On Saturday, Nov. 9, 2002, in Florence, Italy, between 500,000
and one million people marched against war.

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Nov. 13 (AGR)— Between 500,000 and 1 million people marched in Florence, Italy on Saturday to protest a US war on Iraq and what they see as global US imperialism.

Fired with anti-American sentiment and angered by a tough new UN resolution to disarm Iraq, European activists joined forces in a carnival atmosphere and marched together, singing and blowing shrill whistles. “Take your war and go to hell,” one of the colorful banners read. “Drop Bush Not Bombs,” said another.

The rally marked the climax of the first European Social Forum, which brought together anti-corporate globalization campaigners from across the continent for four days of talks and concerts.

With busses and trains still arriving, authorities had estimated more than 450,000 protesters were on the streets, but organizers said that by day’s end the crowd was more than a million people.

“The atmosphere here is wonderful. Absolutely perfect. It shows that a new young left is emerging,” said Stavos Valsamis, a 27-year-old Greek activist from Athens.

French farm union leader José Bové arrived on a tractor. Protesters clambered up scaffolding around arches near the city center to get a better view of the massed throngs, some city residents hung white banners of peace from the windows and balconies, and others threw confetti on the marchers.

“We no longer have any illusions about institutions like the United Nations and their ability to help humanity,” said Alain Krivine, a far-left French politician. He was convinced the United States had already made up its mind to attack Iraq.

“Marches alone won’t stop wars, but this is quite literally a first step,” he said.

Meanwhile, a controversy unleashed by Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci was sparked just prior to the peace march.

Fallaci published an “open letter” to the residents of Florence in the daily Il Corriere della Sera on the eve of the Forum, urging residents to “close up everything. Close the shops, the bars, the restaurants, the markets, the theaters and the movie theaters...” inciting unfounded fears, say her critics.

She described the Social Forum activists as “false revolutionaries,” adding, “They live off Daddy’s money, spout foolishness about poverty, and blame all ills on the United States.”

Haidi Giuliani, mother of Carlo Guiliani — the activist killed by the Carabiniere militarized police last year in Genoa during the harsh crackdown on the protests surrounding the summit of the Group of Eight most industrialized countries — responded to Fallaci, calling her a “terrorist.”

“We have fixed a date of February 15,” said Italian activist Piero Maestri at the end of the Social Forum meetings, adding that the rallies would be staged simultaneously in all major European capitals.

“However, if war breaks out beforehand, we will hit the streets immediately,” he said.

Social forum
takes on US imperialism

The European Social Forum focused its criticisms Friday on the US-led terror war and the apparently imminent attack against Iraq, as attendance at the forum’s events surpassed all expectations, drawing nearly twice the predicted number.

Forum organizers had projected that some 18,000 people would register to attend the seminars and workshops, but by Friday 35,000 participants could be counted.

The more than 160 seminars and workshops that began Thursday were the main part of the five-day forum — a regional mirror of the World Social Forum which began meeting yearly in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001 as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum held every year in the Swiss alpine city of Davos.

Food sovereignty, foreign debt, immigration, information, culture, world peace and the economy were on the agenda in Italy.

One of the participants in Thursday’s activities who received the strongest applause was Lindsay German, with the British Stop the War Coalition, which is opposed to an eventual joint US-British military strike against Iraq.

German criticized her government, saying that whether out of “imperialist nostalgia or short-sighted political convenience,” it has chosen to jump on the US war bandwagon.

Colombian economist Héctor Mondragón criticized the impact of Plan Colombia, the partially US-financed anti-drug program, on peasant farmers in that civil war-torn country.

“If neoliberalism was brought in by governments like the ones headed by [former Chilean dictator Augusto] Pinochet, it can only get worse with Plan Colombia’s helicopters,” said Mondragón.

Tobias Pflueger, an activist with the German anti-military association Imi, accused the European Union of being “dependent on the will and interests of Bush,” and slammed the “imperialist war” that Washington intends to launch against Iraq to overthrow the Saddam Hussein government.

Pflueger asserts that at a base near Brussels, 12,000 French, 12,500 British, and 18,500 German troops are training in preparation to take part in a military offensive against Iraq.

