Archive for October 20th, 2007
The Casualties of Iraq
The Casualties of Iraq
by Conn Hallinan
The great 19th-century Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli once remarked there were three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. It is a dictum the Bush administration has taken to heart when it comes to totaling up the carnage in Iraq: If you don’t like the numbers, just change them; and when in doubt, look ‘em in the eye and lie.
For instance, according to the Department of Defense (DOD), the United States does not track civilian casualties. As former commander General Tommy Franks put it, “We don’t do body counts.”
But testimony in the recent trial of U.S. Army snipers from the First Battalion of the 501 Infantry regiment indicated the generals indeed do body counts. In a July hearing at Fort Liberty, Iraq, Sgt. Anthony G. Murphy said he and other snipers felt “an underlying tone” of disappointment from their commanders when they didn’t rack up big body counts.
“It just kind of felt like, ‘What are you guys doing wrong out there?’” he testified. When the snipers started setting traps to lure in unsuspecting Iraqis, the kill ratios went up and the commanders, he said, were pleased.
The choreography the Bush administration does around casualties is aimed at creating a dance of lies and disinformation to cover up one of the worst humanitarian crises to strike the Middle East since the Mongols sacked Baghdad.
That is not an overstatement.
A recent poll by the British agency Opinion Research Business (ORB) found that the war may have killed more than one million people, a toll that surpasses the 800,000 killed in the Rwandan genocide. The ORB used “excess mortality” as its measure, that is, deaths over and above mortality figures from the past.
The Grim Numbers
Trying to figure out the butcher bill in Iraq is an uphill task.
For instance, according to the London-based organization Iraq Body Count, by March of this year, civilian deaths stood at 65,160, although the organization noted that 2007 has seen “the worst violence against civilians in Iraq since the invasion.” The conservative Brookings Institute’s Iraq Index posts slightly higher figures, and the United Nations higher still.
The Iraq Interior Ministry is highly critical of the UN’s conclusion that 34,000 Iraqis died in 2006, calling the figures “inaccurate” and “unbalanced,” but refuses to release its own figures. And the only sum the Bush administration has ever come up with is when the president commented to the press in December 2005 that the number of Iraqis killed was “30,000, more or less.”
The first serious statistical investigation of the war’s impact was a survey by Johns Hopkins University published in the British medical magazine, The Lancet. According to the study, from the March 2003 invasion through September 2006, the number of deaths due to the war was 654, 965 Over half of those were women and children. The Johns Hopkins study also used the “excess mortality” methodology, which measures not only deaths from war, but violent crime and disease. It found that 91.8% of the excess mortality was due to violence, 31% of that inflicted by coalition forces.
President Bush immediately dismissed the study’s methodology as “pretty well discredited,” and the media either ignored it or accepted the White House’s characterization.
In fact, there is virtual unanimity among biostaticians and mortality experts that the methodology used in the Johns Hopkins study is accurate. Following up on an earlier version of the study, Liala Guterman, a senior reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, says she contacted 10 experts in the field about the Lancet article, and “not one of them took issue with the study’s methods or conclusions.” Indeed, she said, the experts found the conclusions “cautious.”
According to John Zogby of Zogby International, one of the world’s most respected polling services, “The sampling in the Lancet survey is solid, the methodology is as good as it gets.” Ronald Waldman, a Columbia University epidemiologist, said the method was “tried and true,” and British Defense Ministry science advisor, Sir Roy Anderson, said the survey was “close to the best practice.”
Indeed, the Bush administration used exactly the same methodology to determine the number of deaths in Darfur, figures that were used to convince the U.S. Congress to label the current crisis in the Sudan “genocide.”
U.S. Casualties
The administration’s sleight of hand on deaths and casualties even extends to its own forces. There are, for instance, no hard figures on the number of private U.S. and British contractors wounded or killed, even though private contractors outnumber the number of coalition troops in Iraq.
And when casualty statistics come out in ways the DOD doesn’t like, it just changes how they are counted.
On January 29, 2007, the Pentagon listed 47,657 “non-mortal” casualties in Iraq. One day later this number had fallen to 31,493 by the simple device of dropping any casualty that did not require “medical air transport.” The DOD also doesn’t include vehicle accidents, or soldiers who are taken ill, including those with mental problems.
Other Consequences
No one has systematically collected information on the number of Iraqis wounded by the war, although a ratio of two or three to one wounded to killedin excess of one million people — is considered a good rule-of-thumb figure.
Besides the deaths and injuries, the war had unleashed, according to the Financial Times, “The worst refugee crisis in the Middle East since the mass exodus of Palestinians that was part of the violent birth of the state of Israel in 1948.” According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 2.2 million Iraqis have fled their country, mostly to Jordan and Syria, and another 2 million have been turned into internal refugees. If one adds to that the ORB figures for deaths, it means at least 20% of Iraqi’s pre-war population of 26 million has been killed, wounded, exiled, or displaced.
The White House has simply ignored the refugee crisis.
In 2006, the United States budgeted $3 million for refugees, although according to Amman-based researcher Noah Merrill, none of the relief organizations, including the UN, has seen any of that money. And if they had, Merrill points out, it would come to a grand total of $3.50 per person. “Jordan is an expensive country, ” he says, “and $3.50 will not help anyone — not even for a day.”
