Uncle Sam ought not be too happy how the world views the so-called leader of the democracies in the world. The results of a Pew Research Center survey and analysis of America's position in the world, ought not come as a surprise to anyone who follows politics.
The IHT reports:
"Distrust of the United States has intensified across the world, but overall views of America remain very or somewhat favorable among majorities in 25 of 47 countries surveyed in a major international opinion poll, the Pew Research Center reported Wednesday.
"Anti-Americanism since 2002 has deepened, but it hasn't really widened," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. "It has worsened among America's European allies and is very, very bad in the Muslim world. But there is still a favorable view of the United States in many African countries, as well as in 'New Europe' and the Far East."
Nonetheless, majorities in many countries reject the main planks of current U.S. foreign policy and express distaste for American-style democracy, the survey found.
Respondents worldwide not only want Washington to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq "as soon as possible," but also seek a rapid end to the American and NATO military intervention in Afghanistan, now in its sixth year."
And:
"While the survey covered a broad range of issues, it focused intensively on the world's image of the United States, which was largely positive in 2002 - reflecting global sympathy for Americans after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington - but has declined steeply since 2003, when the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq.
Over the last five years, favorable ratings of the United States have decreased "in 26 of the 33 countries for which trends are available," Pew said.
Confidence in President George W. Bush, which was already sagging, has dropped further in most countries over the past year, as the Iraqi quagmire has deepened and the world's reprobation has increased."
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Vice President? - or VP involved in vice?
For many Dick Cheney, US Vice President, personifies evil and the blatent abuse of power. As things are shaping up in Washington both Cheney and his "boss" George Bush are headed for more than an "interesting" confrontation with Congress.
It might well be said that it hardly lies in the mouth of John Dean, one-time cohort and key players in the "team" in the White House during the second term of Richard Nixon, to criticise Dick Cheney - but he does so in a fairly incisive and well-put together piece on FindLaw. Some might be tempted to say that one wrongdoer is well-placed to recognise another.
"Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.
In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major and minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.
For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime."
It might well be said that it hardly lies in the mouth of John Dean, one-time cohort and key players in the "team" in the White House during the second term of Richard Nixon, to criticise Dick Cheney - but he does so in a fairly incisive and well-put together piece on FindLaw. Some might be tempted to say that one wrongdoer is well-placed to recognise another.
"Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.
In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major and minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.
For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime."
Friday, June 29, 2007
Not such healthy Olympics
It's nothing new that Beijing is heavily polluted. But now people have woken up to question how all this pollution might easily effect the Olympic athletes next year in Beijing. Not well it would seem.
Spiegel OnLine addresses the issue full-on:
"The Beijing smog feeds on itself. Whenever the city periodically disappears into a brownish-yellow haze, the traffic only gets worse. Those who are fortunate enough to own a car leave their bicycles at home, choosing air-conditioning over the unfiltered cocktail of coal smoke, particulate matter and ozone in the air.
But escaping to the relative comfort of a car's interior won't be an option for those traveling to Beijing in August 2008, when more than 10,000 athletes will compete in the Olympic Games in one of the world's dirtiest cities. China has promised what it calls "Green Games," but its pollution figures suggest the more grayish hue of smog and pollution. "The athletes could be exposed to unhealthy air pollution unless there is a substantial reduction in emissions," warns David Streets of the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, the principal author of an article on the subject in the professional journal Atmospheric Environment
The air is often thick with pollution in Beijing, a city of 11 million. When there is no rain or wind, ozone and fine dust accumulate, often to a rate that is two or three times the maximum levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO)."
The photos in the Spiegel article speak for themselves. So much for the Olympics fostering good health in mind,body and spirit!
Spiegel OnLine addresses the issue full-on:
"The Beijing smog feeds on itself. Whenever the city periodically disappears into a brownish-yellow haze, the traffic only gets worse. Those who are fortunate enough to own a car leave their bicycles at home, choosing air-conditioning over the unfiltered cocktail of coal smoke, particulate matter and ozone in the air.
But escaping to the relative comfort of a car's interior won't be an option for those traveling to Beijing in August 2008, when more than 10,000 athletes will compete in the Olympic Games in one of the world's dirtiest cities. China has promised what it calls "Green Games," but its pollution figures suggest the more grayish hue of smog and pollution. "The athletes could be exposed to unhealthy air pollution unless there is a substantial reduction in emissions," warns David Streets of the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, the principal author of an article on the subject in the professional journal Atmospheric Environment
The air is often thick with pollution in Beijing, a city of 11 million. When there is no rain or wind, ozone and fine dust accumulate, often to a rate that is two or three times the maximum levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO)."
The photos in the Spiegel article speak for themselves. So much for the Olympics fostering good health in mind,body and spirit!
Israel in the West Bank: We're here to stay
As if he debacle and tragedy in Gaza and the West Bank wasn't bad enough - and that's without taking into account the actions of the US and Israel in seeing the collapse of the Palestinian government and a weak President Abbas allegedly take control and the complicity of people such as Condi Rice and most Western governments in what has occured for the Palestinians - if this piece is Haaretz is even half right then the problems between the Palestinians and Israelis, and the region generally, are about to get a lot worse.
Bottom line it is said that Israel will remain in the West Bank for the long haul. As if 40 years occupation and expansion [seizure of lands in fact] of settlements wasn't bad enough!
"The demonstrators and writers of articles commemorating 40 years of Israeli occupation of the territories this month can save their placards and high-brow expressions for repeated use - they will need them in the coming years.
There is a growing consensus in Israel that a withdrawal from the West Bank is no longer possible. It may be possible to hide the Palestinians behind a separation fence, but it is impossible to relinquish control over them.
Everyone shares this conclusion, in all the camps and across the political spectrum. Only the reasons differ. The ideologically motivated right considers the settlements a religious decree. Benjamin Netanyahu is talking about the "defensive wall" of the mountains of Judea and Samaria. Ehud Olmert, who promised to withdraw from the West Bank and evacuate most of the settlements, turned his back on the idea following the Second Lebanon War and the Qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. They are no longer talking about a permanent settlement even in Meretz, only about a theoretical agreement which will grant Israel international legitimacy, out of recognition that Mahmoud Abbas will not be able to carry it out."
Bottom line it is said that Israel will remain in the West Bank for the long haul. As if 40 years occupation and expansion [seizure of lands in fact] of settlements wasn't bad enough!
"The demonstrators and writers of articles commemorating 40 years of Israeli occupation of the territories this month can save their placards and high-brow expressions for repeated use - they will need them in the coming years.
There is a growing consensus in Israel that a withdrawal from the West Bank is no longer possible. It may be possible to hide the Palestinians behind a separation fence, but it is impossible to relinquish control over them.
Everyone shares this conclusion, in all the camps and across the political spectrum. Only the reasons differ. The ideologically motivated right considers the settlements a religious decree. Benjamin Netanyahu is talking about the "defensive wall" of the mountains of Judea and Samaria. Ehud Olmert, who promised to withdraw from the West Bank and evacuate most of the settlements, turned his back on the idea following the Second Lebanon War and the Qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. They are no longer talking about a permanent settlement even in Meretz, only about a theoretical agreement which will grant Israel international legitimacy, out of recognition that Mahmoud Abbas will not be able to carry it out."
US hand in Gaza tragedy
Writing in Foreign Policy in Focus [as reproduced in CommonDreams] Stephen Zunes [professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco] Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus writes:
"There is much blame to go around regarding the tragic turn of events in the Gaza Strip. While Hamas is the most immediate culprit, responsibility also rests with Fatah, Israel - and the United States.
The seizure of power in the tiny coastal territory by Hamas militants after bitter factional fighting with Fatah militiamen has only encouraged anti-Palestinian hardliners in Israel and the United States who claim that the Palestinians are unworthy of statehood and that Israel should continue its occupation and colonization of major segments of Palestinian territory seized by the Israeli armed forces in June 1967. The scenes of the bloody infighting among Palestinians have seemingly reinforced racist notions common in the United States and Israel, as exemplified by the statement by former Israeli Prime Minister and recently re-elected Labor Party leader Ehud Barak’s that Israel was “a villa in the jungle.”
The vast majority of ordinary Palestinians, meanwhile, are disgusted at the behavior of both Hamas and Fatah, who see it as little better than gang warfare and a tragic setback in their struggle for freedom against foreign military occupation. Whether the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip or the newly established parallel government in Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank will be recognized as legitimate by the Palestinians themselves remains to be seen.
As much responsibility as the Palestinian leadership itself must bear for the current situation, none of this would have happened if the U.S. government had lived up to its responsibilities as guarantor of the Oslo Accords and self-proclaimed chief mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. U.S. refusal to force Israel to live up to its legal obligations to end its colonization drive in the West Bank and withdraw from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees has led much of the Palestinian population to give up on the peace process and embrace groups like Hamas, which demand control of all of historic Palestine."
Key to and underlying what Zunes writes is this critical point:
"The myth perpetuated by both the Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties was that Israel’s 2005 dismantling of its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of military units that supported them constituted effective freedom for the Palestinians of the territory. American political leaders from President George W. Bush to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly praised Israel for its belated compliance with a series of UN Security Council resolutions calling for their withdrawal of these illegal settlements (despite Israel’s ongoing violations of these same resolutions by maintaining and expanding their illegal settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights). Pelosi, for example, called Israel’s pullout a “courageous” and “gut-wrenching” decision that constituted “a decisive milestone on the road to peace” toward which the Palestinians have responded by violence, proving that the “conflict is not over occupation…it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.”
"There is much blame to go around regarding the tragic turn of events in the Gaza Strip. While Hamas is the most immediate culprit, responsibility also rests with Fatah, Israel - and the United States.
The seizure of power in the tiny coastal territory by Hamas militants after bitter factional fighting with Fatah militiamen has only encouraged anti-Palestinian hardliners in Israel and the United States who claim that the Palestinians are unworthy of statehood and that Israel should continue its occupation and colonization of major segments of Palestinian territory seized by the Israeli armed forces in June 1967. The scenes of the bloody infighting among Palestinians have seemingly reinforced racist notions common in the United States and Israel, as exemplified by the statement by former Israeli Prime Minister and recently re-elected Labor Party leader Ehud Barak’s that Israel was “a villa in the jungle.”
The vast majority of ordinary Palestinians, meanwhile, are disgusted at the behavior of both Hamas and Fatah, who see it as little better than gang warfare and a tragic setback in their struggle for freedom against foreign military occupation. Whether the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip or the newly established parallel government in Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank will be recognized as legitimate by the Palestinians themselves remains to be seen.
As much responsibility as the Palestinian leadership itself must bear for the current situation, none of this would have happened if the U.S. government had lived up to its responsibilities as guarantor of the Oslo Accords and self-proclaimed chief mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. U.S. refusal to force Israel to live up to its legal obligations to end its colonization drive in the West Bank and withdraw from the occupied territories in return for security guarantees has led much of the Palestinian population to give up on the peace process and embrace groups like Hamas, which demand control of all of historic Palestine."
Key to and underlying what Zunes writes is this critical point:
"The myth perpetuated by both the Bush administration and congressional leaders of both parties was that Israel’s 2005 dismantling of its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of military units that supported them constituted effective freedom for the Palestinians of the territory. American political leaders from President George W. Bush to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly praised Israel for its belated compliance with a series of UN Security Council resolutions calling for their withdrawal of these illegal settlements (despite Israel’s ongoing violations of these same resolutions by maintaining and expanding their illegal settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights). Pelosi, for example, called Israel’s pullout a “courageous” and “gut-wrenching” decision that constituted “a decisive milestone on the road to peace” toward which the Palestinians have responded by violence, proving that the “conflict is not over occupation…it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.”
Monday, June 25, 2007
Going global....
MPS - this blog - is traveling the next weeks......
Postings will continue, although perhaps quite so regularly and fully. Stay stuned for what are, hopefully, interesting and thought-provoking postings not generally widely available or accessible.
Postings will continue, although perhaps quite so regularly and fully. Stay stuned for what are, hopefully, interesting and thought-provoking postings not generally widely available or accessible.
An upcoming anniversary - with more bad news?
Frank Rich, who writes in the NY Times, is no friend of the Bush Administration. He makes no bones about it - as his recent best-selling book clearly shows. Richs' latest column [only available on line on subscription] is yet again feisty - or some would say - but spells out what is probably the scene being played at the White House in relation to Iraq and that "surge". Look out for that 9/11 anniversary, says Rich:
"By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.
America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.
The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"
The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).
General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn't be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge's failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus's variation on the theme) they had to "show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock." The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans' desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.
When Mr. Bush announced his "new way forward" in January, he offered a bouquet of promises, all unfulfilled today. "Let the Iraqis lead" was the policy's first bullet point, but in the initial assault on insurgents now playing out so lethally in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces were kept out of the fighting altogether. They were added on Thursday: 500 Iraqis, following 2,500 Americans. The notion that these Shiite troops might "hold" this Sunni area once the Americans leave is an opium dream. We're already back fighting in Maysan, a province whose security was officially turned over to Iraqi authorities in April.
