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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (39055)	8/20/2002 10:27:40 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi JohnM - if you ever find a factual basis for refuting what I told you, feel free to let me know. I hope you won't mind that I dismiss, with amusement, the allegations of a sociology professor and an economics professor, in favor for my own understanding of enterprise law. I am a lawyer, I don't just play one on the internet. It's election season. I understand why people would prefer to believe fantastic allegations rather than the boring old truth. The stakes this time are higher than usual.

To: JohnM who wrote (39055)	8/21/2002 2:37:28 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Lead story in the WP today is that senior leaders of Al Queda have taken refuge Iraq. Not a mention in the NYT of course. "Wouldn't be Prudent," I guess. :^) Al Qaeda Presence In Iraq Reported Baghdad Knows, Rumsfeld Says By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 21, 2002; Page A01 At least a handful of ranking members of al Qaeda have taken refuge in Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday. Their presence would complicate U.S. efforts against the terrorist network's leadership but also would give the Bush administration another rationale for possible military action against the Iraqi government. Iraq has frequently been cited by administration officials as a haven for al Qaeda fighters who have fled the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan. But what is new, officials said, is the number and senior rank of the al Qaeda members who have been mentioned in recent classified intelligence reports as being in Iraq. "There are some names you'd recognize," one defense official said. Alluding to these reports, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday repeated earlier assertions about al Qaeda's presence in Iraq, but he declined to elaborate on the evidence. "I suppose that, at some moment, it may make sense to discuss that publicly," he said at a news conference. "It doesn't today. But what I have said is a fact -- that there are al Qaeda in a number of locations in Iraq." The reports of a more significant al Qaeda presence in Iraq come amid Pentagon planning for a possible invasion of the country and would appear to back President Bush's arguments for toppling President Saddam Hussein. Eager to bolster the case for military action, administration hawks have pressed for months for whatever evidence can be uncovered about any links between Hussein's government and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. One of the most tantalizing claims, involving a Czech report of a meeting in Prague in April 2001 between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent, has yet to be corroborated. But U.S. officials continue to probe this and other possible connections. As fresh evidence of Hussein's links to terrorism, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer yesterday pointed to the death this week of Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, who died in Baghdad, where he had been living for the past four years. "The fact that only Iraq would give safe haven to Abu Nidal demonstrates the Iraqi regime's complicity with global terror," Fleischer said. Mindful of the additional advantage that any verifiable association with al Qaeda would hand the Bush administration, the Iraqi government has appeared to distance itself from the fugitive terrorists. A senior U.S. intelligence official said there is no evidence that Hussein has formally "welcomed in or sheltered" the terrorists. "They aren't the official guests of the government," another official said, describing them largely as still "on the run." But Rumsfeld scoffed at the notion that al Qaeda members are hiding in Iraq without the full knowledge of the government or its protection. "In a vicious, repressive dictatorship that exercises near-total control over its population, it's very hard to imagine that the government is not aware of what's taking place in the country," the Pentagon leader said. Tariq Aziz, Iraq's deputy prime minister, said in an interview with CBS News yesterday that members of al Qaeda are operating in Iraq, but in the northern part of the country under the control of Kurdish opposition leader Jallal Tallabani, "an ally of Mr. Rumsfeld." "It is not under the control of the government," Aziz said. The Bush administration has been working with Tallabani and the leaders of other Iraqi opposition groups to build a united front against Hussein. Qubad Talabany, Washington representative of the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which operates in northern Iraq, said a group of about 120 Arabs with some links to al Qaeda did arrive in the eastern town of Biyara last September. Their numbers have grown since the U.S. war in Afghanistan began, Talabany said. Al Qaeda has often used northern Iraq to travel between Afghanistan and other countries. So, U.S. officials said, they are not surprised to find some members taking shelter in Iraq. "Given that people dispersed in a variety of different directions, you would expect those with Iraqi ties or nationality to show up in Iraq," the intelligence official said. Of particular interest to U.S. authorities, though, are what two officials characterized as a handful of "second- and third-tier" al Qaeda operatives in Iraq. It is people of this rank in the network who have become a greater focus of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts around the world as bin Laden and his top lieutenants have disappeared from view for months. These operatives are considered responsible for managing much of the terrorist group's activities and may possibly still be in a position to plan future attacks against the United States, officials said. At one point in yesterday's news conference, Rumsfeld expressed a measure of frustration with the intense public attention that the administration's deliberations about Iraq have received in recent weeks. He said news organizations are mistaken "to focus excessively on this one subject and particularize everything to it," calling the debate "a little out of balance." "I don't know what one can do about that, except that I've found that from time to time, I'll give an interview and never mention the word Iraq, and I find that the whole interview is cast around Iraq," he said. Staff writer Dana Priest contributed to this report. washingtonpost.com

