In meeting with UK PM Brown at Camp David yesterday, George Bush said at a press conference, that "freedom and justice" was something all people of the world aspired to.
How the Iraqis are supposed to respond to that is hard to fathom given that the country, thanks to the invasion of the country, has created apparelled hardship for the citizenry. Things were certainly not that bad before the Coalition's Shock and Awe attack on Iraq.
The latest report by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq paints a bleak picture of the devastation wrought on the people of Iraq - as this Guardian Unlimited piece explains:
"One third of the Iraqi population needs emergency aid because of the humanitarian crisis caused by war and ongoing violence, according to a new report.
Around 8 million Iraqis are in urgent need of water, sanitation, food and shelter, a joint report (pdf) released today by Oxfam and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq said.
The document said that although armed violence is the greatest threat facing Iraqis, the population is also experiencing another crisis of "an alarming scale and severity".
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Welcome to Richistan, USA
The commentary is that the economies of most Western nations are traveling well. Share-market gyrations aside, people are said to be better off, credit is readily available, etc. etc. Things like affordability of housing and severe [credit] debt for many is mainly swept aside.
The Observer [reproduced on AlterNet] posits another picture altogether - of the American scene - of the ever-increasing divide between the rich and the poor. It is, in fact, a world-wide phenomenon.
"On the surface, Mark Cain works for a time-share company. Members pay a one-off sum to join and an annual fee. They then get to book holiday time in various destinations around the globe.
But Solstice clients are not ordinary people. They are America's super-rich and a brief glance at its operations reveal the vast and still widening gulf between them and the rest of America.
Solstice has only about 80 members. Platinum membership costs them $875,000 to join and then a $42,000 annual fee. In return they get access to 10 homes from London to California and a private yacht in the Caribbean, all fully staffed with cooks, cleaners and "lifestyle managers" ready to satisfy any whim from helicopter-skiing to audiences with local celebrities. As the firm's marketing manager, Cain knows what Solstice's clientele want. "We are trying to feed and manage this insatiable appetite for luxury," Cain said with pride.
America's super-rich have returned to the days of the Roaring Twenties. As the rest of the country struggles to get by, a huge bubble of multi-millionaires lives almost in a parallel world. The rich now live in their own world of private education, private health care and gated mansions. They have their own schools and their own banks. They even travel apart -- creating a booming industry of private jets and yachts. Their world now has a name, thanks to a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank which has dubbed it "Richistan." There every dream can come true. But for the American Dream itself -- which promises everyone can join the elite -- the emergence of Richistan is a mixed blessing. "We in America are heading towards 'developing nation' levels of inequality. We would become like Brazil. What does that say about us? What does that say about America?" Frank said.
In 1985 there were just 13 US billionaires. Now there are more than 1,000. In 2005 the US saw 227,000 new millionaires being created. One survey showed that the wealth of all US millionaires was $30 trillion, more than the GDPs of China, Japan, Brazil, Russia and the EU combined."
The Observer [reproduced on AlterNet] posits another picture altogether - of the American scene - of the ever-increasing divide between the rich and the poor. It is, in fact, a world-wide phenomenon.
"On the surface, Mark Cain works for a time-share company. Members pay a one-off sum to join and an annual fee. They then get to book holiday time in various destinations around the globe.
But Solstice clients are not ordinary people. They are America's super-rich and a brief glance at its operations reveal the vast and still widening gulf between them and the rest of America.
Solstice has only about 80 members. Platinum membership costs them $875,000 to join and then a $42,000 annual fee. In return they get access to 10 homes from London to California and a private yacht in the Caribbean, all fully staffed with cooks, cleaners and "lifestyle managers" ready to satisfy any whim from helicopter-skiing to audiences with local celebrities. As the firm's marketing manager, Cain knows what Solstice's clientele want. "We are trying to feed and manage this insatiable appetite for luxury," Cain said with pride.
America's super-rich have returned to the days of the Roaring Twenties. As the rest of the country struggles to get by, a huge bubble of multi-millionaires lives almost in a parallel world. The rich now live in their own world of private education, private health care and gated mansions. They have their own schools and their own banks. They even travel apart -- creating a booming industry of private jets and yachts. Their world now has a name, thanks to a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank which has dubbed it "Richistan." There every dream can come true. But for the American Dream itself -- which promises everyone can join the elite -- the emergence of Richistan is a mixed blessing. "We in America are heading towards 'developing nation' levels of inequality. We would become like Brazil. What does that say about us? What does that say about America?" Frank said.
In 1985 there were just 13 US billionaires. Now there are more than 1,000. In 2005 the US saw 227,000 new millionaires being created. One survey showed that the wealth of all US millionaires was $30 trillion, more than the GDPs of China, Japan, Brazil, Russia and the EU combined."
Monday, July 30, 2007
MI5 and those renditions
Little needs be added to this piece from The Guardian on the role of MI5 in renditioning - other than disgust and revulsion at the actions of the Americans with the apparent support and assistance of the Brits.
"An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal 'torture flight' under the programme known as extraordinary rendition.
In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe'. He was abducted and stripped naked by US agents, clad in nappies, a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA 'black site' jail near Kabul in Afghanistan."
Go on to read the full "story" here.
"An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal 'torture flight' under the programme known as extraordinary rendition.
In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe'. He was abducted and stripped naked by US agents, clad in nappies, a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA 'black site' jail near Kabul in Afghanistan."
Go on to read the full "story" here.
Exodus of mass proportions
Iraqis were rightly jubilant that they, against overwhelming odds, beat Saudi Arabia in the final of their football match played in Jakarta earlier today . As the young woman commented in an interview on Radio National's Breakfast program this morning, it was great for the Iraqis to celebrate for once - in other words, something positive amongst all the war and misery presently afflicting Iraq.
Not so happy news for Iraqis is the ever-continuing exodus from the country, as veteran reporter, Patrick Cockburn, reports in The Independent:
"Two thousand Iraqis are fleeing their homes every day. It is the greatest mass exodus of people ever in the Middle East and dwarfs anything seen in Europe since the Second World War. Four million people, one in seven Iraqis, have run away, because if they do not they will be killed. Two million have left Iraq, mainly for Syria and Jordan, and the same number have fled within the country.
Yet, while the US and Britain express sympathy for the plight of refugees in Africa, they are ignoring - or playing down- a far greater tragedy which is largely of their own making.
The US and Britain may not want to dwell on the disasters that have befallen Iraq during their occupation but the shanty towns crammed with refugees springing up in Iraq and neighbouring countries are becoming impossible to ignore.
Even so the UNHCR is having difficulty raising $100m (£50m) for relief. The organisation says the two countries caring for the biggest proportion of Iraqi refugees - Syria and Jordan - have still received "next to nothing from the world community". Some 1.4 million Iraqis have fled to Syria according to the UN High Commission for Refugees, Jordan has taken in 750 000 while Egypt and Lebanon have seen 200 000 Iraqis cross into their territories."
Not so happy news for Iraqis is the ever-continuing exodus from the country, as veteran reporter, Patrick Cockburn, reports in The Independent:
"Two thousand Iraqis are fleeing their homes every day. It is the greatest mass exodus of people ever in the Middle East and dwarfs anything seen in Europe since the Second World War. Four million people, one in seven Iraqis, have run away, because if they do not they will be killed. Two million have left Iraq, mainly for Syria and Jordan, and the same number have fled within the country.
Yet, while the US and Britain express sympathy for the plight of refugees in Africa, they are ignoring - or playing down- a far greater tragedy which is largely of their own making.
The US and Britain may not want to dwell on the disasters that have befallen Iraq during their occupation but the shanty towns crammed with refugees springing up in Iraq and neighbouring countries are becoming impossible to ignore.
Even so the UNHCR is having difficulty raising $100m (£50m) for relief. The organisation says the two countries caring for the biggest proportion of Iraqi refugees - Syria and Jordan - have still received "next to nothing from the world community". Some 1.4 million Iraqis have fled to Syria according to the UN High Commission for Refugees, Jordan has taken in 750 000 while Egypt and Lebanon have seen 200 000 Iraqis cross into their territories."
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Eh? President Petraeus?
Trust Frank Rich in his weekly column in the NY Times [only available in the newspaper itself or on line against subscription] to put into context George Bushs' absence from the Oval Office the other day whilst he underwent a medical checkup and treatment.....and by the way the medicos reported that they could find no brain!
"There was, of course, gallows humor galore when Dick Cheney briefly grabbed the wheel of our listing ship of state during the presidential colonoscopy last weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts. A once-durable staple of 21st-century American humor is in its last throes. We have a new surrogate president now. Sic transit Cheney. Long live David Petraeus!
It was The Washington Post that first quantified General Petraeus’s remarkable ascension. President Bush, who mentioned his new Iraq commander’s name only six times as the surge rolled out in January, has cited him more than 150 times in public utterances since, including 53 in May alone.
As always with this White House’s propaganda offensives, the message in Mr. Bush’s relentless repetitions never varies. General Petraeus is the “main man.” He is the man who gives “candid advice.” Come September, he will be the man who will give the president and the country their orders about the war.
And so another constitutional principle can be added to the long list of those junked by this administration: the quaint notion that our uniformed officers are supposed to report to civilian leadership. In a de facto military coup, the commander in chief is now reporting to the commander in Iraq. We must “wait to see what David has to say,” Mr. Bush says.
Actually, we don’t have to wait. We already know what David will say. He gave it away to The Times of London last month, when he said that September “is a deadline for a report, not a deadline for a change in policy.” In other words: Damn the report (and that irrelevant Congress that will read it) — full speed ahead. There will be no change in policy. As Michael Gordon reported in The New York Times last week, General Petraeus has collaborated on a classified strategy document that will keep American troops in Iraq well into 2009 as we wait for the miracles that will somehow bring that country security and a functioning government.
Though General Petraeus wrote his 1987 Princeton doctoral dissertation on “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam,” he has an unshakable penchant for seeing light at the end of tunnels. It has been three Julys since he posed for the cover of Newsweek under the headline “Can This Man Save Iraq?” The magazine noted that the general’s pacification of Mosul was “a textbook case of doing counterinsurgency the right way.” Four months later, the police chief installed by General Petraeus defected to the insurgents, along with most of the Sunni members of the police force. Mosul, population 1.7 million, is now an insurgent stronghold, according to the Pentagon’s own June report.
By the time reality ambushed his textbook victory, the general had moved on to the mission of making Iraqi troops stand up so American troops could stand down. “Training is on track and increasing in capacity,” he wrote in The Washington Post in late September 2004, during the endgame of the American presidential election. He extolled the increased prowess of the Iraqi fighting forces and the rebuilding of their infrastructure.
The rest is tragic history. Were the Iraqi forces on the trajectory that General Petraeus asserted in his election-year pep talk, no “surge” would have been needed more than two years later. We would not be learning at this late date, as we did only when Gen. Peter Pace was pressed in a Pentagon briefing this month, that the number of Iraqi battalions operating independently is in fact falling — now standing at a mere six, down from 10 in March.
But even more revealing is what was happening at the time that General Petraeus disseminated his sunny 2004 prognosis. The best account is to be found in “The Occupation of Iraq,” the authoritative chronicle by Ali Allawi published this year by Yale University Press. Mr. Allawi is not some anti-American crank. He was the first civilian defense minister of postwar Iraq and has been an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki; his book was praised by none other than the Iraq war cheerleader Fouad Ajami as “magnificent.”
Mr. Allawi writes that the embezzlement of the Iraqi Army’s $1.2 billion arms procurement budget was happening “under the very noses” of the Security Transition Command run by General Petraeus: “The saga of the grand theft of the Ministry of Defense perfectly illustrated the huge gap between the harsh realities on the ground and the Panglossian spin that permeated official pronouncements.” Mr. Allawi contrasts the “lyrical” Petraeus pronouncements in The Post with the harsh realities of the Iraqi forces’ inoperable helicopters, flimsy bulletproof vests and toy helmets. The huge sums that might have helped the Iraqis stand up were instead “handed over to unscrupulous adventurers and former pizza parlor operators.”
Well, anyone can make a mistake. And when General Petraeus cited soccer games as an example of “the astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad last month, he could not have anticipated that car bombs would kill at least 50 Iraqis after the Iraqi team’s poignant victory in the Asian Cup semifinals last week. This general may well be, as many say, the brightest and bravest we have. But that doesn’t account for why he has been invested by the White House and its last-ditch apologists with such singular power over the war.
On “Meet the Press,” Lindsey Graham, one of the Senate’s last gung-ho war defenders in either party, mentioned General Petraeus 10 times in one segment, saying he would “not vote for anything” unless “General Petraeus passes on it.” Desperate hawks on the nation’s op-ed pages not only idolize the commander daily but denounce any critics of his strategy as deserters, defeatists and enemies of the troops.
That’s because the Petraeus phenomenon is not about protecting the troops or American interests but about protecting the president. For all Mr. Bush’s claims of seeking “candid” advice, he wants nothing of the kind. He sent that message before the war, with the shunting aside of Eric Shinseki, the general who dared tell Congress the simple truth that hundreds of thousands of American troops would be needed to secure Iraq. The message was sent again when John Abizaid and George Casey were supplanted after they disagreed with the surge.
