Friday, March 28, 2008

Spy drones in demand by U.S. police departments, but approval pending

Tom Brown
Reuters
Friday, March 28, 2008

The Miami police could soon use cutting-edge flying drones to help fight crime.

A small pilotless vehicle manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and "staring" using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to be introduced soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades.

If use of the drone wins U.S. Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14 pound, or 6.35 kilogram, drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting.

"Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes," said Detective Juan Villalba, a police department spokesman.

"We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission," he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with "barricaded subjects."

And the Miami-Dade police are not alone. Taking their lead from the U.S. military, which has used drones in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, law enforcement agencies across the United States have voiced a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions.

Known in the aerospace industry as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, drones have been under development for decades in the United States.

Full article here.

The 9/11 Stand Down in 2 Minutes

George Washington's Blog
Friday, March 28, 2008

NORAD, responsible for intercepting errant aircraft over the U.S., has a standard operating procedure for scrambling planes for interception which takes less than 15 minutes

They did this successfully (on time) 129 times in 2000 and and 67 times between September 2000 and June 2001.

Yet, on September 11th, they failed to do their job 4 times in a single day:

You might think that the military couldn't find the hijacked planes because the hijackers turned off the transponders. However, a former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew "like the back of my hand" and who handled two actual hijackings says that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview).

As a former senior air force colonel said:

"If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot�I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they�ve changed them to�if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!"
Norad's stand down on 9/11 was so blatant that Norad has been forced to give 3 entirely different versions of what happened that day, as each previous version has been exposed as false. When someone repeatedly changes his testimony after being caught in lies, how believable is he? The falsity of Norad's explanations were so severe that even the 9/11 Commission considered recommending criminal charges for the making of false statements.

NKorea raises stakes in nuke dispute with missile launches

AFP
Friday, March 28, 2008

North Korea raised the stakes Friday in its nuclear disputes with South Korea and the United States, test-firing several missiles and warning it may slow down work to disable atomic plants.
The actions come one day after the communist state expelled South Korean officials from a joint industrial estate, in protest at the new conservative government's tougher policy towards Pyongyang.

Presidential spokesman Lee Dong-Kwan described the missile launches as part of a regular military exercise. "I believe North Korea will not sour relations with South Korea," he said.

But one analyst said it was "highly possible" the situation would worsen.

"We may see naval clashes (in disputed waters) in the Yellow Sea," said Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies, adding that the North seeks to sway the outcome of the April 9 parliamentary election.

Yonhap news agency said three or four missiles were fired into the Yellow Sea. It said they were Russian-designed Styx ship-to-ship missiles with a range of 46 kilometres (29 miles).

There were several similar launches last summer.

After a decade-long "sunshine" rapprochement policy under liberal presidents, the new Seoul administration is linking long-term economic aid to nuclear disarmament.

It says it will also raise Pyongyang's human rights record. On Thursday in Geneva, Seoul voted for a UN Human Rights Council resolution expressing deep concern at that record.

Full article here.

Call For New 9/11 Investigation Reaches Crescendo

Public figures increasingly speaking out while media ignores professionals and experts
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, March 28, 2008

Calls for a new 9/11 inquiry are reaching a crescendo, with well-respected authorities and celebrities alike adding their voices to the cause, as the official 9/11 story crumbles under the weight of revelations of White House ties to the 9/11 Commission, and other cover-ups on behalf of authorities staffed with investigating the attacks.

The corporate media's insistence on ignoring hundreds of professional experts who are calling for a new 9/11 investigation has spurred many celebrities to use their public platforms to speak out, knowing that the press will at least have to address the issue.

The latest to do so is top comedian Margaret Cho, who told the Alex Jones Show yesterday that the public were going to become very angry when it was fully disclosed that the attacks were a conspiracy, concurring with fellow comedian George Carlin who also questioned the official story last year.

The path was trailblazed by Charlie Sheen in March 2006 when he spoke of his doubts about the official story and questioned the collapse of WTC Building 7. Sheen was endlessly smeared for weeks after but he prompted a national debate about 9/11 and the 9/11 Truth Movement enjoyed what many consider to be its most productive year.

