The Great Global Warming Swindle
In this documentary by Martin Durkin, shortlisted for the “Best Documentary Award” at the 2008 Broadcast Awards, scientists and commentators argue that CO2 produced by human activity is not the main cause of climate change:
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 1 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 2 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 3 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 4 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 5 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 6 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 7 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 8 of 9
The Great Global Warming Swindle, part 9 of 9 (credits)
War-Crimes and their Victims
War Crimes Caught on Video
Abu Ghraib
Watch also:
Lifting the Hood – Iraq
on youtube (26 min)
The Road to Guantanamo (Trailer)
Ex-Guantanamo Muslim chaplain speaks out
Former Guantanamo detainee returns home – 15-Dec-07
Israeli War Crimes & Chemical Weapons
Former pilot of the Israel’s air force accuses Israel of war-crimes, using chemical weapons against the people of Gaza
Britain’s Foreign Office wimps surrender to Israeli thugs
By Stuart Littlewood – 17 December 2009
The British public must be wondering what has happened to the nation’s backbone – and its moral compass – when they see news items like these.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday apologized to MK [Member of the Knesset] Tzipi Livni and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for the arrest warrant issued against Livni in London earlier this week. He also promised Lieberman to begin working immediately to change the UK laws that enable the issue of arrest warrants against Israeli officials accused of war crimes.
Who does this foreign secretary think he is, apologizing in our name for the operation of British law, especially when the warrant was issued to answer well-founded charges of war crimes?
Livni claims it was not personal. “It’s about the entire State of Israel and our ability to go on working together against common threats.”
What common threats? We have nothing in common. The threats Israel faces are caused by its racist expansion, land theft, general lawlessness and hateful attitude towards its neighbours, and by the lethal threat Israel itself presents to others in the region. Our government puts us in harm’s way by associating so closely with the regime and continually taking its side.
As for former night club bouncer Lieberman, a deranged loudmouth who lives in an illegal Jewish settlement in the Palestinian West Bank and thrives on extremist language, since when did he merit a British apology?
Miliband called the warrant intolerable and said he had spoken to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Justice Minister Jack Straw to find an urgent solution. Prosor [the Israeli ambassador in London] chastised the British secretary saying it was time the British government took action.
Prosor “chastised” a Minister of the Crown and demanded a change to our laws? Your own laws need changing more than ours, Prosor.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office also released a statement: “We will not agree to a situation in which [former Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defence Minister] Ehud Barak and [opposition leader and former Foreign Minister] Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the bench. We utterly reject the absurdity that is happening in Britain.”
Get your tanks off Palestine’s lawn, Netanyahu, and your squatters off Palestinian land before you criticize anyone else.
The Israelis’ arrogance is breath-taking. Livni would gladly repeat the atrocities in Gaza last December-January. Her office issued a statement saying she was proud of Operation Cast Lead. And speaking at a conference at Tel Aviv’s Institute for Security Studies, she said: ”I would today take the same decisions.”
Leave the law on arrest warrants alone
Miliband’s grovelling, especially to the Lieberman and Livni, is enough to make any red-blooded UK citizen cringe with shame. Few of us, surely, would touch these people with a barge-pole.
This abandonment of principle and descent into the abyss is explained in the Foreign Office statement: “The UK is determined to be a strategic partner of Israel.”
Why? I have always wanted to know how this serves our best interests.
The law on arrest warrants, of course, should be left undisturbed. It’s all quite simple. If Israel behaved in a civilized manner there would be no need for them.
This diplomatic ruckus helps us to see clearly the lunacy of stacking the British Foreign Office with Israel-lovers. There’s Miliband, of course, with his ethnic links. He voted enthusiastically for the Iraq war and against an investigation.
Then there’s our minister in charge of Middle East affairs, Ivan Lewis. He’s a former vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel. He too voted for the Iraq war and against any investigation. In January, with the sickening stench of Israel’s blitzkrieg on Gaza in the world’s nostrils, Lewis told a rally in Manchester: “This community stands shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel in the good and the bad times. We do not apply double standards to Israel…”
The trouble is, his kind don’t apply any standards at all.
In July, with the blood of 1,400 dead Gazans (including 320 children and 109 women) on the hands of the Zionist devils, and with thousands more horribly maimed, the insensitive Lewis told the House of Commons: “Israel is a close ally of the UK and we have regular warm and productive exchanges at all levels.”
Lewis is also chief executive of the Manchester Jewish Federation and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. Along with Miliband, he is the face of British diplomacy in the explosive Middle East.
Add to the team Miliband’s Principal Private Secretary, Matthew Gould, just promoted as Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel with effect from next year. Gould told Haaretz that he and his wife will keep a Jewish household and bring up their kids in the Jewish tradition.
