A Ninth Ward resident talks about seeing his dead neighbor floating in the water for days and remarks how "he was all blown up." Herbert Freeman Jr. tells us how he sat outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center with his elderly mother in the heat with no water for days while waiting for buses that took too long arrive. "She was asking me questions like every five, 10 minutes, and then I noticed she had nodded off." When a soldier ordered him at gunpoint onto the bus that finally came, he was forced to leave his mother's body behind with only a handwritten note identifying her. "I had to pray for my own salvation," he says, and his voice never once breaks -- but his face shows a man who still can't believe that was the choice he had to make.
Cynthia Joyce, N.O. better blues, Salon, 8-20-06
Betrayal of a Secret Agent
Despite the US mainstream news media’s complicity in pushing the story (generated solely by Rove's lawyer) that US Justice Department prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had cleared Rove of wrong-doing in the treasonous outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and its subsequent cover-up, Rove was quite likely indicted three months ago, and has been cooperating, or claiming to cooperate with Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation ever since. Why? Well, perhaps it is VICE _resident Cheney who at the center of this scandal, not Rove.
On 8-21-06, Jason Leopold and Marc Ash of Truthout posted an update:
A two-month investigation undertaken by Truthout into the circumstances that led to Karl Rove's alleged exoneration in the leak probe has once again put the spotlight back on Sealed vs. Sealed, the heading under which 06 cr 128 was filed in US District Court between May 10 and May 17….With Rove cooperating, the probe has once again shifted, and the focus now is on another high-level official in the executive branch: Vice President Dick Cheney. Vice President Dick Cheney is a figure of keen interest to investigators working on the outing of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, former undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. Sources directly familiar with the investigation said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his closest confidants suspect that Cheney was "involved in orchestrating a plot to discredit former ambassador Wilson."…In the case of Vice President Cheney there are, according to the sources familiar with the case, "Constitutional issues that must be researched." Sources familiar with the ongoing probe said that Constitutional experts are deliberating with the Plame investigators, and that the vice president views his status as shielded, to some extent, by executive privilege.
Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame matter is still active and ongoing, sources said, and will be for some time. Fitzgerald has long considered bringing additional charges against other individuals in the administration....Fitzgerald has yet to comment on the status of the probe or specifically on high profile figures his investigators have focused on....
Attempting to gain a clearer picture of the events leading up to the June 12 letter sent by Patrick Fitzgerald to Luskin, our two-month investigation led to several interesting revelations that were communicated to us by well-placed sources. The letter is constructed in a manner consistent with what would be expected when a federal prosecutor writes a letter to a subject's attorney. The letter, we are told, spelled out what was expected of Rove, and made clear the ramifications should he fail to honor the terms of his verbal cooperation agreement with Fitzgerald. According to experts in federal criminal law, that approach is fairly standard given the circumstances.
It was Luskin, sources said, who seized on the single phrase from Fitzgerald's letter that gave the appearance of exoneration trumpeted by the US commercial press. In fact, the letter, taken as a whole, paints no such picture. According to those familiar with the letter sent to Luskin, it details the obligations of a subject, Karl Rove, who must choose between cooperation and further prosecution. If the document were made public it would indicate those obligations, the sources said.
Jason Leopold & Marc Ash, Indictment Still Sealed, Fitzgerald Still Busy, Truthout, 8-21-06
Meanwhile, Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson have filed a civil lawsuit against Libby, Rove and Cheney. For more information, go to the Joseph Wilson and Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust.
RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 7-4-06: Latest Report on Fitzgerald Investigation -- Bush Told Cheney to "Get It Out!"
Words of Power #1: Truths Salvaged from Post-Katrina Debacle
Hard Rain Journal 6-13-06 (Continued): If Treason Occurs, But Everyone Pretends It Didn’t, Is It Still Treason?
Hard Rain Journal 6-13-06: Two Items -- Extraordinary Cyber Security Breach in S.D. Special Election? And More on Rove and Plame...
Hard Rain Journal 6-12-06: Is "Sealed vs. Sealed" the Flashpoint of a Constitutional Crisis?
Words of Power #19: Colbert and McGovern Echo Murrow and Eisenhower, Is the U.S. Nearing Its Tiananmen Square Moment?
Words of Power #16: Lt. Gen. Newbold Bears Witness, Sy Hersh Sounds the Alarm & Patrick Fitzgerald Raises the Stakes
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
Plame, Rove, Cheney, Bush, Libby, Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, Partrick Fitzgerald, Jason Leopold, Katrina, New Orleans, Spike Lee, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, US Constitution
Monday, August 21, 2006
Hard Rain Journal 8-21-06: Bird Flu Update – Denial is More Dangerous than H5N1 Virus Itself
Hard Rain Journal 8-21-06: Bird Flu Update – Denial is More Dangerous than H5N1 Virus Itself
By Richard Power
As of today, 95 people have died from bird flu in 2006, that's as many people as died in all of 2005.
There is concern about a possible second cluster of human infection in Indonesia. According to some reports at least 12 people in Cikelet, a village 150 km southeast of Jakarta, have fallen ill. Two people, a mother and daughter, have died. Such clusters could indicate human to human transmission, although Indonesian authorities are downplaying the likelihood.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, "new strains" of the H5N1 virus, which spread from southern China, are responsible for fresh outbreaks among poultry in Thailand and Laos, although China denies it.
As with numerous other risks and threats, the denial of those responsible for public health, safety, and security is more dangerous than the virus itself.
Bird flu is not only a threat, it is an opportunity for your organization -- both to empower your people by heightening their awareness and to upgrade your preparedness (not only for pandemics but for other disastrous eventualities). Do not forgo it.
Here are excerpts from news stories on recent developments in the bird flu story:
In Indonesia there are more fears about a new bird flu outbreak after it was confirmed that Eius Lina, a 35 year-old woman who died last Thursday at Dr Slamet Hospital, had the bird flu. She is among at least 12 suspected cases of the disease in the West Javan village of Cikelet, 150 km southeast of Jakarta. Her nine-year-old daughter died two weeks ago, but she was buried before any tissue samples were taken for testing. “We did not take her [daughter's] specimens, so we don't know whether she is positive or negative,” I Nyoman Kandun, Indonesia's director general of communicable disease control, said. “It seems she had the same symptoms - pneumonia, breathlessness. If the daughter was also positive we can say this is a cluster family.”
