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	Hurricane Bolton threatens to wreak havoc on the Global Poor by Medea Benjamin   September 13, 2005   One of the truly heart-warming reactions to the suffering wrought by Hurricane Katrina is the response from the international community. The Red Cross received thousands of donations from individual foreigners—rich and poor—whose hearts went out to the victims. The governments of over 60 nations offered everything from helicopters, ships, water pumps and generators to doctors, divers and civil engineers. Poor countries devastated by last year’s tsunami have sent financial contributions. Governments at odds with the Bush administration—Cuba, Venezuela and Iran—offered doctors, medicines and cheap oil. The international response has been so overwhelming that the United Nations has placed personnel in the Hurricane Operations Center of the US Agency for International Development to help coordinate the aid.   Unbeknownst to the US public, however, at the very time impoverished Americans are being showered with support from the world community, the Bush administration’s newly appointed UN ambassador, John Bolton, has been waging an all-out attack on the global poor.   Tomorrow, September 14, over 175 heads of state will gather in New York for the World Summit. One of the major items on the agenda is global poverty. Back in 2000, 191 nations listened to the desperate cry of the world’s poor and developed a comprehensive list to eradicate poverty called the Millennium Development Goals. The goals, to be achieved by 2015, were to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, improve maternal health and reverse the loss of environmental resources. To achieve these ambitious goals, the rich countries made a commitment to spend 0.7 percent of gross domestic product on development. The upcoming Summit was supposed to review the progress toward achieving these goals.   But even before the first world leader landed in New York, John Bolton threw the process in turmoil. In a letter to the other 190 UN member states, Bolton wrote that the United States “does not accept global aid targets”—a clear break with the pledge agreed to by the Clinton administration. (While some countries, including Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have already reached the aid target of 0.7 percent, the United States lags far behind, spending a mere 0.16 percent of its GDP on development.)   Bolton wanted these goals to be eliminated from the document being prepared for the World Summit leaders to sign. In fact, Bolton stunned negotiators when less than one month before the Summit, he introduced over 500 amendments to the 39-page draft document that UN representatives had been painstakingly negotiating for the past year.   The administration publicly complained that the document’s section on poverty was too long and instead called for greater focus on free-market reforms. But those free market reforms did not include encouraging corporations to promote the public good. On the contrary. Bolton wanted to eliminate references to “corporate accountability.” And he went even further, trying to strike the section that called on the pharmaceutical companies to make anti-retroviral drugs affordable and accessible to people in Africa with HIV/AIDS. Bolton’s message that corporate profits should take preference over social needs offers no comfort to the 30,000 poor who die daily from needless hunger and curable diseases.   In another area that severely impacts the world’s poor—climate change—Bolton has been equally brutal. While Hurricane Katrina was lashing the Gulf states, Bolton was slashing the global consensus that “climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the world.” Not only did he attempt to wipe out any references to meeting any obligations outlined in the Kyoto Protocol, but he also stunned negotiators when, in the section on the UN’s core values, he tried to cut the phrase “respect for nature”.   Finally, with global resources that could used to alleviate poverty instead going into the never-ending arms race, Bolton’s agenda moves us in the direction of an even more dangerous and violent world. He tried to eliminate the principle that the use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort, slash references to the International Criminal Court and calls for the nuclear powers to make greater progress toward dismantling their nuclear weapons, and cut language that would discourage Security Council members from blocking actions to end genocide.   John Bolton’s slash-and-burn style has convinced many global leaders that the US agenda is not to reform the United Nations but to gut it. In fact, Bolton even called for deleting a clause saying the United Nations should be provided with “the resources needed to fully implement its mandates.”   The Bolton/Bush agenda reflects a misguided belief that absolute US sovereignty should take precedence over international cooperation. It also sends a message that the US government feels no responsibility towards—or compassion for—the world’s poor.   UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged the United States to back down and reaffirm its support for the millennium development goals, goals that he says have been embraced by the whole world as a way to help poor people who want to live in dignity. Even U.S. allies like Tony Blair have stepped in to try to stop Bolton from wrecking the Summit.   The outcry from the global community is forcing Bolton to back down on some of his more outrageous demands. But the Bolton/Bush agenda still refuses to seriously address the critical issues of our times, ranging from global warming to the arms race to grinding poverty. We citizens must demand that our government’s face to the international world not be that of a mean-spirited, aggressive bully but one that reflects the compassion and commitment to alleviating suffering and environmental devastation that the world has shown us in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.   (Medea Benjamin is Founding Director of the international human rights group Global Exchange).
