ON THE ROAD TO GLENEAGLES
TERROR LAW USED AGAINST PROTESTERS
WHO IS ZARQAWI?

I know that many criticize all the bad news out of Iraq, with its focus on the daily body count and seemingly unstoppable insurgency.

Today, finally, the corner has been turned, as the Mail & Guardian reports:

“Coca-Cola has returned to Iraq after an absence of nearly four decades, triggering a cola war in a lucrative but potentially hostile market. Coke ended its 37-year exile last week by setting up a joint-venture bottling company to compete with Pepsi for 26 million consumers.

Will the war go better with Coke?

G8 UPDATE

Meanwhile, on the links at Gleneagles, the G8 is underway, as are the anti-G8 protests even as police vow to stop them. Some protesters want to blockade the G8 and try to disrupt its meeting — not just protest its presence. IndyMedia.org is updating reports. Here’s the latest as I write at 6 AM New York time:

“Update 8.50am somewhere near Gleneagles Numerous blockades on and around the A9 between Stirling and Perth including lock-on’s on vehicles. M9 closed from junction 8. People walking down from the beacon, good atmosphere, meeting up with cyclists, walkers, and geishas. Various groups seem to be moving towards Gleneagles.”

BBC was reporting this morning on a tug-of-war over the protest,with police claiming they are protecting legit protesters from “anarchist” elements:

“Scottish police call on organizers to cancel a major anti-G8 march, after a clash with protesters before the summit.

“A Tayside Police spokeswoman said: ‘It is not going ahead on the grounds of public safety and because of the disruption to the road network in the area and the level of criminal activity taking place.’”

BBC reported last night:

“The event, at the Gleneagles Hotel near Edinburgh, is the subject of largest security operation in UK history.

“Thousands of protestors will stage what is expected to be a peaceful march near the summit venue although some hope to disrupt the running of the event.

“An anti-poverty concert will be held in Edinburgh’s Murrayfield stadium. Among those performing include Sir Bob Geldof, U2 and James Brown.”

I wonder if JB will do his old classic, “Green Power.”

BACKLASH AGAINST SIR BOB

Journalist Bill Bowles, who spent years working for unions in South Africa, offers a critique from the left of a kind rarely seen in our media, arguing that Tony Blair is using the rock stars — what he calls the “jive 8″ — to remake his image from war backer to Africa savior. He says the British media are largely singing from his hymn book:

“Here in the UK, not coincidentally, the BBC has ‘discovered’ Africa all over again and we have been blitzed with programs on the ‘dark’ continent. Channel 4 even went as far as to move its nightly news to Africa, no doubt giving the news benders a nice warm and woolly feeling there as well. As ever, the BBC is more than ever, nothing more than a mouthpiece for the British political class, peddling the latest line in re-writing the history of British colonialism.

“Far from revealing the real relationship between Africa and imperialism, we have been overwhelmed with a carefully crafted disinformation campaign that sought to shift the responsibility from the capitalist world to all those corrupt African leaders, not that some are not corrupt but look around you folks, are not the ‘leaders’ of the free world mired in corruption from Blair’s relationship to the government of Saudi Arabia to Bush’s incestuous relationship to Halliburton and of course the criminal act of invading Iraq and Afghanistan…”

http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0344.html

For a report on the Monday’s “carnival” and confrontation, see Paul O’Hanlon’s illustrated report:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2005/07/316493.html

Here’s another account challenging the sensational media reports:

http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk/g8bb/viewtopic.php?p=869#869

TERRORISTS?

An Indy Media post reports that the British government is using its anti-terrorist law against protesters: “Five people were detained under the Terrorist Act at Stansted Airport this morning, Tuesday 5th July, and interrogated about whether they had been involved in yesterday’s Carnival for Full Enjoyment.”

A GLOBAL ORDER WITHOUT DOMINATION

While one set of nations meets, another group, a G10 of sorts, is pointedly calling for a “Global Order Without Domination.” Have you ever heard of the SCO? Has it even been reported? Now you have. ITAR-Tass reports:

“ASTANA — The summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which opened here on Tuesday morning, is going on in an expanded format.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov, Uzbek President Islam Karimov and acting Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev are taking part in the summit.

“Mongolian President Nambaryn Enhbayar is also attending the summit. Mongolia has the status of an observer at SCO. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref and Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh, are also attending the SCO summit as observers.”

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2201208&PageNum=1

BUSH: “LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR PEACE”

President Bush, meanwhile, is regurgitating his pro-war mantra, positioning himself as someone who takes unpopular positions — because they are right of course, criticisms be damned. AP reports from Denmark:

“Visiting this Scandinavian nation to thank Danes for sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush also strongly defended his decisions on Iraq, climate change, imprisoning terrorism suspects and aid to Africa — all things that have made him unpopular in Europe.

‘'’I understand that people aren’t going to agree with decisions I make,’ Bush said as he stood alongside Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen with the Danish leader’s official summer residence in the background. ‘I truly believe we’re laying the foundation for peace.”’

WHEN YOU NEED SOME LIES, WHO YOU GONNA CALL?

Todd Johnson of E Pluribus Media reports on Daily Kos:

“Swift Boat PR Team Reassembles to Market Bush Supreme Court Candidate.”

“This Fourth of July was a working holiday for friends and allies of President Bush, as the team behind Swift Boat Veterans for Truth kick-started a new information campaign aimed at marketing the president’s choice for the replacement for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

“Based in Alexandria, VA, Campaign Solutions — the public-relations firm for Bush-Cheney ‘04, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee — has been preparing for more than six months to help influence the confirmation process.

