The Rag Blog

Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, says industry deserves “thanks, not lawsuits.”

WASHINGTON — For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime.

The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure.

To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed.

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.

The federal government’s reliance on private industry has been driven by changes in technology. Two decades ago, telephone calls and other communications traveled mostly through the air, relayed along microwave towers or bounced off satellites. The N.S.A. could vacuum up phone, fax and data traffic merely by erecting its own satellite dishes. But the fiber optics revolution has sent more and more international communications by land and undersea cable, forcing the agency to seek company cooperation to get access.

After the disclosure two years ago that the N.S.A. was eavesdropping on the international communications of terrorism suspects inside the United States without warrants, more than 40 lawsuits were filed against the government and phone carriers. As a result, skittish companies and their lawyers have been demanding stricter safeguards before they provide access to the government and, in some cases, are refusing outright to cooperate, officials said.

“It’s a very frayed and strained relationship right now, and that’s not a good thing for the country in terms of keeping all of us safe,” said an industry official who believes that immunity is critical for the phone carriers. “This episode has caused companies to change their conduct in a variety of ways.”

With a vote in the Senate on the issue expected as early as Monday, the Bush administration has intensified its efforts to win retroactive immunity for companies cooperating with counterterrorism operations.

“The intelligence community cannot go it alone,” Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article Monday urging Congress to pass the immunity provision. “Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits.”

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey echoed that theme in an op-ed article of his own in The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, saying private companies would be reluctant to provide their “full-hearted help” if they were not given legal protections.

The government’s dependence on the phone industry, driven by the changes in technology and the Bush administration’s desire to expand surveillance capabilities inside the United States, has grown significantly since the Sept. 11 attacks. The N.S.A., though, wanted to extend its reach even earlier. In December 2000, agency officials wrote a transition report to the incoming Bush administration, saying the agency must become a “powerful, permanent presence” on the commercial communications network, a goal that they acknowledged would raise legal and privacy issues.

To judge from firsthand documents obtained by the ACLU through a FOIA lawsuit, we can guess what is probably on the missing CIA interrogation tapes — as well as understand why those implicated are spinning so hard to pretend the tapes do not document a series of evident crimes. According to the little-noticed but extraordinarily important book Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond (Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh, Columbia University Press, New York 2007), which presents dozens of original formerly secret documents – FBI emails and memos, letters and interrogator “wish lists,” raw proof of the systemic illegal torture of detainees in various US-held prisons — the typical “harsh interrogation” of a suspect in US custody reads like an account of abuses in archives at Yad Vashem.

More is still being hidden as of this writing — as those in Congress now considering whether a special prosecutor is needed in this case should be urgently aware: “Through the FOIA lawsuit,” write the authors, “we learned of the existence of multiple records relating to prisoner abuse that still have not been released by the administration; credible media reports identify others. As this book goes to print, the Bush administration is still withholding, among many other records, a September 2001 presidential directive authorizing the CIA to set up secret detention centers overseas; an August 2002 Justice Department memorandum advising the CIA about the lawfulness of waterboarding [Italics mine; nota bene, Mr. Mukasey] and other aggressive interrogation methods; documents describing interrogation methods used by special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; investigative files concerning the deaths of prisoners in U.S. custody; and numerous photographs depicting the abuse of prisoners at detention facilities other than Abu Ghraib.’

What we are likely to see if the tapes documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri are ever recovered is that the “confessions” of the prisoners upon which the White House has built its entire case for subverting the Constitution and suspending civil liberties in this country was obtained through methods such as electrocution, beating to the point of organ failure, hanging prisoners from the wrists from a ceiling, suffocation, and threats against family members (”I am going to find your mother and I am going to fuck her” is one direct quote from a US interrogator). On the missing tapes, we would likely see responses from the prisoners that would be obvious to us as confessions to anything at all in order to end the violence. In other words, if we could witness the drama of manufacturing by torture the many violently coerced “confessions” upon which the whole house of cards of this White House and its hyped “war on terror” rests, it would likely cause us to reopen every investigation, including the most serious ones (remember, even the 9/11 committee did not receive copies of the tapes); shut down the corrupt, Stalinesque Military Commissions System; turn over prisoners, the guilty and the innocent, into a working, accountable justice system operating in accordance with American values; and direct our legal scrutiny to the torturers themselves — right up to the office of the Vice President and the President if that is where the investigations would lead.

By the way: “The prohibition against torture [in the law] is considered to be a jus cogens norm, meaning that no derogation is permitted from it under any circumstances.”

This is what the FOIA documents report, belying White House soundbites that “we don’t torture” and explaining the intent pursuit on the part of the CIA and the White House of the current apparent obstruction of justice:

Late 2002 — the FBI objects to the illegality of abuses being put into place by the Defense Department in its “special interrogation plan” to use isolation, sleep deprivation and menacing with dogs against prisoners.

Dec 2, 2002 — Defense Secretary Rumsfeld personally issues a directive authorizing the use of stress positions, hooding, removal of clothing, and the terrorizing of inmates at Guantanamo with dogs.

Dec 3, 2002 — at Baghram, interrogators kill an Afghan prisoner “by shackling him by his wrists to the wire ceiling above his cell and repeatedly beating his legs. A postmortem report finds abrasions and contusions on the prisoner’s face, head, neck, arms and legs and determines that the death was a “homicide” caused by “blunt force injuries.”

April 16, 2003 — Rumsfeld approves yet another directive for abusive interrogation.

This directive for Afghanistan restores to the interrogators’ arsenal many forms of torture that had been resisted by the FBI. [Notably, the FBI had resisted complying with the direct commission of torture since as early as 2002 because, as its Behavioral Analysis Unit complained to the Defense Department at that time in an internal email, “not only are these tactics at odds with legally permissible interviewing techniques [italics mine: in other words, all concerned know these are apparent war crimes]…but they are being employed by personnel in GTMO who have little, if any, experience eliciting information for judicial purposes.” In other words, as any trained interrogator knows, the abuses are both doubtless illegal and certainly ineffective for getting real intelligence. [Jaffer and Singh, Timeline of Key Events, pp. 45-65,op. cit.]

Oct 22 2003 — Final autopsy report relating to death of “52 y/o Iraqi Male, Civilian Detainee” held by U.S. forces in Nasiriyah, Iraq. Prisoner was found to have “died as a result of asphyxia…due to strangulation.”

November 14, 2003 — a sworn statement of a soldier stationed at Camp Red, Baghdad, states that “I saw what I think were war crimes” and that “the chain of command….allowed them to happen.”

