RECESSION, DEPRESSION, COLLAPSE: WHAT’S FEAR GOT TO DO WITH IT? By Carolyn Baker

From Speaking Truth to Power:

Interesting, isn’t it, that mainstream economists need a so-called economic guru like Alan Greenspan to confirm that the U.S. economy is in recession? If the maestro says it is so, then it is. If he doesn’t, then the “downturn” has a silver lining. And now we have the Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, stating what the American public has known all too well during the past year: “The economy has taken a sharp downturn.” Gee, Mr. Paulson, you get the understatement of the year award because what Americans have also discovered is that the middle class is now almost extinct after only a few decades of having one-thanks to you and your friends at Goldman Sachs.

No one walking away from a foreclosed home, no one declaring bankruptcy, no uninsured person staring in the face tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills needs a maestro or any other member of the ruling elite to tell them that not only are we in a recession, but we are on a fast-track to a depression that is going to make 1929 look like living in the lap of luxury. It’s called the collapse of Western civilization, and it is well underway.

Oh, you don’t like my use of the word “collapse”? Then please listen up.

One of the most inspiring but also heart-wrenching stories I’ve seen this past week when Truth To Power was in the midst of its spring fundraiser and was not reporting much news was the CBS report on Tennessee-based Remote Area Medical’s efforts to bring health and dental care to the uninsured or underinsured not only throughout the world, but now more than ever, in the U.S. As I watched this must-see video clip, my heart soared, even as I wept. What was confirmed in every cell of my body was that the American healthcare system has already collapsed, and that every other institution in this nation is rapidly succumbing to the domino effect of empire’s unequivocal unraveling. Watch the CBS report for yourself, and I’m certain you will agree.

In looking honestly at these realities, it is impossible not to feel fearful, and some may once again accuse me of fear-mongering. However, I argue that fear is not necessarily a negative emotion or an unproductive waste of energy. I’m not talking about fear for the sake of fear, but rather, fear as a motivator-fear as a force that compels us to act.

Gavin De Becker’s 1997 book The Gift Of Fear was written to assist readers in detecting violent behavior in the workplace, in the street, or in the home, for the purpose of protecting themselves. In contemplating collapse we are not dealing up close and personal with violence-at least not in this stage of collapse, as much as we are attempting to read the signals it is sending so that we may wisely prepare ourselves for navigating it. Among the author’s suggestions are:

• Recognizing the survival signals that warn us of impending danger
• Relying on our intuition
• Separating real from imagined danger
• Moving beyond denial so that one can tune in to one’s intuition

As we witness collapse and experience its impact on our lives, the fundamental concept of De Becker’s book may serve us well. He argues that fear is an evolutionary gift imbedded in our DNA for the purpose of assisting our survival. Becoming overwhelmed with it or wallowing in it is indeed not useful, but neither is attempting to hermetically seal ourselves off from it. In fact, as De Becker argues, fear helps us move out of denial so that we can really tune into our intuition which facilitates our becoming proactive on our own behalf. What we need is not exemption from fear but a way of integrating it into our current reality in balance with other emotions.

What I want the reader to understand is that collapse is already happening. Your resentment of the word doesn’t change the fact that it is occurring. Like Greenspan and Paulson, we all have the option of masking the realities of meltdown and continuing to wait for someone or something to “prove” to us that the world as we have known it is over.

Is talking about collapse scary? You bet. Does that mean we should avoid the word or “re-frame” it into something more “acceptable.” Only if we insist on living in denial. If we feel fear about collapse, does that mean that we are “living in fear”? Only if we feel nothing else about it except fear and allow the fear to paralyze us.

OK, so collapse is happening, it’s real, and it’s going to get worse. So now what? How can I utilize that fear to take action? Keeping in mind that this is all scary to talk about, let’s feel the fear and keep talking.

The first step, in my opinion, is to take a long, hard look at what action, in the face of the collapse of Western civilization, is realistic and truly useful. I believe we must approach this on two levels. First, what will actually make a difference in the world at large? Will using cloth shopping bags, changing my light bulbs, or shopping locally make a difference in the macrocosm? Quite frankly, probably not, although these may facilitate one’s adaptation to a drastically new way of life and make that transition less traumatic. But then I must ask myself what my intention is. Am I trying to prevent the collapse that is already in progress? Am I trying to make it less severe than if I did nothing? Do I think I have some control over the collapse missile now that it has been launched and probably has a life of its own? If I don’t have control-if control of the macrocosmic outcome isn’t even possible, how does that feel? Even more scary? OK, so let’s step back from the macrocosm for a moment and make this more personal.

Let’s address the second level, my personal and immediate milieu. Who and what is in my personal world? Who do I love and trust and want to share my life with? What fears come up as I think about this? Fear that I can’t talk to them about collapse? Fear that I will lose them, and they will lose me? Fear of separation from loved ones? Fear of making major changes like relocation, scaling down, bankruptcy, losing insurance, quitting a job or losing it?

