‘Virtue police’ in Pakistan are the threat,
not ‘shariah’ - activists
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WORLD BRIEFS
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Argentine president, Supreme Court
clash ‘threatens governance’
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Views of US plummet in Europe, Muslim world
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French rescue US internationals in Liberia
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Bush tours Auschwitz, says ‘evil’ must be resisted, ignores his family’s past
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NATO, global gendarme
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Taliban are back — and with a
murderous vengeance

By Luke Harding

Kabul, Afghanistan, June 8— The resurgence of the Taliban was dramatically illustrated yesterday when a suspected car bomber blew up a military bus in the heart of Kabul, killing at least four German peacekeepers and injuring 29 others.

In the deadliest attack on international forces in Afghanistan so far, the bomber drove his taxi alongside the bus shortly after it pulled out of the soldiers’ HQ in the east of the city.

Witnesses reported a massive explosion. “I was 50 or 60 meters away. The whole ground shook. The bus was blown six or seven meters into the air and came flipping down on the other side of the road. I saw several bodies lying on the ground,” an Afghan shopkeeper, Khais Mohammad, 20, told The Observer.

The soldiers were part of the 5,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), based in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban 18 months ago.

The peacekeepers were on a tour of duty in Afghanistan and were heading to the city’s international airport when the bomber struck. The attack was almost certainly the work of renegade Taliban or al-Qaida activists who are trying to overthrow the regime of Afghanistan’s pro-American leader, Hamid Karzai.

The timing of the incident could not have been more symbolic — it came while Karzai was away in Britain collecting an honorary knighthood from the Queen.

In recent months Taliban supporters have regrouped in the south and east of Afghanistan, where they have carried out numerous attacks on military bases occupied by Americans, and on their Afghan allies.

Last week 49 people were killed in a ferocious gun-battle between Taliban supporters and pro-government Afghan militiamen near the southern city of Kandahar. The fighting broke out after Taliban activists slipped across the border from Pakistan and opened fire on government troops using rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers.

Forty Taliban were killed in one of the biggest battles since the movement’s apparent defeat in November 2001. But yesterday’s suicide bombing graphically demonstrates the Taliban’s ability to strike deep inside the capital, and at the emblems of Karzai’s struggling interim government.

Last night Major Sarah Wood, a spokesperson for ISAF, said it was too early to speculate who had carried out yesterday’s bombing in Kabul. But she added: “It appears to be a deliberate attack on peacekeeping military personnel. There have been many serious casualties as well as some walking wounded. The injured have been all taken to military hospitals.”

No warning was given before the attack at 8am local time, she added. The blast took place three miles east of the city center, near the city’s customs house, on the main road out of Kabul towards the eastern city of Jalalabad and the Pakistan border.

The ISAF bus had driven less than 2km from the base used mainly by German and Dutch soldiers when it was ambushed. Yesterday British troops sealed off the area, as Apache helicopters circled overhead. But Afghan security officials said there was little chance of catching those responsible — but said they suspected the involvement of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a rebel pro-Taliban warlord.

The bomber’s head was found nearby in a ruined building, they added. “There’s nothing left of the car but the burned chassis. The bomb blew inside the bus,” said Afzal Aman, Kabul’s deputy chief of security.

“This is the work of our enemies. It is a terrorist attack that bears all the hallmarks of al-Qaida and the supporters of Mullah Omar [the Taliban’s fugitive leader].” He added, “Karzai’s government is not weak. You have to remember we have had 22 years of war in Afghanistan. Mr. Karzai is working for peace. Most people are happy with him.”

It was not clear last night how many Afghan civilians were injured. More than 11,000 soldiers — most of them Americans — are still in Afghanistan, in addition to 5,000 peacekeepers from some 20 countries.

Germany and the Netherlands are currently in command of ISAF, which was led by Britain last year, but are due to hand over control to NATO in August.

Karzai has pleaded with the international community to extend the scope of ISAF’s operations beyond Kabul, and raised the issue last week with Tony Blair in Downing Street. Large areas of Afghanistan have in effect reverted to Taliban control — including the provinces of Zabul, Oruzgan and Helmand in the south, and Paktika and Ghazni in the east.