Half of Iraq’s population are children, nearly 20% of them under the age of five. Some 25% are malnourished and 10% suffer from acute malnutrition. According to a UNICEF study, 70% of Iraqi’s children suffer from traumatic stress syndrome.
Food rationing, a system on which five million Iraqis rely to stay alive, is breaking down, and according to Patrick Cockburn of The Independent, two million can no longer be fed because of security concerns. Unemployment is at 68%. Once the most industrial country in the Arab world, Iraq is devolving into an oil-rich, agrarian backwater. Some 75% of the country’s doctors and pharmacists have fled, bringing its medical system — at one time the best in the Arab world — to the point of collapse.
And finally, like a biblical plague, cholera is working itself down the country’s river system, from the Kurdish north to Basra in the south. Over 7,000 cases have been confirmed in northern Iraq, according to the World Health Organization.
In 1258 the Mongol generals Hulagu and Guo Kan besieged and took the city of Baghdad. They murdered its inhabitants, burned its libraries, and ravished its lands. The Bush administration has done the same, but hidden it behind a smoke screen of lies and voodoo statistics.
For the average Iraqi, there is little difference between the Mongols and the United States. Both have laid waste to their country.
Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/18/4666/
BURMA’S FAILED ORANGE REVOLUTION
BURMA’S FAILED ORANGE REVOLUTION
Dr. Habib Siddiqui
October 09, 2007
http://canadawatch.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=503&Itemid=57
On September 25, 2007 President Bush announced “new” sanctions against the military government of Burma, symbolically joining hands with tens of thousands of protesters in the streets of Yangon and challenging the United Nations to join him in a broader “mission of liberation.”
However, as I see it, the older sanctions imposed by the USA and some western countries did not really bite deep into the skin of the SPDC regime that is ruling Burma. There is also crass hypocrisy in how the sanctions have thus far been imposed by the Bush Administration. A multi-national oil company like Chevron was apparently exempted from adhering to the sanction rule book and is allowed to do business as usual in the oil and gas exploration sector with the SPDC.
Why this selective application for an oil company? Well, we don’t have to be reminded that oil is important to the trio – Bush, Cheney & Rice – all linked with the oil industry before joining the Administration. As is also obvious now, it was not the WMD but the control of the oil fields in Iraq that was the primary motivation for why they invaded Iraq. And of course, there are other reasons too, namely, making the region ‘secure’ for the rogue state – Israel. I doubt that the Bush Administration is unaware that the Chevron-money goes directly to the pockets of the SPDC regime, providing the necessary blood infusion that it needs to function. But then again, we are continuously reminded by our Wall Street pundits that if Chevron does not do business, there are many other non-American companies willing to close the deal with the Myanmar regime! They argue: why should a U.S. company suffer the brunt of unfair trading or business practices? So, if the Bush Administration wants it to be taken seriously, it must go beyond the hollow rhetoric to imposing biting sanctions to isolate the hated regime.
As we also know, in spite of unrest and demonstrations inside Burma, two major trading partners – China and India – continue to doing business with the SPDC regime. Thailand, Russia and Japan are also doing business as usual with the regime, as are many other countries including India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. So, unless the sanctions are universally imposed and fully embraced (stopping all sorts of trade, explorations, and flow of goods and currency to and from Burma by land, sea and air with all other countries), I see little chance in disciplining the brutal regime. The clearest case for a win-win strategy, without requiring a devastating war from outside, is that of mimicking the measures taken two decades earlier against the Apartheid regime of South Africa that forced it to collapse under massive pressure of sanctions.
In those days, the USA and Israel were the biggest trading partners of the hated regime in South Africa. But with world-wide condemnation from outside, and struggle for freedom and equality within under the able and time-tested leadership of the ANC and people like Bishop Desmond Tutu, all the big foreign companies and institutions (including my own alma mater – the University of Southern California. Los Angeles) were forced to withdraw their massive investment money and stop all dealings, thus nailing the beast of Botha’s Apartheid rule and dawning the age of democracy, liberty and equality in Mandela’s South Africa.
But I don’t see anything remotely similar happening for Burma. The oppressive SPDC regime has two veto-wielding backers inside the UNSC – China and Russia. Unless they change their attitude, I doubt anything positive would emerge from the UNSC. Mind that: neither of these two countries has what we call a functioning democracy. They are oligarchies with a centralized power structure. No opposition party or candidate can win any important election there. From their records of monumental crimes against the Muslims in Chechnya, Russia and Xinjiang, China, and Buddhists in Tibet, China, it is obvious that human rights are not a moral compass in these two countries. As much it is true for most countries in this age of moral bankruptcy, cheap trade with Burma is more important to these two countries. That is why, we are not surprised either to see how Gandhi’s India has no moral qualms to emerge as the second largest trading partner of the SPDC regime.
