The JvL Bi-Weekly

 

James van Luik

Publisher & Editor & Compiler

 

Please forward the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested

 

Tuesday, June 15th, 2004

Volume 3, No. 11

 

 

6. Articles

Two poems

 

1. Opposition Growing to US Exemption on Global Court

2. Iraqi Abuses: The Things Bush Didn't Mention in His Speech

3. McCarthyism Watch: Art Gallery Owner Beaten Up for Showing Anti-Torture Painting

4. Noam Chomsky on Reagan's Legacy

5. En Mi Verdad: In My Truth

6. Climate-Change Gases Now Increasing "Alarmingly": UN

7. From: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

 

1. OPPOSITION GROWING TO US EXEMPTION ON GLOBAL COURT

BY

EVELYN LEOPOLD

 

The United States may not have enough UN votes to exempt American soldiers from prosecution by a new global criminal court, with China now questioning the action in view of the prison scandal in Iraq, diplomats said on Thursday, May 27^th, 2004.

 

A Security Council draft resolution designed to put US peacekeepers out of the reach of the International Criminal Court expires on July 1. A renewal was delayed last week by China and it is expected to go before the Council again after a resolution on Iraq's transition is adopted.

 

Two years ago the Council voted unanimously in favor of the measure when the Bush administration began to veto UN peacekeeping missions after members hesitated.

 

Last year three nations abstained but this year there are enough abstentions that could bring the resolution perilously close to defeat. A minimum of nine votes in favor is needed for adoption in the 15-member Council.

 

Brazil, Spain, France and Germany have signaled they would abstain and Chile, Romania and Benin as well as China are considering it.

 

But some diplomats said the resolution would squeak through because no one wanted to see Washington kill UN peacekeeping missions. "The British say they are holding their noses and voting for it and others may do the same," said one envoy.

 

But China's position is an unusual one as Beijing has neither ratified nor signed the treaty establishing the court.

 

'A Very Bad Signal'

 

Several diplomats said that China was bargaining with the US over Taiwan's status in the World Trade Organization, one of the few international bodies that admit both Beijing and Taipei.

 

However, China's UN ambassador, Wang Guangya, denied this  was the case and said the resolution was sending a "a very bad signal at this time," especially to Iraq.

 

He told Reuters the US abuse of Iraqi prisoners raised the need for "strict observance of international law." The resolution, he  said, was a signal that "whatever you are doing, you are being protected by the Security Council."

 

"So we find it difficult to say 'yes' to this resolution," Wang said. "The United States has difficulties with ICC. We also have difficulties, but from different points of view."

 

The Bush administration argues that the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, could be used for politically motivated law suits against far-flung American soldiers. Supporters say the court's statutes exclude countries with a proper judicial system, like the Untied States, from prosecution.

 

"The language agreed upon two years ago embodies a fair but hard-fought compromise that allows us to participate in UN peacekeeping operations, while protecting our personnel serving in these operations," said Richard Grenell, spokesman for US Ambassador John Negroponte.

 

The court, the first permanent global war crimes tribunal, was set up to prosecute the world's worst atrocities, such as genocide, mass war crimes and systematic human rights abuses.

 

Specifically, the US draft resolution would place any soldier or official out of the court's reach from any nation if they served on missions established or authorized by the UN. This would apply to those from countries that did not ratify the 1998 treaty creating the court.

 

Of the 15 Security Council members, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Romania and Benin are among 94 nations that have ratified the 1998 treaty creating the court.

 

Russia, Chile, Angola, Algeria and the Philippines, are among 135 nations that signed the treaty. China and Pakistan have neither signed nor ratified and the Bush administration rescinded the US signature.

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 2. IRAQI ABUSES: THE THINGS BUSH DIDN'T MENTION IN HIS SPEECH

BY

ROBERT FISK

 

I can't wait to see Abu Ghraib prison reduced to rubble by the Americans—at the request of the new Iraqi government, of course. It will be turned to dust in order to destroy a symbol of Saddam's brutality. That's what President Bush tells us. So the re-writing of history still goes on.

