| To: Thomas M. who wrote (107) | 12/13/2001 2:08:02 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | latimes.com 13, 2001
JDL Leader Accused in Mosque Bomb Plot
By GREG KRIKORIAN and RICHARD WINTON, Times Staff Writers
The volatile chairman of the militant Jewish Defense League and another of the group's top officials faced federal charges Wednesday of plotting to blow up a Los Angeles area mosque and an office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista).
Irv Rubin, 56, the group's chairman, and Earl Krugel, 59, its West Coast coordinator, were arrested late Tuesday after explosive powder was delivered to Krugel's home in Reseda, authorities said.
Other weapons and bomb-making materials were seized during a raid at Krugel's home, authorities said.
Rubin, long seen as an isolated extremist by mainstream Jewish leaders, and Krugel were charged with conspiracy to destroy a building by means of an explosive, which carries a maximum five-year sentence, and possession of a destructive device related to a crime of violence, which carries a mandatory 30-year sentence.
Law enforcement authorities said the arrests followed one of the most significant investigations by the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force in its 16-year history.
"Not long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I announced my office's promise to vigorously prosecute hate crimes," John Gordon, U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said at a news conference. "Last night's arrests confirm that we meant what we said."
The alleged plot, according to an FBI affidavit, was revealed by a JDL member who was first contacted by Rubin and Krugel in October about participating in attacks on local Arab-related institutions. In a subsequent tape-recording of a meeting at Krugel's residence, the affidavit alleges, Krugel said Arabs needed "a wake-up call" and Rubin said the JDL needed to draw more attention to itself in a "militant way."
The final plans, authorities allege, were hatched Tuesday night at an Encino delicatessen when Rubin identified Issa's office and the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City as targets and the informant unloaded five pounds of explosive powder in Krugel's garage. Minutes later, dozens of law enforcement officers arrested both men without incident--Krugel at his home and Rubin in his car, not far from his residence in Monrovia.
At a bail hearing Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Victor B. Kenton ordered both men held without bail pending arraignment Dec. 31. They were found to be flight risks and dangerous to the community. Outside the courtroom, relatives protested the arrests.
"My husband has been fighting terrorism all his life. This is a travesty," said Rubin's wife, Shelley. "He is a good, upstanding man who speaks his mind--and that has gotten him in trouble in the past."
After the ruling, Krugel's lawyer, Charles L. Kreindler, said the defendants may have been entrapped.
"In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the government decided to become more proactive," Kreindler said. "In this case, they became a little too proactive. They sent in a snitch who set them up."
But Muslim and Jewish community representatives said they were shocked only at the contemptible nature of the alleged plot. "Rubin has never shied away from violent rhetoric against Arabs and Muslims," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.
David Lehrer, western regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said Rubin was viewed with "utter contempt" in the Jewish community. "They have no constituency to speak of," he said of the JDL.
The JDL claims several thousand members nationwide but many experts on political extremism say the group is much smaller.
The alleged plot also drew strong condemnation from the purported targets, who were not notified about the threats, authorities say, because they were identified only minutes before the arrests. "As you can imagine, this is shocking news to receive," said Issa, who is of Lebanese descent. "Like most Americans, my hope is for a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict. Unfortunately, there are extremists on both sides who oppose a peaceful resolution, and instead choose violence."
Usman Mahda, community liaison for King Fahd Mosque, said he was shocked by the alleged plot, which comes during Ramadan, the holiest time of the year for Muslims.
"There would have been hundreds and hundreds of people [there] . . . mostly American citizens," Mahda said. "It is scary. It's sad and it's disgusting. No Muslims, Jews or Christians should suffer like that."
Built in 1998, the mosque draws members from Los Angeles and Orange counties' growing Muslim community. In her affidavit, FBI Special Agent Mary P. Hogan said she was first contacted by the informant on Oct. 18 about an unsolved 1985 homicide, the bombing death of Alex Odeh, western director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee in Santa Ana.
One year after Odeh's murder, an FBI analysis said "certain evidence" implicated former associates of Rubin's who have since emigrated to Israel. Although Rubin has always denied any involvement, he has said that Odeh "got exactly what he deserved."
In her 15-page affidavit, the FBI's Hogan alleged the following account of events following her initial contact with the informant:
On Oct. 20, the informant made a tape-recording of a meeting with Krugel and Rubin where the two discussed various potential targets, including mosques.
During that discussion, "Rubin stated that it was his desire to blow up an entire building," the affidavit says, "but that the JDL did not have the technology to accomplish such a bombing (apparently alluding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks).
"Rubin also said that the JDL should not go after a human target because they still had not heard the end of the Alex Odeh incident," the affidavit says, adding that Rubin referred to the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles as a "viable target."
On Oct. 29, at another meeting secretly recorded by the FBI informant, Krugel directed the informant to take photographs of the Muslim council's office.
And on Nov. 4, Krugel reviewed numerous photos of the building that houses the Muslim council's offices and said he and the informant could build a bomb to destroy the office. "Krugel also stated that they should plant the bomb at night because if they injured anyone it would bring 'heat' on the JDL," the affidavit says.
But at a Nov. 29 meeting, Krugel no longer seemed concerned about that prospect. During another discussion about bombing the Muslim council's offices, "the [informant] asked Krugel about the possibility of an Arab getting killed should a bomb explode at the office . . . Krugel replied, 'C'est la vie . . . ,' " the affidavit says. Hogan said the alleged plotting continued until Tuesday, when the informant met with Rubin and Krugel "to finalize plans for the bombing."
At that meeting, Rubin specifically identified Issa's office and the King Fahd Mosque as targets, and plans were made for the informant to drop off explosive powder at Krugel's garage so the bomb could be assembled. After the powder was delivered to Krugel's garage, FBI agents and Los Angeles police served a search warrant.
They recovered five pounds of explosive powder, fuses, pipes, end caps and a dozen rifles and handguns, some loaded, officials said.
At the news conference, authorities said that the bombs allegedly to be used in the attacks would not be sufficient to topple a building but would be powerful enough to kill or maim anyone within 50 feet.