In September 2006, former Governor, actor and wrestling star Jesse Ventura questioned 9/11 during an on-camera interview with Alex Jones and also cited Operation Northwoods and the Gulf of Tonkin as examples of how the government has planned and carried out staged war provocations in the past.

In July 2007, popular film maker Michael Moore told WeAreChange.org reporters that he had many more questions about 9/11 than at the time of making Fahrenheit 9/11 and did not believe the public had been told "half the truth" about what really happened.

Martin Sheen echoed his son's comments in October 2007 along with rising actor Mark Ruffalo, following in the footsteps of Rosie O'Donnell, who caused shockwaves when she brought 9/11 truth to national prominence during her stint as The View host.

The View was also used as a platform for actor James Brolin to raise 9/11 truth, who questioned the official version of events in the same week that acclaimed director David Lynch spoke out.

Lynch told Dutch television he thought WTC Building 7 was brought down via controlled demolition and that the Pentagon and Pennsylvania crash sites were suspicious due to the absence of evidence that a plane crashed at either location.

Other notable public figures speaking out at the same time included Ed Asner, Matthew Bellemy of Muse and director Richard Linklater.

American icon Willie Nelson threw his hat in the ring last month, when he told The Alex Jones Show that he thought the twin towers were imploded like condemned Las Vegas casino buildings.

Nelson's comments were almost universally blackballed by the corporate media, who had patently learned from the Sheen controversy that smear campaigns were only leading to more people being exposed to the information and beginning the wake-up process.

Of course, the really important advocates of 9/11 truth are the hundreds of architects, scholars, engineers and other expert professionals who are demanding a fresh inquiry, but they are habitually ignored by the media as the 9/11 Truth Movement is smeared as a fringe interest fad populated by kooks and imbeciles.

In reality, doubts about the official 9/11 story are shared by a myriad of well-respected figures.

The Japanese Parliament were recently a captive audience to a 9/11 truth presentation by Fujita Yukihisa - a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet.

Andreas von Buelow, the former German Defense Secretary, was perhaps the first most prominent individual to go on the record back in 2004, when he blamed the CIA for orchestrating the attacks.

He was followed by former environment minister in Tony Blair's government Michael Meacher, who questioned the stand down of NORAD on 9/11 and dismissed the entire war on terror as a hoax.

Veteran CIA agent and respected geopolitical expert Robert Baer said that "all the evidence points to" 9/11 having had elements of an inside job during a radio apperance in June 2006.

Late last year, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga told Italy's most respected newspaper that the attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad and that this was common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies.

Former Wall Street Journal editor, U.S. Treasury Secretary and founder of Reaganomics Paul Craig Roberts questioned the susupicious collapse of the twin towers and Building 7 in February 2006.

Headed up by Richard Gage, the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth organization lists hundreds of experts in their field who all concur that the implosion of the buildings is not consistent with the official story and needs to be investigated.

Scholars For 9/11 Truth & Justice, headed by Professor Steven Jones, counts amongst its ranks hundreds of physicists, scientists and academic professionals who all share doubts about 9/11.

Another website, Patriots For 9/11 Truth, lists hundreds more former government, military, air force, and navy officials who have all spoken out about 9/11.

With the impartiality of the 9/11 Commission having been blown wide open by revelations of White House ties with Philip Zelikow, allied to the fact that the Pentagon knowingly lied to the Commission during testimony, the call for a new independent inquiry, armed with subpoena powers, is amplifying to a crescendo.

Allegations of a cover-up in regard to the organization responsible for investigating the collapse of the twin towers on behalf of FEMA this week also increased the pressure.

The more prominent figures that add their voice to that call, be they captains of culture or respected authorties in their discipline, can only increase the eventual likelihood of a new investigation.

The Rising of the Mehdi Army: Basra Erupts

PATRICK COCKBURN
Counterpunch
Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Iraqi army is fighting the Mehdi Army Shia militia in the streets of Basra after the government launched its most serious offensive to gain control of the southern oil city.

