Monday, March 24, 2008
Witness - Return to Iraq
Witness presenter Rageh Omaar returned to Iraq five years after reporting on the US-led invasion. He found much had changed and, as ordinary Iraqis told him, rarely for the better.
Saddam’s Files
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By Michael Isikoff
They show terror plots, but raise new questions about some U.S. claims.
President Bush said lots of things about Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War. But few of his charges grabbed more attention than an unscripted remark he made at a Texas political fund-raiser on Sept. 26, 2002. "After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush said. The comment referred to a 1993 claim by the Kuwaiti government—accepted by the Clinton administration—that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) had plotted to assassinate President George H.W. Bush during a trip to Kuwait that spring. Ever since, armchair psychologists have suggested that personal revenge may have been one reason for the president's determination to overthrow Saddam's regime.
But curiously little has been heard about the allegedly foiled assassination plot in the five years since the U.S. military invaded Iraq. A just-released Pentagon study on the Iraqi regime's ties to terrorism only adds to the mystery. The review, conducted for the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command, combed through 600,000 pages of Iraqi intelligence documents seized after the fall of Baghdad, as well as thousands of hours of audio- and videotapes of Saddam's conversations with his ministers and top aides. The study found that the IIS kept remarkably detailed records of virtually every operation it planned, including plots to assassinate Iraqi exiles and to supply explosives and booby-trapped suitcases to Iraqi embassies. But the Pentagon researchers found no documents that referred to a plan to kill Bush. The absence was conspicuous because researchers, aware of its potential significance, were looking for such evidence. "It was surprising," said one source familiar with the preparation of the report (who under Pentagon ground rules was not permitted to speak on the record). Given how much the Iraqis did document, "you would have thought there would have been some veiled reference to something about [the plot]."
The failure does not, of course, prove that the Iraqis were not planning such an operation. "It would not have surprised me at all if the Iraqis expunged any record of that—it was an utter embarrassment for them," says Paul Pillar, the CIA's former top analyst on the Middle East. But others have wondered whether the original allegations were exaggerated. The Kuwaiti claim grew out of the arrest of a band of whisky smugglers near the Iraq border that spring. Kuwaiti authorities also recovered a Toyota Land Cruiser containing 175 pounds of explosives connected to a detonator. After several days in Kuwaiti custody, the smugglers' ringleader, Wali al-Ghazali, confessed that he had been dispatched by an Iraqi intelligence agent to blow up former president Bush. Amnesty International questioned whether al-Ghazali (the only one to claim that Bush was the target) had been tortured. But when an FBI team concluded that the detonator and explosives closely resembled other Iraqi bombs, President Clinton ordered a Tomahawk cruise-missile strike on IIS headquarters. Years later Kuwait's emir declined to sign al-Ghazali's death warrant and commuted the sentences of four of the six convicted plotters. "It was always a circumstantial case," says Judith Yaphe, another former CIA analyst on Iraq. A White House spokesman declined to comment, but a U.S. intelligence official said, "It remains our view that Saddam's government had a hand" in the 1993 plot, and that information since the war "lends further credence" to that view.
Evidence of the Bush plot wasn't the only thing the Pentagon researchers couldn't find. There were also no records showing what the report called a "smoking gun" connection between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda—one of the principal claims made by the White House to advance the case for war. The report did find plenty of evidence that Saddam's regime had close ties to other (mainly Palestinian) terror groups and had maintained contacts with some radical Islamic movements—including, according to one 1993 document, Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Last week Vice President Dick Cheney said the document showed there was a "link between Iraq and Al Qaeda." But Pillar notes the Egyptian group—headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri—didn't merge with Al Qaeda until years later. "This is the same kind of word game they played before the war," Pillar says.
Perhaps most revealing of all was a tape of Saddam's conversations with his ministers after the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993—a plot linked to a group of Islamic radicals, one of whom, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was an Iraqi-American who fled to Baghdad after the attack. For years Bush administration officials like Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz charged that Iraq had given "sanctuary" to Yasin, suggesting that the regime may have been complicit in the 1993 bombing. But the newly discovered tape shows that Saddam and his ministers were puzzled by the bombing and wondered whether the "Zionists" or U.S. intelligence were secretly behind it. They also were deeply suspicious of Yasin, whom the Iraqis had in custody and were interrogating. Yasin, Saddam says on the tape, is "too organized in what he is saying and is playing games." The Pentagon researcher said the exchange shows how "paranoid and suspicious" the Iraqis were about their adversaries. They may not have been alone.
By Michael Isikoff
They show terror plots, but raise new questions about some U.S. claims.
President Bush said lots of things about Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War. But few of his charges grabbed more attention than an unscripted remark he made at a Texas political fund-raiser on Sept. 26, 2002. "After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush said. The comment referred to a 1993 claim by the Kuwaiti government—accepted by the Clinton administration—that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) had plotted to assassinate President George H.W. Bush during a trip to Kuwait that spring. Ever since, armchair psychologists have suggested that personal revenge may have been one reason for the president's determination to overthrow Saddam's regime.
But curiously little has been heard about the allegedly foiled assassination plot in the five years since the U.S. military invaded Iraq. A just-released Pentagon study on the Iraqi regime's ties to terrorism only adds to the mystery. The review, conducted for the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command, combed through 600,000 pages of Iraqi intelligence documents seized after the fall of Baghdad, as well as thousands of hours of audio- and videotapes of Saddam's conversations with his ministers and top aides. The study found that the IIS kept remarkably detailed records of virtually every operation it planned, including plots to assassinate Iraqi exiles and to supply explosives and booby-trapped suitcases to Iraqi embassies. But the Pentagon researchers found no documents that referred to a plan to kill Bush. The absence was conspicuous because researchers, aware of its potential significance, were looking for such evidence. "It was surprising," said one source familiar with the preparation of the report (who under Pentagon ground rules was not permitted to speak on the record). Given how much the Iraqis did document, "you would have thought there would have been some veiled reference to something about [the plot]."
The failure does not, of course, prove that the Iraqis were not planning such an operation. "It would not have surprised me at all if the Iraqis expunged any record of that—it was an utter embarrassment for them," says Paul Pillar, the CIA's former top analyst on the Middle East. But others have wondered whether the original allegations were exaggerated. The Kuwaiti claim grew out of the arrest of a band of whisky smugglers near the Iraq border that spring. Kuwaiti authorities also recovered a Toyota Land Cruiser containing 175 pounds of explosives connected to a detonator. After several days in Kuwaiti custody, the smugglers' ringleader, Wali al-Ghazali, confessed that he had been dispatched by an Iraqi intelligence agent to blow up former president Bush. Amnesty International questioned whether al-Ghazali (the only one to claim that Bush was the target) had been tortured. But when an FBI team concluded that the detonator and explosives closely resembled other Iraqi bombs, President Clinton ordered a Tomahawk cruise-missile strike on IIS headquarters. Years later Kuwait's emir declined to sign al-Ghazali's death warrant and commuted the sentences of four of the six convicted plotters. "It was always a circumstantial case," says Judith Yaphe, another former CIA analyst on Iraq. A White House spokesman declined to comment, but a U.S. intelligence official said, "It remains our view that Saddam's government had a hand" in the 1993 plot, and that information since the war "lends further credence" to that view.
Evidence of the Bush plot wasn't the only thing the Pentagon researchers couldn't find. There were also no records showing what the report called a "smoking gun" connection between Saddam's regime and Al Qaeda—one of the principal claims made by the White House to advance the case for war. The report did find plenty of evidence that Saddam's regime had close ties to other (mainly Palestinian) terror groups and had maintained contacts with some radical Islamic movements—including, according to one 1993 document, Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Last week Vice President Dick Cheney said the document showed there was a "link between Iraq and Al Qaeda." But Pillar notes the Egyptian group—headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri—didn't merge with Al Qaeda until years later. "This is the same kind of word game they played before the war," Pillar says.
Perhaps most revealing of all was a tape of Saddam's conversations with his ministers after the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993—a plot linked to a group of Islamic radicals, one of whom, Abdul Rahman Yasin, was an Iraqi-American who fled to Baghdad after the attack. For years Bush administration officials like Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz charged that Iraq had given "sanctuary" to Yasin, suggesting that the regime may have been complicit in the 1993 bombing. But the newly discovered tape shows that Saddam and his ministers were puzzled by the bombing and wondered whether the "Zionists" or U.S. intelligence were secretly behind it. They also were deeply suspicious of Yasin, whom the Iraqis had in custody and were interrogating. Yasin, Saddam says on the tape, is "too organized in what he is saying and is playing games." The Pentagon researcher said the exchange shows how "paranoid and suspicious" the Iraqis were about their adversaries. They may not have been alone.
Ottawa turns off tap on right to water
Go to Original
By Maude Barlow
"The Canadian government is at it again."
That was the opening line in an urgent email we received this week from an international NGO working to promote the right to water at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE) had just participated in a session where the Canadian government had undermined a key resolution tabled by Germany and Spain at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on March 10 that calls for water and sanitation to be recognized as a human right.
The resolution, which will be voted on within the week, is currently being debated at the UNHRC session in Geneva that ends on March 28. Canada has presented numerous objections that have been echoed by the United States.
As it stands, Canada and the United States are the only two countries to go on record at the United Nations to oppose the right to water.
Canada is a member of the UNHRC until 2009; the United States is not an elected member but is allowed to engage under the rules of the Council.
The joint resolution promoted by Germany and Spain aims to establish a "special rapporteur" with the mandate to provide guidance on the right to water and sanitation, identify best practices, investigate country situations and promote the right internationally.
This follows a report by Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stating that "specific, dedicated and sustained attention to safe drinking water and sanitation is currently lacking at the international level" and recommending that access to safe drinking water and sanitation be recognized as a human right.
Canada is working to weaken the resolution by demanding that references to the right to water and sanitation be removed and that the scope be reduced. Canada wants the proposed position of "special rapporteur" to be downgraded to "independent expert" serving for only one year instead of the proposed three years. Canada is also opposing visits by this expert to individual countries and the granting of a mandate enabling them to clarify the content of the right to water and sanitation.
This is the third time in six years that member nations of the UN have pushed for recognition of the human right to water. On each occasion, Canada has rejected the efforts to have water recognized as a right.
At a 2002 meeting, Canada stood alone among 53 countries by voting against the appointment of a special rapporteur on water. More recently, Canada reacted negatively to an October 2006 resolution of the UN Human Rights Council to conduct a study on the right to water.
The debate occurs as communities around the world observe today's 15th UN World Water Day.
The Liberal party defended the Harper government's position in the media earlier this week, claiming that a right to water would make Canada vulnerable to bulk water exports. This is utterly untrue.
All transboundary water issues were explicitly excluded from the scope of the resolution. A human rights convention is between a government and its citizens. Recognition of the right to water in no way affects a country's sovereign right to manage its own resources.
The reality is the resolution would be at odds with the North American Free Trade Agreement, which defines water as a good and an investment. The real issue is that the Liberals, like the Conservatives, refuse to reopen NAFTA to remove water. They would rather deny Canada and the world the right to water.
Recognizing water as a human right is vital to ensuring that governments address the reality of more than a billion people who are currently without access to clean water.
The fact that water is not acknowledged as a right has allowed decision-making over water policy to slip away from the UN and governments toward institutions promoting water privatization, which has harmed the environment and cut poor communities off from their water supplies around the world.
This motion by Germany and Spain presents new hope for groups who want to see an international solution to the global water crisis. Negotiations on the issue are expected to conclude this week and the Council of Canadians has responded to the call of our international allies by mobilizing thousands across the country to demand that our government reverse its position.
We will be marking World Water Day by working to promote the right to water in nearly 40 communities across the country. Sadly, our government seems determined to mark the day by denying that same right.
By Maude Barlow
"The Canadian government is at it again."
That was the opening line in an urgent email we received this week from an international NGO working to promote the right to water at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The Centre on Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE) had just participated in a session where the Canadian government had undermined a key resolution tabled by Germany and Spain at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva on March 10 that calls for water and sanitation to be recognized as a human right.
The resolution, which will be voted on within the week, is currently being debated at the UNHRC session in Geneva that ends on March 28. Canada has presented numerous objections that have been echoed by the United States.
As it stands, Canada and the United States are the only two countries to go on record at the United Nations to oppose the right to water.
Canada is a member of the UNHRC until 2009; the United States is not an elected member but is allowed to engage under the rules of the Council.
The joint resolution promoted by Germany and Spain aims to establish a "special rapporteur" with the mandate to provide guidance on the right to water and sanitation, identify best practices, investigate country situations and promote the right internationally.
This follows a report by Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stating that "specific, dedicated and sustained attention to safe drinking water and sanitation is currently lacking at the international level" and recommending that access to safe drinking water and sanitation be recognized as a human right.
Canada is working to weaken the resolution by demanding that references to the right to water and sanitation be removed and that the scope be reduced. Canada wants the proposed position of "special rapporteur" to be downgraded to "independent expert" serving for only one year instead of the proposed three years. Canada is also opposing visits by this expert to individual countries and the granting of a mandate enabling them to clarify the content of the right to water and sanitation.
This is the third time in six years that member nations of the UN have pushed for recognition of the human right to water. On each occasion, Canada has rejected the efforts to have water recognized as a right.
At a 2002 meeting, Canada stood alone among 53 countries by voting against the appointment of a special rapporteur on water. More recently, Canada reacted negatively to an October 2006 resolution of the UN Human Rights Council to conduct a study on the right to water.
The debate occurs as communities around the world observe today's 15th UN World Water Day.
The Liberal party defended the Harper government's position in the media earlier this week, claiming that a right to water would make Canada vulnerable to bulk water exports. This is utterly untrue.
All transboundary water issues were explicitly excluded from the scope of the resolution. A human rights convention is between a government and its citizens. Recognition of the right to water in no way affects a country's sovereign right to manage its own resources.
The reality is the resolution would be at odds with the North American Free Trade Agreement, which defines water as a good and an investment. The real issue is that the Liberals, like the Conservatives, refuse to reopen NAFTA to remove water. They would rather deny Canada and the world the right to water.
Recognizing water as a human right is vital to ensuring that governments address the reality of more than a billion people who are currently without access to clean water.
The fact that water is not acknowledged as a right has allowed decision-making over water policy to slip away from the UN and governments toward institutions promoting water privatization, which has harmed the environment and cut poor communities off from their water supplies around the world.
This motion by Germany and Spain presents new hope for groups who want to see an international solution to the global water crisis. Negotiations on the issue are expected to conclude this week and the Council of Canadians has responded to the call of our international allies by mobilizing thousands across the country to demand that our government reverse its position.
We will be marking World Water Day by working to promote the right to water in nearly 40 communities across the country. Sadly, our government seems determined to mark the day by denying that same right.
Why All the Foreign Bases?
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By Sam Baker
On May 14, 2005 the Associated Press reported Bulgaria's announcement that it would provide three new military bases to the US. General James Jones, the top commander of US and NATO troops in Europe, said that he would propose to the US Congress "four or five Bulgarian military facilities for use by US forces." More recently, the US announced plans for new bases in Romania.
