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Anti-Muslim attacks penetrate
US ‘hallowed halls of ivy’
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NATION BRIEFS
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China hawk settles in neo-cons’ nest
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Bush ally set to profit from war on terror

By Antony Barnett and Solomon Hughes

May 11— James Woolsey, former CIA boss and influential adviser to President George Bush, is a director of a US firm aiming to make millions of dollars from the “war on terror.”

Woolsey, one of the most high-profile hawks in the war against Iraq and a key member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, is a director of the Washington-based private equity firm Paladin Capital. The company was set up three months after the terrorist attacks on New York and sees the events and aftermath of Sept. 11 as a business opportunity which “offer[s] substantial promise for homeland security investment.”

The first priority of Paladin was “to invest in companies with immediate solutions designed to prevent harmful attacks, defend against attacks, cope with the aftermath of attack or disaster and recover from terrorist attacks and other threats to homeland security.”

Paladin, which is expected to have raised $300 million from investors by the end of this year, calculates that in the next few years the US government will spend $60 billion on anti-terrorism that would not have been spent before Sept. 11, and that corporations will spend twice that amount to ensure their security and continuity in case of attack.

The involvement of one of the most prominent hawks in Washington with a company standing to cash in on the fear of potential terror attacks will raise eyebrows in some quarters.

In 2001, US Undersecretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz sent Woolsey to Europe, where he argued the case for links existing between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. He was one of the main proponents of the theory that the anthrax letter attacks in America were supported by Iraq’s former dictator.

More recently, Woolsey told CNN about Saddam’s attempts to produce a genetically modified strain of anthrax. He told the US broadcaster: “I would be more worried over the mid to long term about biological weapons, because the chemical gear, we’re -- I think we’re pretty well equipped to deal with. But there have been stories that Saddam has been working on genetically modifying some of these biological agents, making anthrax resistant to vaccines or antibiotics.”

Little evidence was provided for the Iraq link to the anthrax attacks and the FBI is now investigating a lone US scientist whom it believes was responsible. But Woolsey’s assertions added to a political atmosphere in which spending on equipment designed to protect individuals and firms from terror was predicted to mushroom.

One of Paladin’s first investments was $10.5 million in AgION Technologies, a firm devising anti-germ technology that it hopes will “be the leader in the fight against bacterial attacks initiated by terrorists on unsuspecting civilian and military personnel.”

Woolsey is not alone among the members of the Pentagon’s highly influential Defense Policy Board to profit from America’s war on terror.

The US watchdog group, Center for Public Integrity, showed that nine of the board’s members have ties to defense contractors that won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. Woolsey’s fellow neo-conservative, Richard Perle, had to resign his chairmanship of the board because of conflicts of interest, although he remains a board member.

The hawks and their money

Dick Cheney, Vice President

Cheney once ran oil industry giant Halliburton whose subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, has won lucrative contracts in post-Saddam Iraq. The Defense Department gave KBR exclusive rights to a $90 million contract to cater for the Americans who are working on rebuilding Iraq. KBR also won a lucrative contract to repair Iraq’s oilfields.

Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary

Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of European engineering giant ABB when it won a £125m contract for two light water reactors to North Korea -- a country he now regards as part of the ‘axis of evil’. (see The two faces of Rumsfeld)

Richard Perle

An influential member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, Perle is managing partner of venture capital company Trireme, which invests in companies dealing in products of value to homeland security. It sent a letter to Saudi arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi arguing that fear of terrorism would boost demand in Europe, Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

George Shultz, ex-Secretary of State

Shultz is on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group, the largest contractor in the US and one of the favorites to land lucrative contracts in the rebuilding of Iraq. Shultz is chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a fiercely pro-war group with close ties to the White House.

Source: Observer (UK)

Anti-Muslim attacks penetrate
US ‘hallowed halls of ivy’

By Gitendra E. Chitty

New Haven, Connecticut, May 9 (IPS)— Since US forces attacked Iraq in March, college campuses nationwide have seen backlashes against both Muslim students and anti-war activists. At Yale University alone, students claim seven instances of violence have occurred on what are normally the sheltered grounds of educational privilege.

Christine Lo, a junior at Yale who had hung a US flag upside-down outside her window to protest the invasion of Iraq, says she never expected the events of Mar. 27, when four male students broke into her suite armed with a plank of wood and tried unsuccessfully to pry open her room door.

After they left, Lo found a note urging Americans to destroy Muslims and “launch so many missiles their mothers don’t produce healthy offspring.”

Although Lo is not Muslim, she believes her anti-war stance prompted the break-in. Other hate-crime complaints were subsequently lodged with university administrators, including one from protester Raphael Soifer after a Yale student spat at him in a dining hall, shouting “I hope you and your families die! Why don’t you go live in Iraq?”