Taliban attacks on the strategic road between Kabul and Kandahar have grown so frequent that Afghan de-miners working in the area now venture out escorted by armed guards. Over the past two months suspected Taliban rebels have shot dead a Red Cross worker near Kandahar and an Italian tourist.

While most ordinary Afghans do not want the Taliban back, there is growing nostalgia for the security and order that they brought, after years of Mujahadin turmoil and civil war.

“I like the Taliban. I want them back,” one Afghan, who refused to be named, told The Observer.

Source: Observer (UK)

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‘Virtue police’ in Pakistan are the threat,
not ‘shariah’ - activists

By Christopher Nadeem

Peshawar, Pakistan, June 9 (IPS)— The passage by Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province of a bill on Islamic law, or ‘shariah,’ made international headlines, but many here say it will not affect life as much as the introduction of another law they would fear — the setting up of the “virtue police.”

Right after unanimous passage by the NWFP government of the shariah bill on June 2, officials of the ruling Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) religious alliance were already talking about the next step in the road to what they think is a puritan society faithful to Islam.

For them, this step is the creation of ombudsman’s offices at the provincial, district and other levels that would be tasked with ensuring that the Islamic laws are enforced.

The decisions of these offices would not subject to challenge, and each office would carry out its mandate through a “hasba force,” a special force that Pakistani legal experts and activists fear will turn out resembling the vice and virtue squad of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in the past.

“The ‘hasba’ act should be rejected because it is fascist in nature,” said Qazi Anwar, a Supreme Court lawyer. “It is more dangerous because they will be giving sticks in the hands of the mullahs.”

For instance, Anwar says, “It will enable the force to enter or search any premise without a search warrant. This is against the personal liberties of the citizens provided by the Constitution.”

Islamic scholar Dr. Mohammad Farooq, heretofore sympathetic to the MMA, now says that the way its leadership has gone about introducing an Islamic system in the province since its electoral victory in October 2003 leaves a lot to be desired.

Since many of the changes under shariah have not been debated, he says the public will get even more confused when the Ombudsman’s offices are set up — whether the issue is about veil for women, beards for men, or other matters.

The Islamisation process worries many here not so much because of the religious aspect, but because of the political use of religion. The MMA’s plans have not only sent shivers among the liberal segments of society, women, and minority groups, but has also pitched the provincial government against the central government in Islamabad.

After all, Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been trying to show the western world that he is clamping down on religious extremism.

Some activists and some politicians had been wary of speaking out against the shariah decision for fear of being labeled un-Islamic. But some aired their views anyway at the first public dialogue on the issue on June 4, organized by the civil society group Joint Action Committee.

Abdul Akbar Khan, parliamentary leader of the Pakistan People’s Party in the NWFP assembly, did not oppose the shariah bill in the legislature, but said at the dialogue that there was no need for it because Pakistan’s Constitution is already Islamic in nature.

In the eighties, several areas of the criminal justice system — the “hudud” law, laws on narcotics and blasphemy, were “Islamised.”

The shariah bill, which would have Islamic law take precedence over other laws and would govern the lives of people in accordance with Islamic teachings, is expected to become law when the NFWP governor signs it. This is a mere formality.

Khan adds that the bill is “defective and unconstitutional” because provinces cannot legislate on matters of finance and economy, which are the domain of the federal government. This, he said, would affect the bill’s plan to the banking system into an interest-free one.

Legal expert Sher Afan Khattak calls the “shariah bill” an eyewash for the MMA leadership to show that it is carrying out its election pledges. In fact, he says it is a copy of the Enforcement of Shariah Act 1991, “with a few minor changes.” This law, however, was never fully implemented.

The passage of the MMA’s shariah bill was far from a surprise. In recent months, the MMA has cancelled licenses to buy and sell alcohol, banned music in public transport, stopped male coaches from training female athletes, shut some cinemas, and removed billboards with pictures of female models.

It also ordered government departments to make arrangements to hold prayers during office hours.

It is the women who fear the implications of the MMA’s version of shariah law and its hasba squads the most — whether it is in the area of dress codes or education.

