Bush's real agenda in Palestine 31/07/2007 06:00:00 PM GMT
The U.S. continues its efforts to stifle Palestinian democracy and ensure the success of the Israeli project.

By Ramzy Baroud

The Hamas government crackdown on Mohamed Dahlan's corrupt security forces and affiliated gangs in the Gaza Strip in June appears to mark a turning point in the Bush administration's foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel. The supposed shift, however, is nothing but a continuation of Washington's efforts to stifle Palestinian democracy, to widen the chasm separating Hamas and Fatah, and to ensure the success of the Israeli project, which is focussed on colonising and annexing what remains of Palestinian land.

It's vital that we keep this seemingly obvious reality at the forefront of any political discussion dealing with the conflict: the occupied Palestinian territories represent a mere 22 per cent of historic Palestine.

Currently, Israel is on a quest to reduce this even further by officially conquering the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Gaza is only relevant to this issue insofar as it represents a golden opportunity to divide Palestinians further, to confuse their national project and to present a grim picture of them as an unruly people who cannot be trusted as peace partners to the far more civilised and democratic Israelis.

By prolonging Gazan strife, thus the Palestinian split, Israel will acquire the time required to consolidate its colonial project, and to further rationalise its unilateral policies vis-Ã -vis matters that should, naturally, be negotiated with the Palestinians.

Moreover, one must not lose sight of the regional context. The Israeli lobby and its neo- conservative allies in the U.S. administration and in the media are eager for a military showdown with Iran, which would weaken Syria's political standing in any future negotiation with Israel in regards to the occupied Golan Heights, and which would obliterate the military strength of Hizbullah, proven to be the toughest enemy Israel has ever faced in its decades-long conflict with the Arabs.

Thus, it was of paramount importance for Hamas's "rise" to be linked directly to its relations with Iran; such ties, although greatly exaggerated, are now readily used as a rationale to explain Bush's seemingly historic move from backing Israel from a discreet distance (so as not to appear too involved) to initiating an international peace conference aimed solely at isolating Hamas, which would further weaken the Iranian camp in the Middle East.

It also explains the abundant support offered by autocratic Arab regimes to Abbas, and Arab leaders' warnings about the rise of an Iranian menace.

On the one hand, eliminating Hamas would send an unambiguous message to their own Islamic political parties; on the other, it's a message to Iran to back off from a conflict that has long been seen as exclusively Arab-Israeli.

The irony is that to ensure the relevance of the Arab role in the conflict, some Arabs are making historic moves to normalise with Israel, and in return for nothing.

Similarly, to ensure its own relevance, Abbas's Fatah is actively coordinating with Israel to destroy its formidable opponent, which represents the great majority of Palestinians in the occupied territories and arguably abroad. For this, assistance is required: money to ensure the loyalty of his followers, weapons to oppress his opponents, political validation to legitimise himself as a world leader, and new laws to de-legitimise the legal, democratic process that produced the Hamas victory of January 2006. In a conflict that is known for its agonisingly slow movement, nothing short of a miracle can explain how Abbas received all of these perks at an astronomical speed.

The moment Abbas declared his arguably unconstitutional emergency government, the suffocating sanctions were lifted -- or more accurately, on the West Bank only. To ensure that no aid reaches anyone who defies his regime, Abbas's office revoked the licences of all NGOs operating in Palestine, making it necessary for them to submit new applications. Those loyal to Abbas are in. The rest are out.

Weapons and military training have also arrived in abundance. Palestinians who have been denied the right to defend themselves, and for decades described as "terrorist", are suddenly the recipients of many caches of weapons coming from all directions. Israel announced a clemency to Fatah fighters; the freedom fighters turned gangsters will no longer defend their people against Israeli brutality, but will be used as a force ready to take on Hamas when the time comes.

As for regional and international legitimacy, the Bush administration "decided" to change its policy to one of direct engagement, calling for an international Middle East peace conference. The conference will be about peace in name only, for it will not deal with any of the major grievances of the Palestinians that have fuelled the conflict for years, such as the problem of refugees, Jerusalem and the drawing of borders. Israel is of course willing to "concede" if these efforts will reframe the conflict as exclusively Palestinian, and as long as there is no objection to its illegal annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The reality is that there has been no change in American foreign policy regarding Palestine. The U.S., Israel and a few Arab regimes are pursuing the same old policy, which is merely being adjusted to fit the new political context.

While Abbas and his men might bask in the many bonuses they are receiving in exchange for their role in destroying the Palestinian national project, the future will prove that Israel's "goodwill gestures", the support of the Israeli lobby in Washington, and the latter's generosity will not last.

Abbas could as easily find himself a prisoner in the basement of his own presidential compound, just like his predecessor, if he dares assert the legitimate rights of his people, by far the ultimate losers in this shameless battle.

-- Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian-American author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in numerous newspapers and journals worldwide, including the Washington Post, Al Ahram Weekly and Le Monde Diplomatique. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London). Read more about him on his website: rhttp://www.aljazeera.com/news/print.php?newid=23663amzybaroud.net

Ronald Brownstein:
Double whammy for Republicans
The coming election could be dangerous for the GOP's moderates and mavericks.
August 12, 2007

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. —

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is an ardent, unwavering supporter of the Iraq war. In the House of Representatives during the 1990s, he served as a manager of the Republican majority's impeachment case against President Clinton.

Yet for Marty Eells, an emergency medical services training officer here, Graham is an insufficiently reliable conservative. Eells is angered by Graham's criticism of President Bush on issues like the treatment of detainees in the war on terrorism.

"He's made remarks and comments he doesn't have any business making," Eells said.

Other conservatives in this dependably Republican state are unhappy with Graham for supporting the failed Senate effort to legalize illegal immigrants and for his role in the 2005 bipartisan compromise that preserved the right of the Senate minority to filibuster judicial nominees. In the midst of this unease, several local Republicans -- including the lieutenant governor -- have floated the possibility of challenging Graham from the right for the GOP Senate nomination next year.

In Connecticut, Republican Rep. Christopher Shays has a different problem. Last year, he narrowly survived a Democratic tide that left him the sole Republican holding a House seat in all of New England. Now, at a time when disapproval of Bush and the war appears even more intense across the Northeast than it was in 2006, Shays has already attracted a well-funded Democratic opponent (Jim Himes, a former Goldman Sachs vice president) who will face him in 2008.



Shays and Graham embody the two forms of dissent from the dominant conservative orthodoxy in the modern Republican Party. In one category are traditional moderates like Shays, who pursue a centrist course, especially on social and foreign policy issues, but whose numbers have relentlessly declined for decades. In the second are maverick figures like Graham or Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who are too conservative to be considered moderates but too eclectic and unpredictable to be considered reliable allies by the right. Both of these groups -- moderates and mavericks -- are under siege at a moment when Republicans are struggling to reach independent and swing voters disillusioned by Bush and the war.

In the coming election, moderate and maverick Republicans face mirror-image risks. Because the maverick conservatives tend to represent more solidly Republican areas (like Graham in South Carolina or Hagel in Nebraska), they face relatively less danger of losing to Democrats in a general election next fall. But precisely because they represent conservative regions where demands for ideological purity are more intense, the mavericks are confronting an elevated risk of challenges in party primaries.

Hagel, the most outspoken Republican critic of the war, has already drawn a serious primary opponent (Nebraska Atty. Gen. Jon Bruning) for next year, and Graham and Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens could face challenges in the primaries too -- which would make 2008 the first time since 1978 that more than one Republican senator has faced such a challenge. More than half a dozen House Republicans, all of them in Republican-leaning districts, also have attracted primary challengers.

Some moderate Republicans, including Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter and former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, also have confronted arduous primaries from conservative challengers in recent years, and Maryland's Wayne Gilchrest, a leading House centrist, is facing one now. But for most of the remaining GOP moderates, primaries are no longer the principal danger. Instead, because they mostly now represent swing or even Democratic-leaning constituencies, the moderates face a growing danger in their general election campaigns. In 2006, the Republican Party suffered heavy general election losses in the affluent, white-collar suburbs where moderates tend to be located and where they once thrived (especially along the coasts and in the upper Midwest). And "the environment for them in 2008 could be as bad or worse," said independent election analyst Stuart Rothenberg.

