News: Americas
» 2008
December 15, 2009
Monsanto named worst corporate climate lobbyist
US company wants its GM crops to be given carbon credits and to be at the forefront of tackling climate change despite link to deforestation
Biotech giant Monsanto has been criticised for its aggressive corporate lobbying on climate change at the Copenhagen summit. In a public vote organised by an alliance of NGOs, including Friends of the Earth and Spinwatch, the US agricultural company came out ahead of oil giant Shell and the American Petroleum Institute. Monsanto was nominated for its promotion of genetically modified (GM) crops as a solution to climate change and for pushing its crops to be used as biofuels.
Read article in The Ecologist (UK)
December 5, 2009
Dr David Kelly: doctors start legal action for new inquest
Six senior doctors have begun legal action to force a new inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, the scientist who died days after being exposed as the source of a controversial BBC story on the Iraq war. The action is being taken because six doctors are convinced that the original verdict of suicide is unsafe and should be overturned. Some suspect that Dr Kelly, 59, was murdered shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC story which alleged that evidence against Iraq had been "sexed up" by the Government in order to justify the 2003 invasion. The body of Dr Kelly, who was a UN weapons inspector, was found more than six years ago in woods near his Oxfordshire home after he went out for a walk. His wrist had been slashed.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
December 1, 2009
Blair may have ‘signed in blood’ to topple Saddam a year before war
Tony Blair and President Bush might have secretly “signed in blood” a deal to overthrow Saddam Hussein a year before ordering the Iraq war, according to a former senior diplomat. Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s Ambassador to Washington in the run-up to the war, said an agreement to aim for “regime change” may have been reached during a private meeting at the President’s Crawford ranch in April 2002.
Read article in the Tehran Times (Iran)
November 30, 2009
Iraq inquiry: The 'just war' that was illegal and immoral
Tony Blair, with a truly toxic mixture of sanctimoniousness and wealth-enhancing chutzpah, has always maintained that his Iraq invasion was a just war. He has held to this shibboleth with trembling lip and quasi-religious conviction. But the letter to him from Lord Goldsmith, which emerged at the weekend, changes everything. Dated July 29, 2002, a full eight months before Blair launched his grotesque Middle-eastern misadventure, the then Attorney General wrote to tell him that such an invasion would be illegal under international law. It is in the bundle of documents at the Chilcot inquiry, to be addressed when the former prime minister, abortive President of Europe and putative Middle East peace envoy gives evidence to it in the new year.
Read article by George Pitcher in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
November 24, 2009
Iran gains $5b on dollar to euro shift
Iran has gained $5 billion through its policy of shifting away from the U.S. currency in favor of the euro, Central Bank Governor Mahmoud Bahmani was quoted as saying on Monday. “Iran has considerably reduced the amount of U.S. dollars in its currency basket,” said Mahmoud Bahmani in Tehran at the 3rd Seminar on Banking Services and Export, Press TV reported. Since October 2007, Iran has received 85 percent of its oil revenues in currencies other than the U.S. dollar, and “the country expresses determination to substitute the greenback for the remaining 15 percent of its oil revenues.”
Read article in the Tehran Times (Iran)
November 10, 2009
First Obama envoy to visit North Korea
WASHINGTON — The new US administration will send its first mission to North Korea to jumpstart denuclearization talks, officials confirmed Tuesday, saying the visit was likely before year end. "After careful consideration and extensive consultation among our allies and partners, we have told North Korea that we are prepared for Ambassador Bosworth and a small interagency team to visit Pyongyang at an appropriate time not yet determined," State Department spokesman P.J Crowley said. North Korea has invited special envoy Stephen Bosworth to visit for talks to end what it calls Washington's "hostile" policy toward the communist state.
Read AFP news report at google.com
October 27, 2009
Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials. The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home. The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
October 6, 2009
The demise of the dollar
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
September 29, 2009
US, Cuba held unannounced talks
A senior American diplomat has held unannounced, high-level talks in Havana with the Cuban government, three State Department officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday, raising hopes for a thaw in long-icy relations. The talks were the first of their kind in years between representatives of the U.S. and Cuban governments, the bitter Cold War rivals among whom trust appears to be gradually building.