Two weeks ago, in his continuing quest for “candid” views, Mr. Bush invited a claque consisting exclusively of conservative pundits to the White House and inadvertently revealed the real motive for the Petraeus surrogate presidency. “The most credible person in the fight at this moment is Gen. David Petraeus,” he said, in National Review’s account.
To be the “most credible” person in this war team means about as much as being the most sober tabloid starlet in the Paris-Lindsay cohort. But never mind. What Mr. Bush meant is that General Petraeus is famous for minding his press coverage, even to the point of congratulating the ABC News anchor Charles Gibson for “kicking some butt” in the Nielsen ratings when Mr. Gibson interviewed him last month. The president, whose 65 percent disapproval rating is now just one point shy of Richard Nixon’s pre-resignation nadir, is counting on General Petraeus to be the un-Shinseki and bestow whatever credibility he has upon White House policies and pronouncements.
He is delivering, heaven knows. Like Mr. Bush, he has taken to comparing the utter stalemate in the Iraqi Parliament to “our own debates at the birth of our nation,” as if the Hamilton-Jefferson disputes were akin to the Shiite-Sunni bloodletting. He is also starting to echo the administration line that Al Qaeda is the principal villain in Iraq, a departure from the more nuanced and realistic picture of the civil-war-torn battlefront he presented to Senate questioners in his confirmation hearings in January.
Mr. Bush has become so reckless in his own denials of reality that he seems to think he can get away with saying anything as long as he has his “main man” to front for him. The president now hammers in the false litany of a “merger” between Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and what he calls “Al Qaeda in Iraq” as if he were following the Madison Avenue script declaring that “Cingular is now the new AT&T.” He doesn’t seem to know that nearly 40 other groups besides Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have adopted Al Qaeda’s name or pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden worldwide since 2003, by the count of the former C.I.A. counterterrorism official Michael Scheuer. They may follow us here well before any insurgents in Iraq do.
On Tuesday — a week after the National Intelligence Estimate warned of the resurgence of bin Laden’s Qaeda in Pakistan — Mr. Bush gave a speech in which he continued to claim that “Al Qaeda in Iraq” makes Iraq the central front in the war on terror. He mentioned Al Qaeda 95 times but Pakistan and Pervez Musharraf not once. Two days later, his own top intelligence officials refused to endorse his premise when appearing before Congress. They are all too familiar with the threats that are building to a shrill pitch this summer.
Should those threats become a reality while America continues to be bogged down in Iraq, this much is certain: It will all be the fault of President Petraeus."
"There was, of course, gallows humor galore when Dick Cheney briefly grabbed the wheel of our listing ship of state during the presidential colonoscopy last weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts. A once-durable staple of 21st-century American humor is in its last throes. We have a new surrogate president now. Sic transit Cheney. Long live David Petraeus!
It was The Washington Post that first quantified General Petraeus’s remarkable ascension. President Bush, who mentioned his new Iraq commander’s name only six times as the surge rolled out in January, has cited him more than 150 times in public utterances since, including 53 in May alone.
As always with this White House’s propaganda offensives, the message in Mr. Bush’s relentless repetitions never varies. General Petraeus is the “main man.” He is the man who gives “candid advice.” Come September, he will be the man who will give the president and the country their orders about the war.
And so another constitutional principle can be added to the long list of those junked by this administration: the quaint notion that our uniformed officers are supposed to report to civilian leadership. In a de facto military coup, the commander in chief is now reporting to the commander in Iraq. We must “wait to see what David has to say,” Mr. Bush says.
Actually, we don’t have to wait. We already know what David will say. He gave it away to The Times of London last month, when he said that September “is a deadline for a report, not a deadline for a change in policy.” In other words: Damn the report (and that irrelevant Congress that will read it) — full speed ahead. There will be no change in policy. As Michael Gordon reported in The New York Times last week, General Petraeus has collaborated on a classified strategy document that will keep American troops in Iraq well into 2009 as we wait for the miracles that will somehow bring that country security and a functioning government.
Though General Petraeus wrote his 1987 Princeton doctoral dissertation on “The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam,” he has an unshakable penchant for seeing light at the end of tunnels. It has been three Julys since he posed for the cover of Newsweek under the headline “Can This Man Save Iraq?” The magazine noted that the general’s pacification of Mosul was “a textbook case of doing counterinsurgency the right way.” Four months later, the police chief installed by General Petraeus defected to the insurgents, along with most of the Sunni members of the police force. Mosul, population 1.7 million, is now an insurgent stronghold, according to the Pentagon’s own June report.
By the time reality ambushed his textbook victory, the general had moved on to the mission of making Iraqi troops stand up so American troops could stand down. “Training is on track and increasing in capacity,” he wrote in The Washington Post in late September 2004, during the endgame of the American presidential election. He extolled the increased prowess of the Iraqi fighting forces and the rebuilding of their infrastructure.
The rest is tragic history. Were the Iraqi forces on the trajectory that General Petraeus asserted in his election-year pep talk, no “surge” would have been needed more than two years later. We would not be learning at this late date, as we did only when Gen. Peter Pace was pressed in a Pentagon briefing this month, that the number of Iraqi battalions operating independently is in fact falling — now standing at a mere six, down from 10 in March.
But even more revealing is what was happening at the time that General Petraeus disseminated his sunny 2004 prognosis. The best account is to be found in “The Occupation of Iraq,” the authoritative chronicle by Ali Allawi published this year by Yale University Press. Mr. Allawi is not some anti-American crank. He was the first civilian defense minister of postwar Iraq and has been an adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki; his book was praised by none other than the Iraq war cheerleader Fouad Ajami as “magnificent.”
Mr. Allawi writes that the embezzlement of the Iraqi Army’s $1.2 billion arms procurement budget was happening “under the very noses” of the Security Transition Command run by General Petraeus: “The saga of the grand theft of the Ministry of Defense perfectly illustrated the huge gap between the harsh realities on the ground and the Panglossian spin that permeated official pronouncements.” Mr. Allawi contrasts the “lyrical” Petraeus pronouncements in The Post with the harsh realities of the Iraqi forces’ inoperable helicopters, flimsy bulletproof vests and toy helmets. The huge sums that might have helped the Iraqis stand up were instead “handed over to unscrupulous adventurers and former pizza parlor operators.”
Well, anyone can make a mistake. And when General Petraeus cited soccer games as an example of “the astonishing signs of normalcy” in Baghdad last month, he could not have anticipated that car bombs would kill at least 50 Iraqis after the Iraqi team’s poignant victory in the Asian Cup semifinals last week. This general may well be, as many say, the brightest and bravest we have. But that doesn’t account for why he has been invested by the White House and its last-ditch apologists with such singular power over the war.
On “Meet the Press,” Lindsey Graham, one of the Senate’s last gung-ho war defenders in either party, mentioned General Petraeus 10 times in one segment, saying he would “not vote for anything” unless “General Petraeus passes on it.” Desperate hawks on the nation’s op-ed pages not only idolize the commander daily but denounce any critics of his strategy as deserters, defeatists and enemies of the troops.
That’s because the Petraeus phenomenon is not about protecting the troops or American interests but about protecting the president. For all Mr. Bush’s claims of seeking “candid” advice, he wants nothing of the kind. He sent that message before the war, with the shunting aside of Eric Shinseki, the general who dared tell Congress the simple truth that hundreds of thousands of American troops would be needed to secure Iraq. The message was sent again when John Abizaid and George Casey were supplanted after they disagreed with the surge.
Two weeks ago, in his continuing quest for “candid” views, Mr. Bush invited a claque consisting exclusively of conservative pundits to the White House and inadvertently revealed the real motive for the Petraeus surrogate presidency. “The most credible person in the fight at this moment is Gen. David Petraeus,” he said, in National Review’s account.
To be the “most credible” person in this war team means about as much as being the most sober tabloid starlet in the Paris-Lindsay cohort. But never mind. What Mr. Bush meant is that General Petraeus is famous for minding his press coverage, even to the point of congratulating the ABC News anchor Charles Gibson for “kicking some butt” in the Nielsen ratings when Mr. Gibson interviewed him last month. The president, whose 65 percent disapproval rating is now just one point shy of Richard Nixon’s pre-resignation nadir, is counting on General Petraeus to be the un-Shinseki and bestow whatever credibility he has upon White House policies and pronouncements.
He is delivering, heaven knows. Like Mr. Bush, he has taken to comparing the utter stalemate in the Iraqi Parliament to “our own debates at the birth of our nation,” as if the Hamilton-Jefferson disputes were akin to the Shiite-Sunni bloodletting. He is also starting to echo the administration line that Al Qaeda is the principal villain in Iraq, a departure from the more nuanced and realistic picture of the civil-war-torn battlefront he presented to Senate questioners in his confirmation hearings in January.
Mr. Bush has become so reckless in his own denials of reality that he seems to think he can get away with saying anything as long as he has his “main man” to front for him. The president now hammers in the false litany of a “merger” between Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and what he calls “Al Qaeda in Iraq” as if he were following the Madison Avenue script declaring that “Cingular is now the new AT&T.” He doesn’t seem to know that nearly 40 other groups besides Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have adopted Al Qaeda’s name or pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden worldwide since 2003, by the count of the former C.I.A. counterterrorism official Michael Scheuer. They may follow us here well before any insurgents in Iraq do.
On Tuesday — a week after the National Intelligence Estimate warned of the resurgence of bin Laden’s Qaeda in Pakistan — Mr. Bush gave a speech in which he continued to claim that “Al Qaeda in Iraq” makes Iraq the central front in the war on terror. He mentioned Al Qaeda 95 times but Pakistan and Pervez Musharraf not once. Two days later, his own top intelligence officials refused to endorse his premise when appearing before Congress. They are all too familiar with the threats that are building to a shrill pitch this summer.
Should those threats become a reality while America continues to be bogged down in Iraq, this much is certain: It will all be the fault of President Petraeus."
Noam Chomsky: The cold war between Washington and Tehran
When Noam Chomksy writes or speaks people listen. They may not necessarily agree with him, but the man and his views are not be taken lightly - or ignored. After all a survey has shown him to be seen as one of the most respected people in the world.
Chomsky has just had a new book, "Interventions", published. Common Dreams has an extract [republished from ZNet]:
"In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington’s basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important.
As was the norm during the Cold War, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq-a country otherwise free from any foreign interference, on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.
In the Cold War-like mentality that prevails in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shiite Crescent that stretches from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, through Shiite southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the “surge” in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq-more narrowly, to attaining U.S. goals in Iraq.
Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington’s heightened aggressiveness, with forces deployed in position to attack Iran and regular provocations and threats.
For the United States, the primary issue in the Middle East has been and remains effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance."
Chomsky has just had a new book, "Interventions", published. Common Dreams has an extract [republished from ZNet]:
"In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington’s basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important.
As was the norm during the Cold War, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq-a country otherwise free from any foreign interference, on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.
In the Cold War-like mentality that prevails in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shiite Crescent that stretches from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, through Shiite southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the “surge” in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq-more narrowly, to attaining U.S. goals in Iraq.
Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington’s heightened aggressiveness, with forces deployed in position to attack Iran and regular provocations and threats.
For the United States, the primary issue in the Middle East has been and remains effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance."
His Israel Question revisited
The release, exactly 12 months ago, of Antony Loewenstein's book "My Israel Question" [MUP] caused near-enough to a firestorm. It says something about the book itself, and the interest in the subject-matter, that the book went to 3 reprints. It recently was short-listed in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards for 2007.
One most satisfactory outcome of the book, if nothing else, has been that the discussion of the vexed topic of Israel, the Palestinians, how Israel deals with the Palestinians and the Israel Lobby [in the US, Australia and elsewhere] has, at long last, been given air-play in the media - and alternative voices, to the shrill ones usually heard, now seen and read.
''I can think of few books about Israel and Palestine, written by an Australian, as important as Antony Loewenstein's brave j'accuse. In challenging the propagandists to give up their addiction, he is a truth-teller bar none.' --John Pilger
'This is one of the best treatises which presents in the most lucid way possible why anti-Zionism can not be equated with anti-Semitism. Interweaving personal trips, most valuable information and clear analysis, My Israel Question will serve as an essential guide for those who dare to criticise Zionist wrongdoing in the past and Israeli policies in the present, without being deterred by false allegations of Anti-Semitism.' --Dr Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa, Israel, and author of A History of Modern Palestine
'My Israel Question still deserves a strong readership, precisely because it makes us uncomfortable.' Weekend Australian 29/07/2006".
It is welcome news that a Second, and revised, edition of My Israel Question [MUP] has just now being released.
"Written by an Australian Jew, Antony Loewenstein, My Israel Question was published in 2006 amidst a storm of controversy, critical praise and robust public debate. The Israel-Palestine conflict had rarely been discussed as frankly, an indication that decades-old silencing of dissenting views was coming to an end. Loewenstein's searching discussion continues here in this fully updated and expanded new edition. Loewenstein's is an important new voice in one of the most significant debates of our time."
The book is available in bookstores - and on line. Check out the MUP web site here.
