some background on pan am 103 and the libyan bomber

Lockerbie Part of a Bigger Story
by Eric Margolis
Libya's Moammar Khadaffy, once branded "the mad dog of the Middle East" by Ronald Reagan, is celebrating 40 years in power in spite of a score of attempts by western powers and his Arab "brothers" to kill him.

In 1987, I was invited to interview Khadaffy. We spent an evening together in his Bedouin tent. He led me by the hand through the ruins of his personal quarters, bombed a year earlier by the U.S. in an attempt to assassinate him. Khadaffy showed me where his two-year old daughter had been killed by a 1,000-pound bomb.

"Why are the Americans trying to kill me, Mister Eric?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

I told him because Libya was harbouring all sorts of anti-western revolutionary groups, from Palestinian firebrands to IRA bombers and Nelson Mandela's ANC. To the naive Libyans, they were all legitimate "freedom fighters."

Last week, a furor erupted over the release of a dying Libyan agent, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, convicted of the destruction of an American airliner over Scotland in 1988.

Hypocrisy on all sides abounded. Washington and London blasted Libya and Scotland's justice minister while denying claims al-Megrahi was released in exchange new oil deals with Libya.

The Pan Am 103 crime was part of a bigger, even more sordid story. What goes around comes around.

1986: Libya is accused of bombing a Berlin disco, killing two U.S. servicemen. A defector from Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, claims it framed Libya. Khadaffy demands Arabs increase oil prices.

1987: The U.S. tries to kill Khadaffy but fails. Eighty-eight Libyan civilians die.

1988: France wages a secret desert war with Libya over mineral-rich Chad. France's secret service, SDECE, is ordered to kill Khadaffy. A bomb is put on Khadaffy's private jet but, after Franco-Libyan relations abruptly improve, the bomb is removed before it explodes.

1988: The U.S. intervenes on Iraq's side in its eight-year war against Iran. A U.S. navy Aegis cruiser, Vincennes, violates Iranian waters and "mistakenly" shoots down an Iranian civilian Airbus airliner in Iran's air space. All 288 civilians aboard die. Then vice-president George H.W. Bush vows, "I'll never apologize ... I don't care what the facts are."

The Vincennes' trigger-happy captain is decorated with the Legion of Merit medal for this crime by Bush after he becomes president. Washington quietly pays Iran $131.8 million US in damages.

Five months later, Pan Am 103 with 270 aboard is destroyed by a bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland. The U.S. and Britain pressure Scotland to convict al-Megrahi, who insists he is innocent. Serious questions are raised about the trial, with claims CIA faked evidence to blame Libya.

Some intelligence experts believe the attack was revenge for the downing of the Iranian airliner, carried out by Mideast contract killers paid by Iran. Serious doubts about al-Megrahi's guilt were voiced by Scotland's legal authorities. An appeal was underway. Libyans believed he was a sacrificial lamb handed over to save Libya from a crushing U.S. and British-led oil export boycott.

1989: A French UTA airliner with 180 aboard is blown up over Chad. A Congolese and a Libyan agent are accused. French investigators indict Khadaffy's brother-in-law, Abdullah Senoussi, head of Libyan intelligence, with whom I dined in Tripoli. Libya blames the attack on rogue mid-level agents but pays French families $170 million US.

I believe al-Megrahi was probably innocent and framed. Scotland was right to release him. But Libya was guilty as hell of the UTA crime, which likely was revenge for France's attempt to kill Khadaffy.

Pan Am 103 probably was revenge for America's destruction of the Iranian Airbus. In 1998, Britain's MI6 spy agency tried to kill Khadaffy with a car bomb.

In the end, the West badly wanted Libya's high grade oil. So Libya bought its way out of sanctions with $2.7 billion US total in damages. The U.S., Britain, France and Italy then invested $8 billion US in Libya's oil industry and proclaimed Khadaffy an ally and new best friend.

Happy birthday, Moammar.

fraser sockeye 'commercially extinct'.....that's pretty sad

Fraser River sockeye salmon "commercially extinct", Sto:lo advisor says
By Carlito Pablo
Are the Fraser River sockeye “commercially extinct”?

Ernie Crey, fisheries advisor to the Sto:lo Tribal Council, says so.

See also


Former fisheries minister David Anderson links fish collapse to climate change

Gerry Kristianson: We need to improve our ability to predict salmon abundance

Brian Riddell: Where have all the Fraser River sockeye salmon gone?