Why does the US need new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania? According to Chalmers Johnson, in his book "The Sorrows of Empire," America already possesses more than 725 overseas bases. This incredible estimate comes from two official sources: The Department of Defense's "Base Structure Report," and "Worldwide Manpower Distribution by Geographical Area." Johnson claims that the figure is actually an underestimate, because many bases are "secret" or otherwise not listed on official books. As an example, Johnson quotes several sources who cite at least six US installations in Israel which are either operating or are under construction.
During the Cold War, it was argued that the US needed forward basing in strategic areas of the world to counter the Soviet position, and contain Soviet expansion. But the US continues to aggressively pursue more bases in far-flung areas of the globe, despite the fact that the Cold War has been over for more than a decade. American officials have explained that the new bases in Bulgaria and Romania are part of a broader US strategy of shifting troops based in Western Europe further east. In other words, now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, America is aggressively expanding into its former sphere of influence by recruiting former Soviet satellites into NATO, and garrisoning them with bases and troops. In fact, since 9/11 alone the US has acquired at least 14 new bases in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Persian Gulf, and Pakistan, and was evicted from a recently procured base in Uzbekistan. This figure does not include the newly-announced Bulgarian and Romanian bases. Are we to believe that the US needs more military bases worldwide – not less – now that the Cold War is over?
Apparently so. Thomas Donnelly, an archetype neoconservative militarist, recently published a pamphlet entitled "The Military We Need," available at http://www.aei.org/books/. Among other things, he argues for the creation of "new networks of overseas bases," and a "semipermanent ring of 'frontier forts' along the American security perimeter from West Africa to East Asia." In Counterpunch, Winslow T. Wheeler quoted Donnelly at a speech before the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute as saying the US "homeland" includes the area defined in the Monroe Doctrine. In Donnelly's mind, the US has apparently already annexed the Caribbean and Central America.
Since the end of the Cold War, the US has acquired a plethora of new bases throughout the Persian Gulf. Some observers believe that these bases were obtained to "secure" a strategic commodity – oil. While oil security was certainly a main concern of the first Gulf War, US bases in the Middle East are actually generating the very insecurity – in the forms of terrorism and insurgency – that they supposedly exist to combat. Certainly, there were no terrorist or insurgent attacks on Iraqi oil facilities before that country was invaded, occupied, and garrisoned with US bases and troops. Furthermore, Bin Laden cited US military occupation of Saudi Arabia as a key reason for Al-Qaida attacks against US interests. Another problem with the "oil security" thesis is that America only had two permanent bases (both naval) operating in the entire region during the Cold War, when the Middle East faced the threat of invasion by the Soviet Union – one in Bahrain, and the other on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, 3340 miles from Baghdad.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is, of course, another explanation offered for the buildup of US bases in the region. The question then becomes why the war was necessary in the first place. One answer is that the US seeks dominance over the few "rogue states" in the area who refuse to follow dictates from Washington. Before the second Gulf War began, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman wrote "Why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled? Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran." The bases Bookman portended have already been built, and Iran now faces a likely referral to the UN Security Council.
The invasion of Iraq wasn't the first occasion for US imperialism in the region. In 1963, the CIA backed a Ba'athist coup in Iraq which resulted in the assassination of then Prime Minister Abdel-Karim Kassem and many others on a CIA-supplied hit list. These actions paved the way for Ba'ath loyalist Saddam Hussein to assume direct dictatorship of the country by 1979. By the early 1980's, the US had restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq, and was providing assistance to Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran. This assistance included, but was not limited to, intelligence information, monetary loans, weapons and munitions grants and sales (including helicopters which were used to launch gas attacks on Kurds), and weapons-grade Anthrax bacterial cultures. Current and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein personally on at least two occasions during this period.
In 1953, the CIA under Eisenhower backed a successful coup in Iran which overthrew the constitutionally and democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq – who had nationalized British oil interests – and installed an American puppet, shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, or the "Shah of Iran." Upon taking power, the Shah awarded American and British oil companies a 40% stake each in a new oil consortium with the rights to pump Iranian oil. To protect their puppet, and repress all dissent, the CIA assisted the shah in the creation of the brutal SAVAK – a secret police force with unlimited censorship, surveillance, arrest, and detention powers. Under the shah's reign, SAVAK operated secret prisons, institutionalized torture, and murdered thousands of political prisoners. Iran remained a US-sponsored totalitarian terror-state ruled by an American puppet until the overthrow of the shah in 1979 and the ushering in of an Islamic fundamentalist regime under the Ayatollah Khomeini.
But US interests in the region are not limited to oil dominance or political control. It is no secret that a cabal of prominent neoconservatives operating at very high levels within the George W. Bush regime, but also within the Pentagon, various quasi-governmental boards, think tanks, special interest groups, and political magazines, long lobbied for the US to invade Iraq and remake the entire Middle East over to suit Israel. These neoconservatives share a passionate attachment to the Jewish state, and some have close connections to the Likud party and Israeli leaders such as Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. The neoconservative agenda for Iraq was made abundantly clear in various letters to the president and congressional leaders, as well as books, articles, position papers, reports, and other publications written years before 9/11. For instance, in July 1996, neoconservatives Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others wrote a position paper for Benjamin Netanyahu entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." Among other things, the paper advocated regime change in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. And in a September 2000 report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century," the neoconservative Project for the New American Century wrote that they were waiting for a "catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor" to provide an excuse to execute their agenda. The two disasters which afforded them their opportunity were the election of George W. Bush and the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
But the involvement of neoconservatives in the decision to invade Iraq is already well-known and well-documented, and a comprehensive analysis is far beyond the scope of this article. The point is simply to illustrate that, whatever the motives for the second Gulf War and virulent spread of US bases in the region – domination of oil, subjugation and control of "rogue states," furthering Israeli interests, or "spreading democracy" for that matter – these are imperial motives for imperial actions.
In addition to building new bases, the US also continues to maintain old bases and security guarantees throughout the world. Bases in South Korea, half a world away, were built during the Cold War ostensibly to defend that nation against attack by North Korea. This was part of a broader effort to "contain communism" and stop the fulfillment of the "domino theory." But the bases and troops remain despite the fact that the Cold War is over and communism is a dying ideology. In fact, the US has recently taken a more aggressive posture towards North Korea, indicting it as a member of an "axis of evil."
Interestingly, while the US is building new bases overseas, it is closing bases domestically. No overseas bases are slated for closure by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Because private defense contractors like Halliburton source foreign labor when performing overseas base support, the US is now, in effect, outsourcing defense-related jobs.
There is no great mystery regarding the US garrisoning of east and central Asia, Japan, Eastern and Western Europe, Cuba, the Persian Gulf, and many other areas of the globe with hundreds of military bases. The truth of the matter is that America, "the world's only remaining superpower," is actually the world's only remaining global empire. And as all empires do, it will continue to expand until it is deterred by a rival power, or until it bankrupts the "homeland" with imperial overstretch and wars. Indeed, the very term "homeland" itself implies that there must be an associated "away land" component. This "away land" is the US empire abroad.
Is America really an empire? Empires have taken many forms throughout history. Empires based on one extreme – the Roman model for instance – built their empires through outright annexation of conquered territories. The English, French, Dutch, and Spanish based their empires upon the institution of colonization. Dr. Ivan Eland, in his book "The Empire has no Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed," has concluded that, structurally, the American empire is modeled on another extreme – that of the ancient Greek city-state Sparta. Sparta did not conquer and annex other peoples, with the exception of the Helots. Rather, it used its superior military prowess to dominate allied oligarchic factions through its military alliance, the Peloponnesian League. Sparta's de facto control over the foreign policy of the Peloponnesian League gave it effective control over the foreign policies of the city-states comprising the alliance. Sparta demanded that the city-states within its orbit maintain their oligarchic form of government, and it reserved the right to impose this restriction by force. But Sparta did not micromanage the domestic affairs of its alliance members on a day-to-day basis. In this regard, the Spartan model of empire is one of "looser control" over states comprising an empire.
Like Sparta, the US has de facto control over the foreign policy of its military alliance, NATO. And presumably, the US would not allow an objectionable form of government to take power in a key strategic ally. In fact, the US has sought to instigate or prevent regime change in many states it has wanted to control, whether strategic or non-strategic, allied or non-allied. Examples include Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Greece, Grenada, Guam, Guatemala, Haiti, Hawaii, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Philippines, Samoa, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Venezuela, and Vietnam, among others.
But while the US empire resembles Sparta structurally, Eland points out that in its offensive orientation it more closely resembles Athens. Sparta was a defensive, status-quo power that did not seek to enlarge, control non-strategic non-allied states, or remake the world in its image. Athens did. Coincidentally, Athenians believed their divine calling in life was to "spread democracy."
The US has also employed other models in building empire. After the Spanish-American war, Hawaii, the Panama Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, and Guam were annexed outright, and the Philippines were subjected to an American form of colonial rule not unlike that employed by European colonial powers at the time. The advent of the Cold War hailed the superpower practice of spawning satellites and client states. The American empire really represents a conglomeration of different approaches to empire building.
In a sense, the American empire is worldwide. The US dollar, as the world's reserve currency, allows the US to tax other countries by issuing depreciating pieces of paper in exchange for real goods and services. Rome imposed a comparable form of taxation by debasing its gold and silver coinage.
There are two imperial schools of thought operating within the American empire. The old globalist, Woodrow Wilson, New World Order Establishment, consisting of both Democrats and Republicans, prefers to disguise the iron fist of empire beneath a soft velvet glove of multilateralism, alliances, the UN, and humanitarianism. The new neoconservative imperialists – comprised of Republicans – care little for disguises, subtleties, pretenses, and diplomatic niceties. While not direct descendants, they are more similar in style to the unabashed Theodore Roosevelt school of imperialism. They prefer a more unilateral approach to empire, brandishing a naked iron fist devoid of any velvet glove. Because they are unapologetic hawks – chicken hawks in fact, as they use other people to fight their wars for them while they stack up deferments – neoconservative imperialists seem to relish the thought of using imperial power with a little more glee than their Wilsonian counterparts. Within the Republican party at least, and for the time being, the neoconservatives are waxing and ascendant, and the old Wilsonian Establishment is waning. But it is important to recognize that the differences between the two factions are differences of order, rather than kind. There is no anti-imperial constituency of any remote political significance operating within the American empire.
But the mystery of American empire is a lesser conundrum to contemplate. The greater mystery is why Americans have never questioned the fact that their republic has become an empire. Americans, as a people, seem to be quite uniquely ignorant in this regard, as every other empire in the annals of recorded human history was known to be an empire by its own citizens. Thus it would seem that Americans have earned quite a historical distinction for themselves, happily munching away on fast food while watching the latest reality TV shows, completely oblivious to the world around them and to their complicity in their own destruction.
By Sam Baker
On May 14, 2005 the Associated Press reported Bulgaria's announcement that it would provide three new military bases to the US. General James Jones, the top commander of US and NATO troops in Europe, said that he would propose to the US Congress "four or five Bulgarian military facilities for use by US forces." More recently, the US announced plans for new bases in Romania.
Why does the US need new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania? According to Chalmers Johnson, in his book "The Sorrows of Empire," America already possesses more than 725 overseas bases. This incredible estimate comes from two official sources: The Department of Defense's "Base Structure Report," and "Worldwide Manpower Distribution by Geographical Area." Johnson claims that the figure is actually an underestimate, because many bases are "secret" or otherwise not listed on official books. As an example, Johnson quotes several sources who cite at least six US installations in Israel which are either operating or are under construction.
During the Cold War, it was argued that the US needed forward basing in strategic areas of the world to counter the Soviet position, and contain Soviet expansion. But the US continues to aggressively pursue more bases in far-flung areas of the globe, despite the fact that the Cold War has been over for more than a decade. American officials have explained that the new bases in Bulgaria and Romania are part of a broader US strategy of shifting troops based in Western Europe further east. In other words, now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, America is aggressively expanding into its former sphere of influence by recruiting former Soviet satellites into NATO, and garrisoning them with bases and troops. In fact, since 9/11 alone the US has acquired at least 14 new bases in Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, the Persian Gulf, and Pakistan, and was evicted from a recently procured base in Uzbekistan. This figure does not include the newly-announced Bulgarian and Romanian bases. Are we to believe that the US needs more military bases worldwide – not less – now that the Cold War is over?
Apparently so. Thomas Donnelly, an archetype neoconservative militarist, recently published a pamphlet entitled "The Military We Need," available at http://www.aei.org/books/. Among other things, he argues for the creation of "new networks of overseas bases," and a "semipermanent ring of 'frontier forts' along the American security perimeter from West Africa to East Asia." In Counterpunch, Winslow T. Wheeler quoted Donnelly at a speech before the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute as saying the US "homeland" includes the area defined in the Monroe Doctrine. In Donnelly's mind, the US has apparently already annexed the Caribbean and Central America.
Since the end of the Cold War, the US has acquired a plethora of new bases throughout the Persian Gulf. Some observers believe that these bases were obtained to "secure" a strategic commodity – oil. While oil security was certainly a main concern of the first Gulf War, US bases in the Middle East are actually generating the very insecurity – in the forms of terrorism and insurgency – that they supposedly exist to combat. Certainly, there were no terrorist or insurgent attacks on Iraqi oil facilities before that country was invaded, occupied, and garrisoned with US bases and troops. Furthermore, Bin Laden cited US military occupation of Saudi Arabia as a key reason for Al-Qaida attacks against US interests. Another problem with the "oil security" thesis is that America only had two permanent bases (both naval) operating in the entire region during the Cold War, when the Middle East faced the threat of invasion by the Soviet Union – one in Bahrain, and the other on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, 3340 miles from Baghdad.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq is, of course, another explanation offered for the buildup of US bases in the region. The question then becomes why the war was necessary in the first place. One answer is that the US seeks dominance over the few "rogue states" in the area who refuse to follow dictates from Washington. Before the second Gulf War began, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman wrote "Why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled? Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran." The bases Bookman portended have already been built, and Iran now faces a likely referral to the UN Security Council.
The invasion of Iraq wasn't the first occasion for US imperialism in the region. In 1963, the CIA backed a Ba'athist coup in Iraq which resulted in the assassination of then Prime Minister Abdel-Karim Kassem and many others on a CIA-supplied hit list. These actions paved the way for Ba'ath loyalist Saddam Hussein to assume direct dictatorship of the country by 1979. By the early 1980's, the US had restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq, and was providing assistance to Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran. This assistance included, but was not limited to, intelligence information, monetary loans, weapons and munitions grants and sales (including helicopters which were used to launch gas attacks on Kurds), and weapons-grade Anthrax bacterial cultures. Current and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein personally on at least two occasions during this period.
