[Wino]

...On Tuesday (June 29), the London-based Al Hayat newspaper reported that 63-year-old Bremer had a young Iraqi lover during his stay in Iraq.
According to the report, the unnamed woman worked in the presidential protocol office during former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's term.....

Old Muslim saying - "When man goes to the other side of the mountain, he must eat!"

Considering Bremer is a republican, I'm glad to hear it was a woman.

[eggplant43]

Long executive reach distinguishes Cheney

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | June 29, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Dick Cheney occupies an unprecedented position in American history. There has never been such a powerful vice president. There has never been anyone other than a president as powerful as Cheney.

Cheney hides his influence behind a low public profile. Seen darting between meetings, he signals his all-business approach by carrying his own notebooks. Even Jimmy Carter had someone else drag his briefcase.

Cheney also shields his clout behind President Bush's determination to show that he himself is in charge. At times, Bush has even pointed a finger at his own chest and praised his own ''tough decisions," while Cheney stands quietly in the wings.

In recent weeks, however, the astonishing range of Cheney's influence has been on display in virtually every controversy involving the administration. The chain of events drew Cheney out of the shadows even before he created a ruckus by lobbing an obscenity at his slightly thinner twin, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.

First came the 9/11 Commission reports showing Cheney's take-command attitude on Sept. 11, 2001, ordering the shootdown of any hijacked plane and then warning the president of an alleged threat to Air Force One, which sent Bush to a bunker in Nebraska.

Cheney claims that he got Bush's approval for the shootdown order, but notes taken at the time made no reference to it, and the commission found discrepancies in the accounts of those present.

Then came the commission's rejection of ''collaboration" between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This trope was one of the pillars of the case Cheney built for war in Iraq, and the administration can't afford to lose it. Cheney reasserted the link, hinting he had more information but not providing any.

Then, last week, came the Supreme Court's decision to return to a lower court the question of whether Cheney must reveal details of his Energy Task Force, followed by his confrontation with Leahy. Cheney later said his expletive was a response to Leahy's insinuations about no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton, the company Cheney headed in the 1990s.

Since the vice president's influence is already embedded in the administration through his numerous friends appointed to high positions -- including his mentor, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- Cheney's character and motivations ought to be fair game for the media as the campaign heats up. So should efforts to connect the dots on his unusual ascent.

It began with a move that was, in retrospect, perfectly illustrative of his approach to power: Charged with heading the committee to choose Bush's running mate, Cheney quietly shifted his voter registration from Texas (the presidential nominee's state, and thus ineligible) to Wyoming and appointed himself to the job.

Cheney achieved this maneuver with so little friction that almost no one saw it as a power grab. The media simply assumed someone, probably Bush's father, thought it would be a good idea to have an old Washington hand on the ticket to assist Bush, who was neither worldly nor knowledgeable about policy.

Now, in office, Cheney utilizes the old maxim that there's no limit to what people can achieve if they don't care who gets the credit. He can shun accolades because, unlike all vice presidents going back to Alben Barkley, he has no higher ambitions. He would be an old 68 at the end of a second Bush term, with four heart attacks behind him, and voters wouldn't trust his health.

Thus, Cheney can channel all his ambition into this administration. Without having to accumulate debts for a future campaign, he's beyond the normal political controls: No one can ward him off by threatening to embarrass him politically. And he can offer the president unwavering loyalty.

In the past, when administrations sailed through rocky seas, the vice president would grab the first lifeboat and paddle furiously: Al Gore stood behind Bill Clinton in public during impeachment, but aides quickly leaked stories of his private disgust over Clinton's conduct; George H. W. Bush did everything but hide under a sofa to claim he was ''out of the loop" on the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal.

Since no one has used the vice presidency as a power base for anything but running for president, Cheney could invent his own job.

He followed models perfected by others. There have been powerful first ladies (Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Reagan), powerful chiefs of staff (Donald Regan), and powerful Svengali-like advisers (Henry Kissinger, Edward House during the Wilson administration).

Cheney combined all three. Like a first lady, his stature is unique. Unlike a staff member, he can't be fired. Like Regan, Cheney, a former chief of staff to President Ford, is clearly the chief operating officer of the White House, overshadowing the titular chief, Andrew Card, like an elephant over a mouse. And he's made himself the president's prime policy adviser, supplanting Cabinet chiefs like Secretary of State Colin L. Powell or Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

As a result, Cheney looms larger than Hillary Rodham Clinton in the '90s, with about a tenth as much scrutiny, even during a campaign. So far, Cheney has stuck to the traditional vice-presidential role of raising funds and tending to the party's base. But he's been anything but a traditional vice president.

Peter S. Canellos can be reached at canellos@globe.com.

