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[Matt Simmons' book is being read in boardrooms and war-rooms all around the industrialized world. The Saudi kingdom is a top-heavy anomaly, flush with wealth that couldn't be more vulnerable. Some sort of arrangement has surely been made among the competing aspirants to Fahd's throne whereby they won't kill each other right away. But what that arrangement is, or how long it will hold - or whether the royal Saudis can conjure any adequate short-term hedge against the steep depletion curve Mr. Simmons has made so visible - is hard to say. We at FTW await further signals and will be commenting soon. -JAH]
Saudi King Fahd dead
CNN.COM
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/01/fahd.obit/index.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
(CNN) -- Saudi Arabia's King Fahd -- whose reign was marked by unprecedented prosperity, but whose close ties with the United States stirred the passions of Islamic militants -- has died, Saudi Arabia's information minister announced Monday.
His exact age remains uncertain -- believed to be between 82 and 84.
A source told CNN's Nic Robertson that Fahd died Sunday evening. His burial is scheduled for Tuesday at 3 p.m. (8 a.m. EDT) in Riyadh.
The former Crown Prince Abdullah, Fahd's half brother, has been named the new Saudi king and Defense Minister Prince Sultan has replaced Abdullah as crown prince. (Abdullah profile)
"King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz has chosen Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz as Crown prince in accordance with Article 5 of the basic system of government," a statement from the Saudi royal court said.
"Allegiance will be paid by the public to King Abdullah and Prince Sultan after the noon prayers on Wednesday."
The Saudi monarch had been in and out of the hospital in recent months, most recently suffering from pneumonia-like symptoms. Fahd yielded day-to-day control of the kingdom a decade ago after suffering a stroke, with Abdullah serving as the de facto ruler since then.
Fahd assumed the throne on June 13, 1982, becoming the fifth king of Saudi Arabia. He was the son of King Abdul Aziz Bin Abdul Rahman Al-Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi Arabia.
"I will be father to the young, brother to the elderly," he once said. "I am but one of you; whatever troubles you, troubles me; whatever pleases you, pleases me."
The Saudi monarch was held in high esteem across the Arab and Muslim worlds because of his role as the custodian of the two holy mosques -- the major shrines of Islam in Mecca and Medina.
As king, he supervised projects to facilitate the hajj for the more than 2 million pilgrims from around the world who visit each year. Under his rule, Mecca was expanded to 3.5 million square feet to accommodate 1 million worshippers; Medina has grown to nearly 1.8 million square feet to accommodate 500,000 people, according to his official biography.
He was also an ardent supporter of the mujahedeen in the 1980s in their fight against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan -- where Saudi-born terror leader Osama bin Laden first gained a following.
But it was Fahd's decision to allow U.S. forces to be based out of Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq that outraged Islamic fundamentalists, including bin Laden who criticized his homeland for allowing "infidels" to attack another Arab country from its soil.
The United States also used a highly secret base in the kingdom to conduct special operations from during the early days of the Iraq invasion in 2003.
Al Qaeda terrorists have launched several attacks inside the kingdom in recent years. And 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States were from Saudi Arabia -- a fact that did not sit well with many in Washington who have been skeptical of the kingdom.
But the Bush administration has remained staunchly behind the kingdom since 9/11, calling Riyadh a key ally in the war on terror.
"The Saudis have been very aggressive in hunting down the terrorist cells that are in Saudi Arabia and we've had a good deal of success also on the terrorist financing front," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a foreign policy speech in May 2005.
Born in 1923, Fahd attended one of the kingdom's first educational institutions during his youth, and in 1953 he became Saudi's first minister of education.
For the next two decades, he served increasingly important roles, including interior minister, deputy prime minister and crown prince. In 1977, he met with U.S. President Jimmy Carter and U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance about the importance of American involvement in trying to forge a lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"I believe the U.S. can play an important part in solving the problem if we take into account not only American influence worldwide, but also the strong relationship between America and Israel," he said at the time.
He continued to try to work for Mideast peace over the years, including on his first visit to the United States as king in 1985 when met with President Ronald Reagan about the need for a renewed American role in the Mideast peace process.
