UPDATE - April 13, 2007 - Editor's note: I am posting at the overflow blog(also see yesterday's articles below and at the secondary blog).
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Editor's note: I am moving to post at the secondary blog(also new articles below and yesterday's postings at the overflow blog).
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Anything coming from the Bush gang is generally a lie. In this case however it is a convenient truth. The Israelis and neocons want Sudan partitoned, meaning severely weakened, as they are accomplishing in Iraq.
Related
The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency
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February 8, 2007
Natsios describes on-going Sudanese crisis
by Mariam Khan
Editors’ note: This article has been corrected. The original article contained substantial inaccuracies.
The on-going Darfur crisis is no longer a genocide situation, according to U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios. Natsios, a Professor in the School of Foreign Service, spoke on Wednesday in Gaston Hall.
Natsios did note, however, that genocide had previously occured in Darfur, amidst the ongoing conflict between inhabitants of the Sadanese region and government-backed Janjaweed militias.
Darfur has been a hot button issue since 2003. 2.5 million people have been displaced and over 400,000 people have died as a result of the conflict, according to Natsios.
“The place is littered with mass graves,” he said. Over 2,000 villages were destroyed from the beginning of the war in 2003 to the present, according a United Nations count cited by Natsios.
Natsios pointed to property issues as a major aspect of the conflict, explaining that the Arab Janjaweed militia has been destroying homes and taking the land and animals.
“Without property in Darfur, you will die,” he said. “You cannot go back to your homes because you have nothing to live off of.”
Natsios called Darfur a catastrophe, but said that he is opposed to continuing to use the word genocide, which President Bush and the State Department use to describe the situation in Darfur.
“The term genocide is counter to the facts of what is really occurring in Darfur,” he said.
“The humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the everyday suffering of children, females and males, is beyond imagination,” Azanaw Mengistu (COL ’09), a STAND member who attended the lecture, said. “Every day millions of Darfurians are losing hope and the international community’s response has been unfortunately disappointing.”
Eric Wind (SFS ’09) agreed that the situation was dire, but his motives for attending the speech were slightly different.
“As a Christian, I condemn the human rights abuses going on in Darfur,” he said. “I hope that the efforts of Ambassador Natsios, world leaders and non-governmental organizations such as STAND will help end unnecessary bloodshed in Darfur.”
Natsios said that the proposed deployment of 10,000 more United Nations troops, along with extensive negotiations, is the next step in ending the conflict.
“If a negotiated approach does not work, then we have to go to Plan B.”
Natsios would not comment on the details of “Plan B” but said that it would involve drastic measures by the United States.
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Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Gaza: Israeli daily violence and failing public services
10-04-2007 Interview
Gaza: daily violence and failing public services
On his return to Geneva after heading the ICRC's sub-delegation in Gaza for the past 15 months, Georgios Georgantas answers our questions.
What are the main problems that people living in Gaza face today?
How has the armed violence affected people's daily lives?
The people of Gaza have to contend with extreme violence and failing public services on a daily basis. Health care, education and other public services have gradually broken down since aid to the Palestinian Authority was suspended in early 2006. Meanwhile, violence has surged as a result of the Israeli military operations, the fighting among Palestinian factions and the rise in ordinary crime.
©ICRC/T. Voeten/il-e-00604
Gaza, Beit Hanoun.
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Gaza, Beit Hanoun.
©ICRC/T. Voeten/il-e-00604
There are two sources of violence: the military operations conducted by the Israeli army and the internecine fighting among Palestinians.
The Israeli operations consist mainly of incursions into the territory that can result in the isolation of entire neighbourhoods or villages. During these incursions, people can no longer move about freely: they cannot shop, visit a doctor or go to a hospital. Homes are occupied and the owners sometimes no longer have access to food or water.
The main problem caused by the fighting among Palestinian factions is the lack of access to medical care. Ambulances are often delayed at check points or road blocks and cannot collect the wounded and take them to hospitals.
What activities is the ICRC currently carrying out in Gaza?
Above all we strive to reach the people caught up in the violence and bring them vital assistance.
One of our main priorities is to make sure that ambulances can collect the wounded. Another is to provide food and water for all those in need, especially families whose houses have been occupied. We also help repair basic infrastructure so as to restore access to water and electricity.
During the infighting among Palestinians, our main role is to remind the parties of their obligation to spare all medical personnel, ambulances and hospitals.
As an ICRC representation who has just spent 15 months in Gaza, what do you see as the organization's main achievements during that period?
Before I arrived in Gaza, I was afraid that it would be very difficult for the ICRC to carry out its activities in such a highly politicized environment – and one that was the focus of so much media attention. I was afraid that we would have very little room for manoeuvre.
Once I got there, however, I realized that our work ia especially useful in such an environment. Thanks to its professional expertise, the ICRC is able to reach people in need and provide them with essential assistance and protection.
A convenient untruth
Attributing the bombings in Algeria to al-Qaida obscures the fact that this is a continuation of a civil war, not a new front in the 'war on terror'.
Algeria's premier, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, was still outraged by the apparent attack on his life at his offices in central Algiers on April 11 when he appeared on al-Arabiya television that evening. A suicide bomber had rammed a truck into the guard post outside his offices before it exploded, in the first attack in the centre of the country's capital for many years. Al-Qaida, he told his region-wide Arab audience, was responsible for "this cowardly attack, this rejection of reconciliation".
It is, of course, a very convenient explanation, for it means that Algeria, in common with the western world and its North African and Middle Eastern neigbours, is plagued by a transnational existential threat, to which the only meaningful response is force. And, of course, Algeria should know, for it only recently ended a decade-long civil war which broke out after the Algerian army aborted legislative elections in 1991, causing at least 200,000 deaths, because of its fears that an Islamist party would win them.
Yet, that experience highlights the dilemma as to whether the bombings were really part of the global terrorist threat or whether they reflected, as the civil war had done, more localised, purely Algerian problems. One of the major reasons for the civil war was the widespread view in Algeria that, over the previous 30 years, the country's government had betrayed its revolution and the bloody war with France between 1954 and 1962.
The Islamist movement, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), was popularly seen as a more legitimate inheritor of the revolutionary mantle than the country's official single political party, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), and that was why it was set to win the elections - to the detriment of the vested interests of the elite. That was also the reason why the civil war was fought with such viciousness.
The group that was responsible for the bombing of the premier's office last Wednesday, the Groupe Salafiste de Predication et du Combat (GSPC), which renamed itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb last September, had emerged out of the conflict in 1997 and has continued the fight ever since, with the same goals, in northern Algeria and in the Sahara. Although it is now reduced to a hard core, estimated at between 800 and 1,000 fighters, it continues its campaign.
But the campaign is local, as it always was, against the Algerian security services and the Algerian state, which it seeks to replace with an Islamic caliphate. Even though it now claims the mantle of al-Qaida - something which Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's number two, confirmed after the group's second attempt to gain such an endorsement last September (the first was made in 2001) - its real agenda has not changed. Even though western intelligence agencies claim that it organises training camps in the Sahara, for which there is little evidence, its real target is still the government in Algiers.
Even the timing of the attack, which was accompanied by another car-bomb attack on a police station in the eastern suburbs of the capital, was determined by local events. It did not occur as part of a coordinated campaign with the suicide bombings in Casablanca the previous day; the Moroccan authorities are satisfied that there was no "external connection". Instead, it was a response to a determined effort by the Algerian army to destroy its redoubts in Kabylia, to the east of the capital, an operation that has been going on for the last two weeks, and to a spate of trials in absentia of its leaders because of their refusal to accept an amnesty offered by the government last year, which had been intended to produce "national reconciliation".
The attack also fits into a pattern of recent attacks by the group, starting last October, which have involved police stations and foreign personnel working for companies in Algeria. Their purpose is to demonstrate that, despite its best efforts, the Algerian government has not been able to subdue the group and that it can continue its fight. Worse still, yesterday's bombing demonstrates that not even the capital is safe, despite the government's claims.
And where does al-Qaida fit into the picture? The suggestion that it acts as a transnational organisation directing violence in Algeria according to a centrally-conceived plan is simply untrue. Events there do not fit into the alleged global threat to western states accused of interfering in the Muslim world. They still address the group's proclaimed national agenda of removing un-Islamic, tyrannical and corrupt government.
However, as a rhetoric of rejection, as an idea, an ideology of resistance, accessible through the internet and by word-of-mouth, al-Qaida's global vision of confronting the west to create an idealised Islamic state instead has become a commonplace throughout the Muslim world and even in Europe itself - a fitting counterpart to the "global war on terror" that has, in large part, helped to foster it and now becomes its bedfellow.
George Joffe is a research fellow at the Centre of International Studies, Cambridge University. Also a visiting professor of geography at Kings College, London University, he specialises in the Middle East and North Africa. George is currently engaged in a project studying connections between migrant communities and transnational violence in Europe.
Weekly Standard: Bush has "near dictatorial power"
Thursday April 12, 2007 07:06 EST
The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb participated in a conference call with former Senator George Mitchell yesterday, during which Mitchell advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. This is what Goldfarb wrote about that call:
Pam Hess, the UPI reporter who gave us this extremely moving and persuasive glimpse of the liberal case for the war in Iraq, asked if timetables for withdrawal "somehow infringe on the president's powers as commander in chief?" Mitchell's less than persuasive answer: "Congress is a coequal branch of government...the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government."So apparently, the American Founders risked their lives and fortunes in order to wage war against Great Britain and declare independence from the King -- all in order to vest "near dictatorial power" in the American President in all matters of foreign policy and national security. And, of course, for the Michael Goldfarbs of the world, "war" and "national security" -- and the "near dictatorial power" vested in the President in those areas -- now encompasses virtually every government action, since scary and dangerous Muslims are lurking everywhere, on every corner, and the entire world is one big "battlefield" in the "War on Terrorism," including U.S. soil.True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.
Until the Bill Kristols and John Yoos and other authoritarians of that strain entered the political mainstream, I never heard of prominent Americans who describe the power that they want to vest in our political leaders as "near dictatorial." Anyone with an even passing belief in American political values would consider the word "dictatorial" -- at least rhetorically, if not substantively -- to define that which we avoid at all costs, not something which we seek, embrace and celebrate. If there is any political principle that was previously common to Americans regardless of partisan orientation, it was that belief.