In his January prime-time speech announcing the surge, Mr. Bush also said that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." More fiction. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, says it would take "a miracle" to pass the legislation America wants. Asked on Monday whether the Iraqi Parliament would stay in Baghdad this summer rather than hightail it to vacation, Tony Snow was stumped.
Like Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus, Mr. Snow is on script for trivializing September as judgment day for the surge, saying that by then we'll only "have a little bit of metric" to measure success. This administration has a peculiar metric system. On Thursday, Peter Pace, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the spike in American troop deaths last week the "wrong metric" for assessing the surge's progress. No doubt other metrics in official reports this month are worthless too, as far as the non-reality-based White House is concerned. The civilian casualty rate is at an all-time high; the April-May American death toll is a new two-month record; overall violence in Iraq is up; only 146 out of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods are secure; the number of internally displaced Iraqis has quadrupled since January.
Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine's Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraqi health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. Or if the Pentagon were not withholding statistics on the increase of attacks on the Green Zone. Apparently the White House is working overtime to ensure that the September "snapshot" of Iraq will be an underexposed blur. David Carr of The Times discovered that the severe Pentagon blackout on images of casualties now extends to memorials for the fallen in Iraq, even when a unit invites press coverage.
Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? For the administration, the way forward will include, as always, attacks on its critics' patriotism. We got a particularly absurd taste of that this month when Harry Reid was slammed for calling General Pace incompetent and accusing General Petraeus of exaggerating progress on the ground.
General Pace's record speaks for itself; the administration declined to go to the mat in the Senate for his reappointment. As for General Petraeus, who recently spoke of "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad, he is nothing if not consistent. He first hyped "optimism" and "momentum" in Iraq in an op-ed article in September 2004.
Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of "victory" or retreat to the apocalypse of "precipitous withdrawal." But by the latest of the president's ever-shifting definitions of victory, we've already lost. "Victory will come," he says, when Iraq "is stable enough to be able to be an ally in the war on terror and to govern itself and defend itself." The surge, which he advertised as providing "breathing space" for the Iraqi "unity" government to get its act together, is tipping that government into collapse. As Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival," has said, the new American strategy of arming Sunni tribes is tantamount to saying the Iraqi government is irrelevant.
For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.
Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can't be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can't happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam's mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan.
As General Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That's why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they're forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that action would have to be taken "if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function."
Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. "We kept surging in those years," he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. "It didn't work." Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don't have the votes to force the president's hand. With him, it's a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead."
"By this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.
America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.
The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"
The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).
General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn't be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge's failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus's variation on the theme) they had to "show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock." The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans' desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.
When Mr. Bush announced his "new way forward" in January, he offered a bouquet of promises, all unfulfilled today. "Let the Iraqis lead" was the policy's first bullet point, but in the initial assault on insurgents now playing out so lethally in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces were kept out of the fighting altogether. They were added on Thursday: 500 Iraqis, following 2,500 Americans. The notion that these Shiite troops might "hold" this Sunni area once the Americans leave is an opium dream. We're already back fighting in Maysan, a province whose security was officially turned over to Iraqi authorities in April.
In his January prime-time speech announcing the surge, Mr. Bush also said that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." More fiction. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, says it would take "a miracle" to pass the legislation America wants. Asked on Monday whether the Iraqi Parliament would stay in Baghdad this summer rather than hightail it to vacation, Tony Snow was stumped.
Like Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus, Mr. Snow is on script for trivializing September as judgment day for the surge, saying that by then we'll only "have a little bit of metric" to measure success. This administration has a peculiar metric system. On Thursday, Peter Pace, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the spike in American troop deaths last week the "wrong metric" for assessing the surge's progress. No doubt other metrics in official reports this month are worthless too, as far as the non-reality-based White House is concerned. The civilian casualty rate is at an all-time high; the April-May American death toll is a new two-month record; overall violence in Iraq is up; only 146 out of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods are secure; the number of internally displaced Iraqis has quadrupled since January.
Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine's Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraqi health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. Or if the Pentagon were not withholding statistics on the increase of attacks on the Green Zone. Apparently the White House is working overtime to ensure that the September "snapshot" of Iraq will be an underexposed blur. David Carr of The Times discovered that the severe Pentagon blackout on images of casualties now extends to memorials for the fallen in Iraq, even when a unit invites press coverage.
Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? For the administration, the way forward will include, as always, attacks on its critics' patriotism. We got a particularly absurd taste of that this month when Harry Reid was slammed for calling General Pace incompetent and accusing General Petraeus of exaggerating progress on the ground.
General Pace's record speaks for itself; the administration declined to go to the mat in the Senate for his reappointment. As for General Petraeus, who recently spoke of "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad, he is nothing if not consistent. He first hyped "optimism" and "momentum" in Iraq in an op-ed article in September 2004.
Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of "victory" or retreat to the apocalypse of "precipitous withdrawal." But by the latest of the president's ever-shifting definitions of victory, we've already lost. "Victory will come," he says, when Iraq "is stable enough to be able to be an ally in the war on terror and to govern itself and defend itself." The surge, which he advertised as providing "breathing space" for the Iraqi "unity" government to get its act together, is tipping that government into collapse. As Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival," has said, the new American strategy of arming Sunni tribes is tantamount to saying the Iraqi government is irrelevant.
For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.
Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can't be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can't happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam's mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan.
As General Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That's why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they're forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that action would have to be taken "if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function."
Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. "We kept surging in those years," he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. "It didn't work." Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don't have the votes to force the president's hand. With him, it's a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead."
The PA Authority, Quislings, the CIA and a multitude of issues
Dissident Voice has a penetrating and clear-headed analysis of the present issues in Gaza, the West Bank, the US-Israel dimension in events in recent days and how this might all play out. One certainly can't hope to see any resolution of the myriad of issues confronting the Palestinians and Israelis in this on-going problem.
"It’s no secret that the Bush administration has been funneling money to Palestinian militias that are preparing to overthrow Hamas. On Monday, Condoleezza Rice announced that the US would resume “full assistance to the Palestinian government” and end the year-long boycott to the people in the West Bank. The new aid — which could amount to as much as $86 million — will be used to shore up the PA security apparatus and pay the salaries of officials in the “emergency government.” The uncovering of the CIA documents in Gaza will cast a cloud over the administration’s largesse and make Abbas look like a Palestinian Karzai who gets financial treats from Washington to follow their diktats.
On Thursday, Condoleezza Rice was given the task of outlining the administration’s new policy vis-Ã -vis the Abbas’ “emergency government.” The Bush team had already decided the night before that they would throw their full support behind Abbas and his “unelected” clatter of pro-western stooges. Rice could hardly contain her glee the next day when she ascended the podium and began wagging her finger reproachfully at Hamas:
“Hamas has made its choice,” Condi growled. “It has sought to attempt to extinguish democratic debate with violence and to impose its extremist’s agenda on the Palestinian people in Gaza, now responsible Palestinians are making their choice and it is the duty of the international community to support those Palestinians who wish to build a better life and a future of peace.”
This typically Orwellian statement was intended to justify the deposing of the legally elected government of Palestine. No matter, Rice’s pronouncements are always reiterated verbatim in the media without challenge regardless of how incongruous they may be.
The Bush administration had plenty of time to observe developments on the ground and make an informed decision about what to do next. There was no need to hurry. Instead, they decided to blunder ahead and launch their “West Bank First” policy, which commits US support to Abbas without any consideration of the public mood. The frantic pace of the decision-making, makes it look like Bush and Olmert are elevating Abbas to promote their own political agendas. Naturally, the Palestinians can be expected to resent this conspicuous outside meddling.
Former President Jimmy Carter was the first to blast Bush’s new plan. He said that “the United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements. . . . Carter said that Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government and that the Bush administration’s refusal to accept the 2006 election victory of Hamas was ‘criminal.’”
Carter’s comments appeared in just one newspaper — the Jerusalem Post. The ex-president has been increasingly marginalized since he dared to imply that Israel is an apartheid state. But Carter’s analysis is dead-on — Bush is just aggravating an already tense situation. He’d be better off trying to bring the two sides together and reconciling their differences rather than igniting a potentially explosive confrontation. Besides, Abbas’ close ties to Washington and Tel Aviv doesn’t bode well for his government’s long-term prospects. The US and Israel are widely reviled in the occupied territories and, as author Khalid Amayreh says, “Palestinians won’t accept a Vichy Government.”
Three days ago Abbas disbanded the Hamas-dominated parliament and sacked Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Abbas had no legal justification for this action. In fact, the “Basic Law” that applies to this case stipulates that “The President cannot suspend the legislative Council during a state of emergency” and there is “no provision whatsoever for an emergency government.” The president does not even have the authority to “call for new elections” — let alone, replace the elected representatives of the people. Abbas’ only support comes from political leaders in Tel Aviv and Washington and their reluctant accomplices in the EU."
"It’s no secret that the Bush administration has been funneling money to Palestinian militias that are preparing to overthrow Hamas. On Monday, Condoleezza Rice announced that the US would resume “full assistance to the Palestinian government” and end the year-long boycott to the people in the West Bank. The new aid — which could amount to as much as $86 million — will be used to shore up the PA security apparatus and pay the salaries of officials in the “emergency government.” The uncovering of the CIA documents in Gaza will cast a cloud over the administration’s largesse and make Abbas look like a Palestinian Karzai who gets financial treats from Washington to follow their diktats.
On Thursday, Condoleezza Rice was given the task of outlining the administration’s new policy vis-Ã -vis the Abbas’ “emergency government.” The Bush team had already decided the night before that they would throw their full support behind Abbas and his “unelected” clatter of pro-western stooges. Rice could hardly contain her glee the next day when she ascended the podium and began wagging her finger reproachfully at Hamas:
“Hamas has made its choice,” Condi growled. “It has sought to attempt to extinguish democratic debate with violence and to impose its extremist’s agenda on the Palestinian people in Gaza, now responsible Palestinians are making their choice and it is the duty of the international community to support those Palestinians who wish to build a better life and a future of peace.”
This typically Orwellian statement was intended to justify the deposing of the legally elected government of Palestine. No matter, Rice’s pronouncements are always reiterated verbatim in the media without challenge regardless of how incongruous they may be.
The Bush administration had plenty of time to observe developments on the ground and make an informed decision about what to do next. There was no need to hurry. Instead, they decided to blunder ahead and launch their “West Bank First” policy, which commits US support to Abbas without any consideration of the public mood. The frantic pace of the decision-making, makes it look like Bush and Olmert are elevating Abbas to promote their own political agendas. Naturally, the Palestinians can be expected to resent this conspicuous outside meddling.
Former President Jimmy Carter was the first to blast Bush’s new plan. He said that “the United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements. . . . Carter said that Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government and that the Bush administration’s refusal to accept the 2006 election victory of Hamas was ‘criminal.’”
Carter’s comments appeared in just one newspaper — the Jerusalem Post. The ex-president has been increasingly marginalized since he dared to imply that Israel is an apartheid state. But Carter’s analysis is dead-on — Bush is just aggravating an already tense situation. He’d be better off trying to bring the two sides together and reconciling their differences rather than igniting a potentially explosive confrontation. Besides, Abbas’ close ties to Washington and Tel Aviv doesn’t bode well for his government’s long-term prospects. The US and Israel are widely reviled in the occupied territories and, as author Khalid Amayreh says, “Palestinians won’t accept a Vichy Government.”
Three days ago Abbas disbanded the Hamas-dominated parliament and sacked Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Abbas had no legal justification for this action. In fact, the “Basic Law” that applies to this case stipulates that “The President cannot suspend the legislative Council during a state of emergency” and there is “no provision whatsoever for an emergency government.” The president does not even have the authority to “call for new elections” — let alone, replace the elected representatives of the people. Abbas’ only support comes from political leaders in Tel Aviv and Washington and their reluctant accomplices in the EU."
Iraq: Paying for non-existent WMD's
The US accused Iraq of having WMD's. A chorus of people [well a small one anyway] like Tony Blair and John Howard joined in the refrain. Oops ........they were wrong! And they knew that all along! So, while a charade was being played out searching for those non-existent WMD's a huge cost in manpower and the like was being incurred.
So, who pays for all this nonsense? Yes sir, the poor ole Iraqis - to the tune of US$10 billion per annum. They have been repaying the money to the USA, as Press Esc reports:
"Iraq has been forced to pay US$10 billion a year to the US-led team searching for weapon's of mass destruction, even after it emerged that such stockpiles did not exist, a US Congressional report has found.
The Iraq: Post-Saddam Governance and Security report by the Congressional Report Service notes that The formal US-led WMD search ended December 2004 but the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is still formally active.
A draft resolution was only circulated this month to end UNMOVIC's work, which costs US $10 billion per year drawn from Iraqi revenues."
Astounding!
So, who pays for all this nonsense? Yes sir, the poor ole Iraqis - to the tune of US$10 billion per annum. They have been repaying the money to the USA, as Press Esc reports:
"Iraq has been forced to pay US$10 billion a year to the US-led team searching for weapon's of mass destruction, even after it emerged that such stockpiles did not exist, a US Congressional report has found.
The Iraq: Post-Saddam Governance and Security report by the Congressional Report Service notes that The formal US-led WMD search ended December 2004 but the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is still formally active.
