February 2003

¤ Picture of the front of the London demo (Large)
¤ Half Million in Anti-War Demo in Berlin
¤ 1 million Italians march against Iraq war
¤ In pictures: World rallies against war
¤ Peace rally held in Bermuda
¤ Big peace rally held in Brussels
¤ Anti-war march: what the speakers said
¤ People power takes to the world's streets
¤ UK's biggest peace rally
¤ One million. And still they came
¤ Blair stakes his political future on beating Iraq
¤ The great unheard finally speak out
¤ Australia launches anti-war protests
¤ BIGGEST EVER PEACE RALLY IN LONDON
¤ Mass protests in Glasgow and London
¤ Estimated 800,000 in peace rally in Central London
¤ Dozens stage candle-light vigil in Bahrain
¤ Peace protests spread around globe
¤ Dublin Anti-war protest numbers increase to 100,000
¤ Belgrade joins the global anti-war movement
¤ Antiwar demonstration outside U.S. Embassy in Japan
¤ Anti-War Protesters Pour Into Streets of Australia, New Zealand
¤ French say no to war
¤ US and Britain put on the defensive
¤ When peace isn't worth the price
¤ Dolly the sheep put down after growing old too soon
¤ War only weeks away, Powell warns
¤ Fighting words from war-renouncing Japan
¤ Forgotten, ignored, scared. And on the march today
¤ Millions join anti-war protests worldwide
¤ Blair backs UN route on Iraq
¤ Bin Laden son, al Qaeda terrorists spotted in Iran
¤ Ridge: No Need to Panic Over Alerts
¤ Gaza bomb kills four Israeli soldiers
¤ Colombia rebels kill and seize Americans
¤ Powell's Bad Day
¤ Britain and US unmoved as Blix calls for more time over Iraq
¤ Iraq won't preside over disarmament forum
¤ Bahrain smashes 'terrorist cell'
¤ Widow of anthrax victim sues for $50M
¤ South Koreans Visiting North, Despite Tensions
¤ Critics Fear Candid Rumsfeld Has Impeded Iraq Coalition
¤ Iraqi reporter expelled; Baghdad orders Fox out
¤ U.S.-led team raids suspected Afghanistan hide-outs
¤ 15 killed by bomb 'meant for Colombian President'
¤ U.S. plans ignore Iraq's clans
¤ The old and the ancient world confront Powell with new realities
¤ Frustrated Powell voices fears of endless, fruitless weapon checks
¤ Millions to march in hundreds of cities - a global protest begins
¤ Blix gives doves no reason to back war
¤ Disarray over Mugabe forces EU to delay summit
¤ Hardline Milosevic ally charged by Hague war crimes tribunal
¤ Pepsi loses its bottle in dispute over hip-hop commercial
¤ The People vs The War
¤ On a day of high drama turned back the tide of war
¤ Where does this leave us on the crucial issues?
¤ Vintage performance from an international bureaucrat
¤ Trench warfare over Iraq's destiny
¤ Weapons report reinforces divisions among big players
¤ Invasion, bombs, gas - we've been here before
¤ Bush a dill? Try a drunk, a thief, a deserter ...
¤ Iran out of Bush's new spin on 'axis of evil'
¤ Veto axe hangs over final US push for support
¤ Troops plan to storm Baghdad on first day of battle
¤ Unkind thoughts swell as the Europeans think Yank
¤ Tom's bleating about Bush goes back a way

Latest News
Posted: Friday, February 14, 2003

¤ Sharp Words On Iraq War From Outgoing Nigerian Ambassador
¤ Blix: No Weapons of Mass Destruction Found
> ElBaradei: No Evidence of Iraq Resuming Nuclear Weapons Program
¤ Blix: Iraq Banned Weapons Unaccounted For
¤ China: UN Must Do All It Can to Avoid War on Iraq
¤ France: Force Against Iraq Unjustified at This Time
¤ Dolly the Cloned Sheep Put to Death
¤ China gets jets from Russia
¤ UN weapons inspectors' report: At a glance
¤ No mandate to go to war
¤ Court Stops Florida From Blocking Nude Anti-War Activists
¤ ONGC strikes huge oil, gas reserves off Mumbai coast
¤ 'We are at the start of a hundred-year war'
¤ Blix: No Weapons of Mass Destruction Found
¤ Powell's Al Qaeda-Baghdad link falls apart
¤ British Agency Claims New bin Laden Tape
¥ Elvis also gave them a recording yesterday
¤ Bad Tip Contributed to Orange Alert, Official Says
> Not Really! We believe it was the bogus dossier
¤ First Lady gives TV alerts static
¤
¤ Saddam issues decree banning weapons of mass destruction
¤ Blix: "We have no evidence of weapons of mass destruction'
¤ Key points: UN inspectors' report
¤ WHY WE SHOULD MARCH TOMORROW
¤ 190,500 SAY NO TO WAR
¤ The fuzzy ethics of nonlethal weapons
¤ Protest march may break records
¤ Impending War on Iraq an American Jihad
¤ Saddam's gas victims blame the West, too
¤ A monument to hypocrisy
¤ CIA sabotaged inspections and hid weapons details
¤ Bush tells troops to prepare for 'great tests'
¤ US ready to use Blix report as launchpad for Gulf war
¤ Scenes of Colonial Africa With Racist Overtones
¤ Blair and Bush warn Europe to prepare for war
¤ US rules out sanctions in effort to ease Korea crisis
¤ Rumsfeld won't rule out nuclear bomb against Iraq
¤ Front-row seats for the war
¤ Nato doves refuse to budge but US hawks sharpen claws
¤ US movie stars lash out at Bush
¤ Global march for peace
¤ Blix report may not be last seen by UN council
¤ Patience will be a vital weapon in the long battle against terrorism
¤ Yes, there is an alternative to this approaching war
¤ The Sketch: Blunkett line on terror is as clear as mud
¤ Ovation for Schroeder as he grasps the chance for peace
¤ The enemy can't hide from our missiles: N Korea
¤ Sharon war-crime ruling icily received
¤ Greenspan and Bush in public clash
¤ Battle lines drawn on day of decision
¤ 24 Israeli soldiers hurt when RPG explodes in Golan Heights base
¤ Iraq deputy PM: We don't have the means to attack Israel
¤ Aziz's Roman welcome fuels US anger against Europe
¤ Kim is evil but not stupid, southerners say

British police detains "Venezuelan passenger" with grenade
Posted: Friday, February 14, 2003

VHeadline.com

Security concerns are focused on London Gatwick airport today after it was revealed that despite a heightened state of terrorist alert with British troops guarding key installations, luggage belonging to a "Venezuelan passenger" aboard a British Airways flight had passed through the arrival airport's X-ray screening without detection.

"In fact the hand grenade was only discovered, quite by chance, during a random check in the arrivals hall," a UK security source has told VHeadline.com ... "Gatwick security is very, very embarrassed by it all .. there are all sorts of feathers flying because of the lapse!"

British media has been quick to blame Venezuelan airport security and British Airways has reacted swiftly to ground all flights to and from Caracas until an investigation is completed ... but no one had thought to question Gatwick's security, despite the UK-based terrorist alert.

Meanwhile, Venezuela's Ambassador to London, Alfredo Toro Hardy hints that the man detained by British anti-terrorist police may have been using a false or stolen Venezuelan passport. "Our (Venezuelan) authorities are checking details but there appear to be some anomalies .. the man is definitely of Bangladeshi origin!"

Ambassador Toro Hardy rejects criticism of lax security procedures at Caracas (Simon Bolivar) international airport and insists that Venezuela maintains internationally-established aircraft loading procedures. Security at Maiquetia had already been on a heightened security alert of its own because of the current political-economic crisis and responsibilities are strictly observed from passage through check-in, baggage loading and all stages through the aircraft's lift-off to its final destination from Caracas.

Latest News
Posted: Thursday, February 13, 2003

¤ Official: US Special Operations Troops Busy in Iraq
¤ Sharon to be sued for war crimes
¤ Belgian move against Sharon angers Israel
¤ Blair: weapons report 'breaches UN resolution'
¤ Which country poses the greatest danger to world peace
¤ The Path to Credibility
¤ Doing Al Qaeda's Dirty Work for Them
¤ Police arrest two near Heathrow airport amid terror alert
¤ Plan: US general to run Iraq
¤ Suit questions Bush's war powers
¤ Sharon's war-crimes trial after he leaves office
¤ Now Blair clashes with Germans
¤ Hysteria runs riot; networks fuel the fear
¤ Israel's Heroism is Terrorism by Anyone Else
¤ Bin Laden's voice aside, war on Iraq is not war on Al Qaeda
¤ Western publics can't stomach U.S. foreign policy
¤ I'll be seeing you at the anti-war march on Saturday
¤ Blair under siege from every side
¤ Nato fails to break impasse on Turkey
¤ France leads rejection of Nato's new plan for defending Turkey
¤ Iraqi missiles break sanctions, say United Nations weapons experts
¤ Iran will be one of the winners of the war
¤ Vatican rolls out red carpet for Christian Aziz
¤ U.S. bombs kill at least 17 civilians, Afghans say
¤ 10 million join world protest rallies
¤ Bin Laden tape divides allies on nature of link to Baghdad
¤ Israeli army is ready to beat off Iraqi retaliation
¤ US seeks 'someone like Jimmy Carter' to oversee Iraq
¤ An Empire Too Far
¤ US already knew of Bin Laden tape
¤ N Korea threatens US targets
¤ North Korea Wants Arms and More Aid From U.S. (NY Times Registration)
¤ Israeli fury as Belgian court opens way for Sharon trial
¤ Netanyahu recalls ambassador from Belgium
¤ U.S. is more dangerous than Saddam
¤ 17 Killed in Bolivian Violence
¤ 10 million join world protest rallies
¤ Turkey denies British troops role on border
¤ The threat from America is different this time.
¤ 17 Afghan villagers 'killed in American bombing raids'
¤ NATO Allies Reject New U.S. Plan on Iraq
¤ Anthrax jabs mutiny widens amid fears of cancer, sterility
¤ Russian threat to block Bush
¤ Africans call for lifting of sanctions
¤ Germany leads doubters on al Qaeda-Iraq link
¤ Why the Europeans do not trust the Bush regime
¤ Finding no weapons drives the President paranoid
¤ Anti-War Group Urging Youth to Be 'Militant' Like Malcolm X
¤ Bolivia shuts down after riots
¤ Anti-taxation riots in Bolivia
¤ Death toll hits 20 in Bolivia violence

Working-Class Revolt In Bolivia
Posted: Thursday, February 13, 2003

by Forrest Hylton

Dual power has come to Bolivia most suddenly: not, as expected, in the form of a coordinated uprising of coca growers, highland Aymara peasants, and Quechua speaking peasants under the direction of Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People; instead, high school students and the working class of La Paz and its satellite city, El Alto, rose up spontaneously in the largest urban insurrection since the National Revolution of 1952.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 12, students from Ayacucho high school attacked the Presidential Palace in the Plaza de Murillo with stones, and after the Military Police shot and killed members of the police's Special Group, crowds burned the headquarters of the major neoliberal political parties (MNR, MIR, ADN) as well as a privately-owned television station, the vice-president's office, the Ministry of Labor, and the Ministry of Sustainable Development, the last of which was created under the first Sánchez de Lozada administration (1993-97). They looted supermarkets, stores, ATMs, the Central Bank, destroyed a café frequented by many of Bolivia's notables, and burned a car that was carrying the son of the leader of MIR. In El Alto, rioters burned and looted the water company, the power company, Banco Sol, the customs office, and the mayor's office, and on the morning of February 13, they took over the Coca Cola and Pepsi bottling plants.