During Fahd's tenure, the kingdom saw an economic, agricultural and educational transformation, building on its oil wealth to become an international and regional power.
"With the blessing and grace of Almighty God and with the assistance of the faithful Saudi people, we shall continue the welfare march of construction and development and maintain the gains which are reflected by comprehensive achievements in various fields," he recently said.
[These two articles about the Posada case might best be introduced by some excerpts from a speech given by a most unusual man. Though they describe America's behavior in one Southeast Asian people's fight for national liberation, they apply excruciatingly well to any country south of Texas. The intervening decades have changed things - but not enough to make these words any less relevant to the American role in world affairs. We could not get our own house in order: the sheer inhuman brutality of the right wing got a free pass in our country, with the lies of political advertising and psychological warfare on one side, and the complacency and exhaustion of the public on the other. Each time the U.S. electorate moved toward adult behavior and responsibility, rightist violence beat us back down to puerile obedience. But they cannot stop other peoples from maturing, and as for us, Peak Oil and the international human community will put the bully to bed soon enough - with no supper. -JAH
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Presente!
They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.
The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.
It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
-The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]
Luis Posada Carriles Denied Bond
By Bill Weaver,
Posted on Tue Jul 26th, 2005 at 12:56:53 AM EST
(By Bill Weaver and Irasema Coronado)
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/26/05653/4399
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Luis Posada Carriles, notorious figure in Latin American terrorist history and former CIA operative, is denied bond today in El Paso Texas by immigration judge.
Luis Posada Carriles sat hunched in a chair, a man curved with age and wracked with disease. Bandages over his right eye and on his right lower jaw covered mutilations from skin cancer surgery from earlier in the week. His face bruised from the procedure, he spoke only to his attorneys and never addressed the judge or the court. With a gravelly voice and a clipped and odd enunciation, a consequence of being shot in the face by unknown gunmen in Guatemala in 1990, Posada quietly rasped questions to his attorneys. The purpose of the hearing today in an El Paso immigration courtroom was to determine whether or not this man should be set free on bond. But the simplicity of the goal of the hearing disguised the symbolic importance of what was taking place in the courtroom.
Posada, termed by Fidel Castro the "worst terrorist in the hemisphere," is nevertheless revered by Cuban Americans for his relentless efforts to assassinate Castro and cripple Cuban relations with other Latin American nations. Posada is the living tissue of a clash of ideology and culture that spread violence and death throughout a dozen countries and took the specific goal of perverting and destroying democratic institutions throughout the hemisphere. Dedicated to the elimination of Castro, and ever fearful of expanding leftist influence from Cuba to Central and South America, Posada is the matrix of U.S. policy of a bygone era. It is difficult to know where the U.S. government ends and Luis Posada begins, but today in a court room they were both symbolically on trial. In a foolishness that is normally only found in movies and bad novels, the benefactor, protector, and employer of Posada, the U.S. government, finds itself in the unenviable position of calling him to account for acts that the government helped him to commit. It seems trite to say, but is also true, that whatever is charged against Posada in support of his detention and deportability is also chargeable against the United States.
Dressed in orange prison shirt and pants, and wearing a none-too-hidden bullet-proof vest beneath his garb, Posada stood swiftly as Judge William Abbot entered the courtroom. The judge, an affable man who seemed intent on putting everyone at ease, never addressed Posada directly during the 90 minute hearing and referred to him only as "client" or "defendant." It was all but a foregone conclusion that Posada would continue to be detained without bond. And indeed this is how the judge ruled, but not without taking a few interesting turns. The two attorneys representing Posada expressed frustration that their client had not been charged with the crimes the government kept referring to by inference and implication. Matthew Archambeault claimed that the government was making reference to his client as a terrorist without having to answer for such characterizations or provide evidence of Posada's terrorism. But this seemed an improvident point to press, as Posada was undeniably involved in a multitude of terrorist operations and attacks spanning five decades, including the infamous Operation Condor, Iran-Contra, a series of bombings in Cuba in 1997, and numerous attempts to assassinate Castro. But what weighed heavy in the courtroom is simply how to define the term terrorism. One would hope that such a term would prove not to be so malleable and manipulable as to be taken over by cynics; it is to stand for something clearly wrong, something clearly against humanity. Posada, though, makes the United States uncomfortable in the use of that term, for it is clear that much of what he did in Latin America was either at the behest of the United States or with its approval. And in recent months, more information has come to light to show clear U.S. involvement in violence and terrorism in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America over an extended period of time. For example, it now appears that Operation Condor, a cooperative venture by Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, and Bolivia to gather intelligence and hunt down and kill leftists and political opponents, was coordinated through an intelligence collection site operated by the U.S. in Panama. It also appears that U.S. encipherment systems were used to provide secure communications to the Condor group. The Condor killings, and killings of leftists generally, termed "justice actions" by Posada and his colleagues, numbered in the thousands and reached even to U.S. soil and Washington, D.C., with the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit less than a month before the Cubana Flight 455 bombing arranged by Posada and Orlando Bosch.