 

Last August, I was invited to Abu Ghraib – by my favorite US Gen. Janis Karpinski, no less – to see the million-dollar US refurbishment of this vile place. Squeaky–clean cells and toothpaste tubes and fresh pairs of pants for the "terrorist" inmates. But now, suddenly, the whole kit and caboodle is no longer an American torture center. It's still an Iraqi torture center, and thus worthy of demolition.

 

Weapons of mass destruction? Forget it. Links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda? Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's Abu Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding party slaughtered? Forget it. Clear the decks for both "full sovereignty" and "chaotic events". This is, at any rate, according to Bush. When I heard his hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib as "Abu Grub" on Monday night, I could only profoundly agree.

 

But we're in danger again of missing the detail. Just as the unsupervised armed mercenaries being killed in Iraq are being described by the occupation authorities as "contractors" or, more mendaciously, "civilians" – so the responsibility for the porno interrogations at Abu Ghraib is being allowed to slide into the summer mists over the Tigris River.

 

So let's go back, for a moment, to the long weeks in which the Department of Bad Apples allowed its jerks to put leashes around Iraqi necks, force prisoners to have sex with each other and raped some Iraqi lasses in the jail.

 

And let's cast our eyes upon that little, all-important matter of responsibility. The actual interrogators accused of encouraging US troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contracts with Israel. The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defense minister.

 

According to Dr. JP London's company, CACI International, the visit of Dr. London – sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including US congressmen and other defense contractors – was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defense and homeland security agencies".

 

The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only US citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib – but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship.

 

The once secret torture report by US Gen. Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. Gen. Taguba mentions Steven Staphanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Staphanovic, who worked for CACI – known to the US military as "Khaki" – was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or  instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' … he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse". One of Staphanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan – who was not named in the Taguba report – now says that he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq. We know the Pentagon asked Israel for its "rules of engagement" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israeli officers have briefed their US opposite numbers and according to the Associated Press, "in January and February of 2003, Israeli and American troops trained together in southern Israel's Negev desert … Israel has also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the US for a seminar on counterterrorism".

 

Staphanovic of CACI, who may also be Australian, was accused by Taguba's army report of making "a false statement to the investigation team regarding … his knowledge of abuses". Another outside interrogator, Adel Nakhla, who may be of Egyptian origin, was a witness to the "stacking" of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib. John Israel "misled" investigators by denying he had witnessed misconduct and did not have "security clearance". Israel, according to Titan – two of whose employees were mentioned in Taguba's report – worked for one of the company's "subcontractors". Titan refused to name the "subcontractor".

 

Why? Among the company's former directors is ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, one of the architects of the US invasion of Iraq, a friend of Ahmed Chalabi and a prominent pro-Israeli lobbyist in Washington. Dr. London says CACI "does not condone or tolerate or endorse in any fashion (sic) any illegal, inappropriate behavior on the part of its employees in any circumstance at any time anywhere".

 

But it is clear the torture trail at Abu Ghraib has to run much further than a group of brutal US military cops, all of whom claim "intelligence officers" told them to "soften up" their prisoners for questioning. Were they Israeli? Or South African?  Or British? Are we going to let the story go?

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 3. McCARTHYISM WATCH: SAN FRANCISCO ART GALLERY OWNER BEATEN UP FOR SHOWING ANTI-TORTURE PAINTING

BY

MATHEW ROTHSCHILD

 

Lori Haigh runs an art gallery in San Francisco. Well, she used to.

 

On May 16^th, according to AP, she installed a piece of art work by Guy Colwell entitled "Abuse." The painting (which you can see at www.nobeliefs.com/abuse.htm) is an elaboration of the torture that went on at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In the foreground of Colwell's painting are two grinning US soldiers, one man and one woman, with American flags on their sleeves. The man is holding a cattle prod, and the woman, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, is holding electrical wires. Those wires are attached to the fingers of three naked male Iraqi detainees who are standing on cylinder blocks. The prisoners are hooded. In the background, two other American soldiers in sunglasses are leading a shackled and blindfolded woman into the room.

 

Haigh placed the painting in the front window of her gallery. Two days later, "someone threw eggs and dumped trash on the doorstep," AP reported, and "people started leaving nasty messages and threats on her business answering machine." She told AP that she received "about 200 angry voicemails, e-mails, and death threats."

