Make It an Island

By BRUCE BABBITT

Washington

AFTER the victims are interred and public officials held to account for the destruction of a great American city, Congress must determine what to rebuild and what to abandon to the encroaching waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans will survive only as an island surrounded by miles of open water. It will take a national effort, led by our best scientists, engineers and city planners, to achieve even this reduced vision of an American Venice. We must take the time to redesign the city to function as an island, with an island infrastructure, including relocated streets, highways and utilities. The island will need higher, stronger seawalls and levees sufficient to withstand new threats, including the rising sea levels and bigger hurricanes spawned in warming Atlantic waters.

Sea levels are likely to rise two to three feet in this century. Coastal maps drawn from consensus estimates show that virtually all of the delta lands south of Baton Rouge and below Interstate 10 - some 5,000 square miles - will be submerged by the end of this century.

State and local officials are understandably in denial about the impending loss of so much Louisiana land and heritage. The depth of their paralysis is underlined by a recent program to collect discarded Christmas trees from New Orleans to stack on barrier islands against the tides.

In recent years state agencies assembled a $14 billion project called Coastal 2050. One of its proposals was to cut gaps in the Mississippi River levees, which would provide outlets for the river to deposit some of its sediment onshore to help rebuild the delta. This idea may help in a few areas, but it will do little to offset the vastly larger forces of a rising sea.

Other proposals in the package include building coastal barriers, plugging delta channels dredged by oil companies and re-vegetating barrier islands. But overall the Coastal 2050 projects have as much chance of success as King Canute commanding the tides to recede.

Congress should resist the urge to appropriate huge sums for piecemeal reconstruction efforts. Restoration of the city and the delta will be a national effort, and it should be guided by a national plan. Congress should charge a commission of our best scientists, engineers and planners to asses the alternatives, draw up a regional land plan and recommend a realistic course of action.

Bruce Babbitt, a former secretary of the interior, is the author of the forthcoming "Cities in the Wilderness."

Twenty Things We Now Know Four Years After 9/11

Bernard Weiner, Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers

August 31, 2005

In a few days, it will be four years since the awful events symbolized by the date "9/11." Time for our annual list of what we've learned from that tragedy and what followed from it.

Much new information has been revealed this year, with corroborating documents verifying aspects of the story we only surmised previously. So without further ado, below are the twenty things we now know four years after 9/11, based mainly on documented evidence found in the Bush-friendly mainstream media.

A general assessment before we begin the numbered list: There now is a widely-accepted foreign and domestic judgment that the Bush Administration is composed of bumbling, dangerous, close-minded ideologues. You can see it in the polls (as I write this, Bush has only a 40% approval rating, amazingly low) and, particularly, in how many conservative/traditional Republicans and former military officers are expressing remorse at having supported this guy in the 2004 election. Bush these days still has his true-believer base of about 30%, but he's extremely vulnerable politically, which is why Rove and his minions are so desperate right now and are ratcheting up the rhetoric and smear-tactics against their political enemies. And the desperation helps us understand why Bush keeps returning to 9/11, the one talisman that he thinks still may work for him, that singular moment in his history when many Americans thought he looked good.


1. THE 9/11 ATTACK & COVERUP

We know that 9/11, regardless of the degree of complicity you believe the Bush Administration was guilty of, was seized on by Bush&Co. as the event that would be used to justify all that would follow domestically and in foreign/military affairs. The evidence indicates that, at the least, the highest circles in the White House knew a spectacular attack was in the works in the days and weeks preceding 9/11 -- warnings were coming into the White House from a host of foreign leaders and intelligence agencies -- but chose to do nothing, presumably to make use of those events in the service of their hidden agenda.

Similarly, nothing was done as a result of the government's own intelligence warnings. The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," talked about al-Qaida wanting to hit the nation's capital, preparations for airline hijackings, casing of buildings in New York, terrorists in the U.S. with explosives, etc. Bush went to ground in Texas, the FBI told Ashcroft to stop flying commercial jets, etc. The attacks finally came about a month later, and the Bush forces were ready to make their moves.

The key neo-con leaders in charge of U.S. foreign/military policy (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Perle, Khalilzad, et al.) were founders of, and affiliated with, The Project for The New American Century; in one of their key reports, they noted that the far-right should expect their revolution to take a long time, "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." Enter 9/11. (See "How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer.)

The neo-cons realized that presidents enjoy enormous patriotic support during wartime, but when the war ends, those leaders lose their compelling luster, as was the case with Bush#1. Ergo, Bush#2 would become a PERMANENT wartime president, and those who opposed him could then be tarred forever with the "unpatriotic" brush, and their political opposition marginalized. And it worked: the Democrats cowered and gave Bush virtually everything he wanted, up until relatively recently, when occasionally they remember they have spines in their bodies and stand up and fight as an opposition party should.


2. OIL & THE POLITICS OF PNAC

We know that after 9/11, Bush seemed to bring the entire country along with him when he launched an attack on al-Qaida and its Taliban-government supporters in Afghanistan. But there's no oil in that destitute country -- and, as Rumsfeld reminded us, not much worth bombing -- and thus no lessons could be drawn by Middle East leaders from the U.S. attack. But, as Cheney's secret energy panel was aware, there was another country in the region that did have oil, and lots of it, and could be taken easily by U.S. forces; thus Iraq became the object-lesson to other autocratic leaders in the Middle East: If you do not do our bidding, prepare to accept a massive dose of "shock&awe": You will be overthrown, replaced by democratic-looking governments as arranged by the U.S.

The neo-cons -- most from PNAC and similar organizations, such as the American Enterprise Institute -- had urged Clinton to depose Saddam Hussein in 1998, but he demurred, seeing a mostly contained dictator there, whereas Osama bin Laden, and those terrorists like him, actually were successfully attacking U.S. assets inside the country and abroad.

But the PNAC crowd had larger ambitions than simply toppling a brutal dictator. Among their other recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking countries devoid of imminent danger to the U.S., abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with U.S. goals, making sure no other nation (or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve power-parity with the U.S., installing U.S.-friendly governments to do America's will, using tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. All of these extreme PNAC suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, were enshrined in 2002 as official U.S. policy in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America.


3. SEXING UP THE INTEL

We know that given the extreme nature of the neo-con agenda, the Bush Administration had their work cut out for them in fomenting support for an invasion and occupation of Iraq. Therefore, among the first move by Rumsfeld following 9/11 was to somehow try to connect Saddam to the terror attacks. The various intelligence agencies reported to Rumsfeld that there was no Iraq connection to 9/11, that it was an al-Qaida operation, but that was merely a bothersome impediment. Since the CIA and the other intelligence agencies would not, or could not, supply the intelligence needed to justify a war on Iraq, Rumsfeld set up his own rump intelligence agency, the Office of Special Plans, stocked it with political appointees of the PNAC persuasion, and soon was stovepiping cherry-picked raw intel straight to Cheney and others in the White House. Shortly thereafter, Cheney, Rice and others in the White House Iraq Group went big-time with the WMD scare and the melding of Saddam Hussein with the events of 9/11.

Based on this sexed-up and phony intelligence, Cheney, Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and the others began warning about mushroom clouds over the U.S., drone planes dropping biological agents over the East Coast, huge stockpiles of chemical weapons in Iraq, etc. Secretary of State Colin Powell, regarded as the most believable of the bunch, was dispatched to the United Nations to make the case, which he did, reluctantly, by presenting an embarrassingly weak litany of surmise and concocted facts. The world didn't buy it, and the opposition to the U.S. war plan was palpable and huge: 10 million citizens throughout the world hit the streets to protest, former allies publicly criticized Bush. Only Tony Blair in England eagerly hitched his wagon to the Bush war-plan with large numbers of troops dispatched -- as it turned out, over the legal, moral and political objections of many of his closest aides and advisers.


4. THE DOWNING STREET REVELATIONS

We know that those advisers warned Blair that he was about to involve the U.K. in an illegal, immoral and probably unwinnable war -- which would put U.K. and U.S. troops in great danger from potential insurgent forces. How do we know about these inner workings of the Blair government? Because a few months ago, someone from inside that body leaked the top-secret minutes from those war-Cabinet meetings, the so-called Downing Street Memos.

We also learned from those minutes that Bush & Blair agreed to make war on Iraq as early as the Spring of 2002 -- the intelligence, they decided, would be "fixed around the policy" to go to war -- despite their telling their legislative bodies and their citizens that no decisions had been made. In fact, the Bush Administration had decided to go to war a year before the invasion. "Fuck Saddam,? Bush told three U.S. Senators in March of 2002. "We're taking him out."


