No. 679  

EDITORIAL:  Franz J. T. Lee,  
THE NEW IN OLD COSTUMES

8 de junio del 2003
*** ¿Locura o Política?

Immanuel Wallerstein
www.irakwar.ru

*** La mafia sindical hasta ha tiroteado a los trabajadores
Juez de Lara pretende desconocer decisión soberana de
Asamblea de Trabajadores de Covencaucho que destituyó
a bandidos sindicaleros cetevecos.

 

*** El rostro del fascismo se manifiesta en la zona de la "gente decente"
(Actualizado) Horda de desadaptados carmonistas agrede a asistentes
y organizador de acto cultural en El Cafetal.

June 5, 2003

*** Aide Denies Shaping Data to Justify War

By ERIC SCHMITT.

** Government blames intelligence 'rogue elements' in weapons row

PM to face Commons inquiry over arms controversy

By Andrew Grice and Rupert Cornwell in Washington

04 June 2003. 

*** G8 dismiss the African catastrophe

By Chris Talbot-

7 June 2003.  

** Subject: (CADENA BOLIVARIANA)- [sierrajaguar]
Wolfowitz admite que el principal motivo de la guerra en Irak
fue el petróleo.
El Periódico - última hora
Internacional

** Britain: Blair defeats motion for inquiry into Iraqi WMDs

By Julie Hyland
7 June 2003. 

*** Bayer's Record Fraud  

*** SPAM ...  

*** Shameful / FBI, INS abused Sept. 11 detainees.
June 5, 2003

*** Ashcroft Defends Detentions as 

Immigrants Recount Toll. 

By ERIC LICHTBLAU.  


*** What could Macedonia Learn from a Tiger?
              The Asian Tigers and the Phenomenon of
Uninterrupted Economic Growth

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin.  

08/06/03.

 

Immanuel Wallerstein
www.irakwar.ru

Traducido para Rebelión por Ángel Cristóbal Colmenares E.

Cuando el tan "pro-establishment" y responsable Financial Times, diario representativo del gran capital, publica un editorial cuyo titulo es "Locura Impositiva" y del cual el subtítulo es "La administración estadounidense tira la prudencia por la ventana", uno sabe que debe estar muy disgustado. El editorial concluye con esta sombría nota: "Para [los Republicanos más extremos], minar el orden internacional multilateral no es suficiente; las por largo tiempo sostenidas opiniones acerca de la redistribución del ingreso también requieren una revisión radical. En respuesta a esta embestida no hay mucho que la mayoría racional pueda hacer: las razones poco importan; la teoría económica es echada a un lado; y la evidencia contraria se desprecia. Pero mirar como la superpotencia económica mundial destruye lentamente a la quizá más envidiable posición fiscal del mundo es algo digno de contemplar."

Así mientras Bush y compañía están bravuconeando sobre sus victorias en Irak y en el Congreso estadounidense, y mucha de la izquierda mundial escribe en un tono de desmayo desesperado sobre estos éxitos, quizá debemos mirar las profundas hendiduras al interior de todas esas fuerzas que pudieran ser denominadas "de centro derecha" - mundial, en los Estados Unidos y entre los estratos capitalistas.

Primero las señales de la hendidura. Henry C. K. Liu, director de un grupo inversionista con base en Nueva York, escribe en Asia Times un artículo titulado "La hegemonía del dólar estadounidense tiene que irse". El director de investigación de inversiones del Banco Privado Citigroup hace notar que los países del ASEAN + 3 países (Sudeste de Asia, Japón, China y Corea del Sur) están en proceso de desarrollar los llamados "instrumentos de deuda cross-border" (lo cual significa deudas registradas en sus propios signos monetarios en lugar de dólares estadounidenses), y llama a éstos "un martillo masivo suspendido sobre la economía estadounidense". Él prevé que creando una Unidad Monetaria Asiática pudieran forzar a los Estados Unidos a un "ensayo de deuda mayor" y realmente llevan a la Tesorería estadounidense a negociar no en dólares estadounidenses sino en monedas asiáticas.

En el frente europeo, Christoph Bertram, director del Instituto alemán para Asuntos Internacionales y de Seguridad, y anteriormente un decidido atlantista, escribe un artículo, una vez más en el Financial Times, titulado "Alemania no se convertirá en vasallo de los Estados Unidos". Atribuye a George Bush la plena responsabilidad por este cambio en la opinión alemana, y prevé que la Unión Europea habrá de "[enlazar] irreversiblemente juntos a los miembros en su defensa, como ha hecho el euro en política monetaria".

Y en los Estados Unidos, James Carroll, escribiendo en el Boston Globe, habla del cambio de clima en Estados Unidos, "una nación tan a la ventura que no se atreve a mirar dos veces su condición real".

La última perorata del Senador Byrd (quien hasta apenas dos años antes nunca fue considerado un radical o incluso un Demócrata liberal) finalizó con: "Y afirmo mis palabras. La calculada intimidación que vemos tan a menudo últimamente por 'los poderes que son' sólo mantendrá a la leal oposición tranquila por cierto tiempo. Porque eventualmente, como siempre lo hace, la verdad surgirá. Y cuando lo haga, el castillo de naipes, construido con engaños, se caerá."

