Poor Nations To Bear Brunt As World Warms

Taken from The New York Times, Published: April 1, 2007
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The world’s richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas.

But despite longstanding treaty commitments to help poor countries deal with warming, these industrial powers are spending just tens of millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world’s most vulnerable regions — most of them close to the equator and overwhelmingly poor.

Next Friday, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that since 1990 has been assessing global warming, will underline this growing climate divide, according to scientists involved in writing it — with wealthy nations far from the equator not only experiencing fewer effects but also better able to withstand them.

Two-thirds of the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas that can persist in the air for centuries, has come in nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European countries. Those and other wealthy nations are investing in windmill-powered plants that turn seawater to drinking water, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically altered to flourish even in a drought.

In contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and disrupted water supplies, according to new scientific assessments. As the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island nations, that are most at risk.

“Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic,” said Henry I. Miller, a fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. We’ll see the same phenomenon with global warming.”

Those in harm’s way are beginning to speak out. “We have a message here to tell these countries, that you are causing aggression to us by causing global warming,” President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in February.

“Alaska will probably become good for agriculture, Siberia will probably become good for agriculture, but where does that leave Africa?”

Scientists say it has become increasingly clear that worldwide precipitation is shifting away from the equator and toward the poles. That will nourish crops in warming regions like Canada and Siberia while parching countries — like Malawi in sub-Saharan Africa — which are already prone to drought.

While rich countries are hardly immune from drought and flooding, their wealth will largely insulate them from harm, at least for the next generation or two, many experts say.

Cities in Texas, California and Australia are already building or planning desalination plants, for example. And federal studies have shown that desalination can work far from the sea, purifying water from brackish aquifers deep in the ground in places like New Mexico.

“The inequity of this whole situation is really enormous if you look at who’s responsible and who’s suffering as a result,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations climate panel. In its most recent report, in February, the panel said that decades of warming and rising seas were inevitable with the existing greenhouse-gas buildup, no matter what was done about cutting future greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Miller, of the Hoover Institution, said the world should focus less on trying to rapidly cut greenhouse gases and more on helping regions at risk become more resilient.

Many other experts insist this is not an either-or situation. They say that cutting the vulnerability of poor regions needs much more attention, but add that unless emissions are curbed, there will be centuries of warming and rising seas that will threaten ecosystems, water supplies, and resources from the poles to the equator, harming rich and poor.

Cynthia E. Rosenzweig, a NASA expert on climate and agriculture who is a lead author of the United Nations panel’s forthcoming impacts report, said that while the richer northern nations may benefit temporarily, “As you march through the decades, at some point — and we don’t know where these inflection points are — negative effects of climate change dominate everywhere.”

There are some hints that wealthier countries are beginning to shift their focus toward fostering adaptation to warming outside their own borders. Relief organizations including Oxfam and the International Red Cross, foreseeing a world of worsening climate-driven disasters, are turning some of their attention toward projects like expanding mangrove forests as a buffer against storm surges, planting trees on slopes to prevent landslides, or building shelters on high ground.

Some officials from the United States, Britain and Japan say foreign-aid spending can be directed at easing the risks from climate change. The United States, for example, has promoted its three-year-old Millennium Challenge Corporation as a source of financing for projects in poor countries that will foster resilience. It has just begun to consider environmental benefits of projects, officials say.

Industrialized countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol, the climate pact rejected by the Bush administration, project that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon flow via that treaty into a climate adaptation fund.

But for now, the actual spending in adaptation projects in the world’s most vulnerable spots, totaling around $40 million a year, “borders on the derisory,” said Kevin Watkins, the director of the United Nations Human Development Report Office, which tracks factors affecting the quality of life around the world.

The lack of climate aid persists even though nearly all the world’s industrialized nations, including the United States under the first President Bush, pledged to help when they signed the first global warming treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, in 1992. Under that treaty, industrialized countries promised to assist others “that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation.” It did not specify how much they would pay.

A $3 billion Global Environmental Facility fund maintained by contributions from developed countries has nearly $1 billion set aside for projects in poorer countries that limit emissions of greenhouse gases. But critics say those projects often do not have direct local benefits, and many are happening in the large fast-industrializing developing countries — not the poorest ones.

James L. Connaughton, President Bush’s top adviser on environmental issues, defended the focus on broader development efforts. “If we can shape several billion dollars in already massive development funding toward adaptation, that’s a lot more powerful than scrounging for a few million more for a fund that’s labeled climate,” he said.

But it is clear that the rich countries are far ahead of the poor ones in adapting to climate change. For example, American farmers are taking advantage of advances in genetically modified crops to prosper in dry or wet years, said Donald Coxe, an investment strategist in Chicago who tracks climate, agriculture and energy for the BMO Financial Group. The new seed varieties can compensate for a 10 or 15 percent drop in rainfall, he said, just the kind of change projected in some regions around the tropics. But, he said, the European Union still opposes efforts to sell such modified grains in Africa and other developing regions.

Technology also aids farmers in the north. John Reifstack, a third-generation farmer in Champaign, Ill., said he would soon plant more than 30 million genetically modified corn seeds on 1,000 acres. It will take him about five days, he said, a pace that would have been impossible just four years ago. (Speedy planting means the crop is more likely to pollinate before the first heat waves, keeping yields high.) The seed costs 30 percent more than standard varieties, he said, but the premium is worth it. Precipitation is still vital, he said, repeating an old saw: “Rain makes grain.” But if disaster strikes, crop insurance will keep him in business.

All of these factors together increase resilience, Mr. Reifstack and agriculture experts said, and they are likely to keep the first world farming for generations to come.

Robert O. Mendelsohn, an economist at Yale focused on climate, said that in the face of warming, it might be necessary to abandon the longstanding notion that all places might someday feed themselves. Poor regions reliant on unpredictable rainfall, he said, should be encouraged to shift people out of farming and into urban areas and import their food from northern countries.

Another option, experts say, is helping poor regions do a better job of forecasting weather. In parts of India, farmers still rely more on astrologers for monsoon predictions than government meteorologists.

Michael H. Glantz, an expert on climate hazards at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who has spent two decades pressing for more work on adaptation to warming, has called for wealthy countries to help establish a center for climate and water monitoring in Africa, run by Africans. But for now, he says he is doubtful that much will be done.

“The third world has been on its own,” he said, “and I think it pretty much will remain on its own.”

New Europeans Use Imaginary Cattle To Milk EU Subsidies

Last week was the 50th anniversary of the European Union. There have been many benefits to the citizens of the European Union but one aspect that most European hate is the Common Agricultural Policies where sometimes farmers of member countries are paid vast amounts of money to do nothing. Here is an interesting story...

Taken from The Times, UK, October 25, 2006
By Rory Watson in Brussels

Auditors have refused to sign off accounts for the 12th year

LIVESTOCK farmers in Slovenia, only two years after joining the European Union, are proving as imaginative as Italian olive growers when claiming Brussels subsidies. Inspectors found that half the cattle that Slovene farmers said they owned, so qualifying them for special EU cow and beef grants, did not exist.

A quarter of their sheep and goats were equally invisible.

Discrepancies between farming fact and fiction, which are equally strong among the older members of the EU, cost almost €1 billion (£670 million) last year — about 2 per cent of the agriculture budget.

Nine payments worth €2 billion to olive oil producers in Spain, Greece and Italy last year were either inflated or wrong, according to the annual report of the European Court of Auditors, the EU spending watchdog. In the case of Italy, it went even further, describing two cases as irregular.

The auditors discovered that two thirds of the 95 EUfinanced regional projects that they examined, which include new roads and bridges, contained “material errors”. These ranged from a lack of proper invoices for expenditure being reclaimed to declaring costs that had no relation to the scheme being funded. There are also considerable variations in the way that national authorities apply EU rules.

Last year Poland simply gave a warning to anyone who did not apply good farming practices. Under EU law, they should have been fined almost €1 million. In Greece, farmers’ unions input agricultural data into insecure computer systems that can be modified externally at any time.

After investigating how the €105 billion EU budget was spent last year across a range of policy areas, the auditors identified “a material level of error in underlying transactions and weak internal control systems”. As a result, for the 12th year in succession, they refused to sign off the accounts, giving them only qualified approval.

