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HavenWorks.com/opinion/archive/2004 |
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ARCHIVES NEWS Opinion News History Archives Opinion Archives 2003 Opinion Archive 2002 Opinion Archive 2001 Opinion Archive "A Blog" |
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Free-Speech- 
- 
- "Firms
play tough game to defend a good name." ... ""Overzealous
companies often try to assert trademark ownership in inappropriate ways
to stifle free speech," says Kembrew McLeod, a communications studies professor
at the University of Iowa and author of the forthcoming book "Freedom of
Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity."
"The real harm comes from self-censorship in a world where [companies]
fire off cease-and-desist letters, and where we and our employers back
down from lawsuits, even when they're baseless."" ... "The stakes can run
high. Microsoft, for instance, is vigorously defending its ubiquitous Windows
trademark from what it views as an infringement by a San Diego software
firm called Lindows, which markets an alternative computer-operating system.
Last summer, Fox News made headlines when it attempted to prevent humorist
Al Franken from using its "Fair and Balanced" tag line in the title of
his bestselling book." -By Eric Schellhorn
-CSMonitor
- 
- "Sudan:
New Darfur Documents: Ties Between Government and
Janjaweed Militias Confirmed." ... "In a series of official Arabic-language
documents from government authorities in North and South Darfur dating
from February and March 2004, officials call for recruitment and military
support, including “provisions and ammunition” to be delivered to known
Janjaweed militia leaders, camps and “loyalist tribes.” " ... "A particularly
damning February directive orders “all security units” in the area to tolerate
the activities of known Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal in North Darfur. The
document “highlights the importance of non-interference so as not to question
their authority” and authorizes security units in a North Darfur province
to “overlook minor offenses by the fighters against civilians who are suspected
members of the rebellion….”" ... "Another document calls for a plan for
“resettlement operations of nomads in places from which the outlaws [rebels]
withdrew.” This, along with recent government statements that displaced
persons will be settled in 18 “settlements” rather than in their original
villages, raises concerns that the ethnic cleansing that has occurred will
be consolidated and that people will be unable to return to their villages
and lands." ... "Human Rights Watch called for Sudan government officials
implicated in the policy of militia support to be added to the U.N. sanctions
list included as part of a pending U.N. resolution. It also called for
international monitoring of the disarmament of the militia groups and the
establishment of an international commission of inquiry into the abuses
committed in Darfur by all parties to the conflict." -HRW.org
- 
- "Darfur
Documents Confirm Government Policy of Militia Support:
A Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, July 20, 2004." ... "Since February
2003, the government of Sudan has used militias known as “Janjaweed”3
as its principal counter-insurgency ground force in Darfur against civilians
from the Fur, Zaghawa, Massalit and other ethnic groups from which two
rebel groups known as the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the
Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) are drawn. The government-backed Janjaweed
militias are derived from the “Abala,” camel-herding nomads who migrated
to Darfur from Chad and West Africa in the 1970s, and from Arab camel-herding
tribes from North Darfur.4
With government aerial support, arms, communications, and other backing,
and often alongside government troops, the Janjaweed militias have been
a key component in the government’s military campaign in Darfur; a campaign
that has resulted in the murder, rape and forced displacement of thousands
of civilians.5"
... "If genuinely concerned with bringing peace and stability to Darfur
and ending the cycle of violence and impunity in the region, the Sudanese
government should suspend key government officials who bear responsibility
for recruiting, arming or otherwise supporting the Janjaweed militias from
official duties, pending official investigation of their responsibility
for abuses." ... "In addition, the international community must recognize
that the government-backed militias and government forces are clearly indivisible—they
are utilized as one entity. Those officials for whom there is evidence
of implication in the policy of militia support should be included in any
forthcoming international measures, including international travel sanctions,
arms embargoes, and investigation by any future international commission
of inquiry." -HRW.org
- 
- "Bodies lined
up in the desert of Darfur: Witness to ethnic cleansing."
... "I saw numbing evidence of the ethnic cleansing campaign pursued by
the government of Sudan in this Muslim region, which is populated by Arabs
and non-Arabs. In response to a rebellion begun by primarily non-Arab groups
in early 2003, the regime armed the Janjaweed militia, giving them impunity
to attack. Burned villages confirmed harrowing stories we had heard from
Darfurians who were lucky enough to make it to refugee camps in Chad."
... "In village after village that I visited, the painstakingly accumulated
wealth of the non-Arab population - their livestock, their homes, their
grainstocks - had been abruptly destroyed. About 1.5 million people have
been left homeless, and as many as 300,000 may be dead by year's end."