Read Associated Press news report at google.com
September 17, 2009
Obama shelves Europe missile plan
US President Barack Obama has shelved plans for controversial bases in Poland and the Czech Republic in a major overhaul of missile defence in Europe.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
September 10, 2009
City of New York Concedes 9/11 Coalition Has 30,000 Valid Signatures to Put Referendum for 9/11 Investigation on November Ballot
In a last minute decision, lawyers for the City of New York have conceded that the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now (NYC CAN), a group comprising 9/11 family members, first responders and survivors, indeed did submit over 30,000 valid signatures to put the referendum for a new 9/11 investigation before the voters of New York City this November. In an earlier letter from the City Clerk dated July 24, 2009, the City had claimed only 26,003 signatures were valid, 3,997 short of the requisite 30,000. The City's concession that over 30,000 of the 52,000 signatures submitted were in fact valid paves the way for lawyers from both sides to argue the legality of petition. Asked whether he thought NYC CAN could overcome the City's challenge to the legality of the petition, legal counsel to the petitioners, Dennis McMahon, said, "Absolutely. Although the City has an incredibly successful record of shooting down ballot initiatives, we will be arguing from a fresh perspective that reflects the unprecedented events of 9/11."
Read press release at reuters.com
Comment: If a referendum were to pass in November, it would lead to the creation of a local, independent commission with subpoena power that would be tasked with comprehensively reinvestigating the 9/11 attacks.
September 6, 2009
China alarmed by US money printing
The US Federal Reserve's policy of printing money to buy Treasury debt threatens to set off a serious decline of the dollar and compel China to redesign its foreign reserve policy, according to a top member of the Communist hierarchy.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
September 4, 2009
White House to Open Visitor Logs to Public
WASHINGTON — President Obama announced Friday that he will open up White House visitor logs on a regular basis for the first time in modern history, providing the public an unusually extensive look at who gets the opportunity to help shape American policy at the highest levels. “Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process,” the president said in a written statement issued by the White House while he vacationed with his family at Camp David. The new policy settles four lawsuits against the government seeking such records.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
September 3, 2009
Living with Cheney's poisonous legacy
Nine years on, 'war on terror' policies still haunt the US and its allies. Who will stand up to challenge the ex-VP's recklessness?
The former US vice-president Dick Cheney is almost as busy now as he was when he was running the United States and its wars. Most of his effort, repeated and of course unchallenged on Fox News last Sunday, is devoted to an open and unapologetic defence of torture, aka "enhanced interrogation techniques", which he says have "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people". He should have said "other people" or "more people", because thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people have indeed died as a result of the full-scale Bush-Cheney wars unleashed in response to the 9/11 atrocities, as if fighting crime with crime, mass murder with mass murder, was the obvious and right thing to do.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
September 2, 2009
Dick Cheney’s Version
After the C.I.A. inspector general’s report on prisoner interrogation was released last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney settled into his usual seat on Fox News to express his outrage — not at the illegal and immoral behavior laid out in the report, of course, but at the idea that anyone would object to torturing prisoners. He was especially vexed that the Obama administration was beginning an investigation.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: To learn more about Cheney, click here.
September 1, 2009
C.I.A. Resists Disclosure of Records on Detention
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency is refusing to make public hundreds of pages of internal documents about the agency’s defunct detention and interrogation program, saying such disclosures would jeopardize national security by revealing classified intelligence sources and operations. The C.I.A.’s argument to withhold the material, laid out Monday in a declaration to a federal court in New York, comes a week after the Obama administration declassified documents about abuses in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons and the Justice Department began investigating the actions of C.I.A. operatives. Among the documents the agency is trying to keep classified are President George W. Bush’s September 2001 authorization for the C.I.A. to begin secretly holding terrorism suspects; cables between C.I.A. officers in the secret prisons, known as black sites, and their bosses in Washington; and assessments by C.I.A. lawyers about the legality of the detention program.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
August 27, 2009
US to abandon Polish-Czech missile shield, lobbyist says
The United States has all-but abandoned plans to house anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech republic, according to a senior White House lobbyist. Riki Ellison, the chairman of the 10,000 member-strong Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said in Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza on Thursday (26 August) that the US has changed its mind to avoid a rift with Russia and is now looking at Israel, Turkey, the Balkans or ship-borne facilities instead. "The signals given by generals from the Pentagon are clear: the current US government is looking for different solutions on the question of missile defence than Poland and the Czech republic," he said. "The new [US] team is paying more attention to Russian arguments," he added.