Ooops, I think we’ve hit the big one: Fear of death-well, maybe not literal death, maybe not the “big one” but fear of the “little deaths” of loss which may feel like the “big death” of our own extinction. OK, time to take several deep breaths.

As we hit this rock-bottom fear, we must now ask ourselves if our ultimate objective in facing, talking about, and preparing for collapse is pure survival, or if it’s larger than that. You see, this is the part that many people who are talking about “collapse preparation” fail to discuss. It’s much easier to talk about stockpiling food and water or where one is going to invest one’s money or how one is going to purchase precious metals or what skills one needs to learn for survival. It is far more risky and scary to talk about emotional and spiritual preparation for collapse. All of the other preparations are pretty much about making rational decisions based on adequate information. But when we begin preparing our souls for collapse, we’re in a completely different dimension, and I argue, the most frightening as well as the most replete with potential. Potential for what?

The moment we begin discussing collapse and the notion of preparing for or surviving it, we enter the territory of meaning and purpose. Like someone stranded on a desert island or trapped in a downed airplane miles from nowhere, we are faced with those troubling “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” questions that civilization has so masterfully assisted us in escaping. It is because humans have evaded and avoided dealing with those questions that we have created cesspools of government and financial corruption, the depletion of virtually all of earth’s resources, the extinction of 200 species per day, oceanic dead zones the size of some states, the horror of genetically modified foods, and the destruction of our own and the earth’s immune systems.

In a recent teleseminar offered by Life After The Oil Crash, Dmitry Orlov, author of the forthcoming Re-Inventing Collapse and a series of articles highlighting the similarities between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the U.S., stated that more important than figuring out where we’re going to put our money or deciding where we might relocate is our psychological preparation for collapse. If we are not working on that aspect of preparation, then we are likely to discover that other forms of preparation do not fortify us in the ways we had hoped.

If we continue to avoid dealing with the reality of collapse, we get to escape those troubling “Who am I and why am I here?” questions a little longer and thereby perpetuate the underlying cause of the nightmares we have created for ourselves and for succeeding generations. On the other hand, if we are willing to talk about collapse, live and work with it alongside all of the other aspects of our lives that bring us joy and meaning, we open ourselves to a stunning opportunity that we may never have discovered were it not for the end of the world as we have known it.

There is very little we can do about collapse, but there is much that we can do with it. That does not necessarily mean that we can create a clean, compassionate, just, humane planet in our lifetime. I believe that to presume we can do so without the demise of Western civilization is an illusion. Unfortunately, empire has set the earth community up for dissolution, and collapse will bring forth the “great sorting out” but hardly in ways we’d prefer.

Bearing in mind the poet’s political incorrectness around gender and possibly the reader’s sensitivity to the “G” (God) word, I offer the words of Rilke:

At once the winged energy of delight

Carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,

Now beyond your own life build the great

Arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed

In passing through the harshest danger;

But only in a bright and purely granted

Achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable

Relationship is not too hard for us;

The pattern grows more intricate and subtle.

And being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

Until they span the chasm between the two

Contradictions…For the god

Wants to know himself in you.

The world we wanted to have is not within our reach; the world we deeply dread is upon us. Meanwhile, the world we have known, ugly as it may be but nevertheless familiar, is vanishing before our eyes. Herein lies an opportunity to experience deeper layers of who we really are and what we are really made of. Collapse is compelling us to confront these issues, whether we want to or feel ready to do so or not. While I do not welcome the suffering this will entail, I do welcome the transformation of human consciousness and thus the evolutionary quantum leap it may offer us. For a deeper understanding of this metamorphosis, I highly recommend an article that Truth To Power sent to subscribers earlier this week by Sarah Edwards and Linda Buzell entitled, “The Waking Up Synrdome.” It confirms that instead of being the enemy, fear may be a powerful ally. If we can face the fear and take action, we may be able to “build the great arch of unimagined bridges.”

Bush quietly links cybersecurity program to NSA

Source: RawStory.

Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has dropped the bomb.

At a speech to hundreds of security professionals Wednesday, Chertoff declared that the federal government has created a cyber security “Mahattan Project,” referencing the 1941-1946 project led by the Army Corps of Engineers to develop American’s first atomic bomb.

According to Wired’s Ryan Singel, Chertoff gave few details of what the government actually plans to do.

He cites a little-noticed presidential order: “In January, President Bush signed a presidential order expanding the role of DHS and the NSA in government computer security,” Singel writes. “Its contents are classified, but the U.S. Director of National Intelligence has said he wants the NSA to monitor America’s internet traffic and Google searches for signs of cyber attack.”

The National Security Agency was the key player in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was revealed by the New York Times in 2005.

Sound familiar? Yesterday, documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under the Freedom of Information act showed the FBI has engaged in a massive cyber surveillance project that targets terror suspects emails, telephone calls and instant messages — and is able to get some information without a court order.