All these ground realities do sound really hopeless and depressing. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel in Myanmar? I believe there is. The clue to toppling the SPDC regime probably lies in mimicking the South African experiment of disengagement. In the 1980s, the Apartheid regime also had its powerful backers in the U.N. They were the United States of America and Israel (and Marcos’s Philippines). When the entire U.N. voted in one way, recommending sanctions against and condemning the Apartheid regime, the USA and Israel continued to cast their votes in the opposite way, even wielding the Veto power (by the USA) in the UNSC. The two countries had remarkable similarities with South Africa in that the more powerful settlers from Europe had dispossessed the less powerful indigenous, native communities. It was truly an uphill battle in the U.N. to pass any punitive measure or incriminating Resolution against the racist regime. However, in the mid-1980s, even the die-hard supporters had to say that the days of Apartheid rule in South Africa were over. Yes, with nation-wide demonstrations inside the USA and some European countries that had heavily engaged in business with the Apartheid regime, the governments and powerful corporations in these countries caved in. They stopped all future business dealings with the regime, and pulled out money. The ‘Old Crocodile’ President Botha relented to intense domestic and external pressure and implemented a series of gradual race reforms, telling his white Afrikaners that they must “adapt or die.” Botha was ousted as National Party leader by F.W. de Klerk in September 1989, who released Mandela the next year.
So, for a desired change in Burma, all the conscientious human beings must demand that their respective governments stop all forms of business dealings with the SPDC regime. The UNSC must steer head the global demand for an end to tyranny in Burma. If the regime’s ethnic cleansing against the minority Rohingyas and Karens, and overbearing repression against its citizens are not appropriate subjects for the UNSC, what is? Why should this organization even exist if it cannot redress people’s legitimate grievances against a despised, unelected, usurping power that has dishonored the people’s verdict and tyrannized everyone – from the Muslim and Christian minorities to majority Buddhists – for more than four decades? Should the UNSC Resolution be only reserved for a now hanged Saddam Hossein, and launching unjust and immoral wars against civilians in the Middle East, let alone conspiring to attack Iran under false pretext at the behest of powerful ‘Amen Corner’?
The UNSC must do the right thing. It has more proof than it requires to isolate the SPDC regime 100 per cent. Through its biting resolutions, it can let every government within the U.N. know that if it were to conduct any business deal with the regime, it would lose its membership in the world body, and would feel the pinch from losing bilateral ‘favored nation’ trading status with other developed nations. The UNSC must also stop all multi-national companies from doing any business with the regime. Let “real” sanctions hurt the regime! Let it find out that it has no friend on which to lean.
The most important factor for a change in Burma is, however, its own people. It is they who must desire change wholeheartedly and should be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice necessary to bring about a positive change in their lives. If they are afraid to sacrifice for a noble cause, nothing will happen for them. No outside intervention or goodwill will help. So far, I have not seen that kind of sacrifice made inside Burma. There has not been a repeat of the 8-8-88 event. The Junta-defying demonstrations in September were neither big enough nor well organized to shake the SPDC boat.
Leadership is very crucial for the success or failure of any movement. The events of the past weeks have demonstrated that the Burmese people are radar-less without an effective leadership that gravitates everyone for a common, noble cause. The people of Burma must develop genuine leadership the same way the Black South Africans had done when their charismatic leaders Mandela and Mbeki were serving long prison times. Most of the opposition leaders in Burma are grossly incompetent and selfish. They live in their feudal past. They look at things from their chauvinistic, foggy, ethnic prism that is not wide enough to understand other communities. Their inherent xenophobia, racism and feudalistic behavior do not encourage other groups to take them seriously as better alternatives to the current regime. They often talk about democracy, but have no clue about what it takes to make a democratic society. They talk about liberty but approve the 1982 Burma Citizenship Law that effectively denies basic citizenship rights to millions of minority Muslims and Christians. They talk of human rights, but to them the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a non-binding leaflet from a distant planet that they can be oblivious about or show selective amnesia. They display no understanding about pluralism and respect for others.
These are, in my opinion, the sad realities of today’s Burma. And yet the march for democracy, freedom and human rights must go on – both inside and outside Burma. In the absence of imprisoned political leaders, Burma must find its genuine leadership that integrates and empowers people of various races, ethnicities and religious persuasions for a common, higher goal so that she can develop true democratic spirits under a Federal framework. As for those of us who are outside, we must do our part to pressure our respective governments and the world bodies to bring about measures that force the repressive junta towards a democratic transition with minority rights protected.
See the list of companies doing business with the SPDC regime: http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/dirty_list/dirty_list_details.html
For a list of companies that pulled out, see:
http://www.ibiblio.org/freeburma/boycott/progress.htm
About the author: Dr. Siddiqui is Director of the Arakan-Burma Research Institute, USA.
This material has been simulposted with Cyrano’s Journal Online
Rep Watson – Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
Rep Watson – Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
AIPAC is pushing us to war with Iran for Israel
World Bank, IMF face competition in China, Russia
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are grappling with diminished roles and relevance since China, Russia and other rapidly developing countries have amassed wealth to the point they now outstrip the Bretton Woods institutions as the biggest lenders in the world.
The $600 billion in reserves amassed by China and other emerging nations just in the first half of this year doubled the total reserves of the IMF, while those same nations have established “sovereign wealth funds” totaling $3 trillion that dwarf the aid budgets of the World Bank, IMF and Western nations. The U.S. government, by comparison, provides about $11 billion a year in international aid.