 

So she decided to remove the painting, but still things got worse.

 

One day, someone walked into the gallery and spit in her face.

 

And then on May 27^th, someone "knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched Haigh in the face, knocking her out, breaking her nose, and causing a concussion," AP said. Two days later, she still had a bad black right eye, with purple on the cheek next to the eye, one bandage over the nose, and another over her right eyebrow.

 

The abuse was too much for her—she has two young kids—so she has closed her gallery down. If you go to www.capogallerysf.com, you will see a picture of the gallery's front door, with yellow caution tape across the front. "The Capobianco Gallery is closed," the site says.

 

"This isn't art-politics central here at all," Haigh told AP. "I'm not here to make a stand. I never set out to be a crusader or a political activist."

 

On Saturday, May 29^th, artists, poets, and other defenders of the First Amendment rallied in support of Haigh, her gallery, Colwell, and free expression.

 

"In effect, the attackers, instead of writing 'Jew' on the window, wrote 'Artists' on the window," poet Jack Hirschman, who spoke at the rally, tells me. "The attack was really something out of the Brown Shirts."

 

Hirschman says more than 100 people attended.

 

"This is all too scary for me," Haigh, who was at the rally, told the San Francisco Chronicle. But the paper said she was "visibly moved by the show of support" and is "weighing her options."

 

(I could reach neither Haigh nor Colwell for comment. I called the phone number of the gallery and got only this message: "Thank you for calling the Capobianco Gallery. Please leave a message after the tone.")

 

Here is Hirschman's poem he read at the rally. I'm reprinting it here with his permission:

 

Defiant

For the Capobianco Gallery

Not just elsewhere

But right here

In North Beach

The power of painting

To provoke and endure

 

Has called out

The old hatreds:

Death threats, spittle,

A physical attack on a

Gallery owner by

 

Detestable little

Worms from the fascist can of abuse

That's been thrown wide open.

Enough!

When the people

Gather, what's been terrifying

 

Turns to dust

And brush strokes

Turn into the proverbial

Thumbs in the eyes of

Censoring war thugs,

 

Because the freedom

To create a work of art

Is of the deepest affirmation

Of the human heart

And its very deathlessness

 

Is why no violence can

Ever long prevent the beauty

Of its truth of liberty from being

Triumphant in its struggle

Against the lie of the living dead.

 

"The enemy cannot be triumphant in this kind of situation," Hirschman says. "The gallery has to open again."

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 4. NOAM CHOMSKY ON REAGAN'S LEGACY

(Bush has resurrected "The Most Extremist, Arrogant, Violent and Dangerous Elements" of Reagan's White House)

INTERVIEWING NOAM CHOMSKY:

AMY GOODMAN

 

(Editor's note: This is a rough transcript)

 

The network and newspaper coverage of the death of Ronald Reagan has brought forth a chorus of praise from Democrats and Republicans alike. Much of the reporting and commentary, under the guise of respecting the dead, has represented a dramatic rewriting of the history of the Reagan years in office.

 

Looking back at the Reagan presidency doesn’t mean we actually have to look back. Many of the same people who populated his administration are in the George W. Bush administration as well: James Baker, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, John Poindexter, John Negroponte, just to name a few.

 

I asked leading dissident Noam Chomsky to reflect on the policies of Reagan's administration during his 8 years in power and Reagan's influence on the current Bush Administration.

 

Amy Goodman: Noam Chomsky, can you talk about this, the people that are now running the administration are some of the very people who ran the Reagan administration more than 20 years ago?