Historically, moderate Republicans offered the most important voice of ideological diversity in the GOP. But like the American auto companies or the Wednesday night bowling league, moderate Republicans have been in decline for so long that decline itself has become part of their tradition. In their heyday, from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s, formidable Senate Republican moderates like Jacob Javits of New York, Clifford Case of New Jersey, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts and Charles McC. Mathias of Maryland often tipped the result on issues relating to civil rights, the environment, judicial appointments and national security.

Since the 1970s, though, they have steadily lost ground, undermined by the same two forces evident today. Conservative primary challengers ousted Case in 1978 and Javits in 1980 and weakened Brooke before he lost a general election in 1978. The larger problem has been the decline since the 1970s in the number of voters willing to split their ticket between a presidential candidate of one party and congressional candidates of the other. That has made it more difficult for each party to elect House and Senate members behind enemy lines -- in the states that usually prefer the other party in presidential campaigns. The two big losers in that generation-long sorting-out have been moderate-to-conservative Southern Democrats and moderate-to-liberal Republicans, primarily from the Northeast.

Taken together, these forces have winnowed the number of Republican moderates, especially in the Senate. Fewer than half a dozen Republican senators (such as Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine) still qualify as moderates. Their numbers are so attenuated that they now exert influence almost solely when they align with maverick conservatives (such as Graham, Hagel or Virginia's John Warner), whose numbers now top those of true moderates. But even combined, the two groups' size in both congressional chambers remains modest. In the House, for instance, only 20 Republicans (out of more than 230) voted against a majority of their caucus even as much as 15% of the time during the last Congress.

The upcoming election may further deplete the ranks of both the mavericks and moderates. Bush's focus on mobilizing the conservative base, while generally helping Republicans in conservative areas, has alienated independent and moderate voters in the suburban districts many moderates GOP officeholders represent.

The moderates would benefit if the GOP picks a 2008 presidential nominee who can compete in Democratic-leaning terrain, but even that would not eliminate the risk of further House and Senate losses driven by Bush's intense unpopularity in those areas -- like the 24% approval rating he posted last month in New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, in traditional Republican strongholds -- the red places -- the maverick conservatives are confronting a party base frustrated and agitated over the party's weakened situation. Each of this year's primary challenges feeds on different grievances, but they draw on a common sense among conservatives that the party lost its way during its 12 years in the congressional majority. To that tinder, opposition to Iraq (in Hagel's case) and support for immigration reform (for both Hagel and Graham) has introduced a powerful spark.

"When we are now questioning ourselves ... and wondering who we are as Republicans, everyone who has been up there and part of the process should not sleep well if they've got a challenge in their own party," said longtime South Carolina GOP strategist Warren Tompkins, a former advisor to Graham.

Centrist Democrats aren't immune to these trends. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, for instance, lost a Democratic primary last year (before winning reelection as an independent). But for all the fulminating against centrists on liberal websites, the internecine warfare isn't burning as hot among Democrats.

This difference is rooted in the fact that the Democrats today are much more of a coalition party than the Republicans: Polls show that only about half of Democratic voters consider themselves liberals, while three-fourths or more of Republicans call themselves conservatives. That means to win elections, Democrats depend more than Republicans on the votes of moderates -- which compels them to accept more dissent from party orthodoxy.

The question for Republicans, as they try to dig out from the collapse of Bush's second term, is whether they can rebuild a majority coalition without tolerating more dissent and diversity as well.

Ronald Brownstein is The Times' national affairs correspondent.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-...nion-columnists

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_he...o_the_jungl.htm

August 12, 2007

Welcome to the Jungle: US Military Psychological Operations and You

By Heather Wokusch


"...the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other." - Benjamin Franklin, 1787

They say that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out, but that if you raise the pot's heat gradually, the frog won't react.

The US public has been on a slow boil since 2001. This administration's rollbacks have been so consistent and so egregious that it's no surprise many Americans feel apathetic.

And that begs the question: What exactly would it take to get the US public spurred into action?

Sentient World Simulation (SWS) may have an answer. It's a computer-based project designed to "generate alternative futures" and no surprise, the US Defense Department is actively involved.

According to one of the project's developers, Purdue University professor Alok Chaturvedi, "SWS will consist of a synthetic environment that mirrors the real world in all it key aspects - Political, Military, Economic, Social, Information, and Infrastructure." The goal is to copy each person on earth into the SWS parallel universe, and then see how they respond to external events such as natural disasters or political upheavals.

The concept paper Chaturvedi co-authored additionally notes, "SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP)," to help the military "develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners."

To anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners.

Blurring the lines between military and civilian Psychological Operations is nothing new. In 1989, US forces in Panama blasted Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" into the Vatican Embassy during negotiations for the handover of General Manuel Noriega, and from 1998-1999, US military PSYOP personnel interned at both CNN and NPR.

More recently, a 2003 Pentagon document called Information Operations Roadmap detailed the US military's approach to exploiting information in order to "keep pace with warfighter needs and support defense transformation." Personally approved by former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the document was declassified in 2006 and covers everything from the Pentagon's plans for Computer Network Attack ("We Must Fight the Net") to beefing up the use of Psychological Operations ("We Must Improve PSYOP") to manipulating information through means including: "Radio/ TV/Print/ Web media designed to directly modify behavior and distributed in theater supporting military endeavors in semi or non-permissive environment."

While The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids US propaganda intended for foreign audiences from being used domestically, Information Operations Roadmap acknowledges that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa."

The 2003 Pentagon document adds, "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices."

Perhaps that's why a top US general ordered public affairs to be joined with combat PSYOP into one "strategic communications office" in Iraq in the summer of 2004.

Domestically, it doesn't help that SWS and other developments in military Psychological Operations are accompanied by rollbacks in the right to dissent and bipartisan support of government surveillance of American citizens.

Makes you wish our cyberspace clones could tell us how best to fight the Matrix.

At the very least, we must become more vigilant about the ongoing use of military PSYOP and misinformation – the Pat Tillman case is a perfect example. Holding the Defense Department and media accountable for every mislead regarding the Bush administration's military adventurism is more important than ever.

Action ideas:

1. For a great database on the Bush Administration's misleads about Iraq, see Rep. Henry A. Waxman's, "Iraq on the Record."

2. One Defense Department group particularly especially interested in these topics is The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its Information Exploitation Office, for example, is focused on "shaping the battlespace before conflict" and its site is filled with snappy computer graphics reminiscent of militaristic video games. Taxpayer dollars hard at work.

3. For media watchdog groups, check out Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting and Media Matters for America.

4. Had enough? E-mail, call or write the White House, Congress or state and local government here.

Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives' Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now series. To contact Heather, visit www.heatherwokusch.com

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jo...ery_possibl.htm

August 12, 2007

War By Every Possible Means

By John E. Carey

America is losing the world-wide war against America. That’s right, the world-wide war against America.

This is not just our war against terrorists or terrorism. This is also about three or four-fifths of the rest of the world opposing the “Only Superpower.”

Just as when ancient Rome became decadent and soft and hired more and more mercenaries to fight its wars; we Americans are discussing gay marriage at political “debates” while China and Russia make deals to oppose the U.S. plan to throttle Iran’s nuclear program.

While John Edwards is getting his $400.00 haircut, and Mitt Romney spends $300 on his makeup, about one million Chinese “hackers” are launching a cyber attack against U.S. computers.

Why does Newt Gingrich, a student of history and a well schooled Washington insider, add to his speeches, “We are in trouble, and somebody had better start talking about it in a blunt way.”

You think that is just a cute tag line or does he believe it?

The war we are already engaged in is a world-wide war against the U.S. and that’s us.

We at Peace and Freedom view “war” as a struggle for dominance in many areas: geo-political influence, resources, science and technology and everything else. The U.S. has already proven, with the assistance of terrorists and insurgents from around the globe, that the best military doesn’t always “win.” The lessons of the war in Vietnam are locked in which Pentagon safe?

What we are talking about is a war by every possible means that is being launched against the U.S. and to which the U.S. should respond. It is a war to assemble political, manufacturing, military, technological and mineral wealth.

And we are losing.

Consider China. You have read any news lately in any credible “world view” publication or web site that DIDN’T have some jaw dropping news about China?