Yale is not alone. Late in April, 12 angry students stormed the office of the College Voice newspaper at the College of Staten Island after it printed a pro-Palestinian article. When the administration failed to respond to the incident, the paper arranged its own security, says staff member Omar Hammad.

The office, he adds, has received many phone threats -- as recently as last week -- calling Muslims “terrorists,” and demanding they leave the country. The paper’s associates say they are likely being singled out because of their many Muslim staff members. “I don’t see this going away any time soon,” Hammad said with a sigh.

Some say the university incidents merely mirror incidents in the wider society, echoing the claims of Muslims, Arabs, and others of minority descent who have felt a significant increase in racism since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

A 2002 Hamilton College and Zogby International survey found that almost 75 percent of Muslim Americans either faced physical or verbal attacks since Sept. 11 or know someone who has. According to a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) survey last year, the number of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate crimes and instances of discrimination rose 43 percent from 2001 to 2002, on campus and off.

“Muslim students have felt physical dangers in everyday situations ... labeled unpatriotic and therefore terrorists ... being ostracized based on their beliefs,” says Sumeyya Ashraf, president of Yale’s Muslim Student Association.

Students worry that even the Ivy covered walls will not protect them, she adds. The attacks “have created an immediate sense of fear on a campus we thought was safe from harm.”

Two weeks after the Yale attacks, Dean Richard Brodhead sent a brief note to all undergraduates, warning them that harassment had no place at Yale, a response that was widely criticized. Even after University President Richard Levin issued a follow-up message condemning the attacks and the school attempted to hold meetings and encourage dialogue, some students insist that the attackers should be found and punished.

“The problem is lack of an adequate response,” says Shagran Hassan, of Concerned Students at Yale (CSY). Christopher Jordan of Concerned Black Students at Yale (CBSY) agrees, and urges the university to “re-engage in an honest dialogue about racial, ethnic, religious and political tolerance.” Both groups were formed to counter campus discrimination and hate crimes.

Others believe the recent events are part of a broader problem in US universities. Although Levin believes the incidents are unusual, Shelita Stewart of CBSY is not surprised at the attacks.

“It is not just the war in Iraq,” she says, adding that people do not like to believe that elite universities “contain hate speech and hate threats ... There is a desire to deny that racism [or] religious oppression is present.”

Similar campus hate crimes have occurred across the country, including at the University of Virginia, where a minority candidate for student government was targeted, and at San Jose State University (California), where bathroom graffiti exclaimed, “Muslims will be shot on SJSU campus on March 10!”

At the University of California Los Angeles Medical Center, Muslim prayer rugs in the non-denominational chapel were found soaked in pig’s blood.

Students are not the only targets. Cases of discrimination against Muslim employees are being investigated at colleges across the US. CAIR civil rights consultant Hassan Mirza says a Muslim at an Oklahoma university was repeatedly harassed by co-workers, who hung pictures depicting him as a terrorist and labeling him an “al-Qaida operative.”

When complaints to his supervisors were ignored and the man was “constructively terminated,” CAIR began a case to have him reinstated.

Another Muslim claims she was fired from her job at a Maryland university when administrators became uncomfortable and made comments about her Muslim friends and the copy of the Koran on her computer.

Yale, UCLA, and San Jose State officials have condemned the acts on their campuses, but in places where freedom of thought has traditionally been fostered, some students are now afraid to express themselves. Jordan says that students fear appearing anti-American, and hesitate to talk about attacks or other incidents.

Yet not all the news is bad. According to Reuters news agency, UCLA’s spiritual center received a number of queries from people “of all faiths” wanting to help pay for new rugs. In Connecticut, Sumeyya Ashraf says the outpouring of support from dozens of campus groups make her proud “to be part of a community that took a stand against such behavior and has confirmed that we must never be afraid to speak out.”

China hawk settles in neo-cons’ nest

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, May 9 (IPS)— Neo-conservative hawks have scored a new victory in the administration of President George W. Bush with the hiring by Vice President Richard Cheney of a prominent hawk on China policy.

China specialist and Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg has been named Deputy National Security Adviser and Director of Policy Planning on Cheney’s high-powered, foreign-policy staff headed by I. Lewis Libby, one of the most influential foreign-policy strategists in the administration.

Both Friedberg and Libby—as well as Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and 21 other prominent right-wingers—signed the 1997 founding charter of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which called for the adoption of a “‘Reaganite’ policy of military strength and moral clarity.”

Friedberg also signed another PNAC letter to Bush on Sept. 20, 2001, which called for the “war on terrorism” to be directed against Iraq and other anti-Israel forces in the Middle East, in addition to al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Friedberg wrote a chapter on the threat posed by China in Present Dangers, a 2000 book edited by PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan that also included chapters by other leading neo-conservative hawks, including former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief James Woolsey.

The significance of his appointment lies both with Cheney’s and Libby’s influence in foreign policy-making and the fact that Friedberg will be the only recognized China expert in such a senior position.

