The High Priests of Globalisation

Mend the Atlantic alliance

2003-12-30T15:29:00.000Z

Mend the Atlantic alliance
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/story/0,4386,225914,00.html

OTTO GRAF LAMBSDORFF
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

BONN - It has been distressing to see how the meaning of 'alliance' has been so manhandled of late - especially with regard to the Atlantic alliance, which has proven so successful over three generations. In need of a re- definition once the Cold War ended, it has remarkably shown a renewed purpose and capability, in the Balkans, for instance, or in Afghanistan.

Yet the conflict in Iraq seems at times to have jammed its operative core as never before in my memory, to the point where new mending efforts have become of the highest priority.

At such times, I am simply impressed by the value of the contribution that a number of private organisations can bring to bear - organisations whose international memberships are too diverse to pretend to achieve anything approaching an official consensus, yet which have managed over the years to keep alive the kind of frank transatlantic dialogue we so sorely need today.

By 'frank', I mean often sharp, yet always mindful of the overarching stake we have in being allies across the ocean. I participated in several such recent debates in frameworks like the Trilateral Commission or Bilderberg. One, in Portugal in October, was graced by the sober, off-the-record remarks of Mr Adnan Pachachi, who will assume the presidency of Iraq's Governing Council next month.

In sharp contrast with much of a European press which, in line with its initial opposition to war, is prone to highlight the 'American quagmire', Mr Pachachi underscored not only the inherent difficulties faced by the coalition but also its steady progress on the concrete material, social and political grounds.

Another one - in New York last month - elicited perhaps the key to our problem: Whatever doubts some (not I) may have had about the wisdom of the coalition's very ambitious intervention in Mesopotamia, our obvious collective interest as allies is to do everything to avoid its eventual failure and to participate in full in pacifying and re-building a viable Iraq - with all the positive ripples that could ensue in this tortured region.

How did we get to this pass in the first place? Surely, there is much blame to go around. On Europe's part - and speaking only for myself - I believe that German and French behaviour, and especially language, were inexcusable. For a major ally of the United States to announce in advance that it would not abide by any United Nations resolution asking for military action was to drive an unprecedented political wedge among us. On the face of it, it amounted to unilateralism at its worst. The standing official declaration from Berlin that no German troops will be sent to Iraq makes no sense: If it is all right for us to be present and effective in Kabul, why would Baghdad be of less concern to us?

Fortunately, there are signs today that some repair work is under way. It is visible in the German stance, more modest in France, and very real in Russia.

The latest UN Security Council resolution on Iraq on Oct 16 shows a considerable American desire to compromise. Above all, it opens the way for a genuine 'internationalisation' of the conflict, through which, in turn, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (Nato) proven peacekeeping capabilities can be brought to bear in the region, with the active participation of German and French troops, among others.

Similar signs of conciliation happily concluded the defence summit meeting last week on Nato defence. To my great relief, the somewhat baroque proposal to create a European military headquarters out of nothing in Tervuren, near Brussels, and separate from Nato, has been shelved.

The favoured solution of a planning cell within the European Union's existing structure - hence under the authority of the high representative for our elusive 'common' defence and foreign policies, Mr Javier Solana - seems to me the right way not to duplicate the ever-essential integrity of the alliance. That is to say, it allows European forces to play a full part, which they may choose within a Nato framework that has again and again shown how indispensable it remains.

In the meantime, perhaps the worst result of the transatlantic ado over Iraq this year has been the growing anti-American feeling in large segments of European public opinion. Old or new, this sentiment is fuelled by daily reports of American 'non-success' on the ground. Which goes to prove that a return to normal relations among allies - rather than imaginary rivalries that are so at odds with the osmosis of our cultures across the ocean - is the right way to proceed.

People, starting with the American people, hotly reject today the role of policemen of the world. It is the essence of our alliance - and, when it temporarily lapses, that of private, independent forums - to breed the kind of ongoing transatlantic dialogue that must prevail, today more than ever.

Not unsurprisingly in the current climate of transatlantic relations, a somewhat blunt statement from the Pentagon concerning economic re- construction contracts in Iraq has revived fears of 'retribution' on the part of the US against those who did not join the coalition. This is far from the truth.

US President George W. Bush's decision to send his father's secretary of state, Mr James Baker, to Germany and other countries is welcome news. And, to put it very frankly, some of us in Europe should feel hard put to claim an immediate commercial harvest from a conflict fought principally by our allies across the ocean, at a high cost in human lives and money.

The writer is honorary European chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a former economics minister of Germany

Mr.Bush and his gang of thugs find it very hard to hide the TRUTH in the internet age

2003-12-30T15:28:00.000Z

Mr.Bush and his gang of thugs find it very hard to hide the TRUTH in the internet age
http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=46577

The American Neo-Conservative War Party, in firm control of both major political parties in the United States, is getting increasingly and obviously more desperate. ... The desperation is also due to the increasing inability of Mr. Bush and his Israeli- affiliated advisors to quash the free flow of information in an Internet age.

