30-plus governors told to quit in letters from Guardians of the Free Republics

By Anita Kumar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2010; A03

More than 30 governors, including Robert F. McDonnell (R) of Virginia, received letters from an anti-government group this week demanding that they resign within three days or face removal from office.

The letters from the group, Guardians of the Free Republics, do not threaten violence, according to officials in Richmond and Washington. No arrests have been made.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) did not receive a letter, his spokesman, Shaun Adamec, said Friday.

The demands come after an outbreak of harassment and vandalism against members of Congress a couple of weeks ago. A Philadelphia man was charged Monday with threatening to kill U.S. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and his family.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned police across the country that the letters could provoke violent behavior.

"The FBI and DHS are not aware of any immediate or credible threat,'' a Department of Homeland Security official said in a statement. "Although no specific information to indicate violence is intended as part of this plan, the bulletin was shared with federal, state, local and tribal partners to ensure they are equipped with the tools they need to better recognize behaviors and other indicators consistent with homeland security threats to prevent violence or criminal acts."

In at least two states, Utah and Nebraska, security was increased after the letters were received. In Nevada, screening machines were added to the main entrance of the state Capitol.

Guardians of the Free Republics aspires to restore the U.S. republic by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, according to its Web site.

"The Restore America Plan is a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war,'' the Web site says.

Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University who has studied anti-government groups for more than two decades, said the delivery of the demands -- to so many governors -- is unprecedented.

"Given how emotional politics has become, it has to be taken seriously,'' he said. "On the one hand, it's absurd. On the other hand, given the time it took to contact 30 governors, it's not easily dismissed."

Mark Potok, an editor at the Southern Poverty Law Center who tracks extremists and hate speech, said the group stems from the "sovereign citizen" movement, including those who do not believe in paying taxes or abiding by zoning or other regulations. Some contend that a person has not committed a crime if there is no complaining witness.

In Virginia, the letter was received at the governor's office in Richmond on Wednesday. It was turned over to the Virginia State Police, which sent it to the Richmond FBI office.

The governor's office released a statement Friday morning that said the "the Governor and his family are secure."

Governors who received the letters include Tim Pawlenty (R) of Minnesota, Jennifer M. Granholm (D) of Michigan, Bobby Jindal (R) of Louisiana, Chet Culver (D) of Iowa, Brad Henry (D) of Oklahoma and Mike Rounds (R) of South Dakota. The FBI expects that all 50 governors will eventually receive such letters.

Saudi Arabia To Execute TV Host for Sorcery

Times of London
Friday, April 2, 2010

A popular Lebanese TV host who was arrested in Saudi Arabia two years ago could be facing execution any day now for charges of sorcery, the Times of London reports. Ali Hussain Sibat was arrested during a pilgrimage to the country and charged with sorcery after authorities forced him to confess on Saudi national TV that he "consulted spirits to predict the future." Sibat's confession was later used against him in court. Prior to his arrest, Sibat was the host of Sheherazade, a Lebanese TV show that asked viewers to call in for advice. Inside sources told Sibat's lawyer May El Khansa that an execution was imminent (many believed that he would be killed yesterday) but CNN reports that Lebanon's justice minister contacted El Khansa on Thursday to assure her that he would not be killed the following day. According to human rights groups, sorcery and witchcraft arrests are on the rise in Saudi Arabia.

Some right-wingers ignore facts as they rewrite U.S. history

By Steven Thomma,
McClatchy Newspapers
Thu Apr 1, 4:05 pm ET

WASHINGTON — The right is rewriting history.

The most ballyhooed effort is under way in Texas , where conservatives have pushed the state school board to rewrite guidelines, downplaying Thomas Jefferson in one high school course, playing up such conservatives as Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation and challenging the idea that the Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state.

The effort reaches far beyond one state, however.

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today's politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton ? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.

Theodore Roosevelt ? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt ? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.

Joe McCarthy ? Liberals lied about him. He was a hero.

Some conservatives say it's a long-overdue swing of the pendulum after years of liberal efforts to define history on their terms in classrooms and in popular culture.

"We are adding balance," Texas school board member Don McLeroy said. "History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left."

The effort in Texas and nationwide is controversial, however, even among many conservatives. McLeroy was defeated in a recent primary after he led the campaign for a more conservative version of history, a defeat that the National Review , a leading conservative organ, called "sensible."

While even some conservative intellectuals say that some of the revisionist history is simply wrong, at the core, the effort reflects the ever-changing view of history, which is always subject to revision thanks to new information or new ways of looking at things, and often is viewed through a political lens.

"History in the popular world is always a political football," said Alan Brinkley , a historian at Columbia University . "The right is unusually mobilized at the moment."

"Part of the tide of history is that it's contested terrain," said Fritz Fischer , a historian at the University of Northern Colorado and the chairman of the National Council for History Education . "We should always be arguing and questioning what happened in the past."

It's not just historians who contest history, however. It's also politicians and pundits.

The left has done it.

Fischer cited the case of controversial former University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill , whose essay claiming that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were the fruit of illegal U.S. policies became a cause celebre. Fischer said Churchill "ignored a lot of evidence and made some up to promulgate a particular political belief."

Now, it's the right.

"There's clearly a political impetus behind this that connects to the issues of today," Fischer said, such as labeling President Barack Obama a socialist. "But when history is ignored to do it, that can be dangerous."

Here are five recent examples of new conservative versions of history:

JAMESTOWN

Reaching for an example of how bad socialism can be, former House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey , R- Texas , said recently that the people who settled Jamestown, Va. , in 1607 were socialists and that their ideology doomed them.

" Jamestown colony, when it was first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and dying in the snow," he said in a speech March 15 at the National Press Club .

It was a good, strong story, helping Armey, a former economics professor, illustrate the dangers of socialism, the same ideology that he and other conservatives say is at the core of Obama's agenda.

It was not, however, true.

The Jamestown settlement was a capitalist venture financed by the Virginia Company of London — a joint stock corporation — to make a profit. The colony nearly foundered owing to a harsh winter, brackish water and lack of food, but reinforcements enabled it to survive. It was never socialistic. In fact, in 1619, Jamestown planters imported the first African slaves to the 13 colonies that later formed the United States .

ALEXANDER HAMILTON

At the same event, Armey urged people to read the Federalist Papers as a guide to the sentiments of the tea party movement.

"The small-government conservative movement, which includes people who call themselves the tea party patriots and so forth, is about the principles of liberty as embodied in the Constitution, the understanding of which is fleshed out if you read things like the Federalist Papers," Armey said.

Others such as Democrats and the news media, "people here who do not cherish America the way we do," don't understand because "they did not read the Federalist Papers," he said.

A member of the audience asked Armey how the Federalist Papers could be such a tea party manifesto when they were written largely by Alexander Hamilton , who the questioner said "was widely regarded then and now as an advocate of a strong central government."

Armey ridiculed the very suggestion.

"Widely regarded by whom?" he asked. "Today's modern, ill-informed political science professors? . . . I just doubt that was the case, in fact, about Hamilton."

Hamilton, however, was an unapologetic advocate of a strong central government, one that plays an active role in the economy and is led by a president named for life and thus beyond the emotions of the people. Hamilton also pushed for excise taxes and customs duties to pay down federal debt.

In fact, Ian Finseth said in a history written for the University of Virginia , others at the constitutional convention "thought his proposals went too far in strengthening the central government."

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Theodore Roosevelt was long an icon of the Republican Party , a dynamic leader who ushered in the Progressive era, busting trusts, regulating robber barons, building the Panama Canal and sending the U.S. fleet around the world announcing ascendant American power.

Fox TV commentator Glenn Beck , however, says that Roosevelt was a socialist whose legacy is destroying America. It started, Beck said, with Roosevelt's admonition to the wealthy of his day to spend their riches for the good of society.

"We judge no man a fortune in civil life if it's honorably obtained and well spent," Roosevelt said, according to Beck. "It's not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it only to be gained so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."

Actually, Roosevelt said, "We GRUDGE no man a fortune ... if it's honorably obtained and well USED." But either way, Beck saw the threat.

"Oh? Well, thank you," Beck said with scorn during his keynote speech to the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington . The presidential suggestion that the wealthy of the Gilded Age should contribute to the good of society was a clear danger that must be condemned, Beck said.

"Is this what the Republican Party stands for? Well, you should ask members of the Republican Party , because this is not our founders' idea of America. And this is the cancer that's eating at America. It is big government; it's a socialist utopia," Beck said.