“There really haven’t been top people under Bush who knew much about China,” says John Gershman, an Asia specialist at New York University. “He’s the first one.”

But according to Gershman, Friedberg “fits clearly into the group that has been dominant in the administration” since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

“He’s a China-threat person without being hysterical about it,” Gershman continues. “But his appointment is a clear sign that the co-operation that has emerged between the US and China on the war on terrorism and North Korea is entirely tactical, and that Cheney is still inclined to see China as a strategic competitor.”

The appointment, which will take effect June 1, comes at an interesting moment in the evolution of Sino-US ties under Bush, who came into office with a significantly harsher view of Beijing than his predecessor, President Bill Clinton.

An early test came in the spring of 2001 after a collision between a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet that destroyed the latter and forced the US plane to land on Hainan Island, where its crew was detained for several weeks.

The incident turned out to be an early indication of the profound split within the administration between right-wing hawks centered in the offices of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose successful negotiation of the crew’s return eventually defused a crisis that was avidly stoked by neo-conservatives, especially Kristol and Kagan, whose Weekly Standard magazine generally reflects the views of the administration’s hawks.

Bush himself appeared to mellow on China after the crisis and a subsequent meeting with then-president Jiang Zemin, a process that was furthered after Sept. 11 when Washington actively sought Beijing’s co-operation in the “war on terrorism.”

But despite the detente, Rumsfeld, presumably with Cheney’s backing, held up resumption of military-to-military ties between the US and China that were cut off for more than one year during the crisis.

In addition, the Pentagon has been trying to persuade a reluctant Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, to buy a slew of weaponry—including destroyers, submarines, and aircraft—which the administration approved for sale to the island almost two years ago.

According to the May 9 Wall Street Journal, Washington is now offering Taiwan its most advanced anti-missile system, the Patriot-3, a sale that, if consummated, is almost certain to result in a Chinese protest.

The Pentagon has also been eagerly courting the Indian military over the past year. One recently leaked document, revealed by Foreign Report, depicted China as “the most significant threat to both [the US and India],” and called for Delhi to become a “vital component of US strategy” vis-a-vis China, particularly now that Washington is reassessing its military alliances with Japan and South Korea.

In this context Friedberg’s appointment gains significance.

In his writings over several years, Friedberg has depicted China as a “strategic competitor” to the United States that will almost inevitably challenge Washington’s own political and military pre-eminence in the region.

In a 2000 article entitled “The Struggle for Mastery in Asia,” in the leading neo-conservative monthly Commentary, Friedberg wrote, “over the course of the next several decades there is a good chance that the United States will find itself engaged in an open and intense geopolitical rivalry with the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” While such a situation is not completely inevitable, he says it is “quite likely.”

“The combination of growing Chinese power, China’s effort to expand its influence, and the unwillingness of the United States to entirely give way before it are the necessary preconditions of a ‘struggle for mastery,”’ he goes on, adding that actual military confrontation could be either slow to develop or could happen as a result of a “single catalytic event, such as a showdown over Taiwan.”

One of the major problems that US policymakers will face is balancing the interests of “powerful business lobbies” - which Friedberg calls “pro-PRC lobbying groups” - in the US determined to expand access to China’s market and labor force against strategic concerns caused by Beijing’s desire to expand its influence in the region.

He also expresses concern that China’s growing economic power in Asia will enable it to exert influence on the region’s governments as part of its “strategic competition.”

Moreover, writes Friedberg, China “will be a very different kind of strategic competitor from the Soviet Union,” given its size, dynamism, and relative openness, all of which could work against Washington’s ability to “contain” it in the coming years.

“The thrust of what he writes is the inevitability of confrontation with the US or of an attempt to displace the US in Asia,” says one former senior State Department Asia specialist. “The problem with this is his automatic presumption of a clash rather than a more careful assumption that confrontation may not be inevitable.”

Indeed, Friedberg’s assumptions were even questioned by Zalmay Khalilzad, a senior Bush strategist who has handled relations with Afghanistan and Iraq but has supported a policy of both engagement and containment - or “congagement” - toward China.

In a published reply to Friedberg’s Commentary article, Khalilzad criticized his assumption “that the current Chinese regime and/or its likely successor will pursue regional hegemony. This is by no means inevitable,” Khalilzad said, arguing that it was also possible that the relationship would evolve into “mutual accommodation and partnership,” particularly if Beijing made democratic reforms.

But Friedberg thinks this unlikely. “Regimes in transition from strict authoritarianism to greater political openness,” he wrote, “have historically been prone to bouts of aggressive nationalism.”

While Washington should continue to foster trade and investment - though not in key strategic areas - the priority, he wrote, should be placed on “serious, sustained, and unchecked efforts to strengthen our alliances, improve our military capabilities, and maintain a balance of power in Asia that is favorable to our interests. Engagement, yes; but from a position of strength.”