The Entangling American Alliance With Israel: More of the American Right Catches On by Mark Dankof for Al Bawaba

The American Neo-Conservative War Party, in firm control of both major political parties in the United States, is getting increasingly and obviously more desperate. The transparent desperation comes in the wake of plummeting opinion polls about Mr. Bush-s preemptive war in Iraq. This in turn is related to brewing public discontent over provably false pre-war intelligence estimates, skyrocketing war bills, a steady stream of young American deaths in what is demonstrably now an urban guerrilla war in Baghdad, the ongoing public exposure of the crooked character of no-bid contract awards and accompanying war profiteering by the President-s friends in entrenched places like Halliburton Oil and Bechtel, and insane suggestions by key Administration advisors that an expansion of the preemptive war doctrine may soon include Syria and Iran.

The desperation is also due to the increasing inability of Mr. Bush and his Israeli-affiliated advisors to quash the free flow of information in an Internet age. Where once the denizens of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and The New Republic could insure a mainstream Left-Right War Party consensus on American Empire and Israel through the control and manipulation of disseminated news, their Information Monolith has become an increasing casualty of citizen accessibility to responsible domestic and international data and op-ed pieces which shed light upon what was an aura of darkness.

The most recent example of the shedding of light and the absence of the Emperor-s clothing occurred this week in two articles covering a story with the potential to sear the War Party even further. The British Guardian-s November 22nd story by Jamie Doward and Jessica Hodgson entitled, "Pentagon Bankers May Bail Out [Conrad] Black: -Ex-Presidents Club- [Carlyle Group] Ready to Throw Lifeline to Embattled Telegraph Owner," and Justin Raimondo-s Antiwar.com op-ed piece entitled, "Conrad Black and the Corruption of Empire: The War PartyvThey-re Thieves As Well as Liars," both reveal the ominous triangular alliance of Mr. Bush-s Neo-Conservative Chicken Hawks with military-related contractors and the ever-present Israeli Lobby at a time when a trusting consensus in the President and his preemptive war policies is coming apart like a cheap suit.

The story is fraught with implications. Lord Conrad Black, the recently deposed CEO of Hollinger International, Inc. and continued owner of the British Telegraph, was forced to step down at Hollinger after pocketing $7.2 million in unauthorized pay, not including millions in payments to Black-s front companies for "management services." Hollinger-s stockholders are demanding a company investigation. The Security and Exchange Commission is also involved.

But far more than Conrad Black-s criminal exposure is involved in the Hollinger affair, whose newspaper portfolio includes the Likudnik Jerusalem Post. Justin Raimondo reminds readers at Antiwar.com that Chief Neo-Con adviser to George Bush and Israeli asset, Richard Perle, is a Board Member of Hollinger and the head of Hollinger Digital, the company-s venture capital arm---which in turn has invested $2.5 million in Trireme Partners, a subsidiary seeking to cash in on defense contracts and the Homeland Security buildup. Hollinger International also invested $14 million in an outfit called Hillman Capital, whose managing partner, Gerald Hillman, is not only a Perle partner at Trireme, but a fellow colleague at the infamous Defense Policy Board. It is this latter American national security conclave where the interests of defense contractors and assets of the Ariel Sharon regime in Israel intersect in the Pentagon board-s individual and collective membership.

As Raimondo puts it, the Hollinger media combine is a ". . .particularly muscular tentacle of the Neo-Con media octopus. . .its demise would mark a great setback for the War Party." There is a corollary to this truism: the demise of Hollinger would not simply be a setback for the agitprop tentacles of the War Party, but a potential takedown of much more than the personage of Conrad Black. Who else might go down, criminally as well as politically, and what might be the subsequent implications for the credibility of American, Israeli, and British national security and banking elites if the takedown occurs in the light of day?

Key chessplayers with concealed hands may be attempting to arrange the pieces on the board to insure that the answers remain hidden in the darkness. The infamous Carlyle Group, linked to Bush and Bin Laden family investments, American defense contractors and oil consortiums, central bankers and Likudniks, has now stepped forward to indicate a possible interest in rescuing Hollinger International. The November 22nd Guardian story quotes a Carlyle source as indicating that: 1) the sum of the arrangement would be a removal of Conrad Black from management, but not his equity stake; 2) a Carlyle investment sum that could be as much as a 40% ownership of Hollinger; and 3) a provision for Carlyle to name new members to the Hollinger Board of Directors. Black must be rejoicing in a proposed arrangement which allows him to keep the dough, stay on this side of the law and jail, and maintain the protective covering of a management umbrella comprised of heavyweights John Major, George Herbert Walker Bush, James Baker, Frank Carlucci, Henry Kissinger?and Richard Perle. One suspects that Mr. Black-s membership in the secretive, globalist Bilderberg group, mentioned in the Guardian account, would also remain intact.