Here are just a few topics and headlines recently from China (and a few other places):

China could use pile of cash to invest in USA

China Threat: “Nuclear Option” Against U.S. Economy

China’s Golden Cyber-Shield

Vietnam: New Gold Rush

In Iraq, China Arming Both Sides: U.S.

Report: Risk of nuclear warfare rising

Missiles Everywhere

A $1.5 trillion mistake: Pakistan, North Korea, Iran and the Nuclear Nexus

Well, you get the idea.

During the last year, China opened the world’s largest seaport: in Pakistan. China deflected international pressure on the genocide in Darfur so it could continue to hustle Sudan’s leadership to gain a monopoly over that county’s oil. China destroyed a satellite with an Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile test. A Chinese submarine maneuvered undetected into a position that allowed it to surface within sight of a U.S. aircraft carrier. North Korea tested at least one nuclear device. Iran threatened to go nuclear and tested missiles of increasing range: perhaps they can already reach into Europe. And while the U.N. and U.S. wring their hands about pollution and global warming, China continues to hide behind the legalese that it is a “developing nation” and exempt from restrictions like those in the Kyoto pact. That air pollution over Beijing is from manufacturing, my friend. A manufacturing juggernaut.

During the last year Vladimir Putin in Russia has opposed the U.S. on all fronts, invoking old Cold War rhetoric. Russia has been reinvigorated by oil wealth.

Chihuahuas like Ceasar Chavez upped their ugly rhetoric and initiated more anti-U.S. positions and actions.

Cindy Sheehan when to Venezuela to visit. Nancy Pelosi went to Syria to visit. And during a Democratic debate, Barak Obama said he’s go anywhere to visit.

While Meredith Viera of NBCs TODAY Show tasted Chinese cuisine in Beijing to the delight of some grinning Chinese stooge Olympic handler, China was sucking as much iron and tin out of Africa as it could find.

While Americans sat transfixed to Paris Hilton and other meaningless and fleeting news, some ground-shaking world events have occurred. What we need to know is: has this been due to geological shifts or nuclear testing?

I don’t want to be painted an alarmist and dismissed to a corner of the room. What we are urging is a reawakening of our view of the world situation and a change to the sleepwalking politicians at the debates so far. Get Dennis Kucinich off the stage for God’s sake and let’s hear what Mr. Gingrich has to say.

My friend Les Lothringer, who lives and works in China and has spent his lifetime understanding international business says, “The U.S. has made a mistake allowing so much manufacturing and R&D to come here [to China], or anywhere for that matter. It should be brought back to the U.S. The Chinese economy will slow. Americans will learn some financial discipline and American domestic technical know-how, which made the US pre-eminent, will assert itself.”

To ignore Les’ advice is folly, we believe. Viewed as a monopoly board, all the hotels and properties are headed out of the U.S.

And we are not even discussing this mass migration.

Related:

Excellent Gingrich Speech, National Press Club, Aug. 7, 2007

Americans Swallowing Communist Precept: Ideology Over Competence




Authors Website: http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/

Authors Bio: John E. Carey is the former president of International Defense Consultants, Inc.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_w_...llegedly_pr.htm

August 11, 2007

Even on allegedly progressive Internet sites you have to walk on eggs when you talk about the neocon cabal. Why is this?

By W. Christopher Epler (Bill)

A peculiar bias of many allegedly progressive Internet sites is that you have to walk on eggs when you talk about the neocon cabal? Why is this?

For openers, this bias does not seem to exist at Op-Ed News, and kudos accordingly. Here, that ultimately secret society of "think tanks" and astronomically rich lobbies can be addressed openly. Here you can claim that the neocon cabal (or lobby) has been the true control center of the State and Defense Departments of the United States of American for at least the last seven years -- in short, the perennial dog which is wagging the perennial tail (i.e., the great majority of American citizens).

Almost from day one of the Bush/Republican administration, it was obvious the neocons (i.e., neoconservatives), had somehow engineered what effectively was (and still is) an American coup d'etat. It's now historically verified knowledge that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, had also attempted such a coup d'etat in the 30's with the help of Adolph Hitler's 3rd Reich. Indeed much of the Bush family fortune is grounded in those WW2 financial transactions.

Well, where the grandfather failed, G. W. Bush succeeded. We can think of him as president pinhead until the cows come home, but with the backing and brains of the neocon cable (to which Paul Wolfowitz was just welcomed with open arms after his egregiously inappropriate behavior at the World Bank), our country is now a full blown Police State with a ONE party system: the Democratic/Republican Party.

In short the "neocons" are the poison inside the scorpion, with their genocidal Middle East agendas which have turned our children into cannon fodder for Bush/Cheney Oil Wars and are inexorably pushing America's economy into heretofore unimaginable points of no return.

In short, thanks to the neocon cabal, we are losing EVERYTHING, i.e., our children's lives, our civil rights, Mother Nature, a reliable, dynamic economy, our retirements, our health care programs, our medical research, our planetary credibility, and on and on and on.

ALL OF THIS is the direct by product of the philosophy (mostly of Leo Strauss), politics, and religious fanaticisms of this neocon Heart of Darkness.

So why do many (most) allegedly liberal/progressive sites not let us talk about this?

Does the long arm of the neocon cabal reach EVEN INTO THE INTERNET? Are we too quick in thinking the Internet is offering us a life saving alternative to the Judas Media (mostly owned by, you guessed it, the neocon cabal).

Clearly, this subject is as massive as it is horrendous and if we can't start whacking away at the anti-American neocon cabal EVEN ON THE INTERNET, then it's game over.

Too much is at stake here for secret Internet double standards. We have to be able to go to where the core cancer is and that, with absolute certainly, is the neocon cabal.
**********************************************************************

W. Christopher Epler (Bill) <http://theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com/>

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
How the ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad
By DAVID ROHDE and DAVID E. SANGER At key moments in the fight for Afghanistan, the Bush administration diverted scarce resources to Iraq.

• Maps: Terrorism on the Rise
• Pakistan’s Leader Addresses Afghan Tribal Meeting 8:25 AM ET

Democrats Say Leaving Iraq May Take Years
By JEFF ZELENY and MARC SANTORA Even as they call for an end to the war, Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the U.S. engaged in Iraq for years.

• Graphic: Candidates on Iraq
• Clinton | Edwards | Obama

It's Time To Stop Accepting Bush's Failures- Editorial : Albuquerque Tribune
Given that U.S. forces have been largely pinned down in the bloody Iraq occupation and civil war for the past four years, should it surprise anyone in Washington, Peoria or Albuquerque that al-Qaida has regrouped and grown stronger in its historic stomping grounds of Pakistan and Afghanistan? Is it coincidence that almost nobody is talking about persistent homeland vulnerabilities here, including U.S. ports, power plants, etc

The Insidious 'Protect
America Act'
By Joel Skousen
Editor - World Affairs Brief
8-11-7


Since the takeover of the Republican party by globalists (masquerading as Christian conservatives), the legislative evils they have perpetrated have always come clothed in nice sounding names: the USA PATRIOT ACT and the PROTECT AMERICA ACT are two of the worst.

The "Protect American Act" does no such thing. It now authorizes, under the cover of "foreign" eavesdropping the indiscriminate surveillance of the domestic side of the leger as well. As I pointed out last week, they've been doing it all along, now they have some official cover.

Here's a personal example: When I was Chairman of the Conservative National Committee in 1983, I was talking to a foreign friend in El Salvador about why he shouldn't trust the overtures of a certain US Army reserve Major who was trying to ingratiate himself with the emerging right wing political movements of Central America. Within a half an hour this non active-duty Major had burst into my office and was threatening me never to speak about him over the telephone again. Obviously, my call was monitored, without a warrant, and this guy had some not-so-lowly connections into American intelligence, just as I had suspected.

Let's face it: All calls are monitored by NSA computers. That's a fact. So be careful what you say on the phone. The government claims to have computer programs to filter out domestic calls and separate them from foreign. Even if they do, how can we know if they are used? Naturally, we only have the government's word on that. But, it gives us no reason to relax. Even if the government is telling the truth, which I doubt, they can't filter something unless they collect it first--and that has heretofore been illegal and unconstitutional. It's still unconstitutional because Congress cannot pass a law making exceptions to the 4th Amendment without amending the constitution. A statute isn't enough.