 

Noam Chomsky: That's quite true. The Reagan administration is either the same people or their immediate mentors for the most part. I think one can say that the current administration is a selection of the more extremist and arrogant and violent and dangerous elements of the Reagan administration. So on things like – I mean, that is true on domestic and international policy they are, both in the Reagan years and now, they are committed to dismantling the components of the government that serve the general population  --  social security, public schools and so on and so forth, but in a more extreme fashion now. Partly because they think they have achieved a sort of higher stage from which to launch the attack, and internationally it's pretty obvious. In fact, many of the older Reaganites and Bush, number one people have been concerned, even appalled by the extremism of the current administration in the international domain. That's why there was unprecedented elite criticism of the national security strategy and the implementation in Iraq – narrow criticism, but significant. So, yes, they're there, in fact, you cannot – some of the examples are remarkable, including the ones that you mentioned. And very timely they picked Negroponte, who of course has just been appointed, the new ambassador to Iraq where he will head the biggest diplomatic mission in the world. The pretense is that we need this huge diplomatic mission to transfer full sovereignty to Iraqis and that's so close to self-contradiction that you have to admire commentators who sort of pretend not to notice what it means, also to overlook, consciously, what his role was in the Reagan administration. He also provided – he was an ambassador in the Reagan years, ambassador to Honduras where he presided over the biggest CIA station in the world, and the second largest embassy in Latin America, not because Honduras was of any particular significance to the US, but because he was responsible for supervising the bases from which the US mercenary army was attacking in Nicaragua, and which ended up practically destroying it. By now, Nicaragua is lucky to survive a few generations. That was one part of the massive international terrorist campaign that the Reaganites carried out in the 1980s under the pretence they were fighting a war on terror. They declared a war on terror in 1981 with pretty much the same rhetoric that they used when they redeclared it in September 2001. It was murderous terrorist war. It devastated Central America, had horrendous effects elsewhere in the world. In the case of Nicaragua, it was so extreme that they (the US) were condemned by the World court, by two supporting Security Council Resolutions that the US had to veto, after which, of course, they rejected the court judgment and then escalated the war to the point where finally the effects were extraordinary. By the analysis of their own specialists, the per capita deaths in Nicaragua would be comparable to about 2.5 million in the US, which as they have pointed out is greater than the total number of casualities in all US wars, including the Civil War and all wars in the 20^th century, and what's left of the Nicaraguan society is a wreck. Since the US took over again, it's gone ever more downhill. Now the second poorest in the hemisphere after Haiti and not coincidentally, the second major target of US intervention in the 20^th century after Haiti, which is first. The recent health administration statistics show that about 60% of children under two are suffering from severe anemia caused by malnutrition and probably brain damage. Costa Rica, the US is trying to allow Nicaraguans – to do enough low-level work so that they can send back some remittances to kept their families alive. It's a real victory. You can understand why Colin Powell and others are so proud of it. But Negroponte was in charge of it in the first half of the decade directly, and in the second half more indirectly in the State Department and National Security staff where he was Powell's adviser. And now he is – he is supposed to undertake the same role and similar role in Iraq. He was called in Nicaragua "The Proconsul," and the "Wall Street Journal" was honest enough to run an article in which they headlined "Modern Proconsul" in which they mentioned his background in Nicaragua without going into it much and said, yes he will be the proconsul of Iraq. Now that's a direct continuity, but there's a lot more than that. What you mentioned is correct. Elliot Abrams in an extreme case. I mean, he's now the head of the Middle East section of the National Security Council. He was – as you know, he was sentenced for lying to Congress. He' got a presidential pardon, but he was one of the most –he was in charge in the State Department of the Central American atrocities, and on the Middle East, he is way out at the extreme end of the spectrum. This does reflect the – in a way – the continuity of policies, but also the shift towards extremism within that continuity.

 

Amy Goodman: There was very little critical comment about President Reagan this  weekend on his death perhaps explained by his death, what happens when a person dies, and what people say or perhaps also because there is a kind of rewriting of history that has been going on. But one of the few people who were quoted in the mainstream media was the Mexican foreign minister, Jorge – the former Mexican politician, Jorge Castaneda, whose father served as foreign minister as well in 1979 to 1982 who said Reagan was extremely unpopular in Mexico when he was president because of his policies in Central America, and what was viewed in Mexico as a Mexico bashing campaign over drug trafficking. Reagan's involvement in Nicaragua and El Salvador, viewed in Mexico, he said was unwarranted meddling that was "interventionist, rooted in cold war rivalries and disrespectful of international law. " Castaneda conditioned, "not only were his policies viewed negatively, but he pressured Mexico enormously to change its foreign policies."