In 1953, the CIA under Eisenhower backed a successful coup in Iran which overthrew the constitutionally and democratically elected Mohammad Mossadeq – who had nationalized British oil interests – and installed an American puppet, shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, or the "Shah of Iran." Upon taking power, the Shah awarded American and British oil companies a 40% stake each in a new oil consortium with the rights to pump Iranian oil. To protect their puppet, and repress all dissent, the CIA assisted the shah in the creation of the brutal SAVAK – a secret police force with unlimited censorship, surveillance, arrest, and detention powers. Under the shah's reign, SAVAK operated secret prisons, institutionalized torture, and murdered thousands of political prisoners. Iran remained a US-sponsored totalitarian terror-state ruled by an American puppet until the overthrow of the shah in 1979 and the ushering in of an Islamic fundamentalist regime under the Ayatollah Khomeini.
But US interests in the region are not limited to oil dominance or political control. It is no secret that a cabal of prominent neoconservatives operating at very high levels within the George W. Bush regime, but also within the Pentagon, various quasi-governmental boards, think tanks, special interest groups, and political magazines, long lobbied for the US to invade Iraq and remake the entire Middle East over to suit Israel. These neoconservatives share a passionate attachment to the Jewish state, and some have close connections to the Likud party and Israeli leaders such as Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu. The neoconservative agenda for Iraq was made abundantly clear in various letters to the president and congressional leaders, as well as books, articles, position papers, reports, and other publications written years before 9/11. For instance, in July 1996, neoconservatives Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, and others wrote a position paper for Benjamin Netanyahu entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." Among other things, the paper advocated regime change in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. And in a September 2000 report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century," the neoconservative Project for the New American Century wrote that they were waiting for a "catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor" to provide an excuse to execute their agenda. The two disasters which afforded them their opportunity were the election of George W. Bush and the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
But the involvement of neoconservatives in the decision to invade Iraq is already well-known and well-documented, and a comprehensive analysis is far beyond the scope of this article. The point is simply to illustrate that, whatever the motives for the second Gulf War and virulent spread of US bases in the region – domination of oil, subjugation and control of "rogue states," furthering Israeli interests, or "spreading democracy" for that matter – these are imperial motives for imperial actions.
In addition to building new bases, the US also continues to maintain old bases and security guarantees throughout the world. Bases in South Korea, half a world away, were built during the Cold War ostensibly to defend that nation against attack by North Korea. This was part of a broader effort to "contain communism" and stop the fulfillment of the "domino theory." But the bases and troops remain despite the fact that the Cold War is over and communism is a dying ideology. In fact, the US has recently taken a more aggressive posture towards North Korea, indicting it as a member of an "axis of evil."
Interestingly, while the US is building new bases overseas, it is closing bases domestically. No overseas bases are slated for closure by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Because private defense contractors like Halliburton source foreign labor when performing overseas base support, the US is now, in effect, outsourcing defense-related jobs.
There is no great mystery regarding the US garrisoning of east and central Asia, Japan, Eastern and Western Europe, Cuba, the Persian Gulf, and many other areas of the globe with hundreds of military bases. The truth of the matter is that America, "the world's only remaining superpower," is actually the world's only remaining global empire. And as all empires do, it will continue to expand until it is deterred by a rival power, or until it bankrupts the "homeland" with imperial overstretch and wars. Indeed, the very term "homeland" itself implies that there must be an associated "away land" component. This "away land" is the US empire abroad.
Is America really an empire? Empires have taken many forms throughout history. Empires based on one extreme – the Roman model for instance – built their empires through outright annexation of conquered territories. The English, French, Dutch, and Spanish based their empires upon the institution of colonization. Dr. Ivan Eland, in his book "The Empire has no Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed," has concluded that, structurally, the American empire is modeled on another extreme – that of the ancient Greek city-state Sparta. Sparta did not conquer and annex other peoples, with the exception of the Helots. Rather, it used its superior military prowess to dominate allied oligarchic factions through its military alliance, the Peloponnesian League. Sparta's de facto control over the foreign policy of the Peloponnesian League gave it effective control over the foreign policies of the city-states comprising the alliance. Sparta demanded that the city-states within its orbit maintain their oligarchic form of government, and it reserved the right to impose this restriction by force. But Sparta did not micromanage the domestic affairs of its alliance members on a day-to-day basis. In this regard, the Spartan model of empire is one of "looser control" over states comprising an empire.
Like Sparta, the US has de facto control over the foreign policy of its military alliance, NATO. And presumably, the US would not allow an objectionable form of government to take power in a key strategic ally. In fact, the US has sought to instigate or prevent regime change in many states it has wanted to control, whether strategic or non-strategic, allied or non-allied. Examples include Afghanistan, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Greece, Grenada, Guam, Guatemala, Haiti, Hawaii, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Philippines, Samoa, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Venezuela, and Vietnam, among others.
But while the US empire resembles Sparta structurally, Eland points out that in its offensive orientation it more closely resembles Athens. Sparta was a defensive, status-quo power that did not seek to enlarge, control non-strategic non-allied states, or remake the world in its image. Athens did. Coincidentally, Athenians believed their divine calling in life was to "spread democracy."
The US has also employed other models in building empire. After the Spanish-American war, Hawaii, the Panama Canal Zone, Puerto Rico, and Guam were annexed outright, and the Philippines were subjected to an American form of colonial rule not unlike that employed by European colonial powers at the time. The advent of the Cold War hailed the superpower practice of spawning satellites and client states. The American empire really represents a conglomeration of different approaches to empire building.
In a sense, the American empire is worldwide. The US dollar, as the world's reserve currency, allows the US to tax other countries by issuing depreciating pieces of paper in exchange for real goods and services. Rome imposed a comparable form of taxation by debasing its gold and silver coinage.
There are two imperial schools of thought operating within the American empire. The old globalist, Woodrow Wilson, New World Order Establishment, consisting of both Democrats and Republicans, prefers to disguise the iron fist of empire beneath a soft velvet glove of multilateralism, alliances, the UN, and humanitarianism. The new neoconservative imperialists – comprised of Republicans – care little for disguises, subtleties, pretenses, and diplomatic niceties. While not direct descendants, they are more similar in style to the unabashed Theodore Roosevelt school of imperialism. They prefer a more unilateral approach to empire, brandishing a naked iron fist devoid of any velvet glove. Because they are unapologetic hawks – chicken hawks in fact, as they use other people to fight their wars for them while they stack up deferments – neoconservative imperialists seem to relish the thought of using imperial power with a little more glee than their Wilsonian counterparts. Within the Republican party at least, and for the time being, the neoconservatives are waxing and ascendant, and the old Wilsonian Establishment is waning. But it is important to recognize that the differences between the two factions are differences of order, rather than kind. There is no anti-imperial constituency of any remote political significance operating within the American empire.
But the mystery of American empire is a lesser conundrum to contemplate. The greater mystery is why Americans have never questioned the fact that their republic has become an empire. Americans, as a people, seem to be quite uniquely ignorant in this regard, as every other empire in the annals of recorded human history was known to be an empire by its own citizens. Thus it would seem that Americans have earned quite a historical distinction for themselves, happily munching away on fast food while watching the latest reality TV shows, completely oblivious to the world around them and to their complicity in their own destruction.
Cheney backs Israel over security
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US Vice-President Dick Cheney has given strong backing to Israel ahead of talks with Palestinian leaders.
Mr Cheney said the US would never put any pressure on Israel over issues he said would threaten its security.
Speaking in a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he described America's commitment to Israel's security as "unshakeable".
Mr Cheney will visit the West Bank town of Ramallah on Sunday for talks with Palestinian leaders.
"America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakeable, as is our commitment to Israel's right to defend itself - always - against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction," Mr Cheney said.
"The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps to threaten its security."
Peace efforts
Mr Cheney reaffirmed Washington's commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state and said Palestinian leaders could be "certain of America's goodwill".
"We want to see a resolution to the conflict, an end to the terrorism that has caused so much grief to Israelis, and a new beginning for the Palestinian people," he said.
Mr Cheney said history had shown that "Israelis are prepared to make wrenching national sacrifices on behalf of peace" when encountered by Arab partners "who accepted Israel's permanence and are willing and capable of delivering on their commitments".
The vice-president attended an Easter Mass in Jerusalem and met more Israeli officials before his visit to Ramallah.
In a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, he reiterated Washington's commitment to the Middle East peace process.
"We're obviously dedicated to doing all we can as an administration to try to move the peace process forward and also obviously actively involved in dealing with the threats we see emerging in the region," he said.
In Ramallah, Mr Cheney is due to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
'Darkening shadows'
US President George W Bush has said he hopes for a peace deal before he leaves office in January.
Both Mr Cheney and Mr Olmert referred to regional tensions in the Middle East.
"We must not, and will not, ignore the darkening shadows of the situations in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria and in Iran and the forces there that are working to derail the hopes of the world," Mr Cheney said shortly after landing in Israel.
Mr Olmert said that there were "many items on the common agenda" of the US and Israel including Iran and carrying on peace negotiations with Palestinians.
"We are watching very carefully the northern front, the behaviour of Syria, and Hezbollah," he added.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called Mr Cheney's comments "completely biased in favour of the Israeli occupation".
He said they confirmed that the US "is a partner to Israel in its war against our people and against the Gaza Strip".
The BBC's Tim Franks in Jerusalem says Israelis and Palestinians are sceptical about the chances for peace.
Opinion polls suggest that most people doubt that the current talks, given an extra push by the Americans at the end of last year, will lead to a deal any time soon, he says.
Mr Cheney will visit Turkey before returning to Washington.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney has given strong backing to Israel ahead of talks with Palestinian leaders.
Mr Cheney said the US would never put any pressure on Israel over issues he said would threaten its security.
Speaking in a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he described America's commitment to Israel's security as "unshakeable".
Mr Cheney will visit the West Bank town of Ramallah on Sunday for talks with Palestinian leaders.
"America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakeable, as is our commitment to Israel's right to defend itself - always - against terrorism, rocket attacks and other threats from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction," Mr Cheney said.
"The United States will never pressure Israel to take steps to threaten its security."
Peace efforts
Mr Cheney reaffirmed Washington's commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state and said Palestinian leaders could be "certain of America's goodwill".
"We want to see a resolution to the conflict, an end to the terrorism that has caused so much grief to Israelis, and a new beginning for the Palestinian people," he said.
Mr Cheney said history had shown that "Israelis are prepared to make wrenching national sacrifices on behalf of peace" when encountered by Arab partners "who accepted Israel's permanence and are willing and capable of delivering on their commitments".
The vice-president attended an Easter Mass in Jerusalem and met more Israeli officials before his visit to Ramallah.
In a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres, he reiterated Washington's commitment to the Middle East peace process.
"We're obviously dedicated to doing all we can as an administration to try to move the peace process forward and also obviously actively involved in dealing with the threats we see emerging in the region," he said.
In Ramallah, Mr Cheney is due to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
'Darkening shadows'
US President George W Bush has said he hopes for a peace deal before he leaves office in January.
Both Mr Cheney and Mr Olmert referred to regional tensions in the Middle East.
"We must not, and will not, ignore the darkening shadows of the situations in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria and in Iran and the forces there that are working to derail the hopes of the world," Mr Cheney said shortly after landing in Israel.
Mr Olmert said that there were "many items on the common agenda" of the US and Israel including Iran and carrying on peace negotiations with Palestinians.
"We are watching very carefully the northern front, the behaviour of Syria, and Hezbollah," he added.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called Mr Cheney's comments "completely biased in favour of the Israeli occupation".
He said they confirmed that the US "is a partner to Israel in its war against our people and against the Gaza Strip".
The BBC's Tim Franks in Jerusalem says Israelis and Palestinians are sceptical about the chances for peace.
Opinion polls suggest that most people doubt that the current talks, given an extra push by the Americans at the end of last year, will lead to a deal any time soon, he says.
Mr Cheney will visit Turkey before returning to Washington.
U.S. Pushed Allies on Iraq, Diplomat Writes
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By Colum Lynch
Chilean Envoy to U.N. Recounts Threats of Retaliation in Run-Up to Invasion
UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Mu¿oz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.
"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Mu¿oz writes.
But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Mu¿oz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.
Mu¿oz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war: Then-U.N. Ambassadors Juan Gabriel Vald¿s of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.
The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the French threat to veto the resolution.
In the weeks preceding the war, Bush made several appeals to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Mexican President Vicente Fox to rein in their diplomats and support U.S. war aims. "We have problems with your ambassador at the U.N.," Bush told Fox at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Los Cabos, Mexico, in late 2002.
"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long," Bush told the Chilean president on March 11, 2003.
"Bush had referred to Lagos by his first name, but as the conversation drew to a close and Lagos refused to support the resolution as it stood, Bush shifted to a cool and aloof 'Mr. President,' " Mu¿oz writes. "Next Monday, time is up," Bush told Lagos.
Senior U.S. diplomats sought to thwart a last-minute attempt by Chile to broker a compromise that would delay military action for weeks, providing Iraq with a final chance to demonstrate that it had fully complied with disarmament requirements.
On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But then-U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning them that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Mu¿oz writes.
Aguilar Zinser, who died in 2005, was forced out of the Mexican government after publicly accusing the United States of treating Mexico like its "back yard" during the war negotiations. Vald¿s was transferred to Argentina, where he served as Chile's top envoy, and Mu¿oz, a Chilean minister and onetime classmate of Condoleezza Rice at the University of Denver, was sent to the United Nations in June 2003 to patch up relations with the United States.
In the days after the invasion, the National Security Council's top Latin American expert, John F. Maisto, invited Mu¿oz to the White House to convey the message to Lagos, that his country's position at the United Nations had jeopardized prospects for the speedy Senate ratification of a free-trade pact. "Chile has lost some influence," he said. "President Bush is truly disappointed with Lagos, but he is furious with Fox. With Mexico, the president feels betrayed; with Chile, frustrated and let down."
Mu¿oz said relations remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to suspected U.S. eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Mu¿oz said in an interview.
The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on."
Mu¿oz said that threats of reprisals were short-lived as Washington quickly found itself reaching out to Chile, Mexico and other countries to support Iraq's messy postwar rehabilitation. It also sought support from Chile on issues such as peacekeeping in Haiti and support for U.S. efforts to drive Syria out of Lebanon. The U.S.-Chilean free trade agreement, while delayed, was finally signed by then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick in June 2003.
Mu¿oz said that Rice, as secretary of state, called him to ask for help on a U.N. resolution that would press for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The United States had secured eight of the nine votes required for adoption of a resolution in the Security Council. Mu¿oz had received instructions to abstain. "I talked to [Lagos], and he listened to my argument, and we gave them the ninth vote," he said.
By Colum Lynch
Chilean Envoy to U.N. Recounts Threats of Retaliation in Run-Up to Invasion
UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.
The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, Heraldo Mu¿oz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.
"In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Mu¿oz writes.
But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Mu¿oz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.
Mu¿oz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war: Then-U.N. Ambassadors Juan Gabriel Vald¿s of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.
The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the French threat to veto the resolution.
In the weeks preceding the war, Bush made several appeals to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Mexican President Vicente Fox to rein in their diplomats and support U.S. war aims. "We have problems with your ambassador at the U.N.," Bush told Fox at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Los Cabos, Mexico, in late 2002.