What does not remain intact is the credibility of Mr. Bush and his top advisors about the moral and political rationale for war in Iraq. Especially problematic for the President--and for the Israeli Lobby-s agents in both the Executive and Legislative Branches of the American government--is the exposure of a widening breach in the electorate generally, and on the starboard side of the political spectrum in the United States specifically, when it comes to the questions of Oil, Empire, and Israel as legitimate grounds for the expenditure of American lives. The vetting this week of the deeper implications of a Carlyle-Hollinger International, Inc. business partnership simply heightens this developing gulf, much to the chagrin of both George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon.

William Kristol-s The Weekly Standard, William F. Buckley-s National Review, Joseph Farah-s pro-Israel Internet site World Net Daily, and the tel-evangelists of the Dispensational Christian lobby will continue to march to the drumbeats of more preemptive war, more military intervention, and more death on behalf of oil pipelines and Sharon-s occupation policies on the West Bank and Gaza. But other winds on the American Right have begun to blow in the opposite direction. These winds gather with increasing speed and resolve, in a desire to restore the Old Republic while avoiding planetary apocalypse and American policy paths designed to revisit the tragedies of the Roman and British Empires past. They include Patrick J. Buchanan-s The American Conservative; Clayton R. Douglas-s The Free American; Jon Basil Utley-s Americans Against World Empire; Eric Garris-s Antiwar.com; LewRockwell.com; Robert Higgs-s The Independent Review; and the powerful, yet theologically reflective essays of Catholic commentator Joseph Sobran.

The plot thickens. Stay tuned.

(Mark Dankof is an Internet news commentator and book reviewer for Uncensored News and Views. A past candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware in 2000, he is a Lutheran pastor and post-graduate student of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. His own web site, Mark Dankof-s America, contains many articles and items of interest, including the recently completed 14 chapter manuscript A Summer of a Thousand Nights: From Tehran to Susa.)

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A world in which friendship and business blur

2003-12-30T15:25:00.000Z

A world in which friendship and business blur
http://www.iht.com/articles/122478.htm

Jacques Steinberg and Geraldine Fabrikant The New York Times
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

NEW YORK On the dust jacket of his recently published biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Conrad Black, the embattled media magnate, collected laudatory blurbs from an impressive set of conservative thinkers.

Henry Kissinger wrote, "No biography of Roosevelt is more thoughtful and readable." The columnist George Will called the book a "delight to read." And William Buckley Jr. commended it as "a learned volume on FDR by a vital critical mind."

What the blurbs did not mention was that each man was praising the work of a sometime boss. During the 1990's, Black appointed all three to an informal international board of advisers at Hollinger International, the newspaper company he controlled. For showing up once a year with Black to debate the world's problems, each was typically paid about $25,000 annually until the board was disbanded in 2001.

The advisory board was one example of how friendships with rich and often politically influential people overlapped with business in Black's world. The board became a who's who of mostly conservative thinkers and politicians who included Margaret Thatcher, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Perle and the former head of Archer Daniels Midland, Dwayne Andreas.

Black enjoyed more than just conversation from the advisers that Hollinger paid for. Will and Buckley have since written positively about Black in their columns, though without mentioning their business dealings. Three other members of the advisory board later joined Hollinger's board as directors.

But now, as Black and Hollinger face inquiries by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department into more than $200 million that Black and his top executives collected, these interlocking relationships may come to haunt not only Black but also the directors who oversaw the company while these payments were being made. In some cases the directors themselves accepted additional payments from the company.

Black, who was scheduled to testify before the securities commission on Monday, was advised by his lawyers to invoke his constitutional right to remain silent because he had not had time to review all the documents related to the current issues, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

The overlapping of Black's social, political and business lives, which was reflected in the composition of the Hollinger board, is being scrutinized in the investigation. In the 1990's, Kissinger, Perle and Andreas served as directors when they were also getting paid by the company for advising Black. Kissinger, Perle and Andreas declined repeated requests for interviews last week, as did Black.

A closer look at the members of Black's inner circle sheds light not just on board oversight but also on how he managed, over just two decades, to transform an obscure Canadian mining company into the owner of more than 100 daily newspapers, including The Daily Telegraph of London, The Jerusalem Post and The Chicago Sun- Times.

In the process, Black was transformed into a press baron who lived lavishly on Park Avenue, in Palm Beach and in London and was at ease in the most prominent salons in the world. His annual Hollinger Dinner attracted the likes of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.

"I think Conrad did these things less for the bottom line than to create the aura that group gave him," said Peter Munk, the founder and chairman of Barrick Gold, who served briefly on the Hollinger board in 1990's. "He reveled in that aura."

Brzezinski, who was national security adviser in the Carter administration, said he first met Black perhaps four decades ago at one of several international conferences that they frequented. One is known as the Bilderberg group, a conclave of business and political leaders from North America and Europe that meets each year for discussions that are off the record.