 

Noam Chomsky: That's correct. Castaneda is being diplomatic. He's understating with regard to the international law and with regard to the intervention. It was – it ended up with a couple hundred thousand people being killed and four countries ruined. And even the world – the US – the people now in office in Washington have the unique honor of being the only ones in the world who have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism. That's a little more than what he said, but that's what he's aiming at. The unpopularity continues. The latest figures show that this George Bush, number two, latest Latin American figures, among Latin American elites, the ones who tend to be more supportive of the US, I think it was about close to 90% opposition throughout the hemisphere and approximately, if I remember, 98% opposition to him in Mexico. But to be accurate, we should say that this goes way back. So, John F. Kennedy was – tried very hard to get Mexico to line up in his anti-Cuba crusade. A famous comment by a Mexican foreign minister when Kennedy tried to convince him that Mexico was to join in the terrorist war against Cuba and the economic embargo strangulation, in fact on the grounds that Cuba was a threat to the security of the hemisphere and the Mexican foreign minister said he had to decline, the prime minister had to decline because if he tried to tell people in Mexico that Cuba was a security threat, 40 million Mexicans would die laughing, which is approximately the right answer. Here not so. The one point on which I think Castaneda's comment that you quote is really misleading is when he refers to cold war thinking and rivalries. There were no Russians in Latin America. In fact, the US was trying very hard to bring them in. Take, say, Nicaragua, when the terrorist war against Nicaragua really took off, Nicaragua tried to get some military aid to defend itself. And they went first to European countries, France, others. The Reagan administration put extreme pressure on them not to send military aid because they were desperately eager for Nicaragua to get military aid from Russia or indirectly through Cuba. So they could then present it as a cold war issue. Nicaragua didn't fall in to the trap as Guatemala had in 1954, basically the same scenario. So, they didn't get jet planes from Russia to defend their airspace against he US attacks. They had every right to do it, but the responsibility to do it, but they understood the consequences. So, the Reagan administration had to float constant stories about how Nicaragua was getting MIG jets from Russia in order to create a cold war conflict. Actually it's very revealing to see the reaction here to those stories. Of course Nicaragua had every right to do it. The CIA had compete control over Nicaragua's airspace and was using it. It was using it to send communications to the guerrilla army, which was – guerrilla is a funny word for it, computers and helicopters and so on to send them instructions so that they could follow the US command orders to avoid the Sandinista army, the Nicaraguan army and to attack what are called soft targets, undefended civilian targets. It's a country that doesn't have a right to defend its airspace to protect that, I don't know what you can say. So, obviously, they have a right to do it, but they didn't. They allowed the US to have control of the airspace and to attack – to use it to attack undefended targets.

 

Amy Goodman: Noam Chomsky, you have written about the US as being the only country in the world to be convicted in the World Court of terrorism. And this had to do with the bombing of the Nicaraguan harbor, which took place under Reagan. Can you talk about that?

 

Noam Chomsky: Yeah. That, too, is a little misleading. Nicaragua was hoping to end the confrontation through legal means, through diplomatic means.

 

Amy Goodman: I mean the mining of the harbor.

 

Noam Chomsky: Yes, the mining of the harbors. They decided to  -- they asked a legal team headed by a very distinguished American international  lawyer, A. Chayes, professor of law at Harvard who had long government service, and that legal team decided to construct and extremely narrow case. So, they kept to matters that were totally uncontroversial, as the US conceded like the mining of the harbors, but it was only a toothpick on a mountain. They picked the narrowest point in the hope that they could get a judgment from the World Court, which would lead the US to back off from the whole international terrorist campaign, and they did win a judgment from the court, which ordered the US to terminate any actions, any violent actions against Nicaragua, which went way beyond mining of the harbors. That was the least of it. So, yes, that was the narrow content of the court decision, although, if you read the decision, the court decision, that goes well beyond, they're all conscious of the much wider terrorist campaign, but the Harvard – the Chayes run legal team didn't bring it up for good reasons. Because they didn't want any controversy at the court hearings about the facts. There was no controversy about that, since it was conceded. However, it should be read as a much broader indictment, and a very important one. I mean, the term that was used by the court was "unlawful use of force," which Is the technical term for the informal notion, international terrorism. There's no legal definition of international terrorism in the international domain. So I bet it was in effect a condemnation of international terrorism over a much broader domain. However, we should bear in mind, it's important for us, that horrible as the Nicaraguan war was, it wasn't the worst. Guatemala and El Salvador were worse. I suggest that in Nicaragua, the reason was that in Nicaragua, the population at least had an army to defend it. In El Salvador and Guatemala, the terrorist forces attacking the population were the army and the other security forces. There was no one to bring a case to the World Court; that can be brought only by governments, not by peasants being slaughtered.