As Spencer Ackerman noted at the beginning of the week, "Experts are still digesting the revision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] signed by President Bush yesterday... It's a fairly safe bet, judging by the amount of expert disagreement about the act's provisions, that most members of Congress don't know what they've just passed. What's clear is that now the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence can now obtain the international communications of U.S. citizens or residents without a warrant provided that such surveillance is 'reasonably believed' to be 'directed at' persons outside the country [a loophole big enough to drive a truck through]. The FISA Court's new, restricted role here is to determine -- up to six months after the fact of the surveillance -- that the government's procedures in seeking the primarily-foreign data is not 'clearly erroneous' [whatever that means]. If it isn't, the surveillance goes forward. [But, the surveillance has already been done before hand, and that isn't going to be undone!]

"...In short, it takes out from Fourth Amendment protections surveillance of a person 'reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States,' no matter who that individual communicates with, inside or outside the United States. 'This deems certain acts as not electronic surveillance as a legal matter, when they certainly would be surveillance as a factual matter,' says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. In fact, the legality of collecting such information without a warrant turns entirely on who the government says it's primarily interested in. 'If you are talking with somebody overseas, and the government intercepts that communication, it is electronic surveillance if government says they were directing the surveillance at you,' says Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. That kind of electronic surveillance would require, under FISA, a probable-cause warrant [which is a secret proceeding so we can't tell when or if they do anything at all to counter the government. Word from those who know is that few warrants are issued, clearly not enough to represent only a pittance of government surveillance]. But the law allows the government to skirt that requirement by shifting the emphasis of its investigation: 'It is not electronic surveillance if the government says it's directing the surveillance at a person overseas.'

"This goes beyond the Terrorist Surveillance Program. As described by President Bush in December 2005, communications monitored by the TSP had to involve, on one end, a known al-Qaeda figure. Now, the subject of surveillance simply has to be 'reasonably believed' to have 'foreign intelligence information' and be, more likely than not, outside the U.S." In fact all this is for show. The government is surveilling everything but only slowly ratcheting up the public awareness of this evil and hoping to destroy, over time, any public expectations of privacy.

BUILDING UP FEAR OF TERROR

In the last two weeks, the media has been busy promoting new government statements warning about more attacks from a strengthened al Qaeda (without a shred of evidence, other than perhaps the government's own foreknowledge of terror acts it controls). ABC News seems to be the lead purveyor of the new government fear-mongering. Led by the National Intelligence Estimate and Homeland Security Department the Bush administration is flooding the media with briefings warning that al Qaeda is preparing a 'spectacular terror attack' in the US this summer (rapidly coming to a close). According to the AP quoting a new U.S. intelligence assessment, "Al Qaeda is stepping up its efforts to sneak terror operatives into the United States and has acquired most of the capabilities it needs to strike here." Still the DHS and the White House drag their feet about sealing US borders.

Patrick Briley, the number one researcher into the government's role in the OKC bombing, wrote this week: "Bush and FBI deliberate inaction against Iraqi, Hamas, Al Qaeda and Al Fuqra terrorists in the OKC super celland Iraqis already in the US from the first Gulf War and currently being brought to the U.S. is another indication that Bush is intentionally not adequately protecting the US from the most recent credible and known threats of Al Qaeda plans to use Iraqis for attacks in the US.

"Instead Bush is allowing the existence of the OKC super cell and Iraqis already in the US to blackmail US citizens for more police state powers and to advance world government and the NAU." Briley doesn't go far enough, in my opinion, when he speaks of Bush "not adequately protecting..." What his evidence really points to is that government doesn't merely tolerate these cells but runs them (through 3rd parties) for the purpose of fear and conflict creation. Briley is right about the eventual goal to get Americans accustomed to more police power and regional/world government.

This week the media was showcasing demonstrations on the explosive power of shoes with C4 explosives in the heel, and the power of vials of liquid triggered to explode-hoping to pacify the growing public disgust and discontent over heavy handed TSA travel restrictions on liquids and gels. To shore up the government's propaganda, the government hired NASA to prepare a little demonstration on the "powerful explosive" effects liquid explosives can have. ABC news and others were dutifully airing the piece, and giving interview time to Homeland Security's own Dr. Frankenstein (Michael Chertoff).

But what the little demonstration on liquid explosives didn't show is how difficult and precise the measurements have to be to produce a larger explosion, how unstable the concoctions are once formed, and how difficult it is to smuggle the electronic triggering mechanisms onto an aircraft. Explosives experts have commented in the wake of the British claims on liquid explosives just how improbable this scenario was and still is.

World Affairs Brief, August 10, 2007

Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.

Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted.

Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief (<http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com> http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com )

http://www.rense.com/general77/prote.htm

Job seekers must obtain Homeland Security approval
Submitted by Adam Thomas on Fri, 2007-08-10 18:45. US citizens and other residents will require prior approval from Department of Homeland Security to get a job, under new immigration guidelines introduced by the Cabinet and sanctioned by President George W. Bush today.

This requirement was initially part of the failed immigration bill which has now been "within the boundaries of existing law to secure our borders more effectively," according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff And Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

The Employment Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) has been renamed E-verify and will initially require more than 200,000 companies doing Federal business to use the system to establish employment eligibility of new hires and the validity of their Social Security Numbers.

Later the system will be expanded to cover all companies and will include photo screening features through agreements to allow E-Verify access to the repository of photographs in state Department Of Motor Vehicles databases.

American Civil Liberties Union pointed out that the DHS's verification system is error plagued and if the department makes a mistake in determining work eligibility, there will be virtually no way to challenge the error or recover lost wages due to the bill’s prohibitions on judicial review.

"EEVS would be a financial and bureaucratic nightmare for both businesses and workers," said Timothy Sparapani, ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Under this already flawed program no one would be able to work in the U.S. without DHS approval - creating a ‘No Work List’ similar to the government’s ‘No Fly List.’ We need immigration reform, but not at this cost."

President Bush praised the two Secretaries for implementing these important reforms.

"Although the Congress has not addressed our broken immigration system by passing comprehensive reform legislation, my Administration will continue to take every possible step to build upon the progress already made in strengthening our borders, enforcing our worksite laws, keeping our economy well-supplied with vital workers, and helping new Americans learn English," Bush said.

It is not clear how this scheme will be funded, as the allocation of US$400 million for the implementation of the EEVS/E-Verify system was part of the immigration bill.

The Congressional Budgeting Office estimates the system to cost in excess of a billion dollars.

http://pressesc.com/news/100410082007/job-...curity-approval

The New York Times

August 12, 2007
China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People
By KEITH BRADSHER

SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 — At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.

Security experts describe China’s plans as the world’s largest effort to meld cutting-edge computer technology with police work to track the activities of a population and fight crime. But they say the technology can be used to violate civil rights.

The Chinese government has ordered all large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million people who have moved to a city but not yet acquired permanent residency.

Both steps are officially aimed at fighting crime and developing better controls on an increasingly mobile population, including the nearly 10 million peasants who move to big cities each year. But they could also help the Communist Party retain power by maintaining tight controls on an increasingly prosperous population at a time when street protests are becoming more common.

“If they do not get the permanent card, they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future,” said Michael Lin, the vice president for investor relations at China Public Security Technology, the company providing the technology.

Incorporated in Florida, China Public Security has raised much of the money to develop its technology from two investment funds in Plano, Tex., Pinnacle Fund and Pinnacle China Fund. Three investment banks — Roth Capital Partners in Newport Beach, Calif.; Oppenheimer & Company in New York; and First Asia Finance Group of Hong Kong — helped raise the money.

Shenzhen, a computer manufacturing center next to Hong Kong, is the first Chinese city to introduce the new residency cards. It is also taking the lead in China in the large-scale use of law enforcement surveillance cameras — a tactic that would have drawn international criticism in the years after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.

But rising fears of terrorism have lessened public hostility to surveillance cameras in the West. This has been particularly true in Britain, where the police already install the cameras widely on lamp poles and in subway stations and are developing face recognition software as well.

New York police announced last month that they would install more than 100 security cameras to monitor license plates in Lower Manhattan by the end of the year. Police officials also said they hoped to obtain financing to establish links to 3,000 public and private cameras in the area by the end of next year; no decision has been made on whether face recognition technology has become reliable enough to use without the risk of false arrests.

Shenzhen already has 180,000 indoor and outdoor closed-circuit television cameras owned by businesses and government agencies, and the police will have the right to link them on request into the same system as the 20,000 police cameras, according to China Public Security.

