James van Luik

[By clicking on this signature one has access to all articles of the JvL Bi-Weekly.]

(Editor's Note: At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. Charles Bukowski)

(Editor's Note 2: Lockheed Martin has become top dog among corporate arms dealers. It became the number one recipient of funds from the US Treasury among all US companies on the wings of the R-22A, a fighter designed to defeat the Soviet Union's MiG 29 UBM. The MiG 29 was never built. And the Soviet Union doesn't exist—proof of the extraordinary effectiveness of the F-22A. Greg Palast)

1. NO TOLLS ON THE INTERNET

LAWRENCE LESSIG & ROBERT W. McCHESNEY

Congress is about to cast a historic vote on the future of the Internet. It will decide whether the Internet remains a free and open technology fostering innovation, economic growth and democratic communication, or instead becomes the property of cable and phone companies that can put toll booths at every on-ramp and exit on the information superhighway.

At the center of the debate is the most important public policy you've probably never heard of: "network neutrality." Net neutrality means simply that all like Internet content must be treated alike and move at the same speed over the network. The owners of the Internet's wires cannot discriminate. This is the simple but brilliant "end-to-end" design of the Internet that has made it such a powerful force for economic and social good: All of the intelligence and control is held by producers and users, not the networks that connect them.

The protections that guaranteed network neutrality have been law since the birth of the Internet -- right up until last year, when the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the rules that kept cable and phone companies from discriminating against content providers. This triggered a wave of announcements from phone company chief executives that they plan to do exactly that.

Now Congress faces a legislative decision. Will we reinstate net neutrality and keep the Internet free? Or will we let it die at the hands of network owners itching to become content gatekeepers? The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn't.

Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer, demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It's what Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls "the Tony Soprano business model": By extorting protection money from every Web site -- from the smallest blogger to Google -- network owners would earn huge profits. Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up. They'd like Congress to "trust them" to behave.

Without net neutrality, the Internet would start to look like cable TV. A handful of massive companies would control access and distribution of content, deciding what you get to see and how much it costs. Major industries such as health care, finance, retailing and gambling would face huge tariffs for fast, secure Internet use -- all subject to discriminatory and exclusive dealmaking with telephone and cable giants.

We would lose the opportunity to vastly expand access and distribution of independent news and community information through broadband television. More than 60 percent of Web content is created by regular people, not corporations. How will this innovation and production thrive if creators must seek permission from a cartel of network owners?

The smell of windfall profits is in the air in Washington. The phone companies are pulling out all the stops to legislate themselves monopoly power. They're spending tens of millions of dollars on inside-the-Beltway print, radio and TV ads; high-priced lobbyists; coin-operated think tanks; and sham "Astroturf" groups -- fake grass-roots operations with such Orwellian names as Hands Off the Internet and NetCompetition.org.

They're opposed by a real grass-roots coalition of more than 700 groups, 5,000 bloggers and 750,000 individual Americans who have rallied in support of net neutrality at http://www.savetheinternet.com/ . The coalition is left and right, commercial and noncommercial, public and private. Supporters include the Christian Coalition of America, MoveOn.org, National Religious Broadcasters, the Service Employees International Union, the American Library Association, AARP and nearly every consumer group. It includes the founders of the Internet, the brand names of Silicon Valley, and a bloc of retailers, innovators and entrepreneurs. Coalitions of such breadth, depth and purpose are rare in contemporary politics.

Most of the great innovators in the history of the Internet started out in their garages with great ideas and little capital. This is no accident. Network neutrality protections minimized control by the network owners, maximized competition and invited outsiders in to innovate. Net neutrality guaranteed a free and competitive market for Internet content. The benefits are extraordinary and undeniable.

Congress is deciding on the fate of the Internet. The question before it is simple: Should the Internet be handed over to the handful of cable and telephone companies that control online access for 98 percent of the broadband market? Only a Congress besieged by high-priced telecom lobbyists and stuffed with campaign contributions could possibly even consider such an absurd act.

People are waking up to what's at stake, and their voices are growing louder by the day. As millions of citizens learn the facts, the message to Congress is clear: Save the Internet.