[Al-Firdaus]

It's Called Democracy
Los Angeles Times | Editorial

Tuesday 29 June 2004

What gives the government the right to arrest you and imprison you indefinitely without offering a reason or opportunity to appeal? The answer, in the United States, is: Nothing gives the government that right. It is hard to see what is left of American freedom if the government has the authority to make anyone on its soil - citizen or noncitizen - disappear and then rule that no one can do anything about it.

Or so we once thought. But the Bush administration - whose convoluted memos on defining torture now rank with Bill Clinton's definition of sex - says Congress gave it exactly this power. And when was that? Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed a two-line resolution authorizing the use of military force against "nations, organizations or persons" engaged in terrorism. We would like to hear from any member who intended by this vote to repeal the Bill of Rights.

Shockingly, though, in rulings issued Monday about the rights of terror suspects being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in a military brig, four justices of the U.S. Supreme Court bought the administration's argument. In better news, a 6-3 majority flatly rejected the administration's arguments that the prisoners were not even entitled to a court hearing. One of the plaintiffs - an American citizen named Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan - has been held in a military brig with no charges brought against him for nearly three years.

The court said that even the Guantánamo detainees who were not citizens were still "persons" under the Constitution. That gives them the right to challenge their detention, with a lawyer to help them. Even Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist couldn't swallow the administration's notion that these prisoners had no rights at all.

President Bush and his administration say: Look, there's a war on. And anyway, the United States is not some Latin American dictatorship of the 1970s; we can trust our government not to abuse the extraordinary power it claims. But this administration's record of incompetence and callousness does not inspire us to lightly kiss away our constitutional protections.

Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, was arrested by the FBI in connection with the Madrid train bombings in March. His fingerprints were supposedly on a bag of detonators found in Spain. Having been tarred as a murderer and terrorist by his own government, he was released with little more than an "oops." More than two dozen Guantánamo prisoners were released earlier this year after Pentagon lawyers decided they were not terrorists after all. Meanwhile, they had been imprisoned for two years.

The whole point of the substantive freedoms and due process guarantees in the Bill of Rights is that freedom should not rest on any government's claims of benevolence. Now that the Guantánamo detainees have been given the right to a hearing, Americans will learn a bit more about what has happened there. As with the abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, it's likely that the more they learn, the less they'll like it.


At War
By Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 02 July 2004

"Mr. President, Iraq is sovereign."

With a simple handwritten note, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice made her bid to author one of the biggest and most brazen lies of our lifetimes. No, Iraq is not sovereign, far from it.

Iraq today remains occupied by a large, primarily US, military force of nearly 150,000. The presence of a foreign army is without popular support from the Iraqi people. Far from being embraced, the occupation has given rise to a local resistance prepared to give their lives to drive those they view as invaders from their homeland. In the 48 hours since Rice penned her note to Bush, four American soldiers have lost their lives and at least eleven more have been wounded.

A massive dis-information campaign has been waged in the US to convince the public that "Iraqis" now control their own fate. But the reality is that the Bush administration has hastily authorized our military to recall thousands of recently discharged veterans in an attempt to bolster an occupying force faced with fierce resistance.

The hasty Saigon-style exit of US overseer L. Paul Bremer III may not have been an escape, but it looked like one. Bremer's departure did however serve to draw attention away from the arrival of his replacement. The new American "Ambassador" to Iraq, John D. Negroponte, arrived almost without mention, a "diplomatic" force 1,700 strong in tow. If you have any misconceptions about Negroponte's mission in Iraq being a diplomatic one, put them to rest now. Mr. Negroponte's specialty is not diplomacy, it is mass graves. As US Ambassador to Honduras during the Reagan administration, he was the Iran-Contra point man in the region.

In 1984 the Reagan administration's plan to ignore the will of Congress and crush the duly elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua was in full swing. Money was coming in from the sale of arms to Iran, the CIA was training death squads to kill anyone who opposed the Reagan agenda, and someone had to coordinate those efforts. That someone was John D. Negroponte.

Specifically, Negroponte is charged by human rights groups with running political cover for the CIA sponsored Honduran Intelligence Battalion 3-16. Battalion 3-16, led by General Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, a graduate of the School of the Americas, was directly responsible for the disappearance of thousands of Nicaraguans who did nothing more than resist a foreign overthrow of their chosen leaders.

Fast forward, Iraq 2004. Newly US-appointed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is a CIA favorite and has vowed to "crush" the resistance. John D. Negroponte arrives in the nick of time to play the role of Ambassador, and all players are in place. Yes, Abu Ghraib was bad, but what's coming could easily be far worse.