They did, however, note that in 2005 the Commission moved to an accruals-based accounting system that should make the flow of EU funds more transparent.

The auditors also concluded that administrative expenditure on EU staff and premises and aid to new member states before they joined the union was “legal and regular”. They welcomed the new integrated control system that now applies to large parts of the Common Agricultural Policy and is proving effective in stamping out fraud.

Presenting the findings, Hubert Weber, the Court of Auditors’ president, said: “The underlying reason why most errors occur is that beneficiaries — farmers, local authorities, project managers — claim more than they have the right to claim.” They did so, he added, either through neglect, error or attempt to defraud.

Siim Kallas, the Administrative, Audit and Anti-fraud Commissioner, reacted angrily to the auditors’ criticism, attacking the way in which the court interpreted any errors that it found. He pointed to a German project, where the auditors rejected all the expenditure involved, although they had examined only 5 per cent of it.

“The work of finding errors by auditors is normal and eternal. What is not normal in our case is that the errors in filling formulas feed high-profile political judgment. Everything is mixed into one pot,” he said.

He also pointed out that the auditors failed to attach sufficient importance to the Commission practice of clawing back from national budgets any EU funding, especially farm payments, that had been spent fraudulently or incorrectly. Last year he claimed that this raised €2.1 billion.
However, David Bostock, the British member at the court, disputed the benefits, pointing out that this simply transferred the financial burden.

“The effect is to shift the cost of disallowed transactions from the European taxpayer to the national taxpayer,” he said.

3 Italians Arrested In EU Corruption Scandal

Taken from The International Herald Tribune, March 28, 2007
By Dan Bilefsky

Three Italians, including a senior European Commission official and an assistant to a former Italian soccer star, have been arrested for alleged corruption involving kickbacks that included free home renovations in connection with €30 million in contracts.

Jos Colpin, a spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor's office, said Wednesday that the charges against the suspects included corruption and forgery. He said the Italians, all residents of Brussels, appeared to have been part of "a very big case of corruption" that had continued for more than 10 years.

A three-year investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office culminated in dozens of raids Tuesday in Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and France involving 30 EU buildings, including the commission's headquarters in Brussels, as well as banks and company offices.

Prosecutors said that those arrested included Giancarlo Ciotti, 46, an official in the European Commission's external relations department; Sergio Tricarico, 39, an assistant to Giovanni Rivera, an Italian member of the European Parliament and a former AC Milan soccer player; and Angelo Troiano, 60, a director of several property companies.

Some EU officials questioned Wednesday why a kickback investigation that appeared to amount to a few hundred thousand euros out of the EU's total €127 billion, or $169 billion, budget had taken three years to uncover and had justified raids in four countries that involved 150 police officers and 30 anti-fraud personnel.

Hans Peter Martin, an independent member of the European Parliament from Austria, who sits on the Budgetary Control Committee, said he believed the anti-fraud investigators had overreacted. "This is a classic case of an overzealous" investigation unit trying to prove its anti-corruption credentials, he said. "They have a history of using a cannon to shoot at little birds instead of going after the really big animals."

Max Strotmann, the spokesman for Siim Kallas, the EU's anti-fraud commissioner, defended the inquiry, saying that the arrests showed that the union's anti-corruption drive was working.

"Complicated cases like this with a trans-national dimension can take a long time to investigate," he said. "The EU has a zero tolerance approach to fraud and this case serves as a warning that fraud, no matter how much money is involved, is taken very seriously."

EU officials said the Anti-Fraud Office began investigating the case in 2004 after a Finnish company complained that it had been unjustly denied an EU contract in New Delhi. There were further allegations in 2005, one official said, that Ciotti had been receiving kickbacks to ensure that Troiano won contracts related to EU delegations abroad. The kickbacks allegedly included the renovation of Ciotti's Brussels home, the official said.

Johannes Laitenberger, the European Commission spokesman, said the case was specifically related to the rental and acquisition of furniture and security installations for EU delegations in the 27-member bloc. "There is a suspicion of corruption and manipulation of public markets .

The real question is to what degree were prices increased," he said.

He added that the inquiry had been initiated by the European Commission itself, which had alerted the anti-fraud unit.

An official said Troiano, the Italian businessman, was alleged to have set up several rival construction companies - all under his control - that bid for the same EU contracts, not all of which were publicized. The alleged involvement of Tricarico, the parliamentary assistant, was unclear, but the official said investigators had unearthed evidence that he had fraudulently used European Parliamentary stationery as part of the scheme.

Rivera, who on Wednesday was planning to give a speech to the Parliament on fraud in European football, was not implicated in the investigation, an official said.

The anti-fraud unit, which has an annual budget of €62 million and employs 600 people, including 160 investigators, was set up in 1999 after financial scandals that culminated in the resignation of the European Commission. The unit, which is part of the commission but which conducts its investigations independently, has been struggling to establish its credibility after a series of critical reports about its management.

Two years ago a report by the EU court of auditors concluded that the unit was disorganized, unaccountable and took too long to conduct investigations. "Files take a very long time to process, the reports submitted are inconclusive and the results are difficult to identify," the report said.

In May 2005, it was accused of mishandling an inquiry into the case of a Brussels-based journalist, Hans-Martin Tillack of Stern magazine, whom it accused of bribing officials to obtain information. Tillack had exposed a scandal at Eurostat, the EU's statistics arm, in which millions of euros disappeared into secret bank accounts.

At the time, the EU ombudsman investigating the Tillack case, which resulted in raids by the Belgian police at Tillack's home and seizure of 20 boxes of his files, said that the inquiry had been mishandled.

Terror Suspect 'Tortured By US'

Taken from The BBC, 30 March 2007

A Saudi man held in US custody for five years has told a military hearing he was tortured into confessing a role in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, 41, said he had faced years of torture after his arrest in 2002, a Pentagon transcript from the closed-door hearing said.

Mr Nashiri said he made up stories to satisfy his captors, the transcript said, but gave no details of torture.

He was among 14 "high-value" detainees moved to Guantanamo Bay in September.

The 14 men were previously held in secret CIA prisons but are now being detained in a maximum security wing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The US has accused Mr Nashiri of being the leader of al-Qaeda's operations in the Gulf at the time of the attack in Yemen, which killed 17 US sailors and almost sunk the warship.

He was tried in absentia in a Yemeni court in September 2004 and sentenced to death.

Interrogators 'happy'
Mr Nashiri's testimony was given at a military tribunal held at Guantanamo to determine his status as an "enemy combatant" on 14 March, AFP news agency reports.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," the transcript of his hearing read.

"It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way.

According to his testimony he eventually "confessed" to playing a key role in the bombing of the USS Cole.

"I just said those things to make the people happy," the transcript read.

"They were very happy when I told them those things."

Among the apparent confessions contained in the transcript, Mr Nashiri told his interrogators that he met al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden several times and received significant amounts of money from him.

Hicks Faces About A Year In Australian Jail

Taken from The Sydney Morning Herald, March 29, 2007
By Tom Allard

DAVID HICKS will be behind bars in Australia until after this year's election, but his stint in an Adelaide prison will be relatively short, under a plea bargain being hammered out between prosecutors and his defence counsel.



Government sources confirmed yesterday that Hicks's prospective sentence would take into account his five years and two months in Guantanamo Bay but would also include a short period to be served in Australia. That period is "not close" to the five years being mooted in some reports, one government official said. The Herald understands that additional time to be served in Australia is about a year.

The outcome, still to be approved by a panel of US military commission officials and its Convening Authority, is a bonus for the Federal Government, as Hicks will be unable to conduct potentially embarrassing interviews before this year's election.

Terry Hicks, who heard of his son's guilty plea on an airport tarmac as he prepared to leave Guantanamo Bay for Australia, yesterday blamed the Federal Government for influencing the court hearing and forcing the guilty plea. "They demonised him, they prejudged him for five years," he said. "I suppose Mr Howard would be throwing his hands up with glee at the moment, but ... this was a way out for David regardless of whether he was guilty or innocent."

Mr Howard said he was not into "glee and vindication". "I understand how Mr Hicks feels. It is his son," he said. "I respect that, but let me deal with the facts. His son has pleaded guilty to a charge that he knowingly gave assistance to a known terrorist organisation, namely al-Qaeda."