El Senador Byrd pronunció su discurso el 21 de mayo. Apenas seis días después, el Secretario Rumsfeld, en su mensaje al Consejo de Relaciones Exteriores, hizo su ahora ampliamente notada observación de que las supuestamente existentes armas de destrucción masiva en Irak "pudieran no ser encontradas jamás". Rumsfeld dijo que quizás los iraquíes las destruyeron "previamente al conflicto". Y por cuanto los Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña justificaron la premura de su rápida y unilateral acción con base en la amenaza de esas supuestas armas, ello es sencillamente un reconocimiento, sin duda forzado por la realidad, de que las armas simplemente no se han encontrado hasta ahora. Puede tardar un rato para que la opinión pública estadounidense asimile esta admisión y reaccione ante ella. Pero Tony Blair se encontró inmediatamente en problemas. En el sistema británico es pecado mortal "despistar" al Parlamento, y él está actualmente bajo fuego (y quizás más que eso) sencillamente como resultado del discurso de Rumsfeld. Su respuesta, hasta ahora, es aguarden un poco más. Blair necesita encontrar esas armas mucho más que Rumsfeld.

La pregunta es entonces si se trata realmente de locura o de política deliberada. Creo que es deliberado e intencional, aunque estoy de acuerdo en que es locura. Para entender cómo piensan los halcones estadounidenses y sus aliados debemos remontarnos a dos siglos atrás. La Revolución Francesa verdaderamente sacudió a la escena cultural mundial. Había un grupo que llegó al poder defendiendo la proposición de que el gobierno tenía el derecho a, y el deber de, imponer cambios radicales en el sistema social en nombre del "pueblo", que era el "soberano". Además, estas dos ideas - que el cambio político era un fenómeno "normal" y que el "pueblo" era el soberano, prendieron rápidamente a través del mundo, y de hecho nunca se han marchado desde entonces.

Hubo una reacción inmediata a estos perturbadores conceptos (y a las acciones a ellos enlazadas). Allí es donde obtenemos el término "reaccionarios". Edmund Burke en Inglaterra y Joseph de Maistre en Francia escribieron libros que básicamente desafían a la doctrina en su conjunto, y afirman el soporte de valores sociales y morales de las autoridades "tradicionales". Los Jacobinos fueron expulsados luego de algunos años, pero Napoleón continuó el empuje jacobino, aunque en forma asaz distorsionada. Por fin, en 1815, la Contrarrevolución había ganado definitivamente. Era el momento de restaurar el orden en Europa y el mundo. El Príncipe Metternich construyó una Santa Alianza cuya política fue confrontar todo desorden con la represión masiva.

No todas las fuerzas del orden estaban de acuerdo con Metternich. En Inglaterra, despacio pero eficazmente, Sir Robert Peel llevó a los Tories a concesiones temporales y limitadas, especialmente el Acta de Reforma de 1832. Y hubo intentos similares en Francia, notablemente la Revolución de 1830 que derrocó a Carlos X y trajo a Luis Felipe, "el ciudadano-rey", al poder.

El decisivo punto de retorno fue la revolución mundial de 1848, que llegó como un enorme estremecimiento para los "reaccionarios". El ahora mayor Metternich fue sacado del cargo. Una revolución "social" tuvo lugar en Francia, buscando afirmar los derechos de los "obreros". Y a lo largo del centro, oriente y sur de Europa, era la "primavera de las naciones." Claro, como sabemos, estas muchas revoluciones fracasaron en corto tiempo, y se hallaron con una renovada y fuerte represión. Pero las fuerzas de centro derecha habían aprendido su lección. Decidieron bajar a la ruta de Peel y aceptaron la necesidad de "concesiones" en función de anticiparse a lo peor. Las décadas siguientes vieron el levantamiento de lo que los historiadores llaman "los conservadores ilustrados" - Disraeli en Gran Bretaña, Napoleón III en Francia, Bismarck en Alemania.

Desde aquel momento, los conservadores devinieron meramente en una versión algo más prudente de liberalismo centrista. De hecho, con el propósito de frenar la fuerza creciente de movimientos "radicales" de izquierda, los conservadores estaban a menudo más dispuestos a usar al estado para promulgar cambios que los liberales centristas: la extensión del sufragio por Disraeli, la restauración de derechos sindicales por Napoleón III, los inicios del Estado de Bienestar por Bismarck. Esas políticas prevalecieron entre los grupos políticos conservadores hasta la revolución mundial de 1968 que destronó a los liberales centristas dominantes y "liberó" a aquéllos que se consideraban a sí mismos la "verdadera" derecha del firme control de los "conservadores ilustrados". El levantamiento de la "verdadera" derecha puede encontrarse en la toma parcial del Partido Conservador británico por Tatcher y en el muy parcial control del Partido Republicano estadounidense por Reagan. El actual régimen de Bush ha transformado esta toma parcial en un control total.

Los halcones estadounidenses son el resucitar de Metternich y de sus imperturbablemente reaccionarias políticas: su machista unilateralismo en la escena mundial, y su verdaderamente serio intento de desmantelar el estado de bienestar en los Estados Unidos. Ese es el porqué el Financial Times dice que "las razones poco importan" para ellos. Y es el porqué los herederos de Sir Robert Peel en todo el mundo están muy disgustados. Así como las políticas de Metternich llevaron al desastre a las fuerzas conservadoras del mundo tal como ocurrió en 1848, los herederos de Peel temen (y esperan) que las políticas de Bush harán lo mismo, y peor. Y que el desastre está en el horizonte.