A draft resolution was only circulated this month to end UNMOVIC's work, which costs US $10 billion per year drawn from Iraqi revenues."
Astounding!
Sunday, June 24, 2007
You gotta be kidding! Tony Blair as ME envoy?
The suggestion that Tony Blair, when retired as PM from next week onwards, might be appointed ME envoy in some sort of role as peace-maker draws the ire and condemnation of Robert Fisk. Writing in The Independent, Fisk takes his pen [sword?] to Blair with no holds barred. Fisk is right! Blair, the show-pony, is certainly not the one to become engaged in any dialogue in seeking to bring about a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict. With Blair's record he would, in effect, be a dead man walking.
"I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create "Palestine". I checked the date - no, it was not 1 April - but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being "our" Middle East envoy.
Can this really be true? I had always assumed that Balfour, Sykes and Picot were the epitome of Middle Eastern hubris. But Blair? That this ex-prime minister, this man who took his country into the sands of Iraq, should actually believe that he has a role in the region - he whose own preposterous envoy, Lord Levy, made so many secret trips there to absolutely no avail - is now going to sully his hands (and, I fear, our lives) in the world's last colonial war is simply overwhelming.
Of course, he'll be in touch with Mahmoud Abbas, will try to marginalise Hamas, will talk endlessly about "moderates"; and we'll have to listen to him pontificating about morality, how he's absolutely and completely confident that he's doing the right thing (and this, remember, is the same man who postponed a ceasefire in Lebanon last year in order to share George Bush's ridiculous hope of an Israeli victory over Hizbollah) in bringing peace to the Middle East...
Not once - ever - has he apologised. Not once has he said he was sorry for what he did in our name. Yet Lord Blair actually believes - in what must be a record act of self-indulgence for a man who cooked up the fake evidence of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" - that he can do good in the Middle East.
For here is a man who is totally discredited in the region - a politician who has signally failed in everything he ever tried to do in the Middle East - now believing that he is the right man to lead the Quartet to patch up "Palestine"."
"I suppose that astonishment is not the word for it. Stupefaction comes to mind. I simply could not believe my ears in Beirut when a phone call told me that Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara was going to create "Palestine". I checked the date - no, it was not 1 April - but I remain overwhelmed that this vain, deceitful man, this proven liar, a trumped-up lawyer who has the blood of thousands of Arab men, women and children on his hands is really contemplating being "our" Middle East envoy.
Can this really be true? I had always assumed that Balfour, Sykes and Picot were the epitome of Middle Eastern hubris. But Blair? That this ex-prime minister, this man who took his country into the sands of Iraq, should actually believe that he has a role in the region - he whose own preposterous envoy, Lord Levy, made so many secret trips there to absolutely no avail - is now going to sully his hands (and, I fear, our lives) in the world's last colonial war is simply overwhelming.
Of course, he'll be in touch with Mahmoud Abbas, will try to marginalise Hamas, will talk endlessly about "moderates"; and we'll have to listen to him pontificating about morality, how he's absolutely and completely confident that he's doing the right thing (and this, remember, is the same man who postponed a ceasefire in Lebanon last year in order to share George Bush's ridiculous hope of an Israeli victory over Hizbollah) in bringing peace to the Middle East...
Not once - ever - has he apologised. Not once has he said he was sorry for what he did in our name. Yet Lord Blair actually believes - in what must be a record act of self-indulgence for a man who cooked up the fake evidence of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" - that he can do good in the Middle East.
For here is a man who is totally discredited in the region - a politician who has signally failed in everything he ever tried to do in the Middle East - now believing that he is the right man to lead the Quartet to patch up "Palestine"."
The grubbiness of lobbying and lobbyists
We all know it goes on. Lobbying. Just think the gun lobby and AIPAC in the USA. Lots of money and shadowy figures meeting, greeting and paying their way with and through politicians. It is a "disease" spreading through many countries.
Now, Harpers Magazine [reproduced on AlterNet] has gone undercover to "expose" how the lobbyists operate. It doesn't make for pretty reading.
"In March, when the U.S. State Department announced its new global survey of human rights, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that the report demonstrated America's commitment to civil liberties, the rule of law, and a free press.
"We are recommitting ourselves to stand with those courageous men and women who struggle for their freedom and their rights," she said. "And we are recommitting ourselves to call every government to account that still treats the basic rights of its citizens as options rather than, in President Bush's words, the non-negotiable demands of human dignity."
Flipping through the report, however, one cannot help but notice how many of the countries that flout "the non-negotiable demands of human dignity" seem to have negotiated themselves significant support from the U.S. government, whether military assistance (Egypt, Colombia), development aid (Azerbaijan, Nigeria), expanded trade opportunities (Angola, Cameroon), or official Washington visits for their leaders (Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan). The granting of favorable concessions to dictatorial regimes is a practice hardly limited to the current administration: Bill Clinton came into office having said that China's access to American markets should be tied to improved human rights -- specifically its willingness to "recognize the legitimacy of those kids that were carrying the Statue of Liberty" at Tiananmen Square -- but left having helped Beijing attain its long-cherished goal of Permanent Most Favored Nation trade status. Jimmy Carter put the promotion of human rights at the heart of his foreign policy, yet he cut deals for South American generals and Persian Gulf monarchs in much the same fashion as his successor, Ronald Reagan.
How is it that regimes widely acknowledged to be the world's most oppressive nevertheless continually win favors in Washington? In part, it is because they often have something highly desired by the United States that can be leveraged to their advantage, be it natural resources, vast markets for trade and investment, or general geostrategic importance. But even the best-endowed regimes need help navigating the shoals of Washington, and it is their great fortune that, for the right price, countless lobbyists are willing to steer even the foulest of ships."
Now, Harpers Magazine [reproduced on AlterNet] has gone undercover to "expose" how the lobbyists operate. It doesn't make for pretty reading.
"In March, when the U.S. State Department announced its new global survey of human rights, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that the report demonstrated America's commitment to civil liberties, the rule of law, and a free press.
"We are recommitting ourselves to stand with those courageous men and women who struggle for their freedom and their rights," she said. "And we are recommitting ourselves to call every government to account that still treats the basic rights of its citizens as options rather than, in President Bush's words, the non-negotiable demands of human dignity."
Flipping through the report, however, one cannot help but notice how many of the countries that flout "the non-negotiable demands of human dignity" seem to have negotiated themselves significant support from the U.S. government, whether military assistance (Egypt, Colombia), development aid (Azerbaijan, Nigeria), expanded trade opportunities (Angola, Cameroon), or official Washington visits for their leaders (Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan). The granting of favorable concessions to dictatorial regimes is a practice hardly limited to the current administration: Bill Clinton came into office having said that China's access to American markets should be tied to improved human rights -- specifically its willingness to "recognize the legitimacy of those kids that were carrying the Statue of Liberty" at Tiananmen Square -- but left having helped Beijing attain its long-cherished goal of Permanent Most Favored Nation trade status. Jimmy Carter put the promotion of human rights at the heart of his foreign policy, yet he cut deals for South American generals and Persian Gulf monarchs in much the same fashion as his successor, Ronald Reagan.
How is it that regimes widely acknowledged to be the world's most oppressive nevertheless continually win favors in Washington? In part, it is because they often have something highly desired by the United States that can be leveraged to their advantage, be it natural resources, vast markets for trade and investment, or general geostrategic importance. But even the best-endowed regimes need help navigating the shoals of Washington, and it is their great fortune that, for the right price, countless lobbyists are willing to steer even the foulest of ships."
The [contrived?] Howard 2007 "issue"
No one can deny that the recent Report on Aboriginal welfare is devastating - and a blight on all Australian governments down the years and Australians in allowing such deplorable conditions and situations to continue to exist.
But, the wide-ranging response by the Federal Government so obviously smacks of political opportunism in this election year. It has all the grubby paws of PM Howard over the policy initiatives clearly hastily cobbled together.
Gregory Phillips, a medical anthropologist specialising in healing, post-traumatic stress syndromes and addictions in indigenous communities, writing an op-ed piece in The Age, also questions the Government's actions - and is cynical to boot:
"Far from being a radical saviour concerned with the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse in the Northern Territory, the Prime Minister is mostly concerned with painting all Aborigines as being useless crooks and abusers. That way, he can put up a smokescreen to justify the weakening of Aboriginal communal rights to land under the guise of economic development.
Nobody denies that sexual abuse and alcoholic dysfunction in indigenous communities is a massive problem. Many Aborigines have long advocated for better services to deal with the issues, and have strongly asserted that alcoholism and sexual abuse are not a part of Aboriginal culture. It is, in fact, a learned behaviour. Where did Aborigines learn it? It is partly a hangover of the missionary days only 20 and 30 years ago, where sexual violence was routinely perpetrated on Aborigines by police, pastoralists and missionaries, and where the church often forced people to marry against their social and cultural clan systems. This is not an excuse for abuse today, but it is part of the reason people are behaving this way now. Sure, the abuser must take responsibility for these terrible actions, and sure, society has a responsibility to protect children. But to do so only through the law has never worked either here or overseas.
There's no evidence that dealing with addictions and sexual abuse through legal, criminal or administrative systems alone works. It might help alleviate some physical injury and perhaps prevent a small amount of abuse, but it doesn't address the emotional and mental turmoil that gave rise to the behaviour in the first place."
But, the wide-ranging response by the Federal Government so obviously smacks of political opportunism in this election year. It has all the grubby paws of PM Howard over the policy initiatives clearly hastily cobbled together.
Gregory Phillips, a medical anthropologist specialising in healing, post-traumatic stress syndromes and addictions in indigenous communities, writing an op-ed piece in The Age, also questions the Government's actions - and is cynical to boot:
"Far from being a radical saviour concerned with the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse in the Northern Territory, the Prime Minister is mostly concerned with painting all Aborigines as being useless crooks and abusers. That way, he can put up a smokescreen to justify the weakening of Aboriginal communal rights to land under the guise of economic development.
Nobody denies that sexual abuse and alcoholic dysfunction in indigenous communities is a massive problem. Many Aborigines have long advocated for better services to deal with the issues, and have strongly asserted that alcoholism and sexual abuse are not a part of Aboriginal culture. It is, in fact, a learned behaviour. Where did Aborigines learn it? It is partly a hangover of the missionary days only 20 and 30 years ago, where sexual violence was routinely perpetrated on Aborigines by police, pastoralists and missionaries, and where the church often forced people to marry against their social and cultural clan systems. This is not an excuse for abuse today, but it is part of the reason people are behaving this way now. Sure, the abuser must take responsibility for these terrible actions, and sure, society has a responsibility to protect children. But to do so only through the law has never worked either here or overseas.
There's no evidence that dealing with addictions and sexual abuse through legal, criminal or administrative systems alone works. It might help alleviate some physical injury and perhaps prevent a small amount of abuse, but it doesn't address the emotional and mental turmoil that gave rise to the behaviour in the first place."
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Arab unease about Hamas victory in Gaza
The US and Israel may be congratulating themselves on what they have achieved with the endorsement of Pres Abbas in the West Bank, the lock-down in Gaza with Hamas in control, and some talk of revived peace-talks, but that is not a view shared by many Arab countries. They see the Hamas victory in Gaza - for that is what is - causing wider ripples in the region, as IHT reports:
"The fight over control of the Gaza Strip has frightened Arab leaders because it was characterized by the same dynamics that have been roiling the region. It pitted a Western-backed leadership in power for years against a newly empowered, radical Islamist group aligned with Syria and Iran.
The Western-backed group lost and the Iranian-Syrian group won, again.
That outcome demonstrated the rising threat to the status quo posed by political Islam in places like Cairo, Amman and Riyadh. And it gave Iran yet another foothold on Arab borders.
"We have a big problem here that is much deeper," said Abdel Moneim Said, director of the state-financed Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies in Cairo. "It is related to the bankruptcy of the shape of the modern Arab political entity and its inability really to convince the people with where they are going. Then you have the success of the other side, like Hamas, in making a clearer, simpler message."
"The fight over control of the Gaza Strip has frightened Arab leaders because it was characterized by the same dynamics that have been roiling the region. It pitted a Western-backed leadership in power for years against a newly empowered, radical Islamist group aligned with Syria and Iran.
The Western-backed group lost and the Iranian-Syrian group won, again.
That outcome demonstrated the rising threat to the status quo posed by political Islam in places like Cairo, Amman and Riyadh. And it gave Iran yet another foothold on Arab borders.
"We have a big problem here that is much deeper," said Abdel Moneim Said, director of the state-financed Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies in Cairo. "It is related to the bankruptcy of the shape of the modern Arab political entity and its inability really to convince the people with where they are going. Then you have the success of the other side, like Hamas, in making a clearer, simpler message."
Fight for world's food
This is, literally, food for thought - as The Independent reports:
"Most people in Britain won't have noticed. On the supermarket shelves the signs are still subtle. But the onset of a major change will be sitting in front of many people this morning in their breakfast bowl. The price of cereals in this country has jumped by 12 per cent in the past year. And the cost of milk on the global market has leapt by nearly 60 per cent. In short we may be reaching the end of cheap food.