"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long," Bush told the Chilean president on March 11, 2003.
"Bush had referred to Lagos by his first name, but as the conversation drew to a close and Lagos refused to support the resolution as it stood, Bush shifted to a cool and aloof 'Mr. President,' " Mu¿oz writes. "Next Monday, time is up," Bush told Lagos.
Senior U.S. diplomats sought to thwart a last-minute attempt by Chile to broker a compromise that would delay military action for weeks, providing Iraq with a final chance to demonstrate that it had fully complied with disarmament requirements.
On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But then-U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning them that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Mu¿oz writes.
Aguilar Zinser, who died in 2005, was forced out of the Mexican government after publicly accusing the United States of treating Mexico like its "back yard" during the war negotiations. Vald¿s was transferred to Argentina, where he served as Chile's top envoy, and Mu¿oz, a Chilean minister and onetime classmate of Condoleezza Rice at the University of Denver, was sent to the United Nations in June 2003 to patch up relations with the United States.
In the days after the invasion, the National Security Council's top Latin American expert, John F. Maisto, invited Mu¿oz to the White House to convey the message to Lagos, that his country's position at the United Nations had jeopardized prospects for the speedy Senate ratification of a free-trade pact. "Chile has lost some influence," he said. "President Bush is truly disappointed with Lagos, but he is furious with Fox. With Mexico, the president feels betrayed; with Chile, frustrated and let down."
Mu¿oz said relations remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to suspected U.S. eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Mu¿oz said in an interview.
The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on."
Mu¿oz said that threats of reprisals were short-lived as Washington quickly found itself reaching out to Chile, Mexico and other countries to support Iraq's messy postwar rehabilitation. It also sought support from Chile on issues such as peacekeeping in Haiti and support for U.S. efforts to drive Syria out of Lebanon. The U.S.-Chilean free trade agreement, while delayed, was finally signed by then-U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick in June 2003.
Mu¿oz said that Rice, as secretary of state, called him to ask for help on a U.N. resolution that would press for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The United States had secured eight of the nine votes required for adoption of a resolution in the Security Council. Mu¿oz had received instructions to abstain. "I talked to [Lagos], and he listened to my argument, and we gave them the ninth vote," he said.
Tibet and the March 10 commemoration of the CIA's 1959 'uprising'
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By Gary Wilson
Has Tibet become the front line of a new national liberation struggle? Or is something else happening there?
The U.S. news media are filled with stories about events unfolding in Tibet. Each news report, however, seems to include a note that much of what they are reporting cannot be confirmed. The sources of the reports are shadowy and unknown. If past practice is any indicator, it is likely that the U.S. State Department and the CIA are their primary sources.
One frequently quoted source is John Ackerly. Who is Ackerly? As president of the International Campaign for Tibet, he and his group appear to work closely with the U.S. government, both the State Department and Congress, as part of its operations concerning Tibet. During the Cold War, Ackerly’s Washington-based job was to work with “dissidents” in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania in 1978-80.
A private international security agency in Washington, Harbor Lane Associates, lists Ackerly and the International Campaign for Tibet as its clients, along with former CIA Director and U.S. President George H.W. Bush and former Pentagon chief William Cohen.
AP, Reuters and the other Western news agencies all quote Ackerly as a major source for exaggerated reports about the clashes that have just occurred in Tibet. For example, MSNBC on March 15 reported:
“John Ackerly, of the International Campaign for Tibet, a group that supports demands for Tibetan autonomy, said in an e-mailed statement he feared ‘hundreds of Tibetans have been arrested and are being interrogated and tortured.’”
Qiangba Puncog, a Tibetan who is chair of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, described the situation quite differently at a March 17 press briefing in Beijing.
According to china.org.cn, China’s state Web site, the Tibetan leader said that allies of the exiled Dalai Lama on March 14 “engaged in reckless beating, looting, smashing and burning and their activities soon spread to other parts of the city. These people focused on street-side shops, primary and middle schools, hospitals, banks, power and communications facilities and media organizations. They set fire to passing vehicles, they chased after and beat passengers on the street, and they launched assaults on shops, telecommunication service outlets and government buildings. Their behavior has caused severe damage to the life and property of local people, and seriously undermined law and order in Lhasa.
“‘Thirteen innocent civilians were burned or stabbed to death in the riot in Lhasa on March 14, and 61 police were injured, six of them seriously wounded,’ said Qiangba Puncog.
“Statistics also show that rioters set fire to more than 300 locations, including residential houses and 214 shops, and smashed and burned 56 vehicles. ...
“Qiangba Puncog also claimed that security personnel did not carry or use any lethal weapons in dealing with the riot last Friday. ...
“The violence was the result of a conspiracy between domestic and overseas groups that advocate ‘Tibet independence,’ according to Qiangba Puncog. ‘The Dalai clique masterminded, planned and carefully organized the riot.’
“According to Qiangba Puncog, on March 10, 49 years ago, the slave owners of old Tibet launched an armed rebellion aimed at splitting the country. That rebellion was quickly quelled. Every year since 1959, some separatists inside and outside China have held activities around the day of the rebellion. ...
“Any secessionist attempt to sabotage Tibet’s stability will not gain people’s support and is doomed to fail, he said.”
Meeting in New Delhi
Whatever is taking place in Tibet has long been in preparation. A conference was held in New Delhi, India, last June by “Friends of Tibet.” It was described as a conference for the breakaway of Tibet.
The news site phayul.com reported at the time that the conference was told “how the Olympics could provide the one chance for Tibetans to come out and protest.” A call was issued for worldwide protests, a march of exiles from India to Tibet, and protests within Tibet—all tied to the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
This was followed by a call this past January for an “uprising” in Tibet, issued by organizations based in India. The news report from Jan. 25 said that the “Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement” was established Jan. 4 to focus on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The beginning date for the “uprising” was to be March 10.
At the time the call was issued, U.S. Ambassador to India David Mulford was meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. U.S. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky made a similar visit to Dharamsala last November. Dobriansky is also a member of the neocon Project for a New American Century. She has been involved in the so-called color revolutions in Eastern Europe.
Phayul.com reports that the Tibet “Uprising” group’s statement says they are acting “in the spirit of the 1959 Uprising.”
The 1959 uprising
Knowing more about the 1959 “uprising” might help in understanding today’s events in Tibet.
In 2002 a book titled “The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet” was published by the University Press of Kansas. The two authors—Kenneth Conboy of the Heritage Foundation and James Morrison, an Army veteran trainer for the CIA—proudly detail how the CIA set up and ran Tibet’s so-called resistance movement. The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA payroll and approved the CIA’s plans for the armed uprising.
The CIA put the Dalai Lama’s brother, Gyalo Thodup, in charge of the bloody 1959 armed attack. A contra army was trained by the CIA in Colorado and then dropped by U.S. Air Force planes into Tibet.
The 1959 attack was a CIA planned and organized coup attempt, much like the later Bay of Pigs invasion of socialist Cuba. The purpose was to overthrow the existing Tibetan government and weaken the Chinese Revolution while tying the people of Tibet to U.S. imperialist interests. What does that say about today’s March uprising, that’s done in the same spirit?
By Gary Wilson
Has Tibet become the front line of a new national liberation struggle? Or is something else happening there?
The U.S. news media are filled with stories about events unfolding in Tibet. Each news report, however, seems to include a note that much of what they are reporting cannot be confirmed. The sources of the reports are shadowy and unknown. If past practice is any indicator, it is likely that the U.S. State Department and the CIA are their primary sources.
One frequently quoted source is John Ackerly. Who is Ackerly? As president of the International Campaign for Tibet, he and his group appear to work closely with the U.S. government, both the State Department and Congress, as part of its operations concerning Tibet. During the Cold War, Ackerly’s Washington-based job was to work with “dissidents” in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania in 1978-80.
A private international security agency in Washington, Harbor Lane Associates, lists Ackerly and the International Campaign for Tibet as its clients, along with former CIA Director and U.S. President George H.W. Bush and former Pentagon chief William Cohen.
AP, Reuters and the other Western news agencies all quote Ackerly as a major source for exaggerated reports about the clashes that have just occurred in Tibet. For example, MSNBC on March 15 reported:
“John Ackerly, of the International Campaign for Tibet, a group that supports demands for Tibetan autonomy, said in an e-mailed statement he feared ‘hundreds of Tibetans have been arrested and are being interrogated and tortured.’”
Qiangba Puncog, a Tibetan who is chair of the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government, described the situation quite differently at a March 17 press briefing in Beijing.
According to china.org.cn, China’s state Web site, the Tibetan leader said that allies of the exiled Dalai Lama on March 14 “engaged in reckless beating, looting, smashing and burning and their activities soon spread to other parts of the city. These people focused on street-side shops, primary and middle schools, hospitals, banks, power and communications facilities and media organizations. They set fire to passing vehicles, they chased after and beat passengers on the street, and they launched assaults on shops, telecommunication service outlets and government buildings. Their behavior has caused severe damage to the life and property of local people, and seriously undermined law and order in Lhasa.
“‘Thirteen innocent civilians were burned or stabbed to death in the riot in Lhasa on March 14, and 61 police were injured, six of them seriously wounded,’ said Qiangba Puncog.
“Statistics also show that rioters set fire to more than 300 locations, including residential houses and 214 shops, and smashed and burned 56 vehicles. ...
“Qiangba Puncog also claimed that security personnel did not carry or use any lethal weapons in dealing with the riot last Friday. ...
“The violence was the result of a conspiracy between domestic and overseas groups that advocate ‘Tibet independence,’ according to Qiangba Puncog. ‘The Dalai clique masterminded, planned and carefully organized the riot.’
“According to Qiangba Puncog, on March 10, 49 years ago, the slave owners of old Tibet launched an armed rebellion aimed at splitting the country. That rebellion was quickly quelled. Every year since 1959, some separatists inside and outside China have held activities around the day of the rebellion. ...
“Any secessionist attempt to sabotage Tibet’s stability will not gain people’s support and is doomed to fail, he said.”
Meeting in New Delhi
Whatever is taking place in Tibet has long been in preparation. A conference was held in New Delhi, India, last June by “Friends of Tibet.” It was described as a conference for the breakaway of Tibet.
The news site phayul.com reported at the time that the conference was told “how the Olympics could provide the one chance for Tibetans to come out and protest.” A call was issued for worldwide protests, a march of exiles from India to Tibet, and protests within Tibet—all tied to the upcoming Beijing Olympics.
This was followed by a call this past January for an “uprising” in Tibet, issued by organizations based in India. The news report from Jan. 25 said that the “Tibetan People’s Uprising Movement” was established Jan. 4 to focus on the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The beginning date for the “uprising” was to be March 10.
At the time the call was issued, U.S. Ambassador to India David Mulford was meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. U.S. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky made a similar visit to Dharamsala last November. Dobriansky is also a member of the neocon Project for a New American Century. She has been involved in the so-called color revolutions in Eastern Europe.
Phayul.com reports that the Tibet “Uprising” group’s statement says they are acting “in the spirit of the 1959 Uprising.”
The 1959 uprising
Knowing more about the 1959 “uprising” might help in understanding today’s events in Tibet.
In 2002 a book titled “The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet” was published by the University Press of Kansas. The two authors—Kenneth Conboy of the Heritage Foundation and James Morrison, an Army veteran trainer for the CIA—proudly detail how the CIA set up and ran Tibet’s so-called resistance movement. The Dalai Lama himself was on the CIA payroll and approved the CIA’s plans for the armed uprising.
The CIA put the Dalai Lama’s brother, Gyalo Thodup, in charge of the bloody 1959 armed attack. A contra army was trained by the CIA in Colorado and then dropped by U.S. Air Force planes into Tibet.
The 1959 attack was a CIA planned and organized coup attempt, much like the later Bay of Pigs invasion of socialist Cuba. The purpose was to overthrow the existing Tibetan government and weaken the Chinese Revolution while tying the people of Tibet to U.S. imperialist interests. What does that say about today’s March uprising, that’s done in the same spirit?
Happy Anniversary, America! How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
Go to Original
By David Michael Green
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration, (No, it’s not a terrorist attack - that was 2001! No, it’s not a catastrophic war - that was 2003! No, it’s not a drowning city - that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe disengagement with which he’s attended the previous ones, you cannot but stop and gaze in stark, comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the Washington press corps yet once again - and seeing them fawn over him, laugh in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once again - is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of humor. Monty Python is about as funny - and as stiff - as Dick Nixon, by comparison.
It’s simply incomprehensible. It’s not so astonishing, of course, that a country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions when they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality. Plenty of countries have managed that feat, especially when - as was the case with Bush - every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then pure corruption and intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered indeed with bimbos and petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to explain is how a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains, and with the capacity to choose, and in the twenty-first century no less, allows this to happen. And then stands by silently watching for eight years as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes, all 600 million of them, hardly any of them even blinking.
And so, remarkably, as we mark now the fifth anniversary of the very most tragic of these debacles, the most destructive and the most shameful - because it was the most avoidable - the sad question of the hour is less what is to be done about it than will anyone even notice? Not likely. And not for very long if they do. And, most of all, definitely not enough so as to take meaningful action to bring it to an end, even at this absurdly late date.
But let’s give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously reminded us that, “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here, because these guys were so absolutely careful to avoid exposing the costs of their war to those who could demand its end. For example, by some counts, there are more mercenaries fighting in Iraq, at extremely high cost, than there are US military personnel. There’s only one reason for that. If the administration implemented the draft that is actually necessary to supply this war with adequate personnel, the public would end both the war and the careers of its sponsors, post haste. For the same reason, this is the first American war ever which has not only not been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in fact witnessed a tax cut. Likewise - to ‘preserve the dignity’ of the dead, of course - you are no longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base. And the press are embedded with forces who are also responsible for their safety, which is just a fancy way of saying that they’re so censored they make Pravda look good. It is, in short, quite easy for average Americans to get through their day, every day, without the war impacting their lives in any visible respect, and that is precisely what hundreds of millions of us are doing, week in and week out. All of this is courtesy of an administration that couldn’t run a governmental program to save its own life - but, boy, they sure as hell know how to market stuff.
So perhaps there is no excuse, after all, for my naïveté, for my credulousness in wanting to believe that twenty-first century America might be different enough not to follow the smallest of men - a personal failure and a 40-year drunkard who, unlike Herr Göring’s führer, couldn’t even claim charismatic eloquence as the sole virtue accounting for his power - to follow such a petulant child off the deep end of a completely unjustified war. Perhaps Americans and American democracy are no wiser or better than any other people or political system, even today, even after the worst century of warfare in human history, even after the mirror-image experience of Vietnam. Maybe the experience of Iraq hasn’t even changed them, and they’ll once again follow like lemmings when led to war by pathetic creatures such as George W. Bush, fifty years from now. Or five years from now. Or even five months from now, as the creature d.b.a Dick Cheney tees up a confrontation with Iran in order keep Democrats out of the White House, and himself out of jail.
