The Business of Water: Privatizing An Essential Resource
By Stephen Lendman

In her 2002 book titled, "Water Wars," noted author, social activist, and ecologist Vandana Shiva called privatizing water:

• ecological terrorism;
• a global water crisis;
• along with overuse, waste and pollution, it can cause "the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth;"
• the road to "an ecological crisis with commercial causes but no market solutions; (they) destroy the earth and aggravate inequality; the solution to an ecological crisis is ecological, and the solution for injustice is democracy;" and
• water rights are natural and "usufructuary....water can be used but not owned;" it belongs to everyone as part of the commons as an essential "basis of all life....under customary laws, the right to water has been accepted as a natural, social fact."

Shiva lists nine water democracy principles:

On March 9, 2010, around noon, about 14 pro-Healthcare Reform activists were arrested at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in down town Washington, D.C. They attempted to cross a police line set up at an entrance to the hotel, where the Fat Cats of the Health Insurance Industry were holding a conference. Earlier, the protesters had convened at Dupont Circle for a rally. Then, they paraded down to the hotel, about ten blocks away. The crowd was estimated at about 5,500. The event was staged by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), along with more than 50 major Labor, grassroots and religious leaders. Background here.

The D.C. police decided, for their own reasons, not to place criminal charge against the parties that were detained at the hotel. Four of the 14 reportedly arrested were: an official from the SEIU union; Jonathan Tasini, Democratic candidate for U. S. Senate in NY; Jeff Blum of US Action and Sean Dobson of Progressive Maryland. The crowd shouted chants, like: 'Healthcare, now!' and 'Arrest the real criminals!"

Drones Club Meets in San Diego
By Frank Green | Counter Punch

The manufacturers of drone airplanes, which have killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan, are about to see their prospects soar as the Pentagon expands its vast arsenal.

At least that was the message at Tuesday's "Unmanned Aircraft Systems West" conference in San Diego, where advocates of the lethal composite birds dispassionately described how unpiloted planes directed via satellite will soon come to largely replace the human element on the killing fields.

Use of the so-called Predator and Reaper drones to fight the U.S.-spawned war in the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan have rapidly escalated during the opening months of the Obama administration, with 51 reported strikes in Pakistan in 2009 alone - up from 45 during the previous eight years, according to a recent report by the New America Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The foundation alleges in its "The Year of the Drone" account that more than 1,000 - or 32 per cent - of drone attack victims were civilians.

Tuesday's industry conference was held at the sprawling Sheraton Hotel on Harbor Island. A group of antiwar protesters picketed the event on a sidewalk near the facility's entrance. Read more.

NATO Goes Anti-Nuclear?
Support for nuclear disarmament has spread to the heart of the Atlantic alliance and beyond.
By Alice Slater | Foreign Policy In Focus | March 9, 2010

President Obama's call for a nuclear-weapons-free world in Prague last April unleashed a great outpouring of support from international allies and grassroots activists demanding a process to actually eliminate nuclear weapons. One recent and unexpected initiative has come from America's NATO allies. Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway have called on NATO to review its nuclear policy and remove all U.S. nuclear weapons currently on European soil under NATO's "nuclear sharing" policy. Despite U.S. insistence on strict adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which prohibits the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear weapons states, several hundred U.S. nuclear bombs are housed in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Turkey.

Citing Obama's announcement in Prague of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," the NATO allies have broken ranks with the United States. All five governments are experiencing domestic pressure to end the hypocrisy of the NPT, where nuclear "haves" disregard their disarmament requirements with impunity while using coercion, sanctions, threats of war, and even actual war (as in Iraq) to prevent the nuclear "have-nots" from acquiring nuclear bombs. Together with calls from major former political and military leaders to eliminate nuclear weapons, as well as UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon's proposal for a five-point program "to rid the world of nuclear bombs," these NATO members have seized the political moment. They have decided to do their part to maintain the integrity of the NPT in advance of the five-year review conference this May at the UN in New York.

The NATO five put NATO's nuclear policy on the agenda for an April strategy meeting in Estonia. They have neither been dissuaded by Obama's cautionary note that the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world "will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime," nor discouraged by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's mistaken qualification of Obama's remarks when she said that "we might not achieve the ambition of a world without nuclear weapons in our lifetime or successive lifetimes" (emphasis added). Read more.

Party Time: Where Your Healthcare and Jobs Dollars are Going
By Ralph Lopez | Daily Kos

Rep. Dennis Kucinich is currently asking for a flood of calls to trigger a debate on war spending, through "yes" votes on his resolution now on the floor calling for U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of the year. A 3 hour debate and vote will take place tomorrow.