"He's an extremely intelligent guy, very well read," Brzezinski said. In the early 1990's, Black decided to form a miniature Bilderberg of his own by creating a board to advise Hollinger on international affairs, according to "Shades of Black," a biography by Richard Siklos, a former reporter for Business Week and The Financial Post, a business newspaper in Toronto.

According to Siklos, the advisory board's earliest incarnations included Kissinger, Perle, Brzezinski and Thatcher as well as Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Chaim Herzog, a former president of Israel. They were later joined by others, including Will and Buckley.

Though Black frequently found room for liberals on his list of dinner guests, the members of the advisory panel usually shared Black's conservative views.

Brzezinski's personal records show that he collected almost $170,000 for attending seven such meetings during the 1990's. Buckley estimated that he earned perhaps $200,000 or more. Will could not recall how many meetings he had attended; an aide later confirmed that the fee for each meeting was $25,000.

Though conversations at the advisory meetings could be illuminating, Buckley said he would be hard pressed to find an example of how the sessions had been of assistance to Hollinger.

But sometimes having such good friends helped burnish Black's public image. In a column syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group in March, Will recounted observations Black had made in a London speech defending the Bush administration's stance on Iraq.

In a rebuttal to Bush's critics, Will wrote, "Into this welter of foolishness had waded Conrad Black, a British citizen and member of the House of Lords who is a proprietor of many newspapers."

Asked in an interview whether he should have told his readers of the payments he had received from Hollinger, Will said he saw no reason to.

"My business is my business," he said. "Got it?"

Alan Shearer, editorial director and general manager of the Washington Post Writers Group, said he was unaware of Will's affiliation with Hollinger or the money he had received. "I think I would have liked to have known," Shearer said.

Aside from some good press, there were more tangible benefits for both Black and the people who associated with him, benefits that go to the heart of shareholder complaints about the company.

Perle, the former head of the U.S. Defense Policy Board who has served on the Hollinger board, also served as chairman or co-chairman of Hollinger Digital, a unit of the parent company, after its inception in 1996. In that capacity, he was paid more than $300,000 a year in salary and $2 million in bonuses - figures that have not previously been disclosed, according to someone with knowledge of the company. Reached for comment, Perle referred all questions on these payments to the company.

Trireme, a venture capital firm partly managed by Perle and advised by Black, received a $2.5 million investment from Hollinger this year, although the company did not initially disclose the firm's name, according to company filings. Hollinger also gave about $200,000 a year to National Interest, a foreign affairs publication where Black and Kissinger are co-chairmen of the editorial board, of which Perle is a member. The payments were first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

Hollinger disclosed last month that the company had given several current and former executives more than $30 million in payments that had not been approved by the company's board. In earlier filings, the company said some of these payments had been approved by its independent directors.

By accepting additional fees for having served among Black's international advisers, the three could be considered consultants or insiders. According to Charles Elson, professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware, accepting those payments increases their potential liability for oversight failures.

Herbert Denton, an informal adviser to Hollinger shareholders, was more blunt. "They were lined up at the trough," he said. "One hand was washing the other."

Some shareholders are also angry about roughly $200 million in management fees paid to another company controlled by Black since 1995. In the wake of the company's announcement, Black has quit as chief executive but is staying on as chairman while the board explores whether to sell any company assets.

2003-12-30T15:24:00.000Z

The Economics of the Noble Path
http://www.guerrillanews.com/globalization/doc3588.html

Adam Porter, December 16, 2003

The Economics of the Noble Path group meet every now and then. Like the great and the good do at weekends. They quietly invite interesting speakers from around the world to Italy, in this case the seaside town of Rimini. There they discuss events, past present and future. They try to map out ideas of a better, brighter, fairer world. Or at least they say they do. Then they go back to five star hotels and drink champagne, sponsored by banks, corporations and in this case that well known democracy the State of Qatar. Whilst doing this they reaffirm to themselves that they are making the globe a better place for us all. But let us be clear, they are making the place worse, much worse.

"It's fucking shit," said one renegade delegate, the laudable Nobel prize winning author Derek Walcott from the Caribbean island of St Lucia. "I don't give a shit, I'm fucking frustrated. I don't care. This whole experience has been exasperating, fucking terrible. It's too fucking exasperating, I'm tired of talking, I need to cool down…oh…fucking hell. Who do these people think they are? I…mean…their egos, I don't give a shit who they are, they need to shut up."

This was Walcott's reaction to the three day meeting, and this is a man who can express himself. He has been to the lair of the `Economica Del Nobile Sentiero` and he is worried. Do they scare you? They should do. The Economics Of The Noble Path society is like a mutated cross between the Bilderberg Group and the Wizard of Oz's Yellow Brick Road. But it is somehow worse. At least the Bilderberg group want to destroy mankind, this rabble think they are sorting us out.

They have a deep contact with the United Nations, the bumbling frightened group of useless men and women who spent so long on their knees in front of the USA that they finally succumbed in February, as "the evil of international law" was "destroyed," as President Bush's advisor Richard Perle put it.