One most satisfactory outcome of the book, if nothing else, has been that the discussion of the vexed topic of Israel, the Palestinians, how Israel deals with the Palestinians and the Israel Lobby [in the US, Australia and elsewhere] has, at long last, been given air-play in the media - and alternative voices, to the shrill ones usually heard, now seen and read.
''I can think of few books about Israel and Palestine, written by an Australian, as important as Antony Loewenstein's brave j'accuse. In challenging the propagandists to give up their addiction, he is a truth-teller bar none.' --John Pilger
'This is one of the best treatises which presents in the most lucid way possible why anti-Zionism can not be equated with anti-Semitism. Interweaving personal trips, most valuable information and clear analysis, My Israel Question will serve as an essential guide for those who dare to criticise Zionist wrongdoing in the past and Israeli policies in the present, without being deterred by false allegations of Anti-Semitism.' --Dr Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa, Israel, and author of A History of Modern Palestine
'My Israel Question still deserves a strong readership, precisely because it makes us uncomfortable.' Weekend Australian 29/07/2006".
It is welcome news that a Second, and revised, edition of My Israel Question [MUP] has just now being released.
"Written by an Australian Jew, Antony Loewenstein, My Israel Question was published in 2006 amidst a storm of controversy, critical praise and robust public debate. The Israel-Palestine conflict had rarely been discussed as frankly, an indication that decades-old silencing of dissenting views was coming to an end. Loewenstein's searching discussion continues here in this fully updated and expanded new edition. Loewenstein's is an important new voice in one of the most significant debates of our time."
The book is available in bookstores - and on line. Check out the MUP web site here.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
The real stats on Iraq
Drawing on material published by the US Lenin's Tomb reports on the real stats relating to Iraq:
"The trends continue to be supported by the coalition's data:
"For some inexplicable reason, Republicans have been preoccupied for quite some time with Baghdad’s electrical supply, pointing to it as one of the good-news stories that Americans allegedly don’t hear about. The White House urged the media to cover it more a year ago; Tony Snow bragged about Iraq’s electricity-generating facilities; and then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office boasted of Baghdad’s shining lights as an example of progress in the war.
They had it backwards. Electricity in Baghdad has been one of the more chronic infrastructure problems plaguing the Iraqi city. Indeed, over the last year or so, the number of hours Baghdad residents could expect electricity has actually dropped.
Don’t worry, the Bush administration has a plan to deal with all of this. Take steps to improve the power supply? Don’t be silly; the administration has decided to stop reporting on Baghdad’s electrical problems.
As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.
[T]he State Department, which prepares a weekly “status report” for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.
It’s the quintessential Bush move — when struggling with discouraging news, it’s easier to hide it than fix it."
"The trends continue to be supported by the coalition's data:
- The rate of attacks is at an all time high, weapons cache finds are at an all time high, attacks are still directed overwhelmingly at occupying forces, but as the Iraqi police and army are trained and put into combat situations, they are taking a bigger brunt of the violence.
- The attacks on civilians remains the smallest wedge of all attacks. Resistance attacks are still concentrated in four provinces where the occupiers are most active, of course, and least present where the occupiers have given authority to regional parties. Once again, the areas under almost complete insurgent control are the areas most likely to have working electricity, which is telling.
- Support for a divided Iraq remains extremely low, predictably highest among the Kurds. One welcome new trend is a dramatic decrease in sectarian incidents reported. Sadly it continues to be the case that those attacks on civilians, whether sectarian or insurgent in nature, are those with the highest death yield, and civilians continue to bear the brunt of attacks.
- The report attributes the high profile attacks (suicide attacks and car bombings) that take large civilian casualties to "AQI", but this fits too easily into the occupation narrative: the truth is that there are a number of groups - still a minority of resistance fighters - who are using these tactics."
"For some inexplicable reason, Republicans have been preoccupied for quite some time with Baghdad’s electrical supply, pointing to it as one of the good-news stories that Americans allegedly don’t hear about. The White House urged the media to cover it more a year ago; Tony Snow bragged about Iraq’s electricity-generating facilities; and then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s office boasted of Baghdad’s shining lights as an example of progress in the war.
They had it backwards. Electricity in Baghdad has been one of the more chronic infrastructure problems plaguing the Iraqi city. Indeed, over the last year or so, the number of hours Baghdad residents could expect electricity has actually dropped.
Don’t worry, the Bush administration has a plan to deal with all of this. Take steps to improve the power supply? Don’t be silly; the administration has decided to stop reporting on Baghdad’s electrical problems.
As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.
[T]he State Department, which prepares a weekly “status report” for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.
It’s the quintessential Bush move — when struggling with discouraging news, it’s easier to hide it than fix it."
Hollywood goes to war.....that War!
Hollywood has, traditionally, played it very carefully when making movies in relation to war and global conflicts. That is not to say that movies depicting the Russians or Arabs - never said so explicitly - as "baddies" haven't been made, almost, seemingly, as part of some sort of propaganda.
The Iraq War appears to have changed things, for as The Independent reports, a slew of movies dealing with the War are about to hit our screens:
"Not so long ago, Hollywood was famously shy of telling stories ripped straight from the headlines. The movies, after all, are a form of escapism, first and foremost. Who wants to go to the multiplex to get more of the same depressing images being broadcast on the evening news?
Film-makers and studio chiefs preferred to take a more oblique route to commenting on the pressing events of the moment, especially when it came to questions of war and peace. They transferred the conflict to an earlier time, or to another culture, or simply kept quiet until the conflict itself was long over. Robert Altman's counter-cultural masterpiece M*A*S*H famously managed to send up the absurdities of the Vietnam war while purporting to be set 20 years earlier in Korea. More recently, Ridley Scott gave us an earful on the follies of imperialism in the Middle East by recreating the Crusades in Kingdom of Heaven.
Now, though, Hollywood seems to have lost its coyness. Perhaps it began with Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which turned anger at the Bush administration on the eve of the 2004 presidential election into an unlikely box-office hit. Perhaps the moment of truth came with last year's United 93, Paul Greengrass's harrowing recreation of the doomed fourth jetliner on 11 September 2001, whose passengers sacrificed themselves to avoid a greater atrocity in a major East Coast city.
The plain fact, though, is that we are about to be inundated with dramas set either in or around the Iraq war, and the tone of most, if not all, of them is hardly complimentary to George Bush's military adventure in the Middle East.
The first of them is also the one with the highest profile, since it has been written and directed by Paul Haggis, the Canadian film-maker who wrote Clint Eastwood's Academy Award-winning Million Dollar Baby, then walked away with the Best Picture Oscar for his directorial debut, Crash."
The Iraq War appears to have changed things, for as The Independent reports, a slew of movies dealing with the War are about to hit our screens:
"Not so long ago, Hollywood was famously shy of telling stories ripped straight from the headlines. The movies, after all, are a form of escapism, first and foremost. Who wants to go to the multiplex to get more of the same depressing images being broadcast on the evening news?
Film-makers and studio chiefs preferred to take a more oblique route to commenting on the pressing events of the moment, especially when it came to questions of war and peace. They transferred the conflict to an earlier time, or to another culture, or simply kept quiet until the conflict itself was long over. Robert Altman's counter-cultural masterpiece M*A*S*H famously managed to send up the absurdities of the Vietnam war while purporting to be set 20 years earlier in Korea. More recently, Ridley Scott gave us an earful on the follies of imperialism in the Middle East by recreating the Crusades in Kingdom of Heaven.
Now, though, Hollywood seems to have lost its coyness. Perhaps it began with Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which turned anger at the Bush administration on the eve of the 2004 presidential election into an unlikely box-office hit. Perhaps the moment of truth came with last year's United 93, Paul Greengrass's harrowing recreation of the doomed fourth jetliner on 11 September 2001, whose passengers sacrificed themselves to avoid a greater atrocity in a major East Coast city.
The plain fact, though, is that we are about to be inundated with dramas set either in or around the Iraq war, and the tone of most, if not all, of them is hardly complimentary to George Bush's military adventure in the Middle East.
The first of them is also the one with the highest profile, since it has been written and directed by Paul Haggis, the Canadian film-maker who wrote Clint Eastwood's Academy Award-winning Million Dollar Baby, then walked away with the Best Picture Oscar for his directorial debut, Crash."
The 15 greenest cities in the world
No doubt there would be many countries - or certainly their politicians - which claim to have a green city. It's all a matter of prospective in the final analysis. However, grist [an online environmental news and commentary site] has determined what it regards as the 15 greenest cities in the world - in a rather, and perhaps somewhat surprising, collection:
"These metropolises aren't literally the greenest places on earth -- they're not necessarily dense with foliage, for one, and some still have a long way to go down the path to sustainability. But all of the cities on this list deserve recognition for making impressive strides toward eco-friendliness, helping their many millions of residents live better, greener lives".
To find out whether your city made the mark, read on here.
"These metropolises aren't literally the greenest places on earth -- they're not necessarily dense with foliage, for one, and some still have a long way to go down the path to sustainability. But all of the cities on this list deserve recognition for making impressive strides toward eco-friendliness, helping their many millions of residents live better, greener lives".
To find out whether your city made the mark, read on here.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Diplomacy - Lift that veil?
The TV debate / discussion on CNN between Democratic candidates for the US presidency the other day highlighted the issue to whom, and how, dialogue ought to be had with governments of other countries. Talk openly to, say Iran, or do it all behind closed doors? Then again, should any discussion, open or otherwise, be held even if the US considers the "foreign" government abhorrent?
This is an issue and question taken up by John Nichols in a piece, "Clinton, Kissinger and the Corruptions of Empire" in The Nation:
"Of all the corruptions of empire, few are darker than the claim that diplomacy must be kept secret from the citizenry.
This hide-it-from-the people faith that only a cloistered group of unelected and often unaccountable elites – embodied by the nefarious and eminently indictable Henry Kissinger – is capable of steering the affairs of state pushes Americans out of the processes that determine whether their sons and daughters will die in distant wars, whether the factories where they worked will be shuttered, whether their country will respond to or neglect genocide, whether their tax dollars will go to pay for the unspeakable.
It allows for the dirty game where foreign countries are included or excluded from contact with the U.S. based on unspoken whims and self-serving schemes, where trade deals are negotiated without congressional oversight and then presented in take-it-or-leave-it form and where war is made easy by secretive cliques that are as willing to lie to presidents as they do to the people."
This is an issue and question taken up by John Nichols in a piece, "Clinton, Kissinger and the Corruptions of Empire" in The Nation:
"Of all the corruptions of empire, few are darker than the claim that diplomacy must be kept secret from the citizenry.
This hide-it-from-the people faith that only a cloistered group of unelected and often unaccountable elites – embodied by the nefarious and eminently indictable Henry Kissinger – is capable of steering the affairs of state pushes Americans out of the processes that determine whether their sons and daughters will die in distant wars, whether the factories where they worked will be shuttered, whether their country will respond to or neglect genocide, whether their tax dollars will go to pay for the unspeakable.
It allows for the dirty game where foreign countries are included or excluded from contact with the U.S. based on unspoken whims and self-serving schemes, where trade deals are negotiated without congressional oversight and then presented in take-it-or-leave-it form and where war is made easy by secretive cliques that are as willing to lie to presidents as they do to the people."
Yikes....now they're looking to attack Syria!
One would have thought that the Bush Administration had not only learned something from the Iraq debacle - no other word for it - but that one cannot just attack or march into countries because its policies don't find favour with the Bushies.
Seems not! If this piece, from Counterpunch, is right, even if somewhat diminished in their influence, the neo-cons are still banging on with their discredited policies and are now trying to turn their attention, and that of the White House, to possibly attacking Syria.
"Neocon officials in the Defense Department call them "low-hanging fruit"--- as though countries were produce ripe for picking and eating. The term refers to nations targeted for regime change that might be achieved with minimal strain, at least when compared with the effort needed to topple the regime in Iran. Some neocons are beginning to concede that the effort might not be feasible at this time (not that they would be climbing the tree and plucking the fruit; they'd stand below advising on how it should be done). They're advocating instead that the Bush administration move soon against Syria.
From late 2003 to late 2005 it looked to me as though Syria would be the next "Terror War" target, largely because of Bush's rhetoric, Israeli aggression against Syria and the Israeli propaganda campaign against Syria (suggesting that the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been transported over the border into the Arab state). But then the Israeli government and Lobby urged the Bush administration to focus its energies on attacking Iran. (Asked by the administration for suggestions for a new leader in Syria to be installed after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad, the Israelis said they couldn't think of one. This position has been repeated as recently as March 2007.) In any case the Israeli government sees Iran as the "existential threat" to itself, Syria more of an irritation.
But the advocated Iran attack has been long-delayed. The neocons have lost some influence, although they remain highly dangerous and influential. Rapid Islamophobes like Elliott Abrams, David Wurmser, Eric Edelman and Eliot Cohen retain their posts, while neocon ideologues such as Bill Kristol enjoy access to cable TV audiences and readers of op-ed pieces in the most widely-read newspapers. The latter very often articulate the view of Vice President Cheney's circle. Cheney is known to be frustrated at the postponement of the planned Iran attack.