Read article at euobserver.com
August 19, 2009
A Nuremberg for Guantánamo
AT the end of World War II, the Allied powers found themselves in charge of thousands of captured enemies, many of whom had committed unspeakable crimes. Some among the victors thought that the prisoners should simply be shot. Others, including many in the American government, steadfastly insisted that these men should be subjected to criminal proceedings. Thus the Nuremberg trials were born, tribunals that meted out justice for some of the 20th century’s worst atrocities while demonstrating the return of the rule of law on the European continent and the superiority of democratic values over Fascist lunacies. The Guantánamo detainees pose a similar conundrum today.
Read Op-Ed article by Guénaël Mettraux in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: As Guénaël Mettraux points out in this article, by giving a fair trial to the Guantánamo detainees, the United States would reassert its core values and bring the nation back within the tradition of law and justice that it so forcefully defended during WWII and the subsequent Nuremberg trials. In the same way, the principle of law and justice forms the backbone of the campaign for a trial against the pharmaceutical drug cartel. “A Nuremberg for the Pharma Cartel” would ensure that the fraudulent business model of the pharmaceutical drug cartel is finally ended and that the health and interests of six billion people and all future generations would be placed above those of the special interests behind the business with disease. To learn what you can do to help bring about such a trial, click here. To send your personal testimony, click here.
August 18, 2009
US military deaths in Iraq war at 4,332
As of Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009, at least 4,332 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)
Comment: Tragic and unnecessary though they are, the number of military deaths in the Iraq war are dwarfed by the number of civilians who have lost their lives as a result of the George Bush/Tony Blair-led invasion. Even by September 2007, estimates suggested that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens had been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.
August 10, 2009
Chemical companies, US authorities knew dangers of Agent Orange
Those responsible for exposing Vietnamese citizens and US troops to toxic defoliants kept silent about known health implications, a review of documents finds. US chemical companies that made Agent Orange and the government and military authorities who ordered its spraying on Vietnam knew the human health toll it could take, according to official and unofficial documents detailing the history of the deadly defoliant. A review of the documents related to the use of Agent Orange – a dioxin-laden herbicide – in Vietnam, including decades-old declassified papers from the companies that manufactured it and the government and military that used it, provides compelling evidence that those in charge also concealed evidence of the devastating effects it could have on people.
Read article in the Thanh Nien Daily (Vietnam)
July 28, 2009
Trade liberalization linked to obesity in Central America
Since trade liberalization between Central and North America, imports and availability of processed, high-fat and high-sugar foods have increased dramatically. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Globalization and Health link this influx of American junk food to a 'nutrition transition' in Central American countries, with a growing burden diet-related chronic disease.
Read article at physorg.com
July 19, 2009
Democracy hangs by a thread in Honduras
The right-wing coup d'état is faltering, but its supporters have powerful friends in Washington.
The international group of right-wingers who staged the coup d'état against the democratic government of Honduras on 28 June are watching their plot fast unravel. There is stiffening international opposition to their protégé, Roberto Micheletti, who, in his capacity as President of Congress, ordered President Manuel Zelaya to be expelled from the country by plane in his pyjamas.
Read article in the Independent (UK)
Comment: President Zelaya had undertaken a number of progressive reforms during his presidency. Of these reforms, his measures against the pharma industry were arguably the most significant. Pharmaceutical multinationals control eighty percent of all drugs sold in Honduras, all of them imported at high cost to its national health service. To the intense anger of these drug makers, Zelaya had signed an agreement with Venezuela and Cuba to import cheap generic versions of the most commonly used drugs. Significantly, therefore, financial backing for the coup against Zelaya has been identified by some as coming from the pharmaceutical industry.