Once, when asked when his work for the CIA had ceased, Posada claimed he could not remember when he left the Agency, but then responded that "all Cubans work for the CIA." But the man sitting in front of us today worked for no one, and Judge Abbott, noting Posada's extensive terrorist background and a formal request for his extradition to Venezuela to stand trial for the Cubana Airlines bombing, was clearly unwilling to pay serious attention to any argument for bond. The court found at least two compelling reasons to deny Posada bond. First, Posada's illegal entry into the U.S. coupled with the formal request for extradition from Venezuela prevented judicial discretion to set bond. Second, and more to the point of Posada's background, Judge Abbott found that the case of In re Mohammad J.A. Khalifah deprived him of the discretion to do anything but retain Posada in custody, and that policy forced him to refuse a change of venue to Miami. Khalifah held that, "An alien subject to criminal proceedings for alleged terrorist activities in the country to which the Immigration and Naturalization Service seeks to deport him is appropriately ordered detained without bond as a poor bail risk." As Judge Abbot said, it is "better to be safe than sorry," but then immediately added "not that I really want to keep this case, it's driving my docket crazy."
But as the hearing wound down, the judge dropped a bombshell in the courtroom. He informed both the attorneys for Posada and for the U.S. Government that he would issue a pretrial order in late July or early August requiring counsel to brief the court as to whether or not Posada's actions in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion could be construed as terrorist actions under U.S. statutes governing detention and deportability of aliens. Abbot then pointedly noted that he looked especially forward to the government's brief on that matter. The court was silent. An immigration judge had just ordered a brief as to whether or not an action 43 years ago supported and funded by the U.S. government in accordance with policy taken at the highest levels, including presidential decisions, could be construed as a terrorist act under current U.S. law. As Javier Montaño, Posada's second-chair counsel, translated the judge's statement to Posada, a hint of a smile came over the old man's face. No doubt the irony was not lost on Posada, and one wonders if he will take the stand and testify at his August 29th hearing on his asylum application. For their part, Posada's attorneys are not saying whether or not he will take the stand, but it was made clear that both sides, the government and Posada, will be ready to litigate the matter to it's end beginning in late August. If Posada does testify, the definition of terrorism will not be the main legal issue, but it will certainly be the most salient issue in the courtroom. And we wait with anticipation to see how Judge Abbott rules with respect to whether or not Posada's participation in the Bay of Pigs action qualifies as a terrorist act under present U.S. law.
Posada Carriles deportation case turns into Bay of Pigs sparnfarkel
By Bill Conroy,
Posted on Mon Jul 25th, 2005 at 11:05:45 PM EST
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/25/23545/7557
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Accused terrorist Luis Posada Carriles failed to make his case to be set free on bond today. Posada, as you recall, has been in federal custody for a couple months now pending a ruling on his request for asylum.
Of even greater interest, however, is the fact that the Associated Press reports that the federal immigration judge hearing Posada's case "asked lawyers involved in the deportation case … to provide briefs on whether the Bay of Pigs invasion could be considered an act of terrorism."
That's right, U.S. prosecutors and Posada's attorneys will now have to duke it out over whether the U.S. government engaged in an act of terrorism against the Cuban government in the early 1960s. And the irony is that it will be to the benefit of U.S. prosecutors to argue that it was terrorism, since it would seem to bolster the government's case against granting Posada asylum.