And remember this is a `liberal` group. Or at least that is how it sees itself. This is the 'centre ground' meeting. This is supposedly an alternative to the monetarist cowboys and pro-beard Mullahs who seek to do their business in the rest of the world. Well, they say they are an alternative.

If this is the `noble` route we are going to take to get ourselves out of climate change, financial collapse, the end of oil and the death of the water table, well, we don't have a hope.

"Who needs hope?" said arch American nihilist, Shumacher Society board member and fellow speaker Kirkpatrick Sale. "A world without hope would be a good thing. I can't do anything for the people of South Central Los Angeles, or along the banks of the Hudson River, those people are lost, hopeless. Hope is just something that religions sell."

For a second it seemed like Dick Cheney had magically appeared and was being honest about his real views. But no. And these were the best people there.

The jury was kind of out on Lester Brown. He runs the Earth Policy Institute in the USA which monitors global warming and so on. He wears trainers and a bow tie. A kind of Lou Grant cool. He also had some very interesting things to say about food.

"In the next one to two years I think the `wake-up call` is going to come, in the shape of sharply increasing food prices. Because of one factor, China is draining its water supply, namely its giant fossilised aquifer that sits underneath its farming regions. As it drains its aquifer for irrigation the water cannot be replaced. As it has less water, and as global temperatures rise, it is getting less and less harvest. It takes around 1000 tonnes of water to make one tonne of grain, so in effect the futures market in grain has become a futures market in water.

So in one or two years it is going to start importing grain, for the very first time. This will be from the United States. Now in the past the idea that the United States would sell huge amounts of grain to China in its hour of need would have been laughed at, even ten years ago. But now America has a trade deficit with China, of $100bn a year. China can buy all America's grain…twice over."

So, we are in the Gustav Schmidt. Food prices are going to go bezerk because of a totalitarian state and the effects of corporations heating up our tiny planet. But despite Lester having the only interesting thing to say over the whole three day hell- hole he got it in the neck from Kirkpatrick and Walcott, privately of course. Lester had overrun his allotted time, he does not have time to stay for questions, or even to hear other speakers. "He is like a rock star on tour," said Sale dismissively. But by this time everyone was frothing, me included, it was hard to see the wood for the self-satisfied grins and bursting frowns.

Still, in the calm light of day, at least Lester had an interesting and important point to raise. Unlike most of the other speakers. Between them they were a fawning bunch of chino-clad academics, bankers and assorted system-tweakers. Happy to purvey their complicit and tired world view to an audience who struggled to keep their eyes open, literally.

The former Sandanista Minister of Culture and poet Ernesto Cardenal was the best at somnambulant speaking. He read four of his awful religious poems about how God created love and trees and so on, without ceasing. Nearly an hour of relentless drivel, it could have been the catchphrase of the whole event. Except it lasted three days. He sent tens of people to sleep.

The plum voiced British MEP Emma Nicholson was also at the event. She attended in her role as Vice President of the European Union Committee on Foreign Affairs and Human Rights. She was there, like so many others, to receive some sort of award for humanitarianism. So were the bankers and the academics and the UN people and the Nobel writers. Backslapping extreme.

Nicholson is obsessed with promoting her work for the Marsh Arabs. A cause relentlessly championed by the political right, as if to show their compassion. At a press conference she spoke passionately about how only laws, and the communal application of laws, can bring true freedoms to societies such as Iraq. Only when the ideas of the UN have been implemented in Iraq will there be freedom.

"The key is the implementation of human rights conventions," she said. "The separation of politics and justice is paramount, all people must come under justice."

So, I asked her, how does Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air base - where the U.S. have beaten to death two prisoners - and the coalition prison in Baghdad, holding 11,000 without trial, fit in to that role of communal law? Especially as her role as vice president of an EU committee on human rights?

"What?" she said seemingly confused. "Gua what, Guat what? What? I don't…" She turned to her Italian translator to help her out.

"You know," said the translator in her Italian accent, possibly translating English into English for the first time. "Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the prisoners are held."

"What?" repeated Nicholson. "I don't understand."

"You know, the prisons.."

"Oh that…" said Nicholson "well, my answer to that is…I'm a European."

Which didn't appear to be an answer at all, it appeared to be code for "fuck off."

She was helped out, pathetically, by Giandomenico Picco, a man you may not have heard of, but he is the UN Undersecretary in New York, a powerful man. He leapt to Emma's aide "those are conflicts which are not European," he spluttered. Which if you think about it for more than five seconds is absolute nonsense. British, Danish, Spanish, Polish and other European troops were all involved. Still, this is the level of public servant we have these days. They will try anything to get out of a difficult situation. Prevarication, deception, water muddying, it all works for them. Keeps one in canapés.