Sure, presidents and prime ministers, no less than kings and führers, will lie their countries into war. Sure, they’re very good at it, and getting better all the time. Definitely a frightened people are more prone to stupidity than those lucky enough to contemplate in the luxury of quiet safety. Without question, it helps an awful lot - if you’re just Joe Sixpack, out there trying to figure out international politics in-between a long day’s work, helping the kids with their algebra homework, and the Yankee game - to have a checking-and-balancing Congress, a responsible opposition party, and/or a critical media helping you to understand the issues accurately, rather than gleefully capitulating to executive power at every opportunity. But that by no means excuses a public who were fundamentally far more lazy than they were ignorant or confused. And lazy is one thing when you’re talking about a highway bill or even national healthcare. But when it comes to war, lazy is murder.
I don’t think it took a giant leap of logic to understand that this war was bogus from the beginning, even based on what was known at the time. The war was sold on three basic arguments, each of which could have been easily dismantled even then with a little thoughtful consideration.
The first was WMD, of course. So, okay, perhaps your average American didn’t know that the United States government (including many in the current administration) had actually once supplied Saddam Hussein the material to make these evil weapons, and had covered for him at the UN and elsewhere when he used them. Although this historical myopia is very much part of the problem, of course. Americans are so ready to denounce supposed enemies without doing the slightest bit of historical homework to become acquainted with the slightest bit of history to make sense of the situation. If you don’t know that the US actually canceled elections and helped assassinate a ‘democratic’ president in Vietnam, of course you’re going to support war there. If you don’t know that the US toppled a democratically elected Iranian government to steal the country’s oil and then installed a brutal dictatorship in its place, of course you’re going to be angry at US diplomats being held hostage. And if you don’t bother to learn the true history of Iraq, perhaps you’ll find the WMD argument quite persuasive.
But, in fact, even without the historical background information, it never made a damn bit of sense. Iraq had been pulverized by war and sanctions for over twenty years prior to 2003. Two-thirds of its airspace was controlled by foreign militaries. Its northern region was effectively autonomous, a separate country in all but name. It was in no position to attack anyone. Moreover, it hadn’t attacked anyone - not the United States or anyone else. Indeed, it hadn’t even threatened to attack anyone. Shouldn’t that be part of the calculation in determining whether to go to war? Do we really want to give carte blanche to any dry (we hope) drunkard in the White House who today wants to bomb Norway (”They’re stealing our fish!”), or tomorrow wants to invade Burkina Faso (”They dress funny!”)?
Too often, of course, the historical answer to that question has unfortunately been yes, we apparently do want to do that. But let’s consider the massive warning signs in this case, even apart from what could be known about the administration’s lies at the time. Shouldn’t it have been enormously problematic that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Even the administration never had the gall to make that claim. Wasn’t it transparent to anyone that America had plenty on its plate already in dealing with the enemy we were told we had, rather than adding a new adventure to the pile? And why wasn’t this thing selling throughout the world, or even amongst the traitorous half of the Democratic Party in Congress? Remember how everyone at home and abroad - yes, including the French - supported the US and its military actions in Afghanistan only twelve months before? Shouldn’t it have been a warning sign of epic proportions that these same folks wouldn’t countenance a war in Iraq just a year later? That the administration had to yank its Security Council resolution off the table, even after breaking both the arms of every member-state around the horseshoe table, because it could still only get Britain and two other patsies to lie down for this outrage, out of a total of fifteen, and nine needed to pass?
And how about the logic of that whole WMD thing, after all? Did anyone ever stop to think that several dozen other countries have WMD, including some that are pretty hostile to the United States? Did anyone not remember that the Soviets once had nearly 25,000 strategic nuclear warheads pointed in our direction? What ever happened to the logic of deterrence? To mutually assured destruction? And what about the mad rush to go to war, preempting the UN weapons inspectors from doing their job? Are we really okay with the notion that instead of ‘risking’ whatever would have been at risk by giving the inspectors another six or eight weeks to finish up, we’ve instead bought this devastating war down on our own heads for no reason at all? If you stop to think about it, it makes you shudder. Which I guess explains why not too many people stop to think about it.
The second rationale for war was the bogus linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda. The extent and ramifications of this lie are so significant that the White House, it was just recently revealed, squelched a Pentagon report showing no connections between the two. Is this sort of censorship what the Bush administration means by democracy, the remedy it’s always preaching for the rest of the world but never practicing at home? Anyhow, remember how definitive Cheney and the rest were of this supposed al Qaeda linkage, based pretty much entirely on a meeting between two operatives in Prague which likely didn’t even take place? Now we find out that the Department of Defense has spent the last five years combing through a mere 600,000 documents, and found zero evidence of such a link. Not some evidence. Not mixed evidence. Zero evidence.
But you could tell even then that they had almost nothing to go on. Christ, the United States government itself has had far more interactions with al Qaeda - including helping to build the beast from its inception - than one disputed meeting between two spooks in Prague. Doesn’t it seem that a decision to go to war should hang on more than a single thread like that, let alone a narrow and tattered one? And how many of us are down for attacking any country right now that might have had a single meeting between a low-level functionary and an al Qaeda representative?
Then, once again, there’s the matter of that whole pesky logic thing. Pay attention now, class. What do we know about al Qaeda? They are devoted to religious war - jihad - in the name of replacing governments across the Middle East with theocracies, or better yet recreating the old Islamic caliphate stretching across the region, right? Right. Now if this vision could have more thoroughly contradicted Saddam’s agenda for a secular dictatorship seeking regional domination on his own Stalinist terms, it is hard to imagine how. You don’t need a PhD in international politics to see that these two actors were about as antithetical to each other as the Republican Party is to integrity. Then again, even having one doesn’t necessarily mean you have the foggiest clue about what’s going on in the world, as Condoleezza Rice clearly demonstrated by brilliantly failing to anticipate that Hamas would win elections she had pushed the Palestinians to hold. For someone serving as secretary of state, this idiocy is the rough equivalent of anyone else being shocked when a dropped bowling ball hurtles to the ground, because they’re not yet fully acquainted with the concept of gravity. Evidently, in Texas this is what they call ‘credentials’.
Lastly, Bush’s little adventure in Mesopotamia was supposed to bring democracy to the region, remember? Never mind, of course, that there has long already been a fairly thriving Islamic democracy, right next door. Oops! It’s called Turkey. And let’s not forget Mr. Bush’s long-standing devotion to democracy, as he amply demonstrated in the American election of 2000. Or as he has continually manifested by bravely and publicly pushing the Chinese to democratize. Just as he has with his pals in Egypt and especially the family friends running Saudi Arabia, the recipient of more American foreign aid than nearly any other country in all the world. And let’s not forget the several hundred thousand perished souls from Darfur, whom this great champion of human rights has fought valiantly to keep alive by… by… well, I’m sure he’s done a lot behind the scenes. Sure is gonna be hard for them to exercise their precious right to vote from the next world, eh?
What is clear is that the reasons given to the American public for the war in Iraq were entirely bogus. This much is already on the public record, from the Downing Street Memos and beyond. Even if we can only speculate on why they actually invaded - oil, glory, personal insecurity, Israel, clobbering Democrats, Middle Eastern dominance - what we know for sure is that the rationale fed to the public was a knowingly fabricated pack of scummy lies. It wasn’t about WMD, it wasn’t about links to al Qaeda, and it sure wasn’t about democracy.
But even if we can’t identify the true motivations within the administration for invading, we can surely begin to see the costs. Probably a million Iraqi civilians are dead. Over four million are displaced and now living as refugees. Together, these equal a staggering one-fifth of the population of the entire country. Meanwhile, the remaining four-fifths are living in squalor, fear and a psychological damage so extensive that it is hard to grasp. America has lost 4,000 soldiers, with perhaps another 30,000 gravely wounded. Hundreds of thousands more will be scarred for life from their experiences in the hell of Mr. Bush’s war. Our military is broken and incapable of responding to a real emergency, at home or abroad. Our economy will sustain a blow of perhaps three trillion dollars before it is all said and done. Our reputation in the world is in the toilet. We have turned the Iranian theocracy into a regional hegemon. And we have massively proliferated our own enemies within the Islamic community. That would be one hell of an expensive war, even if the reasons given for it were legitimate. It is nearly incomprehensible considering that they were not.
This week, a man died in France, the last surviving veteran of World War I, a devastating conflict that - even a century later - nobody can still really explain to this day. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe “Make-me-SecDef-Mac-oh-please-pick-me-Mac” Lieberman parachuted into Iraq for photo-ops to sustain the war they don’t have the integrity or the guts to abandon. Never mind that their visits had to be by surprise, and that they stroll around the Green Zone wearing armored vests - surely the most powerful measures of the war’s success imaginable. Of course, to be fair, we’ve only been at it for five years now. Perhaps after the remaining ninety-five on McCain’s agenda go by, Americans will finally be safe enough in Iraq to announce their visits in advance.
So, Happy Anniversary, America! You put these people in charge, and then - after seeing in explicit in detail what they were capable of - you actually did it again in 2004! You stood by in silence watching the devastation wrought upon an innocent people, produced in your name and financed by your tax dollars. And you continue to do just that again, now in Year Six.
Brilliant! Put on your party hat, America. You won the prize.
You’ve successfully answered the musical question, “How lethally stupid can one country be?”
By David Michael Green
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration, (No, it’s not a terrorist attack - that was 2001! No, it’s not a catastrophic war - that was 2003! No, it’s not a drowning city - that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe disengagement with which he’s attended the previous ones, you cannot but stop and gaze in stark, comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the Washington press corps yet once again - and seeing them fawn over him, laugh in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once again - is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of humor. Monty Python is about as funny - and as stiff - as Dick Nixon, by comparison.
It’s simply incomprehensible. It’s not so astonishing, of course, that a country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions when they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality. Plenty of countries have managed that feat, especially when - as was the case with Bush - every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then pure corruption and intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered indeed with bimbos and petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to explain is how a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains, and with the capacity to choose, and in the twenty-first century no less, allows this to happen. And then stands by silently watching for eight years as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes, all 600 million of them, hardly any of them even blinking.
And so, remarkably, as we mark now the fifth anniversary of the very most tragic of these debacles, the most destructive and the most shameful - because it was the most avoidable - the sad question of the hour is less what is to be done about it than will anyone even notice? Not likely. And not for very long if they do. And, most of all, definitely not enough so as to take meaningful action to bring it to an end, even at this absurdly late date.
But let’s give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously reminded us that, “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here, because these guys were so absolutely careful to avoid exposing the costs of their war to those who could demand its end. For example, by some counts, there are more mercenaries fighting in Iraq, at extremely high cost, than there are US military personnel. There’s only one reason for that. If the administration implemented the draft that is actually necessary to supply this war with adequate personnel, the public would end both the war and the careers of its sponsors, post haste. For the same reason, this is the first American war ever which has not only not been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in fact witnessed a tax cut. Likewise - to ‘preserve the dignity’ of the dead, of course - you are no longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base. And the press are embedded with forces who are also responsible for their safety, which is just a fancy way of saying that they’re so censored they make Pravda look good. It is, in short, quite easy for average Americans to get through their day, every day, without the war impacting their lives in any visible respect, and that is precisely what hundreds of millions of us are doing, week in and week out. All of this is courtesy of an administration that couldn’t run a governmental program to save its own life - but, boy, they sure as hell know how to market stuff.
So perhaps there is no excuse, after all, for my naïveté, for my credulousness in wanting to believe that twenty-first century America might be different enough not to follow the smallest of men - a personal failure and a 40-year drunkard who, unlike Herr Göring’s führer, couldn’t even claim charismatic eloquence as the sole virtue accounting for his power - to follow such a petulant child off the deep end of a completely unjustified war. Perhaps Americans and American democracy are no wiser or better than any other people or political system, even today, even after the worst century of warfare in human history, even after the mirror-image experience of Vietnam. Maybe the experience of Iraq hasn’t even changed them, and they’ll once again follow like lemmings when led to war by pathetic creatures such as George W. Bush, fifty years from now. Or five years from now. Or even five months from now, as the creature d.b.a Dick Cheney tees up a confrontation with Iran in order keep Democrats out of the White House, and himself out of jail.
Sure, presidents and prime ministers, no less than kings and führers, will lie their countries into war. Sure, they’re very good at it, and getting better all the time. Definitely a frightened people are more prone to stupidity than those lucky enough to contemplate in the luxury of quiet safety. Without question, it helps an awful lot - if you’re just Joe Sixpack, out there trying to figure out international politics in-between a long day’s work, helping the kids with their algebra homework, and the Yankee game - to have a checking-and-balancing Congress, a responsible opposition party, and/or a critical media helping you to understand the issues accurately, rather than gleefully capitulating to executive power at every opportunity. But that by no means excuses a public who were fundamentally far more lazy than they were ignorant or confused. And lazy is one thing when you’re talking about a highway bill or even national healthcare. But when it comes to war, lazy is murder.
I don’t think it took a giant leap of logic to understand that this war was bogus from the beginning, even based on what was known at the time. The war was sold on three basic arguments, each of which could have been easily dismantled even then with a little thoughtful consideration.
The first was WMD, of course. So, okay, perhaps your average American didn’t know that the United States government (including many in the current administration) had actually once supplied Saddam Hussein the material to make these evil weapons, and had covered for him at the UN and elsewhere when he used them. Although this historical myopia is very much part of the problem, of course. Americans are so ready to denounce supposed enemies without doing the slightest bit of historical homework to become acquainted with the slightest bit of history to make sense of the situation. If you don’t know that the US actually canceled elections and helped assassinate a ‘democratic’ president in Vietnam, of course you’re going to support war there. If you don’t know that the US toppled a democratically elected Iranian government to steal the country’s oil and then installed a brutal dictatorship in its place, of course you’re going to be angry at US diplomats being held hostage. And if you don’t bother to learn the true history of Iraq, perhaps you’ll find the WMD argument quite persuasive.
But, in fact, even without the historical background information, it never made a damn bit of sense. Iraq had been pulverized by war and sanctions for over twenty years prior to 2003. Two-thirds of its airspace was controlled by foreign militaries. Its northern region was effectively autonomous, a separate country in all but name. It was in no position to attack anyone. Moreover, it hadn’t attacked anyone - not the United States or anyone else. Indeed, it hadn’t even threatened to attack anyone. Shouldn’t that be part of the calculation in determining whether to go to war? Do we really want to give carte blanche to any dry (we hope) drunkard in the White House who today wants to bomb Norway (”They’re stealing our fish!”), or tomorrow wants to invade Burkina Faso (”They dress funny!”)?
Too often, of course, the historical answer to that question has unfortunately been yes, we apparently do want to do that. But let’s consider the massive warning signs in this case, even apart from what could be known about the administration’s lies at the time. Shouldn’t it have been enormously problematic that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11? Even the administration never had the gall to make that claim. Wasn’t it transparent to anyone that America had plenty on its plate already in dealing with the enemy we were told we had, rather than adding a new adventure to the pile? And why wasn’t this thing selling throughout the world, or even amongst the traitorous half of the Democratic Party in Congress? Remember how everyone at home and abroad - yes, including the French - supported the US and its military actions in Afghanistan only twelve months before? Shouldn’t it have been a warning sign of epic proportions that these same folks wouldn’t countenance a war in Iraq just a year later? That the administration had to yank its Security Council resolution off the table, even after breaking both the arms of every member-state around the horseshoe table, because it could still only get Britain and two other patsies to lie down for this outrage, out of a total of fifteen, and nine needed to pass?