China, dipping into its more than $1 trillion in cash reserves, has taken the lead and is particularly eclipsing the World Bank in Africa by providing resource-rich countries such as Sudan with no-strings-attached loans in exchange for stable supplies of raw materials for its fast-growing economy.
The World Bank, by contrast, usually attaches unpopular conditions such as forced privatization to its loans and scrutinizes the corruption and human rights records of client countries. Development experts say the Chinese loans to corrupt regimes in Africa has made it easier for them to avoid international pressure to clean up graft.
Robert B. Zoellick, the new president of the World Bank, “has his work cut out,” said Elizabeth Stuart of Oxfam International, an anti-poverty group. “The bank now is facing more competition than ever as Africa looks to Beijing rather than Washington.”
Ms. Stuart said the bank will have to reassert its relevance by refocusing efforts on poverty reduction rather than on spreading Western-style economic policies as it did in the past.
The World Bank and IMF are holding their semi-annual fall meeting in Washington this weekend.
Mr. Zoellick yesterday said he would respond to the growing competition by for the first time seeking to enlarge the bank’s resources by taking contributions from private corporations as well as big developing countries. The bank’s loan funding now is derived largely from U.S., European and Japanese contributions.
IMF Managing Director Rodrigo De Rato yesterday called on China to cooperate with the World Bank and IMF and ensure that its lending in Africa doesn’t fuel a spiral of debt in the vacuum left by recent debt-forgiveness programs that wiped out the obligations of many African nations.
“China is showing a growing interest in Africa, and that is welcome,” he said. “But it should work with others to ensure that countries can absorb resources efficiently.”
The IMF, which in the 1990s frequently acted as the international lender of last resort and oversaw a raft of rescue operations triggered by the Asian financial crisis, today finds itself with few clients to bail out or school in Western economic ways. That is thanks largely to the strong financial positions and stores of cash reserves accumulated by former clients such as Russia, Brazil and South Korea, who have cast off their debts.
“Right now, the developing nations are flush with cash, with the U.S. among the main beneficiaries” as the poorer nations — in a role reversal — have financed nearly half of U.S. international debt this year, said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America.
The ironic result is that major emerging countries such as Brazil, China and Russia are comfortably insulated from the financial crisis that emerged this year in the U.S. with widespread defaults on subprime mortgages. While that debt crisis has cut growth in the U.S. and Europe, it presents little threat to the developing world, ratings agencies say.
The reversal of the world order as originally envisioned in the Bretton Woods agreement 60 years ago is producing increasing calls for an overhaul of the IMF and World Bank that would give developing countries a greater say. Today, the United States and Europe appoint the heads of the institutions and have veto power over the banks’ actions.
Russia, a principal client of the IMF in the 1990s which jolted global markets by defaulting on its debt in 1998, has shed its debt and is brimming with cash from export sales of oil and gas. It says it is considering dramatically increasing its contribution to the banks, but with the goal of increasing Russia’s voice as well as those of China, India and Brazil.
Other nations in Latin America and Africa also are stepping up demands. “They cannot ignore millions of voices around the world calling for reform,” said Kumi Naidoo, chairman of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. “Countries in the South need to have a say at least in decisions that will have long-lasting consequences for them.”
Many Western aid experts agree that change is needed, although efforts at reform so far have been feeble.
“Global institutions need to reflect the changing demographic and economic balances,” said Johannes F. Linn of the Brookings Institution. “If China and India continue their rapid economic growth of recent decades, as they seem poised to do, they will surpass most, if not all, of the current industrial countries in economic size.”
Important to note that as these blooksuckers meet this weekend, Turkey is the IMF’s largest borrower and Turkey now finds itself in todays spotlight. Not only is Russia and China the new lenders to the world, but the Bank of the South is also being formed as well. Looks more and more like we’re headed for a multi-polar world that includes regional currencies and no longer being ruled by the Bank of England and the Fed.
Iran: Shell, Total must Finalize Gas Deals by June
Iran: Shell, Total must Finalize Gas Deals by June
TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- France’s Total and Royal Dutch Shell must finalize their gas deals with Iran by June or the giant South Pars project will go ahead without them, an Iranian official was quoted as saying.
Iran, with the world’s second largest gas reserves after Russia, had previously warned the French energy major not to bow to political pressure to steer clear of the Islamic Republic.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called last month for tougher international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programs and warned Total and gas firm Gaz de France to stop investing in OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer.
“Total and Shell have only until June 2008 to finalize their deals,” oil ministry web site Shana quoted the managing director of Pars Oil and Gas company, Ali Vakili, saying on Tuesday. Shana carried his comments on Wednesday.
“In the past few days and in order to finalize the deals … we gave an ultimatum to Total and Shell and if we don’t reach an agreement with them, we will not extend the time for talks,” Vakili said.
Both Shell and Total have said rising industry costs had delayed their multi-billion dollar investments in Iran’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, which would be fed by the giant South pars gas field.
The Anglo-Dutch company has a preliminary deal to develop part of the South Pars gas field, despite Washington urging its allies not to invest in Iran because of Iran’s progress in the nuclear technology.
Total agreed to take on the project to build Iran’s first LNG export terminal in February 2004, with an initial start date of 2009 that has since been pushed back to 2011 after years of debates over terms.