"And we need to address it as if it is a cancer. It must be cut out of the system because they cannot coexist. ... You must eradicate it. It cannot coexist."

There's no doubt that Roosevelt was a domestic policy liberal by today's standards. In a 1910 speech in Kansas , he acknowledged that his "New Nationalism" meant "far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had."

The 26th president insisted, however, that he wanted the government to guarantee opportunity, not a handout.

"The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare," he said.

"Give him a chance, not push him up if he will not be pushed. ... Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see that he gets a chance to show the worth that is in him."

In his autobiography three years later, Roosevelt went on to dismiss the tenets of socialism as taught by Karl Marx as "an exploded theory."

"Too many thoroughly well-meaning men and women in the America of today glibly repeat and accept," he wrote, "various assumptions and speculations by Marx and others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have been shown to possess not one shred of value."

In addition, Roosevelt didn't advocate government ownership of the means of production, the definition of socialism.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

It's long been debated how well Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal government programs countered the Great Depression, but now a prominent conservative has introduced the idea that Roosevelt CAUSED the Depression.

"FDR took office in the midst of a recession," Rep. Michele Bachmann , R- Minn. , told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. "He decided to choose massive government spending and the creation of monstrous bureaucracies. Do we detect a Democrat pattern here in all of this? He took what was a manageable recession and turned it into a 10-year depression."

A year before, Bachmann went to the House floor to blame FDR and what she called the "Hoot-Smalley" tariffs for creating the Depression.

"The recession that FDR had to deal with wasn't as bad as the recession (President Calvin) Coolidge had to deal with in the early '20s," she said.

Coolidge cut taxes and created the roaring '20s, Bachmann said.

"FDR applied just the opposite formula: the Hoot-Smalley act, which was a tremendous burden on tariff restrictions. And of course trade barriers and the regulatory burden and of course tax barriers.

"That's what we saw happen under FDR. That took a recession and blew it into a full-scale depression. The American people suffered for almost 10 years under that kind of thinking."

The truth? Historians agree that tariffs hurt trade and worsened the depression.

However, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act — not Hoot-Smalley — was proposed by two Republicans, Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon . A Republican House and a Republican Senate approved it. President Herbert Hoover , a Republican, signed it into law.

The facts also show that the country was in something far worse than a "manageable recession" in March 1933 when Roosevelt took office.

Stocks had lost 90 percent of their value since the crash of 1929. Thousands of banks had failed. Unemployment reached an all-time high of 24.9 percent just before Roosevelt was inaugurated.

JOE MCCARTHY

Sen. Joseph McCarthy , R- Wis. , burst onto the national stage in the early 1950s with accusations that he had a list of names of known Communists in the federal government. He didn't name them, was censured by the Senate eventually and his name became synonymous with witch hunts — McCarthyism.

Now, the end of the Cold War has opened up spy files and identified many Communist spies who operated inside the government during the era. Some conservatives argue that this proves not only that McCarthy was right, but also that he was a hero and that he was smeared by liberals, the news media and historians.

"Almost everything about McCarthy in current history books is a lie and will have to be revised," conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly said.

"Liberals had to destroy McCarthy because he exposed the entire liberal establishment as having sheltered Soviet spies," conservative commentator Ann Coulter said in one interview.

"The myth of 'McCarthyism' is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times," she said in another. "Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. ... If the Internet, talk radio and Fox News had been around in McCarthy's day, my book wouldn't be the first time most people would be hearing the truth about 'McCarthyism.' "

Yet even some prominent conservatives say that McCarthy's defenders go too far, and that even from a conservative perspective, McCarthy was no hero and damaged the country.

"A dangerous movement has been growing among conservative writers to vindicate the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and his campaign to expose Soviet spies in the U.S. government," Ronald Kessler wrote for the conservative Web site Newsmax.com.

"The FBI agents who were actually chasing those spies have told me that McCarthy hurt their efforts because he trumped up charges, unfairly besmirched honorable Americans and gave hunting spies a bad name."

Kessler said the release of secret Cold War files under the Venona Project confirmed that there were Soviet spies in the U.S. government.

"The problem was that the people McCarthy tarnished as Communists or Communist sympathizers were not the real spies," Kessler wrote.

"The cause of anti-communism, which united millions of Americans and which gained the support of Democrats, Republicans and independents, was undermined by Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin ," wrote William Bennett , who was the conservative secretary of education under President Ronald Reagan .

"McCarthy addressed a real problem: disloyal elements within the U.S. government. But his approach to this real problem was to cause untold grief to the country he claimed to love," Bennett wrote in his book "America: The Last Best Hope."

"Worst of all, McCarthy besmirched the honorable cause of anti-communism. He discredited legitimate efforts to counter Soviet subversion of American institutions."

ON THE WEB

More on Jamestown

Armey's speech at the National Press Club

Treasury Department history of Hamilton

University of Virginia on Hamilton

More on the Venona Project

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Who should be at Obama's health care signing? Truman

Here's the truth: 'Birther' claims are just plain nuts

Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make birthers look sane

Newark, N.J., marks first murder-free month in 44 years

Brett Michael Dykes is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News
Thu Apr 1, 12:45 pm ET

In the annals of American urban decay, Newark, N.J., has long stood apart. Five of Newark's last seven mayors have been indicted on criminal charges, and in 1996, Money magazine named Newark — a city of around 280,000 just eight miles outside of New York City — the "Most Dangerous City" in America. In explaining its choice, Money reported that one in every 25 Newark residents had been the victim of a violent crime at some point.

Boy, how times have changed.

Fourteen years after winning that dubious distinction, Newark is in the midst of a drastic turnaround. And today marks a significant milestone in that shift: March 2010 is now in the books as the first month in 44 years that no one was murdered in New Jersey's largest city. In a story time-stamped at 12:01 a.m. this morning, NJ.com reports:

It's been 32 days since a homicide took place in Newark, marking the first time there has been a slay-free calendar month in the city since 1966.

Police Director Garry McCarthy said he hopes to best a 43-day period from March to April of 2008, the longest span of time without a slaying in the city since 1961. 10 homicides have occurred in Newark since January 1st, and none have taken place in the South Ward, long believed to be Newark's most dangerous section.

Most observers credit the city's turnaround to the aggressive efforts of Mayor Cory Booker, elected in 2006 on pledge to restore the city's economy and civic order. Booker may be best know in the media world for a fake feud he had with Conan O'Brien, but he's an accomplished civic reformer. Prior to his election, Booker lived for eight years in one of the city's more notorious housing projects where he organized tenants to fight the drug gangs that riddled the area.

Shortly after his inauguration, Booker appointed MCarthy, the former NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations, to overhaul Newark's beleaguered police department. He collaborated with McCarthy on improved law-enforcement measures such as round-the-clock security cameras to monitor criminal activity throughout the city. Booker has also made a point of patrolling the streets of the city in late evening hours in the company of his security staff.

"We're really encouraged," Booker said in an interview with Yahoo! News about Newark's landmark month without a murder. "This is just another milestone that proves we're making progress in our city. It's really helping pulling the city together."

He also says that he plans to keep building on the achievement. "We're going to continue to push beyond what people think is impossible. We want to show the rest of the country what's possible by doing what we're doing."

More U.S. Muslims facing problems in return from abroad, groups say

By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 2, 2010; A06

Muslim advocacy groups say an increasing number of Muslim and Arab U.S. citizens and permanent residents who travel abroad are facing new complications in returning to the United States because of heightened security.

An attempted Christmas day bombing on a Detroit-bound airplane caused soul-searching in government agencies after it became clear that the alleged would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was not on a watch list. Since then, the no-fly list has swelled from 3,400 people to about 6,000, with thousands more on the list for travelers who warrant extra screening.

The lists are not made public, and most people don't know they are on one until they arrive at the airport. In one case, an American says he has been barred from returning to the United States without explanation.

Raymond Earl Knaeble IV said that when he presented his U.S. passport at the airport in Bogota, Colombia, for a flight to Miami last month, "They came back and told me, 'You can't fly with any airlines to the USA.' "

Knaeble, 29, a California-born military contractor scheduled to start a job in Texas that week, said the airline sent him to the U.S. Embassy to straighten things out. There, he said, an FBI agent questioned him about his recent conversion to Islam and a trip to Yemen, where he had spent three months studying Arabic.

"He said, 'I can't give you back your passport,' " Knaeble said. That was almost three weeks ago, and Knaeble says no one has told him why.