5. BUSH RACES TO WAR

We know that many of Blair's most senior advisors thought the WMD argument rested on shaky ground, and that the legality of the war was in question without specific authorization from the United Nations Security Council. But the Bush Administration rushed to war anyway -- in haste because the U.N. inspectors on the ground in Iraq were not finding any WMD stockpiles -- without proper planning and with no workable plan to secure the peace and reconstruct the country after the major fighting.


6. THE BIG LIE TECHNIQUE ON WMD

We know (thanks to the Downing Street Memos) that both the U.S. and U.K. were well aware that Iraq was a military paper tiger, with no significant WMD stockpiles or link to Al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, the major thrust of Bush&Co.'s justification for going to war was based on these non-existent weapons and 9/11 links. The Big Lie Technique -- repeating the same falsehoods over and over and over -- drummed those lies into our heads day after day, month after month, with little if any skeptical analysis by the corporate mainstream media, which marched mostly in lockstep with Bush policy and thinking. Wolfowitz admitted later that they chose WMD as the primary reason for making war because they couldn't agree on anything else the citizenry would accept. But frightening people with talk of nuclear weapons, mushroom clouds, toxins delivered by drone airplanes and the like would work like a charm. And so they did, convincing the American people and Congress that an attack was justified. It wasn't.


7. PUSHING IRAQ TOWARDS IRAN

We know that the real reasons for invading Iraq had precious little to do with WMD, Islamist terrorists coming from inside that country, installing democracy, and the like; there were no WMD to speak of, and Saddam, an especially vicious dictator, did not tolerate religious or political zealotry of any stripe. No, the reasons had more to do with American geopolitical goals in the region involving oil, control, support for its ally Israel, hardened military bases and keeping Iran from having free rein in the region.

As it turned out, by invading and occupying Iraq, it pushed that country and Iran into a far closer religious and political alliance than would have been the case if Saddam had been permitted to remain in power. Bush may have sacrificed thousands of American dead, tens of thousands of American wounded, and more than 100,000 Iraqis as "collateral damage" -- and now Bush&Co. quietly are willing to accept an Islamist government more attuned to Teheran than to Washington, one with precious little regard for human rights, especially involving women. That is one royal FUBAR.


8. IRAQ AS A DISASTER ZONE

We know that Bush's war has been a thorough disaster -- built on a foundation of lies, and incompetently managed from the start. As a result, the Occupation has provided a magnet for jihadists from other countries, billions have been wasted or lost in the corrupt system of organized corporate looting that ostensibly is designed to speed up Iraq's "reconstruction," etc. etc. Indeed, so much has Bush's war been botched that the "realists" in the Administration know they must get out as quickly as possible if they are to have any hope of exercising their considerable muscle elsewhere in the Middle East.


9. WHERE WILL THE BODIES COME FROM?

We know that Bush's Middle East agenda also is suffering because the U.S. military is spread way thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the desertion rates are high, soldiers are not re-upping at the usual clip, recruitment isn't working and illegal scams are being used to lure youngsters into signing up -- in short, there are no military forces to spare on the ground. Either a military draft will be instituted or all future attacks will have to come from air power or from missiles, which will merely deliver a message, making the bombed populations even angrier at America, and with no guarantee of success in forging U.S.-friendly "democratic" governments in Iran, Syria, et al. In short, we are witnessing the limits of imperial power in the modern world.


10. HIDING THE TRUTH FROM THE PUBLIC

We know that Bush&Co. made sure that there would be no full-scale, independent investigations of their role in using and abusing the intelligence that led to war on Iraq.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Republican Pat Roberts, held hearings on the failures lower down the chain, namely at the CIA and FBI level, and promised there would be followup hearings on any White House manipulation of intelligence. But, election over, Roberts says no purpose would be served in launching such an investigation. Likewise, the 9/11 Commission did not delve deeply into how the Bush Administration misused its pre-9/11 knowledge. Bush sent an October 5, 2001 memo to Rumsfeld, Powell, O'Neill, Ashcroft, and the heads of the CIA and the FBI restricting their talking to Congress about 9/11 and other "national-security" matters; the only Democrats who could receive these "sensitive" briefings -- meaning they were forbidden to make them public -- were the Senate and House Minority Leaders, and the ranking members of the Intelligence Committees. Nobody else was to be in the loop. In short, this secretive administration made sure that everything was done to head off at the pass any investigations whatsoever. Cheney and Bush told the minority and majority leaders in Congress that there should be no 9/11 hearings, for "national security" reasons. Bush&Co. fought tooth and nail against an independent 9/11 Commission, and against the families who pushed for it.


11. THE ROAD TO DICTATORSHIP

We know that Bush has no great love of legitimate democratic processes, certainly not inside the United States. He much prefers to rule as an oligarch, but to do that, he had to invent legal justifications that granted him the requisite power. So he had his longtime lawyer-toady, Alberto Gonzales, devise a legal philosophy that permits Bush to do pretty much what he wants -- ignore laws on the books, disappear U.S. citizens into military prisons, authorize torture, etc. -- whenever Bush says he's acting as "commander-in-chief" during "wartime."

And, since "wartime" is the amorphous "war on terrorism," from which there is no end, Bush is home free. There always will be terrorists trying to do anti-U.S. damage somewhere around the globe, or inside America, and the "commander-in-chief" will need to respond. Ergo, goes this logic, Bush is above the law, untouchable, in perpetuity. (Bush&Co. also made sure that U.S. officials and military troops would not be subject to indictment by any international court or war-crimes tribunal.)

Neither Gonzales, nor Bush, has disavowed this legal philosophy of a dictator-like President being beyond the reach of the law. No doubt, the issue ultimately will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, to which Bush has nominated Judge John Roberts, who would be the key swing vote. Roberts, as author Chris Floyd has noted, recently upheld Bush's sovereign right to dispose of "enemy combatants" any way he pleases. In a chilling decision, the appeals panel, of which Roberts was a member, ruled that the Commander-in-Chief's arbitrarily-designated "enemies" are non-persons, with no legal rights. Bush now feels free to subject anyone he likes to the "military tribunal" system he has concocted.

The fact that Roberts did not recuse himself from ruling on this issue while he was in the process of being interviewed for the Supreme Court appointment by the employer being sued in the case, would seem to be an open-and-shut case of conflict-of-interest. If the Democrats have any balls, this egregious ethical lapse should serve as an "extraordinary" reason for a filibuster of his nomination.


12. TORTURE AS OFFICIAL STATE POLICY

We know that Gonzales, then Bush's White House Counsel, and Pentagon lawyers beholden to Rumsfeld, devised legal rationales that make torture of suspects official state policy. These Bush-loyalist lawyers also greatly widened the definition of what is acceptable interrogation practice -- basically anything this side of death or terminally abusing internal organs. They also authorized the sending of key suspects to countries specializing in extreme torture. After all this, Bush and Rumsfeld professed shock, shock!, that those under their command would wind up torturing, abusing and humiliating prisoners in U.S. care. But the Administration made sure to stop all inquiries into higher-up responsibility for the endemic torture. The buck never stops on Bush's desk -- if something goes wrong (and he never will admit to mistakes), it's always someone else's fault.


13. MAKING THE BILL OF RIGHTS "QUAINT"

We know that the Bush Administration has been able to obtain whatever legislation it needs in its self-proclaimed "war on terror" by utilizing, and hyping, the understandable fright of the American people. The so-called Patriot Act -- composed of many honorable initiatives, and many clearly unconstitutional provisions, cobbled together from those submitted over the years by GOP hardliners and rejected as too extreme by Congress -- was presented almost immediately to a House and Senate frightened by the 9/11 attacks and by the anthrax introduced into their chambers by someone still not discovered. Ridge and Ashcroft emerged periodically to manipulate the public's fright by announcing another "terror" threat, based on "credible" but unverified evidence; Ridge, who has since resigned, recently admitted that there were no good reasons for many of those supposed "alerts." Meanwhile, Congress (shame on you, Democrats!) recently made most of the Patriot Act laws permanent! Unless those can be repealed, that vote will be a nail into the coffin housing the remains of the Bill of Rights.


14. THE OUTING OF COVERT AGENTS

The Bush Administration, for its own crass political reasons, compromised American national security by outing two key intelligence operatives -- one, CIA agent Valerie Plame, who had important contacts in the shadowy world of weapons of mass destruction (outed by "senior Administration officials," apparently in retaliation for her husband's political comments); revealing the identity of a CIA agent can be a felony. The other, apparently to show off how successful they were in their anti-terrorism hunt, was a high-ranking mole close to bin Laden's inner circle, who could have kept the U.S. informed as to ongoing and future plans of al-Qaida. That's our war-on-terrorism government at work.