2. THE SECRET WAR AGAINST THE DEFENSELESS PEOPLE OF WEST PAPUA

JOHN PILGER

In 1993, I and four otherstraveled clandestinely across East Timor to gather evidence of the genocide committed by the Indonesian dictatorship. Such was the depth of silence about this tiny country that the only map I could find before I set out was one with blank spaces stamped "Relief Data Incomplete." Yet few places had been as defiled and abused by murderous forces. Not even Pol Pot had succeeded in dispatching, proportionally, as many people as the Indonesian tyrant Suharto had done in collusion with the "international community."

In East Timor, I found a country littered with graves, their black crosses crowding the eye: crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road. They announced the murder of entire communities, from babies to the elderly. In 2000, when the East Timorese, displaying a collective act of courage with few historical parallels, finally won their freedom, the United Nations set up a truth commission; on 24 January, its 2,500 pages were published. I have never read anything like it. Using mostly official documents, it recounts in painful detail the entire disgrace of East Timor's blood sacrifice. It says that 180,000 East Timorese were killed by Indonesian troops or died from enforced starvation. It describes the "primary roles" in this carnage of the governments of the United States, Britain and Australia. America's "political and military support were fundamental" in crimes that ranged from "mass executions to forced resettlements, sexual and other horrific forms of torture as well as abuse against children." Britain, a co-conspirator in the invasion, was the main arms supplier. If you want to see through the smokescreen currently around Iraq, and understand true terrorism, read this document.

As I read it, my mind went back to the letters Foreign Office officials wrote to concerned members of the public and MPs following the showing of my film Death of a Nation. Knowing the truth, they denied that British-supplied Hawk jets were blowing straw-roofed villages to bits and that British-supplied Heckler & Koch machine-guns were finishing off the occupants. They even lied about the scale of suffering.

And it is all happening again, wrapped in the same silence and with the "international community" playing the same part as backer and beneficiary of the crushing of a defenseless people. Indonesia's brutal occupation of West Papua, a vast, resource-rich province – stolen from its people, like East Timor – is one of the great secrets of our time. Recently, the Australian minister of "communications," Senator Helen Coonan, failed to place it on the map of her own region, as if it did not exist.

An estimated 100,000 Papuans, or 10 per cent of the population, have been killed by the Indonesian military. This is a fraction of the true figure, according to refugees. In January, 43 West Papuans reached Australia's north coast after a hazardous six-week journey in a dugout. They had no food, and had dribbled their last fresh water into their children's mouths. "We knew," said Herman Wainggai, the leader, "that if the Indonesian military had caught us, most of us would have died. They treat West Papuans like animals. They kill us like animals. They have created militias and jihadis to do just that. It is the same as East Timor."

For over a year, an estimated 6,000 people have been hiding in dense jungle after their villages and crops were destroyed by Indonesian special forces. Raising the West Papuan flag is "treason." Two men are serving 15- and ten-year sentences for merely trying. Following an attack on one village, a man was presented as an "example" and petrol poured over him and his hair set alight.

When the Netherlands gave Indonesia its independence in 1949, it argued that West Papua was a separate geographic and ethnic entity with a distinctive national character. A report published last November by the Institute of Netherlands History in The Hague revealed that the Dutch had secretly recognized the "unmistakable beginning of the formation of a Papuan state," but were bullied by the administration of John F Kennedy to accept "temporary" Indonesian control over what a White House adviser called "a few thousand miles of cannibal land."

The West Papuans were conned. The Dutch, Americans, British and Australians backed an "Act of Free Choice" ostensibly run by the UN. The movements of a UN monitoring team of 25 were restricted by the Indonesian military and they were denied interpreters. In 1969, out of a population of 800,000, some 1,000 West Papuans "voted." All were selected by the Indonesians. At gunpoint, they "agreed" to remain under the rule of General Suharto – who had seized power in 1965 in what the CIA later described as "one of the worst mass murders of the late 20th century." In 1981, the Tribunal on Human Rights in West Papua, held in exile, heard from Eliezer Bonay, Indonesia's first governor of the province, that approximately 30,000 West Papuans had been murdered during 1963-69. Little of this was reported in the west.