Rubin succeeded JDL founder Rabbi Meir Kahane as chairman in 1985 after a decade as the group's West Coast coordinator. The league was formed by Kahane in 1968 in Brooklyn to protect Jewish residents but soon drew accusations of vigilantism. Rubin became known as a firebrand activist who was repeatedly arrested after various confrontations. He was arrested in 1992 on charges of conspiracy to commit murder for hire, but was released after prosecutors determined police had insufficient evidence. |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Thomas M. who started this subject | 12/14/2001 2:01:02 AM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | U2's "Bullet The Blue Sky"
In the howling wind
Comes a stinging rain
See it driving nails
Into the souls of the tree of pain
From the firefly, a red-orange glow
See the face of fear
Running scared in the valley below
(Sky) Oooh oh oh oh
(Sky) Oooh oh oh oh
Bullet the blue sky
(Sky)
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue
Bullet the blue
In the locust wind
Comes a rattle and hum
Jacob wrestled the angel
And the angel was overcome
Plant a demon seed
You raise a flower of fire
See them burning crosses
See the flames higher and higher
(Sky) Oooh oh oh oh
(Sky) Oooh oh oh oh
Bullet the blue sky
(Sky)
Bullet the blue sky
Bullet the blue
Bullet the blue
Suit and tie come up to me
His face red
Like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colours of a royal flush
And he's peeling off those dollar bills
Slapping them down
"One hundred!"
"Two hundred!"
And I can see those fighter planes
And I can see those fighter planes
Across the mud huts as the children sleep
Through the alleys and the quiet city street
Up the staircase to the first floor
We turn the key and slowly unlock the door
A man breaths into his saxophone
Through the walls we hear the city groan
Outside is America
Outside is America
...America
Across the field
You see the sky ripped open
See the rain pouring through the gaping wound
Pounding the women and children
Who run....into the arms.....
...of America
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, as in many things, it is slightly open to interpretation. But from reading the lyrics and reading a few books where Bono talks about the song... It is musically supposed to represent the bombings of El Salvadorian towns during its civil war by US planes. It is about the United States' policy of supporting dictators in 3rd world countries to oppose the spread of communism. But more than all this, it is about the way war destroys people.
dtek.chalmers.se |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Thomas M. who started this subject | 12/14/2001 1:10:18 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | | Former Cleveland running back Mike Sellers and injured cornerback Lamar Chapman were indicted on felony drug charges in Cleveland. They are charged with possession of cocaine and ''criminal tools'' --- money and cellular phones. |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: Thomas M. who started this subject | 12/14/2001 1:12:38 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | Israel targets peaceful Palestinian leaders for assassination:
villagevoice.com
Sharon: Nightmare Rubout Would Unleash Waves of Retaliation
Death Wish in the Holy Land
by Jason Vest
For those who track the ongoing Al-Aqsa Intifada, the only scenario
possibly more disconcerting than Yasir Arafat getting knocked off by the
Israelis is Ariel Sharon being assassinated by the Palestinians—an act
that would surely loose unprecedented waves of Israeli military violence
against the Palestinian Authority, likely culminating in its destruction. The
odds of such a thing happening to Sharon are, however, slim. His
personal security is tighter than ever, and while he may not have gone
far enough for some on the Israeli right, he's not in danger of being killed
by one of his own, as Yitzhak Rabin was.
But in a situation where extremists on both sides are ascendant,
politically, Sharon's days may be numbered; Benjamin Netanyahu and his
retrograde settler supporters are lurking conspicuously on Sharon's right.
Still, at this point, the difference between Sharon and Netanyahu is
essentially rhetorical. While Sharon has begun to recast his definition of
the conflict as one not against Palestinians but against select
"terrorists," his actions—especially in the wake of his cabinet's
declaration last week that the Palestinian Authority is "an entity that
supports terror"—move increasingly closer to what the far-right Likudniks
want: the annihilation of the PA.
"Arafat comes in for a fair share of criticism," says a veteran CIA Middle
East specialist, "but I'm sorry, the catch-22 they've put him in is either
going to cause a Palestinian civil war, or doom him to failure. Telling him
to get everything under control but then making it difficult, if not
impossible, for him and anyone else to move around, and declaring the
security forces charged with getting everything under control as
terrorists themselves—leaving them subject to assassination—is
hopeless.
"And while the Israelis say they've always gone after 'terrorist' targets,"
the specialist adds, "they've in fact also gone after those members of
the Palestinian leadership who have two important attributes: One, they
were interested in a two-state solution, and two, they were the kind of
people who were strong enough to be the peace party in Palestinian
leadership. Most of these guys have been killed. Frankly, I have long
suspected the Israeli strategy is to kill the moderate Palestinians as well
as militants and send this thing careening towards an endgame where
Israel has the extremist enemy it wants."
Indeed, as Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the human rights-oriented Shalom
Center in Philadelphia notes, one need only consult an exceptional recent
story in the right-of-center Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot for confirmation
of this idea. On November 25, Alex Fishman, the paper's security expert,
reported that the Israeli government was aware that the Palestinian
Authority had finally prevailed on Hamas in mid November to accept a
quiet, tenuous deal in which Hamas would refrain from any suicide
attacks within Israel's pre-1967 borders.
All bets were off, however, after the November 23 Israeli assassination of
Hamas leader Mahmud Abu Hunud—which, according to Fishman, was
exactly what Sharon's government wanted. "Whoever gave a green light
to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in
one blow the gentleman's agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian
Authority," Fishman wrote. "Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu
Hunud knew in advance that that would be the price. The subject
was extensively discussed both by Israel's military echelon and its
political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation. Now, the
security bodies assume that Hamas will embark on a concerted effort to
carry out suicide bombings, and preparations are made accordingly."
Says Waskow: "Sharon is driving Palestinian society more and more to
the right, to the fanatics, which is calculated to create the results he
wants. If there's a Palestinian civil war, no matter who wins, it would
shatter the Palestinian Authority, which meets his needs. If there isn't a
war, he can point to the suicide bombings as justification for more
military action. And you can't blow up a Palestinian police station and
then say, 'Why aren't you arresting people?' You can't cut off all traffic
on the roads and say, 'Why aren't you acting like a real government?' "
Not, adds Waskow, that this all redounds on Sharon. "The Palestinians,
and Hamas especially, are profoundly and shallowly stupid, too," he says.
"I keep envisioning, imagining, wishing, that after Sharon's incursion to
the Temple Mount, what if instead of stone throwing, there had been
massive sit-downs, no stones, no weapons, but general strikes—what if
Arafat had behaved like Gandhi. If Arafat had been a profoundly great
leader, he would have led a nonviolent resistance 14 months ago. There
is so much stupidity to spare on both sides. But Israeli stupidity is
compounded by the fact that they have 10 times the power."
Harold Gould, a visiting professor at the University of Virginia and an
expert on South Asia and terrorism, says he shares Waskow's desire for a
Palestinian Gandhi, but believes the possibility is simply too far gone; the
Israeli right's obsession with applying an archaic colonialist model to the
Occupied Territories has made it all but impossible. "The Israelis think all
they have to do is keep the Occupied Territories chopped up and
continuously impose police actions, and it just doesn't work," Gould says.