Khalilah Sabra, director of the immigrant justice program at the Falls Church-based Muslim American Society, said that since Christmas the organization has seen a 50 percent increase in reports of extensive questioning and delays of Arabs and Muslims, to about 16 cases a month. "Getting out [of the U.S.] is okay. No one says anything, but when they try to come back they are not allowed in, or they are being questioned," she said.

The Obama administration plans to replace rules instituted after the Christmas bombing attempt that stepped up airport screening of people traveling to or from 14 countries, or holding passports from those countries, to a system that focuses more on intelligence data such as red-flag travel patterns, senior officials said Thursday. It's not clear whether that change will affect people who have faced increased difficulties traveling in recent months.

Government officials have said in recent weeks that the lists are likely to continue to grow. "The entire federal government is leaning very far forward on putting people on lists," said Russell Travers, deputy director for Information Sharing and Knowledge Development at the National Counterterrorism Center, at a Senate hearing March 10.

Timothy Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, said that for now, based on intelligence and the threat level at the time, certain people have been provisionally moved from lower-level watchlists to more restrictive ones. "They were moved as a precaution, and we're in the process of reviewing that," he said.

For travelers -- mostly men -- who are questioned, "it's really having a chilling effect," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, which has been advising Knaeble and others. "People do whatever they can now not to cross borders if they're Muslim because they feel there's some potential for humiliation."

The State and Homeland Security departments declined to comment for this article, but officials have acknowledged that the lists can produce false positives.

To streamline the process and reduce misidentifications, the Transportation Security Administration has begun the Secure Flight program, which asks for additional information from travelers, and the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, or TRIP, which allows people who think they are on a list to ask the government to investigate their situation.

Since 2007, about 91,000 people have applied, and two thirds have received case numbers to present in travel. Most were never really on a list, Healy said, adding that airlines can have other reasons for questioning or delaying travelers.

Applicants are never told whether they were on a list or removed from one; the only way to know is to try flying again.

But if a traveler is abroad while waiting the 60 days for a case to be processed, "basically, if you're stuck, you're out of luck," Sabra said.

Darryl Dalil Javid, 44, a District native and convert to Islam, learned that when he tried to fly out of Yemen in January. He had moved there five years ago, returning regularly to the United States to work as a facilities manager. Last year, his Yemeni visa expired, but he said he continued to fly in and out without problems.

After the Christmas bombing attempt, however, Yemen began to deport people without valid visas, Javid said, and when it tried to deport him, he could not find an airline that would let him fly to the United States. At one point, he made it as far as Istanbul only to be denied boarding on a Chicago-bound flight.

"They don't tell you anything, what's your situation, how do you get out of your situation," he said. "You have to figure it out."

Speaking by phone last month from a holding cell in the Yemeni Interior Ministry, Javid said he had had the bad luck to study for a month at the same Arabic language school -- the Sana'a Institute for the Arabic Language -- that Abdulmutallab had once attended, although Javid said he had never seen or heard of him there. Yemen was cheap, he said, and he found community there with other American converts.

"We are not disgruntled, we're not, 'Oh, I hate America, I want to live somewhere else,' " he said.

After he was barred from the Chicago flight, Javid spent a week sleeping in the Istanbul airport, flying briefly to Morocco only to be turned back. Finally, he was sent back to Yemen and put in a room full of detainees in the Interior Ministry. In each country, he said, he was questioned by embassy officials and FBI agents.

Knaeble, too, said he chose Yemen because it was cheap. He converted to Islam about a year ago, after working in Kuwait for three years as a driver. In the past 2 1/2 weeks, he said, FBI agents in Bogota have questioned him about his view of jihad and whether he knows the Christmas day bombing suspect and the suspect in the Fort Hood slayings.

Knaeble is paying $50 a night for a Bogota hotel. The FBI has given him $500 to cover expenses, but he said he feels trapped.

"I don't understand, what did I do? Why can't I go back to the USA?" He has lost his job, he said, and some of his faith in the government he served in the military.

Javid finally returned to the United States March 25, after U.S. Embassy officials told him that he could buy a ticket only on a certain flight carrying U.S. air marshals.

In his mother's townhouse in Laurel this week, he sat in a white robe, surrounded by copies of the Koran. He said the ordeal, including air tickets he could not use, cost him about $6,000.

"Security is always inconvenient," he said. "But I think it's without serious consideration of what people can go through, when you say, 'Okay, put them on [the list] first and investigate them later.' "

FBI warns extremist letters may encourage violence

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and DEVLIN BARRETT
The Associated Press
Friday, April 2, 2010; 9:34 AM

WASHINGTON -- The FBI is warning police across the country that an anti-government group's call to remove governors from office could provoke violence by others.

A group that calls itself the Guardians of the free Republics wants to "restore America" by peacefully dismantling parts of the government, according to its Web site.

As of Wednesday, more than 30 governors had received letters saying if they don't leave office within three days they will be removed, according to an internal intelligence note by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The note was obtained by The Associated Press.

Investigators do not see threats of violence in the group's message, but fear the broad call for removing top state officials could lead others to act out violently.

Governors whose offices reported receiving the letters included Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Chet Culver of Iowa and Jim Gibbons of Nevada.

Screening machines for visitors and packages were added to the main entrance to the Nevada Capitol as a precaution after Gibbons received one of the letters.

"We're not really overly concerned, but at the same time we don't want to sit back and do nothing and regret it," Deputy Chief of Staff Lynn Hettrick said.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said federal authorities had alerted the governor that such a letter might be coming, and it arrived Monday or Tuesday. Boyd, who described the letter as "non-threatening," said it was opened by a staffer and immediately turned over to the Michigan State Police.

Jindal's office confirmed the governor had received a letter from the Guardians of the free Republics and directed all further questions to the Louisiana State Police.

"They called us as they do for any letter that's out of the norm," said Lt. Doug Cain, a state police spokesman.

He declined to provide specifics about the letter, but said, "not knowing the group and the information contained in the letter warranted state police to review it." Cain said the letter has gone to numerous governors across the country.

The FBI warning comes at a time of heightened attention to far-right extremist groups after the arrest of nine Christian militia members last weekend accused of plotting violence.

In explaining the letters sent to the governors, the intelligence note says officials have no specific knowledge of plans to use violence, but they caution police to be aware in case other individuals interpret the letters "as a justification for violence or other criminal actions."

The FBI associated the letter with "sovereign citizens," most of whom believe they are free from all duties of a U.S. citizen, like paying taxes or needing a government license to drive. A small number of these people are armed and resort to violence, according to the intelligence report.

Last weekend, the FBI conducted raids on suspected members of a Christian militia in the Midwest that was allegedly planning to kill police officers. In the past year, federal agents have seen an increase in "chatter" from an array of domestic extremist groups, which can include radical self-styled militias, white separatists or extreme civil libertarians and sovereign citizens.

Moscow subway bomber was widow of militant

By MANSUR MIROVALEV, Associated Press Writer Mansur Mirovalev, Associated Press Writer 40 mins ago

MOSCOW – A 17-year-old widow of a slain Islamist rebel was one of the two female suicide bombers who attacked Moscow's subway, a leading Russian newspaper reported Friday, as President Dmitry Medvedev announced new measures to crack down on terrorism.

The death toll from Monday's subway bombings in Moscow rose to 40 on Friday as a man died in the hospital of his injuries. At least 90 others were injured in those attacks.

Medvedev, himself a lawyer, said the laws should be broadened so that those who help terrorists even in small ways — "by making soup or washing clothes" — are punished. However, that is something Russian authorities have already been doing.

The Kommersant newspaper reported that the subway bombers came from Dagestan and Chechnya, two neighboring, predominantly Muslim provinces in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region. Dagestan was the site of two subsequent suicide bombings on Wednesday that killed 12 people, mostly police officers, and another explosion Thursday that killed two suspected militants.

Federal and local officials in Dagestan refused to comment Friday to The Associated Press on the newspaper report. A Chechen militant leader on Thursday claimed responsibility for the subway bombings.

Kommersant published a photograph of a young woman dressed in a black Muslim headscarf and holding a pistol. It named her as Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova from Dagestan, saying she was also known as Dzhennet Abdullayeva.

A man with his arm around her, also holding a gun, is identified as Umalat Magomedov, whom the paper describes as an Islamist militant leader killed by government forces in December.

The report, giving no sources, said the second bomber has been tentatively identified as 20-year-old Markha Ustarkhanova from Chechnya. On Thursday, the paper said she was the widow of a militant leader killed last October while preparing to assassinate Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who is backed by the Kremlin.