May 13, 2004 — a sworn statement of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion recounts an incident in which “interrogators abused 17-year-old son of prisoner in order to ‘break’ the prisoner.”

May 18, 2004 — a Privacy Act statement of an Abu Ghraib sergeant notes that prisoners had been forced to stand “naked with a bag over their head, standing on MRE boxes and their hand[s] spread out…holding a bottle in each hand.”

May 24, 2004 — Sworn statement of interrogator who arrived at Abu Ghraib in October 2003, discussing use of military dogs against juvenile prisoners.

June 16, 2004 — Marine Corps document describing abuse cases between September 2001 and June 2004, including “substantiated” incidents in which marines electrocuted a prisoner and set another’s hands on fire.

Undated: Sworn statement of screener who arrived at Abu Ghraib in September 2003, indicating that prisoners at Asamiya Palace in Baghdad had been beaten, burned and subjected to electric shocks.

Subsequent internal documents record prisoners being stripped, made to walk into walls blindfolded, punched, kicked, dragged about the room, observed to have bruises and burn marks on their backs, and having their jaws deliberately broken. Still other reports document further incidents classified by the military itself as probable murders committed by US interrogators.

The book also reveals an extraordinary original transcript of a Dept. of the Army Inspector General interview with Lieutenant General Randall Marc Schmidt. Lt. Gen. Schmidt had interfaced with MG Geoffrey Miller on the one hand — the most brutal overseer of such abuses, the one who was sent to “Gitmo-ize” other prisons — and the honorable JAG military lawyers on the other hand, over the abuses under investigation at that time. [Lt. Gen. Schmidt advised MG Miller of his rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice at that time — in other words, those involved know something serious is at stake, p. a-16].

The transcript of this internal document reveals Lt. Gen. Schmidt’s own words that it was his understanding that the directives to commit these acts, many of which are apparently war crimes, came right from the top.

The interview was not primarily intended to be a public document:

“An Inspector General” notes the document, “is an impartial fact-finder for the Directing Authority Testimony taken by an IG and reports based on that testimony may be used for official purposes. Access is normally restricted to persons who clearly need the information to perform their official duties. [italics mine]. In some cases, disclosure to other persons may be required by law or regulation or may be directed by proper authority.” As in the case, clearly, here — though the immense implications of this privately taken testimony have not reverberated fully yet in a public forum: “I thought the Secretary of Defense in good faith was approving techniques,” testified Lt. Gen. Schmidt. “In good faith after talking to him twice. I know that — and these weren’t interrogations or interviews of him. This was our hour and forty-five minutes and then another hour and fifteen kind of thing were [sic] we sat in there and had these discussions with him.” [Testimony of Lt. Gen. Randall M Schmidt, Taken 24 August 2005 at Davis Mountain Air Force Base, Arizona, Dept. of the Army Inspector General, Investigations Division, pp. a-30 to a-53, Jaffer and Singh, op. cit].

So what should Congress know as it decides what is to be done?

We torture, illegally, by directive; the directives come from the top; those who torture know it is probably criminal; when we torture prisoners, the guilty and the innocent, they will tell us anything they think we want to hear — including implicate themselves falsely, as many reports from Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations testify to — to make the torture stop; and the White House routinely uses that faked or coerced unverifiable “intelligence” to buttress its wholesale assault on our liberties.

As the CIA tries to spin its apparent crimes and claim that its waterboarding and other forms of criminal torture “saved lives” — while conveniently offering no evidence to back that up, and while the administration withholds evidence to the contrary from the lawyers of the detainees — we should bear in mind that the decades of research on torture summarized in the magisterial survey “The Question of Torture” show beyond the shadow of a doubt that prisoners being tortured will indeed “say anything.” When American prisoners were tortured by the North Vietnamese, their confessions were phrased in Communist cliches.

We should note too — as the White House tries to muddy the waters by pretending that there has ever been a “debate” about such acts as these — that the US in the past prosecuted waterboarding itself: when the Japanese had waterboarded US prisoners they were convicted with sentences of fifteen years of hard labor.

We should also bear in mind that the Bush White House has deliberately crafted its memos and laws — such as the Bybee/Gonzales “torture memo” and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — with a keen eye to seeking indemnification of its own guilt regarding having committed evident crimes, because those involved know quite well that acts committed could be criminal acts. (An historical note worth mentioning, when we consider how hyperalert the Bush White House has been to the issue of seeking retroactively to protect itself and its subordinates from prosecution for war and other crimes, is that the Nuremberg Trials eventually swept up influential Nazi industrialists such as Fritz Thyssen of IG Farben — who relied on Auschwitz slave labor — and with whom Prescott Bush had collaborated in amassing the Bush family millions; some of the sentences given to those industrialists found guilty in the postwar trials were severe.) For a moment postwar, the legal spotlight was also about to search out and hold accountable the several prominent US investors who had partnered with Nazi industrialists (see the exhaustively documented study of US/Nazi corporate collaboration, IBM and the Holocaust.)

Prosecution for war crimes and other criminal acts, which the administration so clearly recognizes that it may well have committed — which its legislation so clearly shows it realized it may well commit in advance of the commission — is the only consequence the Bush team seems to be really afraid of as it attempts its multiple subversions of the rule of law. This is why the nation’s grassroots call for a truly independent investigation into possible criminality is so very urgent and so necessary to restore the rule of law in our nation.

Mr. Mukasey could look up his own department’s files and understand that waterboarding is a war crime; not only that, the US Military prosecuted waterboarding as a war crime itself in 1902 — it had been used against prisoners in the Phillipines — and those Americans who had committed it received convictions from the military. It is hopeless to rely on the Justice Department.

An independent special prosecutor must be appointed. The people who are found guilty, in America, must face justice.

Let the investigations begin.

There is something untrustworthy about a man who can’t conduct a decent affair. Rudy Giuliani never could. He flaunted his girlfriend Judi Nathan (now a proper lady with a proper lady’s name, Mrs. Judith Giuliani) at public events while he was mayor and married to Donna Hanover, with whom he had no understanding about elective affinities. He used his son Andrew as his beard, claiming he was teaching the boy golf those many weekends when he was cavorting with Judi in Southampton. He announced his new love, and concomitant dumping of the old, at a 2001 press conference, thus informing Donna their marriage was over at the precise moment that any New Yorker listening to 1010 WINS learned of it. Then he tried to push her and the children out of Gracie Mansion so he could get on with his life.