Some civil rights activists contend that the cameras in China and Britain are a violation of the right of privacy contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Large-scale surveillance in China is more threatening than surveillance in Britain, they said when told of Shenzhen’s plans.

“I don’t think they are remotely comparable, and even in Britain it’s quite controversial,” said Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel of Human Rights Watch in New York. China has fewer limits on police power, fewer restrictions on how government agencies use the information they gather and fewer legal protections for those suspected of crime, she noted.

While most countries issue identity cards, and many gather a lot of information about citizens, China also appears poised to go much further in putting personal information on identity cards, Ms. PoKempner added.

Every police officer in Shenzhen now carries global positioning satellite equipment on his or her belt. This allows senior police officers to direct their movements on large, high-resolution maps of the city that China Public Security has produced using software that runs on the Microsoft Windows operating system.

“We have a very good relationship with U.S. companies like I.B.M., Cisco, H.P., Dell,” said Robin Huang, the chief operating officer of China Public Security. “All of these U.S. companies work with us to build our system together.”

The role of American companies in helping Chinese security forces has periodically been controversial in the United States. Executives from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems testified in February 2006 at a Congressional hearing called to review whether they had deliberately designed their systems to help the Chinese state muzzle dissidents on the Internet; they denied having done so.

China Public Security proudly displays in its boardroom a certificate from I.B.M. labeling it as a partner. But Mr. Huang said that China Public Security had developed its own computer programs in China and that its suppliers had sent equipment that was not specially tailored for law enforcement purposes.

The company uses servers manufactured by Huawei Technologies of China for its own operations. But China Public Security needs to develop programs that run on I.B.M., Cisco and Hewlett-Packard servers because some Chinese police agencies have already bought these models, Mr. Huang said.

Mr. Lin said he had refrained from some transactions with the Chinese government because he is the chief executive of a company incorporated in the United States. “Of course our projects could be used by the military, but because it’s politically sensitive, I don’t want to do it,” he said.

Western security experts have suspected for several years that Chinese security agencies could track individuals based on the location of their cellphones, and the Shenzhen police tracking system confirms this.

When a police officer goes indoors and cannot receive a global positioning signal from satellites overhead, the system tracks the location of the officer’s cellphone, based on the three nearest cellphone towers. Mr. Huang used a real-time connection to local police dispatchers’ computers to show a detailed computer map of a Shenzhen district and the precise location of each of the 92 patrolling officers, represented by caricatures of officers in blue uniforms and the routes they had traveled in the last hour.

All Chinese citizens are required to carry national identity cards with very simple computer chips embedded, providing little more than the citizen’s name and date of birth. Since imperial times, a principal technique of social control has been for local government agencies to keep detailed records on every resident.

The system worked as long as most people spent their entire lives in their hometowns. But as ever more Chinese move in search of work, the system has eroded. This has made it easier for criminals and dissidents alike to hide from police, and it has raised questions about whether dissatisfied migrant workers could organize political protests without the knowledge of police.

Little more than a collection of duck and rice farms until the late 1970s, Shenzhen now has 10.55 million migrants from elsewhere in China, who will receive the new cards, and 1.87 million permanent residents, who will not receive cards because local agencies already have files on them. Shenzhen’s red-light districts have a nationwide reputation for murders and other crimes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/business...MhOyUgKmsAXUOpQ

Fighting the Democrats’ Complicity with Bush

by Francis A. Boyle / August 10th, 2007

Despite the massive, overwhelming repudiation of the Iraq war and the Bush Jr. administration by the American people in the November 2006 national elections conjoined with their consequent installation of a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party with a mandate to terminate the Iraq war, since its ascent to power in January 2007 the Democrats in Congress have taken no effective steps to stop, impede, or thwart the Bush Jr. administration’s wars of aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or anywhere else, including their long-standing threatened war against Iran. To the contrary, the new Democrat-controlled Congress decisively facilitated these serial Nuremberg crimes against peace on May 24, 2007 by enacting a $95 billion supplemental appropriation to fund war operations through September 30, 2007.

In the spring of 2007 all the Congressional Democrats had to do was nothing. They could have sat upon the supplemental appropriation request for war operations by the Bush Jr. administration and thus failed to enact it into law. At that point, the money for war operations would have gradually run out, and the Bush Jr. administration would have been forced to have gradually withdrawn U.S. armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of so doing, the Congressional Democrats knowingly prolonged these wars of aggression and thus in the process became aiders and abettors to these Nuremberg crimes against peace.

Under the terms of the United States Constitution, the President cannot spend a dime unless the money has somehow been appropriated by the United States Congress. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution expressly provides: “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law…” Furthermore, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12 of the Constitution also provides that “Congress shall have power . . . To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years . . . ”

America’s Founders and Framers deliberately strove to keep America’s prospective military establishment on a financial short-leash tightly held by the hands of Congress precisely because of their well-founded fear that a standing army would constitute a dire threat to the continued existence of the Republic based upon their recent experience confronting and defeating King George III’s standing army. As the American July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence stated their objections in part: “[H]e has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power . . . For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us…”

Congress must use its constitutional power of the purse to terminate the Bush Jr. administration’s wars of aggression immediately. Those Congressional incumbents of either political party who refuse to do so must be replaced by men and women of good faith and good will of any or no political party who will do their constitutional duty to terminate ongoing Nuremberg crimes against peace. To the contrary, the current leadership of the Democratic Party (though, to be sure, not all Democrats), let alone most of the Republicans, have been complicit with all the atrocities that the Bush Jr. administration has inflicted upon international law, international organizations, human rights, the United States Constitution, civil rights, civil liberties, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere since September 11, 2001.

Further confirmation of this proposition can be found in the fact that when the self-described Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan went on July 23, 2007 with 200 protesters to speak with Democratic Congressman John Conyers — Chair of the House Judiciary Committee that has supervisory jurisdiction over bills of impeachment — about starting impeachment proceedings against President Bush Jr., at the end of an hour Congressman Conyers ordered her and 45 others arrested for disorderly conduct when they refused to leave his office. In other words, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party arrested one of the leaders of the American Peace Movement for insisting that he and his congressional colleagues perform their constitutionally-mandated duties. Nothing could be more symptomatic of the constitutional, moral, and political bankruptcy of the so-called two-party system of politics in the United States of America: Republicans versus Democrats, Tweedle Dum versus Tweedle Dee.

Since the Democrats’ Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi had already ruled arbitrarily that President Bush’s impeachment was “off the table,” Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan announced her intention to run against Pelosi in the 2008 national elections. Once again Mrs. Sheehan’s instincts, principles, judgment, and strategy are directly on target. The American people must oppose, defeat, and replace all members of the United States Congress of any political party who will not impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney in order to terminate their needlessly — inflicted death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia as soon as possible. The so-called leaderships of both political parties have left the American people with no alternative. Even more urgently, the Neo-Conservative cabal known as the Bush Jr. administration are still threatening, planning, preparing, and conspiring to attack Iran, which could very well set-off World War III. Just recently they added nuclear-armed Pakistan to their publicly proclaimed list of targets.

Meanwhile, the Bush Jr. administration’s “surge” of 30,000 troops into Iraq announced in January of 2007 has marched on to its inexorable bloodbath for the Iraqi people and U.S. armed forces. There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that the underlying strategy of the Bush Jr. administration is nothing more than to postpone their inevitable defeat in Iraq until after their departure from office in January 2009 no matter what the cost in lives to Iraqis and Americans. But the world cannot wait until January of 2009 for America to start to end these wars and their related war crimes, as well as to prevent more threatened wars, especially against Iran or Pakistan, which could prove catastrophic for humankind.

The United States Congress must immediately and simultaneously proceed to exercise both its constitutional power of the purse and its constitutional power of impeachment toward that end. That is the bilateral strategy which the U.S. Congress pursued a generation ago in order to terminate the Nixon administration’s criminal wars of aggression against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. That must be the bilateral strategy by which the U.S. Congress today terminates the Bush Jr. administration’s criminal wars of aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and otherwise perhaps soon Iran or Pakistan. Despite Pelosi’s disingenuous protestations to the contrary, the Nixon/Vietnam precedent proves that Congressional impeachment and cutting-off funds for wars are mutually reinforcing strategies. They might even win the 2008 U.S. Presidential and Congressional elections for those who embrace them.