“The European Union [EU] has gone from being an economic alliance to a military alliance… A militarized EU is not the Forum’s choice. We want a Europe constructed from below,” he said.

Colleen Kelly, of the US-based Peaceful Tomorrow, an association of the families of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack victims, also condemned the anti-terrorist campaign the Bush administration is pushing.

“I cried about the death of my brother [the day of the attacks], but I also cried on Oct. 7, 2001, when the US government launched the war against Afghanistan,” she said.

Kelly announced peace demonstrations outside the White House in Washington, DC to begin Nov. 17.

Sources: Associated Press,
Inter Press Service, Reuters

US and UN warlord strategy fails Afghan people

New York, New York, Nov. 5— The US-led coalition forces are actively backing a warlord in western Afghanistan with a disastrous human rights record, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The 51-page report, “All Our Hopes Are Crushed: Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan” documents widespread abuses by the military, police, and intelligence services under the command of Ismail Khan, the local governor. The abuses include arbitrary and politically-motivated arrests, intimidation, extortion, and torture, as well as serious violations of the rights to free expression and association.

“The international community says it wants to reduce the power of the warlords and bring law and order back to Afghanistan,” said John Sifton, co-author of the report and a researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. “But in Herat, it has done exactly the opposite. The friend of the international community in western Afghanistan is an enemy of human rights.”

Ismail Khan has personally ordered some of the politically motivated arrests and beatings, which have taken place throughout 2002. The Human Rights Watch report documents beatings with thorny branches, sticks, cables, and rifle butts. The most serious cases of torture involved hanging detainees upside down, whipping, and using electric shocks. Members of the Pashtun minority have been specially targeted for abuse.

Human Rights Watch criticized international actors for legitimizing and supporting warlords like Ismail Khan. Earlier this year, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called on Ismail Khan during a visit to Herat, and afterward described him to reporters as “an appealing person.”

“Much of the country is in the hands of violent commanders and their undisciplined troops,” said Sifton. “The United States has even admitted providing warlords with weapons.”

In Herat, Human Rights Watch researchers found a closed society in which there is virtually no dissent or criticism of the government, no independent newspapers, and no freedom to hold public meetings. Ismail Khan and his supporters have intimidated journalists and printers and stifled or controlled the few civic organizations they permit to exist. Non-political civic groups have stopped gathering, and university students refrain from discussing political issues.

“Herat has been known for centuries as a center of open culture, literature and learning,” said Sifton. “The Taliban tried to destroy that. Now Ismail Khan is continuing their work.”

Human Rights Watch noted that both the US and Iranian militaries have a presence in the area, regularly meet with Ismail Khan and members of his government, and have previously given military and financial assistance to Ismail Khan and other commanders allied with him.

The president of Iran, Hojatoleslam Mohammad Khatami, has also visited Khan.

“The United States and Iran have a great deal of influence over Ismail Khan,” said Sifton. “They put him where he is today. They now have a responsibility to make him clean up his act.”

Human Rights Watch urged the expansion of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) beyond Kabul so that warlords can be sidelined and an expanded UN human rights monitoring and protection operation can be deployed. Because of previous US opposition and reluctance among other member states of the United Nations, expansion of the force has not taken place. But there are signs that the United States now recognizes that its strategy of entrusting security to warlords could lead to renewed instability.

“The United States says that is has reconsidered its position about ISAF,” says Sifton. “With the command of ISAF soon shifting to Germany and the Netherlands, now is the time to expand the force.”

The Human Rights Watch report criticizes the UN mission in Afghanistan for not doing enough to monitor and report on human rights abuses. The report urges the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Lakhdar Brahimi, to expand the United Nations’ human rights monitoring efforts and to urge UN member states to supply troops and resources to expand ISAF to areas outside of Kabul.

“The United Nations says it is using a ‘light footprint’ approach in Afghanistan,” said Sifton. “Clearly, this isn’t working when it comes to human rights.”

Human Rights Watch called on international donors to ensure that aid to Afghanistan is not channeled directly through Ismail Khan or his government. Instead, the aid should go through the national government, or nongovernmental organizations.