In the return whiff of scandal around Rudy and Judi the hoary details of their crass courtship are said to be of no consequence. Let’s not get into his private life, commentators quickly warned, eager to steer political discussion clear of anything that might actually rub up against realities of life experienced by the common horde. Let’s talk about the issues, the “new” ones here being hardly newer than what any New Yorker had long known: that the NYPD accompanied the pair on their trysts; that, hark!, these police escorts were paid for from the public purse and involved some finagled accounting. The parched details and dollar amounts in the latest revelations are nowhere nearly as telling as the rough picture of things sketched in Newsday by Jimmy Breslin back in 2000, when he wrote about a cop nicknamed Wrong Way because once while pulling into Gracie Mansion with Judi in the backseat he almost collided with the cop pulling out of the mansion with Donna.

Wrong Way was later part of a five-car police detail assembled simply to get the king and his court to the ballgame: one car for Rudy, one for Judi, one for Andrew, one for Donna and one for the Other Girl he’s said to have kept on the side, the two girlfriends given separate corporate seats at Yankee Stadium. The only evocative tidbits among the latest are news that someone from the NYPD walked Judi’s dog and accompanied her on a shopping trip when she selected her sapphire and diamond engagement ring–in Atlanta, while business in post-9/11 New York bordered on the berserk insisting that Love NY meant Shop NY. At least the cops didn’t torture or kill the dog, a practice that in an earlier life was part of young Judi’s job. That would have twinned Giuliani’s personal and political deficits, probably irreparably.

In the main, the huff and puff over “taxpayer expense” is not likely to blow down much to obstruct Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. Once we collectively concede that some maximum leader requires maximum protection, and so too his loved ones–either for the sake of his happiness or as a hedge against ransom threats–then there’s really not much difference between the wife, the kids, the dog, the girlfriend. The reporters at Politico didn’t sift through those FOIA documents out of a passion for fiscal probity. Sex is the story that sells here, so why not talk about sex?

Granted it was more fun–the last time adultery and presidential ambitions coincided so publicly–to imagine Governor Clinton bound to a bedstead with silken ties, maddened by the big-haired blonde with her animal prints and scented light bulbs, a woman who claimed he was never so happy as when he could bury his face in her muff, than it is to contemplate Mayor Giuliani panting over his soon-to-be-new-missus, the “princess,” according to Vanity Fair, who’s always longed to be “a queen.” To toss around the subject of adultery and politics now is to raise that specter of Saturday Night Bill, and of the other big-haired girl, the frisky Monica, with her kneepads and cigar tricks and oral-anal games in the Oval Office. And no one much wants to do that: not partisans of Hillary Clinton; not her opponents, who may have to support her come November or ask for the Clintons’ support; not conservatives, who may find themselves having to back their own philanderer down the road.

Already, this is a repression election. Rumors are afloat that Rudy needs a short leash, his eyes wandering toward a former rhythmic twirler with eclectic tastes, a fan of The Lonely Crowd, The Indispensable Chomsky and Leadership, by Rudolph Giuliani. Democratic bloggers bleat pathetically, “At least he [Bill] stayed married.” Although Hillary’s great asset, she sometimes wears it like a cross. Rudy is said to be similarly chafing now that Judith is his wedded wife. Christians take heart in Mike Huckabee and, maybe, the knowledge that if Giuliani does turn out to be the chosen one, his sins won’t matter anyway. David got away with Bathsheba, after all, and with dispatching her husband, Uriah the Hittite, to the enemy’s spears. The rest of us can take heart that at least Rudy doesn’t hold the power of life and death over anyone. Bill executed a man as the Gennifer Flowers story swirled in 1992. He bombed Iraq as the Senate considered removing him from office over Monica Lewinsky. Nothing beats death for distraction.

The trouble, in fact, is in treating sex as a distraction. Usually it isn’t. Usually it’s just life, like the mortgage and the bad school and the checkbook that’s balanced or not, the dinner that’s sublime or not. Adultery may thrillingly divert from one reality, but in the form practiced by Bill and Rudy and millions of others it tends to create its own parallel universe, with its own set of mores and unwritten rules. Rudy broke them all. One doesn’t bring the paramour to the marriage bed (unless it’s a threesome), or involve the children, or deliberately humiliate the spouse. Bohemians, hippies, gay people, adventurers in polyamory have all experimented with different levels of truth-telling, and have all decided, at one time or another, when a lie or reticence is the kindest act of all. But they’ve also understood, at some deep level, why the English called adultery a “criminal conversation”: the criminal part could be jettisoned, as it was by English law in the nineteenth century, but the conversation, measured physically, emotionally, intellectually, could not.

Only a madman or a monk would count it a moral failure to converse with more than one person for a lifetime, yet most Americans call adultery just that, even when they’re involved in it. And most married people probably are involved in it, or have been. Poll numbers are as schizoid as the culture, with overwhelming majorities telling surveyors they “know someone” who’s not monogamous while only a minority own up to it. A politics that’s similarly evasive–that counts as irrelevant the ways in which people arrange their lives, their joys, needs and sorrows; that cares nothing for how and why they converse–is no politics at all. It doesn’t matter that Rudy had sex with Judi or anyone else, or that he had that police escort, frankly. What matters is that Rudy was a prick. Rudy made it cruel.

A bill is on its way to President George W. Bush with an enclosure that encapsulates the atmosphere of a disoriented US Congress. Euphemistically titled “Sense of Congress on Federalism in Iraq” and attached to the 2008 defence authorisation bill that was passed in the House of Representatives yesterday (and is expected to pass easily in the Senate today*), this latest Iraq-related opus to emerge from Capitol Hill is so riddled with inconsistencies that it is the opponents of the idea of US interference in internal Iraqi affairs that emerge as the clear victors in this strange affair.

It may be useful to briefly recapitulate the flaws of the precursor to the text which is now being turned into law. Contrary to accounts in the US press, the Senate’s “Biden amendment” of September 2007 did not specifically seek to divide Iraq into any particular number of federal states, nor did it advocate full partition. It did however violate the Iraqi constitution in two major ways. Firstly, by introducing the idea of a “conference settlement” of Iraq’s federal question, it sought to circumvent the democratic procedures for creating federal regions “from below” through grassroots initiatives as outlined in the Iraqi constitution. Secondly, by anticipating an Iraq that would be wholly divided into federal regions it usurped, by implication, the constitutional rights of individual Iraqi governorates to retain their unitary state status if that should be the wish of their populations. In short, the “Biden amendment” ignored Iraq’s status as a unique specimen within the world’s family of federations, namely, an asymmetrical federation where the demarcation of federal entities is gradual and where the right to create new federal entities is vested exclusively in the local populations of the existing governorates. This is a dual system combining federal and unitary-state elements, and it may well end up with one federal region only (Kurdistan, the sole federal entity explicitly mentioned in the 2005 constitution) – although existing governorates, like for instance Basra, or Najaf, can try to opt for a federal status at a future stage if their populations should strongly favour this. To those searching for comparisons, the United States is entirely irrelevant; it is to Spain and Russia (and, arguably, the United Kingdom) one should look for cases with certain parallels to the asymmetric division of power between centre and regions in force in today’s Iraq.