Last week, the ACLU revealed documents showing that the Pentagon was using the FBI to spy on Americans. The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans’ Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.

Chertoff sought to calm those who worry that Homeland Security will begin t take an invasive Internet role.

“We don’t have to sit on the internet and prevent things from coming in or going out,” Chertoff said, which Singel says refers to China and other countries that censor what web sites their citizens can see. “That’s not what we are going to do.”

Bush wants $42 million more for program

But Chertoff may have had another reason for hyping threats of cyber terrorism. Money.

Congress appropriated $150 million in funding for the program this year, Singel notes. The administration has sought $192 million for 2009.

Speaking of threats, Chertoff remarked: “Imagine, if you will, a sophisticated attack on our financial systems that caused them to be paralyzed. It would shake the foundation of trust on which our financial system works.”

Remarked Singel wryly, “That digital mushroom cloud scenario means the government’s role in computer security must extend beyond federal networks, and reach to shared responsibility for financial, telecommunication and transportation infrastructure, Chertoff said. “The failure of any single system has cascading effects across our country.”

Which recalls another quote by a senior administration official.

Speaking of the alleged threat of Saddam Hussein in 2003, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice remarked, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Could Wal-Mart Cause the End of Growth Hormones in Milk?

From the Globe and Mail, with comments by Dr. Mercola below:

Wal-Mart, the largest grocery retailer in the United States, has announced that its store brand milk will now come exclusively from cows not treated with artificial growth hormones. The move will likely send a powerful signal to food manufacturers about the growing mainstream demand for healthier food products.

Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association, says, “It’s reached the tipping point … Even Wal-Mart’s customers are demanding milk free from genetically engineered hormones.”

The Kroger grocery chain began selling only hormone-free milk a month ago. Safeway has switched its in-store brands to hormone-free milk, though it also sells other brands produced from cows given the hormone. Starbucks recently began using only hormone-free milk in its stores as well.

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Wal-Mart is not only the largest grocery retailer in the United States, it’s the largest organic retailer as well. Because of this, they also have the most organic shoppers, and Wal-Mart wants to keep these shoppers coming into their stores. And so, you have their removal of recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBGH, from their milk. The decision-makers at Wal-Mart are well aware of the steady stream of dairies who are eliminating Monsanto’s dangerous hormone from their milk. They’re also aware that many consumers are boycotting the hormone as well. And if there’s one thing Wal-Mart will listen to, it’s dollars and cents, and keeping rBGH in their milk was threatening some of theirs. So while this may not have been an altruistic move on Wal-Mart’s part, it is still a positive one. And because Wal-Mart is so giant, this decision could very well push rBGH, which is already on thin ice in the United States, off the radar entirely. Yet, rBGH-Free Milk is STILL Not Healthy If you HAD to drink pasteurized milk, and you could choose between one WITH rBGH, and one WITHOUT it, the one without would certainly be preferable. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintains that milk with the hormone is identical to milk without it, scientists such as Dr. Michael Hansen from the Consumers Union and Dr. Samuel Epstein from the Cancer Prevention Coalition feel otherwise. According to these two experts, milk from rBGH-injected cows contains substantially higher amounts of a potent cancer tumor promoter called IGF-1, and despite evidence that rBGH milk contains higher levels of pus, bacteria, and antibiotics, the FDA gave the hormone its seal of approval, with no real pre-market safety testing required. So you are clearly better off avoiding this hormone. Yet, the real question isn’t whether to drink milk with or without rBGH, it’s whether to drink milk pasteurized or raw. And there is really no question about this: the ONLY way that milk should be consumed is if it’s raw. The funny thing is, there never used to be such a thing as “raw” milk. That would be like saying, “I want some raw lettuce” or a “raw orange.” It wasn’t until the early 1900s that pasteuri zation was invented, and prior to that, ALL milk was raw. Well, just as the pot is boiling over rBGH in milk, the issue over whether raw milk should be made widely available is also heating up. And I am hopeful that one day soon the voices of the public will prompt some changes in that arena, like it did for rBGH. So while Wal-Mart’s decision to stop carrying rBGH milk is a small step in the right direction, I’ll save my applause until Wal-Mart announces that they are now stocking their shelves with high-quality RAW milk. You May Want to Rethink Shopping at Wal-Mart Anyway Before we pat Wal-Mart on the back too much, let’s all remember that this mega-corporation is not only the “king of low prices,” it’s the ki ng of predatory business practices as well. And while I do admire their organizational structure, I do not set foot in Wal-Mart stores because of their abusive business practices and the way they are helping to degrade organic food standards. For example, Penn State University researchers estimate some 20,000 American families have dropped below the poverty level due to the astounding growth of Wal-Mart between 1987 and 1998. And in counties where Wal-Mart stores are located, more than 15 percent of families depend on food stamps, compared to the national norm of 8 percent. You can find out more details on the perils of the growth of Wal-Mart by watching “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” When you do, you may come to the same conclusion I did many years ago, which is that local farmers and food coops will always be a better place to buy your food than any giant superstore like Wal-Mart.