But there is no doubt the Government is delighted. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said yesterday the Government had unashamedly "been tough on the Hicks case".

However, it remains unclear how long it will take for Hicks to return. First he and his lawyers have to agree on which of 24 specific allegations that underpinned the charge of providing material support to terrorists he will admit to.

Hicks will also be grilled by a military commission judge over the authenticity of his guilty plea. His sentence will then be completed, probably within a week.

Hicks, along with the US and Australian governments, will then have to agree on the conditions surrounding his transfer to Australia.

The Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said the process meant that Hicks had no grounds to appeal against his sentence when he returned home, despite suggestions from the South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, to the contrary.

Mr Ruddock also said international prisoner exchange treaties prevented the Government receiving the prisoner from altering his sentence. This has implications for any attempt by a Rudd Labor government, or the South Australian Government, which will run his prison, to commute his sentence or offer a pardon.

"The principle is very clear: if a country were to unilaterally vary a sentence imposed on an individual in another jurisdiction, no country would deliver anybody up," Mr Ruddock said.

He also said Hicks would be banned from selling his story, which publicists said yesterday would be worth more than $1 million. In a letter to his friend Louise Fletcher, Hicks urged her not to write a book about him "because I would have no chance to make any money when I get home".

The Government spent more than $300,000 assisting Hicks, his lawyers and his father. The journey of Terry Hicks and David's sister Stephanie to Guantanamo Bay was paid by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

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A panel of military officers had recommended a term of seven years, but a section of a plea agreement that had been kept secret from the panel capped the sentence at nine months for David Hicks, who has been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. Under the agreement, the confessed Taliban-allied gunman will be allowed to serve his sentence in an Australian prison, but must remain silent about any alleged abuse while in custody.

Under his plea deal, Hicks stipulated that he has "never been illegally treated by a person or persons while in the custody of the U.S. government," Kohlmann said. In the statement read by Mori, Hicks thanked U.S. service members for their professionalism during his imprisonment. Furthermore, the judge said, the agreement bars Hicks from suing the U.S. government for alleged abuse, forfeits any right to appeal his conviction and imposes a gag order that prevents him speaking with news media for a year from his sentencing date. Hicks previously reported being beaten and deprived of sleep during his more than five years at the prison erected for terrorism suspects held at this U.S. Navy base.

Of his son's plea of being guilty, Terry Hicks said: "It's a way to get home. He was desperate; he just wanted to get out." Mr Hicks told ABC radio: "He's had five years of absolute hell and I think anyone in that position, if they were offered anything, they would possibly take it." Hicks will have to make a detailed confession of his crime to a military commission before he can be convicted and repatriated.

The plea deal guarantees that Hicks will be transferred to Australian custody within 60 days of sentencing and probably much sooner. Hicks is still designated an enemy combatant and will remain at his cell in the maximum-security Camp 6 until transfer, officials said.

The 35-point charge sheet presented to the commission members was a modification of the original indictment. All references to a connection with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were omitted, as were mention of Hicks discussing with Al Qaeda members his willingness to commit an act of martyrdom and his reported associations with notorious suspects including so-called American Taliban John Walker Lindh and Briton Richard Reid, the would-be "shoe bomber."

The revised list of accusations suggested Hicks' contacts with Al Qaeda were limited and low-level. An earlier clause accusing Hicks of having "expressed his approval" of the Sept. 11 attacks was changed to state that Hicks had no foreknowledge of the hijackings.

The Bush administration has been under intense pressure from the Australian government, which is holding elections this year, to resolve the case and return Hicks. After 11 years in power, Mr Howard is facing the worst opinion polls of his primeministership. A poll on March 20th gave Labor a 22-point lead over the government. However, a poll in December on the Hicks case itself rocked the government. It showed that about two-thirds of Australians thought Mr Hicks should be returned to Australia, and only one-quarter supported Mr Howard's hands-off approach. Since then Mr Howard has changed his public tune, blaming America for the delays in bringing Mr Hicks to trial. That may not be enough to assuage public anger, which probably runs deep enough to affect elections in a few months' time.

The tribunal process has succeeded in making Hicks, a directionless one-time kangaroo skinner, into something of a local hero. A senator who represents Hicks' state in Australia told the New York Times he would return "as a guilty man who has not had a fair trial. The Australian public will see through this process." A columnist for the influential national daily the Australian wrote that "this case has been about much more than Hicks. The U. S. justice system and the U.S. government's commitment to the rule of law have also been on trial. Although Hicks has pleaded guilty, the jury is still out on U.S. justice."

Russia And US Accused Of Abusing Men Freed From Guantanamo Bay

Taken from The Independent, UK, 29 March 2007
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

The Kremlin and the United States have been accused of flouting international law in a report which tells the little-known story of seven Russian men freed from Guantanamo Bay.

According to the report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the men, who were released from the US detention centre in Cuba without charge, returned to Russia to face a life of torture, harassment and unfair trials.

All seven were arrested by US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan during 2002 and only released from Guantanamo in 2004 on the promise that they would receive "humane treatment" on their return to Russia.

Of the seven, all of whom are ethnically non-Russian and come from predominantly Muslim areas, three are in prison, three are in hiding, and the seventh refuses to talk about his experience.

The New York-based rights organisation said Washington knew that the men would face torture at the hands of the Russian authorities but accepted the flimsy diplomatic assurances offered by Moscow.

"The US government knew that these men would likely be tortured, and sent them back to Russia anyway," the report said.

"The Russian experience shows why diplomatic assurances simply don't work." Human Rights Watch said the UK government also accepted 'diplomatic assurances' to render terrorism suspects to countries where they were likely to face torture.

Of the seven Russian nationals sent back from Guantanamo the case of Rasul Kudaev, a resident of the southern Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, is the most shocking.

Kudaev was initially given his liberty by the authorities but in October 2005 he was accused of taking part in an armed uprising in the city of Nalchik, an allegation he fiercely denies.

Although he has not been charged, he remains in custody to this day; according to Human Rights Watch there is compelling evidence that he has been tortured. When his lawyer visited him in custody she noted that he had to be carried because he couldn't walk and that "his eye was full of blood, his head was a strange shape and size, his right leg was broken and he had open wounds on his hands." Two of the other Guantanamo Seven were convicted of blowing up a gas pipeline in Tatarstan, a charge they deny.

According to Human Rights Watch confessions were beaten out of them by depriving one of them of sleep for one week and using a gas mask to asphyxiate him until he was ready to sign anything.

Ordinary Customers Flagged As Terrorists

Taken from The Washington Post, March 27, 2007; Page D01
By Ellen Nakashima

Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control's list of "specially designated nationals" has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to be issued today.

"The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security," said Shirin Sinnar, the report's author. "The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don't trample on individual rights."

The lawyers' committee has documented at least a dozen cases in which U.S. customers have had transactions denied or delayed because their names were a partial match with a name on the list, which runs more than 250 pages and includes 3,300 groups and individuals. No more than a handful of people on the list, available online, are U.S. citizens.

Yet anyone who does business with a person or group on the list risks penalties of up to $10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison, a powerful incentive for businesses to comply. The law's scope is so broad and guidance so limited that some businesses would rather deny a transaction than risk criminal penalties, the report finds.

"The law is ridiculous," said Tom Hudson, a lawyer in Hanover, Md., who advises car dealers to use the list to avoid penalties. "It prohibits anyone from doing business with anyone who's on the list. It does not have a minimum dollar amount. . . . The local deli, if it sells a sandwich to someone whose name appears on the list, has violated the law."

Molly Millerwise, a Treasury Department spokeswomen, acknowledged that there are "challenges" in complying with the rules but said that the department has extensive guidance on compliance, both on the OFAC Web site and in workshops with industry representatives. She also said most businesses can root out "false positives" on their own. If not, OFAC suggests contacting the firm that provided the screening software or calling an OFAC hotline.

"So the company is not only sure that they are complying with the law," she said, "but they're also being good corporate citizens to make sure they're doing their part to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse by terrorists or [weapons] proliferators or drug traffickers."