"Countries like India that went through the colonial experience
instinctively understand where Palestinian anger and violence are coming
from. Israelis, Americans and most Westerners, like the British during the
Raj, still don't get it. As in all past colonialism, there comes a point at
which the victims refuse to be rational anymore."
But in this care, one can easily make the argument that the colonialists
revel in apocalyptic irrationality as well. In 1923, radical Zionist Ze'ev
Jabotinsky—spiritual father of not only of Menachem Begin but of Meir
Kahane—wrote that the "sole way" for Jews to deal with Arabs in
Palestine was through "total avoidance of all attempts to arrive at a
settlement"—which Jabotinsky euphemistically termed the "iron wall"
approach. Not coincidentally, a picture of Jabotinsky graces Sharon's
desk. As the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim noted in a letter last year to the
University of London's Institute of Historical Research, Jabotinsky held
that the only time to negotiate with Arabs was after the "iron wall" had
been built. "The mistake of some of Israel's leaders, and especially the
leaders of the Right," Shlaim lamented, "is that they regard Israel's
military superiority not as an asset in negotiating a final settlement of
the conflict with the Palestinians, but as an instrument for perpetuating
Israel's mastery over them. The politicians of the Right still believe that
the only language the Arabs understand is force. . . . [but] Israel can
only have peace with the Arabs when it is prepared to meet them
halfway." |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: Thomas M. who wrote (111) | 12/16/2001 6:26:03 PM | | From: James Calladine | | | | 10/24 Catherine Austin Fitts - Narco-Dollars for Dummies "How the Money Works" in the Illicit Drug Trade
narconews.com
October 24, 2001
Narco News 2001
Narco-Dollars for Dummies "How the Money Works" in the Illicit Drug Trade
Part I in a Series
By Catherine Austin Fitts
Special to the Narco News Bulletin
Narco News Publisher's Note: Catherine Austin Fitts is a former managing director and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co, Inc, a former Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration, and the former President of The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc. She is the President of Solari, Inc, an investment advisory firm. Solari provides risk management services to investors through Sanders Research Associates in London.
"The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government."
- William Colby, former CIA Director, 1995
A Simple Framework: The Solari Index and the Dow Jones Index
The Solari Index is my way of estimating how well a place is doing. It is based upon the percentage of people in a place who believe that a child can leave their home and go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle and come home alone safely.
When I was a child growing up in the 1950's at 48th and Larchwood in West Philadelphia, the Solari Index was 100 percent. It was unthinkable that a child was not safe running up to the stores on Spruce Street for a popsicle and some pin ball. The Dow Jones was about 500, the Solari Index was 100 percent and our debt per person was very low. Of course I did not think about it that way at the time. All I knew was that life on the street with my buddies was sweet.
Today, the Dow Jones is over 9,000, debt per person is over $100,000 and the my favorite hairdresser in Philadelphia, Al at the Hair Hut in West Philadelphia, and I just had a debate yesterday afternoon while Al was cutting my hair about whether the Solari Index in my old neighborhood was 0 percent (my position) or 10 percent (Al's position). Men always think it is higher than women.
Despite the boy-girl spread between us, it is fair to say that Al and I agree that the Solari Index is in the tank ---both in the streets of Philadelphia and throughout America.
Life on the street ain't sweet any more. I watched the slide of the Solari Index as a child. A lot of it had to do with narcotics trafficking and the people that narco dollars put in power on our streets - and in city hall, in the banks, in Congress and the corporations and investors down town and that ring the city.
My mission is to see the Solari Index return to 100 percent and to do so in a manner that moves the Dow up and our debt per person down and makes me and my partners a whole pile of money.
A few years back when my efforts to improve the Solari Index were threatening to reduce narcotics profits in a few places, I discovered that I could not look to the enforcement or the judicial establishment funded with my tax dollars to protect me. Narco dollars had the upper hand throughout government and the legal establishment.
That's when I decided that I would have to learn how the money works on the drug trade.
Here is what I have learned that has been useful to me---- and may help you have a better map of how narco dollars impact you, your business, your family and the Solari Index in your neighborhood.
The Economics of Production: Sam and Dave Do Boat Loads of White Agricultural Substances
Okay, let's start at ground zero. It is 1947, and World War II is over.
America is ready to go back to work to build the corporate economy. We are in New Orleans on the docks.
Two boats pull into the docks. The first boat is full of a white agricultural product grown in Latin America called sugar. The owner of the cargo, lets call him Sam, sells his boat load of white agricultural substance to the sugar wholesaler on the docks for how much money?
Ok, so let's say that Sam sells his entire boatload of sugar to the sugar wholesaler on the docks for X dollars.
Now, after Sam pays his workers and all his costs of growing and transporting the sugar, and after he and his wife spend the weekend in New Orleans and he pays himself a bonus and buys some new harvest equipment and pays his taxes, how much cash does he have left to deposit into his bank account? Or, another way of saying this is: What is Sam's net cash margin on his sugar business?
Well, it depends on how lucky and hard working and smart Sam is, but let's say that Sam has worked his proverbial you know what off and he makes around 5-10 percent. Sam the sugar man has a 5-10 percent cash profit margin. Let's call Sam's margin S for slim or SLIM PERCENTAGE.
Back on the docks, the second boat---an exact replica of the boat carrying Sam's sugar---is a boat carrying Dave's white agricultural product called drugs. In those days this was more likely to be heroin, these days more likely to be cocaine. Whatever the precise species, the planting, harvesting and production of this white agricultural substance, Dave's drugs, are remarkably like Sam's sugar.
Ok, so if Sam the sugar man sold his sugar to the sugar wholesaler for X dollars, how much will Dave the drug man sell his drugs to the drug wholesaler for? Well, where Sam is getting pennies, Dave is getting bills. If Sam had sales of X dollars, let say that Dave had sales of 50-100 times X. Dave may carry the same amount of white stuff in a boat but from a financial point of view, Dave the drug man has a lot more "sales per boat" than Sam the sugar man.
Now, after Dave pays his workers and all his costs of growing and transporting the drugs, and after he and his wife spend the weekend in New Orleans and he pays himself a bonus and buys some new harvest and radar equipment and spends what he needs on bribes and bonuses to a few enforcement and intelligence operatives and retainers to his several law firms, how much cash does he have left to deposit into his bank account? Or, another way of saying this is what is Dave's net cash margin on his drug business?