But The Weekly Standard has an agenda single-mindedly focused on the Middle East and Muslims that outweighs everything else, and nothing can impede that agenda -- certainly not something as comparatively unimportant as the American constitutional framework. That's why, to Goldfarb, there is nothing at all odd about advocating "near dictatorial power" vested in the President (at least the current President). For this faction, anything that promotes the all-important agenda of Middle East hegemony and war against "our" enemies is, by definition, good.
The notion that our Constitution vests anything like "near dictatorial power" in the President in any area -- let alone areas as broadly defined as "foreign policy and war" and "national security" -- is so utterly absurd that no response ought to be required. In his post, Goldfarb places a link over the phrase "near dictatorial power" which takes one to Federalist 70, which contains Alexander Hamilton's argument as to why powers assigned by the Constitution to the Executive ought to be vested in one individual rather than an executive council.
Who knows what support Goldfarb thinks there is anywhere in the Federalist Papers for a belief in "near dictatorial power," but if I had to guess, Goldfarb is likely referring to this sentence in Federalist 70:
Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.Goldfarb seems to think that when Hamilton described a Roman "Dictator" with "absolute power," he was describing what he hoped the new American President would be. Does that argument need any refutation?
The fact that The Weekly Standard lies at the center of our mainstream political spectrum -- Bill Kristol's endless series of falsehoods throughout the Bush presidency and his endless calls for new wars against more countries was rewarded with a featured column in Time -- by itself explains political developments over the last six years which were previously unthinkable. The Bill Kristols are those who exert the most influence over this administration, and they simply do not believe in the defining political principles of this country.
One of the best summaries of those basic principles comes from Antonin Scalia in his opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, when he patiently tried to explain what previously -- prior to the ascension of the Michael Goldfarbs, John Yoos and Dick Cheneys -- did not need to be explained in this country: namely, that the President of the United States does not have the power to imprison American citizens without charges or a trial, and that does not change in the slightest merely because the President cites the imperatives of "war" (emphasis added):
The proposition that the Executive lacks indefinite wartime detention authority over citizens is consistent with the Founders' general mistrust of military power permanently at the Executive's disposal. In the Founders' view, the "blessings of liberty" were threatened by "those military establishments which must gradually poison its very fountain." The Federalist No. 45, p. 238 (J. Madison). No fewer than 10 issues of the Federalist were devoted in whole or part to allaying fears of oppression from the proposed Constitution's authorization of standing armies in peacetime.One of the principal purposes of the Federalist Papers -- which Goldfarb obscenely cites as though it supports his twisted views of dictatorial omnipotence in America -- was to assuage widespread concerns (or, as Scalia put it, "mistrust") that the President would be, in essence, a new British King. That fear was not eliminated or even diminished, but instead was particularly pronounced, with regard to the President's role as "Commander-in-Chief," which is why there are so many safeguards in the form of Congressional powers designed to limit that role. All of this is excruciatingly basic and obvious, really not much beyond what seventh grade civics students are taught about what distinguishes a Republic from a "dictatorship."Many safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns. Congress's authority "[t]o raise and support Armies" was hedged with the proviso that "no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years." U.S. Const., Art. 1, §8, cl. 12. Except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President's military authority would be "much inferior" to that of the British King:
"It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy: while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which, by the constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature." The Federalist No. 69, p. 357.A view of the Constitution that gives the Executive authority to use military force rather than the force of law against citizens on American soil flies in the face of the mistrust that engendered these provisions.
What the actual Americans who founded the country feared (as opposed to "hoped for and craved") was that the President would wield "near dictatorial power." Anyone with doubts should simply read Article II -- defining the powers of the President -- and see how limited those powers are. Even the glorious sounding power of "Commander-in-Chief" is, as Scalia noted, nothing more than the power, when Congress decides to fund a military and when it authorizes the use of military force, to act as top General directing troop movements and the like. In all other respects, those powers are checked, regulated and limited by the people through their Congress.
America was founded to avoid the warped and tyrannical vision which The Weekly Standard and its comrades crave (and which they have spent the last six years pursuing and implementing). This group actually thinks that, right this very minute, we are at war with Iran and Syria -- and that the President can and should act accordingly against our "Enemies." And they think that even though Congress has not declared war on those countries, something they consider to be only an irrelevant technicality, even though it is that "technicality" which Hamilton, in Federalist 69, identified as one of the key features distinguishing the American President from the British King:
The one [the American President] would have a a right to command the military and naval forces of the nation; the other [the British King], in addition to this right, possesses that of declaring war, and of raising and regulating fleets and armies by his own authority.Theoretical disputes aside, Americans who believe in the defining political principals of this country ought to find the phrase "near dictatorial power" to be intrinsically repugnant. But The Weekly Standard and comrades don't believe in those principles, and hence can openly embrace that phrase. Although that is not exactly news, it is still always valuable to highlight when their declarations of what they really are find such explicit expression.
British Troops Kill 20 Shi'ites in Retaliation for Last Week's Killings
20 Shia gunmen die in British Basra fightback
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 11:31am BST 12/04/2007
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 11:31am BST 12/04/2007
British forces have hit back at Iraqi insurgents who killed six colleagues last week, by launching an operation in which they shot dead more than 20 gunmen of Basra's rogue militias.
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Details of the assault emerged last night as the bodies of four soldiers killed by a roadside bomb on Thursday were put on flights back to the UK. They arrived at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire this morning for a repatriation ceremony.
The attack began when a battalion-size force was sent into one of the southern city's toughest terrorist strongholds, three miles from where four soldiers, including two women, were blown up in their Warrior armoured vehicle.
An armoured force of 400 troops from the 2Bn The Rifles and 2Bn The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, both of which suffered fatalities last week, entered the Shia Flats area on the western outskirts of Basra to search for hidden weapons. The district is notorious as one of the most dangerous in southern Iraq.
"We wanted to make quite clear there's nowhere in Basra we cannot go," a British commander told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. "We are prepared to be there in daylight and take whatever comes our way. We are not being bombed out or intimidated."
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Initially there was no response as the troops began searching homes where they recovered some small arms. But then the atmosphere changed.
"It was all going very well but then there was a sense something bad was about to happen as we noticed children starting to speak into their mobile phones and point at us," the commander said. "At this stage it became clear that the militia was massing for some kind of attack."
As the troops took up defensive positions around their Warrior and Bulldog armoured vehicles, Iraqi gunmen carrying AK47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades could be seen scurrying along rooftops and down streets. It is believed ammunition and hundreds of weapons are hidden in the area and brought into the open at short notice when the British appear.
Intelligence sources also informed the troops on the ground that Shia terrorists were heading towards them from other parts of the city.
The battle began on Tuesday afternoon with numerous rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire hitting the British positions.
The soldiers from the Rifles and Duke of Lancaster's held off the attacks for more than two hours and shot a number of gunmen. There were no British casualties as they gradually fought their way back to their base at Basra Palace.
Coalition jets also made low flying passes to intimidate the enemy although they did not drop any bombs. During one skirmish two attackers, who fired grenades at a British position, were chased down and arrested. Both are likely to face charges.
Commanders believed that some of the dead might have been behind the ambush of a Warrior in which 2nd Lt Joanna Dyer, a close friend of Prince William at Sandhurst, and three other soldiers were killed. A sniper, possibly from Shia Flats, also killed two other soldiers earlier last week. "This was at a location where we believe those responsible for killing our people were almost certainly recruited from," a military source said.
During the battle an Iraqi policeman was shot by one of the militias. He later died.
No civilians are believed to have been killed in the fight, the military reported, although it could not rule out innocent casualties caught in the crossfire.
"While we may regret that such incidents have to take place, we will not allow militia gunmen to control parts of Basra," said Lt Col Kevin Stratford-Wright, the British military spokesman in southern Iraq.
"There are no 'no-go' areas for multi-national forces in Basra. Security is our responsibility and, in conjunction with the Iraqi security forces, we seek to provide as secure an environment as possible. This will inevitably involve taking on the rogue militia who blight the lives of people in Basra."
Official estimates put the number of Iraqis hit by British gunfire at 10 but other defence sources said that double that figure had been shot.
Arrested
April 11, 2007
By Dr. June Scorza Terpstra
On Thursday evening, March 8, International Women’s Day, I was arrested by Evanston police. This occurrence came on the heels of a controversial article I wrote for which I received hate mail and death threats. I was made to step out of my car; my hands were cuffed behind my back as I stood in the dark street with three young, piggish male officers. I was asked if I had one hundred dollars cash. Cars with people stopped at the nearest cross light were staring at me. My person, my car and my purse were searched. I was asked if I had anything up my crotch. I was placed in the suffocating back seat of a squad car and taken to the Evanston police station. As I was commandeered into a holding area, my hands cuffed behind my back, I remembered this police station. Twenty years ago I was the founder of a women’s shelter and a women’s university program in Evanston and had occasion to work with police in that building who knew little to nothing and cared less about victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
I was questioned as to whether I take drugs. I consciously kept my dignity and said, no, do you? I was told I thought I was "above the law" by a boy given deadly toys to protect his master’s money and rules playing king of the traffic violations hill. For further intimidation I was threatened with a strip search and a jail cell. My husband bailed me out.
What was my crime? I had failed to pay a speeding ticket in Kansas about a year ago and unknown to me my license was suspended. There I was, a woman who had founded programs for women and children in Evanston and has been teaching social justice at universities and colleges for over 20 years in the USA, with three uniformed robo-boys bereft of minds and hearts as they rummaged through my car stocked with baby seats for grandkids and kid's toys for my weekend birthday party with my grandchildren. They put me in the back of the police car, my wrists burning from the handcuffs, with my blood pressure soaring, unable to breathe for the first minutes, struck down powerless against boys with guns and handcuffs who said that they were only "following procedure". I was instantly criminalized because I had lost a ticket a year ago and had never received notice in my move from one state to another. If I had been arrested for practicing my constitutional right to dissolve this present government, I could have understood the situation, but this arrest was for the capitalist crime of not paying $150.00 for driving my car too fast across this infernal country. Debtor’s prisons are now one of the features of a police state in which 2.5 million people are presently in the prison system of the USA with over 60% of the people imprisoned for non-violent offenses.