The fact that I’m Jewish means I will come with a particular insight and sympathy and understanding, because the story of my family is in certain respects the story of the people of the State of Israel. But fundamentally I’m going as the British ambassador, to pursue British policies and advance British interests.
That’s difficult to believe, and some will point to a hopeless conflict of interests not only for Gould but also Miliband, Lewis and others who feel an affinity with the appalling “story” of Israel.
Presiding over all this is our disaster-prone prime minister, Gordon Brown, a Zionist sympathizer and patron of the Jewish National Fund, which is an organization set up to facilitate the confiscation and development of illegally occupied Palestinian lands.
As if to illustrate just how far Britain will go to appease Israel’s “Criminal Tendency”, the Jewish Chronicle reported a few days ago how the Foreign Office stamped on an initiative by the Department for Communities and Local Government to reassure the Muslim community that the British government did not support Israel’s actions in Gaza. Foreign Office officials considered it pandering to the Muslim community’s prejudices about Israel, especially when it was discovered that some Muslim leaders around the country wanted the government to recognize Hamas’s right to armed resistance. Tut-tut. Oh dear, no. Everybody knows that only Israel is entitled to self-defence. And Britain panders only to Israel.
British Jewish MP Sir Gerald Kaufman recently threw a bucket of cold water over this obscene Anglo-Israeli love-in by branding the Israeli government a gang of amoral thugs. These are the undesirables Miliband wants to accommodate with a change in the law. Well, I doubt if the British public would welcome the idea of such vile people, who think nothing of burning women and children to the bone with white phosphorus, coming and going as they please in our capital city.
These same thugs won’t even allow thousands of Palestinian students like Berlanty Azzam the freedom to travel within their own homeland to attend university and finish their degree.
Mr Miliband, your cruel friends are not welcome here.
Sanctioning Iran a Dangerous, Illegal Move
By Rep. Ron Paul, December 16, 2009
Before the United States House of Representatives, statement opposing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act
I rise in strongest opposition to this new round of sanctions on Iran, which is another significant step toward a U.S. war on that country. I find it shocking that legislation this serious and consequential is brought up in such a cavalier manner. Suspending the normal rules of the House to pass legislation is a process generally reserved for “non-controversial” business such as the naming of post offices. Are we to believe that this House takes matters of war and peace as lightly as naming post offices?
This legislation seeks to bar from doing business in the United States any foreign entity that sells refined petroleum to Iran or otherwise enhances Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum such as financing, brokering, underwriting, or providing ships for such. Such sanctions also apply to any entity that provides goods or services that enhance Iran’s ability to maintain or expand its domestic production of refined petroleum. This casts the sanctions net worldwide, with enormous international economic implications. Recently, the Financial Times reported that, “[i]n recent months, Chinese companies have greatly expanded their presence in Iran’s oil sector. In the coming months, Sinopec, the state-owned Chinese oil company, is scheduled to complete the expansion of the Tabriz and Shazand refineries – adding 3.3 million gallons of gasoline per day.”
Are we to conclude, with this in mind, that China or its major state-owned corporations will be forbidden by this legislation from doing business with the United States? What of our other trading partners who currently do business in Iran’s petroleum sector or insure those who do so? Has anyone seen an estimate of how this sanctions act will affect the U.S. economy if it is actually enforced?
As we have learned with U.S. sanctions on Iraq, and indeed with U.S. sanctions on Cuba and elsewhere, it is citizens rather than governments who suffer most. The purpose of these sanctions is to change the regime in Iran, but past practice has demonstrated time and again that sanctions only strengthen regimes they target and marginalize any opposition. As would be the case were we in the U.S. targeted for regime change by a foreign government, people in Iran will tend to put aside political and other differences to oppose that threatening external force. Thus this legislation will likely serve to strengthen the popularity of the current Iranian government. Any opposition continuing to function in Iran would be seen as operating in concert with the foreign entity seeking to overthrow the regime.
This legislation seeks to bring Iran in line with international demands regarding its nuclear materials enrichment programs, but what is ironic is that Section 2 of HR 2194 itself violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which both the United States and Iran are signatories. This section states that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States … to prevent Iran from achieving the capability to make nuclear weapons, including by supporting international diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s uranium enrichment program.” Article V of the NPT states clearly that, “[n]othing in this treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this treaty.” As Iran has never been found in violation of the NPT – has never been found to have diverted nuclear materials for non-peaceful purposes – this legislation seeking to deny Iran the right to enrichment even for peaceful purposes itself violates the NPT.
Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that many of my colleagues opposing war on Iran will vote in favor of this legislation, seeing it as a step short of war to bring Iran into line with U.S. demands. I would remind them that sanctions and the blockades that are required to enforce them are themselves acts of war according to international law. I urge my colleagues to reject this saber-rattling but ultimately counterproductive legislation.