Just happened across a startling piece, even for me, by the Nation's Jeremy Scahill which details how Afghanistan has become U.S. private contractor piggy land even by Bush administration standards.

"In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by [Sen. Claire] McCaskill’s staff, "From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000." Read more.

Dear Supporter:

On March 16, 2003, human rights activist Rachel Corrie was killed while trying to protect a home in Gaza from demolition while the family was inside. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier ran over Rachel in a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. Rachel was 23 years old. Seven years after her killing, Rachel's parents are still seeking truth and accountability. Today is Rachel's day in court and Israel must be held accountable for Rachel's killing - take action now.

After Rachel's killing, Israel conducted an investigation that even the U.S. State Department said was not thorough enough and neither credible nor transparent. The U.S. government advised Rachel's parents Cindy and Craig Corrie to sue Israel, which they did in March 2005. Their case is finally starting in the Haifa District Court in Israel today. Follow the trial at the Rachel Corrie Foundation website http://www.rachelcorriefoundation.org/.

CCR sued Caterpillar (view the details of the case Corri et al. v. Caterpillar) on behalf of Rachel's parents as well as four Palestinian families whose family members were killed or injured when Caterpillar bulldozers demolished their homes. The court dismissed that case in 2007 because it would put into question the U.S. government's decision to pay for the bulldozer sales.

SATURDAY, MARCH 20th
Rally 11 AM
Music by -- HAYMARKET SQUARES

Meet - Corner of Central & Roosevelt at the
“Release the Fear”(melted weapons sculpture)
Park in garage behind Fair Trade Café, 1020 N. 1st Ave.
or TAKE THE LIGHT RAIL
March to Teach-in with signs & banners!

Teach-in - 12 Noon - 2 PM
at A. E. England Auditorium, 424 N. Central,
The first building north of Main Transit Terminal (north of Polk Street -west side of Central)
across from the Walter Cronkite School of Communication.
Parking at Central and Filmore - $4.00 All Day

AFGHANISTAN Teach-In Panel:

Last Week: US Iraq Casualties Jump to 74,793
Compiled by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

US military occupation forces in Iraq under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered 10 combat casualties in the week ending March 9, 2010* as the official total since the 2003 invasion rose to at least 74,793. The total includes 35,194 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and more than 39,545 (as of March 6, 2010) dead, injured and sick from "non-hostile" causes requiring medical evacuation.

The actual total is over 100,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the more than 30,000 veterans whose injuries-mainly brain trauma from explosions - were diagnosed only after they had left Iraq.** In addition, Iraq Coalition Casualties names eight service members who died of wounds after they left Iraq but are not counted by the Pentagon.

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by occasionally reporting only the total killed (4,384 as of March 9, 2010) but rarely mentioning the 31,716 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they almost always ignore the 38,545 (as of March 6, 2010)*** military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,384 reported deaths include 906 (no change) who died from those same causes, including at least 18 from faulty electrical work by KBR and 204 suicides through March 6, 2010.***

* The number of wounded is updated weekly (usually Tuesday).
** New York Times, Jan 26, 2009
*** http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/oif-total.pdf

Premature Withdrawal
Washington’s Cult of Narcissism and Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt | Tom Dispatch.com

It's a spectacular story, really: Washington has nearly half a century of combined war-fighting experience in Iraq and Afghanistan under its belt, all bad, and yet we evidently want more of the same. In Afghanistan the war is expanding, while in our nation's capital a growing chorus of "warrior-journalists" (possibly backed by U.S. military figures in Iraq) are staking out the future and insisting that, without the U.S. military, what lies ahead for Iraq is, at best, dismal, at worst hopeless; that, despite being implicated in the worst carnage in that country since March 2003, the only force that stands between Iraq and disaster is that same military.

In my latest post, I explore the special dispensation of these "experts" to interpret a future that has yet to happen, as well as the very American cult of narcissism they bring with them. As I write, "What’s remained in all this, remarkably enough, is our confidence in ourselves, our admiration for us, our... well, why not say it?... narcissism. Nothing we’ve done so far stops us from staring into that pool and being struck by what a kindly, helpful face stares back at us. Think of those gathering officials, pundits, journalists, and military figures seemingly eager to imagine the worst and so put the brakes on a full-scale American withdrawal as the Sally Fields of foreign policy. ('I can't deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!”)

