Thursday, April 26, 2007
Jose Padilla and the Zucchini Prosecution
By Mike Whitney
The case against Jose Padilla would be funny if a man’s life hadn’t been ruined in the process---but it has. The Bush administration has leapt from one absurd accusation to the next completely undisturbed by the glaring inconsistencies of their case. The prosecution’s objective is the same now as it was 5 years ago when the Chicago gang-banger was first arrested at O’ Hare Airport as an alleged “dirty bomber”, that is, keep Padilla behind bars for the rest of his life.
The government has no case against Padilla and they know it. He’s merely a lab-rat in their experiment to expand presidential powers. The Washington Post even admitted this in an article earlier this week, “Few Specifics Evident as Padilla Trial Nears” 4-23-07. Padilla had no nuclear material, no plan to attack apartment buildings, and no part in any terrorist conspiracy. It’s all baloney. In 5 years, the government hasn’t produced a shred of evidence that Padilla is guilty of anything.
Nothing—zippo! In fact, according to the Washington Post, the government’s case “lacks anything about the defendant being involved in ANY particular plot in the United States OR ANYWHERE ELSE”.
So, why has this travesty been allowed to continue for so long?
Padilla has been in solitary confinement for the last 5 years. During that time he was drugged, humiliated, and tortured—all of the practices which have become commonplace under Bush. For the first 4 years he was deprived of habeas corpus and legal counsel. During that period, he was never charged with a crime. He was simply declared an “enemy combatant” and stripped of his rights. His arrest has been used to establish the precedent that Bush can arbitrarily imprison American citizens without filing charges. It is the very definition of tyranny.
But this is old news. What’s new is that the media’s coverage of Padilla has grown strangely sympathetic. The Washington Post, which has been one of the strongest backers of Bush’s foreign adventurism, has been considerably less supportive of his attack on civil liberties. The Post criticized the weakness of the government’s case and the woeful lack of evidence connecting Padilla to a crime. The prosecution even admits that the charges are “hard to particularize” and that the defendant cannot be “linked to a particular violent act or terrorist group.” This explains the skepticism of U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke who said (with some irony) that the indictment “is very light on facts”.
Nevertheless, the Padilla case is going forward even though there is no evidence of a crime---just the possibility that Padilla might do something illegal in the future. The parallels to Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” have not been lost on Padilla’s defense team who characterized the government’s case as “the ethereal nature of an alleged conspiracy.”
By “ethereal” we assume they mean hogwash.
The Post does a good job of exposing the flaws in the prosecution’s case, but stops short of saying the charges are baseless and without merit. They know what Bush and his legal team are up to and what extraordinary steps they will take to reach their goal. They are trying to convict a man (and possibly send him to his death) without producing any witnesses or evidence of a crime. If they succeed, Bush will be able to ignore the law and arrest whomever he chooses. That doesn’t mean the outcome of the trial is certain. Far from it. In fact, it’ll be hard to prove Padilla’s guilt with nothing but conjecture and demagoguery.
Presently, the government is charging Padilla as a material witness in a “conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim”. But they have no proof.
They say that he is part of a “North American support cell that’s part of a vast international movement of foot soldiers, recruiters and financiers who foment violent jihad around the globe.”
Again, there is no of this.
They say that he signed a “mujahideen data form”; an “application form that was recovered from a reputed Al Qaida base.”
Even if Padilla did sign this silly-sounding jihad application, (which is still in doubt) that's guilt by association---it doesn’t prove that he was involved in the commission of a crime.
The prosecution’s case depends on convincing jurors that Padilla was secretly preparing Al Qaida forces for another terrorist attack. They have submitted wiretapped phone conversations which (they believe) implicate him in a conspiracy. But do they? The conversations prove nothing. In fact, they're ridiculous. They are merely recordings of Padilla with some unknown person talking in code about spending “$3500 to buy zucchini”.
“Zucchini”?
Is that it? Is that the government's case? Is it really worth keeping a man behind bars for 5 years and driving him mad because he talks about zucchini on the phone?
What about rhubarb?
Even the Post cannot relay the details of the “The Zucchini Prosecution” without a hint of derision. The Post’s reporter, Peter Whoriskey, mockingly notes that while the government’s case is short on “violent specifics”; it is “rich in atmospherics.”
Indeed. The entire case appears to be built on “atmospherics” rather than facts. The prosecution has no more evidence now than they did when they began this witch-hunt. Federal Prosecutor Brian Frazier admitted as much when he was asked about the vague nature of the charges.
Frazier said they were “hard to particularize” and that they revolve around an “inchoate crime…rather than any completed operation”.
“Inchoate”?
So, Frazier is admitting that the alleged crime was still in its embryonic stages? That it hadn’t yet been committed!?!
Get this: Jose Padilla just spent 5 years in solitary confinement for a crime, which the government now admits, never took place.
The notion that a man can be imprisoned without proof of a crime is “preemptive justice”, which is no justice at all. It denies the “presumption of innocence” and cedes absolute power to the state.
The court needs to put an end to this nonsense and dismiss the case for lack of evidence. This fiasco has gone on long enough. No one should be caged like an animal for half a decade for talking about zucchini on the phone.
Padilla should be released.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
Maybe the authors of the Federalist Papers were liars. Maybe they were just engaged in political propaganda in order to shove through the Constitution. In secret, perhaps, they were plotting a Leviathan state with a president who can do all that the Bush administration claims he can, which pretty much amounts to whatever Bush wants to do.
If that was the case, they knew better than to advertise it. The Constitution would never have passed. Fear of a powerful president was one of the main reasons that people were fearful of abandoning the Articles of Confederation, which had no executive to speak of.
Recall that the founders had long tangled with the king in England. The entire Declaration of Independence was a personal attack on him and his policies. These were the days of “personal states” in the sense that a government was still thought to be the private property of a monarch. The bad aspect of this system was that the king could become a tyrant. The good aspect was that people knew whom to target to end the tyranny or, in the case of the founders, whom to denounce in the course of a political separation.
As an alternative to the personal executive state, the founders (perhaps naïvely) believed that they could create a Roman-style republic with a twist. There would be a head of state, but he would be controlled by a legislature. In fact, controlling the president would be the main job of the legislature. The founders went this one better by refusing to invest much power in the central government. Instead, the powers were decentralized and belonged to the member states.
The anti-federalists were skeptical. How can you create a presidency and not expect it to become corrupt? Alexander Hamilton was absolutely reassuring in Federalist 69. He said that the president bears no resemblance at all “to the Grand Seignior, to the khan of Tartary, to the Man of the Seven Mountains, or to the governor of New York.” He concedes that the president has some resemblance to the king of Britain, but there are important and critical differences. He would only be president for four years, which is too little time “for establishing a dangerous influence in a single State.”
He raises a point that was very much central to the minds of that generation. A king cannot be removed from office through peaceful means. In contrast, the president “would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.”
Yes, said Hamilton, the president is commander in chief of the military. But this power is only “occasional”: when the legislature has authorized the military for actual service. He has no power to declare war or to raise and regulate armies. All these powers “appertain to the legislature.” Finally, he reminds us, if any powers are abused—such as the power of pardon—the president can be impeached immediately.
One gathers from these passages a vision of the president as a temporary manager, doing only what the legislature approves, always under the relentless threat of impeachment. Presidents would come and go, and they would be in fear of the legislature. One misstep and they could be tossed out. Oh, and by the way, the president can’t get rid of the legislature except in one narrow case: he can adjourn them when they otherwise can’t agree on how or when to leave.
What about his powers? He can negotiate treaties and commercial agreements. He can welcome ambassadors. Everything else can only be done with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Was Hamilton a liar? He is usually presented as the advocate of presidential supremacy and certainly he went much farther than the Jeffersonians in his view of government. He was an extremist by any standard. He favored leviathan by comparison to the anti-federalists. And yet, from his own writings, the president in his vision of the Constitution is nothing more than a hired manager with few powers, and those not trivial are subject to the legislature. If he abuses power, he goes to the gallows in the republican fashion: he is impeached.
How does this contrast with the view of the Bush administration? It is opposite in every respect. Consider the claim of John Yoo, author of The Powers of War and Peace, the bible of the Bush administration’s claim of totalitarian powers in war, and the reputed author of most of the Bush administration’s torture policies. Yoo’s book is a twisted mess, an attempt to justify reading the founding period in an opposite way from its historical reality. It’s like arguing that King Lear is a comedy, that Beethoven was second rate, or that the Bible endorses Satanism. There is always someone around to make any crazy claim you want, and if you are the ruling party, intellectuals will crawl out of the woodwork to say what you want them to say.
In any case, this book by Yoo dismisses the whole of what Hamiliton says in Federalist 69 as “rhetorical excess.” And an article in the Boston Globe quotes him as saying that “Fed 69 should not be read for more than what it is worth.” Why? Because all presidents since FDR have used the imaginary war power to do their dirty tricks.
This is an interesting argument. It says that because some tyrants have violated the Constitution, all presidents should presume the right to be tyrants in the manner in which the Constitution’s framers tried to guard against. Now if some intellectuals set out to say that the Constitution is really just a myth, that our past doesn’t matter, that the founders’ intentions are irrelevant, that the rule of law is and should be a dead letter, that would be one thing. We would be back to the fundamental debate of liberty versus despotism.
Instead, keep in mind that the people arguing for executive dictatorship fashion themselves as conservatives. Contrast this with the genuine conservatism of Robert Taft, who saw the postwar period as a time to set matters right and return to first principles. He attacked Truman for his Cold War forays and stated clearly that Congress alone has authority to declare war and manage foreign policy. FDR’s attitude toward his power, Taft wrote, was inconsistent with our heritage.
To return to my original question: what if the authors of the Federalist Papers were liars? This is not as crazy a theory as it might sound. Patrick Henry believed that they were, which is why he opposed the Constitution to begin with. It was too much of a risk, he said, to create any sort of president: “If your American chief be a man of ambition and abilities, how easy is it for him to render himself absolute!”
Patrick Henry lost the debate because enough people believed that Hamilton was sincere in his promises and that the president would be restrained. So let us be clear about what the advocates of executive rule are really saying. They are saying things that if they had been said to that founding generation of Americans would have prevented the Constitution from ever being passed. But it did pass. So until we can restore the Articles, let’s live up to the Constitution, and stop the dissembling, especially in the name of “conservatism.”
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., is founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and editor of LewRockwell.com.
McCain 2008 Ad on Daily Kos: "Surrender is not an option"
by atticus
Apr 26, 2007
MCCain 2008? Surrender is not an option ? WTF
Get that crap advertisment off of here does daily kos really need that kind of money?
Permalink | 54 comments
---
Related
McCain 2008 Ad on Daily Kos: "Surrender is not an option"
by atticus
Apr 26, 2007
MCCain 2008? Surrender is not an option ? WTF
Get that crap advertisment off of here does daily kos really need that kind of money?
Permalink | 54 comments
---
Related
Frameshop: MCCAIN IS NOT AN OPTION (sign the petition today)
Replacements waiting in wings as Renzi ponders resignation
Embattled Arizona Republican Congressman Rick Renzi may resign from office in the wake of a federal investigation into his involvement in land-swap deal and an FBI raid on an Arizona insurance business owned by his wife.
Renzi told The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C., this week that he was considering stepping down.
Democrats are looking to oust Renzi and some top Republicans in the state, who asked not be identified, are talking about the possibly of Renzi's resignation.
The Hill also reported that the federal inquiry is focused on possible nondisclosure of a $200,000 payment made to Renzi by a business partner involved in the land swap. The Wall Street Journal reports that a grand jury has been convened in Tucson to look into Renzi's actions.
Taxes and links with government contractor Mantech International also have come into question, according sources familiar with the Renzi controversy.
Renzi has hired Phoenix attorney Grant Woods as well as Washington, D.C., law firm Nixon Peabody LLP to help him in the matter.
Renzi's office has not commented on the matter since Tuesday, when the congressman issued a statement saying he was stepping down temporarily from congressional panels. Renzi has denied any wrongdoing and said press accounts and Democratic charges are inaccurate.
A number of names on both sides of the political aisle have been mentioned if Renzi's steps down and there is a special election or if he opts not to run again in 2008.
Possible Democratic contenders include former Casa Grande Mayor Bob Mitchell, real estate developer and former state Democratic Party Chairman Jim Pederson, Sedona attorney Ellen Simon, Pinal County Attorney Carter Olson and former Phoenix TV news reporter Mary Kim Titla. Simon ran against Renzi in 2006 and Bob Mitchell is the brother of Tempe/Scottsdale Congressman Harry Mitchell.
On the GOP side, former state Senate President Ken Bennett, state Sen. Tom O'Halleran and state Rep. Bill Konopnicki are possible contenders.
Renzi's district is a competitive one, including Flagstaff, Window Rock, Sedona, Casa Grande and Prescott.
The FBI raided Patriot Insurance Agency Inc. in southern Arizona earlier this month. The agency is owned by Roberta Renzi. The Renzi family also owns a vineyard and has had real estate holdings in the state. Renzi's father, Eugene Renzi, is an executive with Virginia-based Mantech.
Why the Main Stream Media is Full of Shit
Thursday, 26 April 2007
by Larry C Johnson
Just logged on to get some details on the Senate vote to approve funds for our troops in Iraq while setting a deadline to require the start of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. And what is the media focused on? The "narrow" victory of 56-41 and the fact that Joe Lieberman voted with the Republicans. Take a gander at the AP and NY Times versions:
Ann Flaherty reports that The 51-46 vote was largely along party lines, and like House passage of the same bill a day earlier, fell far short of the two-thirds margin needed to overturn the president's threatened veto. Nevertheless, the legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to send to Bush since they reclaimed control of both houses of Congress in January.
NY Times reporters, Hulse and Zeleny, write--The 51-46 vote, far short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override Mr. Bush’s veto, came after a morning-long debate in which supporters of the bill called it a way to make the Iraqis take responsibility for their own security, while opponents called it a blueprint for defeat.
Why do they ignore the important story?
Two Republicans--Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith--voted with the Democrats. And John McCain and Lindsey Graham were AWOL. There's the key story.
The Senate is within striking distance of overriding a Bush veto. Yet the mainstream media insists there is virtually no chance.
That is why I think they are generally completely full of shit.
Ann Wright speaks about the war with Iraq and the possibility of war with Iran
Ann Wright - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
---
April 26th, 2007
Ann Wright speaks at Brown University
Ann Wright speaking at Brown University on April 16, 2006 about the war with Iraq and the possibility of war with Iran. Filmed by Paul Hubbard.
Thank you Ann and Paul for sending this to us!
Scott Ritter - Target Iran
Part 1
“War will not solve any problem we face with Iran.”
Scott Ritter, former Major of the US Marines and Chief UNSCOM Weapons Inspector in Iraq, spoke on the folly of war with Iran in the General Pershing Room of the War Memorial, Indianapolis, IN on April 18, 2007.
This is Part 1 - his presentation in the program “US Policy in the Middle East; Target Iran and the role of Congress.”
Clips from the Q and A will follow. He spoke on a two person panel with the Honorable Andy Jacobs, former Congressperson from Indiana.
The program was sponsored by Veterans for Peace, Indiana Chapter #49, Indianapolis Peace House & Plowshares, Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center, and Traprock Peace Center.
Moderator: Pierre Atlas
Political Science Professor and Director of Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian College
Video recorded and edited by Charles Jenks; © 2007 Traprock Peace Center; all rights reserved. Contact: charles@traprockpeace.org
http://www.traprockpeace.org
Will Gitmo Be with Us Forever?
Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, Will Gitmo Be with Us Forever?
Back in September 2006, I wrote a post, "The Facts on the Ground, Mini-Gulags, Hired Guns, Lobbyists, and a Reality Built on Fear," in which I wondered whether any new administration, any new president would ever be able to take real steps toward ridding our world of the realities created by the Bush administration -- like, for instance, our second "Defense Department," the sprawling, ill-organized, incompetent Department of Homeland Security (and the billions and billions of dollars in "security" interests that have already grown up around it), or the military's unprecedented new North American Command (Northcom). Noting that a little publicized $30-million maximum-security wing at Guantanamo was just then being completed by the U.S. Navy and that the American prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan had also just undergone an upgrade (as more recently has Camp Cropper, one of our two main prisons in Iraq), I wondered whether a future president would even be capable of shutting down Guantanamo, no less our whole secret, offshore Bermuda Triangle of injustice (and the various "extraordinary rendition" operations that go with it).
As that question refused to quit my brain, I finally asked Karen J. Greenberg, Tomdispatch regular, recent visitor to Guantanamo, co-editor of The Torture Papers, and Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, to give the problem some serious thought. It seemed to me that a president who couldn't, or wouldn't, shut down Guantanamo would be unlikely to do much else that really mattered in our world. Here is her measured response. Any bets on whether it happens? Tom
Can Guantanamo Be Closed?
What a New President Could Do
By Karen J. GreenbergA surprising number of Americans of note are in agreement. Guantanamo should be closed. The New York Times and the human rights community have, of course, called for it to be shut down, but so has the new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. So has President Bush. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has given indications that she seconds Bush's call. Senator John McCain has said he would close the prison immediately upon becoming president.
On the Democratic side, while John Edwards and Bill Richardson have both called for Guantanamo's closing, the larger field of Democratic candidates has remained curiously silent on the subject. Do they know something we don't? Admittedly, one Democratic Congressman, James Moran of Virginia, has mentioned the possibility of including funds to close Guantanamo in the 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill, but the leading Democratic presidential hopefuls have as yet said very little about Guantanamo.
Perhaps they sense the Pandora's box of conundrums that would be unleashed in any genuine attempt to shut the place down. It's easy enough -- almost a no-brainer -- to say you want to close Guantanamo. After all, along with those photos from Abu Ghraib, the now-infamous extra-legal detention facility in Cuba has made the American government globally synonymous with the revocation of international law, the disregard of U.S. law, and the torture and abuse of prisoners or, as the Bush administration prefers to call them, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Actually closing Gitmo, however, is another matter entirely. The hard part is fleshing out the next thought: How exactly would you go about it? As Secretary of State Rice said recently, "The president would close Guantánamo tomorrow if someone could answer the question: And what will you do with the dangerous people who are there?" Congressman John Murtha has made a similar point: Knowing how to shut down Guantanamo -- given the set of nearly intractable legal knots the Bush administration has tied the prison complex and its detainees up in -- is "not that easy."
Perhaps those Democratic presidential candidates, realizing exactly this, are only waiting for some direction on the subject. So let's do our best to separate the wheat from the chaff and focus on what it would really take to move beyond words to action, when it comes to the most notorious prison complex on planet Earth.
First, let's get clear just what -- and who -- we're talking about. Forget those fourteen "high value" detainees, including Ramsi Binalshibh and Khaled Sheik Mohammed, whom the President suddenly transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006 -- finally, five years late, bringing the "worst of the worst" to the facility (as the administration had promised to do at its opening). These 14 are almost certain to be tried and convicted before this administration leaves office under the much-redesigned, jerry-rigged military commissions process it already has shakily in place.
Let's forget as well the nearly 100 detainees who have been cleared for transfer or release, many of them now in a new category -- "No Longer Enemy Combatants" -- and all of them waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the State Department to find countries willing enough to take them in. Nor are we talking about the 65 to 70 detainees who are considered culpable enough to be tried by some sort of military commission before January 2009.
The real problem -- the conundrum wrapped in an enigma -- comes with another group. At present, there are in Gitmo perhaps 160 detainees (as the public affairs staff at the facility told me), who will most likely never be charged, never be tried, and may nonetheless never be sent home. It's a category without a name, or really any precedent -- a category that all too conveniently defies solution and so keeps Guantanamo in operation.
For all prospective Gitmo closers, then, the question is: What are we going to do with individuals the Bush administration doesn't pretend to have sufficient evidence to try (even under its own deficient military commission process), but who, officials claim, are too full of potentially useful information to release? There are a few ideas floating around out there.
There is the suggestion that we transfer them to military prisons inside the United States. Sen. McCain suggested Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; Congressman Moran has urged military brigs in the five states within the jurisdiction of the extremely conservative 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which might be likely to look the other way as prisoners are detained on American soil without recourse of any sort for the rest of their lives.
The other choices are stark: Return these detainees to their countries of origin; find an unlikely third country willing to accept them (possibly in return for some kind of financial quid pro quo) and not likely to torture them; or, of course, when all else fails and the obvious alternatives (each of which presents its own set of problems) seem to lead nowhere, leave them where they are -- and leave Gitmo open for business.
So let's try a little harder. How could a new president extricate us from this mess? The next occupant of the White House should start by accepting the following very American principle: Those who are not going to be charged with a crime should be returned to their home country, a third country, or the country where they were initially captured .
Behind this principle lies a reality which must also be accepted. The current Guantanamo debacle has little to do with the rule of law, the Geneva Conventions, or even, for that matter, a realistic assessment of the more pressing terrorist threats to the United States. At its heart of hearts lies a simple fear of political embarrassment.
U.S. officials have consistently held that they are guarding vital national security interests by keeping the never-to-be-charged detainees in custody. However, the sad truth is that, when it comes to most of these prisoners, what's really been at stake is the administration's need to save face by concealing its utter ineptitude. Privately, even Bush administration officials will acknowledge that the detainees were captured and sent to Gitmo capriciously. Rather than housing the "worst of the worst" (as the administration has regularly bragged), Gitmo penned up the easiest to grab, especially in Afghanistan. Often these were simply the individuals that local bounty hunters could provide or who were found on or near the battlefield. Many were put on planes to Guantanamo based on nothing but an American unwillingness to assert with confidence that they would never be a threat to the United States. Instead of masterminds, what the Bush administration netted were cooks, chauffeurs, wanderers, the mentally deranged, and -- sometimes -- children.
When an administration defiantly adverse to ever admitting error decided not to send home those who had been seized by mistake, it set itself a trap that it has been unable to escape to this day. Any presidential candidates who hope not to be similarly trapped might consider the following:
The Bush administration is already releasing the wrongly detained. Detainee by detainee, it has been quietly whittling away at its mistakes, sending home 385 detainees who look no more or less guilty than those remaining in custody.
Releasing all detainees who are not going to be charged restores judgment and the rule of law where irrational fear and a Commander-in-Chief presidency have reigned supreme. When asked to explain the threat posed by such detainees, officials and public relations officers at Guantanamo are quick to name the kind of venomous hate-speech that leaps from the mouths of people imprisoned without hope, under generally horrific conditions, for year upon year. The most notorious example of the supposed dangers posed by these detainees has been the Australian kangaroo skinner and Taliban convert David Hicks, who supposedly threatened to hurt American guards and their families if ever released. But there are undoubtedly plenty of other examples as well. Consistently, Guantanamo officials have acted as if angry words held magical powers, as if talking jihad could make it happen. Unfortunately, Gitmo is, by now, a delusional system in a non-judicial bubble, lacking any calming, rational presence, or anyone who can distinguish between something as simple as an angry rant and serious danger.
It is time to return to a system in which terrorists are tried in courts based on actual evidence. Unless this principle is accepted, Guantanamo won't be closed because there will always be U.S. prisoners who can't be tried and will never be freed.
A corollary to this that must be accepted is: There can be no absolute guarantee that some of the 160 former detainees, once freed and returned, won't commit acts of terror. But in the exponential growth of terrorist threats in recent years, particularly in the wake of the Bush administration's war in Iraq, a few of these small fry simply don't add up to a significant menace. After five years of interrogation, incarceration, and often long periods of isolation, many of them are, in any case, now deemed broken men. If any of them do prove threatening, let them be captured anew and tried for actual acts or plans on any of the many legal grounds available to law enforcement.
To shut Guantanamo, a future president would have to accede to another proposition as well: Those at Gitmo convicted of crimes should serve their sentences in U.S. military prisons on U.S. soil. Opponents insist that this would "endanger" Americans. According to Senator Jim DeMint, "To bring known terrorists, many of whom have killed Americans, to our shores risks the lives of additional Americans and encourages more attacks on our soil." Does Senator DeMint actually believe this? Does he truly consider the U.S. military incapable of keeping convicted prisoners under lock and key? How would a future president weigh such doubts against the giant sigh of relief the world at large would heave when the last door opened on the last cell in Guantanamo?
There is one additional point -- so self-evident that, to date, no one has thought to mention it -- all candidates should agree on: Bring no new prisoners to Guantanamo.
Earlier this year, I spoke with a group of burka-clad Muslim women in London who feared that friends or family members now in custody might be transferred to Guantanamo. I dismissed their comments as outdated and their fears as misplaced.
I assured them that, outside of the 14 high-value detainees, the Bush administration hasn't sent a single new prisoner to Guantanamo since late 2004. But, as it turned out, they knew something I didn't. Last month, a little story appeared in the back pages of some American newspapers. The United States had indeed moved its first new captive to Guantanamo in over two years -- and, according to the Washington buzz, more such detainees can be expected sooner or later, either from a war in Iran or some other "front" in the administration's global counterterrorism offensive.
To sum up: Separate Guantanamo from a new detention policy based on the rule of law.
It would behoove the next president -- and benefit the nation -- to close Guantanamo as a sign of starting anew. It should be the first order of global business for anyone entering the Oval Office. The next order of business should be the formation of a bipartisan commission to help settle national policy on the detention of foreign prisoners in any future anti-terror operations. The sooner this commission is formed, the better.
And here's one final piece of advice: These days it may seem un-American, but perhaps a simple, heartfelt apology to the angry innocents who were held all these years might be in order. More than anything, what Guantanamo needs is an American president with genuine guts, a man or woman who is willing to demonstrate that leadership is about making the hard choices, knowledgeably, openly, and with accountability.
Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law and the editor of The Torture Debate in America and (with Joshua Dratel) The Torture Papers.
Copyright 2007 Karen J. Greenberg
Barack Obama: Neocon Warrior
---
Remarks of Senator Barack Obama to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
April 23, 2007
Good morning. We all know that these are not the best of times for America’s reputation in the world. We know what the war in Iraq has cost us in lives and treasure, in influence and respect. We have seen the consequences of a foreign policy based on a flawed ideology, and a belief that tough talk can replace real strength and vision.
Many around the world are disappointed with our actions. And many in our own country have come to doubt either our wisdom or our capacity to shape events beyond our borders. Some have even suggested that America’s time has passed.
But while we know what we have lost as a consequence of this tragic war, I also know what I have found in my travels over the past two years.
In an old building in Ukraine, I saw test tubes filled with anthrax and the plague lying virtually unlocked and unguarded – dangers we were told could only be secured with America’s help.
On a trip to the Middle East, I met Israelis and Palestinians who told me that peace remains a distant hope without the promise of American leadership.
At a camp along the border of Chad and Darfur, refugees begged for America to step in and help stop the genocide that has taken their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.
And along the crowded streets of Kenya, I met throngs of children who asked if they’d ever get the chance to visit that magical place called America.
So I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.
I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so. This President may occupy the White House, but for the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open. And it’s time to fill that role once more.
I believe that the single most important job of any President is to protect the American people. And I am equally convinced that doing that job effectively in the 21st century will require a new vision of American leadership and a new conception of our national security – a vision that draws from the lessons of the past, but is not bound by outdated thinking.
In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. When narco-trafficking and corruption threaten democracy in Latin America, it’s America’s problem too. When poor villagers in Indonesia have no choice but to send chickens to market infected with avian flu, it cannot be seen as a distant concern. When religious schools in Pakistan teach hatred to young children, our children are threatened as well.
Whether it’s global terrorism or pandemic disease, dramatic climate change or the proliferation of weapons of mass annihilation, the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries.
The horrific attacks on that clear September day awakened us to this new reality. And after 9/11, millions around the world were ready to stand with us. They were willing to rally to our cause because it was their cause too – because they knew that if America led the world toward a new era of global cooperation, it would advance the security of people in our nation and all nations.
We now know how badly this Administration squandered that opportunity. In 2002, I stated my opposition to the war in Iraq, not only because it was an unnecessary diversion from the struggle against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, but also because it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the threats that 9/11 brought to light. I believed then, and believe now, that it was based on old ideologies and outdated strategies – a determination to fight a 21st century struggle with a 20th century mindset.
There is no doubt that the mistakes of the past six years have made our current task more difficult. World opinion has turned against us. And after all the lives lost and the billions of dollars spent, many Americans may find it tempting to turn inward, and cede our claim of leadership in world affairs.
I insist, however, that such an abandonment of our leadership is a mistake we must not make. America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America. We must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission – we must lead the world, by deed and example.
We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people. We must lead by marshalling a global effort to stop the spread of the world’s most dangerous weapons. We must lead by building and strengthening the partnerships and alliances necessary to meet our common challenges and defeat our common threats.
And America must lead by reaching out to all those living disconnected lives of despair in the world’s forgotten corners – because while there will always be those who succumb to hate and strap bombs to their bodies, there are millions more who want to take another path – who want our beacon of hope to shine its light their way.
This election offers us the chance to turn the page and open a new chapter in American leadership. The disappointment that so many around the world feel toward America right now is only a testament to the high expectations they hold for us. We must meet those expectations again, not because being respected is an end in itself, but because the security of America and the wider world demands it.
This will require a new spirit – not of bluster and bombast, but of quiet confidence and sober intelligence, a spirit of care and renewed competence. It will also require a new leader. And as a candidate for President of the United States, I am asking you to entrust me with that responsibility.
There are five ways America will begin to lead again when I’m President. Five ways to let the world know that we are committed to our common security, invested in our common humanity, and still a beacon of freedom and justice for the world.
The first way America will lead is by bringing a responsible end to this war in Iraq and refocusing on the critical challenges in the broader region.
In a speech five months ago, I argued that there can be no military solution to what has become a political conflict between Sunni and Shi’a factions. And I laid out a plan that I still believe offers the best chance of pressuring these warring factions toward a political settlement – a phased withdrawal of American forces with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31st, 2008.
I acknowledged at the time that there are risks involved in such an approach. That is why my plan provides for an over-the-horizon force that could prevent chaos in the wider region, and allows for a limited number of troops to remain in Iraq to fight al Qaeda and other terrorists.
But my plan also makes clear that continued U.S. commitment to Iraq depends on the Iraqi government meeting a series of well-defined benchmarks necessary to reach a political settlement. Thus far, the Iraqi government has made very little progress in meeting any of the benchmarks, in part because the President has refused time and again to tell the Iraqi government that we will not be there forever. The President’s escalation of U.S. forces may bring a temporary reduction in the violence in Baghdad, at the price of increased U.S. casualties – though the experience so far is not encouraging. But it cannot change the political dynamic in Iraq. A phased withdrawal can.