The silence of the "international community" is explained by the fabulous wealth of West Papua. In November 1967, soon after Suharto had consolidated his seizure of power, the Time-Life Corporation sponsored an extraordinary conference in Geneva. The participants included the most powerful capitalists in the world, led by the banker David Rockefeller. Sitting opposite them were Suharto's men, known as the "Berkeley mafia," as several had enjoyed US government scholarships to the University of California at Berkeley. Over three days, the Indonesian economy was carved up, sector by sector. An American and European consortium was handed West Papua's nickel; American, Japanese and French companies got its forests. However, the prize – the world's largest gold reserve and third-largest copper deposit, literally a mountain of copper and gold – went to the US mining giant Freeport-McMoran. On the board is Henry Kissinger, who, as US secretary of state, gave the "green light" to Suharto to invade East Timor, says the Dutch report.

Freeport is today probably the biggest single source of revenue for the Indonesian regime: the company is said to have handed Jakarta $33bn between 1992 and 2004. Little of this has reached the people of West Papua. Last December, 55 people reportedly starved to death in the district of Yahukimo. The Jakarta Post noted the "horrible irony" of hunger in such an "immensely rich" province. According to the World Bank, "38 per cent of Papua's population is living in poverty, more than double the national average."

The Freeport mines are guarded by Indonesia's special forces, who are among the world's most seasoned terrorists, as their documented crimes in East Timor demonstrate. Known as Kopassus, they have been armed by the British and trained by the Australians. Last December, the Howard government in Canberra announced that it would resume "cooperation" with Kopassus at the Australian SAS base near Perth. In an inversion of the truth, the then Australian defense minister, Senator Robert Hill, described Kopassus as having "the most effective capability to respond to a counter-hijack or hostage recovery threat." The files of human-rights organizations overflow with evidence of Kopassus's terrorism. On 6 July 1998, on the West Papuan island of Biak, just north of Australia, special forces massacred more than 100 people, most of them women.

However, the Indonesian military has not been able to crush the popular Free Papua Movement (OPM). Since 1965, almost alone, the OPM has reminded the Indonesians, often audaciously, that they are invaders. In the past two months, the resistance has caused the Indonesians to rush more troops to West Papua. Two British-supplied Tactica armored personnel carriers fitted with water cannon have arrived from Jakarta. These were first delivered during the late Robin Cook's "ethical dimension" in foreign policy. Hawk fighter-bombers, made by BAE Systems, have been used against West Papuan villages.

The fate of the 43 asylum-seekers in Australia is precarious.

In contravention of international law, the Howard government has moved them from the mainland to Christmas Island, which is part of an Australian "exclusion zone" for refugees. We should watch carefully what happens to these people. If the history of human rights is not the history of great power's impunity, the UN must return to West Papua, as it did finally to East Timor.

Or do we always have to wait for the crosses to multiply?

3. UNDERSTANDING THE ROOTS OF MIGRATION: THE DEBATE IN THE US

THE STAFF OF WITNESS FOR PEACE (MEXICO)

In recent days, millions have taken to the streets to protest unjust immigration policies and to influence legislation under debate in the Senate. Many of you have called your senators letting them know your views on pending legislation. Our work is far from finished.

On May 1st, show your solidarity with undocumented immigrants by participating in “The Great American Boycott 2006—a day without an immigrant" ("El Gran Paro Americano 2006—un día sin inmigrante"). For information about actions going on in different parts of the country, see www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org and www.NoHR4437.org.

Background

Legislation in the House of Representatives, HR 4437, would make the presence of undocumented persons in the U.S. a felony punishable by jail time, immediately qualifying 12 million people in this country for sentencing. The bill criminalizes humanitarian assistance to the undocumented, putting churches, social service providers, and “good Samaritans” at risk nationwide, and increases sanctions against those who employ them.

Our nation is deeply divided on immigration issues. The country’s 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants are variously described as an occupying army of thieves, snatching jobs and subverting our laws, or as a wholesome community of strivers, eager to build families and chase the American dream.

A majority of the undocumented workers come from Mexico.