The elaborate and expensive "Iraqi Rule" charade is a made-for-American-TV production being thrown together literally on an hour-to-hour basis. The parading of former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein provides vivid insight into the desperate, even frantic, bid to maintain a veneer of order in the eyes of US voters.

With mind-boggling, chorus-line precision, every major corporate news agency in the US shouted, in unison, on cue: "Legal Custody of Saddam Transferred to Iraqis." For the record, Saddam is under US military armed guard now and will be until he dies. The rest of it is 100% grade-A, all-American bovine feces. Although it should be noted that the nephew of accused Iranian spy Ahmed Chalabi, Salem Chalabi, has been cast in the role of Judge in Saddam's made-for-TV trial: that should prove interesting.

It is difficult to imagine how Saddam Hussein can get anything approaching a fair trial. His testimony would be an embarrassment to the current occupants of the White House who for so long funded and supplied him, benefiting from his repression of true Iraqi interests. All this knowing well the scope of his crimes. So, once again, it's the all too familiar, rock-and-hard-place scenario.

No, Iraq is not sovereign, not by a long shot, and there isn't anyone in Washington that wants it to be anytime soon. No one knows that better that than those telling the lie. No, there is no multi-national force. It's George W. Bush in control of the US military and his cronies reaping the profits.

Lost in all this are those who pay the price of war, those whose lives are torn apart or ended and forgotten. When all the money has been made, and deposited, and spent, who will remember those who carried the rifle or lost the leg? When we leave Mesopotamia, and we will, who will think of the child crushed beneath the wheel of greed?

[bassetman]

Originally Posted by eggplant43

Long executive reach distinguishes Cheney

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | June 29, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Dick Cheney occupies an unprecedented position in American history. There has never been such a powerful vice president. There has never been anyone other than a president as powerful as Cheney.

Cheney hides his influence behind a low public profile. Seen darting between meetings, he signals his all-business approach by carrying his own notebooks. Even Jimmy Carter had someone else drag his briefcase.

Cheney also shields his clout behind President Bush's determination to show that he himself is in charge. At times, Bush has even pointed a finger at his own chest and praised his own ''tough decisions," while Cheney stands quietly in the wings.

In recent weeks, however, the astonishing range of Cheney's influence has been on display in virtually every controversy involving the administration. The chain of events drew Cheney out of the shadows even before he created a ruckus by lobbing an obscenity at his slightly thinner twin, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.

First came the 9/11 Commission reports showing Cheney's take-command attitude on Sept. 11, 2001, ordering the shootdown of any hijacked plane and then warning the president of an alleged threat to Air Force One, which sent Bush to a bunker in Nebraska.

Cheney claims that he got Bush's approval for the shootdown order, but notes taken at the time made no reference to it, and the commission found discrepancies in the accounts of those present.

Then came the commission's rejection of ''collaboration" between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This trope was one of the pillars of the case Cheney built for war in Iraq, and the administration can't afford to lose it. Cheney reasserted the link, hinting he had more information but not providing any.

Then, last week, came the Supreme Court's decision to return to a lower court the question of whether Cheney must reveal details of his Energy Task Force, followed by his confrontation with Leahy. Cheney later said his expletive was a response to Leahy's insinuations about no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton, the company Cheney headed in the 1990s.

Since the vice president's influence is already embedded in the administration through his numerous friends appointed to high positions -- including his mentor, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- Cheney's character and motivations ought to be fair game for the media as the campaign heats up. So should efforts to connect the dots on his unusual ascent.

It began with a move that was, in retrospect, perfectly illustrative of his approach to power: Charged with heading the committee to choose Bush's running mate, Cheney quietly shifted his voter registration from Texas (the presidential nominee's state, and thus ineligible) to Wyoming and appointed himself to the job.

Cheney achieved this maneuver with so little friction that almost no one saw it as a power grab. The media simply assumed someone, probably Bush's father, thought it would be a good idea to have an old Washington hand on the ticket to assist Bush, who was neither worldly nor knowledgeable about policy.

Now, in office, Cheney utilizes the old maxim that there's no limit to what people can achieve if they don't care who gets the credit. He can shun accolades because, unlike all vice presidents going back to Alben Barkley, he has no higher ambitions. He would be an old 68 at the end of a second Bush term, with four heart attacks behind him, and voters wouldn't trust his health.

Thus, Cheney can channel all his ambition into this administration. Without having to accumulate debts for a future campaign, he's beyond the normal political controls: No one can ward him off by threatening to embarrass him politically. And he can offer the president unwavering loyalty.

In the past, when administrations sailed through rocky seas, the vice president would grab the first lifeboat and paddle furiously: Al Gore stood behind Bill Clinton in public during impeachment, but aides quickly leaked stories of his private disgust over Clinton's conduct; George H. W. Bush did everything but hide under a sofa to claim he was ''out of the loop" on the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal.