Iran initially said the project was worth $2 billion, but European companies allege that construction costs have since spiraled throughout the energy sector.
Iran’s caretaker Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said in September a price in excess of $11 billion quoted by Total was too high for Iran and that his country could easily find replacements.
“We are having intensive negotiation with them (Total and Shell) in this regard,” Vakili said.
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8607260224
Iran, Venezuela Form Oil Venture to Rival Shell, Eni
TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iran and Venezuela, the producers of about 9 percent of the world’s oil, will form a $1 billion global venture for projects in countries where companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc or Eni SpA are facing tougher business conditions.
Venezuelan-Iranian Oil & Gas Co., or VENIROGC, may be registered by the end of the year with its head office in a European country, Mohammad Ali Talebi, chief of Venezuelan operations at Iran’s state-owned Petropars Ltd., said in an interview in Tehran late yesterday.
“The idea of the company is to become the same as Chevron, Shell or Eni,” Talebi, a VENIROGC board member, said in the Petropars headquarters. “We’ll do the international oil and gas business along the entire value chain, from production to gasoline stations.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez have expanded cooperation outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, to which they both belong. Chavez began supplying Iran with gasoline after the Islamic Republic started fuel rationing last June.
VENIROGC will be a 50-50 partnership between state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA and Petropars. Unlike existing ventures, it will focus on oil and gas developments outside the two countries, such as in Bolivia, Talebi said. Spain and the Netherlands are being considered as possible sites for the company’s head office.
Talebi said he hopes the venture will be registered in the British Virgin Islands by the end of 2007. Its offshore address will make the company immune to any banking sanctions against Iran and allow it to attract loans on international financial markets.
Talebi declined to say how much money VENIROGC needs to raise initially, saying only it would be “no less” than $1 billion for exploration and production.
“This is still a baby,” Talebi said. “You have to take good care of a baby.” Ahmadinejad and Chavez agreed to create the venture during a meeting in Caracas in September 2006.
A 27-year veteran of the oil industry, Talebi is the urbane, English-speaking face of Iran’s new global energy push. He splits his time between his modern office in a wealthy north Tehran suburb and the Eurobuilding in Caracas, 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) away.
Petropars, a unit of National Iranian Oil Co., already has two agreements with PDVSA. One is for joint exploration of the Ayacucho 7 block in Venezuela’s heavy-crude-producing Faja del Orinoco region. If the wells are determined to be commercially viable the two companies will develop it together, with PDVSA holding 51 percent of the venture, Talebi said.
Production may begin as early as 2011 and reach full capacity, or 200,000 barrels per day, after 2012, Talebi said. The two companies estimate that Ayacucho 7 will require $4 billion of investment, should development go ahead.
A second project, exploring for natural gas in the Cardon 2 block in the Gulf of Venezuela, is still waiting for government approval, Talebi said. Chevron Corp. runs neighboring block 3.
“We have no hesitation to talk to them,” Talebi said, when asked if the proximity of a US company caused any awkwardness because of American economic sanctions against Iran. “We’re friendly. We’re talking together, sharing information.”
The peculiarities of Iran’s petroleum law are partially responsible for pushing Petropars to look abroad, Talebi said.
The company was originally founded in 1998 as a general contractor to develop Iran’s South Pars field, part of the world’s biggest reservoir of natural gas. Because it’s not allowed to operate projects once they’re up and running, Petropars is expanding abroad, Talebi said.
Besides Venezuela, the company is considering operations in Bolivia, where Ahmadinejad signed energy agreements on a visit last month. Bolivian President Evo Morales nationalized oil and gas fields in 2006, causing companies like Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Shell to sell assets.
Petropars is on an Iranian government list of state asset sales, and 20 percent of the company will be offered to investors by March 2008, Talebi said.
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8607260221
More villification of de Menezes by the British media (Update: Image manipulated; counterfeit passport stamp)
Regarding the latest developments in court regarding the execution of Charles de Menezes by British Police, Channel 4 reported yesterday on their 7 pm news programme that:
“Menezes ‘had traces of cocaine”
Update: image presented to court had evidence of “manipulation
In the aftermath of the Charles de Menezes shooting in August 2005, Tet and discussed what might happen next, based on what happened after the shooting of innocent students at Kent state University, Ohio, all those years ago.
We weren’t disappointed – it soon came out that he was “an illegal immigrant”, and of “asian appearance”.
This was discussed at length in a previous article, which became one of our most read. Unfortunately, the original story is no longer there (IT guys? Hexen?) but the comments remain:
The latest Channel 4 story is also reported on their website:
A court hears that Jean Charles de Menezes’s body was found to have traces of cocaine after he was shot dead by police.
Pathologist Dr Kenneth Shorrock told the Old Bailey today that Mr de Menezes’s urine tested positive for cocaine, and that very small levels were found in his blood.
Earlier, in a day of dramatic evidence, a firearms officer codenamed “Ralph” broke down in tears while giving evidence about the moment his team killed Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station.
He told the Old Bailey that despite what happened he was “very proud” of them.
The officer, codenamed Ralph, said police had been prepared to risk their lives pursuing the man they believed was a suicide bomber into the Underground.