Clouds of dark smoke rose over Basra 340 miles south of Baghdad as Iraqi soldiers tried to take control of the main roads while black-clad militiamen fought back from the alleyways. "There are clashes in the streets," said Jamil, a resident of the city. "Bullets are coming from everywhere and we can hear the sound of rocket explosions."

The fighting was spreading across Shia areas of Iraq as the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mehdi Army, called for a campaign of civil disobedience in which shops, businesses, schools and universities would close down.

In the Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City, home to two million people in Baghdad, police and army checkpoints were simply abandoned and militiamen took over. In a statement read out by a senior aide yesterday, Mr Sadr called on Iraqis to stage sit-ins all over the country and added that he would declare "a civil revolt" if attacks by US and Iraqi security forces continued. Civil disobedience is different in Iraq from most countries, since most protesters are armed or have weapons available.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has moved to Basra, where he is said to be supervising the operation, in which 22 people have been killed and over 100 wounded so far. It is unlikely, however, that the Iraqi army assault would have been launched without the support of the American military, whose jets and helicopters are providing air support.

The Sadrist headquarters in the Shia holy city of Najaf has ordered the Mehdi Army field commanders to be on maximum alert and prepare "to strike the occupiers", which means attacking US forces. If they do so it would mean the end of the ceasefire declared by Mr Sadr on 29 August last year and renewed in February.

It is this truce which US commanders have said contributed significantly to the fall in violence in Iraq over the past six months. Rockets fired from Shia areas of Baghdad pounded the American-protected Green Zone yesterday.

Basra has been increasingly controlled by Shia militias since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. British forces were never able to establish their authority over the city and finally handed over security control to Iraq on 16 December last year, saying that the British presence was provoking rather than reducing violence.

Mr Maliki has declared that the government is intending to restore law and order in Basra but the Sadrist movement, the most powerful Shia mass movement, will see the offensive as an attempt by its Shia rivals in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq to displace them. If there is an all-out confrontation, the Iraqi army might well look to support from the United States and Britain, initially through air strikes. So far British forces have not been involved in the fighting.

The US has been eager for the central government to regain control of Basra, which sits on top of Iraq's oil reserves and is also close to the American army's main supply line that runs west of the city up the main highway from Kuwait to Baghdad. Basra has hitherto been run by competing local warlords, each of whom has been seeking to gain control of valuable local concessions and rackets such as fuel and the ports of Basra and Umm Qasr. One Iraqi businessman who dispatched a container from Umm Qasr port to Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan says he paid $500 (£250) in transport costs and $3,000 in bribes to ensure safe passage.

Mr Sadr has been keen to avoid an all-out military confrontation with the US army or Iraqi units backed by the Americans ever since he fought the US Marines in Najaf in 2004. Although his Mehdi Army militiamen suffered heavy losses because of the American force's superior arms, they showed that they were prepared to fight to the end. In the warren of slums in Basra, they could do the same and they could also spread the fighting across the overwhelmingly Shia south of Iraq.

Dollar Heads for Biggest Weekly Drop Against Euro in a Month

Agnes Lovasz and Kosuke Goto
Bloomberg
Friday, March 28, 2008

The dollar headed for its biggest weekly decline in a month against the euro as traders raised bets the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to avert a recession.

The currency was also poised to drop versus the British pound and the Swiss Franc before a U.S. government report today that will probably show growth in consumer spending slowed. The yen fell against the Australian and New Zealand dollars as gains in Asian stocks prompted traders to increase holdings of higher- yielding assets funded with loans from Japan.

``There are further declines ahead for the dollar,'' said Antje Praefcke, a Frankfurt-based currency strategist at Commerzbank AG, Germany's second-largest lender. ``The U.S. is probably facing a recession and the Fed will cut rates further. There are ongoing problems with the financial sector. All of this is not good news for the dollar.''