Indonesia probes possible cluster after 45th bird flu death, Asia News/Italy, 8-21-06
New strains of the H5N1 virus caused some of the fresh outbreaks of bird flu in Thailand and Laos and they appear to have spread from southern China, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said....Vigorous control measures must be implemented to prevent further spread of the disease in birds and poultry, the U.N. agency said in a statement. Recent outbreaks of avian flu in northeastern Thailand and neighbouring Laos were caused by a H5N1 virus strain previously not detected in the region, but similar to a strain found in southern China, it said. "Poultry trade across borders is continuing in Southeast and East Asia despite well-known risks," the FAO said. New bird flu strains blamed for S.E. Asia outbreaks, Reuters, 8-17-06
Lack of cooperation between health and farm officials in developing countries is hampering the fight against bird flu, the World Health Organisation said....WHO officials say one major problem lay in the differing focus of health and farm or animal husbandry departments. "Basically, the target populations of the different departments have been different: one focusing on poultry and the other people," said Subhash Salunke, WHO's regional advisor for communicable disease surveillance and response....A prime example of such a lack of coordination was Indonesia, one of the delegates said. The fight against bird flu in Indonesia was largely led by the health ministry whose officials had little idea about animal health, said the delegate, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Indonesia, along with China, is among the worst-affected countries. India and Thailand were cited as countries where there was good coordination between health and agricultural departments. "In the countries where these two sectors have collaborated well, the outbreaks in animals and in humans have been contained," Samlee Plianbangchang, WHO regional director for Southeast Asia, told delegates. Lack of coordination hitting bird flu fight - WHO, Reuters, 7-28-06
China admits its first human death from bird flu actually occurred in late 2003 – several months earlier than the previously reported first death from the current outbreak. The Chinese health ministry confirmed its first human case through laboratory tests that were carried out with the World Health Organization (WHO) and researchers from the Chinese Academy of Military Medicine, the ministry said on its website. It identified the victim as a 24-year-old private in the People's Liberation Army, surnamed Shi. China had previously said its first human bird flu case was in November 2005. Officials admitted their mistake after eight Chinese scientists published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in June 2006, claiming Shi became ill from bird flu on 25 November 2003 and later died. The journal even received a bogus email claiming to come from an author of the letter and asking for its withdrawal...Prior to China's announcement, the first human death from bird flu in recent years was believed to have been in Vietnam in January 2004. Since then, over 220 people have caught the virus, resulting in about 130 fatalities....China was widely criticised for initially covering up the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in late 2002, enabling the virus to spread more easily and kill hundreds globally. New Scientist, 8-9-06
Related Posts:
Hard Rain Journal 7-11-06: Bird Flu Update – Woe in Indonesia, Concern in Africa, & Preparedness in An Australian Resort & Small Town USA
Hard Rain Journal 6-30-06: Bird Flu Update -- Four Important News Items
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, India, SARS, Crisis Management, Business Continuity, Indonesia, China, Laos, Thailand
By Richard Power
As of today, 95 people have died from bird flu in 2006, that's as many people as died in all of 2005.
There is concern about a possible second cluster of human infection in Indonesia. According to some reports at least 12 people in Cikelet, a village 150 km southeast of Jakarta, have fallen ill. Two people, a mother and daughter, have died. Such clusters could indicate human to human transmission, although Indonesian authorities are downplaying the likelihood.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, "new strains" of the H5N1 virus, which spread from southern China, are responsible for fresh outbreaks among poultry in Thailand and Laos, although China denies it.
As with numerous other risks and threats, the denial of those responsible for public health, safety, and security is more dangerous than the virus itself.
Bird flu is not only a threat, it is an opportunity for your organization -- both to empower your people by heightening their awareness and to upgrade your preparedness (not only for pandemics but for other disastrous eventualities). Do not forgo it.
Here are excerpts from news stories on recent developments in the bird flu story:
In Indonesia there are more fears about a new bird flu outbreak after it was confirmed that Eius Lina, a 35 year-old woman who died last Thursday at Dr Slamet Hospital, had the bird flu. She is among at least 12 suspected cases of the disease in the West Javan village of Cikelet, 150 km southeast of Jakarta. Her nine-year-old daughter died two weeks ago, but she was buried before any tissue samples were taken for testing. “We did not take her [daughter's] specimens, so we don't know whether she is positive or negative,” I Nyoman Kandun, Indonesia's director general of communicable disease control, said. “It seems she had the same symptoms - pneumonia, breathlessness. If the daughter was also positive we can say this is a cluster family.”
Indonesia probes possible cluster after 45th bird flu death, Asia News/Italy, 8-21-06
New strains of the H5N1 virus caused some of the fresh outbreaks of bird flu in Thailand and Laos and they appear to have spread from southern China, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said....Vigorous control measures must be implemented to prevent further spread of the disease in birds and poultry, the U.N. agency said in a statement. Recent outbreaks of avian flu in northeastern Thailand and neighbouring Laos were caused by a H5N1 virus strain previously not detected in the region, but similar to a strain found in southern China, it said. "Poultry trade across borders is continuing in Southeast and East Asia despite well-known risks," the FAO said. New bird flu strains blamed for S.E. Asia outbreaks, Reuters, 8-17-06
Lack of cooperation between health and farm officials in developing countries is hampering the fight against bird flu, the World Health Organisation said....WHO officials say one major problem lay in the differing focus of health and farm or animal husbandry departments. "Basically, the target populations of the different departments have been different: one focusing on poultry and the other people," said Subhash Salunke, WHO's regional advisor for communicable disease surveillance and response....A prime example of such a lack of coordination was Indonesia, one of the delegates said. The fight against bird flu in Indonesia was largely led by the health ministry whose officials had little idea about animal health, said the delegate, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Indonesia, along with China, is among the worst-affected countries. India and Thailand were cited as countries where there was good coordination between health and agricultural departments. "In the countries where these two sectors have collaborated well, the outbreaks in animals and in humans have been contained," Samlee Plianbangchang, WHO regional director for Southeast Asia, told delegates. Lack of coordination hitting bird flu fight - WHO, Reuters, 7-28-06
China admits its first human death from bird flu actually occurred in late 2003 – several months earlier than the previously reported first death from the current outbreak. The Chinese health ministry confirmed its first human case through laboratory tests that were carried out with the World Health Organization (WHO) and researchers from the Chinese Academy of Military Medicine, the ministry said on its website. It identified the victim as a 24-year-old private in the People's Liberation Army, surnamed Shi. China had previously said its first human bird flu case was in November 2005. Officials admitted their mistake after eight Chinese scientists published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in June 2006, claiming Shi became ill from bird flu on 25 November 2003 and later died. The journal even received a bogus email claiming to come from an author of the letter and asking for its withdrawal...Prior to China's announcement, the first human death from bird flu in recent years was believed to have been in Vietnam in January 2004. Since then, over 220 people have caught the virus, resulting in about 130 fatalities....China was widely criticised for initially covering up the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in late 2002, enabling the virus to spread more easily and kill hundreds globally. New Scientist, 8-9-06
Related Posts:
Hard Rain Journal 7-11-06: Bird Flu Update – Woe in Indonesia, Concern in Africa, & Preparedness in An Australian Resort & Small Town USA
Hard Rain Journal 6-30-06: Bird Flu Update -- Four Important News Items
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, India, SARS, Crisis Management, Business Continuity, Indonesia, China, Laos, Thailand
Sunday, August 20, 2006
GS(3) Intel Brief 8-20-06: Climate Change, the Great Game, Cyber War & Corruption from China, Bosnia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Iberia, US & Pipelinistan
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
GS(3) Intel Brief 8-20-06: Climate Change, the Great Game, Cyber War & Corruption from China, Bosnia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Iberia, US & Pipelinistan
By Richard Power
Here are highlights from 14 items, including both news stories and op-ed pieces, from 11 diverse, international news sources: Reuters, Inter Press Service, Axis News (Eurasian Secret Service Daily Review), Agence France Presse, Asia Times Der Spiegel, Eurasianet, BBC, Associated Press, USA Today, and Government Computer News. They provide insight on important global issues and trends. In this briefing, the interdependent issues of global warming, energy security, environmental security, sustainability, and the struggle for geopolitical hegemony are featured. But corruption in business and government, improving life in developing countries, racism, cyber war, and destabilization of emerging nations are also explored.
(NOTE: I will continue to monitor developments in the Mexican presidential election, and post GS(3) Thunderbolts as I have twice already since 7-8-06. Likewise, if there is a significant development in regard to bird flu, I will post a Thunderbolt.)
