Archive for January, 2006

Swindling the Sick: The IMF Debt Relief Sham

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

As 2005 holiday celebrations were getting underway last December, the International Monetary Fund pledged a gift to Nicaragua: complete cancellation of the $201 million debt that Nicaragua owed the multilateral financial institution. Many have applauded this move, part of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, as a needed step towards unshackling historically debt-ridden countries like Nicaragua. In early January I told a group of US citizens visiting Managua that this event may signify an achievement in Nicaragua’s long struggle for self-determination, giving us something, finally, to celebrate. Considering recent moves by the IMF, it appears I was wrong.

The mood in Managua lately has been anything but celebratory. Yesterday, my neighbor Blanca Obando came to my door, said hello, and burst into tears. Through her sobs, she related how her diabetic sister-in-law, Reina Landeros Poveda, had recently cut her foot and developed a painful skin infection. Soon thereafter, Blanca escorted her sister-in-law to the Lenin Fonseca public hospital. Outside the hospital entrance, they found throngs of infected and suffering people who were lying on the curbs “like dogs,” vomiting in the street, and urinating where they could as they awaited nonexistent medical attention. “It was the worst thing I’ve seen in Nicaragua,” Blanca cried. Such words should not be taken lightly from someone who’s seen her country dominated by a US-backed dictator, crushed by a US-funded contra war, and strangled by a US-imposed economic embargo. Edging through the crowd, Blanca and Reina reached the hospital gates and found them locked shut. Hospital staff turned the women back to the street, informing Reina that she could not enter unless she had been shot, run over, or could otherwise show she was on the brink of death.
commondreams.org

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
nytimes.com

BYU professor’s group accuses U.S. officials of lying about 9/11

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

Last fall, Brigham Young University physics professor Steven E. Jones made headlines when he charged that the World Trade Center collapsed because of “pre-positioned explosives.” Now, along with a group that calls itself “Scholars for 9/11 Truth,” he’s upping the ante.

“We believe that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11,” the group says in a statement released Friday announcing its formation. “We believe these events may have been orchestrated by the administration in order to manipulate the American people into supporting policies at home and abroad.”

Headed by Jones and Jim Fetzer, University of Minnesota Duluth distinguished McKnight professor of philosophy, the group is made up of 50 academicians and others.

They include Robert M. Bowman, former director of the U.S. “Star Wars” space defense program, and Morgan Reynolds, former chief economist for the Department of Labor in President George W. Bush’s first term. Most of the members are less well-known.

The group’s Web site (www.ST911.org) includes an updated version of Jones’s paper about the collapse of the Twin Towers and a paper by Fetzer that looks at conspiracy theories. The government’s version of the events of 9/11 — that the plane’s hijackers were tied to Osama bin Laden — is its own conspiracy theory, says Fetzer, who has studied the John F. Kennedy assassination since 1992.

“Did the Bush administration know in advance about the impending attacks that occurred on 9/11, and allow these to happen, to provoke pre-planned wars against Afghanistan and Iraq? These questions demand immediate answers,” charges a paper written collectively by Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group plans to write more papers, and present lectures and conferences.
deseretnews.com

Davos diary 2006

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

By Gillian Caldwell
Executive director, Witness

OK so today is the celebrity blog, because I spent the last 24 hours being with and thinking about “celebrities” and the complexities of their engagement in the issues we work on.

As I mentioned, Peter Gabriel is our founder and we are truly blessed to have such a humble, imaginative, smart and generous soul on our side. Witness was his idea and his involvement has been critical to our creation and continued existence.

When Peter arrives in Davos, we tend to pal around together because I like him… and because the more time I spend with him, the more opportunity I can generate for our work and for the human rights organisations and issues we are trying to get focus on – issues like slavery in Brazil, child soldiers in the Congo, educational desegregation in Bulgaria, the militarisation of the US-Mexico border etc.

I met Angelina Jolie (Angie) last year with Peter, and she has since become involved in our work. We caught up yesterday and I met her partner Brad Pitt (as if I had to tell you, but I hold out some lifeless hope that the BBC audience is a little less consumer-culture oriented?).

Anyway, Angie and Brad are here, genuinely committed to learning and to trying to improve the state of the world. It’s frustrating for me, knowing Angie personally and having seen first-hand how hard she works on a range of issues, to see people dismiss celebrity engagement as superficial, or worse yet a play for positive media attention.