The “Biden amendment” of last September also highlighted the logical flaws of the US senators’ approach as they seek to apply the concept of federalism to create an alternative Iraq policy. Their problem is that Iraqi parliamentarians and the Bush administration happen to speak with one voice on this particular issue: they follow the 2005 constitution and the law on implementing federalism of October 2006, which together provide detailed principles, procedures and timelines for creating federal regions in those parts of the country where there is a genuine desire for such federalisation. These procedures are finite and clearly defined: unless one intends to break the law, there is no need for additional “conferences” or “international assistance” of any kind. Accordingly, if US senators wish to produce something that is somehow “more federal” than this, they will have to violate the Iraqi constitution – which is just what they did through their September resolution.

Unsurprisingly, Senator Joseph Biden and his allies flatly deny that they are transgressing the Iraqi constitution. But their handling of this in the final Congress conference version of the bill has been particularly awkward. The two elements of the original amendment that are clearly in breach of the Iraq constitution are still there – the “conference for Iraqis”, and the idea of a “comprehensive”, one-off settlement where, by implication, the entire country is to be subjected to federalisation. Instead of resolving this (for instance by suggesting a more limited mandate for the projected “conference”, or by explicitly recognising the constitutional right of existing governorates to remain non-federated), the US congressional conferees have simply littered their text with caveats that invite the Iraqis to break their own constitution if that is seen to be the popular will! The key clause is now rendered as follows: “if the Iraqi people support a political settlement in Iraq based on the final provisions of the constitution of Iraq that create a federal system of government and allow for the creation of federal regions, consistent with the wishes of the Iraqi people and their elected leaders, the United States should actively support such a political settlement in Iraq [emphasis added]”, followed by the suggested ingredients for this kind of settlement – including action by the international community to “support” a federalism deal, as well as the previously mentioned federalism conference, neither of which, of course, is actually mentioned anywhere in the 2005 Iraqi constitution.**

This is disingenuous in two ways. First, the Iraqi federal system as outlined in the 2005 constitution is simply not of the “settlement” sort (i.e. one big, convenient conference of “major” factions, of the kind that would seem palatable and perhaps manageable to US senators) but instead is based on gradual evolution through bottom–up processes. The reason for this is that the concept of federalism is so contested in Iraq that, for fear of popular resistance, even the elites who wrote the 2005 constitution did not dare to impose any particular federal formula on the country beyond recognising Kurdistan as a federal region. Basically, the arrangement is supposed to guard against any federal entities being imposed on parts of Iraq where there is no popular demand for federalism. Second, how could the existence of “popular support” for such a “settlement” be ascertained prior to the proceedings themselves? Through a popular referendum? In that case, the question to be put to the Iraqi voters would have to be framed in a very inventive way, because the real question would be: “Do you support the idea of temporarily dispensing with the 2005 constitution and the 2006 law for implementing federalism (and their long-drawn procedures), so that Iraq instead can have a (US-designed, more effective) process including international ‘support’ and (maybe) a (one-day?) ‘conference for Iraqis’ to divide their country into federal regions?”

The irony is that during this work the senators were actually quite close to the key to an alternative Iraq policy. They even touched on it when they inserted the words “final provisions of” before “the Iraqi constitution” in the conference version of the bill – presumably a reference to the fact that the Iraqi constitution itself is an evolving project, with an ongoing process of revision by committee. Where the senators made their big mistake was in focusing on federalism instead of constitutional revision. This is where there is room for the “grand settlement” (including features related to federalism) which the senators so clearly want. This is also where such “settlement” can be sought without violating the Iraqi constitution, because the process of revision itself is constitutionally mandated. But the direction of change likely to meet with Iraqi approval would again be the opposite of the general thrust in the latest US Congress bill. Instead of asking for more federalism (or a more rapid path towards federalism), many Iraqis seem to favour delays for implementing federalism, stricter criteria for forming federal regions, or guarantees against a federal arrangement where new demarcation lines would correspond to ethnic and sectarian divisions – in short, they maintain the general scepticism towards federalism that has been reflected in successive opinion polls among Shiites and Sunnis alike. But because the committee charged with revising the Iraqi constitution clearly is not responding to these signals from below, this may constitute an area where Iraqi nationalists might actually appreciate some kind of input or support from the international community – perhaps even from the US Congress.

The “Biden amendment” of September 2007 was provocative in its flagrant violation of the Iraqi constitution. Thanks to the efforts of Iraqis who protested the bill, Congress has now been sufficiently shaken to present yet another version, this time with so many additional contradictions that the new text is best characterised as illegible. All in all, it is quite hard to see why the language on federalism was included at all.

ENDNOTES

* Postscript: the bill formally cleared the final hurdle in the Senate on 14 December with an almost unanimous vote.

WASHINGTON – The FBI is investigating the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Justice Department officials said, following allegations of misconduct from former employees.

The investigation of Stuart Bowen involves possible electronic tampering, including alleged efforts by the inspector general to go through e-mails of employees in his office, said two officials close to the inquiry Thursday. It is being handled by the FBI’s Washington field office, according to law enforcement officials, who like the first officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

According to one of the officials close to the investigation, the FBI is looking into several issues of possible fraud and abuse and has interviewed a number of former and current employees — some two or three times. A grand jury has been impaneled, and has issued subpoenas for documents.

The official said that in addition to the allegations involving Bowen accessing employee e-mails, the FBI is also looking into whether Bowen and his deputy, Ginger Cruz, may have inappropriately used taxpayer funds to pay their legal expenses associated with an administrative investigation that began in 2006.

In addition, the FBI probe may also review whether Bowen misled investigators about the cost of an expensive book project about the special inspector general’s activities in Iraq, which is being put together by his office.

A spokeswoman for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said nobody in the office had been notified of any FBI investigation.

“I can neither confirm or deny the existence of any investigation. However, no SIGIR official has received notice that they are the subject or target of a criminal investigation,” SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said.

Belisle also released a copy of a memo written by Bowen that addressed some of the issues raised in the investigation. In the memo, he said the office paid for $32,700 of Cruz’s legal fees and none of his own. He said that SIGIR’s general counsel determined that some of her fees could be paid by the agency since the administrative review “covered actions taken in her official capacity.”