Human Rights Watch urged governments to stop pinning all of their hopes for security in Afghanistan on the creation of a new Afghan army.

“Of course, training the future Afghan army is important, but it will have little or no impact in the short-term,” said Sifton. “The people of Herat can’t wait that long. It’s time for the United States, the United Nations, and all the other actors involved in Afghanistan to sit down with President Karzai to come up with a real plan for security and human rights.”

Source: Human Rights Watch

Women condemn US imperialism at global gathering

By Paula Baker

Vancouver, Canada, Nov. 4 (IPS)— US imperialism, in the form of globalization and the ‘war against terror,’ is inflicting a particularly heavy toll on women, heard delegates to the first International Women’s Conference: Towards our Liberation, held here on the weekend.

More than 200 women from 18 nations came together in this Pacific coast city to analyze global developments since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

“This is a historical conference because it’s the first conference where women have had [an] opportunity to come together in the atmosphere of anti-terrorism -- to analyze, see the impacts, and create strategies,” said meeting organizer and Vancouver Grassroots Women member Rachel Rosen.

“We’re here to expose, but also to critically understand what these wars will really mean to the people of the world, and in particular to women.”

“We hope the conference will help us develop action plans to take back to our countries to build an international, united action against US-led wars,” she added.

Initiated in May 2001 by GABRIELA, a national alliance of 250 women’s groups in the Philippines that seeks to liberate Filipino women, the conference brought together women from all sectors -- students, domestic workers, minorities, politicians, and activists.

Representing countries from Asia-Pacific, Africa, Middle East, the Americas, and Europe, they discussed wars of aggression, imperialist globalization, fundamentalism, and the role of women vis-a-vis these forces.

In her address Friday, Philippine congresswoman and GABRIELA Secretary General Liza Largoza-Maza set the tone when she said, “toiling women everywhere in the world bear the heaviest burden of poverty spawned by imperialist globalization.

“While elite in poor and rich countries continue to amass wealth, women’s bodies and labor are commodified and exploited.

“Never before has US imperialism been so ferocious in its hegemonic pursuits,” added Largoza-Maza. “In its desire to address the growing recession plaguing industrialized countries and maintain its dominance, US imperialism has to repackage its more than 50-year-old formula of exploitation and call it globalization,” she said.

Panelists throughout the weekend echoed Margoza-Laza’s sentiments about US-led military occupations around the world.

“There is a great threat out of the US because [US President George W.] Bush definitely wants war,” said An Lenarts, chair of Marianne, a Belgian organization for working class and migrant women, in her panel address Saturday.

“At all costs the US imperialists want to conquer Iraq because it’s the first step in overthrowing the corporate Middle East, and because, politically, they want to control it.”

Lenarts said European nations have similar designs although, “it looks like there are parts of Europe that accept this and some that appear to be more peaceful.”

“We don’t have any illusions about this [because] the European Community is an imperialist block pointed on expansion and a monetary hold [in a region] like the Middle East would allow them to compete with the US.”

In a closed session Sunday, the women were to formulate resolutions for future action. The conference was scheduled to end Monday with an anti-war march in downtown Vancouver.

Panelist Nadia Ali Majid on Saturday told first-hand stories about living as a refugee of war in Kurdistan, in northern Iraq.
“The humanitarian point of view is war means death and destruction, but it also means the disintegration of people’s lives,” Ali Majid said.
“War doesn’t end when the military leaves, it continues. In Iraq after the war, the new regime passed laws against contraception, cut back funding for education, and returned to older religious traditions, which all aided in stifling women,” she added.

“To the US, Sept. 11 was a magic card to bring the imperialist plan to the Middle East. That is why we need to unite as women and help bring an end to imperialist war.”

US political activist Judith Mirkinson rounded out the panel discussion with her views on global power. “With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we’re now in a uni-polar world, with the US determined to run the whole show alongside multi-national corporations,” she said.

“This new ‘assault on terrorism’ isn’t new; it came in under the Clinton administration in 1996. And that’s why it’s important to understand it wasn’t Sept. 11 that ushered in this new period today -- we’re not using new policies here -- what we’re seeing is a continuation in US policy.