For those of us who have grown up in post-war Britain food prices have gone only one way, and that is down. Sixty years ago an average British family spent more than one-third of its income on food. Today, that figure has dropped to one-tenth. But for the first time in generations agricultural commodity prices are surging with what analysts warn will be unpredictable consequences.
Like any other self-respecting trend this one now has its own name: agflation. Beneath this harmless-sounding piece of jargon - the conflation of agriculture and inflation - lie two main drivers that suggest that cheap food is about to become a thing of the past. Agflation, to those that believe that it is really happening, is an increase in the price of food that occurs as a result of increased demand from human consumption and the diversion of crops into usage as an alternative energy resource.
On the one hand the growing affluence of millions of people in China and India is creating a surge in demand for food - the rising populations are not content with their parents' diet and demand more meat. On the other, is the use of food crops as a source of energy in place of oil, the so-called bio-fuels boom.
As these two forces combine they are setting off warning bells around the world."
"Most people in Britain won't have noticed. On the supermarket shelves the signs are still subtle. But the onset of a major change will be sitting in front of many people this morning in their breakfast bowl. The price of cereals in this country has jumped by 12 per cent in the past year. And the cost of milk on the global market has leapt by nearly 60 per cent. In short we may be reaching the end of cheap food.
For those of us who have grown up in post-war Britain food prices have gone only one way, and that is down. Sixty years ago an average British family spent more than one-third of its income on food. Today, that figure has dropped to one-tenth. But for the first time in generations agricultural commodity prices are surging with what analysts warn will be unpredictable consequences.
Like any other self-respecting trend this one now has its own name: agflation. Beneath this harmless-sounding piece of jargon - the conflation of agriculture and inflation - lie two main drivers that suggest that cheap food is about to become a thing of the past. Agflation, to those that believe that it is really happening, is an increase in the price of food that occurs as a result of increased demand from human consumption and the diversion of crops into usage as an alternative energy resource.
On the one hand the growing affluence of millions of people in China and India is creating a surge in demand for food - the rising populations are not content with their parents' diet and demand more meat. On the other, is the use of food crops as a source of energy in place of oil, the so-called bio-fuels boom.
As these two forces combine they are setting off warning bells around the world."
CIA to air its dirty washing
Many will be intrigued to read the revelations almost certain to emerge from CIA documents, previously classified, to be released for public viewing next week. All those dirty tricks, etc. On one level, open government is commendable, but is what is planned by the CIA going a tad too far?
The Washington Post reports:
"The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.
The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.
"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests."
The Washington Post reports:
"The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.
The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.
"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests."
Friday, June 22, 2007
Now that's not a record to be proud of
Climate change, and all the issues surrounding it, just won't go away. It's got to be the hot-button topic of 2007 - with justifiable good cause.
A report, just out, detailed in The Guardian, makes for rather frightening reading as China, and its economy power along. For all the leaps and bounds now occuring in the fast-growing China, the negative effects of that growth will extend way beyond its borders right around the globe. It is, indeed, a small world!
"China has overtaken the US as the biggest producer of carbon dioxide, a development that will increase anxiety about its role in driving man-made global warming and will add to pressure on the world's politicians to reach an agreement on climate change that includes the Chinese economy.
China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen next year.
But according to figures released yesterday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which advises the Dutch government, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those of the US.
The agency said China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes. But per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low, about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.
China's surge to 8% more than the US was helped by a 1.4% fall in the latter's CO2 emissions during 2006, which, analysts say, is down to a slowing US economy.
A report, just out, detailed in The Guardian, makes for rather frightening reading as China, and its economy power along. For all the leaps and bounds now occuring in the fast-growing China, the negative effects of that growth will extend way beyond its borders right around the globe. It is, indeed, a small world!
"China has overtaken the US as the biggest producer of carbon dioxide, a development that will increase anxiety about its role in driving man-made global warming and will add to pressure on the world's politicians to reach an agreement on climate change that includes the Chinese economy.
China's emissions had not been expected to overtake those from the US, formerly the biggest polluter, for several years, although some reports predicted it could happen next year.
But according to figures released yesterday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which advises the Dutch government, soaring demand for coal to generate electricity and a surge in cement production have helped to push China's recorded emissions for 2006 beyond those of the US.
The agency said China produced 6,200m tonnes of CO2 last year, compared with 5,800m tonnes from the US. Britain produced about 600m tonnes. But per head of population, China's pollution remains relatively low, about a quarter of that in the US and half that of the UK.
China's surge to 8% more than the US was helped by a 1.4% fall in the latter's CO2 emissions during 2006, which, analysts say, is down to a slowing US economy.
The richest country? - going broke?
Figures recently released in Australia show that every Australian owes $160 for every $100 income. One needn't be a genius in maths to see that this won't work for very long. Also, it gives the lie to the suggested financial well being of the populace. The rich may be doing well, but the majority are not.
The great US of A - with its allegedly powering economy and polulation of 300 million - seems to be traveling badly on an economic level, with troubles afoot down the track, if this report in USA Today is to be believed:
"Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.
Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities. State and local government retirement plans account for much of the rest.
This hidden debt is the amount taxpayers would have to pay immediately to cover government's financial obligations. Like a mortgage, it will cost more to repay the debt over time. Every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to do so in 75 years."
The great US of A - with its allegedly powering economy and polulation of 300 million - seems to be traveling badly on an economic level, with troubles afoot down the track, if this report in USA Today is to be believed:
"Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.
Unfunded promises made for Medicare, Social Security and federal retirement programs account for 85% of taxpayer liabilities. State and local government retirement plans account for much of the rest.
This hidden debt is the amount taxpayers would have to pay immediately to cover government's financial obligations. Like a mortgage, it will cost more to repay the debt over time. Every U.S. household would have to pay about $31,000 a year to do so in 75 years."
Thursday, June 21, 2007
How will some Frenchmen live?
They are everywhere - and people are seemingly hooked on / to them. What? Those [damned] BlackBerrys.
But, no longer in France, as this piece in The Independent reveals:
"Seven million people worldwide may be addicted to them but the French government has said "non" to Le BlackBerry, fearing US intelligence agents could be snooping on state secrets.
"The risks of interception are real. It is economic war," Alain Juillet, who is in charge of economic intelligence for the government, told Le Monde newspaper.
The concern is that information sent from a BlackBerry gets routed via servers in the United States and Britain, and that this poses "a problem with the protection of information".
Research In Motion, the company that makes the handheld devices, poured cold water on the French fears, saying there was no way that the US National Security Agency could see the content of messages that were transmitted .
But Paris is clearly not convinced. France's General Secretariat for National Defence first declared the ban on BlackBerrys 18 months ago but recently had to send out another reminder.
Civil servants say rebellious employees are still engaging in surreptitious BlackBerrying. And government officials are still moaning about the edict, because they object to being ordered to abandon technological advances.
"We feel like we're losing a ridiculous amount of time. We're having to learn how to do things in the old-school way," one minister's aide complained."
But, no longer in France, as this piece in The Independent reveals:
"Seven million people worldwide may be addicted to them but the French government has said "non" to Le BlackBerry, fearing US intelligence agents could be snooping on state secrets.
"The risks of interception are real. It is economic war," Alain Juillet, who is in charge of economic intelligence for the government, told Le Monde newspaper.
The concern is that information sent from a BlackBerry gets routed via servers in the United States and Britain, and that this poses "a problem with the protection of information".
Research In Motion, the company that makes the handheld devices, poured cold water on the French fears, saying there was no way that the US National Security Agency could see the content of messages that were transmitted .
But Paris is clearly not convinced. France's General Secretariat for National Defence first declared the ban on BlackBerrys 18 months ago but recently had to send out another reminder.
Civil servants say rebellious employees are still engaging in surreptitious BlackBerrying. And government officials are still moaning about the edict, because they object to being ordered to abandon technological advances.
"We feel like we're losing a ridiculous amount of time. We're having to learn how to do things in the old-school way," one minister's aide complained."
"West Bank First": It won't work
To see events unfold in and in relation to the West Bank, Gaza and the newly-appointed Palestinian Prime Minister is odd to say the least. Clearly all vestiges of democracy have been swept aside. PM Olmert, and the Israelis, have again conned the world. Does anyone seriously think that the Israelis will adopt any policies of fairness and justice for the Palestinians let alone addressing issues like that awful Wall, the enclaves set up in the West Bank and those countless crossings? Meanwhile, the US and the West are falling over themselves to bolster the Fatah regime and provide previously wrongly withheld monies to the Palestinian Authority.
The Washington Post puts a realistic position, pretty pointedly, this way:
"Having embraced one illusion -- that it could help isolate and defeat Hamas -- the Bush administration is dangerously close to embracing another: Gaza is dead, long live the West Bank. This approach appears compelling. Flood the West Bank with money, boost Fatah security forces and create a meaningful negotiating process. The Palestinian people, drawn to a recovering West Bank and repelled by the nightmare of an impoverished Gaza, will rally around the more pragmatic of the Palestinians.
The theory is a few years late and several steps removed from reality. If the United States wanted to help President Mahmoud Abbas, the time to do so was in 2005, when he won office in a landslide, emerged as the Palestinians' uncontested leader and was in a position to sell difficult compromises to his people. Today, Abbas is challenged by far more Palestinians and is far less capable of securing a consensus on any important decision."
As if the political analysis wasn't enough to highlight a range of issues, this piece in Information Clearing House reveals a disturbing, but nevertheless not unsurprising, revelation:
"When Hamas gunmen stormed the Fatah security compounds in Gaza last week they found huge supplies of American-made weaponry including 7,400 M-16 assault rifles, dozens of mounted machine guns, rocket launchers, 7 armored military jeeps, 800,000 rounds of bullets and 18 US-made armored personnel carriers. They also discovered something far more valuable--- CIA files which purportedly contain "information about the collaboration between Fatah and the Israeli and American security organizations; CIA methods on how to prevent attacks, chase and follow after cells of Hamas and the Committees; plans about Fatah assassinations of members of Hamas and other organizations; and American studies on the security situation in Gaza." (Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily.com)
If the documents prove to be authentic, they will confirm what many critics of Fatah believed from the beginning; that US-Israeli intelligence agencies have been collaborating with high-ranking members of the PA to help crush the Palestinian national liberation movement. The information could be disastrous for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his newly-appointed “emergency government”. It could destroy their credibility before they even take office.
The extent of Fatah’s cooperation with the CIA is still unknown, but an article in The New York Sun, (“Hamas Takes over Gaza Security Services” 6-15-07) suggests that the two groups may have been working together closely. Former Middle East CIA operations officer Robert Baer, who was interviewed in the article, said that the discovery of the documents was “a major blow to Fatah” and will show “a record of training, spying on Hamas”."
The Washington Post puts a realistic position, pretty pointedly, this way:
"Having embraced one illusion -- that it could help isolate and defeat Hamas -- the Bush administration is dangerously close to embracing another: Gaza is dead, long live the West Bank. This approach appears compelling. Flood the West Bank with money, boost Fatah security forces and create a meaningful negotiating process. The Palestinian people, drawn to a recovering West Bank and repelled by the nightmare of an impoverished Gaza, will rally around the more pragmatic of the Palestinians.
The theory is a few years late and several steps removed from reality. If the United States wanted to help President Mahmoud Abbas, the time to do so was in 2005, when he won office in a landslide, emerged as the Palestinians' uncontested leader and was in a position to sell difficult compromises to his people. Today, Abbas is challenged by far more Palestinians and is far less capable of securing a consensus on any important decision."
As if the political analysis wasn't enough to highlight a range of issues, this piece in Information Clearing House reveals a disturbing, but nevertheless not unsurprising, revelation:
"When Hamas gunmen stormed the Fatah security compounds in Gaza last week they found huge supplies of American-made weaponry including 7,400 M-16 assault rifles, dozens of mounted machine guns, rocket launchers, 7 armored military jeeps, 800,000 rounds of bullets and 18 US-made armored personnel carriers. They also discovered something far more valuable--- CIA files which purportedly contain "information about the collaboration between Fatah and the Israeli and American security organizations; CIA methods on how to prevent attacks, chase and follow after cells of Hamas and the Committees; plans about Fatah assassinations of members of Hamas and other organizations; and American studies on the security situation in Gaza." (Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily.com)
If the documents prove to be authentic, they will confirm what many critics of Fatah believed from the beginning; that US-Israeli intelligence agencies have been collaborating with high-ranking members of the PA to help crush the Palestinian national liberation movement. The information could be disastrous for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his newly-appointed “emergency government”. It could destroy their credibility before they even take office.
The extent of Fatah’s cooperation with the CIA is still unknown, but an article in The New York Sun, (“Hamas Takes over Gaza Security Services” 6-15-07) suggests that the two groups may have been working together closely. Former Middle East CIA operations officer Robert Baer, who was interviewed in the article, said that the discovery of the documents was “a major blow to Fatah” and will show “a record of training, spying on Hamas”."
Talk about a very, very long haul!
Things aren't on the impove in Iraq. The news, daily, from that war-ravaged country couldn't be worse. One almost gets the impression that we are all now enured to things going badly there. A bombing here, a car-bomb there.....and casualties in large numbers.