... "It is time to move directly against regime officials who are responsible
for the killing. Accountability for crimes against humanity is imperative,
as is the deployment of sufficient force to ensure disarmament and arrangements
to deliver emergency aid." -By John Prendergast -NYTimes
via -IHT.com
Stephen
Cambone - 
Torture
- Prisons
- Classified
- Military
- 
Intelligence
- 
US
- 
Iraq
- 
Afghanistan
- Noteworthy
- "Implausible
Denial II." ... "On Saturday, May 15--twenty-four
hours after The Nation published "Implausible
Denial"--The New Yorker posted on its website Seymour Hersh's latest
Abu Ghraib-related investigative report. Its central revelation: The interrogations
at [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib were part of a highly classified Special Access
Program (SAP) code-named Copper Green, authorized by [Republican President
Bush's] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ultimately overseen by Under
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone. Originally a joint
[Central Intelligence Agency] CIA-Pentagon program in Afghanistan that
utilized highly trained Special Operations personnel, Copper Green eventually
expanded to Iraq, Hersh reports, where Cambone decided it would begin using
non-Special Operations personnel--including military intelligence officers
and other military personnel--to begin questioning prisoners whose status
was outside the program's original brief. The CIA objected and withdrew
from the program, while Cambone apparently tasked [Major General] Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former Guantánamo Bay interrogations chief,
with "Gitmo-izing" Iraq's prison system." ... "What may be more surprising
than the revelations in Hersh's piece is the fact that leads to the Abu
Ghraib skullduggery were hidden in plain sight--and that the Pentagon press
corps all but ignored them. Though Cambone has been an exceptionally sub
rosa figure in his position as DoD's intelligence chief, on November 21,
2003, he sat down for a rare on-record meeting over breakfast with the
Defense Writers Group. Again in contrast to his May 11 comments, in which
he cast himself as a benign bureaucrat largely out of the loop, his November
comments offer a glimpse into the mechanics of how Cambone's office was
assertively taking the lead in coordinating intelligence operations in
Iraq." ... "Noting first that his office has "one group of people over
to do an assessment" and that another was getting ready to go, Cambone
said that "the requirement for an increased level of intelligence support
became increasingly evident as we went through a period between early July/late
August.... In that late August time frame, a delegation went over there
from the Department and included people from the CIA to look at how we
were structured, whether we had proper arrangement at the division level,
whether that information, as it was being compiled at the divisional level,
was being moved from that level up to the CJTF-7 [Combined Joint Task Force-7]
level in an expeditious manner."" ... "Cambone further stated that the
group "came back with a list of somewhere close to eighty or ninety recommendations,"
and went on to describe a rapid infusion of personnel and technology for
intelligence-related endeavors. He also noted that the Director of Central
Intelligence, George Tenet, had "made a number of adjustments in his complement
of people in Iraq" as part of a "concerted effort to lash up much more
tightly the work that is done in the context of the CIA activities with
those being done by the Department to ensure there is [a] cross-flow of
information and cooperation."" ... "Cambone's remarks at the breakfast
also bring into potentially clearer focus the role in Abu Ghraib of [Lieutenant
General] Lieut. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, his deputy for intelligence
and warfighting support. "It is an office," Cambone says of Boykin's shop,
"that is designed to assure the types of capabilities we have just been
talking about here, whether it is people, or it is resources, or it is
material, or it is information, is moved forward to the people who need
it at various levels of command and operation in order for them to execute
their mission."" -By Jason
West -TheNation.com
Stephen
Cambone - Torture
- Prisons
- Military
- Intelligence
- 
Police
- Human
Rights - Law
- 
Politics
- 
Feith
- 
Rhode
Island - 
Virginia
- US
- Iraq
- Guantánamo
Bay - 
Cuba
- Noteworthy
- "Implausible
Denial." ... "Writing in the December 16, 2002, edition
of The Nation, I broke the news--and explored the concerns many
in the [United States] US intelligence community had--about [Republican
President Bush's] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's quiet success in
prevailing upon Congress to authorize the creation of a new senior position
at the Pentagon,the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Several
months later, in the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review, I
followed up with a piece devoted to the media's utter lack of interest--perhaps
best demonstrated by the absence of any reporter from a farcical confirmation
hearing--in the new Under Secretary himself, Stephen Cambone." ... "Despite
his status as the Pentagon's über-intelligence authority, in the initial
days of the breaking [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib scandal Cambone was virtually
invisible. When Rumsfeld was called to the Hill to testify before the Armed
Services Committee on May 7, however, Cambone was unexpectedly summoned
to the witness table from his chair behind Rumsfeld. That cameo appearance
resulted in a more expansive return appearance on May 11, in which Cambone
less than deftly tried to undermine Abu Ghraib investigator [Major General]
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. (Cambone disputed the general's conclusion that
military intelligence units effectively controlled the prison's military
police detachment.) Cambone also reacted adversely to [Rhode Island Democratic]
Senator Jack Reed's assertion (confirmed by Taguba) that recommendations
made in a report on improving intelligence collection at Abu Ghraib by
then-chief Guantánamo Bay [Cuba] interrogator [Major General] Maj.