Female suicide bombers from the North Caucasus are referred to in Russia as "black widows" because many of them are the wives, or other relatives, of militants killed by security forces.

Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have called for the terrorists to be unceremoniously destroyed. On Friday, Medvedev broadened the targets to include their accomplices.

"In my opinion, we have to create such a model for terrorist crimes that anyone who helps them — no matter what he does, be it cook the soup or wash the clothes — has committed a crime," Medvedev said.

Russian police and security forces have long been accused of seizing people suspected of aiding militants. Some people were tortured and many disappeared, and rights people trying to document the abuses have also been slain, kidnapped, threatened or have disappeared.

Tennessee man pleads guilty in plot against Obama

By SHEILA BURKE
Associated Pres
Mon Mar 29, 9:24 pm ET

JACKSON, Tenn. – A Tennessee man authorities say is a white supremacist has pleaded guilty to plotting to kill then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and dozens of other black people in 2008.

Twenty-one-year-old Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tenn., pleaded guilty Monday to eight of 10 counts in an indictment accusing him of conspiracy, threatening a presidential candidate and various federal firearms violations. Under a plea agreement, he faces 12 to 18 years in prison, but a federal judge could choose a longer sentence.

Co-defendant, 19-year-old Paul Schlesselman of Helena-West Helena, Ark., pleaded guilty in January and will be sentenced April 15.

Authorities have described the two as skinheads who planned a cross-country robbing and killing spree that would end with an attack on Obama.

Who are the Christian militia 'Hutaree' and why was the FBI targeting them?

Brett Michael Dykes is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News
Mon Mar 29, 4:16 pm ET

This weekend, the FBI conducted a series of raids in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana to detain members of a Christian militia group on criminal charges. So what does this group believe, and how do its members fit in with the larger radical right?

The group in question calls itself the "Hutaree"; its website says the term translates as "Christian warrior." And in keeping with that name, the material it has posted online reflects an outlook of violent religious confrontation. The Hutaree believe that acts of violence can bring about the final judgment prophesied in the Christian Bible — and therefore have been arming themselves to go to war with the Antichrist, "evil Jews," and Muslims. They have documented their training exercises in a series of YouTube videos. And they spell out the theological rationale for their actions on the "About Us" page on their website:

Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment. The only thing on earth to save the testimony and those who follow it, are the members of the testimony, til the return of Christ in the clouds. We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming ... The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it. We will reach out to those who are yet blind in the last days of the kingdoms of men and bring them to life in Christ.

According to the indictment unsealed this morning in court, the nine members of the group — eight men and one woman — planned to "levy war" against the U.S. government. To incite such a war, the group planned to murder law enforcement officials and then follow up their initial attacks with a separate attack on the fallen officers' funeral(s), where a large number of law enforcement personnel would no doubt be gathered.

With other news of vandalism and harassment from right-wing activists angry about the passage of health care reform, some commentators are already depicting the arrests as a further sign of how conservative activists are promoting violence in their ranks. But even within the militant world of the Michigan militia movement, the Hutarees are viewed as extreme religious fanatics. Michael Lackomar, a leader of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia, told the Associated Press that he'd fielded a frantic call from a Hutaree member Saturday night reporting the onset of the federal raids. After hearing pleas for help, Lackomar said that his group declined. "They said that they were under attack by the ATF and wanted a place to hide," Lackomar recalls. "My team leaders said, 'No thanks.' "

A posting on a Hutaree message board by someone named Anna seems to back up Lackomar's claim that Hutaree members were seeking help from other militia groups in the area.

"We need some help please," she wrote. "I am enroute south with my children using the wifi's as I can. They were catching others as they came to their rallying points, they broke into homes and took children and used the tasers on wives, my son who is 12 and I got out by crawling through the creeks behind our house. My husband and others are taken, please call the press and tell them, if any in the Michigan Militia is still free please rally with them. Please help."

Still, while the more secular and libertarian leaders of the militia movement may distance themselves from the Hutaree, the two militant strains of right-wing activism share some tactical affinities, says Kenneth S. Stern, the American Jewish Committee's director on anti-Semitism and extremism. "What you're starting to see in the number of militia groups sprouting up in the last year is a general antigovernment ideology," Stern says. "The targeting of cops is not inconsistent with that. The literature that glorified that white supremacist movement that helped the militia movement take off in the 1990s advocated those tactics — especially in books like 'The Turner Diaries.' And some of these groups — like the Order and others — started setting traps for law enforcement and going after first responders."

Stern cautions that it's too soon to draw broader lessons from the alleged Hutaree plot. But he does add that "whenever you have a combination of the ideology that says, 'the government is evil and we'd better do something about it,' and a religion that says, 'Hey, God wants you to do something about it,' that can be problematic."

Militia accused of plotting war on US government

By JOHN SEEWER
Associated Press
3/30/2010

WHEATLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. – A ninth alleged member of a Christian militia group that prepared to battle the Antichrist and the U.S. government was arrested after the FBI played recorded messages from family and friends, who urged the man to give himself up, over loudspeakers outside a home in rural Michigan.

Joshua Matthew Stone peacefully surrendered to heavily armed authorities Monday night. His father and seven others believed to be part of the Michigan-based Hutaree appeared in court earlier on charges they plotted to kill a police officer and slaughter scores more by bombing the funeral — all in hopes of touching off an uprising against the government.

Most of the arrests came during weekend raids in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. FBI agents moved quickly against Hutaree because members planned an attack sometime in April, prosecutors said. Authorities seized guns but would not say whether they found explosives.

The arrests dealt "a severe blow to a dangerous organization that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

In an indictment, prosecutors said the group began military-style training in the Michigan woods in 2008, learning how to shoot guns and make and set off bombs.

David Brian Stone, 44, of Clayton, Mich., and one of his sons were identified as ringleaders. Stone, known as "Captain Hutaree," organized the group in paramilitary fashion, prosecutors said. Ranks ranged from "radoks" to "gunners," according to the group's Web site.

"It started out as a Christian thing," Stone's ex-wife, Donna Stone, told The Associated Press. "You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far."

Donna Stone said her ex-husband pulled her son, David Brian Stone Jr., into the movement. The arrest of another of the senior Stone's sons Monday night happened 30 miles from the site of the Michigan raid, at a home where he was found with five other adults and a child.

"We're guessing he's been in there at least a day," Andrew Arena, head of the FBI's field office in Detroit, said after Joshua Stone surrendered.

Arena noted the pleas from Stone's family and friends. "They worked with us. They recorded some messages for us," he said.

Arena said the other adults at the home were taken into custody and a determination about whether they will face charges will be made later. The child was 1 or 2 years old, he said.

Other details, including whether those in the house were affiliated with Hutaree, weren't immediately released. Joshua Stone and his family were familiar with the area and may have done some training there, though not necessarily at the site where he was apprehended, Arena said.

Prosecutors said David Stone had identified certain law enforcement officers near his home as potential Hutaree targets. He and other members discussed setting off bombs at a police funeral, using a fake 911 call to lure an officer to his death, killing an officer after a traffic stop, or attacking the family of an officer, according to the indictment.

After such attacks, the group allegedly planned to retreat to "rally points" protected by trip-wired explosives for a violent standoff with the law.

"It is believed by the Hutaree that this engagement would then serve as a catalyst for a more widespread uprising against the government," the indictment said.

The charges against the nine suspects include seditious conspiracy — plotting to levy war against the U.S. — possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, teaching the use of explosives, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction — homemade bombs.

Hutaree says on its Web site its name means "Christian warrior." The group quotes several Bible passages and declares: "We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. ... Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment."

The Web site does not list specific grievances against law enforcement and the government.

The site features a picture of 17 men in camouflage, all holding large guns, and includes videos of armed men running through the woods. Each wears a shoulder patch that bears a cross and two red spears.

Heidi Beirich, research director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said her group learned about Hutaree last year while compiling its annual list of "patriot groups."

"Their Christian apocalyptic vision is quite different from most other militias," Beirich said. "Most don't put their religion first — they're more concerned with out-of-control federal government."

The wife of one of the defendants described Hutaree as a small group of patriotic, Christian buddies who were just doing survival training.

"It consisted of a dad and two of his sons and I think just a couple other close friends of theirs," said Kelly Sickles, who husband, Kristopher, was among those charged. "It was supposed to be a Christian group. Christ-like, right, so why would you think that's something wrong with that, right?"