In this context, former Bush speechwriter and Christian rightist Michael Gerson published an op-ed in the Washington Post last Friday calling for an attack on Syria to stop its alleged support for the resistance in Iraq. He revives the horticultural metaphor. "Syria. . . . is what one former administration official calls 'lower-hanging fruit,'" Gerson writes, adding "Syria's Baathist regime provides a base of operations for its Iraqi Baathist comrades involved in the Sunni insurgency." He immediately adds, "Suicide bombers from Saudi Arabia and North Africa arrive by plane in Damascus, and, with the help of facilitators, some 50 to 80 cross into Iraq each month. The Syrians say they lack the ability to stop them; what they lack is the intention." He calls for "forceful action against Syria's Ho Chi Minh Trail of terrorists."
Seems not! If this piece, from Counterpunch, is right, even if somewhat diminished in their influence, the neo-cons are still banging on with their discredited policies and are now trying to turn their attention, and that of the White House, to possibly attacking Syria.
"Neocon officials in the Defense Department call them "low-hanging fruit"--- as though countries were produce ripe for picking and eating. The term refers to nations targeted for regime change that might be achieved with minimal strain, at least when compared with the effort needed to topple the regime in Iran. Some neocons are beginning to concede that the effort might not be feasible at this time (not that they would be climbing the tree and plucking the fruit; they'd stand below advising on how it should be done). They're advocating instead that the Bush administration move soon against Syria.
From late 2003 to late 2005 it looked to me as though Syria would be the next "Terror War" target, largely because of Bush's rhetoric, Israeli aggression against Syria and the Israeli propaganda campaign against Syria (suggesting that the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been transported over the border into the Arab state). But then the Israeli government and Lobby urged the Bush administration to focus its energies on attacking Iran. (Asked by the administration for suggestions for a new leader in Syria to be installed after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad, the Israelis said they couldn't think of one. This position has been repeated as recently as March 2007.) In any case the Israeli government sees Iran as the "existential threat" to itself, Syria more of an irritation.
But the advocated Iran attack has been long-delayed. The neocons have lost some influence, although they remain highly dangerous and influential. Rapid Islamophobes like Elliott Abrams, David Wurmser, Eric Edelman and Eliot Cohen retain their posts, while neocon ideologues such as Bill Kristol enjoy access to cable TV audiences and readers of op-ed pieces in the most widely-read newspapers. The latter very often articulate the view of Vice President Cheney's circle. Cheney is known to be frustrated at the postponement of the planned Iran attack.
In this context, former Bush speechwriter and Christian rightist Michael Gerson published an op-ed in the Washington Post last Friday calling for an attack on Syria to stop its alleged support for the resistance in Iraq. He revives the horticultural metaphor. "Syria. . . . is what one former administration official calls 'lower-hanging fruit,'" Gerson writes, adding "Syria's Baathist regime provides a base of operations for its Iraqi Baathist comrades involved in the Sunni insurgency." He immediately adds, "Suicide bombers from Saudi Arabia and North Africa arrive by plane in Damascus, and, with the help of facilitators, some 50 to 80 cross into Iraq each month. The Syrians say they lack the ability to stop them; what they lack is the intention." He calls for "forceful action against Syria's Ho Chi Minh Trail of terrorists."
Shared despair in divided Hebron
The impact of the wall Israel is constructing around itself, and often through Palestinian land or cities, continues unabated. Shamefully, the world ignores what is happening, the human cost involved and what the long-term effect is sure to be.
Hebron is a city, and its people, critically effected by what the Israelis are doing - as this piece, from The Washington Post, so graphically explains:
"The barrier Israel is constructing in the largely rural West Bank is effectively separating Arab from Jew along much of its 456-mile length. But the broader project of disentangling the two peoples in the absence of a peace agreement is failing in urban areas such as Hebron, where the most radical elements of Islamic and Jewish nationalism are gaining strength.
Within Hebron, the separation is enforced not only by Israeli barriers but also by military checkpoints and curfews intended to protect the roughly 700 Jewish settlers living within the city's most historic and religiously important areas. Securing the small Jewish minority has a potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs, who voted last year to fill all nine of the district's parliamentary seats with candidates from the armed Islamic movement Hamas.
This city, set among prolific vineyards, was among the first destinations for Jewish settlers following the 1967 Middle East war, when the Israeli military occupied the West Bank. Fired by a four-millennia-old religious claim to Hebron, the settler enterprise here is among the most ideologically determined in the territories. Its expansionist goals clash with Palestinian secular and Islamic armed movements, whose own nationalist passions helped turn Hebron into one of the most violent venues of the Palestinian uprisings."
Hebron is a city, and its people, critically effected by what the Israelis are doing - as this piece, from The Washington Post, so graphically explains:
"The barrier Israel is constructing in the largely rural West Bank is effectively separating Arab from Jew along much of its 456-mile length. But the broader project of disentangling the two peoples in the absence of a peace agreement is failing in urban areas such as Hebron, where the most radical elements of Islamic and Jewish nationalism are gaining strength.
Within Hebron, the separation is enforced not only by Israeli barriers but also by military checkpoints and curfews intended to protect the roughly 700 Jewish settlers living within the city's most historic and religiously important areas. Securing the small Jewish minority has a potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs, who voted last year to fill all nine of the district's parliamentary seats with candidates from the armed Islamic movement Hamas.
This city, set among prolific vineyards, was among the first destinations for Jewish settlers following the 1967 Middle East war, when the Israeli military occupied the West Bank. Fired by a four-millennia-old religious claim to Hebron, the settler enterprise here is among the most ideologically determined in the territories. Its expansionist goals clash with Palestinian secular and Islamic armed movements, whose own nationalist passions helped turn Hebron into one of the most violent venues of the Palestinian uprisings."
Thursday, July 26, 2007
A forgotten country - Burma!
Whilst the world sees the war in Iraq grind on, fighting in Afghanistan continue unabated and various geo-political issues flare up from time to time around the globe, countries like Burma are either simply overlooked or slip under the radar.
That Burma is a country beset with a myriad of problems and issues which can no longer be ignored, is taken up by The Independent in this piece on what seems to be a "forgotten" country:
"Burma suffers a political, human rights and humanitarian situation as grim as any in the world today. The country is run by an utterly illegitimate government that spends 50 per cent of its budget on the military and less than a $1 (50p) per head on the health and education of its own citizens.
The thugs and impostors who rule the roost practise some of the most egregious human rights abuses known to mankind. Rape as a weapon of war, extra-judicial killings, water torture, mass displacement, compulsory relocation, forced labour, incarceration of political prisoners, religious and ethnic persecution, and the daily destruction of rural villages are all part of the story of savagery that has disfigured Burma.
People lack access to food, water, sanitation and the most basic health and education provision. Twice over the past three years, I have met just a handful of the 500,000 internally displaced people in eastern Burma and the 100,000 living in refugee camps in Thailand, victims of the wanton savagery of the Burmese Army.
Harrowing accounts of children dying from malnutrition, women perishing in childbirth and people succumbing to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis will remain indelibly imprinted upon my mind if I live to be 100. Most shocking of all was the experience of meeting children who told me they had seen their parents shot dead and parents who were forced to watch their children's summary execution.
Infectious diseases are approaching epidemic levels and 71 per cent of the population are at risk of malaria. A 2006 estimate of the child mortality rate in eastern Burma was 221 per 1000, compared to 205 in the DRC. Health spending is the lowest in the world (0.5 per cent of GDP) and 60 per cent of households have no education at all."
That Burma is a country beset with a myriad of problems and issues which can no longer be ignored, is taken up by The Independent in this piece on what seems to be a "forgotten" country:
"Burma suffers a political, human rights and humanitarian situation as grim as any in the world today. The country is run by an utterly illegitimate government that spends 50 per cent of its budget on the military and less than a $1 (50p) per head on the health and education of its own citizens.
The thugs and impostors who rule the roost practise some of the most egregious human rights abuses known to mankind. Rape as a weapon of war, extra-judicial killings, water torture, mass displacement, compulsory relocation, forced labour, incarceration of political prisoners, religious and ethnic persecution, and the daily destruction of rural villages are all part of the story of savagery that has disfigured Burma.
People lack access to food, water, sanitation and the most basic health and education provision. Twice over the past three years, I have met just a handful of the 500,000 internally displaced people in eastern Burma and the 100,000 living in refugee camps in Thailand, victims of the wanton savagery of the Burmese Army.
Harrowing accounts of children dying from malnutrition, women perishing in childbirth and people succumbing to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis will remain indelibly imprinted upon my mind if I live to be 100. Most shocking of all was the experience of meeting children who told me they had seen their parents shot dead and parents who were forced to watch their children's summary execution.
Infectious diseases are approaching epidemic levels and 71 per cent of the population are at risk of malaria. A 2006 estimate of the child mortality rate in eastern Burma was 221 per 1000, compared to 205 in the DRC. Health spending is the lowest in the world (0.5 per cent of GDP) and 60 per cent of households have no education at all."
The Iraqisation of Afghanistan
This from the Mother Jones issue of July / August:
"Last year suicide bombings quintupled, attacks on international forces tripled, and support for the Taliban grew. According to CNN terror analyst and Taliban expert Peter Bergen, there are 10 entirely avoidable mistakes made by the Bush administration."
The Mother Jones piece lists the 10 mistakes here. It doesn't make for happy reading.
"Last year suicide bombings quintupled, attacks on international forces tripled, and support for the Taliban grew. According to CNN terror analyst and Taliban expert Peter Bergen, there are 10 entirely avoidable mistakes made by the Bush administration."
The Mother Jones piece lists the 10 mistakes here. It doesn't make for happy reading.
Reframing the war in Iraq?
That things aren't going well in Iraq is almost a given. Whether to withdraw or somehow come to some conclusion in the country is now the subject of debate in the US. To withdraw 160,000 US personnel it was said yesterday would take one year to complete. Meanwhile, the appetite by Americans for the war is ever diminishing.
George Bush doesn't seem to be getting the message - or, not for the first time, living in his own fanciful world. Speaking at a military base yesterday Bush suggested that the "fight" in Iraq was to defeat al Qaida - for not to do so would endanger the US. Never mind that a report out just last week referred to the strength of al Qaida being in Pakistan - not Iraq. Also not to be overlooked is that it is said that al Qaida only accounts for 15% of attacks in Iraq.
In his on line column Watching Washington, on NPR, Ron Elving suggests that Bush is now reframing the war in Iraq in terms of having to defeat Osama bin Laden:
"It hardly seems possible for President Bush to raise his bet on the war in Iraq, the single policy that already defines his presidency and threatens to define his party for a decade.
Yet how else can we describe what the administration has done this week? On the same day that the Washington Post and ABC News released a poll in which nearly 7 of 10 Americans disapproved of his handling of the war, President Bush gave a high-profile speech in Charleston, S.C., declaring "America can accept nothing less than complete victory" in Iraq.
The president then raised the stakes still further by suggesting anything less than that would be a personal triumph for Osama bin Laden. With heavy emphasis, he framed the conflict in Iraq not as a sectarian struggle between long-feuding factions there, but as a duel between two outsiders — the United States and al-Qaida. The forces of America versus the forces of Sept. 11. Us versus them. Good versus evil."
Surely there is an insidious shift of policy underway here - with the attendant cost to everyone involved in the War.
George Bush doesn't seem to be getting the message - or, not for the first time, living in his own fanciful world. Speaking at a military base yesterday Bush suggested that the "fight" in Iraq was to defeat al Qaida - for not to do so would endanger the US. Never mind that a report out just last week referred to the strength of al Qaida being in Pakistan - not Iraq. Also not to be overlooked is that it is said that al Qaida only accounts for 15% of attacks in Iraq.
In his on line column Watching Washington, on NPR, Ron Elving suggests that Bush is now reframing the war in Iraq in terms of having to defeat Osama bin Laden:
"It hardly seems possible for President Bush to raise his bet on the war in Iraq, the single policy that already defines his presidency and threatens to define his party for a decade.
Yet how else can we describe what the administration has done this week? On the same day that the Washington Post and ABC News released a poll in which nearly 7 of 10 Americans disapproved of his handling of the war, President Bush gave a high-profile speech in Charleston, S.C., declaring "America can accept nothing less than complete victory" in Iraq.
The president then raised the stakes still further by suggesting anything less than that would be a personal triumph for Osama bin Laden. With heavy emphasis, he framed the conflict in Iraq not as a sectarian struggle between long-feuding factions there, but as a duel between two outsiders — the United States and al-Qaida. The forces of America versus the forces of Sept. 11. Us versus them. Good versus evil."
Surely there is an insidious shift of policy underway here - with the attendant cost to everyone involved in the War.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Now it's outsourced intelligence
We've all known that much of the military and associated work in Iraq has been outsourced - often to companies and characters with more than a dubious record. Not coincidentally, these very same contractors have been closely allied with the White House.
Now, The Nation magazine reveals that intelligence has also been out outsourced:
"The unprecedented involvement of private corporations in the Iraq War has been well documented. Private soldiers working for Blackwater USA, Triple Canopy and others provide security services against military-level threats, and they regularly engage in combat. But what is not generally known is that the secret side of the Iraq War and the larger "war on terror" is also conducted by private corporations, fielding private spies. The reach of these corporations has extended into the Oval Office. Corporations are heavily involved in creating the analytical products that underlie the nation's most important and most sensitive national security document, the President's Daily Brief (PDB).
Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in US government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors."
An interesting question in all of this is to what extent, if any, is the intelligence garnered by these outsourced people, being shared by the US with its alleged allies like Australia and Great Britain.
Now, The Nation magazine reveals that intelligence has also been out outsourced:
"The unprecedented involvement of private corporations in the Iraq War has been well documented. Private soldiers working for Blackwater USA, Triple Canopy and others provide security services against military-level threats, and they regularly engage in combat. But what is not generally known is that the secret side of the Iraq War and the larger "war on terror" is also conducted by private corporations, fielding private spies. The reach of these corporations has extended into the Oval Office. Corporations are heavily involved in creating the analytical products that underlie the nation's most important and most sensitive national security document, the President's Daily Brief (PDB).
Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in US government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors."
An interesting question in all of this is to what extent, if any, is the intelligence garnered by these outsourced people, being shared by the US with its alleged allies like Australia and Great Britain.
Climate change in action....
Forget about Al Gore and his message. Forget too the sceptics about climate change. It's upon us whether we like it or not. Witness the weather all around the globe. Where it is supposed to be hot it's cool, if not downright cold, and wet. Winter in some regions is the most severe for years. It seems like the weather patterns have gone berserk.
Take Britain. It has had unprecedented rain with devastating results. The Independent comments on what has befallen the British Isles:
"Flood-ravaged Britain is suffering from a wholly new type of civil emergency, it is clear today: a disaster caused by 21st-century weather.
This weather is different from anything that has gone before. The floods it has caused, which have left more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power, thousands more people homeless and caused more than £2bn worth of damage - and are still not over - have no precedent in modern British history.
Nothing in the past hundred years, in terms of flooding caused by rainfall, has been as bad. According to the Environment Agency, even the previous worst case, the extensive floods of spring 1947, which were aggravated by the vast snow melt that followed an exceptionally hard winter, has been surpassed.
"We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before," said the agency yesterday. "The benchmark was 1947, and this has already exceeded it." And the 1947 floods were said to have been the worst for 200 years.
Most remarkable of all is the fact that the astonishing picture the nation is now witnessing - whole towns cut off, gigantic areas underwater, mass evacuations, infrastructure paralysed and grotesquely swollen rivers, from the Severn and the Thames downwards not even at their peaks yet - has all been caused by a single day's rainfall. A month's worth and more in an hour. It is obvious that the Government and the civil powers, from Gordon Brown down to the emergency services, are struggling to cope, not only with the sheer physical scale of the disaster itself, but with the very concept of it. It is entirely unfamiliar. It is new. Yet it is exactly what has been forecast for the past decade and more."
Take Britain. It has had unprecedented rain with devastating results. The Independent comments on what has befallen the British Isles:
"Flood-ravaged Britain is suffering from a wholly new type of civil emergency, it is clear today: a disaster caused by 21st-century weather.
This weather is different from anything that has gone before. The floods it has caused, which have left more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power, thousands more people homeless and caused more than £2bn worth of damage - and are still not over - have no precedent in modern British history.
Nothing in the past hundred years, in terms of flooding caused by rainfall, has been as bad. According to the Environment Agency, even the previous worst case, the extensive floods of spring 1947, which were aggravated by the vast snow melt that followed an exceptionally hard winter, has been surpassed.
"We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before," said the agency yesterday. "The benchmark was 1947, and this has already exceeded it." And the 1947 floods were said to have been the worst for 200 years.
Most remarkable of all is the fact that the astonishing picture the nation is now witnessing - whole towns cut off, gigantic areas underwater, mass evacuations, infrastructure paralysed and grotesquely swollen rivers, from the Severn and the Thames downwards not even at their peaks yet - has all been caused by a single day's rainfall. A month's worth and more in an hour. It is obvious that the Government and the civil powers, from Gordon Brown down to the emergency services, are struggling to cope, not only with the sheer physical scale of the disaster itself, but with the very concept of it. It is entirely unfamiliar. It is new. Yet it is exactly what has been forecast for the past decade and more."
The world's stupidest Fatwas
Pretty everyone knows that Salman Rushdie copped one - a fatwa on his life. It meant he was subjected to virtually 24 hour security wherever he went.
Bizarre as it might seem, Foreign Policy [FP] has collected what it describes as the world's stupidest fatwas. As the magazine notes:
"No central authority controls doctrine in Islam, one of the world’s great religions. The result? A proliferation of bizarre religious edicts against targets ranging from Salman Rushdie to polio vaccinations."
Bizarre as it might seem, Foreign Policy [FP] has collected what it describes as the world's stupidest fatwas. As the magazine notes:
"No central authority controls doctrine in Islam, one of the world’s great religions. The result? A proliferation of bizarre religious edicts against targets ranging from Salman Rushdie to polio vaccinations."
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Globalisation backlash in rich nations
We've all seen the TV footage. Protesters at a conference somewhere in the world ranged up against a phalanx of police. The main object of the protesters has been globalisation, with all that entails, and climate change.
Those protesting have, almost invariably, been labeled long-haired radicals or lefties. Politicians have simply been dismissive. It now seems, if the FT /Harris poll [as reported on FT.com] is anything to go by, that rich nations are now also against globalisation.
"A popular backlash against globalisation and the leaders of the world’s largest companies is sweeping all rich countries, an FT/Harris poll shows.
Large majorities of people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalisation.
Viewing globalisation as an overwhelmingly negative force, citizens of rich countries are looking to governments to cushion the blows they perceive have come from the liberalisation of their economies to trade with emerging countries."
Those protesting have, almost invariably, been labeled long-haired radicals or lefties. Politicians have simply been dismissive. It now seems, if the FT /Harris poll [as reported on FT.com] is anything to go by, that rich nations are now also against globalisation.
"A popular backlash against globalisation and the leaders of the world’s largest companies is sweeping all rich countries, an FT/Harris poll shows.
Large majorities of people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalisation.
Viewing globalisation as an overwhelmingly negative force, citizens of rich countries are looking to governments to cushion the blows they perceive have come from the liberalisation of their economies to trade with emerging countries."
The 21st century comes to electioneering
The "little man" had a chance at confronting the Democratic contenders for the US Presidency yesterday. In a venture between CNN and the video-sharing YouTube, "ordinary" people could challenge the presidential hopefuls on a range of topics. No sanitised debate here. Just plain and direct questions.
The NY Times reports this unique event - surely a first this century in harnessing technology to old-fashioned electioneering - this way:
"Facing an unusual series of video-recorded questions from Americans — by turns toughly worded, highly emotional, and simply offbeat — the eight Democratic presidential candidates sparred tonight over race, gay marriage, Darfur and troops in Iraq, while also still finding ways to trade the verbal jabs that typify traditional debates.
The televised debate was unusual from the start: A man speaking on a homemade video — and not the usual television anchorman — opened the forum, sponsored by CNN and the video-sharing Web site YouTube, by imploring the candidates to answer directly and not “beat around the bush” — the last word delivered as a play on President Bush’s surname."
The NY Times reports this unique event - surely a first this century in harnessing technology to old-fashioned electioneering - this way:
"Facing an unusual series of video-recorded questions from Americans — by turns toughly worded, highly emotional, and simply offbeat — the eight Democratic presidential candidates sparred tonight over race, gay marriage, Darfur and troops in Iraq, while also still finding ways to trade the verbal jabs that typify traditional debates.
The televised debate was unusual from the start: A man speaking on a homemade video — and not the usual television anchorman — opened the forum, sponsored by CNN and the video-sharing Web site YouTube, by imploring the candidates to answer directly and not “beat around the bush” — the last word delivered as a play on President Bush’s surname."
The Barrier to Peace.....
The "issue" between Palestine and Israel continues unabated. Now, ex PM Blair is set to play some sort role in an attempt to resolve the issue between the 2 peoples.
Barry Lando, writing in truthdig.com, suggests that Israel, and the West, must first address the issue of the "birth" of Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians then living in Palestine before it became the State of Israel. That brings with it a myriad of issues, not the least the growing numbers of Palestinians in Israel now.
"Forget about Hamas, the wall, Gaza and the occupied territories. There can be no peace in the Middle East until Israel and the Palestinians deal with one key issue: the Palestinian demand that Israel recognize their right of return. That demand is based on the Arab charge that the Zionist state created the refugee problem in the war of 1948-49 by a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It’s an accusation that Israel’s leaders have consistently rejected. Jewish soldiers could never commit such crimes. It was the Arabs themselves, they say, who created the refugees.
It has become increasingly evident, however, that the Israeli position is, in fact, a self-serving myth created when the Jewish state was born, perpetuated ever since by the country’s leaders and still blandly accepted by Washington.
The myth goes like this: In 1948, when the Arabs attacked the newly declared state of Israel, the Arab population fled by the hundreds of thousands. They left not because of attacks by Israeli soldiers but because of the calls of their own Arab leaders, who guaranteed them a speedy return once the Arab armies had triumphed over the upstart Jewish state. Indeed, they fled despite the attempts of many Israelis—as was movingly portrayed in the film “Exodus”—to convince their Palestinian neighbors to remain. Why should such treacherous people have the right to return? Not to mention the fact that their return by the millions would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state."
Barry Lando, writing in truthdig.com, suggests that Israel, and the West, must first address the issue of the "birth" of Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians then living in Palestine before it became the State of Israel. That brings with it a myriad of issues, not the least the growing numbers of Palestinians in Israel now.
"Forget about Hamas, the wall, Gaza and the occupied territories. There can be no peace in the Middle East until Israel and the Palestinians deal with one key issue: the Palestinian demand that Israel recognize their right of return. That demand is based on the Arab charge that the Zionist state created the refugee problem in the war of 1948-49 by a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It’s an accusation that Israel’s leaders have consistently rejected. Jewish soldiers could never commit such crimes. It was the Arabs themselves, they say, who created the refugees.
It has become increasingly evident, however, that the Israeli position is, in fact, a self-serving myth created when the Jewish state was born, perpetuated ever since by the country’s leaders and still blandly accepted by Washington.
The myth goes like this: In 1948, when the Arabs attacked the newly declared state of Israel, the Arab population fled by the hundreds of thousands. They left not because of attacks by Israeli soldiers but because of the calls of their own Arab leaders, who guaranteed them a speedy return once the Arab armies had triumphed over the upstart Jewish state. Indeed, they fled despite the attempts of many Israelis—as was movingly portrayed in the film “Exodus”—to convince their Palestinian neighbors to remain. Why should such treacherous people have the right to return? Not to mention the fact that their return by the millions would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state."
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Invisible Government
You may not like him, you may disagree with him, but it is hard to ignore the fundamental propositions put forward by John Pilger. Pilger researches his stuff well and knows his facts. Yes, what he often says, makes one uncomfortable. To ignore Pilger is to ignore what is happening around us. And so it is relation to a talk given by him recently, " The Invisible Government", reported on ZNet.
"The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called "professional journalism" was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment—objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, "entirely bogus".
For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories—domestic and foreign—you'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies. Yet, Miller's parroting of official sources and vested interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945. "No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin," was the headline on his report, and it was false.
Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by 50 corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just 9 corporations. Today it is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them. This concentration of power is not exclusive of course to the United States. The BBC has announced it is expanding its broadcasts to the United States, because it believes Americans want principled, objective, neutral journalism for which the BBC is famous. They have launched BBC America. You may have seen the advertising."
"The title of this talk is Freedom Next Time, which is the title of my book, and the book is meant as an antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism. So I thought I would talk today about journalism, about war by journalism, propaganda, and silence, and how that silence might be broken. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called "professional journalism" was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment—objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, "entirely bogus".
For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories—domestic and foreign—you'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies. Yet, Miller's parroting of official sources and vested interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945. "No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin," was the headline on his report, and it was false.
Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by 50 corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just 9 corporations. Today it is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them. This concentration of power is not exclusive of course to the United States. The BBC has announced it is expanding its broadcasts to the United States, because it believes Americans want principled, objective, neutral journalism for which the BBC is famous. They have launched BBC America. You may have seen the advertising."
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Are newspapers going the way of the Dodo?
The endless discussion [debate?] about whether we are witnessing a demise of the newspaper as we know it alongside the ascendancy of blogs and news on the internet, continues unabated. It's most likely too early to say how will come out the winner, if there ever will be one.
One thing is certain. Newspapers have considerably "lost" the influence and clout, and journalists of standing, they once enjoyed. This is the topic of an article by Russell Baker "Goodbye to Newspapers?" in the New York Review of Books:
"The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. It has lost too much public respect. Courts that once treated it like a sleeping tiger now taunt it with insolent subpoenas and put in jail reporters who refuse to play ball with prosecutors. It is abused relentlessly on talk radio and in Internet blogs. It is easily bullied into acquiescing in the designs of a presidential propaganda machine determined to dominate the news.