“They’re accusing other nations of harboring weapons of mass destruction and a need for a new regime. Well, the US is truly the weapon of mass destruction and, as women of the US, we only have one thing to say - regime change begins at home.”

Rosen said she hopes the conference becomes an annual event for women to develop and implement campaigns to expose and oppose US-led wars and globalizations, but said that funding was uncertain. “Ideally, we’d like to run this annually, but we’re a grassroots organization,” she said.

“That’s why the biggest thing here is the commitment that’s really made all of this possible. Everyone who’s attending the conference did some kind of fundraising to get here.

“So it’s not a matter of these people just showing up -- they’re here because they worked hard to get here. That’s how important and timely this conference is to women.”

Colombian Indians prisoners in their own territory

By Yadira Ferrer

Bogota, Colombia, Nov. 5 (IPS)— Indigenous people in Colombia’s remote northern Nevada de Santa Marta mountain chain say they are being held prisoners in their own territory by restrictions imposed by the national state of emergency, which keep them from going to nearby towns to purchase food.

The restrictions form part of the state of “interior commotion” declared by President Alvaro Uribe shortly after he took office in August, IPS was told by representatives of around 5,000 peasants and indigenous people from 70 villages affected by the new measures.

The restrictions have come on top of the growing presence in the area of the armed groups involved in this South American nation’s four-decades-old civil conflict.

The state of “interior commotion” gives the conservative Uribe administration special powers to crack down on the escalation of violence by the leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitary groups.

The Colombian military now have the power to monitor and control the movements of people and food in conflict zones, and to detain, without a warrant, anyone deemed “suspicious.”

The secretary of the Tayrona Indigenous Association, Jeremías Torres, said that the local communities have been “humiliated” by the increased number of army troops in the Nevada de Santa Marta sierra, which is located in the departments of Magdalena, Guajira and César, along the Caribbean coast.

“These men set up control posts, demand to see our identity cards, which we do not use in our culture, keep us from bringing in food, and try to recruit our youngsters,” said Torres, referring to the army.

Guerrillas and paramilitary groups are disputing control over the isolated mountain region, which is used as a corridor for the trafficking of drugs and weapons.

Peasant farmer Jorge González, the president of the communal association of the village of Santa Clara, said there was no reason why he and other members of his community should have to ask for army permission to buy food in nearby market towns.

In late October, 140 Indians and peasant farmers staged a 36- hour march from the Nevada de Santa Marta sierra, demanding that the irregular armed groups and the army leave them alone and respect their neutrality.

“In concrete terms, we demanded that the routes for bringing up food be unblocked, and that we be allowed to walk freely through the sierra, which is our home,” said González.

According to the peasant activists, the villages in question purchased a weekly average of $3,600 worth of food and other merchandise before the restrictions were imposed, while authorities are now allowing locals to bring in just $500 worth of food a week.

The army says the restrictions are aimed at keeping the irregular armed groups from obtaining provisions by sending local peasants to purchase food.

The Office of the People’s Defender (ombudsman) expressed concern over the situation in the Nevada de Santa Marta sierra, in a report that documents 60 murders and other human rights violations committed in that area this year.

In addition, it states that between June 2000 and October this year, 33 indigenous people have died in “selective killings” blamed on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group, and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the paramilitary umbrella organization.

The Office of the People’s Defender recommended that the Interior Ministry “put into effect an emergency plan that guarantees the fundamental and collective rights of the indigenous and peasant communities in the Nevada de Santa Marta sierra.”

The government has admitted that “there are doubts regarding the handling of human rights by the public forces” in some areas where special measures have been applied, and committed itself to “doing everything within its reach to ensure respect for human rights.”

Local human rights groups complain that some aspects of the new measures are ambiguous, which can bring undesired consequences. They demand that the new rules be discussed with local communities, in order to prevent abuses.

Indigenous leaders say their communities are the main victims of the conflict, despite the fact that they have declared themselves neutral and in favor of peaceful coexistence.