Sickles said agents seized the guns her 27-year-old husband collected as a hobby and searched for bomb-making materials at her home near Sandusky, Ohio, but added: "He doesn't even know how to make a bomb."

One defendant expressed anti-tax views during his Monday court hearing. Thomas W. Piatek, a truck driver from Whiting, Ind., told a federal judge he could not afford an attorney because he was "getting raped on property taxes."

The mother of another defendant, 33-year-old Jacob Ward, told police in Huron, Ohio, last summer that family members took away his two guns — an AK-47 rifle and a semiautomatic pistol — because she thought he needed mental health treatment.

Some in Indonesia praise, seek to replicate China's fight against United States

By Andrew Higgins
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 29, 2010; A09

Amid cries of "God is Great," the former chief of staff of the Indonesian army joined hard-line Muslim activists in a Jakarta ballroom last week to denounce the United States -- and praise China as a model of how to stand up to Washington.

"We should do what China has done; America must follow our rules," declared retired Gen. Tyasno Sudarto. Veiled women and bearded men, seated separately to avoid mingling of the sexes, shouted praise for Allah and jabbed their fists in the air. Another speaker hailed China for defying Washington's "neo-liberal" economic creed.

The boisterous event, organized by an Islamic organization called Hizb ut-Tahrir, brought together two groups of Indonesians that don't usually mix -- fervent champions of an Islamic state and zealous secular nationalists. What united them was a shared fury at Washington and the hope that Beijing can put America in its place.

Their take on China -- a country ruled by an atheistic Communist Party -- marks a curious shift in thinking by Islamists and hard-core nationalists who have traditionally viewed Beijing, as well as each other, with deep distrust. The new thinking is a sign of how Beijing's growing economic and diplomatic power is scrambling old assumptions and alliances, sometimes in volatile and unlikely ways.

For more than four decades -- ever since Beijing armed and financed Indonesian communists plotting to seize power in 1965 -- China has been viewed by many here as a menace. Fear of China was reinforced by a widespread suspicion, and also jealousy, of Indonesia's economically powerful ethnic Chinese minority. In 1998, pro-democracy protests that toppled Suharto degenerated into an anti-Chinese pogrom. It used to be illegal in Indonesia to publicly display Chinese writing, and Chinese New Year lion dances were banned.

Such wariness of China has far from vanished but is now balanced by esteem for its economic achievements and its role in shifting the balance of power in world affairs in Asia's favor. "Lingering suspicion of China is still present but this is offset by admiration for China's successes," said Juwono Sudarsono, a former defense minister and professor of international relations at the University of Indonesia.

The fervently anti-American speakers in the Jakarta ballroom don't represent the mainstream here but their view of China tracks with a broader shift in attitudes. China has won a particularly strong following among those upset with the free-market policy prescriptions of the so-called "Washington consensus," which many Indonesians blame for a severe economic crisis in the late 1990s. The Washington-based International Monetary Fund is widely loathed in Indonesia. Islamists, right-wing nationalists and activists on the left routinely denounce the IMF.

The rival policy, the so-called "Beijing consensus," which puts the state at the center of economic development, is seen as a promising alternative "even among some educated Indonesians," Sudarsono said. But, he added, many realize "it is very hard to imitate the Communist Party of China" in Indonesia, which has spent the last decade building a vibrant democracy on the ruins of Suharto's authoritarian system.

While China enjoys emotional appeal as an alternative to American power and "neo-liberal" economics, it has struggled to win over constituencies more concerned with reality than ideology. For example, Indonesian industrialists and farmers, worried by the prospect of a surge in Chinese imports, have complained about a new free trade agreement that creates a huge free-trade zone comprising China, Indonesia and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. They want the agreement, known as CAFTA, which went into force Jan. 1, renegotiated.

In a recent speech in Jakarta to the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, China's ambassador to Indonesia, Zhang Qiyue, voiced frustration at what she said is alarmist talk that "the Chinese dragon is coming." Indonesia, she said, "is lagging behind."

Washington, for its part, has worked to strengthen already close ties with Jakarta's leadership and lift the United States' reputation with the general public, which plummeted during the Bush administration. This effort hasn't been helped by President Obama's decision to twice postpone visits to Jakarta, where he lived for four years as a boy. But, unlike his predecessor, the president is hugely popular among many Indonesians.

While China has emphasized economics in its ties with Jakarta, Obama has focused on Indonesia's credentials as a democracy -- the third biggest after India and the United States. Washington doesn't say so publicly, but Indonesia and Asia's two other big democracies, India and Japan, are seen by U.S. officials as a bulwark against the rising influence of authoritarian China.

Indonesia, wary of upsetting China, insists that it's not going to gang up on anyone and will pursue a foreign policy guided by what, in a recent speech in Australia, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono described as the principle of a "million friends and zero enemy."

A few hours after the White House announced that Obama would put off a March trip to Jakarta until at least June, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa held a press conference and said his government had no hard feelings. And anyway, he added, Jakarta has its hands full preparing for the arrival of another important visitor -- the prime minister of China. "We have very good relationships with China and the U.S.," Natalegawa said.

Did Iraq Just Elect a Mass-Murderer?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on March 28, 2010, Printed on March 29, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146204/

We can’t know whether the new Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, murdered six restrained men in cold blood while a mix of Iraqi and American guards looked on in shock.

What we do know is that Allawi was alleged to have committed the gruesome crime just before the “hand-over” of the government to Iraqi nationals in 2004 (he served as interim prime minister in Iraq’s transitional government). The allegations were made by an award-winning journalist in a major mainstream publication -- Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald -- relying on two sources who confirmed details of the event independently of one another.

We also know that the American media, with few exceptions, killed the story entirely. The few outlets that alluded to the charges did so with such a degree of skepticism -- essentially accepting official denials (and half-denials) as the end of the matter -- as to render it virtually meaningless.

As a result, in 2004, with debate over the invasion of Iraq front and center around the world, the American public got a far different picture of the conflict -- and the leaders George W. Bush installed in the fledgling Iraqi government -- than the people of every other English-speaking country in the world.

Here’s how Paul McGeough broke the story in the Herald, Australia’s leading daily:

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners -- handcuffed and blindfolded -- were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".

The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, then Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that while he personally found the allegations "unbelievable," he also thought that, “because they are written by a credible journalist, [then-Foreign Minister Alexander] Downer's responsibility is to get the truth from the Australian embassy in Baghdad and from the government of the United States. It's important that these matters are clarified.”

In the UK, there were also calls for an inquiry. “It is vital that [the allegations] are cleared up one way or another and that needs an independent inquiry,” said former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who resigned his cabinet post over the Iraq war.

Those calls went unheeded. Allawi was cleared of the charges in an investigation conducted by the subsequent Iraqi government under the auspices of President Ibrahim Al-Jafari. But that came during a period of unprecedented political upheaval and violence, and Allawi remained an influential MP in that government; his party, the Iraq National Accord, was the leading party in the Iraqi National List, which in turn was a key part of the governing coalition of Nouri al-Maliki at the time. Both the Iraqi government and the American forces in Iraq had every imaginable incentive to sweep the charges under the rug.

While Allawi strenuously dismissed the charges, reports at the time suggested that rumors of the killings swirling around Baghdad actually enhanced Allawi’s reputation in some quarters as a strong leader who had the backbone to tame the insurgency then raging at full steam.

U.S. Blackout

In Scotland, the award-winning Sunday Herald ran its sister publication’s copy, as did the New Zealand Sunday Star Times, the Irish Examiner and Canada’s Toronto Post. The London Daily Mail and South Africa’s Sunday Mail (same ownership) ran a story with a similar lead, although the denial comes right up front:

IRAQ'S new Prime Minister was fighting to clear his name last night after he was accused of executing as many as six suspected insurgents.

Iyad Allawi is alleged to have shot the prisoners at a Baghdad police station days before power was handed to the interim Iraqi government last month…

The story broke only to a limited degree in the United States. Newsweek had a brief report on the allegation and it also appeared on the UPI wire. In its usually direct way, UPI led with: “Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi killed six suspected insurgents just days before he was handed power, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.”

But, according to a Lexis-Nexis search of the two-week period following the Herald’s bombshell, no major papers picked up the UPI story. The Los Angeles Times did run a piece under the headline: "Rumors circulate about Allawi's itchy trigger finger,” which was republished by the Kansas City Star, the Baltimore Sun and the San Francisco Chronicle. This is how those papers’ readers got the story:

There are many versions of the story on the street. In one, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is driving through downtown Baghdad and sees a frail old man being confronted by three armed men attempting to steal his vehicle.