It's also going to be a multiple of Sam's margin, right? Maybe it will be 20 percent or 30 percent or more? Let's call it B for Big, or BIG PERCENTAGE. Dave the drug man has a much bigger "cash profit per boat" than Sam the sugar man. Part of that is, of course, once Dave has set up his money laundering schemes, even after a 4-10 percent take for the money laundering fees, it's fair to say his tax rate of 0 percent is lower than Sam's tax rate. While it is expensive to set up all the many schemes Dave might use to launder his money, once you do it you can save a lot avoiding some or all of the IRS's take.
Look at your estimate of Sam and Dave's sales and profits. Now answer for yourself the following questions.
Who is going to get laid more, Sam or Dave?
Who is going to be more popular with the local bankers, Sam or Dave?
Who is going to have a bigger stock market portfolio with a large investment house, Sam or Dave?
Who is going to donate more money to political campaigns, Sam or Dave?
Whose wife is going to be bigger in the local charities, Sam or Dave's?
Whose companies will have more prestigious law firms on retainer, Sam or Dave's?
Who is going to buy the other's company first, Sam or Dave? Is Dave the drug man going to buy Sam the sugar man's company, or is Sam the sugar man going to buy Dave the drug man's company?
When they want to buy the other's company, will the bankers, lawyers and investment houses and politicians back Sam the sugar man or Dave the drug man?
Whose son or grandson has a better chance of getting into Harvard or getting a job offer at Goldman Sachs, Sam or Dave's?
Don't listen to me. And don't listen to Peter Jennings, Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. Who do you think pays their salaries? Who owns the companies they work for? Sam or Dave?
Don't listen to anyone else. Think about the numbers and listen to your heart. What do you believe?
There is very little about how the money works on the drug trade that you cannot know for yourself by coming to grips with the economics over a fifty year period of Sam and Dave and their boat loads of white agricultural substance. It is the magic of compound interest.
As one of my former partners used to say, "Cash flow is more important than your mother."
Many Boatloads Later
It's more than fifty years now since the boats transporting Sam and Dave's white agricultural products docked in New Orleans. I don't know what the Narco National Product (Solari's term for that portion of the GNP coming from narco dollars) was in 1947, but lets say it was a billion dollars or less. Today, the Narco National Product that number is estimated to be about $400 billion globally and about $150 billion plus in the United States.
It helps to look at the business globally as the United States is the world leader in global money laundering. According to the Department of Justice, the US launders between $500 billion - $1 trillion annually. I have little idea what percentage of that is narco dollars, but it is probably safe to assume that at least $100-200 billion relates to US drug import-exports and retail trade.
Ok, so let's think about how much Sam and Dave have in accumulated profits in their bank and brokerage accounts.
Let's assume that the US narco national product in 1947 was $1 billion and it has grown to about $150 billion today. Assume a straight line of growth from $1 billion to $150 billion, so the business grows about $3 billion a year and then tops out at $150 billion as the Solari Index has bottomed out at or near 0 percent. America is about as stoned on illegal drugs as it can get, and growth in controlled two substances has moved to Ritalin and other cocaine-like drugs for kids that government programs and health insurance will now finance.
Let's take the BIG PERCENT margin that we estimated for Dave the drug man's net cash margin. Let's say that every year from 1947 through 2001, that the cash flow sales available for reinvestment from drug profits grew by $3 billion a year, throwing off that number times BIG PERCENT. Okay, assume that the reinvested profit grew at the compound growth rate of the Standard & Poor's 500 as it got reinvested along the way.
That amount is an estimate for the equity owned and controlled by those who have profited in the drug trade. Total narco dollars. How much money is that? I made an Excel spread-sheet once to estimate total narco capital in the economy.
My numbers showed` that Dave the drug man had bought up not only Sam's companies, but ---if you throw in other organized crime cash flows----a controlling position in about most everything on the New York Stock Exchange.
When you think about it, this analysis make sense. The folks with the BIG PERCENT --- big cash margin ---- would end up rich and in power and the guys working their you-know-what off for SLIM PERCENT --- a low cash margin --- would end up working for them.
A Real World Example: NYSE's Richard Grasso and the Ultimate New Business "Cold Call"
Lest you think that my comment about the New York Stock Exchange is too strong, let's look at one event that occurred before our "war on drugs" went into high gear through Plan Colombia, banging heads over narco dollar market share in Latin America.
In late June 1999, numerous news services, including Associated Press, reported that Richard Grasso, Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange flew to Colombia to meet with a spokesperson for Raul Reyes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the supposed "narco terrorists" with whom we are now at war.
The purpose of the trip was "to bring a message of cooperation from U.S. financial services" and to discuss foreign investment and the future role of U.S. businesses in Colombia.
Some reading in between the lines said to me that Grasso's mission related to the continued circulation of cocaine capital through the US financial system. FARC, the Colombian rebels, were circulating their profits back into local development without the assistance of the American banking and investment system. Worse yet for the outlook for the US stock market's strength from $500 billion - $1 trillion in annual money laundering - FARC was calling for the decriminalization of cocaine.
To understand the threat of decriminalization of the drug trade, just go back to your Sam and Dave estimate and recalculate the numbers given what decriminalization does to drive BIG PERCENT back to SLIM PERCENT and what that means to Wall Street and Washington's cash flows. No narco dollars, no reinvestment into the stock markets, no campaign contributions.
It was only a few days after Grasso's trip that BBC News reported a General Accounting Office (GAO) report to Congress as saying: "Colombia's cocaine and heroin production is set to rise by as much as 50 percent as the U.S. backed drug war flounders, due largely to the growing strength of Marxist rebels."
I deduced from this incident that the liquidity of the NY Stock Exchange was sufficiently dependent on high margin cocaine profits (BIG PERCENT) that the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange was willing for Associated Press to acknowledge he is making "cold calls" in rebel controlled peace zones in Colombian villages. "Cold calls" is what we used to call new business visits we would pay to people we had not yet done business with when I was on Wall Street.
I presume Grasso's trip was not successful in turning the cash flow tide. Hence, Plan Colombia is proceeding apace to try to move narco deposits out of FARC's control and back to the control of our traditional allies and, even if that does not work, to move Citibank's market share and that of the other large US banks and financial institutions steadily up in Latin America.
Buy Banamex anyone?