In this instant what I teach became very real. My understanding of how each and every one of us is criminalized in the USA increased ten fold. I hear my Black, Arab, Muslim, Red and Brown students tell me they are stopped, harassed, shoved up and searched against cars by the police on a routine basis in their neighborhoods. I remember the battered woman and rape victim victimized by the police. I see the political prisoners such as Dr. Sami al-Arian, Leonard Peltier and Jose Padilla, tortured and tormented by their captors. I see the Arab men with brown bags over their heads that are forced out of their homes, disappeared and sexually humiliated as I remember the boy cop looking me in the eyes and sneeringly say, "Do you have anything up your crotch?"
The image of the Mexican woman struggling across the border violently caught and marched off and then raped in holding pens is in my mind as this arresting "officer of the law" threatens to have me strip-searched and put in a cell. I recall the three Arab women sitting in an Iraqi cell waiting to be killed by men trained by US mercenaries and militaries, the people from New Orleans still held captive in FEMA camps for the crime of being homeless after a flood, the Canadian student arrested and strip-searched and held in a US prison just this week for the crime of failing to stop at a stop sign, the Palestinian teen waiting to cross an Israeli checkpoint and winds up rotting in an Israeli jail.
I recall all of these and more as I recall the empty eyes of the police as they tell me I am under arrest. I realize yet again that I am the arrested and the imprisoned and that they are me. I always have been them and they have always been me.
In Solidarity for the Liberation of the Oppressed,
Dr. June Scorza Terpstra
June Scorza Terpstra, Ph.D. is an activist educator and university lecturer in Justice Studies and Criminal Justice. She is presently teaching courses on Law and Terrorism, Social Justice and Resistance. She was the founding director of the Evanston Northshore YWCA Shelter for Battered Women and the Northwestern University Women’s Center. She is a former Community Research Fellow and graduate of Loyola University Chicago.
By Dr. June Scorza Terpstra
On Thursday evening, March 8, International Women’s Day, I was arrested by Evanston police. This occurrence came on the heels of a controversial article I wrote for which I received hate mail and death threats. I was made to step out of my car; my hands were cuffed behind my back as I stood in the dark street with three young, piggish male officers. I was asked if I had one hundred dollars cash. Cars with people stopped at the nearest cross light were staring at me. My person, my car and my purse were searched. I was asked if I had anything up my crotch. I was placed in the suffocating back seat of a squad car and taken to the Evanston police station. As I was commandeered into a holding area, my hands cuffed behind my back, I remembered this police station. Twenty years ago I was the founder of a women’s shelter and a women’s university program in Evanston and had occasion to work with police in that building who knew little to nothing and cared less about victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
I was questioned as to whether I take drugs. I consciously kept my dignity and said, no, do you? I was told I thought I was "above the law" by a boy given deadly toys to protect his master’s money and rules playing king of the traffic violations hill. For further intimidation I was threatened with a strip search and a jail cell. My husband bailed me out.
What was my crime? I had failed to pay a speeding ticket in Kansas about a year ago and unknown to me my license was suspended. There I was, a woman who had founded programs for women and children in Evanston and has been teaching social justice at universities and colleges for over 20 years in the USA, with three uniformed robo-boys bereft of minds and hearts as they rummaged through my car stocked with baby seats for grandkids and kid's toys for my weekend birthday party with my grandchildren. They put me in the back of the police car, my wrists burning from the handcuffs, with my blood pressure soaring, unable to breathe for the first minutes, struck down powerless against boys with guns and handcuffs who said that they were only "following procedure". I was instantly criminalized because I had lost a ticket a year ago and had never received notice in my move from one state to another. If I had been arrested for practicing my constitutional right to dissolve this present government, I could have understood the situation, but this arrest was for the capitalist crime of not paying $150.00 for driving my car too fast across this infernal country. Debtor’s prisons are now one of the features of a police state in which 2.5 million people are presently in the prison system of the USA with over 60% of the people imprisoned for non-violent offenses.
In this instant what I teach became very real. My understanding of how each and every one of us is criminalized in the USA increased ten fold. I hear my Black, Arab, Muslim, Red and Brown students tell me they are stopped, harassed, shoved up and searched against cars by the police on a routine basis in their neighborhoods. I remember the battered woman and rape victim victimized by the police. I see the political prisoners such as Dr. Sami al-Arian, Leonard Peltier and Jose Padilla, tortured and tormented by their captors. I see the Arab men with brown bags over their heads that are forced out of their homes, disappeared and sexually humiliated as I remember the boy cop looking me in the eyes and sneeringly say, "Do you have anything up your crotch?"
The image of the Mexican woman struggling across the border violently caught and marched off and then raped in holding pens is in my mind as this arresting "officer of the law" threatens to have me strip-searched and put in a cell. I recall the three Arab women sitting in an Iraqi cell waiting to be killed by men trained by US mercenaries and militaries, the people from New Orleans still held captive in FEMA camps for the crime of being homeless after a flood, the Canadian student arrested and strip-searched and held in a US prison just this week for the crime of failing to stop at a stop sign, the Palestinian teen waiting to cross an Israeli checkpoint and winds up rotting in an Israeli jail.
I recall all of these and more as I recall the empty eyes of the police as they tell me I am under arrest. I realize yet again that I am the arrested and the imprisoned and that they are me. I always have been them and they have always been me.
In Solidarity for the Liberation of the Oppressed,
Dr. June Scorza Terpstra
June Scorza Terpstra, Ph.D. is an activist educator and university lecturer in Justice Studies and Criminal Justice. She is presently teaching courses on Law and Terrorism, Social Justice and Resistance. She was the founding director of the Evanston Northshore YWCA Shelter for Battered Women and the Northwestern University Women’s Center. She is a former Community Research Fellow and graduate of Loyola University Chicago.
The April Issue of The Independent Monitor is out!
The National Newspaper of Arab Americans
We are pleased to report that the April issue of The Independent Monitor is out.
Read in this issue:
http://www.theindependentmonitor.com/Issues/TIMApril2007.pdf
You Have More Power Than You Think, The Publisher.
NAAP Leadership Conference Hosted by ACCESS Detroit, Lara Shbeyr Maxey.
Learning From Janet Nguyen’s Close Victory, Rashad Al-Dabbagh.
How Barak Obama Learned to Love Israel, Ali Abunimeh.
Does the Israeli Tail Wag the American Dog? Kathleen and Bill Christison.
PAWA Celebrates the Palestinian Woman, Abrahim Appel and Iman Al-Dabbagh.
Carter’s Apartheid Charges Ring True, Saree Makdisi.
NAAP-OC Meet the Professional Dinner, Abrahim Appel and Iman Al-Dabbagh.
Israel Guilty of Occupation, Apartheid and Colonialism, John Dugard.
A Child Dies at Checkpoint While Soldiers Examine ID Cards, Anna Baltzer.
The Media is Heading Where? Julian Do.
Mainstream American Journalists Exclude Arabs in “diversity” Debate, Ray Hanania.
Will Omnibus Research Study Help Fix California’s Broken Education System, Hassina Leelarathna.
Cultural Briefings, Al Jadid Staff
And MUCH more …
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We are pleased to report that the April issue of The Independent Monitor is out.
Read in this issue:
http://www.theindependentmonitor.com/Issues/TIMApril2007.pdf
You Have More Power Than You Think, The Publisher.
NAAP Leadership Conference Hosted by ACCESS Detroit, Lara Shbeyr Maxey.
Learning From Janet Nguyen’s Close Victory, Rashad Al-Dabbagh.
How Barak Obama Learned to Love Israel, Ali Abunimeh.
Does the Israeli Tail Wag the American Dog? Kathleen and Bill Christison.
PAWA Celebrates the Palestinian Woman, Abrahim Appel and Iman Al-Dabbagh.
Carter’s Apartheid Charges Ring True, Saree Makdisi.
NAAP-OC Meet the Professional Dinner, Abrahim Appel and Iman Al-Dabbagh.
Israel Guilty of Occupation, Apartheid and Colonialism, John Dugard.
A Child Dies at Checkpoint While Soldiers Examine ID Cards, Anna Baltzer.
The Media is Heading Where? Julian Do.
Mainstream American Journalists Exclude Arabs in “diversity” Debate, Ray Hanania.
Will Omnibus Research Study Help Fix California’s Broken Education System, Hassina Leelarathna.
Cultural Briefings, Al Jadid Staff
And MUCH more …
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Israeli policies contravene with peace, Palestine Permanent Observer at the UN Says
Wednesday April 11, 2007 14:26 by Rami Almeghari - IMEMC&Agencies rami at imemc dot org
Palestine permanent observer at the United Nations, Mansour Mansour, warned Tuesday of continued Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people, saying such actions contravene with peace and help further feul tension on the ground.
In a letter, Mansour handed over to the chief of the security council, Mansour said that in a time many parties involving the Arab states league and the Palestinian national unity government, are exerting serious peace efforts toward potential peace, Israel violates the international humanitarian law on daily basis.
Mansour pointed out that Israel has been committing a series of extrajudicial assassinations, the latest of which was the killing of a Palestinian resident in the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza, in addition to the killing of other Palestinians in the West Bank.
As for the West Bank, Mansour maintained, the Israeli forces have recently used Palestinians as human shields during house-to-house searches, reiterating underway suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israeli armed settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem
.
The Palestinian diplomat affirmed that the continued Israeli construction of the illegal separation barrier, deep into the Palestinian territories, especially in Jerusalem, has blatantly defied the ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the relevant United Nations’ resolutions as well as the international humanitarian law.
The international court of justice issued in 2004 an advisory opinion calling for tearing down the fence-off wall and compensating those affected by its building.
The letter read that the Israeli army has been installing approximately 500 military checkpoints and roadblock across the West Bank, blocking movement of the Palestinian population and vehicles and causing ‘catastrophic economic consequences’.
Israel has been imposing a prolonged closure policy on the occupied Palestinian territories, such as the closure of Rafah crossing terminal in southern Gaza, creating a great deal of deterioration at the humanitarian level, Mansour’s letter hinted.
According to a Palestinian Authority’s report, the Israeli army has killed 6 Palestinians over the past week.