Colombia’s armed conflict claims around 20 lives a day, only five of whom are armed combatants. Civilians are often targeted by the various armed groups, which accuse them of sympathizing with the enemy.

‘Committee for the Liberation of Iraq’ sets up shop

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Nov. 4— A small group of well-placed right-wing activists with close ties to hawks in the offices of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as next Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott, is busy readying a new campaign to rally public support for the invasion of Iraq.

The “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq” is setting up offices on Capitol Hill this week, according to its president, Randy Scheunemann, Lott’s former chief national-security adviser who last year worked in Rumsfeld’s office as a consultant on Iraq policy. The chairman of the new Committee, Bruce P. Jackson, is a former vice president of Lockheed Martin who chaired the Republican Party Platform’s subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy when Bush ran for president in 2000.

Jackson, who also served as chairman of the US Committee to Expand North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which spearheaded a “citizen’s” campaign to persuade Congress to ratify NATO’s eastward expansion in 1998, resigned from Lockheed earlier this year to, in his words, “pursue democracy building projects full-time.”

He, Scheunemann, and a prominent Republican fund-raiser who worked with Jackson on the NATO Committee, Julie Finley, founded the Project on Transitional Democracies, for which he is now president. He also leads the US Committee on NATO, a successor to the expansion effort, in which both Scheunemann and Finley are officers.

The new Committee on Iraq appears to be a spin-off from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a front group consisting mainly of neo-conservative Jews and heavy-hitters from the Christian Right whose public recommendations on fighting President George W. Bush’s “war against terrorism” and alignment with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the second intifada have anticipated to a remarkable degree the administration’s policy course.

Both Scheunemann and Jackson have signed a number of PNAC’s open letters to Bush, including one sent just eight days after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, calling for Washington to carry the anti-terrorist campaign beyond al-Qaida to Syria, Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Palestine Authority and, of course, Iraq.

Other signers included Richard Perle, chairman of Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board (DPB), Frank Gaffney, a Perle protege who now heads the Center for Security Policy (CSP), and several of Perle’s colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), including former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Michael Ledeen, and Marc Reuel Gerecht.

Gary Schmitt, PNAC’s executive director, has agreed to join Jackson, Finley, and Scheunemann, as an officer in the new Iraq group.

Scheunemann told Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) that they are still recruiting members for the Committee’s board of directors. So far, however, former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, and ret. General Wayne Downing, a former lobbyist for the Iraqi National Congress (INC) who worked as Bush’s top counter-terrorism official on his National Security Council staff until he unexpectedly resigned last summer, have all signed on.

Like Downing, Scheunemann has long-standing links to the INC, a very loose coalition of Iraqi dissidents and opposition groups headed by the controversial Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi and the INC have long been championed by the neo-conservatives around Rumsfeld and Cheney but disdained as ineffectual and possibly corrupt by regional specialists at the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the uniformed brass, including ret. General Anthony Zinni, who served as commander of the Pentagon’s Central Command in the late 1990s.

In 1998, Scheunemann, who was then working for Lott, drafted the “Iraq Liberation Act” that authorized $98 million for the INC, only a fraction of which was spent by the Clinton administration, largely due to opposition from State, the CIA, and Zinni. The Pentagon recently took control of the bulk of the unspent funds to begin training various INC factions.

The mission statement of the new Committee, whose website is at <www.liberationiraq.org>, describes its purpose as “promot[ing] regional peace, political freedom and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations.”

It says the current government in Baghdad “poses a clear and present danger to its neighbors, to the United States, and to free peoples throughout the world.”

“The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq will engage in educational and advocacy efforts to mobilize US and international support for policies aimed at ending the aggression of Saddam Hussein and freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny,” it goes on. It “is committed to work beyond the liberation of Iraq to the reconstruction of its economy and the establishment of political pluralism, democratic institutions, and the rule of law.”

Scheunemann told FPIF the group will concentrate its efforts on the media “both in the US and in Europe.”

The new committee appears to be the latest organization used by neo-conservatives and other right-wingers in a long line of similar front groups stretching back over a quarter of a century, first to the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and then to the more bipartisan Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), which campaigned against détente and arms control treaties during the Carter administration.