A federal immigration judge on Monday ordered that the 77-year-old CIA asset remain in federal detention in El Paso, where he has been held since May after being taken into custody in Miami. He is charged with illegally entering the United States.
Posada claims he entered the "land of the free" through Mexico. Other facts seem to indicate he may well have landed in Florida via a trip on a covert shrimp boat. After granting an interview to a Miami newspaper announcing his whereabouts in the Cuban community in Miami, he was taken into custody by federal agents and shipped to El Paso.
From the AP story:
Judge William A. Abbott also denied bond for Luis Posada Carriles, 77, a former CIA operative accused of orchestrating the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner while in Caracas, Venezuela.
… Among the factors Abbott said he would consider in Posada's case was whether he had ever provided material support for acts of terror.
Recently declassified CIA documents show that the spy agency trained Posada in Guatemala in 1961 to participate in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, including explosives and weapons training. Posada, who rose to the rank of second lieutenant, was in the U.S. Army from March 1963 to March 1964 in Fort Benning, Ga.
Abbott said the sponsor of terrorist activity didn't matter, even if it were the U.S. government. He didn't elaborate, except to say he would ask the lawyers to provide briefs on the matter.
So is the judge in the case actually going to stand up to the Bush Administration and pry open Posada's terrorist past before pronouncing judgment? If so, how long will it be before the judge is jammed up by U.S. "national security interests" - and Posada's case transferred to a more friendly court?
Those cards have yet to be play out. But Posada's attorney seems to be interested in this game of Texas Hold'em as well, according to the AP report:
"I look forward to reading the government's response," said Matthew J. Archambeault, one of Posada's Florida-based attorneys.
After all, if Posada's work for the CIA is deemed "terrorist activity," by extension that means the CIA is a sponsor of terrorism
It does appear the strain of it all, and maybe the bad prison food, are starting to get to Posada.
More from the AP report:
Posada was mostly silent during Monday's hearing, occasionally conferring in Spanish with one of his lawyers. Appearing in court in a red jail uniform, with the outline of a bulletproof vest visible on his back, Posada's right temple and jaw were heavily bandaged from recent skin cancer surgery.
Of course, Posada's attorneys are denying that their client participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion -- well, in lawyer talk anyway. His attorney, Archambeault, said Posada "did not actually participate in the failed invasion," according to the AP report. But such wording leaves plenty of wiggle room for Posada to avoid perjury charges down the road, when it comes to light that he did play a role in the planning and coordination of the invasion.
Posada's attorneys also are denying that their client had any role in another terrorist act, the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner. However, it seems even his longtime employer, the CIA, can't back up Posada on that one.
From the AP report:
According to a declassified CIA document released last month, Posada said shortly before the deadly bombing that he and others would "hit a Cuban airplane." Venezuelan officials have said Posada was in Caracas when he allegedly planned the attack, which killed 73 people when the plane crashed off the coast of Barbados.
Finally, Posada has dropped his claim that he is a U.S. resident. His attorney says his client "didn't want to burden the court with an issue he couldn't win," the AP reports.
So it sounds like Posada's attorneys are zero for three at the plate by my count. The judge now wants to explore Posada's ties to the Bay of Pigs invasion; even CIA documents point to the fact that Posada's denials concerning the Cuban airline bombing don't carry water; and now Posada is giving up on what had all along seemed a dubious claim to U.S. residency -- given the fact that he hadn't lived in the United States (prior to his illegal entry) in decades.
So where's the beef in his case? What does he deserve asylum from -- the justice due for his terrorist past?
Posada's last hope is the political might of the anti-Castro Cuban community it seems, or at least that might explain why, as AP reports, that his "lawyer did say Posada would renew his request that the case be moved to Miami and elsewhere in Florida, where Posada has friends and relatives."
But will Bush actually take the international political heat on this one to appease elements of the anti-Castro Cuban community in Miami? Not likely -- particularly because those votes can always be "fixed" in other ways.