Guantanamo Prisoners Not ”Persons”
By William Fisher
NEW YORK, Dec 15 (IPS) – In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that ”torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use”.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC had ruled that government officials were immune from suit because at that time it was unclear whether abusing prisoners at Guantanamo was illegal.
Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.
The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – a statute that applies by its terms to all ”persons” – did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.
The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that ”torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants”.
Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.
The circuit court ruled that ”torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants”.
That opinion was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson, who was appointed to the federal circuit court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 and to the Appeals Court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush.
The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to Britain in 2004 with no charges ever having been filed against them.
Eric Lewis, lead attorney for the detainees, said, ”It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision. The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not.”
”The lower court found that torture is all in a days’ work for the Secretary of Defense and senior generals,” he added. ”That violates the president’s stated policy, our treaty obligations and universal legal norms. Yet the Obama administration, in its rush to protect executive power, lost its moral compass and persuaded the Supreme Court to avoid a central moral challenge. Today our standing in the world has suffered a further great loss.”
Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Attorney Shayana Kadidal, co-counsel on the case, told IPS, ”In many ways the opinion the Supreme Court left standing today is worse when one gets past the bottom line û no accountability for torture and religious abuse û and digs into the legal reasoning.”
”One set of claims are dismissed because torture is said to be a foreseeable consequence of military detention,” he said. ”How will the parents of our troops captured in future foreign wars react to that?”
”Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not ‘persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow,” he added.
The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves, were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States… Full article
Israel bans tourists from key West Bank bus line
December 16, 2009
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Just days before Bethlehem’s busiest tourist season begins, Israeli authorities implemented a ban on foreign-passport holders traveling to Jerusalem on Palestinian buses.
On 11 December, Bethlehem tourists began to report being pulled off line 21, a route used predominantly by holders of East Jerusalem residency cards, as they stopped for inspection at the Jerusalem tunnel entrance into Israel.
For years, foreign-passport holders using public transportation could choose between the tunnel bus, which departs near Beit Jala, or Israel’s military checkpoint 300, known colloquially as Gilo or Rachel’s Tomb.
A high-ranking Israeli security official confirmed the policy change on Monday. “This issue is being resolved presently. Everything will be completed in a day or so, possibly even today,” the official said, confirming that, for now, redirecting foreign-passport holders from the tunnel to checkpoint 300 is a matter of policy.
Palestinian Authority security sources said the phenomenon follows a unilateral decision by Israeli authorities made months ago to ban foreigners from the route.
It was not clear, however, who ordered the changes, or why. Israeli army sources insisted they had nothing to do with the plan, but officials in the country’s Border Police, the paramilitary branch of the Israeli Police, said such orders could only have come from the military.
“The [army] commander makes the policy; we just implement it,” said a border guard official who insisted on anonymity. “If the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] says we can’t allow foreign people – it’s a policy.”
A PA police spokesman said he was aware of the issue but refused further comment, referring inquiries to the District Coordination Office (DCO), the local arm of Israel’s non-military, civil administration in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“We’ve been aware of the plan for three, maybe four months; I don’t know why they’d implement it now,” said a Palestinian who works with the DCO. Israel never provided any official or written explanation, he added, nor were local officials given a say in the matter.
Despite numerous inquiries this week to the Israeli military, Border Police, Civil Administration, and national police, no official was ever willing to offer an on-the-record explanation for the ban.
‘Rude’ and ‘threatening’ treatment
Among the first reports Ma’an received about the issue was from an American music teacher accessing Jerusalem to teach students of a local conservatory. She, along with three others, were told they could not re-board the bus after it was checked by soldiers. “They saw the foreigners and herded us to the side,” said 24-year-old Katie Rowold, a US citizen held up on Friday. “Then everyone got back on the bus except for us. … We had to get a service taxi to the walk-through checkpoint [300].”
Sandra Baille, a 64-year-old Canadian citizen, was on a bus with some luggage waiting to have her passport checked by soldiers. As custom generally allows women with children or bags, the sick, or the elderly to remain on the bus during inspections, Baille was surprised when a guard ordered her off the vehicle. “A young Israeli soldier with a mask on his face up to his nose boarded the bus and indicated to me with his arm to get off,” she explained. “I held out my passport so he could see I was an international, but he threw his arm [pointing] to the side. He didn’t say a word, he just pointed.”
Outside the bus, Baille found herself with a group of foreign citizens also waiting at the side of the road. When they asked what was going on, “we were told ‘new rules, new rules,'” Baille said. She was ordered to take her luggage, for a planned trip to northern Israel, Nazareth and the Galilee, off the bus, and watched Palestinian passengers get back on board. She waited again while the driver argued with guards, and heard the bus ordered to leave without the five foreigners. “We were left to walk up the hill” back to Beit Jala, she said.