B.C. tourism operators raise alarm over sea lice

Crey explains in the following press release:

August 28, 2009

For Immediate Release

Fraser River Sockeye Salmon Commercially Extinct

The fisheries advisor to the Sto:lo Tribal Council, Ernie Crey, says that Fraser River Sockeye is now commercially extinct. He says that in the summer of both 2007 and 2008 sockeye salmon failed to make it back to the Fraser River in large enough numbers to support commercial fishing in either U.S. or Canadian waters. “While it’s true that in 2008 Canada picked up a meager 16,100 sockeye in commercial fisheries and the U.S. fleet snagged 46,000 sockeye, these fisheries qualified more as an embarrassment than an actual fishery”, said Crey. And he says that the summer of 2007, in so far as Fraser sockeye was concerned, was a complete washout for both the U.S. and Canada.

Crey said that salmon experts at both the Pacific Salmon Commission and the Department of Fisheries & Oceans, predicted that 10.6 million sockeye would come back to the Fraser River this summer. “A fish run of that size would have permitted commercial exploitation of Fraser sockeye by both the U.S. and Canada, unfortunately the forecast was wildly optimistic with fewer than 2 million sockeye actually showing up”. He said everyone is now starting to count down the days to next summer when another big sockeye run to the Fraser is expected. “I hope next summer does turn out to be a banner year for Fraser sockeye, but there is a strong possibility 2010 will be a carbon copy of 2009 and we should plan accordingly”, said Crey.

“We need to face up to the facts about Fraser sockeye. The summer of 2010 could be a bust for Fraser sockeye and, we already know that the following two summers will take us back to two successive low cycle years for sockeye. And the fish from this year’s spawning population will come back to the Fraser in 2013. This means we are staring four straight years of no commercial sockeye fishing squarely in the face. There is no way to candy coat the next four summers, Fraser sockeye are now commercially extinct for the foreseeable future”, said Crey.

Crey said that both the First Nations Fisheries Council and the Sto: lo Tribal Council has asked the Fisheries Minister to help organize a salmon summit to address the Fraser River salmon calamity, but they have yet to hear from the Minister’s Office.

CRUDE - Official Trailer

a doc about chevron.....destruction in the amazon

time to leave afghanistan

Quittin' Time in Afghanistan
by Eric Margolis
An election held under the guns of a foreign occupation army cannot be called legitimate or democratic.
This week's stage-managed vote in Afghanistan for candidates chosen by western powers is unlikely to bring either peace or tranquility to this wretched nation that has suffered 30 years of war.

The Taliban and its nationalist allies rejected the vote as a fraud designed to validate continued foreign occupation and open the way for western oil and gas pipelines.

The Taliban, which speaks for many of Afghanistan's majority Pashtun, said it would only join a national election when U.S. and NATO troops withdraw.

After all the pre-election hoopla and agitprop in Afghanistan, we come out the same door we went in. The amiable U.S.-installed leader, Hamid Karzai, may remain in office, powerless.

Yet Washington is demanding its figurehead achieve things he simply cannot do. Meanwhile, Karzai's regime is engulfed by corruption and drug dealing.

Real power remains with strongmen from the Tajik and Uzbek minorities and local, drug-dealing tribal warlords who are paid by Washington to pretend to support Karzai. Behind the Tajiks and Uzbeks stand their patrons, Russia, India and Iran.

Afghanistan's Pashtun tribes, which make up 55% of the population, are largely excluded from power. They were the West's closest allies and foot soldiers ("freedom fighters") during the 1980s war against the Soviets.

The Taliban arose during the chaotic civil war of the early 1990s as a rural, mostly Pashtun religious movement to stop the wide-scale rape of women, impose order, and fight the drug-dealing Afghan Communists. The so-called "terrorist Taliban" received U.S. funding until four months before 9/11. Washington cut off aid after the Taliban made the fatal error of giving a major pipeline deal to an Argentine rather than U.S. oil firm for which Hamid Karzai once reportedly worked as a consultant.

Oil pipeline

The current war in Afghanistan is not about democracy, women's rights, education or nation building. Al-Qaida, the other excuse, barely exists. Its handful of members long ago decamped to Pakistan. The war really is about oil pipeline routes and western domination of the energy-rich Caspian Basin.

Afghanistan is a three-legged ethnic stool. Take away the Pashtun leg and stability is impossible.