Since no one has used the vice presidency as a power base for anything but running for president, Cheney could invent his own job.

He followed models perfected by others. There have been powerful first ladies (Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Reagan), powerful chiefs of staff (Donald Regan), and powerful Svengali-like advisers (Henry Kissinger, Edward House during the Wilson administration).

Cheney combined all three. Like a first lady, his stature is unique. Unlike a staff member, he can't be fired. Like Regan, Cheney, a former chief of staff to President Ford, is clearly the chief operating officer of the White House, overshadowing the titular chief, Andrew Card, like an elephant over a mouse. And he's made himself the president's prime policy adviser, supplanting Cabinet chiefs like Secretary of State Colin L. Powell or Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

As a result, Cheney looms larger than Hillary Rodham Clinton in the '90s, with about a tenth as much scrutiny, even during a campaign. So far, Cheney has stuck to the traditional vice-presidential role of raising funds and tending to the party's base. But he's been anything but a traditional vice president.

Peter S. Canellos can be reached at canellos@globe.com.

Very interesting!

[eggplant43]

July 03, 2004 -- 09:42 PM EDT)
A brief thought on the vice-presidential choice.

For starters, I have no idea who Kerry will pick. And I haven't even given a lot of thought to who he should pick, though I do agree with John Judis, who wrote in a guest-post here a week before last, that personal chemistry shouldn't be the criterion Kerry uses.

All that aside, here's a thought ...

Smart money seems to be on John Edwards or Dick Gephardt getting the nod.

But if you look back over recent American history you have to go back to Ronald Reagan's choice of George Bush in 1980 to find an instance in which a favorite or even prominent contender got picked. In fact, with the possible exception of Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, I think you might even argue that not since Reagan's choice of Bush has a presidential candidate chosen a vice-presidential candidate who anyone had even considered a serious contender.

Think about: Joe Lieberman? Dick Cheney? Jack Kemp? Geraldine Ferraro? Each totally out of left-field. Or, as the case may be, right-field.

Bill Clinton's choice of Al Gore, admittedly, falls a bit outside my model. But not by much. (In retrospect, it seems a logical choice. But at the time it went against all the logic or regional or ideological balancing.)

Point being, that since 1980 the norm for vice-presidential picks seems to be that pundits bandy about half a dozen names of serious contenders. And then the pick ends up being someone who was either never even considered or someone who was thought the longest of long-shots.

Now, like everyone else did in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000, I certainly figure that it'll be one of the logical choices -- Edwards or Gephardt most likely. But if it is one of those two, it'll be a break from the trend of the last quarter century.

-- Josh Marshall

Copyright 2004 Joshua Micah Marshall

This document is available online at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/arc..._27.php#003119

[Al-Firdaus]

U.S. Is seen Losings Its Moral Authority
By Thomas Fuller and Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune

Monday 05 July 2004

War, detentions and Patriot Act cited; also, 'incredible harm' of prison abuse.
The costs of the war in Iraq have been counted in dollars spent and lives lost. But with the handover of limited sovereignty complete, some diplomats, academics and human rights groups speak of a less tangible price, not just in Iraq but far beyond its borders.

The war and prisoner abuse - combined with the detentions at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the tough terms of the Patriot Act - have eroded the moral leadership that Washington has pursued without embarrassment for years, they say.

"It's caused incredible harm to our position in the world," said Felix Rohatyn, the financier and former U.S. ambassador to France, referring specifically to the prison abuse scandal.

"I'm a refugee," said Rohatyn, who went to the United States six decades ago, fleeing Nazi-occupied France. "I know what America stood for when I came here.

"That's not the way we are looked at now."

Musa Hitam, a former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, cited the case of his country as an example of diminished U.S. moral authority.

When Musa led a lonely campaign four years ago to abolish a tough internal security law in Malaysia, Western governments vocally supported him, believing that the law calling for detention without trial was anachronistic in the fast-modernizing country.

Today, in a world fearful of terrorism and divided by events in Iraq, the outside calls to drop the internal security act have been reduced to a whisper, according to Musa.

He said he sensed an "embarrassed silence" from Western diplomats, especially from the United States, which once described the law as draconian and denounced its use against Anwar Ibrahim, a top politician who fell out of favor and remains in a Malaysian prison, where he was beaten, notoriously, by a chief of police.

"What we were alleged to have done is chicken feed, is nothing, compared to what the U.S. administration has done," Musa said in an interview. "Leadership by example is in tatters now, as far as the U.S. is concerned."

American officials acknowledge the damage - Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke of "a terrible impact" on America's image of the prisoner abuse scandal - but they cite the larger U.S. record and they promise to redress the problem through a fair, forthright and tough-minded response.

