Saturday, April 28, 2007
Gareth Porter explains the the massive loopholes in the Democrat’s bogus withdrawal plan
Journalist and historian Gareth Porter explains the the massive loopholes in the Democrat’s bogus withdrawal plan, the false premise of both parties that al Qaeda in Iraq would be anything but doomed if the U.S. left, the question of neocon malevolence versus incompetence, the possibility of war with Iran, whether talks with that country could just be used as a further excuse for war when they “fail,” the first Democratic presidential debate blues and the common assumption that if the U.S. did leave, that the civil war will get worse.
US LAW IN THE BALANCE
By Niki Raapana
April 28, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
The formation of a global government requires very careful planning. A global system must, like all existing political systems, have its own bureaucratic structure for enforcing its own idea of justice. It also needs a philosophical foundation for its principles, its laws, and its social and foreign policy. For as much scrutiny as the global government gets from people around the world, it's amazing how little attention is paid to the actual emerging system.
The front-runner for becoming the emerging supra-national synthesis of all nations is called communitarianism. The communitarian philosophy is already established as the basis for the laws, the regional plans, and the expanded enforcement actions nec global governmentessary to full integration.
Widespread ignorance of communitarianism and denial of the existence of an emerging global legal system has allowed every program necessary to achieve full implementation, unhindered by press or public scrutiny. The vast majority of citizens of the United States do not know what it means when their legislatures say they are "balancing" their laws. They never question why there must be a balance between individual rights and community rights. This "news" can be printed on the front page of American newspapers and not an eyebrow will raise. The new American mantra is that rights to privacy and anonymity have to be balanced against the community's need for greater homeland security, and gee, while they're at it, they may as well go ahead and protect the environment and provide social equity too.
Our citizens have not been told that open borders, protected land and water, free trade, citizen advisory councils, domestic spying, reaching consensus, public-private partnerships, sustainable development, exporting democratic freedom, and enforcing the global common good is as un-American as buying British merchant's tea. The U.S. National Guard says it protects the "common good" right on TV. It's a tragedy that our people do not understand either the ideology or the roots for all the important words used to define American laws.
The term homeland was used in the 1930s to describe a position of the Austrian Minister Zernatto who negotiated terms with the Nazis. Today homeland is a Russian political party and is also used to describe all of Russia. In 2002, Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote , "The name Homeland Security grates on a lot of people, understandably. Homeland isn't really an American word, it's not something we used to say or say now." ( answers.com)
We have a whole war named for Terrorism, and yet we have never been taught the word "terrorist" comes from the Jacobin freemasons who established the usefulness of terror tactics to achieve sweeping political goals in 1789 France. We surely have never been told the term "civil society" originated with the Jacobin's revolutionary idealists. Would it come as any surprise to hear the term "ideology" also originated in 18 th century France?
Our government has described its efforts in Iraq as rebuilding a communitarian system in the Middle East, yet this term never comes up in congressional debates, nor is it part of the anti-war speeches. It's not even part of the calls for Bush and Cheney's impeachment. How can so many people be opposed to the current administration's polices and wars, be so upset over congressional passage of the Patriot Act and the Amnesty idea, be so suspicious of the WTO, and yet not be the slightest bit interested in the actual ideology behind the wars and the laws, let alone the entire concept for global domination over every nation's marketplace?
How is it possible that educated Americans cannot see there is a recurring theme inherent in all new actions that alter national systems, regardless of whether the changes are violent invasions or are quietly adopted into regulatory law just under the local radar? Maybe they've heard it so many times from so many public officials' lips that they assume it's a good thing to rebuild a moral community based in shared values. It sounds so lovely, doesn't it? Anyone opposed would have to be immoral with selfish values, wouldn't they?
The communitarian language is peppered with quite lovely phrases that define a perfect utopian world where everyone is treated with respect and dignity, and everybody shares. This is the final synthesis of all political, economic, social, and religions theories, so it gets to use all their highest sounding goals and platitudes. The bottom line to achieving perfection (a topic which must never be broached) is that American liberty and property cannot long exist without a communitarian perspective (Etzioni). Americans may never be told why their new internationally decreed human rights also carries with it a new legal requirement to perform new duties that are part of a global citizen's responsibilities (Giacomazzi).
Communitarianism is duality magnified by a million times a trillion. It embraces every purpose and mouths the promises made by every prophet and alchemist since the dawn of man. It's designed to become the global justice system and the global religion, so it also must claim to want consensus from each nation and church. This all inclusive philosophy is how they explain they can protect individual rights at the same time they strip them all away. Some sacrifices must be made for the common good. It's the end that matters, it's the end that justifies the means. Violence was always part of their plan to create a peaceful world. Some diehard nations have to be violently subdued. Other nations led by more pragmatic, business classes can be convinced to adapt their morals to allow for organized nepotism and graft. We have arrived at the grand convergence of all humanity; it's the ultimate bi-partisan consensus. This is the perfectly planned transcendent triumph of alchemy over instinct.
Communitarian law is a large part of the "continuous development of norms." This is the designated supreme law in the European Union. This is the legal principles for the Earth Charter. This is the moral purpose for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it changes constantly, rarely in the open, so that few people can ever claim to understand it.
"Secondly, there are entire new areas of international law which need to be thoroughly studied, followed on a daily basis, and almost constantly translated into the domestic legal system. A good example of this is the continuous development of norms protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, rights of minorities, environmental law, communitarian law, etc. Such developments impose another important aspect on the work of a good legal adviser in a democratic, law-abiding country: that of contributing to the further development of international law. I shall quote my former British colleague Sir Arthur Watts who wrote very explicitly about it: "Since there is no legislature, it (international law) changes essentially through State practice - which means what Foreign Ministries do and what Foreign Ministry legal advisers advise their Ministries it is lawful for them to do. Since the law has to change in this way, it means that States can, and do, break new ground and so contribute to the creation of new law. A legal adviser, accordingly, may have to participate in this process; and he may certainly, in appropriate circumstances, advise that it will be lawful to do something which has never been done before, or which would involve the development in a new direction of an existing rule of international law. The circumstances of international life are pressing, and even though a situation may have novel elements it cannot be met with inaction; and novel situations may call for novel responses." " (Nick Stanko, Chief Legal Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Croatia)
In all cases regarding individual rights against the common good, the common good wins.
In order to have an efficient global government, we need a higher global standard that rules supreme over all nations (Garcia). This higher law has to have the ultimate authority to enforce its decisions against anyone in the world, from the small citizen property or business owner all the way up to the President of the United States of America
The EU constitution was supposed to be their legitimizing, crowning achievement. It was designed to pave the way to a completely global communitarian system. But it failed after Dutch and French voters rejected its supremacy clause. So for the EU's 50 th birthday party, Big Mother took a novel approach by trying to rally skeptical French and Dutch voters with a new Treaty called the Berlin Declaration. By taking out the very word "constitution," EU leaders hope to sway European voters into accepting communitarian supremacy of law.
"The signing of the Berlin Declaration - a two-page document designed to rally skeptical voters behind the EU in plain and uplifting language - was the centerpiece of celebrations of the EU's 50th birthday, officially the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 which founded the European Economic Community, which became the EU. 'The declaration did not even mention the word 'constitution,' a token of how controversial the issue remains two years after French and Dutch voters blocked the charter in 2005 referendums."("EU seeks way out of constitutional crisis at birthday celebration" International Herald Tribune, 3/26/2007)
What began as the "law of treaties" already crept into every national system via regional trade agreements designed by Big Mother's representatives. All modern trade groups are regulated by referring to established EU case law. The legitimacy of supreme international ideals, while existing mainly in the communitarian's skewed visionings, is slowly gaining in stature and respect, due mainly to advertising it as the only "moral" court of justice. The rest of us exist unaware in the era of "psychological jurisprudence." (Fox 1990)
Two sets of opposing laws claim to rule supreme in the U.S. Supreme means "greatest in status or authority or power." The Communitarian theory says international law is supreme. When officials of the United States of America cite the "Rule of Law" to justify their most unconstitutional acts, they aren't referring to the U.S. Bill of Rights; it's been balanced.
References:
1, Abroadco Study Abroad, Granada, Spain. POLS course includes: "Basic Principals of Multi-National Constitutionalism in Europe. -National sovereignty sessions. -Constitutional characteristics of treaties. -Characteristics of communitarian rights: direct effect and supremacy of communitarian."
2, Adler, Matthew D,. April 2006, "Constitutional Fidelity, the Rule of Recognition, and the Communitarian Turn in Contemporary Positivism" University of Pennsylvania Law School, Public Law Working Paper No. 06-19,
3, www.answers.com/topic/homeland
4, Altneuland: "The Constitution of Europe in an American Perspective", April 28 - 30, 2004 A Joint Conference Organized by The Hauser Global Law School Program, the Jean Monnet Center for International and Regional Economic Law & Justice, New York University School of Law, The Program in Law and Public Affairs, and The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
5, Etzioni Amitai, "Public Health Law: A Communitarian Perspective"
6, GARCÍA, Fernando at Bolitin Mexicano: "The aim of this essay is to discuss some of the legal problems (both at the constitutional and communitarian levels), faced by the European Union, as a conse-quence of the process of integration and its relation to domestic legal systems of the member States. In this way, the article analyzes the way in which the Court of Justice has controled the principle of the supremacy of communitarian law over domes-tic laws, as well as over the principle of uniformity in its application, on the basis of international intruments, common constitutional traditions and general principles of communitarian law. In addition, the author explains the role of national courts in the determination of constitutional limits to the pro-cess of integration, mainly in what concerns issues such as fundamental rights and the power to determine the jurisdiction limits of communitarian institutions. Lastly, the author stresses the need to establish a structure of the constitutional kind as a useful tool for the effi-cacy of the process of integration. Descriptors: integration, communitarian law, domestic law, European Union, supre-macy, uniformity.
7, Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, "Rights and Responsibilities"
8, Lewis, J. "Communitarian Theory"
9, Malavet, Professor, U.S. Territories Seminar, Notes, Part 5
© 2007 Niki Raapana- All Rights Reserved
Niki Raapana is the co-founder of the Anti-Communitarian League (ACL), an online research center for studying outside the box.
Niki is also the recent author of the non-fiction biography, 2020. Unlike the ACL website (which is a massive endeavor) 2020 introduces the global community government in 100-pages using laymen's terms for average readers. Price: $20.00, includes S&H. Send check or money order to: Nikki Raapana, HC 60 Box 329, Copper Center, Alaska 99573 or order online using PayPal at the ACL: http://nord.twu.net/acl
E-Mail: nikiraapana@gmail.com
Don't Blame Iran for Iraq
Friday, Apr. 27, 2007
Administration claims that Iran has been supplying arms to Iraq's Sunni insurgency have never made any sense. Coming soon after Washington initially accused Tehran of arming Shi'ite militias, they have seemed like a weak attempt to remake its case tying the country to attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq — the vast majority of which are carried out by Sunni, not Shi'a, forces.
One of the unshakable foundations of Iranian foreign policy is support for Iraq's Shi'a, who now more than ever are bloody foes of the country's Sunni minority. And if for some unfathomable reason Iran were arming the Sunni insurgency, would it leave behind evidence to implicate itself?
In April 1983 an Iranian surrogate group blew up the American embassy in Beirut. Forensic investigators sifting through the rubble determined with a fair amount of certainty that the bomb maker had inserted explosives inside the firing chain, ensuring a "signature" was not left to tie the attack to Iran. Iran never claimed the attack, the suicide bomber was never named, and if it weren't for a still classified lucky break, we would have had no evidence the Iranians were behind it. It is unlikely in the intervening years Iran lost its touch. It certainly isn1t clumsy enough to leave serial numbers or factory markings on weapons going to the Sunni insurgency.
An intel official recently assigned to Baghdad told me he too thought the Administration's claims are ridiculous. Iraq is too chaotic and the insurgency too fragmented — both the Sunni and Shi'a — to determine the origin of arms. The Iranians certainly are arming Shi'a militias, but what happens to the arms once they get to Iraq are anyone's guess. Among other things, Sunni insurgent groups regularly raid Shi'a caches.
And like everything else in Iraq, it turns out to be more complicated. Even before Saddam fell, Hizballah and other Lebanese militias opened up shop in Iraq. (A large part of Hizballah's leadership has strong historical ties to Iraq, including Hizballah secretary general Hasan Nasrallah, who studied in Najaf.) Iraqis — both Shi'a and Sunni — fought with Hizballah in southern Lebanon in its 18-year war against Israel, picking up battlefield experience we1re now seeing in Iraq, including knowledge of explosive-formed projectiles, EFP1s.
Compounding the problem, I am told by someone close to Hizballah, is that Syria does not have complete control over Iranian arms stores it holds for Hizballah. Some arms and explosives are finding their way to the Sunni insurgency, possibly with the complicity of individual Syrian intelligence officers or the Syrian regime.
In other words, even if Iranian-built EFPs are finding their way into the hands of the Sunnis, we don?t really know who the culprit is.
Bringing in Iran to help try and stem the violence in Iraq is a step in the right direction. But Iran has nowhere near the levels of control over and responsibility for the chaos and carnage that Washington is ascribing to it, and we can't count on it being the silver bullet. The unfortunate truth is Iraq is awash in weapons and only a unified, independent, popularly backed Iraqi government can change that.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East and Time.com's intelligence columnist, is the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down
Stop the war against Sudan
April 28, 2007
By David Rolde
The United States has been waging war against Sudan for the past 15 years, and we need to stop it. Just like with Iraq, the U.S. war against Sudan is a war for oil and a war for Israel. The proposed invasion of Sudan is based on lies. The lie of accusing the government of Sudan of "genocide in Darfur" serves the same function as the lie a few years ago accusing the government of Iraq of "possessing weapons of mass destruction". The U.S. government, and its allies the Israeli and U.K. governments, are the real world champion purveyors of genocide and possessors of WMDs.
Sudan, the geographically largest country in Africa and the home of 35 million people, has been devastated by U.S. attacks for the past 15 years. In the early 90s the U.S. government declared Sudan to be a "state sponsor of terrorism" because the government of Sudan does not support Israel. The U.S. government imposed sanctions against Sudan. The U.S. sanctions and trade boycott escalated in severity several times during the 90s and 00s and damaged the Sudanese economy, causing immense human suffering. Throughout the 90s the U.S. government armed and funded the SPLA rebels in the south of Sudan in a war against the Sudanese government, and against rival southern groups, in which millions of persons were killed or displaced. Millions of southern refugees fled from the SPLA and now live in Khartoum, the northern capital. The culmination of U.S. support for war in Sudan was the so-called "Sudan Peace Act," signed by George W Bush in 2002, which allocated one hundred million dollars per year to the SPLA.
One notable episode of the U.S. war against Sudan happened in 1998 when the U.S. government of Bill Clinton, with a missile strike, destroyed Sudan's only pharmaceutical plant, the al-Shifa plant near Khartoum. This rendered Sudan unable to produce needed human medications to treat endemic diseases such as malaria and also veterinary medicines needed by Sudan's livestock industry which is a major part of the livelihood of the people of Sudan.
In 2004, during the U.S. presidential election campaign, the U.S. government started leveling false allegations of "genocide" against the Sudanese government in regards to the new civil war in Darfur in the west of Sudan. The U.S. media and pro-imperialist "human rights" organizations (such as Human Rights Watch which is controlled by billionaire George Soros and the Council on Foreign Relations) falsely portrayed the conflict in Darfur as a slaughter of black Africans by a "white Arab" Sudanese government. In reality it was a civil war among many armed groups, some of which were supported by the U.S. and Israel, fighting over limited resources in an impoverished region. Nearly everyone in Sudan is a black African. And nearly everyone in Darfur is a black African, Arabic-speaking Muslim. The numbers cited for the "genocide" in Darfur were inflated estimates of how many people might die from famine and disease.
This year the propaganda against Sudan in the United States has intensified again. On April 30, 2006, the U.S. government in conjunction with U.S. Zionist groups, staged a large pro-war rally in Washington DC. U.S. congresspersons, as well as members of the Bush administration, spoke at the rally calling for the war against Sudan to be escalated by sending in an invasion force of U.N., NATO or U.S. troops. Nearly every pro-Israel group in the USA has anti-Sudan propaganda on the front of their website. In Massachusetts an example of a Zionist group doing pro-war activism is the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Boston.
The anti-Sudan rhetoric is no different than the rhetoric that the U.S. government uses against other countries that the United States is attacking. One aim of U.S. attacks against Sudan is to gain or maintain control over Sudan's natural resources: notably petroleum but also uranium, other minerals, gum arabic, and the Nile River which supplies water to Egypt. China currently has access to oil from Sudan, and the U.S. government wants to cut China off. Destabilizing and impoverishing Sudan serves American and Israeli hegemonic interests to make sure there are no prosperous independent nations in the Middle East and North African regions.
But within the United States the anti-Sudan rhetoric is useful for more than just getting Americans ready for more overt war against Sudan. Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric regarding Sudan is part of the general anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda that is used to gain U.S. domestic support for the war in Iraq, continued U.S. support for Israel, and the so-called "war on terror". Zionist groups in the United States have been purveying anti-Arab propaganda regarding Sudan for many years before the Darfur war, making false claims about "slavery" in Sudan. Slave redemption efforts in Sudan have been shown to be a hoax. Divesting from Sudan is a Zionist anti-Arab counter-proposal to the idea of divesting from Israel. Lies about Arabs divert attention from efforts to end Israeli apartheid in Palestine.
On September 1, 2006, the U.S. rammed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council calling for tens of thousands of U.N. troops, ostensibly "peace-keepers" but really an imperialist invasion force, to be sent to Darfur to replace the current smaller U.S.-puppet African Union force. On September 17, Zionists and other pro-war Americans held an anti-Sudan rally in Central Park in New York City. The keynote speaker at the rally was Madeleine Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, who is infamous for having admitted that the Clinton administration and the U.N. had killed half a million Iraqi children through the sanctions in the 90s but nevertheless defending the actions against Iraq as worthwhile. Rally attendees were asked to wear blue hats to signify their desire to send "blue helmet" U.N. troops to invade Sudan. These U.N. troops would not be "peace-keepers." We can see the likely outcome by looking at Haiti where, in 2004, the U.S. deposed the legitimate government and then sent in a U.N. occupation force which has terrorized the country and brutalized the Haitian people. When foreign U.N. soldiers get to Darfur and can't determine which black Arabic-speaking Muslims are the "bad Arabs" and which are the "good Africans", the U.N. troops will kill people indiscriminately. The Sudanese people will rightly resist. The situation will escalate. U.S. warmongers will call for sending more troops, including U.S. troops, and bringing the war to Khartoum. It will be a disaster. The U.S. war against Sudan needs to be stopped and reversed now.
Anti-war activists are not working hard enough to stop the U.S. and Zionist war against Sudan. The current threats against Sudan are just as serious as the threats against Iran. Anti-war activists should be focusing more effort to stop the war against Sudan and to work against U.S. imperialism in Africa in general - the current war against Sudan is just one manifestation of centuries of European colonialism and neo-colonialism in Sudan and Africa. The situation for the people of Sudan will improve once foreign intervention in Sudan stops.
By David Rolde
The United States has been waging war against Sudan for the past 15 years, and we need to stop it. Just like with Iraq, the U.S. war against Sudan is a war for oil and a war for Israel. The proposed invasion of Sudan is based on lies. The lie of accusing the government of Sudan of "genocide in Darfur" serves the same function as the lie a few years ago accusing the government of Iraq of "possessing weapons of mass destruction". The U.S. government, and its allies the Israeli and U.K. governments, are the real world champion purveyors of genocide and possessors of WMDs.
Sudan, the geographically largest country in Africa and the home of 35 million people, has been devastated by U.S. attacks for the past 15 years. In the early 90s the U.S. government declared Sudan to be a "state sponsor of terrorism" because the government of Sudan does not support Israel. The U.S. government imposed sanctions against Sudan. The U.S. sanctions and trade boycott escalated in severity several times during the 90s and 00s and damaged the Sudanese economy, causing immense human suffering. Throughout the 90s the U.S. government armed and funded the SPLA rebels in the south of Sudan in a war against the Sudanese government, and against rival southern groups, in which millions of persons were killed or displaced. Millions of southern refugees fled from the SPLA and now live in Khartoum, the northern capital. The culmination of U.S. support for war in Sudan was the so-called "Sudan Peace Act," signed by George W Bush in 2002, which allocated one hundred million dollars per year to the SPLA.
One notable episode of the U.S. war against Sudan happened in 1998 when the U.S. government of Bill Clinton, with a missile strike, destroyed Sudan's only pharmaceutical plant, the al-Shifa plant near Khartoum. This rendered Sudan unable to produce needed human medications to treat endemic diseases such as malaria and also veterinary medicines needed by Sudan's livestock industry which is a major part of the livelihood of the people of Sudan.
In 2004, during the U.S. presidential election campaign, the U.S. government started leveling false allegations of "genocide" against the Sudanese government in regards to the new civil war in Darfur in the west of Sudan. The U.S. media and pro-imperialist "human rights" organizations (such as Human Rights Watch which is controlled by billionaire George Soros and the Council on Foreign Relations) falsely portrayed the conflict in Darfur as a slaughter of black Africans by a "white Arab" Sudanese government. In reality it was a civil war among many armed groups, some of which were supported by the U.S. and Israel, fighting over limited resources in an impoverished region. Nearly everyone in Sudan is a black African. And nearly everyone in Darfur is a black African, Arabic-speaking Muslim. The numbers cited for the "genocide" in Darfur were inflated estimates of how many people might die from famine and disease.
This year the propaganda against Sudan in the United States has intensified again. On April 30, 2006, the U.S. government in conjunction with U.S. Zionist groups, staged a large pro-war rally in Washington DC. U.S. congresspersons, as well as members of the Bush administration, spoke at the rally calling for the war against Sudan to be escalated by sending in an invasion force of U.N., NATO or U.S. troops. Nearly every pro-Israel group in the USA has anti-Sudan propaganda on the front of their website. In Massachusetts an example of a Zionist group doing pro-war activism is the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Greater Boston.
The anti-Sudan rhetoric is no different than the rhetoric that the U.S. government uses against other countries that the United States is attacking. One aim of U.S. attacks against Sudan is to gain or maintain control over Sudan's natural resources: notably petroleum but also uranium, other minerals, gum arabic, and the Nile River which supplies water to Egypt. China currently has access to oil from Sudan, and the U.S. government wants to cut China off. Destabilizing and impoverishing Sudan serves American and Israeli hegemonic interests to make sure there are no prosperous independent nations in the Middle East and North African regions.
But within the United States the anti-Sudan rhetoric is useful for more than just getting Americans ready for more overt war against Sudan. Anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric regarding Sudan is part of the general anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda that is used to gain U.S. domestic support for the war in Iraq, continued U.S. support for Israel, and the so-called "war on terror". Zionist groups in the United States have been purveying anti-Arab propaganda regarding Sudan for many years before the Darfur war, making false claims about "slavery" in Sudan. Slave redemption efforts in Sudan have been shown to be a hoax. Divesting from Sudan is a Zionist anti-Arab counter-proposal to the idea of divesting from Israel. Lies about Arabs divert attention from efforts to end Israeli apartheid in Palestine.
On September 1, 2006, the U.S. rammed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council calling for tens of thousands of U.N. troops, ostensibly "peace-keepers" but really an imperialist invasion force, to be sent to Darfur to replace the current smaller U.S.-puppet African Union force. On September 17, Zionists and other pro-war Americans held an anti-Sudan rally in Central Park in New York City. The keynote speaker at the rally was Madeleine Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, who is infamous for having admitted that the Clinton administration and the U.N. had killed half a million Iraqi children through the sanctions in the 90s but nevertheless defending the actions against Iraq as worthwhile. Rally attendees were asked to wear blue hats to signify their desire to send "blue helmet" U.N. troops to invade Sudan. These U.N. troops would not be "peace-keepers." We can see the likely outcome by looking at Haiti where, in 2004, the U.S. deposed the legitimate government and then sent in a U.N. occupation force which has terrorized the country and brutalized the Haitian people. When foreign U.N. soldiers get to Darfur and can't determine which black Arabic-speaking Muslims are the "bad Arabs" and which are the "good Africans", the U.N. troops will kill people indiscriminately. The Sudanese people will rightly resist. The situation will escalate. U.S. warmongers will call for sending more troops, including U.S. troops, and bringing the war to Khartoum. It will be a disaster. The U.S. war against Sudan needs to be stopped and reversed now.
Anti-war activists are not working hard enough to stop the U.S. and Zionist war against Sudan. The current threats against Sudan are just as serious as the threats against Iran. Anti-war activists should be focusing more effort to stop the war against Sudan and to work against U.S. imperialism in Africa in general - the current war against Sudan is just one manifestation of centuries of European colonialism and neo-colonialism in Sudan and Africa. The situation for the people of Sudan will improve once foreign intervention in Sudan stops.
Monica Goodling Instructs DOJ Officials to Delete Documents
Friday, April 27, 2007
Another Friday, another document dump from the DOJ. I haven't had time to look through very many of the documents, but one of the first ones I came across was this one from Monica "I plead the Fifth" Goodling. Notice the instruction in boldface type (click on the image to zoom in):
Yes, that's an instruction to delete documents. And notice the date: February 12, 2007. That's well after Congress began investigating this matter. I don't believe any subpoenas or document requests had yet been issued (someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that), but it was pretty clear by then that document requests were likely.
Let's review the timeline. On January 17, 2007, Senators Feinstein and Leahy grilled Alberto Gonzales on the recent spate of U.S. Attorney firings. On January 25, 2007, Senator Schumer announced that he was going to hold hearings on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. And on February 6, Schumer held the first set of hearings, in which Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified that Bud Cummins was not asked to leave for "performance-related" reasons, but rather to make way for Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin. That damaging testimony helped propel this story to the front pages.