	The war of unintended consequences by AFP / The Guardian / Canadian Press   November 5, 2005.   “Iraq war "fuelled terrorism": former British ambassador”. (AFP)   Britain”s involvement in the Iraq war has "partly radicalised and fuelled" the rise of home-grown terrorism, London”s former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, said on Saturday.   Prime Minister Tony Blair has repeatedly denied that the US and British invasion of Iraq in March 2003 has led to an increase in Islamic extremism and that it played a part in the July 7 attacks in London which left 56 dead.   But in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Sir Christopher said: "There is plenty of evidence around at the moment that home-grown terrorism was partly radicalised and fuelled by what is going on in Iraq. There is no way we can credibly get up and say it has nothing to do with it. Don”t tell me that being in Iraq has got nothing to do with it. Of course it does," he said.   Sir Christopher - a key aide to Mr Blair in crucial talks between London and Washington in the months and weeks leading up to military action - said the continued US-British presence in the Gulf was aiding Iraqi insurgents.   Sir Christopher”s memoirs of the decision-making that led to the Iraq war, DC Confidential, is to be serialised in the Guardian and the Daily Mail newspapers. The book reportedly singles out Mr Blair and a number of British cabinet members for criticism, and reveals that in the build-up to war the Prime Minister had few dealings with the Foreign Office, where diplomats raised doubts about the conflict”s legitimacy. He expressed concern about how it was conducted and the apparent lack of a coherent strategy following victory. "One of the things that came to me when writing was how political the war was," he told The Guardian, which editorially opposed the invasion. "This wasn”t just a war, it was a political war."   Montreal, 20 October 2005   “War in Iraq may be fuelling Global Insecurity, Canadian Spy Chief Warns”, by Jim Bronskill. (The Canadian Press)   The head of Canada"s spy agency strongly suggested Thursday the US-led war in Iraq is making the world a less secure place.   "Diplomacy is not my field, security and intelligence is," CSIS director Jim Judd said at a conference on intelligence studies. "And I think from a security and intelligence perspective, the conflict in Iraq may be creating longer-term problems, not just for Iraq but other jurisdictions as well."   The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said Iraq is becoming a "kind of a test bed for new techniques" for Islamic extremists, such as suicide attacks and the use of improvised explosives.   A number of radicals from Canada - fewer than 10 - have slipped across borders to join the fighting in Iraq, Judd said during a break in the annual gathering of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies. "We know of others who may be planning to," he added. "I don"t think there"s anything we can do legally to prevent this."   Judd expressed concern about the dangers extremists from North America, Europe and the Middle East pose once they leave Iraq. "It raises the longer-term question of what do they bode for the future?" Judd said.   Journalist and author Peter Bergen warned that the war in Iraq could spawn a new generation of trained warriors - the "shock troops of the new international jihad" - determined to carry out terrorist attacks against the West. Osama bin Laden"s al-Qaida network has proven alluring to wayward extremists partly because western societies have done a poor job of challenging his arguments, terrorism experts told the conference.   Young students who attend the most radical Muslim schools are presented with a violent world view and taught to despise "corrupting western influences" from an early age, said Karin von Hippel of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We"ve lost the moral high ground to the wrong people, and we need to get it back," von Hippel said.   Bergen, a commentator for cable news network CNN, said the next time a westerner is beheaded by Islamic extremists, those who oppose terrorism should stress that the Koran in no way endorses such violence.   Both von Hippel and Bergen took issue with the notion that poverty is a driving force behind terrorism. "If poverty were really a true cause of terrorism, more terrorists would come from the poorest parts of world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, and thus far this is not the case," von Hippel said.   Presenters pointed to history in an effort to put the terrorist threat in perspective. Stephane Leman-Langlois of the University of Montreal dismissed the assertion, voiced last year by Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan, that the world is more dangerous than at any time in collective memory. He argued the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War amounted to "a far more scary time" than the possible fallout of the post-9/11 era.   The conference has attracted about 360 security officials, academics and commentators, including well-known American journalist Seymour Hersh.   Hersh, who has reported extensively about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq, said he has become fascinated by what he sees as a neo-conservative coup in the corridors of US power. He believes the Americans should pull out of Iraq immediately. "The faster out of there, the better it is," Hersh said.   September 12, 2005 (The Guardian)   What real progress can the US and its allies honestly claim for the war on terror?   During the past century the United States has faced two brutal assaults. Within four years of the first, on December 7 1941, the US and its allies had mobilized, taken on and defeated two powerful enemies, Japan and Germany. Four years after the second, on September 11 2001, what real progress can the US and its allies honestly claim for the war on terror?   The answer, tragically and alarmingly, is that they have not made enough. Not only is terror very much still with us, it is also on the increase. Last year, the US state department reported 651 "significant terrorist attacks" around the world, three times the total for 2003 and the highest annual number since Washington began to collect such statistics two decades ago. Around a third of those attacks took place in Iraq, supposedly the central front of the war on terror, in some parts of which terrorist killings have now reached pandemic levels. Since April, more than 4,000 Iraqis have been killed by terrorists in Baghdad alone. But the killing is in no way confined to Iraq. No one in London needs any reminder of that. And Britain, like the US and many others, is wrestling to balance established liberties and ways of life with the danger that another 9/11, or another 7/7, may occur at any time.   The assault on America four years ago this week was in every way as infamous a deed as the one committed by Japan in 1941. Much of the response to it, however, was not just ineffective but counter-productive. Faced with 9/11, George Bush"s initial response was briefly both brainy and belligerent. But the initial advantages were quickly squandered under pressure from the ideological right. By choosing to rid the world of evil - above all in Iraq - rather than to hunt down, take out and politically disable al-Qaida, Mr Bush set his country on a path which continues to dismay America"s friends and to delight its enemies.   In effect, though, he also did Osama bin Laden"s job for him. The war on terror, with its rhetoric of a battle between good and evil and its talk of a fight that will last for generations, depended for credibility upon the efficacy of American power and upon the accuracy of the US neocon prescription of a "democratic revolution" across the Middle East. In reality, both have proved to be wishful thinking - the real surprise being the limits of the US military effort. America has fought and occupied, but it has not shown that it can rebuild. The idea that Iraq would set off a domino democratic effect across the Middle East now seems even more preposterous than ever - if Iraq is exporting anything to its neighbors, it is violence not democracy. Faced with a ruthless insurgency, American public opinion is faltering as the gulf on the ground between reality and objectives widens. Post-Katrina, the question is not whether the US will begin to withdraw - but when, how and, above all, with what damage.   Politically this may be inevitable and even desirable - but we will all live with the consequences. The most damning charge against the war on terror is that it has been a recruiting sergeant for the very forces it sought to destroy.
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