Gen. Geoffrey Miller clearly called for the use of [Military Police] MPs
in interrogations, which helped create an environment that begot the subsequent
abuse and torture in the tiers. As a May 12 Washington Post editorial
points out, Cambone's office approved interrogation practices that are
in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions." ... "At the May 11 hearings,
Cambone and another senior Defense Department official, Army intelligence
chief [Lieutenant General] Lieut. Gen Keith Alexander, essentially cast
themselves as mere Pentagon representatives fielding questions about Abu
Ghraib--and not as men who might bear any responsibility for what they
desperately tried to cast as an aberrant and isolated incident. Yet many
of their assertions on May 11 are in fact contradicted by statements they
made before the same committee a month before, as well as a year-old memo
outlining the responsibilities of Cambone's office." ... "The Under Secretary
of Defense for Intelligence, or OUSD(I) in Pentagonese, was originally
conceived by Rumsfeld as a centralizing measure, a way to give him "one
dog to kick" rather than a "whole kennel" of individual civilian and uniformed
defense intelligence agencies. In choosing the person responsible for ostensibly
bringing unprecedented order and control to the Pentagon's spy shops, the
Secretary chose Cambone, a man with no intelligence experience but a favored
protégé and loyal partisan who had served on Rumsfeld's ballistic
missile threat commission and worked with the neoconservative Project for
the New American Century. Previously principal deputy to Under Secretary
for Policy Doug Feith (and, in that capacity, liaison between Feith and
the ideological intelligence analysis unit that would later morph into
the notorious Office of Special Plans), Cambone went out of his way in
his confirmation hearings to say that he would closely "consult and coordinate"
with Feith to "insure [that Department of Defense] DoD-related intelligence
activity supports the goals" of the Pentagon's policy shop." ... "Two months
after Cambone's confirmation, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described
his new portfolio in a detailed internal Pentagon memo. Reflecting the
seriousness and specificity of Cambone's mission, an organizational chart
appended to the memo shows a generic under secretary with six deputies,
including one for warfighting and operations, whose duties include specific
liaison with the intelligence elements of each of the armed services, each
individual combatant command, and the under secretary for policy. The document
itself explicitly states that Cambone's office will, among other things:"
... "provide oversight and policy guidance for all DoD intelligence activities;
provide policy oversight of all the intelligence organizations within the
DoD, to include ensuring these organizations are manned, trained, equipped
and structured to support the missions of the Department; provide
assessments of and advice [to] the Secretary and CJCS [Chairman, Joint
Chiefs of Staff] on the adequacy of military intelligence performance;
exercise management and oversight of all DoD counterintelligence and security
activities; coordinate DoD intelligence and intelligence-related policy,
plans, programs, requirements and resource allocations; oversee provision
of intelligence support and involvement in information operations, focused
on assessments in support of operations." ... "None of this should leave
much to the imagination, especially when it comes to policies and practices
pertaining to the dimensions of human intelligence collection that involve
interrogations conducted by military intelligence. Yet when asked by [Virginia
Republican] Senator John Warner if his office has "overall responsibility
for policy concerning the handling of detainees," Cambone dodged with a
"not precisely, sir," effectively denying any responsibility as set forth
in his charge by Wolfowitz. Rather, Cambone said, he only reactively "became
involved in this issue from the perspective of assuring there was a flow
of intelligence back to the commands and done in an efficient and effective
way."" -By Jason
West -TheNation.com
- 
- 
- 
-
- "Pakistan's
Nuclear Ali Baba." ... ""Nobody could touch him,"
says Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, Pakistan's foreign minister. The regret in
his voice is palpable. "Imagine an American government doing this to Charles
Lindbergh, or Albert Einstein, at the height of his popularity. Dr. A.Q.
Khan is that kind of national hero in Pakistan."" ... "Abdul Qadeer Khan,
an accomplished scientist, is also by his own account a thief of Ali Baba
proportions. He became a national hero by stealing the designs of a European
nuclear centrifuge system that enabled Pakistan to explode several nuclear
devices in 1998. Khan's original nuclear larceny, as Kasuri says, "gave
us strategic balance."" -By Jim Hoagland
-WashingtonPost
ELECTION
2004 -
- "Kerry
turns to the 'band of brothers': Republicans are
keen to portray John Kerry as a limp-wristed liberal, but this genuine
war hero has already tapped into the Vietnam generation, says Philip James."