Its advertising and circulation are being drained away by the Internet, and its owners seem stricken by a failure of the entrepreneurial imagination needed to prosper in the electronic age. Surveys showing that more and more young people get their news from television and computers breed a melancholy sense that the press is yesteryear's thing, a horse-drawn buggy on an eight-lane interstate.
Then there are the embarrassments: hoaxers like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass turn journalism into farce. The elite Washington press corps is bamboozled into helping a circle of neoconservative connivers create the Iraq war. What became of heroes? Journalists used to dine out on the deeds of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during Watergate; of David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and Malcolm Browne in Vietnam; of "Punch" Sulzberger and Kay Graham risking everything to publish the Pentagon Papers. Instead of heroes, today's table talk is about journalistic frauds and a Washington press too dim to stay out of a three-card-monte game."
One thing is certain. Newspapers have considerably "lost" the influence and clout, and journalists of standing, they once enjoyed. This is the topic of an article by Russell Baker "Goodbye to Newspapers?" in the New York Review of Books:
"The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. It has lost too much public respect. Courts that once treated it like a sleeping tiger now taunt it with insolent subpoenas and put in jail reporters who refuse to play ball with prosecutors. It is abused relentlessly on talk radio and in Internet blogs. It is easily bullied into acquiescing in the designs of a presidential propaganda machine determined to dominate the news.
Its advertising and circulation are being drained away by the Internet, and its owners seem stricken by a failure of the entrepreneurial imagination needed to prosper in the electronic age. Surveys showing that more and more young people get their news from television and computers breed a melancholy sense that the press is yesteryear's thing, a horse-drawn buggy on an eight-lane interstate.
Then there are the embarrassments: hoaxers like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass turn journalism into farce. The elite Washington press corps is bamboozled into helping a circle of neoconservative connivers create the Iraq war. What became of heroes? Journalists used to dine out on the deeds of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during Watergate; of David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and Malcolm Browne in Vietnam; of "Punch" Sulzberger and Kay Graham risking everything to publish the Pentagon Papers. Instead of heroes, today's table talk is about journalistic frauds and a Washington press too dim to stay out of a three-card-monte game."
Iran: Chose your unhappy ending!
Iran, the country, its President and its nuclear ambitions, float in and out of the news. It is hard to determine to what extent that is the fault of the media. Whatever the reason, it would seem it Iran, and all that goes with the country, is certainly at the moment a potential boiling cauldron.
The Economist reflects on and considers where things are at in its cover story this week "The Riddle of Iran". The 3 options it suggests as possibilities on where things are headed aren't particularly "happy" ones either for the region or the world as a whole.
"What Iran is doing at Natanz is entirely illegal. It has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and says its nuclear aims are peaceful. But having spent decades deceiving nuclear inspectors, it is disbelieved even by its friends. A year ago this month Russia and China therefore joined the rest of the UN Security Council in ordering Iran to stop. It carried on regardless. The Security Council followed up with two resolutions, in December 2006 and March this year, repeating its demands and applying sanctions. The centrifuges spin defiantly on.
So what next? This story could have at least three unhappy endings. In one, Iran ends up with nuclear weapons, bringing new instability and a hair-trigger face-off with nuclear Israel into one of the world's least-safe neighbourhoods. In another, America or Israel take pre-emptive military action and manage to stop it, even though such an attack would almost certainly have very dangerous consequences of its own. In the third ending, Iran is attacked, and enraged, and retaliates—and still ends up with a bomb anyway."
The Economist reflects on and considers where things are at in its cover story this week "The Riddle of Iran". The 3 options it suggests as possibilities on where things are headed aren't particularly "happy" ones either for the region or the world as a whole.
"What Iran is doing at Natanz is entirely illegal. It has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and says its nuclear aims are peaceful. But having spent decades deceiving nuclear inspectors, it is disbelieved even by its friends. A year ago this month Russia and China therefore joined the rest of the UN Security Council in ordering Iran to stop. It carried on regardless. The Security Council followed up with two resolutions, in December 2006 and March this year, repeating its demands and applying sanctions. The centrifuges spin defiantly on.
So what next? This story could have at least three unhappy endings. In one, Iran ends up with nuclear weapons, bringing new instability and a hair-trigger face-off with nuclear Israel into one of the world's least-safe neighbourhoods. In another, America or Israel take pre-emptive military action and manage to stop it, even though such an attack would almost certainly have very dangerous consequences of its own. In the third ending, Iran is attacked, and enraged, and retaliates—and still ends up with a bomb anyway."
Dumb - and continuing to be so
The world may not like Hamas - but they exist. Ignoring them, as the latest pronouncement from the US and EU declares will happen, as reported in the IHT, seems plain dumb. But that isn't anything new.
"The United States and the European Union on Thursday held firm to their refusal to deal with the Palestinian movement Hamas as former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain prepared to start his new job as Middle East peace envoy."
So, now what? Just be an ostrich and continue to refuse to even meet with an elected government? Former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, seems on the money when he is reported in the same IHT piece thus:
"But in Washington, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said the quartet should find some way to talk to Hamas.
"I don't think you can just cast them into outer darkness and try to find a solution to the problems of the region without taking to account the standing that Hamas has in the Palestinian community," Powell said in a radio interview.
He said Hamas, which controls Gaza, was not going away and enjoyed considerable Palestinian support.
"They won an election that we insisted upon having," Powell said, adding that Hamas needed to be engaged, "as unpleasant a group they may be and as distasteful as I find some of their positions."
Read the full IHT piece here.
"The United States and the European Union on Thursday held firm to their refusal to deal with the Palestinian movement Hamas as former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain prepared to start his new job as Middle East peace envoy."
So, now what? Just be an ostrich and continue to refuse to even meet with an elected government? Former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, seems on the money when he is reported in the same IHT piece thus:
"But in Washington, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said the quartet should find some way to talk to Hamas.
"I don't think you can just cast them into outer darkness and try to find a solution to the problems of the region without taking to account the standing that Hamas has in the Palestinian community," Powell said in a radio interview.
He said Hamas, which controls Gaza, was not going away and enjoyed considerable Palestinian support.
"They won an election that we insisted upon having," Powell said, adding that Hamas needed to be engaged, "as unpleasant a group they may be and as distasteful as I find some of their positions."
Read the full IHT piece here.
Bush and Co on the march....
Assuming that even just half of this piece in Dar Al-Hayat is true, then the world is about to witness more than turbulence in the Middle East in the next months. One might have thought that the US and its allies had had enough trauma and come to sufficient grief in Iraq. It would seem not!
"Those betting on a quick U.S. exit from Iraq and a change in President Bush's Iran policy would do well to read the recent report from the U.S. intelligence community - reports that indicate a plan of using Iraq as a base of operations from which to launch attacks against regional threats to U.S. interests.
Six years after the attacks of September 11, U.S. intelligence indicates that Al Qaeda is as much a threat now as then, aided by the U.S. war on Iraq and the growth of fanatic movements. It also indicates that the U.S. is losing on several fronts against Al Qaeda - a group that has clearly reconstituted and reorganized itself over the past couple of years.
In addition to threats from Al Qaeda, the U.S. intelligence report identifies a danger from the Lebanese party Hizbullah, which has attacked U.S. targets in the past and is seen as probably attacking again should its interests be threatened or should its patron Iran be subjected to an American attack".
"Those betting on a quick U.S. exit from Iraq and a change in President Bush's Iran policy would do well to read the recent report from the U.S. intelligence community - reports that indicate a plan of using Iraq as a base of operations from which to launch attacks against regional threats to U.S. interests.
Six years after the attacks of September 11, U.S. intelligence indicates that Al Qaeda is as much a threat now as then, aided by the U.S. war on Iraq and the growth of fanatic movements. It also indicates that the U.S. is losing on several fronts against Al Qaeda - a group that has clearly reconstituted and reorganized itself over the past couple of years.
In addition to threats from Al Qaeda, the U.S. intelligence report identifies a danger from the Lebanese party Hizbullah, which has attacked U.S. targets in the past and is seen as probably attacking again should its interests be threatened or should its patron Iran be subjected to an American attack".
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Justice goes west in Australia
Little needs to be added to this insightful and thought-provoking piece by Julian Burnside QC in The Age, on the case of Mohamed Haneef, his initial detention, release on bail and then taken into custody when his visa was cancelled.
All Australians ought to be truly alarmed by what has happened here. It's a slippery slope when events such as those which have occured in the Haneef case go unchallenged.
"The treatment of Mohamed Haneef is very disturbing. He spent 12 days in custody waiting to be questioned by police and he was held under provisions that do not appear to contemplate such lengthy detention without charge.
When, eventually, the police started questioning Haneef, they apparently found out no more than they already knew: he had given his cousin a pre-paid SIM card that still had some credit. Haneef could no longer use it because he was leaving England. A year later the SIM card was found in a car used by a terrorist.
It is a thin-looking case that will depend on showing that Haneef had reason to think one year ago that the SIM card would be used by a terrorist organisation.
Australia Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty described the case as being "at the margin". Presumably the same thinking persuaded the magistrate that Haneef should be bailed pending trial.
Prolonged detention for questioning is troubling: it is difficult to square with our assumptions about liberty. But things soon got much worse: as soon as Haneef was granted bail, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews cancelled his visa."
All Australians ought to be truly alarmed by what has happened here. It's a slippery slope when events such as those which have occured in the Haneef case go unchallenged.
"The treatment of Mohamed Haneef is very disturbing. He spent 12 days in custody waiting to be questioned by police and he was held under provisions that do not appear to contemplate such lengthy detention without charge.
When, eventually, the police started questioning Haneef, they apparently found out no more than they already knew: he had given his cousin a pre-paid SIM card that still had some credit. Haneef could no longer use it because he was leaving England. A year later the SIM card was found in a car used by a terrorist.
It is a thin-looking case that will depend on showing that Haneef had reason to think one year ago that the SIM card would be used by a terrorist organisation.
Australia Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty described the case as being "at the margin". Presumably the same thinking persuaded the magistrate that Haneef should be bailed pending trial.
Prolonged detention for questioning is troubling: it is difficult to square with our assumptions about liberty. But things soon got much worse: as soon as Haneef was granted bail, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews cancelled his visa."
Stand up President Ahmadinejad
The media savages him. He is scorned by many. It is said that many of his countrymen don't like him let alone approve of his random pronouncements. Who? President Ahmadinejad. True, he has made totally outrageous statements. The UN wants to order sanctions against his country, Iran. But, who is this man actually?
One person has sought to find out, in this rare insight into the man, published on Mother Jones:
"Yossi Melman is one of the most interesting intelligence correspondents around. He covers intelligence and national security issues for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and is the coauthor, with Meir Javedanfar, of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran (Carroll & Graf, 2007).
In their book, Melman and Javedanfar provide an in-depth look at the personality of Ahmadinejad, his religious beliefs, and the continuous cat-and-mouse game being played by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran. Their book also describes how IAEA inspectors came to the realization that Iran utilized technology provided by the renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Previously, Melman wrote (with CBS reporter Dan Raviv) a book about the history of the Israeli Intelligence community including Mossad, Every Spy a Prince. Melman answered Laura Rozen’s questions about Israeli thinking about Iran, Iranian president Ahmadinejad, and the mystique of Israeli intelligence."
Read the interview with Melman here.
One person has sought to find out, in this rare insight into the man, published on Mother Jones:
"Yossi Melman is one of the most interesting intelligence correspondents around. He covers intelligence and national security issues for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and is the coauthor, with Meir Javedanfar, of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran (Carroll & Graf, 2007).
In their book, Melman and Javedanfar provide an in-depth look at the personality of Ahmadinejad, his religious beliefs, and the continuous cat-and-mouse game being played by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran. Their book also describes how IAEA inspectors came to the realization that Iran utilized technology provided by the renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Previously, Melman wrote (with CBS reporter Dan Raviv) a book about the history of the Israeli Intelligence community including Mossad, Every Spy a Prince. Melman answered Laura Rozen’s questions about Israeli thinking about Iran, Iranian president Ahmadinejad, and the mystique of Israeli intelligence."
Read the interview with Melman here.
Making it look like you're busy
George Bush has called for yet another conference on the Middle East conflict. To what precise end is entirely unclear. Condi Rice - she with no credibility in the region - will chair the meeting.
Tony Karon, writing on his blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan, puts the whole exercise into context:
"In his latest effort to look busy on the Israeli-Palestinian front, President Bush has now proposed a regional conference to be chaired by Secretary of State Condi Rice, in which Israel would join its Arab neighbors at the table. But lest this sound like a peace conference, don’t be fooled. Its purpose, a U.S. official told Haaretz, will be “to review progress toward building Palestinian institutions, look for ways to support further reforms and support the effort going on right now between the parties together.” If that sounds mushy, that’s precisely the intention. It’s all about “looking busy” without actually doing anything; “bolstering” a new Palestinian regime whose purpose in Israeli and American eyes is simply to serve as a gendarmerie for Israel’s security.