Moreover, until we change our approach in Iraq, it will be increasingly difficult to refocus our efforts on the challenges in the wider region – on the conflict in the Middle East, where Hamas and Hezbollah feel emboldened and Israel’s prospects for a secure peace seem uncertain; on Iran, which has been strengthened by the war in Iraq; and on Afghanistan, where more American forces are needed to battle al Qaeda, track down Osama bin Laden, and stop that country from backsliding toward instability.
Burdened by Iraq, our lackluster diplomatic efforts leave a huge void. Our interests are best served when people and governments from Jerusalem and Amman to Damascus and Tehran understand that America will stand with our friends, work hard to build a peaceful Middle East, and refuse to cede the future of the region to those who seek perpetual conflict and instability. Such effective diplomacy cannot be done on the cheap, nor can it be warped by an ongoing occupation of Iraq. Instead, it will require patient, sustained effort, and the personal commitment of the President of the United States. That is a commitment I intend to make.
The second way America will lead again is by building the first truly 21st century military and showing wisdom in how we deploy it.
We must maintain the strongest, best-equipped military in the world in order to defeat and deter conventional threats. But while sustaining our technological edge will always be central to our national security, the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face. This is why our country’s greatest military asset is the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States.
This administration’s first Secretary of Defense proudly acknowledged that he had inherited the greatest fighting force in the nation’s history. Six years later, he handed over a force that has been stretched to the breaking point, understaffed, and struggling to repair its equipment.
Two-thirds of the Army is now rated “not ready” for combat. 88% of the National Guard is not ready to deploy overseas, and many units cannot respond to a domestic emergency.
Our men and women in uniform are performing heroically around the world in some of the most difficult conditions imaginable. But the war in Afghanistan and the ill-advised invasion of Iraq have clearly demonstrated the consequences of underestimating the number of troops required to fight two wars and defend our homeland. That’s why I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.
But adding troops isn’t just about meeting a quota. It’s about recruiting the best and brightest to service, and it’s about keeping them in service by providing them with the first-rate equipment, armor, training, and incentives they deserve. It’s about providing funding to enable the National Guard to achieve an adequate state of readiness again. And it’s about honoring our veterans by giving them the respect and dignity they deserve and the care and benefits they have earned.
A 21st century military will also require us to invest in our men and women’s ability to succeed in today’s complicated conflicts. We know that on the streets of Baghdad, a little bit of Arabic can actually provide security to our soldiers. Yet, just a year ago, less than 1% of the American military could speak a language such as Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Urdu, or Korean. It’s time we recognize these as critical skills for our military, and it’s time we recruit and train for them.
Former Secretary Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the Army you have, not the one you want.” I say that if the need arises when I’m President, the Army we have will be the Army we need.
Of course, how we use our armed forces matters just as much as how they are prepared.
No President should ever hesitate to use force – unilaterally if necessary – to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened. But when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others – the kind of burden-sharing and support President George H.W. Bush mustered before he launched Operation Desert Storm.
And when we do send our men and women into harm’s way, we must also clearly define the mission, prescribe concrete political and military objectives, seek out advice of our military commanders, evaluate the intelligence, plan accordingly, and ensure that our troops have the resources, support, and equipment they need to protect themselves and fulfill their mission.
We must take these steps with the knowledge that while sometimes necessary, force is the costliest weapon in the arsenal of American power in terms of lives and treasure. And it’s far from the only measure of our strength.
In order to advance our national security and our common security, we must call on the full arsenal of American power and ingenuity. To constrain rogue nations, we must use effective diplomacy and muscular alliances. To penetrate terrorist networks, we need a nimble intelligence community – with strong leadership that forces agencies to share information, and invests in the tools, technologies and human intelligence that can get the job done. To maintain our influence in the world economy, we need to get our fiscal house in order. And to weaken the hand of hostile dictators, we must free ourselves from our oil addiction. None of these expressions of power can supplant the need for a strong military. Instead, they complement our military, and help ensure that the use of force is not our sole available option.
The third way America must lead again is by marshalling a global effort to meet a threat that rises above all others in urgency – securing, destroying, and stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
As leaders from Henry Kissinger to George Shultz to Bill Perry to Sam Nunn have all warned, the actions we are taking today on this issue are simply not adequate to the danger.
There are still about 50 tons of highly enriched uranium – some of it poorly secured – at civilian nuclear facilities in over forty countries around the world. In the former Soviet Union, there are still about 15,000 to 16,000 nuclear weapons and stockpiles of uranium and plutonium capable of making another 40,000 weapons scattered across 11 time zones. And people have already been caught trying to smuggle nuclear materials to sell them on the black market.
We can do something about this. As President, I will lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years – the most effective way to prevent terrorists from acquiring a bomb.
We know that Russia is neither our enemy nor close ally right now, and we shouldn’t shy away from pushing for more democracy, transparency, and accountability in that country. But we also know that we can and must work with Russia to make sure every one of its nuclear weapons and every cache of nuclear material is secured. And we should fully implement the law I passed with Senator Dick Lugar that would help the United States and our allies detect and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.
While we work to secure existing stockpiles of nuclear material, we should also negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material.
As starting points, the world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and work to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. If America does not lead, these two nations could trigger regional arms races that could accelerate nuclear proliferation on a global scale and create dangerous nuclear flashpoints. In pursuit of this goal, we must never take the military option off the table. But our first line of offense here must be sustained, direct and aggressive diplomacy. For North Korea, that means ensuring the full implementation of the recent agreement. For Iran, it means getting the UN Security Council, Europe, and the Gulf States to join with us in ratcheting up the economic pressure.
We must also dissuade other countries from joining the nuclear club. Just the other day, it was reported that nearly a dozen countries in and around the Middle East –including Syria and Saudi Arabia – are interested in pursuing nuclear power.
Countries should not be able to build a weapons program under the auspices of developing peaceful nuclear power. That’s why we should create an international fuel bank to back up commercial fuel supplies so there’s an assured supply and no more excuses for nations like Iran to build their own enrichment plants. It’s encouraging that the Nuclear Threat Initiative, backed by Warren Buffett, has already offered funding for this fuel bank, if matched two to one. But on an issue of this importance, the United States should not leave the solution to private philanthropies. It should be a central component of our national security, and that’s why we should provide $50 million to get this fuel bank started and urge other nations, starting with Russia, to join us.
Finally, if we want the world to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia must lead by example. President Bush once said, “The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status – another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation.” Six years later, President Bush has not acted on this promise. I will. We cannot and should not accept the threat of accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch. We can maintain a strong nuclear deterrent to protect our security without rushing to produce a new generation of warheads.
The danger of nuclear proliferation reminds us of how critical global cooperation will be in the 21st century. That’s why the fourth way America must lead is to rebuild and construct the alliances and partnerships necessary to meet common challenges and confront common threats.
In the wake of the Second World War, it was America that largely built a system of international institutions that carried us through the Cold War. Leaders like Harry Truman and George Marshall knew that instead of constraining our power, these institutions magnified it.
Today it’s become fashionable to disparage the United Nations, the World Bank, and other international organizations. In fact, reform of these bodies is urgently needed if they are to keep pace with the fast-moving threats we face. Such real reform will not come, however, by dismissing the value of these institutions, or by bullying other countries to ratify changes we have drafted in isolation. Real reform will come because we convince others that they too have a stake in change – that such reforms will make their world, and not just ours, more secure.
Our alliances also require constant management and revision if they are to remain effective and relevant. For example, over the last 15 years, NATO has made tremendous strides in transforming from a Cold War security structure to a dynamic partnership for peace.
Today, NATO’s challenge in Afghanistan has become a test case, in the words of Dick Lugar, of whether the alliance can “overcome the growing discrepancy between NATO’s expanding missions and its lagging capabilities.”
We must close this gap, rallying members to contribute troops to collective security operations, urging them to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization, streamlining decision-making processes, and giving commanders in the field more flexibility.
And as we strengthen NATO, we should also seek to build new alliances and relationships in other regions important to our interests in the 21st century. In Asia, the emergence of an economically vibrant, more politically active China offers new opportunities for prosperity and cooperation, but also poses new challenges for the United States and our partners in the region. It is time for the United States to take a more active role here – to build on our strong bilateral relations and informal arrangements like the Six Party talks. As President, I intend to forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.
In this way, the security alliances and relationships we build in the 21st century will serve a broader purpose than preventing the invasion of one country by another. They can help us meet challenges that the world can only confront together, like the unprecedented threat of global climate change.
This is a crisis that cannot be contained to one corner of the globe. Studies show that with each degree of warming, rice yields – the world’s most significant crop – fall by 10%. By 2050 famine could displace more than 250 million people worldwide. That means people competing for food and water in the next fifty years in the very places that have known horrific violence in the last fifty: Africa, the Middle East, South Asia.
As the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases, America has the greatest responsibility to lead here. We must enact a cap and trade system that will dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. And we must finally free ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil by raising our fuel standards and harnessing the power of biofuels.
Such steps are not just environmental priorities, they are critical to our security. America must take decisive action in order to more plausibly demand the same effort from others. We should push for binding and enforceable commitments to reduce emissions by the nations which pollute the most – the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, and India together account for nearly two-thirds of current emissions. And we should help ensure that growth in developing countries is fueled by low-carbon energy – the market for which could grow to $500 billion by 2050 and spur the next wave of American entrepreneurship.
The fifth way America will lead again is to invest in our common humanity – to ensure that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow.
A recent report detailed Al Qaeda’s progress in recruiting a new generation of leaders to replace the ones we have captured or killed. The new recruits come from a broader range of countries than the old leadership – from Afghanistan to Chechnya, from Britain to Germany, from Algeria to Pakistan. Most of these recruits are in their early thirties.
They operate freely in the disaffected communities and disconnected corners of our interconnected world – the impoverished, weak and ungoverned states that have become the most fertile breeding grounds for transnational threats like terror and pandemic disease and the smuggling of deadly weapons.
Some of these terrorist recruits may have always been destined to take the path they did – accepting a tragically warped view of their religion in which God rewards the killing of innocents. But millions of young men and women have not.
Last summer I visited the Horn of Africa’s Combined Joint Task Force, which was headquartered at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti. It’s a U.S. base that was set up four years ago, originally as a place to launch counter-terrorism operations. But recently, a major focus of the Task Force has been working with our diplomats and aid workers on operations to win hearts and minds. While I was there, I also took a helicopter ride with Admiral Hunt, the commander of the Task Force, to Dire Dawa, where the U.S. was helping provide food and water to Ethiopians who had been devastated by flooding.
One of the Navy captains who helps run the base recently told a reporter, “Our mission is at least 95 percent civil affairs. It's trying to get at the root causes of why people want to take on the U.S.'' The Admiral now in charge of the Task Force suggested that if they can provide dignity and opportunity to the people in that region, then, “the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if not completely, diminishes.”
We have heard much over the last six years about how America’s larger purpose in the world is to promote the spread of freedom – that it is the yearning of all who live in the shadow of tyranny and despair.
I agree. But this yearning is not satisfied by simply deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box. The true desire of all mankind is not only to live free lives, but lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and simple justice.
Delivering on these universal aspirations requires basic sustenance like food and clean water; medicine and shelter. It also requires a society that is supported by the pillars of a sustainable democracy – a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force. It requires building the capacity of the world’s weakest states and providing them what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth. And it requires states that have the capacity to fight terrorism, halt the proliferation of deadly weapons, and build the health care infrastructure needed to prevent and treat such deadly diseases as HIV/AIDS and malaria.
As President, I will double our annual investments in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012 and ensure that those new resources are directed towards these strategic goals.
For the last twenty years, U.S. foreign aid funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation. Doubling our foreign assistance spending by 2012 will help meet the challenge laid out by Tony Blair at the 2005 G-8 conference at Gleneagles, and it will help push the rest of the developed world to invest in security and opportunity. As we have seen recently with large increases in funding for our AIDS programs, we have the capacity to make sure this funding makes a real difference.
Part of this new funding will also establish a two billion dollar Global Education Fund that calls on the world to join together in eliminating the global education deficit, similar to what the 9/11 commission proposed. Because we cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy.
I know that many Americans are skeptical about the value of foreign aid today. But as the U.S. military made clear in Camp Lemonier, a relatively small investment in these fragile states up front can be one of the most effective ways to prevent the terror and strife that is far more costly – both in lives and treasure – down the road. In this way, $50 billion a year in foreign aid – which is less than one-half of one percent of our GDP – doesn’t sound as costly when you consider that last year, the Pentagon spent nearly double that amount in Iraq alone.
Finally, while America can help others build more secure societies, we must never forget that only the citizens of these nations can sustain them. The corruption I heard about while visiting parts of Africa has been around for decades, but the hunger to eliminate such corruption is a growing and powerful force among people there. And so in these places where fear and want still thrive, we must couple our aid with an insistent call for reform.
We must do so not in the spirit of a patron, but the spirit of a partner – a partner that is mindful of its own imperfections. Extending an outstretched hand to these states must ultimately be more than just a matter of expedience or even charity. It must be about recognizing the inherent equality and worth of all people. And it’s about showing the world that America stands for something – that we can still lead.
These are the ways we will answer the challenge that arrived on our shores that September morning more than five years ago. A 21st century military to stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar. Global efforts to keep the world’s deadliest weapons out of the world’s most dangerous hands. Stronger alliances to share information, pool resources, and break up terrorist networks that operate in more than eighty countries. And a stronger push to defeat the terrorists’ message of hate with an agenda for hope around the world.
It’s time we had a President who can do this again – who can speak directly to the world, and send a message to all those men and women beyond our shores who long for lives of dignity and security that says “You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.”
It’s time, as well, for a President who can build a consensus at home for this ambitious but necessary course. For in the end, no foreign policy can succeed unless the American people understand it and feel a stake in its success – and unless they trust that their government hears their more immediate concerns as well. After all, we will not be able to increase foreign aid if we fail to invest in security and opportunity for our own people. We cannot negotiate trade agreements to help spur development in poor countries so long as we provide no meaningful help to working Americans burdened by the dislocations of a global economy. We cannot expect Americans to support placing our men and women in harm’s way if we cannot prove that we will use force wisely and judiciously.
But if the next President can restore the American people’s trust – if they know that he or she is acting with their best interests at heart, with prudence and wisdom and some measure of humility – then I believe the American people will be ready to see America lead again.
They will be ready to show the world that we are not a country that ships prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far off countries. That we are not a country that runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they are there or what they are charged with. That we are not a country which preaches compassion and justice to others while we allow bodies to float down the streets of a major American city.
That is not who we are.
America is the country that helped liberate a continent from the march of a madman. We are the country that told the brave people of a divided city that we were Berliners too. We sent generations of young people to serve as ambassadors for peace in countries all over the world. And we’re the country that rushed aid throughout Asia for the victims of a devastating tsunami.
Now it’s our moment to lead – our generation’s time to tell another great American story. So someday we can tell our children that this was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East. That this was the time when we confronted climate change and secured the weapons that could destroy the human race. This was the time when we brought opportunity to those forgotten corners of the world. And this was the time when we renewed the America that has led generations of weary travelers from all over the world to find opportunity, and liberty, and hope on our doorstep.
One of these travelers was my father. I barely knew him, but when, after his death, I finally took my first trip to his tiny village in Kenya and asked my grandmother if there was anything left from him, she opened a trunk and took out a stack of letters, which she handed to me.
There were more than thirty of them, all handwritten by my father, all addressed to colleges and universities across America, all filled with the hope of a young man who dreamed of more for his life.