On that other war-front, Afghanistan, things aren't too rosy either - so much so that the new British ambassador to Kabul has made what can only be seen as a dire prediction [as the TimesOnLine reports]:
"Britain will need to stay in Afghanistan for "decades" to fight terrorism and pull the country out of poverty, the UK's new ambassador to Kabul said today.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who has been in his post for six weeks, said efforts to stabilise and rebuild the war-torn country would have to be a "marathon rather than a sprint".
In an interview this morning the ambassador, considered one of Britain's biggest diplomatic heavyweights, admitted that the UK should have stepped up its development and regeneration efforts in Afghanistan earlier.
“The task of standing up a government of Afghanistan that is sustainable is going to take a very long time,” Sir Sherard told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme today. “It’s a marathon rather than a sprint. We should be thinking in terms of decades.”
On that other war-front, Afghanistan, things aren't too rosy either - so much so that the new British ambassador to Kabul has made what can only be seen as a dire prediction [as the TimesOnLine reports]:
"Britain will need to stay in Afghanistan for "decades" to fight terrorism and pull the country out of poverty, the UK's new ambassador to Kabul said today.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who has been in his post for six weeks, said efforts to stabilise and rebuild the war-torn country would have to be a "marathon rather than a sprint".
In an interview this morning the ambassador, considered one of Britain's biggest diplomatic heavyweights, admitted that the UK should have stepped up its development and regeneration efforts in Afghanistan earlier.
“The task of standing up a government of Afghanistan that is sustainable is going to take a very long time,” Sir Sherard told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme today. “It’s a marathon rather than a sprint. We should be thinking in terms of decades.”
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Pete's missing ticker
Christian Kerr, political pundit and journalist, writing in Crikey [only on subscription - well worth taking out] has some interesting political analysis on recent opinion polls and how Treasurer Peter Costello might want to consider them:
"Here are two facts most journalists would be astonished to discover. Labor has led every Newspoll since August and the Government has led only once since June last year.
Look at Labor’s two-party-preferred vote in Newspoll so far this year: 56, 54, 57, 61, 57, 59, 57, 59, 57, 55, 60, and 56. And in ACNielsen: 58, 61, 58, 58, and 57.
A few more of these in the parliamentary recess and a challenge might be on – if Costello has the b-lls. He has little to lose – except perhaps at least a three-year stint in opposition. If he took over now, he would be PM pro tem, with the chance to win and become PM in his own right.
If Costello became PM now and lost, but the election result ends up closer than the current polls, then he could take credit for a turnaround. If it is the same or worse, then Howard still takes the blame.
Who will be PM in 2010? If Rudd wins, it’s most unlikely he’ll be challenged in his first term. If Howard stays and wins, he might stay healthy and retain the will to continue “so long as his party wants him to”, but his position will be untenable even as “Howard the Invincible”.
Still, unless he strikes now, it’s hard to see Costello becoming PM. Howard will make sure of that, as will the other challengers.
But Costello seems too soft and lazy. Too soft and lazy to challenge and too soft and lazy to be an opposition leader. Yes, he was sharp and aggressive in Parliament yesterday, weighing into Kevin Rudd over his productivity problems.
But that’s shooting fish in a barrel. The Treasurer fails the ticker test."
"Here are two facts most journalists would be astonished to discover. Labor has led every Newspoll since August and the Government has led only once since June last year.
Look at Labor’s two-party-preferred vote in Newspoll so far this year: 56, 54, 57, 61, 57, 59, 57, 59, 57, 55, 60, and 56. And in ACNielsen: 58, 61, 58, 58, and 57.
A few more of these in the parliamentary recess and a challenge might be on – if Costello has the b-lls. He has little to lose – except perhaps at least a three-year stint in opposition. If he took over now, he would be PM pro tem, with the chance to win and become PM in his own right.
If Costello became PM now and lost, but the election result ends up closer than the current polls, then he could take credit for a turnaround. If it is the same or worse, then Howard still takes the blame.
Who will be PM in 2010? If Rudd wins, it’s most unlikely he’ll be challenged in his first term. If Howard stays and wins, he might stay healthy and retain the will to continue “so long as his party wants him to”, but his position will be untenable even as “Howard the Invincible”.
Still, unless he strikes now, it’s hard to see Costello becoming PM. Howard will make sure of that, as will the other challengers.
But Costello seems too soft and lazy. Too soft and lazy to challenge and too soft and lazy to be an opposition leader. Yes, he was sharp and aggressive in Parliament yesterday, weighing into Kevin Rudd over his productivity problems.
But that’s shooting fish in a barrel. The Treasurer fails the ticker test."
World Refugee Day 2007
You might not know it given the scant, if any, marking of the day in the media or elsewhere, but today, 20 June, has been designated by UNHCR as World Refugee Day.
As the UNHCR records on its website:
World Refugee Day: Displacement in the 21st Century. A new paradigm
"The refugee challenge in the 21st century is changing rapidly. People are forced to flee their homes for increasingly complicated and interlinked reasons. Some 40 million people worldwide are already uprooted by violence and persecution, and it is likely that the future will see more people on the run as a growing number of push factors compound one another to create conditions for further forced displacement.
Today people do not just flee persecution and war but also injustice, exclusion, environmental pressures, competition for scarce resources and all the miserable human consequences of dysfunctional states.
The task facing the international community in this new environment is to find ways to unlock the potential of refugees who have so much to offer if they are given the opportunity to regain control over their lives.
There are three ways we at the UN Refugee Agency are making this goal a reality: we protect, we build and we advocate. First, we protect refugee rights to safety, shelter and health, focusing special attention on the most vulnerable people, particularly women and girls.
Second, we work with our partners to build the capacity of refugees to fend for themselves once they are able to do so. And we work hard to find solutions so that refugees become self-sufficient as soon as possible.
Third, we advocate to draw attention to the plight of refugees and to raise the money necessary to get the job done. Our goal is to persuade people that it is our common responsibility to make a difference for those forced to pick-up and go through no fault of their own. Results on the ground show we are making progress. Last year, we helped hundreds of thousands of people return home. In Africa, bright spots include stepped-up repatriation to South Sudan and winding up of UNHCR's operations in Liberia and Angola. In April, we held a major conference in Geneva and mobilized international support for the millions fleeing conflict in Iraq. We cannot do this alone. But with your support UNHCR can begin to turn the tide, giving refugees hope for the future and new opportunities for their families and their communities."
As the UNHCR records on its website:
World Refugee Day: Displacement in the 21st Century. A new paradigm
"The refugee challenge in the 21st century is changing rapidly. People are forced to flee their homes for increasingly complicated and interlinked reasons. Some 40 million people worldwide are already uprooted by violence and persecution, and it is likely that the future will see more people on the run as a growing number of push factors compound one another to create conditions for further forced displacement.
Today people do not just flee persecution and war but also injustice, exclusion, environmental pressures, competition for scarce resources and all the miserable human consequences of dysfunctional states.
The task facing the international community in this new environment is to find ways to unlock the potential of refugees who have so much to offer if they are given the opportunity to regain control over their lives.
There are three ways we at the UN Refugee Agency are making this goal a reality: we protect, we build and we advocate. First, we protect refugee rights to safety, shelter and health, focusing special attention on the most vulnerable people, particularly women and girls.
Second, we work with our partners to build the capacity of refugees to fend for themselves once they are able to do so. And we work hard to find solutions so that refugees become self-sufficient as soon as possible.
Third, we advocate to draw attention to the plight of refugees and to raise the money necessary to get the job done. Our goal is to persuade people that it is our common responsibility to make a difference for those forced to pick-up and go through no fault of their own. Results on the ground show we are making progress. Last year, we helped hundreds of thousands of people return home. In Africa, bright spots include stepped-up repatriation to South Sudan and winding up of UNHCR's operations in Liberia and Angola. In April, we held a major conference in Geneva and mobilized international support for the millions fleeing conflict in Iraq. We cannot do this alone. But with your support UNHCR can begin to turn the tide, giving refugees hope for the future and new opportunities for their families and their communities."
New defence minister comes in with guns blazing
Let's just hope that this report on TimesOnLine is not correct - for if it is, stand back for the carnage and fallout of a disgraceful act of aggression of the first order.
"Israel's new defence minister Ehud Barak is planning an attack on Gaza within weeks to crush the Hamas militants who have seized power there.
According to senior Israeli military sources, the plan calls for 20,000 troops to destroy much of Hamas’s military capability in days.
The raid would be triggered by Hamas rocket attacks against Israel or a resumption of suicide bombings.
Barak, who is expected to become defence minister tomorrow, has already demanded detailed plans to deploy two armoured divisions and an infantry division, accompanied by assault drones and F-16 jets, against Hamas."
"Israel's new defence minister Ehud Barak is planning an attack on Gaza within weeks to crush the Hamas militants who have seized power there.
According to senior Israeli military sources, the plan calls for 20,000 troops to destroy much of Hamas’s military capability in days.
The raid would be triggered by Hamas rocket attacks against Israel or a resumption of suicide bombings.
Barak, who is expected to become defence minister tomorrow, has already demanded detailed plans to deploy two armoured divisions and an infantry division, accompanied by assault drones and F-16 jets, against Hamas."
When things come around......and bite!
Americans have always been good at lecturing the world on what is said to be right and wrong. That double-standards have always been present goes without saying. And, so it has now happened to the Americans yet again.
Post 9/11 the Americans have had their "detainees". Not charged with anything. Just locked up. The US has virtually ignored the outrage from certain quarters inside the country and from around the world. Now those pesky Iranians have taken their own "detainees" - Americans. Ah, that's different! - as Karen Greenberg highlights in this piece on Tom Dispatch:
"For Americans, it should be startling to see the word "detainee" suddenly appear in a different country, on a different continent, and referring not to alleged jihadi terrorists but to a group of Americans. After all, "detainee" is the word the Bush administration coined to deal with suspected terrorist captives who, they argued, should be subjected to extra-legal treatment as part of the Global War on Terrorism. Now, that terminology is, as critics long predicted might happen, being turned against American citizens. I am referring to the current detention of Americans in Iran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government currently holds in custody Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, Iranian-American scholars and activists accused of being spies and/or employees of the U.S. government intent on fomenting dissent and disruption within Iran. (A fifth American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent engaged in business of an unknown nature in Iran, disappeared on March 8th.) The four are apparently behind bars at Tehran's Evin prison, notorious for its special wing for political prisoners and, among human rights activists, for being the location of the lethal beating of a Canadian-Iranian journalist in 2003. Evin and other Iranian prisons are cited by Human Rights Watch for frequent torture and mistreatment of arrested Iranian dissidents.
The Iranian government has said that the detained are threats to "national security," despite protests that they were visiting their families and/or engaged in purely peaceful work. The U.S. Government has been denied information on their treatment and the possible accusations against them.
The Bush administration is naturally incensed over the incarceration of these Americans. As well its officials should be. "It is absolutely incredible to us," said State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey, "to think that there could be any possible doubt in the Iranians' minds that these individuals are there simply to conduct normal, basic human interactions, including family visits." President Bush himself has insisted that "their presence in Iran poses no threat." The Associated Press reported that Bush was also "‘disturbed' by the fact that Iran has still not provided any information about the welfare and whereabouts" of the missing Levinson and has condemned Iran for being "defiant as to the demands of the free world."
President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly without respect for international rights.
But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a trap for the government -- and for Americans generally. More than five years after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now seek to claim in relation to Iran."
Post 9/11 the Americans have had their "detainees". Not charged with anything. Just locked up. The US has virtually ignored the outrage from certain quarters inside the country and from around the world. Now those pesky Iranians have taken their own "detainees" - Americans. Ah, that's different! - as Karen Greenberg highlights in this piece on Tom Dispatch:
"For Americans, it should be startling to see the word "detainee" suddenly appear in a different country, on a different continent, and referring not to alleged jihadi terrorists but to a group of Americans. After all, "detainee" is the word the Bush administration coined to deal with suspected terrorist captives who, they argued, should be subjected to extra-legal treatment as part of the Global War on Terrorism. Now, that terminology is, as critics long predicted might happen, being turned against American citizens. I am referring to the current detention of Americans in Iran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government currently holds in custody Haleh Esfandiari, Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, Iranian-American scholars and activists accused of being spies and/or employees of the U.S. government intent on fomenting dissent and disruption within Iran. (A fifth American, Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent engaged in business of an unknown nature in Iran, disappeared on March 8th.) The four are apparently behind bars at Tehran's Evin prison, notorious for its special wing for political prisoners and, among human rights activists, for being the location of the lethal beating of a Canadian-Iranian journalist in 2003. Evin and other Iranian prisons are cited by Human Rights Watch for frequent torture and mistreatment of arrested Iranian dissidents.
The Iranian government has said that the detained are threats to "national security," despite protests that they were visiting their families and/or engaged in purely peaceful work. The U.S. Government has been denied information on their treatment and the possible accusations against them.
The Bush administration is naturally incensed over the incarceration of these Americans. As well its officials should be. "It is absolutely incredible to us," said State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey, "to think that there could be any possible doubt in the Iranians' minds that these individuals are there simply to conduct normal, basic human interactions, including family visits." President Bush himself has insisted that "their presence in Iran poses no threat." The Associated Press reported that Bush was also "‘disturbed' by the fact that Iran has still not provided any information about the welfare and whereabouts" of the missing Levinson and has condemned Iran for being "defiant as to the demands of the free world."