Allawi leaps out of his car and shoots dead the would-be carjackers.

In another, Allawi is in a Baghdad jail where he interviews suspects, hears their confessions, declares “they deserve to die” and shoots them on the spot.

A third version sets the scene of his violent retribution in the Shiite city of Najaf, which has been racked by violence in recent months.

Is there any truth to these tales that Allawi has shot suspects? The stories have been denied by Allawi and dismissed by members of his government, the U.S. Embassy and a State Department spokesman.

On the last point, Scotland’s Sunday Herald reported: "Senior US officials have not made an outright dismissal of the allegations…."

The New York Sun, a conservative alternative paper, ran the only other U.S. story that came back from a Lexis-Nexis search. It reported the allegations were thought unlikely because of Allawi’s character. The Sun’s lead was: “Iraq's top human rights official said yesterday allegations that Prime Minister Allawi summarily executed six prisoners before taking power is a baseless smear spread to undermine the government.”

That was based on a Federal News Service interview with Iraq's Human Rights Minister Bakhtiya Amin, in which he said: “This is not the Iyad Allawi that I know. He's not a killer. And he's not the type of person who goes out killing people.”

It’s an odd line of defense in light of the fact that, as Douglas Valentine wrote in Counterpunch: “According to published reports, Allawi began his career in the killing business in the 1960s on behalf of Saddam Hussein; but in 1978, he switched to the CIA after Hussein tried to kill him. In 1991 Allawi co-founded an anti-Saddam, CIA-front organization, the Iraqi National Accord (INA), which the New York Times described as ‘a terrorist organization.’” When he assumed the office of interim Prime Minister, some European papers routinely refer to Allawi as a “former assassin,” or in similar terms.

At least readers of the L.A. Times and the other three papers that ran its story knew that a rumor about Allawi killing the prisoners was out there. That put them ahead of readers of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and every other major daily, who heard nothing of the matter.

I sent the original Sydney Morning Herald story to Daniel Okrent, the New York Times’ public editor at the time, with a note that read: “Clearly, the story that follows is not flattering. But it is just as clearly newsworthy and nobody's covering it.”

Okrent’s assistant sent me a link to a Times story titled: “A Tough Guy Tries to Tame Iraq." The story was about "rumor and innuendo” that Allawi was “overseeing the interrogation of a cabal of Lebanese terrorists” when he said “Bring me an ax,” and then “lopped off the hand of one of the Lebanese men.” It’s a nasty story, yes, but not quite the same.

And while there may be several stories out there, only one was reported by a respected journalist, Paul McGeough, in one of a close ally’s leading newspapers. McGeough, while acknowledging that in Iraq "It's very difficult to separate out what people are telling you from what they are hearing," stood behind his reporting in an interview with the Australian news show, "Lateline":

MAXINE McKEW: Paul, as you've also made clear in your article, Prime Minister Allawi has flatly denied this story. Why then is the Herald so confident about publishing it?

PAUL McGEOUGH, 'SYDNEY MORNING HERALD' AND 'AGE' FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Well it's a very contentious issue. What you have is two very solid eyewitness accounts of what happened at a police security complex in a southwest Baghdad suburb. They are very detailed. They were done separately. Each witness is not aware that the other spoke. They were contacted through personal channels rather than through the many political, religious or military organisations working in Baghdad that might be trying to spin a tale. And they've laid it out very carefully and very clearly as to what they saw.

MAXINE McKEW: You haven't identified these witnesses but why have they felt free to talk about such an extraordinary story?

PAUL McGEOUGH: Well, they were approached through personal connections and as a result of that, they accepted assurances. They were guaranteed anonymity, they were told that no identifying material would be published on them and they told what they saw.

Again, can’t know if the Allawi story is true. We only that it has never been fully investigated, and that the citizens of Australia, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Canada and South Africa had a view of the Iraqi Interim Government that Americans did not share.

That disconnect was striking, and led to stories like the one in Pakistan’s Daily Times under the headline: “US Media Kills Story that Iraqi PM Executed 6 Prisoners.”

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

The Israel Lobby's Big Problem: People Aren't Afraid to Criticize Israel Anymore

By Ira Chernus, AlterNet
Posted on March 27, 2010, Printed on March 29, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146197/

I just ran across a couple of noteworthy quotes from members of AIPAC — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful organization in the much-dreaded “Israel lobby” — which began its annual meeting in Washington on Monday:

“We were never exposed to anti-semitism, but we heard about anti-Israel campaigns in colleges, and next year we are going to college, and we want to have the tools to deal with that,” said a high school senior, one of some 1300 students and youth at the meeting, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Note how effortlessly this kid moves from “anti-semitism” to “anti-Israel.” That’s how AIPAC has always recruited youth: Take Americans who have never experienced anti-semitism personally and make them believe that, even if they haven’t seen any enemies, those enemies are out there, lurking everywhere, disguised as “critics of Israel,” just waiting to pounce on poor, unsuspecting Jews.

But times are changing. Even AIPAC no longer tries to keep up the old fiction that criticizing Israel is, in and of itself, an anti-semitic act. There are too many Israeli Jews, who are obviously loyal to their nation, criticizing their government for that old canard to stick.

So now the right-wingers have come up with a more sophisticated version: “Soft” critics of Israel are OK — those who don’t go too far in their criticism — but “hard” critics of Israel are obviously anti-semites. And of course AIPAC and its right-wing partners in Israel gets to decide what counts as going too far.

Apparently it’s those “hard critics” who mount the “anti-Israel campaigns in colleges,” and they’re the ones this AIPAC high-schooler has learned to be afraid of. Well, AIPAC has to have some anti-semites out there to pursue its double-barreled strategy: Incite fear to rally the troops while justifying everything the Israel government does as necessary for Jewish survival, and therefore morally justified.

But what if American Jews stopped being afraid and stopped justifying outrageous Israel actions, like the recent announcement (while Vice-President Joe Biden was visiting the country) of 1600 new Jewish housing units in the occupied territory of East Jerusalem?

Which brings me to the other noteworthy quote, a rather blunt one from AIPAC attendee Donell Weinkopf of New York: “I would not say that I am disappointed by the Netanyahu government. But I feel like shit. Israel did something stupid by declaring this construction. … I think that the time has come for Israel to stop biting the hand of a friend.”

Weinkopf probably tracked the incident closely. So he knows that no one has been able to turn up evidence to refute Israeli Prime Minister’s Bibi Netanyahu’s claim that the announcement, made by a far right cabinet minister, came as a surprise to him. Let’s assume it did. But Weinkopf also knows that Bibi could have reversed the decision and immediately healed any rift with the U.S. Instead, though, he merely offered Biden a meaningless apology for “bad timing” and boasted that the building project would go ahead anyway.

Then Israel’s PM came to Washington, where Weinkopf and all the other AIPAC’ers heard him deliver a seemingly defiant speech. The journalist who got the two rich quotes at the AIPAC meeting heard it too and described it this way: “Unsurprisingly, his speech included every possible cliche: Death camps, the relentless persecution the Jewish people have suffered throughout history, the powerful bond between the Jews and the land of Israel and, of course, Jerusalem. … Far from being a conciliatory effort, Netanyahu’s speech was riddled with borderline provocation. … He did not present a real vision for peace or compromise.”

And the very next day, as Netanyahu prepared to meet with Obama at the White House, news came of yet another provocation: approval of a new apartment building for Jews in the hotly-contested Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, a project that has already been criticized by the U.S. government. It seems likely that the move was intentionally timed by right-wingers to offset any possible image of Netanyahu compromising with Obama. Bibi “is planting the seeds for the next crisis,” one of his political opponents charged.

However, outright defiance of the U.S. could get Bibi in bad trouble politically at home. So behind the scenes he is backing down a bit in the face of Obama administration criticism (which was repeated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she addressed the AIPAC gathering).

One Israeli journalist, citing unnamed “analysts,” says that the harsher tone from Washington “stems not from the decision to build in Ramat Shlomo, but because Netanyahu broke an earlier pledge to improve governmental oversight in order to prevent the Interior Ministry coming out with announcements of the kind that sparked this crisis.”

It’s probably no coincidence that, precisely as Netanyahu was spending several hours at the White House, the Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee decided to freeze all discussion of expanding Jewish construction in Jerusalem “until further notice”(though the one new building in Sheikh Jarrah will proceed).