During the 1980s, they spawned new groups -- consisting mostly of the same people -- such as the Committee for the Free World; Prodemca (Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America), which supported Reagan administration policies in Central America; and the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), which campaigned against the overseas work of mainstream Protestant churches and liberation theology of the Roman Catholic Church; among others.

Many of the activists in these groups were associated with AEI, the leading neo-conservative think tank in Washington and one whose foreign-policy positions have never enjoyed as much influence as now.

In the lead-up to the Gulf War 11 years ago, many of the same individuals launched the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), co-chaired by Perle along with former New York Democratic Rep. Stephen Solarz. It worked closely with both the Bush Sr. administration in mobilizing support for the war, particularly in Congress, and with a second group financed by the Kuwaiti monarchy called Citizens for a Free Kuwait. CPSG also received a sizable grant from the Wisconsin-based Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of both PNAC and AEI.

As recently as 1998, the CPSG called in an open letter to Clinton for Washington to adopt a “comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime” centered on support for the INC and US air power. More recently, it lobbied Congress to give Bush authority to wage war against Iraq.

The 1998 letter was signed by many of the charter members of PNAC, which had been launched the year before, who are now the leading Iraq hawks inside the administration. They include Rumsfeld and four of his top deputies at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Dov Zakheim, and Peter Rodman; the arch-unilateralist undersecretary of state for arms control and international strategy, John Bolton; Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky; and senior National Security Council staffers Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad.

PNAC’s Schmitt and its two co-founders, Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan; CSP’s Gaffney; as well as several AEI associates, including Perle, Jeffrey Gedmin, Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, and David Wurmser also signed.

PNAC published its own letter urging stronger action against Iraq in January, 1998. It stressed that “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council” before taking unilateral military action. That letter was signed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rodman, Bolton, Dobriansky, Abrams, Khalilzad, Kagan, Kristol, and Perle, as well as half a dozen other leading neocon and right-wing lights.

One year later, many of the same figures helped create the Balkan Action Committee (BAC) in support of NATO’s campaign against Serbia. Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Perle all served on BAC’s executive committee, which, like the Prodemoca and the CPSG, for example, published open letters to the president and took out ads in major newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Scheunemann’s Republican connections do not only run to Lott. He served as foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain, a key Iraq hawk, during his unsuccessful presidential run from 1999-2000, as well as a senior adviser to former Sen. Robert Dole in 1996.

Jackson served as national co-chairman of the Dole for President Finance Committee in that same year and worked with Scheunemann on the Party’s Platform subcommittee for National Defense and Security Policy. A Military Intelligence officer in the US army from 1979 to 1990, Jackson worked in the offices of both Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney when they served as defense secretaries under Reagan and Bush Sr. After a brief stint as an investment banker for Lehman Brothers in New York, he joined Martin Marietta, rising to his last post as vice president for Strategy and Planning at Lockheed Martin after the two defense giants’ merger.

An outspoken champion of Taiwan, Jackson first came to public prominence as head of the US Committee to Expand NATO, which sought the alliance’s inclusion of nations from Central and Eastern Europe, a lucrative new market for Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors. At the time, he described his role as Committee president as a “hobby,” but, according to a report by the World Policy Institute, he worked virtually full-time on the lobbying effort.

Also working with him was Steve Hadley, an assistant secretary of defense under Bush Sr. and currently Bush Jr. Deputy National Security Adviser. Hadley was then employed by Shea and Gardner, a law firm that represents Lockheed Martin.

Several months ago, The Washington Post reported that PNAC’s deputy director, Tom Donnelly, was joining Lockheed Martin. Several weeks later, he was reported to have been posted at AEI.