It's now clear who at least two of the "senior administration officials" were who leaked Plame's identity: Karl Rove, Bush's guru, now deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is expected to unseal indictments in this case sometime this Fall that either could focus narrowly on perjury involving Plame's outing, or could be expanded to the broader issue of the manipulative lies emanating from the machinations of the White House Iraq Group (Cheney/Libby, Rove, Card, Rice, Hadley, Hughes, Matalin, et al.) in taking this nation to war. It is possible that Bush and Cheney and Bolton, among others, could be charged or listed an unindicted co-conspirators.


15. PROTECTING THE VOTE

We know that America's voting-machine system -- and more importantly, vote-counting system -- is corruptible and likely has been corrupted. Sophisticated statistical analysis along with wide-scale exit-polling, suggests strongly that the 2004 election results were fiddled with by the private companies that tally the votes. These companies are owned by far-right Republican supporters. But the same objection would be lodged if Democrats owned the companies. There are no good reasons to "outsource" vote-counting to private corporations -- who refuse to permit inspection of their proprietary software, and whose technicians have behaved suspiciously on election nights in 2000 in Florida, in 2002 in Georgia, and in Ohio and Florida in 2004. And we haven't even mentioned the GOP dirty-tricks department whose function has been, by hook or by crook, to lower the number of potential Democrat voters, especially minority voters. Note: Unless the vote-counting system can be changed soon -- and the vote-tallying scandal will not be adequately dealt with by voter-verified receipts -- the integrity of our elections will be suspect into the far future. Even if all the other reforms were implemented, they would mean nothing without the guarantee of honest elections.


16. NO ECONOMIC PLAN

We know that the Bush Administration paid off its backers (and itself) by giving humongous tax breaks, for 10 years out, to the already wealthy and to large corporations. In addition, corporate tax-evasion was made easier via offshore listings. All this was done at a time when the U.S. economy was in recessionary doldrums and when the treasury deficit from those tax-breaks was growing even larger from Iraq war costs. So far as we know, the Bush Administration has no plans for how to retire that debt and no real plan (other than the discredited "trickle-down" theory) for restarting the economy and creating well-paying jobs for skilled workers, so many of whom have had their positions outsourced to foreign lands.


17. STARVING THE GOVERNMENT

We know that the HardRight conservatives who control Bush policy don't really care what kind of debt and deficits their policies cause; in some ways, the more the better. They want to decimate and starve popular social programs from the New Deal/Great Society eras, including, most visibly, Head Start, Social Security, Medicare (and real drug coverage for seniors), student loans, welfare assistance, public education, etc. (Especially egregious is the education scam known as "No Child Left Behind.") Since these programs are so well-approved by the public, the destruction will be carried out stealthily with the magic words "privatization," "deregulation," "choice" and so on, and by going to the public and saying that they'd love to keep the programs intact but they have no alternative but to cut them, given the deficit, weak economy and "anti-terrorist" wars abroad. Bush's whirlwind tour trying to sell his Social Security "reform" plan has backfired badly, but he's still pushing a good many of those ideas, just in case he can slip it in somewhere, maybe by tying it somehow to Saddam Hussein and 9/11.


18. THE ENVIRONMENTAL GIVEAWAY

We know that Bush environmental policy -- dealing with air and water pollution, mineral extraction, national parks, and so on -- is an unmitigated disaster, giving pretty much free rein to corporations whose bottom line does better when they don't have to pay attention to the public interest. It's the worst sort of grab-the-money-and-run scenario.


19. THE GREED OF POLITICAL POWER

We know from "insider" memoirs and reports by former Bush Administration officials -- Joseph DeIulio, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, et al. -- that the public interest plays little role in the formulation of policy inside the Bush Administration. The motivating factors are mainly greed and ideological control and remaining in political power. Further, they say, there is little or no curiosity to think outside the political box, or even to hear other opinions.


20. FAITH- OR REALITY-BASED PROGRAMS

We know that this attitude ("my mind is made up, don't bother me with the facts") shows up most openly in how science is disregarded by the Bush Administration (good example: global warming) in favor of faith-based thinking. Some of this non-curiosity about reality may be based in fundamentalist religious, even Apocalyptic, beliefs. Much of Bush's bashing of science is designed as payback to his fundamentalist base, but the scary part is that a good share of the time he actually believes what he's saying, about evolution vs. intelligent-design, stem-cell research, abstinence education, censoring the rewriting of government scientific reports that differ from the Bush party line, cutbacks in research&development grants for the National Science Foundation, etc., ad nauseum. This closed-mind attitude helps explain, on a deeper level, why things aren't working out in Iraq.


AMERICA OR GERMANY IN THE '30s?

In sum (although we could continue forever detailing the crimes and misdemeanors of this corrupt, incompetent Administration), we know that more and more the permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home (the shredding of Constitutional rights designed to protect citizens from a potential repressive government) are taking us into a kind of American fascism domestically and an imperial foreign policy overseas. All aspects of the American polity are infected with the militarist Know-Nothingism emanating from the top, with governmental and vigilante-type crackdowns on protesters, dissent, free speech, freedom of assembly, etc. happening regularly on both the local and federal levels. More and more, America is resembling Germany in the early 1930s, group pitted against group while the central government amasses more and more power and control of its put-upon citizens.

Bush has had a rough first year of his second term. It's as if the public blinders are starting to come off, and the true nature of this man and his regime are finally starting to hit home and he is seen for what he is: an insecure, arrogant, dangerous, dry-drunk bully who is endangering U.S. national interests abroad with his reckless war in Iraq, his wrecking of the U.S. economy at home, and with his over-reaching in all areas.

If a Democrat president and vice president had behaved similarly to Bush and Cheney, they'd have been in the impeachment dock in a minute. If the Plame-Iraq indictments come down as expected, a momentum for impeachment of Bush and Cheney will be generated.

Our job now is to keep that political momentum building to get rid of these guys, while we try to organize a pro-democracy, anti-imperialist movement for change in this country that is inclusive, non-dogmatic, and capable of winning elections. That may or may not involve the Democratic Party.

Pat Robertson's Katrina Cash

by MAX BLUMENTHAL

Every cloud has a silver lining. Hurricane Katrina has devastated New Orleans, leaving thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless, and plunging the entire city into chaos. In the hurricane's wake, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its director, Michael Brown, forced out of his former job at the International Arabian Horse Association, with no credentials in disaster relief, have become targets of withering criticism. Yet FEMA's relief efforts have brought considerable assistance to at least one man who stands to benefit from Hurricane Katrina perhaps more than any other individual: Pat Robertson.

With the Bush Administration's approval, Robertson's $66 million relief organization, Operation Blessing, has been prominently featured on FEMA's list of charitable groups accepting donations for hurricane relief. Dozens of media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN and the Associated Press, duly reprinted FEMA's list, unwittingly acting as agents soliciting cash for Robertson. "How in the heck did that happen?" Richard Walden, president of the disaster-relief group Operation USA, asked of Operation Blessing's inclusion on FEMA's list. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars."

Though Operation USA has conducted disaster relief for more than twenty-five years on five continents, like scores of other secular relief groups currently helping victims of Hurricane Katrina, it was omitted from FEMA's list. In fact, only two non-"faith-based" organizations were included. (One of them, the American Red Cross, is being blocked from entering New Orleans by FEMA's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.) FEMA, meanwhile, has reportedly turned away Wal-Mart trucks carrying food and water to the stricken city, teams of firemen from Maryland and Texas, volunteer morticians and a convoy of 1,000 boat owners offering to help rescue stranded flood victims. While relief efforts falter in the face of colossal bureaucratic incompetence, the Bush Administration's promotion of Operation Blessing has ensured that the floodwaters swallowing New Orleans will be a rising tide lifting Robertson's boat.

Robertson recently ignited a media firestorm when he called for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez during a broadcast of The 700 Club. He has also blamed the 9/11 attacks on America's tolerance of abortion and homosexuality and declared the Supreme Court a greater threat to the United States than Al Qaeda. Robertson assiduously cultivates his celebrity with remarks like these, casting himself as a divisive bigot to his foes and a righteous prophet to his allies in Christian right circles. But there is much more to Robertson than the headline-grabbing hothead he plays on TV.

