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Today's Stories August 22, 2006 Gilad Atzmon Israel Must Win Eamonn McCann Bereft Belfast Mother Charges Security Firms with Wanton Murder in Iraq Ramzi Kysia My Journey to South Lebanon August 21, 2006 Jonathan Cook Caught in a Net of Delusion Paul Craig Roberts Artificial Recovery; Real Job Losses Kathy Kelly Israel's "Proportionate Response": Measured Amid the Wreckage Mike Roselle Irony Runs Through It: Making a Ruckus Lenni Brenner Mayor Bloomberg: the Flying Faker Maher Osseiran Osama's Confession; Osama's Reprieve August 19 / 20, 2006 Weekend Edition Uri Avnery The 155th Victim Eliza Ernshire Terror and Freedom on the West Bank Virginia Tilley Inside 1701: What the UN Ceasefire Resolution Actually Says Kathy Kelly Funerals at Qana: a Journey to Southern Lebanon Marc Levy You are What You Dream: "Before you talk of heroes you must feel, taste, touch, smell the horror." Stephen Bradberry / Jeffrey Buchanan Hopes and Homes: Subject to Seizure on the Katrina's Anniversary Barbara Rose Johnston Banking on Violence: Guatemalan Genocide and US Security William Blum Perpetual Fear: Saved Again, Praise the Lord! Stephen Fleischman Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon Ralph Nader The Legacy of John Kenneth Galbraith Dave Lindorff Busted, Again: Bush is Two Times a Criminal Fred Gardner When Cannabis Failed to Sell David Krieger Nuclear Insecurity Dan La Botz The Minutemen: Mad at the Wrong Guys Poets' Basement Davies / Engel   August 18, 2006 Brian M. Downing American Generals and Iraq: Time to Call for a Rapid Withdrawal John Blair Divine Strike in the Bible Belt: Will They Bomb Bedford? Alan Hart The Lebanon War, a Post Mortem Craig Murray Hitting a Nerve: the Hair Gel Terror Hype Chris Dols Confronting Madison's NaziFest Emily Kirksey The Cuban Mirage: Self-Deception in Miami and Washington Joaquín Bustelo Forging a New Strategy for Immigrant Rights: Report from Chicago William S. Lind Beaten: Why the IDF Lost in Lebanon Podcast of the Day The F-22 PodCast Website of the Day Burn a Brick for Jesus   August 17, 2006 CounterPunch News Service "Goodbye to the Unipolar World": an Interview with Hasan Nasrallah Barucha Peller This Pain Has No Ceasefire Ramzy Baroud Lebanon: a Critical Battlefield for the New Middle East Rothem Shtarkman Gen. Dan Halutz: Inside Trader Craig Murray The UK Terror Plot: What's Really Going On? Samar Assad Gaza: One Year After Disengagement Mike Ferner Lt. Watada's Challenge Arnold Kohen A Second Rebirth for East Timor? Kevin Zeese Does the Invasion of Lebanon Foretell a Regional War? Missy Comley Beattie Open Wounds Uri Avnery From Mania to Depression Video of the Day Neil Young: After the Garden Website of the Day Art for Peace   August 16, 2006 Merav Yudilovitch Apocalypse Near: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on Lebanon Robert Fisk Behind the Lies of Bush and Blair: It Falls to Assad to Tell the Truth Mark Williams The Missiles of August: The Lebanon War and the Democratization of Missile Technology John Ross End Game Engulfs Mexico Christopher Brauchli The Poor Are Such a Nuisance John Walsh AIPAC Congratulates Itself for Slaughter in Lebanon Ron Jacobs Gee, Your Hair Smells Terror-ific!: Shampoo, Fear and Elections Rachard Itani It Ain't Over: What Did and Didn't Happen in Lebanon Felice Pace Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains: The Real Threat is Not What You Expected Niranjan Ramakrishnan Lieberman the Enabler Frank, Sharma and Peterson Venezuela's Revolution of Hope: "In Two Years, Everything Has Changed!" Jonathan Cook Real Photo Fakers; Real War Crimes Website of the Day You Too Can Paint Like Jackson Pollock!   