June 9, 2006

World Media Watch

edited by Gloria R. Lalumia

BuzzFlash Note: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

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WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR JUNE 9, 2006

1//The Globe and Mail, Canada--SECRETIVE, POWERFUL BILDERBERG GROUP MEETS NEAR OTTAWA (It's like Woodstock for conspiracy theorists. A serene suburban setting has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards — and suspicions of world domination. … They're called the Bilderberg group. They include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world's biggest companies. Those who follow the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton elected after he agreed to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. … The 2006 group includes David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, New York Gov. George Pataki, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada, cabinet ministers from Spain, Greece and a number of media moguls, including Globe and Mail newspaper publisher Philip Crawley. However, Bilderberg followers say that media moguls whose outlets report leaked details from the meetings will see themselves banned in the future. The group also includes a pair of prominent figures involved in planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq — Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi. Fellow White House power-players Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank, have spoken to the group in the past. But Bilderberg is not exclusively a right-wing body, by any means. Bill Clinton's right-hand-man Vernon Jordan, was also in attendance Thursday, as was his Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross.)

2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--TALIBAN TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE COUNTRY (The Taliban movement has evolved beyond its guerrilla struggle into an organized widespread rebellion. It has fully matured in southern Afghanistan and is heading north toward Kabul and beyond, all the way drawing on growing popular support. "Don't consider the present [insurgency] movement as Taliban only. This is a mass mutiny against the foreign presence, and all common Afghans are solely responsible for that," Gul Mohammed, a Taliban commander, explained to Asia Times Online in an interview in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province in Afghanistan. Gul Mohammed's views are not exaggerated. They confirm exhaustive ATol on-the-ground-investigations and reports over the past few months. And this week, the Senlis Council, a London-based international security and policy advisory think-tank, reached a similar conclusion.)

3//RIA Novosti (Russian News and Information Agency), Russia-- NATO ARGUMENTS SPARK CLASHES IN UKRAINE’S CRIMEA (Pro- and anti-NATO demonstrators clashed Thursday at the southern Ukrainian port of Feodosia as tension mounts over a U.S. naval ship docked at the port and Ukraine's intention to join the alliance. Demonstrators in the largely Russian-speaking Crimea region, which is home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, have been blockading a U.S. vessel, the Advantage, moored at Feodosia since late May ahead of military exercises slated to start late July that are seen by many as part of Ukraine's bid to join NATO. … A deputy from Feodosia's city council said that on Thursday anti-NATO activists had managed to penetrate the port area and open containers brought by the American vessel.)

RELATED: UKRAINE, NATO POSTPONE JOINT MANEUVERS

4//The Daily Times, Pakistan--CIVIL NUCLEAR DEAL: US AND INDIA TO DISCUSS ‘IMPRACTICAL’ CONDITIONS (American and Indian officials are expected to discuss next week two new conditions imposed by the US in their nuclear deal that Indian experts feel are “impossible to accept”. These conditions require India to return all material and equipment that it will acquire under the deal if either side terminates it, or if the US perceives a violation of the letter and spirit of the agreement for cooperation in civil nuclear energy. The perceived violation will also entitle the United States to demand the return of all material and equipment and all “nuclear material and weapon-usable byproducts” produced through their use. Indian nuclear experts say that the two conditions are not only “impossible to accept” but “impractical and will set a dangerous precedent”.)

5//The Independent, UK--CAMERON BACKS REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH (David Cameron has said the Conservative Party is in favour of redistributing wealth in another significant move on to Labour's natural territory. The Tory leader endorsed his policy chief Oliver Letwin, who angered the party's traditionalists last December by saying he supported redistribution to try to narrow the gap between rich and poor. … His remarks about redistribution will worry Tory right-wingers, already alarmed that Mr Cameron has watered down the party's traditional commitment to tax cuts. Tory advisers believe the party will not win voters' trust on public services if it appears obsessed with lower taxes. Mr Cameron also urged his party to end its verbal attacks on public servants. The war is over," he said. "There's been a war of words about waste and bureaucracy from the right, which sometimes has given an impression that we don't value public service, when we do.")

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1//The Globe and Mail, Canada Posted at 8:28 PM EDT on 08/06/06

SECRETIVE, POWERFUL BILDERBERG GROUP MEETS NEAR OTTAWA
Alexander Panetta, Canadian Press

Ottawa — It's like Woodstock for conspiracy theorists.

A serene suburban setting has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards — and suspicions of world domination.

On the outskirts of the nation's capital, a tony high-rise hotel beside a golf course is hosting the annual meeting for one of the world's most secretive and powerful societies.

It's not the Freemasons.

Forget those fabled U.S. military men who tucked away UFOs in the Arizona desert.

These guys, you've probably never even heard of, and if you believe the camera-toting followers who attend all their meetings, they control the world.

They're called the Bilderberg group.

They include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world's biggest companies.

Those who follow the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton elected after he agreed to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Some people say that I advocate a conspiracy theory. That's not true. I recognize a conspiracy fact,” said James P. Tucker.

The 74-year-old American journalist has been following the Bilderberg group for decades, has written extensively about it, and recently published his Bilderberg Diary. He follows the group to its annual meetings and stands outside describing to other journalists details of his privileged access to their inner workings.

He is not alone.

Daniel Estulin snapped photographs of every vehicle that approached the concrete-and-glass complex Thursday. He says Mossad — Israel's spy agency — is paying attention.

Away from the golf course, there are no grassy knolls in the industrial zone outside Ottawa's Brookstreet hotel, the site of this week's meeting, but the scene does nothing to dissuade conspiracists.

Ottawa police officers are standing guard outside a dozen metal gates that serve as security checkpoints a half-kilometre from the hotel.

But Ottawa's finest are clearly not in charge here.

To approach the hotel property, even these uniformed police officers are required to show their credentials to the half-dozen black-suited men working for Globe Risk, a private security firm.

“This is pretty unusual,” one Ottawa cop said.

Another said they were hired to be there in their off-duty hours and weren't told much by their superiors: “They just told us, ‘These are important people. It's a private meeting.' ”

A small crowd of curious onlookers snapped photos of black-windowed sedans stopping at the checkpoints. It was impossible to see who was sitting inside.

But it's fun to imagine.

(SNIP)

Bilderberg says the privacy of its meetings helps encourage freewheeling discussion.

An unsigned press release, sent by fax, confirmed this year's meeting would deal with energy issues, Iran, the Middle East, terrorism, immigration, Russia, European-American relations and Asia.

“The meeting is private to encourage frank and open discussion,” said the release.

“There will be no press conference.”

The release included a list of participants at this year's event.

The 2006 group includes David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, New York Gov. George Pataki, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada, cabinet ministers from Spain, Greece and a number of media moguls, including Globe and Mail newspaper publisher Philip Crawley. However, Bilderberg followers say that media moguls whose outlets report leaked details from the meetings will see themselves banned in the future.

The group also includes a pair of prominent figures involved in planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq — Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi. Fellow White House power-players Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank, have spoken to the group in the past.

But Bilderberg is not exclusively a right-wing body, by any means. Bill Clinton's right-hand-man Vernon Jordan, was also in attendance Thursday, as was his Mideast negotiator Dennis Ross.

(MORE)

2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong June 9, 2006

TALIBAN TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE COUNTRY
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN border areas - The Taliban movement has evolved beyond its guerrilla struggle into an organized widespread rebellion. It has fully matured in southern Afghanistan and is heading north toward Kabul and beyond, all the way drawing on growing popular support.

"Don't consider the present [insurgency] movement as Taliban only. This is a mass mutiny against the foreign presence, and all common Afghans are solely responsible for that," Gul Mohammed, a Taliban commander, explained to Asia Times Online in an interview in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province in Afghanistan.

Gul Mohammed's views are not exaggerated. They confirm exhaustive ATol on-the-ground-investigations and reports over the past few months. And this week, the Senlis Council, a London-based international security and policy advisory think-tank, reached a similar conclusion.

"Helmand [where the Taliban have a strong foothold] is an early warning of what the whole of Afghanistan could become if a radically different approach is not taken in the coming months," the Senlis Council, an independent group actively engaged in work in Afghanistan, said in its report.

"The United States unilaterally bombing Kandahar undermined the civilian population's support for the [Hamid] Karzai government," the council said. "The recent riots in Kabul were also an example of the increasing hostility of the Afghan people towards the international community."

Gul Mohammed picked up the point: "Americans crashed our gates and the sanctity of our houses. They disrespected our traditions and gave Christian missionaries a free hand to operate in Afghanistan. We just explained these features to the masses, who are our brothers and sisters."

(SNIP)

"Before the present [spring] campaign, we had adopted a strategy to educate the masses about the high-handedness of the Americans. Whenever we entered any village, we surrounded the whole area and asked the people to gather in a nearby mosque," said Gul Mohammed.

"We then told the people that they are under foreign occupation and there is a need to stand up against the foreign forces. We distributed night messages [a traditional Afghan way of spreading information] and passed on our messages through audio cassettes and computer disks."

Gul Mohammed maintained that the Taliban would continue their twofold strategy - military and political - and expressed confidence that soon the movement would reach into northern Afghanistan and foreign forces there would be very much under attack, as they are in southern Afghanistan.

"At present we have made Kandahar, Qalat and Helmand our strategic nucleus, where we have completely debased the enemy. There are seven main districts in Kandahar which are completely in our hands. Soon we will intensify our suicide operations throughout Afghanistan, and then you will see how the Afghan administration will collapse," said Gul Mohammed.

This is substantiated by the Senlis Council report: "About 80% of the population in Helmand supports the Taliban. The British troops [who are to replace US troops] will need to regain control, and for this they will need a different approach. That approach will have to be to listen to people and their needs."

The report continued, "The perception of the local people has changed ... they now see the Taliban as acceptable. So actually the Taliban are about to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the local population."

Gul Mohammed is of the same view: "In the next stage, ethnic groups from the Tajik and Uzbek communities will join hands in our struggle and foreign forces will not have any option except to leave Afghanistan.

"We have made southern Afghanistan a hell for foreign forces. There is little media coverage on our activities, otherwise [people would know] we are far ahead of the Iraqi resistance. There is not a single day when the Taliban don't carry out an operation against foreign forces.

"In the last two months we launched 20 successful attacks against foreign forces in which they lost men and assets. For instance, a recent incident happened in Maroof district of Kandahar in which we targeted a military convoy in which two tanks and eight US [foreign troops] were killed. The media did not mention this operation," Gul Mohammed said with some satisfaction.

Gul Mohammed said the Taliban had stored a lot of weapons before the US invasion, which they were now using, including Stinger missiles.

Again, the Senlis Council report confirms this. "We're talking about attacks being conducted every day. We're talking about a rise in suicide bombings, from five in 2004 to 21 in just the first semester of 2006. We're talking of a sophistication of terror techniques used, for example in the explosive devices used. So there is definitely a change in the way the insurgents are organizing their operations."

(SNIP)

"The more they oppress Afghans, the more the reaction generates against the Americans. The same happened with Soviet Russia [in the 1980s], and ultimately it was defeated in Afghanistan and collapsed. The same will happen with the Americans," Gul Mohammed predicted.

(MORE)

3//RIA Novosti (Russian News and Information Agency), Russia 19:20 08/06/2006

NATO ARGUMENTS SPARK CLASHES IN UKRAINE’S CRIMEA

KIEV, June 8 (RIA Novosti) - Pro- and anti-NATO demonstrators clashed Thursday at the southern Ukrainian port of Feodosia as tension mounts over a U.S. naval ship docked at the port and Ukraine's intention to join the alliance.

Demonstrators in the largely Russian-speaking Crimea region, which is home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, have been blockading a U.S. vessel, the Advantage, moored at Feodosia since late May ahead of military exercises slated to start late July that are seen by many as part of Ukraine's bid to join NATO.

Ukraine's Channel Five reported that anti-NATO demonstrators, organized by the pro-Russian opposition Party of Regions, outnumbered a pro-NATO group mustered by the Pora public movement, and physically ousted them.

Channel Five said it was the first clash between demonstrators since anti-NATO demonstrations had started.

Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych said his party, which won elections in March but was unable to form a parliamentary majority, would not support President Viktor Yushchenko's decree granting access to foreign military detachments for joint military exercises in Ukraine at the next session of the Supreme Rada.

(SNIP)

A deputy from Feodosia's city council said that on Thursday anti-NATO activists had managed to penetrate the port area and open containers brought by the American vessel.

"Today we managed to penetrate the port area and open several containers, where we discovered at least 30 metric tons of weapons and fuses," Borys Stepanov said.

(SNIP)

Sea Breeze is a multinational sea exercise hosted by Ukraine and the U.S. and designed to improve cooperation and coordination between countries in the Black Sea Region that was scheduled to start on July 18. The embassy added that it was not a NATO-sponsored exercise.

RELATED: UKRAINE, NATO POSTPONE JOINT MANEUVERS

Ukraine's defense minister said Thursday that joint air-force exercises with the U.K. scheduled for next week had been cancelled as a political crisis mounted over foreign troops' presence in the country. … "In the current situation, we and the British side have decided to postpone the Tight Knot 2006 military exercises," the defense ministry's press service quoted Anatoly Hrytsenko as saying.

4//The Daily Times, Pakistan Friday, June 09, 2006

CIVIL NUCLEAR DEAL: US AND INDIA TO DISCUSS ‘IMPRACTICAL’ CONDITIONS
By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: American and Indian officials are expected to discuss next week two new conditions imposed by the US in their nuclear deal that Indian experts feel are “impossible to accept”.

These conditions require India to return all material and equipment that it will acquire under the deal if either side terminates it, or if the US perceives a violation of the letter and spirit of the agreement for cooperation in civil nuclear energy.

The perceived violation will also entitle the United States to demand the return of all material and equipment and all “nuclear material and weapon-usable byproducts” produced through their use. Indian nuclear experts say that the two conditions are not only “impossible to accept” but “impractical and will set a dangerous precedent”.

(SNIP)

A US team led by negotiator Richard Stratford is to arrive in New Delhi next week for further negotiations. Stratford is the director for nuclear energy, safety and security in the State Department’s Bureau of International Security and Non-Proliferation. The External Affairs Ministry is mum over the stand that India will take in the negotiations with Stratford on the conditions that the Americans have been introducing one by one, citing their domestic difficulties in getting the agreement through the US Congress. Reports from Washington say Stratford will be carrying a message to the Indian negotiators that the US wants the deal done before December to coincide with adoption of its sponsored Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament.

5//The Independent, UK Published: 09 June 2006

CAMERON BACKS REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor

David Cameron has said the Conservative Party is in favour of redistributing wealth in another significant move on to Labour's natural territory.

The Tory leader endorsed his policy chief Oliver Letwin, who angered the party's traditionalists last December by saying he supported redistribution to try to narrow the gap between rich and poor.

"He was saying something that was blindingly obvious: any party that accepts some sort of progressive tax system is in favour of redistribution. That's a very sensible thing to say," Mr Cameron told New Statesman magazine.

Although Labour has redistributed wealth since 1997, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been reluctant to use "the r-word" for fear of upsetting middle-class voters.

In his interview, Mr Cameron balanced his comments by echoing Mr Blair's statement in 2001 that it was, "not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money".

Mr Cameron said: "My view is that the greatest concern we should have is not the gap between David Beckham's wages on the one hand, and someone on benefits on the other. I don't think making the top 1 per cent richest poorer makes the 10 per cent poorest richer."

His remarks about redistribution will worry Tory right-wingers, already alarmed that Mr Cameron has watered down the party's traditional commitment to tax cuts. Tory advisers believe the party will not win voters' trust on public services if it appears obsessed with lower taxes.

Mr Cameron also urged his party to end its verbal attacks on public servants.

"The war is over," he said. "There's been a war of words about waste and bureaucracy from the right, which sometimes has given an impression that we don't value public service, when we do." Mr Cameron said that what was needed was to trust professionals to deliver local public services. "There's a great ethos of public service in this country and that is something to be celebrated and nurtured and learned from."

(MORE)