Tom Kubbany is neither a terrorist nor a drug trafficker, has average credit and has owned homes in the past, so the Northern California mental-health worker was baffled when his mortgage broker said lenders were not interested in him. Reviewing his loan file, he discovered something shocking. At the top of his credit report was an OFAC alert provided by credit bureau TransUnion that showed that his middle name, Hassan, is an alias for Ali Saddam Hussein, purportedly a "son of Saddam Hussein."

The record is not clear on whether Ali Saddam Hussein was a Hussein offspring, but the OFAC list stated he was born in 1980 or 1983. Kubbany was born in Detroit in 1949.

Under OFAC guidance, the date discrepancy signals a false match. Still, Kubbany said, the broker decided not to proceed. "She just talked with a bunch of lenders over the phone and they said, 'No,' " he said. "So we said, 'The heck with it. We'll just go somewhere else.' "

Kubbany and his wife are applying for another loan, though he worries that the stigma lingers.

"There's a dark cloud over us," he said. "We will never know if we had qualified for the mortgage last summer, then we might have been in a house now."

Saad Ali Muhammad is an African American who was born in Chicago and converted to Islam in 1980. When he tried to buy a used car from a Chevrolet dealership three years ago, a salesman ran his credit report and at the top saw a reference to "OFAC search," followed by the names of terrorists including Osama bin Laden. The only apparent connection was the name Muhammad.

The credit report, also by TransUnion, did not explain what OFAC was or what the credit report user should do with the information. Muhammad wrote to TransUnion and filed a complaint with a state human rights agency, but the alert remains on his report, Sinnar said.

Colleen Tunney-Ryan, a TransUnion spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that clients using the firm's credit reports are solely responsible for any action required by federal law as a result of a potential match and that they must agree they will not take any adverse action against a consumer based solely on the report.

The lawyers' committee documented other cases, including that of a couple in Phoenix who were about to close on their first home, only to be told the sale could not proceed because the husband's first and last names - common Hispanic names - matched an entry on the OFAC list.

The entry did not include a date or place of birth, which could have helped distinguish the individuals.

In another case, a Roseville, Calif., couple wanted to buy a treadmill from a home fitness store on a financing plan. A bank representative told the salesperson that because the husband's first name was Hussein, the couple would have to wait 72 hours while they were investigated.

Though the couple eventually received the treadmill, they were so embarrassed by the incident they did not want their names in the report, Sinnar said.

James Maclin, a vice president at Mid-America Apartment Communities in Memphis, which owns 39,000 apartment units in the Southeast, said the screening has become "industry standard" in the apartment rental business. It began about three years ago, he said, spurred by banks that wanted companies they worked with to comply with the law.

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, has studied the list and at one point found only one U.S. citizen on it. "It sounds like overly cautious companies have started checking the list in situations where there's no obligation they do so and virtually no chance that anyone they deal with would actually be on the list," he said. "For all practical purposes, landlords do not need to check the list."

Still, Neil Leverenz, chief executive of Automotive Compliance Center in Phoenix, a firm that helps auto dealers comply with federal law, said he spoke to the general manager of a Tucson dealership who tearfully told him that if he had known to check the OFAC list in late summer of 2001, he would not have sold the car used by Mohamed Atta, who went on to fly a plane into the World Trade Center.

Staff researchers Bob Lyford and Richard Drezen contributed to this report.

US: Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years

U.S. Watch Lists Are Drawn From Massive Clearinghouse
Taken from The Washington Post, March 25, 2007; Page A01
By Karen DeYoung


Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world - field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip - arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.




Click picture to enlarge


Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.


But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean. "Where am I going to be, where is my successor going to be, five years down the road?"

TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.

The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation - and potentially more serious consequences - for many U.S. citizens and visitors.

In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler's name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September. Congressional committees have criticized the process, some charging that it collects too much information about Americans, others saying it is ineffective against terrorists. Civil rights and privacy groups have called for increased transparency.

"How many are on the lists, how are they compiled, how is the information used, how do they verify it?" asked Lillie Coney, associate director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. Such information is classified, and individuals barred from traveling are not told why.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret.

So is the reason Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, remains on the State Department's consular watch list. Detained in New York while en route to Montreal in 2002, Arar was sent by the U.S. government to a year of imprisonment in Syria. Canada, the source of the initial information about Arar, cleared him of all terrorism allegations last September - three years after his release - and has since authorized $9 million in compensation.

TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. "What's the alternative?" Travers said. "I work under the assumption that we're never going to have perfect information - fingerprints, DNA - on 6 billion people across the planet. . . . If someone actually has a better idea, I'm all ears."

'Thousands of Messages' The electronic journey a piece of terrorism data takes from an intelligence outpost to an airline counter is interrupted at several points for analysis and condensation.

President Bush ordered the intelligence community in 2003 to centralize data on terrorism suspects, and U.S. agencies at home and abroad now send everything they collect to TIDE. It arrives electronically as names to be added or as additional information about people already in the system.The 80 TIDE analysts get "thousands of messages a day," Travers said, much of the data "fragmentary," "inconsistent" and "sometimes just flat-out wrong." Often the analysts go back to the intelligence agencies for details. "Sometimes you'll get sort of corroborating information," he said, "but many times you're not going to get much. What we use here, rightly or wrongly, is a reasonable-suspicion standard."

Each TIDE listee is given a number, and statistics are kept on nationality and ethnic and religious groups. Some files include aliases and sightings, and others are just a full or partial name, perhaps with a sketchy biography. Sunni and Shiite Muslims are the fastest-growing categories in a database whose entries include Saudi financiers and Colombian revolutionaries.


U.S. citizens - who Travers said make up less than 5 percent of listings - are included if an "international terrorism nexus" is established. A similar exception for the administration's warrantless wiretap program came under court challenge from privacy and civil rights advocates.

Information SharingEvery night at 10, TIDE dumps an unclassified version of that day's harvest - names, dates of birth, countries of origin and passport information - into a database belonging to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. TIDE's most sensitive information is not included. The FBI adds data about U.S. suspects with no international ties for a combined daily total of 1,000 to 1,500 new names.

Between 5 and 6 a.m., a shift of 24 analysts drawn from the agencies that use watch lists begins a new winnowing process at the center's Crystal City office. The analysts have access to case files at TIDE and the original intelligence sources, said the center's acting director, Rick Kopel.

Decisions on what to add to the Terrorist Screening Center master list are made by midafternoon. The bar is higher than TIDE's; total listings were about 235,000 names as of last fall, according to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. The bar is then raised again as agencies decide which names to put on their own watch lists: the Transportation Security Administration's "no-fly" and "selectee" lists for airlines; Consular Lookout and Support System at the State Department; the Interagency Border and Inspection System at the Department of Homeland Security; and the Justice Department's National Crime Information Center. The criteria each agency use are classified, Kopel said.

Some information may raise a red flag for one agency but not another. "There's a big difference between CLASS and no-fly," Kopel said, referring to State's consular list. "About the only criteria CLASS has is that you're not a U.S. person. . . . Say 'a Mohammed from Syria.' That's useless for me to watch-list here in the United States. But if I'm in Damascus processing visas . . . that might be enough for someone to . . . put a hold on the visa process."

All of the more than 30,000 individuals on the TSA's no-fly list are prohibited from entering an aircraft in the United States. People whose names appear on the longer selectee list - those the government believes merit watching but does not bar from travel - are supposed to be subjected to more intense scrutiny.

With little to go on beyond names, airlines find frequent matches. The screening center agent on call will check the file for markers such as sex, age and prior "encounters" with the list. The agent might ask the airlines about the passenger's eye color, height or defining marks, Kopel said. "We'll say, 'Does he have any rings on his left hand?' and they'll say, 'Uh, he doesn't have a left hand.' Okay. We know that [the listed person] lost his left hand making a bomb."

If the answers indicate a match, that "encounter" is fed back into the FBI screening center's files and ultimately to TIDE. Kopel said the agent never tells the airline whether the person trying to board is the suspect. The airlines decide whether to allow the customer to fly.

TSA receives thousands of complaints each year, such as this one released to the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act: "Apparently, my name is on some watch list because everytime I fly, I get delayed while the airline personnel call what they say is TSA," wrote a passenger whose name was blacked out. Noting that he was a high-level federal worker, he asked what he could do to remove his name from the list.