Quizá un día en el futuro habrá un Armagedón entre la izquierda y la derecha. Pero en el presente inmediato, se espera una confrontación entre las facciones de centro derecha de Metternich y de Peel. La facción de Metternich piensa que la apuesta es el orden mundial. La facción de Peel cree que el riesgo es la supervivencia de un sistema capitalista.

http://www.rebelion.org/opinion/030608wallerstein.htm  

01.06.2003

La mafia sindical hasta ha tiroteado a los trabajadores Juez de Lara pretende desconocer decisión soberana de Asamblea de Trabajadores de Covencaucho que destituyó a bandidos sindicaleros cetevecos Por: G. G.- Aporrea Publicado el Domingo, 08/06/03 12:39am				imprímelo mándaselo a tus panas

El rostro del fascismo se manifiesta en la zona de la "gente decente" (Actualizado) Horda de desadaptados carmonistas agrede a asistentes y organizador de acto cultural en El Cafetal. Por: Chapulín / MS - Aporrea.org Publicado el Domingo, 08/06/03 01:20am				imprímelo mándaselo a tus panas

Nota de aporrea: Actualización (Domingo 7 de Junio, 12:54pm): El acto cultural en la Biblioteca Raúl Leoni se trataba del Festival de Cortometrajes Libertarios, organizado por los compañeros de la Comisión de Relaciones Anarquistas (CRA-AIT). Este grupo nada tiene que ver con el Chavismo, de manera que no se explica cómo es que el partido Primero Justicia organiza un ataque en contra de estas personas. Estamos casi seguros de que el diputado Juan Barreto no hubiera sido invitado a este evento, mucho menos a ser orador de órden. ¿Sólo porque se menciona la palabra LIBERTARIO se asocia a un colectivo anarquista con el Chavismo? ¡Por favor! Esta situación demuestra el grado de ignorancia de "los intelectuales" de Primero Justicia y la horda que los apoya. No hay personas menos violentas en la izquierda que estos activistas anarquistas de la CRA. Aporrea se solidariza con los la CRA y en especial con Rafael Uzcátegui, organizador del evento, quienes se están reuniedo para luego emitir una declaración conjunta en torno a los lamentables sucesos. ¡NO AL FASCISMO! El canal de oposición Globovisión se dió un festín fascista al mostrar como una manada de unos 150 agentes del mal, sabotearon e impidieron un acto cultural en la biblioteca Raúl Leoni de El Cafetal (zona de clase media alta en el este de Caracas), donde aparentemente uno de los ponentes iba a ser el diputado del MVR y profesor Juan Barreto. Por las pantallas de TV se pudo ver como 3 endemoniados opositores, sacaban arrastrado -al mejor estilo fascista- a un individuo que parecía ser el organizador del evento. Mientras el individuo era arrastrado, la manda de fascistas gritaba todo tipo de groserías. Sólo faltaban los golpes para hacerlo una vulgar copia de lo que sucedió el 12 de Abril en Santa Fe con el entonces Ministro Rodríguez Chacín. La horda de irregulares que realizó la operación de saboteo y agresión, fue encabezada y dirigida por "chicos bien" del partido opositor neo-fascista Primero Justicia, miembros de la Coordinadora de Oposición. Los desadaptados vestían franelas de la mencionada organización falanguista. No es la primera vez que algo como esto sucede. En Julio del año pasado, un foro en la biblioteca Paul Harris de La California organizado por el grupo Emergencia Patriotica 333, y donde la diputada Iris Varela era la ponente principal, fue saboteado por opositores llenos de odio, quienes gritaron groserías, lanzaron piedras, sacaron palos, y trataron de arrancar las rejas y tumbar las cercas de la biblioteca (Ver Comunicado sobre la agresión de ciudadanos por parte de hordas fascistas en Caracas). El Cafetal es una zona de Caracas donde vive la "gente decente", según los opositores al Presidente Chávez. Agresiones como ésta confirman el alto grado de odio que circula por sus venas y lo "decentes" que son. El triste episodio, es otro ejemplo de la frustración de un grupo minoritario que ha sido derrotado una y otra vez en el terreno electoral, cuyos golpes de estado han sido neutralizados por LA MAYORIA POPULAR, y que no encuentran como ventilar sus frustraciones. A todas esta cabe preguntarse: ¿Por qué los chavistas fueron tan criticados por sacar a los adecos de Catia, pero en cambio esta turba fue prácticamente glorificada por el canal Globovisión? ¿Por qué el gobierno mandó a la Guardia Nacional a proteger a los adecos en "El Catiazo", pero no hizo lo mismo para proteger a las personas que querían escuchar a Juan Barreto en El Cafetal? ¿Por qué el MVR no puede organizar una megaconcentración en la calle Lebrún de Petare el 13 de Junio, como respuesta al Petarazo? Total, Primero Justicia lo hizo en esta ocasión abierta y públicamente, y nadie los está demandando. ¿Permitirá el gobierno el Petarazo, el Antimanazo y el Vallazo, y mandará a la GN a proteger a los opositores otra vez mientras que a nuestra gente nadie las protege? Señores de la oposición fascista, es hora de comprar una copia del Kamasutra Ilustrado y comenzar a ventilar las frustraciones de manera más constructiva y no dañina (¿no aprendieron nada en la adolescencia?). Vayánse acostumbrando porque el Comandante no se vá porque lo apoya LA MAYORIA y punto. .