Next in Part II: Narco Dollars On Your Map |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (2) |
|
| To: James Calladine who wrote (112) | 12/16/2001 7:34:12 PM | | From: James Calladine | | | | October 15, 2001
Narco News 2001
Citigroup's Rubin: Banking on Terror
Citigroup Lobbies to Weaken Anti-Terror Legislation
Anti-Terror Controls Could Clip Bank Industry's Narco-Profits
Senator: Bank Lobbyists "are being very unpatriotic"
Time To Expose the "White Collar Terrorists"
Editorial
By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
The view is suddenly different from Citigroup headquarters in New York, and from the boardrooms of the large banks and financial institutions that compete with it, too. We are not speaking of the empty vista of a city skyline where two towers once stood and thousands of innocent lives were lost. The sweat under the white collars of bank executives in New York is not due to fear of suicide bombers. The specter haunting Citigroup and the other large banks is that the fast march of current events could lead to a new public understanding and outrage: that terrorism and the illicit drug trade that funds it could not exist without banks to launder their funds.
The bankers and financiers knew, or should have known, all along that their money-laundering business has caused many atrocities, and would eventually lead to massacres on the scale of September 11th.
Three words must now enter the public lexicon: "White Collar Terrorists."
The kingpins of global organized crime do not wear sombreros nor turbans. They wear suits and ties. They attend political fundraisers. They hire big lobbying firms. They pressure and push lawmakers for loopholes that have, so far, allowed a system of "private banking," "correspondent banks," and "offshore shell banks" to launder the money of corrupt regimes and criminal empires across the world.
Citigroup is the largest financial institution in the world. It has been caught time and time again in narco-money laundering trails in our América and across the globe. Citigroup, according to the Washington Post, is now lobbying to weaken anti-terrorism money-laundering legislation in Washington.
Narco News has extensively documented Citigroup's history of impunity and corruption when it comes to laundering drug money for corrupt regimes in Mexico and Peru, and Argentina, among other nations. We have also reported on the hypocrisy of Citigroup executive chairman Robert Rubin, who prosecuted Banamex in the Operation Casablanca case when he was U.S. Treasury Secretary, and then orchestrated the former National Bank of Mexico's purchase by Citigroup. Rubin, as alleged in a pending federal lawsuit by a former U.S. Customs Agent against his former department, presided over a Treasury regime that punished, harassed and silenced honest whistleblowers against corruption in his agencies.
In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, President George W. Bush has proclaimed that Washington will now clamp down on the money laundering that funds terrorist organizations. But the White House has, so far, only frozen assets of foreign businesses, all of them from the Arab regions. The executive branch continues to allow impunity and corruption by U.S. financial powers, even as it grandstands against the terror-money trail.
Congress, however, has stood up to take on the real power-behind-the-terror-throne: United States banking and financial interests. The Washington Post reported last week that "Some of the nation's largest banks -- including Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. -- are lobbying to change key provisions of proposed money-laundering legislation."
The Washington Post reports:
Citigroup and other big banks want to change the wording of a provision that would require banks to actively monitor transactions they conduct for their wealthiest clients -- "private banking" customers -- and for clients of other banks -- "correspondent banking" services, sources said. The banks want to include language that would give the secretary of the Treasury the authority to exempt U.S. banks from having to exercise enhanced oversight when doing business with banks from countries that have weak money-laundering laws, an industry lawyer familiar with the lobbying effort said. In addition, Citigroup executive Rick Small has proposed language that would soften a provision barring U.S. banks from doing business with offshore shell banks that have no physical office and no affiliation with an established bank. Until recently, Small was one of the Federal Reserve Board's top money-laundering experts. He didn't return calls.
Each of these three areas of Citigroup's business - Private Banking, Correspondent Banking, and relations with Offshore Shell Banks - are keys to a system in which U.S. banks have been allowed to virtually monopolize the drug money trade. While U.S. authorities rail about "drug dealers," "cartels" and "narco-guerrillas," the true kingpins of the illegal drug trade are the banks and institutions that launder the drug money and hoard the profits. It is precisely for them that drug prohibition exists, and that governments protect them by prosecuting the lower levels of the illicit drug trade.
Bush's dishonest "war on terrorism" has so far followed the drug-war model of hypocrisy. He has targeted foreigners and outlaws, while leaving the powerful White Collar Terrorists within the United States to conduct business-as-usual. And thus, the institutional apparatus that funds and ensures future acts of terrorism is left in place, untouched. Citigroup director Robert Rubin's cynical role as apologist and publicist for White Collar Terrorism did not end when he left his job as Treasury Secretary. After the September 11th attacks, and the presidential speeches about money laundering by terrorists, Rubin penned a column for the Financial Times of London titled, with a straight face, "Getting Tough on Terror Funding."
"Fighting terrorism on a global scale must include a consistent and co-ordinated approach to stemming the flow of funds to terrorist organizations," began Rubin in his column.
Rubin praised the Clinton administration's actions (in effect, patting himself on the back for his own failures as Treasury Secretary) and also the Bush administration (in effect, polishing the apple for the administration whose complicity Rubin's Citigroup needs to continue business-as-usual).
According to banker Rubin, the U.S. government that regulates his and other banks has been an effective foe of illicit money laundering. In Rubin's self-interested fantasy world, one can close his eyes and almost see the twin towers of World Trade, still standing, and more than 4,000 workers assassinated there, still riding the elevator, smiling from 9 to 5 each day. "The keys to success in this arena," writes the architect of Washington's failed policies against money-laundering, "are persistence, patience and, especially, international co-operation."
The blame, Rubin implies, lies not with the culture of impunity that allows U.S. bankers the loopholes they need to launder the drug money of despots and mafias across the world. Rubin seeks to point the finger away from his industry's responsibility and profits, toward foreign nations: "to be successful, the US must secure the full co-operation of the international community in adopting policies and procedures to identify, track and block the flow of funds related to money laundering or support for terrorism."
"Many countries," Rubin tells us, "lack the laws, enforcement mechanisms and political will to stem undesirable financial flows. Now is the time to address those weaknesses." But what about the country where Rubin lives, and the government that regulates his bank? "The US cannot be effective in its financial assault on terrorism by going it alone," he argues. Perhaps sensing that members of Congress are justifiably concerned that the United States has not effectively stemmed the illegal money laundering business within its borders, Rubin suggests that his fox be deputized to guard the chickens: "It is vitally important that the US government co-ordin ate with the private sector throughout this process to maximise the effectiveness of this effort."
But as Rubin makes his hollow calls for "international cooperation," he and his bank are being most uncooperative with Congressional efforts to end money laundering at home, in the financial capital of the world.
Legislation sponsored by Senators Carl M. Levin (D-Michigan) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), according to the Washington Post, "is intended to make it easier for federal authorities to detect and dismantle the financial networks of global terrorists, drug dealers and other criminals."