 

Amy Goodman: Professor Chomsky, I wouldn't want to end this discussion without talking about the Reagan years and Africa, particularly South Africa.

 

Noam Chomsky: Well, the official policy was called "constructive engagement." I recall it during the 1980s, by then there was enormous pressure to end all support for the apartheid government. Congress passed legislation barring trade and aid. The Reagan administration found ways to evade the congressional legislation, and in fact trade with South Africa increased in the latter part of the decade. This is incidentally the period when Colin Powell moved to the position of national security adviser.

 

The US was strongly supporting the apartheid regime directly and then indirectly through allies. Israel was helping get around the embargo. Rather as in central America where the clandestine terror made use of other states that served as – that helped the administration get around congressional legislation. In the case of South Africa, just look at the rough figures. In Angola and Mozambique, the neighboring countries, in those countries alone, the South African depredations killed about million-and-a-half people and led to some $60 billion in damage during the period of constructive engagement with the US leading the way. It was a horror story.

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5. EN MI VERDAD: IN MY TRUTH

BY

ANTONIO GUERRERO

(One of the Cuban 5)

 

Dónde está la razón?  Se preguntaron.

Pero entre miedos y otras cosas indígnas

Se perdío la llave

Y la razón quedó tras la puerta,

Y yo quedé encerrado, al otro lado,

En este mudno que no es el que yo quiero.

 

Where is the reason? They asked themselves.

But amidst fears and other indignities

The key was lost

And reason remained behind the door.

And I stayed confined on the other side

In this world which is not the one I want.

 

Y aunque de pronto el cielo se cargó de sombras,

Sepan los tan felices de su última ignominia,

Que en mi osadía el terror no funciona,

Que en mi honor injusticia no trabaja,

Que en mi virtud la avaricia no mella,

Que en mi verdad la dignidad cohabita,

Que en mi amor la alegría siempre llega

 

And although suddenly the sky filled up with shadows,

Let those so happy of their latest disgracefulness know

That in my courage terror does not function,

That in my honor injustice does not work,

That in my virtue greed does not harm

That in my truth dignity cohabits

That in my love happiness always comes.

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 6. CLIMATE-CHANGE GASES NOW INCREASING "ALARMINGLY": UN

BY

THE STAFF OF ONEWORLD.NET

 

The secretary of the UN's paramount environment accord warned that climate-altering pollution emitted by burning oil, gas and coal was now growing at "an alarmingly rapid" rate.

 

"Recent news about a disintegrating Arctic ice cap and the increased frequency of extreme weather events and associated damage have added to the sense of urgency" about climate change. Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said here in Bonn.

 

"Also worrying are the latest measure of the alarmingly rapid growth in atmospheric CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentrations," she said.

 

Waller-Hunter referred to measurements made by US scientists at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

 

She said CO2 was recorded there in March at 379 parts per million (ppm), "well above the 280 ppm of pre-industrial times and with a three ppm increase from the year before."

 

That three-ppm year–on–year increase compares with an average annual growth of 1.8 ppm over the past decade, Waller-Hunter said.

 

Climate expert Jennifer Morgan, with the environmentalist group WWF, said the recorded increase was extraordinary. "That's scary," she told AFP.

 

CO2 is by far the most important of the six "greenhouse" gases blamed for driving changes to the world's delicate climate system.

 

These gases hang like an invisible shroud in the atmosphere, trapping the sun's heat and driving up the temperature of the Earth's land and sea, inflicting what scientists say are potentially catastrophic changes to icecaps, glaciers and rainfall patterns.