What matters now, U.S. officials have said, is how Americans react, and are seen to react. "Watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and with scandal," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on May 7, testifying before Congress on the Abu Ghraib scandal.

By contrast, human rights workers note that in some places the United States has become a different type of role model: Some governments now cite the Patriot Act or the Guantánamo experience to justify crackdowns or extrajudicial detentions.

The government in Malaysia has done so in defense of its internal-security act, said Zainah Anwar, a women's rights activist there. "They say: 'Even the United States believes in detention without trial. If the democratic, developed, civilized West can have such a law, why are you clamoring to repeal the law?'" Zainah said.

Politicians in China, Russia and Egypt have employed similar language, rights workers say.

Alex Arriaga, an Amnesty International USA spokeswoman, noted that when Charles Taylor, then president of Liberia, last year detained journalists who had criticized his rule, he labeled them "enemy combatants," the U.S. term for Guantánamo detainees.

"Governments are clearly citing the war on terror to legitimize their repressive practices," Arriaga said.

"We have seen a proliferation of what we would consider to be very repressive legislation."

Opinion polls and large street demonstrations show the anger millions of people abroad have felt toward the United States, its president or its actions in Iraq. Less clear is how deep and lasting is the harm.

"Many people now critical are people who were great admirers of our principles and values," said John Esposito, former director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington.

"Abu Ghraib in particular has seriously undermined our ability to preach to the world," he said. "There's a question about how much moral authority is even left."

There have been tangible consequences. The United States obtained a unanimous United Nations endorsement for its Iraq transition plan, but then suffered a stinging setback. The Security Council refused to grant the extension of immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq that Washington wanted; some council members explicitly cited Abu Ghraib.

Partly because of the prison scandal, the U.S. State Department delayed by nearly two weeks the scheduled May 5 release of a report on its promotion of human rights and democracy abroad.

Diplomats and rights workers say that in many parts of the world, anger and distrust have grown more evident among intellectuals, elites and political pacesetters - many of whom once sought inspiration from the United States.

Rights advocates assert that the United States has at times muffled its message on rights; they claim that it has toned down criticisms of places like Thailand and Uzbekistan, partners in the Iraq coalition, as well as Israel. U.S. officials deny this.

In Kenya, the United States found itself in an uncomfortable controversy. It strongly backed antiterrorism legislation proposed by the government. But democracy advocates, who had successfully fought against one-man, one-party rule, said the legislation could bring new oppression, particularly of Muslims.

It was a quandary, Princeton Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and former assistant secretary of state, said in an interview. "The U.S. had to be very sensitive to the fact that we don't want to be perceived as pushing governments away from the democratic process."

The government ultimately redrafted the legislation.

But Abu Ghraib was a particularly tough blow.

"It is devastating," Arriaga said. "It makes it so much more difficult to advocate on behalf of victims of torture all over the world - incredibly so - because the U.S. is sending the message that international standards apply only when convenient."

Esposito agreed, saying, "We are a great country, but how are we going to now move forward and pressure others in light of what we've done?"

None of the dozen diplomats, rights workers and analysts interviewed for this article had a simple answer.

Esposito said he believed that only serious policy change, including a new approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would help re-establish U.S. credibility. He seriously doubts that will happen in this election year, he added.

Lyman said that while the U.S. image had suffered, "we haven't been fatally hurt." But on Abu Ghraib, he said, "It would help if the administration was more forthright" and admitted fully to mistakes.

As deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy and human rights, Lorne Craner, finds himself smack in the middle of the debate. He said in May that it was "a reasonable question" whether "Abu Ghraib robs us of our ability to talk about human rights abroad."

But he said in an interview last week that he had been heartened by reaction to what he called "a test case": the U.S. response to the growing human disaster in the Sudanese region of Darfur. Powell visited the area last week to seek solutions and call attention to the problem.

"I must say I haven't heard anybody say, 'Why is the secretary going to Darfur, because you guys did Abu Ghraib?'" Craner said. "We have been the leader on Sudan and Darfur, and I haven't heard one person say, 'You are unqualified morally to address this question because of Abu Ghraib.'"

When he met last week with a visiting Iraqi group, Craner said: "We talked about Abu Ghraib, but I raised it, they didn't. I apologized for it."

"I'm not saying it's blown over," Craner said. "It has hurt us. But the question is how much.

"I have not seen it damage our capability yet" to promote rights and democracy.

Much good is done, Craner said he believed, when foreigners see how the system deals openly with problems or when the U.S. news media air America's dirty laundry openly, critically and extensively, as with Abu Ghraib.