The second Sánchez de Lozada administration, teetering on the brink, has responded once again with a display of violence, though it does not yet control the proletarian areas of La Paz and El Alto that voted for Evo Morales and MAS. Armed with clubs, residents there have organized neighborhood watch groups to guard against looting and have blocked off main roads as well as selected side arteries to keep the military out.

As in the National Revolution of 1952, the police are part of the popular revolt, though it is anyone's guess as to how long the unity will last. What detonated the uprising-which has since spread to Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and could easily reach Sucre-was the violence that the Military Police unleashed against the police's Special Group, which had marched peacefully on the Presidential Palace to protest proposed tax measures that threaten to further reduce their meager $105/month salaries. By the end of the Wednesday, February 12, there were more than 100 injured, and the death toll was 18, with 13 in La Paz and 5 in El Alto, including a young girl. To put this figure in regional perspective, since Bolivia has just over 8 million inhabitants, a proportionate number of dead in Colombia would be roughly 95 and in Venezuela, 60. To situate it in national historical context, the most violent contemporary administration was that of former IBM executive Jorge Quiroga (2000-2001), which killed roughly forty people in less than a year. In six months the Sánchez de Lozada administration is already responsible for 44 civilian deaths.

Since the major TV stations ceased broadcasting at 7 PM, the first night of the uprising was not televised, but it was atmospheric: close to midnight, with a dense fog covering El Alto (the Aymara city of 500,000 above La Paz), people met in groups of several hundred to discuss strategy, decide on appropriate tactics, and come up with a division of labor as rumors of an imminent coup circulated. Human concentrations were strongest on the bridges in La Ceja and at the toll that separates El Alto from La Paz. Old women, children over 12, young couples--nearly everyone participated. The streets, empty of traffic and smoking from the bonfires that rebels had set, were full of broken glass and large metal objects like desks, road construction signs and iron rods. In the hillside neighborhoods of northwestern La Paz below El Alto, the scene was much the same, except that certain secondary routes were deliberately kept open to traffic and people concentrated in smaller groups, with larger groups battling the military behind barricades in the city center immediately below. In La Paz as well as El Alto, the army fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowds through the day and night.

Because it faced the military's tanks, bullets and tear gas in the Plaza San Francisco, on Thursday, February 13, a march of more than 10,000 people was dispersed within hours. By early afternoon eight were dead and more than ten injured with bullet wounds from shots fired by army snipers posted on the rooftops of buildings and in the streets around the Presidential Palace. One of the dead was a nurse from the Red Cross who entered a building to help someone who had been shot.

The lower and middle ranks of the police who led yesterday's revolt do not recognize the agreement signed by the government and the leadership of the police in the early morning of February 13, and have called for Sánchez de Lozada's renunciation-a demand first voiced by Evo Morales in January. They did not participate in the repression of the march or the assault on El Alto's barricades (though the Judicial Police rounded up looters).

Morales, absent from the march that he and MAS had called, plans to marshal his forces in Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People, and though Felipe Quispe is in Mexico, he returns on Friday, February 14. He and Morales have agreed that the highland Aymara will join the coca growers in a solidarity blockade. Though it is impossible to predict anything more specific than a broad spectrum of possibilities, unless the government manages to bring the lower ranks of the police into line, and quickly, the extension of dual power in time and space is one of the possibilities. More likely, the requisite co-ordination across regional, ethnic, and class barriers will not materialize in time to overthrow the government. Whatever the short-term outcome, however, the question of dual power has arisen again in Bolivia, and this time not only in the countryside. It will not likely disappear anytime soon.

Forrest Hylton is conducting doctoral research in history in Bolivia

Latest News
Posted: Wednesday, February 12, 2003

¤ Big talk and little stick: Our North Korean folly
¤ Collateral damage
¤ The Bush Admin's slide into totalitarianism
¤ Greenspan Throws Cold Water on Bush Arguments for Tax Cut
> (NY Times Registration Required)
¤ Spain's Aznar Internally Isolated on Iraqi affair
¤ U.S. Alarmed by Use of Al Qaeda Bomb Term
¤ Powell Wrong about 'bin Laden' Tape
¤ Poll gloom for Blair on Iraq
¤ White House now eager to release words linked to bin Laden
¤ Rising storm of protest against U.S. drive on Iraq
¤ Inquiry into the 'tainted' No 10 dossier on Iraq
¤ How do Powell & Tenant have foreknowledge of tape?
¤ Blair's Official Spokesman see no reason to doubt tape
¥ Yeah Right!
¤ Osama on cue
¤ London security alert 'on scale of 9/11'
¤ Germany: Bin Laden Tape Doesn't Prove Iraq Link
¤ Another dubious 'Bin Laden tape' comes when the US needed it
¤ Bin Laden, Unedited After Powell's Disclosure
¤ Osama bin Laden came to the rescue of George W. Bush yesterday
¤ The myth of the state and the reality of the annexation
¤ 'Stay in Afghanistan,' Karzai urges
¤ U.N. inspectors to destroy first banned Iraq weapons
¤ Rice, Blix Confer On Iraq Briefing
> Acknowledgment Of Violation Urged
¤ Mike Klare on scheduling war
¤ Hard To Believe
¤ Tanks roll into Bethlehem
¤ Nuclear stand-off may go to UN
¤ Russian threat to block Bush
¤ War spinners won't let truth stand in the way of a good story
¤ Jazeera: Bin Laden Urges Muslims to Defend Iraq
¤ Bin Laden tape advises how to wear down the American foe
> You're on your own with this.....
¤ America's 48 hours to kill Saddam
¤ US names its choice to succeed Saddam
> Propaganda gone wild...
¤ 3 western pillars already shaken
¤ Anthrax jabs mutiny widens amid fears of cancer, sterility
¤ Fighting rages on in the Philippines
¤ German police launch terror raids
¤ Chinese Freer to Speak and Read, but Not Act
¤ Nuclear watchdog debates N Korea
¤ Not all conservatives on board on Iraq
¤ No "Weapons of Mass Destruction" found in T&T
¤ Nine killed as Philippine troops assault MILF positions
¤ Vulnerable but ignored: how catastrophe threatens the 12 million children of Iraq
¤ Mandate for war will fail, predicts Germany
¤ Irreconcilable differences of opinion?
¤ What the papers have to say about the transatlantic split on Iraq war
¤ Franco-German plan is a threat to peace, says UK
¤ Mr Blair is facing the most momentous decision of his political life
¤ The French should be heard, not vilified
¤ What sense can Iraq war make?
¤ Let diplomacy run its course
¤ Crean tells US ambassador to butt out
¤ Bush gushes, PM blushes in war office
¤ The US lacks a compelling case
¤ New Zealand PM delivers anti-war message to the US
¤ Pentagon plans NATO blitz on Germany by pulling out
¤ Bin Laden urges suicide attacks ???
¤ US public backs Bush to go it alone
¤ Tanks roll on British streets

Update : Feb 12, 2003
Posted: Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Trinidad Express and the 'Terror Lab' Hoax
National Security Minister Howard Chin Lee last night said based on the forensic report, all of the items (except) one, were inert material and are not items used to produce biological agents, explosives or chemical weapons. The one exception, Sulphuric Acid, is a corrosive substance and is normally used in car batteries and in the manufacture of fertilisers.

As Caracas boils, its elite dodges scalds
All over Venezuela's violence-torn capital, the affluent are stocking up, laying emergency plans and counting their weapons. 10/02/03

Latest News
Posted: Tuesday, February 11, 2003

¤ Bush's Ugly America
¤ Anti-War Protestors Are Warmongers for Our Enemies
¤ How Americans Are Blackmailed By Israel
¤ Journalists find little at site named by Powell
¤ Terrorists are coming, really, they are coming, lets bomb Iraq
¤ White House seeks Moussaoui trial halt
¤ New Zealand PM delivers anti-war message to the U.S.
¤ BBC bans news stars from anti-war march
¤ 'Bin Laden tape to show Iraq link' [seems like US propaganda]
¤ Powell Ties 'bin Laden' Message to Iraq
¤ Bin Laden says he is Iraqi partner - Powell
In Cairo, Al-Jazeera chief editor Ibrahim Hilal said his station had no such tape of bin Laden.
¤ Powell before the U.N. - No sale: Oil was the word never spoken
¤ Template for Iraq Pretext-Operations Cuba--1962, Iraq--2003
¤ Paul Krugman: 'The wimps of war'
¤ Replays show Powell did not score
¤ In search of the opposition: Left over?
¤ Old alliances, new risks
¤ Speak Up for Your Right to March!
¤ Iran reveals uranium, but pledges peaceful use
¤ Lies, Damned Lies, and Antisemitism
¤ Palestinians are being subjected to torture by Israel
¤ U.S. dismisses Iraqi acceptance of U-2 surveillance flights
¤ Best Argument Against Invading Iraq
¤ Oil plays starring role in plans for post-Hussein Iraq
¤ War, peace collide in sermons
¤ Voters desert Blair over Iraq
¤ U.S. fears Iran has 'pretext' for nukes
¤ Anti-Americanism Moves to W. Europe's Political Mainstream
> More like Anti-Bush's policies not Anti-American
¤ US may send elite troops to fight Abu Sayyaf rebels
¤ Straw attacks proposal to avert Iraq war
¤ Why stop in Iraq: reform the entire Arab world
¤ Iran poses third nuclear threat to US
¤ Pyongyang was progressing until US rightwingers showed up
¤ BP buys into big oil in Russia
¤ Fat or fatuous, it's just another feeding frenzy...
¤ The terrorist-in-chief
¤ Nato wounded in crossfire over Iraq
¤ African ambush brings Mugabe in from the cold
¤ Palestinians say they are being subjected to punishment 'lottery'
¤ Can the old world order survive this much collateral damage?
¤ France, Germany and Russia defy the US by declaring that war is unjustified
¤ New 'Patriot Act' under fire from civil rights groups
¤ 3 Nato states use veto against US
¤ Why Saddam bashing?
¤ The cost of truth
¤ We haven't committed troops yet, says Austrailian PM
¤ Blix game to give peace a chance
¤ The Case For War
¤ US alliance no bed of roses for Mark and Tom

Powell before the U.N. - No sale
Posted: Tuesday, February 11, 2003

February 6, 2003
by Robert Jensen

Oil was the word never spoken

The world's attention Wednesday was trained on what Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the United Nations, but far more crucial was what he didn't say.