 

The UNFCCC is the parent treaty of the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to trim output of fossil gases.

 

Kyoto, signed in 1997, remains in limbo however.

 

The United States, the biggest carbon polluter, has walked away from it and Russia is dragging its feet about ratifying the accord, a move that would push the deal over a legal threshold and make it an international treaty.

 

Waller-Hunter made the remarks at the final day of a four-day international conference on solar, wind and other renewable energies in Bonn.

 

She said renewables could play a "central role" in combating climate change.

 

"On average, about 2.3 tonnes of CO2 are released per tonne of oil equivalent supplied. This means that the (share) of 14 percent in the world's energy supply help us avoid the emission of more than three billion tonnes of CO2 every year."

 

The 14 percent comprises wind, solar, hydro and geothermal energy, together with waste and "combustible renewables."

 

That category includes wood, which is widely used for heating and cooking in poor countries, and while fuel-inefficient is relatively low in CO2 emissions.

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 7. FROM: PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL PEACE

BY

GORE VIDAL

 

It is June 16^th. It seems like five years rather than five days since the execution. The day before the execution, June 10^th, 2001, the New York Times discussed "The Future of American Terrorism. "Apparently, terrorism has a real future; hence we must beware Nazi skinheads in the boondocks. The Times is, occasionally, right for the usual wrong reasons. For instance, their current wisdom is to dispel the illusion that "McVeigh is merely a pawn in an expansive conspiracy led by a group of John Does that may even have had government involvement. But only a small fringe will cling to this theory for long." Thank God: one had feared that rumors of a greater conspiracy would linger on and Old Glory herself would turn to fringe before our eyes. The Times, more  in anger than in sorrow, feels that McVeigh blew martyrdom by first pleading not guilty and then by not using his trial to "make a political statement about Ruby Ridge and Waco." McVeigh agreed with the

Times, and blamed his first lawyer, Stephen Jones, in unholy tandem with the judge, for selling him out. During his appeal, his new attorneys claimed that the serious sale took place when Jones, eager for publicity, met with the Time's Pam Belluck. McVeigh's guilt was quietly conceded, thus explaining why the defense was so feeble. (Jones claims he did nothing improper.)

 

Actually, in the immediate wake of the bombing, the Times concedes, the militia movement skyrocketed from 220 antigovernment groups in 1995 to more than 850 by the end of '96. A factor in this growth was the belief circulating among militia groups "that government agents had planted the bomb as a way to justify anti-terrorism legislation. No less than a retired Air Force general has promoted the theory that in addition to Mr. McVeigh's truck bomb, there were bombs inside the building." Although the Times likes analogies to Nazi Germany, they are curiously reluctant to draw one between, let's say, the firing of the Reichstag in 1933 (Göring later took credit for this creative crime), which then allowed Hitler to invoke an Enabling Act that provided him with all sorts of dictatorial powers "for protection of the people and the state," and so on to Auschwitz.

 

Edye Smith was interviewed by Gary Tuchman, May 23^rd, 1995, on CNN. She duly noted that the ATF bureau, about seventeen people on the ninth floor, suffered no causalities. Indeed they seemed not to have come to work that day. Jim Keith gives details in OKBOMB!, while Smith observed on TV, "Did the ATF have a warning sign? I mean, did they think it might be a bad day to go into the office? They had an option not to got to work that day and my kids didn't get that option." She lost two children in the bombing. ATF has a number of explanations. The latest: five employees were in the offices, unhurt.

 

Fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27^th, 1947. Place: White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dan Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only if  he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congresses and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian guard at the Pentagon we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues. We complain of terrorism, yet our empire is now the greatest terrorist of all. We bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine. We the unrepresented People of the United States are as much victims of this militarized government as the Panamanians, Iraqis, or Somalians. We have allowed our institutions to be taken over in the name of a globalized American empire that is totally alien in concept to anything our founders had in mind. I suspect that it is far too late in the day for us to restore the republic that we lost a half-century ago.

 

(Editor's Note: I recommend: Gore Vidal. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. How We Got To Be So Hated. Pages 22 to 41 are of special historical importance.

 Also, the next issue of the Bi-Weekly will be July 15th, 2004.)

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