Here is a summary. Longer excerpts and links follow below. Customized analysis is provided for clients.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Special forces slid down ropes from helicopters to rescue Ethiopians stranded by floods on Friday, as river waters in the south surged anew threatening more devastation. Nearly 900 people have been killed and almost 50,000 marooned as heavy rains since early August burst river banks and sent devastating flash floods across the Horn of Africa country (Reuters, 8-18-06)
In just two weeks of the northern hemisphere's hottest month, fires raged through 36,000 hectares of forest in Portugal and 89,000 in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia. And history keeps on repeating itself every August in these two lands with similar languages, customs and geography….During the fires, something over two percent of Galicia's total surface area of three million hectares were in flames. Five hundred villages and a thousand homes scattered in the countryside had to be protected from the fires. (Inter Press Service, 8-14-06)
On 11th August, in the early hours of the morning, the tomb of Bosnia's wartime President Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo's Old Town was blown up. Although authorities have not identified yet any suspects, this may not be a simple separate vandalism act. Whoever the perpetrators of this criminal act may be, their motive was definitely to provoke the Muslim Bosnians and thus destabilise the country. Why did they choose exactly this period of time? Is the reason the forthcoming elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina or something less obvious and deeper....(Axis News (Eurasian Secret Service Daily Review), 8-14-06)
ASIA PACIFIC
Russia and the United States, and to an increasing degree China, have been locked in a bitter struggle for control of both Central Asia’s energy resources and export routes….Over the past year-and-a-half – since Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution and Uzbekistan’s Andijan events – Russia has seen its political influence in Central Asia rise dramatically at the expense of the United States….This turn of events has brought Moscow substantial economic advantages, underscored by Kazakhstan’s commitment in early April to significantly raise its oil exports via a Russian-controlled pipeline….(Eurasianet, 8-17-06)
At least 18 million people have been affected by China's worst drought in 50 years….The south-western region of Chongqing has been worst hit, but areas of Sichuan and Liaoning are also affected. In Chongqing there has been no rain for more than 70 days, and two-thirds of the rivers have dried up, Xinhua said. Residents in some mountain villages are having to walk up to 2km (1.25 miles) to get water….and Xinhua estimates the drought has caused economic losses of 11.74bn yuan ($1.24bn)....(BBC, 8-18-06)
"In India, corruption is under the table. In China, it is over the table, while in Indonesia corruption includes the table," it has been said….Javanese kings always ruled through a combination of intrigue, superstition and selective rewards….The arrival of democracy has resulted in greater corruption as each successive ruler has sought to cement his or her grip on the populace. (Asia Times, 8-19-06)
Americas
The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said. "The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States," said the Earth Policy Institute, which has warned for years that climate change demands action now. (Agence France Press, 8-17-06)
In remarks to the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, [New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin] said the hurricane "exposed the soft underbelly of America as it relates to dealing with race and class." "And I, to this day, believe that if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different response," the mayor said....(Associated Press, 8-18-06)
Brazil's new generation of cars and trucks adapted to run on alcohol has just hit the two-million mark, motor industry figures show. "Flex-fuel" vehicles, which run on any combination of ethanol and petrol, now make up 77% of the Brazilian market. (BBC News, 8-18-06)
Global
Oil and gas supplies are becoming scarcer and more expensive. The hunt for the world's remaining resources is creating new alliances and the danger of fresh conflicts. China is moving aggressively to sate its growing appetite for energy, potentially setting up a confrontation with the United States for the dwindling resources of the Middle East and Africa....(Der Spiegel, 8-18-06)
A global energy plan to be released by the World Bank next month risks squandering scarce resources on so-called clean coal technologies and misses bigger investments in renewable energy, but does address gaps in the energy needs of the poor, according to a new analysis by an environmental group. (Inter Press Service, 8-18-06)
The Netherlands is the rich nation that does the most to improve lives in developing countries, a Center for Global Development (CGD) report says.
The UK is 12th in the annual Commitment to Development Index of the world's 21 richest nations and Japan ranked last….(BBC News, 8-13-06)
Cyberspace
Maj. Gen. William Lord, director of information, services and integration in the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, today told an audience of civilian Air Force personnel attending the Air Force IT Conference that "China has downloaded 10 to 20 terabytes of data from the NIPRNet. They're looking for your identity, so they can get into the network as you." (Government Computing News, 8-15-06)
Small, removable digital devices that can store massive amounts of sensitive data are becoming big headaches for companies and consumers. That is one of the conclusions of a survey released Tuesday. Universal Serial Bus (USB) drives, sometimes called thumb drives or flash drives, are major security concerns as more are lost or stolen, says security firm Vontu, which sponsored the survey. More than half of 484 tech professionals surveyed said USB drives contain confidential information that is unprotected. At least one USB drive with data is lost at work each month, according to 20% of those polled….(USA Today, 8-16-06)
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Special forces slid down ropes from helicopters to rescue Ethiopians stranded by floods on Friday, as river waters in the south surged anew threatening more devastation. Nearly 900 people have been killed and almost 50,000 marooned as heavy rains since early August burst river banks and sent devastating flash floods across the Horn of Africa country…."The death toll could run into thousands, because of the increasing flood waters that are surging from the river," Nakia Ankosia, a parliamentarian from the region, told Reuters. "It is impossible to look for dead bodies anymore. What we are trying to do is save the lives of people marooned.” Authorities say more rivers in the north, south, east and west have overflowed, and the country's major dams are filling to breaking point. Officials say heavy rains are likely to continue until September and spread flooding to other areas….Flash floods typically happen in the lowland areas when rains during the June-September rainy season drench Ethiopia's highlands. Flooding has been exacerbated by land cultivation, deforestation and overgrazing, aid agencies say.
Tsegaye Tadesse, Ethiopia struggles to aid 48,000 marooned by floods, Reuters, 8-18-06
In just two weeks of the northern hemisphere's hottest month, fires raged through 36,000 hectares of forest in Portugal and 89,000 in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia. And history keeps on repeating itself every August in these two lands with similar languages, customs and geography. From Jul. 31 to Aug. 14, fires in Portugal destroyed an area equivalent to four times the metropolitan area of Lisbon, and three times the 13,591 hectares consumed by fire from January through July. But the fires were far worse in Galicia, across the border in Spain, where at the end of the first fortnight of August the area reduced to ashes had gone from 2,241 hectares to 88,473 hectares -- in other words, 39 times more scorched land in two weeks than in the previous seven months….During the fires, something over two percent of Galicia's total surface area of three million hectares were in flames. Five hundred villages and a thousand homes scattered in the countryside had to be protected from the fires. Two women burned to death when they were trapped in their car by the fire, and 30 people have been arrested on suspicion of arson. So far this year, 50,000 hectares on mainland Portugal and her Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores have gone up in flames, according to figures released Thursday. In spite of this worrying information derived from the European Union's satellite-based European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), the Portuguese government pointed out that the total burned area up to the end of July was less than one-sixth of the average for the same period in the last five years, when the area burned by fire averaged 90,000 hectares. Up to Jul. 31, the total area burned in the EU amounted to 64,500 hectares, "much less than" the 610,000 hectares which burned in the same period in 2005, said the EFFIS report, which did go on to say, however, that "the fire season is not yet over."
Mario de Queiroz, Summer Heat and Forest Fire Hell, Inter Press Service, 8-14-06
On 11th August, in the early hours of the morning, the tomb of Bosnia's wartime President Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo's Old Town was blown up. Although authorities have not identified yet any suspects, this may not be a simple separate vandalism act. Whoever the perpetrators of this criminal act may be, their motive was definitely to provoke the Muslim Bosnians and thus destabilise the country. Why did they choose exactly this period of time? Is the reason the forthcoming elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina or something less obvious and deeper....Throughout July, a series of different acts of intimidation occurred in Republika Srpska (RS). In Banja Luka, Trebinje and several other small towns in the east, shots were fired at a rebuilt mosque, hostile graffiti insulting Muslim Bosnians appeared on the walls of a sports stadium and a primary school, the house of famous Bosnian poet Nasiha Kapidzic was attacked, etc.
Whether there is a link between these events happened in the RS and the bomb attack on the grave of Alija Izetbegovic has not been proven. And to blame any members of either constituent nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be unfounded and illegal. However, all these events undeniably confirm the escalating tension in the country….The first and most obvious reason of the current tension in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the forthcoming elections on 1st October….However, to link every violent act in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the forthcoming elections would be a limited interpretation. The Serbian media has been trying hard to slander the Muslim Bosnians of having radical Islamist perspectives in the Balkans and being in touch with the Al-Qaeda….The main question is this: Are there some groups, who have the interest of turning the “Serbian Question” (definitely the most intriguing question after the “German Question” of the last century”) into an invented “Bosnian Question”?