Eventually I got her to admit that European nations had been involved in all the conflicts which led to these prisons being created. She refused to countenance anything to do with Afghanistan, she is after all "a European" but said she, "would like to go and visit the prison in Baghdad, but I haven't had an opportunity. And remember Iraq is full of criminals."

Six months after the war and the representative of the European Union committee that deals with human rights has not even visited the jail. Still, Iraq is full of criminals. It certainly is. So, to sort a few things out I cornered her as she tried to leave.

What about the countries that supplied Saddam? What about the countries that broke sanctions, their own and those of the UN? Should those politicians be prosecuted?

"Yes they should. 37 countries broke those arms sanctions, some countries supplied both sides in the Iran Iraq war, and I think some sort of tribunal should be set up under the power of the United Nations to investigate the matter, I don't know if it will but…"

Including the British Conservative ministers who did the same?

"Well, I don't want to get involved in libel," she spluttered stepping backwards. "But, well, one of the ministers who sanctioned it was Clark...Alan Clark"

Alan Clark is of course dead and hence can't sue. However Ms Nicholson forgot Geoffrey Howe, Norman Fowler and Margaret Thatcher. She may have also omitted that she was a Conservative at the time, like you do. But she did say some important things.

"The British Parliament had banned arms sales to Iraq in 1984. That vote in parliament was broken and we (MPs) were not to know for many years. It was a deeply disillusioning moment and it shocked me very deeply. I made my mind up at that time (of the Scott Inquiry) that I decided to do something for the Marsh Arabs, to try and repair some of the damage done by our ministers, the sanctions broken by our ministers. It was a very very ugly feature of the times, sanction breaking is an illegality and it should be punished, and those who broke the sanctions should be tried."

"But…" she added. "…the world is a deeply imperfect place."

However you would be forgiven if you did not think that. Especially if you had seen the frighteningly complacent speeches by bankers and corporate advisors at the podium. Hey what's the problem just get rid of the "extremists on both sides." Then there were the self congratulatory 'medal ceremonies'. This included a sickeningly sentimental posthumous one, replete with video, to Sergio de Mello. It would have made a great orgy. As an intellectual gathering it fell horribly short.

But here and there were chinks of light. It isn't all fakery and canapés. Jean Zeigler of the UN spoke with anger about the connections and similarities between GW Bush and OB Laden, and how "globalisation is like AIDS it destroys the immune system of poor countries." Both receiving applause.

Dr. Colin Campbell once again extolled the audience on the forthcoming peak in global oil production and its possible effects. Derek Walcott swore and told the audience the whole event was a waste of time "apart from my medal, I liked that." And Kirkpatrick Sale got lost his anger, in his own anarcho-communalistic despair.

But let us not go home with no hope. The small number of Italian students who were fortunate enough to attend could speak the truth. As with all events such as this it is only here that we see how ordinary people know best. We see how any elite will inevitably be lost in a sea of chauffeurs, back slapping and Pouilly Fume.

"They don't care," said a young woman waving her fingers at the departing dignitaries. "The system is too good for them. They talk a lot and do nothing, they say how bad things are and then they go to the Grand Hotel (Five Stars) for lunch. What did they say? That the world is wrong? We know that. Are they really serious? Do they think we can't see?"

We can see alright, and it isn't pleasant.

Adam Porter is GNN's European correspondent

2003-12-30T15:19:00.000Z

Mend the Atlantic alliance
straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/ story/0,4386,225914,00.html

OTTO GRAF LAMBSDORFF
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

BONN - It has been distressing to see how the meaning of 'alliance' has been so manhandled of late - especially with regard to the Atlantic alliance, which has proven so successful over three generations. In need of a re- definition once the Cold War ended, it has remarkably shown a renewed purpose and capability, in the Balkans, for instance, or in Afghanistan.

Yet the conflict in Iraq seems at times to have jammed its operative core as never before in my memory, to the point where new mending efforts have become of the highest priority.

At such times, I am simply impressed by the value of the contribution that a number of private organisations can bring to bear - organisations whose international memberships are too diverse to pretend to achieve anything approaching an official consensus, yet which have managed over the years to keep alive the kind of frank transatlantic dialogue we so sorely need today.

By 'frank', I mean often sharp, yet always mindful of the overarching stake we have in being allies across the ocean. I participated in several such recent debates in frameworks like the Trilateral Commission or Bilderberg. One, in Portugal in October, was graced by the sober, off-the-record remarks of Mr Adnan Pachachi, who will assume the presidency of Iraq's Governing Council next month.

In sharp contrast with much of a European press which, in line with its initial opposition to war, is prone to highlight the 'American quagmire', Mr Pachachi underscored not only the inherent difficulties faced by the coalition but also its steady progress on the concrete material, social and political grounds.

Another one - in New York last month - elicited perhaps the key to our problem: Whatever doubts some (not I) may have had about the wisdom of the coalition's very ambitious intervention in Mesopotamia, our obvious collective interest as allies is to do everything to avoid its eventual failure and to participate in full in pacifying and re-building a viable Iraq - with all the positive ripples that could ensue in this tortured region.

