Response to latest Gardiner article on US-Iran Face-Off

Gardiner’s article can be found below and also at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17121.htm

Gardiner has up until now been a voice of caution in warning that rather than being preparations for war, the most recent movements on both sides of the US-Iran face-off have been more akin to gunboat diplomacy, with the potential for war only through severe incompetence (although he doesn’t discount the irrational intentions both the Bush administration + Ahmadinejad appear to harbour). However, I think he may be a bit shrill in this article especially on his first point.

Even if Iran DID have evidence that the US was involved in some way in the recent attacks on Revolutionary Guards on its Pakistan border (http://tinyurl.com/384cdx), possibly associated with the US-backed MEK – or maybe even the ISI (follow this one up):

–> Shouldn’t “informed source” be speaking to European press/wire rather than the Chinese if Gardiner is right on this count? A Chinese wire recipient indicates: 1. Our “informed source” is bluffing – he’s willing to circulate unsubstantiated rumour but not back it up (Look how quickly they learn from their American friends!). Therefore, Gardiner’s point about Iranians “making it an issue” is wrong on accounts that Iran is here fighting a PROPAGANDA war for friends – like China (esp with the UN deadline on enrichment set for 21st Feb) – rather than trying to convince Europeans (the potential swing bloc on Iran) that the US is leaving behind clues to its operations inside of Iran (which is unlikely in any case). I’m not saying “informed source’s” (or Iran’s) motivations can be reduced to UNSC votes for tomorrow. Rather, they’re looking for all the sympathy they can get, especially with Russia seemingly back-peddling in their assistance at an Iranian nuclear power plant (see wire sources).

On the second count, surplus troops being sent to Baghdad in future to possibly operate an Iran C+C, this is someting that has already been speculated on as at least a part of the intention behind the neocons “surge” policy. Gardiner may well be the first to spot evidence of this, although it’s too early to say at the present time.

CAAT infiltrated by BAE in Saudi Corruption Investigation

The parallel universe of BAE: covert, dangerous and beyond the rule of law

How long can Britain’s biggest arms company run a secret service and trump the armed forces in political influence?

George Monbiot
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian

There is a state within a state in the United Kingdom, a small but untouchable domain that appears to be subject to a different set of laws. We have heard quite a bit about it over the past two months, but hardly anyone knows just how far its writ runs. The state is BAE Systems, Britain’s biggest arms company. It seems, among other advantages, to be able to run its own secret service.

This week, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) hopes to obtain a court order against BAE. The order would allow it to discover how the arms company obtained one of its confidential documents. CAAT instructed its lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, to seek a judicial review of the government’s decision to drop the corruption case against BAE, which is alleged to have paid massive bribes to members of the Saudi royal family. Leigh Day sent CAAT an email containing advice on costs and tactics. The email ended up in the hands of the arms company.

How? Correspondence between a plaintiff and his lawyers couldn’t be more private. The last people you would show it to are the defendants in the case. But somehow the letter found its way to BAE’s offices.

The arms company argues that it was the unwitting and unwilling recipient of the email. So why does it refuse to tell CAAT who sent it? Why, far from assisting CAAT’s attempt to explain this mystery, has it threatened the group with costs for seeking to reveal BAE’s source?

CAAT has good reason to be suspicious. In 2003, the Sunday Times revealed that BAE had carried out a “widespread spying operation” on its critics. “Bank accounts were accessed, computer files downloaded and private correspondence with members of parliament and ministers secretly copied and passed on.” The paper said the arms company made use of a network run by a former consultant for the Ministry of Defence called Evelyn Le Chene. “Le Chene recruited at least half a dozen agents to infiltrate CAAT’s headquarters at Finsbury Park, north London, and a number of regional offices.” They provided BAE with advanced intelligence on CAAT’s campaign against the sale of its Hawk aircraft to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. The arms company also obtained CAAT’s membership list, its bank account details, the identity of its donors, its letters to ministers, even the contents of private diaries belonging to its staff.

After the story was published, CAAT asked a team of investigators to examine the messages sent from its offices. They found that one of the group’s most senior members of staff, the national campaigns and events coordinator, had sent 181 emails to an unfamiliar address. Many of them contained extremely sensitive information.