July 19, 2009
Calls for probe into Dr. Kelly's 'suicide'
A US Air Force linguist joins a host of doctors in demanding a new probe into the mysterious death of a British scientist and weapons expert who opposed the Iraq war. The controversy surrounding Dr. David Kelly's death was first rekindled following a Daily Express report in June that revealed the expert was in the middle of writing a book containing damaging government secrets on the Iraq war as well as biological warfare in apartheid South Africa. The linguist, Mai Pederson, who was part of Kelly's eapons inspection team in Iraq, has called on the Attorney General for England, Wales and Northern Ireland to carry out an 'independent' review of the case, reported the Mail on Sunday.
Read article on the Press TV website (Iran)
July 10, 2009
Medvedev given first coin of future supranational currency at G8
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday he had been given an example coin of a possible global currency at the G8 summit in Italy, adding that all aspects of reserve currencies were under discussion. "We are discussing both the use of other national currencies, including the ruble, as a reserve currency, as well as supranational currencies," the Russian leader said at a news conference following the G8 summit. Medvedev showed reporters an example of a coin of a supranational currency, which he called a "united future world currency."
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
July 5, 2009
Kelly’s Book Of Secrets
Weapons inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his mysterious death. He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the British and American invasion. He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets. Following his death, his computers were seized and it is still not known if any rough draft was discovered by investigators and, if so, what happened to the material. Dr Kelly was also intending to lift the lid on a potentially bigger scandal, his own secret dealings in germ warfare with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Read article in the Daily Express (UK)
July 1, 2009
Russia, U.S. arms reduction deal closer than expected – diplomat
Russia and the United States have made more significant progress in the preparation of a new strategic arms reduction treaty than the sides expected, a Russian deputy foreign minister said on Wednesday. "Progress is more significant than we expected when we started the talks on the issue," Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview with RIA Novosti prior to the visit of U.S. President Barack Obama to Russia on July 6-8. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Obama agreed in April to launch discussions on a new agreement to replace the START 1 treaty, which expires in December.
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
June 21, 2009
Tony Blair pushed Gordon Brown to hold Iraq war inquiry in private
• Former PM feared facing 'show trial'
• Leak reveals plan to provoke invasion
Tony Blair urged Gordon Brown to hold the independent inquiry into the Iraq war in secret because he feared that he would be subjected to a "show trial" if it were opened to the public, the Observer can reveal. The revelation that the former prime minister - who led Britain to war in March 2003 - had intervened will fuel the anger of MPs, peers, military leaders and former civil servants, who were appalled by Brown's decision last week to order the investigation to be conducted behind closed doors. Blair, who resisted pressure for a full public inquiry while he was prime minister, appears to have taken a deliberate decision not to express his view in person to Brown because he feared it might leak out. Instead, messages on the issue were relayed through others to Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, who conveyed them to the prime minister in the days leading up to the announcement of the inquiry last week.
Read article in the Observer (UK)
Comment: With more than one million Iraqi citizens having been murdered since the American and British-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, reports suggest Blair is desperate to avoid the inquiry being held in public as it would damage his ambitions of becoming EU president.
June 21, 2009
Confidential memo reveals US plan to provoke an invasion of Iraq
A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein. The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action. Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.
Read article in the Observer (UK)
Comment: This year, the Dutch government launched its own inquiry into its support for the war; significantly, this will see all the intelligence shared with the Dutch intelligence services by the UK intelligence services. The Dutch inquiry intends to publish its report in November – thus suggesting that confidential information about the role played by the UK and the US could become public before the results of the UK inquiry are published next year.
June 15, 2009
Outcry over Government's decision to hold Iraq war inquiry in secret
Gordon Brown ran into fresh trouble today as he announced that the long-awaited Iraq war inquiry would be held in secret.