Bowen also issued a broad defense of his office — from its budget and pay policies to employee turnover — and concluded that, “I take seriously the requirement that SIGIR maintain the highest standards of integrity and transparency as we carry out our demanding oversight effort.”

Congress Daily, a publication that focuses on Capitol Hill, first reported the FBI’s investigation into the matter on its Web site Thursday.

Bowen denied any wrongdoing and also said he hadn’t been notified by the FBI that he was a target, according to the report.

“I am confident that this is going to amount to nothing,” Bowen was quoted by Congress Daily.

In May, the White House confirmed that Bowen’s office, whose revelations of waste and corruption in Iraq have repeatedly embarrassed the Bush administration, was being investigated by the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency after complaints from former employees. The executive branch organization was created to investigate allegations of misconduct by inspectors general at federal agencies.

At the time, the White House rejected suggestions the integrity inquiry was an act of retribution against Bowen, with then-press secretary Tony Snow saying the council was “an independent investigative organization” that did not directly follow the White House’s direction.

That investigation, triggered by a lengthy anonymous complaint filed by former staff members, focused on a number of fraud and abuse allegations, as well as descriptions of possible workplace violations, including sexual harassment. It included charges that Bowen’s office overstated the amount of savings that it generated in order to justify a budget request and that money was wasted on the book project.

The military is among the most conservative of societal institutions. Before they use a tactic in a full-up war, they look for ways to test it. Small wars and other minor conflicts frequently provide the opportunity.

One such opportunity seems to have presented itself last spring, when the Estonian government relocated a Soviet war memorial from central Tallinn to a military cemetary. The memorial had been a traffic-stopping center of protests, those protests incited by Russia.

Estonia, a Soviet Republic between 1945 and 1991, sees the internet as a way toward economic success for a small country starting from ‘way behind. Estonians have given us Kazaa, pioneering peer-to-peer file-sharing software, and Skype, the free internet phone service. More than 90% of bank transactions in Estonia are carried out over the internet. A few years ago, my friends’ front yard was trenched along the street. Optical fiber to every home. Estonians vote via the internet, and the government has just opened a virtual embassy in Second Life.

So what better way to send a message and test a tactic than by the internet?

For several days, internet providers and Estonian government, banking and news sites were shut down by denial-of-service attacks, many of thousands of hits arriving in torrents to large for servers to handle. NATO, of which Estonia is now a member, and some of its member countries sent experts to observe and advise.

The attacks appeared to be organized and came in three waves over a well-defined period of time; if they were coming from individuals, a tailing-off would have been expected. Attacks on banks focused on one bank at a time. The source cannot be traced; it is easy to achieve anonymity over the internet, and denial-of-service attacks are organized by commandeering unprotected personal computers, without the awareness of the owners of those computers. The estimate is that one million computers in fifty countries were attacking.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently invited Jaak Aaviksoo, Estonia’s Minister of Defense, to speak on lessons learned from that internet battle.

Aaviksoo had more questions than answers. The Estonian government is evaluating the attack and their response. He emphasized that there is much thinking-out to be done. Unlike physical attacks, computer attacks come from everywhere and nowhere. “Boundaries become increasingly dissolved between the international and domestic affairs, between civil and military spheres, between the private and the public, between peace and conflict.” Insufficiently protected personal computers (yours could have been one!) were “zombified” by intruders who then sell the computers for as little as ten cents per computer to those who want to make the attacks.

Should the individual owners who left their computers insufficiently protected and therefore part of the attack be held liable?

How should privately-owned internet resources like those of the banking industry be protected? To what extent should government and the private sector cooperate?

Who is responsible within the government? Commerce? Defense?

The effects of the attack were mainly psychological. At a time when Estonians wanted news of the protests in Tallinn, their internet news sources became unavailable. Being unable to access their bank accounts at the same time was frightening. Some of our more imaginative future-war strategists like to worry about electromagnetic pulse effects from nuclear weapons being used to shut down communications, but here was a much simpler and cost-effective method.

Any country is vulnerable, although an attacker faces the question of how to scale up to larger numbers of computers. Estonia’s population is 1.4 million people.

The Council of Europe has a convention on cyber crime that has been ratified by twenty European countries and the United States. NATO will consider cybersecurity issues at the summit meeting in Bucharest next spring. Clearly these are just beginnings, and evaluation of the Estonian attack will help to clarify what needs to be done relative to treaties and security measures.

Finally, a typically Estonian observation:

We are extremely thankful for the publicity we had due – or thanks to the cyber attacks early April this year. This is the positive side of the story. We have modest resources; we could have never managed that publicity to our cyber activities in Estonia.

Update: Meanwhile, China may be hacking US National Laboratory computer systems.

And is this the botnet that did it? Do you click on e-mail attachments from unknown senders?

Texans seeking to escape the next hurricane or state emergency by evacuation bus will first be submitted to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director says.

The idea, according to Jack Colley, is to keep sex offenders and others who may be wanted by police off the same buses used by the most vulnerable during an evacuation: the elderly, disabled residents and children.

“This will allow us to help them evacuate,” Colley said of sex offenders and others wanted for crimes. “We’re not going to leave anyone.”

Though the intent is to make sure vulnerable evacuees aren’t victimized, Colley acknowledged that culling sex offenders and other criminals from a herd of evacuees during a potentially chaotic evacuation comes with plenty of challenges.

“We’ll be able to do it,” he said of the task, declining to be more specific about the process because of safety concerns.

He said the agency’s first concern is to move people out of harm’s way.

But Colley insists a better filter on who gets on an evacuation bus with special needs residents will eliminate potential problems.

“We’re here to save lives,” Colley said.

Earlier this month, it was announced AT&T Inc. has contracted with the Texas Governor’s Division of Emergency Management to provide electronic wristbands for those residents wanting them, before they board an evacuation bus.

The wristbands would be scanned by emergency management officials and the person’s name would be added to a bus boarding log. That person’s name and their bus information would be sent wirelessly to the University of Texas Center for Space Research data center.

When the evacuee arrives at a designated shelter, the wristband would be scanned again to help state employees respond to inquiries from the public about the safety and location of evacuated family members.

The decision to wear a wristband is purely voluntary. But anyone who boards an evacuation bus will have to provide a name. There will be no requirement to show an identification card, such as a driver’s license, but officials may ask those boarding for an ID.

Colley confirmed that all of those names will be checked against existing sex offender registries and other criminal background databases. Colley said officials are not interested in evacuees’ past criminal convictions, only if they have outstanding warrants, are sex offenders or parolees.