Activist Bushra Gohar said: “They are wasting time and resources on non-issues. It will be an embarrassment for the country. The women in this part of the country are already backward because of the conservative social set-up. They want to push women further back.”

“They will harass the women through the ‘hasba’ squads. And it will be up to the extremist hooligans to determine what’s right and what’s wrong,” she pointed out, adding that women fear they might one day be prevented from leaving home to work.

The MMA wants to set up separate universities for women in their version of Islam, but rights activists say this is not about religion but violations of women’s rights.

The chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Afrasiab Khattak, minced no words: “The MMA government wants to bring in segregation in society on the basis of gender.”

“They are following in the Taliban’s footsteps. Now it’s in education and sports, soon it will be the work places,” he said. “Music and dance is in our culture,” he added, yet the MMA wants to force things that are against Pakistani culture. Khattak says that Pakistan is once again caught between the religious and military elements, which he calls two sides of the same coin.

After all, he said, the religious parties won with such a big margin in the 2002 election with the blessings of the military-dominated government — this is why they are now a major partner in the coalition at the central government, apart from running NFWP.

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Argentine president, Supreme Court
clash ‘threatens governance’

By Viviana Alonso

Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 5 (IPS)— Argentina’s institutions are at risk as a result of President Néstor Kirchner’s request that Congress reactivate the petition for a political trial of members of the Supreme Court, warn legal experts and politicians.

Despite the reservations expressed about the move, Kirchner’s request was well received by the Impeachment Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which on Thursday once again filed charges against the president of the Supreme Court, Julio Nazareno, one of the justices reaping most criticism from political and civil society groups.

“We are convinced that there are judges who do not dignify the Supreme Court of Justice,” said the chairman of the parliamentary commission, Ricardo Falú, alluding to the dozens of denunciations made about justices’ abuses of power and conflicts of interest in hearing certain cases.

Kirchner asked Congress, in a speech broadcast via TV and radio Wednesday night, to apply this “remedy,” the impeachment to remove members of the highest court accused of “poor performance” and who are suspect due to their alleged dependence on former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

In this way Kirchner, who took office on May 25, is continuing firmly in his “surgical strategy,” which began on his first day as president, when he pushed three-quarters of the top military brass into retirement along with several ranking officers of the Federal Police.

But in situations like the president’s targeting of the judiciary, “the republican system is at risk,” commented former government attorney Julio César Strassera, who served as prosecutor in the trial of the leaders of Argentina’s military dictatorship (1976-1983).

“This court is atrocious,” Strassera commented, but added, “Be careful with drumming up impeachments in order to create vacancies on the bench, because [those who carry them out] are the same lawmakers who last year closed the case.”

He was alluding to the impeachment of the nine members of the Supreme Court initiated by a group of parliamentarians led by deputy Elisa Carrió, and which was at first backed by then president Eduardo Duhalde (2002-2003).

That initiative was filed away when it did not obtain the required two-thirds vote in the Chamber of Deputies to ask the Senate to try the justices.

Now “there is a very high risk that when another president comes who doesn’t like the composition of the Supreme Court, he can take them out with a stroke of his pen,” said Strassera.

Constitutional expert Ricardo Gil Lavedra agrees with Strassera in that “it is very bad for the Republic for one government branch to interfere in another, because each one should play the role it was intended to.”

“I don’t think this [presidential] stance is logical. Whatever the trial the members of the court deserve, it is not the men, but rather the institution that we must begin to respect,” explained Gil Lavedra, who served as a justice of the high court that handed down life sentences to the dictatorship’s leaders, who Menem later pardoned.

Carrió, leader of the centre-left Movement for a Republic of Equals, said she agrees with “the principle of cleaning up the country through serious, institutional channels.”

However, the former lawmaker and former presidential candidate clarified that she supports Kirchner’s strategy, “but not carried out just any way. We must go slowly, through the traditional means, and with restraint, because one must be very careful when moving forward on several different fronts.”

“I say to the president that there is no reason to sow so many winds, because he could reap whirlwinds. We need greater moderation in this case because the country has a mafia structure that might react,” said Carrió.