The coordinator, Martin Hogbin, denied that he was an agent of Le Chene’s. He claimed that the mysterious email address belonged to a former CAAT volunteer, and that he had been sending him this information because he might find it interesting.

The investigators contacted the former volunteer, who told them that he had not received any messages from Hogbin, and did not recognise the address. CAAT took the case to the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner, who found that the email address belonged to “a company with links to Evelyn Le Chene”. Both Le Chene and Hogbin refused to assist the investigations. If it was true that Hogbin was working for Le Chene, it would be a tremendous coup for her and her clients. As campaigns and events coordinator, he knew more than anyone else about CAAT’s plans. If BAE were to obtain and make use of such intelligence, it could anticipate and outmanoeuvre the Campaign’s attempts to expose or embarrass it.

BAE’s spying operations represent just one way in which the company looks like a parallel state. It also appears to enjoy crown immunity. Last August, this column suggested that the Saudi corruption case might be dropped, in order to protect a new order for 72 BAE jets. It was not a hard prediction to make – Saudi Arabia had made the new deal conditional on the abandonment of the case. But I could not have guessed that both the attorney general and the prime minister would make such a show of squashing the investigation. They seemed to go out of their way to demonstrate to BAE’s clients that they would do whatever it took to protect the new order, even if it meant exposing themselves to allegations of collusion.

The prime minister has never taken such a risk on behalf of one of his departments, let alone his ministers or officials (witness how Lord Levy and Ruth Turner have been left to swing). There are just two friends for whom he will put his legacy on the line: George Bush and BAE.

In 2001, Blair overruled Clare Short and Gordon Brown to grant an export licence for BAE’s sale of a military air-traffic control system to one of the world’s poorest countries, Tanzania. The World Bank had pointed out that the contract was ridiculously expensive – Tanzania could have bought a better system elsewhere for a quarter of the price. In January the Guardian revealed that BAE Systems allegedly paid a $12m (£6.2m) “commission” to an agent who brokered the deal.

In 2005, Blair made a secret visit to Riyadh to expedite BAE’s deal with the Saudi princes. He then sent both John Reid and Des Browne to clinch the order. Ministers in the UK have always acted as unpaid salesmen for the arms companies, but seldom has a prime minister muddied his hands this much. Blair pushed the order through by promising the Saudis that they could have the first 24 planes ahead of schedule. How? By selling them the jets already allotted to the RAF. BAE’s interests, in other words, trump the requirements of our own armed forces.

Blair has also broken his government’s pledge to publish the report by the National Audit Office on BAE’s dealings in Saudi Arabia. It remains the only NAO report never to have been made public. We can only guess why the prime minister needs to protect it.

It could be argued, with some force, that this government has always had a special relationship with big business, rather like its special relationship with George Bush (it gets beaten up and thanks him for it). But the special favours it grants BAE are deeply resented by other corporations. After the suppression of the Saudi case, F&C Asset Management, a very large institutional investor, wrote to the government to complain that its decision undermined the rule of law and the predictability of the investment climate. Hermes, Britain’s biggest pension fund, said that it threatened the UK’s reputation as a leading financial centre, and the chairman of Anglo-American wrote that the abandonment of the case “damaged the reputation of Britain”.

At what point does the government conclude that this company has got out of control? That it presents a danger to national interests, to the reputation of the prime minister, to the privacy and civil liberties of its opponents? Why does it appear to be above the law? For how much longer will it be permitted to run what looks like a parallel secret service? Of all the questions we might ask of our ministers, these are the least likely to be answered.

monbiot.com

Article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2011616,00.html

What does the “enabling law” passed by Chavez really mean?

Did Chavez Overreach?

Venezuela’s Enabling Law Could Enable Opposition

By GREGORY WILPERT

Caracas, Venezuela.

Venezuela’s opposition and critics of the Chavez government around the world finally feel vindicated (again). The Venezuelan dictatorship that they have been predicting for the past eight years has, according to them, finally come to pass ­ for the sixth or so time. Already when Chavez was first elected in 1998 critics predicted Chavez would bring about a dictatorship in Venezuela. They kept having to revise their estimates for when this dictatorship would set in, though, because following each prediction of impending dictatorship Chavez would do something that completely negated the announcement.