The answer, Kopel said, is little. A unit at the screening center responds to complaints, he said, but will not remove a name if it is shared by a terrorism suspect. Instead, people not on the list who share a name with someone listed can be issued letters instructing airline personnel to check with the TSA to verify their identity. The GAO reported that 31 names were removed in 2005.

A Process Under Fire A recent review of the entire Terrorist Screening Center database was temporarily abandoned when it proved too much work even for the night crew, which generally handles less of a workload. But the no-fly and selectee lists are being scrubbed to emphasize "people we think are a danger to the plane, and not for some other reason they met the criteria," Kopel said.

A separate TSA system that would check every passenger name against the screening center's database has been shelved over concern that it could grow into a massive surveillance program. The Department of Homeland Security was rebuked by Congress in December for trying to develop a risk-assessment program to profile travelers entering and leaving the United States based on airline and financial data.

Kopel insisted that private information on Americans, such as credit-card records, never makes it into the screening center database and that "we rely 100 percent on government-owned information."

The center came in for ridicule last year when CBS's "60 Minutes" noted that 14 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were listed - five years after their deaths. Kopel defended the listings, saying that "we know for a fact that these people will use names that they believe we are not going to list because they're out of circulation - either because they're dead or incarcerated. . . . It's not willy-nilly. Every name on the list, there's a reason that it's on there."

Poll: 50% Of Israeli Jews Support State-Backed Arab Emigration

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 27/03/2007
By Yoav Stern

A Poll sponsored by the Center for the Campaign Against Racism found that half the Jewish population of Israel believe the state should encourage Arab emigration. The poll, conducted by the Geocartography Institute and presented Tuesday at a press conference, found a sharp increase in the number of Israeli Jews who support Arab emigration in comparison to a similar poll conducted last year. The poll was carried out in December 2006, and included 500 participants. The margin of error is 4.4 percent.

In addition, the poll addresses the Jewish reaction to hearing the Arabic language spoken on the streets of Israel. According to the data, some 50 percent of the participants said they become fearful when they hear the Arabic language spoken around them. 43 percent said they feel uncomfortable, and 30 percent feel hatred. In contrast, last year only 17.5 percent said they feel hatred when faced with spoken Arabic.

The poll participants were also asked about work relations with Arabs. 50 percent said they would refuse to work at a job in which their direct supervisor would be Arab. This number represents a 47 percent increase since the 2005 poll on the same topic.

Center for the Campaign Against Racism director Baher Awdeh called on the state of Israel on Tuesday to "wake up" in light of these findings, and utilize its judicial and education systems to combat this rise in racist sentiments. Awdeh said that the fact that Israel is defined as the "Jewish state" is discriminatory against Arabs in and of itself. "Jewish citizens interpret this definition to mean that they are superior or entitled to more rights than Arab citizens," he said.

Awdeh offered his explanation for the deterioration of Jewish-Arab relations, saying the war in Lebanon, and the opposing views it generated among Jewish and Arab citizens, could have contributed to the deterioration. Another reason could be the entry of Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) to the coalition, being a politician known for his anti-Arab views. He added that Israel's policy of expropriating Palestinian lands and destroying Palestinian homes may have also contributed to the problem.

"When Sheikh Raed Salah said what he said in Jerusalem, he was immediately arrested and indicted. But when Jewish religious figures and politicians express anti-Arab views, no indictments are filed, even months later," Awdeh said.

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Additional information taken from the The Jerusalem Post Webste:

Over half of the Jewish population in Israel believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason, according to the same survey.

Over 75 percent of participants did not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. Sixty percent of participants said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home.

About 40 percent of participants agreed, “Arabs should have their right to vote for Knesset revoked”.

Over half of the participants said they would not want to work under the direct management of an Arab, and 55 percent said, “Arabs and Jews should be separated at entertainment sites”.

Israel: Kollek Was British Informer

Former mayor of Jerusalem helped British troops in their 1940s crackdown against right-wing underground Zionist groups, Irgun and Stern Gang

Taken from YNet News, Israel, 29/03/2007
By Ronen Bergman

Teddy Kollek, the legendary mayor of Jerusalem, lent a hand to the British authorities in their 1940s crackdown against right-wing underworld movements that sought to drive the British out of Palestine, secret MI5 documents have shown.





Kollek, who died three months ago, supplied the British intelligence agency with information about the activities of the Irgun and Stern Gang. Beyond intelligence about the clandestine activities of the two groups, Kollek tried to help the British capture one of their most wanted men: Irgun leader Menachem Begin.

Begin commanded the Irgun from 1944 to 1948.

According to the newly released files, Kollek was instrumental in leading to the arrests of dozens of Irgun and Stern Gang members, the confiscation of arms, and the thwarting of numerous attacks against British interests.

Kollek's collaboration with the British came in the framework of a campaign waged by the Jewish Agency against the Irgun and Stern Gang, whose violent activities it deemed harmful to its political plans.

Leaders of the Yishuv, the Jewish population in Palestine, were keen on building bridges with the British to seek approval for their plans to bring thousands of refugees to Palestine from Europe.

The British mandate cashed in on Kollek's position as the deputy head of intelligence in the Jewish Agency to gain access to sensitive information about the Irgun and Stern Gang.

The scorpion During a meeting with an MI5 officer on August 10, 1945, Kollek disclosed the location of a secret Irgun training camp in an abandoned building near Binyamina.

British forces raided the training camp soon after, arresting 27 Irgun members, including three women and a handful of commanders who topped Britain's list of most wanted underworld figures. "It will be a great idea to raid the place," Kollek is quoted as telling his British contact during one of their meetings.

The British contact wrote in one of his briefings that success against "Zionist terror" depended on Kollek and his men.

Last year the British government opened its extensive intelligence library on MI5 activities in the '40s to the public.

The Israeli Embassy in London was particularly interested in file number 66968, which documented Kollek's collaboration with MI5.

The Foreign Ministry however asked that Britain freeze the release of Kollek's file so long he was alive.

Although many of Kollek's testimonies were omitted, his name appeared on the file in which he is referred to as "the source." His codename was Scorpion.

Kollek never admitted to having collaborated with the British against Zionist underground groups but in his autobiography he said that he was against the violence exhibited by the Irgun and Stern Gang, referring to their attacks as "anarchy."

Kollek served as the mayor of Jerusalem from 1969 to 1993 when he lost to Ehud Olmert.

Israel: Greenpeace Warns Of Nuclear Mishap

Taken from The Jerusalem Post, Mar. 29, 2007
By SHELLY PAZ

The Dimona nuclear research center includes a heavy water reactor for producing plutonium or tritium, a facility to reprocess plutonium, another to reprocess uranium and create nuclear fuel, and yet another to enrich uranium, as well as storage for nuclear waste, according to Greenpeace.

Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.The NGO made these assertions in a report entitled "An Overview of Nuclear Facilities in Iran, Israel and Turkey," released at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday timed to coincide with the arrival of its Rainbow Warrior flagship, currently on a three-month "Nuclear-Free Middle East" tour.

An earthquake or an attack at the Nahal Sorek research reactor, located 30 km. from Tel Aviv, could have disastrous consequences, according to the report.

And a meltdown at the Dimona facility could increase cancer rates in an area up to 400 kilometers in radius, reaching Cyprus, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, it says.

"A reactor accident or leakage of nuclear waste from the facilities appears the most likely scenario," the report reads. "The consequences of an incident involving an explosion large enough to disperse plutonium from either the reactor or the reprocessing facility would be the most serious type of accident that could occur."

Nearby Yavne and the entire Tel Aviv area could face dire consequence from a release of radioisotopes being produced in the Nahal Sorek reactor, which has been in operation since 1960."People would be required to shelter within their homes, and possibly even be evacuated from an area several kilometers from the plant. Large-scale provision of potassium iodate (potassium-iodine) tablets to limit some of the long term impacts would also be required," the report says.

Finally, the report says Haifa's residents are at risk from an Israel Navy base whose submarines are capable of firing cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads. "The main hazard, apart from the actual use of a nuclear weapons, would be from maintenance or from an accident while the submarine was on patrol, if it were to be carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles," the report says.