And how about the logic of that whole WMD thing, after all? Did anyone ever stop to think that several dozen other countries have WMD, including some that are pretty hostile to the United States? Did anyone not remember that the Soviets once had nearly 25,000 strategic nuclear warheads pointed in our direction? What ever happened to the logic of deterrence? To mutually assured destruction? And what about the mad rush to go to war, preempting the UN weapons inspectors from doing their job? Are we really okay with the notion that instead of ‘risking’ whatever would have been at risk by giving the inspectors another six or eight weeks to finish up, we’ve instead bought this devastating war down on our own heads for no reason at all? If you stop to think about it, it makes you shudder. Which I guess explains why not too many people stop to think about it.
The second rationale for war was the bogus linkage between Iraq and al Qaeda. The extent and ramifications of this lie are so significant that the White House, it was just recently revealed, squelched a Pentagon report showing no connections between the two. Is this sort of censorship what the Bush administration means by democracy, the remedy it’s always preaching for the rest of the world but never practicing at home? Anyhow, remember how definitive Cheney and the rest were of this supposed al Qaeda linkage, based pretty much entirely on a meeting between two operatives in Prague which likely didn’t even take place? Now we find out that the Department of Defense has spent the last five years combing through a mere 600,000 documents, and found zero evidence of such a link. Not some evidence. Not mixed evidence. Zero evidence.
But you could tell even then that they had almost nothing to go on. Christ, the United States government itself has had far more interactions with al Qaeda - including helping to build the beast from its inception - than one disputed meeting between two spooks in Prague. Doesn’t it seem that a decision to go to war should hang on more than a single thread like that, let alone a narrow and tattered one? And how many of us are down for attacking any country right now that might have had a single meeting between a low-level functionary and an al Qaeda representative?
Then, once again, there’s the matter of that whole pesky logic thing. Pay attention now, class. What do we know about al Qaeda? They are devoted to religious war - jihad - in the name of replacing governments across the Middle East with theocracies, or better yet recreating the old Islamic caliphate stretching across the region, right? Right. Now if this vision could have more thoroughly contradicted Saddam’s agenda for a secular dictatorship seeking regional domination on his own Stalinist terms, it is hard to imagine how. You don’t need a PhD in international politics to see that these two actors were about as antithetical to each other as the Republican Party is to integrity. Then again, even having one doesn’t necessarily mean you have the foggiest clue about what’s going on in the world, as Condoleezza Rice clearly demonstrated by brilliantly failing to anticipate that Hamas would win elections she had pushed the Palestinians to hold. For someone serving as secretary of state, this idiocy is the rough equivalent of anyone else being shocked when a dropped bowling ball hurtles to the ground, because they’re not yet fully acquainted with the concept of gravity. Evidently, in Texas this is what they call ‘credentials’.
Lastly, Bush’s little adventure in Mesopotamia was supposed to bring democracy to the region, remember? Never mind, of course, that there has long already been a fairly thriving Islamic democracy, right next door. Oops! It’s called Turkey. And let’s not forget Mr. Bush’s long-standing devotion to democracy, as he amply demonstrated in the American election of 2000. Or as he has continually manifested by bravely and publicly pushing the Chinese to democratize. Just as he has with his pals in Egypt and especially the family friends running Saudi Arabia, the recipient of more American foreign aid than nearly any other country in all the world. And let’s not forget the several hundred thousand perished souls from Darfur, whom this great champion of human rights has fought valiantly to keep alive by… by… well, I’m sure he’s done a lot behind the scenes. Sure is gonna be hard for them to exercise their precious right to vote from the next world, eh?
What is clear is that the reasons given to the American public for the war in Iraq were entirely bogus. This much is already on the public record, from the Downing Street Memos and beyond. Even if we can only speculate on why they actually invaded - oil, glory, personal insecurity, Israel, clobbering Democrats, Middle Eastern dominance - what we know for sure is that the rationale fed to the public was a knowingly fabricated pack of scummy lies. It wasn’t about WMD, it wasn’t about links to al Qaeda, and it sure wasn’t about democracy.
But even if we can’t identify the true motivations within the administration for invading, we can surely begin to see the costs. Probably a million Iraqi civilians are dead. Over four million are displaced and now living as refugees. Together, these equal a staggering one-fifth of the population of the entire country. Meanwhile, the remaining four-fifths are living in squalor, fear and a psychological damage so extensive that it is hard to grasp. America has lost 4,000 soldiers, with perhaps another 30,000 gravely wounded. Hundreds of thousands more will be scarred for life from their experiences in the hell of Mr. Bush’s war. Our military is broken and incapable of responding to a real emergency, at home or abroad. Our economy will sustain a blow of perhaps three trillion dollars before it is all said and done. Our reputation in the world is in the toilet. We have turned the Iranian theocracy into a regional hegemon. And we have massively proliferated our own enemies within the Islamic community. That would be one hell of an expensive war, even if the reasons given for it were legitimate. It is nearly incomprehensible considering that they were not.
This week, a man died in France, the last surviving veteran of World War I, a devastating conflict that - even a century later - nobody can still really explain to this day. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, John McCain and Joe “Make-me-SecDef-Mac-oh-please-pick-me-Mac” Lieberman parachuted into Iraq for photo-ops to sustain the war they don’t have the integrity or the guts to abandon. Never mind that their visits had to be by surprise, and that they stroll around the Green Zone wearing armored vests - surely the most powerful measures of the war’s success imaginable. Of course, to be fair, we’ve only been at it for five years now. Perhaps after the remaining ninety-five on McCain’s agenda go by, Americans will finally be safe enough in Iraq to announce their visits in advance.
So, Happy Anniversary, America! You put these people in charge, and then - after seeing in explicit in detail what they were capable of - you actually did it again in 2004! You stood by in silence watching the devastation wrought upon an innocent people, produced in your name and financed by your tax dollars. And you continue to do just that again, now in Year Six.
Brilliant! Put on your party hat, America. You won the prize.
You’ve successfully answered the musical question, “How lethally stupid can one country be?”
America’s Next 9/11
A Little Sugar Makes the Medicine Go Down
Go to Original
By Paul Craig Roberts
The investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein has taken up the Litvinenko case.
The media used the Litvinenko case as sensational propaganda against Russian President Putin and then tossed it aside. For those whose memories of the case have faded, Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB officer living in England who died in 2006, apparently from the radioactive isotope Polonium-210.
The British government encouraged the tale that Russian President Putin had sent Andrei Lugovoi to poison Litvinenko’s tea at a meeting on November 1, 2006. The story appealed to people brought up on James Bond thrillers, but the story never made any sense. Polonium 2-10 is a rare and tightly controlled substance as likely to contaminate the assassin as the victim. There are far easier and more effective ways of killing someone.
Moreover, there is no evidence to connect Russia to Litvinenko’s death. But this didn’t stop the British government from grandstanding, sending an extradition request for Lugovoi in July 2007. The British government sent the request despite the facts that there is no extradition treaty between Britain and Russia and the Russian constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens. Epstein suggests that the purpose of the extradition request was to block the Russian government from investigating Litvinenko’s death in London. Litvinenko had a false passport provided by the British government. A real investigtion might have opened up the shadowy world of security consultants in which Litvinenko rubbed shoulders with former British police and intelligence officials.
The Russians asked to see the evidence. The case file delivered by the British contained nothing of substance. Not even the autopsy report was provided to the Russians. Epstein managed to convince the Russians to let him see the file and to question them about the case. In brief, if the British have a case, they are withholding the evidence.
The charge that Putin was behind Litvinenko’s death seems to have originated with Boris Berezovsky, one of the Russian Jewish oligarchs who had grabbed the lion’s share of privatized Soviet assets during Yeltsin’s presidency. http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/Berezovsky.htm Epstein reports that Berezovsky’s protector in Russia was Litvinenko, the deputy head of the organized crime unit of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB. When Berezovsky fled Russia to escape fraud charges, Litvinenko followed. Epstein reports that Berezovsky has declared an agenda of “overtrowing the regime of his archenemy, Mr. Putin.” According to Epstein, “Alex Goldfarb, the executive director of Mr. Berezovsky’s foundation, prepared for Litvinenko’s end by writing out his ‘deathbed’ statement, which, according to Mr. Goldfarb, was drawn from statements Litvinenko had dictated to him.”
Epstein writes: “A few hours after Litvinenko died on November 23, 2006, Mr. Goldfarb arranged a press conference and released the sensational deathbed statement accusing Mr. Putin of the poisoning.” Web sites supported by Berezovsky spread the story that Litvinenko was murdered by the FSB.
The effort to link Putin and the FSB to Litvinenko’s death might be a tale designed to cover-up a more serious crime in the making. Polonium-210 is an indication that someone is trying to build a nuclear weapon. Epstein finds reasons to suspect that Litvinenko had, and perhaps Berezovsky has, connections to a Polonium smuggling scheme, and Litvinenko’s death resulted from accidental or careless exposure to Polonium-210.
Who would be trying to build a secret nuclear weapon or perhaps only a “dirty bomb” that would serve to spread some radiation and massive amounts of fear and hysteria? The public has been carefully prepared to suspect Iran. If such a device were exploded somewhere in the United States, Bush, Cheney, and the neocon nazis would have their second new Pearl Harbor to justify their planned attack on Iran.
We know that the Bush regime wants to attack Iran. Despite the NIE report that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program several years ago and despite no signs of a weapons program having been uncovered by IAEA inspectors, Bush, Cheney, and the neocon nazis continue to agitate for striking Iran “before it is too late.” Their politicized military commander in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus, keeps insisting that Iran is training Iraqi insurgents and supplying weapons that are killing US troops. Bush and Cheney themselves have made trips to Europe and the Middle East trying to marshall support for an attack on Iran. Anyone who is not deaf, blind and stupid knows that the Bush regime is doing everything it can to create circumstances that will permit a US attack on Iran.
We know for a fact that the Bush regime created false evidence, lied, and deceived in order to attack Iraq. All the reasons given for the US invasion have proven to be false. The real agenda has never been declared. Yet, five years later the traitors in high office who deceived Americans into a war in behalf of a hidden agenda have not been held accountable. As Agatha Christie said, getting away with one murder makes it easy to commit another.
There is so much that Americans do not know about secret schemes serving undeclared agendas. Those who have attempted to clue in fellow citizens are invariably frustrated, because Americans have been trained to dismiss the messenger who brings news of “false flag” events as a “conspiracy theorist.”
Best-selling author Steve Alten in his recently published book, The Shell Game, attempts to reach Americans with a thriller that mixes fiction with fact. Alten describes a conspiracy, beginning in 2007 and ending in 2012, by a Black Op group in a Republican administration to set off nuclear weapons in two American cities, with planted evidence pointing to Iran. It is a historical thriller predictive of our immediate future by an author who has no illusions about the US Government or the interest groups that control it.
Alten’s book is a first class thriller set in the real world of today. It is a perfect read for Americans who need their dose of reality to be watered down with fiction and delivered as entertainment.
Go to Original
By Paul Craig Roberts
The investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein has taken up the Litvinenko case.
The media used the Litvinenko case as sensational propaganda against Russian President Putin and then tossed it aside. For those whose memories of the case have faded, Alexander Litvinenko was a former KGB officer living in England who died in 2006, apparently from the radioactive isotope Polonium-210.
The British government encouraged the tale that Russian President Putin had sent Andrei Lugovoi to poison Litvinenko’s tea at a meeting on November 1, 2006. The story appealed to people brought up on James Bond thrillers, but the story never made any sense. Polonium 2-10 is a rare and tightly controlled substance as likely to contaminate the assassin as the victim. There are far easier and more effective ways of killing someone.
Moreover, there is no evidence to connect Russia to Litvinenko’s death. But this didn’t stop the British government from grandstanding, sending an extradition request for Lugovoi in July 2007. The British government sent the request despite the facts that there is no extradition treaty between Britain and Russia and the Russian constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens. Epstein suggests that the purpose of the extradition request was to block the Russian government from investigating Litvinenko’s death in London. Litvinenko had a false passport provided by the British government. A real investigtion might have opened up the shadowy world of security consultants in which Litvinenko rubbed shoulders with former British police and intelligence officials.
The Russians asked to see the evidence. The case file delivered by the British contained nothing of substance. Not even the autopsy report was provided to the Russians. Epstein managed to convince the Russians to let him see the file and to question them about the case. In brief, if the British have a case, they are withholding the evidence.
The charge that Putin was behind Litvinenko’s death seems to have originated with Boris Berezovsky, one of the Russian Jewish oligarchs who had grabbed the lion’s share of privatized Soviet assets during Yeltsin’s presidency. http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/Berezovsky.htm Epstein reports that Berezovsky’s protector in Russia was Litvinenko, the deputy head of the organized crime unit of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB. When Berezovsky fled Russia to escape fraud charges, Litvinenko followed. Epstein reports that Berezovsky has declared an agenda of “overtrowing the regime of his archenemy, Mr. Putin.” According to Epstein, “Alex Goldfarb, the executive director of Mr. Berezovsky’s foundation, prepared for Litvinenko’s end by writing out his ‘deathbed’ statement, which, according to Mr. Goldfarb, was drawn from statements Litvinenko had dictated to him.”
Epstein writes: “A few hours after Litvinenko died on November 23, 2006, Mr. Goldfarb arranged a press conference and released the sensational deathbed statement accusing Mr. Putin of the poisoning.” Web sites supported by Berezovsky spread the story that Litvinenko was murdered by the FSB.
The effort to link Putin and the FSB to Litvinenko’s death might be a tale designed to cover-up a more serious crime in the making. Polonium-210 is an indication that someone is trying to build a nuclear weapon. Epstein finds reasons to suspect that Litvinenko had, and perhaps Berezovsky has, connections to a Polonium smuggling scheme, and Litvinenko’s death resulted from accidental or careless exposure to Polonium-210.
Who would be trying to build a secret nuclear weapon or perhaps only a “dirty bomb” that would serve to spread some radiation and massive amounts of fear and hysteria? The public has been carefully prepared to suspect Iran. If such a device were exploded somewhere in the United States, Bush, Cheney, and the neocon nazis would have their second new Pearl Harbor to justify their planned attack on Iran.
We know that the Bush regime wants to attack Iran. Despite the NIE report that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program several years ago and despite no signs of a weapons program having been uncovered by IAEA inspectors, Bush, Cheney, and the neocon nazis continue to agitate for striking Iran “before it is too late.” Their politicized military commander in Iraq, Gen. Petraeus, keeps insisting that Iran is training Iraqi insurgents and supplying weapons that are killing US troops. Bush and Cheney themselves have made trips to Europe and the Middle East trying to marshall support for an attack on Iran. Anyone who is not deaf, blind and stupid knows that the Bush regime is doing everything it can to create circumstances that will permit a US attack on Iran.