Can Karpat, "Bosnian Question" or Re-Balkanisation of the Balkans, Axis News (Eurasian Secret Service Daily Review), 8-14-06
ASIA PACIFIC
The results of the August 15-17 Eurasian Economic Community summit have potentially profound ramifications for the geopolitical contest in Central Asia involving the region’s natural resources. The summiteers agreed to proceed with two projects – covering the creation of a customs union, as well as a common energy market – that could place Russia, the community’s dominant member, in a virtually unassailable economic position in Central Asia.
The summit brought together the leaders of the six EEC member states – Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – for discussions at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi. Armenian and Ukrainian leaders attended the gathering as observers….it is the EEC’s energy intentions that would appear to have a greater, and more immediate potential impact on Central Asian geopolitics. Russia and the United States, and to an increasing degree China, have been locked in a bitter struggle for control of both Central Asia’s energy resources and export routes….Over the past year-and-a-half – since Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution and Uzbekistan’s Andijan events – Russia has seen its political influence in Central Asia rise dramatically at the expense of the United States….This turn of events has brought Moscow substantial economic advantages, underscored by Kazakhstan’s commitment in early April to significantly raise its oil exports via a Russian-controlled pipeline….The EEC energy initiative seems specifically designed to frustrate the US effort to reorient Central Asia toward South Asia. Details concerning the EEC initiative were scarce, however, as it was discussed behind closed doors at the summit. What is known is that Russia now seems intent on establishing control over the source of the region’s electricity-generating capacity – water. Sergei Blagov and Igor Torbakov, EEC SUMMIT FOCUSES ON ENERGY, SECURITY AND FREE TRADE, Eurasianet, 8-17-06
At least 18 million people have been affected by China's worst drought in 50 years….The south-western region of Chongqing has been worst hit, but areas of Sichuan and Liaoning are also affected. In Chongqing there has been no rain for more than 70 days, and two-thirds of the rivers have dried up, Xinhua said. Residents in some mountain villages are having to walk up to 2km (1.25 miles) to get water. At least one person is said to have died from heatstroke, and Xinhua estimates the drought has caused economic losses of 11.74bn yuan ($1.24bn)....This drought is again affecting millions of people. According to Xinhua, 10m people in Sichuan, nearly 8m in Chongqing and 600,000 in Liaoning do not have enough access to drinking water at the moment. The problem has also affected huge areas of farmland, with crop failures and the death of cattle. The Sichuan meteorological bureau has forecast that the drought will continue, at least for the next few days.
Chinese drought affects millions, BBC, 8-18-06
"In India, corruption is under the table. In China, it is over the table, while in Indonesia corruption includes the table," it has been said….In India corruption is almost entirely a post-'70s phenomenon, with the country's politicians at the epicenter. While bureaucrats are also corrupt, they have derived strength from their political masters - indeed those working for relatively honest politicians are demonstrably less corrupt than the average, as well as being unhappy, presumably….If India's plural democracy has pushed corruption ahead, China's one-party state has not done much better. Ever since Deng Xiaoping issued his "to get rich is glorious" edict, the party has seized on many opportunities to make money. Whether it is the People's Liberation Army (PLA), whose suite of businesses rivaled any Western conglomerate (until president Jiang Zemin cracked down late in the '90s) or local party officials whose fingers appear in every urban development, taxpayers' money has been illegally channeled into the hands of politically connected individuals….Javanese kings always ruled through a combination of intrigue, superstition and selective rewards. This placed them on the same level as a dalang (puppeteer) in a wayang kulit (shadow puppet show), carefully controlling the movements of various puppets and introducing surprise changes to the script depending on the audience reaction. The last of the great "dalangs" was Suharto, whose use of his country's talented Chinese community reflected a genuine marriage of convenience….The arrival of democracy has resulted in greater corruption as each successive ruler has sought to cement his or her grip on the populace.
Chan Akya , The wages of corruption, Asia Times, 8-19-06
Americas
The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said. "The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States," said the Earth Policy Institute, which has warned for years that climate change demands action now.
Institute president Lester Brown said that about a quarter of a million people who fled the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina a year ago must now be classed as "refugees" "Interestingly, the country to suffer the most damage from a hurricane is also primarily responsible for global warming," he said. The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but has refused to sign up to the Kyoto pact aimed at reducing emissions of gases that scientists say are to blame for heating up the Earth…. The flow of climate refugees to date numbers in the thousands, but if we do not quickly reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, it could one day number in the millions," Brown said.
The institute's study classed "climate refugees" as part of a larger group of people who have been forced from their homes by man-made environmental change such as overgrazing. "Overgrazing destroys the vegetation which leads then to local sandstorms ... we are looking at growing flows of environmental refugees in Africa, for example in Nigeria, Senegal, Mauritania or Kenya," Brown told reporters. Millions of people in northern and western China have abandoned their villages as the land turns semi-arid because of overgrazing, the study said.
China is also the second biggest greenhouse-gas polluter after the United States thanks to the voracious rise in coal, gas and oil consumption to power its economic growth. The booming port city of Shanghai could be at risk of flooding from more ferocious typhoons linked to global warming as it is only a metre (three feet) above sea level, Brown said.
Jitendra Joshi, US Suffers World's First Climate Change Exodus: Study, Agence France Press, 8-17-06
In remarks to the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, [New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin] said the hurricane "exposed the soft underbelly of America as it relates to dealing with race and class." "And I, to this day, believe that if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different response," the mayor said....While tens of billions of dollars in federal aid have flowed to Louisiana and other states devastated by Katrina, much of it has gone to developers and contractors, Nagin said. "Very little of those dollars have gotten to the local governments or to the people themselves," Nagin said. Katrina dispersed three-quarters of New Orleans' pre-hurricane population of about 460,000. Today, it's a city of about 250,000 people. Nagin suggested that Louisiana and federal officials would prefer the city remain smaller….."We are being strangled, and they're using the money to set local policies to try to take control of the city to do things that they had in mind all along, and that's to shrink the footprint, get a bunch of developers in the city, and try to do things in a different way," Nagin said. "We're not going to let that happen. They're going to give us our money, and we're going to rebuild this city."
Nagin: Racism, red tape slowed recovery, New Orleans mayor: Katrina response elsewhere would have been different, Associated Press, 8-18-06
Brazil's new generation of cars and trucks adapted to run on alcohol has just hit the two-million mark, motor industry figures show. "Flex-fuel" vehicles, which run on any combination of ethanol and petrol, now make up 77% of the Brazilian market. Brazil has pioneered the use of ethanol derived from sugar-cane as motor fuel Ethanol-driven cars have been on sale there for 25 years, but they have been enjoying a revival since flex-fuel models first appeared in March 2003. Just 48,200 flex-fuel cars were sold in Brazil in 2003, but the total had reached 1.2 million by the end of last year and had since topped two million, the Brazilian motor manufacturers' association Anfavea said.