Read article in The Times (UK)
Comment: A study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB), suggests that more than one million Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the U.S. and U.K invasion in 2003. As such, we can only conclude that by deciding to hold this inquiry in private, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is attempting to cover up evidence that the perpetrators of this war are guilty of war crimes.
June 12, 2009
Venezuela Orders End to Coca-Cola Zero Production
On Wednesday the Venezuelan Ministry for Health ordered the Coca-Cola Company to remove its product Coca-Cola Zero from sale for containing a cancerous ingredient, sodium cyclamate, an ingredient not included in the US version of the drink. Jesus Mantilla, the health minister, said, "The product should stop circulating in order to protect the health of Venezuelans." He said the product contains sodium cyclamate, which in large amounts can be harmful, and then announced that the product should be recalled, destroyed, and not produced anymore.
Read article at venezuelanalysis.com
June 8, 2009
US denies N Korea invasion plans
The US has no plans to invade North Korea or topple the country's government by force, the Obama administration's top disarmament envoy has said. The comments from Stephen Bosworth came as North Korea warned it would use its nuclear weapons in a "merciless offensive". Speaking in New York on Tuesday, Bosworth rejected the North's claim to be responding to a threat or hostile policy by the US as "simply groundless". He added that "negotiations and dialogue are the best means to achieve the goal of complete and verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula."
Read article at aljazeera.net
June 3, 2009
Cheney's defense of his co-presidency
As the nation watches in bemused disbelief, former Vice President Dick Cheney stridently defends the Bush administration's national security record, particularly as that record involves the euphemistic "harsh interrogation" of prisoners of war from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the question inevitably arises: Why does he feel compelled to do his? Isn't there an unwritten rule that former presidents and vice presidents keep their criticisms to hemselves and let the new administration develop its own policies? They tend to stay out of politics after leaving office, using their time to write memoirs and build a financial cushion on the well-heeled speaking circuit. Cheney is breaking the code. But it's different for Cheney. It's important to keep in mind that the policies in question are his policies. They are not Bush policies; they are Cheney-developed and Cheney-orchestrated. If this premise was ever in any doubt, Cheney's behavior confirms it.
Read article in the San Francisco Chronicle (USA)
May 26, 2009
Shell's N.Y. trial over Nigerian deaths delayed
NEW YORK - A civil trial over the alleged involvement of giant oil producer Royal Dutch Shell Plc in the executions of protesters in Nigeria in the 1990s has been delayed until next week, a court clerk said on Tuesday.
Read news report at reuters.com
Comment: The lawsuit brought against Shell alleges that it was complicit in the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a well-known activist, who, along with other protestors, had been campaigning against ecological damage caused by oil extraction. Saro-Wiwa and eight other campaigners were executed by hanging in November 1995 following their conviction by military tribunal on what were widely seen as trumped-up charges.
May 6, 2009
Bush Officials Try to Alter Ethics Report
Focus Is Approval of Harsh Interrogations
Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)
May 5, 2009
Russia's Medvedev welcomes new U.S. stance on missile defense
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed on Tuesday the readiness of the new U.S. administration to take on board Moscow's objections to the deployment of a U.S. missile shield in Central Europe. Moscow considers Washington's plans to deploy a tracking radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland to be a threat to Russian security. The United States has argued the facilities are necessary to guard against the threat of missile attacks from states such as Iran. "I am pleased that our American partners are showing willingness to discuss this issue rather than take a stubborn stance and deploy [the shield] no matter what," Medvedev said at a meeting with A Just Russia party activists.
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
April 24, 2009
Russia, U.S. to hold full-scale arms reduction talks in mid-May
Russian-U.S. negotiations on a new strategic arms reduction treaty will take place in May in Washington, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said on Friday. The Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (START 1), signed in 1991, obliges Russia and the United States to reduce nuclear warheads to 6,000 and their delivery vehicles to 1,600 each. The treaty expires on December 5 this year. "The first round of full-scale negotiations between Russia and the United States on a [new] strategic arms reduction treaty will be held in mid-May in Washington," said Anatoly Antonov, director of the Foreign Ministry's department for security and disarmament, who led the Russian delegation at the U.S. Embassy in Rome earlier on Friday.