It is because someone in this country answered that prayer that I stand before you today with faith in our future, confidence in our story, and a determination to do my part in writing our country’s next great chapter.
The American moment has not passed. The American moment is here. And like generations before us, we will seize that moment, and begin the world anew. Thank you.
*As prepared
Moyers and Me: Before Baghdad Fell
The Bill Moyers documentary on our failed and barren press
---
 When Bill Moyers returned to PBS on Wednesday, I tried to recall this week what I'd said when I appeared on his show in early April 2003 -- as U.S. troops were about to topple Saddam. Did I make a fool myself? A transcript soon told all. By Greg Mitchell (April 25, 2007) -- Bill Moyers Journal returned to PBS on Wednesday night with a powerful indictment of the media for its failures in the run-up to the Iraq war. Last week, in previewing "Buying the War," I tried to recall exactly when I was a guest on Moyers' previous PBS series, NOW. It was right around the time our invasion of Iraq in late-March 2003, but was it just before or after the war started? And what did we mainly talk about? I guessed it had to do with the mixed editorial views of newspapers. Did I say anything I'd now regret, such as predicting that we'd surely be hailed as liberators by the Iraqis? How time flies when you're tearing another country, and your own, apart. Curiosity finally got the best of me, and I managed to find a transcript of the chat on the Web. Turns out it took place on April 4, 2003, just a few days before the American forces took Baghdad. By then, it was clear the U.S. was headed for a quick (apparent) victory. Indeed, the interview concluded with Moyers asking, "Do you have a sense that when the battle is over, this story's only begun?" Apparently I replied: "I don't think most Americans understand that this is going to be something that's with us for years and decades, and I'm not sure we get a sense of that from the coverage which seems to be oriented towards next week or next month, when the battle will be over. The boys will start to come home, and it will be a glorious episode in our past rather than something that's just the beginning of this story. "We're really at the beginning of the story of the US and Iraq and the 21st century." Whew. Here are a few other comments on still-relevant war and press issues from back then. * MOYERS: Do you think the public knows that the reporters who are embedded had to sign a contract with the Pentagon in order to be accepted for this role? That they had to agree to play by the rules? MITCHELL: Well, it's a good question whether they know but also whether they care. I think, as we found in polls over the years, that the American people... believe that there should be all sorts of restrictions. And, of course, everyone agrees that in war time there should be more restrictions. But the question is, to what degree? And we've seen in our interviews with editors in the past couple weeks, many cases of editors getting a lot of mail from readers who are upset about their coverage. And it shows that the people have a really different view about what the rights and the responsibilities of the press are. MOYERS: I saw your story about USA TODAY the other day... the editor of USA TODAY got in trouble for this photograph, didn't he? MITCHELL: Well, they ran a photograph of some dead Iraqi soldiers on the front page. And a large number of readers, they told us, complained because on the same day they ran a photo inside of a U.S. soldier surrounded by happy Iraqi children. And so these people were saying, "Why wasn't that photo on the front page instead of the dead Iraqi soldiers?" And the executive editor of USA TODAY told us that, yeah, the reason was simple. It was a day of great bloodshed. One of those days of great pessimism. And he thought it would have been inappropriate and misleading to show this happy photo on the front page. So he went with the more grim photo. Another example I'll give you, the DALLAS MORNING NEWS editor told us that they've gotten a lot of complaints for showing dead civilians or damaged civilians of Iraqis on the on the front page. And he says that it's viewed by the readers as an anti-war statement... showing the casualties on the other side is an anti-war statement. And that really goes against all the principles of press coverage that we believe in which is, you know, showing what is happening. And letting the people deal with it as they can. MOYERS: Do you think that journalists can be objective about what they're reporting when they are alongside the troops who are protecting them as they move forward? MITCHELL: Well, I think that's one of the problems. These reporters have been living with these troops. Reporting with them, getting to know them. And, of course, that's all terrific. You know, no one could really be against that. But in practice it could modify or adjust what they report about the actions....One of the problems in this whole campaign has been that originally we were told that the embedded reporters would only make up maybe half of the reporters who would be covering the conflict. The rest would be independent. But what's happened is because of the dangers over there-- almost all the reporters are the embedded reporters. So there's very few free-roaming reporters who can report without any restrictions whatsoever. But the problem is that the commentators on TV have almost from the beginning adopted a "we" attitude. They now are reporting, "We are advancing. We are taking fire. We are taking prisoners." So all objectivity has been dropped. And, as human beings, I think we could agree it's understandable in this situation. But, as journalists, it's not the best situation where commentators, anchormen-- reporters in the field -- are talking about this as a "we" rather than a U.S. mission or the U.S. soldiers. MOYERS: Fox News has become the cheerleader for the government. What does it do to other news organizations when Fox proves that jingoism is more popular than journalism? MITCHELL: I think the problem with that is that a lot of the other-- particularly the cable news networks have-- felt that they have to keep up with that. I think there's a certain competition to show that they're not soft on the war, that they don't have any less patriotism than Fox. And we've seen it just this morning. I saw an interview on CNN with an Australian woman who had been in Baghdad and had just left. And the woman kept saying that, you know, she was amazed how much the Iraqi people, although they may not like Saddam Hussein, were very angry about the bombings. Many of their children had been injured or killed....And the person who was the interviewer back in the U.S. asked her one aggressive question after another. After he finished talking to her, he then sort of editorialized on the air, saying-- "Well, we've talked to countless people who say that the Iraqi civilians will welcome with open arms the American soldiers." Now that may or may not be true. But the point is that even after one of the rare kind of dissenting or contrary opinions was expressed, the anchor felt he had to then jump in and editorialize, saying, "You can disregard what this woman said. You know, we have other information." The press should report straight down the line. You know, let the people see all sides. Let the people get all the information as quickly as they can. And let the chips fall where they may.... MOYERS: What concerns you about what's not being covered? MITCHELL: My complaint is with the cable news networks that are on 24/7 and yet have found virtually no time to interview psychologists and theologians and other observers who could talk about what this is doing to us what this is doing to us as a country. MOYERS: Do you see as much cheerleading in the print press as you do on television? MITCHELL: No, I think the print press has played it more straight down the line. They've had a more variety of stories. They have had reports from Baghdad itself. More reports on what people are saying around the world. More reports on protests pro and con about the war. More range of editorial opinions. So I think the print press and newspapers have done a much better job, a more reflective job. MOYERS: What do you think is stake for democracy and how we journalists cover this war? MITCHELL: Edward R. Murrow had a quote on his wall in his office from Thoreau in which he said something like, "To speak the truth, you need two people. One to speak it and one to hear it." And I think that sums up the relationship not only between the military and the press but the press and the American people. You know, the press often is reporting factual matters. And the public sometimes turns away from it. We entered this war, with upwards of half the people in the country believing that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack. Now, how did that happen? Was that the media's fault? Was it the government's fault for putting out the stories? Or is the public sometimes not receptive, and the public wants to believe what the public wants to believe? MOYERS: Last question. Do you have a sense that when the battle is over, this story's only begun? MITCHELL: "I don't think most Americans understand that this is going to be something that's with us for years and decades, and I'm not sure we get a sense of that from the coverage which seems to be oriented towards next week or next month, when the battle will be over. The boys will start to come home, and it will be a glorious episode in our past rather than something that's just the beginning of this story. "We're really at the beginning of the story of the US and Iraq and the 21st century." Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor. |
'The smells and sounds are unbearable. I find myself crying. It is too hard emotionally'
Thursday April 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Islamic insurgents fire on Ethiopian positions in Mogadishu. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The war that we worried about has not only started but has taken a turn we never thought was possible. The latest fighting has been going on for nine days. It seems the shelling never stops. On Saturday night it was raining and we could not make out what was thunder and what was artillery. Both sides are firing indiscriminately. Even the normally quiet areas are under attack. From my house in K4 I can see branches falling where the bullets are hitting.
In other areas it is far worse. There are burned bodies in burned-out houses. People are being buried by the roadside in shallow graves.
There are so many wounded people; from babies to 90-year-olds. They are brought to the hospitals near my house in wheelbarrows and donkey carts, bleeding, missing limbs.
The smells and sounds are unbearable. I find myself crying. I need to go to the hospitals to chronicle what is happening. But it is getting too hard emotionally. As a reporter for Reuters I am an observer, but I am also a human being.
I grew up in Mogadishu and returned to the city last July with my young son Liban, who is 10. He was born in North America but I wanted him to live among his relatives and to learn to speak proper Somali.
We came because we had heard that the warlords had been defeated and that we did not need to move around with bodyguards. The beaches were open and safe.
My 64-year-old mother, who was living in Canada but struggling in the cold winters also returned to Mogadishu. So did two of my brothers who had been living abroad. For a few months we were all happy.
Even when the war with Ethiopia started we decided to stay because the Islamists said they would not fight for Mogadishu in order to spare the city from the mayhem we are seeing today.
Now I am the only one in my family left. My son and my brothers are in North America and my mother is in Kenya with my nephews and nieces.
At my home near the airport I now have five other journalists staying with me because their houses are in areas that are being heavily shelled. They joke and call themselves Internally Displaced Journalists.
We often report from the roof of my house because it is too dangerous to move around the city. We must walk a very fine line. Not only are we afraid of getting killed in fighting as innocent bystanders, but by reporting the reality you quickly create enemies.
My sons phone everyday from Toronto to ask why I am still here and doing this to them. Even local people here ask why I am staying when I could get out. I tell them that I want to show the world what is going on. But they say that the world doesn't care or this would not be happening to us.
Knee-deep blood in the land of make-believe
Analysis
By Carla Binion
Online Journal Associate Editor
Apr 26, 2007, 00:44
It’s astonishing that members of Congress are either unaware George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied the nation into war with Iraq, or they are aware of the fact and don’t care. A Congress grounded in reality would have unequivocally acknowledged the administration’s lies long ago and taken appropriate action -- almost certainly impeachment.
If we say the pre-war lies don’t matter and the country should sweep them under the rug and only focus on the best way out of Iraq, what we’re really saying is that the truth itself doesn’t matter. If we say we should look away from the fact that thousands of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died for a lie, we’re saying the lost lives don’t matter, the war-injured and maimed don’t matter, America’s honor and integrity don’t matter.
The logic-free anti-impeachment excuse is that the nation can’t handle running the country and impeachment simultaneously. John Nichols wrote in The Nation recently, “[House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi fears that impeachment would distract from the Democratic legislative agenda and provoke an electoral backlash.”
However, the bottom line is the country can’t afford to let Bush and Cheney get away with deceiving us into a costly and bloody war. Decisions on a matter of this weight shouldn’t be based on fear, whether fear of an impeded agenda or threat of backlash.
According to Nichols, such fears are unwarranted. He mentions the Watergate Congress was able to carry out a complex agenda in addition to conducting impeachment proceedings against Nixon. Nichols also points out that “Democrats had one of their best years ever at the polls after pressuring Nixon out of office.”
The public would likely reward congressional Democrats for their courage if they impeached Bush and Cheney. Impeachment proceedings will shed additional light on the administration’s malfeasance, and the increased exposure would likely cause the country to support the Democrats’ efforts.
Though Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) filed articles of impeachment against Cheney on April 25, he hasn’t gained support from certain members of Congress. According to an article by the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer declined to support Kucinich’s efforts. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, said, “Dennis can do what he wants; I’m not going to support it.”
It’s ironic that Kucinich is dismissed while Hoyer and Emanuel are actually the ones with the frivolous position. What could be more superficial and feckless than Hoyer’s and Emanuel’s writing off the idea of impeachment without first examining the abundant evidence for it?
The case for impeaching Bush and Cheney has already been made by prominent public figures, including former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman. In a January 2006 article for The Nation, Holtzman says, “A President can commit no more serious crime against our democracy than lying to Congress and the American people to get them to support a military action or war.”
Holtzman continues, “Given that the consequences can be death for hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of people -- as well as the diversion of vast sums of money to the war effort -- the fraud cannot be tolerated.” Members of Congress should read the entire Holtzman article.
Impeachment opponents say Bush and Cheney haven’t committed documented impeachable offenses. However, Michael Schudson writes in Watergate In American Memory, “A president can be impeached not only for directly engaging in criminal acts but for failing to fulfill his oath of office, failing to see in good faith that the laws of the land are executed. There is no legal ‘bar’ to interpreting impeachment in this light.”
Any member of Congress who doubts the Bush administration lied and fixed the intelligence around the Iraq policy should read the many books and articles which detail the deceptions. In Worse Than Watergate, John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon says, “The evidence is overwhelming, certainly sufficient for a prima facie case, that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense.”
Dean states, “Bush deliberately violated the very authorization he sought from Congress, which was not merely a serious breach of faith with a trusting Congress, but a statutory and constitutional crime.” He reminds us that Bush lied to Congress at a classified briefing when he claimed Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons and was able to use them, via unmanned drone aircraft, against the United States.
According to Dean, at a congressional leadership meeting on October 3, 2002, Bush falsely claimed Saddam’s regime had the ability and materials needed to build nuclear weapons. Dean also notes that Bush deceived Congress in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address when he falsely claimed Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.
Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent and is currently an editor at the Washington Post. Recently he discussed his book, The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq, in a Democracy Now broadcast with interviewer Amy Goodman.
Goodman asked about the CIA’s role regarding the misleading Niger claim. Eisner said, “The CIA actually had attempted to block the statement . . . There was quite an argument between lower CIA officials and White House staff . . . Finally, George Tenet, the head of the CIA, had to intercede on October 7 and demand that the White House remove the sentence describing uranium purchases in Niger.”
However, Bush did include the sentence in his address. He omitted any mention of U.S. intelligence reports, saying only that the information came from British intelligence. During the interview with Eisner, Amy Goodman aired a portion of her earlier Democracy Now interview with former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Well before the State of the Union, Wilson had told the CIA the British reports weren’t reliable.
Wilson said Bush referred to British intelligence and left out reference to U.S. intelligence, because the CIA had refuted the claim. He adds, “So there was real deception there. This was not just an accident. This was not a slip of the tongue. These were people who wanted to put something in there that was actually deceptive to the U.S. Congress and to the American people.”
Goodman returned to the discussion with Eisner and asked whether Congress might later consider impeachment. He responded, “What do we know that President Bush himself knew about this, and what do we know the Vice President knew . . . Of all people, Vice President Cheney is not just some latter-day vice president that had no relationship to the intelligence community.”
Eisner added, “[Cheney] was considered one of the most minute analysts of information that was coming in. He knew more than many other people that Italian military intelligence was providing this information, and he also knew there were highly placed doubts about all of the information . . . So there’s a lot of investigation to be done, subpoenas to be issued, before I would know enough to talk about impeachment.”
The investigation and subpoenas should go forward, and Congress shouldn’t let administration officials get away with evading the subpoenas or whitewashing and covering up the facts. Given the vast amount of evidence on public record and easily available to Congress, it’s likely that any honest, rigorous investigation would lead to impeachment.
Though impeachment isn’t the focus of his book, David Corn lists dozens of Bush’s and Cheney’s serious deceptions in The Lies of George W. Bush. The information in this book alone would give any member of Congress ample reason to issue subpoenas and follow up with impeachment proceedings.
Corn makes it clear the Bush administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq and lied about and fixed the intelligence. He describes how Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union Address, falsely implied that U.N. inspectors believed Iraq had large amounts of WMD.
Instead, U.N. inspectors expressed doubt, stating they had dismantled Iraq’s key weapons-making facilities and destroyed most existing WMD. Corn refers to a September 2002 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The document said: “There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare production facilities.”