Related Articles:

The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know, and the Eventual U.S. Decline

Wal-Mart Promotes a Distorted View of Organic Foods

A Fake Group Fights for Monsanto’s Right to Deceive You

Demand for raw milk growing, despite “dangers”

Sorry, FDA, your scare tactics don’t work anymore!

Hopefully this is the beggining of the end of factory-farmed Big Dairy.

For more info. visit RealMilk.com.

From MSNBC:

Consumers want hormone-free dairy even as FDA warns about health risks

Morry Gash / AP

Jane Ratajczak carries her raw milk to her car in New Holstein, Wis.

Despite potentially serious health risks, demand for unpasteurized, or raw, milk is growing among consumers concerned about chemicals, hormones and drugs.

With prices topping $5 per gallon, more dairies are selling raw milk — and finding themselves at odds with public health officials. The federal government and a majority of states prohibit sales of raw milk to the public, claiming it is responsible for hundreds of people sickened in the past decade with salmonella, E. coli, Listeria monocytogenes and other bacteria.

“Raw milk continues to cause outbreaks year after year,” said John Sheehan, who oversees plant and dairy food products for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “It is a concern for the FDA.”

More than 1,000 people, including two who died, got sick from raw milk or cheese made from raw milk from 1998 to 2005, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pasteurization uses heat to destroy bacteria. It also extends the shelf life of milk. Proponents of raw milk contend the process destroys nutrients and enzymes and that raw milk is healthier.

“Raw milk is like a magic food for children,” said Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates consumption of whole, natural foods.

Advocates dispute reports from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies. They claim raw milk relieves allergies, asthma, autism and digestive disorders.

‘Sick of being sick’

Pasteurization should not affect milk’s taste, texture or nutritional content, aside from a slight loss of vitamin C, said Robert Bradley, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has worked in food science for 44 years.

However, the process can destroy proteins and enzymes that help the body absorb vitamins and digest lactose, said Michelle Babb, a registered dietitian who teaches at Bastyr University in Kenmore, Wash., which promotes natural and alternative medicines. High heat also can damage water-soluble B vitamins, she said.

People looking for raw milk began showing up at Kay and Wayne Craig’s organic farm in eastern Wisconsin five or six years ago. Many had digestive issues or other health problems.

“They’re sick of being sick, and they’re sick of the meds and the side effects, and so they’re looking for options,” said Wayne Craig, 50.

The couple had about 100 customers by the time they opened their store with organic products three years ago. Now they have about 800.

Selling illegally

No government agency or group tracks raw milk sales nationwide. But in Washington state, the number of dairies selling raw milk to the public grew from six to 22 in the past two years. In Massachusetts, the number has more than doubled to 24 in the past five years even as the overall number of dairies has declined.

Wisconsin has banned the sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk, although it allows “incidental sales” by farmers. It also permits farm owners to consume their own milk.

That prompted Wisconsin farmers, like those in a number of other states, to make a variety of arrangements to sell raw milk legally. Farmers have sold shares in their cows, herds and milk licenses.

Jane Ratajczak, 43, of Kiel, started buying raw milk from the Craigs after reading a book about natural cures. She now drinks four or five glasses a day and said she has noticed no ill effects.

“To me, it’s refreshing,” she said. “Just grab a glass of milk.”

The FDA, however, says “raw milk, no matter how carefully produced, may be unsafe.” More than 1,000 people, including two who died, got sick from raw milk or cheese made from raw milk from 1998 to May 2005, according to the most recent count from the federal Centers for Disease Control.

A Tax System that Matches Oregon Values

By Mike Leachman via Oregon Center for Public Policy:

This tax season, a minimum wage worker who was employed full-time last year and raising one child will pay about $321 in state income taxes. That’s equivalent to the cost of about a month’s worth of food based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

For a single parent working at minimum wage $321 is a lot of money, especially when you compare it to the income tax bill that Intel Corporation, with $9 billion in profits, likely paid last year: 10 bucks.

Why is Intel, with $9 billion in profits, probably paying only 10 bucks? Because over the last decade the actions of Oregon’s legislature have not matched the values of Oregonians.

Intel hasn’t always paid a pittance in state income taxes. In 1997, the company paid over $50 million in income taxes to Oregon. The company boasted at the time that it was the state’s best corporate income taxpayer.

Today, though, thanks to huge corporate tax breaks handed to it by the Oregon legislature, Intel likely has joined the ranks of the majority of Oregon’s corporations, who get off paying just 10 bucks a year in income taxes on their profits.