Others explained how they had to flag down a cab willing to enter a PA area and drive back inside Bethlehem to cross through the Gilo checkpoint there, before ultimately catching another Palestinian bus on the other side of the cement wall. One international who asked not to be named described being left helpless on the side of the busy highway, while Israeli-plated cars zoomed past. “Luckily there was a taxi sitting there. I don’t know what we would have done.”
Baille, the Canadian national, described the guards’ treatment as rude, saying she could not understand what reason Israel would have to target tourists. “Its ironic,” she added. “All over Canada there are signs saying ‘Welcome to Israel,’ but in the end they wouldn’t let us in.” Canada was the test country for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “Brand Israel” campaign.
Another group of six internationals – four Americans, a Canadian and German national – were warned by the driver of a 21 bus on Saturday that foreigners were no longer being permitted to travel via the tunnel. They said the driver eventually let them on, but that they were indeed refused passage through the checkpoint.
Bad news for Christmas
Reports of internationals being pulled off buses continued throughout the week, and several have noted longer lines at the Gilo checkpoint, making it increasingly difficult to access Jerusalem from Bethlehem.
However, the ban appears to apply only to Palestinian buses in the West Bank. Foreign nationals traveling on Israel’s Egged service, which connects the country’s settlements throughout the occupied territories, including in Bethlehem, into Israel, reported no problems at the tunnel checkpoint. Internationals in private cars were similarly unaffected.
It was not clear if the initiative to limit foreigners’ movement in the region was linked to prior passport restrictions. Mirroring the treatment received by Palestinians already living under the four-decade occupation, similar restrictions on foreigners first came to light in September when Israel began issuing visas that permit travel only in PA-controlled areas.
Israel, meanwhile, has sought to reassure Palestinian Christian leaders that it would facilitate the movement of congregants and tourists as Christmas approaches. Security authorities recently invited the leaders of local churches to a meeting on a military base, where army officials promised to help ease closures, for example, by granting permits for Christians from Gaza to visit Bethlehem for the holiday.
Tens of thousands of foreign-passport holders enter Bethlehem every Christmas to celebrate along with the local Palestinian population, attending mass at the Nativity Church and other annual festivities. Some 60,000 internationals made the pilgrimage in 2008.
The Copenhagen Conundrum
By ROBERT BRYCE
December 16, 2009
Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg has made famous the phrase “Copenhagen Consensus” which posits that money aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions would be better spent addressing other health and welfare challenges, like preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS.
Well, now that thousands of politicians and environmentalists are meeting in Copenhagen to discuss ways to achieve drastic cuts in global carbon dioxide emissions, it’s time to recognize a new term: the Copenhagen Conundrum. The conundrum is obvious: given that billions of people are still living in dire energy poverty, how can world leaders expect any significant reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions, particularly when there are no viable substitutes for hydrocarbons, which now provide 88% of the world’s primary energy?
The Copenhagen Conundrum can easily be understood by considering these two facts: 22% of the world’s population doesn’t have electricity, and nearly 40% still relies on traditional biomass – straw, wood, or dung – for their cooking needs.
The issues of energy poverty and population are closely intertwined. And that connection can be seen by looking at the world’s six most populous countries. They are, in descending order of population: China, India, the US, Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan. The energy disparity among the residents of these countries is stark. The US, with about 300 million residents, consumes almost as much energy as the other five most-populous countries – let’s call them the Big Five — combined. The total population of the Big Five – Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan – is about 3 billion, or about 10 times that of the US. And yet the average resident of the Big Five lives in energy poverty. The 3 billion residents of the Big Five consume, on average, about 0.66 gallons of oil equivalent per day, or about one-tenth as much energy as the average American.
Per-Capita Energy Use In the Six Most-Populous Countries,
In Gallons of Oil Equivalent Per Day
China: 1.26
India: 0.31
US: 6.32
Brazil: 0.97
Indonesia: 0.44
Pakistan: 0.32
Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2009.
A glance at those numbers shows why the leaders of developing countries are so reluctant to agree to any kind of cap on their carbon dioxide emissions. The simple truth is that as energy consumption increases, so does wealth. While various promoters of “green” energy discuss the potential breakthroughs in alternatives sources like wind and solar, the reality is that 88% of the world’s commercial primary energy is provided by coal, oil, and natural gas. And as much as politicians and environmentalists might like to change that percentage, there are no other sources of energy that can match hydrocarbons when it comes to the Four Imperatives: power density, energy density, cost and scale. Furthermore, barring some miraculous technological breakthrough, there won’t be a significant change in the world’s need for hydrocarbons over the next two to five decades.