June 5, 2003 Aide Denies Shaping Data to Justify War By ERIC SCHMITT ASHINGTON, June 4 — The Pentagon's top policy adviser held an unusual briefing today to rebut accusations that senior civilian policy makers had politicized intelligence to fit their hawkish views on Iraq and to justify war on Saddam Hussein. The official, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, acknowledged that he created a small intelligence team inside his office shortly after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, to search for terrorist links with Iraq and other countries that he suggested the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked. Intelligence analysts elsewhere in the government have complained that the Pentagon team provided an alternative hard-line view of intelligence related to Iraq that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld used in meetings with President Bush and other top national security aides. "This suggestion that we said to them, `This is what we're looking for. Go find it,' is precisely the inaccuracy that we are here to rebut," Mr. Feith told reporters. "I know of nobody who pressured anybody." Mr. Feith declined to comment on a growing chorus of criticism that American intelligence miscalculated the threat of Iraq's weapons programs or that policy makers exaggerated the threat. Eight weeks after the Iraq war ended, American forces have yet to find any chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. "The process of gathering information about the Iraqi programs is under way," Mr. Feith said, referring to a new, enlarged military search team that began arriving in Iraq this week. "I'm not going to come in and pre-empt the careful work that's being done." The administration's handling of intelligence on Iraq is growing into a significant political issue. Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, have in recent days all defended the intelligence used by the administration to justify the attack against Iraq. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair has done the same, and today rebutted criticism from lawmakers who were pressing for an independent inquiry into British intelligence on Iraq. After Mr. Feith's nearly hourlong briefing, some defense officials familiar with classified intelligence assessments on Iraq, its ties to terrorists and what the govern ment charged were its weapons of mass destruction programs, said they were baffled or angered by his remarks. One senior official, who said he was skeptical of Mr. Feith's account, was too angry to answer immediately. Another official said simply, "There was a lot of doublespeak out there." Mr. Feith rarely gives on-the-record interviews or press briefings, but he said he acted on his own — not on orders from Mr. Rumsfeld or the White House — to rebut several published reports about the intelligence team he set up and its relation to the Office of Special Plans, an 18-member unit responsible for planning the Defense Department's Iraq policy. Mr. Rumsfeld has expressed confidence that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons will eventually be uncovered, but in recent days he has suggested some of the stockpiles might have been destroyed before the war or that Iraq might have concealed its production equipment in commercial factories to be used when needed. The C.I.A. is now preparing for Congress the information its analysts used to draw their conclusions that Baghdad possessed chemical and biological weapons, and was actively pursuing development of nuclear arms. House and Senate committees are also readying their own reviews of prewar intelligence. Mr. Feith said he established an intelligence team of two to six people after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to examine terrorist connections around the world, not solely with Iraq. Its specialty was to use powerful computers and new software to scan and sort documents and reports from the C.I. A., the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies, defense officials said. "Its job was to review this intelligence to help digest it for me and other policy makers, to help us develop Defense Department strategy for the war on terrorism," Mr. Feith said. But other defense officials said the team's task quickly turned to gleaning details that may have collectively pointed to Iraq's wider connections to terrorism. Among the team's most prominent findings were suspected linkages between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a conclusion doubted by the C.I.A. and D.I.A. Mr. Rumsfeld found the report important enough to ask Mr. Feith to present it to Mr. Tenet, which Mr. Feith said he did last August. Mr. Feith denied that the creation of the intelligence team reflected frustration on the part of senior Defense Department officials. "I don't know why it should surprise anybody that any given group of people looking at a mass of material might come up with a few interesting insights that other people didn't come up with," Mr. Feith said. He said the planning office, led by the neo-conservative scholar Abram N. Shulsky, was created last October to handle the growing duties of preparing for a possible war with Iraq. Mr. Feith said the intelligence team and policy planning office were separate entities with different responsibilities. He said the intelligence team was disbanded last August and the planning office was established two months later. Mr. Feith also denied that the planning office was a conduit for intelligence reports from the Iraqi National Congress to the White House. But other defense officials gave a different interpretation today. These officials said the intelligence team was still active at least through last fall, and its assessments carried weight with the Special Plans office. In interviews late last October, Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, described the intelligence team as still active. A senior defense official said today he could not explain the discrepancy, adding that the intelligence team was a "very minor thing on their radar screens." Mr. Feith also disputed the notion that the intelligence team "developed the case on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction," saying it focused on terrorist networks. But moments later, Mr. Feith said one of the seminal lessons from the Sept. 11 attacks was the connection between terrorist networks and their desire to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Asked why his internal intelligence team would therefore not look at the weapons programs of Iraq and other countries, Mr. Feith conceded, "Yes, I imagine that they looked at W.M.D. along with other stuff." Government blames intelligence 'rogue elements' in weapons row PM to face Commons inquiry over arms controversy By Andrew Grice and Rupert Cornwell in Washington 04 June 2003 A senior Minister has blamed "rogue elements" in the intelligence services for questioning the evidence behind Tony Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq. As the pressure built on the Prime Minister, John Reid, the Leader of the Commons, launched an extraordinary attack on parts of the security services. He told The Times: "There have been uncorroborated briefings by a potentially rogue element or indeed rogue elements in the intelligence services. I find it difficult to grasp why this should be believed against the word of the British Prime Minister and the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee." Dr Reid repeated his claim in media interviews today and called on critics to "put up or shut up". There was "15 years of evidence" that Saddam had such weapons, he said. In the Commons this afternoon, Mr Blair insisted that intelligence evidence presented by the Government had been fully endorsed by security chiefs. Dr Reid said on the BBC Breakfast programme that no one had a greater respect than him for the security services after his experience in Northern Ireland and at the Ministry of Defence. "What has happened over the past week has been as big an attack on the leadership of those security services and intelligence services as it has on the Prime Minister," he said. "We have now had five days during which the allegation is made that not only has the Prime Minister and people like myself and the Cabinet been dishonest and duplicitous in deceiving our Cabinet colleagues or Parliament ... but also that the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, and the joint intelligence committee itself ... allowed their integrity to be impeached, allowed evidence to be misrepresented ... these are scurrilous attacks on people who have served this country," he said. He later said on BBC Radio Radio 4's Today programme that the programme's reporter Andrew Gilligan had made inconsistent claims and suggested at one point they could have come from a "man in the pub". Dr Reid's intervention came after it became clear that the all-party Foreign Affairs Select Committee is to launch