We know for a fact that the Bush regime created false evidence, lied, and deceived in order to attack Iraq. All the reasons given for the US invasion have proven to be false. The real agenda has never been declared. Yet, five years later the traitors in high office who deceived Americans into a war in behalf of a hidden agenda have not been held accountable. As Agatha Christie said, getting away with one murder makes it easy to commit another.
There is so much that Americans do not know about secret schemes serving undeclared agendas. Those who have attempted to clue in fellow citizens are invariably frustrated, because Americans have been trained to dismiss the messenger who brings news of “false flag” events as a “conspiracy theorist.”
Best-selling author Steve Alten in his recently published book, The Shell Game, attempts to reach Americans with a thriller that mixes fiction with fact. Alten describes a conspiracy, beginning in 2007 and ending in 2012, by a Black Op group in a Republican administration to set off nuclear weapons in two American cities, with planted evidence pointing to Iran. It is a historical thriller predictive of our immediate future by an author who has no illusions about the US Government or the interest groups that control it.
Alten’s book is a first class thriller set in the real world of today. It is a perfect read for Americans who need their dose of reality to be watered down with fiction and delivered as entertainment.
US Firm Lays Claim to "Potentially Vast" Arctic Oil Resources
Go to Original
By Randy Boswell
US firm lays claim to nearly all of what it says will be 400 billion barrels.
A U.S.-based company that has controversially laid claim to nearly all of the Arctic Ocean's undersea oil said yesterday that new geological data suggest a "potentially vast" petroleum resource of 400 billion barrels.
That figure is backed by a respected Canadian researcher who recently signed on as the firm's chief scientific adviser.
Las Vegas-based Arctic Oil & Gas has raised eyebrows around the world with its roll-of-the-dice bid to lock up exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from rapidly melting areas of the central Arctic Ocean, currently beyond the territorial control of Canada, Russia and other polar nations.
The company, which counts retired B.C. senator Edward Lawson among its directors, has filed a claim with the United Nations to act as the sole "development agent" of Arctic seabed oil and gas.
The firm acknowledges that the Arctic's petroleum deposits are the "common heritage of mankind," but has argued that the polar region requires a private "lead manager" to organize a multinational consortium of oil companies to extract undersea resources responsibly and equitably.
The Canadian government has dismissed the company's "alleged claim" over Arctic oil as having "no force in law," but experts in polar issues have raised alarms about the firm's actions, saying they could disrupt efforts to create an orderly regime for exploiting resources and protecting the Arctic environment under international law rather than a marketplace model.
In its latest statement about the polar seabed's "enormous reserve potential" for petroleum deposits, Arctic Oil & Gas cites recent scientific evidence that huge, floating mats of azolla - a prehistoric fern believed to have covered much of the Arctic Ocean during a planetary hothouse era about 55 million years ago - decomposed soon after the age of the dinosaurs and exist today as "vast hydrocarbon resources" trapped in layers of rock below the polar ice cap.
Jonathan Bujak, a former geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada who now works as a private consultant in Canada and Britain, is described in the Arctic Oil & Gas statement as confirming the "highly probable validity" of recent research pointing to rock layers "extremely rich" in "hydrocarbon precursors" throughout the Arctic basin.
Mr. Bujak, who previously worked for PetroCanada as a petroleum geologist, co-authored a landmark 2006 study in the journal Nature that first detailed the ancient azolla explosion that shows up today in Arctic seabed core samples.
Neither Mr. Bujak nor Mr. Lawson could be reached for comment yesterday.
Scientists have predicted that global warming could leave the entire Arctic virtually ice-free for months at a time within 20 years. That prospect has hastened a scramble among nations with a polar coast - namely Canada, Russia, the U.S., Norway and Denmark, which controls Greenland - to try to strengthen their scientific claims under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to extended territorial sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean floor.
A report issued last week by the European Union's top two foreign policy officials also highlighted the looming international struggle over Arctic oil deposits.
Authored by Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Europe's commissioner for external relations, the study pointed to "potential consequences for international stability and European security interests" as the retreat of Arctic ice makes shipping and oil and gas exploration a reality in the region.
Noting the "rapid melting of the polar ice caps," the report noted that "the increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region."
By Randy Boswell
US firm lays claim to nearly all of what it says will be 400 billion barrels.
A U.S.-based company that has controversially laid claim to nearly all of the Arctic Ocean's undersea oil said yesterday that new geological data suggest a "potentially vast" petroleum resource of 400 billion barrels.
That figure is backed by a respected Canadian researcher who recently signed on as the firm's chief scientific adviser.
Las Vegas-based Arctic Oil & Gas has raised eyebrows around the world with its roll-of-the-dice bid to lock up exclusive rights to extract oil and gas from rapidly melting areas of the central Arctic Ocean, currently beyond the territorial control of Canada, Russia and other polar nations.
The company, which counts retired B.C. senator Edward Lawson among its directors, has filed a claim with the United Nations to act as the sole "development agent" of Arctic seabed oil and gas.
The firm acknowledges that the Arctic's petroleum deposits are the "common heritage of mankind," but has argued that the polar region requires a private "lead manager" to organize a multinational consortium of oil companies to extract undersea resources responsibly and equitably.
The Canadian government has dismissed the company's "alleged claim" over Arctic oil as having "no force in law," but experts in polar issues have raised alarms about the firm's actions, saying they could disrupt efforts to create an orderly regime for exploiting resources and protecting the Arctic environment under international law rather than a marketplace model.
In its latest statement about the polar seabed's "enormous reserve potential" for petroleum deposits, Arctic Oil & Gas cites recent scientific evidence that huge, floating mats of azolla - a prehistoric fern believed to have covered much of the Arctic Ocean during a planetary hothouse era about 55 million years ago - decomposed soon after the age of the dinosaurs and exist today as "vast hydrocarbon resources" trapped in layers of rock below the polar ice cap.
Jonathan Bujak, a former geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada who now works as a private consultant in Canada and Britain, is described in the Arctic Oil & Gas statement as confirming the "highly probable validity" of recent research pointing to rock layers "extremely rich" in "hydrocarbon precursors" throughout the Arctic basin.
Mr. Bujak, who previously worked for PetroCanada as a petroleum geologist, co-authored a landmark 2006 study in the journal Nature that first detailed the ancient azolla explosion that shows up today in Arctic seabed core samples.
Neither Mr. Bujak nor Mr. Lawson could be reached for comment yesterday.
Scientists have predicted that global warming could leave the entire Arctic virtually ice-free for months at a time within 20 years. That prospect has hastened a scramble among nations with a polar coast - namely Canada, Russia, the U.S., Norway and Denmark, which controls Greenland - to try to strengthen their scientific claims under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to extended territorial sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean floor.
A report issued last week by the European Union's top two foreign policy officials also highlighted the looming international struggle over Arctic oil deposits.
Authored by Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Europe's commissioner for external relations, the study pointed to "potential consequences for international stability and European security interests" as the retreat of Arctic ice makes shipping and oil and gas exploration a reality in the region.
Noting the "rapid melting of the polar ice caps," the report noted that "the increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geo-strategic dynamics of the region."
New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears
Go to Original
By Justin Lahart, Patrick Barta and Andrew Batson
Spread of prosperity brings supply woes; slaking China's thirst.
Now and then across the centuries, powerful voices have warned that human activity would overwhelm the earth's resources. The Cassandras always proved wrong. Each time, there were new resources to discover, new technologies to propel growth.
Today the old fears are back.
Although a Malthusian catastrophe is not at hand, the resource constraints foreseen by the Club of Rome are more evident today than at any time since the 1972 publication of the think tank's famous book, "The Limits of Growth." Steady increases in the prices for oil, wheat, copper and other commodities - some of which have set record highs this month - are signs of a lasting shift in demand as yet unmatched by rising supply.
As the world grows more populous - the United Nations projects eight billion people by 2025, up from 6.6 billion today - it also is growing more prosperous. The average person is consuming more food, water, metal and power. Growing numbers of China's 1.3 billion people and India's 1.1 billion are stepping up to the middle class, adopting the high-protein diets, gasoline-fueled transport and electric gadgets that developed nations enjoy.
The result is that demand for resources has soared. If supplies don't keep pace, prices are likely to climb further, economic growth in rich and poor nations alike could suffer, and some fear violent conflicts could ensue.
Some of the resources now in great demand have no substitutes. In the 18th century, England responded to dwindling timber supplies by shifting to abundant coal. But there can be no such replacement for arable land and fresh water.
The need to curb global warming limits the usefulness of some resources - coal, for one, which emits greenhouse gases that most scientists say contribute to climate change. Soaring food consumption stresses the existing stock of arable land and fresh water.
"We're living in an era where the technologies that have empowered high living standards and 80-year life expectancies in the rich world are now for almost everybody," says economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, which focuses on sustainable development with an emphasis on the world's poor. "What this means is that not only do we have a very large amount of economic activity right now, but we have pent-up potential for vast increases [in economic activity] as well." The world cannot sustain that level of growth, he contends, without new technologies.
Americans already are grappling with higher energy and food prices. Although crude prices have dropped in recent days, there's a growing consensus among policy makers and industry executives that this isn't just a temporary surge in prices. Some of these experts, but not all of them, foresee a long-term upward shift in prices for oil and other commodities.
Today's dire predictions could prove just as misguided as yesteryear's.
"Clearly we'll have more and more problems, as more and more [people] are going to be richer and richer, using more and more stuff," says Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician who argues that the global-warming problem is overblown. "But smartness will outweigh the extra resource use."
Some constraints might disappear with greater global cooperation. Where some countries face scarcity, others have bountiful supplies of resources. New seed varieties and better irrigation techniques could open up arid regions to cultivation that today are only suitable as hardscrabble pasture; technological breakthroughs, like cheaper desalination or efficient ways to transmit electricity from unpopulated areas rich with sunlight or wind, could brighten the outlook.
In the past, economic forces spurred solutions. Scarcity of resource led to higher prices, and higher prices eventually led to conservation and innovation. Whale oil was a popular source of lighting in the 19th century. Prices soared in the middle of the century, and people sought other ways to fuel lamps. In 1846, Abraham Gesner began developing kerosene, a cleaner-burning alternative. By the end of the century, whale oil cost less than it did in 1831.
A similar pattern could unfold again. But economic forces alone may not be able to fix the problems this time around. Societies as different as the U.S. and China face stiff political resistance to boosting water prices to encourage efficient use, particularly from farmers. When resources such as water are shared across borders, establishing a pricing framework can be thorny. And in many developing nations, food-subsidy programs make it less likely that rising prices will spur change.
This troubles some economists who used to be skeptical of the premise of "The Limits to Growth." As a young economist 30 years ago, Joseph Stiglitz said flatly: "There is not a persuasive case to be made that we face a problem from the exhaustion of our resources in the short or medium run."
Today, the Nobel laureate is concerned that oil is underpriced relative to the cost of carbon emissions, and that key resources such as water are often provided free. "In the absence of market signals, there's no way the market will solve these problems," he says. "How do we make people who have gotten something for free start paying for it? That's really hard. If our patterns of living, our patterns of consumption are imitated, as others are striving to do, the world probably is not viable."
Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of "The Limits to Growth," says the book was too optimistic in one respect. The authors assumed that if humans stopped harming the environment, it would recover slowly. Today, he says, some climate-change models suggest that once tipping points are passed, environmental catastrophe may be inevitable even "if you quit damaging the environment."
One danger is that governments, rather than searching for global solutions to resource constraints, will concentrate on grabbing share.
China has been funding development in Africa, a move some U.S. officials see as a way for it to gain access to timber, oil and other resources. India, once a staunch supporter of the democracy movement in military-run Myanmar, has inked trade agreements with the natural-resource rich country. The U.S., European Union, Russia and China are all vying for the favor of natural-gas-abundant countries in politically unstable Central Asia.
Competition for resources can get ugly. A record drought in the Southeast intensified a dispute between Alabama, Georgia and Florida over water from a federal reservoir outside Atlanta. A long-running fight over rights to the Cauvery River between the Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu led to 25 deaths in 1991.
Economists Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley and Shanker Satyanath and Ernest Sergenti of New York University have found that declines in rainfall are associated with civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Sierra Leone, for example, which saw a sharp drop in rainfall in 1990, plunged into civil war in 1991.
A Car for Every Household
The rise of China and India already has changed the world economy in lasting ways, from the flows of global capital to the location of manufacturing. But they remain poor societies with growing appetites.
Nagpur in central India once was known as one of the greenest metropolises in the country. Over the past decade, Nagpur, now one of at least 40 Indian cities with more than a million people, has grown to roughly 2.5 million from 1.7 million. Local roads have turned into a mess of honking cars, motorbikes and wandering livestock under a thick soup of foul air.
"Sometimes if I see something I like, I just buy it," says Sapan Gajbe, 32 years old, a dentist shopping for an air conditioner at Nagpur's Big Bazaar mall. A month earlier, he bought his first car, a $9,000 Maruti Zen compact.
In 2005, China had 15 passenger cars for every 1,000 people, close to the 13 cars per 1,000 that Japan had in 1963. Today, Japan has 447 passenger cars per 1,000 residents, 57 million in all. If China ever reaches that point, it would have 572 million cars - 70 million shy of the number of cars in the entire world today.
China consumes 7.9 million barrels of oil a day. The U.S., with less than one quarter as many people, consumes 20.7 million barrels. "Demand will be going up, but it will be constrained by supply," ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer James Mulva has told analysts. "I don't think we are going to see the supply going over 100 million barrels a day, and the reason is: Where is all that going to come from?"
Says Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel: "The idea that we might have to move on to other sources of energy - you don't have to buy into the Club of Rome agenda for that." The world can adjust to dwindling oil production by becoming more energy efficient and by moving to nuclear, wind and solar power, he says, although such transitions can be slow and costly.
Global Thirst
There are no substitutes for water, no easy alternatives to simple conservation. Despite advances, desalination remains costly and energy intensive. Throughout the world, water is often priced too low. Farmers, the biggest users, pay less than others, if they pay at all.
In California, the subsidized rates for farmers have become a contentious political issue. Chinese farmers receive water at next to no cost, accounting for 65% of all water used in the country.
In Pondhe, an Indian village of about 1,000 on a barren plateau east of Mumbai, water wasn't a problem until the 1970s, when farmers began using diesel-powered pumps to transport water farther and faster. Local wells used to overflow during the monsoon season, recalls Vasantrao Wagle, who has farmed in the area for four decades. Today, they top off about 10 feet below the surface, and drop even lower during the dry season. "Even when it rains a lot, we aren't getting enough water," he says.
Parched northern China has been drawing down groundwater supplies. In Beijing, water tables have dropped hundreds of feet. In nearby Hebei province, once large Baiyangdian Lake has shrunk, and survives mainly because the government has diverted water into it from the Yellow River.