Few even remember that we went through a version of this 40 years ago in Vietnam. There, too, Americans were repeatedly told that the U.S. couldn’t withdraw because, if we left, the enemy would launch a “bloodbath” in South Vietnam. This future bloodbath of the imagination became so real that sometimes it seemed to put the ongoing bloodbath in Vietnam in the shade. The only problem was: When the last American took that last helicopter out, the future bloodbath didn’t happen.

Given the propensity of the Obama administration to backpedal, this is a dangerous development, so my piece is both a warning and a reminder. "It’s worth keeping in mind," I conclude, "that not even Americans can occupy the future. It belongs to no one." Read more.

VelvetRevolution has been critical of the Department of Justice on many fronts. Yet now we can report a bit of good news for a change from DOJ. On Monday, the Antitrust Division announced a settlement of an antitrust action against ES&S for its purchase last year of Diebold/Premier Voting Systems.

Since that merger was announced, we have been actively opposing it as part of our Diebold Return our Money Campaign, with press releases, letters to DOJ and Congress, and collaboration with our election reform colleagues. Had the sale been allowed, ES&S would control more than 70% of the votes cast in the country, a virtual monopoly as we had argued and as the DOJ has now agreed.

“The acquisition had been opposed by election integrity organizations, Hart Intercivic (a much smaller Austin-based competitor), the New York Times' editorial board, and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, and was being investigated by 14 different states along with the DOJ's antitrust division,” wrote VR co-founder Brad Friedman, who has been covering this story extensively at The BRAD BLOG.

However, we are concerned about how long it took for the DOJ to act because, over the past six months, ES&S has totally dismantled Diebold/Premier leaving all of Diebold's old customers in 22 states either without a vendor or forced to contract with ES&S in order to hold elections this year.

We will keep you posted about our efforts to ensure that the voters and the integrity of our elections do not suffer further from this corporate mess -- one of the dangers of relying on private companies to run public elections -- that we have been warning about for so long.

While this settlement is a good step toward reigning in unbridled corporate power and monopoly, it certainly does not put an end to the larger problem: the obscuring of democracy via secret software from We the People. The counting of our votes should be done in a transparent, verifiable and overseeable manner, not by computers that often fail, can be rigged and hacked, and do not produce verifiable, transparent election results.

When means, motive, and opportunity exist for election manipulation, it would be naive to presume it will not and has not occurred. Our own investigations, such as Rove Cybergate, make a strong case that intentional manipulation of recent U.S. elections has occurred and that voting machine companies have helped facilitate the undermining of transparent, accurate, verifiable democracy.

We at Velvet Revolution want to give a shout out to our election reform colleagues at Black Box Voting and Voter Action for their terrific work in helping to oppose the dangerous ES&S merger with Diebold/Premier.

We must continue the fight. We rely on you, our members, for support. As one of our fans on Facebook posted, "VR is one of the most effective advocacy groups dollar for dollar anywhere."

Please make a donation if you are able so the fight continues to ensure democracy can be restored to the United States of America.

On March 9, 2010, a rally was held in Washington, D.C. championing Healthcare Reform. The spirted demonstration began at Dupont Circle, at 10: 30 AM, and then moved south, about 10 blocks to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Fat Cats from the Healthcare Insurance Industry were holding a conference at that site. The protest action was organized by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), along with more than 50 major Labor, grassroots and religious leaders. For background go here. Featured in this video are: Billionaires for Wealthcare; David Patterson, the youngest delegate to the DNC; and the Rhythm Workers Union. The latter group has been at just about every rally/protest action worthy of the name in the Washington, D.C. area going back at least to October, 2002.

Click "Read more" for flyer and to order tickets.

Rachel Corrie’s (Posthumous) Day in Court
By Amy Goodman | Truthdig

An unusual trial begins in Israel this week, and people around the world will be watching closely. It involves the tragic death of a 23-year-old American student named Rachel Corrie. On March 16, 2003, she was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer.

Corrie was volunteering with the group International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which formed after Israel and the United States rejected a proposal by then-United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to place international human rights monitors in the occupied territories. The ISM defines itself as “a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.” Israel was building a large steel wall to separate Rafah from Egypt, and was bulldozing homes and gardens to create a “buffer zone.” Corrie and seven other ISM activists responded to a call on that March day to protect the home of the Nasrallah family, which was being threatened with demolition by two of the armored Israeli military bulldozers made by the U.S. company Caterpillar.