an inquiry which will focus on whether the Foreign Office and the Government "presented accurate and complete information to Parliament in the period leading up to military action in Iraq, particularly in relation to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction". In the Commons, the Prime Minister acknowledged that "somebody from the intelligence community" had been briefing the media over claims that the Government had exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq weapons in the run–up to war. But during exchanges with Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith at Prime Minister's Questions he said that all the intelligence information published by the Government had come from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Following an earlier claim by the Leader of the Commons John Reid that "rogue elements" in the intelligence service had been briefing against the Government, Mr Blair praised the "integrity" of the agencies, saying they did a "superb job". He said that he did not believe that the person responsible for the briefing had been a member of JIC, which includes the heads of MI5, MI6 and the electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ. "I have confirmed with the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee there was no attempt at any time by any official or minister or member of Number 10 Downing Street staff to override the intelligence judgments of the Joint Intelligence Committee," he said. He said that the controversial claim that Iraq had been able to deploy some weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes' notice "was a judgment made by the Joint Intelligence Committee and by them alone". The announcement of an inquiry by the foreign affairs committee, whose hearings are normally held in public, was unexpected. It will start next week and a report is expected as early as next month. The inquiry represents a considerable challenge to Mr Blair, who cannot control an independent committee of MPs. Donald Anderson, Labour chairman of the committee, said he would request all relevant intelligence material be provided by No 10. He said: "It's clearly a matter of major public concern, the quality of intelligence. We will ask for all relevant material and if it is lacking we will say so in our report." Mr Anderson said that the committee might invite Mr Blair, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and serving intelligence officers to give evidence. He added: "We are a different animal to the Intelligence and Security Committee. They are not a select committee, they are appointed by the Prime Minister and report to the Prime Minister. There would be a credibility problem with them which there would not be with our inquiry." Mr Anderson was reinstated as chairman of the committee after a rebellion by Labour backbenchers against government attempts to replace him after the 2001 election. The ISC, which monitors the intelligence services, meets in private and, although its reports are published, they include sections that are blanked out to protect the services. The committee of MPs and peers is chaired by Ann Taylor, the Government's former chief whip. It asked Downing Street for permission to open an investigation into Iraq's WMD last month and has been involved in tense negotiations over the terms. Some ISC members were worried that, unless the Prime Minister formally ordered an inquiry, they would be denied access to intelligence material. Mr Blair will try to head off that criticism today by promising the Government's full co-operation. Critics said Mr Blair would have the final say on the committee's report. But ISC sources said it would not allow him to veto findings to spare embarrassing criticism, pointing to criticism of the security services in its report on the Bali nightclub bombings last October, which killed more than 190 people. Mr Blair will not have much time to rest after his week-long foreign trip. The Liberal Democrats will stage a Commons debate on the need for "an independent inquiry into the handling of the intelligence received, its assessment and the decisions made by ministers based upon it". The Tories, who supported the war, are hardening their position. Iain Duncan Smith wrote to Mr Blair last night, demanding urgent answers to five key questions over WMD. He said: "Serious allegations are now being made, allowing others to cast doubt on statements made by you and your ministers ... My concern is that this will have a detrimental effect on the ability of the Government and the Armed Forces to complete their task in Iraq, unless things are cleared up quickly." John Denham, who quit as a Home Office minister, called for a wide-ranging inquiry into the intelligence, WMD and the diplomatic moves before the conflict, similar to the one launched after the Falklands War. But that demand was rejected by Downing Street. The pressure on Mr Blair for some form of inquiry became unstoppable after news emerged that two powerful Senate panels in the United States planned to hold hearings on the WMD issues. As the row in America over alleged manipulation of intelligence grew, the CIA agreed to give Congress "back-up" information about its conclusions on Saddam Hussein's illegal weapons programmes. "It's clear the intelligence was simply wrong," Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat on the Senate armed forces committee, said yesterday. His misgivings are shared even by some Republicans. But American public opinion remains behind Mr Bush, with a majority clearly believing the US was right to invade Iraq, even if the WMD threat proves to have been less great than feared. A CNN/USA Today poll yesterday found only 31 per cent of Americans felt the Bush administration "deliberately misled" the country, and two thirds were ready to give it the benefit of the doubt. ISSUES AT THE HEART OF THE AFFAIR By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor Q. What evidence did No 10 have to back its claim that Saddam's "military planning allows for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them"? A. Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces Minister, has admitted that the information was based on a single, uncorroborated source. As intelligence agencies normally use two sources, Mr Blair has to explain why the 45 minute claim was used so prominently. If, as understood, the information came from an Iraqi scientist desperate to defect, how can we be sure about its veracity? Q. Did No 10 at any stage ask the security services to "sex up" the Joint Intelligence Committee dossier published in September? What was Alastair Campbell's role in the rewriting of the draft? A. The draft would have to be published by Downing Street or passed to the Intelligence and Security Committee. Mr Blair said, in his foreword, that the dossier "is based, in large part, on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC)". He must explain which parts of it were not the work of the JIC. . Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, said that "it is possible that the Saddam regime decided that they would destroy them [WMD] prior to the conflict". Is he right? A. Any destruction of chemical and biological stocks, and certainly missiles, would have been picked up by US spy planes and intelligence. Q. Why did the Government include in its dossier claims that Saddam was actively seeking to acquire nuclear material from Niger? A. The head of the International Atomic Energy Authority denounced the documents on which this claim was based as a forgery, yet the Foreign Office has never explained why such stress was put on it. Q. Did Saddam possess WMD in a deliverable form? A. Hans Blix constantly insisted there was no evidence that they still existed in 2003. He said that stocks were "unaccounted for". Washington and London claimed that this amounted to "overwhelming evidence" of a current weapons programme. Q. Mr Blair said on Sunday that he had new , unpublished information to back up previous statements about WMD. What is it? Will he publish it? A. Mr Blair is relying on an "international survey group" to scour Iraq. There is no clear deadline for its work. Traces of chemical and biological stocks will not silence his critics - only serious and numerous finds of warheads would. And if his evidence amounts simply to testimony from interviewed scientists, it will be ridiculed. Q. What made Mr Blair change his mind about publishing a dossier after ruling one out in March 2002? A. Before Mr Blair's trip to meet George Bush at Camp David on 7 September, intelligence sources were briefing that the idea of a dossier was dead. Within days of returning, Mr Blair surprised security sources by announcing one would be produced. If Mr Blair was told by Mr Bush that war was inevitable, he may have wanted to get his propaganda up and running. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=412257     5 June 2003 11:19 Search this site:  Printable Story