That’s right, Intel, with $9 billion in profits, probably paid about three pennies for every dollar in state income taxes paid by a young working mother trying to raise a child on an annual income of about $16,200.

The story doesn’t stop with Intel, either. Most corporations operating in Oregon pay three cents for every dollar paid in taxes by a minimum wage worker. Two-thirds of the corporations operating in Oregon, including 20 corporations with profits of $1 million or more, get away with paying just 10 bucks a year in state income taxes. It would take 32 of those corporations to match the income taxes we ask that young mother working at minimum wage to pay.

It’s time for Oregon legislators to establish a new set of priorities for Oregon, priorities that better match the values of Oregonians. Oregon legislators wrongly shifted more of the costs of public structures away from big corporations and onto minimum wage workers and the rest of us. Let’s build a tax system that better matches Oregon values.

Oregon could eliminate income taxes on the minimum wage working mother by increasing the state Earned Income Credit. Such an increase would help that mother keep food on her family’s table, instead of sending a month’s worth of her family’s food budget to Salem to help pay for public structures — universities and state police, for instance — that Intel and other corporations operating in this state rely upon every day and get essentially for free.

What would it cost to eliminate the income tax on the minimum wage family? A little less than $50 million a year, or roughly the amount that Intel proudly paid in state income taxes a decade ago.

Oregonians believe hard-working families deserve food on the table. Next year, the legislature should better match its actions with Oregon values by increasing the state Earned Income Credit and raising the minimum corporate income tax so that corporations like Intel pay something similar to what they used to pay.

Think about it. Profitable Intel could once again proudly proclaim itself to be the state’s best taxpayer, and families struggling to make ends meet by working at a minimum wage job could open their cupboards and find that Salem had decided to leave them a little more to eat.

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Michael Leachman is a policy analyst at the Oregon Center for Public Policy, which does in-depth research and analysis on budget, tax, and economic issues with the goal to improve decision making and generate more opportunities for all Oregonians.

US shamed by Mandela terror link

From BBC News:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has asked for “embarrassing” travel restrictions on Nelson Mandela and South African leaders to be lifted.

Mr Mandela will celebrate his 90th birthday later this year

A bill has been introduced in the US Congress to remove from databases any reference to South Africa’s governing party and its leaders as terrorists.

The African National Congress (ANC) was designated as a terrorist organisation by South Africa’s old apartheid regime.

At present a waiver is needed for any ANC leaders to enter the country.

“It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts – the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela,” Ms Rice told lawmakers in Washington.

Last week, Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who introduced the bill said it was “shameful” that the United States still treated the ANC this way.

“Amazingly, Nelson Mandela still needs to get a special waiver to enter the United States based on his courageous leadership of the ANC. What an indignity. This legislation will wipe it away,” he said.

South Africa’s apartheid government banned the ANC in 1960, imprisoning or forcing into exile its leaders.

Mr Mandela, who turns 90 this year, was released in 1990 after spending 27 years in prison.

He then became the country’s first post-apartheid-era president, before retiring after serving one term in office.

He appears to be in reasonable health, but now makes far fewer public appearances.

Afghans Hold Secret Trials for Men That U.S. Detained

By TIM GOLDEN and DAVID ROHDE, New York Times:

Dozens of Afghan men who were previously held by the United States at Bagram Air Base and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are now being tried here in secretive Afghan criminal proceedings based mainly on allegations forwarded by the American military.

The prisoners are being convicted and sentenced to as much as 20 years’ confinement in trials that typically run between half an hour and an hour, said human rights investigators who have observed them. One early trial was reported to have lasted barely 10 minutes, an investigator said.

The prosecutions are based in part on a security law promulgated in 1987, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Witnesses do not appear in court and cannot be cross-examined. There are no sworn statements of their testimony.

Instead, the trials appear to be based almost entirely on terse summaries of allegations that are forwarded to the Afghan authorities by the United States military. Afghan security agents add what evidence they can, but the cases generally center on events that sometimes occurred years ago in war zones that the authorities may now be unable to reach.

“These are no-witness paper trials that deny the defendants a fundamental fair-trial right to challenge the evidence and mount a defense,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a lawyer for the advocacy group Human Rights First who has studied the proceedings. “So any convictions you get are fundamentally flawed.”

The head of Afghanistan’s national intelligence agency, Amrullah Saleh, said his investigators did their best to develop their own evidence. But he added that the Afghan judicial system remained crippled by problems more than six years after the fall of the Taliban.

“This is Afghanistan,” he said. Referring to the Afghan trials, he added, “I am equally critical of that procedure, but who is supposed to fix it?”

Since 2002 the Bush administration has pressed foreign governments to prosecute the Guantánamo prisoners from their countries as a condition of the men’s repatriation. But many of those governments — including such close American allies as Britain — have objected, saying the American evidence would not hold up in their courts.

Afghanistan represents perhaps the most notable exception.