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
April 22, 2009
In the Spirit of Openness
When he was vice president, Dick Cheney never acknowledged the public’s right to know anything. Now, suddenly, he has the full disclosure bug. He told Fox News this week that President Obama’s decision to release memos written by the Bush Justice Department authorizing the abuse and torture of detainees inspired him to ask the Central Intelligence Agency to release transcripts of those interrogations. Doing so, he said, would show the world how much valuable intelligence was obtained by subjecting detainees to forced nudity, prolonged sleep deprivation, slamming against walls, extremes of heat and cold and the near-drowning known as waterboarding. Mr. Cheney was not being entirely honest (he made the request last month), and his logic is confounding.
Read Editorial in the New York Times (USA)
April 19, 2009
Shock Corridor!!
Did you know that in America, the land of human rights, you can legally be given repeated electric shock treatments, for no reason, for years and years, and no one can help prevent that from happening? Ray Sandford, 54, lives in a group home in Minneapolis. He has not been charged with any crime, and his mental problems subsided long ago. However, against his will, Ray has received over 40 court ordered shock treatments.
Read blog entry at pharmalittle.blogspot.com
April 18, 2009
The Torturers’ Manifesto
To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity. Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners. In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
April 17, 2009
Moscow irked by NATO exercises in Georgia
NATO's decision to hold exercises in Georgia next month threatens to complicate ties with Russia, the Russian president said on Friday. The Cooperative Longbow 09/Cooperative Lancer 09 command-and-staff exercise, led by the Western military bloc, will be held from May 6 through June 1, and will not feature light or heavy weaponry. "Such decisions are disappointing and do nothing to help restore full-level contacts between the Russian Federation and NATO," Dmitry Medvedev said.
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
April 17, 2009
Obama Says U.S. Will Pursue Thaw With Cuba
President Obama, seeking to thaw long-frozen relations with Cuba, told a gathering of Western Hemisphere leaders on Friday that “the United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba,” and that he was willing to have his administration engage the Castro government on a wide array of issues. Mr. Obama’s remarks, during the opening ceremony at the Summit of the Americas, are the clearest signal in decades that the United States is willing to change direction in its dealings with Cuba.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
April 15, 2009
Pentagon Closes Office Accused of Issuing Propaganda Under Bush
WASHINGTON — A Pentagon office responsible for coordinating Defense Department information campaigns overseas has been abolished in an effort by the Obama administration to distance itself from past practices that some military officers called propaganda, senior officials said Wednesday. Military and civilian critics said the office, the Defense Department office for support to public diplomacy, overstepped its mandate during the final years of the Bush administration by trying to organize information operations that violated Pentagon guidelines for accuracy and transparency.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
April 15, 2009
Officials Say U.S. Wiretaps Exceeded Law
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
April 8, 2009
Medically Assisted Torture
There was a great deal to be troubled by in a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross documenting the kinds of torture and abuse inflicted on terrorism suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency. One disturbing footnote is that medical personnel were deeply involved in facilitating the abuses, which were intended to coerce suspects into providing intelligence.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
April 8, 2009
U.S. lawmakers meet with Fidel Castro
HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist leader of Cuba, met with visiting members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday, a day after his brother, Raul, who succeeded him as president, did the same, according to a U.S. official in Havana. The meeting with Fidel Castro, 82, comes amid speculation that the United States is considering a shift in relations with the Communist nation that sits just 90 miles from the Florida Keys. Upon returning to the United States, members of the caucus said it's time to consider an end to the trade embargo and other diplomatic restrictions placed on Cuba for the past five decades.