Cindy Corrie, Rachel’s mother, related what happened: “The bulldozer proceeded toward Rachel. ... She was in her orange jacket. When it kept coming, she rose on the mound, and the eyewitnesses testified that her head rose above the top of the blade of the bulldozer, so she could clearly be seen, but the bulldozer continued and proceeded over her, and so that it was covering her body. It stopped and then reversed, according to the eyewitness testimonies, without lifting its blade, so backed over her once again.

“Her friends were screaming at the bulldozer drivers through this to stop. They rushed to her, and she said to them, ‘I think my back is broken.’ And those were her final words.” Read more.

Keeping America in the Dark
By Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law | Jurist
JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says a recent effort by a conservative advocacy website to besmirsch the reputations of current DOJ lawyers who previously represented detainees should not distract the US government from criminally prosecuting DOJ lawyers from the past administration who made torture possible....

I recently came across an effort by a group calling itself Keep America Safe to pressure DOJ lawyers who once represented detainees by outing them as the “Al Qaeda 9”. This new twist smacks of the “Cully” Stimson's effort in the last administration to “pressure” law firms that had lawyers working pro bono for the defense on those cases. After an uproar, Stimson resigned.

Keep America Safe and its surrogates appear to be conducting a thinly veiled effort to question the patriotism of those lawyers who represented detainees in resisting violations of the Geneva Conventions and bringing to light, in FOIA requests and litigation, the torture in the prior administration.

This kind of chilling effect on dissent from outrageous policy is nothing new under the sun. Its natural impact is to attempt to intimidate both those who take on these cases and those who would hire such people after they take on these cases, especially those entering the government to serve the public trust. Too much “controversy” about them. Read more.

Bush League Justice in Judge Manfred Delong's Calgary Court

Anthony J. Hall, Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge, wrote today, March 10th:

Judge Manfred Delong shut down the trial of Splitting The Sky versus George W. Bush on the second day of proceedings. The court denied STS his frequently emphasized request to have two witnesses give evidence in his defense. Those witnesses were myself and Cynthia McKinney. The trial came to an end just as Ms. McKinney arrived in Calgary from London. The US-based oil conglomerates active throughout Alberta form the core business constituency of the Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who represents a Calgary riding in Parliament.

The court accepted two documents as evidence for the defense. On is Gail Davidson's widely disseminated legal opinion for Lawyer's Against the War. STS and I studied this document closely in the days leading up to my friend being arrested for his arrest attempt. LAW's legal opinion highlighted some of the evidence, statutes and treaties to brand Bush as a "credibly accused war criminal" that should not be allowed into Canada. Prior to Bush's touching down in Calgary to address an audience of oil executives, Davidson's documemtation was distributed widely to officials of the Harper government and Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The other exhibit for the defense was my own paper that I originally presented at an invited academic venue at the University of Winnipeg. It has been published under a variety of titles on the Internet, including at Global Research.ca, 911 Blogger.com, 9/11 Truth.org and Voltairenet in both French and English. My initial title for it is "Bush League Justice: Should George W. Bush Be Arrested in Calgary Alberta and Tried for International Crimes."

Delong will deliver his ruling on June 7. The case for the prosecution both revealed and obscured much about the new police strategies being employed throughout North America to monitor, manage, divide and spin doctor demonstrators seeking to call attention to their political dissent. In my opinion the Crown's chief agent of prosecution, Tracy Davis, acted more as an advocate and defender of the police rather than as a representative of the Canadian people through Her Majesty as she is required to do according the constitutional tradition of the British Commonwealth.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The U.S Department of Justice announced last month a new program to help poor people accused of crimes obtain a lawyer. Great Idea! But what difference will that make as long as the DOJ approves of their prosecutors framing innocent people?

In January, lawyers for President Obama argued before the U.S.Supreme Court that we don't have a constitutional right not to be framed. Check it out: On January 5th, The LA Times reported in the case of Pottawattamie County v. McGhee and Harrington, "President Obama's lawyers asserted there is no constitutional 'right not to be framed.'" In this case two men spent more than 25 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit.

On my 62nd birthday, February 24th, 2008, while I was in federal prison in the swamps of Louisiana, for something that The New York Times and 91 former state Attorneys General say is not a crime, CBS' 60 Minutes did a 12 minute piece showing how prosecutors bargained with a "crook" to get him to write and rewrite his testimony until he got it the way the government wanted. Then government prosecutors (Karl Rove's best friend's wife who was and still is the U.S. Attorney in my case) presented false evidence to get a conviction."

Please watch this CBS 60 Minutes piece as a birthday present to me this year.