Most important was the one word at the core of plans for war but which never crossed Powell's lips: Oil. That word cannot be spoken by U.S. policymakers, though people everywhere know that if not for oil, the United States would not be pursuing a war.

Because the United States won't talk openly about plans for the future of Iraq's oil, most of the world is skeptical of U.S. arguments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, terrorist ties and human-rights violations. People are concerned about the issues but don't trust U.S. motives. Powell asked a reasonable question: "Why should any of us give Iraq the benefit of the doubt?" What he fails to appreciate is that others are asking the same question about the United States.

Given the sophisticated U.S. intelligence technology and the fervor with which U.S. policymakers want to indict Iraq, it was striking how weak was the case Powell offered; the slick charts and maps were impressive but couldn't cover the fact that Powell had little real evidence. Even if his claims were all true, nothing he said makes the case for war. Instead, Powell presented a good argument for continuing inspections -- with serious cooperation on the part of U.S. officials with orders to share all relevant intelligence produced by the extraordinarily sophisticated U.S. intelligence-gathering technology.

What was the real aim of Powell's public-relations show? One likely target was the American public; the administration realizes it must counter the growing antiwar movement. Another was leaders of countries such as France and Turkey, where populations are overwhelmingly against war and politicians need a cover if they are to capitulate to U.S. demands without appearing to be lapdogs.

Powell unwittingly reinforced this reality with a map of the range of Iraqi missiles. With the exception of Israel (whose leaders favor a U.S. offensive in Iraq for their own power interests), the peoples within those concentric circles, which mark the potential reach of the Iraqi missiles, are not in favor of war. If Iraq's neighbors -- the people who should be most afraid -- don't feel threatened, why does the United States feel compelled to go to war?

Powell claimed that Iraq has engaged in "a policy of evasion and deception," and certainly a regime like Saddam Hussein's is capable of such tactics. But the rest of the world also sees "disturbing patterns of behavior" in U.S. actions.

A case in point: The United States has undermined instead of supported international efforts at disarmament. One example was its torpedoing of Jose Bustani, director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in April 2002 when it appeared Bustani's efforts could create obstacles to the U.S. war plans by initiating chemical weapons inspections in Iraq. And the United States remains the world's largest arms dealer, hardly a recommendation for its self-proclaimed position of world peacekeeper.

Weapons of mass destruction -- in Iraq, throughout the Middle East and the world -- are a threat to peace and security. But the issue is pretext for the United States in a cynical ploy to cover strategic goals concerning oil.

No one suggests the United States seeks to permanently take direct possession of Iraqi oil. Instead, policymakers are interested in control over the flow of oil and oil profits. A client state in Iraq would give the United States a more permanent and extensive military presence in the region and could push aside Saudi Arabia as the key player in OPEC. Iraq's oil reserves, estimated to be the second largest in the world, are particularly attractive because of quality and low extraction costs. U.S. control over Iraq through a compliant regime -- beholden for its very existence to the United States -- dramatically increases U.S. control over oil, and therefore over the world economy.

U.S. officials have openly expressed their contempt for international law and declared their intention to go to war, with or without U.N. approval. That's why all the talk of whether Powell would produce a "smoking gun" was irrelevant. There was no need for a smoking gun because the nation with the biggest guns in the world had made it clear that it needs no evidence -- smoking, smoldering, or even completely cold -- to take the world to war.

---------------

Robert Jensen, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream and a member of the Nowar Collective.

Copyright © Robert Jensen 2003

Template for Iraq Pretext-Operations: Cuba--1962, Iraq--2003
Posted: Tuesday, February 11, 2003

February 8, 2003
by John Stanton

On March 13, 1962, the Pentagon's Joint Chief's of Staff prepared a document titled Operation Northwoods (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/doc1.pdf ) containing plans to create a pretext for a US invasion of Cuba. The Pentagon intended to stage Cuban attacks on Americans to incite public opinion in support of an attack on Cuba. Jim Bamford brought the document to light in his expose of the National Security Agency titled Body of Secrets. With the torrent of propaganda coming out of the US government--to include US military live fire exercises carried on CNN and Fox, rebroadcasts of the thriller True Lies and carefully timed announcements of US troop deployments--it's worth looking at some of the more sinister elements of that document presented to then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara.

Given the secrecy surrounding the Bush Regime--and the statements emanating from its officials--it does not seem unreasonable to assume that the US government has in play pretext-operations plans for Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Colombia and, perhaps, Cuba. It's important to remember that the US entry into the Vietnam War came about over the August, 1964 incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in which US, South Vietnamese and Laotian military forces deliberately provoked North Vietnamese patrol boats into a fight. That resulted in the ill-fated Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which, in the end, tore the US apart for decades to come. Commenting on that event, President Lyndon Johnson would say in 1965 that "for all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

In the prelude to the first Persian Gulf War in the early 1990's, Bush I's pretext-operations included lying to the American public about Iraqi troops massing on the Saudi Arabian border when, in fact, satellite photos would later show they were not. He also tried to convince the American public that Iraqi troops were invading hospitals and throwing infants out windows when, in fact, they were not. The US government has a long history of deception and deceit and it always is at the expense of the American people.

Does any of this sound familiar? "The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government...and to develop an image of a threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere...In as much as the objective is overt military intervention ...both overt and covert operations [should] be assigned [to] the Joint Chiefs of Staff...Harassment and deceptive actions to convince the Cubans of immanent invasion would be emphasized. Our posture throughout execution of the plan will allow rapid change from exercise to intervention...We could develop a Cuban terror campaign...in Washington...Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue...It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the US to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama or Venezuela...It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGS have destroyed a USAF aircraft over international waters in an unprovoked attack...It is understood the Department of State also is preparing suggested courses of action to develop justification for US military intervention in Cuba."

That was the plan in 1962 for Cuba. Is this plan in operation for Iraq in 2003? On February 7, 2003, one day after Secretary of State Colin Powell's Invasion Iraq presentation before the United Nations, the Bush Regime took the American public to code "Orange"--the second highest threat level--and was warned of immanent chemical-biological attacks on US soil. Precaution? Good intelligence?

Ask the Joint Chiefs.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security matters.

Latest News
Posted: Monday, February 10, 2003

¤ A Failure of Skepticism in Powell Coverage
¤ Bush Cancels Northern Iraqi Strike
¤ Embarrassment over fake cyberterrorism story
¤ Iraq: 2 Killed, 9 Injured in U.S/U.K. Raid
¤ Oil Prices slip, US case for war under attack
¤ Washington and London Isolated
¤ US fury at European peace plan
¤ ISOLATED BUSH AND BLAIR SHUN NEW PEACE PLAN
¤ Evidence against Iraq 'manufactured' by West
¤ Chirac, Putin: No need for war
¤ YellowTimes.org shut down
¤ Correcting For The Distorted Vision Of The Corporate Media
¤ Bush uses Osama to justify action
¤ What Rasputin is at Bush's elbow, urging bloody war with Iraq?
¤ Why go to war? The terrorists have already "won."
¤ Rocket Slams Into Eastern Edge of Kabul
¤ Poll: Germans Believe U.S. a Nation of Warmongers
¤ Blair government caught out over latest Iraq dossier
¤ UN plays down Iran nuclear plans
¤ Nato crisis 'will not delay war'
¤ Commonwealth 'to re-admit' Zimbabwe Despite UK's propaganda
¤ Paris pact urges inspection boost
¤ Iran Says It's Working on Enriched Uranium Plant
¤ European Countries Block NATO on Iraq; U.S. Fumes
¤ US threatens blockade of North Korea
¤ MI-6 and CIA oppose war on Iraq
¤ US, Turks wrangle over command of troops in northern Iraq
¤ Consequences Of War
¤ Ex-colonial power sends more troops in Ivory Coast
¤ Balkan leader renews call for independence
¤ 'Dude, you're getting a Dell' guy arrested for marijuana possession
¤ Rift widens between key allies, U.S.
¤ Bush turns increasingly to language of religion
¤ Fear-mongering at its worst
¤ Late peace bid: send in UN troops
¤ Howard to urge second resolution
¤ Blast for NATO as Rumsfeld trades barbs with dubious Europe
¤ Ashamed that Rumsfeld is one of the family
¤ Bush fury as split widens over iraq
¤ US scorns new moves to stop the war on Iraq
¤ Rumsfeld condemned for insulting Germans
¤ Fear of attack builds on streets of Pyongyang
¤ Tokyo battens down for feared attack
¤ Rumsfeld: We will defy Paris and Berlin
¤ Militants tell Muslims to strike back
¤ Rihab Taha claims Saddam never planned to use his deadly toxins
¤ Alliance in turmoil over Turkey dispute
¤ Battle weary Iraqis shrug off threat of more conflict
¤ Sharon promises Israel he will remove Arafat
¤ Iran denies private talks with US officials
¥ We're getting used to the U.S. lying campaign
¤ Afghanistan torn as its neighbours resume their battle for influence
¤ Balkan leader renews call for independence
¤ Among Iraqi exiles, frustration with a tight-lipped US
¤ Lugar: measured, methodical - and worried on Iraq
¤ No proof of Powell claim on al-Qa'ida link
¤ Kuwait refuses haven to refugees fleeing Saddam
¤ Pope takes issue with America's 'just war'
¤ War split puts Nato's future in jeopardy
¤ 20,000 Protests return of urban terror to Colombia
¤ Saudis 'to bypass imams in post-war revolution'