And the Bush Administration is certainly not going to allow Posada, a Venezuelan citizen, to be turned over to the Venezuelan government -- which is seeking his extradition so that he can stand trial on charges that he masterminded the Cuban airliner bombing.
Posada avoided standing trial on the same charges 20 years ago by escaping from a prison in that South American country. If Posada is brought back for a return engagement, he would have the eyes of the world upon him -- and a stage for uncloaking a sordid tale of covert treachery stretching back some 45 years.
The Bush White House already has to be worried about what Posada might say in a U.S. courtroom. He is already threatening to testify at his next hearing in El Paso, slated for Aug. 29, the AP reports.
Posada even appears willing to open up on questions about terrorism.
From a separate report by Reuters:
Posada will "work with the government in good faith" to answer the terrorism question, said (Posada's attorney) Archambeault. "Mr. Posada doesn't want the U.S. government to jump through hoops."
That will be a case of the fox asking the snake what he did with the chicken eggs.
Stay tuned. This game of Texas Hold'em still has a few wild cards in play.
And in the mean time, can someone make sure Posada gets a cell without a window. Too much sunshine could be bad for his skin cancer.
The Peak Oil Crisis: A Mid-Summer Review
The Falls Church News-Press
Serving the City of Falls Church and Northern Virginia
July 28 - August 3, 2005 VOL. XV NO. 21
By Tom Whipple
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The world has never been to peak oil before so we may not immediately recognize what we are seeing. A few months back, most knowledgeable people would have said oil at $60 a barrel would have triggered an economic tsunami by now. But surprise! Here we are and it seems to be business as usual in America with company earnings doing well, the stock market setting some new highs, and thanks to great prices, SUVs and pickups are leaping off dealers' floors and onto America 's highways.
So far this summer oil prices have been jumping up and down depending on which hurricane is or isn't threatening which offshore oilfield, the weekly US oil stocks report, and a little "what is happening in China?" thrown in. The International Energy Agency (keeper of the books on the world's oil supplies and who incidentally haven't had much of a track record recently) says demand - especially from China - is not what it was supposed to be this year, so we can all relax for a while and enjoy the rest of the summer. It may not be 1914 redux after all.
Below the radar of even the most attentive newspaper readers, however, the first stirrings of peak oil reality are starting to trickle in. Not surprisingly, most of these reports come from the poorer parts of the world where $60 oil is simply too much for fragile economies.
Here are a few of the items:
- Last week the BBC reported that dozens were killed in fuel riots across Yemen when the government withdrew subsidies resulting in dramatic price increases.
- All across Indonesia people were lining up at gas stations in response to developing fuel shortages. In one city, half the public transport was inoperable due to a lack of fuel.
- In Zimbabwe , the government has moved to deregulate fuel procurement in the face of severe shortages: waits of hours for buses, gas lines that are blocks long, and a bread shortage. The black market price for gasoline is now ten times the official rate.
- Nearly all the poorer countries make their electricity using diesel generators. Nicaragua , one of the poorest countries in Central America , recently started blacking out the poorer districts between 7 and 10 p.m. , the hours of peak usage.
- Tanzania , with the highest gasoline taxes in East Africa and a chaotic oil marketing system, is seeing its plans for economic growth "suffocated" by high-priced oil. Tanzania also handles fuel for the landlocked states of Malawi , Rwanda , the Eastern Congo , Burundi and Uganda.
- And closer to home, Maxjet put off plans to offer cheap flights from Baltimore to London until spring when the company hopes fuel prices will be cheaper.
At mid-summer, the supply-demand situation remains about the same. OPEC is supposed to be increasing its daily output by some 500K barrels a day and there is evidence from increased tanker charters that this indeed may be happening. In the meantime, production in the non-OPEC countries seems to have dropped by a collective 1.2 million barrels a day below the IEA forecasts for the first half.
Thus, we have learned that $60 oil and the ensuing $2.30 gasoline is not much of deterrent to American driving habits. It is not doing much to the economy, and certainly isn't stirring up any serious action in the Congress which continues to fuss around with a largely meaningless energy bill. With good economic growth, the US demand for oil continues to increase.
The Chinese continue to claim their economy is growing nicely, suggesting increased demand for oil in the near future.
