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    World News
8/23/04 - 8/29/2004

Sunday  8/29/2004

Haiti as Imperial Prison - The Attica of the Americas  8/29/2004 Counterpunch 

Pentagon/Israel Spying Case Expands: Fomenting a War on Iran  8/29/2004 Juan Cole: "Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers."

Report on Iran Key to Spying Inquiry  8/29/2004 LA Times 

In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay  8/29/2004 NYT: "American efforts to build a government structure around former Baath Party stalwarts - officials of Saddam Hussein's army, police force and bureaucracy who were willing to work with the United States - have collapsed. Instead, the former Hussein loyalists, under threat of beheadings, kidnappings and humiliation, have mostly resigned or defected to the fundamentalists, or been killed. Enforcers for the old government, including former Republican Guard officers, have put themselves in the service of fundamentalist clerics they once tortured at Abu Ghraib. In the past three weeks, three former Hussein loyalists appointed to important posts in Falluja and Ramadi have been eliminated by the militants and their Baathist allies. The chief of a battalion of the American-trained Iraqi National Guard in Falluja was beheaded by the militants, prompting the disintegration of guard forces in the city. The Anbar governor was forced to resign after his three sons were kidnapped. The third official, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, was lured to his arrest by American marines after three assassination attempts led him to secretly defect to the rebel cause."

Saturday  8/28/2004

Venezuela envoy to leave Panama  8/28/2004 BBC: "Venezuela has withdrawn its ambassador to Panama, a day after Cuba broke off diplomatic relations with Panama over a pardon for four Cuban exiles."

Suspected Israeli Spy in Pentagon: First the Leak, Then the Fallout  8/28/2004 Debka 

Still Unreported: The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard Fix  8/28/2004 Greg Palast: "In that close race, Bush denied the fix was in to keep him out of 'Nam, and the US media stopped asking questions. What did the victorious Governor Bush's office do for Barnes? According to the tipster, "Barnes agreed never to confirm the story [of the draft dodging] and the governor talked to the chair of the lottery two days later and she then agreed to support letting GTech keep the contract without a bid." And so it came to pass that the governor's commission reversed itself and gave GTech the billion dollar deal without a bid. The happy client paid Barnes, the keeper of Governor Bush’s secret, a fee of over $23 million. Barnes, not surprisingly, denies that Bush took care of his client in return for Barnes’ silence. However, confronted with the evidence, the former Lt. Governor now admits to helping the young George stay out of Vietnam."

FBI espionage probe goes beyond Israeli allegations, sources say  8/28/2004 Knight Ridder: "In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave highly classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which may in turn have passed it on to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has denied his group was involved in any wrongdoing. The linkage, if any, between the two leak investigations, remains unclear. But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official. Feith's office, which oversees policy matters, has been the source of numerous controversies over the last three years. His office had close ties to Chalabi and was responsible for post-war Iraq planning that the administration has now acknowledged was inadequate. Before the war, Feith and his aides pushed the now-discredited theory that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaida."

FBI probes DOD office  8/28/2004 UPI: "Yet according to Green, in March 1983, Feith, then a Middle East analyst on the National Security Council, was fired by Judge William Clark, who had replaced Richard Allen as national security adviser, because Feith "had been the object of an inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington" and that the FBI "had opened an inquiry." Former Counterterrorism Chief Vince Cannistraro confirmed that Feith was fired from the NSC for leaking classified data to Israel. In 1982, Feith went to work for Pentagon official Richard Perle, according to Green and confirmed by U.S. intelligence sources. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who an administration official described as having played a "large role in getting Feith" his current job, was working for the Arms Control and Disarmament agency in 1978 and was the subject of an investigation that alleged he had provided "a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government to an Israeli government official" via "an AIPAC intermediary," according to Green. The probe was eventually dropped."

FBI Probe Targets Pentagon Official Analyst Allegedly Gave Data to Israel  8/28/2004 Washington Post: "The FBI is investigating a mid-level Pentagon official who specializes in Iranian affairs for allegedly passing classified information to Israel, and arrests in the case could come as early as next week, officials at the Pentagon and other government agencies said last night. The name of the person under investigation was not officially released, but two sources identified him as Larry Franklin. He was described as a desk officer in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Bureau, one of six regional policy sections. Franklin worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency before moving to the Pentagon's policy branch three years ago and is nearing retirement, the officials said. Franklin could not be located for comment last night… Even so, the case is likely to attract intense attention because the official being investigated works under William J. Luti, deputy undersecretary of defense for Near East and South Asian Affairs. Luti oversaw the Pentagon's "Office of Special Plans," which conducted some early policy work for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That office is one of two Pentagon offices that Bush administration critics have claimed were set up by Defense Department hawks to bypass the CIA and other intelligence agencies, providing information that President Bush and others used to exaggerate the Iraqi threat… Franklin's name surfaced in news reports last year that disclosed he and another Pentagon specialist on the Persian Gulf region had met secretly with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a discredited expatriate Iranian arms merchant who figured prominently in the Iran-contra scandal of the mid-1980s. That meeting, according to Pentagon officials, took place in late 2001. It had been formally sanctioned by the U.S. government in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism. Franklin and the other Pentagon official, Harold Rhode, met with the Iranians over three days in Italy. Ghorbanifar attended these meetings. Rumsfeld has said that the information received at the meetings led nowhere."


Friday  8/27/2004

Big Apple keeps eye on pair of Hub anarchists  8/27/2004 Boston Herald: "A report in the New York Daily News citing unnamed police sources, said Toure, a Black Panther with arrests for bank robbery and gun charges, has been ``training younger militants.'' The report also said Picariello has been ``recruiting others into extreme measures.'' New York police refused comment on the report… Jamie Bissonette, who has worked with Toure at AFSC for several years, called the charges ``completely off-the-mark.'' She said neither Toure nor anyone from AFSC is going to New York. ``He's not involved in electoral politics,'' she said. Dustin Langley, of ANSWER in New York, called the charges against Picariello ``ludicrous'' and said police are practicing ``fear-mongering'' to distract the public from a dispute over protest sites."

FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case  8/27/2004 CBS News: "The FBI investigation, headed up by Dave Szady, has involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that CBS News was told document the passing of classified information from the mole, to the men at AIPAC, and on to the Israelis. CBS sources say that last year the suspected spy, described as a trusted analyst at the Pentagon, turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was, "in the draft phase when U.S. policy-makers were still debating the policy." This put the Israelis, according to one source, "inside the decision-making loop" so they could "try to influence the outcome." The case raises another concern among investigators: Did Israel also use the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq? With ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the analyst was assigned to a unit within the Defense Department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon's Iraq policy."

FBI looks at Pentagon worker in Israel spy probe  8/27/2004 CNN: "The suspect could have been in a position to influence Bush administration policy toward Iran and Iraq, the senior official said."

End of the siege: the smoke clears in Najaf  8/27/2004 CSM: "Militarily, the Americans emerge victorious, having pushed Sadr back to within a few hundred meters of the outside wall of the shrine. Politically, however, the siege has been disastrous. Shiite opinion toward the Americans, even among moderates of the Sistani camp, is almost universally negative, reminding Iraqis that their country remains a morass of failing infrastructure and poor security."

New super strain of coca plant stuns anti-drug officials  8/27/2004 Scotsman: "This is a very tall plant," said Colonel Diego Leon Caicedo of the anti-narcotics police. "It has a lot more leaves and a lighter colour than other varieties." A toxicologist, Camilo Uribe, who studied the coca, said: "The quality and percentage of hydrochloride from each leaf is much better, between 97 and 98 per cent. A normal plant does not get more than 25 per cent, meaning that more drugs and of a higher purity can be extracted."

The long shadow of Jim Crow - Voter intimidation and suppression in America today, Part 1  8/27/2004 SF Bay View: "In 2003 in Philadelphia, voters in African American areas were systematically challenged by men carrying clipboards, driving a fleet of some 300 sedans with magnetic signs designed to look like law enforcement insignia… As this report details, voter intimidation and suppression is not a problem limited to the southern United States. It takes place from California to New York, Texas to Illinois. It is not the province of a single political party, although patterns of intimidation have changed as the party allegiances of African Americans have changed over the years. It has served to create doubt about the equality of our democracy, and cynicism at home and abroad. This report includes incidents of voter intimidation and suppression from our most recent elections and reviews the historical roots of those efforts in the days following emancipation, through Reconstruction and the “Second Reconstruction,” the years immediately following the passage of the Voting Rights Act."

High crimes and misdemeanours  8/27/2004 Spectator: "All the evidence shows that the Prime Minister misled Parliament and the people on the eve of the Iraq war. Now, as Peter Oborne reveals, a group of MPs are determined to impeach him."

How Torture Came Down From the Top  8/27/2004 Washington Post: "There it details how President Bush, on the advice of his White House counsel and attorney general, decided in February 2002 that the Geneva Conventions would not apply to captured members of al Qaeda and Afghanistan's Taliban. This, despite the objections of the State Department and "many service lawyers," who worried that the decision "would undermine the United States military culture, which is based on a strict adherence to the law of war." In October 2002, Schlesinger recounts, authorities at the Guantanamo Bay prison "requested approval of strengthened counter-interrogation techniques," and in December, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld authorized a number of harsh methods. He was challenged by the military lawyers whom he had failed to consult, and the policy was revised in April 2003."


Thursday  8/26/2004

GOP Protester Has Terror Bombing Rap Sheet  8/26/2004 NewsMax 

Anarchists hot for mayhem Police on guard vs. violent tactics  8/26/2004 NY Daily News 


Wednesday  8/25/2004

Iraqi resistance celebrated in Brazil  8/25/2004 Al Jazeera: "Every Saturday, businessman Jose Gil de Almeida and Moutih Ibrahim, chairman of the Charity Brazilian-Arab Association, gather along with their supporters in the city's main street and distribute posters displaying the actions of the Iraqi resistance. The group organises regular writing and photography competitions in the city's public library, the Parana, visited daily by three thousand students."


Tuesday  8/24/2004

Black and Indian Power The Meaning of Hugo Chávez  8/24/2004 Counterpunch 

With Chávez? Reading the International Private Media  8/24/2004 Counterpunch 

Hoodwinked - Why is Florida's voting system so corrupt?  8/24/2004 Slate: by Ann Louise Bardach, a well informed journalist - "Hood and Jeb Bush have strongly endorsed the state's Republican-controlled legislature's new rule that outlaws manual recounts. This means that if any of the new optical-scan or touch-screen machines fail—as they did in the 2002 elections; and the recent March primaries; and just last week, when a backup system failed in a test run in Miami-Dade—there will be no recourse for counting votes. A coalition of election-reform groups has challenged this rule, and Rep. Robert Wexler of Palm Beach sued in federal court after a state appeals court dismissed the matter, ruling that while the right to vote is guaranteed, a perfect voting system is not. Unlike the recent elections in Venezuela, where the new touch-screen voting machine provided every voter with a receipt, Floridians will have to take the word of Hood and Bush that their vote was counted."


Monday  8/23/2004

GOP Plan Calls for Revamping Intelligence - Pentagon, CIA Would Give Up Many Duties  8/23/2004 Washington Post: "The plan was welcomed by the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, who has endorsed the changes advocated by the commission, including creation of a national intelligence director."


"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to Democracies as against despots: suspicion." -- Demosthenes