Read article at cnn.com
April 4, 2009
Obama to Loosen Restrictions on Policy With Cuba
President Obama plans to abandon longstanding restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba, an administration official said Saturday, fulfilling a campaign promise in a pivotal swing state and signaling a possible warming of relations with the Castro government. The White House is expected to announce the action before Mr. Obama travels to Trinidad and Tobago for a meeting on April 17 of Latin American and Caribbean leaders. The House and Senate are considering legislation that would go even further than the administration and allow all Americans unlimited travel to Cuba.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
March 23, 2009
Everyone Gets a Bonus from Obama's Net Neutrality Plan
Buried deep in President Barack Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is a line that should bring a smile to your face -- and a scowl to phone and cable industry lobbyists. It requires that billions of dollars directed to connect more Americans to broadband be spent on services that meet "nondiscrimination and network interconnection obligations." What this really means is the good guys have won one battle in the fight for an open Internet. According to Obama's plan, government must now require that the $4.7 billion in federal grants for high-speed services be spent the right way: building networks that abide by Net Neutrality. In other words, this money -- your money -- cannot be used by powerful companies like AT&T and Comcast to implement plans to "manage," filter or re-route you whenever you traverse the Web.
Read article on The Huffington Post website (USA)
Comment: To learn more about Net Neutrality, visit the savetheinternet.com website.
March 23, 2009
China ready to discuss new reserve currency at G20 summit
China is ready to discuss Russia's proposal of a new global reserve currency as an alternative to the U.S. dollar at the G20 summit in London, a vice governor of the country's Central Bank said on Monday. Russia earlier submitted a proposal to the G20 summit which could see the IMF examining possibilities for creating a supra-national reserve currency, and also forcing national banks and international financial institutions to diversify their foreign currency reserves.
Read article on the RIA Novosti website (Russia)
February 18, 2009
Blair’s reward for having the ‘right’ foreign policy
So, Tony Blair has been awarded a $1m prize for "his exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict". Some will argue that Blair should be on trial for war crimes, not receiving prizes. Others will say that the award, made by the Dan David Foundation of Tel Aviv, is a huge own goal for Israel because it sinks the country's international standing even lower after its actions in Gaza. But they are missing the point. The award - along with many of the other riches which have come Blair's way since he left Downing Street - is the payback for doing 'the right thing' by way of the US and Israel while he was in office.
Read article by Neil Clark on the First Post magazine website (UK)
February 15, 2009
54.36 percent of voters endorse Chávez's endless reelection
The chair of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, Sunday announced that 54.36 percent of voters (6,003,594 people) endorsed President Hugo Chávez's proposal to amend the Constitution in order to establish endless reelection of all elected officials, while 45.63 percent of Venezuelans (5,040,082 people) rejected the amendment.
Read article at eluniversal.com (Venezuela)
Comment: The result of the vote lifts limits on terms in office for elected officials and allows President Chavez to stand for re-election. Chavez has said he needs to stay in office beyond the end of his second term in 2012 to secure Venezuela's socialist revolution.
February 7, 2009
Biden Signals U.S. Is Open to Russia Missile Deal
MUNICH — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Saturday that the United States will pursue a missile defense plan that has angered the Kremlin, but he also left open the possibility of compromise on the issue and struck a more conciliatory tone than the Bush administration on relations with Russia. “It is time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia,” Mr. Biden said in a speech at a security conference here attended by global leaders and diplomats.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
January 30, 2009
N. Korea revives Cold War tensions with border threats
With threats to scrap a fundamental accord safeguarding against inter-Korean military clashes, North Korea revived Cold War era tensions on Friday, sending an ultimatum to Seoul's government: Withdraw your hard-line policy or face a possible clash. The warning comes as the new U.S. administration is reviewing policy on North Korea, a timing that appeared to be also an attempt to draw Washington's attention to stalled nuclear negotiations, analysts said. Whether Pyongyang will immediately try a military provocation is uncertain, but analysts cautioned Seoul to be on full alert along a volatile inter-Korean sea border where bloody skirmishes occurred in 1999 and 2002.