The dollar traded at $1.5812 per euro at 7:15 a.m. in New York, from $1.5779 yesterday and $1.5431 a week ago. The U.S. currency rose to 99.97 yen, from 99.65 yesterday and 99.58 at the end of last week. Japan's currency weakened to 158.10 per euro, from 157.21 yesterday and 153.55 on March 21.

The dollar, which dropped 2.4 percent this week, will trade in the $1.5750 to $1.58 range today before falling to a record $1.60 within the next two weeks, Praefcke predicted.

New Zealand's dollar advanced after a statistics bureau report showed the nation's economic growth in the fourth quarter accelerated at the fastest annual pace in three years. The currency rose to as high as 80.68 U.S. cents, before trading at 80.54 cents, from 80.35 cents. It also gained 0.6 percent to 80.56 yen. The Australian dollar strengthened 0.6 percent to 92.40 U.S. cents and 0.9 percent to 92.41 yen.

Full article here.

Gates Orders Inventory of US Nukes

Associated Press
March 28, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a full inventory of all nuclear weapons and related materials after the mistaken delivery of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Gates told officials with the Air Force, Navy and Defense Logistics Agency to assess inventory control procedures for the materials and to submit a report within 60 days.

Earlier this week, Gates directed Navy Adm. Kirkland H. Donald to take charge of a full investigation of the delivery mistake in which four cone-shaped electrical fuses used in intercontinental ballistic missile warheads were shipped to the Taiwanese instead of the helicopter batteries they had ordered.

It was the second nuclear-related mistake involving the military that has been revealed in recent months. In August an Air Force B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La. At the time, the pilot and crew were unaware they had nuclear arms aboard.

Read entire article

Top Comedian Believes In 9/11 Conspiracy

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, March 27, 2008

Top comedian and actress Margaret Cho has joined Willie Nelson and Charlie Sheen in questioning the official 9/11 story, stating that the public were going to become very angry when they realized there was a conspiracy behind the terror attacks.

Appearing on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show, Cho said her doubts about 9/11 were sparked by President Bush’s non-reaction to the unfolding crisis.

“I got concerned right after 9/11 where the plane had hit the World Trade Center and he was in that classroom with all those children and they told him what was going on and he did nothing,” said Cho.

“We were attacked for the first time on American soil and he did nothing - that’s when I realized there was something very very wrong,” she added.

Cho questioned the official story of what happened at the Pentagon, asking why so much footage of the twin towers being attacked was available in comparison with not even a clear picture of what occurred at the Pentagon - a far more sensitive and symbolic target.

“Why are they not focusing on that? What are they hiding?” asked Cho, “Of course it’s going to be monitored from every angle at every second and yet we have no footage of it - it’s very mysterious.”

Cho said that there was usually a conspiracy behind every major event in American history and that when the conspiracy behind 9/11 was fully uncovered, people were going to be very angry.

The actress said that many of her Arab-American friends doubted the organizational skills of Al-Qaeda in being able to pull off the terror attacks and questioned the plausibility of the passengers on the plane not fighting back against the hijackers.

Resources:

Bush on the morning of September 11, 2001

Bush Told Of First Attack On 9/11 Before He Left Florida Hotel

Bush reveals first thought: There’s one terrible pilot

Dawdler in chief: The suspicious behavior of George W. Bush during the 9/11 attacks

The Emma E. Booker video: 5-Minute Video of George W. Bush on the Morning of 9/11
What George W. Bush Really Did At Emma E. Booker

Pentagon video

New Pentagon video shows no Boeing airliner
Pentagon Video Is Giant Psy-Op
9/11 Gas Station Video Released - Does not show Flight 77
Pentagon Video in the Nick of Time for Midterms?
How Flight 77 Hitting The Pentagon Would Really Look?

Infeasibility of al-Qaeda

Turkish Intelligence: Al-Qaeda a U.S. Covert Operation
(CIA-run) Pakistan helped al-Qaeda set up shop in Afghanistan: US documents
Former German Defense Minister Confirms CIA Involvement in 9/11: Alex Jones Interviews Andreas Von Buelow
Able Danger found Mohammed Atta connection to CIA network in Brooklyn
How our governments use terrorism to control us

New Evidence: CIA Played Role in RFK Assassination

BBC
March 27, 2008

New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy’s assassination has been brought to light.