Palestine permanent observer at the United Nations, Mansour Mansour, warned Tuesday of continued Israeli attacks on the Palestinian people, saying such actions contravene with peace and help further feul tension on the ground.
In a letter, Mansour handed over to the chief of the security council, Mansour said that in a time many parties involving the Arab states league and the Palestinian national unity government, are exerting serious peace efforts toward potential peace, Israel violates the international humanitarian law on daily basis.
Mansour pointed out that Israel has been committing a series of extrajudicial assassinations, the latest of which was the killing of a Palestinian resident in the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza, in addition to the killing of other Palestinians in the West Bank.
As for the West Bank, Mansour maintained, the Israeli forces have recently used Palestinians as human shields during house-to-house searches, reiterating underway suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israeli armed settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem
.
The Palestinian diplomat affirmed that the continued Israeli construction of the illegal separation barrier, deep into the Palestinian territories, especially in Jerusalem, has blatantly defied the ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the relevant United Nations’ resolutions as well as the international humanitarian law.
The international court of justice issued in 2004 an advisory opinion calling for tearing down the fence-off wall and compensating those affected by its building.
The letter read that the Israeli army has been installing approximately 500 military checkpoints and roadblock across the West Bank, blocking movement of the Palestinian population and vehicles and causing ‘catastrophic economic consequences’.
Israel has been imposing a prolonged closure policy on the occupied Palestinian territories, such as the closure of Rafah crossing terminal in southern Gaza, creating a great deal of deterioration at the humanitarian level, Mansour’s letter hinted.
According to a Palestinian Authority’s report, the Israeli army has killed 6 Palestinians over the past week.
Tell us another one, Mr. Vice President: Sen. Carl Levin
Dick Cheney is still trying to link Iraq with Al Qaeda and 9/11.
By Carl LevinCARL LEVIN, a Democratic senator from Michigan, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
April 12, 2007
TO PARAPHRASE President Reagan, there he goes again.
On Rush Limbaugh's radio program last week, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and stated: "He went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al Qaeda operations inside Iraq…. This is Al Qaeda operating in Iraq and, as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.
While the vice president doesn't say directly that there was a tie between the two, his clear purpose is to blur the line between Al Qaeda — the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks — and the Iraqi dictator in order to justify the war in Iraq.
The problem is, that's simply not supported by the facts or by our intelligence community — and everyone except the vice president acknowledges it. In September, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Hussein was "distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." And the CIA reported a year earlier, in October 2005, that the Iraqi regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." As the Intelligence Committee report noted, the Iraqi intelligence service was actually trying to capture Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad under an alias. Is the vice president willfully ignoring what the rest of the government has concluded? Or does he have access to information he hasn't shared with us? If so, he should produce it.
The vice president has a clear, documented pattern of overstating and misstating information with regard to Iraq. He also, for instance, continued to claim that 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta may have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague — long after the intelligence community believed otherwise. Again, his obvious purpose is to link Hussein's regime with Sept. 11, even though the rest of the world has concluded that no such link exists.
The vice president has made so many outlandish statements that the country barely raised an eyebrow at his false statement last week. The public has stopped believing the words of a man who promised, before we invaded Iraq, that we would be "greeted as liberators" and reassured us nearly two years ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes."
But his comments continue to erode our credibility with the international community, which has already been severely damaged by our rush to war with Iraq with little international support. If, in the months ahead, we face a crisis over Iran's weapons programs and need to rally the international community, we may find that the world has little interest in trusting an administration that misstates facts.
By all accounts, Dick Cheney is one of the most powerful vice presidents in our history, if you define power as influence over policy. We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean for our country when the vice president's words lack credibility, but he still wields great power?
50 White House officials have used RNC accounts
Officials' e-mail may be missing, White House says
The messages, on a private system, are wanted by Congress in a probe of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
By Tom HamburgerTimes Staff Writer
April 12, 2007
WASHINGTON — The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.
The e-mails were considered potentially crucial evidence in congressional inquiries launched by Democrats into the role partisan politics may have played in such policy decisions as the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.
The White House said an effort was underway to see whether the messages could be recovered from the computer system, which was operated and paid for by the Republican National Committee as part of an avowed effort to separate political communications from those dealing with official business.
"The White House has not done a good enough job overseeing staff using political e-mail accounts to assure compliance with the Presidential Records Act," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in an unusual late-afternoon teleconference with reporters.
As a result, Stanzel said, "we may not have preserved all e-mails that deal with White House business."
He refused to estimate how many e-mails may have been lost, but the system was used by dozens of officials for more than six years.
"This is a remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the role of electoral politics in administration policymaking. "The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."
The missing e-mails not only add to the growing legal and public relations woes for the White House and Rove's political operation, but also to the problems of Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Gonzales, who is under fire for the handling of the U.S. attorney dismissals, was serving as White House counsel at the time the Republican National Committee's parallel communications system was set up.
His office had at least partial responsibility for establishing ground rules for using the private system.
The White House briefing Wednesday occurred a few hours after the staff of Waxman's committee and staff of the House Judiciary Committee met with White House officials to discuss the e-mails.
The White House has informed congressional investigators that it will not be able to meet the committee's deadline of Friday to turn over the communications.
The House aides are expected to meet with the Republican National Committee's legal staff today. A committee spokesman said the GOP hopes to cooperate as much as possible but provided no further details.
The e-mails were sent through a communications system created in conjunction with the RNC early in the Bush administration. Rove and others were given special laptop computers and other communications devices to use instead of the government communications system when dealing with political matters.
The parallel system was designed to avoid running afoul of the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government resources for partisan purposes, White House officials have said.
But evidence has emerged that system users sometimes failed to maintain such separation and used the private system when communicating about government business.
For example, before the U.S. attorneys were fired, a Rove deputy used an account maintained by the Republican National Committee in discussions with Justice Department officials about replacing some of the regional prosecutors. One e-mail requested a meeting between top officials at the Justice Department and a member of President Bush's campaign team to discuss one U.S. attorney who was among those to be fired.
The Justice Department turned over those e-mails at the request of several congressional committees.
Waxman said some of the documents suggest White House personnel may have used the political email accounts "to avoid creating a record of the communications."
Loss of the e-mail files would create a potential legal problem for the Bush White House: compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in 1978 in response to the Watergate scandal that enveloped Richard M. Nixon's presidency. The law was designed to ensure that presidential papers were preserved for historical and investigative purposes.
Rove's operation appears to have gone much further. Today, 22 staffers have e-mail accounts issued by the Republican National Committee, Stanzel said, noting that it is a tiny percentage of the 1,000 political appointees in the executive office.
Since 2001, about 50 staffers e-mailed using the system, he said. One former White House staffer told National Journal recently that Rove uses his RNC e-mail account for 95% of his e-mail communications.
One former White House official, Assistant Press Secretary Adam Levine, told The Times that he was issued a private laptop computer but he found the dual system so cumbersome that he decided to use only his official White House computer.
However, Levine recalled seeing White House staff members moving fluidly between their official computers and the laptops provided by the RNC.
Stanzel said that the law has gray areas defining what sort of activity is permitted using government resources, and that some employees may have opted for the RNC system to avoid any suggestion of a Hatch Act breach or because the private equipment was easier to use.
But, he added, "I can say that historically the White House didn't give enough guidance to staff on how to avoid violating the Hatch Act while following the Records Act. We didn't do a good enough job."
Some former employees recall receiving briefings on the Hatch Act. At the time of the 2004 Republican convention, newspaper accounts described emphatic warnings to White House staffers not to use government-issued cellphones for politically related calls.
Now, Stanzel said, the White House has begun a formal review that will include new training material for staff members on maintaining records with special attention to those with RNC accounts.
In addition, the White House will begin the forensic process of trying to reconstruct any lost records. That will probably be hampered by an RNC policy of automatically erasing most e-mail after 30 days. Since 2004, White House records have been exempt, Stanzel said, though individuals might have been able to kill out e-mail messages.
The White House will also explore whether the hard drives of laptop computers might have preserved a record of e-mailed communications.
tom.hamburger@latimes.com
Billionaire Boychiks Battle for Media Empire
‘Committed Zionist’ To Buy Papers With Troubled Ties to Community
Nathaniel Popper | Fri. Apr 13, 2007
When Sam Zell, a Chicago real estate mogul and soon-to-be media magnate, was a junior counselor at a Jewish summer camp, he regularly transfixed his campers with tales of his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Poland.
The Zell family traveled through Russia and Japan, pretending to be tourists at the Bolshoi Ballet so as not to stand out. Fred Margulies, a camper in Zell’s bunk, said that the tale — told after lights out — was the most memorable part of the summer, and a prototypical display of Zell’s preternaturally magnetic personality.
“He was a great storyteller, and he captivated us,” said Margulies, today a rabbi and businessman in Chicago.
Zell’s storytelling skills may be put to a new use when he becomes the owner and CEO of one of America’s most powerful media companies, Tribune Company, which owns 23 televisions stations, a baseball team and many major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. His winning bid for the $8.2 billion company comes after a career in which he has made himself rich — to the tune of $4.5 billion — by turning around flailing companies with his brash, unconventional style. His skill at reviving the near-dead has given him the nickname in which he’s said to revel: “the grave-dancer.”
The irony of Zell’s latest success is that it will likely make him the owner of a company that has been the very antithesis of the Jewish summer camp culture in which Zell was molded. The Chicago Tribune, the company’s flagship publication, has had a famously antagonistic relationship with the Jewish community in Chicago — historically because of its right-wing, isolationist stance during World War II, and more recently because of its critical coverage of Israel. Newspaper watchers say that Zell and the Tribune will be an interesting mix.
“The paper has a reputation for having a thick glass ceiling for Jews,” said Michael Siegel, who for 25 years has been the rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Emet Synagogue, where Zell is a member. “For someone like Sam Zell, who is noted as a grave dancer, here is he is more of a grave spinner. There are probably some past owners and executives who are spinning in their graves right now.”
Even before the Tribune went with Zell’s bid to take the company private, it was clear that the white, Anglo-Saxon culture of the Tribune would be challenged by a Jewish businessman. The major bidder besides Zell was Los Angeles Jewish businessman Eli Broad and his business partner, Ronald Burkle, (who has widely but wrongly been described as Jewish). The deal for the Tribune is not closed, and Broad and Burkle still could be able to best Zell’s offer of $34 a share.