 

 

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G8 dismiss the African catastrophe

By Chris Talbot
7 June 2003

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French President Jacques Chirac had said that he intended to make the desperate situation facing Africa a key theme of the Evian G8 summit. Development agencies and aid charities lobbied hard for at least some indication of a joint effort by the world’s developed countries to help alleviate the increasing poverty, indebtedness and disease facing Africa. They were bitterly disappointed. As a spokesman for Oxfam put it, “Not only are there no firm commitments, even their rhetoric is watered down compared with last year.”

United States President George W. Bush deliberately upstaged the proposals on trade and aid to Africa that Chirac had hoped to make by announcing before the summit that America would spend $15 billion over the next five years on HIV/AIDS. Then at the three-day summit, which Bush left early, Chirac and the other leaders were so concerned to give an appearance of post-Iraq unanimity that they allowed the US to block any movement over areas that affect the underdeveloped world.

The trade issues on which Chirac had specifically proposed action—agricultural protectionism by the West and access to cheap drugs for AIDS—were dropped.

The desperation of the aid agencies in having to cope with a worsening situation in Africa is revealed in a series of documents produced by charities and campaign groups in the run-up to the G8 summit. Pointing to the “Africa Action Plan” that was agreed last year, Actionaid give a detailed list to show that on aid, debt relief, HIV/AIDS, provision of clean water and trade protectionism, “there has been less action since last year’s G8 summit than there was before.”

Jubilee Debt Campaign that mounted the first demonstrations at the G8 in 1998 point out that the supposed debt reduction schemes introduced by the International Monetary Fund mean that “the majority of the world’s poorest and most indebted people remain enslaved by debt, with no real hope under existing policies of being freed from indebtedness.”

Perhaps the most graphic picture of the situation facing Africa was highlighted by pop singer Bob Geldolf’s visit to Ethiopia in the week before the G8 summit. It is two decades after the last serious famine when Geldolf visited the country with the proceeds of his Live Aid charity. UNICEF persuaded him to return to help raise funds because up to 15 million people are facing another famine and the World Food Programme warns that it has only two thirds of the 619,000 tonnes it needs for its 2003 requirements. Geldolf had vowed never to return, but he said, “All the rains have failed. Already UNICEF estimates that there are 60,000 severely malnourished children. Kids are beginning to die now in substantial numbers.”

In his interview in the Independent, Geldolf outlined the features of the catastrophic situation: “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping across the plains of Ethiopia—and they are Famine, Debt, Trade and AIDS.”

Geldolf explained that after the Cold War the West no longer needed to finance dictatorships: “we wanted that money back and the issue of debt came to the fore. Huge numbers of disempowered, disenfranchised, voiceless people were suddenly asked for money they didn’t have.”

Ethiopia, like most African regimes, has such high debt repayments that it cannot afford to provide basic health care.

Geldolf toured the southern province of Sidamo in Ethiopia, once a relatively prosperous region producing the country’s main cash crop, coffee. During previous famines the area was rich enough to buy in food and survive. But over the past four years the price of coffee has fallen by 70 percent so that in the current famine the population is facing starvation.

The protectionism practised by the West has left African countries economically powerless. Tariffs are imposed on coffee—with tariffs increasing at every stage in processing—so it was impossible for Africa to do anything but export the raw beans and suffer the collapse in prices imposed by Western corporations.

Ethiopia is not regarded as an African country with a serious AIDS problem. But Geldolf visited a hospital at Dilla in the southern region. “It was one shitty little hospital to deal with a million people in the area,” he explained. “There was one doctor there—a brilliant man—who had started doing random HIV tests. He’s discovered that 14 percent of the population is positive—double the official estimate.”

It was presumably after witnessing firsthand the impact of AIDS in Ethiopia that Geldolf made his much publicised praise for the Bush AIDS initiative, thinking that this was at least a step forward in dealing with the pandemic that kills 6,500 people each day in Africa and a means of shaming the European powers into giving more funds.

Closer examination reveals this not to be the case.

Bush’s $15 billion AIDS fund was originally announced four months ago [See “Bush uses AIDS funding as an instrument of foreign policy” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/aids-f18.shtml] and has just been passed by Congress. As the World Socialist Web Site explained at the time, the $15 billion figure is spread over five years and next year only at most $2 billion will be made available. Although the law sets out a $3 billion a year provision the actual amount is subject to squeezes in aid budgets and will almost certainly be less. At the same time the White House has recommended cuts in other areas of US foreign aid spending—the US is already one of the lowest aid providers of all developed countries, donating only 0.12 percent of national income.

As AIDS campaigners have pointed out, a major beneficiary of the US initiative will be the American pharmaceutical industry. The US is blocking any trade deal that allows generic anti-AIDS drugs, costing a tenth or less of the drugs produced by the major corporations, to be widely sold in Africa and the underdeveloped countries. This initiative will enable the drug companies to continue selling at inflated prices.

Only $200 million from the total of Bush’s AIDS funding next year will go to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria that was set up through the United Nations in 2001. This is a mere 5 percent of the minimum needed by the Global Fund. Campaigners such as Global AIDS Alliance warn that the fund now faces a financial crisis and will be unable to meet even the limited commitments already made.