For example, following his election in 1998, the first thing he did was to call for a referendum on whether to have a new constitution and held a vote for a constitutional assembly. When the constitutional assembly took on more powers than the legislature, opponents were again screaming “dictatorship,” except that the assembly proposed a constitution that was more democratic than the previous one. Similarly, the 49 law-decrees of 2001 were another marker for the onset of the Chavez dictatorship, except that these laws democratized land ownership and access to credit in Venezuela, among other things. Then again, the April 2002 coup was justified with the story that Chavez was ordering supporters to shoot at opponents, except following the coup very few of the coup organizers were arrested. This pattern repeated itself again with the 2002-2003 oil industry shutdown and with the struggle around the 2004 recall referendum. Each time the opposition and international critics were forced to revise the start date of the Venezuelan dictatorship backwards, much like a religious cult that predicts the end of the world and keeps having to revise its doomsday date.

Now, with the latest series of Chavez’s moves, of asking for and getting a new enabling law, of not renewing the broadcast license of a TV station, of launching a united socialist party, and of proposing an indefinite number of reelections, Chavez’s opponents are at it again. This time, they say, Chavez is definitely stepping over the line. After all, what could be more dictatorial than “ruling by decree,” “closing” an independent TV station, forming a “single party,” and becoming “president for life”? If this were what is happening in Venezuela, it would be ominous indeed. However, these descriptions, taken from the opposition and the international media, are completely removed from what is actually happening in Venezuela. Let’s take a closer look at the “rule by decree” story, which poses risks, but not the ones that opposition analysts are hyperventilating about.

“Rule by Decree”

Even a progressive media outlet such as the extremely popular radio program Democracy Now! adopted this terminology for the recently enabling law that Venezuela’s National Assembly passed. After all, isn’t this the essence of what the enabling law means, that Chavez can “rule by decree”? The problem is that this term can cover a wide range of situations, but is often associated with the power of a dictator or monarch to issue any decree he or she pleases and that everyone must follow, no matter what. Classic examples of such power are the governing styles of an Augusto Pinochet or an Adolf Hitler.

In Venezuela, however, the enabling law is completely different from the above type of “rule by decree” in that it is limited in several ways. First, the President is bound by the constitution. He can only issue so-called “law-decrees” in the areas named by the National Assembly, in the time limit the Assembly imposes, and that are consistent with the constitution. In other words, he cannot arbitrarily order someone’s arrest or do away with basic civil rights, for example. Some of the laws even need to be submitted to the Supreme Court, which vets the law for its constitutionality.

Second, contrary to popular belief, even though Chavez supporters control all branches of the state, law-decrees can be reversed by the most important power of all: the citizens. That is, law-decrees can be rescinded by popular vote. According to Venezuela’s 1999 constitution all laws can be submitted to a referendum if at least 10% of registered voters request such a referendum. Law decrees have an even lower signature requirement, of only 5% of registered voters (800,000 out of 16 million registered voters).

Third, the National Assembly may also modify or rescind law-decrees, at any time, should it feel the need to do so. This is quite unlike the enabling law in the U.S., known as the “Fast Track” law, where the president may sign international treaties that are automatically binding and not open to revision or rescinding by the population.

Will the Enabling Law Lead Towards Autocracy?

Venezuela’s enabling laws are thus relatively moderate measures as far as the common understanding of “rule by decree” is concerned. The next and more important question thus becomes whether such a law will lead to law decrees that end up being dangerous for Venezuelan democracy. Chavez critics who concede the above points imply that even if the power is limited, the lack of separation between executive and legislative will lead to disastrous results. Exactly why this is the case is never explained, other than to say that there are no “checks and balances” between the two. Certainly, with Chavez supporters controlling the legislature, the controls on the presidency are not as strong as they would be if the opposition controlled them, but this is also true for just about any parliamentary system of government and any system in which the executive and the legislature are controlled by the same party. Oddly enough, Chavez critics hardly ever raise such dire warnings about other countries where this is the case.

More important than the question about “checks and balances” (which, as we saw, there are in Venezuela, in the form of the citizenry and the National Assembly), is what Chavez will do with the law. The main objectives for passing these laws, according to the enabling law text, is to promote “popular democracy,” to make the state more efficient, to eradicate corruption, to increase citizen security, to nationalize strategic industries, among many other things. If this is what the laws will actually do, then what is the fuss about? Presumably Chavez critics believe that Chavez will use the enabling law to pass completely different and tyrannical laws. But is there any evidence that this might happen?