Although President Hamid Karzai refused to sign a decree law drafted with American help that would have allowed Afghanistan to hold the former detainees indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” the Afghan authorities have now tried 82 of the former prisoners since last October and referred more than 120 other cases for prosecution.

Of the prisoners who have been through the makeshift Afghan court, 65 have been convicted and 17 acquitted, according to a report on the prosecutions by Human Rights First that is to be made public on Thursday. A draft copy of the report was provided to The New York Times.

United States officials defended their role in providing information for the Afghan trials as a legitimate way to try to contain the threats that some of the more dangerous detainees would pose if they were released outright.

“These are not prosecutions that are being done at the request or behest of the United States government,” said Sandra L. Hodgkinson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detention policy. “These are prosecutions that are being done by Afghans for crimes committed on their territory by their nationals.”

Ms. Hodgkinson said the United States had pressed the Afghan authorities “to conduct the trials in a fair manner,” and had insisted that lawyers be provided for the prisoners after the first 10 of them were convicted without legal representation. But she did not directly reject the criticisms raised in the Human Rights First report, adding, “These trials are much more consistent with the traditional Afghan justice process than they are with ours.”

The new court is located on the ground floor of a new high-security Afghan prison that was built by the United States at Pul-i-Charki, on the outskirts of Kabul.

Although Afghan officials say the trials there are not officially secret, they have allowed only three outside observers — two human rights investigators and a representative of a local United Nations office. The human rights investigators were permitted to see two trials in February, review some trial documents and interview judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers for the court.

Gen. Safiullah Safi, the Afghan Army officer who runs the prison where the trials are being held, told a reporter that permission to view the trials could be granted only by Mr. Karzai’s office. But that office referred the request to Abdul Jabar Sabit, the Afghan attorney general. Mr. Sabit’s office finally said he was too busy to meet with a journalist.

The human rights investigators who observed the operations of the new court described them as a perversion of the efforts by Afghanistan and the United States to rebuild and reform the Afghan judicial system after years of war, corruption and neglect.

They said that the defense lawyers, who work for a legal aid organization based in New York, typically meet their clients five days before their trials begin and have few resources to investigate the distant events on which they turn. At least some of the Afghan judges also appear to accept the American allegations at face value, they said, and routinely admit allegations that would not pass the evidentiary standards of special military tribunals at Guantánamo, much less the federal courts of the United States.

“The files provided by U.S. authorities and the information in them would never have been admissible in a U.S. court or even a military commission in Guantánamo,” said Jonathan Horowitz, an investigator for One World Research, a public-interest investigations firm in New York that also monitored the Afghan trials.

In an interview, one of the justices of the Afghan Supreme Court argued that while the trials might have some flaws, they represented a fair process.

“All of these trials have been prepared by our friends from the United States,” said the justice, who uses the single name Rashid. “They have seen it themselves. We don’t have any doubts about the trial not being fair.”

Justice Rashid added that he had complete confidence in the accuracy of the information that was being provided to Afghan investigators by the American military.

“I’m 100 percent sure that what was done by the United States was done according to the legal system of the United States,” he said. “And I am familiar with the legal system of the United States.”

But one case file that was partly reproduced in the Human Rights First report underscores questions that have been raised about the procedures of the Afghan trials and the American evidence with which they begin.

In a single paragraph, the United States “Report of Investigation” recounts that the Afghan prisoner Rais Mohammed Khan was detained by the police as he and a friend tried to cross the Afghan border in the eastern department of Khost on May 1, 2006. The report, which misidentifies Mr. Khan by a name his father used, Matelky, notes that he and his injured friend were suspected of having planned a suicide bombing that went awry.

“Their stories are conflicting, and the Khost Police Force believe they are directly tied to suicide attacks that were taking place during the Independence Day Parade in Khost,” the report reads. It notes that Mr. Khan appeared to lie on a polygraph examination when he denied involvement in suicide bombing. But it adds:

“Confessions/Admissions/Incriminating Statements: None”

“Witnesses: None”

“Physical Evidence: None”

“Photographs: None”

Also in his Afghan court file was a one-page summary of the recommendation from the United States military panel that reviewed his case at Bagram. It describes him as a low threat to American and coalition forces and him as “low prosecution value.”

He was convicted under the 1987 Afghan security law and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Maliki Disagrees With Petraeus’s ‘Pause,’ Says ‘U.S. Troops Should Be Pulled Out’

Source: Think Progress.

Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress this week that he is recommending to President Bush that the United States “pause” the draw down of troops in Iraq this July for at least 45 days in order to assess the security situation there.

Bush has now accepted Petraeus’s recommendation, “leaving open the possibility that about 140,000 U.S. servicemen and women will still be in the war zone when the next president takes office.”