Kirchner asked Congress in his Wednesday night message to devise urgently the constitutional remedies for resolving the “wrongs that we face.”

“We ask Congress to set an historic landmark and protect the institutions from the men who are not upholding the interests of the country,” he said, noting “removing one or several [Supreme Court] members is not a task that the executive branch can carry out.”

Kirchner’s decision to publicly stand up to the Supreme Court, and its president Nazareno in particular, came after sources close to the presidency learned that the highest court would issue a ruling establishing the “re-dollarization” of the bank deposits frozen since late 2001 in the so-called ‘corralito’ (little fence) decreed by the government at the time.

The decision with which the Supreme Court is ostensibly threatening the government involves thousands of deposits made in dollars prior to 2002, when the Argentine peso was still kept at par to the dollar, but subsequently converted to pesos when the local currency was devalued.

If the court issues that decision, it would complicate the economic policy that the Kirchner government is promoting because it would cost the Central Bank. And it would create difficulties with the International Monetary Fund, which has already expressed its opposition to re-dollarization in Argentina.

Government sources said the intent of the Supreme Court justices to order those deposits to be reconverted to dollars was seen by the Kirchner administration as “extortion.”

In his televised address Wednesday, Kirchner stated that he would not accept “spurious maneuvers or pacts” and that he would not tolerate anyone taking Argentina’s “governance hostage.”

Nazareno, meanwhile, said he did not feel pressured by the president’s speech and that he was unaware of “what extortion by the court” Kirchner alluded to.

“The president’s address does not obligate me to do anything,” said Nazareno.

Another constitutional expert, Gregorio Badeni, questioned Kirchner’s stance, pointing out that the judiciary “is one of the branches of government, in full equality with Congress.”

“The president’s request of Congress shows a lack of respect towards the members of another government branch, as would be the case if they called for the president’s removal,” said Badeni.

“Our judiciary was degraded by the political elite for decades, and did not attain the independence necessary to truly guarantee and serve as a barrier to defend our rights,” he said.

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Views of US plummet in Europe, Muslim world

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, June 3 (IPS)— While the speed of the US conquest of Iraq and the general belief that Iraqis are better off without former President Saddam Hussein were moderating factors, the image of the United States is far more negative in Europe and the Muslim world than a year ago, according to a poll of 20 countries released here Tuesday.

The survey, the latest in a series by the Pew Global Attitudes Project that polled attitudes toward the United States and international relations in 44 countries last year, also found that the United Nations has been a “major victim” of the conflict in Iraq due to the perception that it was no longer relevant.

“The war has widened the rifts between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era — the UN and the North Atlantic Alliance,” says a summary of the more than 200-page report.

In particular, strong majorities, ranging from 57 percent in Germany to 76 percent in France, in five of seven NATO countries surveyed said they support a more independent relationship with Washington on diplomatic and security matters.

At the same time, adds the report, “the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world,” with overwhelmingly negative views that were confined mainly to Arab countries last summer having now spread to a much broader band, from Nigeria in the west to Indonesia in the east.

The report also includes a major section on public attitudes toward globalization, based largely on last year’s 44-nation survey. Among other findings, it concluded that economic integration, strong private sectors and democratic ideals are largely accepted in most parts of the world and that the influence of multinational corporations was considered positive overall, particularly in Africa.

Previous reports by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which is guided by a broad-based international advisory board chaired by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, have been widely quoted, especially by foes of the more-hawkish policies pursued by the administration of President George W Bush.

The 44-country poll which centered on foreign attitudes towards the United States, found a precipitous drop in Washington’s favorability ratings compared to a similar poll conducted in the summer of 2000, the last year of Bill Clinton’s presidency. It also found that the decline in US standing was due far more to opposition to specific policies and the unilateralist course pursued by the administration than to the rejection of US political or cultural values.

The new poll finds that, if anything, the negative trend established by the 2000 and 2002 surveys, has continued for a third year, despite a notable upturn in US standing between March — when polls in half a dozen European countries showed a major plunge in Washington’s image — and last month, when the most recent surveys were carried out.