Brazil's Alcohol Cars Hit 2 Million Mark, BBC News, 8-18-06
Global
Oil and gas supplies are becoming scarcer and more expensive. The hunt for the world's remaining resources is creating new alliances and the danger of fresh conflicts. China is moving aggressively to sate its growing appetite for energy, potentially setting up a confrontation with the United States for the dwindling resources of the Middle East and Africa....Obioku, a village in Nigeria, West Africa. At first glance, this is the end of the world -- and at second glance, even more so....It seems absurd that anyone should fight over this piece of the earth. But in recent months, hundreds have been killed here in the Niger delta. Rebels fight government troops and even demand the secession of the region from Lagos; they present ultimatums requesting billions from Shell, the Anglo-Dutch petroleum giant. Columns of smoke darken the sky where pipelines have been blown up. It's all about the petroleum that lies under the ground here in vast quantities -- petroleum of an especially light, sweetish, consumer-friendly variety....The Caucasian highlands, 70 kilometers (44 miles) southwest of the city of Vladikavkas in the Russian Republic of North Ossetia. Pipelines lie on the frozen ground in strangely twisted shapes, like modelling clay handled by an angry giant. Saboteurs destroyed the two gas pipelines that run through an almost deserted territory and towards Georgia at the end of January. The people in Georgia, whose energy supply is meagre anyhow, suffered the cold for more than a week, cut off from their most important energy source....Fatah, a giant petroleum refinery two hours northwest of Baghdad by car. After almost 20 major attacks in the past year, Iraq's largest oil production facility was closed for the entire month of December. Then, only three days after the re-opening of the complex in Beiji in January, insurgents attacked a convoy consisting of 60 oil trucks and engaged security forces in a firefight that lasted hours. Meanwhile, the number of attacks on oil installations and pipelines across the country continues to rise....Ideological trench fights over secure fuels aside, most reputable scientists agree that the historical "peak" of oil production will be reached in five to 10 years, despite improvements in drilling technology and the expansion of production to include oil shales and oil sands, which are difficult to process. From that point on, oil production will head downhill -- despite increasing worldwide demand....
Erich Follath, The Coming Conflict: Natural Resources are Fuelling a New Cold War, Der Spiegel, 8-18-06
A global energy plan to be released by the World Bank next month risks squandering scarce resources on so-called clean coal technologies and misses bigger investments in renewable energy, but does address gaps in the energy needs of the poor, according to a new analysis by an environmental group. World Bank officials will discuss the document, called the "Progress Report on the Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development", later this month before it is placed on the agenda of the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), next month in Singapore. A similar programme focusing on longer term country-level activities and global research will be completed by the Group of Eight most industrialised countries at their summit in Japan in 2008….When the first draft of the document came out at the spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, many observers said they were shocked by the lack of references to poor people. But analysts who have seen a leaked version of the latest report say that it now devotes considerable space to the needs of the 1.6 billion poor people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, who presently lack access to modern energy. The strategy's advocates inside the Bank say it goes a long way in dealing with environmental problems and climate change concerns….While acknowledging the improvements, the California-based watchdog group International Rivers Network (IRN) says that the plan misses "the double dividend of renewable energy" -- namely, combating climate change and reducing poverty. In a brief analysis of the document, IRN argues that clean technologies like wind, solar, modern biomass, geothermal and small hydropower are available locally, create jobs and have very low environmental impacts, and could better achieve this dividend. The group, which presses for wider adoption of renewable energy and fewer environmentally damaging mega-projects, faulted the Bank for prioritising "large regional hydro and thermal generation plants" as the appropriate way to provide energy access. "This recommendation mirrors the misguided priorities of the World Bank's energy sector lending, of which in 2005 only 10 percent was allocated to energy efficiency and new renewable energy projects," it said….The G8 are still promoting fossil fuel extraction in developing nations through international financial institutions such as the World Bank and export credit agencies. Environmental groups have often called on the G8 and the international institutions to phase in public finance for sustainable clean energy.
Emad Mekay, World Bank Plan Still Favours "Clean" Fossil Fuels, Inter Press Service, 8-18-06
The Netherlands is the rich nation that does the most to improve lives in developing countries, a Center for Global Development (CGD) report says.
The UK is 12th in the annual Commitment to Development Index of the world's 21 richest nations and Japan ranked last….The CGD's measures a broad number of factors for the index, rather than merely the amount of aid countries provide. It also examines several policy areas - such as trade investment migration and environment - while aid is measured not only in terms of quantity but as a share of its income and the quality of aid given.
While the Netherlands led the pack on generous investment and aid as well as measures to curb greenhouse gases, the CGD added they could work harder.
By contrast Japan ranked in last place due to a combination of factors including its low aid and high barriers to imports and migrants from poorer nations.
Meanwhile, despite the US giving the largest amount of aid that donation was the smallest in relation to the size of its economy. The CGD added that a lot of the money was also contingent on the purchase of US goods, and so was in fact a "backdoor subsidy for American interests".
"The lives of a billion people could be improved in the next decade if rich countries reform their trade, migration and investment policies," David Roodman, CGD researcher and chief architect of the CDI.
"Politically, these changes are difficult. However, if rich countries are truly committed to development, they could easily bear the short-term costs of the reforms and the spread of prosperity would serve the interests of all countries."
Netherlands 'Does Most for Poor', BBC News, 8-13-06
Cyberspace
Maj. Gen. William Lord, director of information, services and integration in the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, today told an audience of civilian Air Force personnel attending the Air Force IT Conference that "China has downloaded 10 to 20 terabytes of data from the NIPRNet. They're looking for your identity, so they can get into the network as you." Lord said that this is in accordance with the Chinese doctrine about the use of cyberspace in conflict. "We don't think they've gotten into the SIPRNet yet," [the classified GIG network], he said, "though we know they have [penetrated] the NIPRNet. There is a nation-state threat by the Chinese."
Lord said that the Air Force Research Laboratories are undertaking projects to mitigate the threat, possibly to look at offensive actions that could be launched, but "the rules of engagement have to changed before we're fully engaged in cyberspace."
Patience Wait, Chinese Military Seek Military ID Info, Government Computing News, 8-15-06
Small, removable digital devices that can store massive amounts of sensitive data are becoming big headaches for companies and consumers. That is one of the conclusions of a survey released Tuesday. Universal Serial Bus (USB) drives, sometimes called thumb drives or flash drives, are major security concerns as more are lost or stolen, says security firm Vontu, which sponsored the survey. More than half of 484 tech professionals surveyed said USB drives contain confidential information that is unprotected. At least one USB drive with data is lost at work each month, according to 20% of those polled….
Among recent incidents:
•The personal information of 6,500 current and former University of entucky students, including names, grades and Social Security numbers, was reported stolen May 26 after the theft of a professor's flash drive. The drive has not been recovered, and the university is re-evaluating its use of flash drives, spokesman Jay Blanton says.
•Flash drives holding sensitive and classified military information turned up for sale at a bazaar outside Bagram, Afghanistan, earlier this year. The Army does not know how they were lost and has tightened security for flash drives, Lt. Col. Thomas Collins said in an e-mail from Afghanistan.
•In October, Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Lihue, Hawaii, informed 120,000 current and former patients that a flash drive containing their personal information — names, addresses, Social Security numbers and identifying medical record numbers — was lost. It has yet to be recovered.
Jon Swartz, Small drives cause big problems, USA Today, 8-16-06
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
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GS(3) Intel Brief 8-20-06: Climate Change, the Great Game, Cyber War & Corruption from China, Bosnia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Iberia, US & Pipelinistan
By Richard Power
Here are highlights from 14 items, including both news stories and op-ed pieces, from 11 diverse, international news sources: Reuters, Inter Press Service, Axis News (Eurasian Secret Service Daily Review), Agence France Presse, Asia Times Der Spiegel, Eurasianet, BBC, Associated Press, USA Today, and Government Computer News. They provide insight on important global issues and trends. In this briefing, the interdependent issues of global warming, energy security, environmental security, sustainability, and the struggle for geopolitical hegemony are featured. But corruption in business and government, improving life in developing countries, racism, cyber war, and destabilization of emerging nations are also explored.
(NOTE: I will continue to monitor developments in the Mexican presidential election, and post GS(3) Thunderbolts as I have twice already since 7-8-06. Likewise, if there is a significant development in regard to bird flu, I will post a Thunderbolt.)
