The US government developed an "aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of UN delegates." The smoking gun was "a memorandum written by a top official at the NSA and circulated to both senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency." The friendly agency was Britain's Government Communications Headquarters.
This fact was exposed nearly three years ago. Back then, after news of the NSA's targeted spying at the United Nations broke in the British press, major US mainstream media outlets gave it only perfunctory coverage - or, in the case of the New York Times, no coverage at all. The New York Times opted not to cover the story at all. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.
The Observer explained: "The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia."
The NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, 2003, outlined the wide scope of the surveillance activities, seeking any information useful to push a war resolution through the Security Council - "the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises."
But within days, any doubt about the NSA memo's "authenticity" was gone. The British press reported that the UK government had arrested an unnamed female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak. Facing the possibility of a prison sentence, Katharine Gun said that disclosure of the NSA memo was "necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." She said: "I have only ever followed my conscience."
After 51 weeks she leaked the memo, British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Gun,
---
Patrick Radden Keefe in the online magazine Slate, pointedly noted that "the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122705Y.shtml
It is worth remembering that an abuse of power similar to Bush's NSA wiretapping decision was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. [This comparison was brought home in the ACLU's powerful full page ad in the NYT of December 22nd.]
Impeachment Bush?
Representatives Johns Conyers and John Lewis and Senator Barbara Boxer are talking, in public, about impeachment now.
- Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean argued in his aptly-named book Worse than Watergate that Bush's false statements about WMDs in Iraq-used to drum up support for an invasion-deceived the American people and Congress. This constituted "an impeachable offense," Dean told PBS' Bill Moyers in 2004. "I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people." Bush's actions were actually far worse than Watergate, Dean contends, because "no one died for Nixon's so-called Watergate abuses."
Lending credence to Dean's arguments, the Downing Street Memo revealed that Britain's MI-6 Director Richard Dearlove had told Tony Blair that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush Administration. John Bonifaz, a Boston-based attorney and constitutional law expert, said that Bush seemingly "concealed important intelligence which he ought to have communicated," and "must certainly be punished for giving false information to the Senate." Bush deceived "the American people as to the basis for taking the nation into war against Iraq," Bonifaz argued-an impeachable offense.
By November (2005), a Zogby International poll showed that 53 percent Americans favored impeaching Bush -if it was in fact proven that Bush had lied about the basis for invading Iraq. In the last months, several organizations, including AfterDowningStreet, Impeach Central and ImpeachPAC.org, have formed to urge Bush's impeachment.
- Rep. John Conyers argued as well that the president committed impeachable offenses" because he and senior administration officials "countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in Iraq" at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, including Guantanamo Bay and the now-notorious "black sites" around the world.
- The most compelling evidence of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors is the revelation that he repeatedly authorized NSA spying on US citizens without obtaining the required warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Constitutional experts, politicians and ex-intelligence experts agree that Bush "committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans." Rep. John Lewis-"the first major House figure to suggest impeaching Bush," said the AP-argued that the president "deliberately, systematically violated the law" in authorizing the wiretapping. Lewis added: "He is not King, he is president."
For anyone with understanding and respect for the Constitution, it is obvious that Bush has violated the Fourth Amendment and federal law. This is the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors". Clinton lying about sex is nothing compared to this. It is timely and responsible to talk about impeachment. If the Republicans were loyal to the Constitution, they would be discussing impeachment. Bush has declared himself king in an undeclared war. We don't allow kings in this country. The Founding Fathers came here to avoid that.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122705Q.shtml
25 Reasons to Impeach George W. Bush -- June 6, 2005
http://www.counterpunch.org/corseri06062005.html
Lying to the Sovereign
http://www.thefourreasons.org/
Food crisis feared as fertile land runs out
· Maps show 40% of Earth's land is used for agriculture
· Growing human 'footprint' a risk to the environment
December 6, 2005 -- "The maps show, very strikingly, that a large part of our planet (roughly 40%) is being used for either growing crops or grazing cattle," said Dr Navin Ramankutty, a member of the Wisconsin-Madison team. By comparison, only 7% of the world's land was being used for agriculture in 1700.
The Amazon basin has seen some of the greatest changes in recent times, with huge swaths of the rainforest being felled to grow soya beans.
"One of the major changes we see is the fast expansion of soybeans in Brazil and Argentina, grown for export to China and the EU," said Dr Ramankutty.
This agricultural expansion has come at the expense of tropical forests in both countries.
Meanwhile, intensive farming practices mean that cropland areas have decreased slightly in the US and Europe and the land is being gobbled up by urbanisation.
Contrast this growing reality of what FTW has previously reported in stories articles like "Eating Fossil Fuels" with the hucksterism being offered by advocates of ethanol and the use of non-edible plant waste to make fuels. All plant material that is not eaten must be returned to the soil to enrich it. Every bit of plant material comprises nutrients taken from the soil. Not replacing that energy only exacerbates the damage being done to rapidly eroding topsoil which we described two years ago as "little more than a sponge onto which we pour chemicals derived from oil and gas." Unless some kind of intelligent debate is engaged, the crisis which is just beginning will be what fundamentalist Christians are praying for, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse". It does not have to be that way, or that bad. – Michael Ruppert
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/index.html
The War in Iraq Costs
See this link for up to the minute cost total: $228,764,963,195 and growing
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
DU Gulf Era Veterans now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans
"The real reason for Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi's departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the `Gulf War Syndrome' has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military."
Comment: Sounds to mw like AWOL Bush fired Principi.
"This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed."
He added, "Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability. This astounding number of `Disabled Vets' means that a decade later, 56% of those soldiers who served have some form of permanent medical problems!" The disability rate for the wars of the last century was 5 percent; it was higher, 10 percent, in Viet Nam.
"The VA Secretary Principi was aware of this fact as far back as 2000." "He, and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/122005_world_stories.shtml#0
or the best of N&V at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newsviewsnolose2
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