But just for grins, let’s assume a technological breakthrough occurs that can displace hydrocarbons. And while it may be a miraculous technology, it must be ultra-cheap and it must be dispersed around the world. It will also have to be implemented on a massive scale – a scale big enough to supplant the world’s hunger for hydrocarbons, which now averages nearly 200 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Put another way, that’s approximately equal to the total daily oil output of more than 23 Saudi Arabias.
The world’s two most-populous countries, China and India, have made it abundantly clear that they will not accept any hard limits on their ability to emit carbon dioxide. And other developing countries are doing the same. The reasons are obvious: too many of their people live in energy poverty, and in particular, they lack electricity.
The IEA recently declared that “electricity is, in practice, indispensable for certain basic activities, such as lighting, refrigeration and the running of household appliances, and cannot easily be replaced by other forms of energy. Individuals’ access to electricity is one of the most clear and un-distorted indication of a country’s energy poverty status.”
The leaders of developing countries recognize the essentiality of electricity and what that means with regard to any emissions caps. You may recall that in June, just a few days after the House of Representatives passed its cap and trade bill, Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said that India “will not accept any emission-reduction target – period. This is a non-negotiable stand.” The Indian leader went on, saying that “there is no way India is going to accept any emission reduction target, period, between now and the Copenhagen meeting and thereafter.”
Or consider the words of Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian academic who chairs the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In July, Pachauri told reporters that nearly 40% of his fellow Indians do not have access to electricity. “Can you imagine 400 million people who do not have a light bulb in their homes?” he asked. He went on to make it clear that India will be burning plenty of its own coal in order to produce electricity. “You cannot, in a democracy, ignore some of these realities and as it happens with the resources of coal that India has, we really don’t have any choice but to use coal.”
Like India, China is relying heavily on its domestic coal resources. And while both China and India have recently agreed to set targets on reducing the carbon intensity of their economies, those targets will not actually cut their carbon dioxide emissions.
The simple truth is that the brouhaha over Climategate doesn’t matter. In fact, the entire battle over climate science – and in particular, the arguments over what concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide should be seen as ideal – is largely a waste of time. Given that global policymakers are convinced that carbon dioxide is bad, the most important question they must address is: then what? Put another way, what’s the policy response going to be?
With no ready substitute for hydrocarbons, the answer to those two questions — then what? and what’s the right policy? – should be obvious: nothing. That is, despite all the hew and cry over the need for some dramatic political agreement at Copenhagen, nothing of substance will happen because too many people around the world are still living in energy poverty. And energy poverty brings with it all of the ills that come with poverty: disease, hunger, lack of potable water, lack of education, and other societal ills.
In short, the Copenhagen Consensus and the Copenhagen Conundrum are two sides of the same coin. Global leaders should give up their fixation on cutting carbon dioxide emissions. Significant cuts will not happen. Instead, they should be focusing their efforts on making energy cheap, abundant, and as clean as possible.
Robert Bryce’s latest book, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence”recently came out in paperback.
In Alarming Step Obama Creates Gitmo North
ACLU Press Release
December 15, 2009
NEW YORK – The Obama administration announced today that it will purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois for the purpose of holding some of the detainees currently remaining at Guantánamo. Though the administration is leaving unsaid which detainees will be moved there and for what purposes, the information it has provided indicates that some detainees might be held for military commission proceedings in Illinois while others might be held at Thomson indefinitely without charge or trial.
The administration has stated that “any detainees at Guantánamo who continue to be held, and for whom no prosecution is planned, will be held only under authority granted by Congress in 2001 under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, as informed by the law of war.” However, the so-called war on terrorism is not a traditional war, having no temporal or geographical boundaries.
The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU:
“The creation of a ‘Gitmo North’ in Illinois is hardly a meaningful step forward. Shutting down Guantánamo will be nothing more than a symbolic gesture if we continue its lawless policies onshore.
“Alarmingly, all indications are that the administration plans to continue its predecessor’s policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial for some detainees, with only a change of location. Such a policy is completely at odds with our democratic commitment to due process and human rights whether it’s occurring in Cuba or in Illinois. In fact, while the Obama administration inherited the Guantánamo debacle, this current move is its own affirmative adoption of those policies. It is unimaginable that the Obama administration is using the same justification as the Bush administration used to undercut centuries of legal jurisprudence and the principle of innocent until proven guilty and the right to confront one’s accusers.
“It is also greatly disturbing that the administration will continue the use of military commissions, which are no more acceptable in Illinois or any other U.S. state than in Guantánamo. Despite some improvements, the commissions still fall far short of the legal standards necessary to comply with constitutional and international standards, allowing, for example, the use of coerced and hearsay evidence that would not be allowed in federal court. The proceedings will achieve neither reliable justice nor a restoration of America’s credibility around the world.