He was giving evidence at the trial of the Metropolitan Police, which is accused of a “catastrophic” series of errors leading up to the death of Mr de Menezes. The force denies a single charge under health and safety laws.
Mr de Menezes, who was 27, was followed to Stockwell Tube station from flats linked to attempted bomber Hussain Osman, on July 22 2005. He was shot seven times in the head.
Ralph was the leader of the team of elite CO19 firearms officers who pursued him into the station after giving a “state red” alert to stop him.
‘We were going forward to deal with this in order to protect the public, even though this man could have had a device on him’
‘Ralph’, firearms officerHe told the court: “The only people running down stairs to confront the man that they believed to be Hussain Osman, a known suicide bomber, were police officers from CO19 and surveillance officers as well, while everyone else was running out.
“We were going forward to deal with this in order to protect the public, even though this man could have had a device on him.”
Ronald Thwaites QC, defending, read from a statement made by Ralph, in which he pointed out that police officers at the time believed they were risking their lives to protect the public.
The statement ended: “I hope that’s not forgotten.”
When Mr Thwaites asked him how he felt about being a prosecution witness, the officer, who was giving evidence behind a screen, choked with emotion and was passed a box of tissues by the court usher.
Trial judge Mr Justice Henriques said: “I think the response speaks for itself.”
Ralph said: “Despite the outcome, I was very proud of them.”
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/law_order/menezes+had+traces+of+cocaine/926352
Menezes picture ‘was manipulated’
The defence said the image was to show identification problems
Police have been accused of manipulating a photo of Jean Charles de Menezes so it could be compared to that of one of the 21/7 bomb plotters.
The image had been “stretched and sized” to form a composite image of the Brazilian and Hussain Osman to show the jury, prosecutors told the Old Bailey.
Mr de Menezes was shot dead after being wrongly identified as one of the men who targeted London’s transport system.
The Metropolitan Police denies breaking health and safety laws.
Mr de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head on a train at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005, after being wrongly identified as Osman.
The Met Police said the composite picture was created to illustrate the difficulties officers would have had in differentiating between the two men.
‘Serious allegation’
But Clare Montgomery QC, prosecuting, told the court it had been altered “by either stretching or resizing so the face ceases to have its correct proportions”.
Making the image brighter has changed the image
Michael George, forensics consultant
Forensics consultant Michael George told the court that the police composite appeared to have a “greater definition” than the two images used to produce it.
He produced an alternative composite, which was shown to the jury, in which the two faces had different skin tones and their mouths and noses were not aligned.
Ronald Thwaites QC, defending, asked Mr George whether there had been any manipulation “of the primary features of the face”.
Mr George replied: “I don’t believe there has been any… but making the image brighter has changed the image.”
The court heard the composite was compiled using a 2001 identity card photograph of Mr de Menezes and a photo of Osman taken by police in Rome, where he was arrested.
The judge, Mr Justice Henriques, told the jury that a “serious allegation has been made that a picture has been manipulated so as to mislead”.
Immigration records
Earlier, Mr Thwaites cross-examined immigration official Paul Roach over a counterfeit stamp found in the Brazilian’s passport, asking if this meant he had been in the country illegally.
Mr Roach told the court Mr de Menezes first entered the country on 13 March 2002 and was given six months’ leave to remain, before extending his stay, as a student, to 30 June 2003.
The next record was of him arriving in Ireland from France on 23 April 2005 but there was no notification of when he returned to the UK.
The court heard how as a person entering Britain from Ireland, he would have had an automatic three-month leave to remain which at the earliest would have run out on 23 July, the day after he was killed.
A counterfeit stamp found on his passport may only have been added after he entered the UK, Mr Roach said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7048756.stm
Related :
Lies about ‘failed terror attacks’ in UK
the alleged ringleader of the 7/7 London bombings, was working for British intelligence agency MI5 as an informant
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comment :
Vince Cable the LibDem MP has, using the FOI Act, established that the knife which Dr Kelly used to slash his wrists had no fingerprints on it. Dr Kelly was not wearing gloves. The authorities remain satisified with the results of their enquiry!
Unless some bounder surgically removed Dr Kelly’s fingerprints shortly before he died, it would seem Vince Cable is opening a large can of worms. On an unusually serious note, it is encouraging that we have a handful of MP’s like Vince Cable who are prepared to use their position to right a fairly grim wrong. He deserves recognition for not letting the case drop. I sincerely hope he pursues it till the truth outs. All too easy for these things to be tidied away under the “conspiracy nutters” file.
MEANWHILE the silence from Tories/NewLabour has been embarrassing.
They have got Parliamentary Privilege to indemnify them, so not wanting to rock the boat and keep on the gravy train.
About Iraq. When do we ever hear Cameron attack Brown on this catastrophe? The Commons, the public and most importantly the military were misled about WMD etc etc.
The fact is, the Tories knew all along the deeper reaons for going to war.
Lambros
All n all the most outrageous coverup of modern times
‘Bush has undermined US-China relations’ – Beijing
‘Bush has undermined US-China relations’ – Beijing
Oct 18 2007 icWales
THE US has “gravely undermined” relations with China by giving the Dalai Lama an award, the Beijing government said today.