Most of the new US money will go to US bodies such as USAID and the Centers for Disease Control. They have no experience in dealing with HIV/AIDS in underdeveloped countries, but give a cover for US interventions. The real purpose of Bush’s AIDS proposal is certainly not a genuine humanitarian concern to tackle the AIDS pandemic. Instead the US funding will be targeted at a limited number of African countries where it can be used to boost US strategic interests.

One of the countries on the US list is Ethiopia, whose government has offered its services in the “war against terrorism”. Ethiopia backs various local warlords in Somalia and claims to be fighting the alleged influence of armed Islamic groups in the Horn of Africa. For this reason it has been viewed favourably by the US and Britain as a bulwark against the influence of Arab regimes in the region.

Another aspect of Bush’s AIDS fund not mentioned by Geldolf is the insistence that a third of it is used to support campaigns for sexual abstinence outside marriage. This sop to the Christian right, in addition to being an infringement of basic rights, is known to have no impact at all as a public health measure.

Also demanded by the religious right is the stipulation that no funding goes to groups working with prostitutes and the inclusion of a provision that allows religious organisations to vet the anti-AIDS measures used by NGOs funded by the US.

Because the situation in Africa has deteriorated so markedly over the last few years, and because the lobbying by NGOs have had virtually no effect, campaigners like Bob Geldolf have tended to welcome any apparent step forward, such as Bush’s AIDS package.

In a similar vein other aid organisations, whilst criticising the US, have welcomed the French and British initiatives in Africa. France increased its aid payments by 15 percent in 2002 and Britain promised to increase aid from $5.4 billion a year to $7.8 billion a year by 2006. This reverses the downward trend in aid throughout the last decade.

President Chirac’s proposal to lift trade restrictions on African agriculture will presumably be put to the European Union even though they were dropped at the G8. Radical campaigner George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian newspaper in support of Chirac’s “unprecedented” initiative and attacked British Prime Minister Tony Blair for not supporting him against Bush at the Evian summit.

In fact just as with the US AIDS funding, Britain and France’s concern is to promote their interests in Africa. Leaked documents from the World Trade Organisation’s negotiations made available by campaigning groups earlier this year showed what is behind the agendas of France, Britain and the EU. They are just as committed to free market attacks on working people and the poor as the US.

Trade concessions will be linked to economies opening up to European companies and banks. As the World Development Movement explained: “Now we can see that the EU is aiming for a global takeover of essential services and the financial infrastructure of developing countries for the benefit of EU corporations. We can point to specific examples of countries where they are targeting [state-owned] working alternatives to the free market. The EU has been through their economies with a fine tooth comb. The lie that this is a trade agenda for development has been finally exposed.”

Britain: Blair defeats motion for inquiry into Iraqi WMDs

By Julie Hyland
7 June 2003

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The June 4 parliamentary debate on whether the government had deliberately misled parliament and the British people over Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction witnessed an exercise in political cowardice by the ostensible critics of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

For days the media had been filled with security leaks confirming what the majority of people already knew, or had suspected—that the government had deliberately lied about Iraq’s military capabilities in order to justify its participation in an illegal war of aggression against a poor and largely defenceless nation.

The Labour Party demonstrated its imperviousness to the seriousness of such charges, however, closing ranks behind the prime minister to defeat a Liberal Democrat motion calling for an independent judicial inquiry into the allegations and defeating it by 301 votes to 203.

In the end Blair had had a “good day”, the media proclaimed, with only 11 Labour MPs supporting the opposition motion. None of them thought to question what Blair’s victory actually said about the state of official British politics.

Last September, the British government had released a dossier purportedly containing up-to-date intelligence information on Iraq’s WMDs, which claimed Saddam Hussein would be able to launch a chemical and biological strike against the world within 45 minutes.

Yet, after nearly two months in which British and US troops have occupied huge swathes of Iraq, detaining and interrogating leading Ba’athist officials and scientists, no trace has been found of any chemical and biological weapons arsenal.

According to the Daily Mirror, coalition troops have searched 87 sites considered “prime” areas for the manufacture of such weapons by the US and Britain and found nothing. Nineteen of these had been identified by the US as “highest-priority” zones, but “instead of chemical or biological weapons, searchers uncovered a training facility for Iraq’s Olympic swimming and diving teams, a drinks distillery and a factory making car licence plates,” the paper reported. “A feared weapons store was, in fact, a US field artillery headquarters.”

In his final report to the United Nations, delivered Monday June 2, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix verified that a three-month search of Iraq—cut short by the US-led war—had uncovered no evidence of WMDs.

Faced with such facts US officials had begun to dismiss the significance of Iraq’s military capabilities as a factor in the decision to go to war. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was possible Saddam Hussein had destroyed any illegal weaponry prior to the war—a statement flatly contradicting Blair’s insistence as late as March 18 that claims Iraq had already destroyed its weapons were “palpably absurd”.

Interviewed in Vanity Fair, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the issue of WMDs had been cited for “bureaucratic reasons”, an implicit acknowledgement that the issue had been raised solely to provide a smokescreen for US aggression aimed at establishing its hegemony in the Middle East and seizing control of vital oil resources.

Just as damaging to Blair’s case, anonymous senior figures within Britain’s intelligence services began briefing against government. At least four different sources were cited by the BBC as complaining that the government had distorted intelligence material in effort to press its case for war. The “45 minute” claim in particular had been inserted on the government’s insistence, one had said, despite unease amongst chief spies that the charge had come from just one uncorroborated source.

Later, the Guardian newspaper ran transcripts of a conversation it said had taken place between Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Colin Powell in New York, just prior to the US Security Council meeting on February 5. Correspondent Dan Plesch, from the Royal United Services Institute think tank, claimed that according to the security source who had given him the transcript both had expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq’s banned weapons programme—with Powell allegedly telling Straw that he hoped the facts, when they emerged, would not “explode in their faces”.