But there is one important decision-maker that Petraeus and Bush don’t seem to be listening to: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The AP reports that Maliki told Bush yesterday that he “disagrees” with Petraeus’s recommendation “citing the growing capabilities of Iraq’s own security forces”:

The prime minister told Bush during a 20-minute telephone conversation on Wednesday that Iraqi security forces are capable of carrying out their duties and U.S. troops should be pulled out as the situation permits, according to a senior government adviser who sat in on the phone conversation. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the confidential details.

Bush actually agrees with Maliki. Last month, Bush said the Iraqi government’s offensive against Shi’ite militias in the southern city of Basra “shows the progress the Iraqi security forces have made during the surge.”

Moreover, Bush has also said that if Maliki wants U.S. troops to leave Iraq, then “we would leave“:

BUSH: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It’s their government’s choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave. […] We are there at their request. […] but if they were to make the request, we wouldn’t be there.

Bush has consistently expressed confidence in Maliki’s leadership and judgement saying he had seen “the strength of his character,” that he is a “strong leader,” and a “good guy” with “deep determination.”

If Bush has so much confidence in Maliki’s character and leadership abilities, then perhaps he should take his advice.

Memo Shows Bush Administration Says to Hell With Fourth Amendment Rights

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted April 10, 2008.

News that the Bush administration threw out the Fourth Amendment after 9/11 is a sobering reminder of the lawlessness of its spying program.

News last week of former White House lawyer John Yoo’s recently disclosed 2003 memo positing, among other things, that the president’s authority as commander in chief allows him to override federal laws prohibiting “assault, maiming and other crimes” against suspects in the “war on terror” was followed by a second revelation: an alarming footnote on page 8 referring to another secret memo, written shortly after 9/11, and, in the name of national security, dispensing with the Fourth Amendment.

In the age of the “war on terror,” according to the footnote, the Department of Justice “recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.” (Emphasis in the original.)

The Fourth Amendment, of course, lays out “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Critics of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program — which was started in the same weeks the memo was written — have staked their claims in part on its violation of this right. Proof that the program originated at the same time that the White House officially jettisoned the Fourth Amendment in the name of national security is a damning — if not surprising — revelation.

There’s been a good deal of debate already over whether or not this 2001 memo actually laid the groundwork for the Bush administration’s so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” which was exposed in December 2005. The White House has claimed that it had nothing to do with it, with press spokesman Tony Fratto telling reporters that the program “relied on a separate set of legal memoranda.” But as the legal underpinnings of the Bush administration’s vast power grab are unraveled, the memos offer a window into the radical mindset and ruthless political culture operating in the White House. As tedious and stultifying as the ongoing legislative debate over FISA has been, the Yoo memo is a sobering reminder of the lawlessness at the root of the government’s spying program — and why we should still be paying attention.

Speaking of paying attention: In case there was any doubt, no, Congress and the White House have not yet agreed upon an updated version of the FISA bill. After an endless series of discussions, false starts, shameless, 24-inspired GOP propaganda ads, and one ridiculous countdown clock — on March 14, to Bush’s dismay, the House passed a version of the FISA bill that omitted immunity for telecoms. This was the day after Bush had appeared on the White House lawn and tried to shame House members into passing the Senate version of the FISA bill, which allows retroactive immunity for telecoms. “Companies that may have helped us save lives should be thanked for their patriotic service,” Bush said, “not subjected to billion-dollar lawsuits that will make them less willing to help in the future.”

A few weeks later, on April 1, Politico.com reported that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had announced that the White House “is now in a position where they want to talk about a possible compromise” on the surveillance legislation. According to Hoyer, Congress and the Bush administration were now working in “a different environment than we were in two weeks ago.” No word on what that means, but hints that the White House is willing to negotiate remain dubious. “We’ve seen this before,” wrote True Majority organizer Ilya Sheyman in an action alert sent out on April 2. “Every month or so, the White House floats a new trial-balloon of a possible compromise bill, which inevitably includes immunity for phone companies.” Indeed, rather than negotiating the legislation, the Bush administration and his followers in Congress have focused on repackaging it from month to month, with an ongoing PR campaign in between. In public, director of national intelligence Mike McConnell has indulged in Bush’s fear-mongering fiction that Congress is simply pandering to their legions of money-grubbing trial lawyer supporters. Systematically distorting the debate, he has claimed, for example, that some in the Senate simply believe “we shouldn’t have an intelligence community” and that others “say the president of the United States violated the process, spied on Americans, should be impeached and should go to jail.” (Would that our congressman be so bold!)

In reality, the Bush administration is less concerned about protecting the telecoms than it is about insulating itself from accountability in operating as if it is above the law. As Sheyman points out, “Passing retroactive immunity would put an end once and for all to lawsuits which have the potential to expose the full extent of Bush’s illegal wiretapping program … On this question, there can be no doubt, immunity for phone companies is the same as immunity for George Bush and Dick Cheney.”