Here is a summary. Longer excerpts and links follow below. Customized analysis is provided for clients.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Special forces slid down ropes from helicopters to rescue Ethiopians stranded by floods on Friday, as river waters in the south surged anew threatening more devastation. Nearly 900 people have been killed and almost 50,000 marooned as heavy rains since early August burst river banks and sent devastating flash floods across the Horn of Africa country (Reuters, 8-18-06)
In just two weeks of the northern hemisphere's hottest month, fires raged through 36,000 hectares of forest in Portugal and 89,000 in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia. And history keeps on repeating itself every August in these two lands with similar languages, customs and geography….During the fires, something over two percent of Galicia's total surface area of three million hectares were in flames. Five hundred villages and a thousand homes scattered in the countryside had to be protected from the fires. (Inter Press Service, 8-14-06)
On 11th August, in the early hours of the morning, the tomb of Bosnia's wartime President Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo's Old Town was blown up. Although authorities have not identified yet any suspects, this may not be a simple separate vandalism act. Whoever the perpetrators of this criminal act may be, their motive was definitely to provoke the Muslim Bosnians and thus destabilise the country. Why did they choose exactly this period of time? Is the reason the forthcoming elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina or something less obvious and deeper....(Axis News (Eurasian Secret Service Daily Review), 8-14-06)
ASIA PACIFIC
Russia and the United States, and to an increasing degree China, have been locked in a bitter struggle for control of both Central Asia’s energy resources and export routes….Over the past year-and-a-half – since Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution and Uzbekistan’s Andijan events – Russia has seen its political influence in Central Asia rise dramatically at the expense of the United States….This turn of events has brought Moscow substantial economic advantages, underscored by Kazakhstan’s commitment in early April to significantly raise its oil exports via a Russian-controlled pipeline….(Eurasianet, 8-17-06)
At least 18 million people have been affected by China's worst drought in 50 years….The south-western region of Chongqing has been worst hit, but areas of Sichuan and Liaoning are also affected. In Chongqing there has been no rain for more than 70 days, and two-thirds of the rivers have dried up, Xinhua said. Residents in some mountain villages are having to walk up to 2km (1.25 miles) to get water….and Xinhua estimates the drought has caused economic losses of 11.74bn yuan ($1.24bn)....(BBC, 8-18-06)
"In India, corruption is under the table. In China, it is over the table, while in Indonesia corruption includes the table," it has been said….Javanese kings always ruled through a combination of intrigue, superstition and selective rewards….The arrival of democracy has resulted in greater corruption as each successive ruler has sought to cement his or her grip on the populace. (Asia Times, 8-19-06)
Americas
The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said. "The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States," said the Earth Policy Institute, which has warned for years that climate change demands action now. (Agence France Press, 8-17-06)
In remarks to the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, [New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin] said the hurricane "exposed the soft underbelly of America as it relates to dealing with race and class." "And I, to this day, believe that if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different response," the mayor said....(Associated Press, 8-18-06)
Brazil's new generation of cars and trucks adapted to run on alcohol has just hit the two-million mark, motor industry figures show. "Flex-fuel" vehicles, which run on any combination of ethanol and petrol, now make up 77% of the Brazilian market. (BBC News, 8-18-06)
Global
Oil and gas supplies are becoming scarcer and more expensive. The hunt for the world's remaining resources is creating new alliances and the danger of fresh conflicts. China is moving aggressively to sate its growing appetite for energy, potentially setting up a confrontation with the United States for the dwindling resources of the Middle East and Africa....(Der Spiegel, 8-18-06)
A global energy plan to be released by the World Bank next month risks squandering scarce resources on so-called clean coal technologies and misses bigger investments in renewable energy, but does address gaps in the energy needs of the poor, according to a new analysis by an environmental group. (Inter Press Service, 8-18-06)
The Netherlands is the rich nation that does the most to improve lives in developing countries, a Center for Global Development (CGD) report says.
The UK is 12th in the annual Commitment to Development Index of the world's 21 richest nations and Japan ranked last….(BBC News, 8-13-06)
Cyberspace
Maj. Gen. William Lord, director of information, services and integration in the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, today told an audience of civilian Air Force personnel attending the Air Force IT Conference that "China has downloaded 10 to 20 terabytes of data from the NIPRNet. They're looking for your identity, so they can get into the network as you." (Government Computing News, 8-15-06)
Small, removable digital devices that can store massive amounts of sensitive data are becoming big headaches for companies and consumers. That is one of the conclusions of a survey released Tuesday. Universal Serial Bus (USB) drives, sometimes called thumb drives or flash drives, are major security concerns as more are lost or stolen, says security firm Vontu, which sponsored the survey. More than half of 484 tech professionals surveyed said USB drives contain confidential information that is unprotected. At least one USB drive with data is lost at work each month, according to 20% of those polled….(USA Today, 8-16-06)
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Special forces slid down ropes from helicopters to rescue Ethiopians stranded by floods on Friday, as river waters in the south surged anew threatening more devastation. Nearly 900 people have been killed and almost 50,000 marooned as heavy rains since early August burst river banks and sent devastating flash floods across the Horn of Africa country…."The death toll could run into thousands, because of the increasing flood waters that are surging from the river," Nakia Ankosia, a parliamentarian from the region, told Reuters. "It is impossible to look for dead bodies anymore. What we are trying to do is save the lives of people marooned.” Authorities say more rivers in the north, south, east and west have overflowed, and the country's major dams are filling to breaking point. Officials say heavy rains are likely to continue until September and spread flooding to other areas….Flash floods typically happen in the lowland areas when rains during the June-September rainy season drench Ethiopia's highlands. Flooding has been exacerbated by land cultivation, deforestation and overgrazing, aid agencies say.
Tsegaye Tadesse, Ethiopia struggles to aid 48,000 marooned by floods, Reuters, 8-18-06
In just two weeks of the northern hemisphere's hottest month, fires raged through 36,000 hectares of forest in Portugal and 89,000 in the northwestern Spanish region of Galicia. And history keeps on repeating itself every August in these two lands with similar languages, customs and geography. From Jul. 31 to Aug. 14, fires in Portugal destroyed an area equivalent to four times the metropolitan area of Lisbon, and three times the 13,591 hectares consumed by fire from January through July. But the fires were far worse in Galicia, across the border in Spain, where at the end of the first fortnight of August the area reduced to ashes had gone from 2,241 hectares to 88,473 hectares -- in other words, 39 times more scorched land in two weeks than in the previous seven months….During the fires, something over two percent of Galicia's total surface area of three million hectares were in flames. Five hundred villages and a thousand homes scattered in the countryside had to be protected from the fires. Two women burned to death when they were trapped in their car by the fire, and 30 people have been arrested on suspicion of arson. So far this year, 50,000 hectares on mainland Portugal and her Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores have gone up in flames, according to figures released Thursday. In spite of this worrying information derived from the European Union's satellite-based European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), the Portuguese government pointed out that the total burned area up to the end of July was less than one-sixth of the average for the same period in the last five years, when the area burned by fire averaged 90,000 hectares. Up to Jul. 31, the total area burned in the EU amounted to 64,500 hectares, "much less than" the 610,000 hectares which burned in the same period in 2005, said the EFFIS report, which did go on to say, however, that "the fire season is not yet over."
Mario de Queiroz, Summer Heat and Forest Fire Hell, Inter Press Service, 8-14-06
On 11th August, in the early hours of the morning, the tomb of Bosnia's wartime President Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo's Old Town was blown up. Although authorities have not identified yet any suspects, this may not be a simple separate vandalism act. Whoever the perpetrators of this criminal act may be, their motive was definitely to provoke the Muslim Bosnians and thus destabilise the country. Why did they choose exactly this period of time? Is the reason the forthcoming elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina or something less obvious and deeper....Throughout July, a series of different acts of intimidation occurred in Republika Srpska (RS). In Banja Luka, Trebinje and several other small towns in the east, shots were fired at a rebuilt mosque, hostile graffiti insulting Muslim Bosnians appeared on the walls of a sports stadium and a primary school, the house of famous Bosnian poet Nasiha Kapidzic was attacked, etc.