“The administration must also make very clear what category of detainee will be transferred to Thomson in the future and what kind of prison conditions will apply. Detainees not charged with a crime should not be subject to punitive conditions meant for sentenced prisoners who have been found guilty in a court of law, and all conditions must comply with the Geneva Conventions.
“The administration will no doubt be looking to Congress for legislative buy-in for this facility, and as both branches work together, we strongly urge lawmakers to legislate responsibly and not set any policies or precedents for indefinite detention on U.S. soil, or create any violation of the Geneva Conventions.
“The Obama administration’s announcement today contradicts everything the president has said about the need for America to return to leading with its values. American values do not contemplate disregarding our Constitution and skirting the criminal justice system. After detaining hundreds of individuals without the basic due process rights that define our justice system for almost eight years, it is time to charge suspects where evidence exists and repatriate and transfer the rest to countries where they won’t be tortured.”
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
Israel: Women’s Group Tells Livni to Turn Herself In
December 16, 2009
Bethlehem – Ma’an – The Women’s Coalition for Peace sent a letter on Wednesday to Israel’s former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, calling on her to cooperate with international investigations into her role in the assault on Gaza last winter, after a British court issued an warrant for her arrest on Monday.
The Israeli organization wrote in the letter, which was attached to a translated copy of the Goldstone report on alleged war crimes in Gaza, “We are convinced that if you refer to the report you will understand why British citizens and organizations have turned to the courts with a request to issue a warrant for your arrest.”
The letter added that the Goldstone report directly refers to remarks by senior political figures in Israel which encouraged indiscriminate attacks on civilians, in contradiction of international law.
It is in this context that Livni was quoted as saying, on 13 January 2009, “We have proven to Hamas that the equation has been altered. Israel is a state that, when its citizens are shot at, will respond insanely. And that’s a good thing.”
Furthermore, the letter states, “The Goldstone Report details a long list of indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations … In addition, the report surveys the extent of the damage to industrial infrastructure, food production, water facilities, sewage infrastructure and residential buildings; the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and the targeting of medical staff.
“The testimony of Israeli soldiers corroborates the allegations made in the Report that during Cast Lead heinous war crimes were committed,” the group added.
“The attention of the Goldstone commission was drawn to the way the military operations affected women particularly adversely … Women suffered most of all from the attack which you helped lead, and for which you served as the international spokesperson. “As a feminist organization active in Israel, we consider that only a process of legal investigation and prosecution of war criminals by the international community has the power to bring a measure of justice to the women and men of Gaza.
“ In our opinion the correct reaction on your part to the Goldstone report would be a coming to terms with the wholesale murder with which you collaborated freely as a senior minister in the Israeli government as part of an election campaign.
“We call on you to cooperate with any international investigation that may be opened against you and to counsel your colleagues in the government and military to do the same.”
Israel and the UK confirmed on Tuesday that a British court issued an arrest warrant against its former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for charges related to Israel’s winter war on Gaza.
The incident marks the first time an Israeli official faced arrest in the UK in connection with the Gaza conflict.
Australia: Internet censorship plan gets the green light
ASHER MOSES
Sydney Morning Herald
December 15, 2009 – 11:13PM
The Federal Government has announced it will proceed with controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.
But critics, including the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam, said the trial results were not surprising and the policy was still fundamentally flawed.
The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would introduce legislation just before next year’s elections to force ISPs to block a blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.
The blacklist, featuring material such as child sex abuse, sexual violence and instructions on crime, would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies.
Senator Conroy also released results from a pilot trial of ISP-level internet filters, conducted by Enex Testlab, which he said found that blocking banned material “can be done with 100 per cent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed”.
“Most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet material which is not acceptable in any civilised society,” he said.
“It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material.”
He said about 15 western countries had encouraged or enforced internet filtering, and there was no reason why Australians should not have similar protection.
It is not clear how – or if – the filters will distinguish between illegal RC material and that which is perfectly legal to view.
An earlier version of the Government’s top-secret list of banned sites was leaked on to the web in March, revealing the scope of the filtering could extend significantly beyond child porn.
About half of the sites on the list were not related to child porn and included a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.
“Given the pilot’s modest goals, it was designed from the beginning to pass,” said EFA spokesman Colin Jacobs.
“Although it may address some technical issues, what it leaves out is far more important – exactly what will be blocked, who will decide, and why is it being attempted in the first place?”
Similarly, Senator Ludlam said: “Nobody said that filtering from a static list of URLs was going to slow things down too much unless the list gets huge, so I don’t think they’ve already proven anything that we don’t already know.”
The pilot trial report also noted that motivated people could circumvent any internet filters with ease, which Senator Ludlam and Jacobs said called the effectiveness of the proposal into question.
Ludlam said proving a technical case was not the same as proving the wisdom of going down the internet censorship track in the first place, which he said had always been two separate discussions.