[plschwartz]

Spanish Seek Oil Off Cuba, as Americans Watch Silently
By SIMON ROMERO

Published: July 6, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/bu...ss/06cuba.html

OUSTON, July 5 - Recent announcements from Repsol YPF, the big Spanish oil and gas company, indicate an ambitious expansion program, with projects planned for countries like Libya and Equatorial Guinea that are not for the risk-averse. But none has attracted as much attention as its gamble on Cuba.

Last month, Repsol hired a Norwegian drilling platform, the Eirik Raude, at a cost around $200,000 a day to search for oil in Cuban waters, in a narrow sector of the Gulf of Mexico off the northwestern coast. The venture, established with Cubapetróleo, the government-owned oil company, is being watched about as closely in Houston's executive suites as any in the energy industry.

Advertisement


A significant find by Repsol would, of course, be a boon for Cuba, which imports most of its fuel, mainly from Venezuela, and often struggles to find the hard currency to pay the bills. More broadly, it could shake up the dynamics of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, dominated for decades by the United States and Mexico.

And a big oil discovery could change the political debate in the United States over the decades-old sanctions against Cuba, which now prohibit most commerce with the country.

The last thing that American energy companies want is to be trapped on the sidelines by sanctions while European, Canadian and Latin American rivals are free to develop new oil resources on the doorstep of the United States.

Halliburton, the nation's largest oil services company, is among the wary watchers. John Gibson, president of Halliburton's energy services group, recently said in a speech to employees that he favored lifting economic sanctions against Cuba, as well as Libya and Iran.

"Sanctions are a very U.S.-centric thing, and I believe that free enterprise will establish better relationships," Mr. Gibson said, according to The Associated Press. "There are foreign companies making money in those countries, and I think American companies should have a shot at those markets as well."

That sentiment runs counter to the Bush administration's Cuba policy, which has been to maintain and even strengthen sanctions in hopes of isolating and weakening the Communist country's economy. The administration has recently imposed new curbs on travel to Cuba and on the amount of money and goods Cubans can receive from relatives in the United States.

Cuba's former lifeline of oil collapsed when the Soviet Union did, and the severe fuel shortages that the country suffered have prompted officials in Havana to allow foreign companies to explore for oil in Cuban waters, starting in the mid-1990's.

In the meantime, new technology to squeeze more oil from the small existing fields on the island's north coast has increased output to about 75,000 barrels a day from about 10,000 in the early 90's.

More than half of Cuba's oil is now produced by a Canadian company, Sherritt International, which has been active in Cuba for a decade. "We had the advantage of getting in early and sticking with it," said Ernie Lalonde, Sherritt's director of investor relations. He said the company was considering an exploration project similar to Repsol's in the Cuban portion of the Gulf of Mexico, which covers some 43,000 square miles.

Other foreign energy companies that have ventured into Cuba lately have not been as lucky as Sherritt. Brazil's national oil company, Petróleo Brasiliero, or Petrobras, one of the most experienced offshore producers, came up empty-handed after spending $17 million drilling in Cuban waters in 2001.

Senior executives at Repsol acknowledge that their Cuba venture is far from a sure thing. "These are high-risk areas, but we are optimistic," said Alfonso Cortina, Repsol's chief executive, earlier this year.

Cuba still depends on imports for about half its oil, nearly all bought on preferential terms under an agreement with the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez. The cost strains Cuba's limited hard-currency earnings, and the country is striving to reduce its dependence on imports.

When more than 100 representatives of American agricultural companies attended a trade conference in Havana this spring, senior energy and finance officials in the Cuban government used the opportunity to suggest Cuba as a destination for energy investments. "There is no reason U.S. companies shouldn't take advantage and compete so close to home," said Juan Fleites, a senior executive at Cubapetróleo.

[slickoe]

God help Cuba if oil is discovered there. All third world countries with oil are either puppets of the US or US/Brit consortiums, or in the case of Nigeria, the Dutch and British. Iran suffered under a brutal tryant for decades after an elected president tried to take contol of its own oilfields. Venezuela is currently being destabilized. If oil is found there under a GOP dominated US administration or maybe even a dem one (cross the oil corps and you will get what JFK got) a US puppet gov't made up of Cuban exiles bankrolled by the CIA will be placed in power. Oh, "elections" may be held, like the "democratic" elections in Nicaragua that ended Sandinista rule. Those elections were preceded by years of economic warfare, contra terrorism, and massive US funding of the opposition. "Elect Ortega again and you will starve". Cubans will be given the same choice.

[plschwartz]

Ooops ... 'NY Post' Says Gephardt Gets VP Nod
Sen. John Kerry chose former rival John Edwards Tuesday as his running mate.