In France, for example, only 25 percent of respondents rated the United States favorably in March, just before the invasion began. But after the war, favorability bounced back to 43 percent, substantially more than two months before, but still significantly less than the 63 percent approval rating that the French gave the United States in the summer of 2002.

In addition to the United States, the May poll covered 20 countries, including five West European nations, Russia, eight predominantly Muslim countries, including the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Israel, Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, South Korea and Canada.

Questioning some 16,000 people worldwide, it found that approval of the United States has fallen in every European country since the summer of 2002, including in those states, such as Britain, which supported Washington in the war.

Favorability ratings were highest in Israel (79 percent) and Britain (70 percent) and lowest in Turkey (15 percent, down from 52 percent in 2000), Pakistan (13 percent) and Jordan and the PA, where only one percent of respondents said they had favorable opinions of the United States.

Declines were highest in the Islamic world. In Indonesia, for example, only 15 percent of respondents expressed favorable opinions for the United States, a steep decline from 61 percent just last summer. Among Muslim respondents in Nigeria, favorability fell from 71 percent to 38 percent.

Moreover, a growing percentage of Muslims see the United States as a serious threat to Islam and express “at least some confidence” in Osama bin Laden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs.” On the latter issue, solid majorities in the PA, Indonesia, and Jordan and nearly one-half in Morocco and Pakistan voiced some support for the al-Qaida leader.

By contrast, in most countries friendly to the United States, only modest percentages expressed similar confidence in Bush. Indeed, people with unfavorable views of the lone superpower, according to the report, base most of their opinions on Bush, rather than on the United States generally. This was particularly true in Western Europe.

The survey found what it called “limited optimism” for democratic reform in the Middle East after the war and significant declines in support for the “war on terrorism”.

It also found considerable criticism of US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 20 of 21 countries surveyed — the United States being the only exception — pluralities or majorities said they believed Washington favors Israel too much, an opinion even shared by a strong plurality of 47 percent in Israel itself.

The new results from the 2002 survey also found broad acceptance of the increasing interconnectedness of the world, with three-quarters or more of respondents saying their children should learn English.

At the same time, majorities generally viewed the gap between rich and poor growing and complained that their own situation had deteriorated over the last five years, but they tended to blame domestic factors rather than globalization. This was especially true in Africa and Latin America.

The same survey found that opponents of globalization are not making much headway in influencing views of much of the Third World, although respondents in Argentina, Brazil, Jordan and Turkey were all highly critical of certain institutional symbols of globalization, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

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French rescue US internationals in Liberia

By Ken Kou

Monrovia, Liberia, June 9 (IPS)— Between 500 and 800 foreigners were evacuated from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on June 9, as rebels seeking to overthrow President Charles Taylor resumed their fire-fight, according to diplomats.

The foreigners, mostly Europeans and Americans, were airlifted out of Monrovia by helicopters to a French warship.

They include the Ethiopian national soccer team which found itself trapped in the beleaguered Liberian capital, which is surrounded by rebel forces.

The fighting resumed less than a day after the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) announced a 72-hour ceasefire on Sunday to avoid a “bloodbath” in Monrovia and allow Taylor to resign.

The demand to resign was rejected by Taylor. And, as heavily armed French troops finished airlifting the foreigners, the LURD resumed their attacks on Monrovia. “The situation is deteriorating very fast. There is a lot of gunfire coming from the west and south of the city,” said a diplomat contacted by IPS on Monday.

On June 9 the rebels were on reported to be less than four kilometers from the city center.

Monrovia, with a population of more than a million people, has been thrown in a state of chaos since last week.

The chaos heightened after the United States on Friday ordered its non-essential diplomats to leave Liberia. The order came just less than two weeks after the US State Department issued a travel advisory urging US citizens to leave its former colony.

The city has been in disarray since the UN-backed Special Court for war crimes, which is investigating the Sierra Leone conflict, issued a warrant for the arrest of President Taylor on June 4.