Coincidentally, the same day that news broke of the Bush administration’s supposed newfound spirit of “compromise,” on April 1 on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman interviewed New York Times journalist Eric Lichtblau, one of the two reporters to break the warrantless wiretapping story in December 2005. In his first national broadcast interview following the publication of his book Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice, Lichtblau described the atmosphere surrounding revelations of Bush’s spying program.

“FBI agents stumbled onto this program accidentally within about twelve hours of its inception, and there was a firestorm of anxiety: ‘What the hell is going on here?’ was the reaction literally of one official. This went up the fire poll to senior officials who said, ‘What is going on here? The NSA is not supposed to be in the business of spying on Americans.’”

He also described the intense pressure exerted by the White House on the Times not to publish the story of the government spying program. Ultimately, he said, “the message … was that if there is another attack because you run the story, there will be blood on the New York Times’s hands. That was the message that we all took away from this. If there is another calamity because of — if there’s another calamity after the New York Times runs this story, we will be responsible.”

Three and a half years later, there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil, a fact the administration would credit to illegal programs like warrantless wiretapping. The Bush administration has even seen fit to rewrite history to fit this narrative; in late March, at a speaking engagement at New York’s Commonwealth Club, Attorney General Michael Mukasey came close to tears as he claimed that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 could have been prevented if the government had been in a position to eavesdrop without a warrant. “We’ve got 3,000 people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that,” he said, struggling to regain his composure. Glenn Greenwald, whose FISA coverage has been unmatched, has plenty to say about Mukasey’s false claims. When it comes to pushing through the FISA legislation, it seems nothing is sacred to the Bush administration.

As we await the next “compromise” (or capitulation) on FISA, it’s a good time to step away from the endless chatter and take the long view. Revelations like the 2003 memo provide a sobering reminder that, like the White House’s torture doctrine, the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program was designed in a constitutional vacuum. As reporters for the Associated Press articulated, simply, “For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn’t apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.” As with so many other post-9/11 abuses of power, rather than pushing back, Congress has willingly bent to the frame the Bush administration has imposed when it comes to its eavesdropping program, one that leaves out the basic fact that it was illegal from the start. The result has been dire. As Greenwald wrote last August, “That government officials like McConnell feel so comfortable openly admitting that the government broke the law, obtaining amendments to legalize that behavior after the fact, and then demanding immunity for the lawbreakers, demonstrates how severely the rule of law has been eroded over the last six years.”

UN Human Rights Official Wants Investigation Into US Government Role In 9/11

John Bolton: “This is exactly why we voted against the new human rights council.”

From Steve Watson, Infowars.net:

An official in the newly formed UN Human Rights Council has called for a fresh investigation into the events of 9/11 in order to examine the possible role that neoconservatives may have played in the attacks.

The New York Sun picked up the story today, explaining that Richard Falk, a professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, and an expert on human rights was assigned to a new position within the council on March 26.

His role is to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

Two days prior to the announcement, Falk appeared on former University of Wisconsin lecturer Kevin Barrett’s radio show and spoke of how he is keen to see a fresh investigation into 9/11 in order to address inconsistencies in the official account of what happened.

Mr. Falk told Barrett, “It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess.”

Falk previously penned the preface to Professor David Ray Griffin’s groundbreaking 2004 book The New Pearl Harbor, in which the theologian catalogued scores of unexplained facets surrounding 9/11 and inconsistencies in the official government version of events.

Falk has also published a number of notable books and essays analyzing the legality of the Vietnam War and other military operations, including the Iraq invasion.

A year ago he played a prominent role in a Citizens’ hearing on the legality of the Iraq War as a tribunal testifier. Of the Invasion he has previously written:

“inescapable that an objective observer would reach the conclusion that this Iraq war is a war of aggression, and as such, that it amounts to a Crime against Peace of the sort for which surviving German leaders were indicted, prosecuted and punished at the Nuremberg trials conducted shortly after the Second World War.”

Falk’s appointment to the Human Rights Council has also hit headlines due to the fact that he has previously slammed the Israeli occupation of Palestine and compared the Zionist government’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to the Nazi treatment of Jews in the holocaust.

The Israeli government announced Tuesday that it will deny Falk a visa to enter Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Despite this and the now customary attacks from the Anti-Defamation League, Falk has stood by his comments, telling the BBC: “If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison[.]”

The New York Sun reports that former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton commented on Falk’s recent appointment to the Human Rights Council: “This is exactly why we voted against the new human rights council.”

Bolton is clearly worried that like Falk, some of the officials within the council are legal experts that recognize war crimes when they see them and may actually attempt to do something about it.

Last month Japanese member of Parliament Yukihisa Fujita told the Alex Jones Show that a potential new investigation of the 9/11 cover-up may be coordinated by individuals within the United Nations.

It remains to be seen whether the Human Rights Council is composed of enough well meaning individuals to have a significant impact or whether, like much of the rest of the UN, it becomes a part of the establishment left arm of the global elite system.