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/08/figh...city-with-bush/

<h1 class="title">Religious Right Lining up Behind Fred Thompson</h1> by Bill Berkowitz / August 10th, 2007

Despite Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson’s well-publicized remarks a few months back questioning Fred Thompson’s Christian credibility, and despite his anemic fundaising efforts — in its first month his campaign raised only $3 million instead of a hoped for $5 million — several religious right leaders appear to be gearing up to give the former Republican senator from Tennessee and television actor two thumbs up when he officially enters the GOP race for the presidency; expected to happen sometime shortly after Labor Day.

According to the Boston Globe’s Scott Helman, longtime social conservatives including Gary Bauer, a former presidential candidate who now leads American Values, a conservative public policy organization, and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, Washington, D.C.’s most powerful conservative Christian lobbying group, are clearly dissatisfied with the current field and seem willing to put any differences they might have with Thompson aside and embrace his candidacy.

“There’s a consensus developing around him that’s pretty clear and pretty profound,” John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, an Orlando-based conservative group told the Globe. “I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years in politics.”

“It’s almost as if the man and the moment met,” said Richard Land, who speaks for more than 16 million people as head of public policy for the nation’s Southern Baptists. The Globe reported that while Land has said “he will not endorse a candidate in the primary … his boosterish comments about Thompson — like those of other conservative leaders — leave little doubt about his excitement about the former senator. He said support for Thompson was spreading ‘almost like a prairie fire’ and predicted that some conservative leaders would endorse the 64-year-old actor and lawyer in coming weeks.”

In a piece posted June 20 at Real Clear Politics, David Domke, associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, reported that, “In June, Southern Baptist executive committee president Morris Chapman, who said he hasn’t settled on a candidate yet, nonetheless added: ‘Another Southern Baptist called Fred Thompson the Ronald Reagan of the South, and I think he has some of that appeal. He is a magnetic personality. He seems to articulate his opinions clearly. He seems to be unflappable.’”

Domke pointed out that “Every Republican presidential candidate over the past two decades has invoked the legacy of Reagan — characterized by optimism, love of nation, geniality, and a television-friendly persona. But Thompson is the first GOP candidate to be consistently talked about as Reaganesque. The SBC’s Land, in fact, has been the leading proponent of this comparison.”

The mini-flap between Dobson and the Thompson camp came about earlier this year when Dobson told US News & World Report’s Dan Gilgoff, “I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression.” A Focus on the Family spokesman told the magazine that Dobson meant he has “never known Thompson to be a committed Christian — someone who talks openly about his faith.”

In a story appearing in the July 23 issue of US News, Gilgoff, author of the recently published book The Jesus Machine, which focuses on Dobson’s rise to power, reported that “Dobson and Thompson have since talked, with Dobson rumored to be reassessing Thompson.”

Support for Thompson appears to be equally based on social conservatives’ disdain for the top tier candidates — former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and for Arizona Senator John McCain — as well as their belief that the former D.C. lobbyist/lawyer will make an more acceptable standard bearer for the party.

“He’s got a real good chance to emerge as the conservative alternative to Giuliani,” Bauer said. As for Romney, Bauer pointed out that “They’ll battle it out, but if I had to characterize it right now, I would say that the momentum here has moved to Thompson, at least among the social-issues conservatives.”

“I think there is a genuine comfortable feeling that there may be a candidate out there that everyone can get behind,” said Phil Burress, who leads the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values. “He looks like he’s the first candidate that’s come along that one, can raise money; two, that’s electable, and three, we’re pretty comfortable with … on most of the issues today.”

In his July 23 report, US News’ Gilgoff also pointed out that “prominent social conservative Paul Weyrich … [had] met recently with Thompson and evangelical activists, [and] said the former senator ‘was in agreement with us on almost everything.’” However, in a recent column posted at Townhall.com, Weyrich predicted that regardless of who the GOP’s candidate was, he would lose to Hillary Clinton.

Gilgoff also pointed out that Thompson had “recently hired Bill Wichterman, who served as conservative outreach director for former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and Joseph Cella, president of a conservative Catholic group called Fidelis, to lead” his campaign efforts. The recent hires brought Thompson’s staff to nearly 30, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza recently reported, including a pollster (John McLaughlin), a direct mail firm (HSP Direct), and an e-campaign team (Blaise Hazelwood and Ken Smith).

John Gizzi, political editor of the conservative weekly Human Events, recently reported that a source told him that Cella “will play the same role that Tim Goeglein plays in the [Bush] White House, as a liaison to conservative organizations.”

In late May, Talk2Action’s Frank Cocozzelli, who has been steadfastly monitoring and writing about the Catholic right, wrote that Fidelis (a 501©(4) political advocacy group) “has been tag-teaming with Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (website) to criticize Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion.” Cella lashed out at Giuliani, saying that he “share[d] the exact same position on abortion as fellow Catholic John Kerry. As more people of faith who are pro-life begin to realize this, they will reject Giuliani’s candidacy.”

On its website, Fidelis describes itself as “a Catholic-based organization working with people of faith across the country to defend and promote the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and the right to religious liberty by electing pro-life, pro-family and pro-religious liberty candidates, supporting the confirmation of judges, and promoting and defending laws faithful to the Constitution of the United States.”

Cocozzelli also reported that on May 16 , the organization “announced that it was organizing anti-Giuliani protests during the GOP Presidential Debates then being held in Columbia, South Carolina. Cella also announced [that] Fidelis America PAC, the political action arm of Fidelis, will distribute flyers and stickers prior to tonight’s debate. The stickers read: “Protect the Pro-Life Platform. Defeat Rudy Giuliani.”‘

“At the bottom of both of the Giuliani-targeted Fidelis press releases is a statement very much worth noting,” writes Cocozzelli: “Paid for by Fidelis America PAC_P.O. Box 277 Chelsea, MI 48118_Joseph J. Cella, Treasurer Not Authorized by Any Candidate or Committee.” In the course of his research, Cocozzelli found that the releases appeared to be “designed to influence the 2008 presidential election [and] are posted on what appears to be the joint web site for several related organizations,” Fidelis, Fidelis America — “a hard money PAC,” Fidelis Media Fund — a 527 “soft money” entity, and Fidelis Center for Law and Policy — a 501©(3).

The intermingling of these entities caught Cocozzelli’s eye: “While it is not clear is which legal entity actually controls the web site, there is a potential issue here in the possible commingling of donations since the site serves as the portal for the ©(4) as well as the 527 political action committee. It is an unusual, hazy situation that might pique the interest of the IRS as well as the Federal Election Commission.”

Dan Gilgoff reported that Thompson’s “aides are arranging more meetings between Thompson and conservative Christian leaders and have launched a rapid-response operation to fend off attacks on Thompson’s conservative credentials,” Dan Gilgoff reported.

Gilgoff also noted that Thompson has been touting his campaign endorsements from the National Right to Life Committee. “It didn’t look like he was saying what a group of Christian consultants told him to say,” says Harry Jackson, senior pastor of the 2,000 member Hope Christian Church in College Park, Maryland who also heads a group called the High-Impact Leadership Coalition (website), who met recently with Thompson. “He seemed to be saying, ‘I’m one of you.’”

“There’s a deliberate attempt by evangelical leaders to come to consensus,” says Jackson. David Barton, an evangelical activist who spearheaded pastor outreach for the Republican National Committee in 2004, told Gilgoff that “the leaders I talk to are all really interested in Thompson, but they’re waiting to pull the trigger [on endorsements] until later this year.”

I asked longtime investigative reporter Mike Reynolds why Thompson appeared to be doing so well with the religious right. “Thompson has assiduously worked the leadership — evangelical and traditionalist Catholic — behind the scenes for some time,” said Reynolds, author of a book on politics, money and the religious right to be published by St. Martins Press in 2008. “Taking his cues from Reagan in 1980 and Rove/Bush in 1998, Thompson has laid the requisite groundwork and cultivated a level of trust among this base that no other viable GOP Presidential candidate can match, well ahead of his speech at the Council for National Policy (CNP) in May that was followed by one-on-one meetings with Arlington Group heavies. Two weeks after that CNP speech, Paul Weyrich ran up the flag in a commentary titled “The Man for A Desperate Hour: Fred Thompson” in which he compared Thompson to Reagan. It’s a done deal.”