There will be neither peace nor stability in Afghanistan until all ethnic groups are enfranchised. The West must cease backing minority Tajiks and Uzbeks against majority Pashtun -- who deserve their rightful share of power and spoils.

The solution to this unnecessary war is not more phoney elections but a comprehensive peace agreement among ethnic factions that largely restores the status quo before the 1970 Soviet invasion. That means a weak central government in Kabul (Karzai is ideal for this job) and a high degree of autonomy for self-governing Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara regions.

Government should revert to the old "loya jirga" system of tribal sit downs, where decisions are made by consensus, often after lengthy haggling. That is the way of the Afghans and of traditional Islamic society.

All foreign soldiers must withdraw. Create a diplomatic "cordon sanitaire" around Afghanistan's borders, returning it to its traditional role as a neutral buffer state.

The powers now stirring the Afghan pot -- the U.S., NATO, India, Iran, Russia, the Communist Central Asian states -- must cease meddling. They have become part of the Afghan problem. Afghans must be allowed to slowly resolve their differences the traditional Afghan way, even if it initially means blood. That's unavoidable.

The only way to end the epidemic of drug trading is to shut border crossings to Pakistan and the Central Asian states. But those nation's high officials, corrupted by drug money, will resist.

We can't solve Afghanistan's social or political problems by waging a cruel and apparently endless war. A senior British general just warned his troops might have to stay for another 40 years. (He later retracted).

The western powers, Canada included, have added to the bloody mess in Afghanistan. Time to go home.

District 9 - Official Trailer 2 [HD]

wow! just seen this movie.....really good. an interesting way to examine some very important issues of today.

everything from illegal immigrants, multinational corporations, prejudice and weapons manufacturers making money off of war are all brought to attention in a new way of telling this story.

neil blomkamp was a graduate of the vancouver film school and his short was picked up by peter jackson! yay VFS!!!! you guys rock!

oh good grief! now stephen harper is eating seal meat to prove a point!

Harper attacks seal hunt critics
'No reason the seal industry should be singled out,' PM says in Iqaluit
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 | 1:46 PM CT Comments364Recommend102
CBC News
Speaking to reporters Tuesday in Iqaluit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada's seal hunting industry is subject to high standards. (CBC)
Prime Minister Stephen Harper had fighting words on Tuesday for critics of Canada's seal hunt, accusing European countries and others of unfairly discriminating against the industry.

Speaking to reporters in Iqaluit on Tuesday, Harper defended the seal hunt, which recently became the subject of a trade ban by the European Union.

Late last month, the EU banned the import of seal products from Canada and other sealing nations. The ban is expected to take effect in all 27 EU member countries in October.

EU officials have said the ban was the result of public pressure to stop the hunt.

Animal rights groups argue the hunt is inhumane, but Harper told reporters on Tuesday morning he disagrees.

"This industry, you know, has tight standards, the tightest in the world. The standards of this industry, quite frankly, are better than many other industries that deal with animal products," Harper said.

"There is no reason the seal industry should be singled out for discriminatory treatment by Europeans or any other nation."

Shortly after the EU ban was approved, Trade Minister Stockwell Day vowed to challenge it before the World Trade Organization, calling it an unfair trade restriction.

Canada's East Coast seal hunt is the largest of its kind in the world, with an average annual kill of about 300,000 harp seals. Canada exported about $2.5 million worth of seal products to EU countries in 2008.

Canada's Inuit also have a traditional sealing industry in Nunavut. Sealers in that territory harvest about 35,000 seals annually, up to 11,000 of which are sold on the open market.

Seals are also an essential source of food and clothing for Inuit in remote Nunavut communities.

The EU trade ban does provide a limited exemption for seal products derived from traditional Inuit hunts, but sealers say the exemption comes with a number of restrictions.

As well, they've argued that a trade ban would hurt the entire sealing industry regardless of whether exemptions exist for certain sectors.

Raw, cooked seal on lunch menu

Harper is meeting Tuesday afternoon with his inner circle of cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Defence Minister Peter MacKay, to discuss the government's strategy for the fall parliamentary session.

But before the priority and planning committee begins meeting, they are eating seal for lunch, courtesy of Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who is also the Conservative MP for Nunavut.

"Minister Aglukkaq has generously arranged for her colleagues in cabinet to have a lunch of seal," said Andrew MacDougall, Harper's press secretary.