Far from the media's gaze, Robertson has used the tax-exempt, nonprofit Operation Blessing as a front for his shadowy financial schemes, while exerting his influence within the GOP to cover his tracks. In 1994 he made an emotional plea on The 700 Club for cash donations to Operation Blessing to support airlifts of refugees from the Rwandan civil war to Zaire (now Congo). Reporter Bill Sizemore of The Virginian Pilot later discovered that Operation Blessing's planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the African Development Corporation, a Robertson-owned venture initiated with the cooperation of Zaire's then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

After a lengthy investigation, Virginia's Office of Consumer Affairs determined that Robertson "willfully induced contributions from the public through the use of misleading statements and other implications." Yet when the office called for legal action against Robertson in 1999, Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, a Republican, intervened with his own report, agreeing that Robertson had made deceptive appeals but overruling the recommendation for his prosecution. Two years earlier, while Virginia's investigation was gathering steam, Robertson donated $35,000 to Earley's campaign--Earley's largest contribution. With Earley's report came a sense of vindication. "From the very beginning," Robertson claimed, "we were trying to provide help and assistance to those who were facing disease and death in the war-torn, chaotic nation of Zaire."

(Earley is now president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, an evangelical social-work organization founded by born-again, former Nixon dirty-trickster Charles Colson. PFM has accepted White House faith-based-initiative money and is currently engaged in hurricane relief efforts in Louisiana. Earley remains a close ally of Robertson.)

Absolved of his sins, Robertson dug his heels back in African soil. In 1999 he signed an $8 million agreement with Liberian tyrant Charles Taylor that guaranteed Robertson's Freedom Gold Ltd.--an offshore company registered to the same address as his Christian Broadcasting Network--mining rights in Liberia, and gave Taylor a 10 percent stake in the company. When the United States intervened in Liberia in 2003, forcing Taylor and the Al Qaeda operatives he was harboring to flee, Robertson accused President Bush of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country."

Robertson's scheming hasn't abated one bit. He is accused of violating his ministry's tax-exempt, nonprofit status by using it to market a diet shake he licensed this August to the health chain General Nutrition Corp. (Robertson continues to advertise the shake on his personal website.) He has withstood criticism from fellow evangelicals for investing $520,000 in a racehorse named Mr. Pat, violating biblical admonitions against gambling. He was even accused of "Jim Crow-style racial discrimination" by black employees who successfully sued his Christian Coalition in 2001 for forcing them enter its offices through a back door and eat in a segregated area (Robertson has since resigned).

The Bush Administration has studiously overlooked Robertson's misdeeds. In October 2002, just months after he denounced the White House's faith-based initiative as "a real Pandora's box"--and one month before midterm elections--Robertson pocketed $500,000 in government grants to Operation Blessing. Since then, with the sole exception of his criticism of the US intervention in Liberia, Robertson has served as a willing surrogate for the Administration. His Regent University gave John Ashcroft a cushy professorship to cool his heels after his contentious tenure as US Attorney General. And Robertson's legal foundation, the American Center for Law and Justice, is spearheading the effort to rally right-wing Christian support for Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s confirmation as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now, as fallout from the President's handling of Hurricane Katrina threatens to derail the GOP's long-term agenda, Robertson is back at the plate for Bush, echoing the White House's line that state and local authorities--and even the disaster victims themselves--are to blame for the tragedy engulfing New Orleans.

The September 5 edition of The 700 Club included a report by Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent Gary Lane from outside the ruined New Orleans Convention Center, which had housed mostly impoverished black disaster victims throughout the weekend. "A number of possessions left behind suggest the mindset of some of the evacuees," Lane said. "They include this voodoo cup with the saying, 'May the curse be with you.' " A shot of a plastic souvenir cup from one of New Orleans's countless trinket shops appeared on the screen. "Also music CDs with the titles Guerrilla Warfare and Thugs 'R' Us," Lane stated, pointing out a pile of rap CDs strewn on the ground.

The 700 Club's featured guest was Wellington Boone, a black minister invited by Robertson to provide a counterpoint to the ubiquitous Rev. Jesse Jackson. Boone is a member of the Coalition on Revival, a Christian Reconstructionist organization that advocates replacing the US Constitution with biblical law. Throughout his career, he has distinguished himself from his black clerical colleagues with such remarks as "I believe that slavery, and the understanding of it when you see it God's way, was redemptive" and "The black community must stop criticizing Uncle Tom. He is a role model."

Though Boone's appearance on The 700 Club consisted mostly of benign appeals for "laser-beam prayer," CBN featured a separate interview with Boone on its website in which he declared, "We need to consider the culture of those people still stranded in New Orleans. The looting of property, the trashing of property, et cetera, speaks to the basic character of the people." He added, "These people who have gone through slavery, segregation and the Voting Rights Act are doing this to themselves."

Boone's appearance on The 700 Club had been preceded by an interview with Operation Blessing President Bill Horan. Horan discussed his group's activities in Biloxi, Mississippi, where it plans to set up a mobile kitchen, and in Houston, Dallas and Beaumont, Texas, where it is disbursing cash grants to numerous, mostly unspecified mega-churches, purportedly to support their work with evacuated hurricane victims.

As for the people still stranded in New Orleans who "are doing this to themselves," as Boone said, Operation Blessing has a special plan: avoid them like the plague.

"I've actually heard reports that they [the people of Mississippi] were in worse trouble" than those in New Orleans, claimed Gordon Robertson, the son of Pat Robertson and vice president of The 700 Club. "They were actually harder hit."

"Oh, absolutely," agreed Horan.

At the segment's conclusion, Gordon Robertson asked Horan, "What can people do today? If you were asking for help today, what's the number-one need?"

"It's cash. Cash is what we need more than anything," Horan pleaded. "The more cash we get, the more good we can do." And the Bush Administration, through FEMA, is doing its best to insure that Pat Robertson is getting that cash just as quickly as humanly possible.

At least I'm a Jew

By: Greta Berlin *

Last Saturday, after the demonstration in Bil'in, two of us boarded a bus bound for Hebron, a town of 130.000 Palestinians, 600 lunatic settlers, and 10,000 soldiers and police to 'guard' the settlers. Arriving at noon on Saturday, the day most settlers run rampant over everyone, we were told to immediately go to the top of the hill that separates settlers from Palestinians.

Within a half hour, several settler boys between10-17 came strutting down the road toward the small Palestinian children playing in front of us. The children left immediately, and we turned on our cameras as they advanced toward us. The older boys egged the younger ones to pick up stones and throw them at us two women who were sitting on a stoop. Stones came flying through the air, hitting me in the hand and thigh. Two soldiers who had been standing there watching finally called the police.

I screamed at the settler thugs and started up the hill after them, only to be pulled back by the soldier who said, "I'm sorry, but they get very upset when they see a camera. You need to put it away." "Put it away? Not on your life. You think I'm going to let those damned thugs get away with throwing stones at two women who were sitting there doing nothing?"

"I know, I know, but there's nothing we can do about it. They're under 12 years old."

"Then take their parents in. Collectively punish them the way you do the Palestinians. Fine the crazy bastards."

You get the idea of the conversation. I, of course, have cleaned up my language, because I was furious and have a potty mouth when I get so mad.

We had taken plenty of video and could clearly see which boy had hit me. The soldiers suggested we take it to the police station the next day, and, if we left, they would stop them right away. Well, these nasty kids began a full-on riot, throwing stones at the police and army, throwing pipes off the top of their settler apartment at homes beneath them, screaming obscenities, throwing garbage and flashing mirrors in the faces of the soldiers. Little settler girls started to come down and throw stones. It was so disgusting; I finally left and got treatment for my cuts and bruises. The rioting went on for hours, into the night, where they threw boulders onto the homes of the Palestinians.

One Palestinian man called us and asked us to come to his home. The settlers had come in the week before, and they had cut through every single grape vine that he had, vines that were over 100 years old, thick as my (now aching) thigh. When he called the army, they had come in and said, "Go back in your house or we'll kill you." He had no choice, and every single vine has been cut in half. He took us out and pointed at one. "That one has a shoot growing already. They'll come back someday." My God, what could any of us say?

I spent the next two days at the police station making out a report and giving them video tape of the attack. One policeman said, "I really sympathize, but there's nothing we can do. They're under 12." "That hasn't stopped you from punishing Palestinian families when their kids throw stones... and you have 600 Palestinian children between 13-14 years old in jail."

After an hour of increasingly hostile conversation, he finally admitted that the last time he had tried to stop these thugs, they had slit all 4 of his tires. Another policeman said that they had broken his windshield. I said, "Welcome to Germany." and left.

Nothing will happen. Nothing will be done. These thugs will grow up to be the worst kind of Zio-Nazis, and even the police admit that. 600 of them have made life miserable for the Palestinians, they have closed the stores, thrown excrement and stones on the tops of homes, cut the trees, chain sawed the grape vines.

Today I went to Qawawis, a small village of 40-45 shepherds. We had gone for the day to protect them from the settlers who have beaten them and poisoned their sheep. 8 settlers had beaten a man who had been badly beaten last year and had gone to Iraq for surgery. He refused to make a complaint, more afraid of settlers and knowing that, even with three internationals, two UN observers who came part time and one Israeli from Tayyush, they would come back and kill him.