Does Thompson run the risk of veering too far to the right in his search for support? Ironically, its Gary Bauer who puts his finger on a problem that could develop should Thompson become the GOP nominee: “Thompson’s very good on the defense of normal marriage and free expression of religion. Frankly, he might have an easier time … if he’s not easily labeled as ‘religious right.’”

Thompson may not yet be an officially declared candidate, but he does have a spin/rapid response team in place. His early responders were pressed into duty recently after the Los Angeles Times reported on July 7 that the Senator had “accepted an assignment from a family-planning group [National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association] to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction, according to a 1991 document and several people familiar with the matter.” The gag rule that Thompson wanted eased “barred abortion counseling at clinics that received federal money.”

Springing into action, Thompson spinner Mark Corallo maintained that Thompson “did not lobby for this group, period.” In a telephone interview with the Times, Corallo added: “There’s no documents to prove it, there’s no billing records, and Thompson says he has no recollection of it, says it didn’t happen.”

However, Judith DeSarno, president of the organization in 1991, “said Thompson lobbied for the group for several months,” the newspaper reported. “Minutes from the board’s meeting of Sept. 14, 1991 — a copy of which DeSarno gave to the Times — say: ‘Judy [DeSarno] reported that the association had hired Fred Thompson Esq. as counsel to aid us in discussions with the administration” on the abortion counseling rule.’”

In mid-July, LifeNews.com editor Steven Ertelt wrote that a number of pro-life leaders, including Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, and Richard Land, raised doubts about the truth of the Times story because of that newspaper’s longtime support for abortion rights. Karen Cross, of the National Right to Life Committee, told LifeNews.com that “It appears that there is an attempt to create confusion regarding former Senator Fred Thompson’s pro-life position.”

However, a Time magazine report on July 25 confirmed that “Records … [had] turned up showing that Thompson had billed the group for nearly 20 hours of work in the early 1990s, an awkward revelation for a candidate positioning himself as a straight shooter and true conservative.”

A National Review editorial appeared to best sum up the situation, insisting that it should be treated “as a regrettable bit of ancient history.”

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His column, "Conservative Watch," documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/08/reli...-fred-thompson/

Lying Again, This Time About Iran’s Nuclear Program
by Walter C. Uhler / August 10th, 2007

Has the United States ever had to endure a president who lies as often as George W. Bush? He repeatedly lied to the American people in order to invade Iraq. Now he is lying about Iran. Who is going to hold him accountable? (Full article …)

Iran Plots Syrian President’s Ouster

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 312 of Aug. 3, 2007

August 12, 2007, 9:54 AM (GMT+02:00)

Buoyed up by the triumphs of Hizballah’s war offensive against Israel in 2006 and Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, the clerical rulers of Tehran have invested so heavily in their expanding power structure across the region that a fiasco could push their regime and military prop, the fierce Revolutionary Guards, into a perilous slide at home. To play it safe, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iran sources reveal they have hatched a plan to replace the vacillating figure in Damascus with a puppet at their beck and call, modeled on Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

Thus far, Assad has not strayed too far from the guidelines he and his Iranian allies laid down together, but Tehran can never be sure when he might swerve from the straight and narrow to make his peace with the Americans. The can only guarantee Syria stays in their pockets by installing a pro-Iran loyalist in the presidential palace in Damascus.

Sources close to Persian Gulf rulers believe that if Tehran opts for this course, its chosen instrument for throwing up a military ruler would be the Syrian armed forces, on the assumption that a general has the best chance of unifying the country and its ethnic and religious minorities around the new regime. The Iranians have therefore doubled and tripled their efforts to build up influence in the Syrian army.

An overt manifestation of their success is the prevalence of Syrian army men sporting beards in the style of Revolutionary Guardsmen.

But two additional Iranian steps have been more discreet.

1. Three-week, five-star vacations in Iran are being handed out to hundreds of graduates of every Syrian officers’ course and their families. While the families visit tourist sites, the graduates undergo indoctrination at special RGs seminaries.

2. Last April, RG instructors began handpicking outstanding Syrian officers at these courses and forming them into secret cells for planting in military units on their return home. They are trained to seize centers of government, military installations and public buildings.

It is not known if Assad knows what is going on in his armed forces, or how deeply collaboration with Iranian intelligence for implanting these cells has penetrated the high Syrian command.

Such information would be of paramount bearing on the Syrian ruler’s decision on whether or not to stage a flare-up with Israel, now projected for November or early next winter. An American intelligence estimate, passed to Israel last week, predicts that Syria will then plans to ignite clashes by low-intensity military operations to test Israel’s responses.

The Syrian leadership is divided on this issue:

The anti-war faction. This camp consists of the veteran class of Syrian army generals, traditionally the most American-oriented of the armed forces. Its leaders, defense minister Gen. Hassan Turkemany, chief of staff Gen. Habib Ali, and the presidential military and intelligence adviser Gen. Muhammed Nasif, all urge abstaining from hostile action against Israel.

The pro-war faction. This camp is headed by the Gen. Assaf Shawqat, head of Syrian military intelligence and the president’s brother-in-law. Around him is a band of ambitious young Syrian generals and colonels who have not yet made their name. They network closely with the high command of Iran’s armed forces and Revolutionary Guards.

Their argument for war is that the Assad regime is wobbling so badly that it would take the extreme measure of a war with Israel to unite the country behind the national leadership. These young Turks have convinced Asad that Israel is determined to avoid the kind of large-scale ground operation which went awry in the 2006 Lebanon War and will therefore focus on aerial bombardments of military bases and certain infrastructure targets such as bridges, power plants and water works. They estimate that even then, Israel will confine itself to a limited air offensive, because its policy-makers and military leaders alike will be leery of provoking reprisal from Syrian medium range ground-to-ground C and D Scud missiles against the central and southern populations.

By mid-July, the war faction appeared to be winning the upper hand with President Assad, against the veteran generals.

At the same time, neither camp can know for sure exactly where aggressive action against Israel may lead. A Syrian military defeat in a battle for the Golan and heavy Israeli bombardments deep inside Syria could generate conditions for a military coup d’etat against Assad by generals held up as popular heroes for fighting Israel.

At the same time, Assad’s failure to repulse heavy Israeli military pressure would open the door to Iranian military intervention and a tailor-made opportunity for ousting the regime in Damascus.
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1296

Canada uses military might in Arctic scramble


· Building programme is response to Russian move
· UN to decide on seabed claims to huge oil deposits

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday August 11, 2007
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/">The Guardian


Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, Canada. Global warming has made the Arctic's oil and gas reserves more accessible Photograph: Louise Murray/Science Photo Library


An international scramble for the Arctic's oil and gas resources accelerated yesterday when Canada responded to Russia's recent sovereignty claims with a plan to build two military bases in the region.On a trip to the far north, the prime minister, Stephen Harper, said: "Canada's new government understands that the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: use it or lose it. Today's announcements tell the world that Canada has a real, growing, long-term presence in the Arctic."



Article continues &lt;a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/Params.richmedia=yes&amp;amp;spacedesc=mpu&amp;amp;site=Guardian&amp;amp;navsection=1698&amp;amp;section=103681&amp;amp;country=usa&amp;amp;region=va&amp;amp;city=reston&amp;amp;bandwidth=xdsl&amp;amp;rand=2231224&amp;amp;tile=2231224"&gt; &lt;img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/Params.richmedia=yes&amp;amp;spacedesc=mpu&amp;amp;site=Guardian&amp;amp;navsection=1698&amp;amp;section=103681&amp;amp;country=usa&amp;amp;region=va&amp;amp;city=reston&amp;amp;bandwidth=xdsl&amp;amp;rand=2231224&amp;amp;tile=2231224" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt="Advertisement"&gt;&lt;/a&gt; An army training centre for 100 troops is to be built in Resolute Bay, and a deep-water port will be built on Baffin Island, to bolster Canada's claim to ownership.The move comes a week after a Russian sub planted a flag on the Arctic seabed. Moscow claims rights to half the Arctic. The US, Norway and Denmark also have claims.

A US state department official, speaking last week, signalled that Washington will not stand by in the face of what it sees as a Russian land-grab, though America's position is complicated by its failure so far to sign the treaty of the seas.