By Joe Strupp

Published: July 06, 2004 10:07 AM EST

NEW YORK It was an "exclusive," just as the front page boasted. The New York Post, however, became an object of ridicule Tuesday morning when its front-page report that Rep. Richard Gephardt, (D-Mo.), would be named running mate of presumed Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, turned sour by 9 a.m. when Kerry actually picked Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).

With the headline, "KERRY'S CHOICE" and a subhead declaring "Dem Picks Gephardt as VP candidate," the "exclusive" story, which carried no byline and continued on to Page 4, claimed that the Post (Click for QuikCap) had learned that Gephardt would be announced as Kerry's running mate Tuesday.

"It was thought that Kerry felt more comfortable with Gephardt than any of the other candidates," the story stated. "He even said he would have supported Gephardt if he were not running himself."

The Post had the story removed from its Web site shortly after Kerry's announcement, replaced with a story on the Edwards pick. But the front page image on the NYPost.com home page had disappeared, briefly replaced with an image of Friday's Page One story and later with an image of the paper's Tuesday back page, which promotes the top sports story.

Post Editor Col Allan could not be reached for comment Tuesday morning.

Gleefully pointing out its rival's error, the New York Daily News Web site ran an image of the Post cover.

Perhaps the Post had gotten a little cocky after being the first paper to report unconfirmed reports of actor Marlon Brando's death just last Friday.

The Gephardt story, which cited no named or unnamed sources, even acknowledged that Edwards had been a favorite of many Democratic Party leaders and would have helped Kerry in the South, but pointed out "he is a one-term senator whose lack of seasoning and foreign affairs could have made voters nervous about his ability to assume the presidency during a war or an international crisis."


Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is senior editor for E&P.

[LANMaster]

by Avi Davis

Sorry, no link available.

An encounter at Harvard illuminates the true ignorance of liberal scholars at universities across the country, and the danger they pose to the good fight against terrorism.

The professor narrowed his eyes, leaned back in his chair and yawned.

"You don't really believe that do you?"

I stared back perplexed.

"What?"

"That there is really some terrorist conspiracy poised against the United States."

There was a short silence. I took a deep breath, not sure if he was serious. But when I looked in his eyes, I detected no trace of humor.

"Well ... the events of 9/11 would certainly seem to point to it."

He suddenly sat forward, his face growing flushed.

"Come on, Mr. Davis," he said with an edge now in his voice. "You should know better. You're a journalist. That neo-con crap is just as easily disproved as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It's clear fabrication -- used by Bush and his cronies to justify an unjustifiable war. Better to check the terrorism coming out of Washington before looking abroad."

I had to do a double take to remember where I was sitting and to whom I was speaking. Was this Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein or some other fringe American intellectual of the far left? Was I in Northern California or Vermont where such pabulum passes as standard rhetoric? No. I was in America's intellectual heartland, Harvard University. And I was addressing one of the most noted political scientists in the country.

After a year at Harvard University I have come to understand that the professor's world view represents far more mainstream opinion in the intellectual community than I had ever imagined. For many of the professors, students and general community leaders in this high brow enclave, the events of September 11, 2001 are a distant memory -- the stuff of nightmare perhaps, but something more akin to a natural disaster than a deliberate and unprovoked attack on the United States. Gone is any outrage against the Muslim extremists who perpetrated the atrocities of that day. Absent is any sense in which America is at war with a pitiless force pledged to the elimination of democracy and its replacement with a totalitarian system based on religious law.

Instead, the wrath of the Cambridge liberal community is taken out against the American president himself. George W. Bush, whose election is universally regarded in these circles as tainted and illegitimate, has emerged as the cause of all grief suffered by Americans today. It is not unusual in such elite society to hear Bush described as Adolf Hitler reincarnate, the U.S. under the Bush Administration as an imperialist, racist, capitalist pariah or that Bush is needlessly spilling American blood for the sake of Middle East oil. In addition to his bungling of American foreign policy, he is saddled with the responsibility for the melting of the polar ice caps, for the human rights violations of prisoners of war in Cuba and Iraq, the despoliation of the world's rainforests and the exploitation of child labor in South East Asia. In short, it is George W. Bush and the policies of his imperialistic thugs who revolve the spindle on the axis of evil, not Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or any of the more nefarious leaders of the Third World.

How is it possible that during a military conflict, catalyzed by the most violent attack against America since Pearl Harbor, there could be such unparalleled denigration of a sitting U.S president among academics?

Part of the answer is that for many of them, America's adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are not perceived as a response to a real military threat. In this regard, both Iraq and Afghanistan are not real wars, but punitive missions, representing failure, much like General John F. Pershing's fruitless invasion of Mexico in 1916 or America's involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s.