How did we get to this pass in the first place? Surely, there is much blame to go around. On Europe's part - and speaking only for myself - I believe that German and French behaviour, and especially language, were inexcusable. For a major ally of the United States to announce in advance that it would not abide by any United Nations resolution asking for military action was to drive an unprecedented political wedge among us. On the face of it, it amounted to unilateralism at its worst. The standing official declaration from Berlin that no German troops will be sent to Iraq makes no sense: If it is all right for us to be present and effective in Kabul, why would Baghdad be of less concern to us?

Fortunately, there are signs today that some repair work is under way. It is visible in the German stance, more modest in France, and very real in Russia.

The latest UN Security Council resolution on Iraq on Oct 16 shows a considerable American desire to compromise. Above all, it opens the way for a genuine 'internationalisation' of the conflict, through which, in turn, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (Nato) proven peacekeeping capabilities can be brought to bear in the region, with the active participation of German and French troops, among others.

Similar signs of conciliation happily concluded the defence summit meeting last week on Nato defence. To my great relief, the somewhat baroque proposal to create a European military headquarters out of nothing in Tervuren, near Brussels, and separate from Nato, has been shelved.

The favoured solution of a planning cell within the European Union's existing structure - hence under the authority of the high representative for our elusive 'common' defence and foreign policies, Mr Javier Solana - seems to me the right way not to duplicate the ever-essential integrity of the alliance. That is to say, it allows European forces to play a full part, which they may choose within a Nato framework that has again and again shown how indispensable it remains.

In the meantime, perhaps the worst result of the transatlantic ado over Iraq this year has been the growing anti-American feeling in large segments of European public opinion. Old or new, this sentiment is fuelled by daily reports of American 'non-success' on the ground. Which goes to prove that a return to normal relations among allies - rather than imaginary rivalries that are so at odds with the osmosis of our cultures across the ocean - is the right way to proceed.

People, starting with the American people, hotly reject today the role of policemen of the world. It is the essence of our alliance - and, when it temporarily lapses, that of private, independent forums - to breed the kind of ongoing transatlantic dialogue that must prevail, today more than ever.

Not unsurprisingly in the current climate of transatlantic relations, a somewhat blunt statement from the Pentagon concerning economic re- construction contracts in Iraq has revived fears of 'retribution' on the part of the US against those who did not join the coalition. This is far from the truth.

US President George W. Bush's decision to send his father's secretary of state, Mr James Baker, to Germany and other countries is welcome news. And, to put it very frankly, some of us in Europe should feel hard put to claim an immediate commercial harvest from a conflict fought principally by our allies across the ocean, at a high cost in human lives and money.

The writer is honorary European chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a former economics minister of Germany

2003-12-30T14:45:00.000Z

Mr.Bush and his gang of thugs find it very hard to hide the TRUTH in the internet age

The American Neo-Conservative War Party, in firm control of both major political parties in the United States, is getting increasingly and obviously more desperate. ... The desperation is also due to the increasing inability of Mr. Bush and his Israeli- affiliated advisors to quash the free flow of information in an Internet age.

The Entangling American Alliance With Israel: More of the American Right Catches On by Mark Dankof for Al Bawaba

The American Neo-Conservative War Party, in firm control of both major political parties in the United States, is getting increasingly and obviously more desperate. The transparent desperation comes in the wake of plummeting opinion polls about Mr. Bush-s preemptive war in Iraq. This in turn is related to brewing public discontent over provably false pre-war intelligence estimates, skyrocketing war bills, a steady stream of young American deaths in what is demonstrably now an urban guerrilla war in Baghdad, the ongoing public exposure of the crooked character of no-bid contract awards and accompanying war profiteering by the President-s friends in entrenched places like Halliburton Oil and Bechtel, and insane suggestions by key Administration advisors that an expansion of the preemptive war doctrine may soon include Syria and Iran.

The desperation is also due to the increasing inability of Mr. Bush and his Israeli-affiliated advisors to quash the free flow of information in an Internet age. Where once the denizens of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and The New Republic could insure a mainstream Left-Right War Party consensus on American Empire and Israel through the control and manipulation of disseminated news, their Information Monolith has become an increasing casualty of citizen accessibility to responsible domestic and international data and op-ed pieces which shed light upon what was an aura of darkness.

The most recent example of the shedding of light and the absence of the Emperor-s clothing occurred this week in two articles covering a story with the potential to sear the War Party even further. The British Guardian-s November 22nd story by Jamie Doward and Jessica Hodgson entitled, "Pentagon Bankers May Bail Out [Conrad] Black: -Ex-Presidents Club- [Carlyle Group] Ready to Throw Lifeline to Embattled Telegraph Owner," and Justin Raimondo-s Antiwar.com op-ed piece entitled, "Conrad Black and the Corruption of Empire: The War PartyvThey-re Thieves As Well as Liars," both reveal the ominous triangular alliance of Mr. Bush-s Neo-Conservative Chicken Hawks with military-related contractors and the ever-present Israeli Lobby at a time when a trusting consensus in the President and his preemptive war policies is coming apart like a cheap suit.