If we look at the previous instance in which Chavez had the power of an enabling law, in 2001, this is not what happened. The 49 law-decrees that Chavez signed into effect in November 2001 had a democratizing effect, such as the land reform that democratized land distribution, the banking reform that improved access to credit for micro-entrepreneurs, the fishing reform that empowered small fishers to increase their catch because larger fishers have to fish further from the shore, or the hydrocarbons law that increased state revenues from oil production. Based on this previous experience, there is no reason to believe that this time around Chavez will not pass the types of laws that the enabling laws says he will.

What is more, polls by the Chilean NGO Latinobarometro have shown over and over again that despite all of the opposition’s dire warnings about Venezuela’s supposed slide towards dictatorship, Venezuelans themselves overwhelmingly believe that their government is democratic and is getting more so with every year. Eight years into the “Bolivarian Revolution,” and Venezuelans are in second place, after Uruguay, compared to all other countries in Latin America in saying that they are satisfied with their democracy. This percentage has been on the increase throughout Chavez’s presidency, rising from 32% in 1998 to 57% in 2006. Meanwhile, the Latin American average was 38% in 2006. This and many other similar poll results flatly contradict the notion that Chavez is steadily heading Venezuela towards dictatorship.

Is the Enabling Law A Good Idea?

Once it is clear that the enabling law is neither dictatorial “rule by decree” nor will it lead towards dictatorship, it is still fair to ask whether the law is good for Venezuela. One should note, for example, that there is a contradiction between Chavez wanting to pass laws for introducing more participatory democracy and his doing so in a way that bypasses the democratically elected legislature. That is, having the executive devise and pass the laws is bound to be a less democratic process than via the frequently long-winded debates in the legislature. In other words, efficiency is being traded for debate and deliberation. Chavistas say this is a worthwhile trade-off because the Venezuelan people cannot wait any longer for social justice to arrive in Venezuela.

While this is no doubt true, there is a serious risk that the cost of bringing about social justice now could end up being greater than people are bargaining for. First, the lack of careful democratic deliberation could bring about laws that are poorly formulated and ill-conceived and end up introducing fewer social improvements than would be the case with well deliberated and well formulated laws. In the end, the goal of introducing rapid social improvements could be set back further than they would have, had the legislature developed the laws.

Second, an even greater risk lies with the hardening of the general mindset (which is already quite strong in Venezuela) that laws from a strong leader are better than laws from a messy process of democratic deliberation. Such a mindset opens a slippery slope towards a belief that benevolent dictatorship is the best form of governance.

The third and perhaps greatest danger of introducing such an enabling law now, when its necessity is not obvious to everyone, is that it pushes even moderate critics of Chavez into the camp that believes that Chavez is heading towards dictatorship. While this by itself has never been a concern of Chavez’s and does not change much in the correlation of forces between Chavistas and opposition, it can change the dynamic within the opposition. Having people who used to belong to the moderate opposition, such as Teodoro Petkoff, join the people who say that Venezuela is a totalitarian dictatorship empowers, within the opposition, those who say that Chavez must be removed from power by any means necessary. Of course, this is something that the opposition has been saying all along and has failed miserably in its numerous attempts to remove Chavez. However, if the opposition sees its options shrinking, it might become tempted to take up arms and launch a “contra war”-along the lines of the one that was launched against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua-against the Bolivarian Revolution. Such an occurrence, while apparently unlikely at the moment, is still a possibility and it becomes more possible with each excuse that Chavez gives the opposition, no matter how flimsy that excuse.

Finally, the international campaign to discredit the Chavez government has heated up again, as a result of the enabling law and the other new measures mentioned earlier. If this campaign should succeed now, where earlier such campaigns have apparently failed, the Revolution will no doubt lose badly needed international support. There still is a vast reservoir of sympathy and understanding around the world for the Bolivarian project, but this reservoir is not unlimited.

Chavez and his supporters should ask themselves whether the potential risks of loss of international support, of possibly poorer quality laws, of strengthening personalistic politics, and of the possible creation of a “contra” force are worth the supposed gain in efficiency in bringing about 21st century socialism. Venezuela is not heading towards dictatorship and the opposition Cassandras will have to revise their doomsday date for Venezuela yet again. However, it could very well head towards another period of uncertainty and destabilization if Chavez and his supporters are not careful.