Israel has no interest in discussing a final-status two-state solution with Abbas. It has made clear that it will confine itself to “confidence-building” measures, such as taking Fatah gunmen off Israel’s wanted list if the movement agrees to turn its weapons on Hamas. The latest gestures fall well within the approach recently explained to Jewish Republicans by Elliot Abrams, White House Middle East policy director. As the Jewish Daily Forward reported, Elliot reassured his audience that “lot of what is done during Rice’s frequent trips to the region is ‘just process’ — steps needed in order to keep the Europeans and moderate Arab countries ‘on the team’ and to make sure they feel that the United States is promoting peace in the Middle East.” In other words, looking busy."
Tony Karon, writing on his blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan, puts the whole exercise into context:
"In his latest effort to look busy on the Israeli-Palestinian front, President Bush has now proposed a regional conference to be chaired by Secretary of State Condi Rice, in which Israel would join its Arab neighbors at the table. But lest this sound like a peace conference, don’t be fooled. Its purpose, a U.S. official told Haaretz, will be “to review progress toward building Palestinian institutions, look for ways to support further reforms and support the effort going on right now between the parties together.” If that sounds mushy, that’s precisely the intention. It’s all about “looking busy” without actually doing anything; “bolstering” a new Palestinian regime whose purpose in Israeli and American eyes is simply to serve as a gendarmerie for Israel’s security.
Israel has no interest in discussing a final-status two-state solution with Abbas. It has made clear that it will confine itself to “confidence-building” measures, such as taking Fatah gunmen off Israel’s wanted list if the movement agrees to turn its weapons on Hamas. The latest gestures fall well within the approach recently explained to Jewish Republicans by Elliot Abrams, White House Middle East policy director. As the Jewish Daily Forward reported, Elliot reassured his audience that “lot of what is done during Rice’s frequent trips to the region is ‘just process’ — steps needed in order to keep the Europeans and moderate Arab countries ‘on the team’ and to make sure they feel that the United States is promoting peace in the Middle East.” In other words, looking busy."
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
And this is a lesson in democracy?
The US is hell-bent on bringing democracy to anywhere in the world, especially the Middle East. The Australian Treasurer just last week solemnly pronounced that the Iraq War was intended to bring democracy to Iraq.
Now.....voting is part of the democratic process! Right? Well, yes, but perhaps not in America itself - as this piece in AlterNet clearly explains. There they are trying to cull the voter-lists and even dissuade people from having the right to vote. All shades, again, of the chicanery which characterised the US elections in 1999 and 2003.
"The Justice Department is pressuring 10 states to purge their voter rolls, while states are ignoring laws to help low-income Americans register to vote.
State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.
"It's huge. It's another area where the administration is failing us," said Donna Brazile, chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, speaking of the Department of Justice's oversight of the nation's voter registration laws. "They are not pushing states to recognize their voter registration responsibilities."
At the same time, the Justice Department's Voting Section, which enforces voting rights and supervises elections in some states, is pressuring 10 states to do more to purge voter rolls -- or remove ineligible voters -- before the 2008 presidential election, according to letters sent to state election officials this spring."
Now.....voting is part of the democratic process! Right? Well, yes, but perhaps not in America itself - as this piece in AlterNet clearly explains. There they are trying to cull the voter-lists and even dissuade people from having the right to vote. All shades, again, of the chicanery which characterised the US elections in 1999 and 2003.
"The Justice Department is pressuring 10 states to purge their voter rolls, while states are ignoring laws to help low-income Americans register to vote.
State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.
"It's huge. It's another area where the administration is failing us," said Donna Brazile, chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, speaking of the Department of Justice's oversight of the nation's voter registration laws. "They are not pushing states to recognize their voter registration responsibilities."
At the same time, the Justice Department's Voting Section, which enforces voting rights and supervises elections in some states, is pressuring 10 states to do more to purge voter rolls -- or remove ineligible voters -- before the 2008 presidential election, according to letters sent to state election officials this spring."
US: Moving toward the end of constitutional democracy?
"Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.
Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.
Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.
Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered."
Written by some rabid liberal lefty? No, no lesser person than Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Read the full analysis by Roberts in his piece on Information Clearing House here. It makes for sobering, and rather frightening, reading.
Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.
Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.
Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered."
Written by some rabid liberal lefty? No, no lesser person than Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Read the full analysis by Roberts in his piece on Information Clearing House here. It makes for sobering, and rather frightening, reading.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Deluded.....and living in la la land!
We know that there are still people out there who believe George Bush is all goodness, the Iraq War is being successfully fought and those darned Muslims have to be brought into line.
So, to research how conservative right-wing Americans think, a journalist from The Independent joined a cruise organised by the right-wing organisation "National Review".
"The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth – and as for Guantanamo Bay, it's practically a holiday camp... The annual cruise organised by the 'National Review', mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans."
Read on..... and stop your jaw from dropping open as you discover and learn about people who probably still believe the world is flat. One can only wonder........
So, to research how conservative right-wing Americans think, a journalist from The Independent joined a cruise organised by the right-wing organisation "National Review".
"The Iraq war has been an amazing success, global warming is just a myth – and as for Guantanamo Bay, it's practically a holiday camp... The annual cruise organised by the 'National Review', mouthpiece of right-wing America, is a parallel universe populated by straight-talking, gun-toting, God-fearing Republicans."
Read on..... and stop your jaw from dropping open as you discover and learn about people who probably still believe the world is flat. One can only wonder........
Iran: Here they go again.....
Not content in having caused all the mayhem and political fallout of the Iraq War - and with his "popularity" and that of VP Cheney in the doghouse - it seems George Bush and the White House have Iran in their sights again.
Yes, perhaps Iran is behaving badly in the Middle East - hard to determine, objectively - but another war? But then, reports out of the Middle East yesterday claim that the Sunnis fighting in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia. Take on that country too? Perhaps not! Oil, you know!
The Guardian reports:
"The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."
The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Yes, perhaps Iran is behaving badly in the Middle East - hard to determine, objectively - but another war? But then, reports out of the Middle East yesterday claim that the Sunnis fighting in Iraq come from Saudi Arabia. Take on that country too? Perhaps not! Oil, you know!
The Guardian reports:
"The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."
The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Who's Sorry Now?
Perhaps with more than a tad tongue in cheek, Maureen Dowd, writing her column in the NY Times [not available on line unless by subscription] raises the critical question of taking responsibility for one's actions:
“How I Look on My Mistakes,” by Dick Cheney
Buzz off."
"There’s not much lately that we’d like to import from China.
Certainly not the yummy steamed buns stuffed with shredded cardboard soaked in a caustic agent used to make soap. Or the tasty toothpaste laced with an antifreeze ingredient. Or the scrumptious seafood with a chemical kick. Or those pet foods with kibbles and bits of poison.
But there is one thing made in China we could use: mea culpas of high officials.
Zheng Xiaoyu, a top regulator who helped create China’s Food and Drug Administration, accepted $850,000 in bribes from drug companies and became enmeshed in the mistakes that flooded the market with dangerous drugs. Before he was executed Tuesday, he wrote a short confession titled “How I Look on My Mistakes.”
“Thinking back on what has happened these years, I start to see the problems clearly,” he wrote in prison. “Why are the friends who gave me money all the bosses of pharmaceutical companies? Obviously because I was in charge of drug administration.
“I am confessing here that I loosened self-discipline, ignored the bottom line,” he said, adding that he had to confess his mistakes “as an act of saving my soul.”
We would skip the execution — although perhaps there should be ranch arrest for W., and Cheney could do community service passing out condoms at Gay Pride festivals.
But it is time for the lethally inept duo running the country to do some painstaking self-examination and confession. Just as the Communist Party helped the late Mr. Zheng compose his thoughts, I volunteer to ghost-write our leaders’ self-scrutiny:
“How I Look on My Mistakes,” by George W. Bush
The people trusted me with an important position. I didn’t live up to expectations. I let Dick supersize the executive branch and cast Democrats as whiners and traitors. Why did I not suspect that Dick might be power-hungry when he appointed himself vice president? Why did I let him take over my presidency and fill it up with warmongers? I was so afraid to be called a wimp, as my father once was, I allowed Dick and Rummy to turn me into a wimp. I should never have allowed Dick to conspire with energy lobbyists and steer contracts to Halliburton. A tip-off should have been when Dick kept giving himself all the same powers that I had. Or when he outed that pretty lady spy.
If only I had kept my promise to go after the thugs who attacked us on 9/11, because now I’ve made Osama and Al Qaeda stronger. I know my false claim about Al Qaeda’s ties with Iraq led to Iraq’s being tied down by Al Qaeda. I see now that my bungled war on terror has created more terror, empowered Iran and made America less secure. Oh, yeah, and I’m sorry I broke the military.
I stained the family honor when I ignored the elders of the Iraq Study Group. I should not have worried that I would be seen as kowtowing to my dad’s friends. The Oval Office is not the right place for a teenage rebellion.
I should not have picked that dimwit Brownie, and I should have trusted the gut of anyone besides that goof-off Chertoff to keep the nation safe. And what was I thinking when I said Harriet Miers should be a Supreme Court justice? That was loony. I’m sorry I made the surgeon general mention my name three times on every page of his speeches. That was childish.
How could I have let Dick bring in his best friend, Rummy, my dad’s old nemesis? Dummy Rummy let Osama escape at Tora Bora, messed up the Iraq occupation and aborted a mission to wipe out top Al Qaeda leaders because he was protecting Musharraf, who was protecting Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. Even though I promised to get rid of dictators who helped terrorists, I ended up embracing a Pakistani dictator who helps terrorists.
I’m embarrassed that the Iraqi Parliament is taking a monthlong vacation in the middle of my surge. Could I have set a bad example when I rode my bike in Crawford while New Orleans drowned?
I’m sorry I keep pretending Iraq will get better if we stay longer. It wasn’t very nice of me to push the surge when I knew it couldn’t work. I just wanted to dump the defeat on my successor. I wish Hillary the best of luck.
If I had left the gym long enough to read about Algeria or even one of T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, then I might have not gotten bogged down in Iraq and let North Korea, China and Russia slide.
Being the Decider is so confusing. I regret stealing the presidency and wish I could give it back.
Certainly not the yummy steamed buns stuffed with shredded cardboard soaked in a caustic agent used to make soap. Or the tasty toothpaste laced with an antifreeze ingredient. Or the scrumptious seafood with a chemical kick. Or those pet foods with kibbles and bits of poison.
But there is one thing made in China we could use: mea culpas of high officials.
Zheng Xiaoyu, a top regulator who helped create China’s Food and Drug Administration, accepted $850,000 in bribes from drug companies and became enmeshed in the mistakes that flooded the market with dangerous drugs. Before he was executed Tuesday, he wrote a short confession titled “How I Look on My Mistakes.”
“Thinking back on what has happened these years, I start to see the problems clearly,” he wrote in prison. “Why are the friends who gave me money all the bosses of pharmaceutical companies? Obviously because I was in charge of drug administration.
“I am confessing here that I loosened self-discipline, ignored the bottom line,” he said, adding that he had to confess his mistakes “as an act of saving my soul.”
We would skip the execution — although perhaps there should be ranch arrest for W., and Cheney could do community service passing out condoms at Gay Pride festivals.
But it is time for the lethally inept duo running the country to do some painstaking self-examination and confession. Just as the Communist Party helped the late Mr. Zheng compose his thoughts, I volunteer to ghost-write our leaders’ self-scrutiny:
“How I Look on My Mistakes,” by George W. Bush
The people trusted me with an important position. I didn’t live up to expectations. I let Dick supersize the executive branch and cast Democrats as whiners and traitors. Why did I not suspect that Dick might be power-hungry when he appointed himself vice president? Why did I let him take over my presidency and fill it up with warmongers? I was so afraid to be called a wimp, as my father once was, I allowed Dick and Rummy to turn me into a wimp. I should never have allowed Dick to conspire with energy lobbyists and steer contracts to Halliburton. A tip-off should have been when Dick kept giving himself all the same powers that I had. Or when he outed that pretty lady spy.
If only I had kept my promise to go after the thugs who attacked us on 9/11, because now I’ve made Osama and Al Qaeda stronger. I know my false claim about Al Qaeda’s ties with Iraq led to Iraq’s being tied down by Al Qaeda. I see now that my bungled war on terror has created more terror, empowered Iran and made America less secure. Oh, yeah, and I’m sorry I broke the military.
I stained the family honor when I ignored the elders of the Iraq Study Group. I should not have worried that I would be seen as kowtowing to my dad’s friends. The Oval Office is not the right place for a teenage rebellion.
I should not have picked that dimwit Brownie, and I should have trusted the gut of anyone besides that goof-off Chertoff to keep the nation safe. And what was I thinking when I said Harriet Miers should be a Supreme Court justice? That was loony. I’m sorry I made the surgeon general mention my name three times on every page of his speeches. That was childish.
How could I have let Dick bring in his best friend, Rummy, my dad’s old nemesis? Dummy Rummy let Osama escape at Tora Bora, messed up the Iraq occupation and aborted a mission to wipe out top Al Qaeda leaders because he was protecting Musharraf, who was protecting Al Qaeda in the tribal areas. Even though I promised to get rid of dictators who helped terrorists, I ended up embracing a Pakistani dictator who helps terrorists.
I’m embarrassed that the Iraqi Parliament is taking a monthlong vacation in the middle of my surge. Could I have set a bad example when I rode my bike in Crawford while New Orleans drowned?