Another Jewish businessman, Hollywood supermogul David Geffen, is said to be in talks now with Zell to buy control of the Los Angeles Times. The Times is the largest single property owned by the Tribune and has a contentious history with the Los Angeles Jewish community, strikingly similar to the Tribune’s in Chicago.
Despite being co-religionists, the bidders for the Tribune properties represent a wide spectrum of American Jewish experiences, and their ownership would mean very different things for the papers. Both Broad and Geffen give generously to Jewish causes in Los Angeles and in Israel, but Broad, a Detroit native, is best known for his work as a civic booster in Los Angeles. Geffen fits more into the classic mold of the liberal New Yorker who has dedicated much of his wealth to gay rights, liberal causes and national Democratic politics. Zell, by contrast, has a reputation for conservative politics and a more intimate involvement with Jewish and Israeli causes.
Given that Zell appears to be close to closing the deal for the Tribune, much media scrutiny has shifted toward how his background might shape the papers. One question that is asked frequently is whether Zell will follow the model of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, who has pressed his political views on his media properties, or whether he will concentrate only on the business side.
In an interview with the Tribune last week, Zell suggested that he would not be involved editorially. “Do I look naive enough to think I have any influence about what people write?” Zell asked in his blunt fashion.
Still, Zell has made it clear that he does have an interest in the things his new media properties cover. In the interview last week, he said that his favorite newspaper columnists are Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, all of whom are Jewish and two of whom write frequently and sympathetically about Israel.
Zell himself is a major donor to causes in the Middle East. His donations include a $3.1 million donation to the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and separate donations to the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, a right-wing Israeli think tank. In the United States, he has given major gifts to such Jewish causes as the American Jewish Committee and a Chicago Jewish day school named after his father. All this is on top of his political donations, which have gone mostly to Republican candidates.
Siegel, the rabbi at Zell’s synagogue, said that Zell is a “committed Zionist” and a “generous supporter of Israel,” along with “a member in good standing” of the synagogue who “comes on the holidays often.”
Among media watchers, this has been fodder for conversation. Ken Reich, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who operates a blog about the paper, said he assumes that Zell will shape the policy of his papers to some degree.
“If he cares about the State of Israel, he won’t want his newspaper to be out there chipping away at Israeli interests,” said Reich, who reported mostly on politics during his 39 years at the Times.
Reich said that at the Times, shifting the editorial policy would require only that Zell be consulted in the hiring of the new editorial page editor — a position that was recently vacated.
“It would not take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East,” Reich said. “I tend to expect this to happen.”
Other media critics have taken Zell at his word that he will stick to the business side. Siegel said he was interested to see which direction Zell would take, but he does know that Zell is a “very astute reader of world affairs — an avid newspaper reader — so you’re going to have to keep his interest.”
Siegel himself has been one of the leading critics of the Chicago Tribune’s Middle East coverage. He has organized multiple protest rallies outside the Tribune, most recently in 2003, when the Tribune published a cartoon showing a hook-nosed caricature of the Israeli prime minister following a trail of money laid down by President Bush.
The Tribune eventually apologized to the Jewish community, and Siegel said that the paper has been responsive to the concerns of the Jewish community since then.
Media watchers in Chicago say that Zell’s more immediate effect at the Tribune will likely be on the corporate culture.
“It’s a traditionally corporate environment,” said Abe Peck, a journalism professor at Northwestern University. “They’re the dominant paper in town, and they act like it and dress like it. Here comes this guy who never wears a tie — who comes on his motorcycle — and who brings a whole different style.”
The Tribune’s button-down culture today is an extension of the paper’s historical ownership by Colonel Robert McCormick, who earned the ire of Chicago Jews with his isolationist, right-wing posture during the Nazi era. A similar family of owners, the Chandlers, prevailed at the Los Angeles Times until the 1960s, when Dorothy Chandler began reaching out to the Jewish community to fundraise for local civic causes.
Since the Tribune purchased the Times from the Chandlers, the company has instituted a series of cost-cutting measures that have not gone down well in Los Angeles. Many civic leaders in the city were eagerly hoping that either Geffen or Broad and Burkle would buy the paper from the Tribune, not least because Los Angeles is a liberal city and Geffen and Broad are known for their liberal leanings, both in their secular and Jewish giving. Both men, for instance, are donors to Bet Tzedek, a Jewish legal aid organization. But both men have also tended to put non-Jewish civic causes ahead of their Jewish giving.
“They are both Jewish and very proud of it, but for both of them their primary involvement is not the Jewish community,” said Donna Bojarsky, a consultant in the Los Angeles political and Jewish worlds. “There are not many places to have influence in this city, and the paper would really be it.”
Zell’s arrival at the Tribune has been met with some disappointment in Los Angeles. That has included newspaper staffers who have expressed anxiety over the financial deal structured by Zell whereby he uses employee pensions to finance most of the deal, putting in only $315 million himself and pushing much of the risk onto the employees.
It may yet turn out that Geffen will take control of the Los Angeles property. Zell flew into Los Angeles for dinner with Geffen last Friday night in Malibu, where both men own beachfront houses. Despite their differences, the two men have spoken respectfully about each other, referencing the straight-shooting, unconventional style that inevitably comes from being an outsider.
As Siegel put it about Zell, “He has a great sense of humor — a real love of life — and no patience for baloney or arrogance.”
Fri. Apr 13, 2007
Nathaniel Popper | Fri. Apr 13, 2007
When Sam Zell, a Chicago real estate mogul and soon-to-be media magnate, was a junior counselor at a Jewish summer camp, he regularly transfixed his campers with tales of his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Poland.
The Zell family traveled through Russia and Japan, pretending to be tourists at the Bolshoi Ballet so as not to stand out. Fred Margulies, a camper in Zell’s bunk, said that the tale — told after lights out — was the most memorable part of the summer, and a prototypical display of Zell’s preternaturally magnetic personality.
“He was a great storyteller, and he captivated us,” said Margulies, today a rabbi and businessman in Chicago.
Zell’s storytelling skills may be put to a new use when he becomes the owner and CEO of one of America’s most powerful media companies, Tribune Company, which owns 23 televisions stations, a baseball team and many major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. His winning bid for the $8.2 billion company comes after a career in which he has made himself rich — to the tune of $4.5 billion — by turning around flailing companies with his brash, unconventional style. His skill at reviving the near-dead has given him the nickname in which he’s said to revel: “the grave-dancer.”
The irony of Zell’s latest success is that it will likely make him the owner of a company that has been the very antithesis of the Jewish summer camp culture in which Zell was molded. The Chicago Tribune, the company’s flagship publication, has had a famously antagonistic relationship with the Jewish community in Chicago — historically because of its right-wing, isolationist stance during World War II, and more recently because of its critical coverage of Israel. Newspaper watchers say that Zell and the Tribune will be an interesting mix.
“The paper has a reputation for having a thick glass ceiling for Jews,” said Michael Siegel, who for 25 years has been the rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Emet Synagogue, where Zell is a member. “For someone like Sam Zell, who is noted as a grave dancer, here is he is more of a grave spinner. There are probably some past owners and executives who are spinning in their graves right now.”
Even before the Tribune went with Zell’s bid to take the company private, it was clear that the white, Anglo-Saxon culture of the Tribune would be challenged by a Jewish businessman. The major bidder besides Zell was Los Angeles Jewish businessman Eli Broad and his business partner, Ronald Burkle, (who has widely but wrongly been described as Jewish). The deal for the Tribune is not closed, and Broad and Burkle still could be able to best Zell’s offer of $34 a share.
Another Jewish businessman, Hollywood supermogul David Geffen, is said to be in talks now with Zell to buy control of the Los Angeles Times. The Times is the largest single property owned by the Tribune and has a contentious history with the Los Angeles Jewish community, strikingly similar to the Tribune’s in Chicago.
Despite being co-religionists, the bidders for the Tribune properties represent a wide spectrum of American Jewish experiences, and their ownership would mean very different things for the papers. Both Broad and Geffen give generously to Jewish causes in Los Angeles and in Israel, but Broad, a Detroit native, is best known for his work as a civic booster in Los Angeles. Geffen fits more into the classic mold of the liberal New Yorker who has dedicated much of his wealth to gay rights, liberal causes and national Democratic politics. Zell, by contrast, has a reputation for conservative politics and a more intimate involvement with Jewish and Israeli causes.
Given that Zell appears to be close to closing the deal for the Tribune, much media scrutiny has shifted toward how his background might shape the papers. One question that is asked frequently is whether Zell will follow the model of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, who has pressed his political views on his media properties, or whether he will concentrate only on the business side.
In an interview with the Tribune last week, Zell suggested that he would not be involved editorially. “Do I look naive enough to think I have any influence about what people write?” Zell asked in his blunt fashion.
Still, Zell has made it clear that he does have an interest in the things his new media properties cover. In the interview last week, he said that his favorite newspaper columnists are Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman and David Brooks, all of whom are Jewish and two of whom write frequently and sympathetically about Israel.
Zell himself is a major donor to causes in the Middle East. His donations include a $3.1 million donation to the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and separate donations to the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, a right-wing Israeli think tank. In the United States, he has given major gifts to such Jewish causes as the American Jewish Committee and a Chicago Jewish day school named after his father. All this is on top of his political donations, which have gone mostly to Republican candidates.
Siegel, the rabbi at Zell’s synagogue, said that Zell is a “committed Zionist” and a “generous supporter of Israel,” along with “a member in good standing” of the synagogue who “comes on the holidays often.”
Among media watchers, this has been fodder for conversation. Ken Reich, a former Los Angeles Times reporter who operates a blog about the paper, said he assumes that Zell will shape the policy of his papers to some degree.
“If he cares about the State of Israel, he won’t want his newspaper to be out there chipping away at Israeli interests,” said Reich, who reported mostly on politics during his 39 years at the Times.
Reich said that at the Times, shifting the editorial policy would require only that Zell be consulted in the hiring of the new editorial page editor — a position that was recently vacated.
“It would not take very much tweaking by him to sharply alter the Times editorial policy on the Middle East,” Reich said. “I tend to expect this to happen.”