Latest News
Posted: Sunday, February 9, 2003

¤ Bush budget would overhaul Great Society
¤ Powell's 'proof' is all smoke and mirrors
¤ Armed with everything except moral authority
¤ Powell doesn't know who he is up against
¤ Israel holds rare meet with Iranians, Iraqis
¤ Bush On War Footing: It Won't Be Long Now
¤ Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical On Mideast Policy
¤ Israeli dailies urge America to launch war against Saddam
¤ Powell: More Inspections Won't Solve Iraqi Problem
¤ A credibility chasm for Bush, Powell
¤ Transcript: Colin Powell on Fox News Sunday
¤ The final means of persuasion...bribes
¤ Media Tour Alleged 'Poison Site' in Iraq Found 'Nothing'
¤ Iran: US equipped Iraq with WMD for attack against Iran
> Wants U.S. to pay $500 billion in compensation to victims.
¤ The dossier that shamed Britain
¤ Journalists visit Iraq 'chemical weapons site'
¤ Bush & Company Are Coming
¤ Top U.N. Experts End Crucial Talks with Iraq
¤ Iraq disarmament plan gains support
¤ US Pulls Out Diplomats in Final Preparation for Strike on Iraq
¤ Rumsfeld Family Tie is First Victim of War
¤ Iraq and The Unhappy Lessons of History
¤ France denies secret Franco-German Iraq plan
¤ Powell critical of Franco-German proposal on Iraq
¤ Iraq releases more documents
¤ First casualties in the propaganda firefight
¤ Revealed: truth behind US 'poison factory' claim
¤ Philippine Troops Kill 8 Muslim Rebels
¤ Powell doesn't know who he is up against
¤ AIDS is ethnic weapon developed in the U.S.
¤ How not to win a propaganda war
¤ At least 20 dead in Bogota bomb blast
¤ India expels Pakistan's envoy
¤ Bush braces Americans for war with Iraq
¤ Blix terms talks with Iraqi officials 'very substantial'
¤ Iraq ambassador rebuts Powell's charges of al-Qaeda links
¤ US fails to convince France, Germany over Iraq war
¤ Five Afghan soldiers killed; mortars fired at US base
¤ Bush, Rumsfeld Press for Action on Iraq
¤ US pulls out diplomats in final preparation for strike on Iraq
¤ Mr Blair asks us to trust him. We cannot do so
¤ Korean defiance piles pressure on Bush
¤ MI6 and CIA: the new enemy within
¤ Rome resists Bush's plea for a blessing on aggression
¤ A million to say no to Blair on Iraq
¤ US and Britain give Saddam just 48 hours to leave Iraq
> Sounds like a script from a really bad Western movie...

Update : Feb 09, 2003
Posted: Saturday, February 8, 2003

Foreign coup 'technicians' revealed
as plotting a third coup attempt
Quinto Dia's Miguel Salazar says foreign agencies involved in the April 11 coup have not been idle, and forecasts yet another better-organized coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez Frias. "It won’t depend on the discretion of military officers, and the civilian element will have no say in the matter ... except to validate military intervention with their presence." Salazar's sources report the entry to Venezuela of foreign IC destabilization experts advising an upbeat espionage assault on all levels of national life ... street actions and winning over military officers that escaped the post-April purge are top priorities.
by Miguel Salazar, www.vheadline.com

Latest News
Posted: Saturday, February 8, 2003

¤ ANNAN: 'DON'T GO IT ALONE'
¤ Fake Terror Alerts: We're as stupid as they think we are
¤ Munich Conference Opens With Sharp Differences Over Iraq
¤ Iraq disputes U.S. version of arms photos
¤ North Korea warns final showdown with US will be a nuclear one
¤ Germany, U.S. Trade Barbs Over Iraq Stance
¤ Blair Acknowledges Flaws in Iraq Dossier
¤ THE SMOKING GNU
¤ Jane's Group Now Says British Dossier Copied Its Articles
¤ Intelligence? the British dossier on Iraq's security infrastructure
¤ Brits' Iraq report was cut & paste production
¤ Iran's Top Leader: U.S. Seeks Oil
¤ Weary Wall Street Wary of Bush Policies
¤ Pope Tells World: Don't Resign Yourself to War
¤ Public Schools: Manufacturing Center For Mindless, Immoral Slaves
¤ US lashed out at France, Germany and Belgium
¤ REAL AUTHORS OF IRAQ DOSSIER BLAST BLAIR
¤ Britain Admits That Much of Its Report on Iraq Came From Magazines
¤ US cranks up economic pressure on Germany Support US or else...
¤ Australia's PM support of US defies public opinion
¤ Bomb rips through medical plaza in Afghanistan
¤ US general says country can fight on several fronts
¤ War? All the nudes fit to print
¤ Pak intelligence helping Taliban regroup: Report
¤ Brits admit plagiarizing Iraq report
¤ Colombia club explosion kills 20
¤ Inspectors start critical Iraq talks
¤ A Teaspoonful of Anthrax, and A Mountain of Misinformation
¤ Why war? It's 'do-able'
¤ Iraq dossier assembled by junior aides
¤ Number 10 admits it used thesis by student
¤ Inspectors look for Iraqi climbdown
¤ Beijing in talks on Dalai Lama's return
¤ Pakistan insists 28 held in Naples have no terrorism links
¤ The invisible man who is preparing UK for war
¤ Blair seeks new 'fig-leaf' resolution to avert French veto
¤ Americans barely convince themselves
¤ Blair lays down law against using veto
¤ Scholars hand out a hiding to the not so intelligent
¤ Stars speak out against war
¤ Blair makes his case to hostile audience
¤ African nations to drop Mugabe sanctions
¤ Rumsfeld 'mends fences' by lumping Germany with Cuba and Libya

British Dossier on Iraq Scandal
Posted: Saturday, February 8, 2003

Updated February 15, 2003

Colin Powell and the Great "Intelligence" Fraud

Inquiry into the 'tainted' No 10 dossier on Iraq 12/02/2003

UK's longest serving MPhas been ordered out of the House of Commons 10/2/03 BBC
Mr Dalyell accused the government of misleading Parliament after admitting part of the dossier was copied from an American student's outdated thesis.

Tony Blair Can't Tap Dance, Either 10/02/03

Britain: Blair government caught out
in plagiarism and lies over latest Iraq dossier
By Chris Marsden, wsws.org

Reuter's Video On Powell's fake report 09/02/03

The dossier that shamed Britain
Deception can only corrode public trust

Fake Terror Alerts
We're as stupid as they think we are
How stupid do they think we are? Only hours after our much-praised Secretary of State is revealed to have been using material plagiarized from a college student to justify why we're going to kill thousands of people with bombs, our government issues a terror alert and expects us to believe it?

Brits' Iraq report was cut & paste production
WANTED! Cut & paste artists for our website, little intelligence required. Experienced personnel from UK's 'intelligence services' preferred.

I will not plagiarize Iraq Reports

REAL AUTHORS OF IRAQ DOSSIER BLAST BLAIR

Brits admit plagiarizing Iraq report
Even spelling, punctuation errors repeated

U.S and UK's not so intelligent intelligence
Academics have debunked the British intelligence report on Iraq which the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, relied on in his address to the United Nations Security Council. But the British Government says it is standing by the intelligence dossier, even after scholars revealed that entire passages had been lifted from magazine articles, complete with spelling mistakes. Large parts of the dossier - which claims to have drawn on "intelligence material" - were plagiarised from published academic articles. But a Government spokesman maintained that the report was accurate and said the Government had never claimed all the material was from its spies.

TV documentary
US lied about Gulf War missile "hits"

Phone taps' credibility questioned

No 10 admits mistake in copying Iraq dossier
Downing Street today said it made a mistake in failing to acknowledge that a large section of a dossier on Saddam Hussein was copied from a Californian postgraduate student's outdated thesis.
The UK government and secret services are not some fly by night website that failed to credit someone out of ignorance. They stole the material in order to propagandize the world. So now people must know that it is little academic students who are behind U.S. and UK unintelligence. The UK and US governments have been playing the UN and the world for fools. Do not doubt that they are busy searching these little websites for angles to present to the world. The rather embarrassed U.S. Gov’t is now issuing a terror watch in order to distract the world. THEY HAVE BEEN EXPOSED!

UK war dossier a sham, say experts
British 'intelligence' lifted from academic articles
Amid charges of "scandalous" plagiarism on the night when Tony Blair attempted to rally support for the US-led campaign against Saddam Hussein, Whitehall's dismay was compounded by the knowledge that the disputed document was singled out for praise by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, in his speech to the UN security council on Wednesday.
Citing the British dossier, entitled Iraq - its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation in front of a worldwide television audience Mr Powell said: "I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities." Guardian/UK

A dossier of evidence against Iraq is "solid", Downing Street has insisted after allegations that it included plagiarised material that was 12 years out of date. BBC
It emerged that some of the document was copied from three different articles, including one written by a postgraduate student. Excerpts from a paper relating to the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War by Californian student Ibrahim al-Marashi were used in the intelligence document. The paper was published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs. Other sections in the dossier were apparently taken from defence journal Jane's Intelligence Review. From BBC

¤ U.S. terror alert to distract from false UK dossier
¤ Glenda: Downing Street Lied On Dossier
¤ Letter on UK Plagiarized dossier
¤ UK Government plagiarised Iraq data
¤ Britain's Intelligence Dossier on Iraq was Plagiarized
¤ UK report on Iraq was fake: Academician
¤ The UK Iraq dossier and its use of open sources

Downing St dossier on Iraq, plagiarised
The government's carefully co-ordinated propaganda offensive took an embarrassing hit tonight after Downing Street was accused of plagiarism.
Read sample of the accused plagiarised text
The target is an intelligence dossier released on Monday and heralded by none other than Colin Powell at the UN yesterday. Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student.
UK's Dossier on Iraq, cited by Colin Powell
One of the articles the dossier stole from

Latest News
Posted: Friday, February 7, 2003

¤ TV documentary: US lied about Gulf War missile "hits"
¤ The "smoking gun" has been found
¤ Phone taps' credibility questioned
¤ CIA officer killed in Afghanistan
¤ Israel: Iraq war "earthquake, which will reshape" Middle East
¤ Rumsfeld faces sceptical Europeans
¤ EU president wants European summit on Iraq
¤ Blair tries to woo Iran into anti-Saddam pact
¤ Bush Seeks Israeli Advice on 'Targeted Killings'
¤ No 10 admits mistake in copying Iraq dossier
¤ UK war dossier a sham, say experts
¤ Blair's Plagiarised Dossier On Iraq, 12 Years Old
¤ U.S. terror alert to distract from false UK dossier
¤ Glenda: Downing Street Lied On Dossier
¤ Letter on UK Plagiarized dossier
¤ UK Government plagiarised Iraq data
¤ Britain's Intelligence Dossier on Iraq was Plagiarized
¤ UK report on Iraq was fake: Academician
¤ The UK Iraq dossier and its use of open sources
¤ U.S. cannot skip Israel on way to Iraq
¤ Britain May Propose Using Force in Iraq
¤ Russia opposes second Iraq resolution
¤ Blair lays down law against using veto
¤ France & Russia warned support US war on Iraq or no Iraqi oil
¤ Al Qaeda poised to hit us twice: CIA
¤ Iraq Shows Off Missile Site to Rebut U.S. Charges
¤ Israel to deliver bombs to Indian army
¤ Palestinian nurses shot dead
¤ Powell fails to convince Nato waverers
¤ US is told: turn on us and you get total war
¤ North Korea is certain it's next on the US list
¤ Russia Opposes New U.N. Iraq Resolution
¤ Ashcroft pushes for more death sentences
¤ The new vassals
¤ Five more suicide attempts at Guantanamo
¤ After the war, Angola's battle for survival begins
¤ Democrats Criticizing Bush on N. Korea
¤ Palestinian nurses shot dead
¤ North Korea threatens US with 'total war'
¤ The battle may be won, but it won't make us safer
¤ Bush Seeks Israeli Advice on 'Targeted Killings'
¤ Baghdad rubbishes 'fictional' US claims
¤ Blair tries to woo Iran into anti-Saddam pact
¤ Al-Qaeda close to creating a 'dirty bomb'
> Scaring up support
¤ Iraq could be second Vietnam
¤ Europeans are not persuaded
¤ Such weapons projects are too big to hide, says Baghdad
¤ Phone taps' credibility questioned
¤ Not enough proof, say big three
¤ Plenty of heat, but not much light
¤ Powell is no longer the man the world thought he was
¤ Colombian rebels blow up key oil pipeline
¤ Secret video refers to CIA killing Mugabe
¤ US media buys Powell's 'case against Iraq'

Update : Feb 07, 2003
Posted: Friday, February 7, 2003

Chavez tries to steady the ship as strike peters out
Businesses, factories and restaurants closed for weeks by the general strike in Venezuela have been reopening in a tacit admission by the opposition that the attempt to force President Hugo Chavez from power has failed, at least for the time being.