As Canada was making its move, Danish scientists were preparing to head for the Arctic tomorrow as part of their bid for a share of the region's wealth. A US coast guard icebreaker was heading to the Arctic to map the seafloor north of Alaska.

Although the US and Canada enjoy good relations, the American ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, has expressed annoyance with the prime minister's claims in the past.

No country owns the Arctic Ocean and north pole, but there are international laws governing its use. Under one UN convention, each country with a coast has sole exploitation rights in a limited "exclusive economic zone", beyond which mineral resources are controlled by the International Seabed Authority. However, upon ratification of the UN convention, each country was given a 10-year period within which to make claims to extend its zone. Norway (ratified in 1996), Russia (1997), Canada (2003), and Denmark (2004) have all launched claims that certain Arctic sectors should belong to their territories.

The UN's ruling on these submissions will determine who gets the right to extract the Arctic's huge reserves of oil and gas, estimated at 10bn tonnes.

Arguments over the Arctic were until recently academic because of the depth of the ice, but global warming has seen some of it melt, making drilling feasible. The US geological survey estimates that 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be located under the polar cap.

Speaking in the shelter of a hut in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Mr Harper said: "Protecting national sovereignty, the integrity of our borders, is the first and foremost responsibility of a national government, a responsibility which has too often been neglected."

Last month, he announced that six to eight navy patrol ships will be built to guard the Northwest Passage sea route in the Arctic, which the US insists does not belong to Canada.

Russian researchers claim the Lomonosov ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range. Denmark, which owns Greenland, is claiming the same landmass, saying the Lomonosov ridge is an extension of its territory.

"The preliminary investigations done so far are very promising," Helge Sander, Denmark's minister of science, technology and innovation, told Denmark's TV2 on Thursday. "There are things suggesting that Denmark could be given the north pole."

Christian Marcussen, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said: "We will be collecting data for a possible demand."

The US's position is complicated because the Senate has refused since the 1990s to ratify the 1982 UN convention on the law of the sea, mainly because Republican senators refused to recognise the right of the United Nations to broker it.

Under the convention, countries are entitled to control any waters above landmasses which extend from their continental shelf, the basis of the Russian and Danish claims to the Lomonosov ridge. If the US operated on the same principle, it would be able to claim half of the Arctic.

There is a sense of alarm in the US administration at the possibility of a missed opportunity, and President George Bush in May broke ranks with Republican senators in support of ratification. New hearings in the Senate foreign relations committee will be held in the autumn.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/st...2146727,00.html

<h3 class="post-title"> Delete Your Facebook Account </h3> Sorry about the flurry of vids. I read an article on the info this one presents earlier today. I don't know how correct it is, but it serves as a good reminder to be careful about the info you post on the net and to check the terms and conditions, and privacy policy (even though they are always long) of whatever service you use.



Consider this the start of a campaign to encourage people to delete their Facebook accounts even if only to let Facebook know the terms and conditions and privay policy they present are not acceptable. Leave a comment if you delete yours.

To read an article on this, click here

I would encourage you to support this campaign on your own blog, in forums, or anywhere else you have a voice. Such organisations need to be discouraged from such activity and we need to compell them towards actively protecting our privacy.

You can link to this post or do such things as put the video and article in your own space explaining your concern.

http://fritchie.blogspot.com/2007/08/delet...ok-account.html

Iraq Report Hints: More Time Needed
By Steven R. Hurst
The Associated Press

Thursday 09 August 2007

Anyone who still wonders what America's top two officials in Baghdad will report to Congress next month just hasn't been listening.

The military and diplomatic public relations machines are running full bore. The message: "Things are getting better, but we need more time."

Pushing that assessment most eloquently and fervently is Ambassador Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat and one of the State Department's most seasoned Mideast hands.

He's polishing his report to Congress in every encounter with reporters and does not shy from talking about the difficult task he will face this fall in Capitol Hill committee rooms.

"I don't think any service is done either in Iraq or the U.S. by saying, 'It's going to be OK by November.' This is hard," he said in a recent interview. "There is tremendous damage that's been done physically, politically, socially, and it's going to take time to repair."

"That's first. Second, a sober look at the consequences of what other courses of action can be. Not to paint nightmare scenarios ... but just to think through, what could happen should we decide we really don't want to carry forward (in Iraq) anymore."

The top U.S. general in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, speaks more obliquely - but just as strongly - about not giving up. At all times, Petraeus underscores his belief that the 30,000 extra American troops sent this year have reduced sectarian murders, encouraged more Iraqis to help U.S. forces and squeezed extremist groups.

"Once you get the locals recognizing that you are going to be there a while, they then tell you" where insurgent forces are hiding and where they have placed bombs, he said in a recent interview.

The news releases from Petraeus' command in the past few weeks have spoken boldly of "successes" and have focused attention on U.S. operations against fighters linked to al-Qaida in Iraq.

The military press operation floods e-mail inboxes with accounts of al-Qaida "emirs" and "most-wanted" insurgent leaders captured or killed, often on tips from Iraqi citizens.

There is considerable debate whether the military overstates the influence and presence of al-Qaida in Iraq. But the terror group was robust enough to try to impose a Taliban-style moral code on the Sunni-dominated Anbar province and in Diyala province north of Baghdad, according to Iraqi community leaders and U.S. military reports.

Crocker said he believes al-Qaida overplayed its hand, causing Sunni sheiks and homegrown insurgent leaders to rise up and to join the Americans' fight.

U.S. forces under Petraeus, who wrote the military's book on counterinsurgency warfare, used the serendipitous turnaround to full advantage and turned the one-time insurgents into a kind of auxiliary Iraqi security force. U.S. commanders have provided weapons, even while acknowledging the risks of arming former enemies.

Anbar province has calmed significantly, as have Diyala province and its capital, Baqouba, where U.S. forces have flushed out al-Qaida and Shiite militiamen who had fomented a virtual civil war there.

Members of a key Sunni guerrilla faction, the 1920 Revolution Brigade, also revolted in some Baghdad neighborhoods to chase out their erstwhile allies - led by the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida umbrella group.

Execution-style murders, believed to be the work of the Shiite Mahdi Army, are still occurring with grisly frequency, usually as many as 20 a day. But the numbers have gone down significantly in recent months.

Nevertheless, breakaway members of the militia are increasingly on the attack against U.S. and Iraqi forces, deploying armor-piercing bombs to deadly effect.

The No. 2 U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, says the Shiite militants aided by Iran carried out 73 percent of attacks that killed or wounded American troops in Baghdad in July. The sophisticated bombs - which fire a slug of superheated molten metal - accounted for a third of July U.S. combat deaths.

Members of the rogue militias have admitted to The Associated Press that they are getting the weapon from Iran. Iran denies it is supplying the Shiite cells.

In Washington, President Bush described Iran as "a destabilizing influence in the Middle East" and warned of unspecified "consequences" if Tehran does not halt the suspected flow of explosive devices into Iraq. Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is currently in Tehran seeking better security cooperation and other aid from top Iranian officials.

So the current report card reads: Al-Qaida is on the run somewhat, but the militant Shiite side of the equation is keeping the violence high. And that, the military and diplomats say, argues against a quick American withdrawal.

Neither Crocker nor Petraeus will talk dates. But neither has so far proposed an open-ended U.S. presence. Crocker speaks of looking not at the calendar but at conditions on the ground.

Their stewardship could be softening the drive by some lawmakers to set deadlines for troop withdrawals. A leading anti-war Democrat, Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, has predicted that U.S. commanders will begin lowering troop levels early next year and that Congress could be more flexible in setting a deadline for a full pullout.

The largest unknown is Iraq's political paralysis. Both Washington and Iraqi political leaders show growing disgust with al-Maliki's seeming ineffectiveness and apparent bias in favor of fellow Shiites.

If political inaction and resentment explode into even more chaos - as looks increasingly likely - the hard military and diplomatic work still could be swept away by American voters who just want out of Iraq.

---------

Hurst is AP's bureau chief in Iraq and has covered the war since 2003.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081007M.shtml
August 10, 2007 | A boy cries near a bloodied stretcher while waiting to claim the body of his father, killed in a mortar attack, outside a hospital morgue in Baghdad on August 5. The US military and diplomatic public relations machines continue to put forth the message: "Things are getting better, but we need more time."