And two days later, on February 8, 2007, Senators Durbin, Schumer, Murray, and Reid sent a follow up letter to Alberto Gonzales asking all sorts of questions arising out of McNulty's testimony, including a number of questions about the replacement of Bud Cummins with Tim Griffin.
It is in this context that Monica Goodling, four days later, sends out the above-displayed email, which attaches updated talking points re: Griffin/Cummins and various other U.S. Attorney related issues and instructs the recipients to delete prior versions of the documents.
As a litigator, I can tell you, that's a real no-no. You never instruct people to delete documents that are relevant to a pending investigation. Never. That's true even when the investigating body hasn't yet got around to requesting those documents. It smacks of obstruction. Indeed, the Obstruction of Congress statute, 18 U.S.C § 1505, specifically prohibits any attempts to obstruct "the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress." The penalty is up to 5 years in prison.
I'm not sure if 18 U.S.C § 1505 has been interpreted to apply to the destruction of documents that have not yet been formally requested--I suspect it hasn't--but it is, at the very least, incredibly dodgy to be instructing people to delete documents that relate to a pending Congressional inquiry. If an employee of a private entity were caught giving such an instruction after an investigation had been initiated, it would incur the everlasting wrath of the government agency or prosecutor's office conducting that investigation. It would be a real mess.
That's why the first piece of advice a private entity receives from its lawyers when it learns that it is being investigated is to issue a document preservation notice to all employees. The last thing you want is to have the government request a document and then learn that it was deleted or destroyed AFTER the investigation was initiated. Just ask the people who used to work for Arthur Anderson. The sad demise of that once proud firm is all the reminder you need that the Justice Department doesn't react too kindly to post-initiation-of-investigation destruction of evidence.
Which makes it all the more ironic that Monica Goodling, a high-ranking Justice Department official, is instructing other high-ranking Justice Department officials to delete documents that are relevant to an ongoing Congressional inquiry. No wonder she pled the Fifth.
Yes, that's an instruction to delete documents. And notice the date: February 12, 2007. That's well after Congress began investigating this matter. I don't believe any subpoenas or document requests had yet been issued (someone please correct me if I'm wrong about that), but it was pretty clear by then that document requests were likely.
Let's review the timeline. On January 17, 2007, Senators Feinstein and Leahy grilled Alberto Gonzales on the recent spate of U.S. Attorney firings. On January 25, 2007, Senator Schumer announced that he was going to hold hearings on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. And on February 6, Schumer held the first set of hearings, in which Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified that Bud Cummins was not asked to leave for "performance-related" reasons, but rather to make way for Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin. That damaging testimony helped propel this story to the front pages.
And two days later, on February 8, 2007, Senators Durbin, Schumer, Murray, and Reid sent a follow up letter to Alberto Gonzales asking all sorts of questions arising out of McNulty's testimony, including a number of questions about the replacement of Bud Cummins with Tim Griffin.
It is in this context that Monica Goodling, four days later, sends out the above-displayed email, which attaches updated talking points re: Griffin/Cummins and various other U.S. Attorney related issues and instructs the recipients to delete prior versions of the documents.
As a litigator, I can tell you, that's a real no-no. You never instruct people to delete documents that are relevant to a pending investigation. Never. That's true even when the investigating body hasn't yet got around to requesting those documents. It smacks of obstruction. Indeed, the Obstruction of Congress statute, 18 U.S.C § 1505, specifically prohibits any attempts to obstruct "the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress." The penalty is up to 5 years in prison.
I'm not sure if 18 U.S.C § 1505 has been interpreted to apply to the destruction of documents that have not yet been formally requested--I suspect it hasn't--but it is, at the very least, incredibly dodgy to be instructing people to delete documents that relate to a pending Congressional inquiry. If an employee of a private entity were caught giving such an instruction after an investigation had been initiated, it would incur the everlasting wrath of the government agency or prosecutor's office conducting that investigation. It would be a real mess.
That's why the first piece of advice a private entity receives from its lawyers when it learns that it is being investigated is to issue a document preservation notice to all employees. The last thing you want is to have the government request a document and then learn that it was deleted or destroyed AFTER the investigation was initiated. Just ask the people who used to work for Arthur Anderson. The sad demise of that once proud firm is all the reminder you need that the Justice Department doesn't react too kindly to post-initiation-of-investigation destruction of evidence.
Which makes it all the more ironic that Monica Goodling, a high-ranking Justice Department official, is instructing other high-ranking Justice Department officials to delete documents that are relevant to an ongoing Congressional inquiry. No wonder she pled the Fifth.
U.S. Announces 8 Troop Deaths in Iraq
By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 28, 2007
(04-28) 13:07 PDT BAGHDAD, (AP) --
A car bomb exploded Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala as the streets were packed with people heading for evening prayers, killing at least 58 and wounding scores near some of the country's most sacred shrines. Separately, the U.S. military announced the deaths of eight American troops, including three killed Saturday in a single roadside bombing outside Baghdad.
With black smoke clogging the skies above Karbala, angry crowds hurled stones at police and later stormed the provincial governor's house, accusing authorities of failing to protect them from the unrelenting bombings usually blamed on Sunni insurgents. It was the second car bomb to strike the city's central area in two weeks.
Near the blast site, survivors frantically searched for missing relatives. Iraqi television showed one man carrying the charred body of a small girl above his head as he ran down the street, while ambulances rushed to retrieve the wounded and firefighters sprayed water at fires in the wreckage, leaving pools of bloody water.
The blast took place about 7 p.m. in a crowded commercial area near the shrines of Imam Abbas and Imam Hussein, major Shiite saints. The U.S. military said American forces were on the scene; the Iraqi army asked for medical supplies.
Tenet says Cheney had eye on Iraq long before 9/11
April 28, 2007, 1:51AM
In his book, former CIA director says aides to Cheney and Rumsfeld inserted 'crap' into public justifications for war
By KAREN DEYOUNG
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11 attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George Tenet.
Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to insert "crap" into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration's willingness to "mischaracterize complex intelligence information."
"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat," Tenet writes in At the Center of the Storm, to be published Monday. The debate "was not about imminence but about acting before Saddam did."
White House counselor Dan Bartlett Friday called Tenet a "true patriot" but disputed his conclusions, saying "the president did wrestle with those very serious questions." Responding to reports from the book in Friday's New York Times, Bartlett suggested that the former CIA director might have been unaware of all the discussions. President Bush, Bartlett said on NBC's Today Show, "weighed all the various consequences before he did make a decision."
In their threat briefings for the incoming Bush administration in late 2000, Tenet writes, CIA officials did not even mention Iraq. But Cheney, he says, asked for an Iraq briefing and requested that the outgoing Clinton administration's defense secretary, William Cohen, provide information on Iraq for Bush.
A speech by Cheney in August 2002 "went well beyond what our analysis could support," Tenet writes. The speech charged, among other things, that Saddam had restarted his nuclear program and would "acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon ... perhaps within a year." Caught off-guard by the remarks, which had not been cleared by the CIA, Tenet says he considered confronting the vice president on the subject but did not.
"Would that have changed his future approach?" he asks. "I doubt it but I should not have let silence imply an agreement." Policy-makers, he writes, "have a right to their own opinions, but not their own set of facts."
For the future, Tenet describes his deepest fear as "the nuclear one." He is convinced, he writes, that this is where Osama bin Laden "and his operatives desperately want to go. They understand that bombings by cars, trucks, trains and planes will get them some headlines, to be sure. But if they manage to set off a mushroom cloud, they will make history."
The book breaks Tenet's long public silence since he resigned in June 2004 over what he considered White House attempts to turn him into a scapegoat, as U.S. efforts in Iraq were bogging down, for the faulty intelligence used to justify the invasion in the first place.
Tenet writes that Bush talked him out of resigning in May 2003. But he decided it was time to go nine months later when a book by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward quoted him as telling Bush in December 2002 that the intelligence case against Iraq was a "slam dunk," a statement he says was taken out of context but subsequently used by the administration to blame him for faulty Iraq intelligence. "I couldn't quit immediately over something that appeared in a book," Tenet writes, "but I didn't see any way I could or should stay on much longer." Bush made no attempt to keep him when he finally resigned in June 2004.
Tenet blames himself, among other things, for the hastily compiled October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, issued on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing the war. The NIE, he said, "should have been initiated earlier. I didn't think one was necessary. I was wrong." The document, he acknowledged, was "not cautious in key judgments" and at times used single sources who turned out to be wrong.
A perennial problem, he writes, was a tendency by intelligence analysts to assume other people thought like they did. When judging whether Saddam was lying when he said Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, "we did not account for ... the mind set never to show weakness in a very dangerous neighborhood."
One of the "lowest moments of my seven-year tenure," Tenet recalls, was when a congressman told him in a public hearing in the spring of 2004 that "we depended on you, and you let us down."
He titles one chapter of the 549-page book "Missed Opportunities," but Tenet misses few opportunities himself to settle scores with Cheney and Rumsfeld and their top aides, and with Bush's first-term national security adviser and current secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. He characterizes Rice as a "remote" figure who "knew the president's mind well but tended to stay out of policy fights." Under Rice, he says, the National Security Council failed to explore options and reach consensus. Rumsfeld, he says, refused to recognize worsening reality in Iraq and on several occasions undercut CIA efforts with cavalier treatment of secret information.
By contrast, Tenet's treatment of Bush, who presented Tenet with a Medal of Freedom six months after his departure, is relatively gentle. He says he and others sometimes failed to give Bush the information he needed. "The president was not well served," he says by way of example, "because the NSC became too deferential to a postwar strategy that was not working."
Tenet writes defensively about the controversial program to intercept domestic telephone calls involving terrorism suspects. The program was Cheney's idea, and the vice president briefed "the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees 12 times prior to its public disclosure" in late 2005.
He reiterates a claim last year by Bush that the CIA's harsh interrogations of captured al-Qaida figures "helped disrupt plots aimed at locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia." He says the agency used "the most aggressive" techniques — which he does not detail — on "a handful of the worst terrorists on the planet" and that the questioning was "carefully monitored at all times to ensure the safety of the prisoner."
In his book, former CIA director says aides to Cheney and Rumsfeld inserted 'crap' into public justifications for war
By KAREN DEYOUNG
Washington Post
WASHINGTON — White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11 attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George Tenet.
Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to insert "crap" into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration's willingness to "mischaracterize complex intelligence information."
"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat," Tenet writes in At the Center of the Storm, to be published Monday. The debate "was not about imminence but about acting before Saddam did."
White House counselor Dan Bartlett Friday called Tenet a "true patriot" but disputed his conclusions, saying "the president did wrestle with those very serious questions." Responding to reports from the book in Friday's New York Times, Bartlett suggested that the former CIA director might have been unaware of all the discussions. President Bush, Bartlett said on NBC's Today Show, "weighed all the various consequences before he did make a decision."
In their threat briefings for the incoming Bush administration in late 2000, Tenet writes, CIA officials did not even mention Iraq. But Cheney, he says, asked for an Iraq briefing and requested that the outgoing Clinton administration's defense secretary, William Cohen, provide information on Iraq for Bush.
A speech by Cheney in August 2002 "went well beyond what our analysis could support," Tenet writes. The speech charged, among other things, that Saddam had restarted his nuclear program and would "acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon ... perhaps within a year." Caught off-guard by the remarks, which had not been cleared by the CIA, Tenet says he considered confronting the vice president on the subject but did not.
"Would that have changed his future approach?" he asks. "I doubt it but I should not have let silence imply an agreement." Policy-makers, he writes, "have a right to their own opinions, but not their own set of facts."
For the future, Tenet describes his deepest fear as "the nuclear one." He is convinced, he writes, that this is where Osama bin Laden "and his operatives desperately want to go. They understand that bombings by cars, trucks, trains and planes will get them some headlines, to be sure. But if they manage to set off a mushroom cloud, they will make history."
The book breaks Tenet's long public silence since he resigned in June 2004 over what he considered White House attempts to turn him into a scapegoat, as U.S. efforts in Iraq were bogging down, for the faulty intelligence used to justify the invasion in the first place.
Tenet writes that Bush talked him out of resigning in May 2003. But he decided it was time to go nine months later when a book by The Washington Post's Bob Woodward quoted him as telling Bush in December 2002 that the intelligence case against Iraq was a "slam dunk," a statement he says was taken out of context but subsequently used by the administration to blame him for faulty Iraq intelligence. "I couldn't quit immediately over something that appeared in a book," Tenet writes, "but I didn't see any way I could or should stay on much longer." Bush made no attempt to keep him when he finally resigned in June 2004.
Tenet blames himself, among other things, for the hastily compiled October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, issued on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing the war. The NIE, he said, "should have been initiated earlier. I didn't think one was necessary. I was wrong." The document, he acknowledged, was "not cautious in key judgments" and at times used single sources who turned out to be wrong.
A perennial problem, he writes, was a tendency by intelligence analysts to assume other people thought like they did. When judging whether Saddam was lying when he said Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, "we did not account for ... the mind set never to show weakness in a very dangerous neighborhood."
One of the "lowest moments of my seven-year tenure," Tenet recalls, was when a congressman told him in a public hearing in the spring of 2004 that "we depended on you, and you let us down."
He titles one chapter of the 549-page book "Missed Opportunities," but Tenet misses few opportunities himself to settle scores with Cheney and Rumsfeld and their top aides, and with Bush's first-term national security adviser and current secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. He characterizes Rice as a "remote" figure who "knew the president's mind well but tended to stay out of policy fights." Under Rice, he says, the National Security Council failed to explore options and reach consensus. Rumsfeld, he says, refused to recognize worsening reality in Iraq and on several occasions undercut CIA efforts with cavalier treatment of secret information.
By contrast, Tenet's treatment of Bush, who presented Tenet with a Medal of Freedom six months after his departure, is relatively gentle. He says he and others sometimes failed to give Bush the information he needed. "The president was not well served," he says by way of example, "because the NSC became too deferential to a postwar strategy that was not working."
Tenet writes defensively about the controversial program to intercept domestic telephone calls involving terrorism suspects. The program was Cheney's idea, and the vice president briefed "the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees 12 times prior to its public disclosure" in late 2005.
He reiterates a claim last year by Bush that the CIA's harsh interrogations of captured al-Qaida figures "helped disrupt plots aimed at locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia." He says the agency used "the most aggressive" techniques — which he does not detail — on "a handful of the worst terrorists on the planet" and that the questioning was "carefully monitored at all times to ensure the safety of the prisoner."
Israel and al-Qaeda Want the US to Stay in Iraq
The last thing the Middle East's main players want is US troops to leave Iraq
Across the region, ordinary people want the Americans out. But from Israel to al-Qaida, political groups and states have other ideasHussein Agha
Wednesday April 25, 2007
The Guardian
Overt political debate in the Middle East is hostile to the American occupation of Iraq and dominated by calls for it to end sooner rather than later. No less a figure than King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, arguably the United States' closest Arab ally, has declared the occupation of Iraq "illegal" and "illegitimate". Real intentions, however, are different. States and local political groups might not admit it - because of public opinion - but they do not want to see the back of the Americans. Not yet.
For this there is a simple reason: while the US can no longer successfully manipulate regional actors to carry out its plans, regional actors have learned to use the US presence to promote their own objectives. Quietly and against the deeply held wishes of their populations, they have managed to keep the Americans engaged with the hope of some elusive victory.
The so-called axis of moderate Arab states - comprising Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - dreads an early US withdrawal. First, because it would be widely interpreted as an American defeat, which would weaken these pro-American regimes while both energising and radicalising their populations.
Second, if the US leaves, the emergence of a Shia regime in Iraq - in itself an offensive prospect to them - would only be a matter of time. Facing Arab antipathy, this regime would be likely to look eastward and forge close ties with its Iranian co-religionists. In the view of most Arabs, this would present a formidable challenge, setting in motion a series of dangerous events - an Iranian-Iraqi alliance; political and material support from Arab countries being offered to disgruntled Iraqi Sunni groups; retaliation by Iraqi forces; and the threat of broader regional involvement.
Third, a US departure risks triggering Iraq's partition. As some Arabs see it, the occupation is what holds the country together. So long as coalition forces are deployed, a full-blown breakup can be avoided.
In contrast, with the Americans gone, the odds of partition would increase dramatically, presenting a threat to the integrity and security of regional states. Exacerbating dormant, and in some cases not so dormant, secessionist tendencies would be one concern. Perhaps more worrying would be the ensuing challenge to the legitimacy of the fundamental tenets of nationhood, state, and national borders.
Paradoxically, the competing axis of so-called rogue states made up of Syria and Iran also wants the US to stay. So long as America remains mired in Iraq's quicksand, they think, it will be difficult for it to embark on a similar adventure nearby. This is true not only politically - the quagmire standing as a stark reminder of the invasion's failure - but also militarily: US capabilities will remain stretched for as long as the occupation continues.
Moreover, American forces in Iraq present relatively soft targets for retaliation in case Iran or Syria is attacked. In short, whether or not Syria and Iran are correct in their calculations, the occupation of Iraq is seen as the most effective insurance policy against a possible US attack against them.
For Turkey, America's presence ensures that the national aspirations of Iraq's Kurds will not metamorphose into a fully fledged independent state, a strict red line for Ankara, which has its own irredentist Kurdish problem. By containing Kurdish ambitions, the US diminishes the probability of a costly and uncertain Turkish military campaign to thwart them. Nor is Turkey attracted to the prospect of an Iraqi Shia state allied to Iran and tolerant of Kurdish aspirations - an outcome it hopes the occupation will make less likely.
For Israel too, an American withdrawal could spell disaster. Already, nothing has dented Israeli deterrence more than America's performance in Iraq - an inspiration to Israel's Arab foes that even the mightiest can be brought to heel. An early withdrawal, coming in the wake of last summer's Lebanon war, could put Israel in a dangerous position, handing a victory to Iran - the latest putative threat to Israel's existence - and providing a boost to Syria which may be considering military options to recover the Golan Heights.
There are risks for the smaller Gulf states too. With their large Shia communities and heavy dependence on American protection, they would be threatened by an early US departure from Iraq. In Bahrain, home to an unhappy Shia majority, the fallout could be imminent.
Inside Iraq, this is a period of consolidation for most political groups. They are building up their political and military capabilities, cultivating and forging alliances, clarifying political objectives and preparing for impending challenges. It is not the moment for all-out confrontation. No group has the confidence or capacity decisively to confront rivals within its own community or across communal lines. Equally, no party is genuinely interested in a serious process of national reconciliation when they feel they can improve their position later on. A continued American presence is consistent with both concerns - it can keep clashes manageable and be used to postpone the need for serious political engagement.
Shias in government would like the US to stay long enough for them to tighten their grip on the levers of state power and build a loyal military. Those Shias who are not in power would like them to stay long enough to avoid a premature showdown with their rivals. Militant Shia groups can simultaneously blame the occupation forces for their community's plight and attack them to mobilise further support. Pro-Iranian Shias, meanwhile, retaliate against anti-Iranian US moves with attacks on Americans in Iraq.
Al-Qaida and its affiliates arguably benefit most from the occupation. They established themselves, brought in recruits, sustained operations against the Americans and expanded. The last thing they want is for the Americans to leave and deny them targets and motivation for new members. Other Sunni armed groups need the Americans for similar reasons and for protection against Shias. For Sunni politicians, the occupation prevents a total Shia takeover of state institutions and helps increase their influence.
Of all ethnic groups, the Kurds have made best use of the Americans. Protected by the US from their powerful and ruthless historical foes, Arab and Turk, they have built quasi-independent institutions and prospered amid relative security. They have no reason to want this situation to end.
In common with neighbouring states, Iraqi Shias, Sunnis and Kurds are united in being able to use the Americans' presence to pursue separate and often conflicting political agendas. The grand disconnect in the region is between the political sentiments of ordinary people, which are overwhelmingly for an end to occupation, and the political calculations of leaders, which emphasise the benefits of using the Americans and consequently of extending their stay - at least for the time being.
In this grim picture, the Americans appear the least sure and most confused. With unattainable objectives, wobbly plans, changing tactics, shifting alliances and ever-increasing casualties, it is not clear any longer what they want or how they are going to achieve it. By setting themselves up to be manipulated, they give credence to an old Arab saying: the magic has taken over the magician.
· Hussein Agha is a senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford
comment@guardian.co.uk
Big media's assault on democracy
Ryan Blethen / Times editorial columnist
"Enough" is a word that means little to corporate media. The few bloated companies that remain atop the media food-chain have crossed the line from growing profits to actively pushing rule and law changes that will wound our nation.
These mega-companies move from one industry to the next in the name of consolidation, driven by a Wall Street appetite that demands more every quarter. Companies once devoted to a particular sector are now behemoths that have control over almost everything read, watched or listened to.
Time Warner is a prime example. A magazine publisher and a movie studio is now a leviathan made up of Time Inc., AOL, HBO, Time Warner Cable, New Line Cinema, Turner Broadcasting Systems and Warner Bros. Entertainment. Each part comprises a number of other companies. Time Inc. consists of 130 magazines.
Information
It is Time Warner that is responsible for the latest assault on a mechanism set up to promote democracy and innovation. I am not talking about the Internet, but the U.S. Postal Service. That's right, old snail mail.
Our postal system is written into the Constitution and was set up in a way that all publications, regardless of size or influence, could reach the public. James Madison even said that publications should be sent free.
"It is really one of the great build-outs of democracy in our country," said Bob McChesney, professor of communication at the University of Illinois and president of Free Press.
The mail system faces new challenges in an electronic world, but it is still vital, and democracy will suffer if the new rates instituted by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) are allowed to stand.
The Postal Service sought a modest increase that was acceptable for magazines and periodicals. Then Time Warner got the ear of the PRC, which thrust an incredibly convoluted pay metric written by Time Warner on the Postal Service. The new rates are good for Time Warner because it will be cheaper for them to send out their 130 titles, while smaller and independent publications will be paying crippling rates.
McChesney believes this change, scheduled to go into effect July 15, is dangerous for the nation because it will silence voices that are the bedrock of original reporting.
"The crucial point here is that most of the original material online and most of the articles that bloggers are blogging about come from ink on paper," said McChesney, who is fighting the PRC's decision.
Time Warner is hardly the only Biggie to cozy up to a regulatory agency. The consolidation of the press has been going strong for nearly three decades. Radio contracted like an imploding sun after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The act allowed companies to own an obscene number of stations in the same market, while the Federal Communications Commission did little.
This push to collect and condense has now infringed on the Internet. Cable and telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon are fighting the network-neutrality effort. There are currently no permanent rules stopping these companies that supply the pipes through which the Internet flows from tinkering with different pay scales. Without a neutrality law and strict oversight by the FCC, companies and Web sites would have to pay additional fees to the network provider so Web pages could load at the speed they should. The American consumer — who already pays more than consumers in other countries for broadband service — would pay an even larger bill.
Progress has been made on the net-neutrality front. Late last year, AT&T accepted a net-neutrality rule so its merger with BellSouth would be approved by the FCC. Problem is, AT&T is only held to the rule for two years. Net neutrality has not seemed to hurt AT&T. The company posted a first-quarter profit of $2.8 billion, up from $1.4 billion.
Radio on the Internet is now also under attack. If a recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board stands, small and independent Internet radio stations will have to pay royalty fees so onerous that many might not survive.
The aggression directed at democratizing systems that have long served — and should continue to serve — our nation is worrisome. The institutions charged to protect the public have failed.
Americans have had enough. Now is the time to get active.
Ryan Blethen's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is rblethen@seattletimes.com
The White House Scales Back Talk of Iraq Progress
WASHINGTON, April 27 — The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush’s top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.
In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year.
That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week. That vote, largely symbolic because Democrats do not have the votes to override the promised presidential veto, set deadlines that would lead to the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of March 2008.
Pulling the Trigger on Iran
April 26, 2007
The casus belli for “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, the invasion of Iraq, was a fraud. We know that now. Even though there was no threat whatever to the United States from Iraq, the decision was made by Richard Cheney in consultation with his junior associate, George W. Bush, to invade and occupy Iraq, a country which had been decimated by an economic embargo and whose army had been cut by two-thirds since 1991. Once the predatory decision had been made, it was necessary to fabricate a plausible justification for it, to “fix the intelligence around the policy”, to use the British phraseology. This required months of a carefully calibrated propaganda campaign to misinform the American public and pressure the U.S. Congress and Senate for the authorization to attack. At the UN in the Security Council, a similar mendacious strategy was underway. At the same time, the White House was suggesting that it did not actually need authorization from the Congress or the UN to initiate hostilities. Why not? Because G.W. Bush is POTUS 43, the commander-in-chief, and as such he can do as he pleases when it comes to national security affairs. The same argument will be made if and when the U.S. attacks Iran.
Let’s be clear. Oil-rich Iraq had nothing to do with the national security of the United States. From the very start, going back to Saddam’s attempted annexation of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq was and remains a political football. What has been done to Iraq by successive Administrations in the name of the American people--beginning with H.W. Bush and “Operation Desert Storm” in 1991 and continuing with Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and the murderous economic sanctions on Iraq throughout the 1990’s, and highlighted by the bizarre 1998 “Iraq Liberation Act” of Congress, which passed 360-38 in the House of Representatives and by unanimous consent in the Senate, and finally in 2003, the invasion of Iraq itself, endorsed by the Democratic leadership on Capital Hill--all of this was based upon American domestic politics and constant pressure from the U.S. Israel Lobby, and not on the legitimate national security concerns of the the United States. What is happening now in 2007 is more of the same, to wit, more politics: the Democrats, many of whom were cheerleaders for the war when it began, are trying to make whatever political mileage they can from the obvious disaster this war has become. There are some intellectually honest individuals, like Congressman John Murtha and Senator Chuck Hagel, but they are the exceptions.
Meanwhile, Dick Cheney and what is left of his dwindling gang of “neocons” want to attack Iran, in a last gasp of recklessness and myopia. Bush Jr. is on board, as before, for reasons which remain unclear and unimportant. But the scenario employed to take out Iraq will not work. Why not? Because Cheney and Bush have been exposed as duplicitous. They have hardly an ounce of credibility left. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has degenerated into a nightmare and many of the “neocon” operatives who carried it out from the Pentagon and from the White House have wisely fled the scene of the crime. One of them, I. “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff as well as a counselor to the President, has been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with covering up the White House disinformation campaign. In short, the same dog won’t hunt.
Still, attacking Iran is on Tel Aviv’s wish list, as clearly evidenced by AIPAC’s “Policy Conferences” in Washington from the last 3 or 4 years, so something has to be worked out before Cheney and Bush leave office. Actually, the situation is not looking all that bad on Capital Hill for reinstating “the clash of civilizations”, despite the Iraq fiasco. The me-too Democrats, in particular those running for President in 2008, and especially the Republicans running for President, are on record that “all options are on the table” when it comes to Iran. To translate, under the right circumstances, Democratic leaders, and all Presidential contenders, will go along with a U.S. attack on Iran. It just requires the right setup. The White House has only to prepare the bogus circumstances, like it did prior to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. Fine and dandy. Once again, the Democrats are enabling Cheney and Bush to launch another unprovoked war. It was your country.
But there may be an unforeseen problem for the war party. Two months ago, on April 25th, the London Sunday Times reported (”US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack” by Michael Smith & Sarah Baxter) that a handful of generals and admirals would not obey White House orders to attack Iran, but would resign in the face of such an order. This is astonishing and unprecedented, if true. It appears that a significant number of U.S. military officers have concluded that the two gentlemen in charge at the White House are not playing with a full deck. What does it mean for the warmongers? How will the White House, in cooperation with their “neocon” brain trust, railroad America into another unnecessary war? The largely overlooked and unheralded article in the London Sunday Times provides a good clue. “A second US navy aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS John C Stennis arrived in the Gulf last week, doubling the US presence there. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the US Fifth Fleet, warned: ‘The US will take military action if ships are attacked or if countries in the region are targeted or US troops come under direct attack.’” Read that again. The scenario is in place.
Taking the vice admiral’s statement at face value, this indicates that the White House has ordered the U.S. fleet to attack Iran in the event Iran takes action against any country in the region. An instant war trigger. No need for Congress to act. The me-too Democrats and the brain dead Republicans can relax, sit back and enjoy it. There is no alliance, formal or informal, and no treaty which would require the U.S. to attack Iran in the event Iran “targets” other countries in the region. The only reason Iran would target anybody would be in the event Iran had been targeted first, and Iran was attempting to launch a counter-attack, in other words, defending itself. Get the drift? It is entirely possible that a nuclear-armed Tel Aviv, acting “on its own” but in coordination with Dick Cheney, Elliot Abrams, David Wurmser and maybe even with George W. Bush, will initiate hostilities with a bombing run and/or cruise missile attack on Iran. Then, as soon as Iran attempts to react, Iran will get clobbered with a massive “shock and awe” blitzkrieg carried out by the U.S. air force and navy, which attack will virtually destroy the Iranian military and the Iranian nuclear energy program as well. The final mission accomplished. Cheney and Bush will be back on top in Washington. The shameful and shameless me-too Democrats will be out maneuvered yet again. Life is beautiful. The revenge of the neocons will be complete.
Patrick Foy is author of The Unauthorized World Situation Report.
Poll: Americans Feel Bush Policy Too Skewed Against Liberty
TERROR WARS
Poll Shows Security Imbalance In US
by Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Washington (UPI) April 26, 2007
By a large margin, Americans feel the Bush administration has tipped the balance of security against liberty too far towards security, a new UPI/Zogby polls shows.
But the public remains closely divided on the president's most controversial security programs, favoring by small margins warrantless wiretaps against terror suspects and the broad mining by federal agencies of personal data about U.S. citizens.
When asked whether the Bush administration had "found the right balance between personal security and personal freedom," only one-third (33 percent) agreed. Nearly half (49 percent) agreed instead that the "administration has tipped the balance too far towards security."
Only 7 percent agreed with the third option, that the balance was tipped "too far towards freedom, leaving our security weak."
Asked about specific security programs run by the administration, Americans were generally more supportive of those targeting foreigners.
Two-thirds (66 percent) agreed that the U.S. government had the right to collect personal data about foreign airline passengers coming to the country, which has been a source of ongoing friction with the European Union.
Fifty-five percent agreed that the Terrorism Surveillance Program was "a necessary and legal tool to protect Americans," and 42 percent disagreed. Under the program, the National Security Agency conducts court-authorized but warrantless surveillance of international communications by Americans with suspected terrorists.
But 62 percent also agreed with the proposition that "the government should always be required to get a warrant or court order before monitoring the phone conversations or e-mails of American citizens or legal immigrants."
Americans also appeared closely divided on the merits of federal agencies analyzing vast collections of personal data to look for patterns and connections that might reveal terrorist activity.
Asked about such techniques, known as data-mining, 50 percent agreed that U.S. agencies should be allowed to use them on personal data "like credit card transactions, charitable donations and travel histories," while 46 percent disagreed.
Men were more likely than women to believe that the administration had got the balance between security and freedom right (39 percent for men; 28 percent for women). Women were more likely than men to believe that the balance had tipped too far toward security (53 percent, compared with 45 percent for men).
When broken down by the self-professed ideology of respondents, the survey reveals a predictable near-unanimity among progressives and liberals that the balance has tipped too far towards security. Sixty percent of moderates feel the same way -- 11 percent more than the population as a whole.
Looking at party affiliation, 69 percent of Republicans believe the administration has the balance right, but only 28 percent of independents agree. Fifty-three percent of independents believe the balance is skewed too far to security, 4 percent more than the general population.
The idea that the administration had struck a good balance grew more popular with the increasing age of the respondents. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 64 percent believed the balance was skewed to security, and only 18 percent thought the administration had it right.
But that balance tilts gradually through increasing age ranges, until among those 70 and over, 49 percent believe the balance to be right and only 35 percent see it as tilted to security.
Similar age-related variations can be seen in opinions about individual programs. Only 38 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds support the Terrorism Surveillance Program, compared with 55 percent of the general population and 72 percent of those 70 and older.
There was also a pronounced gender gap. Sixty percent of men believed the program was "legal and necessary," compared with only 50 percent of women.
Independents were almost as supportive of the program as the general population (53 percent, compared to 55), but only 20 percent of Democrats see it as legal and necessary, compared with 93 percent of Republicans.
There was lukewarm support for an administration proposal, contained in the intelligence authorization bill currently stalled in the Senate, to suspend certain provisions of the Privacy Act to facilitate counter-terrorism information sharing.
Only 39 percent of respondents agreed with that idea, and 54 percent opposed it. Support was much higher among Republicans (68 percent), slightly lower among independents (33 percent), and almost negligible among Democrats (16 percent).
Source: United Press International
Poll Shows Security Imbalance In US
by Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Washington (UPI) April 26, 2007
By a large margin, Americans feel the Bush administration has tipped the balance of security against liberty too far towards security, a new UPI/Zogby polls shows.
But the public remains closely divided on the president's most controversial security programs, favoring by small margins warrantless wiretaps against terror suspects and the broad mining by federal agencies of personal data about U.S. citizens.
When asked whether the Bush administration had "found the right balance between personal security and personal freedom," only one-third (33 percent) agreed. Nearly half (49 percent) agreed instead that the "administration has tipped the balance too far towards security."
Only 7 percent agreed with the third option, that the balance was tipped "too far towards freedom, leaving our security weak."
Asked about specific security programs run by the administration, Americans were generally more supportive of those targeting foreigners.
Two-thirds (66 percent) agreed that the U.S. government had the right to collect personal data about foreign airline passengers coming to the country, which has been a source of ongoing friction with the European Union.
Fifty-five percent agreed that the Terrorism Surveillance Program was "a necessary and legal tool to protect Americans," and 42 percent disagreed. Under the program, the National Security Agency conducts court-authorized but warrantless surveillance of international communications by Americans with suspected terrorists.
But 62 percent also agreed with the proposition that "the government should always be required to get a warrant or court order before monitoring the phone conversations or e-mails of American citizens or legal immigrants."
Americans also appeared closely divided on the merits of federal agencies analyzing vast collections of personal data to look for patterns and connections that might reveal terrorist activity.
Asked about such techniques, known as data-mining, 50 percent agreed that U.S. agencies should be allowed to use them on personal data "like credit card transactions, charitable donations and travel histories," while 46 percent disagreed.
Men were more likely than women to believe that the administration had got the balance between security and freedom right (39 percent for men; 28 percent for women). Women were more likely than men to believe that the balance had tipped too far toward security (53 percent, compared with 45 percent for men).
When broken down by the self-professed ideology of respondents, the survey reveals a predictable near-unanimity among progressives and liberals that the balance has tipped too far towards security. Sixty percent of moderates feel the same way -- 11 percent more than the population as a whole.
Looking at party affiliation, 69 percent of Republicans believe the administration has the balance right, but only 28 percent of independents agree. Fifty-three percent of independents believe the balance is skewed too far to security, 4 percent more than the general population.
The idea that the administration had struck a good balance grew more popular with the increasing age of the respondents. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 64 percent believed the balance was skewed to security, and only 18 percent thought the administration had it right.
But that balance tilts gradually through increasing age ranges, until among those 70 and over, 49 percent believe the balance to be right and only 35 percent see it as tilted to security.
Similar age-related variations can be seen in opinions about individual programs. Only 38 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds support the Terrorism Surveillance Program, compared with 55 percent of the general population and 72 percent of those 70 and older.
There was also a pronounced gender gap. Sixty percent of men believed the program was "legal and necessary," compared with only 50 percent of women.
Independents were almost as supportive of the program as the general population (53 percent, compared to 55), but only 20 percent of Democrats see it as legal and necessary, compared with 93 percent of Republicans.
There was lukewarm support for an administration proposal, contained in the intelligence authorization bill currently stalled in the Senate, to suspend certain provisions of the Privacy Act to facilitate counter-terrorism information sharing.
Only 39 percent of respondents agreed with that idea, and 54 percent opposed it. Support was much higher among Republicans (68 percent), slightly lower among independents (33 percent), and almost negligible among Democrats (16 percent).
Source: United Press International
Schadenfreude Is My Middle Name
April 27, 2007
By David Michael Green
dmg@regressiveantidote.net
I’m not an angry man. But I am angry.
I’m not a bitter person. But, boy, am I bitter.
And I’m not generally given to vindictiveness. But, you know what? Right now I’m open to persuasion.
The Bush administration is now beginning an inexorable process which will change its status from the worst administration in American history to the publicly-acknowledged worst administration in American history. I, for one, couldn’t be more delighted.
That delight is only partly based on having been on the receiving end of their atrocities these last six years. And it is only partly based on the assurance that those gifts will keep giving for decades into the future, like a bad case of political herpes.
And that delight is also only partly based on their motivations and the scale of their transgressions. People who believe that the regressive right came to Washington to implement a legitimate ideology that just happens to be different from ours, or who believe that they meant well but, ironically, the first MBA president couldn’t manage his way out of an empty wading pool, even with the entire federal bureaucracy to assist him – such people fundamentally misunderstand this administration and the movement which they spearhead.
These are sociopathic predators – nothing more, nothing less – and we are foolish, to the point of acting as enablers, if we fail to call this what it is. This administration is a kleptocracy which came to town to grab everything it could grab, operating behind a hideously deceitful veil of generated fear and false security provision. Boiled down to its essence, this is little more than a classic protection racket writ large. Whether history will reveal that they manufactured 9/11, or purposely stood by and allowed it to happen, or simply screwed up the job of actually providing real national security, they in any case then milked that tragedy for everything it was worth, constantly sowing fear in the heartland, and offering the false promise of protection to a frightened public.
For all these reasons, they are surely getting what they deserve. But, finally, my delight in watching the long-deserved implosion of this American tragicomedy is also partly based on attitude. Never in my life have I seen such high-handed arrogance, such disrespectful condescension for the loyal opposition, such destructive shredding of the very core institutions of Western political culture, such cavalier disregard for the lives of anyone, including Americans.
No, I’m not generally angry, bitter or vindictive. But you rub your noxious garbage in my face for six (if not twenty-five) years and arrogantly dismiss me as an unpatriotic retread for opposing your transparent predations, then, yeah, I’m going to rejoice in your getting what you deserve. And, right now, I’m rejoicing. Right now, schadenfreude is my middle name.
The fun has only just begun, but nevertheless the wheels are already coming off the wagon. The dominoes are already falling, and Henry Waxman has only just begun to issue subpoenas. The water’s rapidly rising, and is now splashing the dirty faces of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and even George W. Bush. We’re running out of metaphors to mix here, but fortunately not jail cells.
You wouldn’t want to face what they’re facing over the next twenty-one months under the best of circumstances. But you especially wouldn’t want to go there with your popularity in the toilet, your credibility so shot that even Republican senators are disbelieving you in public, a corrosive war that, at best, cannot possibly regain public support, and members of your own party seeing that their association with you, your arrogance, your screw-ups and now your scandals all roll up together into a giant freight train called the 2008 Express, rapidly steaming their direction.
Who will be left to throw Bush a rope when he’s finally going down? Trent Lott? No, they burned him, and something tells me he hasn’t forgotten. John Kerry? Maybe he’ll FedEx over some Band-Aids. Jacques Chirac? That’s Old Europe, people. Saddam Hussein? His rope is in use elsewhere.
So one by one they come down, and no one is even going after the big questions yet, like what happened before and during 9/11, what’s happened before, during and after Katrina, the failure of the Afghan war, and the marketing of the Iraq war. Whether we ever get to those or not, we can at least take pleasure in the just desserts already being served, and relief in the enfeebling of Bush and his destructive agenda.
Rumsfeld’s gone. Without question, forced retirement in failure to some corporate pastureland is far too good a punishment for him, even if he does carry the shame of being one of the few people on this planet moronic enough to get fired by George W. Bush. Nor is he necessarily out of the woods, either. If even the merest approximation of the truth ever makes it to a grand jury, Rummy will want to be investing in some very high-powered legal Dobermans. He’ll need them.
Scooter Libby is now gone, and while it’s true that his crimes greatly exceed his likely punishment, even assuming no pardon, it is something. And let us all laugh collectively at the absurd claims of the right, trying desperately to defend him. “Valerie Plame wasn’t actually undercover!” Well, except that she testified she was. And it was the CIA which had initiated the investigation in the first place, out of concern about having its spy networks exposed. “Libby had lots of important stuff on his plate and just didn’t remember!” Yeah, except that what he just didn’t remember was nine conversations with eight different people on the same subject. (Aren’t these the same people who vitiated Clinton for lying about consensual oral sex under oath? Did I miss something here? When did treason get to be the lesser offense?) No one on the jury believed Libby’s lies for even a second. Indeed, they all felt sorry for what was transparently a case of Libby taking a bullet for his boss, Dick Cheney.
Now comes Wolfowitz and Gonzales. I doubt either can last very long, particularly the former, who has more constituents than just the thumb-sucker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and whose staff is in outright mutiny against the head pirate. It’s breaking my heart, in a schadenfreude kind of way, to see Wolfie hoisted on his own petard, and now flapping in the wind of shame for a third week running. Given his evident insularity of breathtaking proportions (talk about not being able to take a hint!), he probably doesn’t have the decency to be embarrassed for himself yet. And even when he’s unceremoniously tossed overboard, it won’t begin to atone for the destruction listed next to his name in the Big Book of Death. (With apologies to Nathan Hale, I regret that Wolfowitz has but one life to give for all the ones he’s taken.)
But it is a start. After what we’ve been through, it’s amazing and unfortunate how little it takes to provide a measure of satisfaction. Just the same, the visage of European governments and World Bank staff (not exactly paragons of liberalism, either of them) growing nauseous from the smell of rotting predator is always encouraging. And seeing the great anti-corruption crusader indicted for practicing the crassest form of nepotism is only icing on the cake.
Then there’s Alberto Gonzales, for whom the oft-employed term ‘consigliere’ was always far too generous. Sure, the guy makes things happen for his boss, but he’s far more the simple soldier than the clever counselor in Bushland. And since nobody in that sad country is actually principled enough to be a soldier for any cause other than lining their own pockets, we ought to just identify this guy for the sycophant that he is, pure and simple.
But he also happens to be the highest ranking law enforcement official in the land, and if that doesn’t send shivers up your spine you might want to cut back on whatever is your self-medicating substance of choice. Silly Al put on such a show before Congress last week that even Republican senators were eying the political egress, wondering how they could possibly get the stink of Bushism out of their clothes and hair (as if they weren’t one hundred and ten percent culpable themselves, back when Bush walked on water).
No less than seventy-one times, Gonzales’s memory evaded him as he tried to recall the firing of key members of his staff, in the biggest credibility meltdown since… well, since the Libby trial. Imagine a guy who really had a memory that bad arguing the government’s position before the Supreme Court. “I’m sorry, your honor, I don’t recall which side of this case I’m on here.” “I’m sorry, your honor, I haven’t been able to keep all those amendments straight since I lost the cheat sheet I used on my law school finals.”
Perhaps we would have gotten some different answers if the attorney general was subjected to a little of his own justice. Perhaps a few days at Guantánamo would have changed his tune. Maybe the rigors of a torture program he once claimed it was “quaint” and “obsolete” to oppose would stimulate his memory.
But, of course, his absurd testimony was all just dandy for the one guy besides Gonzales himself who could put an end to this embarrassment. Bush’s take was that “the attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly answer”. Bush concluded that Gonzales’s testimony had “increased my confidence in his ability to do the job”.
This last line in particular is just the most recent example of the utterly juvenile content of regressive politics, and the sheer contempt with which we in the body politic are held by these folks. As if Gonzales’s lies to Congress had anything whatsoever to do with Bush’s assessment of him. As if Bush was sitting there watching the television, hoping his attorney general would set the record straight, explain why all of this is not a scandal, and win back his job on the basis of his commitment to good governance. As if the president actually thinks Gonzales told the truth on Capitol Hill. As if that is what he wanted him to do. I don’t remember a looking glass, but surely there must have been one along the way somewhere.
On top of all the injuries of the Bush administration, these childish rhetorical turns only add insult in the sheer contempt they demonstrate for we owners of American democracy. Maybe for the thirty percent of Americans who still support this guy, it works. Maybe for the sheep who are so willfully naive that they let their pastors tell them what to believe politically, it’s okay. But for the rest of us with our very own brains, this is politics that wouldn’t be fit for a sixth grade civics class.
Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, DeLay, Brown, Ney, Abramoff, Cunningham and more. Bush, Cheney and Rove are unquestionably next. Even if they are lucky enough to survive the next couple of years in office, they will be damaged goods to an extent we’ve never seen before, reviled and despised, first a joke and then too destructive to any longer be funny. The clock is now actually their only friend. If they had 41 months left to go, rather than 21, I have no doubt whatsoever there would be impeachments. As it is, we may be stuck with them for the duration.
Which is not necessarily such a bad thing. The longer these guys are around (within severe limits, of course), the more thorough a job they do in discrediting themselves and their regressive politics. Let the revelations drip out, one by one, corroding the foundations of their destructive project. Let them stew in the very acids they themselves have injected into American democracy. It is not enough just to destroy Bush, because there will always be more Bushes (starting with a real one – Jeb). It is Bushism itself – the entire regressive political project – which must be beaten into irrelevance, so that it never resurfaces to bring us this ruin again. And at the moment, no one – not the press and not the Democrats – is doing a better job of destroying regressivism than the regressives themselves.
I’m not an angry person, but if it sounds like I’m angry now, I am. I’m furious for the lies which have been told. I’m indignant about the manipulation of our best instincts as a society by the world’s most cynically destructive government this side of the 1930s. I’m outraged that probably a million people are now dead in order to satisfy the personal insecurities of one individual who is the most powerful amongst us, but at the same time also the weakest, the worst and the most emotionally bankrupt.
I’m irate that my country has become hated in the world, known now for its human rights violations, its arrogant disdain for the institutions of international cooperation, and its practice of cheap pretext-driven invasions of sovereign states of the sort that was already becoming morally inexcusable back in the nineteenth century. I’m enraged that my country is seen as the most hypocritical on Earth, calling for democracy abroad while undermining it even at home, ranting on and on about terrorism while protecting terrorists from justice, railing about weapons proliferation in other countries while building new classes of nuclear warheads and leading the process of weaponizing space, yet another frontier of our physical environment to be turned into a battlefield.
I’m ashamed that it was not already embarrassing enough that my country, five percent of the world’s population, produces twenty-five percent of its greenhouse gases, but that our government then also had to scuttle even the wimpy Kyoto attempt at remedying the problem, all the while lying to us about the disaster itself.
I’m incensed at the fiscal, environmental, governmental and moral mess that we are leaving to our children. We are saddling them with our debts instead of trying to advantage the next generation, like every generation prior has done, and this government’s policies are responsible for that. We are leaving them a planet which will be wracked by the effects of global warming, and this administration is responsible for that. We are bequeathing to them an America which is deeply divided and widely hated, and that is the legacy of the Bush government.
So, yeah, as a matter of fact, I’m pissed.
Three things happened on the same day this week. The first was that the stories of the two most visible faces of the Iraq war were exposed as complete, and completely intentional, lies, manufactured for the purpose of selling the war. Army Ranger Bryan O’Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “I was ordered not to tell” the family of Pat Tillman the truth about how he died by friendly fire. Indeed, Tillman’s uniform was immediately burned and other evidence destroyed, so that a tale of his heroic death in battle with the enemy could be fabricated, complete with the awarding of a Silver Star.
Meanwhile, Private Jessica Lynch testified to the same panel that her heroic story was also manufactured, as were the lies about the abuses of the Iraqis holding her, people who in truth tried to help her and to return Lynch to her unit. “Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent’s home in Wirt County was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true.” To this day, Lynch says, “I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend“. Perhaps I can help here. Can you say “Old Shoe”? Does Robert DeNiro have to walk onto the set to get the American public to realize just how wholly fabricated everything about this war has been?
Everything, that is, but the death and destruction, which has been all too real. The second thing that happened that day was that nine more Americans were killed in Iraq, and twenty more seriously wounded. We don’t ever get to know how many Iraqis are consumed in Mr. Bush’s Mesopotamian conflagration (for the same reason we couldn’t be told the truth about Tillman and Lynch), but based on the best and most scientific research on this question, a reasonable estimate is that about 685 are killed every day. Not a bad day’s work for a contemporary Caligula, eh?
And the third thing that happened that day, while the administration’s lies were being exposed, and while those lies harvested their inevitable grinding, grim reapings yet again, is that the very same people who brought us this deceit and destruction continued their campaign to annihilate the remnants of American democracy through the use of yet further Orwellian rhetoric.
“What’s most troubling about Senator Reid’s comments yesterday is his defeatism”, said America’s vice-president. “It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party.” The president added that the he was disappointed in Congressional Democrats for using the spending bill to make “a political statement”.
It would not be possible for Cheney’s assertions to be more polar opposite from the truth. It would not be possible for him to be more culpable of doing exactly what he accuses the Democrats of doing, for we know for a fact that much of the purpose of this fabricated war (or, at least, the quick and successful war they thought they were fabricating) was to make Bush and his GOP machine invincible in the context of domestic politics, so he could ram through predatory legislation like his raid on Social Security. And we know that the war has in fact been extremely damaging to the security interests of the United States. And we know that when Bush says that, because he will veto a bill it is therefore a “political statement”, he’s actually desperately trying to intimidate Congress into abdicating its voice on policy questions, to prevent them from forcing him to demonstrate before the public the very obstinance he seeks to hide.
All this in one day.
So, yeah, you’re damn right I’m angry. My question is, what in the world is wrong with anyone who isn’t?
And you’re damn right that I get a little thrill from seeing the slightest punishments meted out to the greatest of our criminals. Even if good news hadn’t been so entirely rare these last six years, it would be appropriate.
For these are not ordinary fools, and this is something that Americans haven’t really begun to appreciate yet. If these folks were mere bunglers with proper intentions, I could forgive them. If they were true patriots who simply believed fervently in a different ideology than mine while all their policy ideas turned out to be wrong, I could even forgive that.
But they are none of these things, and the measure of that is to be found precisely in the inversion of truth which is at the core of regressive politics as practiced by Bush, Rove and their fellow predatory kleptocrats. In the marketplace of ideas, lies don’t have to be told to sell policies. In the domain of good governance, memories don’t have to be conveniently erased in order to cover up incompetence and malfeasance.
And this, ultimately, is why I am so angry. These aren’t boobs who couldn’t shoot straight, though they are that as well. And they aren’t true believers of a stupidly destructive ideology suitable only for the most emotionally stunted amongst us, though they are that too. Instead, fundamentally, they are simply greedy marauders who have come to plunder America for all it’s worth.
If they were Russians, or Chinese, or Muslims, our response would be to hate such imperialist exploiters accordingly, and to seek their destruction expeditiously. But because they are Americans, and because they have ironically expropriated all the historic symbols of American patriotism, and because they have so massively and cynically exploited one of the greatest tragedies in American history, and, especially, because the magnitude of their crimes is too existentially debilitating for most Americans to permit themselves to comprehend – because of all these things, we merely revile them, rather than hating them and destroying their movement.
But that is our mistake, and it has already become a lethal one for so many innocent victims of the regressive machine. It’s time for this to stop, and it’s time for us to label this chapter in our history for what it is.
We have a word for Americans who sell out their country for their own profit.
They are traitors.
And we have a word for what these traitors do when they betray our country, our values and our Constitution to pursue their agenda of personal aggrandizement.
It’s called treason.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.
By David Michael Green
dmg@regressiveantidote.net
I’m not an angry man. But I am angry.
I’m not a bitter person. But, boy, am I bitter.
And I’m not generally given to vindictiveness. But, you know what? Right now I’m open to persuasion.
The Bush administration is now beginning an inexorable process which will change its status from the worst administration in American history to the publicly-acknowledged worst administration in American history. I, for one, couldn’t be more delighted.
That delight is only partly based on having been on the receiving end of their atrocities these last six years. And it is only partly based on the assurance that those gifts will keep giving for decades into the future, like a bad case of political herpes.
And that delight is also only partly based on their motivations and the scale of their transgressions. People who believe that the regressive right came to Washington to implement a legitimate ideology that just happens to be different from ours, or who believe that they meant well but, ironically, the first MBA president couldn’t manage his way out of an empty wading pool, even with the entire federal bureaucracy to assist him – such people fundamentally misunderstand this administration and the movement which they spearhead.
These are sociopathic predators – nothing more, nothing less – and we are foolish, to the point of acting as enablers, if we fail to call this what it is. This administration is a kleptocracy which came to town to grab everything it could grab, operating behind a hideously deceitful veil of generated fear and false security provision. Boiled down to its essence, this is little more than a classic protection racket writ large. Whether history will reveal that they manufactured 9/11, or purposely stood by and allowed it to happen, or simply screwed up the job of actually providing real national security, they in any case then milked that tragedy for everything it was worth, constantly sowing fear in the heartland, and offering the false promise of protection to a frightened public.
For all these reasons, they are surely getting what they deserve. But, finally, my delight in watching the long-deserved implosion of this American tragicomedy is also partly based on attitude. Never in my life have I seen such high-handed arrogance, such disrespectful condescension for the loyal opposition, such destructive shredding of the very core institutions of Western political culture, such cavalier disregard for the lives of anyone, including Americans.
No, I’m not generally angry, bitter or vindictive. But you rub your noxious garbage in my face for six (if not twenty-five) years and arrogantly dismiss me as an unpatriotic retread for opposing your transparent predations, then, yeah, I’m going to rejoice in your getting what you deserve. And, right now, I’m rejoicing. Right now, schadenfreude is my middle name.
The fun has only just begun, but nevertheless the wheels are already coming off the wagon. The dominoes are already falling, and Henry Waxman has only just begun to issue subpoenas. The water’s rapidly rising, and is now splashing the dirty faces of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and even George W. Bush. We’re running out of metaphors to mix here, but fortunately not jail cells.
You wouldn’t want to face what they’re facing over the next twenty-one months under the best of circumstances. But you especially wouldn’t want to go there with your popularity in the toilet, your credibility so shot that even Republican senators are disbelieving you in public, a corrosive war that, at best, cannot possibly regain public support, and members of your own party seeing that their association with you, your arrogance, your screw-ups and now your scandals all roll up together into a giant freight train called the 2008 Express, rapidly steaming their direction.
Who will be left to throw Bush a rope when he’s finally going down? Trent Lott? No, they burned him, and something tells me he hasn’t forgotten. John Kerry? Maybe he’ll FedEx over some Band-Aids. Jacques Chirac? That’s Old Europe, people. Saddam Hussein? His rope is in use elsewhere.
So one by one they come down, and no one is even going after the big questions yet, like what happened before and during 9/11, what’s happened before, during and after Katrina, the failure of the Afghan war, and the marketing of the Iraq war. Whether we ever get to those or not, we can at least take pleasure in the just desserts already being served, and relief in the enfeebling of Bush and his destructive agenda.
Rumsfeld’s gone. Without question, forced retirement in failure to some corporate pastureland is far too good a punishment for him, even if he does carry the shame of being one of the few people on this planet moronic enough to get fired by George W. Bush. Nor is he necessarily out of the woods, either. If even the merest approximation of the truth ever makes it to a grand jury, Rummy will want to be investing in some very high-powered legal Dobermans. He’ll need them.
Scooter Libby is now gone, and while it’s true that his crimes greatly exceed his likely punishment, even assuming no pardon, it is something. And let us all laugh collectively at the absurd claims of the right, trying desperately to defend him. “Valerie Plame wasn’t actually undercover!” Well, except that she testified she was. And it was the CIA which had initiated the investigation in the first place, out of concern about having its spy networks exposed. “Libby had lots of important stuff on his plate and just didn’t remember!” Yeah, except that what he just didn’t remember was nine conversations with eight different people on the same subject. (Aren’t these the same people who vitiated Clinton for lying about consensual oral sex under oath? Did I miss something here? When did treason get to be the lesser offense?) No one on the jury believed Libby’s lies for even a second. Indeed, they all felt sorry for what was transparently a case of Libby taking a bullet for his boss, Dick Cheney.
Now comes Wolfowitz and Gonzales. I doubt either can last very long, particularly the former, who has more constituents than just the thumb-sucker at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and whose staff is in outright mutiny against the head pirate. It’s breaking my heart, in a schadenfreude kind of way, to see Wolfie hoisted on his own petard, and now flapping in the wind of shame for a third week running. Given his evident insularity of breathtaking proportions (talk about not being able to take a hint!), he probably doesn’t have the decency to be embarrassed for himself yet. And even when he’s unceremoniously tossed overboard, it won’t begin to atone for the destruction listed next to his name in the Big Book of Death. (With apologies to Nathan Hale, I regret that Wolfowitz has but one life to give for all the ones he’s taken.)
But it is a start. After what we’ve been through, it’s amazing and unfortunate how little it takes to provide a measure of satisfaction. Just the same, the visage of European governments and World Bank staff (not exactly paragons of liberalism, either of them) growing nauseous from the smell of rotting predator is always encouraging. And seeing the great anti-corruption crusader indicted for practicing the crassest form of nepotism is only icing on the cake.
Then there’s Alberto Gonzales, for whom the oft-employed term ‘consigliere’ was always far too generous. Sure, the guy makes things happen for his boss, but he’s far more the simple soldier than the clever counselor in Bushland. And since nobody in that sad country is actually principled enough to be a soldier for any cause other than lining their own pockets, we ought to just identify this guy for the sycophant that he is, pure and simple.
But he also happens to be the highest ranking law enforcement official in the land, and if that doesn’t send shivers up your spine you might want to cut back on whatever is your self-medicating substance of choice. Silly Al put on such a show before Congress last week that even Republican senators were eying the political egress, wondering how they could possibly get the stink of Bushism out of their clothes and hair (as if they weren’t one hundred and ten percent culpable themselves, back when Bush walked on water).
No less than seventy-one times, Gonzales’s memory evaded him as he tried to recall the firing of key members of his staff, in the biggest credibility meltdown since… well, since the Libby trial. Imagine a guy who really had a memory that bad arguing the government’s position before the Supreme Court. “I’m sorry, your honor, I don’t recall which side of this case I’m on here.” “I’m sorry, your honor, I haven’t been able to keep all those amendments straight since I lost the cheat sheet I used on my law school finals.”
Perhaps we would have gotten some different answers if the attorney general was subjected to a little of his own justice. Perhaps a few days at Guantánamo would have changed his tune. Maybe the rigors of a torture program he once claimed it was “quaint” and “obsolete” to oppose would stimulate his memory.
But, of course, his absurd testimony was all just dandy for the one guy besides Gonzales himself who could put an end to this embarrassment. Bush’s take was that “the attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly answer”. Bush concluded that Gonzales’s testimony had “increased my confidence in his ability to do the job”.
This last line in particular is just the most recent example of the utterly juvenile content of regressive politics, and the sheer contempt with which we in the body politic are held by these folks. As if Gonzales’s lies to Congress had anything whatsoever to do with Bush’s assessment of him. As if Bush was sitting there watching the television, hoping his attorney general would set the record straight, explain why all of this is not a scandal, and win back his job on the basis of his commitment to good governance. As if the president actually thinks Gonzales told the truth on Capitol Hill. As if that is what he wanted him to do. I don’t remember a looking glass, but surely there must have been one along the way somewhere.
On top of all the injuries of the Bush administration, these childish rhetorical turns only add insult in the sheer contempt they demonstrate for we owners of American democracy. Maybe for the thirty percent of Americans who still support this guy, it works. Maybe for the sheep who are so willfully naive that they let their pastors tell them what to believe politically, it’s okay. But for the rest of us with our very own brains, this is politics that wouldn’t be fit for a sixth grade civics class.
Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, DeLay, Brown, Ney, Abramoff, Cunningham and more. Bush, Cheney and Rove are unquestionably next. Even if they are lucky enough to survive the next couple of years in office, they will be damaged goods to an extent we’ve never seen before, reviled and despised, first a joke and then too destructive to any longer be funny. The clock is now actually their only friend. If they had 41 months left to go, rather than 21, I have no doubt whatsoever there would be impeachments. As it is, we may be stuck with them for the duration.
Which is not necessarily such a bad thing. The longer these guys are around (within severe limits, of course), the more thorough a job they do in discrediting themselves and their regressive politics. Let the revelations drip out, one by one, corroding the foundations of their destructive project. Let them stew in the very acids they themselves have injected into American democracy. It is not enough just to destroy Bush, because there will always be more Bushes (starting with a real one – Jeb). It is Bushism itself – the entire regressive political project – which must be beaten into irrelevance, so that it never resurfaces to bring us this ruin again. And at the moment, no one – not the press and not the Democrats – is doing a better job of destroying regressivism than the regressives themselves.
I’m not an angry person, but if it sounds like I’m angry now, I am. I’m furious for the lies which have been told. I’m indignant about the manipulation of our best instincts as a society by the world’s most cynically destructive government this side of the 1930s. I’m outraged that probably a million people are now dead in order to satisfy the personal insecurities of one individual who is the most powerful amongst us, but at the same time also the weakest, the worst and the most emotionally bankrupt.
I’m irate that my country has become hated in the world, known now for its human rights violations, its arrogant disdain for the institutions of international cooperation, and its practice of cheap pretext-driven invasions of sovereign states of the sort that was already becoming morally inexcusable back in the nineteenth century. I’m enraged that my country is seen as the most hypocritical on Earth, calling for democracy abroad while undermining it even at home, ranting on and on about terrorism while protecting terrorists from justice, railing about weapons proliferation in other countries while building new classes of nuclear warheads and leading the process of weaponizing space, yet another frontier of our physical environment to be turned into a battlefield.
I’m ashamed that it was not already embarrassing enough that my country, five percent of the world’s population, produces twenty-five percent of its greenhouse gases, but that our government then also had to scuttle even the wimpy Kyoto attempt at remedying the problem, all the while lying to us about the disaster itself.
I’m incensed at the fiscal, environmental, governmental and moral mess that we are leaving to our children. We are saddling them with our debts instead of trying to advantage the next generation, like every generation prior has done, and this government’s policies are responsible for that. We are leaving them a planet which will be wracked by the effects of global warming, and this administration is responsible for that. We are bequeathing to them an America which is deeply divided and widely hated, and that is the legacy of the Bush government.
So, yeah, as a matter of fact, I’m pissed.
Three things happened on the same day this week. The first was that the stories of the two most visible faces of the Iraq war were exposed as complete, and completely intentional, lies, manufactured for the purpose of selling the war. Army Ranger Bryan O’Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “I was ordered not to tell” the family of Pat Tillman the truth about how he died by friendly fire. Indeed, Tillman’s uniform was immediately burned and other evidence destroyed, so that a tale of his heroic death in battle with the enemy could be fabricated, complete with the awarding of a Silver Star.
Meanwhile, Private Jessica Lynch testified to the same panel that her heroic story was also manufactured, as were the lies about the abuses of the Iraqis holding her, people who in truth tried to help her and to return Lynch to her unit. “Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent’s home in Wirt County was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true.” To this day, Lynch says, “I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend“. Perhaps I can help here. Can you say “Old Shoe”? Does Robert DeNiro have to walk onto the set to get the American public to realize just how wholly fabricated everything about this war has been?
Everything, that is, but the death and destruction, which has been all too real. The second thing that happened that day was that nine more Americans were killed in Iraq, and twenty more seriously wounded. We don’t ever get to know how many Iraqis are consumed in Mr. Bush’s Mesopotamian conflagration (for the same reason we couldn’t be told the truth about Tillman and Lynch), but based on the best and most scientific research on this question, a reasonable estimate is that about 685 are killed every day. Not a bad day’s work for a contemporary Caligula, eh?
And the third thing that happened that day, while the administration’s lies were being exposed, and while those lies harvested their inevitable grinding, grim reapings yet again, is that the very same people who brought us this deceit and destruction continued their campaign to annihilate the remnants of American democracy through the use of yet further Orwellian rhetoric.
“What’s most troubling about Senator Reid’s comments yesterday is his defeatism”, said America’s vice-president. “It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party.” The president added that the he was disappointed in Congressional Democrats for using the spending bill to make “a political statement”.
It would not be possible for Cheney’s assertions to be more polar opposite from the truth. It would not be possible for him to be more culpable of doing exactly what he accuses the Democrats of doing, for we know for a fact that much of the purpose of this fabricated war (or, at least, the quick and successful war they thought they were fabricating) was to make Bush and his GOP machine invincible in the context of domestic politics, so he could ram through predatory legislation like his raid on Social Security. And we know that the war has in fact been extremely damaging to the security interests of the United States. And we know that when Bush says that, because he will veto a bill it is therefore a “political statement”, he’s actually desperately trying to intimidate Congress into abdicating its voice on policy questions, to prevent them from forcing him to demonstrate before the public the very obstinance he seeks to hide.
All this in one day.
So, yeah, you’re damn right I’m angry. My question is, what in the world is wrong with anyone who isn’t?
And you’re damn right that I get a little thrill from seeing the slightest punishments meted out to the greatest of our criminals. Even if good news hadn’t been so entirely rare these last six years, it would be appropriate.
For these are not ordinary fools, and this is something that Americans haven’t really begun to appreciate yet. If these folks were mere bunglers with proper intentions, I could forgive them. If they were true patriots who simply believed fervently in a different ideology than mine while all their policy ideas turned out to be wrong, I could even forgive that.
But they are none of these things, and the measure of that is to be found precisely in the inversion of truth which is at the core of regressive politics as practiced by Bush, Rove and their fellow predatory kleptocrats. In the marketplace of ideas, lies don’t have to be told to sell policies. In the domain of good governance, memories don’t have to be conveniently erased in order to cover up incompetence and malfeasance.
And this, ultimately, is why I am so angry. These aren’t boobs who couldn’t shoot straight, though they are that as well. And they aren’t true believers of a stupidly destructive ideology suitable only for the most emotionally stunted amongst us, though they are that too. Instead, fundamentally, they are simply greedy marauders who have come to plunder America for all it’s worth.
If they were Russians, or Chinese, or Muslims, our response would be to hate such imperialist exploiters accordingly, and to seek their destruction expeditiously. But because they are Americans, and because they have ironically expropriated all the historic symbols of American patriotism, and because they have so massively and cynically exploited one of the greatest tragedies in American history, and, especially, because the magnitude of their crimes is too existentially debilitating for most Americans to permit themselves to comprehend – because of all these things, we merely revile them, rather than hating them and destroying their movement.
But that is our mistake, and it has already become a lethal one for so many innocent victims of the regressive machine. It’s time for this to stop, and it’s time for us to label this chapter in our history for what it is.
We have a word for Americans who sell out their country for their own profit.
They are traitors.
And we have a word for what these traitors do when they betray our country, our values and our Constitution to pursue their agenda of personal aggrandizement.
It’s called treason.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.
Polite discussion on Zionism: Is it possible?
April 28, 2007
By Karin Friedemann
I found the website http://www.realisticdove.org/ very interesting because it is the first time I have come across a progressive Jew so honest about his racism. Usually when confronted, these confused souls just get indignant and refuse to speak to you for a few months. I always wondered how a person could think that Israel has a "right" to "security" and shrug off this amazing assumption with the accusation that anyone who has questions about your definitions is accusing you of being an evil murderer. Why would any sane person think that he has the right to live unharrassed on someone else's stolen property? Even the cute kids waving Israeli flags are participating in a criminally insane political ideology.
Progressive Jews want to make the bottom line "Jews are nice people." But that is not the bottom line. As Hillel mentioned, the bottom line is that you don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you. What would we expect if our neighbor, with or without warning, bulldozed our house?
First, we would call the police. If the man with the bulldozer failed to stop bulldozing the house, the police officer would have the duty to disable the vehicle and he might even shoot him. I'm talking about American law. The bulldozer man would be stopped. He would be considered a criminal. He would be put on trial. He would go to prison. If he had killed people in the process of bulldozing the house, he might even be executed. The owner of the house that was bulldozed would be entitled to damages plus extra for pain and suffering. The law requires that his property be restored to the original state that it was in. That includes replanting the trees and fixing the pavement around the house.
The emotional defensiveness of Jews is actually quite amusing, where they want to argue that the bulldozer man was not evil, he was not a murderer. The family that moved into the stolen property are just innocent idealists. They may be misguided, or mistaken, but for some reason Jews want to argue that they are not evil. What they are really saying is that they don't want Jews to be held legally accountable for their actions. They want to enjoy the privilege of being "protected" from the laws that apply to other people.
A law does not cover the "evilness" of a criminal. It covers actions and consequences.
If international law were followed, the Israeli "government' would never have kicked out any Palestinians. The entire existence of Israel is based on the condition made by the U.N. that Palestinians would remain in their homes and receive equal citizenship in the new nation state. That condition was not followed. Therefore, there is no legal basis for any assumption that Israel has a right to exist, according to the U.N. In fact, Israel does not really exist. It is a figment of imagination, the defensive mechanism of the neurotic Jewish collective consciousness. I agree that we need to stop arguing about isms but the next step is to follow the laws that already exist to solve the problems. Don't wait for the world community to force Israel to do it. Why don't we, as Jews, just do it? Why are progressive Jews wasting their time feeling emotionally threatened by a one state solution? The real problem is that we are feeling emotionally threatened by any solution. Because a solution means that a lot of Jews need to be prosecuted.
The refugees need to be given back their property with extra for damages. Even if they fled their homes because Arab leaders told them to get out of the fighting zone in 1948, they have the legal right to return to their homes as soon as the fighting stops. Small wonder why Israel continues to attack people day after day.
The refugees need to be given full civil rights. Full water rights, full road rights, and the full right to criminally prosecute. Every Jewish family in America that has any property in the Holy Land needs to be prosecuted as part of an organized criminal network. Especially if both the Palestinian and the Jewish persons are American citizens. For example one friend of mine, after her family was forced off their land by gunpoint, New York Jews bought the land, bulldozed everything, and planted orange trees. She knows where they live. She knows their names. Anyone who buys or sells stolen property is a criminal. They need to be prosecuted. Any Jew who owns stolen property in the Holy Land should have his property seized including their U.S. assets and progressive Jews should insist on it instead of doing these mental "I'm not evil" gymnastics.
The Jews need to give back what they stole. I am not sure why that is so confusing to people. There needs to be a world tribunal like the Nuremburg trials to determine what was done and who was responsible, and to put an end to this nonsense. But failing that, the U.S. legal system could solve the problem within a year if they just prosecuted this obnoxious real estate mafia. Why are progressive Jews not lobbying for criminal penalties on Jews who invest in property that was cleared of its original owners by force in the Holy Land? There is enough room in all of Bush's new prisons for all these shady real estate agents. This is a simple matter of holding people legally accountable for the harm they cause others.
It is exactly the same issue with dispute over the Roxbury Mosque. Some shady white Jewish real estate dealers were furious that the black community benefited from this piece of land next to the subway station that they wanted to develop, so now they are engaging in extra-legal trickery and character assassination to try to get that piece of real estate away from the people who own it.
Once the Palestinians get their land back and all the Zionist organizations' assets are confiscated to repair all the damage they have done, then we can talk about whether or not "the Jewish people" have the right to "self-determination" in the form of an ethnocentric nation state.
I learned when I was a kid that the way to get self-determination — ie, the ability to do what you want when you want how you want — is to behave yourself. The Jews are not behaving themselves, and there is nothing okay about it. When a progressive Jew starts whining, "You think I'm evil!!" he or she breaks the heart of the human being who is trying to have peace with this person. It ends all rational discussion. It ends all hope for peace.
Sometimes Palestinians find it easier to deal with right wing Zionists than left wing because at least they are honest. A Palestinian can say to a right wing Jew, "You stole my property." The right wing Jew will say, "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it? My religion says I can steal your property." Then the Muslim can with dignity say, "Well my religion says that God curses the man who puts another man out of his home, and that I have the right to fight you." So that actually can be done in the context of a polite dialogue. A peace plan is even potentially possible. Because then the Jew can say, "Well, I don't want you to kill me and I can see why you would think that I deserved it, because if you did the same thing to me I would certainly kill you. So let's make a deal. I'll let you live in the garage." This is still insulting behavior, but it's in the process of being made less sadistic.
On the other hand, if a Palestinian says to a progressive Jew, "You stole my property!" the progressive Jew will usually shut down entirely. I have seen a fifty year old man start crying and insisting he's not evil. This is the behavior of someone who is guilty as sin. Like when you accuse your husband of adultery and he starts guilt-tripping you about how you don't believe in him (hypothetical but common scenario).
The other reaction is to get maliciously angry and start doing character assassination via gossip so that none of the other progressive Jews will greet that person who brought up the "touchy" subject. But they will be told that this person is an "enemy of peace" — so that it will be politically correct to shun them the same way that we avoid eye contact with skinheads and Bible thumpers. Progressive Jews are the most amazingly idealistic people on the planet. They want to be able to continue to sit on someone else's stolen property (or at least vacation on it) and not only think they have a "right" to travel around unharmed, ride the buses, shop and eat pizza while the people they made homeless have no water or food — but they want their victims to LIKE them. The Jews are the only conquerors in the history of the planet that expect the conquered people to LIKE them! If they don't like us, we feel offended and outraged. And what Jews consider as "liking behavior" is never mentioning the property they stole.
It's amazing. I've discussed some of this with Avigail Abarbanel, an ex-Israeli psychiatrist in Australia. She views Zionism as a mental illness that can be treated. But Zionism is just a symptom of a deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have "rights" which do not exist. Like a kid thinking he has the right to hit his sister. It's a failure to apply the Golden Rule to one's personal sense of responsibility in certain situations. The inner conflict that arises from these "situational ethics" certainly does create a clinically diagnosable mental inability to process certain types of information that trigger the neurotic or sometimes even psychotic defensive reaction.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel, Jews are defensive in the sense that they cannot process the type of information that is necessary to create peaceful behaviors. For example, if a Jew and a Palestinian live next door to each other in New Jersey, the Jew being the "owner" of a condo built on the Palestinian person's property, don't you think the Jew should offer to give it back, if he expects the other's friendship? If the Palestinian, as is normal, invites the Jew over for tea and politely doesn't bring up the subject, does the Jew feel that this means it's OK what he did? That he can forgive himself? That is what Jews want after all. We want to be forgiven without apology for everything we have done AND everything we are about to do. Is this a rational approach to peace? Is it working?
By Karin Friedemann
I found the website http://www.realisticdove.org/ very interesting because it is the first time I have come across a progressive Jew so honest about his racism. Usually when confronted, these confused souls just get indignant and refuse to speak to you for a few months. I always wondered how a person could think that Israel has a "right" to "security" and shrug off this amazing assumption with the accusation that anyone who has questions about your definitions is accusing you of being an evil murderer. Why would any sane person think that he has the right to live unharrassed on someone else's stolen property? Even the cute kids waving Israeli flags are participating in a criminally insane political ideology.
Progressive Jews want to make the bottom line "Jews are nice people." But that is not the bottom line. As Hillel mentioned, the bottom line is that you don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you. What would we expect if our neighbor, with or without warning, bulldozed our house?
First, we would call the police. If the man with the bulldozer failed to stop bulldozing the house, the police officer would have the duty to disable the vehicle and he might even shoot him. I'm talking about American law. The bulldozer man would be stopped. He would be considered a criminal. He would be put on trial. He would go to prison. If he had killed people in the process of bulldozing the house, he might even be executed. The owner of the house that was bulldozed would be entitled to damages plus extra for pain and suffering. The law requires that his property be restored to the original state that it was in. That includes replanting the trees and fixing the pavement around the house.
The emotional defensiveness of Jews is actually quite amusing, where they want to argue that the bulldozer man was not evil, he was not a murderer. The family that moved into the stolen property are just innocent idealists. They may be misguided, or mistaken, but for some reason Jews want to argue that they are not evil. What they are really saying is that they don't want Jews to be held legally accountable for their actions. They want to enjoy the privilege of being "protected" from the laws that apply to other people.
A law does not cover the "evilness" of a criminal. It covers actions and consequences.
If international law were followed, the Israeli "government' would never have kicked out any Palestinians. The entire existence of Israel is based on the condition made by the U.N. that Palestinians would remain in their homes and receive equal citizenship in the new nation state. That condition was not followed. Therefore, there is no legal basis for any assumption that Israel has a right to exist, according to the U.N. In fact, Israel does not really exist. It is a figment of imagination, the defensive mechanism of the neurotic Jewish collective consciousness. I agree that we need to stop arguing about isms but the next step is to follow the laws that already exist to solve the problems. Don't wait for the world community to force Israel to do it. Why don't we, as Jews, just do it? Why are progressive Jews wasting their time feeling emotionally threatened by a one state solution? The real problem is that we are feeling emotionally threatened by any solution. Because a solution means that a lot of Jews need to be prosecuted.
The refugees need to be given back their property with extra for damages. Even if they fled their homes because Arab leaders told them to get out of the fighting zone in 1948, they have the legal right to return to their homes as soon as the fighting stops. Small wonder why Israel continues to attack people day after day.
The refugees need to be given full civil rights. Full water rights, full road rights, and the full right to criminally prosecute. Every Jewish family in America that has any property in the Holy Land needs to be prosecuted as part of an organized criminal network. Especially if both the Palestinian and the Jewish persons are American citizens. For example one friend of mine, after her family was forced off their land by gunpoint, New York Jews bought the land, bulldozed everything, and planted orange trees. She knows where they live. She knows their names. Anyone who buys or sells stolen property is a criminal. They need to be prosecuted. Any Jew who owns stolen property in the Holy Land should have his property seized including their U.S. assets and progressive Jews should insist on it instead of doing these mental "I'm not evil" gymnastics.
The Jews need to give back what they stole. I am not sure why that is so confusing to people. There needs to be a world tribunal like the Nuremburg trials to determine what was done and who was responsible, and to put an end to this nonsense. But failing that, the U.S. legal system could solve the problem within a year if they just prosecuted this obnoxious real estate mafia. Why are progressive Jews not lobbying for criminal penalties on Jews who invest in property that was cleared of its original owners by force in the Holy Land? There is enough room in all of Bush's new prisons for all these shady real estate agents. This is a simple matter of holding people legally accountable for the harm they cause others.
It is exactly the same issue with dispute over the Roxbury Mosque. Some shady white Jewish real estate dealers were furious that the black community benefited from this piece of land next to the subway station that they wanted to develop, so now they are engaging in extra-legal trickery and character assassination to try to get that piece of real estate away from the people who own it.
Once the Palestinians get their land back and all the Zionist organizations' assets are confiscated to repair all the damage they have done, then we can talk about whether or not "the Jewish people" have the right to "self-determination" in the form of an ethnocentric nation state.
I learned when I was a kid that the way to get self-determination — ie, the ability to do what you want when you want how you want — is to behave yourself. The Jews are not behaving themselves, and there is nothing okay about it. When a progressive Jew starts whining, "You think I'm evil!!" he or she breaks the heart of the human being who is trying to have peace with this person. It ends all rational discussion. It ends all hope for peace.
Sometimes Palestinians find it easier to deal with right wing Zionists than left wing because at least they are honest. A Palestinian can say to a right wing Jew, "You stole my property." The right wing Jew will say, "Yeah, and what are you going to do about it? My religion says I can steal your property." Then the Muslim can with dignity say, "Well my religion says that God curses the man who puts another man out of his home, and that I have the right to fight you." So that actually can be done in the context of a polite dialogue. A peace plan is even potentially possible. Because then the Jew can say, "Well, I don't want you to kill me and I can see why you would think that I deserved it, because if you did the same thing to me I would certainly kill you. So let's make a deal. I'll let you live in the garage." This is still insulting behavior, but it's in the process of being made less sadistic.
On the other hand, if a Palestinian says to a progressive Jew, "You stole my property!" the progressive Jew will usually shut down entirely. I have seen a fifty year old man start crying and insisting he's not evil. This is the behavior of someone who is guilty as sin. Like when you accuse your husband of adultery and he starts guilt-tripping you about how you don't believe in him (hypothetical but common scenario).
The other reaction is to get maliciously angry and start doing character assassination via gossip so that none of the other progressive Jews will greet that person who brought up the "touchy" subject. But they will be told that this person is an "enemy of peace" — so that it will be politically correct to shun them the same way that we avoid eye contact with skinheads and Bible thumpers. Progressive Jews are the most amazingly idealistic people on the planet. They want to be able to continue to sit on someone else's stolen property (or at least vacation on it) and not only think they have a "right" to travel around unharmed, ride the buses, shop and eat pizza while the people they made homeless have no water or food — but they want their victims to LIKE them. The Jews are the only conquerors in the history of the planet that expect the conquered people to LIKE them! If they don't like us, we feel offended and outraged. And what Jews consider as "liking behavior" is never mentioning the property they stole.
It's amazing. I've discussed some of this with Avigail Abarbanel, an ex-Israeli psychiatrist in Australia. She views Zionism as a mental illness that can be treated. But Zionism is just a symptom of a deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have "rights" which do not exist. Like a kid thinking he has the right to hit his sister. It's a failure to apply the Golden Rule to one's personal sense of responsibility in certain situations. The inner conflict that arises from these "situational ethics" certainly does create a clinically diagnosable mental inability to process certain types of information that trigger the neurotic or sometimes even psychotic defensive reaction.
Unfortunately, when it comes to Israel, Jews are defensive in the sense that they cannot process the type of information that is necessary to create peaceful behaviors. For example, if a Jew and a Palestinian live next door to each other in New Jersey, the Jew being the "owner" of a condo built on the Palestinian person's property, don't you think the Jew should offer to give it back, if he expects the other's friendship? If the Palestinian, as is normal, invites the Jew over for tea and politely doesn't bring up the subject, does the Jew feel that this means it's OK what he did? That he can forgive himself? That is what Jews want after all. We want to be forgiven without apology for everything we have done AND everything we are about to do. Is this a rational approach to peace? Is it working?
Bush Has Gone AWOL: General William Odom
April 28, 2007
By General William Odom
The following is a transcript of the Democratic Radio Address delivered by Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.) on Saturday April 28, 2007:
“Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, retired.
“I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked me.
“In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.
“Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.
“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.
“Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis.
“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.
“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests.
“But it has served Iran’s interest by revenging Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran’s influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda’s interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible.
“We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.
“A wise commander in this situation normally revises his objectives and changes his strategy, not just marginally, but radically. Nothing less today will limit the death and destruction that the invasion of Iraq has unleashed.
“No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Only that step will break the paralysis that now confronts us. Withdrawal is the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe that have stood aside and other major powers including India, China, Japan, Russia.
“It will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries on Iraq’s borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S. approaches, not just to Iraq, but to restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused.
“The bill that Congress approved this week, with bipartisan support, setting schedules for withdrawal, provides the President an opportunity to begin this kind of strategic shift, one that defines regional stability as the measure of victory, not some impossible outcome.
“I hope the President seizes this moment for a basic change in course and signs the bill the Congress has sent him. I will respect him greatly for such a rare act of courage, and so too, I suspect, will most Americans.
“This is retired General Odom. Thank you for listening.”
General Odom has served as Director of the National Security Agency and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer. In his address, General Odom will discuss why he believes President Bush should sign the conference report on the Iraq Accountability Act.
You can download the radio address by clicking here.
By General William Odom
The following is a transcript of the Democratic Radio Address delivered by Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.) on Saturday April 28, 2007:
“Good morning, this is Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army, retired.
“I am not now nor have I ever been a Democrat or a Republican. Thus, I do not speak for the Democratic Party. I speak for myself, as a non-partisan retired military officer who is a former Director of the National Security Agency. I do so because Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, asked me.
“In principle, I do not favor Congressional involvement in the execution of U.S. foreign and military policy. I have seen its perverse effects in many cases. The conflict in Iraq is different. Over the past couple of years, the President has let it proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued.
“Thus, he lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money, and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies. The Congress is the only mechanism we have to fill this vacuum in command judgment.
“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games.
“Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis.
“Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right.
“The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests.
“But it has served Iran’s interest by revenging Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s and enhancing Iran’s influence within Iraq. It has also served al Qaeda’s interests, providing a much better training ground than did Afghanistan, allowing it to build its ranks far above the levels and competence that otherwise would have been possible.
“We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.
“A wise commander in this situation normally revises his objectives and changes his strategy, not just marginally, but radically. Nothing less today will limit the death and destruction that the invasion of Iraq has unleashed.
“No effective new strategy can be devised for the United States until it begins withdrawing its forces from Iraq. Only that step will break the paralysis that now confronts us. Withdrawal is the pre-condition for winning support from countries in Europe that have stood aside and other major powers including India, China, Japan, Russia.
“It will also shock and change attitudes in Iran, Syria, and other countries on Iraq’s borders, making them far more likely to take seriously new U.S. approaches, not just to Iraq, but to restoring regional stability and heading off the spreading chaos that our war has caused.
“The bill that Congress approved this week, with bipartisan support, setting schedules for withdrawal, provides the President an opportunity to begin this kind of strategic shift, one that defines regional stability as the measure of victory, not some impossible outcome.
“I hope the President seizes this moment for a basic change in course and signs the bill the Congress has sent him. I will respect him greatly for such a rare act of courage, and so too, I suspect, will most Americans.
“This is retired General Odom. Thank you for listening.”
General Odom has served as Director of the National Security Agency and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer. In his address, General Odom will discuss why he believes President Bush should sign the conference report on the Iraq Accountability Act.
You can download the radio address by clicking here.
Latin America - Four Competing Blocs of Power
In reality there are four competing blocs of nations in Latin America, contrary to the highly simplistic dualism portrayed by the White House and most of the Left.
:: 04.17.2007
:: 04.17.2007
Introduction
Each of these four blocs represents different degrees of accommodation or opposition to US policies and interests. Moreover much depends on how the US defines or re-defines its interests under the new realities.
The radical left includes the FARC guerrillas in Colombia, sectors of the trade unions and peasant and barrio movements in Venezuela; the labor confederation CONLUTAS and sectors of the Rural Landless Movement in Brazil; sectors of the Bolivian Labor Confederation (COB), the Andean peasant movements and barrio organizations in El Alto; sectors of the peasant-indigenous movement CONAIE in Ecuador; sectors of the teachers and peasant-indigenous movements in Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas in Mexico; sectors of the nationalist-peasant-left in Peru; sectors of the trade union and unemployed workers in Argentina. In addition, there are numerous other social movements in Central and South America and a plethora of small Marxist groups in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and elsewhere. Together these organizations form a heterodox, dispersed political bloc, which is staunchly anti-imperialist, rejects any concessions to neo-liberal socio-economic policies, opposes debt payments and generally supports a socialist or radical nationalist program.
The pragmatic left includes President Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia and Castro in Cuba as well as a multiplicity of large electoral parties and major peasant and trade unions in Central and South America. Included here are the left electoral parties, the PRD in Mexico, the FMLN in El Salvador, the left electoral bloc and the labor confederation (CUT) in Colombia, the Chilean Communist Party, the majority in Peruvian nationalist Humala’s parliamentary party, leadership sectors of the MST, in Brazil, the MAS, the governing party in Bolivia, the CTA, the second largest labor confederation in Argentina, and a minority of the Broad Front and the labor confederation (PIT-CNT) in Uruguay. The great majority of left Latin American intellectuals are found among this political bloc.
It is worthwhile to examine why this bloc is referred to as the ‘pragmatic’ left. First of all Venezuela, Bolivia and the entire spectrum of above-mentioned social movements, trade union confederations, parties and fractions of parties do not call for or practice the expropriation of capitalism, the repudiation of the debt, the complete expropriation of US or EEC banks or multinational corporation, or any rupture in relations with the US.
For example, in Venezuela, private national and foreign banks earned over 30% rate of return in 2005-2007. Foreign-owned oil companies reaped record profits between 2004-2007. Less than 1% of the biggest landed estates were fully expropriated and titles turned over to landless peasants. Capital-labor relations still operate in a framework heavily weighted on behalf of business and labor contractors who rely on subcontractors who continue to dominate hiring and firing in more than one half of the large enterprises. The Venezuelan military and police continue to arrest suspected Colombian guerrillas and activists and turn them over to the Colombian police. Venezuela and US-client President Uribe of Colombia have signed several high-level security and economic co-operation agreements. While promoting Latin American integration (excluding the US) Chavez has looked toward greater ‘integration’ with neo-liberal Brazil and Argentina, whose oil production and distribution is controlled by European MNCs and US investors. While Chavez attacks US attempts to subvert the democratic process in Venezuela, it still provides 12% of total US petroleum imports, owns 12,000 CITGO gasoline stations in the US and several refineries.
Finally the Venezuela’s political system is wide open to influence by the private mass media, which are overwhelmingly hostile to the democratically elected President and Congress. US-funded NGO’s continue to act on behalf of US policymakers, as do a dozen pro-US political parties and a trade union confederation. The majority of pro-Chavez congressional members and officials are of very dubious nationalist credentials, having jumped on his political bandwagon more for personal advancement than from any populist loyalties. Many emigrated from defunct pro-US right wing political parties. In a word, Venezuela’s pragmatism spells out a very lucrative field for US investors, a reliable supplier of energy and alliances with the US’s major client (Colombia) in Latin America. The essence of the matter is that Chavez’s radical rhetoric and discourse on 21st century socialism does not now or in the proximate future correspond to the political realities. If it were not for Washington’s intransigent hostility and continued confrontation and destabilization tactics, even Chavez’s discourse would likely be moderated. That sectors of big business complain about increased royalty payments, profit sharing and taxes is to be expected, but hardly the basis for Washington to engage in arms boycotts, cheap rhetorical shots and undercover subversion.
US-Venezuela relations embody what is wrong and has failed in Latin America. By comparing Chavez’ policy with that of the previous Venezuelan client regimes during the 1990’s, Washington is painting Chavez as a ‘dangerous radical’. Taking into account the changed international environment of the 2000-2007 period and the limited social welfare, and tax and other reforms, and taking Chavez’ foreign policy pronouncements with a grain of salt, the US is in fact dealing with a pragmatic radical who can be accommodated. But that presumes that Washington rejects the 1990’s as a standard for measuring friends and enemies. It presumes that Washington realizes that the favorable international conjuncture of the 1990’s is gone and it must accommodate moderate reforms and foreign policy differences to avoid a social revolution.
The same is true regarding US policy toward Cuba and Bolivia. Cuba has established diplomatic ties with almost all US clients and allies in Latin America. It has explicitly extended a friendly diplomatic hand to US-backed Colombian President Uribe, rejects the revolutionary left (FARC) in Colombia, gives public support to neo-liberals like Lula of Brazil, Kirchner of Argentina and Vazquez in Uruguay and has signed a wide range of purchasing agreements with big US food exporters amounting to over $500 million dollars a year despite onerous terms. Cuba has provided free health services to a large number of US client regimes ranging from Honduras and Haiti to Pakistan. It is training thousands of doctors and educators from the poorest of US client states and has opened the door to foreign investors from four continents in all its major growth sectors.
Paradoxically as Cuba has deepened its integration into the world capitalist market leading to the emergence of a new class of market-oriented elites, Washington has increased its ideological hostility. By issuing military threats and exercising diplomatic pressure and provocations, the White House has strengthened radical tendencies in Cuban society. Washington has adopted a similar extremist posture toward the pragmatic-leftist Morales regime in Bolivia, whose ‘nationalization’ has not and will not expropriate any foreign-owned enterprise. One of Morales main purposes is to stimulate trade agreements between Bolivia’s agro-business elite and the US.
The third and most numerous political bloc in Latin America are the pragmatic neo-liberals which includes Brazil under Lula, Kirchner’s Argentina and the major trade union confederations in Brazil and Argentina, sectors of the big business and financial elites and the principal provincial political bosses handing out subsistence unemployment doles and food baskets. There are numerous imitators of these regimes among left-liberal opposition groups in Ecuador, Nicaragua (the Sandinistas and their split-offs), Paraguay and elsewhere. Both Kirchner and Lula have defended the entire gamut of legal, semi-legal and illegal privatizations, which took place in the 1990’s. Both have prepaid on their official debt obligations (though Argentina imposed a 60% discount on private debt holders).
Both have pursued agro-mineral export growth strategies. Both have vastly increased financial and business profits while restraining wages and salaries. There are also differences between the two. Kirchner’s pro-industry strategy has led to a growth rate over twice that of Lula and he has reduced unemployment by 50% (from a high base figure) compared to Lula’s failed employment policies. In other words, the investment environment for US business-people and bankers in Argentina and Brazil is as favorable to profit making (or even more so for US bankers in Brazil) as it was during the ‘Golden Years’ of the 1990’s.
The major changes in relations between the pragmatic neo-liberals and Washington are in the negotiations over a free trade agreement. The vast increase in global trade opportunities and the stronger market position of elite export producers and manufacturers within Latin America gives them a stronger negotiating position. Both Lula and Kirchner will have nothing to do with extremist-militarist US efforts to overthrow or boycott Chavez because they have growing and lucrative market investments and joint oil/gas projects in the works. They recognize the basically capitalist nature of the Chavez regime even as they reject most of his radical anti-imperialist discourse. Likewise both Presidents are diversifying trading partners and pursuing markets with US competitors in China and Asia because it is lucrative, revenue generating and part of their neo-liberal practice.
There is a clear difference between the market-oriented and free trade-driven policy of Argentina and Brazil and the militarist, ideologically driven US policy toward Venezuela, Cuba, the Middle East and elsewhere.
While Washington is not hostile to Argentina and has a friendly working relation with Brazil, it has failed to fully exploit the possibilities of extending influence because of its refusal to recognize the emergence of a kind of ‘nationalist’ free trade regime. Measuring Argentina against the 1990’s ‘Golden Age of Pillage’ under President Carlos Menem, Kirchner’s pursuit of negotiated agreements, regulated investments, tax collection and debt re-negotiations is seen as ‘nationalist’, ‘leftist’ and barely tolerable. Likewise Washington, accustomed to Cardoso’s role as a Washington client, is disturbed by the fact that Lula’s free market policies include a demand that the US end agricultural subsidies and quotas as well as Brazil. Once again Washington’s extremism sacrifices large-scale, long-term US entry into Brazil’s industrial and service sector in order to defend uncompetitive US farm enterprises. Washington’s attitude is more akin to a 19th century colonial (or mercantile) power than a 21st century market-based empire-builder, especially faced with pragmatic rulers looking to build their own regional power bases.
The fourth political bloc is the doctrinaire neo-liberal regimes, parties and elite associations, which closely follow Washington’s dictates. This includes the Calderon regime in Mexico, preparing to privatize the lucrative public petroleum and electrical firms, the Bachelet regime in Chile - the perennial agro-mineral-exporter, Central America – the tropical fruit and assembly plant exporters (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala). The latter were brought into the US orbit subsequent to the killing of over 300,000 people between the late 1970’s and early 1990’s.
Colombia, another member of the hard-line neo-liberal bloc, is recipient of $5 billion dollars in US military aid since the late 1990’s. Peru, which over the past 20 years has privatized almost all of its mineral wealth is governed by US client President Alan Garcia who continues the same policies. Paraguay has become the biggest military base for Washington. In Uruguay, a regime of ex-leftists has signed onto a new free trade agreement with the US and agreed to a military training base. In the Caribbean, the US occupies Haiti via the UN after overthrowing and abducting the elected President Bertram Aristide and has a loyal ally in the Dominican Republic (President Leonel Fernandez). In other words, Washington dominates a ‘Pacific Arc’ of loyal clients extending from Mexico, through Central America down the Southern Pacific coast, including Colombia, Peru and Chile. While the political labels, rhetoric and degree of stability vary, these regimes all embrace US-backed doctrines of free market, mostly follow the US lead in regional and international forums and in one degree or another openly or surreptitiously oppose Venezuela and Cuba. Powerful pragmatic leftist movements challenge these client regimes, especially in Mexico, El Salvador, Peru and Colombia (including the radical left in the latter). Nevertheless for the immediate future, Washington has a loyal bloc of follower regimes, even as, over the middle course this could change abruptly.
Conclusion
Claims by Washington and right-wing ideologues that ‘radical populism’ is sweeping the region are self-serving and gross simplifications of a complex reality. Instead there is a ‘quadrangle of competing and conflicting forces’ within Latin America. There are also new and changing international scenarios, which complicate any attempt to ‘pigeonhole’ policies with ‘either/or’ choices. Washington has emphasized the subversive influence of Venezuela and Cuba in weakening US dominance in Latin America. A far more important factor is the across the board rise in commodity prices of goods which are major export earners for Latin America. This means that the Latin American countries have less need to rely on IMF ‘conditions’ for securing loans, thus severely limiting US political leverage. Secondly the greater liquidity means that commercial loans can be secured without resorting to the World Bank, another instrument of US influence in Latin American political and economic policy making. Thirdly the rapidly expanding markets in Asia and particularly the growth of Asian investment in Latin America’s extractive industries has further eroded US ‘market leverage’ in Latin America over and above what Washington possessed in the 1990’s. Fourthly with the slowdown of the US economy in 2007, the US is expected to lessen its investments and trade with Latin America. In other words, Washington has less market leverage over pragmatic leftists and neo-liberals than it possessed during the 1990’s. To continue to act in the late-2000s as if Washington’s relative loss of influence reflects the ebb and flow of political forces (radical populism) within the region is to pursue failed policies. Mislabeling regimes and exaggerating the degree and kind of opposition leads to the exacerbation of conflicts. Furthermore for Washington to persist in believing that it can secure continent-wide free trade agreements based on non-reciprocal concessions (particularly in agriculture) is to lose out on opportunities for trade deals.
Washington’s over-politicization and ideological labeling of changes in US-Latin American relations is a result of the ultra-conservative configuration of policymakers and their principal advisers in Washington.
If Washington has grossly misrepresented Latin American political reality and misreads the current regional and international context, the Left is hardly more prescient. Leftist intellectuals exaggerate the radicalism or revolutionary reality of Cuba and Venezuela. They overlook the contradictory realities and their pragmatic accommodations with neo-liberal regimes. The Left, with little historical perspicacity, continues to categorize pragmatic neo-liberals like Lula, Kirchner and Vazquez as ‘progressives’, lumping them together with pragmatic leftists like Chavez, Castro and Morales. In many cases they characterize parties and regimes based on their past leftist political identities rather than their current free market, pro-agro-mineral elite policies. The Left confuses the pragmatic neo-liberal regimes’ efforts to negotiate symmetrical free market trade agreements with the US as some sort of ‘anti-globalization’ policy or as a ‘counter-weight’ to US power.
The Left has to face up to the fact that while US power has declined relative to the ‘Golden Age of Pillage’ during the 1990’s, it has recovered and advanced since the mass rebellions and overthrow of client regimes of 2000-2002. The hopes that the Left had that the presidential victories of former center-left electoral parties in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, would augur a reversion of the neo-liberal policies of their predecessors have been demonstrably dashed. The attempt to redefine the conversion of the ex-leftist-turned-pragmatic neo-liberals into something progressive or as a ‘counter-weight’ to US power is ingenuous at best and at worst compounds the initial error. The Left’s lack of political clarity regarding political changes has led it into a blind alley as damaging to its future growth as Washington’s failed efforts to recognize the new realities.
While US power over Latin America has declined since the 1990’s it has not been a linear process, a sharp fall has been followed by a partial recovery. The decline of the US has not been matched by a sustained rise in the power of the radical left. The real ‘gainers’ have been the pragmatic leftists and neo-liberals who rode to power with the demise of the doctrinaire neo-liberals and the favorable expansive conjuncture in world market conditions. There are neither inherent long-term ‘laws of imperial decline’ as some Leftist historians claim, nor ‘an end of the revolutionary left’ as their neo-liberal counterparts claim. Rather a realistic analysis demonstrates that political interventions, class conflict and international markets play a major role in shaping US-Latin American relations and more particularly the ascent and decline of US imperial power, social revolutionary forces and the other political variants in between.
March 2007
Cheney has it exactly backwards; Terror attacks up, Rice considered hiding the data
Related
Terror attacks up, Rice considered hiding the data
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State Dept.: Terrorism up 30%
Condi Rice wanted to delay the news, but it has broken on two fronts.
Warren Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy report that the annual State Department on terrorism will report a nearly 30% rise over the previous year, most of it accounted for by attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In other words Cheney has it exactly backwards. The US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is feeding terrorism, not preventing or lessening it. "They" won't follow us home if we leave. But they might if we don't.
Terror attacks up, Rice considered hiding the data
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Saturday, April 28, 2007
Saudi Terror Plot Averted
State Dept.: Terrorism up 30%
Condi Rice wanted to delay the news, but it has broken on two fronts.
Warren Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy report that the annual State Department on terrorism will report a nearly 30% rise over the previous year, most of it accounted for by attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In other words Cheney has it exactly backwards. The US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is feeding terrorism, not preventing or lessening it. "They" won't follow us home if we leave. But they might if we don't.
Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
An Institution Created To Shore Up The Interests Of World Capitalism And US Imperialism
The World Bank along with the IMF have been the main instrument's of global capitalism and US imperialism.
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Capitalism as always is searching for new methods of exploitation of workers, and with the help of the Zionist apartheid regime, they have found new ways to hold people captive, and exploit their labor.
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Inside the giant walled prisons of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they are planning on developing what are being called "industrial Zones" which is basically going to be an imprisoned work
force, who in order to survive will be forced to sell their labor at very cheap slave wage prices to the Zionist apartheid regime, so that the Zionist regime can then inturn sell the products created by this slave wage labor on the world market for hefty profits.
force, who in order to survive will be forced to sell their labor at very cheap slave wage prices to the Zionist apartheid regime, so that the Zionist regime can then inturn sell the products created by this slave wage labor on the world market for hefty profits.___
If this were Nazi Germany these so-called "industrial zones" would be called what they really are...
"work camps."
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I am posting an article about this from left turn magazine, as well as yesterdays Flashpoints program with news about occupied Palestine, and other stories.
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Flashpoints:
After a bloody weekend in the occupied West Bank, is Israel preparing to once again re-invade and destroy Gaza? We'll speak with the executive director of the International Middle East Media Center, George Rishmawi; PLAY or DOWNLOAD
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Cementing Israeli Apartheid: The Role of World Bank
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By Jamal Juma
Through the violent occupation of Iraq, the US is laying the foundations to further open the economy of the Middle East for their corporate interests. Countries once protected by oil revenues are lining up to sign bilateral agreements leading to a Middle East Free Trade Agreement. MEFTA would impose free market policies that have enslaved other regions of the global south to global capital. In Palestine, the World Bank has played a key role in facilitating the cooperation of global capital and occupation.
By Jamal Juma
Through the violent occupation of Iraq, the US is laying the foundations to further open the economy of the Middle East for their corporate interests. Countries once protected by oil revenues are lining up to sign bilateral agreements leading to a Middle East Free Trade Agreement. MEFTA would impose free market policies that have enslaved other regions of the global south to global capital. In Palestine, the World Bank has played a key role in facilitating the cooperation of global capital and occupation.
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In Palestine, international powers are eager to implement plans to use the apartheid apparatus of the Israeli occupation—particularly the infrastructure created by the Apartheid Wall—for the establishment of industrial zones, guaranteeing economic dependency and exploitation of Palestinian communities on top of the occupation control.
In Palestine, international powers are eager to implement plans to use the apartheid apparatus of the Israeli occupation—particularly the infrastructure created by the Apartheid Wall—for the establishment of industrial zones, guaranteeing economic dependency and exploitation of Palestinian communities on top of the occupation control.
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The Apartheid Wall is a devastating extension and acceleration of occupation policies, designed to annex nearly half of West Bank lands and imprison the remaining population within 12 percent of historical Palestine. The Wall to date has destroyed thousands of dunums (4 dunums are equivalent to one acre) of land, uprooted olive trees, displaced families and communities, and separated Palestinians from their land and other Palestinians. Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision, which took up the Palestinian call that the Wall must be torn down and affected communities compensated—the construction of the Wall has only accelerated in the last year.
The Apartheid Wall is a devastating extension and acceleration of occupation policies, designed to annex nearly half of West Bank lands and imprison the remaining population within 12 percent of historical Palestine. The Wall to date has destroyed thousands of dunums (4 dunums are equivalent to one acre) of land, uprooted olive trees, displaced families and communities, and separated Palestinians from their land and other Palestinians. Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision, which took up the Palestinian call that the Wall must be torn down and affected communities compensated—the construction of the Wall has only accelerated in the last year.
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Legitimizing occupation
Legitimizing occupation
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Global bodies have only increased their support for the Wall and occupation policies over the last year. The G-8 controlled World Bank has outlined the framework for this policy in their most recent report on Palestine published in December of 2004, Stagnation or Revival: Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic Prospects.
Global bodies have only increased their support for the Wall and occupation policies over the last year. The G-8 controlled World Bank has outlined the framework for this policy in their most recent report on Palestine published in December of 2004, Stagnation or Revival: Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian Economic Prospects.
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In the report, the World Bank adopts the occupation’s strategically misleading terminology for the Wall, referring to it and its connected infrastructure as a “security fence” or “separation barrier.” This move by the World Bank seeks to legitimize the confiscation of Palestinian lands and obscures the reality on the ground in which 80 percent of the Wall’s destructive path deviates from the 1967 Armistice Line, separating Palestinians from other Palestinians, their capital Jerusalem, land, and essential sources of livelihood.
In the report, the World Bank adopts the occupation’s strategically misleading terminology for the Wall, referring to it and its connected infrastructure as a “security fence” or “separation barrier.” This move by the World Bank seeks to legitimize the confiscation of Palestinian lands and obscures the reality on the ground in which 80 percent of the Wall’s destructive path deviates from the 1967 Armistice Line, separating Palestinians from other Palestinians, their capital Jerusalem, land, and essential sources of livelihood.
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The World Bank’s vision of “economic development” evades any discussion of the illegality of the Wall, the occupation, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. To the contrary it takes Israeli “facts on the ground” as given scenarios and lays the foundations for the economic sustainability of the Palestinian ghettos created by the Wall. The World Bank thinks they can circumvent ICJ concerns if it is justified as a humanitarian project.
The World Bank’s vision of “economic development” evades any discussion of the illegality of the Wall, the occupation, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees. To the contrary it takes Israeli “facts on the ground” as given scenarios and lays the foundations for the economic sustainability of the Palestinian ghettos created by the Wall. The World Bank thinks they can circumvent ICJ concerns if it is justified as a humanitarian project.
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Central to the vision of the World Bank for a thriving and successful Palestinian “state” is the development of an export-orientated economy in which Palestinian dispossessed farmers are exploited as cheap labor and dominated by markets and free trade. Israeli and World Bank interests merge to destroy local forms of trade, sustainable patterns of agricultural production, and existing social structures.
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Agriculture, traditionally the core sector of the Palestinian economy, is barely mentioned in the report, presumably because the World Bank realizes that Palestinians will be left with no land. The only mention of a future for agriculture in areas of Gaza focus on the use of land for export-oriented production, not local sustainability and consumption.
Agriculture, traditionally the core sector of the Palestinian economy, is barely mentioned in the report, presumably because the World Bank realizes that Palestinians will be left with no land. The only mention of a future for agriculture in areas of Gaza focus on the use of land for export-oriented production, not local sustainability and consumption.
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Industrial zones
Industrial zones
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Central to World Bank proposals are the construction of massive industrial zones to be financed by the World Bank and other donors and controlled by the Israeli Occupation. These are envisaged as forming the basis of economic “development” built on Palestinian land around the Wall. Previous initiatives in the Gaza Strip are being used as the “catalyst” and model for the way in which Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall can be put to work in industrial zones.
Central to World Bank proposals are the construction of massive industrial zones to be financed by the World Bank and other donors and controlled by the Israeli Occupation. These are envisaged as forming the basis of economic “development” built on Palestinian land around the Wall. Previous initiatives in the Gaza Strip are being used as the “catalyst” and model for the way in which Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall can be put to work in industrial zones.
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International Financing Institutions are proposing a series of new or revitalized industrial zones. Primary among these are the “Green Line” zones which would be located in areas close to or on the Green Line, including sites close to Jenin, Tarkumiya and Rafah which already have backing with several European and US firms.
International Financing Institutions are proposing a series of new or revitalized industrial zones. Primary among these are the “Green Line” zones which would be located in areas close to or on the Green Line, including sites close to Jenin, Tarkumiya and Rafah which already have backing with several European and US firms.
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The gates built on the 20 percent of the Wall that fall on the Green Line are integral to World Bank plans as the existing gates will facilitate their ability to fund high-tech checkpoints for the transport of goods and control of people with fewer legal barriers stemming from the ICJ decision. Further industrial parks are planned in “Seam Zones” in Palestinian land isolated behind the Apartheid Wall and the Green Line. Given that 80 percent of the Wall deviates from the Green Line, there is scope for various projects on isolated land confiscated by the Israeli Occupation.
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One location highlighted in the Bank’s report is the so-called Tulkarm Peace Park where construction is already underway. Construction has involved using around 600 dunums of land from the villages of Irtah and Farun that have been confiscated by the Wall.
One location highlighted in the Bank’s report is the so-called Tulkarm Peace Park where construction is already underway. Construction has involved using around 600 dunums of land from the villages of Irtah and Farun that have been confiscated by the Wall.
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The industrial zones are designed to serve the needs of the industry markets of Israel, whether by doing the most environmentally destructive production in Palestinian areas or by providing cheap labor. Additionally these zones would benefit the Israeli Occupation abroad where goods “Made in Palestine” have more favorable trade conditions in international markets.
The industrial zones are designed to serve the needs of the industry markets of Israel, whether by doing the most environmentally destructive production in Palestinian areas or by providing cheap labor. Additionally these zones would benefit the Israeli Occupation abroad where goods “Made in Palestine” have more favorable trade conditions in international markets.
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And while the Israeli Occupation plans to stop issuing work permits in 2008 cutting about 30,000 Palestinian jobs (adding to the potential labor force in industrial zones), the World Bank as part of the overall economic plan encourages the issuing of some permits so the Occupation economy can further profit from Palestinians.
And while the Israeli Occupation plans to stop issuing work permits in 2008 cutting about 30,000 Palestinian jobs (adding to the potential labor force in industrial zones), the World Bank as part of the overall economic plan encourages the issuing of some permits so the Occupation economy can further profit from Palestinians.
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Imprisoned labor
Imprisoned labor
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Through the Apartheid Wall, the occupation and international financing institutions aim to cement several realities into the future of Palestinian people. Primary among these is the long-term sustainability of the ghettoization of Palestinians.
Through the Apartheid Wall, the occupation and international financing institutions aim to cement several realities into the future of Palestinian people. Primary among these is the long-term sustainability of the ghettoization of Palestinians.
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This post-Wall vision includes complete control over Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech military gates and checkpoints, through which Palestinians and exports can be conveniently transported and controlled. This will be supplemented with a “transfer system” of walled roads and tunnels to funnel Palestinian workers to their jobs, while simultaneously denying them access to their land around them that lies outside the Bantustans created by the Wall.
This post-Wall vision includes complete control over Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech military gates and checkpoints, through which Palestinians and exports can be conveniently transported and controlled. This will be supplemented with a “transfer system” of walled roads and tunnels to funnel Palestinian workers to their jobs, while simultaneously denying them access to their land around them that lies outside the Bantustans created by the Wall.
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The World Bank places these conditions of imprisonment within a scenario of exploitation of the workers who will be channeled through the Occupation control system. Sweatshops will be one of the only possibilities for earning a living for the Palestinians left in the disparate Bantustans throughout the West Bank.
The World Bank places these conditions of imprisonment within a scenario of exploitation of the workers who will be channeled through the Occupation control system. Sweatshops will be one of the only possibilities for earning a living for the Palestinians left in the disparate Bantustans throughout the West Bank.
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The World Bank states:
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“In an improved operating environment, Palestinian entrepreneurs and foreign investors will look for well-serviced industrial land and supporting infrastructure. They will also seek a regulatory regime with a minimum of ‘red tape’ and with clear procedures for conducting business. Industrial Estates (IEs), particularly those on the border between Palestinian and Israeli territory, can fulfill this need and thereby play an important role in supporting export based growth.”
“In an improved operating environment, Palestinian entrepreneurs and foreign investors will look for well-serviced industrial land and supporting infrastructure. They will also seek a regulatory regime with a minimum of ‘red tape’ and with clear procedures for conducting business. Industrial Estates (IEs), particularly those on the border between Palestinian and Israeli territory, can fulfill this need and thereby play an important role in supporting export based growth.”
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The “red tape” which the World Bank refers to can be presumed to mean trade unions, a minimum wage, good working conditions, environmental protection and other workers’ rights that will be more flexible than the ones in the “developed” world. The World Bank explicitly states that current wages of Palestinians are too high for the region and “compromise the international competitiveness” even though wages compromise only a quarter of the average in Israel. On top of a military occupation and forced expulsion, Palestinians are to be subjects of an economic colonialism common throughout the Southern hemisphere for inflicting poverty and misery.
The “red tape” which the World Bank refers to can be presumed to mean trade unions, a minimum wage, good working conditions, environmental protection and other workers’ rights that will be more flexible than the ones in the “developed” world. The World Bank explicitly states that current wages of Palestinians are too high for the region and “compromise the international competitiveness” even though wages compromise only a quarter of the average in Israel. On top of a military occupation and forced expulsion, Palestinians are to be subjects of an economic colonialism common throughout the Southern hemisphere for inflicting poverty and misery.
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Aiding displacement
Aiding displacement
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The governments of the G-8 have shown vivid interest in this project of displacement, imprisonment, and oppression of Palestinian communities under the pretense of development and humanitarian aid. In breach of the ICJ ruling, the US has already contributed $50 million to construct gates within these prisons to “help” serve the needs of Palestinians. Perhaps even more disturbing is the normalization of such brutal schemes within the programs of donors (such as USAID), who implement politically motivated projects under the rubric of humanitarian assistance.
The governments of the G-8 have shown vivid interest in this project of displacement, imprisonment, and oppression of Palestinian communities under the pretense of development and humanitarian aid. In breach of the ICJ ruling, the US has already contributed $50 million to construct gates within these prisons to “help” serve the needs of Palestinians. Perhaps even more disturbing is the normalization of such brutal schemes within the programs of donors (such as USAID), who implement politically motivated projects under the rubric of humanitarian assistance.
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The World Bank, alongside the US and significant portions of the international community, are using the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an institution through which these policies can be implemented and an “attractive environment for investors” created. The PA is given the role of prison guard, preventing the Palestinian people from defending their lands and rights. The responsibility of the PA towards the Palestinian people necessitates that it stands up against these projects—not by “modifying” or “only partially backing” them, but by completely opposing them.
The World Bank, alongside the US and significant portions of the international community, are using the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an institution through which these policies can be implemented and an “attractive environment for investors” created. The PA is given the role of prison guard, preventing the Palestinian people from defending their lands and rights. The responsibility of the PA towards the Palestinian people necessitates that it stands up against these projects—not by “modifying” or “only partially backing” them, but by completely opposing them.
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Right to exist
Right to exist
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The industrial zones and Bantustans are not new ideas; they are reminiscent of the economic models of racial capital promoted by apartheid South Africa in Bantustans like the Ciskei and Bophuthatswana. They reflect the World Bank’s conscious choice to support the needs and vision of the Occupation which entails the destruction of the Palestinian nation. While espousing the politics of free markets and free trade, the World Bank is not interested in the creation of a free people. Quite the opposite—its interests are best served by keeping Palestinians in economic enslavement.
The industrial zones and Bantustans are not new ideas; they are reminiscent of the economic models of racial capital promoted by apartheid South Africa in Bantustans like the Ciskei and Bophuthatswana. They reflect the World Bank’s conscious choice to support the needs and vision of the Occupation which entails the destruction of the Palestinian nation. While espousing the politics of free markets and free trade, the World Bank is not interested in the creation of a free people. Quite the opposite—its interests are best served by keeping Palestinians in economic enslavement.
___
The failure of the international community and financial institutions to work towards the implementation of the ICJ decision to tear down the Wall and to ensure the respect of Palestinian rights has come at an enormous human cost. And yet, against this bleak and overwhelming reality, Palestinian communities are actively defending their right to exist. Palestinians are implementing the ICJ decision with their own hands, where in villages like Bil`in, the Wall’s cement foundations were physically dismantled in active resistance.
The failure of the international community and financial institutions to work towards the implementation of the ICJ decision to tear down the Wall and to ensure the respect of Palestinian rights has come at an enormous human cost. And yet, against this bleak and overwhelming reality, Palestinian communities are actively defending their right to exist. Palestinians are implementing the ICJ decision with their own hands, where in villages like Bil`in, the Wall’s cement foundations were physically dismantled in active resistance.
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Villages are mobilizing regular demonstrations against the construction of the Wall in the midst of violent reprisals by the Occupation Forces and continue to direct their protest beyond these imprisoned boundaries, towards the international community at large. As history illustrates repeatedly, attempted pacification of resistance to Occupation will always be thwarted by a people’s unrelenting will for self-determination.
Villages are mobilizing regular demonstrations against the construction of the Wall in the midst of violent reprisals by the Occupation Forces and continue to direct their protest beyond these imprisoned boundaries, towards the international community at large. As history illustrates repeatedly, attempted pacification of resistance to Occupation will always be thwarted by a people’s unrelenting will for self-determination.
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Now more than ever it is crucial that movements step up efforts to isolate the Israeli Apartheid and support Palestinians in their struggle for their land. It is important to be prepared to resist new assaults masked in the guise of “development” and “aid” and stand behind the uncompromising demands of a Palestinian led movement—not for comfortable ghettos or colorful walls but liberation and justice.
Now more than ever it is crucial that movements step up efforts to isolate the Israeli Apartheid and support Palestinians in their struggle for their land. It is important to be prepared to resist new assaults masked in the guise of “development” and “aid” and stand behind the uncompromising demands of a Palestinian led movement—not for comfortable ghettos or colorful walls but liberation and justice.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Jamal Juma' is Campaign Coordinator for the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (www.stopthewall.org).
For further information on the World Bank, and Boycotts against Israel, please refer to
Jamal Juma' is Campaign Coordinator for the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (www.stopthewall.org).
For further information on the World Bank, and Boycotts against Israel, please refer to
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"The Most Lawless War of Our Generation": The U.S. Sponsored War In Somalia
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Massacre in Mogadishu--war crime made in the USA
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Friday, April 27th, 2007
"The Most Lawless War of Our Generation" - FPublishmr. UN Spokesperson on Somalia
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In Somali, fierce clashes in Mogadishu are being described as some of the heaviest fighting in the city's history. Some 329 people have been killed over the past ten days. This comes just three weeks after another series of battles claimed at least 1,000 lives. The United Nations says more people - over 350,000 - have been displaced in Somalia in the past three months than anywhere else in the world. [includes rush transcript]
In Somalia, clashes between U.S. backed-Ethiopian forces and fighters aligned with the Islamic Courts Union in the capital Mogadishu are being described as some of the heaviest fighting in the city's history.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Massacre in Mogadishu--war crime made in the USA
---
Friday, April 27th, 2007
"The Most Lawless War of Our Generation" - FPublishmr. UN Spokesperson on Somalia
Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3
Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream
In Somali, fierce clashes in Mogadishu are being described as some of the heaviest fighting in the city's history. Some 329 people have been killed over the past ten days. This comes just three weeks after another series of battles claimed at least 1,000 lives. The United Nations says more people - over 350,000 - have been displaced in Somalia in the past three months than anywhere else in the world. [includes rush transcript]
In Somalia, clashes between U.S. backed-Ethiopian forces and fighters aligned with the Islamic Courts Union in the capital Mogadishu are being described as some of the heaviest fighting in the city's history.
Local human rights workers report at least 329 people have been killed over the past ten days. This comes just three weeks after another series of battles claimed at least 1,000 lives.
The fighting began in December when US-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia. Four months ago today, Islamic fighters abandoned the capital, marking the official fall of the Islamic Courts Union, which had controlled Mogadishu for six months last year.
A humanitarian catastrophe now looms over Somalia. The United Nations says more people have been displaced in Somalia in the past three months than anywhere else in the world. Some 350,000 have fled fighting in Mogadishu since February, more than one-third of its population. That makes the rate of displacement in Somalia over the past three months worse than Iraq. Many of the those displaced are camped on the outskirts of Mogadishu and lack food, medicine and clean water. There is also concern for those trapped inside the capital where more than 600 people have died from acute diarrhea and cholera.
- John Holmes, United Nations emergency relief coordinator: "There are stocks available in the area. If we can sort out the access problems, if we can step up our presence, in particular if we could achieve a ceasefire in Mogadishu and the surrounding area, then I think we will be able to cope with the problem, with some difficulty. But if the fighting continues at its present intensity, if there is no halt in that, if there is no political progress made, then we could indeed be facing a very serious situation indeed. I think already this is one of the biggest movement of population, displacement of population we've seen this year, in terms of numbers, particularly in terms of comparative numbers, compared to the populations of Mogadishu or indeed of Somalia as a whole, greater in that sense than Darfur or eastern Chad, and the problems there are serious enough."
The escalating war in Somalia has received little attention in the U.S. media especially on broadcast television. Using the Lexis database, Democracy Now examined ABC, NBC and CBS's coverage of Somalia in the evening newscasts over the past three months. The result may surprise you: ABC and NBC has not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once. The network dedicated a total of three sentences to the story.
- Salim Lone, a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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AMY GOODMAN: In Somalia, fierce fighting has killed over 320 people over the past ten days. This comes just three weeks after another series of battles claimed at least a thousand lives. Agence France-Presse described Thursday’s clashes in Mogadishu as some of the heaviest fighting in the city’s history.
The fighting began in December when US-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia. Four months ago today, Islamic fighters abandoned the capital, marking the official fall of the Council of Islamic Courts, which had controlled Mogadishu for six months last year.
A humanitarian catastrophe now looms over Somalia. The United Nations says more people have been displaced in Somalia in the past three months than anywhere else in the world. Some 350,000 people have fled fighting in Mogadishu since February, more than a third of its population. That makes the rate of displacement in Somalia over the past three months worse than Iraq. Many of the those displaced are camped on the outskirts of Mogadishu and lack food, medicine and clean water. There is also concern for those trapped inside the capital where more than 600 people have died from acute diarrhea and cholera.
This is UN relief coordinator John Holmes.
JOHN HOLMES: There are stocks available in the area. If we can sort out the access problems, if we can step up our presence, in particular if we could achieve a ceasefire in Mogadishu and the surrounding area, then I think we will be able to cope with the problem, with some difficulty. But if the fighting continues at its present intensity, if there is no halt in that, if there is no political progress made, then we could indeed be facing a very serious situation indeed. I think already this is one of the -- the biggest movement of population, displacement of population we've seen this year, in terms of numbers, particularly in terms of comparative numbers, compared to the populations of Mogadishu or indeed of Somalia as a whole, greater in that sense than Darfur or eastern Chad, and the problems there are serious enough.
AMY GOODMAN: Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi said Thursday his forces were now in control of Mogadishu. The BBC reports, for the first time in nine days, gunfire has stopped. Ethiopians and government troops are patrolling the city conducting house-to-house searches, as residents collect rotting bodies that have been abandoned in the streets.
The escalating war in Somalia has received little attention in the US media especially on broadcast television. Using the Lexis database, Democracy Now! examined ABC, NBC and CBS's coverage of Somalia in the evening newscasts over the past three months. The result may surprise you: ABC and NBC has not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once on a Sunday night news broadcast. The network dedicated a total of three sentences to the story.
Salim Lone is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and a former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. He joins us today from London. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Salim.
SALIM LONE: Thank you for covering Somalia, Amy. As you said, the coverage is absolutely shameless.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, first, Salim, can you describe who the fighting forces are and who's behind them?
SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, the key country there is Ethiopia. Their occupation forces have been there, in fact, long before the actual war began. They came in around September, October. But at the moment, those fighting the Ethiopians and the nominal transitional central government, which is really an absolutely puppet -- it’s quite hapless. In fact, the Ethiopians don't even deal with Somalis that their fighting through the transitional government. They go directly to the elders of the clans to try to negotiate ceasefires. But those fighting them are obviously the Hawiye Clan fighters who dominate Mogadishu. I mean, historically, they're the largest clan in there. But there are also many others, not just Islamists, which is a codeword for terrorists, but there are many Somalis. In fact, most Somalis will not abide this occupation. I mean, this is what is most distressing about this fighting. All fighting is terrible, but you hope in the end something good comes out of it. But in this particular case, it is clear Somalis will not abide the Ethiopian occupation or the government they put in place there. So it is not going to be a successful war for the Somali government, for Ethiopia and, of course, for the US, which is the orchestrator of the whole adventure this time.
AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, you're now in London. The British think tank Chatham House criticized the US role in the war. The authors of the report write, “In an uncomfortably familiar pattern, general multilateral concern to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia has been hijacked by unilateral actors, especially Ethiopia and the United States.”
SALIM LONE: Well, you know, this is par for the course these days. What they also should have mentioned -- but it’s an excellent report, by the way. I really enjoyed reading it, and I’m so glad they were so candid. But one of the big issues here is not merely the unilateralism of the United States, but the inability of the international community and particularly the United Nations Security Council to try to play, if not an independent role, at least a moderating role. It is quite astonishing that for now three months, there has been terrible violence in Somalia, and yet we have not heard anything from the security council about how this carnage must stop. There is no interest whatsoever.
You know the death toll. I mean, you've given all the details. I don't want to go into it. But let me add that women are being raped, that hospitals are being bombed. This is clearly a huge effort to intimidate and terrorize all those who come from clans who are fighting the government. They want to intimidate the civilians, because most of the death toll is of civilians. So this has been going on, and there has been no call whatsoever for this to stop.
You had Sir John Holmes there. He's a Brit, who -- I don't know him personally, so I cannot speak for him. But clearly, he has been appointed, in fact, by the British to his crucial position as chief of humanitarian affairs.
So we are seeing the Security Council completely silent while these atrocities are going on. We are seeing Western governments completely silent. Nothing has come out of Washington. Nothing has come out of London. We now see, for the first time on Wednesday, the ambassador of Germany -- and Germany holds the EU presidency now -- the ambassador released a letter, which he had sent to Abdullah Yusuf, the president of the transitional government. It is a very candid and a very strong letter, and that's wonderful. However, where was Germany? Where was the EU for all this period? Their silence has really given the green light for the Ethiopians to do the terrible things they've been doing.
The death toll now in Somalia is greater than it was in Lebanon. And you will recall, of course, that even then, the big powers -- the US, UK, even initially the UN -- did not demand a ceasefire. But the world media was full of that story, and there were condemnations around the world for what the Israelis were doing. But, of course, Somalis and Africans don't count as nearly much, because there has just been no international outcry at all. It’s not just the media. So we really have a problem there.
AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, we're going to break and come back to this discussion. We'll also play a comment or interaction in the State Department on what is happening right now in Somalia. Salim Lone, columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, joining us from Britain. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Salim Lone. He is the former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq. He’s a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya and is joining us right now from London. Salim, I wanted to talk to you about the US role in all of this. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with the Ethiopian foreign minister on April 23. At a news conference the next day, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said the two had discussed the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. McCormack said the troops had “no desire to stay there any longer than they are needed,” but that they didn't want to withdraw to, quote, open up a -- “vacuum open up in Somalia.” A reporter questioned him about his comments. This is an excerpt.
REPORTER: Does it concern you at all that your little -- your opening readout, your opening statements, with the exception of some of the proper names, could have applied exactly to the situation in Iraq right now? Does that bother -- does that concern you at all?
SEAN McCORMACK: I'm not sure I see your point, Matt.
REPORTER: That the Ethiopians say that they don't want to stay there any longer than they're needed, but they don't want to leave a vacuum. It just sounds --
SEAN McCORMACK: Right.
REPORTER: -- an awful lot like they're taking a page from the administration's thoughts on what to do in Iraq.
SEAN McCORMACK: No. I mean, they're --
REPORTER: But I guess -- so my question is, are you concerned that they might be seeing the beginning or the -- in fact, the middle of an Iraq-style insurgency going on, obviously not directed at US soldiers --
SEAN McCORMACK: Right. Right, right, right.
REPORTER: -- but the same kind of thing. Are you concerned about that?
SEAN McCORMACK: The situations are completely separate. They are -- you know, each are sui generis, but you are in each case concerned about leaving the field to a group of violent extremists who do not have an interest in building up the institutions of a democratic state, so in that sense, in that sense, there are similarities. I think certainly the specifics of each situation are quite different, and the histories are quite different. And I think the level of intensity of fighting in Iraq is quite different than you're seeing in Somalia, and the scale of it is a lot smaller.
AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack. The reporter went on to ask him whether the United States is calling for a ceasefire.
REPORTER: Are you calling for a ceasefire in Somalia, or are you urging the Ethiopians to go for these insurgents with as much intensity as they could?
SEAN McCORMACK: You don't want to see any more violence in Somalia. Everybody would like that to be the case, but there are clearly people there, individuals who are intent upon using violence in order to further a so-called political cause. And we have seen that in other areas around the world. And what can't be allowed to happen is for those forces to gain a foothold to develop a safe haven, from which they could possibly launch attacks against other states in the region and further.
REPORTER: So you're not calling for a ceasefire?
SEAN McCORMACK: We want to see an end to the violence. But the real way to get an end to the violence is (a) stabilize the security situation, and (b) find a political situation that is workable for the major political factions in Somali life that have an interest in actually building a different kind of Somalia, as opposed to the one we've seen for the past few decades.
AMY GOODMAN: State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack. Salim Lone, columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, your response?
SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, I’m very interested in the Iraq analogy, and it is really multiple, apart from what was already said there. The contrasts are striking, as well. But let me add to the analogy, actually, that May 1 is approaching. That was the day when on the -- right after the war, President Bush said that his mission had been accomplished. We have the same statement coming out of the prime minister of Somalia yesterday, that the mission has been accomplished and the insurgents have been wiped out.
But let's look at the other contrasts, which are very fascinating. In Iraq, the world body, the Security Council, for the first time in many years since the Soviet Union collapsed, stood up to the United States and refused, despite enormous pressure, to authorize a UN war in Iraq. In Somalia's case, it is precisely the opposite.
To begin with, the lawlessness of this particular war is astounding. I mean, this is the most lawless war of our generation. You know, all aggressive wars are illegal. But in this particular one, there have been violations of the Charter and gross violations of international human rights, but these are commonplace. But, in addition, there have been very concrete violations by the United States, to begin with, of two Security Council resolutions. The first one was the arms embargo imposed on Somalia, which the United States has been routinely flaunting for many years now. But then the US decided that that resolution was no longer useful, and they pushed through an appalling resolution in December, which basically gave the green light to Ethiopia to invade. They pushed through a resolution which said that the situation in Somalia was a threat to international peace and security, at a time when every independent report indicated, and Chatham House’s report on Wednesday also indicated, that the Islamic Courts Union had brought a high level of peace and stability that Somalia had not enjoyed in sixteen years.
So here was the UN Security Council going along with the American demand to pass a blatantly falsified UN resolution. And that resolution actually was a violation. It contravened the UN Charter. You know, the UN Charter is like the American Constitution. Legislators pass laws, but they have to be in conformity with the Constitution. In this particular case, the Charter is the UN’s constitution, and the Security Council cannot -- it's not allowed to really pass laws or rules that violate the Charter. And yet, who is going to correct them? So this --
AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, on April 8, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration recently allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from North Korea, in violation of international sanctions. The US allowed the arms delivery to go through in January, shortly after Ethiopia invaded Somalia, from North Korea. Salim?
SALIM LONE: Well, I mean, this just, you know, shows the lawlessness, the complete lack of pretense, even, to try to honor these resolutions. The big powers decide what resolutions are passed. But now what we see is the big powers then decide, are we actually going to honor the resolution that we just passed?
I mean, I want to give you an incredible example of how the Security Council has become a plaything almost. There was a time when Security Council resolutions had gravitas. For example, everybody knew Resolution 242, asking Israel to vacate the Occupied Territories in exchange for peace. But now, it’s a plaything.
And I want to give the example of the bombings in Spain in the year 2004. Just before the Spanish election, there was this terrible atrocity, as you know. About 200 people, Spaniards, were killed in the terrorist attacks on the trains. Because it was on the eve of the election, the Aznar government, afraid that if it was known that this attack was by terrorists, might lose the election, got the US to support a Security Council resolution which condemned the Basque separatists for the attack. And the Security Council went along with that. I mean, a day later, it became clear that it was a total lie. So the Security Council resolutions really have no meaning now, because they can be passed and violated at will, especially by the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, the Dow Jones newswire has recently reported that the US-backed Somali prime minister wants to pass a new oil law to encourage foreign oil companies to return to Somalia. Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corporation once had exploration contracts in Somalia, but the companies left the country in 1991. How significant is this in the US involvement in Somalia today?
SALIM LONE: Well, you know, as you’ve discussed before, Somalia itself and the region, the Horn of Africa, is newly oil-rich. Kenya has some oil. Oil is the key to domination for the United States -- global domination, I mean. But it is going about, you know, the wrong way to get that oil. The US is also worried that its welcome in the Middle East is diminishing, and they need to make sure -- both they want to encircle the Middle East with the oil field, and they want to make sure they have Somalia and other countries handy for the oil.
But this -- you know, the prime minister’s attempt to lure Western oil companies is on a par with his crying wolf about al-Qaeda at every turn. Every time you interview a Somalia official, the first thing you hear is al-Qaeda and terrorists. They’re using that. No one believes it. No one believes it at all, because all independent reports say the contrary. But they are using that to try to develop support.
And, you know, this is why it is so important. Europe has now been coming into the forefront with its concern. It had this report about major human rights violations had occurred a month ago in Mogadishu. And the Europeans are afraid that they might be complicit in those, because they were supporting the warring -- the groups that were committing those atrocities. Germany, as I said, released that letter on Wednesday. Even the American ambassador has written to Abdullah Yusuf, the president. I mean, they are really writing letters to the Somali president. They will not raise this issue in the Security Council. They will not raise this issue in Washington or London. They want to keep this as a small African issue.
And it is so important for all of us to put pressure on the governments in Europe, in particular, and on Africa, too. I mean, Africa is weak. It cannot really take strong stands. In my own country, Kenya, we have played a terrible role in these extraordinary renditions and Guantanamo Bay that are going on. But, of course, one leading opposition, the candidate in Kenya, said that the US has promised to support the government in the elections at the end of this year in exchange for the terrible things it has been doing. So Africa is weak --
AMY GOODMAN: Salim Lone, I want to ask you quickly, as you talk about Guantanamo, this secret prison in Ethiopia -- not clear how many people are being held there, if this is one of the black sites, one of the prisons that are not very well known about in the world that the US is involved with. But we do know that Amir Mohamed Meshal is there. He is a New Jersey young man from Tinton Falls. Jonathan Landay of the McClatchy Newspapers reported April 24th, Ethiopia has changed its mind and decided for the time being not to free the American Muslim who was captured trying to flee war-torn Somalia and was held without charge in Kenya and Ethiopia for more than four months. Can you talk about this secret prison?
SALIM LONE: Well, you know, there are -- did you say “secret prison”?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
SALIM LONE: Yes, yes, yes. You know, I mean, this whole enterprise -- the kidnappings on Kenyan streets, the grabbing refugees coming across the border -- has a “Made in America” stamp on it, because you’ve seen it all happen before. And these secret prisons, the US denies any responsibility in this whole operation. And yet, we know that CIA and FBI officials are in those prisons interviewing the inmates.
We also know, by the way, that many of the people who have disappeared are not in those secret prisons. Where are those people? Have they be killed? Are they being tortured somewhere else? This is, you know, utter lawlessness.
And we must try to get the Europeans, in particular -- I keep appealing to the Europeans, because I know -- I speak to many European ambassadors in Kenya -- I know that they're privately very concerned about what is going on. And we must get them to do more. It is fine to indicate there are war crimes to be committed. It's fine to say this must stop, and hospitals shouldn’t be bombed, and you can’t keep relief away from suffering people. But they must go beyond that. They must take an initiative, or talk privately to the United States and say, “Look, this is a lost cause. We are only creating suffering, and we're creating problems for ourselves, because there will be blowback on this. There will be animosities and angers, which will affect Europe, America, Africa, everywhere.” So they must [inaudible].
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General’s call for a coalition of the willing to go into Somalia? You’re a former UN official.
SALIM LONE: You know, it is so disgraceful. For him to try to get the Security Council -- that's what he proposes, the Security Council, in case there is no peace in Somalia in the meeting in June, in mid-June, to discuss it in the Security Council -- for him to propose that the UN should now go in to do what the US and Ethiopia have been unable to do, which is basically to impose a client regime on Somalia, it's just absolutely disgraceful. I mean, I read that report to the Security Council, and it is hard to believe that Mr. Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It is so blatantly and comprehensively one-sided. There is not a word about the fact that the Ethiopians are there without any international legitimacy. They're occupiers. They violated the UN Charter. They were not in any danger of being attacked, and they invaded. So this notion must also -- this notion that a coalition of the willing must be formed -- as you know, that was how the first Gulf War was fought. And if this coalition comes into place, which I hope will not, it will merely internationalize the crisis and make things even worse. But I hope the Europeans, in particular, and the Africans who are on the Security Council will not allow that to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for joining us, Salim Lone, columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya, former spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq when it was bombed there, attacked there, several years ago, now living in Kenya, speaking to us, though, from London.
THE REALITY OF ISRAEL
A MILITARIZED OUTPOST SERVING IMPERIALIST INTERESTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Theodor Herzl was very clear when he stated that Der Judenstaat would form a colonial outpost in Palestine if the Great powers granted it to them and guaranteed their existence. “We would there form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should, as a neutral State, remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence”. (Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question. London: H. Pordes, Translated by Sylvie D'avigdor - 6th Edition, p. 30)
On 12 November 1914, Chaim Weizman wrote a letter to C. P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, stating, “…should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more. They would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal”.
Herbert Samuel, a Jewish British of the British civil sent a memorandum in early 1915 headed “The Future of Palestine” to H. Asquith, the British Prime Minister then. In his diary on January 28, 1915 Asquith wrote that Samuel had “argued at considerable length and with some vehemence in favor of the British annexation of Palestine… He thinks we might plant in this not very promising territory about three or four million European Jews… I confess I am not attracted to this proposed addition to our responsibilities…” Asquith later added, “Curiously enough, the only other partisan of this proposal is Lloyd George. And I need not say he does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of ‘agnostic and atheistic’ France”. (Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949, pp. 148-151)
U.S. relationship with the Middle East began as a neutral power interested in the application of self-determination to all ethnic groups, including Armenians, Kurds, and Arabs who were under Turkish rule. This relationship developed into supporting British designs for control of the area following WWI. It was further developed into supporting Zionist plans in Palestine that gradually enhanced into a strategic alliance between the U.S. and Israel as part of the New World Order led by the U.S. following the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.
On 31 October 1998, a U.S. Memorandum of Agreement was signed by American President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu according to which the U.S. would work jointly for the attainment of the following objectives: enhancing Israel’s defensive and deterrent capabilities, and upgrading the framework of the U.S.-Israeli strategic and military relationships, as well as the technological cooperation between them.
This relationship with the Imperialist powers made it possible for the Zionists to create Israel in 1948. After six decades, Israelis began to wake up to reality. The Palestinian Arabs did not vanish into thin air.
In early 2001, Ariel Sharon won the elections in Israel. He came to power with a declared goal of ending the ‘War of Independence’ of which the war in 1948 was ‘just one chapter’. (“Interview with Sharon” by Ari Shavit, published in Ha’aretz on 12 April 2001)
The war against ‘terror’ gave Sharon a cover to press on with his agenda using brutality and war crimes. Through this brutality, Sharon was hoping to bring about a Palestinian surrender to the Zionist whims and wishes. Moreover, he began building a wall to imprison the Palestinians within ghettos making their life impossible. For five years, Sharon failed to realize his dream.
On 12 July 2006, Israel started an all out war against Lebanon using Hezbollah’s kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers as a pretext. The war was ended on 14 August 2006 in complete failure for Israel.
The ‘demographic threat’ came back to haunt the Zionists. A systemic effort to confront the ‘threat’ was introduced according to which annual conferences were held in the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center – Herzliya to discuss and confront this basic and ‘strategic threat’ to the ‘Jewish State’. The first conference was held in December 2001.
Figures published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics on 22 April 2007 indicate that current population of Israel number 7,150,000 of whom 5,725,000 (80%) are Jewish. Arabs living within the borders of Mandate Palestine are approximately 4.5 million. Within ten to fifteen years, Arabs living in Palestine would become the majority even if Palestinian Refugees were not allowed to return to the homes and lands that were usurped from them.
Making peace with the Arabs would mean an end to Israel’s role as a militarized outpost serving Imperialist interests in the Middle East, which would mean an end to the unlimited support Israel gets from the Western Imperialist powers.
The only way out of this vicious circle is for the Israeli Jews to realize the bankruptcy of political Zionism, admit the wrong done to the Arabs, accept the Right of Return and create one Palestinian State within which all citizens would live as equal human beings with equal human rights.
Nizar Sakhnini, 28 April 2007
Theodor Herzl was very clear when he stated that Der Judenstaat would form a colonial outpost in Palestine if the Great powers granted it to them and guaranteed their existence. “We would there form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. We should, as a neutral State, remain in contact with all Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence”. (Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question. London: H. Pordes, Translated by Sylvie D'avigdor - 6th Edition, p. 30)
On 12 November 1914, Chaim Weizman wrote a letter to C. P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, stating, “…should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a million Jews out there, perhaps more. They would develop the country, bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal”.
Herbert Samuel, a Jewish British of the British civil sent a memorandum in early 1915 headed “The Future of Palestine” to H. Asquith, the British Prime Minister then. In his diary on January 28, 1915 Asquith wrote that Samuel had “argued at considerable length and with some vehemence in favor of the British annexation of Palestine… He thinks we might plant in this not very promising territory about three or four million European Jews… I confess I am not attracted to this proposed addition to our responsibilities…” Asquith later added, “Curiously enough, the only other partisan of this proposal is Lloyd George. And I need not say he does not care a damn for the Jews or their past or their future, but thinks it will be an outrage to let the Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of ‘agnostic and atheistic’ France”. (Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949, pp. 148-151)
U.S. relationship with the Middle East began as a neutral power interested in the application of self-determination to all ethnic groups, including Armenians, Kurds, and Arabs who were under Turkish rule. This relationship developed into supporting British designs for control of the area following WWI. It was further developed into supporting Zionist plans in Palestine that gradually enhanced into a strategic alliance between the U.S. and Israel as part of the New World Order led by the U.S. following the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.
On 31 October 1998, a U.S. Memorandum of Agreement was signed by American President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu according to which the U.S. would work jointly for the attainment of the following objectives: enhancing Israel’s defensive and deterrent capabilities, and upgrading the framework of the U.S.-Israeli strategic and military relationships, as well as the technological cooperation between them.
This relationship with the Imperialist powers made it possible for the Zionists to create Israel in 1948. After six decades, Israelis began to wake up to reality. The Palestinian Arabs did not vanish into thin air.
In early 2001, Ariel Sharon won the elections in Israel. He came to power with a declared goal of ending the ‘War of Independence’ of which the war in 1948 was ‘just one chapter’. (“Interview with Sharon” by Ari Shavit, published in Ha’aretz on 12 April 2001)
The war against ‘terror’ gave Sharon a cover to press on with his agenda using brutality and war crimes. Through this brutality, Sharon was hoping to bring about a Palestinian surrender to the Zionist whims and wishes. Moreover, he began building a wall to imprison the Palestinians within ghettos making their life impossible. For five years, Sharon failed to realize his dream.
On 12 July 2006, Israel started an all out war against Lebanon using Hezbollah’s kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers as a pretext. The war was ended on 14 August 2006 in complete failure for Israel.
The ‘demographic threat’ came back to haunt the Zionists. A systemic effort to confront the ‘threat’ was introduced according to which annual conferences were held in the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center – Herzliya to discuss and confront this basic and ‘strategic threat’ to the ‘Jewish State’. The first conference was held in December 2001.
Figures published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics on 22 April 2007 indicate that current population of Israel number 7,150,000 of whom 5,725,000 (80%) are Jewish. Arabs living within the borders of Mandate Palestine are approximately 4.5 million. Within ten to fifteen years, Arabs living in Palestine would become the majority even if Palestinian Refugees were not allowed to return to the homes and lands that were usurped from them.
Making peace with the Arabs would mean an end to Israel’s role as a militarized outpost serving Imperialist interests in the Middle East, which would mean an end to the unlimited support Israel gets from the Western Imperialist powers.
The only way out of this vicious circle is for the Israeli Jews to realize the bankruptcy of political Zionism, admit the wrong done to the Arabs, accept the Right of Return and create one Palestinian State within which all citizens would live as equal human beings with equal human rights.
Nizar Sakhnini, 28 April 2007
Nobel laureate treated, released after being shot in West Bank rally
MAGUIRE-SHOT Apr-23-2007 (420 words) xxxi
By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Northern Ireland's 1976 Noble Peace Prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, was injured in the leg by a rubber bullet while taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli separation wall.
Maguire, a Catholic, required medical treatment for her injury and also for tear-gas inhalation. She remained in the hospital for a few hours, then returned to the demonstration. She left the country the following day, April 21, as planned.
Maguire had been attending the Second Bil'in International Conference on Nonviolence in the West Bank village of Bil'in, where Palestinians and international and Israeli peace activists have held such protests against the wall since February 2005. The conference was sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement.
Movement activist Jonas Martinez, an American Catholic who said he did not want to give more details about where he was from, said conference participants joined the weekly demonstration against the wall and were met by Israeli soldiers armed with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons.
Demonstrators, including Maguire, covered their faces with bandannas and onion slices to dilute the tear gas, he said, and after each lob of tear gas they would regroup and continue forward toward the wall. He said demonstrators shouted in various languages: "Don't shoot, we are nonviolent."
In addition to Maguire, eight demonstrators were hit by rubber bullets, he said, and numerous demonstrators were beaten by soldiers. Three demonstrators were arrested but later released, he said. Some of the more than two dozen injuries came from tear gas, he said.
One demonstrator, Tito Kayak of Puerto Rico, managed to climb a nearby military tower and hang a Palestinian flag on the top; he was arrested. He was to remain under house arrest until the end of the Israeli Independence Day holiday, which begins the evening of April 24, said Martinez.
Israel says the separation wall is necessary to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and notes that the number of attacks has decreased significantly since the wall was built.
At a press conference before being injured, Maguire told about 500 participants in the nonviolence conference that the wall was an "insult to the human family" and must come down.
"Nonviolence will solve the problems here in Israel and Palestine," Maguire said in a statement issued by the International Solidarity Movement. "Often, the world sees only violence. But Palestinians are a good people, working toward nonviolence. This wall must fall."
By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Northern Ireland's 1976 Noble Peace Prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, was injured in the leg by a rubber bullet while taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli separation wall.
Maguire, a Catholic, required medical treatment for her injury and also for tear-gas inhalation. She remained in the hospital for a few hours, then returned to the demonstration. She left the country the following day, April 21, as planned.
Maguire had been attending the Second Bil'in International Conference on Nonviolence in the West Bank village of Bil'in, where Palestinians and international and Israeli peace activists have held such protests against the wall since February 2005. The conference was sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement.
Movement activist Jonas Martinez, an American Catholic who said he did not want to give more details about where he was from, said conference participants joined the weekly demonstration against the wall and were met by Israeli soldiers armed with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons.
Demonstrators, including Maguire, covered their faces with bandannas and onion slices to dilute the tear gas, he said, and after each lob of tear gas they would regroup and continue forward toward the wall. He said demonstrators shouted in various languages: "Don't shoot, we are nonviolent."
In addition to Maguire, eight demonstrators were hit by rubber bullets, he said, and numerous demonstrators were beaten by soldiers. Three demonstrators were arrested but later released, he said. Some of the more than two dozen injuries came from tear gas, he said.
One demonstrator, Tito Kayak of Puerto Rico, managed to climb a nearby military tower and hang a Palestinian flag on the top; he was arrested. He was to remain under house arrest until the end of the Israeli Independence Day holiday, which begins the evening of April 24, said Martinez.
Israel says the separation wall is necessary to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and notes that the number of attacks has decreased significantly since the wall was built.
At a press conference before being injured, Maguire told about 500 participants in the nonviolence conference that the wall was an "insult to the human family" and must come down.
"Nonviolence will solve the problems here in Israel and Palestine," Maguire said in a statement issued by the International Solidarity Movement. "Often, the world sees only violence. But Palestinians are a good people, working toward nonviolence. This wall must fall."
Gaza as Israel's testing ground
Gaza as Israel's testing ground
Doctors in Gaza have been reporting strange wounds on the bodies of innocent bystanders and those targeted by drones. These wounds consist of many small holes, often invisible to X-rays, and burns caused by heat so intense that many cases have required amputation because of the extensive burning.
Doctors in Gaza have been reporting strange wounds on the bodies of innocent bystanders and those targeted by drones. These wounds consist of many small holes, often invisible to X-rays, and burns caused by heat so intense that many cases have required amputation because of the extensive burning.
Slower Growth and Higher Inflation Suggest 'a Hint of Stagflation-Lite'
Commerce Report Raises Eyebrows
By Nell Henderson and Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 28, 2007; D01
The U.S. economy slowed sharply while inflation quickened in the first three months of the year, the government reported yesterday, rekindling concerns that the nation might be sliding into a more serious downturn.
Strong consumer spending was largely offset by plunging home construction, falling exports and tepid business investment from January through March, the Commerce Department reported.
Add it up, and the nation's gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, rose at a sluggish 1.3 percent annual rate -- a significant loss of momentum from the moderate 2.5 percent annual rate of expansion in the previous quarter, and the brisk 3.3 percent growth recorded for all of 2006.
Many analysts, including those at the Federal Reserve, forecast the economy to perk up enough to grow at a modest pace through the rest of the year without tipping into a recession. But at the same time, they see rising risks that the economy will deteriorate further, perhaps into a prolonged period of high inflation and weak growth.
"It was a quarter that was beset by the worst of both worlds, more inflation and less economic growth," said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services, who called the combination "a hint of stagflation-lite."
Janet L. Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in a speech Thursday night that "economic growth has unexpectedly slowed from 'middling' to a crawl," developments that have "significantly increased the risks to the outlook, both for growth and inflation."
Her comments and the economic data strengthened investors' expectations that the Fed will hold short-term interest rates steady at its next policymaking meeting May 9. Many investors are betting the economy will weaken enough that the Fed will cut rates later this year.
The stock market, which rallied earlier in the week on a series of strong corporate profit reports, showed little reaction yesterday to the economic figures. The Dow Jones industrial average has added more than 800 points in the past month, rebounding from a steep sell-off in February to close yesterday at a record 13,120.94, an increase of 15.44 points over Thursday. But the market's enthusiasm could ebb if economic growth remains modest and earnings weaken.
Analysts worry most about the strength of consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy and which kept the economy afloat by rising at a robust 3.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter.
Forecasters expect unemployment to edge higher this year from its very low 4.4 percent rate in March. Analysts also note that American households are coping with heavy debt service, softening home values and rising gasoline prices. If consumer spending falters, the economy could stall or even contract, some observers said.
"If energy and food prices continue on their recent upward path, then it is very likely that the economy will be facing a recession before the end of the year," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
Others countered that consumer spending was fueled by a strong 4.5 percent annualized increase in after-tax personal income in the first quarter. Recent job losses related to housing and manufacturing have been more than offset by rising employment in health care, education, finance, tourism and other services.
"The consumer has not been spooked by either the meltdown in housing or the recent rise in gasoline prices," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight. He said consumer spending would probably slow, but not enough to tip the economy into recession.
Housing, however, remains a drag on the economy. Spending on residential construction fell at a 17 percent annualized rate in the January through March period, the sixth consecutive quarterly decline.
Data show the housing slump is continuing, exacerbated by rising foreclosures that have added to the supply of unsold homes and caused lenders to tighten credit for some buyers. Sales of previously owned homes, which account for about 85 percent of the market, plunged in March by the largest amount in nearly two decades.
The Commerce Department also estimated that U.S. exports, which rose strongly and boosted economic growth last year, fell at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year.
Another soft spot was business spending on buildings, equipment and software, which rose at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter -- a modest gain, but an improvement after a worrisome 3.1 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Meanwhile, consumer prices jumped at a rapid 3.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter, after falling in the last quarter of 2006, following the path of energy costs. After excluding volatile food and energy prices, consumer prices rose by 2.2 percent, compared with a 1.8 percent rise in the previous three-month period.
Crude oil prices surged yesterday to $66.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest level in almost eight months.
The Commerce Department's report provides a first estimate of GDP growth. The figures will be revised in coming months as more data become available.
Slower Growth and Higher Inflation Suggest 'a Hint of Stagflation-Lite'
Commerce Report Raises Eyebrows
By Nell Henderson and Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 28, 2007; D01
The U.S. economy slowed sharply while inflation quickened in the first three months of the year, the government reported yesterday, rekindling concerns that the nation might be sliding into a more serious downturn.
Strong consumer spending was largely offset by plunging home construction, falling exports and tepid business investment from January through March, the Commerce Department reported.
Add it up, and the nation's gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, rose at a sluggish 1.3 percent annual rate -- a significant loss of momentum from the moderate 2.5 percent annual rate of expansion in the previous quarter, and the brisk 3.3 percent growth recorded for all of 2006.
Many analysts, including those at the Federal Reserve, forecast the economy to perk up enough to grow at a modest pace through the rest of the year without tipping into a recession. But at the same time, they see rising risks that the economy will deteriorate further, perhaps into a prolonged period of high inflation and weak growth.
"It was a quarter that was beset by the worst of both worlds, more inflation and less economic growth," said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services, who called the combination "a hint of stagflation-lite."
Janet L. Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said in a speech Thursday night that "economic growth has unexpectedly slowed from 'middling' to a crawl," developments that have "significantly increased the risks to the outlook, both for growth and inflation."
Her comments and the economic data strengthened investors' expectations that the Fed will hold short-term interest rates steady at its next policymaking meeting May 9. Many investors are betting the economy will weaken enough that the Fed will cut rates later this year.
The stock market, which rallied earlier in the week on a series of strong corporate profit reports, showed little reaction yesterday to the economic figures. The Dow Jones industrial average has added more than 800 points in the past month, rebounding from a steep sell-off in February to close yesterday at a record 13,120.94, an increase of 15.44 points over Thursday. But the market's enthusiasm could ebb if economic growth remains modest and earnings weaken.
Analysts worry most about the strength of consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy and which kept the economy afloat by rising at a robust 3.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter.
Forecasters expect unemployment to edge higher this year from its very low 4.4 percent rate in March. Analysts also note that American households are coping with heavy debt service, softening home values and rising gasoline prices. If consumer spending falters, the economy could stall or even contract, some observers said.
"If energy and food prices continue on their recent upward path, then it is very likely that the economy will be facing a recession before the end of the year," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
Others countered that consumer spending was fueled by a strong 4.5 percent annualized increase in after-tax personal income in the first quarter. Recent job losses related to housing and manufacturing have been more than offset by rising employment in health care, education, finance, tourism and other services.
"The consumer has not been spooked by either the meltdown in housing or the recent rise in gasoline prices," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight. He said consumer spending would probably slow, but not enough to tip the economy into recession.
Housing, however, remains a drag on the economy. Spending on residential construction fell at a 17 percent annualized rate in the January through March period, the sixth consecutive quarterly decline.
Data show the housing slump is continuing, exacerbated by rising foreclosures that have added to the supply of unsold homes and caused lenders to tighten credit for some buyers. Sales of previously owned homes, which account for about 85 percent of the market, plunged in March by the largest amount in nearly two decades.
The Commerce Department also estimated that U.S. exports, which rose strongly and boosted economic growth last year, fell at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year.
Another soft spot was business spending on buildings, equipment and software, which rose at a 2 percent annual rate in the first quarter -- a modest gain, but an improvement after a worrisome 3.1 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Meanwhile, consumer prices jumped at a rapid 3.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter, after falling in the last quarter of 2006, following the path of energy costs. After excluding volatile food and energy prices, consumer prices rose by 2.2 percent, compared with a 1.8 percent rise in the previous three-month period.
Crude oil prices surged yesterday to $66.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest level in almost eight months.
The Commerce Department's report provides a first estimate of GDP growth. The figures will be revised in coming months as more data become available.
Justice Dept official resigns over investigation connected with Abramoff
| Posted on Fri, Apr. 27, 2007 | |
| McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON - A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the Department’s expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a Justice Department official with knowledge of the case. Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the Department’s probe of Abramoff. He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s long-time friend and a key associate of Abramoff. When contacted at his home in Washington, Coughlin said he resigned voluntarily because he was relocating to Texas. “I was not asked to resign,” he said in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. “It’s important to me that it's made clear that I left voluntarily.” He said he couldn’t comment on the Abramoff investigation, nor on whether he has a job lined up in Texas. He referred all other questions to friend Michael Horowitz. Horowitz, a criminal defense attorney and former Justice Department official and public corruption prosecutor, did not respond to questions, including about whether he is representing Coughlin. Coughlin also would not say whether he had hired a lawyer. McClatchy’s source at the Justice Department asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the case. Coughlin appears to be the first Justice Department official to come under scrutiny in the wide-ranging probe that has implicated a veteran congressman, a deputy Cabinet secretary, a White House aide and eight others. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to three counts in the corruption probe and could face up to 11 years in prison. It was unclear whether Coughlin is a target in the investigation, which would mean he is under intense scrutiny, or whether he is a subject in the investigation, which would mean investigators have not yet determined whether he committed any wrongdoing. A Justice Department spokesman declined to respond to any questions about the Abramoff investigation because it is still ongoing. Spokesman Bryan Sierra, however, confirmed Coughlin had resigned. He also said Coughlin had recused himself from the Abramoff investigation. The disclosure, nevertheless, was another blow to a Justice Department already struggling to recover from the controversy over the firing of 8 U.S. Attorneys. Democrats and a number of Republicans have criticized Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for his handling of the ousters, which critics charge were politically motivated. | |
Top Bush official admits hooker link, resigns
Rice Deputy Quits After Query Over Escort Service
Randall Tobias Oversaw U.S. Foreign Aid Programs
Randall Tobias Oversaw U.S. Foreign Aid Programs
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 28, 2007; A01
Randall L. Tobias, the deputy secretary of state responsible for U.S. foreign aid, abruptly resigned yesterday after he was asked about an upscale escort service allegedly involved in prostitution, U.S. government sources said.
Tobias resigned after ABC News contacted him with questions about the escort service, the sources said. ABC News released a statement last night saying Tobias acknowledged Thursday that he had used the service to provide massages, not sex.
Tobias has been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an ambitious effort to overhaul how the U.S. government manages foreign aid, a key part of her "transformational diplomacy" agenda. Just two days ago, President Bush lauded Tobias for his work in the administration leading "America's monumental effort to confront and deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the continent of Africa."
In an unusual statement issued at 5 p.m., State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Tobias informed Rice "today that he must step down as Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator effective immediately. He is returning to private life for personal reasons."
Contacted last night at his home in the District, Tobias, a former chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co., declined to discuss the circumstances of his resignation, saying he would "stick with the statement the State Department released today."
According to ABC News, Tobias said he contacted the escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage" and that there had been "no sex" involved.
In a memo yesterday to the USAID staff, James R. Kunder, acting deputy USAID administrator, called the resignation "shocking news" and urged workers not to be "distracted from our developmental and emergency work."
Within minutes of McCormack's announcement, Tobias's biography was removed from the USAID Web site.
State Department officials declined to comment further on the reasons for Tobias's resignation.
"I'm sad today," said one person close to Tobias. "The president loves him and Condi absolutely loves him."
White House officials said Rice briefed Bush on the matter early yesterday before he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The president "was saddened and disappointed and wished Dr. Tobias and his family well," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who operated the escort service, was indicted on federal racketeering charges in February and has threatened to expose her high-profile client list.
Palfrey has contended that her escort service provided clients with college-educated women who engaged in legal, sexual game-playing for $275 per 90-minute session in their homes or hotel rooms. Prosecutors allege she ran a prostitution ring.
Palfrey's attorney, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said yesterday that he has been contacted in the past few days by five lawyers asking whether their client's phone numbers are on Palfrey's list of 10,000 to 15,000 customers from 2002 to 2006. Some have also asked about whether an accommodation can be made to avoid identifying their clients, which Sibley said he is not able to promise. ABC's "20/20" is mining that database of phone numbers, Sibley said, for a news report on the more notable of Palfrey's customers.
"I presume '20/20' crews running around with cameras has led to this flurry of activity," Sibley said. "That may cause some people to worry."
ABC reporters interviewed Palfrey last week, Sibley said, and asked her about specific customers by name. Sibley declined to identity them or speculate about Palfrey's clients whose identities may be revealed in coming days. He said that in many cases, he and Palfrey did not have the investigative resources to identify them from their phone numbers, but that ABC did.
ABC is grappling with the question of whether to air a report or identify some of those on the list. "We can't comment on ongoing reporting," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said.
After a long career in the corporate world, including stints not only at Eli Lilly but also as AT&T vice chairman, Tobias joined the administration in 2003 to be the first global AIDS coordinator, with the rank of ambassador. He was responsible for a start-up program designed to spend $15 billion over five years, with the largest share going to 12 African and two Caribbean countries that account for roughly half the world population with HIV/AIDS.
Last year, Rice tapped Tobias to be the first director of U.S. foreign assistance, with the rank of deputy secretary, giving him the task of both running USAID and coordinating all foreign aid so that the delivery of aid would more closely follow the administration's policy goals. Under Tobias, for the first time, the State Department produced documents showing exactly how much aid was going to each country. He has proven so essential to Rice's plans that she had refused to let him leave even though officials said he had wanted to resign from the high-pressure job for at least six months.
The ambitious effort has been controversial on Capitol Hill, where Tobias's style and performance have come under attack. At a hearing last month, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accused Tobias of "tycoonitis," which he described as "people who come from the top of the corporate ladder who consider congressional suggestions, requests for information and participation in decision-making as intruding on their turf."
Staff writers Michael Abramowitz, John Solomon, Carol D. Leonnig, Howard Kurtz and Martin Weil and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Damaging Congressional Silence on Israeli Violations in Lebanon
Related
One Unexploded Bomb Per Person
---
Michael F. Brown, Electronic Lebanon, 27 April 2007
In late January the State Department delivered a potentially explosive report to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The classified report asserts that Israel may have violated the Arms Export Control Act with its use of American-made cluster munitions this past summer in Lebanon.
Multiple contacts to both offices indicate neither Biden nor Pelosi has any intention of pursuing the matter. In contrast, a congressional investigation 25 years ago helped persuade President Ronald Reagan to suspend cluster munitions to Israel for six years. This Congress, however, will not call Israel to account for its actions.
Cluster munitions are a ghastly creation on two levels. First, these bombs blow apart into hundreds of smaller bomblets, thus spreading death over a wide radius. Second, a terrifying percentage of them fail to explode -- at least initially. These "duds" then sit on the ground like mines until the curious child or plowing farmer stumbles across them -- often with devastating results.
As recently as July, the US House of Representatives voted 410-8 for a resolution including recognition of "Israel's longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss" and welcoming "Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties" in Lebanon and elsewhere. The language was an open insult to the hundreds of Lebanese civilians already killed and injured in the previous few days by the Israeli military.
Many at the State Department appear uncomfortable addressing Israel's seeming culpability. State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack, normally quite articulate, provided journalists with this circumlocution: "There may likely could have been some violations."
Indeed there were. And a bloody mess it is. Amnesty International asserted in late January that in the previous six months, "Thirty people, eight of them de-mining personnel, have been killed, and more than 180 people have been injured, including 20 mine clearers." Amnesty has called on Israel to turn over maps of where these munitions were used as a means to prevent future loss of civilian life. Israel has yet to provide sufficient information.
Israeli officials have defended the use of cluster bombs and other attacks by contending that they warned civilians to leave southern Lebanon, as though such warnings gave them carte-blanche to do as they pleased. But what if Hezbollah gave similar blanket warnings to Israelis in the north of Israel? Surely it is madness to suggest that a warning provides the liberty to fire rockets indiscriminately into Israel or to litter Lebanese villages and farmland with hundreds of thousands of deadly bomblets. Do the infirm and impoverished with no way out have no rights?
De-mining groups estimate that some 2.6 to 4 million submunitions were fired into Lebanon during the five-week war. Israeli Member of Knesset Ran Cohen stated, "The massive use by the IDF of cluster bombs during the war suggests an absolute loss of control and hysteria." It's a loss of control with munitions mostly produced in the United States.
We already know from the Israeli press that the Israeli military did not use the cluster munitions in keeping with the orders of then-Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. "I don't know if this is surprising," said Halutz, "it is more disappointing."
In fact, it is more than disappointing. It is criminal and a violation of US law.
Yet there is a real danger nothing will come of the State Department's report. Pelosi and Biden may not push hard because they dare not aggravate AIPAC. Silence, however, will harm American standing in the region, damage American commitment to human rights principles, and undercut (once again) American national security interests. Congress ought to grapple seriously with this issue rather than suppress the unpleasant facts about Israel's war crimes in Lebanon.
The failure to hold Israel accountable for its actions against Palestinian civilians (and, for that matter, American civilians) in the occupied Palestinian territories undoubtedly contributed to a climate in which many Israeli military leaders thought they could pummel Lebanese civilians with American-made weapons with no repercussions. So far American officials are proving them right.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, while not addressing the possible AECA violation by Israel, introduced legislation earlier this year to "limit the use, sale, and transfer of cluster munitions." She cited heart-rending examples from around the world of the harm these weapons cause to civilians, including to "Hassan Hammade, a 13-year-old Lebanese boy, [who] lost four fingers and sustained injuries to his stomach and shoulder after he picked up an unexploded cluster bomb in front of an orange tree."
Her legislation would do much to limit future harm to children such as Hassan in Lebanon and other innocent civilians in war-ravaged nations. She and co-sponsors Patrick Leahy, Barbara Mikulski, and Bernard Sanders ought to be commended for this legislative initiative. So, too, should Representatives James McGovern, Darrell Issa, and Betty McCollum for their accompanying legislation in the House.
Pelosi and Biden have shrunk from holding Israel accountable for its actions in Lebanon, but could exhibit some overdue leadership by signaling their support for the new cluster bomb legislation.
Michael F. Brown is a fellow at the Palestine Center. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center.
Related Links
Pelosi's Misguided Middle East Visit, Dr. Marcy Newman (5 April 2007)
BY TOPIC: Cluster Bombs
One Unexploded Bomb Per Person
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Michael F. Brown, Electronic Lebanon, 27 April 2007
 |
| UN peacekeeprs detonate unexploded ordnance in the Lebanese town of Hinaya, 25 August 2006. (Mark Garten/UN Photo) |
Multiple contacts to both offices indicate neither Biden nor Pelosi has any intention of pursuing the matter. In contrast, a congressional investigation 25 years ago helped persuade President Ronald Reagan to suspend cluster munitions to Israel for six years. This Congress, however, will not call Israel to account for its actions.
Cluster munitions are a ghastly creation on two levels. First, these bombs blow apart into hundreds of smaller bomblets, thus spreading death over a wide radius. Second, a terrifying percentage of them fail to explode -- at least initially. These "duds" then sit on the ground like mines until the curious child or plowing farmer stumbles across them -- often with devastating results.
As recently as July, the US House of Representatives voted 410-8 for a resolution including recognition of "Israel's longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss" and welcoming "Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties" in Lebanon and elsewhere. The language was an open insult to the hundreds of Lebanese civilians already killed and injured in the previous few days by the Israeli military.
Many at the State Department appear uncomfortable addressing Israel's seeming culpability. State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack, normally quite articulate, provided journalists with this circumlocution: "There may likely could have been some violations."
Indeed there were. And a bloody mess it is. Amnesty International asserted in late January that in the previous six months, "Thirty people, eight of them de-mining personnel, have been killed, and more than 180 people have been injured, including 20 mine clearers." Amnesty has called on Israel to turn over maps of where these munitions were used as a means to prevent future loss of civilian life. Israel has yet to provide sufficient information.
Israeli officials have defended the use of cluster bombs and other attacks by contending that they warned civilians to leave southern Lebanon, as though such warnings gave them carte-blanche to do as they pleased. But what if Hezbollah gave similar blanket warnings to Israelis in the north of Israel? Surely it is madness to suggest that a warning provides the liberty to fire rockets indiscriminately into Israel or to litter Lebanese villages and farmland with hundreds of thousands of deadly bomblets. Do the infirm and impoverished with no way out have no rights?
De-mining groups estimate that some 2.6 to 4 million submunitions were fired into Lebanon during the five-week war. Israeli Member of Knesset Ran Cohen stated, "The massive use by the IDF of cluster bombs during the war suggests an absolute loss of control and hysteria." It's a loss of control with munitions mostly produced in the United States.
We already know from the Israeli press that the Israeli military did not use the cluster munitions in keeping with the orders of then-Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. "I don't know if this is surprising," said Halutz, "it is more disappointing."
In fact, it is more than disappointing. It is criminal and a violation of US law.
Yet there is a real danger nothing will come of the State Department's report. Pelosi and Biden may not push hard because they dare not aggravate AIPAC. Silence, however, will harm American standing in the region, damage American commitment to human rights principles, and undercut (once again) American national security interests. Congress ought to grapple seriously with this issue rather than suppress the unpleasant facts about Israel's war crimes in Lebanon.
The failure to hold Israel accountable for its actions against Palestinian civilians (and, for that matter, American civilians) in the occupied Palestinian territories undoubtedly contributed to a climate in which many Israeli military leaders thought they could pummel Lebanese civilians with American-made weapons with no repercussions. So far American officials are proving them right.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, while not addressing the possible AECA violation by Israel, introduced legislation earlier this year to "limit the use, sale, and transfer of cluster munitions." She cited heart-rending examples from around the world of the harm these weapons cause to civilians, including to "Hassan Hammade, a 13-year-old Lebanese boy, [who] lost four fingers and sustained injuries to his stomach and shoulder after he picked up an unexploded cluster bomb in front of an orange tree."
Her legislation would do much to limit future harm to children such as Hassan in Lebanon and other innocent civilians in war-ravaged nations. She and co-sponsors Patrick Leahy, Barbara Mikulski, and Bernard Sanders ought to be commended for this legislative initiative. So, too, should Representatives James McGovern, Darrell Issa, and Betty McCollum for their accompanying legislation in the House.
Pelosi and Biden have shrunk from holding Israel accountable for its actions in Lebanon, but could exhibit some overdue leadership by signaling their support for the new cluster bomb legislation.
Michael F. Brown is a fellow at the Palestine Center. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center.
Related Links
Abramoff Investigation Spreads To Ex-Justice Dept Criminal Division Lawyer
Ex-Justice Dept. Lawyer Under Scrutiny in Probe
Ties With Abramoff Associate in Question
Ties With Abramoff Associate in Question
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 28, 2007; A06
A federal task force investigating the activities of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has in recent weeks been looking into whether one of Abramoff's colleagues improperly traded favors with a Justice Department lawyer, sources familiar with the Abramoff investigation said yesterday.
The lawyer, Robert E. Coughlin II, resigned on April 6 as deputy chief of staff in the Criminal Division, citing personal reasons, a department spokesman said.
"Bob gave a personal reason for his resignation," said spokesman Bryan Sierra. He stressed that Coughlin "had no involvement" in the department's investigation of Abramoff.
Coughlin had worked in the criminal division since 2005 but was recused from the Abramoff inquiry because of a longtime personal friendship with Kevin A. Ring, one of Abramoff's lobbying colleagues whose actions are under investigation, a law enforcement source said. Investigators are looking into dealings between the two in 2001 and 2002, when Coughlin worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs, the sources said.
Coughlin and Ring were friends on Capitol Hill in the 1990s when both worked as staffers to then-Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R-Mo.), who became attorney general in 2001.
Coughlin's resignation and the surfacing of his name in the Abramoff investigation were first reported yesterday by McClatchy Newspapers.
Investigators came across Coughlin's name while looking into whether Ring improperly sought or received favors for lobbying clients from people in government, the sources told The Washington Post.
Ring took Coughlin to sporting events with tickets provided by his lobbying firm, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.
The task force has tracked millions of dollars in meals, trips, tickets, gifts and campaign contributions that the Abramoff lobbying team lavished on lawmakers and staffers. The investigation has so far resulted in 11 convictions and guilty pleas from lobbyists, staffers, two administration officials and a congressman.
An attorney for Ring could not be reached for comment. Coughlin did not answer calls to his home yesterday, and a lawyer who is serving as his spokesman did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Coughlin is the second Justice Department official whose name has surfaced in the wide-ranging Abramoff investigation. Earlier this year, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, deputy assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources, abruptly resigned when her boyfriend -- now her husband -- was notified that he was a criminal target. J. Steven Griles, former deputy secretary of the Interior Department, has since pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Abramoff.
More Like an Air Ball: MAUREEN DOWD - Tenet
THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST
More Like an Air Ball
By MAUREEN DOWDPublished: April 28, 2007
Slam-Dunk, a k a George Tenet, shows us his tender side, a sniveling C.I.A. chief bullied by “remote” Condi.
Poor Slam-Dunk.
Not since Madame Butterfly has anyone been so cruelly misunderstood and misused. Slam-Dunk says that when he pantingly told the president that fetching information on Saddam’s W.M.D. would be a cinch, he did not mean let’s go to war.
No matter how eager Slam-Dunk was to tell W. what he wanted to hear while polishing W.’s shoes, that intelligence they craved did not exist. “Let me say it again: C.I.A. found absolutely no linkage between Saddam and 9/11,” the ex-Head Spook writes in his new book, self-effacingly titled “At the Center of the Storm.” Besides, Junior and Darth had already decided to go to war to show the Arabs their moxie.
The president and vice president wanted Slam-Dunk to help them dramatize the phony case. Everyone had to pitch in! That Saturday session in December 2002 in the Oval Office was “essentially a marketing meeting,” Slam-Dunk writes, just for “sharpening the arguments.”
Hey, I feel better.
Slam-Dunk always presented himself as the ultimate guy’s guy, a cigar-chomping spymaster who swapped jokes with the president. But now he shows us his tender side, a sniveling C.I.A. chief bullied by “remote” Condi. . .
. . . If you worry about your own survival more than your country’s, you might end up as the whiny fall guy.
More Like an Air Ball: MAUREEN DOWD - Tenet
THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST
More Like an Air Ball
By MAUREEN DOWDPublished: April 28, 2007
Slam-Dunk, a k a George Tenet, shows us his tender side, a sniveling C.I.A. chief bullied by “remote” Condi.
Poor Slam-Dunk.
Not since Madame Butterfly has anyone been so cruelly misunderstood and misused. Slam-Dunk says that when he pantingly told the president that fetching information on Saddam’s W.M.D. would be a cinch, he did not mean let’s go to war.
No matter how eager Slam-Dunk was to tell W. what he wanted to hear while polishing W.’s shoes, that intelligence they craved did not exist. “Let me say it again: C.I.A. found absolutely no linkage between Saddam and 9/11,” the ex-Head Spook writes in his new book, self-effacingly titled “At the Center of the Storm.” Besides, Junior and Darth had already decided to go to war to show the Arabs their moxie.
The president and vice president wanted Slam-Dunk to help them dramatize the phony case. Everyone had to pitch in! That Saturday session in December 2002 in the Oval Office was “essentially a marketing meeting,” Slam-Dunk writes, just for “sharpening the arguments.”
Hey, I feel better.
Slam-Dunk always presented himself as the ultimate guy’s guy, a cigar-chomping spymaster who swapped jokes with the president. But now he shows us his tender side, a sniveling C.I.A. chief bullied by “remote” Condi. . .
. . . If you worry about your own survival more than your country’s, you might end up as the whiny fall guy.
Inside Africa's Guantánamo; Where John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama et al. Stand on Torture
Related
CIA held suspect in secret prison for months
The Waterboard Test: Where John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama et al. Stand on Torture
---
The only way the US can prop up its client regime in Somalia is through lawlessness and slaughter
Salim Lone
Saturday April 28, 2007
The Guardian
CIA held suspect in secret prison for months
The Waterboard Test: Where John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama et al. Stand on Torture
---
The only way the US can prop up its client regime in Somalia is through lawlessness and slaughter
Salim Lone
Saturday April 28, 2007
The Guardian
This is the most lawless war of our generation. All wars of aggression lack legitimacy, but no conflict in recent memory has witnessed such mounting layers of illegality as the current one in Somalia. Violations of the UN charter and of international humanitarian law are regrettably commonplace in our age, and they abound in the carnage that the world is allowing to unfold in Mogadishu, but this war has in addition explicitly violated two UN security council resolutions. To complete the picture, one of these resolutions contravenes the charter itself.
The complete impunity with which Ethiopia and the transitional Somali government have been allowed to violate these resolutions explains the ruthlessness of the military assaults that have been under way for six weeks now. The details of the atrocities being committed were formally acknowledged by a western government for the first time when Germany, which holds the current EU presidency, had its ambassador to Somalia, Walter Lindner, write a tough letter - made public on Wednesday - to Somalia's president, Abdullahi Yusuf.
The letter condemned the indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery in Mogadishu's densely populated areas, the raping of women, the deliberate blocking of urgently needed food and humanitarian supplies, and the bombing of hospitals. This is a relentless drive to terrify and intimidate civilians belonging to clans from whose ranks fighters are challenging the occupation.
There was a time when security council resolutions were hallowed in most of the world, as for example resolution 242 demanding the return of occupied Palestine territory in exchange for peace. But in our new world order, the powerful decide which UN resolutions are passed, and whether they need to be honoured. So the United States, which was violating the UN arms embargo on Somalia, rushed through another resolution in December that it thought would better serve US goals - and then proceeded to violate that one as well.
The new resolution forbade neighbouring countries from being part of the regional peacekeeping force the security council authorised for Somalia; but Ethiopia went much further and unilaterally invaded, with the covert assistance of the US - which also joined the war by bombing Somalia.
This December resolution actually contravened the charter itself, because it made the security council the aggressor and turned a clearly peaceful situation into war. The resolution linked the Islamic Courts government to international terrorism and mandated peacekeeping force, on the basis of chapter VII of the UN charter, to address the "threat to international peace and security" that Somalia posed - when every independent account, including Chatham House's on Wednesday, indicated that the country was experiencing its first peace and security since 1991.
The resolution paved the way for the Ethiopian invasion that has led to the bitter conflict that many independent analysts, including those at a meeting in Addis Ababa organised by Ethiopia's Inter-Africa Group, had warned would be the inevitable result. A government imposed through force by arch enemy Ethiopia was never going to hold sway.
The long silence and the refusal even now to announce measures that might arrest this slaughter mark the lowest point in the big powers' abdication of the "Responsibility to Protect" mandate - adopted, with British leadership, at a summit-level meeting of the security council two years ago. The world's most impoverished people are now being ripped to shreds with no effort whatsoever to get the perpetrators to desist.
A huge campaign must be launched to press western governments to end this slaughter, which is almost entirely the work of those in control of the country. The European Union warned a month ago that war crimes might have been committed in an assault on the capital last month - in which the EU could be complicit because of its large-scale support for those accused of the crimes. Human Rights Watch has documented how Kenya and Ethiopia had turned this region into Africa's own version of Guantánamo Bay, replete with kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons and large numbers of "disappeared": a project that carries the Made in America label. Allowing free rein to such comprehensive lawlessness is a stain on all those who might have, at a minimum, curtailed it.
Work must begin to derail the astounding proposal from the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, which is to be discussed by the security council in mid-June. He would like to mount a UN-sanctioned "coalition of the willing" to enforce peace and restore order in Somalia - in other words, the UN would help Ethiopia and the United States achieve what their own illegal military interventions have failed to accomplish: the entrenchment of a client regime that lacks any popular support. Such an operation is unlikely to succeed in any event, but it could further threaten the turbulent Horn of Africa, which is already teetering on the brink of chaos.
The Somali government is busy crying "al-Qaida" at every turn and offering lucrative deals to oil companies, in a bid to entice greater western support. But this war was lost long ago. In turning to the arch enemy Ethiopia, the transitional government's fate was sealed: the nation will not abide an Ethiopian-US occupation.
Only a political solution will resolve this crisis. Africa must step up to the plate and show spine and leadership in a drive to protect its civilians, and work with Europe and the UN to convince the US to swiftly terminate its latest destabilising adventure.
· Salim Lone, who was the spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, is a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya
salimlone@yahoo.com
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