More than likely the academic antipathy to Bush stems from an inability to appreciate that the rules of war have changed. Invisible enemies who operate in small, isolated units; who can plot and execute a major military assault against a superpower from a cave; who rely on highly sophisticated technologies to communicate commands to underlings; who are capable of marshalling vast financial resources to procure nuclear weaponry and who are driven not as much by ideology as "martyrology", a form of military conduct still largely unrecognized by academia in this century.

Seen in this light, liberal academics mistake the events of September 11 and the dozens of other major terrorist attacks around the world since then, as anomalies. They are unable to connect the dots between these events because the pattern of attack does not conform to a standard military campaign, nor does it represent a serious injury to a seemingly impregnable political system. Liberal academics, because of their grounding in the dialectics of the Cold War are not yet capable of viewing the power of terrorist organizations in the 21st century to threaten democracy because there is no precedent for either its success in toppling elected governments or of achieving significant military objectives. But the results of the Spanish general election in April provides an important warning. It should make clear that the terrorist menace is no longer restricted to performances of mere political theater but is also now geared toward acts of direct political intervention. Under these circumstances, the threat to western civilization is as real as was Fascism's to the democracies of the 1930s.

We can now ruefully reflect on the tragic ill preparedness of the free world to Hitler's designs at that time. Academics and intellectuals in Europe and elsewhere, largely stood on the sidelines as the Nazi threat swelled. No one should pretend that the terrorist menace, if excused and ignored by this country's intellectuals, could not have the same devastating consequences for the United States and its allies in the future. Portraying the American president or any other American leader as a terrorist may provide cartoonists and columnists with noxious verbiage to hurl at conservatives. But in the end it only serves to deflect attention from the real battle and lends support to a source of evil that threatens us all.

Avi Davis is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

[slickoe]

but only 57% of Americans read a single book in 2002 according to a study. This explains A LOT.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5389382

[Ciberblade]

Originally Posted by slickoe

but only 57% of Americans read a single book in 2002 according to a study. This explains A LOT.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5389382

That is sad. Truly sad!

[plschwartz]

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...adlines-nation
Pastors Load Buses With Cuban Aid
From Associated Press

July 8, 2004

HIDALGO, Texas — School buses and other vehicles loaded with medical and office equipment crossed the border into Mexico on Wednesday on a relief trip to Cuba that violates the U.S. embargo.

It was the 14th straight year that Pastors for Peace, an American humanitarian aid group, has sought to bring supplies to the impoverished Communist nation despite the embargo.

"It's a policy that has no redeeming value," said the Rev. Lucias Walker, a New Jersey pastor who founded Pastors for Peace. "What we're doing is an act of civil obedience to a higher power that says you should love your neighbor."

Border officials did not try to stop the nine buses, a truck and several minivans loaded with donations. The equipment was gathered by churches and other groups from 127 U.S. cities.

Customs agents did hand out fliers warning that only three of the group were authorized to travel on to Cuba and the rest were subject to prosecution leading to jail time or fines if they tried to travel to the island.


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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

[~Candy~]

The great 'FREE' country we live in

[plschwartz]

European court rules against foetus rights in involuntary abortion case

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stori.../94642/1/.html


STRASBOURG : The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the involuntary abortion of a foetus does not constitute manslaughter, setting a precedent on the legal status of unborn babies that will be applied across European countries.

The court said Thursday that foetuses could not be legally considered human beings with a corresponding right to life by rejecting a Frenchwoman's claim a hospital committed involuntary homicide in carrying out an abortion six months into her pregnancy following a medical error.

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A contrary judgement could have opened the door to abortions becoming illegal in Europe.

The ruling, however, stopped short of determining whether a foetus was a person or not, saying such a distinction was impossible to make.

"The court is convinced that it is neither desirable, nor even possible as matters stand, to answer in the abstract the question whether the unborn child is a person for the purposes of Article 2" of the European convention on human rights, it said.

The case involved Thi-Nho Vo, a 36-year-old of Vietnamese origin, who lost her baby in 1991 after a patient mix-up in which hospital staff in the city of Lyon confused her with another woman who was to have an intrauterine contraceptive device removed.

The erroneous surgery led to the rupture of the water sac protecting the female foetus, forcing the doctor to order an emergency abortion.

After taking the hospital to court on manslaughter charges and losing in France, Thi-Nho's lawyer lodged the case at the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the foetus was entitled to protection under the European convention article upholding a right to life.

But in its ruling, decided by 14 judges to three, the court decided that such protection could not be extended to foetuses.

It added that it believed the matter would have been better addressed in a civil lawsuit rather than a criminal one, had Thi-Nho started such a case before a four-year statute of limitations that existed at the time.

- AFP



A