US president George Bush presented Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader with the US Congress’s highest civilian honour yesterday and urged Chinese leaders to welcome him to Beijing.
But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said: “The move of the US is a blatant interference with China’s internal affairs, which has severely hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and gravely undermined the relations between China and the US.”
He said foreign minister Yang Jiechi had summoned US ambassador Clark T Randt to express “strong protest to the US government”.
China has warned that giving the award to a person it believes is trying to split the country would have serious consequences for relations, but has not said what it would do.
With the Dalai Lama by his side, Mr Bush praised him as a “universal symbol of peace and tolerance, a shepherd of the faithful and a keeper of the flame for his people”.
Mr Bush said at the US Capitol building, where he personally handed the Dalai Lama the prestigious Congressional Gold Medal: “Americans cannot look to the plight of the religiously oppressed and close our eyes or turn away.”
The Dalai Lama is lauded in much of the world as a figure of moral authority, but China reviles him as a Tibetan separatist and has vehemently protested about the elaborate public ceremony for the past week.
The 72-year-old monk and 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate says he wants “real autonomy” for Tibet, not independence.
He is immensely popular in the Himalayan region, which China has ruled with a heavy hand since its communist-led forces invaded in 1951.
He has lived with followers in exile in India since fleeing Chinese soldiers in Tibet in 1959.
Mr Bush said he did not think his attendance at the ceremony would damage relations with China.
“I support religious freedom; he supports religious freedom. … I want to honour this man,” he told reporters at the White House. “I have consistently told the Chinese that religious freedom is in their nation’s interest.”
But on Tuesday the Bush administration took pains to keep a private meeting with the president and the Dalai Lama from further infuriating China.
Mr Bush wants to ease anger in China, a growing economic and military powerhouse that the US needs to manage nuclear stand-offs with Iran and North Korea.
He also wants to be seen as a champion of religious freedom and human rights.
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/latest-world-news/2007/10/18/bush-has-undermined-us-china-relations-beijing-91466-19970113/
Foreign ministers of Russia, China, India to meet in China
Foreign ministers of Russia, China, India to meet in China
18/ 10/ 2007
BEIJING, October 18 (RIA Novosti) -
Foreign Ministers from China, Russia and India will meet in Harbin, northeast China, on October 24, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said Thursday.
“The sides will exchange ideas on global and regional problems and discuss cooperation issues between the three countries,” Liu Jianchao said.
The diplomat said that tripartite meetings have become a cooperation mechanism between Russia, China and India and expressed hope that the meeting in Harbin would allow politicians and journalists to “get to know the city better.”
http://en.rian.ru/world/20071018/84389417.html
Top US Air Force official ’suicided’
Top Air Force Official Dies in Apparent Suicide
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — The second-highest ranking member of the Air Force’s procurement office was found dead of an apparent suicide at his Virginia home Sunday, Air Force and police officials said today.
The official, Charles D. Riechers, 47, came under scrutiny by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month after the Air Force arranged for him to be paid $13,400 a month by a private contractor, Commonwealth Research Institute, while he awaited review from the White House of his appointment as principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. He was appointed to the job in January.
The Washington Post reported on Oct. 1 that the contractor, Commonwealth Research, registered as a nonprofit organization in Johnstown, Pa., paid Mr. Riechers for two months as a senior technical adviser, though he did no work for the company.
“I really didn’t do anything for C.R.I.” Mr. Riechers told The Post. “I got a paycheck from them.”
The Air Force has disputed The Post’s portrayal of Mr. Riechers’s role and said in a statement today that he was “employed in a scientific and engineering technical assistance capacity to the Air Force and made recommendations that were instrumental in engineering our acquisition transformation and continuing the Air Force’s modernization of our aging fleet.”
Specifically, the Air Force said that Mr. Riechers, a retired Air Force officer and master navigator, provided technical advice on several programs including converting commercial aircraft to military using and modernizing the C-130 transport plane. Loren Thompson, an expert on the military at The Lexington Institute said it was unclear whether Mr. Riechers’s suicide had anything to do with the inquiry. However, he said that Mr. Riechers’s death would cast a further shadow over the Pentagon’s beleaguered procurement system.
Commonwealth Research and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies, have extensive contracts with the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and other Federal departments.
A year before Mr. Riechers’s appointment, the Air Force was mired in scandal. The Pentagon canceled a $23 billion deal to lease 767 tankers from Boeing after the disclosure that a former Air Force procurement officer, Darleen Druyun, was found to have favored Boeing in contracts before being hired by the company.
At a hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month, Senator Carl M. Levin of Michigan said far too many weapons acquisitions had been plagued by “cost increases, late deliveries to the war fighters and performance shortfalls.”
Senator Levin added that 25 of the Pentagon’s major defense acquisition programs had overruns of at least 50 percent. And he expressed concern about an “alarming lack of acquisition planning across the department.”
“The root cause of these and other problems in the defense acquisition system is our failure to maintain an acquisition work force with the resources and skills needed to manage the department’s acquisition system,” Mr. Levin said. “The Pentagon and Justice Department are currently conducting criminal investigations into some $6 billion in contracts to supply essential supplies to American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait.”