Whether there is a link between these events happened in the RS and the bomb attack on the grave of Alija Izetbegovic has not been proven. And to blame any members of either constituent nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be unfounded and illegal. However, all these events undeniably confirm the escalating tension in the country….The first and most obvious reason of the current tension in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the forthcoming elections on 1st October….However, to link every violent act in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the forthcoming elections would be a limited interpretation. The Serbian media has been trying hard to slander the Muslim Bosnians of having radical Islamist perspectives in the Balkans and being in touch with the Al-Qaeda….The main question is this: Are there some groups, who have the interest of turning the “Serbian Question” (definitely the most intriguing question after the “German Question” of the last century”) into an invented “Bosnian Question”?
Can Karpat, "Bosnian Question" or Re-Balkanisation of the Balkans, Axis News (Eurasian Secret Service Daily Review), 8-14-06
ASIA PACIFIC
The results of the August 15-17 Eurasian Economic Community summit have potentially profound ramifications for the geopolitical contest in Central Asia involving the region’s natural resources. The summiteers agreed to proceed with two projects – covering the creation of a customs union, as well as a common energy market – that could place Russia, the community’s dominant member, in a virtually unassailable economic position in Central Asia.
The summit brought together the leaders of the six EEC member states – Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – for discussions at the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi. Armenian and Ukrainian leaders attended the gathering as observers….it is the EEC’s energy intentions that would appear to have a greater, and more immediate potential impact on Central Asian geopolitics. Russia and the United States, and to an increasing degree China, have been locked in a bitter struggle for control of both Central Asia’s energy resources and export routes….Over the past year-and-a-half – since Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution and Uzbekistan’s Andijan events – Russia has seen its political influence in Central Asia rise dramatically at the expense of the United States….This turn of events has brought Moscow substantial economic advantages, underscored by Kazakhstan’s commitment in early April to significantly raise its oil exports via a Russian-controlled pipeline….The EEC energy initiative seems specifically designed to frustrate the US effort to reorient Central Asia toward South Asia. Details concerning the EEC initiative were scarce, however, as it was discussed behind closed doors at the summit. What is known is that Russia now seems intent on establishing control over the source of the region’s electricity-generating capacity – water. Sergei Blagov and Igor Torbakov, EEC SUMMIT FOCUSES ON ENERGY, SECURITY AND FREE TRADE, Eurasianet, 8-17-06
At least 18 million people have been affected by China's worst drought in 50 years….The south-western region of Chongqing has been worst hit, but areas of Sichuan and Liaoning are also affected. In Chongqing there has been no rain for more than 70 days, and two-thirds of the rivers have dried up, Xinhua said. Residents in some mountain villages are having to walk up to 2km (1.25 miles) to get water. At least one person is said to have died from heatstroke, and Xinhua estimates the drought has caused economic losses of 11.74bn yuan ($1.24bn)....This drought is again affecting millions of people. According to Xinhua, 10m people in Sichuan, nearly 8m in Chongqing and 600,000 in Liaoning do not have enough access to drinking water at the moment. The problem has also affected huge areas of farmland, with crop failures and the death of cattle. The Sichuan meteorological bureau has forecast that the drought will continue, at least for the next few days.
Chinese drought affects millions, BBC, 8-18-06
"In India, corruption is under the table. In China, it is over the table, while in Indonesia corruption includes the table," it has been said….In India corruption is almost entirely a post-'70s phenomenon, with the country's politicians at the epicenter. While bureaucrats are also corrupt, they have derived strength from their political masters - indeed those working for relatively honest politicians are demonstrably less corrupt than the average, as well as being unhappy, presumably….If India's plural democracy has pushed corruption ahead, China's one-party state has not done much better. Ever since Deng Xiaoping issued his "to get rich is glorious" edict, the party has seized on many opportunities to make money. Whether it is the People's Liberation Army (PLA), whose suite of businesses rivaled any Western conglomerate (until president Jiang Zemin cracked down late in the '90s) or local party officials whose fingers appear in every urban development, taxpayers' money has been illegally channeled into the hands of politically connected individuals….Javanese kings always ruled through a combination of intrigue, superstition and selective rewards. This placed them on the same level as a dalang (puppeteer) in a wayang kulit (shadow puppet show), carefully controlling the movements of various puppets and introducing surprise changes to the script depending on the audience reaction. The last of the great "dalangs" was Suharto, whose use of his country's talented Chinese community reflected a genuine marriage of convenience….The arrival of democracy has resulted in greater corruption as each successive ruler has sought to cement his or her grip on the populace.
Chan Akya , The wages of corruption, Asia Times, 8-19-06
Americas
The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said. "The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States," said the Earth Policy Institute, which has warned for years that climate change demands action now.
Institute president Lester Brown said that about a quarter of a million people who fled the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina a year ago must now be classed as "refugees" "Interestingly, the country to suffer the most damage from a hurricane is also primarily responsible for global warming," he said. The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but has refused to sign up to the Kyoto pact aimed at reducing emissions of gases that scientists say are to blame for heating up the Earth…. The flow of climate refugees to date numbers in the thousands, but if we do not quickly reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, it could one day number in the millions," Brown said.
The institute's study classed "climate refugees" as part of a larger group of people who have been forced from their homes by man-made environmental change such as overgrazing. "Overgrazing destroys the vegetation which leads then to local sandstorms ... we are looking at growing flows of environmental refugees in Africa, for example in Nigeria, Senegal, Mauritania or Kenya," Brown told reporters. Millions of people in northern and western China have abandoned their villages as the land turns semi-arid because of overgrazing, the study said.
China is also the second biggest greenhouse-gas polluter after the United States thanks to the voracious rise in coal, gas and oil consumption to power its economic growth. The booming port city of Shanghai could be at risk of flooding from more ferocious typhoons linked to global warming as it is only a metre (three feet) above sea level, Brown said.
Jitendra Joshi, US Suffers World's First Climate Change Exodus: Study, Agence France Press, 8-17-06
In remarks to the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, [New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin] said the hurricane "exposed the soft underbelly of America as it relates to dealing with race and class." "And I, to this day, believe that if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different response," the mayor said....While tens of billions of dollars in federal aid have flowed to Louisiana and other states devastated by Katrina, much of it has gone to developers and contractors, Nagin said. "Very little of those dollars have gotten to the local governments or to the people themselves," Nagin said. Katrina dispersed three-quarters of New Orleans' pre-hurricane population of about 460,000. Today, it's a city of about 250,000 people. Nagin suggested that Louisiana and federal officials would prefer the city remain smaller….."We are being strangled, and they're using the money to set local policies to try to take control of the city to do things that they had in mind all along, and that's to shrink the footprint, get a bunch of developers in the city, and try to do things in a different way," Nagin said. "We're not going to let that happen. They're going to give us our money, and we're going to rebuild this city."
Nagin: Racism, red tape slowed recovery, New Orleans mayor: Katrina response elsewhere would have been different, Associated Press, 8-18-06
Brazil's new generation of cars and trucks adapted to run on alcohol has just hit the two-million mark, motor industry figures show. "Flex-fuel" vehicles, which run on any combination of ethanol and petrol, now make up 77% of the Brazilian market. Brazil has pioneered the use of ethanol derived from sugar-cane as motor fuel Ethanol-driven cars have been on sale there for 25 years, but they have been enjoying a revival since flex-fuel models first appeared in March 2003. Just 48,200 flex-fuel cars were sold in Brazil in 2003, but the total had reached 1.2 million by the end of last year and had since topped two million, the Brazilian motor manufacturers' association Anfavea said.