I am tired, I am hot, I am dusty, I finally had a shower after three days. I am burned, and I wonder what the hell I'm doing here and if we make one God damned bit of difference. Israel is committing silent genocide on a people who have been ignored and villanized. Their children look at us with big eyes and ask us why our government doesn't see what is happening.

What do I tell them? That the police and army refuse to see what they're doing? The policeman, a Sephardic Jew, admitted to me that he knew he was a second class citizen in a racist society. "But at least I'm a Jew." he said.

God help us all.

* Greta Berlin is a U.S peace activist visiting the Palestinian territories. She a member of “Women in Black”, Los Angeles, California.

Jerusalem: Pious Jew spits on Christians again

Submitted by David Bloom on Mon, 09/05/2005 - 14:44.

The Jerusalem Post reports another incident of a pious Jew spitting at Christian clergy or symbols in the Israeli-occupied Old City of Jerusalem.

According to Holocaust survivor Dr. Israel Shahak, in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, this practice has ancient roots and has become increasingly commonplace:

Dishonoring Christian religious symbols is an old religious duty in Judaism. Spitting on the cross, and especially on the Crucifix, and spitting when a Jew passes a church, have been obligatory from around AD 200 for pious Jews. In the past, when the danger of anti-Semitic hostility was a real one, the pious Jews were commanded by their rabbis either to spit so that the reason for doing so would be unknown, or to spit onto their chests, not actually on the cross or openly before the church. The increasing strength of the Jewish state has caused these customs to become more open again but there should be no mistake: The spitting on the cross for converts from Christianity to Judaism, organized in Kibbutz Sa'ad and financed by the Israeli government, is a an act of traditional Jewish piety. It does not cease to be barbaric, horrifying and wicked because of this! On the contrary, it is worse because it is so traditional, and much more dangerous as well, just as the renewed anti-Semitism of the Nazis was dangerous, because in part, it played on the traditional anti-Semitic past.

JPost's account:

Jew spits at Greek priests in J'lem
Jerusalem Post, Sept. 5
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

A young religious Jew spat at a procession of Greek Orthodox priests in the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday, police said, in the third such incident in the mixed city in the last year.

The skullcap-wearing assailant, Amitai Shashar, 20, told police that he spat at the procession near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because he saw the cross that participants in the ceremony were carrying, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

The attacker, an Old City resident, was taken into custody by police officers who were escorting the religious procession.

A Greek Orthodox Church spokesman said that the Jewish extremist had spat in the face of the head of ceremonies, after getting into a heated verbal altercation with the priests at the procession.

Church officials declined to lodge a complaint with police, the church spokesman said.

The assailant was later released on NIS 2,500 bail by a Jerusalem court, and ordered to stay out of the Old City for the next thirty days, except to go to and from his Old City home.

The incident was the third such assault in the Old City in the last year.

Earlier this year, an Armenian priest was attacked by four yeshiva students in the Old City of Jerusalem, an altercation that began when one of the yeshiva students spat on the black-robed priest in front of the Armenian Monastery where he lives.

In a separate incident last year, a yeshiva student spat at a Sunday morning procession of Armenian clergymen in Jerusalem's Old City and then scuffled with a priest. He later apologized. (JPost, Sept. 5)

According to Amiram Barkat in Ha'aretz on Oct. 12, 2004, the phenomenom is probably underreported by the victims:

Christians in Jerusalem want Jews to stop spitting on them

A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem's Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

The clergyman prefered not to lodge a complaint with the police and told an acquaintance that he was used to being spat at by Jews. Many Jerusalem clergy have been subjected to abuse of this kind. For the most part, they ignore it but sometimes they cannot.

On Sunday, a fracas developed when a yeshiva student spat at the cross being carried by the Armenian Archbishop during a procession near the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City. The archbishop's 17th-century cross was broken during the brawl and he slapped the yeshiva student.

[...]

According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, "as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country."

Rossing says there are certain common characeristics from the point of view of time and location to the incidents. He points to the fact that there are more incidents in areas where Jews and Christians mingle, such as the Jewish and Armenian quarters of the Old City and the Jaffa Gate.

There are an increased number at certain times of year, such as during the Purim holiday. "I know Christians who lock themselves indoors during the entire Purim holiday," he says.

Former adviser to the mayor on Christian affairs, Shmuel Evyatar, describes the situation as "a huge disgrace." He says most of the instigators are yeshiva students studying in the Old City who view the Christian religion with disdain.

"I'm sure the phenomenon would end as soon as rabbis and well-known educators denounce it. In practice, rabbis of yeshivas ignore or even encourage it," he says.

Evyatar says he himself was spat at while walking with a Serbian bishop in the Jewish quarter, near his home. "A group of yeshiva students spat at us and their teacher just stood by and watched."

Planned Parenthood

IRAQ: Corruption is the Growth Industry

Like many other Iraqis, businessmen invariably make then-and-now comparisons with Saddam Hussein. Saddam ran his own massive corruption of the UN oil-for-food program and he and his cronies regularly demanded a cut of any new business or contract. But Iraqi businessman said: "I'd say that about 10 per cent of business was corrupt under Saddam. Now it's about 95 per cent. We used to have one Saddam, now we have 25 of them." by By Paul McGeough, The Age May 2nd, 2005

Over lunch on a sultry Baghdad day, Iraqi businessman Mohammed Jawad talked camels and corruption. "Iraq is like a camel," he said. "If it is healthy, no one can kill it. But when it is sick on the ground, the camel dies by a thousand knives." The knives are wielded by corrupt ministers and their cronies - tribal and family - who force contractors to inflate tender bids for contracts worth billions so they can gouge millions for themselves. The new Iraq receives foreign aid worth close to $US100 billion ($A126 billion) and the corruption watchdog Transparency International says it could become "the biggest corruption scandal in history". Jawad taps into the economy at various levels - he's an engineer and builder, he supplies government departments and he represents foreign companies. He said: "After I went to the Transport Ministry with a proposal for flights to Iraq from Scandinavia, I had a call from the minister's cousin to say that there would be no deal unless I paid a bribe of $US500,000." He cited the case of another ministry - electricity - in which he said a fellow tribesman had been appointed ministerial bagman. "If you don't pay 5 or 6 per cent of the contract price on the side, you're told the ministry wants to work with a different company," he said. He said contractors had told him of the manipulation of a recent tender: "The work was worth about $US15 million. But the minister's staff wanted a rake-off of about $US40 million. So they advised the bidder to inflate the price to $US70 million, so that they could have their cut and the bidder would make a good profit too." Like many other Iraqis, businessmen invariably make then-and-now comparisons with Saddam Hussein. Saddam ran his own massive corruption of the UN oil-for-food program and he and his cronies regularly demanded a cut of any new business or contract. But Jawad, a Shiite with no brief for his former leader, said: "I'd say that about 10 per cent of business was corrupt under Saddam. Now it's about 95 per cent. We used to have one Saddam, now we have 25 of them." The corruption is not just local. A legal battle in the US over the performance of Custer Battles, a small US firm that previously had never won a Washington tender, shows how contractors can avoid supervision and rort their books in postwar chaos. Documents leaked to the US media and accounts by whistleblowers in the company, which had contracts in Iraq worth more than $US30 million, reveal its tactics - invoicing Washington for $US2.1 million for work worth less than $US1 million; setting up shell companies in the Cayman Islands to submit padded sub-contract invoices to return profits as high as 130 per cent, instead of a 25 per cent ceiling imposed by its contracts. But it's not just minnows. Audits of US spending in Iraq have criticised a lack of competitive bidding for contracts worth billions in a race dominated by corporations close to the Bush Administration. An investigation of the spending of Iraq's oil revenue in the first 15 months of the occupation found that close to $US9 billion had been spent without proper accounting, including an electrical contract worth $US340 million, let without tendering. A Pentagon audit has accused Halliburton, a Houston-based oil services conglomerate formerly run by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, of overcharging on one contract by more than $US100 million; and one of the company's subsidiaries is under investigation for charging more than $US27 million to transport from Kuwait to Iraq fuel worth less than $US100,000. Transparency International's Global Corruption Report 2005 criticises international donor countries in Iraq, of which the US is the biggest, as a dismal example of an absence of transparency and accounting that leads to great waste and fraud. A section of the report by contributor Reinoud Leenders and Justin Alexander begins: "Wednesday 9 April 2003 was not only the day that most Iraqis rejoiced at the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. In the eyes of many Iraqis, it was also the day that marked the beginning of a new era of intensified theft of state property, corruption and conflicts of interest. "When asked to give their views on the birth of the new Iraq, the probability is high that Iraqis will refer not only to the widespread looting by 'Ali Babas' but to the looting by Iraq's new democratic leaders."