“The Judicial Confirmation Network (JCN) is a post-office box and a Web site registered by Donatelli late last year, with Campaign Solutions as the point of contact. The JCN claims to be ‘an organization of citizens’ that works ‘to ensure that the confirmation process for all judicial nominees is fair.’”

http://www.dailykos.com/user/ePluribus%20Media

At the same time, the GOP claims it is trying to insure a “dignified” debate with Eric Ueland, an assistant to the Senate Majority leader, saying:

“Every contact we have with these folks is ’stay on message, stay on purpose.’ The extremism of language, if there is to be any, should be demonstrably on the other side.”

WAS IT KARL ROVE?

The Nation’s David Corn asks: “Is Rove the Plame/CIA Leaker?”

“Is it Karl Rove?

“This past weekend, a pundit and a journalist each reported that Rove, Bush’s uber-strategist (and now, officially, the deputy White House chief of staff), was a source for Time magazine’s Matt Cooper, who has resisted cooperating with a court order to reveal his sources to Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the Bush administration leak that revealed undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. (Plame, a.k.a Valerie Wilson, is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a Bush administration critic). Last week, after the Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal from Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller (who also was subpoenaed by Fitzgerald for her sources), Time magazine decided to cooperate with Fitzgerald and turn over Cooper’s notes and emails. (Cooper said he disagreed with — but understood — his employer’s decision; Miller and the Times vowed to continue resisting.) Appearing on The McLaughlin Group — which was taped on Friday — commentator Lawrence O’Donnell said that the documents handed over by Time to Fitzgerald would reveal that Rove had been Cooper’s source. The next day, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek posted a piece that reported,

“The e- mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper’s sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with Newsweek, Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article.

“O’Donnell’s comment and Isikoff’s report set off a wave of reaction. I received numerous emails proclaiming ‘Rove is it, he’s the [deleted] who revealed Plame’s identity.’ But a careful reading of the available facts leads to this unsatisfying conclusion: not so fast.”

www.davidcorn.com

ZARQAWI LINKED TO DIPLOMAT KIDNAPPING

In Iraq, al-Jazeera reports:

“A group said to be linked to al-Qaeda and headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi says it is holding the Egyptian diplomat abducted in Iraq.”

Questions remain about Zarqawi. Dahr Jamail, the great independent journalist who was in Edinburgh with me on Sunday, raised some questions in a recent report carried by TomDispatch.com:

“A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his organization Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn’t claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets). Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based upon administration lies and manipulations, I had begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed.

“In Amman, where I was recently based, random interviews with Jordanians only generated more questions and no answers about Zarqawi. As it happens, though, the Jordanian capital is just a short cab ride from Zarqa, the city Zarqawi is said to be from. So I decided to slake my curiosity about him by traveling there and nosing around his old neighborhood.

“‘Zarqawi, I don’t even know if he exists,’ said a scruffy taxi driver in Amman and his was a typical comment. ‘He’s like Bin Laden, we don’t even know if he exists; but if he does, I support that he fights the U.S. occupation of Iraq.’

“Chatting with a man sipping tea in a small tea stall in downtown Amman, I asked what he thought of Zarqawi. He was convinced that Zarqawi was perfectly real, but the idea that he was responsible for such a wide range of attacks in Iraq had to be ‘nonsense.’

“‘The Americans are using him for their propaganda,’ he insisted. ‘Think about it — with all of their power and intelligence capabilities — they cannot find one man?’”

AMERICAN FILMMAKER HELD IN IRAQ

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/international/middleeast/06detain.html?th&emc=th

“DISGUSTING”

The mother of military service member killed in Iraq has now recounted a meeting she had with President Bush in the White House. She called it “disgusting:”

“Instead of a kind gesture or a warm handshake, Sheehan said she immediately got a taste of Bush arrogance when he entered the room and ‘in a condescending tone and with a disgusting loud Texas accent,’ said: ‘Who we’all honoring‚here today?’

“‘His mouth kept moving, but there was nothing in his eyes or anything else about him that showed me he really cared or had any real compassion at all. This is a human being totally disconnected from humanity and reality. His eyes were empty, hollow shells and he was acting like I should be proud to just be in his presence when it was my son who died for his illegal war! It was one of the most disgusting experiences I ever had and it took me almost a year to even talk about it,’ said Sheehan in a telephone conversation from Washington D.C. where she was attending a July 4th anti-war rally.

“Sheehan said the June 2004 private meeting with the President went from bad to worse to a nightmare when Bush acted like he didn’t‚t even want to know her name. She said Bush kept referring to her as Ma‚ or Mom‚ while he ‘put on a phony act,’ saying things like ‘Mom, I can’t even imagine losing a loved one, a mother or a father or a sister or a brother.’

“‘The whole meeting was simply bizarre and disgusting, designed to intimidate instead of providing compassion. He didn’t even know our names,’ said Sheehan. ‘Finally I got so upset I just looked him in the eye, saying I think you can imagine losing someone. You have two daughters. Imagine losing them? After I said that he just looked at me, looked at me with no feeling or caring in his eyes at all.’”

http://www.lewisnews.com/article.asp?ID=105971

ON THE HOME FRONT

The Pentagon has a major propaganda operation at work on the home front to “honor our troops,” another way of mobilizing support for the war:

American Forces Press Service reports:

“WASHINGTON, July 5, 2005 — America’s men and women in uniform have another powerful friend working to support them.

“The Washington Nationals, currently in first place in the National League’s East Division, became the first major league baseball team to join the Defense Department’s ‘America Supports You’ program July 4 at their game against the New York Mets at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium here.

“America Supports You is a nationwide program launched by DoD to recognize citizen support for the nation’s military men and women and to communicate that
support to members of the armed forces at home and abroad. The Nationals join many major corporations, organizations and individuals as part of America Supports You.”

http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/][http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/