August 15, 2006 Andrew Ford Lyons Why Hezbollywood Was Born: Digitally Erasing a Massacre Binoy Kampmark Terrorism and the Art of Flying Robert Fisk Israel Wasn't Hoping for This Ralph Nader Bush to Israel: Take Your Time Destroying Lebanon Todd Chretien The US Antiwar Movement: Weak, Passive, Distracted Chris Floyd It's Bigger Than the Neo-Cons Mark Engler WTO: Best Left for Dead? George Galloway "You Don't Give a Damn:" the SkyNews Debate Laray Polk What's More Obscene: War or Sex? Trish Schuh Operation Change of Location?: Where Were the IDF Soldiers Captured? Website of the Day Jesus Never Existed August 14, 2006 Uri Avnery What the Hell Happened to the Israeli Army? Karim Makdisi The Flaws in the UN Resolution Kathy Kelly Approaching a Ceasefire Robert Fisk The Truce That Won't Last Norman Solomon Who's Afraid of Hillary Clinton? MoveOn, for One Sunsara Taylor Ned Lamont and the Antiwar Movement: False Hopes, Bad Terms and Ticking Clocks Robert Jensen Outside the Frame: The Limits of George Lakoff's Politics Mike Whitney The Litani Gambit: Ceasefire or Trojan Horse? P. Sainath An Indian Farmer About to Commit Suicide Writes a Note of Clarification Goretti Horgan The Raytheon Nine: Irish Antiwar Protesters Face "Terrorism" Charges Christopher Reed London Fog: Doubts Hang Over Terror Plot   August 12 / 13, 2006 Weekend Edition Jean Bricmont The De-Zionization of the American Mind Norman Finkelstein Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination? Robert Fisk How the London Terror Scare Looks from Beirut Adrian Grima Forget the 50 Civilians: Watching Lebanon from Malta Barucha Peller Letter from Lebanon: the Proximity of Death Omar Barghouti The UN, Lebanon and Palestine Adam Engel Tearing Down the Master's House: an Interview with Derrick Jensen Conn Hallinan How the Irish Could Save the Middle East John Stauber Meet the GOP's Latest Smear Machine: Vets for Freedom Rev. William Alberts Bush's Primetime Lies Still Go Unchallenged by the Press Fred Gardner Hollywood Does Cannabis: "Weeds," the First Season Lucinda Marshall Penis Politics: Does Dick Cheney Want Us All to Fly Nude? Ron Jacobs Kill the Precedent: an Interview with Rapper Nate Mezmer CounterPunch News Service Kerala Throws Out Coke and Pepsi Poets' Basement Katz, Davies and Orloski August 11, 2006 Col. Dan Smith Crimes Against Peace: Beyond Nuremberg John Ross Class War in Mexico City's Gridlock Michael Donnelly Sore Loserman, Redux William S. Lind Collapse of the Flanks Linda Milazzo Chertoff's New Math: Hair Gel Plot Might Have "Killed 100s of Thousands" Rep. Cynthia McKinney Something is Happening Around the World Azmi Bishara When the Skies Rain Death Henri Picciotto Jewish Dissidents Must Challenge Israel CounterPunch News Wire The Warrior Lawyer: Tom Crumpacker, 1934-2006 Dave Lindorff War Crimes in Lebanon Jonathan Cook From High Wycombe to Nazrareth: How I Found Myself with the Islamic Fascists   August 10, 2006 Uri Avnery The Buck Stops Where? Dave Marsh Who Are Mr and Mrs Lamont? Gabriel Kolko Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Arthur Versluis How Neocons' Nazi Hero Schmitt Spawned Bush's Totalitarian Lunge Jennifer Loewenstein Awakening the Resistance August 9, 2006 Linda Schade Incumbents Beware: Peace Voters Mean Business Jackie Mason Defends Mel Gibson; Ridicules Abe Foxman Jonathan Cook Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah Gilad Atzmon Operation Security Roof Charles Hirschkind Doing the Lebanese a Favor Tom Barry Right-wingers Ramp Up War on Migrants Cockburn & St. Clair The Sweetness of Lieberman's Defeat   August 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Requiem for Baghdad Paul Larudee The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions Joan Roelofs The Malleable US Constitution: a Deterrent to Democracy? Dimi Reider An Interview with IDF Refusenik Sgt. Zohar Milchgrub John A. Murphy The Democrats: a Party on the Run ... from Its Own Members! Eliot Katz The View from the Big Woods: In Which a NYC Antiwar Poet Takes a Summer Vacation in Canada's Boreal Forest Tim Llewellyn Into the Valley of Death Website of the Day Galloway Speaks!   August 7, 2006 Uri Avnery The Junkies of War Karim Makdisi The Draft UN Resolutions: the View from Beirut Nadia Hijab What Israel and the US Wanted May Not Be At All What They Get Sharon Smith Birth Pangs and Dead Babies Magan Wiles Encounter at an Israeli Checkpoint George Beres A New Kind of Bigotry: Lebanon War Exposes Strange Religious Bedfellows Rachard Itani Nice Try, Mr. Bolton Norman Solomon Some Nukes Are A-Okay with the US Media Stan Cox Presidential Doping Scandal Erupts! Mickey Z. Go Ahead, Please Stare at Her Chest Jonathan Cook The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN Website of the Day Sam Husseini Interrogates Newt Gingrich on Lebanon   August 5 / 6, 2006 Virginia Tilley Boycott Now!: the Case for Boycotting Israel Uri Avnery The Black Flag Patrick Cockburn