In conclusion, Corn says it was obvious Bush had “misinformed -- if not misled -- his own country and the world. It was undeniable that he had launched a war on the basis of false assertions . . . George W. Bush had also provided the entire world with good reason to doubt the word of America. And that was unlikely to make the nation safer.”
Many Americans act as if we’re aware the administration deceived us into invading Iraq, while others, including some in Congress, operate as if they fail to see that reality. Those who don’t or won’t see and respond to what actually happened are living in a make-believe state of mind, a form of denial that resembles a psychotic break with reality.
Burying the pre-war lies under the rug harms this country on many levels. The national pretending is disturbing, because Bush’s and Cheney’s pre-war fabrications aren’t just any lies; they’re lies that led to, and continue to cause, widespread loss of life and limb, not only for Americans, but also for soldiers of other nationalities and for Iraqi civilians.
Congress’s failure to confront the untruths that led to the death and bloodshed dishonors those who suffered and died for the lies. When people acknowledge on some occasions that Bush and Cheney lied us into war, yet at other times act as if the lies never happened, they have one foot in reality and the other in a world of make-believe.
Many members of Congress, the media and the American public float along day to day, pretending the administration has been truthful, behaving as if nothing can be done to set right the fact that we were lied into war. How did we get to the point where vast numbers of citizens turn a blind eye by choice?
Imagine American streets filled with the blood of the war’s victims, citizens moving forward doggedly, smiling vacantly, with self-centered plans and agendas, oblivious to the wet red substance. This is America today, sloshing through knee-deep blood in the land of make-believe, living in heart crushing denial about gravely significant events.
A nation that doesn’t care enough about the truth to investigate tenaciously and impeach Bush and Cheney if the probe warrants, is a nation divorced from reality and conscience. No fear-based or politically expedient excuse could possibly justify Congress’s hesitating to pursue this issue in a sober, principled and timely manner.
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
NEW PROBE OF WHITE HOUSE ALREADY CRUMBLING
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility News Release (www.peer.org)
For Immediate Release: April 26, 2007
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337
NEW PROBE OF WHITE HOUSE ALREADY CRUMBLING — Jurisdiction and Subpoena Limits Hamstring Questionable Special Counsel Gambit
Washington, DC — No sooner had the U.S. Office of Special Counsel announced a wide-ranging probe into allegedly improper political activities by White House officials and appointees than the effort has run aground, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Project On Government Oversight. Further complicating matters, Special Counsel Scott Bloch’s pledge to investigate the White House comes as a White House-commissioned investigation into misconduct charges against Bloch enters its final stage.
Bloch’s plan to combine seemingly unrelated high-profile investigations (the firing of U.S. Attorneys, missing Karl Rove emails and political briefings of General Services Administration managers) has also prompted protests both inside and outside the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). Emerging snags include:
- OSC likely does not have jurisdiction over a complaint filed by former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias (a complaint solicited by a Bloch deputy) alleging discrimination on the basis of his service in the Navy Reserve. Presidential appointees who have been confirmed by the Senate are not entitled to claim statutory protection against decisions regarding their continued tenure. In addition, there are profound separation of powers questions about applying statutes to block presidential prerogative to remove his own appointees;
- OSC has only a qualified subpoena power and lacks the authority to enforce its subpoenas in court. If a party simply refuses to comply, OSC must obtain the consent of the General Counsel of the Merits Systems Protection Board, headed by a Bush-appointee, who would then be charged with bringing an enforcement action; and
- The legal basis for an OSC investigation into e-mails from White House staff sent on Republican National Committee accounts as well as OSC’s power to order surrender of the missing missives have not been spelled out.
“It makes no sense for Scott Bloch to investigate the White House while the White House investigates Bloch,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that Bloch has told allies that the White House has twice asked Bloch to resign but Bloch, who is in the midst of a fixed five-year term, can only be removed for cause. “Bloch should recuse himself from this case and hand the matter over either to career staff at OSC or to an outside entity, such as the relevant Inspectors General or Congress.”
The ongoing investigation of Bloch undertaken by the Office of Personnel Management Inspector General at the behest of the President’s Office of Management & Budget comes as a result of a complaint filed by his own staff members and whistleblower groups, including PEER, alleging a host of misconduct charges against Bloch. Ironically, one portion of that complaint concerns Bloch’s improper interference with the handling of Hatch Act cases, the very statute that Bloch is now invoking as the basis for looking a White House political briefings.
“Scott Bloch brings the investigative acumen of an Inspector Clouseau to a very complicated and delicate matter,” Ruch added, noting that Bloch has admitted that he has never undertaken an investigation of this magnitude. “It is not that Bloch has lacked the opportunities to conduct complex investigations since virtually every whistleblower in town goes to the OSC, but Bloch has ignored them all. It is only when a probe serves his political agenda that he latches onto it as if it were the last helicopter leaving Saigon.”
###
Find out about the White House-commissioned investigation of Scott Bloch
View the portion of the complaint detailing allegations of Hatch Act irregularities by Bloch
Look at media reports about attempts by the Bush White House to remove Bloch
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=12769&R=EE02229
and
http://www.bendweekly.com/Opinion/1162.html
Dow at 13,000. How to account for the disconnect?
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Call us skeptical by gimleteye
You read and hear the same news we do. Yesterday, on a day the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 13,000 for the first time, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll disclosed that only 22 percent believe the nation is headed in the right direction.
How to account for the disconnect?
Wall Street apparently believes that the consumer economy is strong. But is consumer confidence really so different from what people feel about the war in Iraq and the collapse of the housing markets and sharply tightening credit across the nation?
It is true that Wall Street has always tended to view gridlock in Washington as good for business, and business is generally good in a time of war.
We look, though, at the disparity in wages, between the economic elite and the mass of Americans ("Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans--those with incomes that year of more than $348,000--receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows." NY Times, March 29, 2007) and believe that something else is going on.
The earth has been "flattened" by globalization. Americans have benefited from high quality goods manufactured in low wage nations, but those benefits are diminishing. People are very anxious, and with good reason.
A dollar of US labor no longer towers over our neighbors or trading partners. We are not educating and training American workers fast enough to compete for higher paying jobs in the new global economy. Hungrier workers are getting those jobs.
It doesn't mean we aren't working hard. We are. In urban areas where housing costs have skyrocketed, two wage-earner families are on a fast treadmill just to keep pace with a single wage earner family, a few decades ago. And businesses are finding out that the last dollar of productivity squeezed by technological efficiencies is not necessarily protecting the higher paying jobs that remain.
The stock market is agnostic to the difficulties ordinary Americans are experiencing. The stock market likes what globalization is doing for large multinational corporations, whose executives are part of a new economic elite, defined by the highest wage differential with ordinary workers since the Great Depression.
The markets are glad. Americans are sad and increasingly irrelevant to the operation of the world economy.
In Nation this week, William Greider interviews economist Ralph Gomory who explains, "America... becomes increasingly dependent, buying from abroad more and more of what its citizens consume and producing relatively less at home. US incomes stagnate as the high-wage jobs disappear and US exports become a smaller share of the world total."
Greider writes, "The conventional win-win assurances... are facile generalizations ... some nations, in other words, do indeed become 'losers'."
What seems to be driving both foreign and domestic policy in the United States is the urgency of 'winners' to separate themselves from the afflicted losers of the global economy. It is not just the issue of wage disparity: that the "the top 1 percent (of income earners) recieved 21.8 percent of all reported income in 2005, up significantly from the 19.8 percent the year before and more than double their share of income in 1980. The peak was in 1928, when the top 1 percent reported 23.9 percent of all income." We all know what happened in 1928.
No, there are more subtle effects, like the fact that so many Americans are driving gas-guzzling SUV's while Exxon coasts from one record profit to the next, a promise sold to consumers by a domestic auto industry that claimed it could not afford high gas mileage standards, leaving Toyota to dismantle US jobs on the basis of better engineered and more fuel efficient products that US auto suppliers couldn't build then but apparently will have to build now, now that they have lost that war, and, American jobs.
We could be wrong. Every government bean counter and statistician for the government wants to find good news in the numbers and even will 'cook the books' (ie. how inflation is measured) when reality cuts too close to the bone.
We noted, yesterday, how the good news on manufacturing and exports highlighted the contribution of a single company, Boeing Aircraft.
It seems inevitable to us that the collapse of housing markets will drag the economy downward. We look at the cranes busily moving over the Miami skyline, hurrying massive condominiums toward certificates of occupancy, we watch our local county commission doing back flips to satisfy the greed of the development lobby, built on the back of liar loans, mortgage fraud, and incestuous relationships between builders and lenders, and shake our heads.
But we may not be wrong. We may just be early.
The Danger Downwind
IN 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency took its first important step toward reducing mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants. Its Clear Air Mercury Rule is intended to bring about a 70 percent reduction in mercury emissions over the next 20 years.
But the new rule does not require all plants to reduce emissions by the same amount. Some may be allowed to pollute more than others by buying pollution credits from other plants.
The E.P.A.’s faith in this “cap and trade” approach is based on the assumption that mercury pollution disperses evenly in the environment. This strategy has worked well in reducing emissions of sulfur dioxide, a component of acid rain. But mercury does not behave in the same way as acid rain. In fact, much of the mercury emitted by coal-fired power plants remains near those plants.
In a just completed 10-year study of birds, fish and mammals in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada, we found five places where fish and wildlife have exceptionally high concentrations of mercury in their blood. Under the E.P.A.’s new rule, these biological mercury “hot spots” could persist, with dangerous consequences for the health of people and wildlife.
For more than a century, mercury pollution has blanketed much of the United States. Coal-fired power plants and other sources emit mercury into the atmosphere, where it is carried with the wind and deposited onto the ground. On land, particularly in wetlands, mercury can change to a form known as methyl mercury, which readily accumulates in organisms.
Methyl mercury is taken up by microscopic plants and animals, which are then consumed by fish and other animals. As it moves up the food chain, methyl mercury increases in concentration as much as 10 million times. Animals at the top of the chain that consume lots of tainted fish — common loons, bald eagles, river otters and some humans — are exposed to methyl mercury in amounts high enough to cause neurological damage, behavioral abnormalities and reproductive problems.
Children are particularly at risk for mercury poisoning. Some 200,000 to 400,000 children born in the United States each year have been exposed to mercury levels in their mothers’ wombs high enough to impair neurological development, according to an analysis of data gathered from 1999-2002 by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
David C. Evers is the executive director of the BioDiversity Research Institute, in Gorham, Me., and Charles T. Driscoll Jr. is a professor of environmental systems engineering at Syracuse University.
Bus closing in on Nixon territory at 28%
Bush Approval Rating Falls to 28%,
Lowest Level So Far, in Harris Poll
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
April 26, 2007
Peace is blocked by the Three Nos of Jerusalem
Published: April 18 2007 18:11 | Last updated: April 18 2007 18:11
The Arab League meeting in Cairo yesterday was unprecedented in its overture to Israel, offering to meet Israeli representatives to clarify the peace initiative that the League re-endorsed at its meeting in Riyadh on March 28. The two events underscore the complete reversal of the paradigm that for so long has defined the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the effort by armies of several Arab countries to abort its birth, until well past the war of 1967 which left Israel in control of all of Palestine, Israel was seen by much of the world as both victim and peace- seeker. Arab countries were seen as warmongers and rejectionists. The paradigm was reinforced by the “Three Nos of Khartoum” when, in 1967, Arab countries pledged there would be no peace, no negotiations and no recognition of the Jewish state.
This image of the Arab worldâos total rejection of Israel persisted into the 1980s, even after it became clear that the prime minister, Golda Meir, had ignored peace initiatives by the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, for which Israel paid dearly in the October war of 1973. Nor did a change in Arab attitudes to the Jewish state implicit in the Saudi Fahd plan, adopted by the Arab League in 1981, prompt any rethinking of that image in Israel or in the west.
Since then, particularly in the aftermath of the Oslo accords in 1993 and the MENA Economic Summits hosted by various Arab countries, Arab rejection of Israel's legitimacy has largely dissipated. Well before the Saudi initiative of 2002 senior Arab officials sought to persuade Yasser Arafat, former Palestine Liberation Organisation leader, to accept peace terms offered by Ehud Barak, Israelâos former prime minister, at Camp David in 2000.
Then came the Saudi initiative, in which the most conservative of Arab countries and the most conservative of Saudi princes, Crown Prince Abdullah, declared that Saudi Arabia would fully normalise its relations with Israel and welcome its embassy and flag in its capital as soon as Israel ended its conflict with the Palestinians, an offer endorsed by every Arab country.
The Israeli response to this tectonic change in Arab psychology and politics was worse than rejection: it was complete indifference, as if this 180-degree turnround in Arab thinking had no meaning for Israel and its future in the region.
Ehud Olmert, prime minister, and his government have reflexively rejected every Arab peace offer, whether from Saudi Arabia, Syria, the Arab League or Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. Ariel Sharonâos and Mr Olmertâos policies these past seven years have shaped a new paradigm in which Israel is the rejectionist party. The Three Nos of Khartoum have been replaced by the Three Nos of Jerusalem: no negotiations with Syria, no acceptance of the Arab initiative and, above all, no peace talks with the Palestinians.
Mr Olmert and his associates devote their diplomatic skills to finding ever more tortured pretexts for blocking every opportunity for peacemaking, while posturing as peace-lovers in search of âoreasonableâo Arabs who qualify as partners for peace. Their goal remains to prevent a peace process that would require them to halt Israel's expansion of its settlements and its effort to cut off East Jerusalem from its Palestinian hinterland.
This deception worked well for a while and perhaps still convinces president George W. Bush and those he relies on to understand the Middle East, the folks who gave us the Iraq war, but has worn thin with much of the rest of the world, including many Americans. Several US columnists who bought into the old paradigm, or avoided the subject for fear of be-ing labelled anti-Israel, now reject it.
Israel has lost the high moral ground. It will not regain it until its citizens elect a government that understands that the price of peace, whose outline was agreed to by both sides in the Taba talks after the failed Camp David negotiations, is far less than the cost of its current rejectionism.
To be sure, the moral high ground does not necessarily provide security. But for a western country, located in the heart of the Arab and Islamic world, that has been the beneficiary of vastly disproportionate US and western support because it has been seen as a moral avatar, the loss of that high ground could not be more devastating to its long-term security.
Henry Siegman is director of the US/Middle East Project and research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
A Weapon that Doesn’t Work for a Threat that Doesn’t Exist
Complex 2030: The Costs and Consequences of the Plan to Build a New Generation of Nuclear Weapons, a World Policy Special Report by William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan, April 2007 (PDF)
---
April 25, 2007
Anti-Missile Missiles in Europe
By William D. Hartung
As Sen. Jess Trussme (a mythical political leader played by our good friend Ira Shorr) is wont to say, the beauty of missile defense is that it is “a weapon that doesn’t work for a threat that doesn’t exist.” This is doubly true for the Bush administration’s plan to put missile interceptors in Poland and anti-missile radars in the Czech Republic.By optimistic projections, the system would cost $3.5 billion and would be ready to go by 2013. U.S. officials involved with the project argue that this is early enough to deal with the highly touted Iranian threat, since they believe that Tehran will not be able to develop a nuclear weapon and mount it on a ballistic missile until at least 2015. If this is so, there is much more time available to negotiate a cap on Iran’s nuclear program than Bush administration officials have officially acknowledged. Negotiations would not only be more effective, but they wouldn’t waste billions of dollars that could be used for far better purposes.
And what kind of system would exist by 2013, if - in a first for the missile defense program - it was actually developed on schedule? Most likely one that is no more effective than current missile interceptors, which have given no evidence that they can stop an incoming warhead under realistic conditions.
If the proposed system only wasted money, that would be outrageous enough. But it is also provoking a three-way political crisis among Europe, Russia, and the United States. One common objection has been raised by Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn of Luxembourg: “We don’t want to be a political football between Russia and the United States. We want the United States, Russia, and Europe to play together in a common defence project.” (Kristin Roberts, “Russian Official Dismisses U.S. Shield Cooperation,” Reuters, April 24, 2007).
While the Czech and Polish governments seem to be prepared to go along with the U.S. plans, nobody has asked the Czech and Polish people. A full 57% of Czechs oppose having U.S. anti-missile radars on their soil, versus 25% in favor. In Poland, the numbers are 68% against U.S. missile interceptors, versus 26% in favor.
As for the Russians, they are having none of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ arguments that they can “share” the project with Washington. From Moscow’s perspective, a system of ten missiles now could be expanded in the future in an effort to blunt their nuclear deterrent vis-à-vis the United States.
Given the obscene nuclear overkill possessed by both countries, the threat of US missile defenses may not be all it is cracked up to be.
But Russian leaders see it in the context of other provocative moves by the United States, from expanding NATO right up to their borders, to building military relationships with former Soviet Republics (and bordering states) from the Ukraine to Georgia to Kazakhstan, to seeking military bases in Rumania and Bulgaria. As the Washington Post put it, “it’s hard to think of a better way to revive the Cold War” than getting the U.S. and Russia into a tangle over the administration’s proposed missile deployments in Europe (”Missile Fantasies,” Washington Post, February 25, 2007).
The real danger of the whole missile defense effort is that it serves as a rationale for maintaining large, ongoing nuclear arsenals. As long as the illusion of a “technical fix” to the nuclear threat is kept alive, the urgency for reducing nuclear stockpiles is diminished.
Combined with the Bush administration’s “Complex 2030″ plan, which calls for building a new generation of nuclear weapons, missile defense represents a threat to peace, and ultimately a threat to all human life. The truth is that the only way to be truly safe from nuclear weapons is to get rid of them - all of them. This is no easy task, but if the U.S. government expended a small portion of the energy it is throwing into its misguided missile defense program into promoting nuclear disarmament, substantial progress could be made in relatively short order.
The Bill Moyers documentary on our failed and barren press
When Journalism Became Transcription and Reporting Disappeared
---
Thursday April 26, 2007 09:26 EST
Glenn Greenwald
(updated below - updated again)
If you didn't watch Bill Moyers' documentary last night regarding the joint, coordinated behavior of our government and its media in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I can't recommend it highly enough. You can watch it here.
For those who have been following these issues, there was no single, specific blockbuster revelation that was not previously known, although Moyers' focus on the superb (and largely ignored) pre-war work of Real Journalists at Knight-Ridder (now at McClatchy) does cast a new light on the profound malfeasance of our most influential media outlets. Most of all, the documentary very powerfully compiles some of the most incriminating facts, and it unapologetically identifies many of the guiltiest and most destructive wrongdoers in our government and in the press.
For that reason, the documentary is -- in one sense -- a very valuable historical account of the corrupt behavior by our dominant political and media institutions which deceived the country into the invasion of Iraq. But on another, more significant level, it illustrates the corruption that continues to propel our political and media culture.
One of the most important points came at the end. The institutional decay which Moyers chronicles is not merely a matter of historical interest. Instead, it continues to shape our mainstream political dialogue every bit as much as it did back in 2002 and 2003. The people who committed the journalistic crimes Moyers so potently documents do not think they are guilty of anything -- ask them and they will tell you -- and as a result, they have not changed their behavior in the slightest.
Just consider that, as Moyers notes, there has been no examination by any television news network of the role played by the American media in enabling the Bush administration and its warmonger propagandists to disseminate pure falsehoods to the American public. People like Eric Boehlert have written books about it, and Moyers has now produced a comprehensive PBS program documenting it. But the national media outlets themselves have virtually ignored this entire story -- arguably the most significant political story of the last decade -- because they do not think there is any story here at all.
The fraud that was manufactured by our government officials and endorsed by our media establishment is one of the great political crimes of the last many decades. Yet those who are responsible for it have not been held accountable in the slightest. Quite the contrary, their media prominence -- as Moyers demonstrates -- has only increased, as culpable propagandists and warmongers such as Charles Krauthammer (now of Time and The Washington Post), Bill Kristol (now of Time), Jonah Goldberg (now of The Los Angeles Times, Peter Beinert (now of Time and The Washington Post), and Tom Friedman (revered by media stars everywhere) have all seen their profiles enhanced greatly in our national media.
And while Judy Miller became the scapegoat for the media's failures, most of the media stars responsible for the worst journalistic abuses -- from Michael Gordon to Tim Russert to Fred Hiatt to most of The Washington Post, to say nothing of the Fox stars and cogs of the right-wing noise machine -- continue merrily along as before, with virtually no recognition of fault and no reduction in their platforms.
Moyers did a superb job of questioning both Tim Russert and Peter Beinart, and both were -- appropriately and enjoyably -- extremely defensive about their behavior. Beinart, along with his good friend and mirror image Jonah Goldberg, participated in one of the most vile -- though not all that unusual -- smear campaigns against a war opponent, Scott Ritter. The smear campaign was necessary precisely because Ritter was one of the very few individuals in this country who (completely unlike Goldberg, Beinart and all of the other faux warrior-experts parading across television screens loyally reciting the Bush line) actually knew what he was talking about when it came to the Iraqi weapons program and its "relationship" to Al Qaeda, and continuously warned (to little effect) about all of the warmongers' false claims about those topics.
But credit is at least due to both Russert and Beinart for appearing on Moyers' program and facing his appropriately confrontational questions. Their willingness to account for their conduct stands in stark contrast to the long list of cowards who still constantly strut around self-lovingly touting their own courage, resolve, Churchillian backbone, and all of their other little self-glorifying platitudes, yet were too afraid to face questioning from a real journalist about all of the fact-free, false propaganda they spewed for years (and continue to spew).
That disgraceful, dishonorable roster of Great Warriors hiding under their beds from Bill Moyers includes Fox's Krauthammer, Fox's Kristol, Fox's Roger Ailes, Bill Safire and Judith Miller. As The Washington Post's own Tom Shales put it:
Among those who declined -- and thus became a part of the story more than they already were -- are Judith Miller of the New York Times, a reporter who became a relentless drumbeater for war; Times pundit William Safire, who'd predicted that Iraqis would welcome Americans as liberators when they marched into Baghdad; columnist Charles Krauthammer, another hawkish columnist who's usually anything but camera-shy; and Fox boss Roger Ailes.People like Bill Kristol and Krauthammer will only go and sit with the likes of Brit Hume and speak only to Fox audiences, so they are never reminded of the literally countless falsehoods they churned out not only to justify the invasion but to profoundly mislead Americans for years about the ongoing occupation. And they both continue to issue one-way decrees from the pages of Time and The Washington Post, where they are never held to account for what they have done.William Kristol, a conservative columnist who, Moyers says, "led the march to Baghdad behind a battery of Washington microphones . . . has not responded to any of our requests for an interview, but he still shows up on TV as an expert, most often on Fox News."
Moyers' documentary is a superb piece of journalism and makes inescapably clear how profoundly corrupt our dominant political and media institutions were prior to the invasion. But most national "journalists" will simply ignore the whole program (as Digby notes, The New York Times, one of the principal culprits, did not even review it).
They will almost certainly dismiss Moyers as a liberal partisan, not a real journalist, and continue to insist that they are doing a superb and even-handed job. They will continue to revere the most guilty parties responsible for the deceit and destruction of the last six years.
And, worst of all, the sicknesses documented so potently by Moyers will continue to pervade our dominant media and political institutions. Comparing 2002 and now, however, there is a significant difference: as Moyers' documentary illustrates, as does the emergence of political blogs, more and more people are increasingly recognizing how pervasive those deficiencies are, and consequently, are developing multiple alternatives to the rancid governing Beltway system.
UPDATE: Tom Tomorrow is one of those radical, unserious, untrustworthy extremist commentators who saw exactly what was going on back in 2002 and was right about virtually everything. As a result, Fred Hiatt and Richard Stengel will never invite him onto the Op-Ed pages of The Washington Post or Time alongside our Brilliant Foreign Policy Luminaries like Charles Kruathammer, Joe Lieberman and Robert Kagan, but -- to celebrate the four-year anniversary of our Glorious War -- he does have a small though rich sampling over at the Huffington Post of the great wisdom showered on us by Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and many of their other media and neoconservative friends.
UPDATE II: CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller watched Moyers' documentary and he is absolutely befuddled that anyone could possibly suggest that our White House Press Corps was insufficiently skeptical of the White House's pre-war claims or that they were too deferential to the Leader:
To hear Bill Moyers tell it last evening on his PBS program "Buying The War," the White House press corps was a willing participant in its own deception about the President's case for war in Iraq.Really, what can one even say about this? Like most of his colleagues, he is drowning in total self-delusion. Note how he pretends to criticize White House journalists for being "irrascible and unlikable" -- the implication being that they are a really tough, ornery and contentious bunch of hard-core reporters who may not be likable or agreeable, but boy, they sure are feisty.He portrays us as easily-manipulated stooges on bended-knee to the President and his top aides.
Now, I'm the first to concede there are plenty of good reasons to criticize the White House Press. We're an irascible and unlikable bunch. I'm one of us and I don't like us very much. But the point made by Bill Moyers at the start of his program last night is just off base. . . . Now, I can understand if Moyers didn't like the President's answers. Fair enough. But to portray reporters as mindless conduits of White House policies is unfounded.
After describing (though understandably not quoting) several of the oh-so-super-tough questions he claims were asked at the pre-war Press Conference -- the one where reporters pretended to raise their hands in the hopes of being called upon, even though they knew Bush had a pre-scripted list of which reporters would be allowed to ask questions and they were only doing that to create a false perception of a free-wheeling press conference -- Knoller ends with these paragraphs:
I wonder if Knoller is aware that seven out of 10 Americans believed even six months after the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein personally planned the 9/11 attacks. But Knoller just cannot believe that anyone would suggest that the national press corps was too compliant.Did we report what the President said about his case for war? Of course we did. That's our job. Did we also report that his views were challenged or disputed by others? Absolutely. Were questions raised about the veracity of the president's arguments? Certainly.
Did reporters stop the U.S. from going to war in Iraq? No. Could reporters have done a better job? Always.
But to charge that the White House press was "compliant" and cheered the President's arguments for war plainly misrepresents the facts.
This is the point I have realized only recently which I cannot stress enough. They really do not think they did anything wrong. They think that their pre-war "journalism" (which, they will admit with great humility, could "of course" -- like everything in the world -- have been better) was perfectly excellent journalism, and anyone who suggests otherwise simply does not understand the elevated role of journalists, and is probably just a lowly partisan hysteric.
That's how they think. Just go read Knoller's response to the Moyers' documentary. Our government deceived the entire country into a war based on a whole set of blatantly false claims -- all of which were shoveled into the public's minds by our nation's media outlets -- and they continue to say what a great job they did.
When Journalism Became Transcription and Reporting Disappeared
BUYING THE WAR: Watch the Show
---
Bill Moyers’ PBS special last night on the media’s complicity in pushing America to war was so powerfully upsetting that I am forced to resort to using mid-1990s NBA metaphors to describe it, if only because describing it without a metaphoric buffer is just too depressing. This production was the documentary equivalent of Tom Chambers famously jumping over a screaming Mark Jackson and hammering down one of the greatest, most in-your-face slam dunks in history.
To call the media’s complicity in the Iraq War a conspiracy is an insult to conspiracies, because it wasn’t hidden - as Moyers shows, it was all out there for everyone to see. The problem was, Beltway reporters didn’t want to see it. As New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller admitted, in the lead up to war most self-respecting Washington journalists who wanted to stay on the White House Christmas card list refused to ask tough questions because “no one wanted to get into an argument with the president.”
What’s really disturbing, however, is not even what this documentary says about the past - but what it says about the state of journalism today. In interview after interview after interview, we hear top journalists and opinionmakers declare that they believe journalism is no longer about basic, hard-scrabble reporting or getting scoops. As the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus says, most reporters today actually try to avoid getting scoops because they “worry about sort of getting out ahead of something” and - gasp! - making their friends inside Official Washington mad at them. So rather than, say, do the real work of reporting news, journalism has become a profession that is almost entirely about PR, transcription and packaging Establishment spin for news copy. This is why, for example, many of the highest-profile political “journalists” like Joe Klein and David Broder never bother to actually report anything anymore - but instead spend most of their time pontificating on horse race polls and campaign gossip, expecting us to believe that’s real “news.”
This kind of attitude, as Moyers shows, goes straight to the top. Take, for instance, NBC’s Tim Russert - the Washington Bureau Chief of NBC NEWS. I stress the word “news” because, remember, “news” is supposed to be reported in the trenches, not transcribed in a television studio. Russert loves to brag about coming from Buffalo (often ending his shows with some irritating quip about the Buffalo Bills) because he believes it gives him some sort of working-class cred and more importantly distracts viewer attention from the fact that he is a longtime Washington insider and multi-million-dollar journalist. And at one point, he brags to Moyers that “I’m a blue-collar guy from Buffalo - I know who my sources are [and] I work ‘em very hard.” But then when Moyers asks him why he gave Vice President Cheney such a free pass to come on Meet the Press and spew blatant lies about Iraq’s WMD - lies that news organizations like Knight Ridder were exposing but people like Russert were ignoring - we get this gem from Russert:
“There were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.”
Moyers quickly noted that at least some reporters “didn’t wait for the phone to ring,” and that CBS’s Bob Simon said that sources debunking the WMD case “would have been available to any reporter who called.” And that makes Russert’s entire sob story fall apart like a house of cards. Russert wants us to believe that he’s just “a blue-collar guy from Buffalo” who works sources very hard. Yet, apparently, “working sources very hard” means not even picking up the phone to make a call, but instead sitting in a comfortable Washington office waiting for people to call him, and in the meantime giving Cheney as much airtime as he wanted to spew lies.
Then there is the interchange with The New Republic’s Peter Beinart, who since cheerleading for the war and berating war critics, has been rewarded with a Time Magazine column and a post as a foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Moyers asks Beinart “what made you present yourself as a Middle East expert” in the lead up to war? Beinart admits that despite his preening around as an expert, he’d never actually been to Iraq, but nonetheless insists that he is “a political journalist.” So Moyers naturally asks that as a “political journalist” what kind of reporting did he do to make sure his prewar cheerleading was substantively sound. Here’s Beinart’s answer:
“Well, I was doing mostly, for a large part it was reading, reading the statements and the things that people said. I was not a beat reporter. I was editing a magazine and writing a column. So I was not doing a lot of primary reporting. But what I was doing was a lot of reading of other people’s reporting and reading of what officials were saying.”
So here we have one of the Iraq War’s leading cheerleaders actually telling us that his entire method of backing up his case was all about amplifying official Washington through brazen transcription. He actually sits there and tells Moyers that as a self-described “political journalist” his primary method of reporting on the issues he presented himself as an expert on was by not reporting at all.
This is what journalism has become today - and the worst part of it is that people who follow this Russert-Beinart method of sitting in comfortable Washington offices not picking up the phone or doing primary research is actually being rewarded as we speak. Moyers, channeling a fantastic piece by Jebediah Reed in Radar Magazine, notes that most of the people who regurgitated the Washington Establishment’s debunked case for war have actually been rewarded with even more prominent positions in the media. And while these desperate-for-attention media icons like Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman are happy to throw themselves in front of cameras for almost any opportunity to promote themselves, they categorically refused to talk to Moyers for his PBS special.
I went to journalism school because I thought journalism was about sifting through the B.S. in order to challenge power and hold the Establishment accountable. Bill Moyers and the folks I’ve gotten to know at McClatchy Newspapers who Moyers highlights show that that long tradition still exists. But the fact that they are such rare exceptions to the rule also show that the incentive system in journalism today is to reward not the people who challenge power, but the people who worship it. And though Tim Russert and Peter Beinart and Bill Kristol and Tom Friedman can kick back in Washington with their six figure salaries and tell themselves that they are really Important People, what we have seen is that they are part of a new journalistic culture that is threatening to destroy what once was a truly noble profession and undermine our democracy.
posted 4/26/2007 by David Sirota @ 8:55 am | Permalink
Nobel Prize winner shot by Israeli Army writes from Palestine
Israeli troops shoot Nobel Peace Prize winner
---
Palestine: IDF Shoots Irish Peace Prize Winner With Rubber Bullets
from a photo series
by the ISM's Martinez
In a Gandhi-like protest, a completely unarmed and peaceful gathering of peace activists who were walking to the Bil'in Wall were tear-gassed and then shot with rubber bullets. After being brought to ambulances for treatment they returned to the non-violent demonstration. Among them was Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire.
Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire writes from Palestine...
'...When the walkers got half way down the road, the Israeli soldiers started firing nerve gas, and plastic bullets directly at us. At another point they used water cannons. We were a completely unarmed peaceful gathering and this vicious attack from the Israeli soldiers was totally unprovoked attack upon civilians. The soldiers block the upper part of the road, thus preventing Dr. Barghouti and some of the Palestinians joining the main vigillers. We were then tear gassed and as I helped a French woman retreat I was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet. Two young women, one from USA and one from New Zealand, helped me towards an ambulance. I saw an elderly Palestinian mother carried on a stretcher into the ambulance, as she was shot in the back with a plastic bullet. I saw a man whose face was covered in blood and a Palestinian youth overcome with the gas. About 20 people were injured. Ann and myself went back to the protest where the people were being viciously attacked with nerve gas and plastic bullets. I was overcome with gas and took a nose bleed which resulted in being carried to ambulance for treatment....'
Related Links: Peace People / Nobel Prize - 1976 / NobelWomensInitiative.org
PalSolidarity.org: All we had for breakfast was tear gas / on December 2006 she was Arrested at Faslane, Scotland
The Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire was among a number of people shot with a plastic bullet on Friday at a weekly protest in Palestine. Ms Maguire had been invited to open an international conference in the village and this ended with a press conference at which hundreds of international journalists were present.
Afterwards, with Ann Patterson also from Belfast, she joined the weekly non-violent demonstration and walk to the Apartheid Wall. Israeli soldiers fired first tear gas and later rubber-coated steel bullets into the crowd. One man was hit in the head, a Palestinian mother hit in the back, a woman journalist hit in the leg, as was Ms Maguire. She was treated in an ambulance and rejoined the walk again but suffered nose bleed from tear gas inhalation and had to be treated again.
One hour before this she had told the conference: ?Thanks to the media here for telling the truth?Bring this truth to whatever country you come from!? . She had called for an end to the occupation of Palestine, international recognition of the Palestinian Government, an end to the building of the Apartheid Wall and restoration of economic and political rights. She also called for the release of the BBC journalist Alan Johnson
In a joint e-mail from Palestine to this writer last night (Sunday) Mairead and Ann say they are both well.
Full report by Inrternational Solidarity Movement reporters at: http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/04/21/april-20-b...test/
REPORT FROM MAIREAD AND ANN PATTERSON BELOW
"On Friday 20th April, 2007, Ann Patterson and I joined the Bil?in Peoples Committee, (outside Ramallah) on their weekly nonviolent protest march to the Apartheid Wall , together with Israeli peace activists and Internationalists from over 20 countries. The Internationals came from France, (over 200) America, Puerto Rico, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Canada, and India.
Before the peace vigil, I participated in a Press Conference with the Palestinian Minister for Information, Mustafa Barghouti, in front of the World Press. Minister Barghouti praised the nonviolent vigil of the Bil?in people and the nonviolent resistance of many people around Palestine,says Bil?in is a model and example to all. He called to stop the building of the wall, and for the upholding of Palestinian Rights under International Law.
I supported his call and thanked the people of Bil?in offering my support for the nonviolent resistance to the Wall as it contravenes International Law, including the International Court of Justice decision in the Hague. I also called for an end to Palestinian occupation, which will be 40 years soon, and recognition by the International Community of the Palestinian Government, together with restoration of economic, political rights of the people.
Both Dr. Barghouti and I called for the release of the BBC Journalist Alan Johnston. I also called for the protection of Journalists all over the world, whose ability to cover the truth, is being infringed.
During Conference the Israeli military drove through the Gate onto Palestinian Land, with many foot soldiers. They surrounded World Media and in Hebrew warned us that if we did not disperse they would attack in five minutes. Myself and Dr. Barghouti, condemned this as abuse of freedom of press, speech, and people's right to peaceful protest and speech.
During press conference a man from San Paulo, climbed to the top of the Surveillance Mask and released a Palestinian Flag. He planned to stay there for 2 days.
We returned to the Village and joined the Peace Vigil moving down the road towards the wall. Several hundred people participated, the Palestinian men, women, and many young Palestinian males leading the march. Very courageous as young Palestinian males when arrested often get beaten. I walked with my Palestinian interpreter who told me his home was on the other side of the wall. His 12 acre land was confiscated by Israeli Authorities and his 400 year old olive trees uprooted, taken to Jerusalem and planted in new Israeli settlements.
When the walkers got half way down the road, the Israeli soldiers started firing nerve gas, and plastic bullets directly at us. At another point they used water cannons. We were a completely unarmed peaceful gathering and this vicious attack from the Israeli soldiers was totally unprovoked attack upon civilians. The soldiers block the upper part of the road, thus preventing Dr. Barghouti and some of the Palestinians joining the main vigillers. We were then tear gassed and as I helped a French woman retreat I was shot in the leg with a rubber bullet. Two young women, one from USA and one from New Zealand, helped me towards an ambulance. I saw an elderly Palestinian mother carried on a stretcher into the ambulance, as she was shot in the back with a plastic bullet. I saw a man whose face was covered in blood and a Palestinian youth overcome with the gas. About 20 people were injured. Ann and myself went back to the protest where the people were being viciously attacked with nerve gas and plastic bullets. I was overcome with gas and took a nose bleed which resulted in being carried to ambulance for treatment.
We were advised by medical staff not to return to vigil and obliged to leave our friends several hours later still heroically trying to get near the wall. On the road towards the village we watched 2 children playing in their garden, oblivious to the nerve gas floating down on the wind towards their home. This permeates their clothes, their lungs and the question has to be asked, what the health of these children will be like in a few years time.
This is not only a question of abuse of human rights, international laws, by the Israeli government; it is a health and environment issue. We were all traumatized by our experience, and with the gas on the air, came the words flowing back to me of a Palestinian Doctor, who said ?the whole Palestinian people, after 40 years of occupation, the whole people of Palestine are traumatized, it is time the International Community acted to put a stop to this suffering and injustice of our people?. I agree enough is enough; it is time for action to force the Israeli Government to enter into unconditional talks to end this tragedy of tragedies of good and gentle Palestinian people.
Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Ann Patterson
Jerusalem
2lst April, 2007-04-21
www.peacepeople.com
Bank warns of increased risks to the UK's financial system
Published: 26 April 2007
The Bank of England issued a stark warning today that the dangers surrounding the UK's financial system have risen over the past nine months. It said benign economic conditions had made banks complacent about risk-taking, some companies were loading themselves up with worryingly high levels of debt, complex credit derivatives were untested in times of turbulence and some debt-laden households were showing "signs of stress". It said the recent US sub-prime mortgage crisis was a salutary reminder of how credit risk assessment can go disastrously wrong, and how participants can be hit by sharp reductions in market liquidity.
In its twice-yearly Financial Stability Report, the Bank said the financial system remained "highly resilient". But it urged banks to be alert to the growing risks and take them into account. It singled out the corporate bond market and its associated derivatives market, which has exploded in size in recent years, as particularly vulnerable.
The six key danger areas identified by the report are: unusually low premia for bearing risk, especially in credit markets; high and rising leverage in parts of the corporate sector; rising systemic importance of large complex financial institutions, ie. the big investment banks and securities houses; dependence of UK financial institutions on market infrastructures and utilities, for example the smooth running of the London Stock Exchange and the BACS clearing system; large financial imbalances among the major economies; high UK household sector indebtedness.
Sir John Gieve, the Bank's deputy governor for financial stability, said: "Financial markets have continued to be vibrant, core institutions are highly profitable and the economic outlook is favourable. But risk-taking is increasing, including through higher leverage, lower margin requirements and relaxation of covenants. The rapid growth in credit risk transfer markets [such as collateralised debt obligations] is also making more participants dependent on continuous market liquidity and could amplify the impact of shocks like a sharp reversal in credit spreads from their current low levels."
Sir John, a member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, said there were few signs that America's sub-prime mortgage crisis would cross the Atlantic. He also played down fears that rising insolvencies and home repossessions could spark a housing crash and undermine financial stability. "We watch the housing market at the MPC every month and there are some signs of easing off," he said. "I don't see this [rising household debt] as likely to precipitate a financial crisis."
Ethiopian tanks kill hundreds of civilians in Mogadishu
Thousands flee as shelling by Ethiopian tanks kills hundreds of civilians in Somali capital
· PM claims Islamists are routed, but attacks go on· UN accuses all sides of committing war crimes
Chris McGreal, Africa correspondent
Thursday April 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Two Islamist insurgents hide behind a wall in Fagah neighbourhood, north of Mogadishu, where Ethiopian troops and Islamists are fighting. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The Ethiopian assault has killed several hundred people, many of them civilians harmed by indiscriminate shelling that has destroyed homes and shops, and forced tens of thousands to flee the city as it spread to previously relatively peaceful parts of Mogadishu. Corpses lay scattered on the streets because it is too dangerous to collect them.
More than 1,000 people were killed in an earlier round of fighting last month. More than a third of the civilian population — some 340,000 people — have fled in the past three months.
The UN humanitarian affairs chief, Sir John Holmes, today accused all those involved of war crimes.
"The rules of humanitarian law are being flouted by all sides ... all factions are equally guilty of indiscriminate violence in a civilian area," he said. "Civilians in Mogadishu are paying an intolerable price for the absence of political progress and dialogue and the failure of all parties to abide by the rules of warfare."
Refugees are camped on the outskirts of the city, with water, food and medicine growing scarcer. About 600 have died of cholera and other diseases.
"At least half the capital is deserted, slowly turning it into a ghost city," the UN refugee agency said.
The interim Somali government said the 20,000-strong Ethiopian force fighting on its behalf, with 5,000 Somali troops playing a lesser role, will keep up the offensive until fighters with the Council of Islamic Courts are defeated. The council ruled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six months last year until overthrown by the Ethiopian army with US backing.
Somalia's prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, today claimed to have defeated the Islamist forces. "We have won the fighting against the insurgents," he told Associated Press. "Most of the fighting in Mogadishu is now over. The government has captured a lot of territory where the insurgents were."
But critics say Somalia has become a battleground for Ethiopia's foreign agenda and Washington's "war on terror" that will do little to bring long term stability.
The Islamic Courts government was popular in Mogadishu after bringing relative order and driving out clan warlords responsible for 16 years of death and mayhem. But the US believed it looked too much like the Taliban, with its ban on music and dancing and the qat narcotic, and that it was sympathetic to al-Qaida.
Washington encouraged the Ethiopian military — at the "invitation" of Somalia's interim national government which was so unpopular it was unable to remain in Mogadishu — to invade and oust the Islamic Courts administration. The new Somali government includes some of the warlords who previously caused so much destruction.
A report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs said that US and Ethiopian strategic interests in supporting a weak and factionalised government that is far less popular than the Islamic Courts administration are an obstacle, not a contribution, to rebuilding Somalia.
"In an uncomfortably familiar pattern, genuine multilateral concern to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia has been hijacked by unilateral actors — especially Ethiopia and the United States," it said.
As always in Somalia, the conflict is also being driven by money through weapons smuggling and business interests.
Ethiopian forces were to have been replaced by African Union peacekeepers, but only 1,200 of the AU's promised 8,000 troops have arrived in Somalia.
From the White House to Abu Ghraib
Thirty-six years ago, Philip Zimbardo, a young psychologist at Stanford University, set up an experiment intended to explore how normal young men would behave if put into a prison setting.
Zimbardo's team advertised for paid volunteers, screened the applicants for mental abnormalities and personality disorders, divvyed up the chosen ones into guards and prisoners, and then kicked off the experiment.
Over the next few days, in the basement lab of the psychology building, the uniformed "guards" - getting increasingly caught up in their role - thought up ever-more creative ways to assert their dominance over the jumpsuit-wearing "prisoners". They paraded them around with bags over their heads; removed the prisoners' clothing as punishment; took away their bedding; made them scrub toilets with their bare hands; insisted they do huge numbers of press ups, sometimes with other prisoners sitting on their backs; threw them into a dark, locked closet that was supposed to serve as an isolation unit; made them scream obscenities at each other; even forced them to pretend to be engaged in sexual activity with other brutalized prisoners.
The experiment was supposed to last two weeks. By day five, however, four of the prisoners had begun showing signs of nervous collapse; and by day six, the "Stanford Prison" had to be closed. What had started out as a low-key academic project had degenerated, in a remarkably short space of time, into a real-life version of William Golding's book Lord of the Flies.
Sound familiar? Over 30 years later, many of the same techniques, amplified by the horrors of war and the terrors of guerilla insurgency - some of them simply bizarre demonstrations of sadism, others clumsily thought-through control strategies - surfaced in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Zimbardo has long been haunted by the events that his experiment precipitated. The realization that he and his fellow-experiment designers had created an utterly toxic environment, in which decent people playing guards speedily degenerated into brutes and decent people playing prisoners became abject, cowering, hysterical captives, has informed Zimbardo's career ever since.
Now, he has finally written a book on the Stanford Prison Experiment, tying it in with the slide toward torture that has occurred in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Titled The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo's volume argues that it's futile to put all of the blame for these violent episodes on "bad apples" in an otherwise good barrel. Quite the opposite, he writes. If senior political, military or correctional officials create a "bad barrel," signify to underlings that abuse will be tolerated, turn a blind-eye to wanton acts of humiliation, then the chances are pretty high that many "good apples" that get dumped into the situation will swiftly go rotten.
A few years back, Zimbardo was approached by the defense team for Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick, one of the reservists on trial for the Abu Ghraib abuses. Frederick was in charge of Tier 1A, the infamous tier in which men were electric-shocked, had attack dogs set on them, and were made to engage in various humiliating sexual rituals. He wasn't one of the prime abusers, but he was responsible for letting the cycle of brutality go unchecked. He was also a man of limited initiative, used to taking orders, and desperate to fit in, to be one of the boys.
Zimbardo came to believe that Frederick was, essentially, a fall-guy for "The System" (his capital letters, not mine). After 9/11, he argues, the higher ups in that system, whether it be political leaders, top military brass or shadowy intelligence bosses, were all giving a nod-and-a-wink to acts designed to physically and mentally break detainees. As the editors of the book The Torture Papers documented, getting "actionable intelligence" from suspects being interrogated came to be more important than respecting the niceties of the Geneva Convention or the various prohibitions on torture signed onto by congress over the years.
In the second half of The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo develops arguments for why Bush, Cheney, then-CIA chief Tenet and Geoffrey Miller - the major general who arrived in Abu Ghraib determined to have the prison there implement Guantanamo methods of interrogation - should stand trial for the atrocities that occurred in Abu Ghraib. If a man like Frederick is going to go to prison for years for his actions, Zimbardo argues, then the higher-ups who allowed this to happen on their watch should most assuredly be held accountable too.
Of course, Bush isn't about to stand trial anytime soon. Congress isn't going to muster the cajones to impeach the man, let alone hand him over to any international court of justice. But that doesn't make Zimbardo's line of reasoning any less valid: bad situations or systems do lead to atrocious actions, not by every participant but by enough to cause tremendous damage. Political climates created by those in power do have a trickle-down impact throughout society, rendering previously unthinkable acts normal.
In the long-run, President Bush's casual acceptance of the need for the state-as-torturer, his willingness to embrace a means-justifies-the-ends philosophy, will likely be his most shameful legacy.
George W's poll numbers are now so utterly dismal that it's hard to work out which actions are most repellant to ordinary voters. I'd like to think - though, admittedly, without the data to back up the hunch - that his and Cheney's implicit condoning of a climate in which torture has flourished ranks up there. After all, most Americans, like most people everywhere, are not innately bad. Maybe for a while they accepted the notion that Abu Ghraib was the product solely of a few twisted, amped-up lowly reservists. Not anymore. Zimbardo and others have done too good a job of showing up the connections, of insisting we look at the nudge-nudge, wink-wink nature of the Bush administration's relationship to torture.
Sasha Abramsky is a senior fellow at the New York-based think tank Demos. He writes regularly for the Nation, Mother Jones, and several other publications. His most recent book, on the issue of the disenfranchisement of felons, is titled Conned: How Millions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House. It was published in April by The New Press, and is available in England and the U.S. His next book will be published by Beacon Press in May, and is titled American Furies.
Official Doubts About Iraq Doomsday Scenario
 MSNBC.com |
Aide Casts Doubt on Bush's Iraq Scenario
April 25, 2007 - Republicans are strong; Democrats are weak. Republicans want victory and order; Democrats want defeat and chaos.
Sound familiar? It should; it’s the Bush administration’s winning script from the 2004 campaign. In recent waeeks, President Bush has been going back to the well to describe the Democratic war-funding bill that’s rapidly heading toward a presidential veto. “I strongly believe that the Democrats’ proposal would undermine our troops and threaten the safety of the American people here at home,” he said Tuesday on the South Lawn of the White House.
Bush’s argument is based on a doomsday scenario for Iraq, where troop withdrawals turn the country into a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and a battleground between regional powers. “Precipitous withdrawal from Iraq is not a plan to bring peace to the region or to make our people safer at home,” Bush said. “It could unleash chaos in Iraq that could spread across the entire region. It would be an invitation to the enemy to attack America and our friends around the world.”
But in private, some of Bush’s most senior aides dispute that scenario. One senior administration official with extensive knowledge of the region, who didn’t want to be identified discussing sensitive policy matters, tells NEWSWEEK that the chances of a regional war in Iraq are low in the event of a U.S. withdrawal. When asked if a regional war would break out, the official said: “Possibly, not probably. It’s more likely that other powers would support their favorite militias, as they’re doing already.”
The senior official said the genocidal bloodbath that Sen. John McCain outlined recently was also unlikely, pointing to the militias’ ability to secure their own neighborhoods after the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra in early 2006. (The official’s main concern: the Iraqi government’s failure to unify the nation and address the root cause of sectarian conflict. “Both the Sunni and Shia are too afraid of each other,” the official said.)
Bush’s argument that Al Qaeda will use Iraq as a safe haven to plot new 9/11-style attacks if the United States pulls out is problematic, too. Osama bin Laden already has a safe haven to plot new attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Gen. Michael Hayden, the CIA director, told senators last year that the border area of Pakistan was a “physical safe haven” that Al Qaeda used as a base to attack Afghanistan. That area is also the likely home of bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, General Hayden added.
That Was Then
In January, President Bush sounded almost sympathetic to war critics. In an interview with National Public Radio, he was asked how he felt about the nonresponse from Democrats about his offer to create a bipartisan panel to advise on the war on terror.
“A lot of these folks aren’t happy we’re in Iraq to begin with, and I understand that,” Bush said. “They don’t believe we are going to succeed in Iraq, and I understand that, too. I think what some may be afraid of is, I’m trying to get them into an Iraq-type situation where they are forced to say something they don’t want to say. I don’t know.”
That was then. In the last four months, Bush has moved from understanding the criticism to seeing it as unforgivable.
“People want our troops to come home, and so do I,” he said outside the White House on Tuesday. “But no matter how frustrating the fight can be and no matter how much we wish the war was over, the security of our country depends directly on the outcome in Iraq. The price of giving up there would be paid in American lives for years to come. It would be an unforgivable mistake for leaders in Washington to allow politics and impatience to stand in the way of protecting the American people.”
Why the change?
Republicans and Democrats feel there is good PR to gain by standing up to each other. The Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, dismissed Vice President Dick Cheney as an attack dog with a 9 percent approval rating. (Cheney’s actual approval rating: 34 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll.)
The White House believes Reid is weak enough to warrant a revival of the “defeatist” attack that failed to work against Democrats in November. The administration thinks Reid is weak because of the Democratic reaction to his comments about the war being “lost.” “The fact that Democrats are distancing themselves from Reid is proof that he is not a good messenger for them,” says a senior Bush aide, who declined to be named while discussing political strategy.
Bush is taking a longer view on Iraq, too—one that moves beyond daily political squabbling. In an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, Bush admitted that his goal is to hand over Iraq in some manageable form to his successor. “I hope to leave a situation that is stable enough so that this [Iraqi] government can move forward with reconciliation, and the security situation is such that we can have far fewer troops there,” he said.
Bush used to say that he didn’t want to kick problems down the road. Now it’s clear that he wants to leave the biggest challenge of his presidency—how and when to withdraw troops from Iraq—to the 44th president.
The real scandal at the World Bank
Johann Hari
The Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world
Published: 26 April 2007
While the world's press has been fixated on the teeny-weeny scandal over whether the World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz helped to get his girlfriend a $300,000-a-year gig next door, they have been ignoring the rancid stench of a far bigger scandal wafting from Wolfie's Washington offices.
This slo-mo scandal isn't about apparent petty corruption in DC. It's about how Wolfowitz's World Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world, and knowingly worsening our worst crisis - global warming - every day.
Let's start with the victims. Meet Hawa Amadu, 70-something, living in the muddy slums of Accra, the capital of Ghana, and trying to raise her grandkids as best she can. Hawa has a problem - a massive problem - and the World Bank put it there. She can't afford water or electricity any more. Why? The World Bank threatened to refuse to lend any more money to her government, which would effectively make it a leper to governmental donors and international business, unless it stopped subsidising the cost of these necessities. The subsidies stopped. The cost doubled. Now Hawa goes thirsty so her grandchildren can drink, and weeps: "Am I supposed to drink air?"
She is not alone. Half a world away, in Bolivia, Maxima Cari - a mother - is also thirsty. "The World Bank took away my right to clean water," she explains. In 1997 the World Bank demanded the Bolivian government privatise the country's water supply. So Maxima couldn't afford it any more. Now she has to use dirty water from a well her villagers dug. This dirty water is making her children sick, and she is sullen. "I wash my children weekly," Maxima says. "Sometimes there's only enough water to wash their hands and faces, not their whole body ... This is not a nice way to live." The newly elected socialist government of Evo Morales is planning to take the water back - and he is, of course, condemned and threatened by the World Bank.
Meet some more victims. I have met hundreds, from Africa to Latin America to the Middle East. Muracin Claircin is a rice farmer in Haiti - only he can't grow rice any more. In 1995, the World Bank demanded Haiti drop all restrictions on imports. The country was immediately flooded with rice from the US, which has been lavishly subsidised by the US government. The Haitian government barely exists and can't offer rival subsidies anyway: the World Bank forbids it. So now Muracin is jobless and his family are starving.
Some 5,000 miles away, Charles Avaala in Ghana is watching his tomatoes rot. He used to grow them for a government-owned community tomato cannery that provided employment for his entire community. The World Bank ordered his government to close it down, and to open the country's markets to international competition. Now he can't compete with the subsidy-fattened tomatoes from Europe. He, too, is starving.
How would Hawa and Maxima and Muracin and Charles feel if you told them none of this is considered a scandal, but business as usual?
These victims are not merely an anecdote soup; they are an accurate summary of the World Bank's effect on the poor. Don't take my word for it. The World Bank's own Independent Evaluation Group just found that barely one in ten of its borrowers experienced persistent growth between 1995 and 2005 - a much smaller proportion than those who stagnated or slid deeper into poverty. The bank's own former chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, says this approach "has condemned people to death... They don't care if people live or die."
Why? Why would a body that claims to help the poor actually thrash them? Because its mission to end poverty has always been mythical. As George Monbiot explains in his book The Age of Consent, the World Bank was created in the 1940s by US economist Henry Dexter White to be a further projection of US power. The bank's head is invariably American, the bank is based in Washington, and the US has a permanent veto on policies. It does not promote a sensible mix of markets and state action - the real path to development. No: the World Bank pursues the interests of US corporations over the poor, every time.
The bank's staff salve their consciences by pickling themselves in an ideology - neoliberalism - that says there is never a conflict between business rights and human rights. If it's good for Shell, it must be good for poor people - right?
This ideology also backfires on us in the rich world. In 2000, the World Bank was finally forced to undertake a review of its energy policies. It did its best to rig it, putting the former energy minister of the corporation-licking Indonesian dictator General Suharto in charge. Emil Salim was even serving on the board of a coal company at the time he was appointed. But - to everyone's astonishment - Salim concluded by opposing the carbon-pumping oil and gas projects that make up 94 per cent of all the bank's energy projects. He said they should be stopped altogether by 2008.
The bank's response? It ignored its own report and carried on warming. The business climate, it seems, trumps the actual climate. Feel the heat.
While the elites huff and puff about Wolfowitz's alleged small corruption and ignore his organisation's proven immense corruption, there is something we - ordinary citizens - can do. In the summer of 2001, at the global justice protests in Genoa, I met Dennis Brutus, a former inmate of Robben Island prison alongside Nelson Mandela. He had been repelled by the bank's actions in South Africa, and started his protests against them by asking a very basic question: who owns the World Bank? It turns out we do. Ordinary people in the West - through their trade unions, churches, town councils, universities and private investments - own it. The bank raises nearly all its funds by issuing bonds on the private market. They are often held by socially minded institutions, the kind who signed up to Make Poverty History. So, Brutus realised, we have a simple power: to sell the bonds and bankrupt the World Bank. "We need to break the power of the World Bank over developing countries just as the disinvestment movement helped break the power of the apartheid regime in South Africa," he explained.
The campaign to make World Bank bonds as untouchable as apartheid-era investments has already begun. The cities of San Francisco, Boulder, Oakland and Berkeley have sold theirs. Several US unions have also joined. Even this small ripple has caused anxiety within the bank about the threat to its "AAA" bond rating.
In the Genoa sun, as tear gas fired by the Italian police hissed in the background, Brutus told me: "I lived to see the death of political apartheid. Now I want to live to see the end of global financial apartheid."
This is the fight we should join. Not some petty squabble over which Washington technocrat is morally pure enough to lead the forces of subsidy-slashing and starvation.
Put Bush's 'puppy dog' terror theory to sleep
Posted Wednesday, April 25th 2007, 4:00 AM
Be Our Guest
Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq.
The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities."
Remarkably, in his attempt to embrace the failed Iraqi adventure even more than the President, Sen. John McCain is now parroting the line. "We lose this war and come home, they'll follow us home," he says.
How is this odd terrorist puppy dog behavior supposed to work? The President must believe that terrorists are playing by some odd rules of chivalry. Would this be the "only one slaughter ground at a time" rule of terrorism?
Of course, nothing about our being "over there" in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists.
Some 100,000 Iraqis, probably more, have been killed since our invasion. They have parents, children, cousins and fellow tribal clan members who have pledged revenge no matter how long it takes. For many, that revenge is focused on America.
At the same time, investing time, energy and resources in Iraq takes our eye off two far more urgent tasks at hand: one, guarding the homeland against terrorism much better than the pork-dispensing Department of Homeland Security currently does the job; and two, systematically dismantling Al Qaeda all over the world, from Canada to Asia to Africa. On both these fronts, the Bush administration's focus is sorely lacking.
Yet in the fantasyland of illogic in which the President dwells, shaped by slogans devised by spin doctors, America can "win" in Iraq. Then, we are to believe, the terrorists will be so demoralized that they will recant their beliefs and cease their terrorist ways.
In the real world, by choosing unnecessarily to go into Iraq, Bush not only diverted efforts from delivering a death blow to Al Qaeda, he gave that movement both a second chance and the best recruiting tool possible.
U.S. military raids in Iraq have uncovered evidence that Iraqis are planning attacks in America, perhaps to be carried out by terrorists with European Union passports that require no U.S. visas. But such attacks here over the next several years are likely now no matter what happens next in Iraq - and that is because of what Bush has already done, not because of any future course we choose in Iraq.
But we can be sure that when the next attacks come in the U.S., if Bush is down on the ranch cutting trees, he and whatever few followers he retains by then will blame his successor. You can almost hear them now: If only hissuccessor had left enough U.S. troops in the Iraqi shooting gallery to satisfy the blood lust of the enemy, as Bush did, then they wouldn't have come here.
The truth: If not for this administration's reckless steps to push America into war - and strategic blunder after strategic blunder that has satisfied the blood lust of the enemy - fewer evildoers would follow us home like the dogs that they are.
Clarke served as chief counterterrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He is now chairman of Good Harbor Consulting.
Interest rates 'could reach 7.5pc'
Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph
A group of Britain's leading monetarists have launched a harsh attack on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, warning that inflation risks surging out of control in repeat of earlier boom-bust cycles.
Bush and Sharansky: Now They’ll Have Prague
Right Web | Profile | Natan Sharansky
---
Shortly after his reelection in 2004, President Bush met in the White House with Natan Sharansky and told reporters that if they wanted to understand his foreign policy they should read the Soviet dissident-turned-Israeli politician’s book “”The Case for Democracy.” The plummeting popularity of his foreign policy has apparently done nothing to harden Bush’s soft spot for Sharansky, who quit politics last year to become the founding chairman of the Institute of Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center.
Bush has agreed to attend a June 4-6 conference in Prague, titled ““Democracy and Security: Core Values and Sound Policies,” that is being co-sponsored by Sharansky’s Jerusalem-based institute. The other headliners include Sharansky, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and one-time Coalition of the Willing member Jose Maria Aznar, the former prime minister of Spain.
COMMENTS: Go to Sirota's Working Assets site to comment on this entry