OPEC and the Russians - the folks with some spare capacity left - seem to have at least squeezed out one last round of production increases in response to calls to stem growth-endangering higher prices. At the same time, many of the world's older non-OPEC oil fields are talking of dramatic drops in production.
If one puts all this together, it is hard to escape the conclusion we just may be very close to Hubbert's peak right now and, some day, 2005 will be declared the year of peak oil.
[Don't miss the forest for some of these "sexy" trees that are showing up. Eighty-five per cent of what is known now was known - and provable - before the 2004 election. American presidencies get hobbled for one reason only; the big money and the corporations want them hobbled. The new news is that Valerie Plame is slowly, but very methodically, being linked to the Downing Street memos. Duh! This is not a big surprise.
But beyond that, the economy will tank this winter. Be sure of it. Climate collapse is imminent. (There were 37 inches of rain in "just a few hours" in Bombay yesterday. 37 inches in just a few hours.) And Peak Oil and gas will make themselves forever known and brutally acknowledged within the next six to eight months. Yet TPTB will ask you to believe that something else is happening. They will ask you to believe that only a change in administrations is needed to solve everything so that you will keep shopping at Wal-Mart; so that you will keep your 401(k) where it is; so that you will keep spending. So that you will not start to ask questions. So that you will not change your lives of your own volition. - MCR]
Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net
White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail
By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 27, 2005; A01
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.
Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street.
In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, an assertion that was later disputed.
Most of the questioning of CIA and State Department officials took place in 2004, the sources said.
It remains unclear whether Fitzgerald uncovered any wrongdoing in this or any other portion of his nearly 18-month investigation. All that is known at this point are the names of some people he has interviewed, what questions he has asked and whom he has focused on.
Fitzgerald began his probe in December 2003 to determine whether any government official knowingly leaked Plame's identity as a CIA employee to the media. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, has said his wife's career was ruined in retaliation for his public criticism of Bush. In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request of the CIA, Wilson found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from that African country and reported back to the agency in February 2002. But nearly a year later, Bush asserted in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, attributing it to British, not U.S., intelligence.
Fitzgerald has said in court that he had completed most of his investigation at a time when he was pressing for New York Times reporter Judith Miller to testify about any conversations she had with a specific administration official about Plame during the week before Plame's identity was revealed.
Miller, who never wrote a story about the matter, is in jail for refusing to comply with a court order to testify. Court records show Fitzgerald is seeking information about communications she had with the Bush official between July 6 and July 13, 2003, when the White House was attempting to discredit Wilson and his allegations.
Fitzgerald appears to believe that Miller's conversations may help him get to the bottom of the leak and the damage-control campaign undertaken by senior Bush officials that week.
Using background conversations with at least three journalists and other means, Bush officials attacked Wilson's credibility. They said that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but CIA officials say that is incorrect. One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post.
Miller's role remains one of many mysteries in the leak probe. It is unclear whom, if anyone, she spoke to about Plame, and why she emerged as a central figure in the probe despite never having written a story about the case. Also murky is the role of Novak, who first publicly identified Plame in a syndicated column published July 14, 2003.
Lawyers have confirmed that Novak discussed Plame with White House senior adviser Karl Rove four or more days before the column identifying her ran. But the identity of another "administration" source cited in the column is still unknown. Rove's attorney has said Rove did not identify Plame to Novak.
In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said that he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."
Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.
Novak and his attorney, James Hamilton, have declined to discuss the investigation, as has Fitzgerald.
Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.
Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.
In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name."
Harlow was also involved in the larger internal administration battle over who would be held responsible for Bush using the disputed charge about the Iraq-Niger connection as part of the war argument. Based on the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy.
Wilson unleashed an attack on Bush's claim on July 6, 2003, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," in an interview in The Post and writing his own op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he accused the president of "twisting" intelligence.
Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to remain in Bush's speech. As part of this effort, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not think Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors, but it is not clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official said.
On July 9, Tenet and top aides began to draft a statement over two days that ultimately said it was "a mistake" for the CIA to have permitted the 16 words about uranium to remain in Bush's speech. He said the information "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed."