Yes, It is a Crusade!: Blair's Mad Speech on Iraq Sgt. Martin Smith Military Training and Atrocities: Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree Gary Leupp America's Heroes on Trial Neve Gordon The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom After 9/11 Ralph Nader Hey Joe!: the Ghosts of Lieberman's Past Peter Bouckaert For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game Peter Montague Nukes Rising: Bush Oversees a Global Nuclear Expansion David Krieger Global Hiroshima: the Stakes Have Been Raised Michael Donnelly "Sir! No Sir!": the Story of the GI Anti-War Movement Fred Gardner Dr. Denney Sues the DEA Catherine Norris Seeking Justice Abroad: Spanish Courts Issue Arrest Warrants for the Butchers of Guatemala Imraan Siddiqi The Smokescreens of War: Moral Superiority, 9/11 and Islamic-Fascism Missy Comley Beattie One Year After the Death of Chase Comley Ira Kay Where is Geography? Getting Beyond the Place Name Game Dave Lindorff Let's Build a Wall Pratyush Chandra Nuclear Fascism in India Ron Jacobs Keeping It Radical St. Clair / Donnelly Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Katz and Davies Website of the Day Defend Bear Butte

August 22 , 2006 "There's No Authority Over Them" Bereft Belfast Mother Charges Private Security Firms with Wanton Murder in Iraq By EAMONN McCANN The mother of a teenager shot dead by British soldiers in Belfast has launched a campaign for an inquiry into alleged killing of civilians by private consultants in Iraq. The woman is Jean McBride, the mother of 18-year-old Peter McBride, shot dead by members of the Scots Guards regiment in the New Lodge Road area in September, 1992. The men’s commander, Lt. Col. Tim Spicer, now heads the company at the centre of the Iraq allegations. In June, the Pentagon announced that an inquiry had cleared Spicer’s company, Aegis Defence Sevices, of shooting up civilian vehicles in Baghdad. However, a former British paratrooper working for Aegis at the time says that the inquiry was a whitewash. He claims that, although he had witnessed the shooting and possessed video-tape of it, repeated offers of evidence were refused. Now, Jean McBride has written to a United Nations working group on the use of mercenaries asking for a new investigation. The former para who worked for Aegis, Rod Stoner, says that he will testify to any new inquiry. UK-based Aegis is the largest private security company operating in Iraq. Stoner resigned from the company last October last year following a dispute over an Aegis employees’ website which Spicer claimed was damaging the company. In an e-mail to Spicer at the time, Stoner denied that he intended to post “videos taken by your teams showing innocent Iraqis being shot up and in some cases killed.” However, after leaving the company, he posted the video on the website. Stoner says he was the “team leader” in the sports utility vehicle from which the shooting took place. The three-and-a-half minute video contains four clips in which automatic fire is directed at civilian cars travelling behind the SUV. One clip shows a white car apparently drifting out of control and then coming to a stop as it is raked with machine-gun fire. Another shows bullets splattering the bonnet and windshield of a Mercedes which crashes into another car. A number of people are seen running from the other car. No one emerges from the Mercedes. The video is shot from inside the SUV as it travels along “Route Irish,” the eight-mile carriageway between Baghdad airport and the city. A sound-track features Elvis Presley singing “Mystery Train.” The Derry-based human rights group, the Pat Finucane Centre, learned of the Pentagon inquiry in May from Mitchell Reiss, the Bush administration’s special envoy on the North. The Centre’s director Paul O’Connor and Jean McBride had met with Reiss in Belfast to protest against the Pentagon’s employment of Spicer’s company. Said Jean McBride afterwards: "I told the ambassador that his government would not take kindly to the Irish or British governments doing business with someone who justified the murder of a US citizen, and that I didn't take kindly to the US government doing business with someone who has justified the shooting, in the back, of my unarmed 18-year-old son. “When we then brought up the Iraq video, Reiss told