To: JohnM who wrote (39055)	8/21/2002 3:07:57 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

And, in South Africa, the World Leaders have gathered to try to stab us in the back. August 21, 2002 Changing Everything Ron Bailey prepares to cover the World Summit on Sustainable Development By Ronald Bailey More than 100 presidents, prime ministers, and other potentates will convene over the next couple of weeks (August 26-September 4) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in a desperate attempt to save the earth. The occasion is the United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), which is aimed at revolutionizing how the world's economy operates. This economic, social and environmental revolution must occur because, it is claimed, humanity is on an unsustainable path that is leading toward global catastrophe. Indeed, all summer, as the WSSD approached, we have been treated to a series of reports and media events concocted to persuade us that the world is about to fall apart. Alongside the official WSSD events will be a Global Forum organized by activist groups who style themselves as the representatives of global "civil society." The United Nations itself gets to choose which organizations are "legitimate" civil society representatives. Thus it will surprise no one that most such activist groups agitate for a stronger and growing role for the United Nations in governing the world's economy and environment. The WSSD is a followup to the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago. At that gathering, world leaders negotiated and adopted the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB), among other treaties. The fearful truth is that once a UN treaty process or agency has been launched, it continues to grow and mutate, but is always aiming to increase the power of international bureaucracies and national governments at the expense of individuals. Consequently, under the once voluntary arrangements of the FCCC, we now have the Kyoto Protocol, which is ostensibly aimed at slowing man-made global warming but which is in reality a mandatory plan outlining the energy future of the whole of humanity for the next century. Meanwhile the CDB, a treaty originally aimed at protecting wildlife and wildlands, has given birth to the Biosafety Protocol which is a trade treaty designed to impede international shipments of food made from genetically improved crops. These international agreements have incorporated and legitimized the "Death Star" of all regulatory policy notions, the precautionary principle. The 100 world leaders at the WSSD are being asked to finalize and approve a Plan of Implementation intended to put humanity on a sustainable path to economic development and environmental protection. First then, what is "sustainable development?" In 1987, a UN Commission on Economic Development report, Our Common Future, defined it as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This rather vague concept has since been vastly elaborated, but the hard core, unchanging center of the concept is that, whatever else it means, it means that rich developed capitalist nations are on an unsustainable path. It essentially incorporates the old-fashioned Malthusianism of early 1960s and 70s-style political environmentalism in which the world is becoming overpopulated and running out of resources. The UN Plan is big on rhetoric in favor of reducing global poverty, increasing access to clean water, sanitation, and education in poor countries. So far, so good. Who could be against such laudable goals? And the Plan does have some very good ideas. For example, it encourages developed countries to eliminate their $300 billion in annual farm subsidies which distort international trade and undermine poor farmers in developing countries. The Plan also favors eliminating energy subsidies and charging farmers the true of cost of their irrigation water. It also encourages rich countries to eliminate trade barriers against the products made in poor countries. However, the Plan also urges all countries to adopt and implement the pernicious Kyoto and Biosafety Protocols and use the precautionary principle as a guide to regulating the development of new technologies. One of the chief contested areas is Section IX, the section that deals with money. Section IX urges debt relief for improvident and corrupt developing country governments and asks rich countries to up their foreign aid budgets substantially. Certain paragraphs of Section IX, favored by activists, would attempt to subordinate the World Trade Organization to the goals of sustainable development. The main flaw in the UN Plan is its abiding conviction that sustainable development is only possible with the vigorous intervention of national governments and international bureaucracies. Developed capitalist economies are precisely those economies that "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." As history has amply shown, technological progress makes possible the economic growth that allows future generations to meet their own needs. There is only one proven way to improve the lot of hundreds of millions of poor people, and that is democratic capitalism. It is in rich democratic capitalist countries that the air and water are becoming cleaner, forests are expanding, food is abundant, education is universal, and women's rights respected. Whatever slows down economic growth also slows down environmental improvement. In Johannesburg, the future of the world may well be determined. Will human liberty and innovation be allowed to flourish or will humanity succumb to the myth of the "limits to growth?" I will be covering the Summit with daily dispatches from Johannesburg reporting on the activities of the official delegates and the goings on among the activists. They will be available at www.reason.com beginning next week. reason.com