I’m sorry I keep pretending Iraq will get better if we stay longer. It wasn’t very nice of me to push the surge when I knew it couldn’t work. I just wanted to dump the defeat on my successor. I wish Hillary the best of luck.
If I had left the gym long enough to read about Algeria or even one of T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, then I might have not gotten bogged down in Iraq and let North Korea, China and Russia slide.
Being the Decider is so confusing. I regret stealing the presidency and wish I could give it back.
“How I Look on My Mistakes,” by Dick Cheney
Buzz off."
Saturday, July 14, 2007
The disjuncture of two worlds......
Whilst the politicians talk about progress in Iraq - albeit slowly and whatever that all means anyway - the reality on the ground is another matter altogether. There is an obvious disconnect between what the military are saying, the politicians pronouncing and the people of Iraq experiencing. The latest revelatory piece on Iraq and the way the Americans act there - see the link to The Nation piece here - is no less than horrific.
TomDispatch [reproduced on truthout.com] has this piece looking at the "disjuncture" of what the US is doing in Iraq and what is actually happening in the country itself:
"Thousands of stories to tell - and no one to listen.
"In violence we forget who we are"
- Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic
1. Statistically Speaking
Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.
But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country - and once defined my own life as well.
Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.
The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds."
Read the full piece here.
TomDispatch [reproduced on truthout.com] has this piece looking at the "disjuncture" of what the US is doing in Iraq and what is actually happening in the country itself:
"Thousands of stories to tell - and no one to listen.
"In violence we forget who we are"
- Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic
1. Statistically Speaking
Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.
But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country - and once defined my own life as well.
Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.
The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds."
Read the full piece here.
The Meaning of "Global Terror"
There are bomb attacks and other terrorist acts being perpetrated around the world. Not regulary, but sufficient to attract media attention, especially post 9/11. How these attacks are reported and the underlying message sought to conveyed is another matter altogether.
It's a topic William Bowles takes up in an interesting piece on Information Clearing House:
"Y‘know it’s amazing really, considering that for centuries Europeans have been invading other countries, enslaving their peoples, ripping off their resources and in the process impoverishing much of the planet. And what is more, moving in and taking up residence without so much as a ‘by your leave’ let alone being put through an intensive examination upon their arrival.
Inevitably therefore, a time would come when through sheer force of circumstances, the descendents of our former overseas possessions would make the hazardous and brave trek to these shores in search of a better life or even to save their lives, largely as a result of the economic policies pursued by the West.
In what are regarded as better times, our former colonial subjects were even ‘welcome’—that is to say, their bodies were. The reception they got however was, to put it mildly, less than cordial for 'the loyal subjects of the Dominion'.
Five centuries of colonialism and imperialism have left a legacy of a deeply ingrained racism which expresses itself at every level of society but which is most insidiously expressed by the state and its mouthpieces, the corporate and state-run media.
Taken as individual expressions, they appear to be innocuous, or at least not directly offensive but when viewed contextually, that is to say as visible articulations of official policy, their impact over time reinforces whatever prejudices people have already absorbed.
Take for example the following quote from Channel 4 News (10/7/07) about the siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan made by Jon Snow as he allegedly reported on events there. Snow tells us that Pakistan is,
“a breeding ground for global terror”
There are so many implications embedded in these six word that they need to be exposed for what they are: inflammatory and racist and simply untrue."
It's a topic William Bowles takes up in an interesting piece on Information Clearing House:
"Y‘know it’s amazing really, considering that for centuries Europeans have been invading other countries, enslaving their peoples, ripping off their resources and in the process impoverishing much of the planet. And what is more, moving in and taking up residence without so much as a ‘by your leave’ let alone being put through an intensive examination upon their arrival.
Inevitably therefore, a time would come when through sheer force of circumstances, the descendents of our former overseas possessions would make the hazardous and brave trek to these shores in search of a better life or even to save their lives, largely as a result of the economic policies pursued by the West.
In what are regarded as better times, our former colonial subjects were even ‘welcome’—that is to say, their bodies were. The reception they got however was, to put it mildly, less than cordial for 'the loyal subjects of the Dominion'.
Five centuries of colonialism and imperialism have left a legacy of a deeply ingrained racism which expresses itself at every level of society but which is most insidiously expressed by the state and its mouthpieces, the corporate and state-run media.
Taken as individual expressions, they appear to be innocuous, or at least not directly offensive but when viewed contextually, that is to say as visible articulations of official policy, their impact over time reinforces whatever prejudices people have already absorbed.
Take for example the following quote from Channel 4 News (10/7/07) about the siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan made by Jon Snow as he allegedly reported on events there. Snow tells us that Pakistan is,
“a breeding ground for global terror”
There are so many implications embedded in these six word that they need to be exposed for what they are: inflammatory and racist and simply untrue."
Can One Live without China?
Is there anything these days which hasn't been made in China? It would seem not!
FP [Foreign Policy] posed the question:
"Is it possible to go for a whole year without buying any products made in China? One woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wanted to find out. FP spoke with author Sara Bongiorni about her new book, the hidden role China plays in our everyday lives, and what it’s like to be a mother of two without a coffee maker."
FOREIGN POLICY: So first, tell us about your book, A Year Without “Made in China”. What motivated you to write it?
Sara Bongiorni: I used to be a business reporter, and I would see this trade data coming from the U.S. Commerce Department each month. You see billions and billions of dollars worth coming in, and you can’t really make sense of it. It’s just so huge, and I felt very disconnected from that information.
So then this impromptu idea just popped into my head. It was two days after Christmas at the end of 2004, and my husband and I were in the living room. There were still holiday presents and toys just strewn across the floor. I started going through them a little bit, and I realized that most of our Christmas gifts came from China. And as I looked around the house, I thought, “Well gosh, most of the other stuff’s from China, too!”
I wanted to see if it was possible for us to avoid buying anything made in China for a year. So, I turned to my husband and said, “Hey, do you want to try this?” And he was like, “Absolutely not. That’s a terrible idea.” I twisted his arm, tried to make it sound fun, and convinced him that we should try this as a kind of experiment. So, on January 1, 2005, we kicked off this year-long—I use the word—“boycott,” but it’s not a political book; it’s not a China-bashing book or a protectionist book. It’s very much a personal story, an attempt to understand our family’s connections to the global economy.
FP: Was it difficult to find out what was made in China?
SB: It was very difficult! And what I found was that there’s just really no way to live what would be considered an ordinary consumer life without a heavy reliance on merchandise from China. It really upended our lives."
Read the full piece here.
FP [Foreign Policy] posed the question:
"Is it possible to go for a whole year without buying any products made in China? One woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wanted to find out. FP spoke with author Sara Bongiorni about her new book, the hidden role China plays in our everyday lives, and what it’s like to be a mother of two without a coffee maker."
FOREIGN POLICY: So first, tell us about your book, A Year Without “Made in China”. What motivated you to write it?
Sara Bongiorni: I used to be a business reporter, and I would see this trade data coming from the U.S. Commerce Department each month. You see billions and billions of dollars worth coming in, and you can’t really make sense of it. It’s just so huge, and I felt very disconnected from that information.
So then this impromptu idea just popped into my head. It was two days after Christmas at the end of 2004, and my husband and I were in the living room. There were still holiday presents and toys just strewn across the floor. I started going through them a little bit, and I realized that most of our Christmas gifts came from China. And as I looked around the house, I thought, “Well gosh, most of the other stuff’s from China, too!”
I wanted to see if it was possible for us to avoid buying anything made in China for a year. So, I turned to my husband and said, “Hey, do you want to try this?” And he was like, “Absolutely not. That’s a terrible idea.” I twisted his arm, tried to make it sound fun, and convinced him that we should try this as a kind of experiment. So, on January 1, 2005, we kicked off this year-long—I use the word—“boycott,” but it’s not a political book; it’s not a China-bashing book or a protectionist book. It’s very much a personal story, an attempt to understand our family’s connections to the global economy.
FP: Was it difficult to find out what was made in China?
SB: It was very difficult! And what I found was that there’s just really no way to live what would be considered an ordinary consumer life without a heavy reliance on merchandise from China. It really upended our lives."
Read the full piece here.
Some "mixed bag"! - with lies thrown in for good measure
George Bush asks the American people for patience in the Iraq War. For what is not really spelt out. His own scorecard on how things are going in Iraq is hardly encouraging. And then there are the continuation of all those lies.
Arianna Huffington in her The Huffington Report takes Bush to task in the clearest terms:
"So to hear the president and the White House spin it (and the media dutiful report it), the interim progress report on Iraq the administration will submit to Congress today is "a mixed bag."
According to Bush's scorecard, progress on eight of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress in May has been "satisfactory," on another eight it has been "unsatisfactory," and two are too close to call.
And this, according to the president, "is a cause for optimism."
That's like a doctor telling you that while your child has shiny hair he also has a brain tumor -- and you coming away thinking the doctor's report is "a mixed bag." That's insane. Trust me, if your kid has a brain tumor, the fact that he has nice hair or is a good speller or has made progress towards playing well with others is not going to even things out and leave you feeling upbeat and optimistic.
As expected, the president asked for more time, said the military had achieved "great things," and blamed the rising unpopularity of the war on "war fatigue." That and restless leg syndrome.
The American people are tired -- of the endless lies the president continues to feed us on the war.
The biggest of these lies remains the assertion that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq to keep from having to fight them here at home. The president today again claimed that one of the reasons we must press on (and on and on) in Iraq is because if we leave we'll "let Al Qaida gain safe haven."
This is shameless, coming the day after a leaked threat assessment from a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al-Qaeda is "better positioned to strike the West" than at any time since 9/11.
And this is because al-Qaeda has enjoyed a "safe haven" in Pakistan. Not Iraq, Mr. President, Pakistan. One of our supposed allies in the global war on terror. So, please, enough of the endless fearmongering drivel about how the folks blowing up people in Iraq are the same ones who attacked us on 9/11.
The threat of terror attacks in America is certainly a real one (just ask your Homeland Security director's gut); but the war in Iraq is not making us safer. It is making us categorically less safe.
One last thing. The President also made the claim that "there is a convergence of visions between what Iraqi leaders want... and the vision articulated by my administration." Oh, really? Tell that to the majority of the members of the Iraqi parliament who in May, by signing a legislative petition, rejected the ongoing occupation of their country by U.S. forces. Mr. Bush must also have missed the recent poll showing that only 22 percent of Iraqis support the presence of coalition troops in their country.
In June, the White House labeled progress in Iraq a mixed bag. They say it's a mixed bag now. Does anyone doubt that it will still be a mixed bag in September or December or April 2008 or as long as Mr. Bush is in the White House?
We need to face up to the brain tumor, Mr. President. And we need to do it now."
Arianna Huffington in her The Huffington Report takes Bush to task in the clearest terms:
"So to hear the president and the White House spin it (and the media dutiful report it), the interim progress report on Iraq the administration will submit to Congress today is "a mixed bag."
According to Bush's scorecard, progress on eight of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress in May has been "satisfactory," on another eight it has been "unsatisfactory," and two are too close to call.
And this, according to the president, "is a cause for optimism."
That's like a doctor telling you that while your child has shiny hair he also has a brain tumor -- and you coming away thinking the doctor's report is "a mixed bag." That's insane. Trust me, if your kid has a brain tumor, the fact that he has nice hair or is a good speller or has made progress towards playing well with others is not going to even things out and leave you feeling upbeat and optimistic.
As expected, the president asked for more time, said the military had achieved "great things," and blamed the rising unpopularity of the war on "war fatigue." That and restless leg syndrome.
The American people are tired -- of the endless lies the president continues to feed us on the war.
The biggest of these lies remains the assertion that we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq to keep from having to fight them here at home. The president today again claimed that one of the reasons we must press on (and on and on) in Iraq is because if we leave we'll "let Al Qaida gain safe haven."
This is shameless, coming the day after a leaked threat assessment from a National Intelligence Estimate concluded that al-Qaeda is "better positioned to strike the West" than at any time since 9/11.
And this is because al-Qaeda has enjoyed a "safe haven" in Pakistan. Not Iraq, Mr. President, Pakistan. One of our supposed allies in the global war on terror. So, please, enough of the endless fearmongering drivel about how the folks blowing up people in Iraq are the same ones who attacked us on 9/11.
The threat of terror attacks in America is certainly a real one (just ask your Homeland Security director's gut); but the war in Iraq is not making us safer. It is making us categorically less safe.
One last thing. The President also made the claim that "there is a convergence of visions between what Iraqi leaders want... and the vision articulated by my administration." Oh, really? Tell that to the majority of the members of the Iraqi parliament who in May, by signing a legislative petition, rejected the ongoing occupation of their country by U.S. forces. Mr. Bush must also have missed the recent poll showing that only 22 percent of Iraqis support the presence of coalition troops in their country.
In June, the White House labeled progress in Iraq a mixed bag. They say it's a mixed bag now. Does anyone doubt that it will still be a mixed bag in September or December or April 2008 or as long as Mr. Bush is in the White House?
We need to face up to the brain tumor, Mr. President. And we need to do it now."
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