Source: Foreign Policy In Focus

 

WORLD BRIEFS

US unilateralism, toothless treaties undermine talks

The unilateral stance of the US on arms control, as well as legal gaps in international arms treaties, are among the reasons negotiations on the matter have been bogged down and violators go unpunished, say disarmament experts. Jozef Goldblat, a researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research and also vice-president of the Geneva International Peace Research Institute said: “In 2000, the US administration formally declared its preference for unilateral action.” He said the US is the first country to back out of an arms control treaty, when in Dec. 2001, President George W. Bush announced the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The Bush administration also said in July 2001 that the draft of the protocol aimed at providing the Biological Weapons Convention with verification authority threatened the integrity of US national security. Enforcing compliance with the treaties is the most urgent issue in global arms control efforts, Goldblat said. He warned that treaties should not include military sanctions for violations, as such measures are solely the terrain of the Security Council. (IPS)

Canada denounces latest US attempts to ‘secure border’

Many Canadian commentators and politicians are denouncing the latest US move to secure its border with its northern neighbour by demanding passports and in some cases visas from Canadian residents of British Commonwealth countries who want to enter the United States.

The policy, announced last week, follows a rare Canadian government travel advisory to citizens born in certain Middle Eastern countries to reconsider if they wanted to cross the border because of new US security rules that include fingerprinting.

The US plan requires travellers living in Canada who are citizens of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to carry passports. Foreign nationals living in Canada from about 50 other Commonwealth countries -- most of them in the developing world -- would need both a passport and a visa to enter the United States.

Canadian citizens can enter the United States without passports as long as they have other forms of identification.

In September, the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a travel advisory, saying Canadians born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, or Syria could be subjected to increased attention from US authorities. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen were later added to the list. (IPS)

Pentagon plans ‘anti-terrorism’
complex in Germany

Pentagon planners want to build an anti-terrorism training camp at Auerbach, near Nuremberg, complete with mock Middle Eastern towns, to train 3,500 elite soldiers from units such as the Green Berets and Army Rangers. The plan is for Auerbach to become the single central training ground for special forces in an anti-terror campaign.

Helmut Ott, Auerbach’s mayor said: “We have seen plans for 1,600 homes for troops and their families. They have applied for permission to raze 80 hectares of woodland.” Ott is terrified that having thousands of the US’s elite soldiers as neighbors will make his sleepy, 688-year-old town an al-Qaida target. “We can reckon from the first day that we will be in the sights of the terrorists. We don’t want what happened to the Pentagon to happen to Auerbach.

“Will our drinking water be safe? Will they use chemical weapons against us? Yes, we don’t mind admitting that we have a great deal of fear.”

He has threatened legal action against the German government over the plans. (The Scotsman)

US loses new
bid to block UN anti-torture pact

A United Nations committee dealt the US a heavy defeat on Nov. 7 in its bid to block a draft anti-torture treaty that has been a decade in the making, paving the way for the pact’s final approval next month. Overriding opposition from Washington, the UN General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee approved the draft treaty by a vote of 104 to eight with 37 abstentions.

Joining the US were China, Cuba, Israel, Japan, Nigeria, Syria, and Vietnam.

The treaty, which the US has opposed since the drafting process began, would set up an international system of inspections for all sites where prisoners are held to insure that torture was not taking place. Washington argued the pact would divert limited UN resources from other, more effective, anti-torture mechanisms and that opening state prisons to international inspection would violate states’ rights under the US Constitution.

The campaign against the pact was the latest in a wave of go-it-alone actions that have infuriated many of the US’s closest allies at the UN, including the rejection of the Kyoto pact on global warming and the new International Criminal Court aimed at combating genocide and war crimes. (Reuters)

Analysts claim
early peak in
world oil production

“The world’s known and estimated ‘yet to find’ reserves cannot satisfy even the present level of production … beyond 2022. Any growth in global economic activity only serves to increase demand and bring forward the peak year,” said Douglas-Westwood analysts in the World Oil Supply Report.

A one percent annual growth in world demand for oil could cause global crude production to peak at 83 million barrels a day (b/d) in 2016, according to the report. A two percent growth in demand could trigger a production peak of 87 million b/d by 2011, while a three percent growth would move that production peak to as early as 2006.

The report considers all existing and potential oil producing countries and forecasts their likely future oil reserves depletion, along with the year and level of peak production. It encompasses all known and “yet to find” oil reserves, including onshore and offshore, deepwater and shallow-water, conventional resources, and oil shale. (Oil and Gas Journal)