The court attempted to have Taylor, who seized power in 1997 after eight years of a bloody civil war, arrested and extradited from Ghana, where he was attending peace talks, last week. But Ghanaian authorities claimed they were not officially informed. Taylor was flown back to Liberia on June 4 on board a Ghanaian official aircraft and was received by crowds of enthusiastic supporters in Monrovia.

“We are waiting for an opportunity when Mr. Taylor would travel out of the country since he would not willingly extradite himself from Liberia,” said Robin Vincent, the court’s registrar.

David Crane, the court’s prosecutor, told journalists on June 4 that Taylor, 55, is now a “wanted war criminal.” He has been charged for his alleged role in the brutal 10-year-long civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, which ended in 2002.

“I am appealing to the international community to help in arresting and turning over Charles Taylor who has been indicted for war crimes,” Crane added.

Taylor is accused of “bearing the greatest responsibility of crimes against humanity and violation of international laws.” He has since challenged claims by the United Nations that he is the principal backer of the former Revolutionary United Front rebels that began the war in Sierra Leone in 1991.

The RUF commanders are alleged to have received financial support, military training, personnel, arms, and ammunition from Taylor.

The timing of the indictment took many by surprise. They believe that it was designed to undermine the Liberian peace talks.

The delegates in Ghana are expected to consider securing a cease-fire between the fighting forces, deployment of an international force, and disarmament of the warring factions.

The questions of government and postponement of the October elections are additional concerns to be addressed at the talks.

The talks were principally between President Taylor and rebels of the Liberia United for Reconciliation and Democracy. It is the first high-level meeting between the two sides.

The latest fighting in Liberia’s long history of conflicts began in 1999 when the LURD accused Taylor of dictatorship and launched a rebellion in the north which has spread to 11 of the country’s 15 regions.

The fighting has affected half the country’s estimated three million people, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Liberia also hosts around 17,000 Sierra Leone refugees, at least 38,000 Ivorian refugees, and nearly 44,000 returning Liberians who fled conflict in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire. These too have been endangered by the fighting.

“Right now, some 400,000 to 600,000 people are without shelter in Monrovia,” said an aid worker in Monrovia. "The situation is bad."

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Bush tours Auschwitz, says ‘evil’ must be resisted, ignores his family’s past

Compiled by Shane Perlowin



June 11 (AGR)— On May 31, a grim-faced President Bush toured the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps, pausing at the ruins of a Nazi crematorium to state his case for standing up to “evil” dictators and terrorism.

“Mankind must come together to fight such dark impulses,” Bush said at the sprawling complex where Nazi German invaders committed genocide during World War II with assembly-line efficiency. “These sites are a sobering reminder of the power of evil and the need for people to resist evil,” he said.

Bush came to Poland citing the Holocaust as “one of the greatest lessons of the past” as he sought to justify the use of military force in Afghanistan and Iraq. The former Soviet bloc country backed the Iraq war at a time when European powerhouses France, Germany, and Russia were leading the opposition to the US and British invasion. Bush showed his gratitude by making Poland the first stop of his weeklong European tour.

Nearly 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered in the twin camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau at the edge of the town now known by its Polish name Oswiecim. Jews regard Auschwitz as their biggest graveyard and the main symbol of the Holocaust.

Bush, the first sitting American president to visit the camp since Gerald Ford in 1975, led his entourage through the camp gate, which bears the sign: “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free). He stood beneath a sign that read: “Jews are a race which must be totally exterminated” and passed the barbed-wire fence that separated guards and their dogs from the prisoners. In a squat brick building housing a gas chamber and crematorium, First Lady Laura Bush placed a long-stemmed rose on a cast-iron gurney used to load bodies into the ovens. The Bushes saw a room piled high with human hair shorn from Auschwitz victims and used during the war to make textiles.

“So sad...very powerful,” Bush said during the tour, his spokesman said.

Like his father, who visited the camp when he was vice president, Bush placed a wreath at the “Wall of Death” where some 25,000 people were shot.

“The civilized world must never forget what took place on this site,” Bush said after walking around the ruins of a crematorium destroyed by the Nazis in the final days of the war.