“While the Government says that they will be relying on an evidence-based policy, we still haven’t seen evidence that this is going to play any meaningful role in preventing children from accessing harmful material online,” Senator Ludlam said.
Jacobs said: “Successful technology isn’t necessarily successful policy. We’re still yet to hear a sensible explanation of what this policy is for, who it will help and why it is worth spending so much taxpayer money on.”
Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, said he would be meeting with his members tonight to discuss the report before formulating a response.
Senator Conroy said the Government would immediately undertake public consultations, starting today with the release of a discussion paper on additional measures to improve the accountability and transparency of processes that lead to sites being placed on the blacklist.
Some of the options raised include appeal mechanisms, notification to website owners of RC content and the review by an independent expert.
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie
Photo – Der Speigel
By ROBERT BRYCE
February 19, 2009
For years, the US has been inundated with claims that it should follow Brazil’s lead on biofuels. These arguments have largely been made by a small, but influential group of neoconservatives who claim that the US should quit using oil altogether. They claim that using more ethanol – produced from sugar cane, or corn, or some other substance – will impoverish OPEC and America will once again be returned to prosperity.
But these claims wither in the face of a story by Clemens Hoges in the January 22 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel. Hoges writes that sugar cane “is considered an effective antidote to climate change, but hundreds of thousands of Brazilian plantation workers harvest the cane at slave wages.” The story is one of several published in recent years that have exposed the brutality of the Brazilian sugar cane fields. But before looking at Der Spiegel’s coverage, let’s do a quick review of the Brazilian ethanol boosters.
Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times has frequently advocated the mirage of “energy independence.” And he has cited Brazil as a model. In an August 2005 column, he conflated the issues of oil and terrorism “we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism: our soldiers and the fascist terrorists,” he wrote. He went on to claim that many of the technologies needed for energy independence are “already here – from hybrid engines to ethanol.” He then quoted Gal Luft, the neoconservative who heads the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and created Set America Free, a group that advocates “energy independence.” Luft claimed that Brazil’s success in cutting its oil imports was due to the fact that the South American country was “bringing hydrocarbons and carbohydrates to live happily together in the same fuel tank.” In Luft’s view, ethanol has brought “Brazil close to energy independence” and insulated it from higher oil prices.
(Luft’s claim completely ignores the fact that since 1980, Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, has been growing its oil production by an average of 9 percent per year thanks to its offshore drilling prowess. Since 1998, Brazil has doubled its oil production and is now producing about 2 million barrels of oil per day. Neither Friedman nor Luft bothered to mention that fact.)
In late 2005, in a speech to the National Press Club, Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell said that “No longer is investing in alternative fuels a fringe idea….Brazil is perhaps the world’s greatest success story. Due to 30 years of hard work, research and investment, Brazil will not need one drop of imported oil this time next year. If anyone suggests to you that these ideas aren’t ready for prime time and cost too much, they are living in the past.”
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle have touted Brazil’s “energy independence miracle.” In a May 2006 opinion piece in the New York Times, they said that ethanol “could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil” and that Brazil proves that “an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil.”
In October 2006, former president Bill Clinton while in California stumping for Proposition 87 (an alternative energy initiative that later failed) declared that the initiative would “move California toward energy independence with cleaner fuels, with wind and solar power.” He continued, “There are people who don’t believe you can do it. I do. Look at Brazil. Don’t you think you can do it if they did it? They run their cars on ethanol.” Clinton later provided a sound bite for the pro-Proposition 87 forces in which he declared that “If Brazil can do it, so can California.”
The biofuels madness continued with a May 6, 2008 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, titled “Food vs. fuel, a global myth.” The piece, written by Set America Free’s Luft, and his fellow traveler, Robert Zubrin, a right-wing zealot who advocates colonizing Mars, claimed, incredibly, that “farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices.” The two went on to declare that “rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down” the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
A big reality check is in order.
First and foremost, over the past two years, 14 studies have found a direct link between the ethanol scam and higher food prices.
Second, Brazil is not the epicenter of ethanol production, the US is. In 2008, the US produced about 9.1 billion gallons of the fuel, all of it from corn. Brazil produced about 6.8 billion gallons. And while sugar cane may be a far better feedstock that corn, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance, the key issue is one of labor. While US corn is harvested mechanically, the Brazilian sugar cane is harvested almost exclusively by hand. And it is dangerous, back-breaking work.
In 2007, London’s The Guardian newspaper ran a story which quoted human rights activists who said that the men who harvest sugar cane for ethanol production “are effectively slaves” and that Brazil’s ethanol industry was “a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses.” It cited figures provided by a Catholic nun, Sister Ines Facioli, who runs a support network in a small town about 200 miles west of São Paolo. She claimed that between 2004 and 2006, 17 cane workers died due to overwork or exhaustion. One laborer, Pedro Castro, told the Guardian’s Tom Phillips, that the hot climate, combined with the heavy protective clothing needed to protect his body from the sharp machete blades used to cut the cane, was like working “inside a bread oven.”