The Senate Banking committee passed the anti-terror money laundering bill early this month. The Senators complained to the Washington Post that there are "efforts by industry to water down the bill." The Post specifically fingered Rubin's Citigroup and J.P. Morgan bank lobbyists as the perpetrators of the attempted dental surgery upon the legislation, intended, said Senator Levin, to assure that the anti-money laundering provisions would "have no teeth."
At Narco News, we will add this entire affair to our growing list of questions to be posed to Citigroup's Robert Rubin when we place him under oath and depose him in the Drug War on Trial case.
Levin warned that failing to clamp down on this kind of money laundering in the United States "could subjugate national security interests to those of big business."
Catherine Austin Fitts, the former managing director of New York financial powerhouse Dillon Read, warned, more than a year ago, that the United States policies on money laundering would lead to atrocity. She said that U.S. enforcement efforts against money laundering are "designed to make the least possible investment in the appearance of financial integrity, while ensuring that the US can become the premier money laundering country in the world, as well as the premiere reinvestment market for successfully laundered funds."
"Money laundering is the engine" wrote Fitts, in her April 2000 correspondence from the Fountainbleu Hotel in Miami Beach, where she attended Money Laundering Alert's Conference on Money Laundering. "It provides a low cost source of capital to build corporations in a manner that destroys the ability of the customers to maintain their cultural or political organization."
"The US enforcement effort to prevent money laundering is the financial equivalent of landing on Normandy beach with a water pistol," wrote Fitts, who said that even honest law enforcement officials are completely outgunned by the banks, their attorneys and lobbyists in trying to stamp out money laundering. "The Money Laundering Enforcement and Compliance Industry is designed to fail."
Writing from the belly of the beast, Fitts reported in April 2000, "This is the most uptight uncomfortable group I have ever been with. I got into the elevator with a relaxed and fun black guy yesterday. I commented about how uptight this crowd was. He laughed and said "Oh, that is because there are so many spooks around."
"At lunch," Fitts reported from the conference, "the guy from Citigroup was talking with someone from Bank of New York who looked genetically just like him. They were talking about who was 'agency' or not and how they coordinate with the 'agency'. I was wearing blue jeans. I guess they did not realize I would understand what they were talking about."
The 'agency'? This brings us to the "CIA exemption" in U.S. money-laundering laws. One of the tougher U.S. anti-money laundering laws is called the Narcotics Kingpins Act. This act was approved by Congress in 1999 to freeze and seize the assets of drug money launderers. Industry lobbyists worked so hard to weaken that bill that a U.S. Congressmen, on the floor of the House, felt compelled to criticize the "narco-lobbyists" who pressured to gut the bill.
"The narco-lobbyists were paid well," said the Congressman in 1999. Apparently, it is still happening in 2001.
A little-known fact about the Narco Kingpins act is that it provides for a "CIA exemption." Before the U.S. publishes and updates its list of narco-kingpins across the globe whose assets are to be frozen and seized, the list is shown to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which has, under the law, a veto power exercised in secrecy. This provision is both to protect criminals and bankers who launder drug money while simultaneously serving as CIA informants, and to give the CIA tremendous power to recruit new informants among corrupt officials and bankers, trading impunity for agency.
How could this be relevant to the September 11th attacks? The U.S. government and media have placed the blame for the attacks on the organization of Osama Bin Laden and his allies, the Taliban in Afghanistan. Narco News repeats that Washington has not yet offered clear evidence of who may have been behind the crimes of September 11th, as articulately explained by former U.S. Army Special Operations Master Sgt. Stan Goff on our pages.
But Citigroup's Bob Rubin seems to accept the hypothesis that Bin Ladin and the Taliban were responsible. In his Financial Times column, he praises the Clinton and Bush administrations for their actions, prior to September 11th, against Bin Laden and the Taliban, as if they had done any good at all in protecting the victims of September.
"In July 1999," writes Rubin of his salad days at Treasury, his boss, Bill Clinton, "signed an order imposing an asset freeze against the Taliban. The basis of this order was a finding that the Taliban had allowed Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation to use its territory as a safe haven and base of operations." Still, if bin Laden and the Taliban were, as Washington claims, responsible for the September 11th attacks, the asset freeze obviously proved impotent.
In Rubin's July of 1999, the U.S. government was still backing the Peru regime of Alberto Fujimori and his strongman Vladimiro Montesinos, despite mountains of evidence linking that regime, and Montesinos in particular, with terrorism and narco-trafficking. It is now undisputed that Montesinos was a CIA "intelligence asset." He was run by the CIA, even as he trampled on human rights and impeded true democracy in Peru - maybe, in fact, because he committed those atrocities.
During that same period, while Citigroup's Robert Rubin was the top U.S. official against money laundering as Treasury Secretary, Citigroup helped Montesinos and his family launder more than $18 million U.S. dollars. This was documented last Spring by Narco News. Montesinos subsequently fell from grace with Washington and the CIA, became a fugitive, was later apprehended by the government of Venezuela and immediately extradited to Peru, where he is now reportedly incarcerated and awaiting trial for a long list of crimes and corruptions. Among the large body of evidence against Montesinos are videotapes he made, secretly, of his meetings with officials, including U.S. officials, in his office. Videos that Montesinos had intended to blackmail others now have converted into evidence against him.
On one of those videotapes, filmed in January 2000, Montesinos told a Peruvian official that Bin Laden used Peru's capital city of Lima as his organization's center of Latin American activities. ``This is the rest area," Montesinos was recorded as saying, almost boasting, "not to carry out operations in Lima but to act on white Americans in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the rest of Latin America.''
The videotape was broadcast on September 21 on the TV station Frequencia Latina in Peru.
The Al Quaida network of Bin Laden could not have enjoyed such refuge in Peru without the approval of Montesinos, who ran Peru with an iron fist, and collected a free from all whom he protected. This, as the U.S. government, according to Peruvian prosecutors, also gave $10 million dollars to groups under control of Montesinos, and as Citigroup helped launder $18 million dollars in Montesinos' illicit money.
Specifically, Citigroup laundered Montesinos money through its "Private Banking" program; the precise program that would be targeted by the legislation in Washington that Citigroup is lobbying to gut.
Robert Rubin of Citigroup says that "Fighting terrorism on a global scale must include a consistent and co-ordinated approach to stemming the flow of funds to terrorist organizations." Afghanistan is being bombed today for exactly what Citigroup Private Banking client Montesinos did: for giving refuge to Bin Laden's organization.