Absent from Bush’s lamentations and derisions of evil was an apology for, or even an acknowledgement of, the direct complicity of his grandfather, Prescott Bush, in supporting and profiting from the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. As he urged people to “never forget” the evil of the Holocaust, he appears to have forgotten to warn people not to turn a blind eye to war profiteers and politicians who, behind the scenes, provide crucial support for brutal regimes.

What one should “never forget,” perhaps, is that recent and ongoing US policies like Washington’s alliance with despotic oil-rich regimes like the one in Saudi Arabia or US sponsorship of the Afghan Mujahadeen have a long history within the corridors of political and financial power in the US. An important context from which to view Bush’s visit to Auschwitz is his own family’s past, of which he is a direct beneficiary.

While the president’s father had dealings with the bin Ladens, his grandfather made a considerable share of the family fortune through his dealings with Nazi Germany. According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and US government archives, President George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush, made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the Holocaust, which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.

From the 1920s into the 1940s — after the Second World War had begun — Prescott Bush was a partner and executive in the Brown Brothers Harriman holding company on Wall Street and a director of one of its key financial components, the Union Banking Corporation (UBC).

Together with his father-in-law George Herbert Walker — the current president’s great grandfather — Prescott Bush controlled another asset of the holding company, the Hamburg-Amerika shipping line, which was utilized by the Nazi regime to transport its agents in and out of North America.

Another subsidiary of the Harriman group, Harriman International Co., struck a deal with Hitler’s regime in 1933 to coordinate German exports to the US market.

UBC, meanwhile, managed all of the banking operations outside of Germany for Fritz Thyssen, the German industrial magnate and author of the book I Paid Hitler, in which he acknowledged having financed the Nazi movement from 1923 until its rise to power.

In October 1942, 10 months after it had entered WWII, the US government seized UBC and several other companies in which the Harrimans and Prescott Bush had interests. In addition to Bush and Roland Harriman, three Nazi executives were named in the order issued by Washington to take over the bank.

An investigation carried out in 1945 revealed that the bank run by Prescott Bush was linked to the German Steel Trust run by Thyssen and Flick, one of the defendants at Nuremberg. This gigantic industrial firm produced fully half the steel and more than a third of the explosives, not to mention other strategic materials, used by the German military machine during the war years.

On Oct. 28, 1942, the US government confiscated the assets of two firms that served as fronts for the Nazi regime — the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation, both controlled by UBC. A month later, it seized Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation (SAC), directed by Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker.

The seizure order, issued under the Trading with the Enemy Act, described Silesian-American as a “US holding company with German and Polish subsidiaries” that controlled large and valuable coal and zinc mines in Silesia, Poland, and Germany. It added that, since September 1939 these properties had been under the control of the Nazi regime, which had utilized them to further its war effort.

Among SAC’s assets was a steel plant in Poland in the same district as Auschwitz. The plant reportedly used the concentration camp’s inmates as slave labor.

Among those who have investigated the links between the Bushes and the Nazis is John Loftus, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department’s War Crimes Unit, who now heads the Florida Holocaust Museum in Saint Petersburg. Loftus has charged that the Bush family received $1.5 million from its interest in UBC, when the bank was finally liquidated in 1951. “That’s where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third Reich,” Loftus said in a recent speech.

Loftus argues that this money — a substantial sum at that time — included direct profit from the slave labor of those who died at Auschwitz. In an interview with journalist Toby Rogers, the former prosecutor said: “It is bad enough that the Bush family helped raise the money for Thyssen to give Hitler his start in the 1920s, but giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is treason. The Bush bank helped the Thyssens make the Nazi steel that killed Allied solders. As bad as financing the Nazi war machine may seem, aiding and abetting the Holocaust was worse. Thyssen’s coalmines used Jewish slaves as if they were disposable chemicals. There are six million skeletons in the Thyssen family closet, and a myriad of criminal and historical questions to be answered about the Bush family’s complicity.”

A classified Dutch intelligence file which was leaked by a courageous Dutch intelligence officer, along with newly surfaced information from US government archives, “confirms absolutely,” Loftus says, the direct links between Bush, Thyssen, and genocide profits from Auschwitz.