Brazil's Alcohol Cars Hit 2 Million Mark, BBC News, 8-18-06
Global
Oil and gas supplies are becoming scarcer and more expensive. The hunt for the world's remaining resources is creating new alliances and the danger of fresh conflicts. China is moving aggressively to sate its growing appetite for energy, potentially setting up a confrontation with the United States for the dwindling resources of the Middle East and Africa....Obioku, a village in Nigeria, West Africa. At first glance, this is the end of the world -- and at second glance, even more so....It seems absurd that anyone should fight over this piece of the earth. But in recent months, hundreds have been killed here in the Niger delta. Rebels fight government troops and even demand the secession of the region from Lagos; they present ultimatums requesting billions from Shell, the Anglo-Dutch petroleum giant. Columns of smoke darken the sky where pipelines have been blown up. It's all about the petroleum that lies under the ground here in vast quantities -- petroleum of an especially light, sweetish, consumer-friendly variety....The Caucasian highlands, 70 kilometers (44 miles) southwest of the city of Vladikavkas in the Russian Republic of North Ossetia. Pipelines lie on the frozen ground in strangely twisted shapes, like modelling clay handled by an angry giant. Saboteurs destroyed the two gas pipelines that run through an almost deserted territory and towards Georgia at the end of January. The people in Georgia, whose energy supply is meagre anyhow, suffered the cold for more than a week, cut off from their most important energy source....Fatah, a giant petroleum refinery two hours northwest of Baghdad by car. After almost 20 major attacks in the past year, Iraq's largest oil production facility was closed for the entire month of December. Then, only three days after the re-opening of the complex in Beiji in January, insurgents attacked a convoy consisting of 60 oil trucks and engaged security forces in a firefight that lasted hours. Meanwhile, the number of attacks on oil installations and pipelines across the country continues to rise....Ideological trench fights over secure fuels aside, most reputable scientists agree that the historical "peak" of oil production will be reached in five to 10 years, despite improvements in drilling technology and the expansion of production to include oil shales and oil sands, which are difficult to process. From that point on, oil production will head downhill -- despite increasing worldwide demand....
Erich Follath, The Coming Conflict: Natural Resources are Fuelling a New Cold War, Der Spiegel, 8-18-06
A global energy plan to be released by the World Bank next month risks squandering scarce resources on so-called clean coal technologies and misses bigger investments in renewable energy, but does address gaps in the energy needs of the poor, according to a new analysis by an environmental group. World Bank officials will discuss the document, called the "Progress Report on the Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development", later this month before it is placed on the agenda of the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), next month in Singapore. A similar programme focusing on longer term country-level activities and global research will be completed by the Group of Eight most industrialised countries at their summit in Japan in 2008….When the first draft of the document came out at the spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, many observers said they were shocked by the lack of references to poor people. But analysts who have seen a leaked version of the latest report say that it now devotes considerable space to the needs of the 1.6 billion poor people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, who presently lack access to modern energy. The strategy's advocates inside the Bank say it goes a long way in dealing with environmental problems and climate change concerns….While acknowledging the improvements, the California-based watchdog group International Rivers Network (IRN) says that the plan misses "the double dividend of renewable energy" -- namely, combating climate change and reducing poverty. In a brief analysis of the document, IRN argues that clean technologies like wind, solar, modern biomass, geothermal and small hydropower are available locally, create jobs and have very low environmental impacts, and could better achieve this dividend. The group, which presses for wider adoption of renewable energy and fewer environmentally damaging mega-projects, faulted the Bank for prioritising "large regional hydro and thermal generation plants" as the appropriate way to provide energy access. "This recommendation mirrors the misguided priorities of the World Bank's energy sector lending, of which in 2005 only 10 percent was allocated to energy efficiency and new renewable energy projects," it said….The G8 are still promoting fossil fuel extraction in developing nations through international financial institutions such as the World Bank and export credit agencies. Environmental groups have often called on the G8 and the international institutions to phase in public finance for sustainable clean energy.
Emad Mekay, World Bank Plan Still Favours "Clean" Fossil Fuels, Inter Press Service, 8-18-06
The Netherlands is the rich nation that does the most to improve lives in developing countries, a Center for Global Development (CGD) report says.
The UK is 12th in the annual Commitment to Development Index of the world's 21 richest nations and Japan ranked last….The CGD's measures a broad number of factors for the index, rather than merely the amount of aid countries provide. It also examines several policy areas - such as trade investment migration and environment - while aid is measured not only in terms of quantity but as a share of its income and the quality of aid given.
While the Netherlands led the pack on generous investment and aid as well as measures to curb greenhouse gases, the CGD added they could work harder.
By contrast Japan ranked in last place due to a combination of factors including its low aid and high barriers to imports and migrants from poorer nations.
Meanwhile, despite the US giving the largest amount of aid that donation was the smallest in relation to the size of its economy. The CGD added that a lot of the money was also contingent on the purchase of US goods, and so was in fact a "backdoor subsidy for American interests".
"The lives of a billion people could be improved in the next decade if rich countries reform their trade, migration and investment policies," David Roodman, CGD researcher and chief architect of the CDI.
"Politically, these changes are difficult. However, if rich countries are truly committed to development, they could easily bear the short-term costs of the reforms and the spread of prosperity would serve the interests of all countries."
Netherlands 'Does Most for Poor', BBC News, 8-13-06
Cyberspace
Maj. Gen. William Lord, director of information, services and integration in the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Warfighting Integration and Chief Information Officer, today told an audience of civilian Air Force personnel attending the Air Force IT Conference that "China has downloaded 10 to 20 terabytes of data from the NIPRNet. They're looking for your identity, so they can get into the network as you." Lord said that this is in accordance with the Chinese doctrine about the use of cyberspace in conflict. "We don't think they've gotten into the SIPRNet yet," [the classified GIG network], he said, "though we know they have [penetrated] the NIPRNet. There is a nation-state threat by the Chinese."
Lord said that the Air Force Research Laboratories are undertaking projects to mitigate the threat, possibly to look at offensive actions that could be launched, but "the rules of engagement have to changed before we're fully engaged in cyberspace."
Patience Wait, Chinese Military Seek Military ID Info, Government Computing News, 8-15-06
Small, removable digital devices that can store massive amounts of sensitive data are becoming big headaches for companies and consumers. That is one of the conclusions of a survey released Tuesday. Universal Serial Bus (USB) drives, sometimes called thumb drives or flash drives, are major security concerns as more are lost or stolen, says security firm Vontu, which sponsored the survey. More than half of 484 tech professionals surveyed said USB drives contain confidential information that is unprotected. At least one USB drive with data is lost at work each month, according to 20% of those polled….
Among recent incidents:
•The personal information of 6,500 current and former University of entucky students, including names, grades and Social Security numbers, was reported stolen May 26 after the theft of a professor's flash drive. The drive has not been recovered, and the university is re-evaluating its use of flash drives, spokesman Jay Blanton says.
•Flash drives holding sensitive and classified military information turned up for sale at a bazaar outside Bagram, Afghanistan, earlier this year. The Army does not know how they were lost and has tightened security for flash drives, Lt. Col. Thomas Collins said in an e-mail from Afghanistan.
•In October, Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Lihue, Hawaii, informed 120,000 current and former patients that a flash drive containing their personal information — names, addresses, Social Security numbers and identifying medical record numbers — was lost. It has yet to be recovered.
Jon Swartz, Small drives cause big problems, USA Today, 8-16-06
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
Global Warming Bosnia Ethiopia Sustainability Rivers China Central Asia Climate Change Environmental Security Africa Europe India Geopolitics, Indonesia, Energy Security, Katrina, Netherlands, Cyber War, Information Warfare, Corruption, Portugal, Spain
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