"Plutonium burns easily and could create a toxic radioactive plume of plutonium particles contaminating a wide area downwind, a long-term environmental risk which can ultimately affect human populations."

Greenpeace's report also discusses potential hazards from four of Iran's nuclear reactors. Seventeen nuclear facilities are know to operate in nine Iranian cities.

"As the development of Iran's nuclear program matures and facilities are completed, the risk of an incident grows. There is a serious concern about the likelihood of a military strike to take out Iran's nuclear program. Furthermore, Iran is an area of seismic risk, with the likelihood of earthquakes in the region creating additional risks for its nuclear program," the report says.

Greenpeace called for urgent discussions to create a nuclear-free Middle East.

"Despite Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity, international reports maintain that this country contains nuclear facilities," said Yonatan Leibowitz, Greenpeace Mediterranean Communications Director. "Israelis have the right to know where these facilities are and the right to understand the serious risks to health and the environment posed by these installations.

"Ambiguous policies about the possible existence of a nuclear program in Israel only serve to destabilize the region. A policy of honesty and transparency is in need to pave the way to nuclear free Middle-East," he said.

The Rainbow Warrior has already visited Dubai, Kuwait, Yemen, Egypt and Iran, where permission to anchored was not obtained. The tour will continue on to Beirut and end in Istanbul in mid-April.

Gaddafi: US Sets Arab League Agenda

Taken from Al Jazeera News Agency, MARCH 28, 2007

The US has already specified the outcome of the Arab League summit taking place in Riyadh, Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's president, has told Al Jazeera.

He said in an interview that Arab leaders should "stay at home" rather than attend Wednesday's summit, which is expected to renew a peace proposal with Israel.

"Arab leaders should not attend the summit. They should stay at home - issues have already been decided from outside," he said.

The Libyan leader, who is boycotting the summit, said Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, "gives orders" to Arab leaders.

'US orders'
Gaddafi said: "She gives orders to Arab leaders ... and Arab foreign ministers ... and she leads the Arab security services.

"She brought the decisions and the Arab summit's agenda ... Why do they [Arab leaders] bother themselves and attend the summit if everything has been already decided in Washington?"

The Riyadh summit is expected to renew an offer of full peace and normal ties with Israel, if it complies with the conditions of an Arab peace blueprint.

The plan, first adopted at a summit in Beirut in 2002, says Israel must withdraw from all Arab land it occupied in the 1967 war, accept the creation of a Palestinian state, and agree to a "just solution" for Palestinian refugees.

Gaddafi said: "Libya has never backed the Arab peace initiative in the Middle East. It presented reservations over the initiative in Beirut summit in 2002."

He again talked about what he believed to be a solution for the Palestinian cause, which is the establishment of a two-nationality state called "Isratine".

Political crisis
Besides Palestine, the Riyadh summit will also tackle other regional issues such as the Iraq conflict that has divided Sunni and Shia Muslims across the region, and the ongoing political crisis in Lebanon between the Western-backed government and the opposition trying to topple it.

Arab leaders are also considering a proposal to forge closer military and security ties, as well as co-operation on developing nuclear energy.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, Saudi's foreign minister, said the Arab peace initiative will have a strong chance of winning international support and of reviving Israeli-Arab peace talks if adopted unanimously by all Arab leaders at the March 28-29 summit.

Draft resolutions agreed on Monday are dominated by the Arab-Israeli conflict and appear designed to persuade Israel to open talks without altering the text of the peace initiative.

The draft text obtained by Reuters calls on "all Israelis to accept the initiative and seize the current opportunity to return to direct and serious negotiating process at all levels".

Palestinian refugees
Israel has objected to some parts of the plan, including the proposed return to the 1967 borders, the inclusion of Arab East Jerusalem in a Palestinian state, and demands for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in what is now Israel.

The text is also viewed with reservations by the Islamic Hamas movement now leading the Palestinian government.

Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader in exile, was quoted by Saudi media as urging Arab leaders before the Riyadh summit not to make concessions on the demand for the Palestinian refugees to return.

Hamas demands a right to return for all Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war.

It has refused to recognise Israel but Palestinian officials say it has agreed not to go against the peace plan. The final draft avoids any mention of the phrase "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.

Instead, it calls for a just solution to the refugee problem.

It also sets up a mechanism to promote the peace plan that could pave the way for Arab countries with no ties to Israel to open channels of communications with

Amazon Tribe Sues Texaco For $6bn

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, MARCH 26, 2007
By Mariana Sanchez

A landmark trial is unfolding in Ecuadorian Amazon, where a group of rainforest residents is suing Texaco for $6bn in oil clean-up costs.



Texaco, now part of Chevron, admits to dumping 18 billion gallons of run-off while drilling for oil in the rainforest, but the company says it did so legally and according to industry standards.

Environmentalists call it the worst oil-related disaster in the world - Texaco allegedly dumped 30 times the amount of crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

Al Jazeera's Mariana Sanchez reports that the plaintiffs say the company left hundreds of dump sites, many of them unlined, and open-air pits that ooze toxic sludge into what was once pristine rainforest.

The Cofan, an indigenous nation of less than 500 men and women, say their land is contaminated and are filing a lawsuit against the giant oil company.

Toribio Aguinda, one member of the Cofan tribe, remembers when the waters of the Aguarico river turned dark.

"The water stunk and so did our fish. In the end, we were left there, with sadness, thinking where will we get fresh water?"

These tribesmen are demanding a clean-up. They are part of the 30,000 plaintiffs who filed a class action lawsuit in New York in 1993 and lost the case. The case is now being tried in Ecuador.

In 2001 Chevron bought Texaco, taking over its assets and this legal battle.

"Texaco created a system where they dumped literally billions of gallons of toxic waste water", said Steven Donziger, legal counsel.

Donziger, who represents the plaintiffs, says the dumping saved the company billions of dollars in operating costs.
"When you do this every day with 300 well sites in 28 years you have an ecological disaster and that’s what we are looking out today," he said.

Meanwhile, Ricardo Reis Vega, Chevron’s legal counsel and vice president, argues the company cleaned up the areas under Chevron’s obligation.

"The part that was in our responsibility inside the scope of work was done 100 percent," Vega said.

In 1995 the Ecuadorian government agreed to release the company from further responsibilities after they cleaned up.

The Amazon Defence Front, also representing the 30,000 plaintiffs, says most of the damage has been left untouched. And the pollution, they say, is not biodegradable.

"This is how Texaco designed their pits and they are still working today. The pollutants come from a pool through a tube into the swamp and the swamp feeds the river from which the Cofan take their water."

The American company says it spent $40m on remediation but that is only one per cent of the amount the Cofan's lawyers estimate is needed for a real clean up.

"You Should Be Ashamed," "You're A Disgrace," And "This Is An Insult To Us."

Protester disrupts Britain's slave trade abolition service

Taken from Yahoo News, Tue Mar 27, 2007
By Robin Millard

A shouting protester got within metres of Queen Elizabeth II at a service on Tuesday marking the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of the slave trade, demanding she apologise personally.



Toyin Agbetu, a human rights campaigner, ran in front of the altar at London's Westminster Abbey - packed with dignitaries - shouting "you should be ashamed," "you're a disgrace," and "this is an insult to us."

He condemned African Christians who attended the national service.

The 2,000-strong congregation included Prime Minister Tony Blair and government ministers as well as the descendants of both slaves and leading abolitionists.

The lone protester was restrained by security guards, and once outside, was arrested and led away in handcuffs by the police.

The anniversary has left political and religious leaders wrestling with how Britain should deal with its past role in the slave trade.

Blair has expressed "deep sorrow" for Britain's involvement in the slave trade but stopped short of a full apology.

Agbetu yelled: "We should not be here, this is an insult to us. I want all the Christians who are Africans to walk out."

He said Queen Elizabeth needed to apologise on behalf of her ancestors.

"You don't have the decency, Mr Blair, to make an apology and the word sorry, and you, the queen...

"The queen has to say sorry. It was Elizabeth I. She commanded John Hawkins (a pioneer of the English slave trade) to take his ship. The monarch and the government and the church are all in there patting themselves on the back.