The Roosevelt administration and powerful political figures in both parties did their best to smooth over Prescott Bush’s problems arising from his business dealings with the Nazis. He was installed as chairman of the National War Board, helping raise private funds for war-related charities. Shortly after receiving his $1.5 million payout from UBC, he ran successfully for the US Senate from Connecticut, a position he held until 1963.

Three generations later, President Bush uses the victims of the Holocaust to justify his agenda of unending war in pursuit of “evil.”

“Thank you sincerely for the deeply moving tour,” he wrote in the Auschwitz guest book. “In dedicating your lives to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and the martyrdom of Poles, you honor all who are victims here. May your work inspire future generations to stand ever vigilant against the return of such unspeakable evil to our world. Never forget.”

Sources: Reuters, Clamor, World Socialist Web Site

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NATO, global gendarme

By Alicia Fraerman

Madrid, Spain, June 4 (IPS)— NATO claimed for itself the right to act in any part of the world, to judge by remarks by Secretary-General George Robertson at the close on June 4 of a two-day meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers in the Spanish capital.

Robertson said that as a collective security alliance, NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) had to be ready “to go where the threats are.”

The statutes and commitments assumed by the members of the alliance, which was created on Apr. 4, 1949 to defend its members from, and avert, any attack by the now-defunct Soviet Union, state that the organization’s action was to be restricted to the North Atlantic: the United States, Canada, western Europe, and the surrounding oceans.

But Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio justified NATO’s planned involvement in peacekeeping functions in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of the US-British attacks on those nations.

Palacio said the decision for NATO to take command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in August and to support Polish troops that will help police Iraq “pragmatically resolves the old debate on the geographic limits of the alliance’s action.”

Spanish peace activists in downtown Madrid protested the founding objectives of the military alliance as well as its new missions, in demonstrations held under the banner “No to NATO” on the evening of June 3.

But one of the protesters, Francisco Miranda, projects director for the non-governmental organization Peace and Third World, told IPS on June 4 that the extension of NATO’s radius of action merely formalizes what the alliance has already been doing in practice.

“The militaristic and interventionist policy of the United States will no longer be solely ‘American,’ but will go by names like ‘the Atlantic alliance,’ ‘European-US alliance,’ or whatever, although it will continue to be the policy decided on by the hawks in Washington,” he said.

The fact that the alliance will provide support to the Polish troops that will be sent to Iraq substantiates that view, said the activist. And although NATO did not decide to send its own forces, the issue is on the table, said members of the US delegation to the NATO meeting in Madrid.

The ministers also discussed the possibility of NATO involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Greek Foreign Minister Georgios Papandreou said that both the EU and NATO would be willing to contribute to peacekeeping and security efforts in the Middle East.

But other European diplomats pointed to Israel’s reluctance to accept EU involvement in the Middle East peace process.

The resolution adopted by the foreign ministers to make the alliance a global instrument against terrorism pointed to reconciliation after the deep rift over the US-British war on Iraq, which was backed by Spain but opposed by France, Germany, and Belgium, said members of the delegations speaking in an unofficial capacity.

NATO is committed to a global perception of security and the stepping-up of efforts in favor of cooperation with other international or regional organizations, stated the final communiqué released by the ministers.

But Mariano Aguirre, director of the prestigious non-governmental Research Center for Peace, told IPS that “the NATO meeting has only formally patched up the deteriorated transatlantic relations.

“The underlying discrepancies between the US government, which wants to dominate its allies as it did 50 years ago, and governments of nations like Germany, Belgium, and France, which resist that in order to hold onto their share of power, have not been resolved,” he added.

Aguirre argued that “the US veto of the proposal for Europe to take charge of the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina, its blocking of the deployment of an international force to oversee an eventual Israeli-Palestinian agreement, and the lack of support for sending European forces to (the Democratic Republic of) Congo highlight the US attempt to assert itself as a neo- imperial power.”

The election for NATO’s new secretary-general is scheduled for November. Among the candidates to replace Robertson, whose mandate ends in 2004, are Norwegian Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold — the first female candidate for the post — European Commissioner for Justice and the Interior Antonio Vitorino, from Portugal, and Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino.

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