For their work, the average cane worker gets paid about $1 for every ton of sugar cane they cut. They often work 12-hour shifts. Their housing, according to Phillips’ article, consists of “squalid, overcrowded ‘guest houses’ rented to them at extortionate prices by unscrupulous landlords.” The average cane cutter makes less than $200 per month. And some, it appears, make nothing at all.
In July 2007, the Brazilian government freed 1,100 laborers who were found working in horrendous conditions on a sugar cane plantation in the northeastern state of Para. A story by the Associated Press said that the workers were forced to work 13-hour days and that they had no choice but to pay “exorbitant prices for food and medicine.” It then cited a source in Brazil’s labor ministry who claimed that many of the workers were “sick from spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities.” The government-backed raid of the plantation lasted three days. The plantation in question is owned by Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, which produces about 13 million gallons of ethanol per year. The workers were caught up in a situation known as debt slavery in which poor workers are taken to remote farms where they then rack up large debts to the plantation owners who force the workers to pay high prices for everything from food to transportation.
According to Land Pastoral, a group affiliated with Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church, about 25,000 workers in Brazil are living in slavery-like conditions, most of them in the Amazon, and many of them working in the sugar cane business. The 2007 raid is not the first. In 2005, 1,000 workers were found living in debt slavery on a sugar cane plantation in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.
The article in Der Spiegel makes it clear that little has changed over the past few years. Hoges reports that one worker he interviewed, Antonio da Silva, makes just $172 per month during the harvest season, which lasts about six months. During the rest of the year, he has to rely on charity to feed his family. Da Silva’s home in the village of Araçoiaba Nova, Hoges reports, is the same as it was five years ago. “They threw plastic tarps over a handful of branches to build the hut where they still live today. The door consists of scraps of cloth nailed to a board, and boards placed around a hole in the tarp form the window. The furniture, arranged on the bare earth floor, consists of the plank beds and a cabinet.”
The most compelling quote in the piece is from Father Tiago, a 66 year-old Scottish monk who has been working in Brazil for decades. The Scotsman makes clear what he thinks about the issue: “The promise of biofuel is a lie. Anyone who buys ethanol is pumping blood into his tank,” he said. “Ethanol is produced by slaves.”
The photos that accompany Hoges’ story should be viewed by everyone who retains the misguided belief that the US should emulate Brazil’s biofuels industry. Here’s the link.
Alas, it doesn’t appear the members of Congress are paying much attention. Last month, US Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, announced that he would be pushing legislation aimed at eliminating the $0.54-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Doing so, Engel said, “would enable U.S. refiners to purchase cheaper and more climate-friendly ethanol, no matter where it comes from. The result would be an overall increase in the supply of fuel, a decrease in its price, and a decrease in our dependency on petroleum from the Middle East.”
Sound bites like the one from Engel ignore basic arithmetic: Even if the US imported all of Brazil’s ethanol — all 6.8 billion gallons per year — that quantity would only provide the energy equivalent of about 1.4 percent of America’s total oil consumption.
Despite those numbers — despite the ongoing evidence of slavery in the Brazilian ethanol trade — the energy discussion in America remains stuck in an absurdist fantasy about energy independence and freedom from the sticky problems of the Persian Gulf. But given what has happened in the past few months with regard to rising food prices and the myriad other problems associated with biofuels, one thing is becoming perfectly clear: Ethanol isn’t the answer to our energy challenge. Ethanol makes it worse.
Edward G. Rendell, “An American Energy Harvest Plan: Jobs, Prosperity, Independence,” December 1, 2005.
Tom Daschle and Vinod Khosla, “Miles Per Cob,” New York Times, May 8, 2006.
California Progress Report, “President Clinton: Why I Support Proposition 87 and Why the Oil Companies are Wrong – The Complete Speech Delivered at UCLA,” October 14, 2006.
Shopfloor.org, “In California, A Bad Proposition,” November 3, 2006.
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/may/06/food/chi-oped0506fuelmay06
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/#B
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,602951,00.html
Tom Phillips, “Brazil’s ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom,” The Guardian, March 9, 2007.
Ibid.
Vivian Sequera, “Brazil Raid Frees Ethanol Plant Slaves,” Associated Press, July 3, 2007.
Clemens Hoges, The High Price of Clean, Cheap Ethanol,” Der Spiegel, January 22, 2009.
http://yonkerstribune.typepad.com/yonkers_tribune/2009/01/engel-outlines-energy-plan-for-the-future-1.html
Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence” available from the carousel at the bottom of this page.
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Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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