Yesterday President Chavez imposed foreign currency controls and announced several price curbs which were immediately condemned by anti-Chavez business and union leaders who backed the strike as politically motivated and aimed at punishing them.

President Chavez proclaimed a victory in the dispute at a rally earlier this week. "The coup-mongering, fascist opposition had their turn with the bat and they've struck out three times," he said. "Now it's our turn to bat." by Duncan Campbell, Guardian UK

Latest News
Posted: Thursday, February 6, 2003

¤ Imaginary friends?
¤ Dubious Dossier
¤ CIA was to help assassinate Mugabe, court told
¤ Don't listen to Americans, says Mandela
¤ Obey ICC: Mandela
¤ Winnie Mandela saves the day
¤ Bin Laden-Iraq link suddenly emerges
¤ US fabricated evidence in Yugoslavia, says former official
¤ Powell claims European terror network is run by al-Qa'ida team based in Iraq
¤ Anti-war demonstrators from London...
¤ US issues travel alert for Munich, citing likely anti-war protests
¤ US gives Iraq one week to avoid war
¤ Texas executes British citizen despite international protests
¤ If the UN vetoes the US, it risks irrelevance?
> UN might become irrelevant to the US and relevant to the world
¤ Support for showdown is not yet evident
¤ France Says Time Not Right for New Iraq Resolution
¤ Hoffman blasts Bush's war plans
¤ Did Colin Powell present a convincing case
¤ Not in Our Name In the News Fox News, O'Reilly Factor
¤ Kurds Puzzled by Report of Terror Camp
¤ US claim dismissed by Blix
¤ US fails to sway doubters
¤ Rumsfeld Warns He Will Ask Congress for More Billions
¤ Musharraf: Bin Laden not in Pakistan
¤ U.S. Gulf force may reach 150,000 this month
¤ Israeli Troops Kill Five Palestinians
¤ Powell's Lack Of Proof Exposes War Of Flaws
¤ N Korea threatens US with first strike
¤ Spy in the sky good enough for most experts on the ground
¤ All too human failings of 'human intelligence'
¤ Stunts and cartoons says Baghdad
¤ The unanswered questions
¤ Powell leaves the jury unconvinced
¤ US watches TV in black and white
¤ Don't let the facts get in the way
¤ You wanted to believe him ? but it was like something out of Beckett
¤ The creeping aversion
¤ Storm kills 164 in Congo
¤ Palestinian cop, woman killed in raids
¤ 3 Afghan soldiers, five Taliban killed near Kandahar
¤ Iraq rejects Powell's claims
¤ Support for showdown is not yet evident
¤ UN speech turned heads but probably didn't change minds
¤ U.S. question: with us, or against us?
¤ Powell's smudged shadow of a smoking gun
¤ Bedouin outraged by demolition of mosque in unrecognized Negev village

Powell's Fairy Tales: Puerile and Patronising
Posted: Wednesday, February 5, 2003

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2003/02/05/43044.html

The "evidence" which was presented to the United Nations Security Council today by Colin Powell was a miscellany of obscure recordings which were misinterpreted by the US Secretary of State and risible satellite photographs which bore a strange resemblance to those which had been taken in Afghanistan two years before.

Colin Powell described the snippets of conversation and cloudy satellite pictures as "solid evidence" that Iraq was in breach of UN SC Resolution 1441 and that this created the grounds for "serious consequences" to be applied.

He began by playing two recordings of conversations between Iraqi officials speaking about sites to be inspected by the UNMOVIC team. In one, the Iraqi claimed "We don't have anything left", interpreted by Colin Powell, to quote, "It was not around" when the inspectors came. There is a subtle and unsubstantiated insinuation in Powell's remark, this being that the material had been removed. Or destroyed, in accordance with the provisions of the UN Resolution but this hypothesis was systematically ignored by the head of US diplomacy throughout his arrogant, forbearing and bullying intervention.

In the second recording, a Republican Guard received a message from an official which stated "There is a possibility that there is by chance forbidden ammo" in the compound. Colin Powell interpreted this as a message to "evacuate it" because there was a "presence of weapons of mass destruction".

Not so. The Iraqi message could have involved anything from out-of-date shells, and we do not know whether the subject of this conversation was the cache of obsolete arms that the inspectors found lying under three years of bird excrement, to banned components. It does not automatically mean that weapons of mass destruction are involved as Colin Powell so simplistically and childishly tried to state.

The fact that Colin Powell was trying so obviously to find links where there were none, does nothing to further the notion that the Bush administration believes in the UNO as a forum of debate. Instead, it lends weight to the belief that the United States of America prefers to ride roughshod over the rest of the international community, as has long been suspected.

The next piece of "solid intelligence" was a series of reports that weapons of mass destruction were being hidden in homes or moved around the countryside in cars, or in trucks under palm trees. It is patently evident that Colin Powell, or the speechwriter, does not understand the complicated, delicate systems which compose the high-tech weaponry of today. These are not shields and spears that can be slung into the back of a truck and carted off across the desert. Colin Powell did not back up this claim with any source of evidence and as such, it is no more than hearsay and gossip, making the US Secretary of State no more than a cheap guttersnipe.

"Solid Intelligence" was supposed to be corroborated by many sources, including intelligence agencies of other countries. Again, the sources were never mentioned. If these sources were the cream of world intelligence agencies which allowed the 11th September to happen on Colin Powell's doorstep, perhaps it would have been more plausible to leave them out of what was supposed to be a serious report.

Interspersed with interjections such as "Tell me! Answer me!" seeming as if he were addressing a convention of boy scouts, showing an utter disrespect for his colleagues on the UN Security Council, Powell went on to back up his evidence with puerile remarks such as "We know from evidence", without ever substantiating what.

The greatest guffaw is the satellite pictures. True, Colin Powell had said before he introduced them, that they were very difficult to interpret and that experts had spent hours poring over them. In other words, in a sickeningly patronising tone, he was saying "These are so difficult to understand but I will tell you how to interpret them", as if his misinterpretations of the recordings were a sound precedent.

Evidently, if it took experts hours and hours to discern what they were looking at, the photographs serve as nothing regarding "solid evidence", making the presentation of these images ludicrous. Obscure rectangular buildings were then shown, looking suspiciously like those taken over Afghanistan, which Colin Powell referred to as "one of the chemical bunkers" and then vehicles, "decontamination vehicles" or "vehicles to move missiles". Previous claims that WMD was being produced at a similar-looking building, which was subsequently inspected, turned out to be wrong: the building was a production facility for powdered baby milk.

One facility, he claimed, was cleaned out on 22nd December, so that when the weapons inspectors arrived, there was nothing to find. Surely they had equipment to check whether or not there were vestiges of chemical or biological weapons. It is simply not possible to load such substances into plastic bags, chuck them onto the backs of lorries and speed them off to fight the elements under some palm tree.

Risibly, and here is the cherry on the cake, immediately after pointing out that "trucks arrived to move more missiles", Powell stated "We don't know precisely what Iraq is moving".

This presentation of "hard evidence" is a tissue of lies, gossip, misinterpretation, cynical manoeuvring and possibly even misrepresentation, aimed at providing a case for a war against Iraq. The UN Security Council is not a kindergarten or a scout camp. The international community is not a class of primary school pupils to be lectured in this way by an incompetent teacher. Were this the case, Colin Powell would be the one to have a donkey's tail pinned to his trousers when he turned around to illustrate his great case against Iraq.

If people believe this report, they will believe that there are fairies at the end of the garden. Colin Powell has managed to allow himself and his image descend from a respected world-class diplomat to some sort of confused, rambling and unconvincing Peter Pan.

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2003/02/05/43044.html

Lastest News
Posted: Wednesday, February 5, 2003

¤ Powell's UN speech dissected
¤ Powell's Fairy Tales: Puerile and Patronising
¤ Powell lays out U.S. case Hollywood usually does it better
¤ Iraq denounces Powell remarks before the Security Council
¤ Mandela says Powell is undermining United States
¤ Pope gives audience to Iraqi minister
¤ Jurors Who Convicted Marijuana Grower Seek New Trial
¤ Full Text of Benn Interview with Saddam Hussein
¤ A War Crime or an Act of War?
¤ No-confidence vote shows Australian divide on Iraq
¤ Israel Razes Militant's House, Woman 'Crushed'
¤ U.S. attack on Iraq 'is to benefit Israel'
¤ Robert Fisk: Don't mention the war in Afghanistan
¤ Left apologists for US imperialism red-bait the anti-war movement
¤ Leaked report rejects Iraqi al-Qaeda link
¤ The US has used faked taped before
¤ Israel has used fake radio messages before
¤ Israeli special forces have been operating in western Iraq for months
¤ Computers can mimic any desired voice
¤ In war, some facts less factual
¤ Bush Iraq Evidence Lies
¤ Israel declines comment on Mandela charges
¤ N Korea nuclear site 'reactivated'
¤ Iraq accused of 'systematic evasion'
¤ Australian no-confidence motion in PM over Iraq
¤ Iraq warns of US pressure ahead of NAM summit
¤ Saddam, in rare TV interview, denies links with al-Qaeda
¤ War is the worst solution, warns Chirac
¤ US claim dismissed by Blix
¤ Under fire from militants US would love to link to Saddam
¤ Burden of proof
¤ With friends like these ...
¤ Catch me if you can
¤ Fireworks Blast Kills 17 in Pakistan
¤ France Not Changing Its Position on Iraq
¤ Can we justify killing the children of Iraq?
> Can they justify killing MORE children in Iraq?
¤ UK 'put up £6m to oust Mugabe'
¤ Down and out in America
¤ British military leaders question mission and ethics
¤ Blood, Stats, and Tears
¤ Jowell in U-turn over anti-war demo
¤ French betrayal turns reluctant warrior Powell into a hawk
¤ We have no relationship with al-Qa'ida, says Saddam
¤ Chavez backs referendum to end Venezuelan crisis
¤ Gene science helps black Britons trace African roots
¤ A frightening picture of American superiority
¤ Don't mention the war in Afghanistan
¤ 'We will not shrink from war'
¤ Russia willing to sell missiles, planes to Pakistan
¤ 7 killed in held Kashmir
¤ Heroes and villains
¤ Of strategic partners and 'stressed' neighbours!
¤ Australian Senate to condemn Howard for sending in troops
¤ Old Liberal hearts in dismay at lackey John
¤ Leaked document shows Prime Minister John Howard committed to war: Crean
¤ Bush jacks up debt to boost arms
¤ Israel Won't Comment on Mandela Charges