Although many people in the U.S. blame migrants for taking “our jobs”, Witness for Peace believes that the real blame lies with neo-liberal trade policies endorsed by our own government. In the twelve years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) passed:

Mexico has seen over 1.5 million farmers displaced by the dumping of cheap corn imports from U.S. producers.

Many of these rural workers have migrated to the border cities, where they have sought employment in maquilas (foreign owned assembly plants or garment factories), more than tripling the population of these free trade centers.

The purchasing power of the minimum wage (about $4.50 US/day) declined by more than 20 percent.

Other displaced workers who have lost their jobs due to maquilas closing in search of cheaper labor have decided to make the perilous journey to the United States: It is estimated that Mexican immigration to the U.S. has doubled since NAFTA began.

Uprooted from their communities by economic policies that have destroyed their livelihoods, more and more Mexicans cross the border in hopes of making a future for themselves and their children. These migrants are refugees of an economic war that leaves scars in the fabric of community life in the small towns that send migrants north each year.

The U.S. depends on migrants for their labor and the Mexican government depends on them to send money home to their families. In 2005 Mexicans living abroad sent more than 20 billion dollars in remittances back to their communities in Mexico. These remittances take the place of the subsidies that were phased out as part of the requirements for neoliberal structural adjustment.

Neither HR 4437 nor the Senate compromise bill address the basic questions about immigration: Why do people leave their homes and families behind and often risk their lives to migrate to the U.S.? Why are they willing to accept jobs paying far below minimum wage?

Join a Witness for Peace delegation to learn about the roots of migration!

This summer Witness for Peace offers delegations to Mexico with a special focus on migration. These delegations will challenge delegates to learn about the realities not discussed in the current immigration debate. They will spend time in communities in southern Mexico to learn about the roots of migration. Other delegations in the future may visit the U.S.-Mexico border with Witness for Peace partner organizations.

June 27-July 6, 2006: The Human Cost of Globalization—Roots of Exploitation and Migration. Ten days, $960 US plus airfare. Deadline for applications: May 10. Sponsored by the New England Region of Witness for Peace. (Call Joanne Ranney at 802-434-2980, EDT, or write [email protected].)

July 23-31, 2006: Free Trade and the Roots of Migration. Nine days, $870 US plus airfare. Deadline for applications: June 4. Sponsored by the Witness for Peace Northwest Region. (Call Leo Gorman at 503-327-5757, PDT, or write [email protected].)

We hope that one of these delegations will work for you. Please also alert your friends and associates to these opportunities. As one former Mexico delegate wrote, “There has been virtually no discussion in the United States regarding the connection between agricultural policy and its impact on rural Mexico, and migration issues. This is the perspective I’ve been trying to bring to conversations, and it is a perspective I would have lacked had I not participated in the delegation.”

All are welcome to submit applications for either of these delegations. Further information and application forms are available at www.witnessforpeace.org, or by contacting the delegation coordinators listed above, or Vera Wiedenbeck at [email protected].

If the above dates do not work for you or others who might be interested, please check with us regularly, as Witness for Peace will continue to offer delegations to Mexico. Please contact us for further information. We are also willing to arrange delegations specifically for interested groups: students, labor, sister cities, religious congregations, etc. Please contact [email protected].

4. ABSTINENCE BACKFIRES

SHARON SMITH

One of the Christian Right's most cherished ideological victories since the 1990s has been the dominance of federally funded "abstinence only until marriage" programs now taught to millions of teenagers across the country.

New evidence, however, suggests that these same programs have contributed to soaring rates of unplanned pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births and, yes, abortions among women who are young or poor.

Abstinence education was not an invention of the Bush administration but was quietly tucked into Clinton's 1996 welfare reform bill-dangling federal grants for abstinence-only programs to cash-starved states-funded with $97 million in 1999 and rising to nearly $170 million last year.

Ironically, teenage contraceptive use had nearly doubled during the Reagan era, when comprehensive sex education-including contraception instruction-still remained the norm.

In contrast, U.S. law now requires federally funded sexuality education to inform teenagers that ''sexual activity outside the context of [monogamous and heterosexual] marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.''