... "As headline grabbing as his surprise win was in Iowa, and his decisive
victory in New Hampshire, together these two states add up to only 32 delegates
for Kerry. He needs another 2,000 or so to be assured the nomination."
... "Traditionally March 2, aka Super Tuesday, is the date when contested
nominations are decided. California, New York and eight other mostly big
states put over 1,000 delegates in play." ... "But this year a change to
the primary schedule has seven southern, mid-western and western states
voting together on February 3. Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma have clustered
with South Carolina, Delaware, North Dakota and Missouri, to give it the
status and influence of a mini Super Tuesday- with 269 delegates up for
grabs." -Guardian.co.uk
- 2004
ELECTION - "Kerry
Appeal: Behind New Hampshire Win: Broad Base, Moderate
Image, Electability." ... "A broad base on issues, a moderate image and
a sense of electability powered John Kerry to a double-digit victory in
the New Hampshire primary and being someone other than Howard Dean
didn't hurt." ... "Kerry did best with voters who were looking mainly for
a candidate who can beat George W. Bush (he won 62 percent of them), and
for someone with the "right experience." But Kerry also won big in two
other, larger groups: Those who viewed Dean unfavorably and those who didn't
think Dean has the right temperament for the job." -By
Gary Langer with David Morris, Dalia Sussman and Maureen Michaels
-ABCNEWS.com
- 
- "Bush's
Space Vision Thing." ... "Critics will no doubt accuse
President Bush of fiscal folly for proposing a grandiose plan for space
exploration at a time when the nation faces onerous deficits and insufficient
money to meet costly obligations on planet Earth. The critics would be
right that money is short and there are many more important things to do
than put astronauts on the Moon or Mars. But Mr. Bush is a canny enough
politician to avoid committing much money to his new space vision. He calls
for only $1 billion in new financing for NASA over five years and a reallocation
of the current five-year budget of $86 billion. The cost will of course
explode later on, when NASA tries to actually carry out the program. What
Mr. Bush has really done is promise the moon (literally) while leaving
future presidents and Congresses to figure out how to pay the potentially
large future bills while they cope with the severe revenue losses caused
by Mr. Bush's reckless tax cuts." -NYTimes
via -Google-News
-
-
- 
-
- "Kennedy
Hits Bush On War." ... "President Bush marketed the
war on Iraq as a "political product" to influence the 2002 elections and
is doing so again this year, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) charged yesterday
in a scathing speech accusing Bush of putting politics ahead of national
security." ... ""No president of the United States should employ misguided
ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war," he said.
"In doing so, the president broke the basic bond of trust between the government
and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth,
America would never have gone to war."" -By Helen
Dewar -WashingtonPost
- 
- ELECTION
2004 - Des-Moines
- QC
- Davenport
- "Des
Moines Register Endorses Edwards." ... "Iowa's largest
newspaper endorsed North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for the Democratic
presidential nomination while three other Iowa newspapers went for Massachusetts
Sen. John Kerry in weekend editions[.]" ... "The Des Moines Register backed
Edwards and called him a cut above several well-qualified candidates despite
the fact that he doesn't have as much experience as other Democrats." ...
"The Quad-City Times in Davenport, the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the
Hawk Eye in Burlington endorsed Kerry, saying his foreign policy experience
makes him the best candidate to face President Bush in the fall election."
-Contributions by David Tirrell-Wysocki, Kate McDann,
and Nedra Pickler -AP
via -Guardian.co.uk
- 
- 
-
- "Music
Pirates Going Clean." ... "For whatever reason, the
number of Internet users who download music free of charge took a dive
over just six months last year." ... "A couple of things happened that
may explain the decline." ... "Last September, the Recording Industry Association
of America began suing individuals for downloading music files -more than
340 cases so far. That might have pricked the conscience of many digital
freeloaders, or at least scared them off." ... "The other change was Apple
Computer's promotion of its iPod listening device and iTunes website, which
allows many popular songs to be downloaded for 99 cents each. Other websites,
including the one that once offered free downloading, Napster, also began
to offer paid service." -CSMonitor
-
-
-
- "The
recording industry gets silly." ... "Just before
the holidays, a United States appeals court ruled against the recording
industry, which had been trying to wrest the names of suspected pirates
from Internet Service Providers. The court said that the industry's strong-arm
tactic "borders upon the silly." No joke." ... "This in important step
to preserving privacy amid the hysteria over piracy. The ruckus started
when the Recording Industry Association of America attempted to force Verizon,
one of the country's largest Internet Service Providers, to turn over the
names of subscribers suspected of swapping pirated tunes. The new ruling
reverses an earlier decision that allowed the RIAA to subpoena companies
such as Verizon to get user names." -By David Kushner
-RollingStone.com/news