After Katrina fiasco, time for Bush to go

By Gordon Adams
Originally published September 8, 2005

WASHINGTON - The disastrous federal response to Katrina exposes a record of incompetence, misjudgment and ideological blinders that should lead to serious doubts that the Bush administration should be allowed to continue in office.

When taxpayers have raised, borrowed and spent $40 billion to $50 billion a year for the past four years for homeland security but the officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot find their own hands in broad daylight for four days while New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast swelter, drown and die, it is time for them to go.

When funding for water works and levees in the gulf region is repeatedly cut by an administration that seems determined to undermine the public responsibility for infrastructure in America, despite clear warnings that the infrastructure could not survive a major storm, it seems clear someone is playing politics with the public trust.

When rescue and medical squads are sitting in Manassas and elsewhere in northern Virginia and foreign assistance waits at airports because the government can't figure out how to insure the workers, how to use the assistance or which jurisdiction should be in charge, it is time for the administration to leave town.

When President Bush stays on vacation and attends social functions for two days in the face of disaster before finally understanding that people are starving, crying out and dying, it is time for him to go.

When FEMA officials cannot figure out that there are thousands stranded at the New Orleans convention center - where people died and were starving - and fussed ineffectively about the same problems in the Superdome, they should be fired, not praised, as the president praised FEMA Director Michael Brown in New Orleans last week.

When Mr. Bush states publicly that "nobody could anticipate a breach of the levee" while New Orleans journalists, Scientific American, National Geographic, academic researchers and Louisiana politicians had been doing precisely that for decades, right up through last year and even as Hurricane Katrina passed over, he should be laughed out of town as an impostor.

When repeated studies of New Orleans make it clear that tens of thousands of people would be unable to evacuate the city in case of a flood, lacking both money and transportation, but FEMA makes no effort before the storm to commandeer buses and move them to safety, it is time for someone to be given his walking papers.

When the president makes Sen. Trent Lott's house in Pascagoula, Miss., the poster child for rebuilding while hundreds of thousands are bereft of housing, jobs, electricity and security, he betrays a careless insensitivity that should banish him from office.

When the president of the United States points the finger away from the lame response of his administration to Katrina and tries to finger local officials in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., as the culprits, he betrays the unwillingness of this administration to speak truth and hold itself accountable. As in the case of the miserable execution of policy in Iraq, Mr. Bush and Karl Rove always have some excuse for failure other than their own misjudgments.

We have a president who is apparently ill-informed, lackadaisical and narrow-minded, surrounded by oil baron cronies, religious fundamentalist crazies and right-wing extremists and ideologues. He has appointed officials who give incompetence new meaning, who replace the positive role of government with expensive baloney.

They rode into office in a highly contested election, spouting a message of bipartisanship but determined to undermine the federal government in every way but defense (and, after 9/11, one presumed, homeland security). One with Grover Norquist, they were determined to shrink Washington until it was "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Katrina has stripped the veil from this mean-spirited strategy, exposing the greed, mindlessness and sheer profiteering behind it.

It is time to hold them accountable - this ugly, troglodyte crowd of Capital Beltway insiders, rich lawyers, ideologues, incompetents and their strap-hangers should be tarred, feathered and ridden gracefully and mindfully out of Washington and returned to their caves, clubs in hand.

Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, was senior White House budget official for national security in the Clinton administration.

New Orleans: The toxic timebomb

Contaminated waters threaten an environmental disaster

By Andrew Gumbel and Rupert Cornwell

Published: 07 September 2005

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has created a vast toxic soup that stretches across south-eastern Louisiana and Mississippi, and portends the arrival of an environmental disaster to rival the awe-inspiring destruction of property and human life over the past week.

Toxicologists and public health experts warned yesterday that pumping billions of gallons of contaminated water from the streets of New Orleans back into the Gulf of Mexico - the only viable option if the city is ever to return to even a semblance of its former self -would have a crippling effect on marine and animal life, compromise the wetlands that form the first line of resistance to future hurricanes, and carry deleterious consequences for human health throughout the region.

The full extent of the danger is unknown and unknowable, but the polluted waters are known to contain human and animal waste, the bodies of people and animals, household effluence, and chemical and petrochemical toxins from the refineries that dot the Gulf coast in and around New Orleans.

Even before the pumping is complete, a process city officials said yesterday would take at least three weeks (some engineers believe it could last months), the consequences for all living creatures - humans, animals, fish and micro-organisms - are likely to be dire.

"We're talking about a mass of decomposing dead bodies and animals. This is going to produce a horrible festering of unknown consequences," said Harold Zeliger, a chemical toxicologist and independent consultant based in New York State.

The waters now swilling around the streets and neighbourhoods of New Orleans will probably end up either in the Mississippi River or in Lake Pontchartrain, just to the north of the city, where they are likely to react with the oxygen in the water and deprive all living creatures, starting with the fish, of the means to life.

"We're looking conceivably at zero-dissolved oxygen, which will lead to the death of fish and other organisms," Dr Zeliger said. "If the migratory birds who pass through the area find any fish to eat, they will be contaminated so the birds will start dying in large quantities ... Reptiles and snakes are going to be driven out of their nests and habitats, which has implications for human safety. We're going to see water moccasins [a highly venomous snake], which are nasty critters, and alligators threatening people."

The prospect of severe chemical fallout overshadowed the cautious progress made by army engineers and rescue workers yesterday. The flood waters began to recede in New Orleans after they successfully plugged the biggest breach in the city's levee system and managed to activate the first water pumps. The breach along the 17th Street Canal, at the eastern end of the city, was responsible for allowing the single biggest body of water to cascade into the city from Lake Pontchartrain, leaving 80 per cent of the city submerged.

But officials are fearful of what they will find once the water level goes down. The human death toll is expected to number in the thousands. Then there is the damage to buildings and artefacts, some of them of immense historical value, wrought by the storm. There is still no fresh running water or air conditioning, while daily temperatures are 90F (32C) or more.

Already, more and more bodies are appearing, floating in the water, or pointed out by people still being rescued from their homes. Some of the bodies have been loaded onto refrigerated trucks and mobile morgues before being identified.

"It's going to be awful, and it's going to wake the nation up again," said Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans, who has suggested that 10,000 may have died in his city alone.

Mr Nagin said that once pumping was completed, it would take several weeks more to clear the debris. Some military engineers are measuring the process in months rather than weeks, and are warning that it could take a year or more before New Orleans was once again habitable in any meaningful sense.

The 17th Street Canal is, moreover, only one of the major problems facing the recovery operation. Other smaller levee breaks in New Orleans defences are still defying the best efforts of the army, which is dropping giant 16,000lb sandbags on damaged sections. Restoring electricity could take up to eight weeks.

The toxic consequences of the disaster will have a profound impact on New Orleans even after the initial clearing is done. Dr Zeliger pointed out that the only way to make the water remotely potable would be to chlorinate it, but given the degree of contamination, this would create its own devastating side effects.

"If one chlorinates poor-quality water, it creates categories of trihalmethanes and other compounds that produce their own nightmarish effects on human health, such as spontaneous abortions," he said. "You'll see the formation of chloroform and bromoform and other toxins. It will be a long time before decent potable water can be drawn - my prediction would be a minimum of one year."

Such warnings have not deterred a minority of New Orleans residents - perhaps 10,000 people - from trying to remain in their homes, or wherever they can find shelter. "We can't force them out," said a member of the Kentucky National Guard, one of thousands of armed guardsmen patrolling the streets alongside army and marines units.

Mr Nagin said it was essential that everyone left so that the repair and recovery could begin. "It's just not safe, leave for a little while," he urged.

Slowly but perceptibly, progress is being made by both federal and state agencies, helped by churches and charities. The emergency medical airlift from New Orleans airport is complete. In some areas, the first financial resources are being distributed to refugees who have lost everything. Across the ravaged region, some communications are starting to be restored.

But thousands of families, if not tens of thousands, remain separated. Many still search for missing relatives. And New Orleans is only one casualty of a storm that, in varying degrees, devastated a region almost as large as Britain. From south-eastern Louisiana across coastal Mississippi, towns and villages have been all but obliterated.

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has created a vast toxic soup that stretches across south-eastern Louisiana and Mississippi, and portends the arrival of an environmental disaster to rival the awe-inspiring destruction of property and human life over the past week.