The evidence was shown in a report by Shane O’Sullivan, broadcast on BBC Newsnight.

It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968.

The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

'Decoy'

Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was shot in a kitchen pantry.

A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him.

However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time.

Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind.

Dr Herbert Spiegel, a world authority on hypnosis at Columbia University, believes Sirhan may have been hypnotically programmed to act as a decoy for the real assassin.

Evidence

The report is the result of a three-year investigation by filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. He reveals new video and photographs showing three senior CIA operatives at the hotel.

Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends:

"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."

Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations.

Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.

Memory

Senator Robert F Kennedy lies critically wounded in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen where he was shot in the head on 5 June, 1968
There have been calls for a fresh investigation into the shooting
Monday, 20 November would have been Bobby Kennedy's 81st birthday. In Los Angeles, his son Max has just broken ground on a new high-school project in memory of his father on the old Ambassador Hotel site.

Paul Schrade, a key figure behind the school project, was walking behind Robert Kennedy that night and was shot in the head. He believes this new evidence merits fresh investigation:

"It seems very strange to me that these guys would be at a Kennedy celebration. What were they doing there? And why were they there? It's our obligation as friends of Bob Kennedy to investigate this."

Ed Lopez, a former Congressional investigator who worked with Joannides in 1978, says:

"I think the key people at the CIA need to go back to anybody who might have been around back then, bring them in and interview them, and ask - is this Gordon Campbell? Is this George Joannides?"

This report was shown on Newsnight on Monday, 20 November, 2006.

McCain Urges New Global Compact — A “League of Democracies”

Remarks By John McCain To The Los Angeles World Affairs Council

JohnMcCain.com | March 27, 2008

Key Quote: "We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact — a League of Democracies…"

ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain’s will deliver the following remarks as prepared for delivery today at the World Affairs Council in Los Angeles, California:

When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well. I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.

I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have. But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace. We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is. We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world’s most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it.

President Harry Truman once said of America, "God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose." In his time, that purpose was to contain Communism and build the structures of peace and prosperity that could provide safe passage through the Cold War. Now it is our turn. We face a new set of opportunities, and also new dangers. The developments of science and technology have brought us untold prosperity, eradicated disease, and reduced the suffering of millions. We have a chance in our lifetime to raise the world to a new standard of human existence. Yet these same technologies have produced grave new risks, arming a few zealots with the ability to murder millions of innocents, and producing a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.

To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman’s day. But leadership today means something different than it did in the years after World War II, when Europe and the other democracies were still recovering from the devastation of war and the United States was the only democratic superpower. Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia that wield great influence in the international system.

In such a world, where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone. We must be strong politically, economically, and militarily. But we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today’s world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.

One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact — a League of Democracies — that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.

At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.

America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.

There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.

Four and a half decades ago, John Kennedy described the people of Latin America as our "firm and ancient friends, united by history and experience and by our determination to advance the values of American civilization." With globalization, our hemisphere has grown closer, more integrated, and more interdependent. Latin America today is increasingly vital to the fortunes of the United States. Americans north and south share a common geography and a common destiny. The countries of Latin America are the natural partners of the United States, and our northern neighbor Canada.

Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery. The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that. I believe the Americas can and must be the model for a new 21st century relationship between North and South. Ours can be the first completely democratic hemisphere, where trade is free across all borders, where the rule of law and the power of free markets advance the security and prosperity of all.

Power in the world today is moving east; the Asia-Pacific region is on the rise. Together with our democratic partner of many decades, Japan, we can grasp the opportunities present in the unfolding world and this century can become safe — both American and Asian, both prosperous and free. Asia has made enormous strides in recent decades. Its economic achievements are well known; less known is that more people live under democratic rule in Asia than in any other region of the world.

FULL ARTICLE