us there was a Pentagon investigation into it already under way and that I would be informed of the outcome.” The video had been shown on More4 News in Britain on March 30 . The More4 bulletin also included an interview with Stoner. In the High Court in London on April 6, Aegis obtained an injunction compelling Stoner to take down the website. Following coverage of the Finucane Centre’s meeting with Reiss the following month, Stoner contacted the Derry group by e-mail, saying that he had made “repeated requests [to Aegis] to be put in contact with those within the Pentagon responsible for the investigation,” but had had no response. He said that he believed that none of the other occupants of the SUV had been interviewed, either: these included the alleged shooter, a South African ex-British Army soldier. On June 1, the Centre e-mailed Reiss: “This man has informed us that he is a former Aegis employee, Mr. Rod Stoner. He has informed us that he was present in the vehicle when the shooting occurred and that he was responsible for posting it on the website. Mr. Stoner has informed us that it is his understanding that none of those present in the vehicle have been contacted by the Pentagon, or indeed by any official investigating the video.” Stoner was available to give evidence, the PFC added. The e-mail was copied to the Inspector General of the US Army, Lt. Gen. Stanley Green. On June 9, a Margaret Baines of Lt. Gen. Green’s office acknowledged receipt of the e-mail. In Baghdad the following day, June 10, the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of Green’s department announced that its inquiry had been completed and had not found “any potential criminality that falls within CID’s investigative purview...No further investigative effort...was warranted.” Aegis issued a statement in London on June 11 welcoming the verdict and referring to its own, earlier investigation which, it said, had concluded that, “The films were recorded during Aegis’ legitimate operations....and the incidents recorded were within the rules for the use of force.” Aegis had not previously published these finding but said now that it had passed them to the US investigators. Stoner has told the PFC that Aegis “showed no interest” in interviewing him during its investigation, and had not interviewed any of his colleagues who had been in the SUV. Jean McBride said last week: “The truth seems to be that there was no inquiry. If you don’t interview people who are offering eye-witness evidence, you aren’t inquiring.” Mrs. McBride and the PFC wrote last week to Armanda Benavides de Perez, Colombian chairwoman of the UN’s new Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries (WGUM), asking her to consider whether the issues arising from the Aegis video come within the working group’s remit. The WGUM was established on June 16 at the inaugural meeting in Geneva of the Human Rights Council, (presided over by Kofi Annan,) which has replaced the long-standing UN Human Rights Commission. “We are not letting go of this,” says Jean McBride. “A man who praised the murderers of my son and who has since been involved in very dubious activities around the world is now running an operation for the US in Iraq in which more innocent people are seemingly being gunned down. “We will be actively seeking support for an inquiry by Ms. De Perez from politicians and others in Ireland, Britain, the US and elsewhere. How can we talk about human rights and the rule of law if people like Tim Spicer are allowed to defend murder in Northern Ireland and then go on to inflict the same attitudes elsewhere?” Eighteen-year-old father-of-two Peter McBride was shot in the back by Scots Guardsmen Mark Wright and James Fisher in north Belfast on September 4th 1992. In February 1995, Wright and Fisher were convicted of murder and sentenced to life. The High Court and Court of Appeal in Belfast and the House of Lords upheld the verdicts. The pair was freed by Northern Secretary Mo Mowlam in September 1998, in advance of releases under the Belfast Agreement. In November 1998, an army board accepted Wright and Fisher back into the regiment. The men’s commander, Col. Spicer, told the board that he’d arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting and that: “It was my inclination that (the soldiers) should