Climate change is likely to intensify water woes. Shifting weather patterns will be felt "most strongly through changes in the distribution of water around the world and its seasonal and annual variability," according to the British government report on global warming led by Nicholas Stern. Water shortages could be severe in parts Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe and Latin America, the report said.
Feeding the Hungry
China's farmers need water because China needs food. Production of rice, wheat and corn topped out at 441.4 million tons in 1998 and hasn't hit that level since. Sea water has leaked into depleted aquifers in the north, threatening to turn land barren. Illegal seizures of farmland by developers are widespread. The government last year declared that it would not permit arable land to drop below 120 million hectares (296 million acres), and said it would beef up enforcement of land-use rules.
The farmland squeeze is forcing difficult choices. After disastrous floods in 1998, China started paying some farmers to abandon marginal farmland and plant trees. That "grain-to-green" program was intended to reverse the deforestation and erosion that exacerbated the floods. Last August, the government stopped expanding the program, citing the need for farmland and the cost.
A growing taste for meat and other higher-protein food in the developing world is boosting demand and prices for feed grains. "There are literally hundreds of millions of people ... who are making the shift to protein, and competition for food world-wide is a new reality," says William Doyle, chief executive officer of fertilizer-maker Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan.
It takes nearly 10 pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork - the staple meat in China - and more than double that to produce a pound of beef, according to Vaclav Smil, a University of Manitoba geographer who studies food, energy and environment trends. The number of calories in the Chinese diet from meat and other animal products has more than doubled since 1990, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. But China still lags Taiwan when it comes to per-capita pork consumption. Matching Taiwan would increase China's annual pork consumption by 11 billion pounds - as much pork as Americans eat in six or seven months.
Searching for Solutions
The 1972 warnings by the Club of Rome - a nongovernmental think tank now based in Hamburg that brings together academics, business executives, civil servants and politicians to grapple with a wide range of global issues - struck a chord because they came as oil prices were rising sharply. Oil production in the continental U.S. had peaked, sparking fears that energy demand had outstripped supply. Over time, America became more energy efficient, overseas oil production rose and prices fell.
The dynamic today appears different. So far, the oil industry has failed to find major new sources of crude. Absent major finds, prices are likely to keep rising, unless consumers cut back. Taxes are one way to curb their appetites. In Western Europe and Japan, for example, where gas taxes are higher than in the U.S., per capita consumption is much lower.
New technology could help ease the resource crunch. Advances in agriculture, desalination and the clean production of electricity, among other things, would help.
But Mr. Stiglitz, the economist, contends that consumers eventually will have to change their behavior even more than then did after the 1970s oil shock. He says the world's traditional definitions and measures of economic progress - based on producing and consuming ever more - may have to be rethought.
In years past, the U.S., Europe and Japan have proven adept at adjusting to resource constraints. But history is littered with examples of societies believed to have suffered Malthusian crises: the Mayans of Central America, the Anasazi of the U.S. Southwest, and the people of Easter Island.
Those societies, of course, lacked modern science and technology. Still, their inability to overcome resource challenges demonstrates the perils of blithely believing things will work out, says economist James Brander at the University of British Columbia, who has studied Easter Island.
"We need to look seriously at the numbers and say: Look, given what we're consuming now, given what we know about economic incentives, given what we know about price signals, what is actually plausible?" says Mr. Brander.
Indeed, the true lesson of Thomas Malthus, an English economist who died in 1834, isn't that the world is doomed, but that preservation of human life requires analysis and then tough action. Given the history of England, with its plagues and famines, Malthus had good cause to wonder if society was "condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery." That he was able to analyze that "perpetual oscillation" set him and his time apart from England's past. And that capacity to understand and respond meant that the world was less Malthusian thereafter.
By Justin Lahart, Patrick Barta and Andrew Batson
Spread of prosperity brings supply woes; slaking China's thirst.
Now and then across the centuries, powerful voices have warned that human activity would overwhelm the earth's resources. The Cassandras always proved wrong. Each time, there were new resources to discover, new technologies to propel growth.
Today the old fears are back.
Although a Malthusian catastrophe is not at hand, the resource constraints foreseen by the Club of Rome are more evident today than at any time since the 1972 publication of the think tank's famous book, "The Limits of Growth." Steady increases in the prices for oil, wheat, copper and other commodities - some of which have set record highs this month - are signs of a lasting shift in demand as yet unmatched by rising supply.
As the world grows more populous - the United Nations projects eight billion people by 2025, up from 6.6 billion today - it also is growing more prosperous. The average person is consuming more food, water, metal and power. Growing numbers of China's 1.3 billion people and India's 1.1 billion are stepping up to the middle class, adopting the high-protein diets, gasoline-fueled transport and electric gadgets that developed nations enjoy.
The result is that demand for resources has soared. If supplies don't keep pace, prices are likely to climb further, economic growth in rich and poor nations alike could suffer, and some fear violent conflicts could ensue.
Some of the resources now in great demand have no substitutes. In the 18th century, England responded to dwindling timber supplies by shifting to abundant coal. But there can be no such replacement for arable land and fresh water.
The need to curb global warming limits the usefulness of some resources - coal, for one, which emits greenhouse gases that most scientists say contribute to climate change. Soaring food consumption stresses the existing stock of arable land and fresh water.
"We're living in an era where the technologies that have empowered high living standards and 80-year life expectancies in the rich world are now for almost everybody," says economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, which focuses on sustainable development with an emphasis on the world's poor. "What this means is that not only do we have a very large amount of economic activity right now, but we have pent-up potential for vast increases [in economic activity] as well." The world cannot sustain that level of growth, he contends, without new technologies.
Americans already are grappling with higher energy and food prices. Although crude prices have dropped in recent days, there's a growing consensus among policy makers and industry executives that this isn't just a temporary surge in prices. Some of these experts, but not all of them, foresee a long-term upward shift in prices for oil and other commodities.
Today's dire predictions could prove just as misguided as yesteryear's.
"Clearly we'll have more and more problems, as more and more [people] are going to be richer and richer, using more and more stuff," says Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician who argues that the global-warming problem is overblown. "But smartness will outweigh the extra resource use."
Some constraints might disappear with greater global cooperation. Where some countries face scarcity, others have bountiful supplies of resources. New seed varieties and better irrigation techniques could open up arid regions to cultivation that today are only suitable as hardscrabble pasture; technological breakthroughs, like cheaper desalination or efficient ways to transmit electricity from unpopulated areas rich with sunlight or wind, could brighten the outlook.
In the past, economic forces spurred solutions. Scarcity of resource led to higher prices, and higher prices eventually led to conservation and innovation. Whale oil was a popular source of lighting in the 19th century. Prices soared in the middle of the century, and people sought other ways to fuel lamps. In 1846, Abraham Gesner began developing kerosene, a cleaner-burning alternative. By the end of the century, whale oil cost less than it did in 1831.
A similar pattern could unfold again. But economic forces alone may not be able to fix the problems this time around. Societies as different as the U.S. and China face stiff political resistance to boosting water prices to encourage efficient use, particularly from farmers. When resources such as water are shared across borders, establishing a pricing framework can be thorny. And in many developing nations, food-subsidy programs make it less likely that rising prices will spur change.
This troubles some economists who used to be skeptical of the premise of "The Limits to Growth." As a young economist 30 years ago, Joseph Stiglitz said flatly: "There is not a persuasive case to be made that we face a problem from the exhaustion of our resources in the short or medium run."
Today, the Nobel laureate is concerned that oil is underpriced relative to the cost of carbon emissions, and that key resources such as water are often provided free. "In the absence of market signals, there's no way the market will solve these problems," he says. "How do we make people who have gotten something for free start paying for it? That's really hard. If our patterns of living, our patterns of consumption are imitated, as others are striving to do, the world probably is not viable."
Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of "The Limits to Growth," says the book was too optimistic in one respect. The authors assumed that if humans stopped harming the environment, it would recover slowly. Today, he says, some climate-change models suggest that once tipping points are passed, environmental catastrophe may be inevitable even "if you quit damaging the environment."
One danger is that governments, rather than searching for global solutions to resource constraints, will concentrate on grabbing share.
China has been funding development in Africa, a move some U.S. officials see as a way for it to gain access to timber, oil and other resources. India, once a staunch supporter of the democracy movement in military-run Myanmar, has inked trade agreements with the natural-resource rich country. The U.S., European Union, Russia and China are all vying for the favor of natural-gas-abundant countries in politically unstable Central Asia.
Competition for resources can get ugly. A record drought in the Southeast intensified a dispute between Alabama, Georgia and Florida over water from a federal reservoir outside Atlanta. A long-running fight over rights to the Cauvery River between the Indian states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu led to 25 deaths in 1991.
Economists Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley and Shanker Satyanath and Ernest Sergenti of New York University have found that declines in rainfall are associated with civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Sierra Leone, for example, which saw a sharp drop in rainfall in 1990, plunged into civil war in 1991.
A Car for Every Household
The rise of China and India already has changed the world economy in lasting ways, from the flows of global capital to the location of manufacturing. But they remain poor societies with growing appetites.
Nagpur in central India once was known as one of the greenest metropolises in the country. Over the past decade, Nagpur, now one of at least 40 Indian cities with more than a million people, has grown to roughly 2.5 million from 1.7 million. Local roads have turned into a mess of honking cars, motorbikes and wandering livestock under a thick soup of foul air.
"Sometimes if I see something I like, I just buy it," says Sapan Gajbe, 32 years old, a dentist shopping for an air conditioner at Nagpur's Big Bazaar mall. A month earlier, he bought his first car, a $9,000 Maruti Zen compact.
In 2005, China had 15 passenger cars for every 1,000 people, close to the 13 cars per 1,000 that Japan had in 1963. Today, Japan has 447 passenger cars per 1,000 residents, 57 million in all. If China ever reaches that point, it would have 572 million cars - 70 million shy of the number of cars in the entire world today.
China consumes 7.9 million barrels of oil a day. The U.S., with less than one quarter as many people, consumes 20.7 million barrels. "Demand will be going up, but it will be constrained by supply," ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer James Mulva has told analysts. "I don't think we are going to see the supply going over 100 million barrels a day, and the reason is: Where is all that going to come from?"
Says Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel: "The idea that we might have to move on to other sources of energy - you don't have to buy into the Club of Rome agenda for that." The world can adjust to dwindling oil production by becoming more energy efficient and by moving to nuclear, wind and solar power, he says, although such transitions can be slow and costly.
Global Thirst
There are no substitutes for water, no easy alternatives to simple conservation. Despite advances, desalination remains costly and energy intensive. Throughout the world, water is often priced too low. Farmers, the biggest users, pay less than others, if they pay at all.
In California, the subsidized rates for farmers have become a contentious political issue. Chinese farmers receive water at next to no cost, accounting for 65% of all water used in the country.
In Pondhe, an Indian village of about 1,000 on a barren plateau east of Mumbai, water wasn't a problem until the 1970s, when farmers began using diesel-powered pumps to transport water farther and faster. Local wells used to overflow during the monsoon season, recalls Vasantrao Wagle, who has farmed in the area for four decades. Today, they top off about 10 feet below the surface, and drop even lower during the dry season. "Even when it rains a lot, we aren't getting enough water," he says.
Parched northern China has been drawing down groundwater supplies. In Beijing, water tables have dropped hundreds of feet. In nearby Hebei province, once large Baiyangdian Lake has shrunk, and survives mainly because the government has diverted water into it from the Yellow River.
Climate change is likely to intensify water woes. Shifting weather patterns will be felt "most strongly through changes in the distribution of water around the world and its seasonal and annual variability," according to the British government report on global warming led by Nicholas Stern. Water shortages could be severe in parts Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe and Latin America, the report said.
Feeding the Hungry
China's farmers need water because China needs food. Production of rice, wheat and corn topped out at 441.4 million tons in 1998 and hasn't hit that level since. Sea water has leaked into depleted aquifers in the north, threatening to turn land barren. Illegal seizures of farmland by developers are widespread. The government last year declared that it would not permit arable land to drop below 120 million hectares (296 million acres), and said it would beef up enforcement of land-use rules.
The farmland squeeze is forcing difficult choices. After disastrous floods in 1998, China started paying some farmers to abandon marginal farmland and plant trees. That "grain-to-green" program was intended to reverse the deforestation and erosion that exacerbated the floods. Last August, the government stopped expanding the program, citing the need for farmland and the cost.
A growing taste for meat and other higher-protein food in the developing world is boosting demand and prices for feed grains. "There are literally hundreds of millions of people ... who are making the shift to protein, and competition for food world-wide is a new reality," says William Doyle, chief executive officer of fertilizer-maker Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan.
It takes nearly 10 pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork - the staple meat in China - and more than double that to produce a pound of beef, according to Vaclav Smil, a University of Manitoba geographer who studies food, energy and environment trends. The number of calories in the Chinese diet from meat and other animal products has more than doubled since 1990, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. But China still lags Taiwan when it comes to per-capita pork consumption. Matching Taiwan would increase China's annual pork consumption by 11 billion pounds - as much pork as Americans eat in six or seven months.
Searching for Solutions
The 1972 warnings by the Club of Rome - a nongovernmental think tank now based in Hamburg that brings together academics, business executives, civil servants and politicians to grapple with a wide range of global issues - struck a chord because they came as oil prices were rising sharply. Oil production in the continental U.S. had peaked, sparking fears that energy demand had outstripped supply. Over time, America became more energy efficient, overseas oil production rose and prices fell.
The dynamic today appears different. So far, the oil industry has failed to find major new sources of crude. Absent major finds, prices are likely to keep rising, unless consumers cut back. Taxes are one way to curb their appetites. In Western Europe and Japan, for example, where gas taxes are higher than in the U.S., per capita consumption is much lower.
New technology could help ease the resource crunch. Advances in agriculture, desalination and the clean production of electricity, among other things, would help.
But Mr. Stiglitz, the economist, contends that consumers eventually will have to change their behavior even more than then did after the 1970s oil shock. He says the world's traditional definitions and measures of economic progress - based on producing and consuming ever more - may have to be rethought.
In years past, the U.S., Europe and Japan have proven adept at adjusting to resource constraints. But history is littered with examples of societies believed to have suffered Malthusian crises: the Mayans of Central America, the Anasazi of the U.S. Southwest, and the people of Easter Island.
Those societies, of course, lacked modern science and technology. Still, their inability to overcome resource challenges demonstrates the perils of blithely believing things will work out, says economist James Brander at the University of British Columbia, who has studied Easter Island.
"We need to look seriously at the numbers and say: Look, given what we're consuming now, given what we know about economic incentives, given what we know about price signals, what is actually plausible?" says Mr. Brander.
Indeed, the true lesson of Thomas Malthus, an English economist who died in 1834, isn't that the world is doomed, but that preservation of human life requires analysis and then tough action. Given the history of England, with its plagues and famines, Malthus had good cause to wonder if society was "condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery." That he was able to analyze that "perpetual oscillation" set him and his time apart from England's past. And that capacity to understand and respond meant that the world was less Malthusian thereafter.
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