The challenge of working with her or anyone at the megastar level is that you simply can’t predict or control what the press will choose to focus on. For example, even when they promised us interviews focused on the issue of Sierra Leone at our December benefit in NY, the exclusive focus of the coverage was on whether or not she was pregnant … and it appears all they were really after was a shot of her midriff!

It’s frankly appalling with all that’s going on the world and I think the press should stop underestimating their audience and start realising that Angie’s enormous fan base actually does care what she has to say, for good reason.

Some high-profile people may dabble, but many others are well served by focused, informed engagement which gets pressing issues to a massive global audience. Bono is a perfect example. He spoke today on a panel titled What’s Next for Africa, with the President of Nigeria and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown of Britain amongst others.

Bono is brilliant, funny, tactical, and he knows his issues of debt relief and trade inside and out. (By the way, in response to recent complaints that he shouldn’t have accepted the Red card from American Express’ offer of 1% of sales in Britain contributed to the causes he is involved in, he is reported to have said “we’re not endorsing them – they are endorsing us!”)

I’m not the type of person to go running around after celebrities and perhaps that’s why I am getting along well with a couple of them. If they’re committed, I’ve got plenty of time. Otherwise, I can’t be bothered.

It was funny meeting Michael Douglas last night though – he is receiving a Crystal Award for his work on handgun control and nuclear proliferation. Being just as media-saturated as the next red-blooded American, I confessed that all I could think about when I looked at him was that boiling bunny (for those of you recall Fatal Attraction).

Anyway, we got passed that and I talked the poor man’s ear off for a while about US foreign policy… and asked him what fed his soul, which is always of interest to me as my staff will tell you.

And, to conclude my musings on celebrity, I was approached on my way through the metal detector just now by a man I had never met before (Danny Quah from the London School of Economics) who said “Oh, Ms. Caldwell, I love your BBC blog!” I was amazed and responded to say I was rushing to write another entry just now on celebrity – and that his introduction was giving me my first personal insight into the genre!

PS: I forgot to mention that I got Peter signed up to be the musical director for Mel Young’s Homeless World Cup which will being teams of homeless people together from more than 40 countries in South Africa in September (he won’t be paid to do it, of course).

And I had a good conversation with Gavin Newsome, the mayor of San Francisco, who said he was absolutely committed to transforming the city’s juvenile justice system this year and had already allocated the money to do it!
bbc.co.uk

Gosh! What super-yum fun! Who knew that fixing the world could be such a groovy experience???

Back to Basics: Why Does High School Fail So Many?

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

On a September day 4 1/2 years ago, nearly 1,100 ninth-graders — a little giddy, a little scared — arrived at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. They were fifth-generation Americans and new arrivals, straight arrows and gangbangers, scholars and class clowns.

On a radiant evening last June, 521 billowing figures in royal blue robes and yellow-tasseled mortarboards walked proudly across Birmingham’s football field, practically floating on a carpet of whoops and shouts and blaring air horns, to accept their diplomas.

It doesn’t take a valedictorian to do the math: Somewhere along the way, Birmingham High lost more than half of the students who should have graduated.

What happened to the Class of 2005?
latimes.com

How Israel and the United States Helped to Bolster Hamas

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

As Hamas wins an upset victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, we take a look at the little-known rise of the militant group with investigative journalist Robert Dreyfuss, author of the new book “Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam.” In it, Dreyfuss reveals how the U.S. looked the other way when Israel’s secret service supported the creation of Hamas. [includes rush transcript]

According to Middle East analyst Dilip Hero, the success of Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections comes as other Islamist groups gaining political strength in the Middle East. Last year Islamist candidates won most of the seats in the municipal elections in Saudi Arabia. In Lebannon, Hizbollah has emerged as the preeminent representative of Lebanese Shiites. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won 60% of the seats it contested last year. And in Iraq, religious Shiite and Sunni parties performed best in December parliamentary elections.
democracynow.org

Hamas History Tied to Israel
By Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent

06/18/02 “UPI” — — In the wake of a suicide bomb attack Tuesday on a crowded Jerusalem city bus that killed 19 people and wounded at least 70 more, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, took credit for the blast.

Israeli officials called it the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in six years.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon immediately vowed to fight “Palestinian terror” and summoned his cabinet to decide on a military response to the organization that Sharon had once described as “the deadliest terrorist group that we have ever had to face.”

Active in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It is has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.

But Sharon left something out.

Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.

Gore Vidal: President Jonah

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

…Not since the glory days of Watergate and Nixon’s Luciferian fall has there been so much written about the dogged deceits and creative criminalities of our rulers. We have also come to a point in this dark age where there is not only no hero in view but no alternative road unblocked. We are trapped terribly in a now that few foresaw and even fewer can define despite a swarm of books and pamphlets like the vast cloud of locusts which dined on China in that ’30s movie “The Good Earth.”

I have read many of these descriptions of our fallen estate, looking for one that best describes in plain English how we got to this now and where we appear to be headed once our good Earth has been consumed and only Rapture is left to whisk aloft the Faithful. Meanwhile, the rest of us can learn quite a lot from “Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire” by Morris Berman, a professor of sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
truthdig.com

Warriors and wusses

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

By Joel Stein
01/24/06 “Los Angeles Times” — — I DON’T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I’m sure I’d like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you’re wandering into a recruiter’s office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I’ve got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I’m not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they’re wussy by definition. It’s as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn’t to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.
informationclearinghouse.info

Rumsfeld’s Roadmap to Propaganda

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

Washington, D.C., January 26, 2006 – A secret Pentagon “roadmap” on war propaganda, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for “boundaries” between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not “targeted,” any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and posted on the Web today, the 74-page “Information Operations Roadmap” admits that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa,” but argues that “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”
www.gwu.edu

File shows US ‘psychological operations’ concerns

Chevron’s 4Q Profit Soars to Record High

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

Chevron Corp.’s fourth-quarter profit climbed 20 percent to $4.14 billion, a company record that continued the most prosperous stretch in the oil company’s 126-year history as it capitalizes on high fuel prices that are squeezing consumers and ruffling politicians.

Its profit of $14.1 billion for the full year was also a company record.

The San Ramon, Calif.-based company’s earnings for 2005’s final quarter, released Friday, represented the most it has made in any three-month period since its inception in 1879. The performance edged the $4.13 billion earned during the second quarter of 2004 _ the early stages of a two-year boom.

Chevron now has posted record annual profits in each of the last two years, earning a combined $27.4 billion.

Oppenheimer & Co. Fadel Gheit believes Chevron will set yet another new earnings record this year as the company continues to mine crude oil prices that are expected to remain above $60 per barrel. “We are only scratching the surface,” Gheit said. “In my view, this company is hitting on all cylinders.”

The windfalls that Chevron has been generating aren’t unique in its industry. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, earned nearly $10 billion in the third quarter and may top that performance when it releases its fourth quarter results Monday.

…For all of 2005, Chevron’s $14.1 billion profit amounted to $6.54 per share, topping its previous highest annual profit of $13.3 billion, or $6.14 per share, established in 2004. Last year’s gains partially reflect Chevron’s increased size after completing a $17.8 billion takeover of Unocal Corp. in August.

The Unocal acquisition increased Chevron’s supply of oil and natural gas, better positioning the company to take advantage of energy prices that have been driven up by steadily rising worldwide demand and Middle East turmoil.

Chevron’s profit would have been even higher last year if not for extensive damage to its Gulf of Mexico operations caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita during August and September.

Those devastating storms hobbled a major Mississippi oil refinery, as well as the Chevron’s natural gas production, preventing the company from fully cashing in on a sharp run-up in energy prices.

Chevron estimated the decreased production in the Gulf of Mexico lowered its annual profit by about $1.4 billion, with about half the loss occurring during the fourth quarter. Gheit estimated the fourth- quarter production setbacks trimmed Chevron’s earnings by about 31 cents per share.

The company has since repaired most of the storm damage, but its production continues to lag below levels before the hurricanes.

Until Katrina struck, Chevron’s average oil production in the Gulf of Mexico averaged about 300,000 barrels per day. In fourth quarter, the average fell to about 160,000 barrels per day. This year, Chevron expects to average about 200,000 barrels per day in the Gulf.

Substantially higher prices for oil and natural gas enabled Chevron to overcome its problems in the Gulf of Mexico.
breitbart.com

The more chaos the better. Rock on Chevron.