And according to Israel’s Interior Ministry, “the prime minister has decided to form a committee of chairmen to improve the coordination between the various government offices over all matters relating to construction and building permits.” The prime minister had already demanded a list of all plans for large projects in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, including Ramat Shlomo.

No, it’s not any huge breakthrough. But it’s one of those little pieces of evidence that point to Netanyahu’s larger strategy. He talks tough and plays the fear card. Quietly, though, he is giving the Americans at least some of what they want. “I can imagine that there will be little building for Jews in Arab neighborhoods,” a consultant to the Israeli government told the Times, and “on Ramat Shlomo I imagine the prime minister gave assurances that nothing would be built for some years.” Other Jerusalem insiders disagree, believing that Bibi won’t give way very much at all.

Which way the Israelis go depends largely on how much pushback they get from the Obama administration. That’s still an open question.

However, it’s clear that Israel can no longer count on U.S. support no matter what it does, because the political atmosphere here is changing so fast. There are countless thousands of Donell Weinkopfs throughout the United States, Jews who would not have dreamed of criticizing Israel a few years ago, but are now thinking for themselves rather than offering knee-jerk praise.

Some of them were surely among the respondents to the latest poll of American Jewish opinion. A few of the most striking findings:

* 82% want the U.S. to “play an active role” in the Israel-Palestine peace process
* 71% want the U.S. to exert pressure on both sides to make compromises for peace
* Fully half stick want U.S. involvement even if it means the U.S. exerting pressure on Israel alone to make compromises
* Asked whether U.S. criticisms of Israel should be made in public, more Jews say “yes” than “no”
* 69% voted for Obama and 62% still approve of the job he’s doing (far higher than h overall public’s rating of the president)

* Obama’s favorable rating is 15 points higher than Netanyahu’s.

It’s also worth noting that Israel and Judaism are not very central in the lives of this sampling of American Jews:

* Asked to name the TWO most important issues facing our country, only 10% put Israel on their short list
* Well over half said they did not follow the controversy surrounding Biden’s visit to Israel closely or at all
* Only 23% attend synagogue services more than a few times a year, and only 39% attend activities of other Jewish groups

That does not sound like a community ready to use its political clout to “stand with Israel” no matter what the Jewish state does. It sounds like a community that identifies as American more that as Jewish, is split by internal conflict on the question of Israel (when it bothers to think about that question at all), and may well be open to supporting Obama and his Middle East policies, even when they involve pressure on Israel.

So AIPAC knows that its old fear-based tactics may still work, but not nearly as well as they once did. Netanyahu knows it too. So does Obama. That’s why the rules of U.S. – Israel relations are changing, even if only slightly thus far.

But Obama has his own fears. He and his party face an uphill political fight this year. He cannot know for sure how far he can push the Israelis without triggering a backlash — not only among Jewish voters but among the many Christians who support Israel for their own reasons, and among a general public long conditioned by the media to see Israel as an underdog oppressed by Muslim “evildoers.” Already Republican candidates are burnishing their “pro-Israel” credentials as a way to attack the Democrats.

On the other hand, if Obama does not pressure Israel enough he could trigger a backlash from another powerful quarter: the Pentagon, which is now pushing for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement as a way to ease anger against U.S. troops in the greater Middle East. Democratic presidents who have never served in the military will go to great lengths to avoid alienating their own military leaders, especially if they hope to make good on a controversial pledge to give gays equality in the military.

More to the point, perhaps, Obama has also publicly pledged to move the Israel-Palestine conflict some significant steps toward resolution. He cannot do that unless he puts enough pressure on Israel. Without sufficient pressure, his fears of failure on his boldest foreign policy promise are likely to come true.

Now the president has a chance to send a clear signal. But no one can say for sure what signal he will send. And that’s precisely what made this week’s AIPAC meeting different from any in recent memory.

Right-wingers in Jerusalem keep getting more and more outrageous. But the political climate in Washington can no longer be predicted, much less taken for granted. So there’s far less reason than before to stand in dread and awe of AIPAC or the “Israel lobby.” There’s far more reason to think that countervailing pressures from the left can make a real difference, giving the administration the safety belt it needs to act decisively. Perhaps that’s what made Donell Weinkopf — and plenty of other AIPAC members, including its top leadership, I suspect — feel like shit.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and American Jews on his blog: http://chernus.wordpress.com.

Tony-gate: Blair Strikes Oil in Iraq

By Jayne Lyn Stahl
HuffingtonPost.com

March 26, 2010 --- Here in the States when someone mentions "UI," most of us think of Unemployment Insurance, but not former UK prime minister Tony Blair.

Late last week came word of a major scandal from the UK Daily Mail. In the three years since he stepped down as prime minister, Blair pocketed more than $30 million in oil revenues from his secret dealings with a South Korean oil consortium, UI Energy Corporation. Despite all his best efforts to keep his connection to UI secret, word is spreading like wildfire throughout the U.K.

Now, you might ask, that he's no longer in government and has his own company, Blair Associates, why would anyone care what his business dealings are? Well, for openers, Mr. Blair is also the West's envoy to the Middle East. Of concern to British politicians, too, is that a former prime minister has been stone cold silent about being on the payroll of an immense multinational oil corporation, specializing in oil exploration in Iraq, and one that coincidentally happens to find itself in another challenging part of the globe.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Blair isn't the only prominent politician on UI's payroll. Others reportedly include former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke, as well as politicians like Congressman Stephen J. Solarz, former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former ambassador to Egypt, Nicholas A. Belites, and U.S. Commander for the Middle East General John P. Abizaid. And, these are just the ones who acknowledge any association with the oil conglommerate.

Two-time presidential candidate, Ross Perot, is listed on UI Energy Corp.'s Web site as part of their extended family. One wonders if there are any other presidents, or presidential candidates, who may have been considered family by the South Korean oil firm.

While they've only been around for about twenty years, it didn't take UI long to come up to speed. A message from the company's president, posted to their Web site, says they are interested in "development of overseas resources such as the Middle East and Africa. Especially, Iraq where various Energy (sic) developments are expected."

UI is now considered among the largest investors in Iraq's oil rich Kurdistan region, which is said to have obtained a modicum of autonomy since the Iraq war.

Some argue that Blair is benefiting hugely from the connections he made during the Iraq war, but maybe it's the other way around. More likely, the decision to collaborate with the U.S. on military adventurism in Iraq was on account of connections already in place by then leaders of both countries.

Blair worked hard to prevent disclosures of what is alleged to have been only a three year relationship with the South Korean oil firm, but it's not inconceivable that his relationship with UI Energy Corp. precedes his departure as prime minister. It's also quite conceivable that his dedication to keeping this matter confidential was meant to protect other international political figures besides himself.

As the UK Daily Mail notes, "The secrecy is particularly odd because UI Energy is fond of boasting of its foreign political advisors." Who else may be found to be among UI's secret foreign political advisors?

Importantly, it is one thing to consult with a firm that acknowledges resource "development" in Iraq when one is envoy to the Middle East. Yes, that may well be conflict of interest, but multiply that conflict of interest exponentially should evidence emerge of his dalliance with UI Energy while he was acting prime minister.

Clearly, the Blair scandal calls into question the exact nature of the alliance between two central figures, and engineers of the Iraq war; then UK prime minister, Tony Blair, and an American president, George W. Bush.

Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published poet, essayist, playwright, and screenwriter, member of PEN American Center, and PEN USA.

Health Reform in the United States

(Taken from CubaDebate)

By Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 24, 2010
6:40 p.m.

March 27, 2010 "Granma" -- BARACK Obama is a fanatical believer in the imperialist capitalist system imposed by the United States on the world. "God bless the United States," he ends his speeches.

Some of his acts wounded the sensibility of world opinion, which viewed with sympathy the African-American candidate’s victory over that country’s extreme right-wing candidate. Basing himself on one of the worst economic crises that the world has ever seen, and the pain caused by young Americans who lost their lives or were injured or mutilated in his predecessor’s genocidal wars of conquest, he won the votes of the majority of 50% of Americans who deign to go to the polls in that democratic country.

Out of an elemental sense of ethics, Obama should have abstained from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already decided to send 40,000 soldiers to an absurd war in the heart of Asia.

The current administration’s militarist policies, its plunder of natural resources and unequal exchange with the poor countries of the Third World are in no way different from those of its predecessors, almost all of them extremely right-wing, with some exceptions, throughout the past century.

The anti-democratic document imposed at the Copenhagen Summit on the international community – which had given credit to his promise to cooperate in the fight against climate change – was another act that disappointed many people in the world. The United States, the largest issuer of greenhouse gases, was not willing to make the necessary sacrifices, despite the sweet words of its president beforehand.