Latest News
Posted: Tuesday, February 4, 2003

¤ Evidence, Absence of Evidence, And Evidence of the Absence of Sense
¤ Bush goes noo-ku-ler
¤ Only by swallowing big lies can Powell justify an invasion of Iraq
¤ Lee calls Bush's priorities 'warped'
¤ US military chief admits American troops already in Iraq
¤ France will not change its position on Iraq
¤ Networks milk story of shuttle disaster
¤ Pentagon investigates top general Franks
¤ BLAIR IS HAPPY AT BLOODSHED
¤ NO WAR IS A SIGN OF WEAKNESS
¤ Russian Ship Docks With Space Station
¤ Sharon government builds fortified wall around West Bank
¤ Bush fudging the ruinous costs of war
¤ Extra $15b for military would profit N.E. firms
¤ Nuclear arms labs would get more work under Bush budget
¤ Could the CIA Be Bringing Drugs Into the USA?
¤ U.S. pressure to suspend Iraq inspections mounts
¤ Supervisors to vote on anti-war measure
¤ Anti-War Protesters Rally as Australia Debates Iraq
¤ Rice to speak on French TV about Iraq
¤ Buses to bring Limerick protesters to Dublin anti-war march
¤ Dublin City Council Backs Sinn Fein Anti-War Motion
¤ Bush gets anti-war message from Vermont lawmakers
¤ Council takes up anti-war resolution
¤ British commanders told to prepare for Iraq occupation
¤ Just a waste of space
¤ Chechen Rebels, Mines Kill 5 Russians
¤ To crush the poor
¤ The real nuclear threat
¤ We shall fight them on the cliches...
¤ Spies force retreat on 'al-Qa'eda link'
¤ Two Palestinian farmers killed by IDF in Gaza Strip
¤ Blair: I will risk my political future over Iraq
¤ Mideast allies take big slice of US aid budget
¤ Nigeria blast toll at least 33
¤ Heat surge clue as ghouls gather shuttle trophies
¤ Experts who warned of disaster claim NASA tried to gag them
¤ Opposition officially ends general strike
¤ Officer's scruples give Israeli army a morals dilemma
¤ Diplomats leaving Baghdad
¤ One dies in Karachi blast
¤ Bush shifts Pyongyang to the back burner
¤ Intelligence agencies doubt al-Qa'ida links
¤ Who'll take the rap for any gun crime the US commits on Iraq?

Update : Feb 04, 2003
Posted: Tuesday, February 4, 2003

A lesson to be learned from February 4, 1992
I remember watching Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias on television, on February 4, 1992, a very few hours after the unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government of Carlos Andres Perez had begun. His words, "Por ahora!" (for now), will be remembered for decades. But what most impressed me that day was that he accepted responsibility for the failure of the attempt. The next day a native Venezuelan barrio woman said to me, "I couldn't believe it when I heard him say that! In all my life, I've never heard anyone in public life here accepting blame for a failure. VHeadline.com Charles Hardy

TRINIDAD'S TERROR LAB FOUND
Bottles containing chemicals and chunks of substances were found discarded and partially burnt on the compound of Petro Lab Ltd’s storage facility in Debe yesterday. The materials closely resemble the chemicals shown to two Express journalists by radical Muslims two weeks ago when they threatened to make poisons and toxins to use in terror attacks.
February 04, 2003 From Trinidad Express

Venezuela Strike Declared Over Amid Petition Drive
Posted: Monday, February 3, 2003

Published on Monday, February 3, 2003 by Agence France Presse

The Venezuelan opposition officially declared an end to a 63-day general strike that has crippled the economy, but said a poll of voters' desire to see President Hugo Chavez's mandate cut had been an "overwhelming" success.

The recall petition is aimed at allowing opponents of the president to voice opinions about possible options for cutting short the populist president's term, which is scheduled to stretch through 2006.

An although the strike was formally ended, it will continue in the oil sector, according to opposition leaders, who said its struggle against the government of Chavez was just entering a "new phase."

"The Democratic Coordinating Committee announced that tonight we are entering a long-expected and more trying new phase in our struggle," said opposition spokesman Timoteo Zambrano.

He said although the strike was ending, the protesters intend to stand by thousands of employees of Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-run oil company, who have been dismissed by the Chavez government.

"Our struggle will now assume new forms, and we will pursue our goals at the negotiation table," Zambrano said.

The strike has caused Venezuela billions of dollars in losses, largely because it slashed oil shipments from the world's fifth largest oil exporter.

The oil sector had prior to the strike produced of 2.8 million barrels per day.

Chavez said Sunday that production had now reached 1.8 million barrels per day and that the world's largest refinery, in Amuey, was back on line.

Production fell to 250,000 barrels a day at the height of the strike in December.

The Organization of American States and former US President Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, have attempted to bring government and opposition together.

But ongoing clashes between Chavez supporters and police Sunday left at least five people injured, as opponents queued to sign the non-binding petition on cutting short his term.

By late Sunday, opposition had garnered more than 3.7 million signatures -- comfortably above expectations, leaders said.

Opposition leader Carlos Ortega, who heads the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation (CTV), said Sunday's vote had been an "overwhelming victory," with a massive turnout.

"The results that we are getting in Caracas and the interior of the country are beating by a long way what we had projected," said Jesus Torrealba, General Secretary of the opposition umbrella group, Democratic Coordinator.

He said the figure surpassed that obtained by Chavez in the 1998 presidential elections, and that a possibility exists the petition could be used to move forward toward constitutional reform to cut short Chavez's mandate.

Despite the official electoral council's failure to endorse Sunday's vote, opposition went ahead with its decision to collect signatures, at some 3,400 collection points set up around Venezuela.

The voting tables opened at 6:00 am (1000 GMT), and had 30,000 volunteer helpers in attendance. Some 11 million voters were invited to put their signature to the survey.

One of the options would be to seek a formal recall referendum, which could be held from mid-August, when Chavez hits his term's midpoint.

Under the constitution, the opposition needs to get the vote of at least 20 percent of the population, some 2.2 million signatures.

A mid-term recall, for Chavez, could come as early as August 19, and it is the only vote he has said repeatedly that he will accept if it is requested at the polls.

Opposition business, labor and political leaders launched the strike over what they say is Chavez's autocratic style, and especially his decree of 49 controversial laws governing the economy, 47 of which petition signers are also demanding be rescinded.

Copyright 2003 AFP

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Bolivia In Historical Context
Posted: Monday, February 3, 2003

by Forrest Hylton

The Weight Of Forgetting

Though they are usually the first to speak in the name of tradition, Conservatives tend to ignore history when evaluating the present, and if anything has been missing in current debates about violence, democracy, human rights, and authoritarianism in Bolivia, it is historical perspective. The hysterical reaction of the media-coupled the near-silence of progressive intellectuals-makes change on this front unlikely, although occasionally cracks in the crumbling edifice show through. In an interview on January 23, the day he joined the Joint Chiefs of the People, Felipe Quispe, leader of the Aymara peasant trade union confederation, CSUTCB, and political party, MIP, said that he represents the people to whom the territory known as Bolivia or Qollasuyu belongs, the people who make it produce, whereas President Sánchez de Lozada represents the people who loot it, sell it, mortgage it, run it and ruin it. The simplicity of this truth does not blunt the force its impact.

The notion that the community Indians are rightful owners of the land, who, as such, should make all political decisions that concern them, points to the Tupak Katari insurgency in 1781, the rebellion of Zárate Willka, Lorenzo Ramírez, and Juan Lero in 1899, and the Chayanta uprising of 1927, led by Manuel Michel. If tropes of "savagery" and "barbarism" are evoked by the names of the abovementioned Indian caciques, it is because official history has buried the record of long, arduous legal struggles that preceded each and every Indian insurrection.

Evo Morales, head of the coca growers' trade union federations and political party, MAS, and Felipe Quispe, the two principal leaders of the Joint chiefs of Staff of the People, inherit a tradition that counterinsurgent discourse has described as "race" (nineteenth) or "caste" war (eighteenth century), but which in fact has consistently explored available legal options while demanding self-government in a more inclusive and democratic polity. Democratic not in the liberal sense of delegated representation, but in the directly participatory sense in which it is being discussed at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. In this respect, Bolivian coca growers and community Indians are politically ahead of their time, not behind it.

The insurgent tradition of direct democracy on the land, which is structured by politico-military-religious hierarchies and enacted in community assemblies, was rendered invisible in both the national and international revolutionary traditions that dominated Bolivian politics after the 1930s. It only reappeared publicly again in the late-1970s. During the forty-year period of eclipse, new forms of struggle, based upon the political party-trade union dyad, emerged with varying class compositions and a common commitment to mestizaje-race mixture of the whitening, "civilizing" variety; a process at once desirable and inevitable. Recent historical scholarship has demonstrated that in Cochabamba, heartland of the ruling MNR (National Revolutionary Movement), mestizaje was a strategy that smallholding Indian peasants created from below, seeking to escape exploitation and the marks of racial inferiority. But there can be little doubt that after 1953, the national revolutionary state made use of it from above. So did the revolutionary internationalists who challenged the MNR from the left via the miners' movement.

To grasp the scope of the influence of mestizaje as a political horizon, one only has to look at the composition and proposals of the National Assembly (1969-71) under radical nationalist General Juan José Torres, who personified upward mobility for middling sectors with popular origins. The proletarian parties and especially the miners' union set the agenda for the National Assembly with the idea of making a transition to socialism. But in those years, as reaction noisily gathered, a new generation of Aymara peasant leaders emerged within the MNR machine and began to bore away at its foundations. The project to break with the racist, teleological paternalism that lay at the core of official rural trade unionism counted on the support of the first generation of semi-urban Aymara intellectuals, plus progressive segments of the Catholic Church. This support was crucial in achieving national projection.