President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly without respect for international rights.
But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a trap for the government -- and for Americans generally. More than five years after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now seek to claim in relation to Iran."
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
In for the long haul view in Iraq
Roger Cohen, veteran columnist, writing in the IHT, gives a sober, but probably realistic assessment, of where the US stands in relation to Iraq and the fallout of the invasion and what has been wrought in this now war-torn country. Sadly, the ramifications of the totally misconceived and illegal invasion extend way beyond the Iraqi borders. Cohen concludes that the US, and the West, is in for a long haul.
"The Iraqi conflict is going to be with us for years if not decades. The country has become the focus of a crisis of Islamic civilization that is closer to its onset than its conclusion. Violent conflict between the now dominant Shiite community and Sunnis nostalgic for power is but one aspect of this epochal upheaval.
As in the Palestinian territories, the Iraqi struggle has been complicated by the presence of forces driven not by national goals but by the global objectives of jihadist Islamism. These jihadists, finding inspiration in their reading of the sacred texts of Islam, have embarked on a holy war against the West.
It is against such fanatics, some of whom call themselves Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, that General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, has just announced a major offensive. I wish Petraeus and the 155,000 troops now in Iraq luck, but I am not hopeful.
The fact is that however many bomb makers are taken out, however many cells broken, the social and religious forces driving angry young men across the Muslim world into this sort of fight are not about to abate."
"The Iraqi conflict is going to be with us for years if not decades. The country has become the focus of a crisis of Islamic civilization that is closer to its onset than its conclusion. Violent conflict between the now dominant Shiite community and Sunnis nostalgic for power is but one aspect of this epochal upheaval.
As in the Palestinian territories, the Iraqi struggle has been complicated by the presence of forces driven not by national goals but by the global objectives of jihadist Islamism. These jihadists, finding inspiration in their reading of the sacred texts of Islam, have embarked on a holy war against the West.
It is against such fanatics, some of whom call themselves Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, that General David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, has just announced a major offensive. I wish Petraeus and the 155,000 troops now in Iraq luck, but I am not hopeful.
The fact is that however many bomb makers are taken out, however many cells broken, the social and religious forces driving angry young men across the Muslim world into this sort of fight are not about to abate."
Palestinians: External pressures? Western hypocrisy?
It looks quite unseemly. All of sudden the West and Israel are embracing the new Abbas-appointed Palestinian government - and in the process people like Condi Rice spouting forth about democracy. Wait a minute! The Hamas-dominated Palestinian Government was democratically elected and has now, on one view at least, being wrongly displaced by President Abbas.
That Palestinian has been pitted against Palestinian goes without saying. What has caused this appalling state of affairs? Karma Nabulsi, fellow in politics and international relations at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, seeks to address the issue in a piece in Guardian Unlimited.
"There is nothing uglier and more brutal to the human spirit, nothing more lethal to that universal hope for freedom, than to see a people struggling for liberty for such a long time begin to kill each other. How and why did we get here? Above all: how do we get out of here? These are the questions everyone watching events unfold in Gaza and the West Bank are asking themselves. But before answering them, it is essential to understand just what we are witnessing.
This is not at its heart a civil war, nor is it an example of the upsurge of regional Islamism. It is not reducible to an atavistic clan or fratricidal blood-letting, nor to a power struggle between warring factions. This violence cannot be characterised as a battle between secular moderates who seek a negotiated settlement and religious terrorist groups. And this is not, above all, a miserable situation that has simply slipped unnoticed into disaster.
The many complex steps that led us here today were largely the outcome of the deliberate policies of a belligerent occupying power backed by the US. As the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Alvaro de Soto, remarked in his confidential report leaked last week in this paper: "The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca, the US envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much 'I like this violence', referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured."
On the current issues in Gaza and the West Bank and the fallout, Rami G. Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published in the IHT under the headline "Palestinian incompetence, Western hypocrisy" writes:
"It's hard to know who appears more ludicrous and despicable, the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas leaderships allowing their gunmen to fight it out on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, or an American administration saying it supports the "moderates" in Palestine who want to negotiate peace with Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday to underline American support for "moderates" committed to a negotiated peace with Israel, such as Abbas. She also called leaders of "moderate" Arab states to rally their support for Abbas against Hamas.
Surrealistically, this was happening when Hamas forces were routing Fatah's security forces to take control of all public facilities in Gaza, and Abbas was proving that the sort of Arab "moderation" he represents has little anchorage in reality any more.
Abbas declared a state of emergency and dismissed the Palestinian government, but the facts on the ground are that the Palestinian government is a fiction, and his state of emergency is a state of imagination. The "moderation" of Abbas and his Fatah movement was a noble nationalistic cause three decades ago. But Fatah's own incompetence and creeping corruption - especially after taking control of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords of 1993 - have turned the movement into an embarrassment that is little more than a pathetic poster child and crippled errand boy for the U.S. State Department."
That Palestinian has been pitted against Palestinian goes without saying. What has caused this appalling state of affairs? Karma Nabulsi, fellow in politics and international relations at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, seeks to address the issue in a piece in Guardian Unlimited.
"There is nothing uglier and more brutal to the human spirit, nothing more lethal to that universal hope for freedom, than to see a people struggling for liberty for such a long time begin to kill each other. How and why did we get here? Above all: how do we get out of here? These are the questions everyone watching events unfold in Gaza and the West Bank are asking themselves. But before answering them, it is essential to understand just what we are witnessing.
This is not at its heart a civil war, nor is it an example of the upsurge of regional Islamism. It is not reducible to an atavistic clan or fratricidal blood-letting, nor to a power struggle between warring factions. This violence cannot be characterised as a battle between secular moderates who seek a negotiated settlement and religious terrorist groups. And this is not, above all, a miserable situation that has simply slipped unnoticed into disaster.
The many complex steps that led us here today were largely the outcome of the deliberate policies of a belligerent occupying power backed by the US. As the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Alvaro de Soto, remarked in his confidential report leaked last week in this paper: "The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca, the US envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much 'I like this violence', referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured."
On the current issues in Gaza and the West Bank and the fallout, Rami G. Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published in the IHT under the headline "Palestinian incompetence, Western hypocrisy" writes:
"It's hard to know who appears more ludicrous and despicable, the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas leaderships allowing their gunmen to fight it out on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, or an American administration saying it supports the "moderates" in Palestine who want to negotiate peace with Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday to underline American support for "moderates" committed to a negotiated peace with Israel, such as Abbas. She also called leaders of "moderate" Arab states to rally their support for Abbas against Hamas.
Surrealistically, this was happening when Hamas forces were routing Fatah's security forces to take control of all public facilities in Gaza, and Abbas was proving that the sort of Arab "moderation" he represents has little anchorage in reality any more.
Abbas declared a state of emergency and dismissed the Palestinian government, but the facts on the ground are that the Palestinian government is a fiction, and his state of emergency is a state of imagination. The "moderation" of Abbas and his Fatah movement was a noble nationalistic cause three decades ago. But Fatah's own incompetence and creeping corruption - especially after taking control of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords of 1993 - have turned the movement into an embarrassment that is little more than a pathetic poster child and crippled errand boy for the U.S. State Department."
Monday, June 18, 2007
Abu Ghraib revisited - with revelations
This paragraph, from another excellent piece by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker sets the tone:
"In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.” (A spokesperson for Cody said, “Conversations regarding general officer management are considered private personnel discussions. General Cody has great respect for Major General Taguba as an officer, leader, and American patriot.”)
“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”
Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation."
Read a fascinating insight and revelation about the man, Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal and paid a "price" for doing so - being honest and saying how it is! It goes without saying that he pinpointed defaults and responsibility for the whole scandal high up the political line.
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”
"In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff. “This is your Vice,” he told Taguba. “I need you to retire by January of 2007.” No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, “He offered no reason.” (A spokesperson for Cody said, “Conversations regarding general officer management are considered private personnel discussions. General Cody has great respect for Major General Taguba as an officer, leader, and American patriot.”)
“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”
Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation."
Read a fascinating insight and revelation about the man, Army Major General Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal and paid a "price" for doing so - being honest and saying how it is! It goes without saying that he pinpointed defaults and responsibility for the whole scandal high up the political line.
“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”
A disaster unfolding
First Israel and Western governments wanted democratic elections in Gaza and the West Bank. They got them, to universal recognition that the elections were fairly and duly held. But, the outcome was not the desired one. Hamas won! So, Israel and the US embarked on efforts to undermine the new government including, with the assistance of European nations, starving the Palestinians of both aide and monies due and payable to them.
So, today we witness an allegedly new Palestinian government whilst Gaza is completely isolated. PM Olmert has already spoken of the benefits for peace this all brings about. A more sober assessment where this is all headed is that of Steven Erlanger, NY Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief:
"After the failure of the Palestinian unity government, Mr. Olmert said in an interview with The New York Times, “I suggest we look at things in a much more realistic manner and with less self-deceit.”
But like all seemingly elegant solutions in this region, this one has many pitfalls. It is entirely unclear whether Hamas would sit still during such an effort, whether Mr. Abbas would be willing to ignore the 1.5 million residents of Gaza or whether the separation strategy would gain the crucial support of the Arab world.
As Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation and the New America Foundation in Washington suggests, it’s hard to imagine how Mr. Abbas could accept the tax receipts Israel has been withholding from the Hamas government and use them only for West Bankers. The Palestinians in Gaza and the refugee diaspora would not stand for it, he says, and Fatah might lose more popularity than it gains."
Meanwhile, Uri Avnery, an insightful observer and commentator, writes:
"The American aim is clear. President Bush has chosen a local leader for every Muslim country, who will rule it under American protection and follow American orders. In Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan, and also in Palestine.
Hamas believes that the man marked for this job in Gaza is Mohammed Dahlan. For years it has looked as if he was being groomed for this position. The American and Israeli media have been singing his praises, describing him as a strong, determined leader, "moderate" (i.e. obedient to American orders) and "pragmatic" (i.e. obedient to Israeli orders). And the more the Americans and Israelis lauded Dahlan, the more they undermined his standing among the Palestinians. Especially as Dahlan was away in Cairo, as if waiting for his men to receive the promised arms.
In the eyes of Hamas, the attack on the Fatah strongholds in the Gaza Strip is a preventive war. The organizations of Abbas and Dahlan melted like snow in the Palestinian sun. Hamas has easily taken over the whole Gaza Strip.
How could the American and Israeli generals miscalculate so badly? They are able to think only in strictly military terms: so-and-so many soldiers, so-and-so many machine guns. But in interior struggles in particular, quantitative calculations are secondary. The morale of the fighters and public sentiment are far more important. The members of the Fatah organizations do not know what they are fighting for. The Gaza population supports Hamas, because they believe that it is fighting the Israeli occupier. Their opponents look like collaborators of the occupation. The American statements about their intention of arming them with Israeli weapons have finally condemned them."
So, today we witness an allegedly new Palestinian government whilst Gaza is completely isolated. PM Olmert has already spoken of the benefits for peace this all brings about. A more sober assessment where this is all headed is that of Steven Erlanger, NY Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief:
"After the failure of the Palestinian unity government, Mr. Olmert said in an interview with The New York Times, “I suggest we look at things in a much more realistic manner and with less self-deceit.”
But like all seemingly elegant solutions in this region, this one has many pitfalls. It is entirely unclear whether Hamas would sit still during such an effort, whether Mr. Abbas would be willing to ignore the 1.5 million residents of Gaza or whether the separation strategy would gain the crucial support of the Arab world.
As Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation and the New America Foundation in Washington suggests, it’s hard to imagine how Mr. Abbas could accept the tax receipts Israel has been withholding from the Hamas government and use them only for West Bankers. The Palestinians in Gaza and the refugee diaspora would not stand for it, he says, and Fatah might lose more popularity than it gains."
Meanwhile, Uri Avnery, an insightful observer and commentator, writes:
"The American aim is clear. President Bush has chosen a local leader for every Muslim country, who will rule it under American protection and follow American orders. In Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan, and also in Palestine.
Hamas believes that the man marked for this job in Gaza is Mohammed Dahlan. For years it has looked as if he was being groomed for this position. The American and Israeli media have been singing his praises, describing him as a strong, determined leader, "moderate" (i.e. obedient to American orders) and "pragmatic" (i.e. obedient to Israeli orders). And the more the Americans and Israelis lauded Dahlan, the more they undermined his standing among the Palestinians. Especially as Dahlan was away in Cairo, as if waiting for his men to receive the promised arms.
In the eyes of Hamas, the attack on the Fatah strongholds in the Gaza Strip is a preventive war. The organizations of Abbas and Dahlan melted like snow in the Palestinian sun. Hamas has easily taken over the whole Gaza Strip.
How could the American and Israeli generals miscalculate so badly? They are able to think only in strictly military terms: so-and-so many soldiers, so-and-so many machine guns. But in interior struggles in particular, quantitative calculations are secondary. The morale of the fighters and public sentiment are far more important. The members of the Fatah organizations do not know what they are fighting for. The Gaza population supports Hamas, because they believe that it is fighting the Israeli occupier. Their opponents look like collaborators of the occupation. The American statements about their intention of arming them with Israeli weapons have finally condemned them."