"This nation has never apologised, there was no mention of the African freedom fighters. This is just a memorial of William Wilberforce."

Wilberforce was the driving parliamentarian behind the landmark change in the British law which abolished the slave trade.

Agbetu, 39, is the founder of Ligali, a British-based human rights group which sets out to "challenge the misrepresentation of African people and culture in the British media."

Major General David Burden, the receiver general of Westminster Abbey, insisted the queen, 80, and her husband Prince Philip, 85, had been safe.

The protester, who had a ticket, had been through security checks and scanners, he said.

"The queen was protected by her own protection officers," said Burden.

"We allow them to speak for a little and then encourage them to leave. We wish it hadn't happened but we're not embarrassed at all."

The service included a sermon from the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and an address from Lady Kate Davson, a great-great-great grand-daughter of Wilberforce, who read one of her ancestor's speeches.

"Slavery is one of the largest pieces of our wounded history, our worldwide wounded history, and...(has) to be confronted in order to get peace in our world," she said.

Williams, the leader of the world's Anglicans, called slavery an offence to human dignity and freedom.

"We, who are the heirs of the slave-owning and slave-trading nations of the past, have to face the fact that our historic prosperity was built in large part on this atrocity," he said.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, finance minister Gordon Brown and London Mayor Ken Livingstone - who has apologised for slavery on behalf of the city - attended.

Afterwards, Queen Elizabeth laid flowers on the memorials to Wilberforce and all those affected by slavery.

The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed on March 25, 1807, imposing a 100-pound fine for every slave found aboard a British ship.

The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act outlawed slavery itself throughout the British Empire. However, some slaves did not gain their final freedom until 1838.

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Useful Readings:

1. Church should consider slave trade reparations, says Archibishop of Canterbury
Daily Mail. UK, 26th March 2007

2. Bishop: 'Why I am NOT saying sorry for slavery'
Daily Mail, UK, 25th March 2007, By MICHAEL NAZIR-ALI, Bishop of Rochester

The Christian Soldiers Who Bring Forgiveness To Pol Pot’s Damned

Taken from The Times, March 19, 2007
By Nick Meo

Ten minutes’ bumpy drive from the border with Thailand, past a strip of gaudy casinos and brothels in a landscape of denuded hillsides, is a place where travellers fear to stop.

Throughout Cambodia the border town of Pailin is known - apart from its gemstones - as the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge, from where its remnants fought the Government until 1998.

The reputation is enough to send most travellers rushing through to the capital, Phnom Penh, eight hours drive away. Locals say that about 70 per cent of the area’s older men were fighters and that nearly all families have links to the regime blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million of their compatriots between 1975 and 1979.



Among them are men guilty of the worst crimes of the 20th century. Yet in the past four years many who are now law-abiding farmers and traders have renounced their former leader Pol Pot as a servant of Satan; travellers today are likely to suffer nothing worse than a fervent attempt to bring them to the Lord.

Phannith Roth, a missionary who grew up half-starved in a labour camp, admitted that he was terrified when his congregation in the town of Siha-noukville begged him to go to Pailin to spread the Word.

“I was scared because there are landmines everywhere, malaria is rife and because of the Khmer Rouge, who everyone knows are cruel,” he said.

“But it was the Lord’s will.”

Now his Pailin Bible Presbytery Church has about 40 former Khmer Rouge worshippers.

“One was a hopeless drunk who told me he would have committed suicide if he had the courage,” Pastor Phannith said.

“He had been forced to machinegun 100 villagers to death and had recognised his own sister among them. After that he couldn’t face his family.

“But now he has found Jesus. He has something to live for; he has stopped drinking.”

Pastor Phannith said that many chose Christianity because they did not find forgiveness in Buddhism, which teaches that a soul must pay for its sins during lives to come.

Other churches have sprung up in the past four years, many with the help of missionary groups in America and South Korea. First to be established was The Good Samaritan Church, which has five ex-Khmer Rouge converts. The Four Gospels has about 30 and only the Seventh-Day Adventists admit to having none, although when they tried to take the gospel to Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state, he cheerily wished them well.

Nuon Chea, the deputy to Pol Pot, who is regarded as the most evil surviving leader of the regime, also lives in the town in a spacious wooden home, overlooked by a half-built hotel for the growing influx of Thai gamblers.

Some former Khmer Rouge figures have embraced capitalism instead of Christianity. District officials are said to be among those who have invested in the tacky Pailin Flamingo and Diamond Crown casinos, which are important employers now that a mining boom has ground to a halt after the gemstones became exhausted. Later this year two former regime leaders are expected to appear before a tribunal charged with crimes against humanity. The tribunal has been delayed by months of bickering, but its rules have finally been agreed.

Pastor Phannith has advised his congregants to cooperate with the tribunal, as he says they should be thinking about justice on earth as well as judgment in heaven. Mean Leap, an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier with a ferocious stare, who is now pastor of the Four Gospels Church, says he and his congregants plan to ignore the tribunal. “Only Christ will save us,” he said.

“Although I don’t know whether we will go to Heaven or Hell.” He says he was a teenage bodyguard for a commander, then fought from Pailin until 1998 against occupying Vietnamese troops. Like most Khmer Rouge veterans in the town, he denies taking part in executions.

Pailin’s hilltop Buddhist temple competes with the churches for souls, with many ex-cadres donating food and cash for the monks. They have much to atone for. Between 1975 and 1979 pagodas were turned into torture chambers because their thick walls muffled screams and monks were singled out for the killing fields.

Abbott Rattanak Mony Chan Kong said: “I don’t care what the Christian churches do but some ex-Khmer Rouge have become monks here. Even if they have killed people in the past they can come here now. We welcome them.”

Thon Thea, a former Khmer Rouge soldier, said: “I had to fight and saw people killed and I feel guilty. But I know that God will forgive me.”

Victims of the killing fields
# An estimated 1.7 million people lost their lives under the brutal ultra-Maoist regime of 1975-79

# The educated - monks, French-speakers and people with glasses - were among those rounded up and tortured in special centres.

# Out of the 16,000 political prisoners who entered the most notorious of these - S-21 - only six are thought to have come out alive.

# Money became worthless and private property, education and religion were all abolished, as Cambodia’s urban dwellers were forced on to agricultural collectives.

# Many victims of Pol Pot's regime were taken into “killing fields” to be executed, having been tortured with searing-hot metal prods or on electrified metal beds.

Colombia Army Chief Linked To Outlaw Militias

The allegations come as Congress reviews aid to the U.S. ally. The CIA says the intelligence hasn't been fully vetted.

Taken from The LA Times, March 25, 2007
By Paul Richter and Greg Miller

WASHINGTON — The CIA has obtained new intelligence alleging that the head of Colombia's U.S.-backed army collaborated extensively with right-wing militias that Washington considers terrorist organizations, including a militia headed by one of the country's leading drug traffickers.



Disclosure of the allegation about army chief Gen. Mario Montoya comes as the high level of U.S. support for Colombia's government is under scrutiny by Democrats in Congress. The disclosure could heighten pressure to reduce or redirect that aid because Montoya has been a favorite of the Pentagon and an important partner in the U.S.-funded counterinsurgency strategy called Plan Colombia. The $700 million a year Colombia receives makes it the third-largest beneficiary of U.S. foreign assistance.

Montoya has had a long and close association with Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, and would be the highest-ranking Colombian officer implicated in a growing political scandal in the South American country over links between the outlawed militias and top officials. The scandal already has implicated the country's former foreign minister, at least one state governor, legislators and the head of the national police, and has shaken Uribe's government.

President Bush called Uribe a "personal friend" two weeks ago during a visit to Bogota, and his government is one of the Bush administration's closest allies in Latin America.

The intelligence about Montoya is contained in a report recently circulated within the CIA. It says that Montoya and a paramilitary group jointly planned and conducted a military operation in 2002 to eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor areas around Medellin, a city in northwestern Colombia that has been a center of the drug trade.

At least 14 people were killed during the operation, and opponents of Uribe allege that dozens more disappeared in its aftermath.

The intelligence report, reviewed by The Times, includes information from another Western intelligence service and indicates that U.S. officials have received similar reports from other reliable sources.