Meanwhile, Rubin's lobbyists, backed by all the economic and political power of Citigroup, the largest financial institution in the world, are working overtime to make sure that nothing - not even the lessons of September 11th - will be able to stop them from laundering the dirty money of terrorists like Montesinos and those he protected, again and again.
The impunity of White Collar Terrorism, reaping its profits from the U.S. policy of drug prohibition and the corrupt and selective enforcement by the government that protects it, guarantees that Bush's "war on terrorism" is already lost. "Very unpatriotic," comments Senator Grassley of the bankers' lobbying efforts.
Rubin and Citigroup, by placing everyone at future risk to ensure their future Private Banking profits, are very unpatriotic, indeed.
Copyright 1999, 2000 Le Metropole Cafe. All rights reserved. |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: James Calladine who wrote (113) | 12/18/2001 12:12:05 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | DO UNTO OTHERS...
Looking at the Hypocrisy of Trade Promotion Authority
tompaine.com
The Bush administration is the world's great cheerleader for "free trade," and has argued that forging new trade agreements is an integral part of the fight against terror. To that end, it has called on Congress to grant it Trade Promotion Authority (previously known as Fast Track) to give it more power at the international negotiating table. Yet the United States, and the administration itself, has had a hard time complying with existing trade agreements. In fact, some of Washington's highest-profile legislation since the September 11th terror attacks -- notably the airline bailout and the federalization of airport security -- contradicts either existing trade law or principles that President George W. Bush would include in future agreements if granted Trade Promotion Authority (the House approved TPA by one vote on December 6, 2001, though the Senate has yet to vote on it).
The administration's selective adherence to its professed principles confirms criticisms that public interest groups have long lodged against the agreements. One is that far from promoting free trade, the agreements favor power and privilege, and allow wealthy countries like the United States to flout them. A second is that trade principles degrade democracy and national sovereignty by inhibiting countries from legislating in the public interest.
<snip> |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| To: James Calladine who wrote (112) | 12/18/2001 12:53:41 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | Very interesting. Chomsky cited some rather illuminating numbers:
<<< Well, the United Nations tries to monitor the international drug trade, and their estimates are on the order of $400 to $500 billion---half a trillion dollars a year--- in trade alone, which makes it higher than oil, something like 10 percent of the world trade. Where this money comes goes to is mostly unknown, but general estimates are that maybe 60 percent of it passes through US banks. After that, a lot goes to offshore tax havens. It's so obscure that nobody monitors it, and nobody wants to. But the Commerce Department every year publishes figures on foreign direct investment, where US investment is going, and through the '90s the big excitement has been the "new emerging markets " like Latin America. And it turns out that a quarter of US foreign direct investment is going to Bermuda, another 15 percent to the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, another 10 percent to Panama, and so on. Now, their not building steel factories. The most benign interpretation is that it's just tax havens. And the less benign interpretation is that it's one way of passing illegal money into places where it will not be monitored. We really don't know, because it is not investigated. >>>
november.org
Tom |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: Thomas M. who wrote (115) | 12/19/2001 9:22:01 AM | | From: James Calladine | | | | Officials Back Low-Yield Nuke Strike
By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, December 18, 2001; 7:26 PM
WASHINGTON (AP)– A low-yield nuclear strike may be the best way to destroy underground stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, Defense officials said in a report to Congress.
The report concludes that it would be impossible for conventional weapons to destroy the most deeply buried facilities of a terrorist group or hostile state that contain chemical or biological weapons, and that a low-yield nuclear device could do the job.
But the United States has no "bunker-busting" nuclear warhead that can penetrate deep enough and with enough accuracy to destroy such an enemy stockpile. And since 1994, the government has been barred by Congress from development any new nuclear warhead.
Despite the ban, the report shows that the administration views a nuclear strike as "an intrinsic part" of dealing with deeply entombed enemy targets and "is essentially doing all the preparation" for a future full-scale research and development program for a new mini-nuclear warhead, said Martin Butcher, director of security programs at the Physicians for Social Responsibility.
This kind of warhead, even at low yields, is "the dirtiest kind of all. It's highly radioactive," said Butcher, whose group as been a leading voice in the nuclear nonproliferation debate. It sends "the wrong signals" and will add to the risk of nuclear proliferation.
The report sent to key committees in Congress by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in October provides a general outline of U.S. capabilities for dealing with what defense officials believe is a growing gap in U.S. military response: The ability to attack deeply buried, hardened enemy targets that are suspected of housing weapons of mass destruction.
House International Relations Committee has called for renewed U.N. inspections in Iraqi on the belief that it has rebuilt its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs since Saddam Hussein stopped allowing inspections in 1998.
Notes and diagrams found in houses vacated by al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan also point to an effort to create weapons of mass destruction.
The report said that enhancements expected to be completed by 2005 to an array of conventional weapons, including today's laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles, should be able to destroy most underground facilities. But it maintains that such weapons will not be able to penetrate the most deeply buried facilities.
Defense officials and nuclear scientists "have completed initial studies on how existing nuclear weapons can be modified to defeat those (deeply buried targets) that cannot be held at risk with conventional high-explosive weapons," the report said.
It acknowledges that any decision to proceed with a nuclear device for attacking underground targets would be considered part of the administration's broader plans for the nuclear stockpile and overall nuclear weapons policy.
But it said that a joint nuclear planning board has been established to examine the use of nuclear weapons as bunker busters. The idea of using low-yield nuclear warheads to attack deeply buried enemy targets has been discussed for years.
It was the subject of a classified study concluded in 1997 and has been frequently discussed by nuclear weapons scientists at the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories.
But Butcher said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the anthrax scare, and the U.S. war on terrorism in Afghanistan have brought the issue of chemical and biological weapons, and how to respond to them, into much greater prominence.
And "it clearly brings into much higher relief" the debate over whether to develop and use a tactical nuclear weapon in response to terrorism, said Butcher. If one were used, he added, the radioactive fallout and political fallout "would be very bad indeed."
The essence of the report sent to Congress was first reported Tuesday by The Albuquerque Journal. A copy of the report was distributed by Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, based in Santa Fe, on its web site.
The report had been requested by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and was part of this year's defense authorization legislation.
––– |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (2) |
|
| To: James Calladine who wrote (116) | 12/20/2001 11:00:07 AM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | commondreams.org
We Are Also in the World: A Bulls-Eye View of Baghdad
by Ramzi Kysia
Baghdad does not know it's a city under a death sentence.