After Hurricane Katrina, nearly 1,700 parolees failed to check in with authorities in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“We’re all entitled to privacy, but we’re not entitled to anonymity,” Colley said.

Colley would not discuss how thorough the background checks will be. He said the state’s focus was keeping sex offenders and those with current warrants segregated from vulnerable residents.

“We’ll have procedures and we’re not going to advertise what they are,” he said.

The history of trying to obfuscate the truth and distort the image of Iraq has always been the aim of the U.S. aggression against the people of Iraq. There is the added factor now of new breed of ‘journalists’ and ‘bloggers’ ever on the lookout for a story that will tell Westerners all they need to know about Iraq, its problems, dangers, and prospects. Despite this, Iraq remains a nation of proud people struggling to liberate themselves from a murderous colonial Occupation.

In a recent interview (“Iraq Doesn’t Exist Anymore”) with the self-described ‘leftists’ blogger Mick Whitney, Nir Rosen made untruthful and unsubstantiated statements regarding the situation on the ground in Iraq and the Occupation of that country by U.S. forces and their collaborators.

Let’s start with the fact. Nir Rosen is an Israeli-American (‘dual loyalty’) citizen of Iranian descent. Before he was recruited for the war on Iraq, Rosen once wrote; “I had dreamed of joining Israel’s elite special forces” to murder defenceless Palestinians and Arabs. Like many of the new breed of journalists who have been drafted into service, Rosen was an embedded ‘reporter’ with U.S. Armoured Cavalry Regiment in western Iraq. Embedded journalism is the antithesis of independent journalism. In embedded journalism, journalists have to serve power and cover-up war crimes. With his “Middle Eastern appearance”, Rosen is the perfect face of U.S. imperialism.

Rosen publishes in many of the U.S. mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, Times Magazine and the Boston Review. However, if Rosen articles about the Middle East, Iraq in particular, had any shred of truth in them, they wouldn’t appear in the New York times, Times Magazine or the Boston Review. Because if Rosen deviates from what Noam Chomsky calls the ‘doctrinal framework’ or the line of serving power, he wouldn’t get his rubbish published there.

In the interview Rosen told Whitney: “The main reason that things have gone so horribly wrong in Iraq is there was no plan for anything; good or bad. The looting was not ‘deliberate’ American policy. It was simply incompetence. The destruction of Iraq’s cultural icons was incompetence, also – as well as stupidity, ignorance and criminal neglect. I don’t believe that there was really any deliberate malice in the American policy; regardless of the malice with which it may have been implemented by the troops on the ground. The destruction of much of Iraq was the result of Islamic and sectarian militias-both Sunni and Shiite-seeking to wipe out hated symbols. The Americans didn’t know enough about Iraq to intentionally execute such a plan even if it did exist. And, I don’t think it did”.

So Rosen and Whitney want us to believe that, the illegal invasion of Iraq was not planned and the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and Police in order to create chaos and insecurity was not deliberate. The mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians and the destruction of Iraq, including Iraq’s cultural heritage was simply “incompetence”, according to Nir Rosen.

Anyone who has paid serious attention to the aggression against the Iraqi people knows that Rosen is patently dishonest and lack moral principles when he touts the situation there was the result of “incompetence” and the destruction of much of Iraq was the result of the militias. The aggression was not a deliberate “malice” according to Rosen; it just happened. According to Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial in 1945 wrote: “Any resort to war — any kind of war — is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty, and destruction of property”. Imagine Rosen describing the aggression in Jackson’s term.

The interview was simply a rehashing of Rosen’s crude simplification that fills a need felt by many pro-Occupation fascists to have it confirmed for them that what happen in Iraq was “unintentional”. Our mission was to “spread democracy” and “freedom” because we jus have too much o them in the West. It is just something gone wrong in Iraq and we had no control over it. Once again we are misled by a typical example of the Western man led by moral principles to promote ‘good’.

Repeating the same rubbish he has been perfecting, Rosen told Whitney: “The violence in Iraq was not senseless or crazy, it was logical and teleological. Shiite militias were trying to remove Sunnis from Baghdad and other parts of the country, while Sunni militias were trying to remove Shiites, Kurds and Christians from their areas. This has been a great success. So you have millions of refugees and millions more internally displaced, not to mention hundreds of thousands dead. There are just less people to kill”. Of course, Whitney did not challenge Rosen during the interview, and the interview is posted on all Zionist and pro-Occupation websites.

Whitney and Rosen know very well that before the U.S. illegal aggression against Iraq, Iraqis were living in harmony regardless of religious or ethnic backgrounds. No racist journalist should deny the fact that before the aggression, Iraq was a safe country for every one, including Westerners like Whitney, Rosen and their ilk. Baghdad is a city of one million Kurds. The “great success” of terrorising Iraqis is happening under the radar screen of the Occupation. Indeed, sectarianism is brought by the invasion and subsequent Occupation, like the Cholera epidemic. It is encouraged and nurtured because it is a vital instrument of the Occupation.

Different militia and extremist groups are working as paid death squads for the Occupation. Iraqis have publicly denounced the violence as without distinction (between ‘Sunnis’ and ‘Shiites’) carried out by criminal gang and death squads on the U.S. pay roll. To increase the violence and justify the ongoing Occupation, the U.S. began inciting one faction against the other. Of course, every thing is ‘masterminded’ by the phantom of “al-Qaeda”. [1]

The current division and political violence is an imperialist-Zionist ploy designed to destroy Iraq as a nation. The destruction of Iraq (physically, culturally and militarily) has been the ideological dream of the Israeli leaders and their Zionist supporters in the U.S., the pro-Israel Jewish Lobby. The recent U.S. Senate vote to partition Iraq along ethnic/religious lines is the beginning of an old scheme for the Middle East. This imperialist-Zionist scheme is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who are loudly demanding the end to the murderous Occupation.

Rosen failed to admit that Iraqis fought an eight-year war against Iran defended their country with pride regardless of religious affiliation. Iraqis do not see themselves in terms of ‘Shiites’ or ‘Sunnis’. Iraqis identify themselves as Muslim-Arab and see themselves as Iraqis first. They showed this loyalty during the Iran-Iraq war. According to U.S. military findings, when the Iraqi government “initiated a total call-up of available manpower in 1986, the response was good. No draft riots occurred; young men-even college students—reported without incident. The fact that the public answered the call tells us that Iraqis support their government … Eighty-five percent of the army belongs to the sect of Shiism”. [2]

The needless killing of more than 1.3 million innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, appeared to have escaped Rosen’s reporting. In fact since 1990, the U.S. and Britain declared outright intent to use disproportionate force, mortally targeting Iraqis as a national group. Some 1.5 million Iraqis died, including 500,000 infants, as a result of the 13-years U.S.-UK enforced UN sanctions.