These programs do not let the facts stand in the way of traumatizing teenagers from developing a remotely healthy attitude toward their own sexuality.

As the Washington Post reported in 2004, "Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught [falsely] over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals 'can result in pregnancy.'"

A Congressional study in 2004 discovered that the curricula used by 69 educational organizations in 25 states taught adolescents that a 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person" and that the HIV virus can be spread by sweat or tears.

In addition, abstinence-only programs universally neglect to teach teenagers to use contraception, instead emphasizing false accusations about contraceptive failure. The Congressional study found, for example, that many abstinence programs claimed condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time, when the actual statistic is just 3 percent.

Not surprisingly, abstinence promotion has not decreased teen sexual activity but has led to an increase in unprotected sex. A recent Columbia University study found that 88 percent of teenage girls who take "virginity pledges" eventually have premarital sex-but are one-third less likely to use contraception when they do so.

At least two-thirds of American teenage females have had sex by the time they reach the age of 18, according to the Center for Disease Control. In any given year, nine in ten teenagers who have heterosexual sex without contraceptives become pregnant.

Nearly 80 percent of U.S. teen births take place outside of wedlock-overwhelmingly to low-income women, while one in four sexually active teens acquires a sexually transmitted disease.

Federal funding for contraception has declined by 59 percent (in constant dollars) since 1980. As a result, women living in poverty are almost four times more likely to become pregnant unintentionally than women of even moderate means.

According to reproductive rights researchers from the Alan Guttmacher institute, the rate of unplanned pregnancy rose by nearly 30 percent for women living below the federal poverty line between 1994 through 2001-while falling by 20 percent during the same time period for women in families earning just $16,000 annually for a family of three.

Among the poorest women, the proportion of unwanted pregnancies that resulted in live births increased by almost 50 percent between 1994 and 2001, while it declined for women in families whose income was at least twice the official poverty level.

Unintended pregnancies led to almost even numbers of births and abortions.

U.S. teen pregnancy rates are double those in England and Canada, and nine times more than those in the Netherlands and Japan.

Research shows that when contraception is readily available, the rate of unplanned pregnancy drops. France offers free emergency contraception to teenagers, without requiring them to inform their parents, yet France has an abortion rate half of that in the U.S.

For the record, no scientific evidence exists to show that consensual sex between teenagers is harmful in any respect.

5. US SCORES POORLY ON INFANT MORTALITY
(Shortcomings in basic health care, obesity cited for low rank among modern nations)

LINDSEY TANNER

Among 33 industrialized nations, the United States is tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with a death rate of nearly 5 per 1,000 babies, according to a new report. Latvia's rate is 6 per 1,000.

"We are the wealthiest country in the world, but there are still pockets of our population who are not getting the health care they need," said Mary Beth Powers, a reproductive health adviser for the U.S.-based Save the Children, which compiled the rankings based on health data from countries and agencies worldwide.

The U.S. ranking is driven partly by racial and income disparities. Among U.S. blacks, there are 9 deaths per 1,000 live births, closer to rates in developing nations than to those in the industrialized world.

"Every time I see these kinds of statistics, I'm always amazed to see where the United States is because we are a country that prides itself on having such advanced medical care and developing new technology ... and new approaches to treating illness. But at the same time not everybody has access to those new technologies," said Dr. Mark Schuster, a Rand Co. researcher and pediatrician with the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Save the Children report, released Monday, comes just a week after publication of another report humbling to the U.S. health care system. That study showed that white, middle-aged Americans are far less healthy than their peers in England, despite U.S. health care spending that is double that in England.

In the United States, researchers noted that the population is more racially and economically diverse than many other industrialized countries, making it more challenging to provide culturally appropriate health care.

About half a million U.S. babies are born prematurely each year, data show. Black infants are twice as likely as white babies to be premature, to have a low birth weight and to die at birth, according to Save the Children.

The researchers also said lack of national health insurance and short maternity leaves likely contribute to the poor U.S. rankings.

Other possible factors in the U.S. include teen pregnancies and obesity rates, which both disproportionately affect black women and increase risk for premature births and low birth weights.

In past reports by Save the Children — released ahead of Mother's Day — U.S. mothers' well-being has consistently ranked far ahead of those in developing countries but poorly among industrialized nations. This year, the United States tied for last place with the United Kingdom on indicators including mortality risks and contraception use.

While the gaps for infants and mothers contrast sharply with the nation's image as a world leader, Emory University health policy expert Kenneth Thorpe said the numbers are not surprising.

"Our health care system focuses on providing high-tech services for complicated cases. We do this very well," Thorpe said.

"What we do not do is provide basic primary and preventive health care services."

6. THE HARDEST WORD

SCOTT RITTER

One has to wonder as to what must have been going through the minds of those who were advising George W Bush and Tony Blair to "come clean", so to speak, about their respective shortcomings regarding the conduct of the war in Iraq. With over 2,460 American and 106 UK soldiers killed in Iraq (not to mention untold thousands of dead Iraqis), the two people in the world most responsible for the ongoing debacle in Iraq displayed the combination of indifference and ignorance that got them neck deep in a quagmire of their own making to begin with.

President Bush kicked himself for "talking too tough", while the British prime minister ruminated on the decision to disband the Ba'athist infrastructure that held Iraq together in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein. Neither expressed any regret over the decision to invade Iraq in the first place.

Bush made no reference to the exaggerated and falsified claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction he and his loyal ally bandied about so freely in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Blair, recently returned from a visit to Baghdad where he met with the newly appointed prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, did not reflect on the reality that the Iraq of Saddam Hussein was a more peaceful and prosperous land before British and American troops overthrew the Iraqi president and condemned Iraq to the horrific reality of insurgent-fed civil strife.

"Despite setbacks and missteps, I strongly believe we did and are doing the right thing," Bush remarked, although he was quick to add, "Not everything has turned out the way we hoped". That, of course, could qualify for the understatement of the year. For his part, Blair spoke of faulty judgements, perhaps the greatest of which was to underestimate the scope and intensity of the insurgency, which he in typical fashion characterized as fighting against the democratic process, as opposed to struggling against an illegal, illegitimate and unjust occupation.

Blair shared his reflective insights at moment when the people of the United Kingdom were wrestling with new revelations concerning how he misled their attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, into putting forward a legal finding that enabled Britain to go to war with Iraq void of a second United Nations security council resolution. Blair had apparently told Lord Goldsmith that Iraq was in "material breach" of its obligations, despite the fact that no new intelligence on WMD had been unearthed, and UN weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq receiving total cooperation from the Iraqi government. Not a peep from the prime minister on this matter, though.

For his part Bush waxed eloquently about the cost of war to America. "No question that the Iraq war has, you know, created a sense of consternation here in America," the president said. "I mean, when you turn on your TV screen and see innocent people die day in and day out, it affects the mentality of our country." He added: "I can understand why the American people are troubled by the war in Iraq. I understand that. But I also believe the sacrifice is worth it and it's necessary."

Of course, the president remained mute as to the current visit to Iraq by the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Michael Hagee, who in the light of recent accusations of excessive force on the part of Marines fighting a life and death struggle in the Anbar province of Iraq, were cautioned to kill "only when justified". Some 717 Marines have lost their lives in the fighting in Iraq, most in the violence-prone Anbar province, where the Iraqi insurgency is particularly deeply entrenched. Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment are accused of slaughtering scores of innocent Iraqis in the aftermath of a fire-fight that followed a deadly attack on the Marines by a road-side bomb. In the middle of a conflict not of their making, fighting an enemy as deadly and resolute as they themselves are, the Marines are now lectured by general's to destroy only that which needs destroyed, kill only those who need killed, as if war was ever that easy.

Instead of focusing on the horrific reality of the unmitigated disaster that these two politicians are solely responsible for inflicting on their own respective armed forces and the people of Iraq, Bush deflected any talk about bringing American troops home. "I have said to the American people, 'As the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down,'" he said. "But I've also said that our commanders on the ground will make that decision." Blair dutifully chimed in that, in the aftermath of his Baghdad visit, he "came away thinking that the challenge is still immense, but I also came away more certain than ever that we should rise to it."