The story is fraught with implications. Lord Conrad Black, the recently deposed CEO of Hollinger International, Inc. and continued owner of the British Telegraph, was forced to step down at Hollinger after pocketing $7.2 million in unauthorized pay, not including millions in payments to Black-s front companies for "management services." Hollinger-s stockholders are demanding a company investigation. The Security and Exchange Commission is also involved.

But far more than Conrad Black-s criminal exposure is involved in the Hollinger affair, whose newspaper portfolio includes the Likudnik Jerusalem Post. Justin Raimondo reminds readers at Antiwar.com that Chief Neo-Con adviser to George Bush and Israeli asset, Richard Perle, is a Board Member of Hollinger and the head of Hollinger Digital, the company-s venture capital arm---which in turn has invested $2.5 million in Trireme Partners, a subsidiary seeking to cash in on defense contracts and the Homeland Security buildup. Hollinger International also invested $14 million in an outfit called Hillman Capital, whose managing partner, Gerald Hillman, is not only a Perle partner at Trireme, but a fellow colleague at the infamous Defense Policy Board. It is this latter American national security conclave where the interests of defense contractors and assets of the Ariel Sharon regime in Israel intersect in the Pentagon board-s individual and collective membership.

As Raimondo puts it, the Hollinger media combine is a ". . .particularly muscular tentacle of the Neo-Con media octopus. . .its demise would mark a great setback for the War Party." There is a corollary to this truism: the demise of Hollinger would not simply be a setback for the agitprop tentacles of the War Party, but a potential takedown of much more than the personage of Conrad Black. Who else might go down, criminally as well as politically, and what might be the subsequent implications for the credibility of American, Israeli, and British national security and banking elites if the takedown occurs in the light of day?

Key chessplayers with concealed hands may be attempting to arrange the pieces on the board to insure that the answers remain hidden in the darkness. The infamous Carlyle Group, linked to Bush and Bin Laden family investments, American defense contractors and oil consortiums, central bankers and Likudniks, has now stepped forward to indicate a possible interest in rescuing Hollinger International. The November 22nd Guardian story quotes a Carlyle source as indicating that: 1) the sum of the arrangement would be a removal of Conrad Black from management, but not his equity stake; 2) a Carlyle investment sum that could be as much as a 40% ownership of Hollinger; and 3) a provision for Carlyle to name new members to the Hollinger Board of Directors. Black must be rejoicing in a proposed arrangement which allows him to keep the dough, stay on this side of the law and jail, and maintain the protective covering of a management umbrella comprised of heavyweights John Major, George Herbert Walker Bush, James Baker, Frank Carlucci, Henry Kissinger?and Richard Perle. One suspects that Mr. Black-s membership in the secretive, globalist Bilderberg group, mentioned in the Guardian account, would also remain intact.

What does not remain intact is the credibility of Mr. Bush and his top advisors about the moral and political rationale for war in Iraq. Especially problematic for the President--and for the Israeli Lobby-s agents in both the Executive and Legislative Branches of the American government--is the exposure of a widening breach in the electorate generally, and on the starboard side of the political spectrum in the United States specifically, when it comes to the questions of Oil, Empire, and Israel as legitimate grounds for the expenditure of American lives. The vetting this week of the deeper implications of a Carlyle-Hollinger International, Inc. business partnership simply heightens this developing gulf, much to the chagrin of both George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon.

William Kristol-s The Weekly Standard, William F. Buckley-s National Review, Joseph Farah-s pro-Israel Internet site World Net Daily, and the tel-evangelists of the Dispensational Christian lobby will continue to march to the drumbeats of more preemptive war, more military intervention, and more death on behalf of oil pipelines and Sharon-s occupation policies on the West Bank and Gaza. But other winds on the American Right have begun to blow in the opposite direction. These winds gather with increasing speed and resolve, in a desire to restore the Old Republic while avoiding planetary apocalypse and American policy paths designed to revisit the tragedies of the Roman and British Empires past. They include Patrick J. Buchanan-s The American Conservative; Clayton R. Douglas-s The Free American; Jon Basil Utley-s Americans Against World Empire; Eric Garris-s Antiwar.com; LewRockwell.com; Robert Higgs-s The Independent Review; and the powerful, yet theologically reflective essays of Catholic commentator Joseph Sobran.

The plot thickens. Stay tuned.

(Mark Dankof is an Internet news commentator and book reviewer for Uncensored News and Views. A past candidate for the United States Senate in Delaware in 2000, he is a Lutheran pastor and post-graduate student of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. His own web site, Mark Dankof-s America, contains many articles and items of interest, including the recently completed 14 chapter manuscript A Summer of a Thousand Nights: From Tehran to Susa.)

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