Other media critics have taken Zell at his word that he will stick to the business side. Siegel said he was interested to see which direction Zell would take, but he does know that Zell is a “very astute reader of world affairs — an avid newspaper reader — so you’re going to have to keep his interest.”
Siegel himself has been one of the leading critics of the Chicago Tribune’s Middle East coverage. He has organized multiple protest rallies outside the Tribune, most recently in 2003, when the Tribune published a cartoon showing a hook-nosed caricature of the Israeli prime minister following a trail of money laid down by President Bush.
The Tribune eventually apologized to the Jewish community, and Siegel said that the paper has been responsive to the concerns of the Jewish community since then.
Media watchers in Chicago say that Zell’s more immediate effect at the Tribune will likely be on the corporate culture.
“It’s a traditionally corporate environment,” said Abe Peck, a journalism professor at Northwestern University. “They’re the dominant paper in town, and they act like it and dress like it. Here comes this guy who never wears a tie — who comes on his motorcycle — and who brings a whole different style.”
The Tribune’s button-down culture today is an extension of the paper’s historical ownership by Colonel Robert McCormick, who earned the ire of Chicago Jews with his isolationist, right-wing posture during the Nazi era. A similar family of owners, the Chandlers, prevailed at the Los Angeles Times until the 1960s, when Dorothy Chandler began reaching out to the Jewish community to fundraise for local civic causes.
Since the Tribune purchased the Times from the Chandlers, the company has instituted a series of cost-cutting measures that have not gone down well in Los Angeles. Many civic leaders in the city were eagerly hoping that either Geffen or Broad and Burkle would buy the paper from the Tribune, not least because Los Angeles is a liberal city and Geffen and Broad are known for their liberal leanings, both in their secular and Jewish giving. Both men, for instance, are donors to Bet Tzedek, a Jewish legal aid organization. But both men have also tended to put non-Jewish civic causes ahead of their Jewish giving.
“They are both Jewish and very proud of it, but for both of them their primary involvement is not the Jewish community,” said Donna Bojarsky, a consultant in the Los Angeles political and Jewish worlds. “There are not many places to have influence in this city, and the paper would really be it.”
Zell’s arrival at the Tribune has been met with some disappointment in Los Angeles. That has included newspaper staffers who have expressed anxiety over the financial deal structured by Zell whereby he uses employee pensions to finance most of the deal, putting in only $315 million himself and pushing much of the risk onto the employees.
It may yet turn out that Geffen will take control of the Los Angeles property. Zell flew into Los Angeles for dinner with Geffen last Friday night in Malibu, where both men own beachfront houses. Despite their differences, the two men have spoken respectfully about each other, referencing the straight-shooting, unconventional style that inevitably comes from being an outsider.
As Siegel put it about Zell, “He has a great sense of humor — a real love of life — and no patience for baloney or arrogance.”
Fri. Apr 13, 2007
Another side of terrorism in the Middle East
By Gary Fields
April 6, 2007
The art of political language, as George Orwell observed, is to make falsehoods sound truthful and to deny voice to those without power. There are few practitioners of this art more highly skilled than the government of Israel.
As the military occupier of the Palestinian territories for the past 40 years, Israel has managed to represent itself as the beleaguered victim of terrorism in its conflict with the Palestinian people. At the same time, the Israeli government, through its influence in America, has discredited and even silenced those voices inside the Palestinian territories with a far different story about terrorism and its victims. Truth, however, is sometimes able to prevail despite the efforts of those with power to prevent truth from gaining voice.The art of political language, as George Orwell observed, is to make falsehoods sound truthful and to deny voice to those without power. There are few practitioners of this art more highly skilled than the government of Israel.
Fields, author of “Territories of Profit: Communications, Capitalist Development and Innovation at G.F. Swift and Dell Computer” (Stanford University Press, January, 2004), currently is writing a book on “The Wall” in the Palestinian territories. He teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of California San Diego.
April 6, 2007
The art of political language, as George Orwell observed, is to make falsehoods sound truthful and to deny voice to those without power. There are few practitioners of this art more highly skilled than the government of Israel.
As the military occupier of the Palestinian territories for the past 40 years, Israel has managed to represent itself as the beleaguered victim of terrorism in its conflict with the Palestinian people. At the same time, the Israeli government, through its influence in America, has discredited and even silenced those voices inside the Palestinian territories with a far different story about terrorism and its victims. Truth, however, is sometimes able to prevail despite the efforts of those with power to prevent truth from gaining voice.The art of political language, as George Orwell observed, is to make falsehoods sound truthful and to deny voice to those without power. There are few practitioners of this art more highly skilled than the government of Israel.
Last August on these pages, I was able to tell such a story about a Palestinian farmer, Mohammed Abdel Aziz Sabatin. What had been happening to Sabatin, in facing daily harassment from Israeli settlers from Bettar Illit, I insisted, went to the essence of the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. Contrary to popular mythology, this conflict is not a clash of civilizations. It is a conflict about land – and the power of one group of people to seize and control the land of another. Sabatin personifies this conflict, while at the same time his situation gives a very different set of meanings to the idea of terrorism and its purveyors. Sabatin owns land directly next to the Jewish settlement of Bettar Illit, a town built on land confiscated in 1989 from the Sabatin family and from numerous other Palestinian families from the town of Husan. All told, about 5,000 dunums (1,250 acres) was forcibly taken from farmers in Husan to build the settlement. After construction, Sabatin was left with a small portion of his former property and has since tried to cultivate olives, figs and almonds on this land. In order to access his farmland, however, Sabatin now has to get a permit from the Israeli military authorities who administer the Occupied Territory of Palestine, and he must pass though the security gate of Betar Illit even though his family has owned this land for 200 years. In owning land in the shadow of the settlement, Sabatin is in a precarious predicament. Last year, Sabatin took me on a tour of his land and told me how settlers from Bettar Illit burn and vandalize his remaining olive and fruit trees on a daily basis. As we walked through his fields, I was able to see olive and fig tree branches shorn from their trunks and scattered on the ground. I also saw several still-smoldering piles of ash, olive trees burned just that morning. “What can I do” Sabatin asked me repeatedly. I never knew what to say. These settlers from Bettar Illit actually want Sabatin to take flight from his land. They are trying to force him to make a “choice” about whether it is worth it to remain. With enough pressure, perhaps he will finally relent and give it up. Now, it appears that the settlement has handed Sabatin an ultimatum. Two weeks ago settlers again set fire to some of his olive trees, but this time the fire burned out of control. The firefighting unit from the settlement had to extinguish the blaze. What they did next, however, is befitting of the term Orwellian. The governing council of Bettar Illit informed Sabatin that it would charge him 7,000 Israeli shekels ($1,600) for the cost of extinguishing the fires since they occurred on his land. This is an amount of money well beyond his means. They gave him until today to remit the money and informed him that failure to pay would result in the settlement confiscating the rest of his land. Sabatin was frantically and desperately trying to find a way to keep his land as the deadline given to him by the settlement approached. Even if he pays the amount, however, what is to prevent extortion such as this from occurring again? This time, however, after years of abuse at the hands of these settlers, Sabatin has vowed to resist. With help from numerous individuals in the San Diego area and beyond, Sabatin has obtained the services of a well-known Israeli human rights lawyer and is preparing to contest the confiscation order. Today's date may very well mark a turning point in his own personal saga. In truth, Sabatin is the personification of a much bigger campaign that has been going on since 1947-48 when Palestinians owned about 90 percent of the land in historic Palestine. Now Palestinians own about 12 percent of the land in their historic homeland and this amount continues to decrease as land policies, including the activities of settlements, continue to encroach on, and confiscate, Palestinian land and property while transferring Palestinians into ever-smaller territorial spaces. Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister of Israel and the architect of the settlement policy, described this campaign as a policy of taking Palestinian land “dunum by dunum.” These policies raise questions about the real purveyors of terror and its victims. The occupation of Palestine by Israel has removed all rights of Palestinians to land and has undermined their capacity to make a living where they have existed for centuries. Palestinians have no security when their land and livelihood can be taken at any time. Until the occupier recognizes these rights, the tragedy of Mohammed Sabatin will continue – and the conflict will not rest.
Fields, author of “Territories of Profit: Communications, Capitalist Development and Innovation at G.F. Swift and Dell Computer” (Stanford University Press, January, 2004), currently is writing a book on “The Wall” in the Palestinian territories. He teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of California San Diego.The Real Surge Story: Sen. Joe Biden
Some good info here. Biden and the CFR are wrong however. The US must leave now.
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The Real Surge Story
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The Real Surge Story
By Joe Biden
Thursday, April 12, 2007; A27
Sen. John McCain[" The War You're Not Reading About," op-ed, April 8] is right to warn about the consequences of failure in Iraq. But he is fundamentally wrong when he argues that those potential consequences require us to stick with a failing strategy.
It is precisely because the stakes are so great that we must change course in Iraq, now.
McCain wrote that the president's strategy is beginning to show results but that most Americans don't know it because the media cover the bad news, not the good news. Of course, reporting any news in Iraq is an extraordinary act of bravery, given the dangers journalists must navigate every day. But the fact is, virtually every "welcome development" McCain cited has been reported, including the purported anti-al-Qaeda alliance with Sunni sheikhs in Anbar, the establishment of joint U.S.-Iraqi security stations in Baghdad and the decision by Moqtada al-Sadr to go to ground -- for now.
The problem is that for every welcome development, there is an equally or even more unwelcome development that gives lie to the claim that we are making progress. For example:
· While violence against Iraqis is down in some Baghdad neighborhoods where we have "surged" forces, it is up dramatically in the belt ringing Baghdad. The civilian death toll increased 15 percent from February to March. Essentially, when we squeeze the water balloon in one place, it bulges somewhere else.
· It is true that Sadr has not been seen, but he has been heard, rallying his followers with anti-American messages and encouraging his thugs to take on American troops in the south. Intelligence experts believe his militia is simply waiting out the surge.
· Closing markets to vehicles has precluded some car bombs, but it also has prompted terrorists to change tactics and walk in with suicide vests. The road from the airport to Baghdad may be safer, but the skies above it are more lethal -- witness the ironic imposition of "no-fly zones" for our own helicopters.