Both politicians were playing to their respective electorates, Blair in an effort to forestall his inevitable departure from government, Bush trying against hope to prevent a democratic landslide in the mid-term elections upcoming in November. But they both forgot that, to paraphrase an old military saying, "the enemy has a vote, too." And the Iraqi insurgency votes on a daily basis, its ballots counted in the bodies of those killed because of the violence brought on Iraq thanks to the decision by Bush and Blair to invade.

That decision, based upon lies and deceit, and done in pursuit of pure power (either in the form of global hegemony, per Bush, or a pathetic effort to ride Bush's coattails in the name of maintaining a "special relationship", for Blair), underscores the reality that when it comes to Iraq, both are resting on a policy that is as corrupt as one can possibly imagine.

Void of any genuine reflection as to what actually went wrong, and lacking in any reality-based process which seeks to formulate a sound way out of Iraq, these two politicians are simply continuing the self-delusional process of blundering down a path in Iraq that can only lead to more death and destruction.

Perhaps the advisors of Bush and Blair thought they were going to put a human face on two leaders who had been so vilified over the Iraq debacle. If so they failed. The joint press conference was little more than a pathetic show where two failed politicians voiced their continued support of failed policies, which had gotten their respective nations embroiled in a failed war. To quote Blair: "What more can I say? Probably not wise to say anything more at all."

7. RESIST THIS US BACKLASH
(Cuba is in danger of being punished by Europe for Washington's loss of clout in Latin America)

IAN GIBSON

Faced with a loss of influence in Latin America as a result of the shift to the left, the US government has been furiously lobbying sympathetic European states to create political leverage on Washington's behalf. As a partner in a "special relationship", Whitehall is a prime target.

The first test of the new US strategy towards its recalcitrant neighbors will come next week when the EU meets to agree on a united approach to relations with Cuba. The "common position" will set out a policy for engagement with the Havana administration and is binding on member states. The threat is of a shift towards a diplomatic freeze, or even sanctions against the Caribbean island.

Those of us who have observed Cuba's social system remain perplexed by the following contradiction: that the determination to "make poverty history" attracts strong support from the EU in principle, yet when a country takes steps to ensure the concept becomes reality, a disapproving silence ensues. This has been demonstrated in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and even Argentina.

Cuba is the only country in Latin America that does not receive assistance from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are supposed to contribute to the development of third world countries. It is also the only nation on the continent with whom the EU has not signed a cooperation agreement. Yet social advances continue, underpinned by moderate but consistent economic growth.

The UN recently announced that Cuba is the only country in Latin America that has no malnutrition. The World Health Organisation reports that the Cuban doctor-patient ratio is 1:170, better than the US average of 1:188. In addition, WHO has commended Cuba for outstanding literacy levels and rates of infant mortality and life expectancy that outstrip Washington DC - despite 45 years of an illegal economic blockade imposed by successive US administrations. Cuba's international activities also deserve recognition. It is operating humanitarian missions in 68 countries and, in 2005 alone, 1,800 doctors from 47 developing countries graduated in Cuba under a free scholarship scheme.

Yet western governments - including our own - offer little acknowledgement of these achievements. The Foreign Office explains it "cannot have normal relations with Cuba" due to human-rights concerns. Amnesty International claims that 72 prisoners of conscience are detained in Cuban jails, an allegation rejected by the Cuban government, which argues that all were tried and found guilty of being in the pay of an enemy power - the US. The International Red Cross has meanwhile reported that up to 40,000 people are detained by coalition forces in Iraq without charge.

If we are to promote the eradication of poverty and greater global cohesion, there must be a sense of justice and mutual respect. Our government should promote exchanges with nations like Cuba and see what we can learn from one another. Scope exists for cooperation in biotechnology. Vaccine exports from Cuba doubled last year and clinical trials in several countries established Cuba as a world leader in cancer research and treatment.

It must be hoped that the EU will resist US pressure, despite the tendency of countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to rush to do Washington's bidding. More than 170 MPs have signed a Commons motion calling for an independent positive approach to Cuba in the Brussels negotiations. They recognise that there is much to gain from cooperation with Latin America but, as recent history reminds us, much to be lost from policies of isolation.