Read article on the Yonhap news agency website (South Korea)
January 29, 2009
Rules of the Game
President George W. Bush, and his aides, could hardly wait to get rid of all those tiresome arms-control treaties when they took office. They tore up the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty to make way for a still largely pie-in-the-sky missile defense system. They opposed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and never made a serious effort to win a ban on the production of fissile material (the core of a nuclear weapon). Mr. Bush grudgingly signed his one and only arms-reduction treaty with the Russians in 2002. That means that today — 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall — the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons, with thousands ready to launch within minutes.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
January 23, 2009
President Obama closing Guantanamo Bay within year
Forbids torture, vows to foster peace in Mideast
On his second day in office, President Barack Obama moved quickly yesterday to reshape U.S. national-security policy, ordering the Guantanamo Bay prison camp closed within a year, forbidding the harshest treatment of terror suspects and vowing a strong focus on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Read article in the Boston Herald (USA)
January 22, 2009
Obama overturns Bush order on access to White House records
President Barack Obama began dismantling the Bush legacy Wednesday, using his first full day to overturn an order that let ex-presidents seal their papers forever. It was one of a number of big and small steps by the new president that, taken together, amounted to a slashing denunciation of his predecessor – from an order halting military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to one meant to make unclassified records more readily available to the public. "It is a new day," said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History, one of scores of groups that had complained for years about the Bush order regarding White House records. "This ... makes it much more difficult for a former president to shape his legacy."
Read article in the Dallas Morning News (USA)
January 21, 2009
On Day One, Obama Sets a New Tone
President Obama moved swiftly on Wednesday to impose new rules on government transparency and ethics, using his first full day in office to freeze the salaries of his senior aides, mandate new limits on lobbyists and demand that the government disclose more information. Mr. Obama called the moves, which overturned two policies of his predecessor, “a clean break from business as usual.” Coupled with Tuesday’s Inaugural Address, which repudiated the Bush administration’s decisions on everything from science policy to fighting terrorism, the actions were another sign of the new president’s effort to emphasize an across-the-board shift in priorities, values and tone.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
January 15, 2009
Forgive and Forget?
Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power. Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights.
Read opinion article by Paul Krugman in the New York Times (USA)
January 14, 2009
Military Planners, in Nod to Obama, Are Preparing for a Faster Iraq Withdrawal
Military commanders are drawing up plans for a faster withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in anticipation that President-elect Barack Obama will reject current proposals as too slow, Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
January 13, 2009
Bush gives Blair highest US civilian honour
Former prime minister receives presidential medal of freedom for 'efforts to promote democracy and peace abroad'
George Bush presented Tony Blair with the presidential medal of freedom, the highest honour awarded to civilians in the United States, at a ceremony at the White House today. The former prime minister received the medal for "efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad", the White House said.
Read article in The Guardian (UK)
Comment: Together with George Bush, Blair has been responsible for the deaths of more than one million people in Iraq. As such, rather than being given a medal, he should be put on trial for war crimes.
January 9, 2009
Who Owns White House History?
It’s time to remind President Bush as he leaves office that his White House records are not his personal property. They belong to the nation. The Presidential Records Act made that the law of the land after the Watergate scandal. Showing disturbing forethought, Mr. Bush signed an executive order in his first year, effectively decreeing that a sitting or former president can withhold his papers indefinitely. Congress is moving to strike down the Bush order. The House has overwhelmingly approved a corrective measure that has a good chance in the Senate. If there’s any delay, we urge President-elect Barack Obama to issue his own executive order restoring the Presidential Records Act as soon as he enters the White House.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)
January 7, 2009
China Losing Taste for Debt From the U.S.
China has bought more than $1 trillion of American debt, but as the global downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more of its money at home, a move that could have painful effects for American borrowers.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
January 3, 2009
Exit, Stonewalling
True to its mania for secrecy, the Bush administration is leaving behind vast gaps in the most sensitive White House e-mail records, and with lawyers and public interest groups in hot pursuit of information that deserves to be part of the permanent historical record. E-mail messages that have gone suspiciously missing are estimated to number in the millions. These could illuminate some of the administration’s darker moments, including the lead-up to the Iraq war, when intelligence was distorted, the destruction of videotapes of C.I.A. torture interrogations, and the vindictive outing of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame Wilson. The deep-sixed history also includes improper business conducted by more than 50 White House appointees via e-mail at the Republican Party headquarters. Historians and archivists are suing the administration.
Read editorial in the New York Times (USA)