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Laughable if it weren't so serious
In his weekly column in the NY Times Frank Rich [no friend of the Bush Administration] draws a few parellels between the Goti Mafia family and the final episode of "The Sopranos" in the US - but more pointedly deals with the testimonials submitted to the Court on behalf of Scooter Libby the other day when the judge was considering whether to allow Libby to escape his jail term pending the hearing of his appeal.
Richs' column [only available on line against subscription] speaks for itself. Just don't laugh too much when you read why Libby's attorneys resisted public disclosure of the testimonials:
"True, the Washington mob isn't as sexy as the Gotti or Soprano clans, but there is now a gripping nonfiction dramatization of its machinations available gratis on the Internet, no HBO subscription required. For this we can thank U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who presided over the Scooter Libby trial. Judge Walton's greatest move was not the 30-month sentence he gave Mr. Libby, a fall guy for higher-ups (and certain to be pardoned to protect their secrets). It was instead the judge's decision to make public the testimonials written to the court by members of the Washington establishment pleading that a criminal convicted on four felony counts be set free.
Mr. Libby's lawyers argued that these letters should remain locked away on the hilarious grounds that they might be "discussed, even mocked, by bloggers." And apparently many of the correspondents assumed that their missives would remain private, just like all other documents pertaining to Mr. Libby's former boss, Dick Cheney. The result is very little self-censorship among the authors and an epistolary gold mine for readers.
Among those contributing to the 373 pages of what thesmokinggun.com calls "Scooter Libby Love Letters" are self-identified liberals and Democrats, a few journalists (including a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine) and a goodly sample of those who presided over the Iraq catastrophe or cheered it on. This is a documentary snapshot of the elite Washington mob of our time.
Like the scripts for "The Sopranos," the letters are not without mordant laughs. Henry Kissinger writes a perfunctory two paragraphs, of which the one about Mr. Libby rather than himself seems an afterthought. James Carville co-signs a letter by Mary Matalin tediously detailing Mr. Libby's devotion to organizing trick-or-treat festivities for administration children spending a post-9/11 Halloween at an "undisclosed location." One correspondent writes in astonishment that Mr. Libby once helped "a neighbor who is a staunch Democrat" dig his car out of the snow, and another is in awe that Mr. Libby would "personally buy his son a gift rather than passing the task on to his wife." Many praise Mr. Libby's novel, "The Apprentice," apparently on the principle that an overwritten slab of published fiction might legitimize the short stories he fabricated freelance for a grand jury.
But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait they provide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As the political historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Mr. Libby perjured himself "only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon." Has there ever been a government leader convicted of a crime — and I don't mean only Americans — who didn't see himself as saving the world from the enemy?
The Libby supporters never acknowledge the undisputed fact that their hero, a lawyer by profession, leaked classified information about a covert C.I.A. officer. And that he did so not accidentally but to try to silence an administration critic who called attention to the White House's prewar lies about W.M.D. intelligence. And that he compounded the original lies by lying repeatedly to investigators pursuing an inquiry that without his interference might have nailed others now known to have also leaked Valerie Wilson's identity (Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer).
Much has been said about the hypocrisy of those on the right, champions both of Bill Clinton's impeachment and of unflinching immigration enforcement, who call for legal amnesty in Mr. Libby's case. To thicken their exquisite bind, these selective sticklers for strict justice have been foiled in their usual drill of attacking the judge in the case as "liberal." Judge Walton was initially appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan and was elevated to his present job by the current President Bush; he was assigned as well to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the Bush-appointed chief justice, John Roberts. Such credentials notwithstanding, Judge Walton told the court on Thursday that he was alarmed by new correspondence and phone calls from the Libby mob since the sentencing "wishing bad things" on him and his family.
In Washington, however, hypocrisy is a perennial crime in both parties; if all the city's hypocrites were put in jail, there would be no one left to run the government. What is more striking about the Libby love letters is how nearly all of them ignore the reality that the crime of lying under oath is at the heart of the case. That issue simply isn't on these letter writers' radar screen; the criminal act of perjury isn't addressed (unless it's ascribed to memory loss because Mr. Libby was so darn busy saving the world). Given that Mr. Libby expressed no contrition in court after being convicted, you'd think some of his defenders might step into that moral vacuum to speak for him. But there's been so much lying surrounding this war from the start that everyone is inured to it by now. In Washington, lying no longer registers as an offense against the rule of law.
Instead the letter writers repeat tirelessly that Mr. Libby is a victim, suffering "permanent damage" to his reputation, family and career in the typical judgment of Kenneth Adelman, the foreign-policy thinker who predicted a "cakewalk" for America in Iraq. There's a whole lot of projection going on, because to judge from these letters, those who drummed up this war think of themselves as victims too. In his letter, the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz sees his friend's case as an excuse to deflect his own culpability for the fiasco. He writes that "during the spring and summer of 2003, when some others were envisioning a prolonged American occupation," Mr. Libby "was a strong advocate for a more rapid build-up of the Iraqi Army and a more rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, points on which history will prove him to have been prescient."
History will prove no such thing; a "rapid" buildup of the Iraqi Army was and is a mirage, and the neocons' chosen leader for an instant sovereign Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, had no political following. But Mr. Wolfowitz's real point is to pin his own catastrophic blundering on L. Paul Bremer, the neocons' chosen scapegoat for a policy that was doomed with or without Mr. Bremer's incompetent execution of the American occupation.
Of all the Libby worshipers, the one most mocked in the blogosphere and beyond is Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American academic and war proponent who fantasized that a liberated Iraq would have a (positive) "contagion effect" on the region and that Americans would be greeted "in Baghdad and Basra with kites and boom boxes." (I guess it all depends on your definition of "boom boxes.") In an open letter to President Bush for The Wall Street Journal op-ed page on June 8, he embroidered his initial letter to Judge Walton, likening Mr. Libby to a "fallen soldier" in the Iraq war. In Mr. Ajami's view, Tim Russert (whose testimony contradicted Mr. Libby's) and the American system of justice are untrustworthy, and "the 'covertness' of Mrs. Wilson was never convincingly and fully established." (The C.I.A. confirmed her covert status in court documents filed in May.)
Mr. Ajami notes, accurately, that the trial was "about the Iraq war and its legitimacy" — an argument that could also be mustered by defenders of Alger Hiss who felt his perjury trial was about the cold war. But it's even more revealing that the only "casualty of a war" Mr. Ajami's conscience prompts him to mention is Mr. Libby, a figurative casualty rather than a literal one.
No wonder Victoria Gotti denigrated "that mob in Washington." When the godfathers of this war speak of never leaving "a fallen comrade" on the battlefield in Iraq, as Mr. Ajami writes of Mr. Libby, they are speaking first and foremost of one another. The soldiers still making the ultimate sacrifice for this gang's hubristic folly will just have to fend for themselves."
Richs' column [only available on line against subscription] speaks for itself. Just don't laugh too much when you read why Libby's attorneys resisted public disclosure of the testimonials:
"True, the Washington mob isn't as sexy as the Gotti or Soprano clans, but there is now a gripping nonfiction dramatization of its machinations available gratis on the Internet, no HBO subscription required. For this we can thank U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who presided over the Scooter Libby trial. Judge Walton's greatest move was not the 30-month sentence he gave Mr. Libby, a fall guy for higher-ups (and certain to be pardoned to protect their secrets). It was instead the judge's decision to make public the testimonials written to the court by members of the Washington establishment pleading that a criminal convicted on four felony counts be set free.
Mr. Libby's lawyers argued that these letters should remain locked away on the hilarious grounds that they might be "discussed, even mocked, by bloggers." And apparently many of the correspondents assumed that their missives would remain private, just like all other documents pertaining to Mr. Libby's former boss, Dick Cheney. The result is very little self-censorship among the authors and an epistolary gold mine for readers.
Among those contributing to the 373 pages of what thesmokinggun.com calls "Scooter Libby Love Letters" are self-identified liberals and Democrats, a few journalists (including a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine) and a goodly sample of those who presided over the Iraq catastrophe or cheered it on. This is a documentary snapshot of the elite Washington mob of our time.
Like the scripts for "The Sopranos," the letters are not without mordant laughs. Henry Kissinger writes a perfunctory two paragraphs, of which the one about Mr. Libby rather than himself seems an afterthought. James Carville co-signs a letter by Mary Matalin tediously detailing Mr. Libby's devotion to organizing trick-or-treat festivities for administration children spending a post-9/11 Halloween at an "undisclosed location." One correspondent writes in astonishment that Mr. Libby once helped "a neighbor who is a staunch Democrat" dig his car out of the snow, and another is in awe that Mr. Libby would "personally buy his son a gift rather than passing the task on to his wife." Many praise Mr. Libby's novel, "The Apprentice," apparently on the principle that an overwritten slab of published fiction might legitimize the short stories he fabricated freelance for a grand jury.
But what makes these letters rise above inanity is the portrait they provide of a wartime capital cut adrift from moral bearings. As the political historian Rick Perlstein has written, one of the recurrent themes of these pleas for mercy is that Mr. Libby perjured himself "only because he was so busy protecting us from Armageddon." Has there ever been a government leader convicted of a crime — and I don't mean only Americans — who didn't see himself as saving the world from the enemy?
The Libby supporters never acknowledge the undisputed fact that their hero, a lawyer by profession, leaked classified information about a covert C.I.A. officer. And that he did so not accidentally but to try to silence an administration critic who called attention to the White House's prewar lies about W.M.D. intelligence. And that he compounded the original lies by lying repeatedly to investigators pursuing an inquiry that without his interference might have nailed others now known to have also leaked Valerie Wilson's identity (Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer).
Much has been said about the hypocrisy of those on the right, champions both of Bill Clinton's impeachment and of unflinching immigration enforcement, who call for legal amnesty in Mr. Libby's case. To thicken their exquisite bind, these selective sticklers for strict justice have been foiled in their usual drill of attacking the judge in the case as "liberal." Judge Walton was initially appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan and was elevated to his present job by the current President Bush; he was assigned as well to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the Bush-appointed chief justice, John Roberts. Such credentials notwithstanding, Judge Walton told the court on Thursday that he was alarmed by new correspondence and phone calls from the Libby mob since the sentencing "wishing bad things" on him and his family.
In Washington, however, hypocrisy is a perennial crime in both parties; if all the city's hypocrites were put in jail, there would be no one left to run the government. What is more striking about the Libby love letters is how nearly all of them ignore the reality that the crime of lying under oath is at the heart of the case. That issue simply isn't on these letter writers' radar screen; the criminal act of perjury isn't addressed (unless it's ascribed to memory loss because Mr. Libby was so darn busy saving the world). Given that Mr. Libby expressed no contrition in court after being convicted, you'd think some of his defenders might step into that moral vacuum to speak for him. But there's been so much lying surrounding this war from the start that everyone is inured to it by now. In Washington, lying no longer registers as an offense against the rule of law.
Instead the letter writers repeat tirelessly that Mr. Libby is a victim, suffering "permanent damage" to his reputation, family and career in the typical judgment of Kenneth Adelman, the foreign-policy thinker who predicted a "cakewalk" for America in Iraq. There's a whole lot of projection going on, because to judge from these letters, those who drummed up this war think of themselves as victims too. In his letter, the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz sees his friend's case as an excuse to deflect his own culpability for the fiasco. He writes that "during the spring and summer of 2003, when some others were envisioning a prolonged American occupation," Mr. Libby "was a strong advocate for a more rapid build-up of the Iraqi Army and a more rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, points on which history will prove him to have been prescient."
History will prove no such thing; a "rapid" buildup of the Iraqi Army was and is a mirage, and the neocons' chosen leader for an instant sovereign Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, had no political following. But Mr. Wolfowitz's real point is to pin his own catastrophic blundering on L. Paul Bremer, the neocons' chosen scapegoat for a policy that was doomed with or without Mr. Bremer's incompetent execution of the American occupation.
Of all the Libby worshipers, the one most mocked in the blogosphere and beyond is Fouad Ajami, the Lebanese-American academic and war proponent who fantasized that a liberated Iraq would have a (positive) "contagion effect" on the region and that Americans would be greeted "in Baghdad and Basra with kites and boom boxes." (I guess it all depends on your definition of "boom boxes.") In an open letter to President Bush for The Wall Street Journal op-ed page on June 8, he embroidered his initial letter to Judge Walton, likening Mr. Libby to a "fallen soldier" in the Iraq war. In Mr. Ajami's view, Tim Russert (whose testimony contradicted Mr. Libby's) and the American system of justice are untrustworthy, and "the 'covertness' of Mrs. Wilson was never convincingly and fully established." (The C.I.A. confirmed her covert status in court documents filed in May.)
Mr. Ajami notes, accurately, that the trial was "about the Iraq war and its legitimacy" — an argument that could also be mustered by defenders of Alger Hiss who felt his perjury trial was about the cold war. But it's even more revealing that the only "casualty of a war" Mr. Ajami's conscience prompts him to mention is Mr. Libby, a figurative casualty rather than a literal one.