As the Banzer dictatorship took shape in the years after 1971, the figure of Tupac Katari re-emerged in the discourse of radical opposition, and by the time of Banzer's overthrow in 1978 the tradition of Aymara insurgency had, in modified form, begun to take its place alongside proletarian-led, Left party-driven trade unionism. Indians, as their leaders and spokespeople began to call them, even fielded parties once the political arena was opened to electoral competition, but none of them were anything less than total failures, except MRTK, which briefly became part of the panopoly of neoliberal parties in the 1990s.

During Banzer's reign, even as the Aymara movement of the altiplano regenerated, Santa Cruz and the tropical part of Cochabamba became the economic heart of Bolivia, because Bánzer subsidized agro-industry with profits from mining exports. After the crisis in the price of primary products hit the eastern tropics in the mid-1970s, the cocaine business soon became a convenient way out for an important part of the agro-exporting bourgeoisie. Further, under Banzer the state encouraged colonization of the tropics because of it could not manage the crisis its policies had created in the western highlands and southern valleys. If we are serious about dealing with the problem of coca production and commercialization, we must recognize the role the Bolivian state and reactionary fractions of capital played in fomenting the transformation of coca into cocaine.

Here we need only look at García Meza's "cocaine coup" of 1980, which made explicit the connection between extreme right-wing politics and narcotics trafficking that Miami Cubans forged in the 1960s and shared with the Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean, and Venezuelan military and police with whom they worked in the 1970s. Though the Reagan administration repudiated García Meza, it supported the Brazilian generals who backed García Meza, not to mention the Argentine colonels who were soon to train Nicaraguan mercenaries in the arts of narcotics-financed counter-insurgency in Honduras. To anyone familiar with the history of U.S. covert operations in Burma in the 1950s, Laos in the 1960s and 70s, Afghanistan and Nicaragua in the 1980s, this should come as no surprise. More recently, here in Bolivia the entrepreneurial sector from Santa Cruz and Beni-organically linked to cocaine exports-has cried for a state of siege, which, when coupled with their vigilante actions, demonstrates that its traditions are alive and well. It is worth asking what role this sector will play in newly arrived Ambassador Greenlee's strategy to pacify the Bolvian tropics.

To place the blame for cocaine exports on coca growers and the Left is the cruelest of historical ironies: cocaleros choose to grow and sell coca because it provides them with a monetary income 3-5 times greater than what they could earn on the altiplano or the valleys, where more than 9 out of 10 people live in poverty. With their proposal to export the leaf to Argentina, the cocaleros are, at least in this respect, true believers in free trade and market rationality. Nearly alone after the destruction of the miners' union (FSTMB) in 1986, they formed a social movement that challenged the destruction of the working class and "drug war" imperialism. Many criticisms of neoliberalism that have become common currency in Bolivia since 2000 were, as recently as 1998, almost exclusively the property of cocaleros and their sympathizers.

To insist that Evo Morales should stick to coca and forget about the FTAA, privatization, or the export of Bolivian gas to the U.S. via Chile is to forget that when the failed national revolution plunged into the neoliberal abyss, the coca growers, more than any other movement, spoke to the interests of the nation composed of the excluded, working majority. Hopes that they could speak effectively to majority interests through Congress, raised in the elections of 2002, have been dashed, and not because of the eloquence or competence of the governing coalition.

How are we to situate the cocaleros against the background of a long history of Aymara insurgency and a short history of Quechua-mestizo industrial and agrarian trade unionism? Clearly the cocaleros are a hybrid of both traditions, and arose as a group of petty producers because of the dual crisis in highland industry and agriculture into which Banzer plunged all Bolivian workers-women and children as well as men, waged and unwaged, rural and urban. The role of the miners in the formation of the coca growers' federations is legendary, but we should not overlook the contribution of the traditions of collective labor and struggle that the highland Aymara and, above all, Quechuas from the valleys brought with them when they migrated to the tropics. As Robert Smale's forthcoming research on the formation of the miners' movement reveals, earlier generations of Quechua petty producers from the valleys and Aymara communities from the highlands decisively shaped political culture in the trade unions between 1900-30.

In terms of identity, the cocaleros are mestizo in the sense that they are not highland community members and own property individually rather than collectively, but not in the national or international revolutionary sense that dominated through the 1980s. Cocaleros do not repudiate Indian cultural traditions or collectivism; in Evo Morales' recent article in Pulso as well as his election campaign, key aspects of the discourse of Indian liberation featured prominently. While they may own property as individuals, coca growers' daily lives and their mode of struggle are collective and communal. Following the re-emergence of the long Aymara tradition of insurgency to the center of the historical stage in 2000-2, the tendency to affirm Indian identity has been reinforced to the point where, at least within the political opposition, parliamentary as well as extra-parliamentary, the whitening, homogenizing discourses on which Bolivian national identity was based for fifty years have died-and good riddance. The question of what Bolvia is, what it has been, and what it might become can now be more freely debated.

Historically, it is beyond question that insurgent Indian movements from below in Bolivia have always championed legalism and worked within the formal political system, and one could argue that they have prioritized legalist tactics even when their rulers relied on violence and disobeyed the law. But they have never been willing to confine their horizons of thought and action to a political system designed to exclude them, either. Insofar as Bolivia has become a more inclusive polity in the past 177 years, it is because pressure from below, applied with various tactics, has forced the hand of power, and not because the dominated have obeyed the changing rules of a political game the dominant have made in order to continue dominating with a minimum of resistance.

Forrest Hylton is conducting doctoral research in history in Bolivia

Latest News
Posted: Sunday, February 2, 2003

¤ Oil and ego motivate Bush
¤ Blix wants hard evidence from US on Iraq: report You Wish!
¤ Bush Budget Boosts Military, Brings Record Deficits
> Bush really 'needs' to secure Iraq's oil now
¤ Bush signs secret directive on Iraq
¤ As Iraq War Looms, a New Sense of Vulnerability
¤ Efforts to show Iraq-Qaeda link cause friction within FBI and CIA
¤ Arafat deputy says intifada ruined 'everything we built'
¤ I Doubt Bush Is Ready To Rule Mesopotamia
¤ The Israeli Elephant In Bush's War Room
¤ Israeli officer tried for stopping raid
¤ The unintended consequences of war
¤ Religiosity and foreign policy: When power disdains realism
¤ Blast rocks Pakistan State Oil HQ
¤ U.N. Inspectors Search Campus in Kurdish Zone, Provoking Anger
¤ Tehran court rules against US
¤ America's War Train Is Leaving the Station
¤ No Delay on Iraq Plans
¤ Free Enterprise and War, a Dangerous Liaison
¤ Clouds Slowly Lift in South Korea
¤ North Korea on 'verge of making warheads'
¤ As Iraq War Looms, a New Sense of Vulnerability
¤ The Space Age Born Of The Cold War Is Over
¤ CIA advertising campaign aims to attract Chinese-Americans
¤ Saddam Hussein has given interview
¤ Astronauts doomed from the start
¤ American, German in bar brawl over Iraq
¤ A space tragedy and the limits to human endeavour
¤ Death Row lawyers have 24 hours to save Briton
¤ Israel's New Call To Arms
¤ Israel Forces confirms that it fired Flachette shells in Gaza
¤ UK Air Force to triple Gulf presence this week
¤ A $12 Billion Question
¤ Baghdad clashes with inspectors over demands
¤ Bomb explodes at Jakarta police HQ
¤ North Korea on 'verge of making warheads'
¤ US military will reinforce Korea
¤ In Kuwait, US troops train - and wait
¤ German outcome douses flame of anti-war alliance
¤ S Korea pushes for peace
¤ Leak feared in al-Qaeda plot to kill Forces chief
¤ Serbia asks to send troops back to Kosovo

Latest News
Posted: Sunday, February 2, 2003

¤ So what do 'the twin menaces' posed by Iraq really add up to?
¤ Keeping Saddam Hussein in a Box
¤ The economic consequences of war
¤ It's Bush the obscurer, not Saddam the feuhrer
¤ Snub for Blair over Zimbabwe
¤ Israel Razes Palestinian Homes in West Bank
¤ False trails that lead to the al-Qaeda 'links'
¤ War 'would mean biggest oil shock ever'
¤ Protesters denounce Ivory Coast peace deal
¤ Ordinary Americans think Bin Laden and Saddam are the same man...
¤ We can still stop this blind march to disaster
¤ Secrets of the axis of evil revealed
¤ Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Bush?
¤ Truth is a casualty even before the war begins
¤ Human remains found among shuttle debris
¤ India mourns loss of astronaut
¤ Israeli Forces demolished 22 Palastinian homes
¤ Bush has failed again and again
¤ False trails that lead to the al-Qaeda 'links'
¤ Thousands protest in Germany against war on Iraq
¤ The symbols in the shuttle tragedy
¤ Palestinian children wounded by Israeli tank fire in Gaza
> Why the Gods do not want them gloating over space
¤ Special forces operate in Western Iraq
> Why the Gods do not want them feeling they own space
¤ Thousands protest in Germany against war on Iraq
¤ Americans think Bin Laden and Saddam are the same man
¤ Ken Loach: 'Bush is after Iraq's oil.
> He can't be seen to back down now'
¤ Snub for Blair over Zimbabwe
¤ Bush and Blair's lethal endgame
¤ Plot to kill British forces chief foiled
¤ Blair to lobby UN as 'plot' to kill UK defence chief foiled
¤ Iraqi water and sanitation systems could be military target
¤ 100,000 Protesters denounce Ivory Coast peace deal
¤ Nasa chiefs 'repeatedly ignored' safety warnings
¤ Israel's first astronaut - Ilan Ramon
¤ Baghdad warns of suicide attacks if US attacks Iraq ???

The symbols in the shuttle tragedy
Posted: Sunday, February 2, 2003

Too many negative connections

"A bright light appeared in the sky, 200,000 feet above Texas. Then a boom and the 'Columbia' hurtled to Earth at 12,500mph, killing all seven crew members on board"
--- By David Randall, Severin Carrell, and David Usborne

Jung and the Space Shuttle
Symbol and Synchronicity with the Columbia Disaster
--- by Jerry Kroth

Am I happy because it happened?

NO!

Am I sad because it happened?

NO!

The Indian government was planning to gloat about their superior space experiences over Pakistan when they both have very earthly problems to resolve. The Indian government still supports the Caste system and the oppression of the Dalits among other things.

The Israeli government was planning to gloat over their close ties to the U.S. and superior technology in the face of occupying Palestine and the killing of innocents.