be rearmed, re-zero their weapons and in my view return to the streets.” Tne soldiers, he added, had been “acting entirely in good faith and, in my view, in complete accordance with the Rules of Engagement.” Jean McBride has campaigned to expose what she says is retrospective complicity by the British authorities in her son’s death. She and the Pat Finucane Centre have lobbied the Dublin Government and parliamentarians in Europe and traveled to the US seeking support from members of Congress. In December 2000, a motion condemning the return of Wright and Fisher to their regiment was passed unanimously in the Irish parliament, Dail Eireann. In June 2003, Peter McBride’s sister, Kelly, stood in a by-election in Brent East, London, to highlight the case. Lib Dem Sarah Teather, who won the seat, has since been a vocal supporter of the campaign. In April 2005, Ms. Teather and London Mayor Ken Livingstone were among politicians who condemned the award of Iraq contracts to Aegis, citing Spicer’s role in the McBride killing. After leaving the British Army in 1994, Spicer, with former Scots Guards colleague Simon Mann and others, set up Executive Outcomes, providing security for business and government interests. Executive Outcomes won contracts in countries including Angola, Rwanda, Burundi and Sierra Leone. In October 1996, Spicer and Mann established Sandline International, which was hired the following year by the government of Papua New Guinea to suppress a revolt on Bougainville, site of the world’s largest copper mine. However, the revolt spread, the government fell and Spicer was briefly jailed. Backed by the British Government, SI collected an $18 million fee from the new government. In 1998, Sandline organised an arms shipment to Sierra Leone in defiance of a UN embargo. It later emerged that British and US officials had secretly given Sandline the go-ahead. Britain’s High Commissioner in Sierra Leone, Peter Penfold, resigned. In September 2004, Mann was sentenced to seven years in prison in Zimbabwe for attempting to buy arms to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. Spicer had meantime, in 2002, founded Aegis Defence Services. The company won a number of contracts in Iraq following the April 2003 occupation. In May 2004, the US Army gave Aegis a $293 contract to coordinate all PSC operations in Iraq: this followed the lynching of four US contractors who had strayed into Fallujah. Last year, Aegis was hired by the UN to provide security during the October referendum and December elections. Aegis’s current Iraqi contracts total more than $400 million. Spicer stepped down late last year as Aegis chairman, but remains CEO and owns 40 percent of the company. There are 25,000 private security contractors involved in the Iraq occupation---the second-biggest contingent after the Americans. Many earn $1,000 a day: 341 have been killed. They operate under rules of engagement drafted by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in 2003. CPA “Order No. Seven” guarantees them immunity under Iraqi law. US Brigadier-General Karl Horst told the Sunday Times last October: “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them...They shoot people and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.” Fatal incidents have been reported. In February, French agency AFP reported two unarmed Iraqis killed in a passing taxi by contractors guarding a US office in Kirkuk. No overall figures are available of casualties of PSC actions. Last year’s UN contracts significantly boosted Aegis’s standing, and may have helped attract new board members announced in November. These include leading British figures Field Marshall Lord Inge, former Chief of the Defence Staff, who took over as chairman, Brigadier James Ellery, former UN administrator in Sierra Leone, Nicholas Soames MP, former Armed Forces Minister, General Sir Roger Wheeler, former Chief of the General Staff and Sir John Birch, former deputy UK ambassador to the UN. Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, now advisor to the government of Vladimir Putin, also joined the Aegis board. The “Route Irish” video can be viewed at www.patfinucanecentre.org: scroll to “Under the Aegis.” Eamon McCann can be reached at Eamonderry@aol.com .

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