No wonder Victoria Gotti denigrated "that mob in Washington." When the godfathers of this war speak of never leaving "a fallen comrade" on the battlefield in Iraq, as Mr. Ajami writes of Mr. Libby, they are speaking first and foremost of one another. The soldiers still making the ultimate sacrifice for this gang's hubristic folly will just have to fend for themselves."
Blair caught out having lied - yet again!
This report from The Guardian says all that needs to be said - PM Tony Blair has, yet again, been shown to have lied about something in relation to the ill-fated Iraq War. Not surprising but hardly a good note to go out on!
"Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more."
"Tony Blair agreed to commit British troops to battle in Iraq in the full knowledge that Washington had failed to make adequate preparations for the postwar reconstruction of the country.
In a devastating account of the chaotic preparations for the war, which comes as Blair enters his final full week in Downing Street, key No 10 aides and friends of Blair have revealed the Prime Minister repeatedly and unsuccessfully raised his concerns with the White House.
He also agreed to commit troops to the conflict even though President George Bush had personally said Britain could help 'some other way'.
The disclosures, in a two-part Channel 4 documentary about Blair's decade in Downing Street, will raise questions about Blair's public assurances at the time of the war in 2003 that he was satisfied with the post-war planning. In one of the most significant interviews in the programme, Peter Mandelson says that the Prime Minister knew the preparations were inadequate but said he was powerless to do more."
Iran: Frightening return to 1979 strictures
It's bad enough that the country's President threatens the existence of Israel or is seemingly hell-bent on Iran going nuclear, but the crack-down on the citizenry would suggest that things are are going to go from bad to worse, on many levels, for the country as a whole.
This report by The Washington Post paints a very bleak picture of how events are clearly spinning out of control in Iran:
"Iran is in the midst of a sweeping crackdown that both Iranians and U.S. analysts compare to a cultural revolution in its attempt to steer the oil-rich theocracy back to the rigid strictures of the 1979 revolution.
The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups.
The move has quashed or forced underground many independent civil society groups, silenced protests over issues including women's rights and pay rates, quelled academic debate, and sparked society-wide fear about several aspects of daily life, the sources said."
One can only puzzzle where all of this will lead. Not to be forgotten is that the Iran's population is largely comprised of people under the age of 30. Will they tolerate, let alone stand idly by, whilst the current crack-down continues? Unlikely!
This report by The Washington Post paints a very bleak picture of how events are clearly spinning out of control in Iran:
"Iran is in the midst of a sweeping crackdown that both Iranians and U.S. analysts compare to a cultural revolution in its attempt to steer the oil-rich theocracy back to the rigid strictures of the 1979 revolution.
The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups.
The move has quashed or forced underground many independent civil society groups, silenced protests over issues including women's rights and pay rates, quelled academic debate, and sparked society-wide fear about several aspects of daily life, the sources said."
One can only puzzzle where all of this will lead. Not to be forgotten is that the Iran's population is largely comprised of people under the age of 30. Will they tolerate, let alone stand idly by, whilst the current crack-down continues? Unlikely!
Saturday, June 16, 2007
What / which "Palestine?"
Any commentary by Robert Fisk on what is really happening in the Middle East - and how events are likely to shape up in the future - can be assured to be both perceptive and probably right on the money.
Fisk's latest piece in The Indepenent, dealing with events in the last 72 hours in the Middle East, makes for an incisive and biting read - and raises questions and issues which will need to be addressed by all the main "players" in and "involved" in the Middle East:
"How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.
Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.
No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?
And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority"."
Fisk's latest piece in The Indepenent, dealing with events in the last 72 hours in the Middle East, makes for an incisive and biting read - and raises questions and issues which will need to be addressed by all the main "players" in and "involved" in the Middle East:
"How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.
Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.
No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?
And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority"."
The real "event" at Kirribilli revealed
Trust Mike Carlton, writing his weekly column in the SMH, to expose the real goings-on at Kirribilli House:
"Such an event there never had been, nor ever could be again. It would be a grand winter ball, to which all the quality of the county and the officers of the regiment were invited. Oh, the clatter of hooves and the rumble of carriages in the long cobbled drive, the swirl of silken gowns and the bobbing of footmen's wigs beneath the portico and, within the great house, what gaiety of the orchestra, what a profusion of elegant decoration and plenitude of refreshments. Rainbows of light from a Baccarat chandelier twinkled upon the diamonds of the ladies, on ribbons and stars and orders, on the crimson pelisse of a dashing colonel of Hussars. The ballroom was a-whirl to the sprightly step of the quadrille, the gavotte, the schottische.
"And there is the Prime Minister!" cried Mrs Bennet, raising her lorgnettes to peer across the milling throng. "The Master of Kirribilli himself! Daughters, I shall beg Lord Downer or Mr Abbott to make us an introduction."
With some warmth, Elizabeth replied to her mother that she did not seek an audience with the Prime Minister, whether effected by Lord Downer or Mr Abbott or both gentlemen together.
"Lizzy, I should box your ears," hissed Mrs Bennet. "We have joined the Liberal Party to find you a husband, and a husband we shall find. It is indeed a privilege to mix with such company, an honour not lightly bestowed. The Howards have graciously bidden us to attend this soiree and I entreat you - no, I direct you - to behave with a decorum appropriate to the occasion."
"Screw decorum," said Elizabeth. "It's a bare-faced political fund-raiser, and if the poor bloody taxpayers ever find out they're being rorted and ripped off like this there'll be hell to pay."
"Such an event there never had been, nor ever could be again. It would be a grand winter ball, to which all the quality of the county and the officers of the regiment were invited. Oh, the clatter of hooves and the rumble of carriages in the long cobbled drive, the swirl of silken gowns and the bobbing of footmen's wigs beneath the portico and, within the great house, what gaiety of the orchestra, what a profusion of elegant decoration and plenitude of refreshments. Rainbows of light from a Baccarat chandelier twinkled upon the diamonds of the ladies, on ribbons and stars and orders, on the crimson pelisse of a dashing colonel of Hussars. The ballroom was a-whirl to the sprightly step of the quadrille, the gavotte, the schottische.
"And there is the Prime Minister!" cried Mrs Bennet, raising her lorgnettes to peer across the milling throng. "The Master of Kirribilli himself! Daughters, I shall beg Lord Downer or Mr Abbott to make us an introduction."
With some warmth, Elizabeth replied to her mother that she did not seek an audience with the Prime Minister, whether effected by Lord Downer or Mr Abbott or both gentlemen together.
"Lizzy, I should box your ears," hissed Mrs Bennet. "We have joined the Liberal Party to find you a husband, and a husband we shall find. It is indeed a privilege to mix with such company, an honour not lightly bestowed. The Howards have graciously bidden us to attend this soiree and I entreat you - no, I direct you - to behave with a decorum appropriate to the occasion."
"Screw decorum," said Elizabeth. "It's a bare-faced political fund-raiser, and if the poor bloody taxpayers ever find out they're being rorted and ripped off like this there'll be hell to pay."
Gaza, Hamas - and the whole mess
Events have moved so quickly in Gaza and the West Bank that it now appears that Israel has an Islamic Hamas-led Gaza on its doorstep. Meanwhile, the West has already flagged its support for the President Abbas and his Fatah organisation in the West Bank. One doesn't need to be much of a political-animal to see that this just isn't going to work. What? - in effect starve out the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza?
At coincidence has it, The Spectator this week has an interview with Dr. Ghazi Hamad, official spokesman for the Palestinian National Authority, who seeks to explain where Hamas stands in the whole Gaza-West Bank-Israel mess:
"It’s a sunny afternoon in London, and I am having tea with Hamas. Or rather, I am having tea with Dr Ghazi Hamad, official spokesman for the Palestinian National Authority and the man tipped to be the new Interior Minister. Dressed in a finely tailored suit, Dr Hamad, a handsome former journalist who holds a doctorate in pharmacology and speaks fluent Arabic, Hebrew, English and French, does not look out of place in this Mayfair hotel. Nor, it has to be said, does he look like your average Muslim terrorist — although as a member of Hamas, he is classified as a terrorist by the West. There was uproar in certain quarters recently when it emerged that the Sudan-educated Palestinian had been granted a visa to travel to the UK.
But here he is, politely sipping Earl Grey and trying to convince me that his party is not a terrorist organisation. ‘Tell me,’ he asks, ‘has Hamas ever used violence against the West? No. We believe in moderate Islam. We are not Taleban. We are not al-Qa’eda.’
‘But you call for Israel’s destruction and recruit suicide bombers!’
He shakes his head at me, and I wonder if he is about to say ‘Israel? What’s that?’ Much to the frustration of the international quartet (EU, US, UN and Russia) and Israel, who claim to be ready to come to the negotiating table, Hamas has doggedly refused to accept the three conditions on which peace talks might be kick-started; one of which is officially recognising its occupying neighbour.
‘We have held a ceasefire since 2005’, he points out. ‘We fought the elections as Al-Eslah and Al-Tagheer, which means “change and reform”. We say that terrorism is not the right track to achieve goals. Our struggle is only against the occupation. Only to reclaim our homeland. Only to be able to live like any other human being.’
‘So, what, you don’t want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth?’
He looks me bang in the eye. ‘We just want a state, based on pre-1967 borders.’"
Reuters reports where things stand at the moment - doubtlessly fluid, to say the least - as being this:
"Western powers rallied behind Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday after Hamas Islamists routed his forces in the Gaza Strip and began imposing a new order in the enclave after days of bloody civil war.
Despite his mandate effectively being reduced to the West Bank, Abbas named a new prime minister after firing the Hamas-led government and declaring a state of emergency.
The United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- the Quartet of Middle East mediators -- gave a "clear message of support" to Abbas.
Washington, Europe and Israel prepared to open the taps on financial aid to Abbas that was cut off a year ago when Iranian-backed Hamas used its popularity in impoverished Gaza to defeat Abbas's more secular Fatah in a parliamentary election.
Abbas named Salam Fayyad, a technocrat who won respect in the West as finance minister, to replace Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister, three months after Hamas brought Fatah members into a "unity" government.
But in Gaza, all but divorced now from the larger West Bank in a blow to Palestinians' hopes for a united state, Hamas leader Haniyeh refused to accept his dismissal. He set about restoring order after six days of battles that ended in revenge killings and looting at Abbas's compound."
At coincidence has it, The Spectator this week has an interview with Dr. Ghazi Hamad, official spokesman for the Palestinian National Authority, who seeks to explain where Hamas stands in the whole Gaza-West Bank-Israel mess:
"It’s a sunny afternoon in London, and I am having tea with Hamas. Or rather, I am having tea with Dr Ghazi Hamad, official spokesman for the Palestinian National Authority and the man tipped to be the new Interior Minister. Dressed in a finely tailored suit, Dr Hamad, a handsome former journalist who holds a doctorate in pharmacology and speaks fluent Arabic, Hebrew, English and French, does not look out of place in this Mayfair hotel. Nor, it has to be said, does he look like your average Muslim terrorist — although as a member of Hamas, he is classified as a terrorist by the West. There was uproar in certain quarters recently when it emerged that the Sudan-educated Palestinian had been granted a visa to travel to the UK.
But here he is, politely sipping Earl Grey and trying to convince me that his party is not a terrorist organisation. ‘Tell me,’ he asks, ‘has Hamas ever used violence against the West? No. We believe in moderate Islam. We are not Taleban. We are not al-Qa’eda.’
‘But you call for Israel’s destruction and recruit suicide bombers!’
He shakes his head at me, and I wonder if he is about to say ‘Israel? What’s that?’ Much to the frustration of the international quartet (EU, US, UN and Russia) and Israel, who claim to be ready to come to the negotiating table, Hamas has doggedly refused to accept the three conditions on which peace talks might be kick-started; one of which is officially recognising its occupying neighbour.
‘We have held a ceasefire since 2005’, he points out. ‘We fought the elections as Al-Eslah and Al-Tagheer, which means “change and reform”. We say that terrorism is not the right track to achieve goals. Our struggle is only against the occupation. Only to reclaim our homeland. Only to be able to live like any other human being.’
‘So, what, you don’t want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth?’
He looks me bang in the eye. ‘We just want a state, based on pre-1967 borders.’"
Reuters reports where things stand at the moment - doubtlessly fluid, to say the least - as being this:
"Western powers rallied behind Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday after Hamas Islamists routed his forces in the Gaza Strip and began imposing a new order in the enclave after days of bloody civil war.
Despite his mandate effectively being reduced to the West Bank, Abbas named a new prime minister after firing the Hamas-led government and declaring a state of emergency.
The United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- the Quartet of Middle East mediators -- gave a "clear message of support" to Abbas.
Washington, Europe and Israel prepared to open the taps on financial aid to Abbas that was cut off a year ago when Iranian-backed Hamas used its popularity in impoverished Gaza to defeat Abbas's more secular Fatah in a parliamentary election.
Abbas named Salam Fayyad, a technocrat who won respect in the West as finance minister, to replace Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister, three months after Hamas brought Fatah members into a "unity" government.
But in Gaza, all but divorced now from the larger West Bank in a blow to Palestinians' hopes for a united state, Hamas leader Haniyeh refused to accept his dismissal. He set about restoring order after six days of battles that ended in revenge killings and looting at Abbas's compound."
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