It would be interminable to list the contradictions between the ideas which the Cuban nation has defended at great sacrifice for half a century and the egotistic policies of that colossal empire.

In spite of that, we harbor no antagonism toward Obama, much less toward the U.S. people. We believe that the health reform has been an important battle, and a success of his government. It would seem, however, to be something truly unusual, 234 years after the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, inspired by the ideas of the French encyclopedists, that the U.S. government has passed [a law for] medical attention for the vast majority of its citizens, something that Cuba achieved for its entire population half a century ago, despite the cruel and inhumane blockade imposed and still in effect by the most powerful country that ever existed. Before that, after almost half a century of independence and after a bloody war, Abraham Lincoln was able to attain legal freedom for slaves.

On the other hand, I cannot stop thinking about a world in which more than one-third of the population lacks the medical attention and medicines essential to ensuring its health, a situation that will be aggravated as climate change and water and food scarcity become increasingly greater in a globalized world where the population is growing, forests are disappearing, agricultural land is diminishing, the air is becoming unbreathable, and in which the human species that inhabits it – which emerged less than 200,000 years ago; in other words, 3.5 million years after the first forms of life emerged on the planet – is running a real risk of disappearing as a species.

Accepting that health reform signifies a success for the Obama government, the current U.S. president cannot ignore that climate change is a threat to health, and even worse, to the very existence of all the world’s nations, when the increase in temperatures – beyond the critical limits that are in sight – is melting the frozen waters of the glaciers, and the tens of millions of cubic kilometers stored in the enormous ice caps accumulated in the Antarctic, Greenland and Siberia will have melted within a few dozen years, leaving underwater all of the world’s port facilities and the lands where a large part of the global population now lives, feeds itself and works.

Obama, the leaders of the free countries and their allies, their scientists and their sophisticated research centers know this; it is impossible for them not to know it.

I understand the satisfaction in the presidential speech expressing and recognizing the contributions of the congress members and administration who made possible the miracle of health reform, which strengthens the government’s position vis-à-vis the lobbyists and political mercenaries who are limiting the administration’s faculties. It would be worse if those who engaged in torture, assassinations for hire, and genocide should reoccupy the U.S. government. As a person who is unquestionably intelligent and sufficiently well-informed, Obama knows that there is no exaggeration in my words. I hope that the silly remarks he sometimes makes about Cuba are not clouding his intelligence.

In the wake of the success in this battle for the right to health of all Americans, 12 million immigrants, in their immense majority Latin American, Haitian and from other Caribbean countries, are demanding the legalization of their presence in the United States, where they do the jobs that are the hardest and with which U.S. society could not do without, in a country in which they are arrested, separated from their families and sent back to their countries.

The vast majority of them immigrated to Northern America as a consequence of the dictatorships imposed on the countries of the region by the United States, and the brutal policy to which they have been subjected as a result of the plunder of their resources and unequal trade. Their family remittances constitute a large percentage of the GDP of their economies. They are now hoping for an act of elemental justice. When an Adjustment Act was imposed on the Cuban people, promoting brain drain and the dispossession of its educated young people, why are such brutal methods used against illegal immigrants of Latin American and Caribbean countries?

The devastating earthquake that lashed Haiti – the poorest country in Latin America, which has just suffered an unprecedented natural disaster that involved the death of more than 200,000 people – and the terrible economic damage that a similar phenomenon has caused in Chile, are eloquent evidence of the dangers that threaten so-called civilization, and the need for drastic measures that can give the human species hope for survival.

The Cold War did not bring any benefits to the world population. The immense economic, technological and scientific power of the United States would not be able to survive the tragedy that is hovering over the planet. President Obama should look for the pertinent data on his computer and converse with his most eminent scientists; he will see how far his country is from being the model for humanity he extols.

Because he is an African American, there he suffered the affronts of discrimination, as he relates in his book, The Dreams of My Father; there he knew about the poverty in which tens of millions of Americans live; there he was educated, but there he also enjoyed, as a successful professional, the privileges of the rich middle class, and he ended up idealizing the social system where the economic crisis, the uselessly sacrificed lives of Americans and his unquestionable political talent gave him the electoral victory.

Despite that, the most recalcitrant right-wing forces see Obama as an extremist, and are threatening him by continuing to do battle in the Senate to neutralize the effects of the health reform, and openly sabotaging him in various states of the Union, declaring the new law unconstitutional.

The problems of our era are far more serious still.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international credit agencies, under the strict control of the United States, are allowing the large U.S. banks – the creators of fiscal paradises and responsible for the financial chaos on the planet – to be kept afloat by the government of that country in each one of the system’s frequent and growing crises.

The U.S. Federal Reserve issues at its whim the convertible currency that pays for the wars of conquest, the profits of the military industrial complex, the military bases distributed throughout the world and the large investments with which transnationals control the economy in many countries in the world. Nixon unilaterally suspended the conversion of the dollar into gold, while the vaults of the banks in New York hold seven thousand tons of gold, something more than 25% of the world’s reserves of this metal, a figure which at the end of World War II stood at more than 80%. It is argued that the [U.S.] public debt exceeds $10 trillion, more than 70% of its GDP, like a burden that will be passed on to the new generations. That is affirmed when, in reality, it is the world economy which is paying for that debt with the huge spending on goods and services that it provides to acquire U.S. dollars, with which the large transnationals of that country have taken over a considerable part of the world’s wealth, and which sustain that nation’s consumer society.

Anyone can understand that such a system is unsustainable and why the wealthiest sectors in the United States and its allies in the world defend a system sustained only on ignorance, lies and conditioned reflexes sown in world public opinion via a monopoly of the mass media, including the principal Internet networks.

Today, the structure is collapsing in the face of the accelerated advance of climate change and its disastrous consequences, which are placing humanity in an exceptional dilemma.

Wars among the powers no longer seem to be the possible solution to major contradictions, as they were until the second half of the 20th century; but, in their turn, they have impinged on the factors that make human survival possible to the extent that they could bring the existence of the current intelligent species inhabiting our planet to a premature end.

A few days ago, I expressed my conviction, in the light of dominant scientific knowledge today, that human beings have to solve their problems on planet Earth, given that they will never be able to cover the distance that separates the Sun from the closest star, located four light years distant, a speed that is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers per second – if there should be a planet similar to our beautiful Earth in the vicinity of that sun.

The United States is investing fabulous sums to discover if there is water on the planet Mars, and whether some elemental form of life existed or exists there. Nobody knows why, unless it is out of pure scientific curiosity. Millions of species are disappearing at an increasing rate on our planet and its fabulous volumes of water are constantly being poisoned.

The new laws of science – based on Einstein’s theories on energy and matter and the Big Boom theory as the origin of the millions of constellations and infinite stars or other hypotheses – have given way to profound changes in fundamental concepts such as space and time, which are occupying theologians’ attention and analyses. One of them, our Brazilian friend Frei Betto, approaches the issue in his book La obra del artista: una vision holística del Universe (The Artist’s Work: a Holistic View of the Universe), launched at the last International Book Fair in Havana.

Scientific advances in the last 100 years have impacted on traditional approaches that prevailed for thousands of years in the social sciences and even in philosophy and theology.

The interest that the most honest thinkers are taking in that new knowledge is notable, but we know absolutely nothing of President Obama’s thinking on the compatibility of consumer societies with science.

Meanwhile, it is worthwhile, now and then, to devote time to meditating on those issues. Certainly human beings will not cease to dream and take things with the due serenity and nerves of steel on that account. It is a duty – at least for those who chose the political profession and the noble and essential resolve of a human society of solidarity and justice.

Gates: Lack Of Middle East Peace Affects U.S. National Security

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
March 26, 2010

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the lack of peace between the Palestinians and U.S. ally Israel is a threat to U.S. national security interests in the Middle East.

Gates said on March 25 that the lack of progress toward Middle East peace is an issue that is exploited by America's adversaries in the region and is a source of political challenge to Washington.

Gates' comments come amid a row between the Obama administration and Israel over how to proceed with the peace process.

Washington has criticized Israeli plans to build new homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, saying they undermine prospects for the launch of indirect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under U.S. mediation. The Palestinians, who are demanding a complete settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, want East Jerusalem for the capital of a future independent Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week concluded a visit to Washington that failed to result in any breakthrough on how to advance peace talks with the Palestinians.

compiled from agency reports
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty