Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"

Wednesday May 2, 2007 10:32 EST

-- Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)

The Wall St. Journal online has today published a lengthy and truly astonishing article by Harvard Government Professor Harvey Mansfield, which expressly argues that the power of the President is greater than "the rule of law."

The article bears this headline: The Case for the Strong Executive -- Under some circumstances, the Rule of Law must yield to the need for Energy. And it is the most explicit argument I have seen yet for vesting in the President the power to override and ignore the rule of law in order to recieve the glories of what Mansfield calls "one-man rule."

That such an argument comes from Mansfield is unsurprising. He has long been a folk hero to the what used to be the most extremist right-wing fringe but is now the core of the Republican Party. He devoted earlier parts of his career to warning of the dangers of homosexuality, particularly its effeminizing effect on our culture.

He has a career-long obsession with the glories of tyrannical power as embodied by Machiavelli's Prince, which is his model for how America ought to be governed. And last year, he wrote a book called Manliness in which "he urges men, and especially women, to understand and accept manliness" -- which means that "women are the weaker sex," "women's bodies are made to attract and to please men" and "now that women are equal, they should be able to accept being told that they aren't, quite." Publisher's Weekly called it a "juvenile screed."

I'll leave it to Bob Altemeyer and others to dig though all of that to analyze what motivates Mansfield and his decades-long craving for strong, powerful, unchallengeable one-man masculine rule -- though it's more self-evident than anything else.

But reading Mansfield has real value for understanding the dominant right-wing movement in this country. Because he is an academic, and a quite intelligent one, he makes intellectually honest arguments, by which I mean that he does not disguise what he thinks in politically palatable slogans, but instead really describes the actual premises on which political beliefs are based.

And that is Mansfield's value; he is a clear and honest embodiment of what the Bush movement is. In particular, he makes crystal clear that the so-called devotion to a "strong executive" by the Bush administration and the movement which supports it is nothing more than a belief that the Leader has the power to disregard, violate, and remain above the rule of law. And that is clear because Mansfied explicitly says that. And that is not just Mansfield's idiosyncratic belief. He is simply stating -- honestly and clearly -- the necessary premises of the model of the Omnipotent Presidency which has taken root under the Bush presidency.

This is not the first time Mansfield has expressly called for the subordination of the rule of law to the Power of the President. In January of 2006 -- in the immediate aftermath of revelations that President Bush had been breaking the law for years by spying on the telephone conversations of Americans without warrants -- Mansfield went to The Weekly Standard and authored a truly amazing article, which I wrote about here (see item 2).

Unlike dishonest Bush followers who ludicrously claimed that Bush's eavesdropping was not illegal, Mansfield embraced reality and candidly argued that President Bush possesses the power to break the law in order to fight The Terrorists. The headline of that article presented the same mutually exclusive choice as the WSJ article today: The Law and the President -- in a national emergency, who you gonna call?

In that article, Mansfied claimed, among other things, that our "enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force"; that the "Office of President" is "larger than the law"; that "the rule of law is not enough to run a government"; that "ordinary power needs to be supplemented or corrected by the extraordinary power of a prince, using wise discretion"; that "with one person in charge we can have both secrecy and responsibility"; and most of all:

Much present-day thinking puts civil liberties and the rule of law to the fore and forgets to consider emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply.

"Law does not apply" -- that is Mansfield's belief, and the belief of the Bush movement. I didn't think it was possible, but Mansfield, with today's article in The Wall St. Journal, actually goes even further in advocating pure lawlessness and tyranny than he did in that remarkable Weekly Standard screed. He begins by describing "the debate between the strong executive and its adversary, the rule of law." He then says: "In some circumstances I could see myself defending the rule of law," but "the rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule."

The rule of law has two defects, each of which suggests the need for one-man rule. That is what is on the Op-Ed page of The Wall St. Journal this morning. The article is then filled with one paragraph after the next paying homage to the need for a Great Leader who stomps on the rule of law when he chooses -- literally:

The best source of energy turns out to be the same as the best source of reason--one man. One man, or, to use Machiavelli's expression, uno solo, will be the greatest source of energy if he regards it as necessary to maintaining his own rule. Such a person will have the greatest incentive to be watchful, and to be both cruel and merciful in correct contrast and proportion. We are talking about Machiavelli's prince, the man whom in apparently unguarded moments he called a tyrant. . .
The president takes an oath "to execute the Office of President" of which only one function is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." In addition, he is commander-in-chief of the military, makes treaties (with the Senate), and receives ambassadors. He has the power of pardon, a power with more than a whiff of prerogative for the sake of a public good that cannot be achieved, indeed that is endangered, by executing the laws. . . .

In quiet times the rule of law will come to the fore, and the executive can be weak. In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong.

In the course of explaining how the rule of law applies only in "quiet times," Mansfield also argues that "civil liberties are subject to circumstances," not inalienable, and that "in time of war the greater dangers may be to the majority from a minority." Thus, he explains -- in what might be my favorite sentence -- "A free government should show its respect for freedom even when it has to take it away."

I'm not going to spend much time rebutting the notion that the American President has the power to act as a Prince and override the rule of law when circumstances supposedly justify that. For one thing, given that this belief has governed our country since the 9/11 attacks, I've made the argument many times before, including here and here, as well as in my book.

But more so, one would hope that no response is really necessary, since most Americans -- outside of the authoritarian cult that has followed George W. Bush as Infallible War Leader -- instinctively understand that America does not recognize such a thing as a political official with the power of "one-man rule" that overrides the rule of law. That we are a nation of laws, not men, is so basic to our political identity that it should need no defense.

And for those with any lingering doubts about how repugnant Mansfield's vision is to the defining American political principle, I would simply turn the floor over to the great American revolutionary Thomas Paine (.pdf), writing in Common Sense:

The point here is not to spend much time arguing that Mansfield's authoritarian cravings are repugnant to our political traditions. The real point is that Mansfield's mindset is the mindset of the Bush movement, of the right-wing extremists who have taken over the Republican Party and governed our country completely outside of the rule of law for the last six years. Mansfield makes these arguments more honestly and more explicitly, but there is nothing unusual or uncommon about him. He is simply expounding the belief in tyrannical lawlessness on which the Bush movement (soon to be led by someone else, but otherwise unchanged) is fundamentally based.

This is why he is published in The Weekly Standard and The Wall St. Journal -- the two most influential organs for so-called "conservative" political thought. All sorts of the most political influential people in our country -- from Dick Cheney to Richard Posner to John Yoo and The Weekly Standard -- believe and have argued for exactly this vision of government. They literally do not believe in our constitutional framework and our most defining political values. They have declared a literally endless War which, they claim, not only justifies but compels the vesting of unlimited power in the President -- "unlimited" by Congress, the courts, American public opinion and the rule of law.

That continues to be the central political crisis we have in this country. It is an encouraging development that Congress is exercising aggressive oversight and investigative powers, but the administration is stonewalling completely, and will continue to, because they do not recognize any duty to respond, to answer questions, to be subject to scrutiny or accountability. We live in stormy times, and thus, as Mansfield says: "In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong."

That is why -- as jarring as it is -- it is actually necessary to ask presidential candidates whether they intend to exercise the power to imprison American citizens with no charges of any kind. The dominant political movement in this country believes in that power and has defended and exercised it. Mansfield's beliefs may be twisted and tyrannical and radical and profoundly un-American. But they are also the beliefs that have propelled our government for the last six years and -- absent some serious change -- very well may continue to propel it into the future.

UPDATE: I just want to add one related point here. Much of the intense dissatisfaction I have with the American media arises out of the fact that these extraordinary developments -- the dominant political movement advocating lawlessness and tyranny out in the open in The Wall St. Journal and Weekly Standard -- receive almost no attention.

While the Bush administration expressly adopts these theories to detain American citizens without charges, engage in domestic surveillance on Americans in clear violation of the laws we enacted to limit that power, and asserts a general right to disregard laws which interfere with the President's will, our media still barely discusses those issues.

They write about John Edwards' haircut and John Kerry's windsurfing and which political consultant has whispered what gossip to them about some painfully petty matter, but the extraordinary fact that our nation's dominant political movement is openly advocating the most radical theories of tyranny -- that "liberties are dangerous and law does not apply" -- is barely noticed by our most prestigious and self-loving national journalists. Merely to take note of that failure is to demonstrate how profoundly dysfunctional our political press is.

-- Glenn Greenwald

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Fred Hiatt and the "Triumphant Top Gun"

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

Thus far in 2007, the most politically insightful observation was made by Rep. David Obey in responding to one of Fred Hiatt's war-mongering, patriotism-challenging screeds: "Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn't listen enough to people like the Washington Post. It's that we listened too much."

As the Four Year Anniversary of "Mission Accomplished Day" approaches, and we fondly recall the inspiring media swooning over George Bush's glorious Declaration of Victory while prancing around in his fighter pilot costume, there are few commentaries as revealing as the Bush-worshipping Editorial in The Washington Post authored by Fred Hiatt on May 11, 2003.

The Editorial Hiatt churned out that day (via Lexis -- and also, via sysprog, here) -- devoted to mocking Democrats for criticizing the Leader's Mission Accomplished Festival -- by itself could serve as a time capsule conveying to future generations all that went wrong in our country during this period. First is the Editorial's headline:

Misfiring at 'Top Gun'

George Bush shows off his powerful "top gun." Democrats who criticize him "misfire." The Editorial begins, right in its headline, with drooling adoration for the Leader's faux masculinity so transparent and cringe-inducing that it actually rivals the incomparable Chris Matthews-G. Gordon Liddy session that included admiration for the size of the President's genitalia (literally) so candid and frank that it was virtually pornographic. These are our serious pundits and foreign policy analysts.

This is the first paragraph of Hiatt's Editorial:

DID PRESIDENT BUSH arrive by fighter jet when he could have taken a helicopter -- for $ 7 less per hour? Did the USS Abraham Lincoln delay its return by a day so that Mr. Bush could make his dramatic tailhook landing? Did White House press secretary Ari Fleischer lie when he said that Mr. Bush had to arrive by jet and then switched his story to say that the president chose to land that way? Are the Democrats who are raising these questions secretly working for Karl Rove?

Democrats who question the Leader's conduct or challenge the veracity of his statements are foolish and are inviting their own political doom. War Leaders are endowed with the prerogative of telling us Glorious Lies. It continues:

Presidential staffs -- and we know this is a shocking concept -- worry quite a bit about the way their visits will look on TV -- and they work to get the most picturesque backdrop! And a president who wins a war -- whether you agreed with that war or not -- pretty much gets to greet returning troops wherever he wants.

The Leader won the War in Iraq in May, 2003. Let's repeat that: Fred Hiatt declared, in May, 2003, that George Bush had won the Iraq War. And the triumphant Commander-in-Chief is entitled to engage in whatever Victory Rituals he wants without having to be questioned or challenged. Then:

Not since the ado over whether Mr. Clinton held up Air Force One on the tarmac for an hour to get a $ 200 haircut has there been a controversy this fundamentally silly. The difference is that the Republicans scored political points with haircut-gate; here, Democrats are only hurting themselves with churlish and petty complaints.

The false "controversy" over Clinton's haircut was a powerful political weapon in the potent hands of the Republicans. But challenging President Bush's Declaration of Victory in a plainly not-yet-completed war, and objecting to the grotesque propaganda used to do it, is both petty and self-destructive. And:

Their real gripe with Mr. Bush is that he looked great; the president pulled off his "Top Gun" act as much as Michael Dukakis flubbed his spin in a tank.

George W. Bush is a real warrior who is strong, powerful, masculine and a genuine Man -- even swooningly hot ("he looked great") -- unlike the effeminate, clumsy loser Democrats. The sober, serious Hiatt continued:

And what was the result of their agitating? Even more showings of the same dramatic footage of a triumphant commander-in-chief. The only rational explanation for this conduct is that it is a brushback pitch designed to intimidate the Bush campaign from using carrier footage in campaign commercials -- but even then, it seems destined (a) not to work and (b) to backfire.

George W. Bush was not a public servant. He was not even merely the President. He was the "triumphant commander-in-chief." Therefore, to do anything other than genuflect to his warrior greatness was both improper and stupid. After all, he just won the Iraq War. Finally:

Yes, yes, Republicans seemed to demand investigations every time Mr. Clinton -- or Hillary Clinton, for that matter -- went outside the Beltway, but Democrats are sorely mistaken if they think the "they did it too" argument is going to have any sway with voters. Mr. Bush's visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln may have been the real kickoff of his presidential campaign. If the Democrats' tone-deaf handling of this episode is any indication, he may well get his four more years.

Just because Republicans investigated Bill Clinton for every petty accusation they could invent does not mean that Democrats should try to exercise oversight over the Triumphant Commander-in-Chief. Voters don't want the Victorious War President criticized, and to think otherwise is "tone-deaf."

Any decent human being who authored such idiocy -- who declared the War in Iraq to have been "won" back in May, 2003 and who openly drooled over the "top gun" of the "triumphant Commander-in-Chief" -- would feel a sense of deep shame and regret. But Fred Hiatt continues to prance around as the Serious Adult in Washington, the one who is sober and sophisticated about hard-nosed matters of foreign policy and war, and who continues to mock those who oppose the war as unserious losers -- as though Fred Hiatt's judgment is worth anything.

As Rep. Obey put it: "those of us who voted against the war in the first place wouldn't have nearly as hard a time getting us out of the war if people like The Washington Post and those who criticized us on the floor yesterday hadn't supported going into that stupid war in the first place."

UPDATE: The Politico -- appropriately enough -- is hosting the first debate for GOP presidential candidates, and is deciding which questions to submit based upon popular vote. Silent Patriot of Crooks and Liars had an excellent idea -- to submit a question asking the candidates to state their views as to whether the President has the power to imprison U.S. citizens without charges or process of any kind (a la Jose Padilla), in light of the prior revealing answers from Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney to that question.

S.P. has now submitted the question to The Politico, and has also posted instructions for how you can vote for that question, to ensure that it gets asked (you basically go here, search for "Silent Patriot," and click the "I LIKE THIS QUESTION" button under that question; it's now the most popular question, so it should be at the top).

It's a worthwhile exercise, I think, in order to compel the GOP candidates to go on record as to whether they intend to claim the power to imprison American citizens without charges (I'd like to hear Democratic candidates answer that as well). Vote early and often (rules permitting, of course).

UPDATE II: One has to acknowledge that this commenter at C&L makes quite a good point:

I just can't believe that here in America such a question would be even asked. What the hell happened to our country? Can you imagine that question being asked in the past elections before 2004? No one would have even thought of it.

The most extremist behavior has become so normalized in the last five years that it is easy to forget just how radical it is. The fact that the question even needs to be asked at all -- let alone that most, if not all, of the GOP candidates will almost certainly embrace (or at least not reject) the tyrannical power of process-less imprisonment of U.S. citizens -- is itself rather remarkable.

UPDATE III: The question we submitted regarding lawless detentions of U.S. citizens is now at the top of the list as the most popular question (but keep voting for it to ensure it stays there). As a result, we have decided to submit as many questions as possible, to ensure that the GOP candidates are forced to answer real questions (the top 20 or so highest vote-getting questions will be asked of the candidates).

Thus far, we have submitted these additional questions:

* Do you think the process of waterboarding -- where the U.S. takes prisoners, straps them to a chair, and pours water on their face so they are in terror of drowning to death -- is a practice consistent with America's moral credibility in the world? -- Vote for that question here (search for "Silent Patriot" or the text of the question) -- two of these questions are now on that page for the top vote-getters
* A recent worldwide poll showed that under the Bush presidency, America has become the third most unpopular country in the world -- right behind Iran and just ahead of North Korea. Why has that happened? -- Vote for that question here (search for "CrooksandLiars" or the text of the question)

To vote for those questions, go to the linked page, find the question, and click the "I LIKE THIS QUESTION" button under each questions (you may have to click to the next page to find it). If you have suggestions for more questions, feel free to email them or leave them in comments (there is a 250-character maximum, so they must be quite short and concise).

Feds: Millions have eaten chickens fed tainted pet food

Related
Millions Of Chickens Fed Tainted Pet Food
---
Story Highlights

•Chickens in possibly hundreds of farms may have been fed tainted food
• Likelihood of human illness after eating such chicken is "very low"
• No human illness linked to the tainted feed reported to FDA, USDA

NEW YORK (CNN) -- People have eaten millions of chickens that were given feed tainted with recalled pet food, federal officials said Tuesday, though they said the threat to human health is minimal.

The announcement came after an investigation of chicken farms in Indiana found that 38 of the facilities had given contaminated feed to poultry raised for human consumption, and that 2.5 million to 3 million people ate them.

The officials added that they expect to discover that chickens on possibly hundreds of farms in other states were also given tainted feed.

In a teleconference with reporters, an official with the Food and Drug Administration said no recall has been issued because "the likelihood of illness after eating chicken fed the contaminated product is very low." (Blog: Melamine 'dilution' means human risk is probably lower )

No human illnesses have been reported related to the feed, officials with the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.

Last week, as part of its investigation into the nationwide pet food recall, the FDA ordered that all vegetable protein imports from China used in human and animal food be detained.

The products include wheat gluten, rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn gluten, corn gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten proteins and mung bean protein.

FDA officials said Tuesday that they have found no evidence that tainted wheat gluten was added directly to any food products sold in the United States.

Two FDA investigators are in China and a third was en route working with the Chinese government's General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to investigate the sources of the contaminated products. (Watch more on concerns about China's food safety )

It was unclear how long tainted food additives from China have been entering the United States.

"Clearly that is a concern if that has been going on for a long period of time," said Dr. David Acheson, who had been appointed earlier in the day to the newly created position of FDA assistant commissioner for food protection.

The FDA's investigation began in March after at least 17 cats and dogs died of kidney failure linked to the tainted pet food. The urine of cats that ate the food tested positive for melamine, an industrial chemical used in the manufacturing of plastic utensils and fertilizer.

Investigators suspect that melamine, in combination with a rice protein additive imported from China and found to contain cyanuric acid, may cause crystals to form in the kidneys, shutting them down. Cyanuric acid is used as a stabilizer in outdoor swimming pools and hot tubs.

"We had one case recently where the cat's kidneys were completely obstructed and when we went to surgery to relieve the obstruction there was no normal stone, instead the ureters were completely full of these melamine-type crystals," said Dr. Louise Murray, director of medicine at New York's Bergh Memorial Animal Hospital.

The National Chicken Council, which represents U.S. poultry producers, marketers and processors, said Tuesday in a written statement: "We are confident that any poultry producers involved will work expeditiously with the government to resolve this matter to the satisfaction of the government agencies."

Leftovers link possible

NCC spokesman Richard Lobb said Chinese producers appear to have been spiking their feed with the contaminants to make it appear that it contains more protein than it does. Some tests for protein content measure nitrogen content, an ingredient of melamine and cyanuric acid.

Lobb said the chicken feed may have been contaminated as a result of a practice common among pet food manufacturers -- they sometimes sell their leftover material to manufacturers of chicken and pig feed.

"It's like cooking cupcakes -- you get some of the dough on the pan, you scrape it off and throw it away. What they're saying is that somebody bought that material and it got mixed in corn and soybean that gets manufactured in poultry feed," he said.

"The dilution factor is enormous. You have a relatively small amount of pet food byproducts used," Lobb said. "It's a safe and wholesome product to use."

Representatives of Perdue and Tyson Foods -- two of the largest U.S. chicken producers -- said Tuesday in letters to supermarkets that they do not use protein ingredients from China in their feeds.

Last week, FDA officials said 6,000 hogs that may have ingested tainted pet food entered the human food supply. Pork producers in seven states -- California, Kansas, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina and Utah -- are being investigated for buying adulterated feed.

The agency also reported last week that it has received more than 17,000 consumer complaints related to the recall, including reports of approximately 4,150 dog and cat pet deaths.

More than 150 brands and 5,300 pet food products have been recalled. Companies that produced affected items include Menu Foods, Hill's Pet Nutrition, P&G Pet Care, Nestle Purina PetCare, Del Monte Pet Products and Sunshine Mills have been recalled in cooperation with the FDA. The first recall was initiated March 16 by Menu Foods.

CNN's Katy Byron, Joe Johns, Miriam Falco and Elizabeth Cohen contributed to this report.

Renzi Breaks Silence: Bush Administration Tried To Rig My Election And ‘Needs To Be Investigated’

Late last month, the FBI raided the home of Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) as part of its “two-track investigation” into the congressman “regarding a land deal, as well as a piece of legislation he helped steer that may have improperly benefited a major campaign contributor.” The House Ethics Committee has signaled that it too may now investigate Renzi.

Renzi’s case was opened by former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who was fired as part of the Bush administration’s purge. In Oct. 2006, word leaked to the media about the investigation. Renzi’s top aide, Brian Murray, then called Charlton’s spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle to inquire about the investigation. Such calls are highly improper and potentially illegal.

Yesterday in an interview with Phoenix’s KPNX, Renzi spoke for the first time since the FBI raid and said that he believes he is being smeared by the Justice Department. He refused to take any responsibility for the land deal, instead charging — without any evidence — that the leaks on the investigation were “lies.” He added that “to make that up and put that out means the Department of Justice was engaged in electioneering and that needs to be investigated.”

Renzi also defended Murray’s phone call to Charlton’s office, even though calls from lawmakers and their staffs to U.S. attorneys about ongoing investigations are potentially illegal. “All he’s doing is calling the public relations department and saying what is this? What’s going on here? He left a message on a telephone machine,” he stated. Two other ousted U.S. attorneys — John McKay and David Iglesias — also received phone calls from federal lawmakers pressuring them on investigations.

He added that for “anyone to conjure up that this somehow affected Mr. Charlton being fired, is just political theater.”

Transcript: expand post »

Posted by Amanda at 5:14 pm

Watch it at: Permalink

Mike Gravel on CNN Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer

2007-04-30

THE COLOR OF OLIVES

From Mexican director Carolina Rivas and cinematographer Daoud Sarhandi comes this elegant and visually breathtaking new film about the Palestinian experience. The Amer family lives surrounded by the infamous West Bank Wall, where their daily lives are dominated by electrified fences, locked gates and a constant swarm of armed soldiers.This unique and intimate documentary shares their private world, allowing a glimpse of the constant struggles and the small, endearing details that sustain them. THE COLOR OF OLIVES is an artistic and beautifully affecting reflection on the effects of racial segregation, the meaning of borders and the absurdity of war.

A Peaceful Solution

Apr 29 2007

Posted by: Jay

written by Willie & Amy Nelson on April 29th, 2007
at 3:03am on the bus in California, on the way to Coachella.

There is a peaceful solution. It’s called a peace revolution.
Now let’s take back America.
There’s a war and we’re in it, but I know we can win it.
So let’s take back America.

It’s a dream, so believe it.
Now get ready to receive it.
And let’s take back America.

And when the war is over and we’ve won it
let’s remember how we done it so we don’t have to do it again.

There is a peaceful solution. It’s called a peace revolution.
Now let’s take back America.
There’s a war and we’re in it, but I know we can win it.
Now let’s take back America.

There was a peace resolution
and a peaceful revolution
and the peaceful solution saved America

Hear Willie sing it A cappella.

Israel's violations of the right to life

Source: Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS)

Date: 01 May 2007

Israel's violations of the right to life: Palestinian child fatalities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory during 2006

Introduction

Throughout the second Intifada, beginning in September 2000, Israel has engaged in gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Israeli military activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT ) has been excessive and disproportionate. Routinely employing sophisticated military weaponry, including missiles and F16 war planes, Israeli forces have acted with insufficient, or no, regard for the lives of civilian residents of the OPT resulting in particularl y high numbers of civilian casualties.

During this period Palestinian children have suffered countless violations of their rights, including violations of the right to life. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2006 there were an estimated 2.1 million children living in the OPT. These children constitute over half (52.3%) of the Palestinian population in the OPT.(1) Their right to life, survival and development is the most fundamental of all human rights of the child.(2) In spite of this, Israel has repeatedly and arbitrarily deprived Palestinian children of the right to life, in violation of article 6 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which it is a State Party.

In 2006, the Israeli military's lack of respect for Palestinian human rights and for the guidelines that seek to protect civilians in periods of armed conflict (as embodied in international humanitarian law) continued. Throughout the year, the Israeli military employed violent, excessive and disproporti onate force against Palestinian civilians. This was evident in the bombardment of civilian houses and infrastructure; the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian activists resulting in the killing of civilian by-standers; and the opening of random gunfire leading to the deaths of children either whilst inside their homes or playing near them. Despite Israel's withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the territory remains occupied. As a result Palestinian civilians, including children, were exposed to numerous violations of international humanitarian law in 2006. Two massive Israeli military offensives in the Gaza Strip during 2006 resulted in high civilian casualties and wide-scale targeting of civilian infrastructure.

In total, Israeli military forces killed 124 Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during 2006. This figure brings the number of child deaths caused by military or settler violence during the second Intifada to 852. The number of Palestinian children killed in 2006 is more than double those killed in 2005, when a total of 52 children were killed. Eighty-five percent (85%) of child fatalities in 2006 occurred in the Gaza Strip.

Notes:

(1) Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (20 November 2006): "On the Occasion of 'International Child Day"

(2) In accordance with definition set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a "child" is anyone under 18 years of age.

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What Are the Prospects for Peace in the Middle East?

Commentary

By Matthew Taylor

With President Jimmy Carter coming to town Wednesday to speak to UC Berkeley students about his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, it’s an appropriate time for us to reflect on the current prospects for justice and peace in the Middle East.

As Carter accurately states in his book, a system of enforced apartheid reigns in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. It is systemic Israeli policy and practice to demolish Palestinian homes, uproot millions of olive trees, build roads that only Israeli colonizers are allowed to access, implant Israeli colonies on Palestinian soil in violation of international law, use an illegal wall to steal Palestinian land, and enforce two entirely different sets of legal standards for Israeli colonizers and the indigenous Palestinian population. Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is both apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and is the further enactment of a long-standing desire for territorial expansion that has permeated Zionist politics since before the 1948 war.

At this past weekend’s Jewish Voice for Peace conference in Oakland, several speakers demonstrated that the situation is getting worse all the time. According to Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (www.icahd.org), Israel has managed to confine Palestinians who live inside the illegally-occupied West Bank to 72 disconnected ghettoes within only 42 percent of the West Bank area, leaving the rest to Israel’s illegal colonization as well as military installations and hundreds of movement barriers—a “matrix of control.” When Israel’s current colonies and land grabs are taken into account, the future contours of the so-called Palestinian “state” does not look like the map of a country, but a piece of Swiss cheese.

Readers of Carter’s book are largely aware of the above challenges. However, what Carter’s book never reveals is that Apartheid can be said to prevail even inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Professor George Bisharat of the Hastings College of Law reports that over 100,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel live inside villages that are officially ‘unrecognized,’ appear on no maps, and are denied basic services such as electricity and garbage collection (www.assoc40.org). Israel has demolished the homes of tens of thousands of Bedouin Arabs in order to create Jewish-exclusive housing. Israel insists that its Palestinian citizens relate to Israel as a “Jewish state”—in other words, an ethnocracy that privileges one ethnic group over another in both blatant and subtle ways.

And then, there’s the elephant in the room: the refugees. Millions of would-be citizens of the state of Israel—the Palestinians who were forcefully exiled in 1948, as well as their children—are denied the ability to return to their homes in peace, despite international guarantees and repeated U.N. resolutions affirming their right to do so. (Meanwhile, as an upper-class American Jew in Berkeley I have the unrestricted right not only to move to Israel, but to purchase a home that once belonged to a refugee.) Apartheid, at its core, is about “apartness” or “separation,” as well as the domination of one group by another. What could be a more extreme act of separation and oppression than forceful expulsion coupled with the denial of a people’s right to return to their homes?

The formula for a resolution to this disaster can take many different directions. Some advocate for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to be reconstituted as a ‘single state’ between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River with equal rights for all its citizens. However, this is a non-starter for most Israelis who insist on a Jewish-majority state. Other proposals include a EU-style regional confederation.

The international community is in near unanimous agreement that the only proposal with a modicum of justice and equity that is practically possible is a ‘two state solution’ (official U.S. policy), where Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders (possibly with agreed upon, equitable, minor border adjustments) and a viable, demilitarized, sovereign Palestinian state is created in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip—the territories occupied in the 1967 war. In fact, last month the entire Arab world re-affirmed its commitment to establish normal relations with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal to the 1967 borders and a just, ‘mutually agreed’ resolution to the Palestinian refugee crisis. Israel rejected the Arab Peace Plan without consideration in 2002, and has shown few signs of taking it more seriously now. It is a tragedy of unspeakable dimensions that the Israeli political elite has for decades preferred colonization to peace. What future are we all doomed to when greed and ambition outweigh coexistence?

According to Halper, the intensity of Israel’s colonization of the occupied territories has de facto eliminated even the possibility of a “viable Palestinian state”—one with territorial contiguity and control over its water, economy, resources, and borders. If so, then Israel’s colonization project may backfire and create a chorus of voices demanding a ‘single state’ solution in the face of ever-worsening Apartheid.

Perhaps Halper is right, perhaps not. Either way, if the international community does not want to let go of the two-state plan, it must act quickly and decisively to explain to Israel in no uncertain terms that its colonization of the West Bank must be fully reversed. It is at least theoretically and logistically possible—France withdrew far more than 500,000 colonizers from Algeria.

So long as U.S. taxpayer dollars fund Israel’s continued colonization and occupation of the West Bank, the United States will continue to exacerbate the conflict rather than resolve it. How can we help? Perhaps it’s time for U.S. taxpayers to demand that the United States cease financial aid to Israel that pays for its occupation and colonization and instead channel funds into activities that would create a viable two-state solution. The United States could fund the resettlement of Israeli settlers back into the pre-1967 borders, and pay to rebuild Palestinian homes demolished by Israel (both in the West Bank and within Israel proper).

As for Carter, his book may well play a significant role in shifting the U.S. discourse and international consciousness. However, Professor Bisharat’s comments show an important place where Carter’s book is silent. Someday, equal rights for all the peoples of the holy land must prevail, no matter whether they reside in a state known as Israel or Palestine.

Matthew Taylor is a fifth-year peace and conflict studies major at UC Berkeley, co-editor of PeacePower magazine (www.calpeacepower.org), and Jewish.

Target of a witch-hunt for opposing Israel

May 4, 2007 | Page 5

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN is the target of a witch-hunt that could cost him his job teaching at DePaul University in Chicago.

An outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights as well as a renowned scholar with a reputation for exceptional teaching, Finkelstein is being considered for tenure at DePaul. He won strong support from the political science department and the personnel committee of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, but DePaul’s dean refused to back his application for tenure.

Finkelstein’s longtime adversary, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, has publicly campaigned against Finkelstein getting tenure at DePaul. DePaul’s provost will make his decision before June, and the university president has until June 15, the last day of the quarter at DePaul, to issue his final word.

Students and faculty have come to Finkelstein’s defense. Hundreds signed a petition of support, and pickets and meetings were organized to draw attention to the case. Students began wearing armbands this week to show their solidarity, and plans are in the works for a week of support events starting May 21, culminating in a demonstration and town hall meeting on May 24.

Here, Finkelstein talks to Socialist Worker’s KATHRYN WEBER, a student at DePaul who has helped to organize the support campaign, about how and why he is still fighting for tenure, nearly 20 years into his academic career.

What you can do

Sign a letter of support and find out more information on this case at the Norman Finkelstein Solidarity Campaign Web site. E-mail finkelgate@gmail.com for more on what you can do to help.

Finkelstein’s Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict is a careful documenting of the history of the conflict and Israel’s apartheid system. His recent Ariel Sharon is a biography of Israel’s former prime minister and leading warrior against the Palestinians.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

HOW DIFFICULT has it been for you to make a space for yourself in teaching in the current political environment?

I GOT my doctorate in 1988. Until 2000, I taught as what is called an adjunct, where you get paid per course. I lived in New York and taught at various universities and colleges. I was paid about an average of $3,000 per course and taught five to six courses a year, so I lived in New York for about 12 years on a salary ranging from $15,000 to $18,000 a year.

Eventually, I got a ”visiting professorship,” which is a yearly position. I was paid substantially more, but those were exceptional years--I think three years out of the 12. My entire teaching career, I have only once been interviewed for a job.

My dissertation was on the theory of Zionism. I don’t want to bore people with the details--just let’s say it was very difficult for me to get a job, because it’s considered a prerequisite that one of the letters of recommendation required for work, if not two, are from your thesis advisors--and none of my thesis advisors would support my candidacy.

HOW DID you recover from that?

WELL, I never got a job! I was working as an adjunct and non-PhDs get adjuncting jobs. It’s the equivalent of substitute teaching.

WHAT HAS been happening at DePaul?

I THINK that had the tenure process been allowed to go along according to basic protocols and procedure, I would have sailed through tenure, but external pressures were applied to the university, which have corrupted the process and derailed my tenure application.

There are two factors, really. One is vindictiveness and revenge--to “get” me for my public opposition to Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories. The other is to transmit the message that if you step out of line on this question, you’re going to face the same penalties as Finkelstein faced. It’s a way of silencing others for coming up behind me.

Finally, the hope is that if I’m denied tenure, it will de-legitimize me. The claim will be made that this Finkelstein guy, because he couldn’t get tenure at what these people consider a “ninth-rate Catholic university,” doesn’t know what he’s saying. That’s not me speaking about DePaul--that’s what they say.

CAN YOU describe the development of this fight with Dershowitz?

I FIRST met Professor Dershowitz on a program called Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman’s nationally broadcast program. I had read his book The Case for Israel as soon as it came out, and it was plain to me that large parts of it had been plagiarized, and also large parts of it were sheer fabrication and falsification of the documentary record.

When I was on the program I effectively told him as much. He was furious when he left the interview. Amy actually told me to watch out.

I felt obliged, having leveled incendiary allegations, to document it all, because otherwise, it would seem as if I was speaking in an irresponsible manner. I went on to document the allegations and produce a manuscript.

When Professor Dershowitz got wind of the manuscript, he embarked on a huge campaign to suppress publication of the book. He wasn’t successful, and now he’s embarked on a new campaign to deny me tenure.

Basically, I think there’s elements of vindictiveness, but also a desire to discredit me--and hopefully, in his mind, to repair some of the damage done by my book and my public allegations.

TO WHAT extent do you think he’s been successful in framing the debate over your tenure?

I DON’T think he’s been very successful. I think he’s looking very foolish. Even mainstream publications like the New York Times, which are very much in his corner and very much not in my corner, didn’t give him a write-up that he can be particularly proud of. He’s not been very successful. He’s behaving at this point in a very self-destructive manner.

WHAT DO you think the state of academic freedom in the U.S. today?

I’M NOT as hysterical about these issues as other people. Mine is kind of an unusual case, because I don’t confine my activity to academia. I speak before large numbers of audiences and I’m a known quantity outside the ivory tower, and so I pose many more problems to the powers that be than most academics.

I could be wrong on this subject, but I don’t think that academic freedom is being threatened. There are some cases, but my case is simply unusual because I’m a political activist outside the ivory tower of academia.

DO YOU think that professors have an obligation to engage in political activity?

THEY DON’T have an obligation as professors; they have an obligation as citizens. They have the luxury of devoting their working life to trying to ferret out the facts and the truth about what’s going on.

For most other working people, their working lives are devoted to jobs which have minimal levels of personal gratification and have very little to do with mental activity of the sort that creates informed citizens. So since you have the luxury of sitting around and reading books, you do have an obligation as a citizen to pursue and expose the truth.

In The Philippines Bush's War On Terror Has Become A War Of Terror

May 1, 2006

By Brian Mcafee

In the Philippines Bush's War On Terror has become a War Of Terror. Last week Elias Mabundas, 25, and Auling Bugahod, 50, both left wing activists were gunned down by the philippine military as they were driving down a freeway. On Wednesday, April 18, Carmelo Palacios, 41, became the 51st journalist to be killed since Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001. Two days prior to the Palacios killing Willie Jerus, 43, a member of the National Peasant Movement (KMP) and a local organizer was gunned down in front of his wife by an unidentified gunman. He was the 843rd leftist to be killed, usually by the same proverbial unidentified gunman/gunmen since Arroyo came to power. In addition to those known killed an additional 210 are reported as missing. Most on the left place full responsibility for the killings and disappearances on the military, the Arroyo government And the Bush administration because of its close ties to Arroyo and the Philippine military.

Rebuked by the UN and the Permanent Peoples Tribunal over human rights abuses and the ongoing killings Arroyo and the U.S. have begun to be held to account. Those murdered have been from every region of the Philippine archipelago and represent a cross section of society. They include priests, journalists, farmers, human rights workers, union leaders and those in the health field among others. Two weeks prior to the for mentioned killings two other KMP activists were found shot, stabbed and placed in garbage bags. Arthur Orpilla and Dionisio Baltad were found 240 miles north of Manila near a military base. The list of deaths has been compiled by Karapatan, the Philippines most prominent human rights organization.

Among those killed about ten percent have been women and a large number of the disappeared have been women.

On March 31, Grecil Gelacio, nine years old, was gunned down by members of the Philippine Army's 101st Infantry Brigade. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as a whole, the Arroyo administration and the U.S. government needs to be held accountable for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people across the Philippines that have occurred over the past 6 years.

The U.S. Military has had a long time training program with the Philippine Military and Philippine National Police. The U.S. Embassy in Manila provides information on the most pertinent joint training program between the U.S. Military and the Philippines, an except from this program description reads- "The International Military Education and Training (IMET) program is an important component of U.S. efforts to professionalize the AFP. The IMET program strives to strengthen the AFP's professionalism, commitment to human rights, discipline and technical expertise. IMET graduates populate top AFP ranks and actively promote close and professional U.S. and Philippine military-to-military relationships." Philippine Military assistance from the U.S. went from $14.6 million in 2001 to $86.5 million a year in 2005. The U.S./Philippine joint military training includes small unit and sniper training. The only suspension that occurred of this joint training was when a rift developed between the two countries when a U.S. Marine was tried and convicted of raping a Philippine national. The U.S. government upset that their rapist was put in a Philippine jail suspended the joint exercises
until he was transfered to the U.S. Embassy. Raul Gonzalez, Arroyo's justice secretary was pivotal in making sure the U.S. was accommodated in this case and generally seems side with the U.S. government over the well being of his own people.

The War Of Terror the U.S. is inflicting on the Philippine people through its blanket support for Arroyo and the Philippine Military and National Police is also a War On The Poor as the targets are generally those concerned with the poverty issue and the beneficiaries of the killings would seem to be those that don't want change, the rich and foreign capital or corporate interests.

Iraqi government to expel Cheney's terrorists

Related
People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran - SourceWatch
On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say
The State Department says MEK is a terror group.
mparent7777+MEK
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Original in Arabic

Machine translation

26/04/2007

Tehran - The Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari Following talks Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran that the Iraqi government has decided to expel the Iranian opposition Mujahideen Khalq from Iraq. Zebari was quoted as saying at a joint press conference held with Mottaki, "that the Iraqi government has formed a committee to ensure the implementation of this resolution." He explained, "talked with a number of countries, including European countries to accept elements of this" group after being discharged from Iraq. The opposition group exists in Iraq before the occupation by the American forces, but the Americans have allowed the group to stay in Iraq. Replying to a question about the Iranian diplomats arrested in Arbil Zebari said that "the Iraqi government will make its utmost efforts for the release of these diplomats and hopes to end this problem and to return to their homeland soon."

Bush Is Over

The Host and The Parasite

Tuesday, 1 May 2007

Hello Marc:

In the past you have been kind enough to repost some of the columns I write for the Canadian Arab News, and which are also found on mediamonitors.net and my website www.gregfelton.com.

I am writing to let you know that my book "The Host and the Parasite—How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America" is available at amazon.com. If crimes and corruptions are your interest, I know that you'll like my analysis of the Bush junta and itrs place in the decades-long degeneration of the U.S. republic.

Thanks for all your support and keep upn the fight for a free press.

Cheers,

Greg Felton

The Host and the Parasite is on sale now!
The Host and The Parasite— How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America is the definitive study of Israel’s use of the U.S. economy, government and military to terrorize the Muslim world. Today the republic is dead, brought down by a junta that serves Israel’s colonial interests, not the U.S. national interest. This is the essence of “the war on terrorism” and the motive behind the Sept. 11 attack, the invasion of Iraq and the overt provocations of Syria and Iran.	“The Host and The Parasite is a profound reading of today’s world. It forcefully brings to the surface historical injustices that today’s powers-to-be buried in the trash bin of history.” —Sam Bahour, businessman, Ramallah, Palestine
To buy your copy go to amazon.com barnesandnoble.com, dandelionbooks.net or call toll-free 1-800-861-7899

Overcoming Zionism

Book Review by Beccy Reese, May 2007

Joel Kovel, Pluto Press, £15.99

Kovel's book is not the first of recent times to argue that the current situation of Bantustans, security walls and Jewish-only roads has no possibility of laying the basis for an autonomous Palestine.

He argues that Zionism has created an Israeli state that is prone to racism, a lack of democracy and ecological disaster. The only hope for a peaceful outcome is to create a single democratic state in the whole of what is currently Palestine, Israel and its occupied territories.

In the first section a concise overview shows how Zionism emerged and took on a direction that focused on taking hold of a land whose native population would pose a constant problem for the establishment of a state with a democratic and Jewish character.

The idea that creating a national identity for Jews would solve anti-Semitism drove Zionism to the conclusion that it had to manufacture "a land without a people for a people without a land". This led to the ethnic cleansing so clearly described in Ilan Pappé's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and the terrorist endeavours of groups like the Stern Gang, who wiped out a good proportion of the British high command in the 1946 King David Hotel bombing.

Most of this is not particularly new ground, having been covered in many excellent critiques of Zionism. A closer examination of how the Jewish state behaves is given in the second part and more eye-opening section of the book.

The balance sheet of what Israel has achieved sits firmly in the negative. Kovel starts by picking apart the often repeated idea that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. While accepting that many states which proclaim to be democratic are a pale reflection of true democracy, the lack of a constitution and the fact that there isn't full equality for all Israeli citizens mean that there is a legitimate questioning of Israeli democratic claims.

Zionists also claim that they have made the desert bloom, while in fact Israel's ecological record is disastrous. Nearly all of Israel's rivers are polluted to lethal levels while asthma rates among children stood at 17 percent in 2002, and a quadrupling of nitrous oxide emissions has been observed since 1980.

Overall the arguments put across are compelling and some of the insights are indeed shocking. In some places there is a tendency for the author to move away from historical and factual analysis towards a more psychological approach, making the book a more complex read at times.

The conclusions are that a society that rests on expropriation and occupation on racist grounds does not benefit either the occupiers or the occupied. To go beyond this is to overcome the ideology and myths of Zionism and imagine what a single secular state would look like.

In arguing to struggle for such a state Kovel is keenly aware of the role that Israel plays within a wider capitalist sphere in terms of its relation to the US, and that there is an invisible hand shaping history that needs to be dislocated.

This detailed description of what a single secular state could look like is fascinatingly useful.

Comments? Email letters@socialistreview.org.uk

Senate orders Gonzales to provide e-mails related to Rove

Senate subpoenas Gonzales on Rove e-mail

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 7 minutes ago

Senators subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Wednesday, ordering him to provide all e-mails related to presidential adviser Karl Rove and the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

"It is troubling that significant documents highly relevant to the committee's inquiry have not been produced," Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., wrote in a letter to Gonzales. The subpoena gives Gonzales until May 15 to turn over the information.

Not accepting the White House's explanation that some of the Rove-related e-mails may have been lost, Leahy subpoenaed any in the custody of the Justice Department. Leahy pointed to Rove's lawyer's statement that some of those the White House claims might be lost had been turned over to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as part of the investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

It was unclear whether any of those were related to the prosecutor firings, but congressional investigators believe that if Fitzgerald could retrieve some e-mails for his investigation, the ones related to the firings of U.S. attorneys are recoverable as well.

The White House has said it is trying to recover e-mails that were lost but has not promised to turn any over to congressional investigators.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Gonzales said during his April 17 testimony to Leahy's committee that he did not know the details but would get back to the chairman.

"I have not heard from you since," Leahy wrote, urging compliance with all of his panel's requests for information "to avoid further subpoenas."

It was the committee's first subpoena issued since the firings caused an uproar earlier this year and imperiled Gonzales' job.

The order compels the Justice Department to turn over "complete and unredacted versions of any and all e-mails and attachments to e-mails to, from, or copied to Karl Rove" related to the firings, written on White House, Republican National Committee or any other e-mail accounts.

The committee is probing whether Rove and other top White House officials conducted official business on RNC accounts intended for political work, then deleted them in violation of the law.

La Brea Tar Pits: A Metaphor for the America Republic?

by William Hughes

(Tuesday, May 1, 2007)

President George W. Bush now has the power, thanks to a mostly cowardly Congress, to declare “Martial Law!” The Defense Authorization Act of 2006 gave him the green light. All he needs is a Reichstag-like incident and our Republic will be history. Like the animals who were trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, it has been sinking for years. Author Chalmers Johnson is convinced the U.S. Empire is headed the way of Greece’s and Rome’s.

“It is truly frightening what is going on in this country.”

-- Ex. Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA)

Los Angeles, CA - It is one of the most visited sites in the U.S. The La Brea Tar Pits, aka “The Page Museum,” is located on famed Wilshire Boulevard, in an area known as the “Miracle Mile District.” Its 23 acres contain millions of fossils of prehistoric animals that were “trapped and preserved” in the asphalt between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, according to the institution. [1] The findings represent hundreds of species of vertebrates. A huge animal, like a Columbian Mammoth, a predecessor of the elephant, could easily get stuck in the “oozing” asphalt, making itself prey to other hungry carnivores, who, in turn, would become victims of the tar pits at the Rancho La Brea. Is the American Republic currently sinking in a lethal tar pit of wrongs, perpetrated by a regime whose contempt for our Constitution knows no bounds?

As I was touring the museum last week, I was struck by its symbolism for what is happening to our America. Over the last six years, the Bush-Cheney Gang has systematically shredded our Constitutional rights. It lied us into the Iraqi War; gutted the Writ of Habeas Corpus; spied on citizens without a court order; condoned the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and at “rendition” horror holes. It claimed the power to declare an individual an “enemy combatant” and to hold him indefinitely and to use “signing statements” to circumvent congressional statutes. It has also set up restrictive “free speech zones” at protest rallies. However, more ominous than all of the above is that on September 30, 2006, the mostly cowardly U.S. Congress passed a law, the “Defense Authorization Act,” which granted George W. Bush Jr., the power to declare “martial law” and “to rule by decree,” if he feels that maintaining “public order” might require it! [2]

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) co-authored this monstrosity, with the then Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John W. Warner (R-VA). Levin, like many others in the U.S. Congress, [3] is suspected of having a “passionate attachment” for Zionist Israel by former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern. [4] The author of “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic,” Chalmers Johnson, describes Warner as one of the “seven morons who lost the war.” He said that when the Senator found out about the torture scandal, he promised that every one culpable in the affair would be held “accountable, but he failed to follow through.” Warner was also the sixth husband of the actress Liz Taylor. If there is a hell, Senators Levin and Warner deserve a special place in it. Bush, the Boy Emperor, from Crawford, TX, instead of facing impeachment, is now only one Reichstag-like incident away from seizing full dictatorial powers.

Johnson in his latest tome traces the demise of our democratic freedoms to our country assuming the role of Global Cop, after WWII, with rampant militarism as its weapon of choice. It was also around this same time that the CIA was hatched. Over decades, Johnson insisted that the agency has become mostly a “private army” for an imperial presidency. He said that “40 percent” of the defense budget is now secret, as is most of the spending done by the CIA. Johnson theorized that “imperialism is the root cause of blowback,” and that the 737 military bases and garrisons we maintain in 130 countries reflect that fact. He sees the American Empire going the way of Greece’s and Rome’s.

A lack of “clear thinking” by our leaders has allowed “evil to enter the picture,” Johnson wrote. As an example, he recalled an interview that Lesley Stahl of CBS did with the then Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, on May 11, 1996. Stahl confronted Albright with the fact that over “half million children had died as a result of sanctions in Iraq. That’s more than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?” The morally obtuse Albright replied: “We think the price is worth it.” The Liar-in-Chief reportedly said after 9/11: “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” Johnson detailed the destruction, via our invasion and occupation of Iraq, “of a whole universe of antiquity” in that country. He added: the U.S. is guilty of “far greater crimes” in Iraq, than the Taliban committed in Afghanistan by dynamiting the Buddhist statutes at Bamiyan. Johnson also gave a back of his hand to the arrogant Neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, the prime architect of the Iraqi conflict. He is now ensnared in a girlfriend-related brouhaha at the World Bank.

The sleazy ultra-lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, a confessed felon, represented another nail in the coffin of our Republic, as did the criminal antics of ex- Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), according to Johnson. Cunningham took $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors, while in office. The Military-Industrial Complex is, indeed, very much at home on Capitol Hill. The number of registered lobbyists in D.C. has almost “doubled,” since the Bush-Cheney Gang took power--”that’s 16,342 lobbyist in 2000 to 34,785 in 2005. Sixty-five lobbyists for every member of Congress...Corrupt and indifferent, the Congress...is simply not up to the task of confronting a modern Julius Caesar...The likelihood is that the U.S. will maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it.” [5]

Johnson also takes to task the federal judiciary, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, for its repeated failure to rein in the White House’s evildoings, and the Establishment Media, too, for its complicity. On April 16, 2007, I heard Bob Woodward speak at Goucher College, just north of Baltimore. He was awful! Whereas Helen Thomas was all over the Bush-Cheney Gang for their putative crimes when she spoke at McDaniel College on April 12th, [6] Woodward came across as a court stenographer. He’s an “insider,” who wants everyone to know he’s on a first name basis with the Secretary of State, “Condi” Rice. He made me ill. And, it is also interesting how this so-called “investigative reporter,” wouldn’t allow any taping of his talk. The doubts that I have had about “Watergate” were reinforced by this incident. [7]

Finally, Johnson is convinced that “we are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire.” Meanwhile, our economy is tanking and the divide between the rich and poor is growing even wider. We no longer “make things” in this country like we used to, except of course, for weaponry. There is also little or no “war dividend” for most American workers. More are asking: “What the hell are we doing in Iraq?” [8] Time is running out. It’s true that a majority of people are now against the Iraqi War and are demanding impeachment. Somehow, that “inchoate bunch” has to be organized into a mass movement capable of restoring our Republic. [8] Saving our America from the “tar pits” that is the Bush-Cheney Gang and the Military/Security State that embraces it, should be a compelling duty for all patriots.

Notes:

[1]. http://www.tarpits.org/

[2]. “Working for the Clampdown: What Might the President Do with his new Power to Declare Martial Law?” by James Bovard, TAC, April 23, 2007.

[3]. http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/14717/index.php

[4]. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/23/693/

[5]. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[6].

[7]. http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=786

[8]. “Signs Along the Road: The Firing Line,” by JoAnn Wypijewski, “Mother Jones” magazine, Nov/Dec, 2006 issue.

‘Why the fuck didn’t George Bush call us and tell us this [9/11] was going to happen?’

“When he turned and said to Bernie Kerik, ‘Thank God George Bush is President,’” what he should have said was, ‘Why the fuck didn’t George Bush call us and tell us this was going to happen?’ That was a more appropriate response.”

Related
KERREY, J. Robert - Biographical Information
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Kerrey, Unbound, Rates Dems and Blasts Giuliani

by Jason Horowitz Published: May 1, 2007

Photo: Getty Images

Bob Kerrey.

As a former Presidential candidate now long out of politics, Bob Kerrey has become the unleashed id of the current Democratic candidates for President.

In response to Rudy Giuliani’s recent remarks doubting the ability of Democrats to keep America safe from terrorism, the Vietnam veteran and former Navy SEAL questioned whether the former Mayor is himself qualified for the job.

“It’s an outrageous statement,” Mr. Kerrey said about Mr. Giuliani’s assertion that a Democratic President would make the country more vulnerable to a similar terrorist attack. “His record of preparing New York between World Trade Center attack No. 1 and attack No. 2—it wasn’t exemplary.”

Far from it, argued Mr. Kerrey in an interview. The former Nebraska governor and then Senator said that he thinks Mr. Giuliani showed solid leadership in the hours and days after the attack, but he just won’t stand for the idea that Republicans—and especially President Bush—did a better job than Democrats at keeping danger at bay.

“When he turned and said to Bernie Kerik, ‘Thank God George Bush is President,’” said Mr. Kerrey, echoing one of Mr. Giuliani’s favorite (but now retired) 9/11 anecdotes. “What he should have said was, ‘Why the fuck didn’t George Bush call us and tell us this was going to happen?’ That was a more appropriate response.”

Not exactly the stuff you heard from the Democratic presidential candidates at the debate in South Carolina. But not far, one supposes, from what the candidates are actually thinking, either.

Mr. Giuliani’s campaign declined to respond to Mr. Kerrey’s remarks.

Mr. Kerrey, who lost part of his leg in Vietnam and was one of the most vocal Democratic boosters of the war in Iraq, has never been accused of shyness. He arrived in New York in 2001 to take over the New School, bringing with him a Senatorial mane of greying hair, a reputation for dating movie stars and a whiff of Mayoral ambition.

Mr. Kerrey’s most public duties these days usually tend towards the ceremonial: introducing Bill Clinton at the annual Parsons Fashion Benefit and Fashion Show, as he did on Monday night, or debating angry liberal teenagers upset about his invitations to John McCain and Newt Gingrich to speak at New School forums.

But he is by no means disengaged from politics.

Asked to rate the foreign-policy platforms of the various Democratic candidates, he was unflinching.

Joe Biden, he says, is the most serious thinker on Iraq, even though his plan smacks too much of micromanaging. Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd and Governor Bill Richardson are likewise in the top tier of foreign policy.

Barack Obama lacks experience, but is uniquely equipped, given his Muslim heritage, Christian faith and peripatetic childhood, to face the foreign-policy challenges of the 21st century.

John Edwards has made strides in foreign policy since he last ran for President, though he is still stronger on domestic issues.

Mr. Kerrey, who sat as the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, also has some specific criticisms of their plans for dealing with Iraq.

He thinks, for example, that Mrs. Clinton’s plan, which maintains funding for American troops but threatens to slash money for the American-trained Iraqi security forces, is misguided.

“I think we have under-funded the Iraqi military,” said Mr. Kerrey. “They don’t have enough helicopters; they don’t have enough of the basic necessities to confront an enemy, either domestic or foreign. So the idea that we are going to provide them an incentive by cutting back on their military—I don’t understand that.”

Worse, said Mr. Kerrey, is that such a move would help America’s enemy in the region.

“Iran will step into the breach,” he said. “If we don’t want to be Iraq’s ally, there are a lot of people in the region who we don’t like who will be willing to fill the gap.”

Mr. Kerrey, who once joined former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Mr. McCain on the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group that advocated regime change, also said that he respected Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to apologize for her 2002 vote authorizing the President to go to war.

“She is saying: ‘Look, I’m not going to throw myself at the mercy of the court and have an abject apology—it looks weak, because it is weak—just to appease an audience,’” Mr. Kerrey said.

Mr. Kerrey thinks that Mr. Edwards—who, by contrast with Mrs. Clinton, has apologized profusely, even theatrically, for his vote—has “traveled a long distance from 2004, when people would say he seems awfully thin. Now what I hear people say is that there is too much attention to domestic policy and not enough to international, other than ‘I’m against the Iraq War and I made a mistake to vote for it.’”

Mr. Obama, he says, is “inexperienced,” but “on the foreign policy side, his big strength is that his name is Barack Hussein Obama.” He argued that Mr. Obama’s foreign-language skills, connection to Muslim countries and personal background uniquely qualify him to send the message that “we are not your worst enemy, unless you make us so. And then we’re your worst enemy.”

Of course, Mr. Kerrey no longer bears the responsibility of taking public positions on the issues of the day, and his own Iraq policy isn’t wholly defined. He argues that the United States achieved its goal of regime change in Iraq by deposing Saddam Hussein, and that it is not America’s role to police the nation, train its soldiers, or even stand in the way of widespread sectarian bloodshed. At the same time, he advocates robust military operations in the majority-Sunni Anbar province with the goal of wiping out Al Qaeda cells, and behaving like a “good ally” to an Iraqi government under siege by an insurgency.

Unlike Mr. Biden, who he says has “a very, very serious proposal of what to do” in Iraq, Mr. Kerrey is convinced the country should not be split up into ethnically homogonous regions and believes that it wants, at its core, to be unified. To that end, Mr. Kerrey wished that Washington would stop “meddling” in Iraq’s affairs.

At the same time, Mr. Kerrey is still very obviously suspicious of the ascendant out-of-Iraq portion of the Democratic electorate.

“Had we not invaded Iraq and overthrown Saddam Hussein—and if Iraq was experiencing the kind of sectarian violence that they are experiencing today—liberals would be advocating, as they are in Darfur, that we use military force to go in,” said Mr. Kerrey. “For any Democratic candidate, they are facing a very anti-war audience. And that’s reality.”

http://www.observer.com/2007/kerrey-unbound-rates-dems-and-blasts-giuliani

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