In addition to his close cooperation with U.S. officials on Plan Colombia, Montoya has served as an instructor at the U.S.-sponsored military training center formerly called the School of the Americas. The Colombian general was praised by U.S. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when Pace directed the regional military command for Latin America, and Montoya has been organizing a new Colombian counternarcotics task force with U.S. funds.

There have been rumors that Montoya has worked with the paramilitaries, but no charges have been lodged by authorities.

For decades, Colombia has been wracked by a civil war pitting left-wing militias against the government. An estimated 3 million Colombians have been forced from their homes and thousands killed during the course of the fighting. Right-wing paramilitary groups, long suspected of links to the government, joined the fight in the 1980s. They were formed ostensibly as defensive forces against leftist groups, but soon became involved in massive land grabs, drug trafficking and takeovers of businesses.

After his election in 2002, Uribe offered a plan to end the civil war under which about 31,000 right-wing fighters have given up their weapons and dozens of their leaders have surrendered in exchange for the promise of light sentences.

But Uribe has faced a steady stream of disclosures about links between the paramilitaries and officials close to him. Allegations that the militias' links reached to the top of the military are likely to intensify efforts by Democrats to cut the Colombian military's portion of a pending $3.9-billion multi-year aid package, congressional aides and regional analysts said. Eighty percent of U.S. aid to Colombia goes to the military and police.

In addition to the aid package, the administration is also seeking congressional approval of a separate U.S.-Colombian trade deal that already has met stiff opposition from Democrats.

The CIA document alleging Montoya's ties to the paramilitaries was made available for review by The Times by a source who refused to identify himself except as a U.S. government employee. He said he was disclosing the information because he was unhappy that Uribe's government had not been held more to account by the Bush administration.

The CIA did not dispute the authenticity of the document, although agency officials would not confirm it. At the CIA's request, The Times has withheld details of the document that agency officials said could jeopardize intelligence sources and methods. A spokesman urged against disclosure of the findings, saying that some are considered to be "unconfirmed" intelligence.

"By describing what it calls a leaked CIA report containing material from another intelligence service — and unconfirmed material at that — the Los Angeles Times makes it less likely that friendly countries will share information with the United States," said Paul Gimigliano, a spokesman for the agency. "And that ultimately could affect our ability to protect Americans."

Douglas Frantz, a managing editor of The Times, responded: "We listened carefully to the CIA concerns and agreed to withhold details that the agency said jeopardized certain sources and ongoing operations, but our judgment is that the significance of the issues raised in this story warrant its publication."

A key finding in the CIA document was that an allied Western intelligence agency reported in January that the Colombian police, army and paramilitaries had jointly planned and conducted the military sweep in 2002 around Medellin, known as Operation Orion.

The allied intelligence agency said its informant was a yet-unproven source and cautioned that the report was to be treated as raw intelligence.

But the document also included a comment from the defense attache of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Col. Rey A. Velez: "This report confirms information provided by a proven source."

According to the document, the attache said information from the proven source "also could implicate" the head of the Colombian armed forces, Gen. Freddy Padilla de Leon, who commanded the military in Barranquilla, in northern Colombia, during the same period.

After Uribe was elected in 2002 on a platform of tough measures against the rebels, he quickly organized the Medellin offensive. It was commanded by Montoya, 57, who hails from the same northern region of Colombia as the president.

Operation Orion sent 3,000 Colombian army soldiers and police, supported by heavily armed helicopter gunships, though a vast shantytown area controlled by Colombia's largest left-wing rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The operation has been widely considered a success and has been a key to Uribe's popularity.

But there have long been allegations that after the army swept through, the paramilitaries filled the power vacuum, asserting their control with killings, disappearances and other crimes.

The Organization of American States and the United Nations have investigated the reports.

Recently, Colombian Sen. Gustavo Petro, a political opponent of Uribe, publicly charged that 46 people disappeared during the operation.

The informant cited in the CIA document reported that in jointly conducting the operation, the army, police and paramilitaries had signed documents spelling out their plans. The signatories, according to the informant, were Montoya; the commander of an area police force; and paramilitary leader Fabio Jaramillo, who was a subordinate of Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, the head of the paramilitaries in the Medellin area.

Murillo, known as Don Berna, took control of the drug trade around Medellin after the death of fabled drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. He is now in a Colombian jail, and U.S. authorities are seeking his extradition.

In an interview, U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said they have closely investigated whether Uribe himself has collaborated with the right-wing paramilitaries in illegal activities and have so far found no proof that he has. But they emphasized that they also could not rule it out.

One of the officials said that it would have been "unusual" for Uribe to be personally involved in the details of a military activity such as Operation Orion, even though the president conceived the campaign. "You don't see him typically involved in that sort of detail," the official said.

One longtime Colombia analyst, Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank, said that any collaboration between Montoya and paramilitaries "would bring the army right into the heart of the scandal." U.S. and Colombian officials have insisted that any links between the Colombian military and the militias involved only low-level, renegade officers.

Already, eight members of the Colombian Congress have been jailed in the scandal, and the foreign minister, a close Uribe ally, has been forced to resign. Colombia's former secret police chief, Jorge Noguera, was arrested last month for allegedly giving paramilitary leaders information on left-wing labor organizers, some of them later killed. He was released Friday on a procedural issue but is subject to rearrest, government officials said.

At a news conference in Bogota, the capital, during his visit this month, Bush expressed confidence that Uribe's government could carry out a thorough investigation of the ties between officials and the paramilitaries.

"I support a plan that says that there be an independent judiciary analyzing every charge brought forth, and when someone is found guilty, there's punishment," Bush said. He said Uribe supported the same approach. Bush administration officials say Uribe deserves credit for being willing to seek the truth about the growing scandal.

Many Democrats in Washington have been less confident. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, (D-Vt.) has argued that the scandal shows the need for a reassessment of U.S. support for Uribe. Many in Congress have contended that if aid to Colombia is not cut, it should at least be shifted so that more goes to non-military purposes.

One of the U.S. officials interviewed said there were signs that the scandal would be increasingly focusing on the military, including Montoya.

"A lot of people in the political class are very nervous," he said.

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President Alvaro Uribe rejected allegations that his army chief collaborated extensively with right-wing militias accused of some of the worst atrocities in Colombia's long-running civil conflict. The allied intelligence agency cautioned that the information linking Montoya to jailed paramilitary warlord Diego Murillo, also known as Don Berna, should be treated as raw intelligence because it was based on a yet-unproven account from an informant. Let’s hope the intelligence was not received from agent Curveball.

Colombia has a history linking the governments and organisations with various right wing paramilitaries. Only last week fruit giant Chiquita admitted paying protection money to Colombian paramilitaries including the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary group on the US list of terrorists. In the past, the company had also made payments to leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), both also listed as terror groups. It was not long ago that Foreign Minister, María Consuelo Araújo resigned after fallout with Uribe from the arrest of five politicians, including her brother, Senator Álvaro Araújo, on charges of working with paramilitary squads in a kidnapping case related to the scandal, made her presence in the cabinet untenable. Then there are the scandals from the Colombia’s “U.S.-bankrolled” army: staged bombings, civilian killings and fake kidnappings have eroded confidence in the institution. A few months ago two imprisoned rebels phoned a radio station o describe how army intelligence officers allegedly paid ex-guerrillas thousands of dollars to stage phony bombings ahead of Uribe's August inauguration to a second term. The jailed guerrillas said the officers intended to take credit and claim reward money for discovering and defusing the bombs, one of which killed a passer-by and wounded 19 soldiers. "The officers offered 30 million pesos ($12,500) for each attack and they paid those who could make one happen," an ex-guerrilla known as Evaristo said from the La Picota prison. They also said the intelligence officers paid former guerrillas to organize the bogus surrender of a rebel unit and falsely accuse peasants of being rebels. Then there are disappearances and killings of general public: of particular concern are complaints that people with no history of guerrilla ties have been seized by security forces only to turn up dead. Last September, the chief federal prosecutor's office opened investigations against 14 soldiers accused of killing civilians and claiming they were guerrillas. No one keeps national figures of extrajudicial killings. But between 2002 and 2005, the independent group Judicial Freedom Corp. recorded 107 cases in five municipalities in northwestern Antioquia state.