marcosolo, 18. Januar 2004 um 13:26:36 MEZ

Arundhati Roy wünscht Bush Saddam Husseins Schicksal

ms:endlich mal jemand, der meine Meinung teilt und durch deren Teilnahme das WEF wenigstens bedingt einen Sinn macht.

(AFP) Bombay (AFP) - Die indische Globalisierungskritikerin Arundhati Roy hat US-Präsident George W. Bush wegen des Irakkriegs erneut scharf angegriffen. Wenn der von der US-Armee gefasste frühere irakische Machthaber Saddam Hussein es verdient habe, vor laufender Kamera und zur besten Sendezeit gedemütigt zu werden, "dann Bush auch", sagte Roy bei einer linksgerichteten Parallelveranstaltung zum Weltsozialforum in Bombay.

Die Schriftstellerin bezog sich auf umstrittene Bilder Saddam Husseins nach seiner Festnahme, auf denen zu sehen war, wie ein Arzt seine Mundhöhle untersuchte und Haarproben genommen wurden. Die Aufnahmen hatten lebhafte Diskussionen über die Rechte des Gefangenen und die Wahrung seiner Würde ausgelöst.

Der irakische Ex-Präsident müsse sicherlich wegen Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit verurteilt werden, sagte Roy beim Kongress der Organisation "Mumbai Resistance", die das Weltsozialforum als zu gemäßigt betrachtet. Dann müssten aber auch alle seine "Komplizen in den USA und Europa" zur Verantwortung gezogen werden.

Zugleich bekräftigte die 41-Jährige, die mit dem Buch "Der Gott der kleinen Dinge" zu Weltruhm gelangte, ihre Forderung nach der "Schließung" zweier US-Firmen, die am Wiederaufbau in Irak beteiligt sein werden. "Unser Kampf muss gegen die Besatzer und die neuen Besitzer Iraks geführt werden", rief Roy ihren rund einhundert Zuhörern zu. Sie nimmt auch am Weltsozialforum teil, bei dem bis Mittwoch knapp 100.000 Teilnehmer über Wege zu einer gerechteren Weltordnung diskutieren wollen.

 

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marcosolo, 17. Januar 2004 um 22:52:07 MEZ

They're Lying to Us About Space

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY by Libby Hicks

Wouldn't you think someone in the mainstream media would develop a memory? How recently did this administration lie about the reasons for invading Iraq?

So suddenly Bush is JFK, and he has announced new plans for going to the moon and to Mars because he is an idealistic space visionary at heart?

While at least a few reporters are covering Ted Kennedy's speech about Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the Project for a New American Century, would someone in the media please click on to PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" -- the classic in which a longing for another Pearl Harbor is expressed -- and then scroll down to the section about space? Read about their real plan for space -- as a battlefield under total military control of the US.

The authors of the report viewed it as a hindrance to their goals that the National Reconnaissance Office (which appropriates funds) did not share their vision. When Bush took office, the priorities of the NRO changed.

In an article entitled "U.S. 'Negation' policy in space raises concerns abroad" (EE Times, 5/22/03), Loring Wirbel wrote the following:

...The nation's largest intelligence agency by budget and in control of all U.S. spy satellites, NRO is talking openly with the U.S. Air Force Space Command about actively denying the use of space for intelligence purposes to any other nation at any time-not just adversaries, but even longtime allies, according to NRO director Peter Teets.

At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."

Beginning next year, NRO will be in charge of the new Offensive Counter-Space program, which will come up with plans to specifically deny the use of near-Earth space to other nations, said Teets.

The program will include two components: the Counter Communication System, designed to disrupt other nations' communication networks from space; and the Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance System, formed to prevent other countries from using advanced intelligence-gathering technology in air or space.

"Negation implies treating allies poorly," Robert Lawson, senior policy adviser for nonproliferation in the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, said at a Toronto conference in late March. "It implies treaty busting."

Hints of such a policy showed up in the Rumsfeld Commission report of January 2001, which warned of a "space Pearl Harbor" if the United States did not dominate low-earth, geosynchronous and polar orbital planes, as well as all launch facilities and ground stations, to exploit space for battlefield advantage...

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Judd Blaisdell, director of the Air Force Space Operations Office, said recently, "We are so dominant in space that I pity a country that would come up against us..."

Actually, I sort of pity us.

Libby Hicks

 

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marcosolo, 17. Januar 2004 um 17:35:17 MEZ

Senator Kennedy Accuses Bush of Using Iraq War for Political Gain

By Deborah Tate Voice of America News

Washington, January 14, 2004 -- A prominent U.S. Senate Democrat is accusing the Bush administration of breaking faith with the American people by waging what he calls "an unnecessary war" with Iraq. Senator Ted Kennedy says the administration used the war and its aftermath for Republican political gain.

Senator Kennedy says the Bush administration came to office determined to find a rationale for ousting former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

In a speech in Washington, Mr. Kennedy said the White House capitalized on the fear created by the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States and 'distorted the truth' about Iraq's weapons programs to justify going to war.

He said the decision to go to war, "could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."

"No president of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war," said Senator Kennedy. "In doing so, the president broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war."

Mr. Kennedy, the leading liberal Democrat in the Senate, praised President Bush's former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill for his comments this week that the administration began planning the Iraq war long before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The administration has denied such assertions, saying the president decided to go to war last March, only after all other options were exhausted.

In his speech, Senator Kennedy said the administration's decision to go to war, and to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people were timed to influence U.S. congressional elections in 2002 and President Bush's re-election campaign this year.

But at the same time, Mr. Kennedy acknowledged the United States cannot abandon Iraq.

"We cannot simply walk away from the wreckage of a war we never should have fought, so that President Bush can wage a political campaign based on dubious boasts of success," he said. "Our overarching interest now is in the creation of a new Iraqi government that has legitimacy in the eyes of its own citizens, so that in the years ahead, the process of constructing democratic institutions and creating a stable peace can be completed. The date of Iraq's transition must not be determined by the date of U.S. elections."

Mr. Kennedy also took issue with the Bush administration view that the war with Iraq has made the United States safer.

"The war has made America more hated in the world, especially in the Islamic world," continued Senator Kennedy. "And it has made our people more vulnerable to attacks both here and overseas. By far the most serious consequence of the unjustified and unnecessary war in Iraq is that it made the war on terrorism harder to win. We knocked al-Qaida down in the war in Afghanistan, but we let it regroup by going to war in Iraq."

Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network are blamed for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

 

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