Countless U.S. soldiers are publicly condemning their criminal actions in Iraq. Writing in the Vermont’s Rutland Herald, Matt Howard, a U.S. Marine, reflects on his participation in the deliberate and unprovoked war of aggression against the Iraqi people: “We did not go to war with the country of Iraq; we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.”

In Rosen’s view, the total destruction of urban centres such as Fallujah, Tel Afar, Samarra, Al-Qaim, Haditha, Tikrit, and Ramadi, among other cities and towns by indiscriminate bombing is not considered war crimes perpetuated with intent to terrorise and pacify the entire Iraqi population.

It is important to remember that from the outset of the Occupation, the U.S. Administration embarked on dividing Iraqis into religious and ethnic groups and hence planted the first seed for disunity and violence. The U.S.-imposed “Iraqi Governing Council” was the best example of a colonial-imposed puppet government formed along ethnic and sectarian lines. The puppet government is simply an extension of the Occupation. It is voids of anything resembling a democracy. It has no political control whatsoever beyond the ‘Green Zone’ where it is protected by the Occupation. Its main function is to provide a façade and legitimise the Occupation. The recent “agreement” to extend the Occupation in flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty is a case in point.

Back in August 2007, Nir Rosen told Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow news: “It’s too late for anything good to happen in Iraq, unfortunately. If the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of this civil war, of ethnic cleansing, until all of Iraq is sort of ethnically—or sectarian, homogenous zones, which is basically what’s already happened. If the Americans leave, then you’ll see greater intervention of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, supporting their own militias in Iraq and being drawn into battle. But no matter what, Iraq doesn’t exist anymore”. Not as simple as that, Mr. Rosen.

And what proof is offered for this Zionist propaganda? None. In fact all the evidence pointed to a premeditated and deliberate U.S.-Zionist plan to destroy Iraq as a nation and replace it with a collection of dependent fiefdoms. It is true, if the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of a U.S.-perpetuated violence and ethnic cleansing. But this is not what Rosen meant. Rosen failed to acknowledge that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is supported by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and will remove the primary cause of the violence.

Where all these militias and criminals came from? Who trained them, armed them and finance them? Whitney didn’t ask. Nowhere in the interviews and scattered articles does Rosen tell us that the militias were the creation of the Occupation and that the violence is the only pretext left to justify the ongoing Occupation. Why Iraqis didn’t “hate each other” before the illegal invasion of their country is totally ignored by Western media and remains a mystery to most Westerners.

Furthermore, Whitney did not challenge Rosen how the Americans managed to protect the Iraqi Oil Ministry while at the same time turn blind eye to the looting and burning of Iraq’s most important buildings and Iraq’s cultural heritage. If the looting was not “deliberate” American policy, there must be a selective “incompetence”. Reports after reports showed clearly that the looting was pre-organised policy to strip Iraq of its Muslim-Arab identity and history. It is important to remember that at the time of looting and destruction, the British journalist Robert Fisk was in Baghdad and witnessed a systematic and deliberate attempt to destroy Iraq as a nation.

Again, Whitney failed to ask Rosen how the Americans were able to build the largest C.I.A. station (“U.S. Embassy”) in the world, “the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defence force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq’s turbulent future”, while most Iraqis left without food, drinking water and electricity. Why Iraq’s healthcare services, including major hospitals and medical centres, and Iraq’s education system including, schools and university remained destroyed and dysfunctional, while Americans are busy building military bases, described by many as “bustling American towns, replete with Burger King, Pizza Hut, shops, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads”? In fact, like most people, many Americans now openly admit that there is a plan to occupy Iraq permanently and loot Iraq of its natural resources.

Finally, Like in Vietnam, the Americans offer the Iraqi people a choice: either you submit to a murderous colonial Occupation or we break you. The Iraqi people refused to submit and the Americans failed to break them.

U.S. policy in Iraq is not simply “incompetence”; it is “an essential component of U.S. policy [since 1990], constituting premeditated genocide against the people of Iraq”, writes Ian Douglas, a professor of Political Sciences and a member of the organising committee of the Brussels Tribunal. Furthermore, the U.S. failed in its imperialist strategy in Iraq not because of “incompetence”, but because “the Iraqi Resistance prevents Iraqi oil from reinforcing the occupation or paying for America’s global war of aggression”, added Douglas. [3].

One question that Mike Whitney didn’t ask Rosen which may clarify Rosen’s perspective is, why thousands of Iraqi scientists, professors, intellectuals and other professionals have been murdered in cold blood? Why at least 40 per cent of the educated and experienced Iraqi professionals have been threatened and forced to leave the country? The aim is to destroy Iraq’s independence by liquidating Iraq’s human resources.

There is no doubt that the premeditated aggression and murderous Occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces and their collaborators have succeeded in destroying the physical state of Iraq and terrorising the Iraqi population. “But, of course, the spirit of the Iraqi people is indestructible. They cannot be broken. They will resist, drive out all intruders, and they will recover. The people of Iraq will overcome the catastrophes of recent years”, writes Denis Halliday, former UN assistant secretary-general and one of the very few honourable voices in the West to publicly condemn the deliberate genocide in Iraq.

Iraq does exist. We should never forget the fact that there is an Iraqi nation and nationalism represented by legitimate National Iraqi Resistance. The U.S. government and its collaborators may have succeeded in killing many innocent Iraqis and removed a sovereign government but the U.S. failed and will not success in its attempt to destroy the Iraqi nation and the Iraq people’s will to resist the Occupation.

Today more than ever there is a need for honest and independent journalists who can stand up and against the active complicity of the mainstream media and in support of the people of Iraq struggle for freedom and independence. Nir Rosen is just another propaganda agent who has shown to be part of a murderous colonial Occupation.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

Endnotes:

[1] Hassan, Ghali, Iraq: Occupation and Sectarianism; Varea, Carlos, Iraq: Sectarian Violence in Iraq and the New War in the Middle East; Wolf, Max, For Iraq, the ‘Salvador Option’ becomes Reality.

[2] Marine Corps Historical Publication – FMFRP 3-203, Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War, December 10, 1990 Chemical Weapons.

A great victory, an unexpected one for several of the affected, was delivered today by Copenhagen’s City Court for those who fight for their liberation and sovereignty and for those who act in solidarity.

One juridical judge and two lay judges found the seven accused Danish solidarity activists, “Fighter and Lovers”, innocent of the Justice Ministry’s charge that they had materially supported “terror groups” FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

Since FARC and PFLP are not terrorist organizations, concluded the judges, neither are the seven activists guilty of any crime.