The reports immediately reignited divisions over the war, which had seen the government and much of the official opposition parties arraigned against the majority of British people.

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who had resigned over the war, led calls for an inquiry. The lack of any evidence supporting the government’s claims over Iraq’s chemical arsenal proved that Blair had committed a “monumental blunder” in moving so quickly to military action, he said.

Pointing out that the attorney general’s legal advice to the government on justification for the war had been based on the existence of WMDs in Iraq, Cook noted, “If he [Saddam Hussein] did not have those weapons, then that legal base disappears.”

Former International Development Secretary Clare Short went even further. Short had supported the government on the war, but resigned shortly afterwards complaining that the prime minister had misled her as to future plans for Iraq, specifically over the role of the United Nations.

In an interview with the Telegraph she said, “I have concluded that the PM had decided to go to war in August sometime and he duped us all along. He had decided for reasons that he alone knows to go to war over Iraq and to create this sense of urgency and drive it: the way the intelligence was spun was part of that drive.”

Short suggested that Blair’s efforts to win UN backing for military action were a charade. The prime minister had entered a secret pact with President George W. Bush in September 2002 to go to war in the spring, she said, and everything that the government had done was in order to justify that predetermined course.

In addition, the prime minister had deliberately targeted the French government’s objections to war without a UN mandate in order to build up a war frenzy, she said.

Presenting a parliamentary motion for an independent inquiry into the allegations. Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said, “I suspect that in presentational terms, Number 10 has gone for the greatest, most arresting presentation of the facts, but that in itself may have had the very unfortunate effect of misleading certain people.”

In response, the government attempted to dismiss the charges as simply the rantings of the usual antiwar dissenters, motivated by pique over the government’s triumph in Iraq.

Blair insisted that responsibility for the dossiers of evidence presented by the government on Iraq’s capabilities rested with the Joint Intelligence Committee, which includes the heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and other senior intelligence figures. The security leaks suggesting the government had doctored intelligence material or expressed private misgivings as to its veracity were the work of “rogue elements” within the security services out to get the Labour government, Labour’s John Reid told the Times newspaper. Reid’s remarks were backed up by chief whip, Hilary Armstrong, who claimed skullduggery was afoot in the intelligence world.

Reid’s intervention threatened to backfire in the government’s face. It is one thing to accuse the prime minister of being a deceitful toady of Bush, hell-bent on dragging the country into an illegal adventure, and quite another to impugn the motives of Britain’s spies—spooks, snoops and assassins they may be, rogues never.

Pressed on whether—if the government truly believed itself to be the target of a faction of the state—it should not immediately convene an inquiry, Reid backtracked.

There is no doubt that elements within Britain’s security services were extremely dissatisfied with the government’s presentation of intelligence reports, especially since virtually all of them have proven worthless and have made the British intelligence service into something of a laughing stock. And some at least considered Blair’s support for a US-led war reckless and contrary to Britain’s own interests in the Middle East.

The row points to fundamental disaffection within broader sections of the British establishment. During Wednesday’s parliamentary debate Blair had gloated at his critics, “They said there would be thousands dead. They said it was my Vietnam. They said that the Middle East would be in flames.”

Blair implied that all of this had proved to be nonsense, but the death toll already runs into thousands. According to the Stop the War coalition, the number of reported civilian deaths caused by the US/UK intervention currently stands at a minimum of 5,434 and it continues to mount—from unexploded ordinance bombs, the lack of basic amenities and poor sanitation—and most significantly from direct confrontations between the Iraqi people and coalition forces.

Reports indicate growing social unrest, including riots, against US/UK forces that are seen as a force of colonial occupation. Every day brings fresh reports of British troops being returned to barracks or investigated on charges of abusing Iraqis and US forces firing on and killing civilians and being targeted in return.

Sections of the Labour Party fear that Iraq may yet prove to be Blair’s Vietnam. Short referred to concerns at the growing instability in Iraq, warning, “Baghdad is a disaster. Everything is wrecked. It is completely violent.... The whole humanitarian system can’t work because it’s all so dangerous and disorderly.”

As to the Middle East, a study released June 3 by the Pew Global Attitudes project found that the war in Iraq has caused anti-American sentiment to reach an all-time high worldwide, especially in Muslim countries.

Even Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the conservative Daily Telegraph and a supporter of the war, was moved to complain, “The Prime Minister sent British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit ... and it stinks.”

Hastings noted with concern the US administration’s “new round of sabre-rattling against Iran”—with whom Britain has sought to cultivate friendly relations—especially given that it had been unable to secure any kind of stability in Afghanistan and now Iraq.

News commentators had noted that should the prime minister prove to have misled the country, he would have to resign. In parliament, former Labour chancellor Dennis Healey reiterated that such a charge, if proven, was a resigning issue.

In the end Blair was able to win the day in Parliament by making clear that he was not the only one that stood to lose out. In a parliamentary vote March 18, the government had comfortably won its resolution to support British participation in the war by 412 to 149 votes, with just 52 abstentions.

That vote was taken despite the fact that it was already clear that the entire case against Iraq was built on a tissue of lies, buttressed by Orwellian doublespeak, in which occupation became liberation and war peace.

The issue of weapons of mass destruction was the casus belli through which the government sought to defy popular opposition to the war and jettison international law. Advised that the US policy of “regime change” was illegal, and could open the government up to charges of war crimes, Blair had to maintain that Iraq’s military capability presented such a pressing and immediate threat that a preemptive strike was necessary for world security.

To this end, the truth was bent and even manufactured to suit the government’s political end of joining with the US war drive in an attempt to carve out a new sphere of interest for British imperialism in the Middle East.