Gregory Wilpert writes for Venezuela Analysis. He can be reached at: gregwilpert@gmail.com

Article at http://counterpunch.org/wilpert02062007.html

Juan Cole: US allegations on Iran Don’t Add Up

New York Times Falls for Bogus

Iran Weapons Charge

Completely Implausible Numbers are Thrown Around – Repeat of Judy Miller Scandal

By Juan Cole

02/12/07 “ICH” – — This NYT article depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to Shiite militias:‘ In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.’

This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months. Day after day, the casualty reports specify al-Anbar Province or Diyala or Salahuddin or Babil, or Baghdad districts such as al-Dura, Ghaziliyah, Amiriyah, etc.–and the enemy fighting is clearly Sunni Arab guerrillas. And, Iran is not giving high tech weapons to Baathists and Salafi Shiite-killers. It is true that some casualties were in “East Baghdad” and that Baghdad is beginning to rival al-Anbar as a cemetery for US troops:

Robert Burns of AP observes,

“The increasingly urban nature of the war is reflected in the fact that a higher percentage of U.S. deaths have been in Baghdad lately. Over the course of the war through Feb. 6, at least 1,142 U.S. troops have died in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, according to an AP count. That compares with 713 in Baghdad. But since Dec. 28, 2006, there were more in Baghdad than in Anbar – 33 to 31.”

Over all, only a fourth of US troops had been killed Baghdad (713 or 23.7 percent of about 3000) through the end of 2006. But US troops aren’t fighting Shiites anyplace else– Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin–these are all Sunni areas. For a fourth of US troops to be being killed or wounded by Shiite EFPs, all of the Baghdad deaths would have to be at the hands of Shiites!

The US military often does not announce exactly where in Baghdad a GI is killed and so I found it impossible to do a count of Sunni versus Shiite neighborhoods. But we know that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was running interference for the Mahdi Army last fall, and it seems unlikely to me that very many US troops died fighting Shiites in Baghdad. The math of Gordon’s article does not add up at all if this were Shiite uses of Iran-provided EFPs.

So the unnamed sources at the Pentagon are reduced to implying that Iran is giving sophisticated bombs to its sworn enemies and the very groups that are killing its Shiite Iraqi allies every day. Get real!

Moreover, there is no evidence of Iranian intentions to kill US troops. If Iran was giving EFPs to anyone, it was to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary, for future use. SCIRI is the main US ally in Iraq aside from the Kurds. I don’t know of US troops killed by Badr, certainly not any time recently.

It is far more likely that corrupt arms merchants are selling and smuggling these things than that there is direct government- to- militia transfer. It is possible that small Badr Corps stockpiles were shared or sold. That wouldn’t have been Iran’s fault.

Some large proportion of US troops being killed in Iraq are being killed with bullets and weapons supplied by Washington to the Iraqi army, which are then sold by desperate or greedy Iraqi soldiers on the black market. This problem of US/Iraqi government arms getting into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas is far more significant and pressing than whatever arms smugglers bring in from Iran.

We now know that Iran came to the US early in 2003 with a proposal to cooperate with Washington in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and that VP Richard Bruce Cheney rebuffed it. The US could have had Iran on its side in Iraq!

The attempt to blame these US deaths on Iran is in my view a black psy-ops operation. The claim is framed as though this was a matter of direct Iranian government transfer to the deadliest guerrillas. In fact, the most fractious Shiites are the ones who hate Iran the most. If 25 percent of US troops are being killed and wounded by explosively formed projectiles, then someone should look into who is giving those EFPs to Sunni Arab guerrillas. It isn’t Iran.

Finally, it is obvious that if Iran did not exist, US troops would still be being blown up in large numbers. Sunni guerrillas in al-Anbar and West Baghdad are responsible for most of the deaths. The Bush administration’s talent for blaming everyone but itself for its own screw-ups is on clear display here.

For more skepticism, see this column at Huffington; and Glenn Greenwald and Think Progress . Labels: Black psy-ops, Iran

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute. Visit his blog www.juancole.com

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Article at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17036.htm