In May, Mr. Riechers told the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association’s Northern Virginia Chapter that restoring credibility to the Air Force was a priority for the Air Force. He said the Darleen Druyun scandal was an “aberration,” that was not representative of the Air Force’s acquisition system.
Mr. Reichers was a retired Air Force officer and master navigator specializing in electronic warfare, with 20 years of operational, acquisition and staff experience, according to the Air Force. He flew more than 1,900 flight hours, with 90 hours of combat and combat support time in B-52G and EC-130H aircraft.
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Top US Air Force official ’suicided’ as Iran war nears
Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that American War Leaders have ’suicided’ one of their Top US Air Force Officials Charles D. Riechers as the rift growing between the US War Leaders and their Top Military Officers over a nuclear attack on Iran appears to be nearing open warfare.
According to Western propaganda media sources, Charles D. Riechers was ‘found dead of apparent suicide’ after coming under the scrutiny of the United States Senate for alleged payments being made to him by the Commonwealth Research Institute, whose parent company is Concurrent Technologies, and which is headed by the secretive Neocon financier of America’s top War Leaders, Daniel R. DeVos. [Note: Daniel R. DeVos frequently refers to himself by his middle name Richard and is not to be confused with the American billionaire Dick DeVos]
These reports to the Kremlin, however, state that Mr. Riechers’ ’suicide’ was, most likely, due to his involvement in the American Neocon plot to secret US nuclear missiles outside of the control of the
US Air Force to be used for an attack upon Iran, and which we had previously reported on in our September 20th report titled “American Spy Satellite Downed In Peru As US Nuclear Attack On Iran Thwarted”.
Such is the chaos in the American Military Establishment over their War Leaders plans to attack Iran the US Military is said to be close to ‘open revolt’, according to these reports and as we can read as verified by German media sources:
“In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Amsterdam-based military historian Gabriel Kolko talks about the prospect of war with Iran and argues that many in the US military now view the White House as being ‘out of control.’
So concerned with the American military calling their own War Leaders ‘out of control’, President Putin, currently on an official state visit to Iran, has ordered Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Bombers on ‘full alert’ and ordered them to begin World-Wide ‘exercises’ for the rest of the month of October.
To the depths of depravity that the United States has fallen to, no less than Americas most ‘trusted’ news source, The New York Times, this week compared themselves to last centuries Nazi Empire, and as we can read:
“Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.”
In the madness of war and horrific destruction being visited upon the Muslim peoples of the World by the United States, and its dwindling allies, it is interesting, but sad, to note how far these once free people fallen in barely 100 years from their truest ideas as a new war with Iran looms before them , and as we can read:
“As President Theodore Roosevelt said in his 1906 State of the Union address, “No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered.”
© October 16, 2007 EU and US all rights reserved.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/
We can attack Iran, says US commander
We can attack Iran, says US commander
by Alex Spillius in Washington
America’s top military officer said the country does have the resources to attack Iran, despite the strain of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Adm Michael Mullen, who took over as chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff three weeks ago, said diplomacy remained the priority in dealing with Iran’s suspected plans to develop a nuclear weapon and its support for anti-US insurgents in Iraq.
But at a press conference he said: “there is more than enough reserve to respond (militarily) if that, in fact, is what the national leadership wanted to do”.
Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons could set off an arms race in the Middle East. “The risk of an accident or a miscalculation or of those weapons or materials falling into the hands of terrorists seem to me to be substantially increased,” he added.
The two leaders appeared together just days after George W Bush raised the spectre of “World War Three” if Iran went nuclear.
Adm Mullen did not elaborate on what size of assault would be feasible, but earlier reports have said the Pentagon had laid out contingency plans for a major aerial campaign against suspected nuclear targets in Iran.
Given that there are approximately 180,000 US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the deployment of a significant ground force is improbable.
Early this year the US navy moved a second aircraft carrier with battleships into the Gulf, its biggest build up of military power there since the months leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, leading to speculation that it was prepared to launch air strikes at any time.
Adm Mullen also said the US military was working hard to stem the flow from Iran into Afghanistan of high-tech materials for roadside bombs. The military has said that parts from the armor-piercing bombs, which have killed hundreds of troops in Iraq, are now getting into Afghanistan.
Iran’s foreign minister said yesterday that his country is ready to establish nuclear energy cooperation with other countries, based on the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to cooperate with other countries in the nuclear field with a peaceful purpose,” said Manouchehr Mottaki during a visit to the western Afghan city of Herat for a conference.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/20/wiran120.xml
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comment :
register in his brains for something called Consequences. One Joke I learned about the Military Personnel goes like this : Alll military are excellent providers for head transplants for the simple reason that their heads are never used and are in brand new shape.
cosmo
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Attacking Iran with US Air force and US Navy is just like having guys, stoning and shaking to stir up a hornet’s nest up on the trees and bees would come out and give a lot of sting, and surely you will chicken out with no effect to the hornet at all. It make a big differences to the bees and its hornet’s when you have guys willing to climb up to the tree, and pull out the hornet and yank out of the place, and this is analogous to the ARMY (the guy who willing climb up to the trees a.k.a. “boots on the trees”). Unfortunately Admiral!!!, your Army were all tied up and destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistant.
djandjolik