A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a role in Tenet's statement.
The prosecutors have talked to State Department officials to determine what role a classified memo including two sentences about Plame's role in Wilson's Niger trip played in the damage-control campaign.
People familiar with this part of the probe provided new details about the memo, including that it was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage who requested it the day Wilson went public and asked that a copy be sent to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to take with him on a trip to Africa the next day. Bush and several top aides were on that trip. Carl W. Ford Jr., who was director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the time and who supervised the original production of the memo, has appeared before the grand jury, a former State Department official said.
[This is more than a sign of an empire in decay. In addition to weakening US military capabilities in the region and being a slap in the face for US prestige, it is also a direct move to reduce the US's (read CIA's) control over the world-record opium harvest being smuggled out of Afghanistan through Tashkent. I have no doubt that many of the flights leaving Karshi-Kanabad - just as they were from Laos in the 1960s and Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador during the 1980s - have been filled with drugs. The timing of this with China's first partial revaluation of the Yuan is another warning signal for the already fragile US economy. - MCR]
Uzbekistan Evicts U.S. From Air Base
By Robert Burns, AP Military Writer
Saturday, July 30, 2005
(07-30) 15:06 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/07/30/national/w080431D29.DTL
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan has ended its agreement allowing U.S. military aircraft and personnel to use an air base that has been an important hub for American military operations in Afghanistan, administration officials said Saturday.
No reason Uzbekistan was evicting U.S. forces from Karshi-Khanabad air base, commonly referred to as K2, was offered by either the State Department or the Defense Department. The Washington Post, which first reported the eviction notice, said no reason was given by Uzbekistan and that U.S. forces would have six months to leave.
The New York Times reported Saturday on its Web site that a State Department official cited the abrupt action as a response to a United Nations operation to take hundreds of Uzbek refugees from the region.
More than 400 people who had fled to Kyrgyzstan after an Uzbek uprising in May were flown Friday to a refugee camp in Romania. The Uzbek government had sought their return.
The U.S. Embassy in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent received the diplomatic note terminating the agreement late last week, State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck said. A Pentagon spokesman, Glenn Flood, said the notice was received Friday.
"This is a bilateral agreement between two sovereign nations, and under that agreement either side has the option to terminate that agreement," Beck said. The State Department had no further comment, she said.
The Uzbek government in recent months had tightened restriction on use of the base, including banning night flights.
"We have to step back and look at our options now and see where we go from here," Flood said. "That airfield has been very important for our operations in Afghanistan" - humanitarian as well as military.
K2 has been a critical staging point for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan since the earliest days of the war, which began in October 2001.
More recently, the base has been used to move supplies, including humanitarian aid, into northern Afghanistan. It also is a refueling point for transport planes.
The eviction notice came just days after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld returned from a Central Asia visit to two Uzbek neighboring states, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Officials in Kyrgyzstan affirmed to Rumsfeld that U.S. forces can continue to use Manas air base for as long as the Afghan war requires.
U.S. forces do not use any bases in Tajikistan, which shares a long border with northern Afghanistan. The Pentagon has an arrangement that permits U.S. planes to refuel there under certain circumstances.
During his trip, Rumsfeld said he did not believe U.S. operations in Afghanistan would be hurt if the Uzbek government denied continued use of K2 because there are other air base options in the region.
"We're always thinking ahead. We'll be fine," Rumsfeld said on Monday.
In early July, a regional organization led by Russia and China issued a statement calling for the U.S. to set a timetable for withdrawing its forces from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Uzbekistan's ties with Washington have deteriorated after the Bush administration joined other Western nations in urging an international investigation into the suppression of a May uprising in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan.
Uzbek government troops fired on protesters in the city after militants seized a prison and a government building. Authorities denied that troops fired on unarmed civilians and said that 187 people died in the unrest; human rights groups put the figure as high as 750.
Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, who has ruled for 16 years and tolerates no dissent, has blamed the violence on Islamic militants.
He has rejected the demands for an outside inquiry, and, facing Western criticism, has found a strong support in Russia and China. Both of them are wary about the U.S. military presence in the strategic and resource-rich region.
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Saudi King Fahd dead