Toxicologists and public health experts warned yesterday that pumping billions of gallons of contaminated water from the streets of New Orleans back into the Gulf of Mexico - the only viable option if the city is ever to return to even a semblance of its former self -would have a crippling effect on marine and animal life, compromise the wetlands that form the first line of resistance to future hurricanes, and carry deleterious consequences for human health throughout the region.

The full extent of the danger is unknown and unknowable, but the polluted waters are known to contain human and animal waste, the bodies of people and animals, household effluence, and chemical and petrochemical toxins from the refineries that dot the Gulf coast in and around New Orleans.

Even before the pumping is complete, a process city officials said yesterday would take at least three weeks (some engineers believe it could last months), the consequences for all living creatures - humans, animals, fish and micro-organisms - are likely to be dire.

"We're talking about a mass of decomposing dead bodies and animals. This is going to produce a horrible festering of unknown consequences," said Harold Zeliger, a chemical toxicologist and independent consultant based in New York State.

The waters now swilling around the streets and neighbourhoods of New Orleans will probably end up either in the Mississippi River or in Lake Pontchartrain, just to the north of the city, where they are likely to react with the oxygen in the water and deprive all living creatures, starting with the fish, of the means to life.

"We're looking conceivably at zero-dissolved oxygen, which will lead to the death of fish and other organisms," Dr Zeliger said. "If the migratory birds who pass through the area find any fish to eat, they will be contaminated so the birds will start dying in large quantities ... Reptiles and snakes are going to be driven out of their nests and habitats, which has implications for human safety. We're going to see water moccasins [a highly venomous snake], which are nasty critters, and alligators threatening people."

The prospect of severe chemical fallout overshadowed the cautious progress made by army engineers and rescue workers yesterday. The flood waters began to recede in New Orleans after they successfully plugged the biggest breach in the city's levee system and managed to activate the first water pumps. The breach along the 17th Street Canal, at the eastern end of the city, was responsible for allowing the single biggest body of water to cascade into the city from Lake Pontchartrain, leaving 80 per cent of the city submerged.

But officials are fearful of what they will find once the water level goes down. The human death toll is expected to number in the thousands. Then there is the damage to buildings and artefacts, some of them of immense historical value, wrought by the storm. There is still no fresh running water or air conditioning, while daily temperatures are 90F (32C) or more.

Already, more and more bodies are appearing, floating in the water, or pointed out by people still being rescued from their homes. Some of the bodies have been loaded onto refrigerated trucks and mobile morgues before being identified.

"It's going to be awful, and it's going to wake the nation up again," said Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans, who has suggested that 10,000 may have died in his city alone.

Mr Nagin said that once pumping was completed, it would take several weeks more to clear the debris. Some military engineers are measuring the process in months rather than weeks, and are warning that it could take a year or more before New Orleans was once again habitable in any meaningful sense.

The 17th Street Canal is, moreover, only one of the major problems facing the recovery operation. Other smaller levee breaks in New Orleans defences are still defying the best efforts of the army, which is dropping giant 16,000lb sandbags on damaged sections. Restoring electricity could take up to eight weeks.

The toxic consequences of the disaster will have a profound impact on New Orleans even after the initial clearing is done. Dr Zeliger pointed out that the only way to make the water remotely potable would be to chlorinate it, but given the degree of contamination, this would create its own devastating side effects.

"If one chlorinates poor-quality water, it creates categories of trihalmethanes and other compounds that produce their own nightmarish effects on human health, such as spontaneous abortions," he said. "You'll see the formation of chloroform and bromoform and other toxins. It will be a long time before decent potable water can be drawn - my prediction would be a minimum of one year."

Such warnings have not deterred a minority of New Orleans residents - perhaps 10,000 people - from trying to remain in their homes, or wherever they can find shelter. "We can't force them out," said a member of the Kentucky National Guard, one of thousands of armed guardsmen patrolling the streets alongside army and marines units.

Mr Nagin said it was essential that everyone left so that the repair and recovery could begin. "It's just not safe, leave for a little while," he urged.

Slowly but perceptibly, progress is being made by both federal and state agencies, helped by churches and charities. The emergency medical airlift from New Orleans airport is complete. In some areas, the first financial resources are being distributed to refugees who have lost everything. Across the ravaged region, some communications are starting to be restored.

But thousands of families, if not tens of thousands, remain separated. Many still search for missing relatives. And New Orleans is only one casualty of a storm that, in varying degrees, devastated a region almost as large as Britain. From south-eastern Louisiana across coastal Mississippi, towns and villages have been all but obliterated.

If Kyoto Is So Dangerous, Why Are Some U.S. Companies Complying?

Rubén Kraiem and Stuart Eizenstat, partners in the law firm Covington & Burling, have asked a simple but powerful question in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy magazine (free registration required). It's a message that's gained increased urgency in light of the catastrophic recent events along the Gulf Coast:

If Kyoto is so dangerous, why is corporate America already playing by its rules?

“Many U.S. multinationals are already complying with Kyoto’s emission targets because they are subject to the agreement in key markets where they operate,” they explain. For example, “Europe’s emissions caps apply to more than 12,000 industrial facilities, many of them owned by American companies.” These companies have the choice, of course, of operating less-efficiently in the U.S. and other countries that aren’t party to Kyoto’s limits. But that’s not what’s happening, they say. ”Global business leaders are not waiting for environmental mandates to be handed down from Washington.”

You might be surprised to find partners in a major law firm making a case for companies to be more environmentally proactive. Indeed, mention “lawyers” and “climate change” in the same sentence, and you’re bound to conjure up images of Gucci-shod lobbyists laboring to protect large polluters from the harsh wrath of government regulations. You probably won’t bring to mind major law firms helping their clients find proactive means of voluntarily reducing their climate impacts.

But Covington is one of a small but growing number of law firms finding value -- for their clients and themselves -- in a somewhat more enlightened approach. And along the way they are making a lie of the Bush administration’s contention that responsibly addressing climate change is an unaffordable folly that will render U.S. companies uncompetitive in global markets and shed millions of American jobs.

“I think there's been a lot of change,” Kraiem told me recently. “It's not as though we're in a brave new world, but there are some real developments over the past few years. Increasingly, there are people in companies that are not compliance people, not EHS [environment, health, and safety] people. They're people who are transactional, strategy, and finance types who are coming to terms with specifically climate issue and the possibility of carbon constraints.”

Kraiem and others thought it made sense to combine the skill sets of a number of groups in their firm “to see if we could be helpful to those companies in moving them in the right direction.”

They were a little surprised by the response, says Kraiem, who has been a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council for the past 12 years. “We discovered that many of our existing clients have sophistication around climate change and carbon constraints issues. Some are looking at CDM [Clean Development Mechanism] opportunities, though they are very tentative. Some are looking at trading opportunities in both Europe and emerging markets in this country. And we have done some serious research in issues such as disclosure trends, disclosure requirements, the exposure clients would have, or underwriters and issuers of securities would have, and what kind of disclosure at this stage is appropriate.”

These aren’t trivial questions, and while plenty of companies remain dug in, fighting climate rules tooth and nail, smart companies are figuring out how to get ahead of Kyoto or any other rules that could some day come down the pike. Indeed, contend Kraiem and Eizenstat -- the latter headed the U.S. delegation to the Kyoto Protocol negotiations for President Clinton -- “Eventually, Wall Street will factor the costs of complying with emissions targets into the price of corporate debt and equities.” It’s not simply a matter of “doing well by doing good.” It’s a matter of survival of the cleanest.

As they conclude in their Foreign Policy piece.

American businesses that refuse to accept that we live in a carbon-constrained world are living on borrowed time. Soon it will no longer be economical for the holdouts to view the United States as a regulatory safe haven. Compliance with the Kyoto Protocol will likely spur countries such as Japan and Britain to subsidize renewable energy and other emission technologies, forcing U.S. companies that might have been market leaders to become consumers of new technology developed by others. There is little chance the Bush administration will suddenly reverse course and endorse Kyoto. Fortunately, a growing number of U.S. businesses are not waiting to take their cues from Washington.

Blaming Katrina on Gays, Israel, and Man-on-Horse Sex

I've been stunned at how long it took a prominent member of the Christian right to blame the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina on America's cultural decadence and immorality. Finally, Rick Scarborough of Vision America and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration has stepped up to the plate, blaming Katrina on gay marriage, man-on-horse sex, and Israel for evacuating a portion of the Messiah's planned landing strip. He did so Volume 1, Number 24 (definitely not to be confused with a Bible verse) of his weekly email newsletter, the Scarborough Report, which you

You can subscribe to here. (Since you can't view Scarborough's latest newsletter online right now, I'm going to excerpt his statement at length.)