The sun still shines here. The date palms and poplars still line the Tigris river. The streets are still full of cars, and buses, and taxicabs searching for fares. When night falls, the mosques are full of people praying, and the sidewalks jam with families enjoying the festive Ramadan atmosphere of street vendors, sweets dealers, and restaurateurs roasting chickens in the open air. And with smuggling at an all time high, the shops are full of pretty things to look at - even if most people still can't afford to buy them.
Walking the streets of Baghdad you notice the architecture - the boarded-up buildings, the crumbling sidewalks. This is what happens after 11 years of economic ruin. But then you also notice the new, box-like structures being built, with huge archways, intricate brickwork, and jutting columns, balconies, and facades. It's a striking mix of old and new, of socialist sensibility and Babylonian splendor - Frank Lloyd Wright meets Lawrence of Arabia. These buildings are beautiful, and you have to wonder how many of them will be standing in six months if the U.S. does decide to massively bomb this country.
As America's "new war" winds down into civil disorder and lawlessness in Afghanistan, the focus is shifting to Iraq. President Bush has put Iraq on notice: let weapons inspectors back into the country, or face the consequences. Media speculation that Iraq will be hit next is rampant. Rabid might be a better word. With this conflict, the media has all but erased the line between speculation, reporting, and enthusiastic encouragement.
There are facts that everyone at home seems to be forgetting. In 1998 there was a year-long series of conflicts with Iraq over weapons inspections. The Iraqi government claimed that the U.S. was using the inspectors to "spy" on the regime, and the U.S. claimed that Iraq was making up stories to hide an active weapons program. In December 1998, this conflict culminated in "Desert Fox," an intense, three-day bombing campaign against Iraq that marked the end of weapons inspections.
According to earlier Pentagon estimates, it also likely resulted in over 10,000 deaths.
In January 1999, both the Washington Post ("Annan Suspicious Of UNSCOM Role," 1/6/99) and the Boston Globe ("US used UN to spy on Iraq," 1/6/99) reported that the Iraqi charges were in fact true, and that the U.S. had been lying and had used the weapons inspection program to spy on the regime.
This is significant.
People cannot be punished for the failures of a government they only happen to live under. Nor can a government be punished because it refuses to assist in its own self-destruction. Nor can the United Nations be subverted to attempt to overthrow its member states. All of these things are gross violations of international law.
U.S. pundits and politicians are forgetting other uncomfortable facts. Primary among these is the devastation that has already been wrought throughout Iraq. In 1991, during the six-week Gulf War, the U.S. dropped over 88,000 tons of explosives on a country 2/3 the size of Texas. This was more firepower than was used by all sides during World War II. It compelled Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait. It also devastated the country.
The Jordanian Red Crescent Society estimated the number of civilian dead at 113,000. This means that the ratio of U.S. soldiers killed by Iraqi fire, to Iraqi soldiers and civilians killed by U.S. fire, was roughly 1:1,000. In a press conference at the time, then Gen. Colin Powell said that wasn't "a number I'm particularly interested in." That wasn't particularly surprising. When the ratio of dead in a conflict is 1:1,000, you don't usually call it a war - you call it a massacre.
After Desert Storm, the international blockade was kept in place to force the Iraqi government to comply with Security Council dictates, including weapons inspections. Let's be blunt: linking the well being of a civilian population, suffering in the immediate aftermath of a devastating bombing campaign, to the vagaries of a brutal dictator - this was madness. It was and is an act of collective punishment. It is illegal, immoral, and, at the very least, it has been spectacularly unproductive at doing anything other than killing massive numbers of human beings.
To some degree, sanctions are crumbling now. Smuggling is widespread. Walking the streets of Baghdad you see more shops than before. But you also see young children, in torn and dirty clothes, searching through the garbage by the side of the road - looking for a meal. Street children are a new phenomenon in Iraq. This is a country where, before the war, childhood obesity used to be the biggest problem pediatricians complained about.
The problem is that sanctions have already devastated Iraq's economy, causing hyperinflation, chronic unemployment, and the collapse of critical civilian infrastructures - including the public health care and educational systems - resulting in the virtual destruction of Iraq's once prosperous middle class. Crumbling or not, economic sanctions, by design, damage economies.
If smuggling cannot take the place of normal economic activity, then neither can a handout. The Oil-for-Food program is at best a band-aid, and at worst an excuse to maintain sanctions. Despite having sold more than $50 billion worth of oil over the 5 years of this program, Iraq has only received some $16 billion worth of supplies through it. This is an average of $150 per person per year - making Iraq, by deliberate design, one of the poorest nations in the world.
In this conflict, the Iraqi people are caught between a dictator and a democracy - neither of which seem to give a damn how many of them die.
The central, shattering truth of this conflict is that hundreds of thousands of innocents have already died, and thousands more continue to die every month. According to the UN's own figures, more children have died in Iraq due to the sanctions than all U.S. combat deaths during all the wars of the 20th Century.
The suffering of the Iraqi people may not impress either the U.S. or Iraqi governments, but it has fragmented the international coalition against Saddam that once existed. And the vision of U.S. warplanes now routinely bombing Iraqi civilians, while U.S.-led sanctions impoverish them, has worked to rehabilitate Saddam's image throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
If Americans can't understand how that's possible, then maybe they can understand this: according to UN agencies and relief organizations in Iraq - organizations such as UNICEFand the International Committee of the Red Cross - sanctions have caused at least 500,000 excess deaths among children under the age of 5. That's a children's 9-11 every month for the last 11 years: 250 World Trade Towers, full of babies and toddlers, crashing to the ground.
Mr. Bassel manages the Zahrat al-Kaleej Apartments in the heart of Baghdad. Like most of the older people here, he treated me with kindness and warm hospitality despite my nationality. He remembers a time when Iraq was a part of the world - and demonized, demoralized and seemingly discarded.
"Americans don't know anything about the world," Bassel told me. "They are on top. They first in technology. They first in military. Everything belong to them. But they should not think they are the only people in the world." Said Bassel, "we are also in the world."
He spoke those words to me as a plea, in the hope of reconciliation between our two peoples. But as America becomes drunk on war fever, we would do well to look at the devastation we have already wrought in Iraq, and to remember one of primary lessons of 9-11: 'We are also in the world' can be a plea - and it can be shout delivered in raging blood. l
Ramzi Kysia is a Muslim-American peace activist, and serves on the board of directors for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (www.saveageneration.org). He is currently in Iraq as part of a Voices in the Wilderness (www.nonviolence.org/vitw) peace delegation trying to stop the war. |
| | Rage Against the Machine | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | KeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| |