The U.S. wanted to further demonstrate to the wider world their superior technology and alliances, gloating in the face of widespread protests over their blatant double standards and bullying tactics.

The planned gloating came to an end.

Representatives of three major players symbolically died at the crossroads between our horizon and the wider space.

This does not mean that all the players involved in the mission were directly part of the wrongs but they were aligned to powers of abuse.

Abusive Governments were planning to misuse the spectacle of that space trip at a time of widespread suffering.

The symbols are hard to resist, but ignorant people should try to keep their feet on the ground and work out their troubles and not use the Universe as a symbol for oppression.

The plans by the U.S., Israel, and India, to use the success of the space trip in their superiority propaganda campaign while they are all engaged in oppressing others, has been thwarted.

The Universe has rejected being used as a symbol for oppression.

They will now try to exploit sympathy, which is an earthly mortal emotion.

Their glories are earthbound where they belong.

All those who provoke wars must now seriously think about their own mortality.

We have gotten a time-out for reflection.

Give thanks.

What will they do with these signatures anyway?
Posted: Sunday, February 2, 2003

by Oscar Heck,
Commentary from Venezuela

This morning at about 8:00 a.m. I walked over to the "parada", the main intersection and entrance to the "barrio" (slum area) where I am at this time.

The "firmazo" ("signing") began before I arrived. It's a one-day coordinated effort to collect signatures throughout all of Venezuela ... a collection of signatures in an attempt by the anti-Chavez opposition (comprised mainly of minority middle-to-upper class Venezuelans), and headed up by the Coordinadora Democratica (Democratic Coordinator), to collect millions of real signatures from people in favor of ousting President Chavez from power as quickly as possible (and this, regardless of the legal process which allows for a binding referendum in August 2003).

Here in the barrio, the line-up for the 'firmazo' ... at 8:30 a.m. ... was approximately 500 people and the organization collecting the signatures (Primera Justicia - a recently born opposition political party) was processing approximately 5-8 people per minute. By 11:00 a.m. (the time at which I write this commentary), there was no more queue ... but people are still coming to sign. They'll be open all day and into the late hours of the evening. This is the only signing station in this Caracas barrio and there are about 6 major barrios in the Caracas area, representing what I estimate to be nearly half the population of Caracas (2 million people).

I made some calculations:

The estimated population of this barrio is about 400,000.

If say, 10 people per minute are signed up for a period of 14 hours, a total of 8,400 signatures will have been collected by the end of the day. This represents a total of 2.1% of the population of the barrio. Throughout Venezuela, my estimate is that at least 50% of the population lives in barrio-like conditions or worse.

I am sure that the percentage of collected signatures will be substantially higher amongst the middle-to-upper classes throughout Venezuela (which represent, in my estimate, about 35% of the Venezuelan population).

What portion of the Venezuelan population will be represented by the number of signatures collected?

What if the 'firmazo' was only held in barrio-like areas, such as in the barrio I am presently at?

What figures would we get if a 'firmazo' was done to sign up people that WANT Chavez to stay?

What will the Coordinadora Democratica LEGALLY do with these signatures anyway?

Economic warfare's new resistance
Posted: Saturday, February 1, 2003

By Matthew Riemer, yellowtimes.org

This past Sunday, January 26, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez greeted a reported 100,000 supporters at the third annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil; this year, the forum was appropriately titled "Life after Capitalism."

Such a title is appropriate because of the transformational throes and growing pains that world society and the global economy are now entering. As globalization's reach expands and its pace quickens, so too does the resistance and crisis.

The events in Venezuela over the past year are the perfect example. They represent the new economic warfare formula whereby the masses of a country (typically overwhelmingly poor) and their leader resist international forces usually comprised of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund, multinationals, and incredibly wealthy private investors.

These "international forces" are represented locally by the regional elite: bankers, union heads, wealthy businessmen, and the upper-middle class. Their goal is to de-nationalize industry and replace it with privatization, thus making accessible to foreign investment the whole of a country's resources. These resources are then developed with foreign money using cheap domestic labor while the products are almost exclusively exported.

This results in the inherent wealth (resources, human potential) of a country being siphoned off to the international "market" while the native population reaps no reward from their country's own wealth or their own labor.

Such was the case in Argentina. Such is the case in Venezuela. And Brazil could be next.

Venezuela's biggest prize is the state-run (nationalized) oil company, PDVSA. The reasons why should be obvious: PDVSA is the country's largest company and employer; Venezuela is a member of OPEC, and the only one in the Western hemisphere at that; Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and third largest to the United States; the oil industry accounts for a full third of the Venezuelan GDP.

Control of the PDVSA means not only incredible control of the fortunes of Venezuela but also control of the world oil market. A Venezuelan economy in the hands of the United States and their proxy financial institutions is crucial to the life of globalization as Washington, with its newfound doctrine of unprecedented militarism and unilateralism, continues to destabilize both the world economy and social fabric.

Recently, opposition forces staged a sleepover protest on a section of one of Caracas' highways. The claims that the opposition is solely made up of the pampered upper-middle class is certainly born out by the photos from the event: the scene looked like some kind of rock concert festival held in the United States or Europe where a sea of brightly colored tents, sleeping bags, and inflatable mattresses are all the eye can see. This in a country where about 75 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Yet "the opposition" looked like they'd just visited their local REI or EMS outdoor retailer.

But Chavez is still holding tight. He survived the coup last April, even after temporarily being removed from power. Now, with the current work stoppage about to enter its third month next week, there are signs that the opposition is weakening and that Chavez will hold on for yet another round.

Such resistance should be quite indicative to globalizing forces of the human spirit's newfound resolve. One can only hope that the global elite, like so many times in the past, won't let their frustration get the better of them when subtler methods fail and resort to overt and bloody repression.

Matthew Riemer has written for years about a myriad of topics, such as: philosophy, religion, psychology, culture, and politics. He studied Russian language and culture for five years and traveled in the former Soviet Union in 1990.

Matthew Riemer encourages your comments: mriemer@YellowTimes.org

Bush's New Mexican Butt-Kisser
Posted: Saturday, February 1, 2003

Adios Minister Castaneda; Hello Professor Jorge
by SAUL LANDAU, www.counterpunch.org

In January, Mexican President Vicente Fox accepted his first cabinet resignation. Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda Gutman resigned and accepted a job as a professor at NYU. One Mexican poll claimed that 77% approved of his leaving. President Fox, deprived of his most learned adviser, looked despondent. The White House praised Castaneda's work and said it would miss him. MORE

Latest News
Posted: Saturday, February 1, 2003

¤ Shuttle Disaster=Textbook Psychological Warfare Operation
¤ US punishes Ukraine over Iraq claim
¤ Jordanians stage anti-US rally
¤ Split at C.I.A. and F.B.I. on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda
¤ The Nuclear Threat Is Real - But From the US, Not Iraq
¤ Blair Called To Quit
¤ Does Senator Joseph Lieberman Believe Americans Are Fools?
¤ The Israeli poison gas attacks
¤ Waiting for the Missiles in Baghdad
¤ Tensions rise over North Korea
¤ Kiev Citizens Protest against War in Iraq
¤ Israel tries without success to link al-Qaida to Saddam
¤ US seeks permission to bomb Pak areas
¤ "We Are Destroying Ourselves."
¤ Space shuttle Columbia crashes
¤ Responses to Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address
¤ Wanted: Enemy to Justify $344 Billion War Budget
¤ Brits Ban Anti-War March
¤ Words Of Mass Destruction
¤ US grapples with its most hated word
¤ Iraq fears US may plant weapons evidence
¤ Blair and Bush split over need for UN mandate
¤ War must be chosen only as a last resort, say unions
¤ What Mr Bush has in mind is nothing less than a reshaping of the world
¤ Mr Blair is not being honest in suggesting that war is an open question
¤ Rallies against US plan to attack Iraq
¤ 18 killed in mine blast near Kandahar
¤ Israeli army kills two Palestinians
¤ Journalist among four killed in held Kashmir
¤ Greater threat than Iraq
¤ Polls Show Difference on Iraq War Option
¤ Nuclear fears rise as North Korea moves fuel rods
¤ US is misquoting my Iraq report, says Blix
¤ US defence spending to top $500bn by 2010
¤ The world waits to hear the evidence
¤ Powell's mission: to link Saddam with terror
¤ Allies plan final showdown
¤ New Korea bomb evidence alarms US
¤ EU in disarray over gang of eight's pro-Bush letter
¤ US is misquoting my Iraq report, says Blix
¤ President's hero full of scorn for him
¤ Washington finds followers in the new Europe

Update : Feb 01, 2003
Posted: Saturday, February 1, 2003

Terror threats in Trinidad and Tobago
T&T has to be kept in line at all times, eg T&T's support for Chavez next door has been frowned on, likewise our tightening relations with Cuba (eg the aim of hiring in T&T some of the 89,000 doctors available in Cuba will further open up the Cuba/Caricom trade links). US foreign policy will do everything to prevent any development of a Cuba/ Brazil/Ecuador/Venezuela/ T&T link in its backyard.

Terror threats in Trinidad and Tobago
Posted: Saturday, February 1, 2003

Abstract: Ship Of Fools

By Bukka Rennie

In context of all this brouhaha and the fact that travel advisories have emanated from the US, Britain and Australia warning their nationals about travelling to T&T because of crime levels and suspected links of people here to international terrorism!

Crime levels in Jamaica, for example, are much higher than in T&T: there are multiple murders and executions sometimes on a daily basis, tourists are also attacked; last year some 32 policemen in Jamaica were arrested for corrupt practices, the drugs economy is more massive and more traditional than T&T, local dons in JA walk around armed and exhibit political clout owing to their traditional and historic structural links to either of the two parties, etc, etc.

Yet no travel advisory has been put out against JA. Why T&T? It can only be because of T&T's geopolitical significance in context of the US foreign policy parameters:

(1) Bush in building up his case to attack Iraq needs to widen his "international terrorist axis" as much as is possible. Suggesting al-Qaida links and presence in T&T allows Bush to do exactly that. The 1990 experience here facilitates Bush's agenda today.

(2) Outside of Canada, the largest bulk of US direct capital investment lies in T&T and that investment has to be protected at all cost.

Because of (1) and (2) T&T has to be kept in line at all times, eg T&T's support for Chavez next door has been frowned on, likewise our tightening relations with Cuba (eg the aim of hiring in T&T some of the 89,000 doctors available in Cuba will further open up the Cuba/Caricom trade links). US foreign policy will do everything to prevent any development of a Cuba/ Brazil/Ecuador/Venezuela/ T&T link in its backyard.

The point is that it seems that there is an agenda to psychologically beat us back into line and the naive and the gullible and those with political axes to grind are innocently being led by their noses. What a herd of asses? [full text]

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