Scarborough declared:

After September 11, 2001, "God bless America" was on everyone's lips. But what, exactly, are we asking God to bless - a nation moving a breakneck speed toward homosexual marriage, a nation awash in pornography, a nation in which our children are indoctrinated in perversion in the public schools, a nation in which most public displays of The Ten Commandments are considered offensive to the Constitution, a nation in which the elite does all in its considerable power to efface our Biblical heritage?

We are sowing the wind. Surely, we shall reap the whirlwind.

One other factor which must be considered: Days before Katrina nearly wiped New Orleans off the map, 9,000 Jewish residents of Gaza were driven from their homes with the full support of the United States government. Could this be a playing out of prophesy ("I will bless that nation that blesses you, and curse the nation that curses you")?

Please read on. I want to give you two examples - from today's headlines - of how we are bringing disaster on ourselves. And then tell you what you can do - right now, today - to begin to reverse the process.

So what were Scarborough's examples of "how we are bringing disaster on ourselves?" First, he cited California's AB 849, a bill changing the definition of marriage in that state from "a man and a woman" to "two persons." Scarborough's second example was even weirder, and more reflective of the Christian right's curious focus on, shall we say, unorthodox sex acts. Check out what he wrote:

In Washington State, a man recently died from internal injuries sustained from committing bestiality with a horse. The incident led police to raid a farm where people were going to have sex with animals.

Though they discovered hundreds of explicit videotapes, apparently, nothing can be done about it. Washington is one of only a handful of states that does not have a law against bestiality....

Is Scarborough suggesting something even more sinister than we know about FEMA head Michael Brown's days at the International Arabian Horse Association? Could Brown have somehow planned Katrina to distract from possible future revelations of horse buggering? And will Katrina now head north and east, towards Russia, where God will exact revenge for the death of Catherine the Great? Or could Scarborough be deadly serious in blaming a bunch of stallion shaggers in rural Washington for flooding New Orleans? Sometime a horse is just a horse, of course.

In case you're wondering if this Scarborough guy is just some isolated Fred Phelps wannabe with no constituency other than the inbred children he whooped into total submission with an axe handle, take a look at the list of confirmed speakers for his Countering the War on Faith Conference, which is scheduled for October 17-18 in Washington DC. They include likely 2008 presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer and Phyllis Schlafly. Among invited speakers are David Horowitz, Zell Miller and Judge Roy Moore. The advisory board of Scarborough's Vision America, meanwhile, is comprised of a Who's Who of the Christian right, including heavy-hitters like D. James Kennedy, Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye.

I slipped into Scarborough's last conference, (read my coverage here) "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," watched a taped address by Tom DeLay, and rubbed shoulders with a gaggle of Republican operatives currently engaged in ramming John Roberts through the Senate. Scarborough has elevated himself to a key role in the conservative movement, and his remarks should not be dismissed as mere horse-play.

Faces of the War in Iraq

Over 100,000 Iraqi citizens and 1800 Americans murdered by George W. Bush and his Jewish Neocon handlers. All for Israel.

U.S. Influence 'Too Much'

Inter Press Service
Dahr Jamail

London, Sep 5 (IPS) - U.S. influence in the process of drafting a constitution for Iraq is excessive and "highly inappropriate", a United Nations official says.

"It is a matter of public record that in the final weeks of the process the newly arrived U.S. ambassador (Zalmay Khalizad) took an extremely hands-on role," Justin Alexander, legal affairs officer for the office of constitutional support with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) told IPS. "Even going so far as to circulate at least one U.S draft."

Alexander, who oversaw the recent proceedings in Baghdad added: "This involvement was highly inappropriate for a country with 140,000 soldiers in country."

Zaid al-Ali, a legal expert who also oversaw the drafting process in Baghdad, made a similar case at a meeting at the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies in London.

"There are three ways in which the occupation intervened in the context of Iraq's constitution-writing process," he said. "Firstly, the occupation authorities selected and affected the makeup of the commission that was charged with drafting Iraq's transitional law, and its permanent constitution. Second, the occupation determined the limits and parameters within which the constitution was to be drafted. Third, the occupation authorities intervened directly in order to safeguard its interests in the context of the constitutional negotiations."

Al-Ali said it was significant that one article in the draft constitution on foreign military bases was dropped from the final version. "One article contained in a previous draft provided that setting up foreign military bases in Iraq was to be forbidden, and that the only way in which this could be deviated from would have been by a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament."

Al-Ali said "this article was dropped from the final draft of the constitution."

An alliance including the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars and the large movement of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said it rejected the draft and a "political process which had been led by occupiers and their collaborators."

The group said in a media statement: "We consider this draft as a next step of this process which does not represent the peoples' will." The alliance also expressed "major suspicions about the honesty of the next referendum, which will take place under occupation and with neither international nor Arabic and Islamic supervision."

Dr. Marinos Diamantides, senior lecturer in law at the University of London, said the entire drafting process could be illegal under international law.

"One could argue the entire process is against the law," Diamantides told IPS. "According to the 1907 Convention (the convention for the pacific settlement of disputes), the occupying power has a duty to maintain the legal system of the country it occupies. This is the first time ever that an occupying power has dismantled the internal law system of the country it occupies."

He also pointed out that ironically the Sunnis now have power to derail the upcoming referendum vote by a two-thirds vote in three provinces. That power was originally intended to give Kurds power to veto the constitution.

When Iraq's Kurdish and Shia dominated parliament recently approved the draft, Sunnis immediately began campaigning for a 'no' vote in the upcoming October referendum. If the draft were to pass the referendum, it would be followed two months later by election for a government.

At least four provinces are predominantly Sunni, and Sunni clerics have urged their followers to reject the draft if it does not meet Sunni demands.

Adding further complexity to the already muddled situation, former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq during the sanctions Denis Halliday believes that even the United Nations has no place in occupied Iraq.

"The UN doesn't have a position in Iraq today," Halliday told IPS. "Once the invasion took place, the UN became collaborators with the enemy (the United States)."

Halliday, who had resigned from his UN post in protest against "genocidal sanctions" added: "This lesson should have been learned in August, 2003 when our office in Baghdad was blown up, as we were collaborators. The UN has simply become a tool of the U.S., and Iraqis can no longer distinguish between the U.S. and the UN."

Justin Alexander said Iraq might need a new constitution. "If Iraq creates a progressive and effective constitution and laws to implement the constitution, then this could benefit Iraqis. But in the absence of mutual reconciliation and an end to the occupation this is all futile."

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at September 5, 2005 03:09 PM

Rachel Corrie's Spirit Meets the Iraqi Resistance

From Cytations

Myths & Assumptions about Arab Fighters
Part II
By Cyte


Joe & Iraqi friends Shaggy and Scooby

Joe Carr is an anti-oppression activist who witnessed the murder of Rachel Corrie.



Joe is sensitive and fearless, just like Rachel was. He spent the month of May in Iraq. We might not want to believe what Joe witnessed in Iraq, but it is true.

Joe saw that "the US has leveled entire neighborhoods [in Fallujah], and about every third building is destroyed or damaged from US artillery. Rubble and bullet holes are everywhere, the city is indescribably ravaged . . . I have a new understanding of the destructive potential of modern warfare."



American soldiers in Fallujah "shoot anyone who drives too close to their convoys," according to Joe.

Shaggy, an Iraqi medic, says his work is dangerous because they "often bomb an area again 45 minutes after . . . killing many aid workers, injured civilians, and curious onlookers."



Terrorists? No. They are Iraqi National Guard.


Joe said, "I met and interviewed dozens of Iraqis including detainee families, sheiks, priests, activists, doctors, shopkeepers, politicians, fighters, and police. I talked with many US soldiers and commanders, and with other international volunteers and human rights workers. I traveled around Baghdad, into the Green Zone, down to Karballa and up to Fallujah."

Still, Joe only managed to meet a single man who claimed to be a resistance fighter! Joe writes that "American soldiers killed seven of his family" and he was one of those "defending" Fallujah. How could they defend it?


Fallujah, defended?


A clergyman told Joe that Fallujans hid, then surrendered, and were still shot dead by American soldiers. Iraqis consider this a cheap or cowardly death. They'd rather imagine that the victims fought back. A defeated people want to believe that there is a resistance.

Iraqis told Joe that they cannot believe that they, the Iraqis, are responsible for heinous acts such as attacks on mosques and churches. We also hear that Marines cannot believe Iraqis are the ones ambushing them: "Something doesn't pass the smell test here." So who is doing it?

Cyte says: This question gives birth to the myth of the foreign fighter.


Israeli contractor at Abu Ghraib

Foreign fighter, indeed.

Iraq is just another Palestine. Bring the troops home, now!

And fire those contractors!