The seven had produced and sold t-shirts with FARC and PFLP emblems in an effort to raise a debate about Denmark’s terror law, which is shaped after USA’s Patriotic Act and EU’s terror list on which FARC and PFLP are placed as terror groups.

The court’s decision is a worldwide precedent. No other court, outside those in Colombia and Israel, have legally judged the contested groups for terror crimes. This will have significance in the international world of politics and justice, and is a setback for the imperial coalition’s “war on terror” with civil liberty restrictions as one consequence.

The court found for the defense in its argument that while both armed movements fighting oppressive governments over four decades had committed specific atrocities their goal is not a terrorist one, rather their goal is to combat government and paramilitary forces, and create a different political course, albeit not with the intent to do damage to constitutional foundations.

FARC and PFLP, said the court, were not engaged in “terrorizing the population,” as is required in Danish law, paragraph 114, to be classified as terrorist, nor was their intent to “destabilize or destroy the land’s basic, political, constitutional, economic or societal structures”.

One of the lay judges was in disagreement regarding terror actions purported by FARC. The total vote was 4-0 against the states attorney’s terror charge against PFLP and 3-1 for FARC.

It is unknown if the state will appeal the decision. The case for them is thin, as the 50-page court decision clearly shows. No hard evidence of terror was presented. The court’s report states that only one of the state’s witnesses had any direct knowledge of the charges. Israeli researcher, Reuven Paz, testified against PFLP as a purported terrorist organization. His credibility, though, was not well taken as he had worked for Israeli intelligence services for 27 years.

Another state’s witness, Angel Rabasa, a former Cuban, testified as a witness from Rand Corporation, a California based weapons industry and US military think-tank.

His credibility was discredited when it was revealed that he had worked for the US military in contrast to his denial of such. Furthermore, he had asserted that FARC had never operated in the legal political arena, yet he had written to the contrary in his book, “Colombia Labyrinth”, published in 2001 by RAND with support of the US military.

Surprising decision

It was a surprising verdict, given the temper of the times: the constant fright signals for terror attacks daily disseminated by the mass media and the government. The Danish government is also fully committed to the war against Afghanistan and has 650 troops there with tanks and heavy artillery. Danish soldiers are regularly shot and killed.

The Danish government, with support from the Social Democratic “opposition”, also continues its “commitment to the Iraq project”, albeit with fewer and fewer military forces.

Yet another reason why the decision was surprising, and an uplift for political activism, is that the court could have taken an easy way out of the dilemma on who is or is not terrorist. The state’s case against the seven had to be based upon material support. Therefore, the collection of proceeds from the t-shirt sales, which was to go to a radio station for FARC and a poster printing press for PFLP, was decisive.

A technical problem for the state’s case was that the $4-5000 collected, slated to be sent to the two groups, was confiscated by the Danish secret police (PET) before any could be sent. PET also confiscated some t-shirts and “Fighters and Lovers” computer and homepage.

The court could have easily found the seven innocent for not having broken the law concretely. Instead, it decided to take the political case head on: are FARC and PFLP terrorists. Their decision is a clear NO.

Collateral consequences

The city court’s decision will also have positive consequences for three other Danish organizations, which have also donated material support to FARC and or PFLP.

The first group to do so, Rebellion (Oprør), had actually sent several thousands of dollars to both FARC and PFLP to do with as they chose. One of Rebellion’s spokespersons, Patrick Mac Manus, was charged with violating the same law, paragraph 114. That case has been postponed due to his illness.

A key figure in Rebellion said that with this court’s decision there is no ground to continue a case against MacManus.

A veterans group from World War 11 (Horserød-Stutthof Foreningen) also sent some money to FARC to challenge the state, which refused to prosecute those old heroes. In an act of solidarity with “Fighters and Lovers”, a Copenhagen union of carpenters and constructions workers (TIB) recently did the same.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — In a tumultuous final session at international climate talks in which the United States delegates were booed and hissed, the world’s nations committed Saturday to negotiating a new accord by 2009 that, in theory, would set the world on a course toward halving emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2050.

The standoff started when developing countries demanded the United States agree that the eventual pact measure not only poorer countries’ steps, but also the effectiveness of financial and technological assistance from wealthier ones.

The United States capitulated in that open session, which many observers and delegates said included more public acrimony than any of the treaty conferences since 1992, when countries drafted the original climate pact, the now-ailing Framework Convention on Climate Change. That change followed a more profound shift by the Bush administration, which agreed during the two-week conference to pursue a new pact fulfilling the unmet goals of the original treaty; the pact would take effect in 2012 when the only existing addendum, the Kyoto Protocol, expires.

While many observers described the United States change as a U-turn, it was the culmination of months of movement by the Bush administration, which had for years insisted that the 1992 treaty was sufficient to avoid dangerous human interference with the climate.

In 2005 talks in Montreal, for example, the American negotiating team walked out of one session, rejecting any talk of formal negotiations to improve on that pact.

While accepting the need for a new agreement, in the end the United States retained the flexibility that it had sought at the outset, fending off European attempts to set binding commitments on emission reductions. American negotiators said this was vital to gain global consensus.

That success, though, was bemoaned by some observers.

Andrew Light, an expert on environmental ethics at the University of Washington who was in Bali, said that by keeping targets out of the two-year negotiating plan, the Bush administration had, in essence, rejected the foreboding climate projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which it had repeatedly praised in recent weeks.

“We could have moved on from here with a confident range of future cuts,” Prof. Light said. “Instead we have to move on with the same continued uncertainty. At the beginning of the week I was really heartened by the public praise the U.S. delegation was giving to the I.P.C.C. and now I can’t help but think, was it all lip service?”

Somewhat obscured by the focus on the American delegation was another important shift: China, which has now surpassed the United States in carbon dioxide emissions, agreed for the first time to language that could commit developing countries to pursue emissions-cutting actions that are “measurable, reportable and verifiable.”

Developing ways to reliably measure how policies or projects affect emissions is a vital prelude to any commitments to limit emissions, said Philip Clapp, the deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group.

The changing position of the Bush administration is likely a reflection of dramatic recent shifts in both the science and politics of climate change.

This year, a set of four reports emerged from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, each stating more clearly than ever that humans were warming the world, and that the unabated burning of fossil fuels and destruction of forests would lead to centuries of disrupted climate patterns, rising seas and ecological and social harm.

Along with the science came the Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth;” Hurricane Katrina, which, while not linked to global warming in itself, was a vivid and effective icon; and spiking oil prices. Finally, the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration’s contention that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency.