This Week:

Quote of the Week

The "phenomenally corrupt" Cheney Energy Task Force

Whose Law is The Law?

"Almost Inconceivable" That U.S. Would Obey the Law

Greetings,

This issue started out as a "Stroll Through the News With Nygaard," a semi-regular feature that is supposed to consist of a large number of very brief comments on a variety of important, odd, or amusing things that I have culled from recent news reports.  But the articles got too long, so what you see is what you are getting instead of a Stroll.

When Nygaard Notes went away from a weekly publication schedule last winter, I fully expected that this would mean that the Notes would come out less often than once per week.  And that's been largely true, up to now.  But...

I've got a large pile of news clippings sitting just to my left as I write this.  And, when you combine that with a bit of a lull in my other (non-writing) work, and the fact that it's been a long time since the last Stroll (over a year!), this makes me wonder if I might not be about to up the frequency for a couple of weeks, just to catch up.  So be warned: The rest of the month may include more than one issue per week.  I hope that's not too much for you.  I hope it's not too much for ME!  After all, I am supposed to be working on a book, and revising the website, and submitting articles to other publications, and preparing to teach my media class, and... well, you get the idea.

But, consider yourself warned: Lots of Notes coming in the next few weeks, it looks like.

Productively yours,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

The advocacy group Public Citizen reports that the Cheney Energy Task Force "was widely discredited because large energy companies like Enron were provided private access to [the group] and were therefore able to influence the outcome of the policy proposals."  Indeed, Project Censored reports that "amid political pressure building over improprieties regarding Enron's colossal collapse, Cheney's office released limited information revealing six Task Force meetings with Enron executives."

When Enron became a touchy subject (and in fact became a symbol of corporate malfeasance and corruption) shortly after the task force wrapped up its work, Dick Cheney sat down with CNN's John King for a one-on-one interview.  This was in January of 2002.  When asked about the Task Force relationship with Enron by CNN in 2002, what he said was very revealing.  He said:

"Enron didn't receive any special treatment. They were treated and dealt with just like a lot of other energy companies were that we talked to during this process."

And that, of course, is precisely the problem.

And now, a bonus "Quote" of the Week (since I had some extra space in the paper edition of the Notes, I had to add something at the last minute).  Even though it appeared in the paper three months ago, I can't get this letter to the editor of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) out of my head.  Here is the entire text of the letter, which ran in the May 6th, 2005 Star Trib:

"I'm tired of reading about proposed tax increases.  When will you read about proposed government cuts in spending?"

A letter from Mars, perhaps?

The "Phenomenally Corrupt" Cheney Energy Task Force

Last week, in referring to the legislative negotiations on the Energy Bill, I referred to it as a "phenomenally corrupt and convoluted process."  The "Quote" of the Week this week touches on this issue, but there's more to my reasoning for making that charge, so much that I couldn't fit it in last week.  So, here is some more on that subject, which I include because I think it illustrates the nature of The Beast fairly well. (The Beast being the modern-day legislative process in the U.S.)

First of all, I said that Dick Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force was the beginning of the planning for the just-passed Energy Bill.  Although most of the goings-on in the Task Force were secret, a couple of groups filed suit to get some of the records of the Task Force, and were (sort of) successful.  Here's a comment on that success from one of the filers, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC):

"In the spring of 2002, under order from a federal judge, the U.S. Department of Energy released to NRDC roughly 13,500 pages relating to previously secret proceedings of the Bush administration's energy task force.  Even though the government heavily censored the documents before supplying them to NRDC, they reveal that Bush administration officials sought extensive advice from utility companies and the oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy industries, and incorporated their recommendations, often word for word, into the energy plan."

Underlining that point, the Los Angeles Times reported, "Throughout February and March, executives representing electricity, coal, natural gas and nuclear interests paraded quietly in small groups to a building in the White House compound."  Meanwhile, according to the Times, anyone "whose views might conflict with industry - the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, even federal agency staff - found themselves shut out or overruled" by the Cheney Task Force.

Indeed, the final report of the Task Force included a "recommendation to... provide for the safe expansion of nuclear energy by establishing a national repository for nuclear waste, and by streamlining the licensing of nuclear power plants."  And this is exactly what the Energy Bill seeks to do.

On a related note:  The executive director of the Cheney Task Force, Andrew Lundquist, officially registered as a lobbyist as of Jan. 1, 2003, nine months after leaving the White House.  Who did he lobby for?  The energy industry, of course!  And a couple of his clients - Duke Energy and Exelon Corp. - are members of LES.  LES is a partnership of major nuclear energy companies that is currently attempting to build a uranium enrichment facility in New Mexico.  That is, they stand to directly benefit from the revival of the nuclear energy industry.  Get it?  Task Force.  Secret.  Lobby.  Revival of industry.  Profit.  Does that sound a little fishy?  I hope so.

I could go on.  But I hope that is sufficient to convince any doubters that I was justified in referring to the Energy Bill proceedings as "phenomenally corrupt."

Whose Law is The Law?

There have been hundreds of articles in the nation's newspapers over the past week about the Israeli government's evacuation of Jewish settlers and soldiers from the occupied Gaza Strip.  In fact, a database search of the English-language press over the past 7 days for articles containing the words "Gaza" and "settlements" yielded 499 articles.  However, when I searched for articles in U.S. newspapers that mention that the settlements are illegal under international law - a fact crucial to understanding what is happening - I was able to find only 10 (ten) articles.

All of the Israeli settlements have been illegal under international law since the first one was established, according to the 49th Article of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states unequivocally that "The Occupying Power [in this case, Israel] shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."  The point was underlined by the U.N. in Security Council Resolutions 446 and 465, of 26 and 25 years ago, respectively.  (I discussed all this in these pages last April, in Nygaard Notes #293 "Legal or Illegal?  Who Says?")

Resolutions 446 and 465 state clearly that the Israeli settlements [in the West Bank as well as Gaza] "have no legal validity" and "constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention."  In other words, they are illegal.

Of the ten articles that mentioned the settlements being illegal, only five actually stated unequivocally that the settlements themselves are and have always been illegal under international law.  The other five reported the idea that the settlements are illegal as a "point of view" or an  "opinion."  The St. Petersburg Times, for instance, put it like this: "Regardless of how others view the Jewish settlements - as bold frontiers of Zionism or as illegal outposts that have made life miserable for the Palestinians - the settlers consider Gaza home."  And my local paper, the Star Tribune, quoted Palestinian-American Ziad Amra of the Minnesota chapter of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee as saying that "he believes" the Israeli settlements and troops "were illegal all along."  The Star Trib did not mention that this "belief" is shared by about 98 percent of the world  - regardless of how the settlers "view" it..

A large number of other articles also used the word "illegal," but they were referring to the declaration by the Israeli government that the settlements are "now" illegal.  Coupled with the failure to mention the Geneva Conventions, or international law in general, this serves to reinforce the impression that Israeli law is the only law that is valid (since that's the judgement that makes them "now illegal") and that international law either is not valid or does not exist.  In fact (referring back to my database search), a search for the words "Gaza" and "settlements" and "international law" for the past seven days yields a total of 16 stories, only two of which appeared in the U.S. press.

While the people who have been living in these settlements understandably have strong feelings about being evicted from the places where they have been dwelling - and I'm sympathetic to them as individuals, especially the children - the issue of how and why they are there in the first place is the central issue here.  The reason that the fact of the settlements' illegality is so rarely  mentioned seems quite clear: In order for that fact to make any sense, one would have to understand that the settlements have been, and are, part of a larger system of occupation, and that the "conflict" between Israel and the Palestinians is a conflict about self-determination, human rights, and, fundamentally, about land.  Once you understand this, the settlements - and the claims of the settlers that these are their "homes" - take on a different meaning.

"Almost Inconceivable" That U.S. Would Obey the Law

In a June 27th story in the New York Times (All The News That's Fit To Print!) there appeared a truly remarkable statement.  I'll have to translate it, I think, so people can see how truly remarkable it is.  But first, some background.

Two years ago, in early 2003, the Times reports, the Italian secret police were "aggressively pursuing a criminal terrorism case" against a 42-year-old Egyptian cleric, Hussan Mustafa Omar Nasr, "with the help of American intelligence officials."  The Times added that "Italian investigators said they had told the Americans they had strong evidence that he was trying to build a terror recruitment network, possibly aimed for Iraq if the United States went forward with plans to topple Saddam Hussein."

Then, on February 17th, 2003, Mr. Nasr disappeared.

This past June 23rd, the Washington Post reported that a judge in Milan, Italy ruled that "there was enough evidence to warrant the arrest of 13 suspected CIA operatives on kidnaping charges."  The London Observer tells us that "Italian investigators claim he was bundled into the back of a van, driven to a US airbase in the north of Italy and secretly flown to Egypt, where he was interrogated and tortured."  No one seems to know where the CIA agents are now, but the Italian charges are criminal charges so, if convicted, the CIA people will face a maximum penalty of 10 years and 8 months in prison.

Under the July 3rd headline "Italy Seethes at U.S. Abduction of Imam," the Boston Globe said that  "The CIA's increasing use of 'extraordinary renditions,' in which US authorities abduct terrorism suspects and transfer them to third countries that are known to use torture, has inflamed passions across Europe among human rights activists and the intelligence community.  It has raised concern that such tactics not only flout international law, but that they may also ultimately undercut much-needed cooperation between the United States and its European allies."

OK, ready?  Here's the remarkable statement from the June 27th Times.  Speaking of the 13 accused CIA folks, the Times wrote:

"If they are indeed Americans and CIA officers and operatives, as described in the arrest warrants, and if they are now in the United States, the American government may in theory be obligated to extradite them.  As a practical matter, however, experts said, it is almost inconceivable that the government would turn over agents who had carried out an operation authorized by the United States and meant to combat terrorism."

And here is the Nygaard Notes Translation: "The United States government doesn't give a good &%$**#  about international law, so we will ignore our legal obligations in this case.  This is what we often do, so why should anyone be surprised?"

Here's why I translate in this manner:  Under the terms of a legally-binding treaty with another country, the U.S. is bound to extradite the 13 accused.  According to the U.S. Constitution, treaties are "the supreme Law of the Land."  So, the Times is saying that "in theory" the U.S. should obey the supreme Law of the Land.  The fact that we have failed to honor treaties on numerous occasions is why it is "almost inconceivable" that the U.S. will decide to obey the law in this case.

I think that's remarkable.  And the remarkable thing is not that the U.S. government plans to ignore the law.  No, what is remarkable is that this is not a big story in the daily press.  The headline on the Times story was a rather benign, "Experts Doubt Accused CIA Operatives Will Stand Trial in Italy."

It's time, I think, for a Nygaard Notes Alternative Headline.  How about, "World's Most Powerful Nation Defies Law."  Or, "U.S. Guilty of Lawlessness."  Or, perhaps, "U.S. to World: Laws Don't Apply To Us."

Get the idea?  Now you can make up your own headline.