The most damning evidence that the "results" McCain cites are illusory is the city of Tall Afar. Architects of the president's plan called it a model because in 2005, a surge of about 10,000 Americans and Iraqis pacified the city. Then we left Tall Afar, just as our troops soon will leave the Baghdad neighborhoods that they have calmed.
This month, Tall Afar was the scene of some of the most horrific sectarian violence to date: a massive truck bomb aimed at the Shiite community led to a retaliatory rampage by Shiite death squads, aided by the Iraqi police. Hundreds were killed. The population of Tall Afar, 200,000 a few years ago, is down to 80,000.
There is an even more basic problem with McCain's progress report, and it goes to the heart of the choice we face in Iraq. Whatever tactical progress we may be making will amount to nothing if it is not serving a larger strategy for success. Alas, the administration's strategy has virtually no prospects for success.
The administration hopes that the surge will buy time for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to broker the sustainable political settlement our military views as essential to lasting stability in Iraq.
But there is no trust within the government, no trust of the government by the people it purports to serve and no capacity on the part of the government to deliver security or services. There is little prospect that the government will build that trust and capacity anytime soon.
In short, the most basic premise of the president's approach -- that Iraqis will rally behind a strong central government that looks out for their interests equitably -- is fundamentally and fatally flawed.
If the president's plan won't work, what will? History suggests only four other ways to keep together a country riven by sectarian strife:
We allow or help one side to win, which would require years of horrific bloodletting.
We perpetuate the occupation, which is impossible politically and practically.
We promote the return of a dictator, who is not on the horizon but whose emergence would be the cruelest of ironies.
Or we help Iraq make the transition to a decentralized, federal system, as called for in its constitution, where each major group has local control over the fabric of its daily life, including security, education, religion and marriage.
Making federalism work for all Iraqis is a strategy that can still succeed and allow our troops to leave responsibly. It's a strategy I have been promoting for a year.
I cannot guarantee that my plan for Iraq (detailed at http://www.planforiraq.com) will work. But I can guarantee that the course we're on -- the course that a man I admire, John McCain, urges us to continue -- is a road to nowhere.
Five years after Jenin: family members continue to search for bodies
Five years after Jenin: family members continue to search for bodies
Five years have elapsed since the battle and massacre in Jenin Refugee Camp. The memories and scars live on in the northern West Bank where a mother is still searching for the body of her disabled son, Jamal Al Fayad. He was buried, as so many were, under the debris of the hundreds of houses destroyed by American-made bulldozers, F-16s and Apache helicopters.
Five years have elapsed since the battle and massacre in Jenin Refugee Camp. The memories and scars live on in the northern West Bank where a mother is still searching for the body of her disabled son, Jamal Al Fayad. He was buried, as so many were, under the debris of the hundreds of houses destroyed by American-made bulldozers, F-16s and Apache helicopters.
US Defense Secretary to Visit Israel to Sell Weapons
Last update - 02:04 12/04/2007
U.S. defense secretary to visit Israel
WASHINGTON - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will visit Israel next week for a series of meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz on the strategic situation in the Middle East.
The visit, scheduled for April 17, is the first time a U.S. Defense Secretary will be visiting Israel in eight years.
American sources told Haaretz on Tuesday that the visit was decided and a date finalized, though an official announcement on the matter has not been made public.
The visit, which comes about a month after Peretz visited Washington, will also deal with bilateral defense ties between the U.S. and Israel.
Gates was appointed Defense Secretary less than six months ago, replacing Donald Rumsfeld. A planned visit of Rumsfeld to Israel in June 2006 was canceled last minute.
The last U.S. Defense Secretary to have visited Israel was William Cohen, who came in 1999, during the second Clinton administration.
The Gates visit is critical to helping heal the rift in the relations between the U.S. and Israel defense establishments, following the crisis that occured over Israeli's sale of defense equipment to China. In 2005, the U.S. defense establishment placed severe sanctions on Israel, which included restrictions on defense-related sales, joint projects and exchanges of information on advanced weapons systems.
Gates' main mission at this point is to oversea the renewed effort to stabilize Iraq, in light of President George Bush's decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in that country.
American sources told Haaretz yesterday that Gates is interested in hearing what the Israeli leadership thinks about the situation in Iraq. He is also planning to discuss tactics for dealing with the IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) employed by terrorists in Iraq, which have taken a toll on U.S. forces.
Among the bilateral issues to be discussed is Israel's wish to be included once more in the JSF (Joint Strike Fighter) project for the new American strike fighter - from which it was excluded following the China crisis. Senior Israeli officials argued in their recent meetings with American counterparts that it is advisable to include some Israeli sub-systems in the new aircraft. However, the Americans were adamant that they do not intend to make further changes in the design and development of the aircraft.
The Israelis said they raised some of the lessons of the Lebanon war in conversations with their American colleagues and recommended that these should be studied before the JSF development program is finalized.
Another issue of interest to Gates and Israel, and a subject covered extensively last week by the New York Times, is Israel's opposition to the sale of advanced weapons systems to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States.
The American defense establishment is determined to sell these systems to Arab states and will seek a compromise formula in order to prevent supporters of Israel in Congress from foiling the deal. Israel has also expressed interest in procuring a number of advanced systems from the U.S. and it is possible that Washington will agree to reconsider the sale of these to Israel in exchange for an easing of Israeli objections to the Saudi deal.
White House tries to hide ease of tax scam?
Bush may really be trying to block Congress' compelling a federal prisoner to testify. The White House does not want Gitmo prisoners telling all to Congress.
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Politics
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Politics
Prisoner to Testify on Ease of Tax Scam
Morning Edition, April 12, 2007 · The White House doesn't want a federal prisoner to testify at a Senate Finance Committee oversight hearing Thursday. The prisoner is supposed to tell senators how he made thousands of dollars using false tax rebates. The Justice Department had cited security as the reason to block the testimony, but recently gave up on its efforts to do so.
by
Twilight Zone: Pass through the portal to the alternate reality of the War Party’s propagandists
April 9, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
by Gregory Cochran
I think almost everybody has wondered what would have happened if they had made a different choice in life, taken a different path. If you didn’t think of it by yourself, seeing “It’s a Wonderful Life” a few hundred times has probably driven the point home by now.
Many authors have applied this idea to big turning points, writing about alternative histories in which Hitler won World War II (Fatherland) or the South won the Civil War (Bring the Jubilee). The notion may not be pure fantasy: the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that these Worlds-of-If may really exist, although forever unreachable.
Or maybe not so unreachable. A very odd pattern of statements by prominent supporters and members of the Bush administration suggests that we may have some truly unusual visitors—literally out-of-this-world.
You see, the president and his associates keep referring to historical events that never happened, at least not as they did in the fields we know. And they keep referring to the same ahistorical events. Over and over, the secretary of state and the (now former) secretary of defense have referred to guerrilla warfare in Germany after the Nazi surrender. But there just wasn’t any. You can’t find it in the history books or in the memories of people who were there at the time. My uncle was in Bavaria in the summer of 1945: no trouble. Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly talked about the similarities between today’s Iraq and America after the Revolutionary War, but again, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any. I don’t believe we found tortured corpses in the streets of Philadelphia every morning back in 1784. And why does President Bush keep saying that Saddam refused to admit those UN arms inspectors back in 2002 and early 2003? Why did Condoleezza Rice, in 2000, say that Iran was probably backing the Taliban, when in fact the two had almost gone to war in 1998?
Now some might say that these statements were just talking points—that is, lies—but I sure wouldn’t want to accuse anyone of lying. More to the point, there have been many ahistorical statements that are just strange and don’t seem to advance any particular political agenda. For example, when President Bush said that the Japanese lost two carriers sunk and one damaged at the Battle of Midway (instead of losing all four, which is what actually happened), who gained? When POTUS said that Sweden has no army (it does), what political argument was advanced?
We’re talking about the rulers of the most powerful nation on earth. It can’t be that they’re just pig-ignorant—of their own history, yet. There has to be a deeper, more subtle explanation.
We can learn more by examining these statements in detail, including those of the administration’s close supporters. They too keep diverging from the history we know. Recently, Rep. Don Young of Alaska quoted Lincoln as saying, “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.” Lincoln never said that, of course. Cliff May, at National Review, said “President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor.” Pretty fly for a dead guy: FDR passed on just before Germany surrendered, well before the Japanese quit. And anyhow, the first of many Pearl Harbor investigations—the Roberts Commission—started only 11 days after the sneak attack.
More and more, I get the feeling that Bush and his friends come from one of the Worlds-of-If—a sad place, even worse than the one we actually live in, a world in which their odd statements are true.
When tired or stressed, they refer to the history that they lived and learned in school. But their briefing books recount an alternate history in which Iraq in 2002 was not a poor and backward country but the coming threat, as our Germany was in 1938. A history in which America, after the Revolution, was a flaming cesspool like Iraq today, a world in which Lincoln executed unruly legislators. One in which World War II dragged on long after the indecisive Battle of Midway. One in which our occupation of Germany was plagued by guerrilla warfare. One in which we’ve been fighting World War IV with Iran and Syria for 25 years, as Jim Woolsey has repeatedly said. One in which a hostile Islamic Caliphate has bothered to go through the formality of coming into existence.
Close study of such statements might eventually give a rough sketch of that other world’s history. This would be of immense value, for it would allow us to learn much about the inner workings of the historical process, just as the discovery of a different kind of life on Mars would be an epochal event in biology. The fact that a history that diverged from ours at least 200 years ago, judging from the differences in the Revolution, still bears some resemblance to ours—still had a battle of Midway, just not the same battle—suggests that unknown overarching forces constrain the course of events. But the story is never the same in detail.
The casual mention of World War IV strongly implies that these interlopers also had a World War III. They must have suffered greatly—maybe bombed out, likely short on resources such as oil. I would guess that those disasters irretrievably darkened their political perspective, just as our World War I left an entire generation embittered and disaffected. Certainly some kind of civilizational blight is needed to explain Vice President Cheney’s “Dark Lord” shtick.
Somehow they came here, so there must be a gate or portal. Judging from the spatial clustering of identifiable visitors, it’s somewhere in Washington, probably very close to the AEI building. Possibly inside. It may be an accident of nature, or it might be a scientific wonder used for judicial exile, just as bad Kryptonians were sent to the Phantom Zone. You have to wonder about that when you consider the kind of guys they’re sending.
If two-way transfer is possible, there could be vast business opportunities. There are reasons to suspect that science and engineering took a very different path over there: their limited understanding of nuclear weapons—they seem to think that nukes are roughly as easy to build as bottle rockets—suggests that nuclear fission may never have been developed on their timeline. But even if they’re behind us in some areas, they’re likely to be ahead in others. I’d guess that they know far more about torture than we do. Practice makes perfect.
Even if they’ve never split the atom, they have much to offer. The very existence of such a portal is the most significant new scientific result in a century, far more important than any result expected from the most advanced accelerator. The sheer physical presence of Condoleezza Rice on this plane suggests, indeed demands, new physics that may lead to the long-desired marriage of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It’s either this or string theory.
Of course this means that we need to corral some or all of these visitors for study and experimentation. Such experiments would, I suppose, interfere with their civil liberties, if they had any, but they’re obviously not citizens of these United States. Technically they’re illegal aliens. Gitmo’s a-waitin’.
And perhaps we can do more. Obviously this other world is in a sorry state and could stand some saving. They’re our closer-than-brothers—our other selves living in a world gone bad, a world in which the toast always falls butter-side down, a world where Mr. Potter owns the Building and Loan. Undoubtedly an irrepressible desire for freedom burns in every heart there. As soon as possible, we should begin preparing for their liberation.
It will be a cakewalk. .
___________________________________
Gregory Cochran is a physicist and evolutionary biologist.
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
by Gregory Cochran
I think almost everybody has wondered what would have happened if they had made a different choice in life, taken a different path. If you didn’t think of it by yourself, seeing “It’s a Wonderful Life” a few hundred times has probably driven the point home by now.
Many authors have applied this idea to big turning points, writing about alternative histories in which Hitler won World War II (Fatherland) or the South won the Civil War (Bring the Jubilee). The notion may not be pure fantasy: the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that these Worlds-of-If may really exist, although forever unreachable.
Or maybe not so unreachable. A very odd pattern of statements by prominent supporters and members of the Bush administration suggests that we may have some truly unusual visitors—literally out-of-this-world.
You see, the president and his associates keep referring to historical events that never happened, at least not as they did in the fields we know. And they keep referring to the same ahistorical events. Over and over, the secretary of state and the (now former) secretary of defense have referred to guerrilla warfare in Germany after the Nazi surrender. But there just wasn’t any. You can’t find it in the history books or in the memories of people who were there at the time. My uncle was in Bavaria in the summer of 1945: no trouble. Secretary Rumsfeld repeatedly talked about the similarities between today’s Iraq and America after the Revolutionary War, but again, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any. I don’t believe we found tortured corpses in the streets of Philadelphia every morning back in 1784. And why does President Bush keep saying that Saddam refused to admit those UN arms inspectors back in 2002 and early 2003? Why did Condoleezza Rice, in 2000, say that Iran was probably backing the Taliban, when in fact the two had almost gone to war in 1998?
Now some might say that these statements were just talking points—that is, lies—but I sure wouldn’t want to accuse anyone of lying. More to the point, there have been many ahistorical statements that are just strange and don’t seem to advance any particular political agenda. For example, when President Bush said that the Japanese lost two carriers sunk and one damaged at the Battle of Midway (instead of losing all four, which is what actually happened), who gained? When POTUS said that Sweden has no army (it does), what political argument was advanced?
We’re talking about the rulers of the most powerful nation on earth. It can’t be that they’re just pig-ignorant—of their own history, yet. There has to be a deeper, more subtle explanation.
We can learn more by examining these statements in detail, including those of the administration’s close supporters. They too keep diverging from the history we know. Recently, Rep. Don Young of Alaska quoted Lincoln as saying, “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.” Lincoln never said that, of course. Cliff May, at National Review, said “President Roosevelt waited until after World War II to put in place a commission to investigate what mistakes led to Pearl Harbor.” Pretty fly for a dead guy: FDR passed on just before Germany surrendered, well before the Japanese quit. And anyhow, the first of many Pearl Harbor investigations—the Roberts Commission—started only 11 days after the sneak attack.
More and more, I get the feeling that Bush and his friends come from one of the Worlds-of-If—a sad place, even worse than the one we actually live in, a world in which their odd statements are true.
When tired or stressed, they refer to the history that they lived and learned in school. But their briefing books recount an alternate history in which Iraq in 2002 was not a poor and backward country but the coming threat, as our Germany was in 1938. A history in which America, after the Revolution, was a flaming cesspool like Iraq today, a world in which Lincoln executed unruly legislators. One in which World War II dragged on long after the indecisive Battle of Midway. One in which our occupation of Germany was plagued by guerrilla warfare. One in which we’ve been fighting World War IV with Iran and Syria for 25 years, as Jim Woolsey has repeatedly said. One in which a hostile Islamic Caliphate has bothered to go through the formality of coming into existence.
Close study of such statements might eventually give a rough sketch of that other world’s history. This would be of immense value, for it would allow us to learn much about the inner workings of the historical process, just as the discovery of a different kind of life on Mars would be an epochal event in biology. The fact that a history that diverged from ours at least 200 years ago, judging from the differences in the Revolution, still bears some resemblance to ours—still had a battle of Midway, just not the same battle—suggests that unknown overarching forces constrain the course of events. But the story is never the same in detail.
The casual mention of World War IV strongly implies that these interlopers also had a World War III. They must have suffered greatly—maybe bombed out, likely short on resources such as oil. I would guess that those disasters irretrievably darkened their political perspective, just as our World War I left an entire generation embittered and disaffected. Certainly some kind of civilizational blight is needed to explain Vice President Cheney’s “Dark Lord” shtick.
Somehow they came here, so there must be a gate or portal. Judging from the spatial clustering of identifiable visitors, it’s somewhere in Washington, probably very close to the AEI building. Possibly inside. It may be an accident of nature, or it might be a scientific wonder used for judicial exile, just as bad Kryptonians were sent to the Phantom Zone. You have to wonder about that when you consider the kind of guys they’re sending.
If two-way transfer is possible, there could be vast business opportunities. There are reasons to suspect that science and engineering took a very different path over there: their limited understanding of nuclear weapons—they seem to think that nukes are roughly as easy to build as bottle rockets—suggests that nuclear fission may never have been developed on their timeline. But even if they’re behind us in some areas, they’re likely to be ahead in others. I’d guess that they know far more about torture than we do. Practice makes perfect.
Even if they’ve never split the atom, they have much to offer. The very existence of such a portal is the most significant new scientific result in a century, far more important than any result expected from the most advanced accelerator. The sheer physical presence of Condoleezza Rice on this plane suggests, indeed demands, new physics that may lead to the long-desired marriage of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It’s either this or string theory.
Of course this means that we need to corral some or all of these visitors for study and experimentation. Such experiments would, I suppose, interfere with their civil liberties, if they had any, but they’re obviously not citizens of these United States. Technically they’re illegal aliens. Gitmo’s a-waitin’.
And perhaps we can do more. Obviously this other world is in a sorry state and could stand some saving. They’re our closer-than-brothers—our other selves living in a world gone bad, a world in which the toast always falls butter-side down, a world where Mr. Potter owns the Building and Loan. Undoubtedly an irrepressible desire for freedom burns in every heart there. As soon as possible, we should begin preparing for their liberation.
It will be a cakewalk. .
___________________________________
Gregory Cochran is a physicist and evolutionary biologist.
NYT Editorial on Iraq's Long Slide: 'There is no possible triumph in Iraq and very little hope left'
Four Years Later in Iraq
Four years ago this week, as American troops made their first, triumphant entrance into Baghdad, joyous Iraqis pulled down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein. It was powerful symbolism — a murderous dictator toppled, Baghdadis taking to the streets without fear, American soldiers hailed as liberators.
After four years of occupation, untold numbers killed by death squads and suicide bombers, and searing experiences like Abu Ghraib, few Iraqis still look on American soldiers as liberators. Instead, thousands marked this week’s anniversary by burning American flags and marching through the streets of Najaf chanting, “Death to America.”
Iraq policy 'spawned new terror'
The British and US policy towards Iraq has "spawned new terror in the region", a think tank report has said.
The countries had tried to "keep the lid on" problems by military force and had failed to address the root causes, the Oxford Research Group warned.
It said Iran, Syria and North Korea had become "emboldened", while the Taleban was on the rise in Afghanistan.
The UK government said the past decade of foreign policy had been effective and action in Iraq was "justified".
Global instability
It comes as a separate report from Oxfam said the Iraq invasion had "seriously undermined" Britain's reputation.
However, the charity warns Britain must not be reluctant to send in troops to deal with future humanitarian crises.
| We are looking at a highly unstable global system by the middle years of the century unless urgent action is taken now Chris Abbott Oxford Research Group |
In a report a year ago, the Oxford Research Group (ORG) highlighted four areas that it said were contributing to world instability.
Climate change, competition for increasingly scarce resources, marginalisation of the majority of the world's population as socio-economic divisions widen, and the increasing use of military force and the further spread of military technologies were all threats.
Its latest report said these issues were still the greatest threats, but added that the ongoing war on terror and the war in Iraq were increasing the risk of future terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11.
"Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror... created a combat training zone for jihadists," it says.
Lead study author Chris Abbott said: "There is a clear and present danger - an increasingly marginalised majority living in an environmentally constrained world, where military force is more likely to be used to control the consequences of these dangerous divisions.
"Add to this the disastrous effects of climate change, and we are looking at a highly unstable global system by the middle years of the century unless urgent action is taken now."
Iran's nuclear plan
The report, Beyond Terror: The Truth About the Real Threats to Our World, said any military intervention in Iran would be "disastrous". However, it warned that Iran should not be allowed to develop civil nuclear power.
"This would involve the development of facilities that are potential terrorist targets, as well as encourage the spread of technology and materials that could be used in the development of nuclear weapons," the report said.
It also added that the British government's decision to replace its nuclear submarine system Trident could "substantially encourage" other states to develop nuclear weapons.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the past decade of foreign policy had been effective and that the military action in Iraq was "justified".
"We have rightly focused on 'hard' security issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone as well as 'softer' issues such as climate change and poverty eradication," he added.