"I understand there will be both raw and cooked seal available, and I know a lot of her colleagues, including the prime minister, were anxious for that."

The priority and planning committee's top priority this fall is to move Canada's economy back on track, MacDougall said.

atrocious anti-female law passed in afghanistan....why are we there again?

Afghanistan's contentious family law quietly enacted
Law lets husbands refuse to support wives if they don't agree to sex
Last Updated: Monday, August 17, 2009 | 3:27 PM ET Comments264Recommend165
The Associated Press
An ethnic Hazara woman walks to a campaign rally for Afghan President Hamid Karzai past a row of his images in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan on Sunday. Women's rights activists allege that Karzai used a constitutional loophole ahead of Thursday's election to enact a law that allows minority Shia Muslim husbands to refuse food and money to their wives if they deny them sex. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)
Women's rights activists alleged Monday that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has used a constitutional loophole to enact a law that allows minority Shia Muslim husbands to refuse food and money to their wives if they deny them sex.

The activists suspect Karzai took the step to appease conservative Shia clergy ahead of Thursday's presidential election. Nearly 20 per cent of Afghans are Shia and could become an influential voting block as Karzai runs for a new five-year term.

The legislation, which governs many aspects of family life for Afghanistan's Shia, has been sparking controversy since Karzai signed an earlier version in March. Critics said the original legislation essentially legalized marital rape and Karzai quickly suspended enforcement after governments around the world condemned it as oppressive and a return to Taliban-era repression of women.

But the revised version, made public in July, riled activists all over again because many restrictive articles remained, including one that appears to give a husband the right to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex with him.

Female parliamentarians said they thought they would get the chance to fight for revisions, only to discover in recent days that Karzai had taken advantage of a legislative recess to approve the law by decree. Parliament has the right to examine and change the law when they reconvene but the law stays in effect in the meantime.

Presidential spokesmen could not be reached for comment.

Financial support can be withheld

Afghanistan's post-Taliban constitution enshrines equal rights for women, but in practice, discrimination is still rife.

Activists alleged Karzai enacted the controversial family law to appease conservative Shia clergy ahead of Thursday's presidential election. (Farzana Wahidy/Associated Press)
The new law includes a section saying that a husband must provide financially for his wife. But it also says that he can withhold this support if she refuses to "submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment," according to a translation of the article supplied by New York-based Human Rights Watch.

In Afghanistan, where most women are uneducated and depend on their husbands for food and clothing, the article could be used to justify a husband starving a wife who refuses to have sex with him.

The legislation was passed by presidential decree in mid-July and published in Afghanistan's official gazette on July 27, which brings the law into force, according to Human Rights Watch. Lawmakers confirmed the process.

Shinkai Kharokhel, a lawmaker who has been involved in reforming the legislation, said no one from the administration told her that the law was being approved without further debate. Instead, she learned third hand that the law she had been fighting was now in effect.

"I was called by a friend, and then a few people from the embassies. And I said, 'I have to check with the minister.' I was really shocked," she said. "My understanding was that it would be sent to parliament. I never thought it would just be published."

Law unlikely to be amended

With a large backlog of legislation to debate and the sensitivity of the issue, it's unclear if parliament will revisit the Shia marriage law anytime soon.

"I think the chances of this being discussed in parliament in the next year or so are low and the chances of improvements being made are lower. So as far this law, I think we're stuck with it," said Rachel Reid, an Afghanistan researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Kharokhel said she felt as if the women of Afghanistan had been pushed to the side to appease powerful Shia men who were worried that legislation would not get passed if they waited until after Thursday's election.

"I am sure it is [Shia] leaders pushing the president of the country so that as soon as possible they would get a law," she said.

Although the law applies only to Shia, women activists fear the law is a step toward the Taliban's draconian treatment of women.

Women unlikely to cast protest votes

Many of the Shia belong to the Hazara ethnic minority. Influential Shia clerics have thrown their support behind Karzai for this year's vote, and Karzai, who belongs to the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, has kept a Hazara leader, Karim Khalili, as his candidate for second vice-president.

Female lawmakers, however, say it's unlikely the enactment of the law will affect women's choice of candidate for the elections, because so few women are aware of the law or how it would apply to their lives.

"They really don't know what the law says and how they will use that law … and we have women who are ashamed to knock on the door of a court to ask for their rights," said Shukria Barakzai, a lawmaker from Kabul.