The word "sorry" is going to figure on the political landscape in Australia in the next little while - as the nature and extent of the apology to made or given to the aboriginal community is debated.
There is already a divide between the new Rudd Government elect and the Opposition.
Professor Lowitja O’Donoghue, venerable and venerated elder in the indigenous community, weighs into the debate in a piece in Crikey:
"I am saddened to hear that the new opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, will not say Sorry to Aboriginal people. But I am not surprised.
Brendan Nelson represents a party that is out of touch. They just don’t get it. He would do well to talk to former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, to learn something about genuine liberal values.
Nelson’s are the mean-spirited responses of denial that diminish him as a person and diminish Australia as a nation. At the very historical moment when new, courageous collaboration is possible, this new Liberal leader, just like Howard before him, fuels the fires of division.
What they fail to grasp, or refuse to see, is that we cannot move forward until the legacies of the past are properly dealt with. This means acknowledging the truth of history, providing justice and allowing the process of healing to occur.
We are not just talking here of the brutality of a time gone by – though that was certainly a shameful reality. We are talking of the present, of the ways in which the legacy of the past lives on for every single Aboriginal person and their families."
Friday, November 30, 2007
The winds of change?
Two pieces in the SMH reflect on what changes may be wrought by and from the change of Federal Government in Australia.
First, a more open and accessible FOI:
"Politicians rarely talk about freedom of information, and the few that do are usually in opposition. So when a politician in government raises the issue, it's worth taking notice, especially when it's the new prime minister who's under no pressure to do so.
Have a look at what Kevin Rudd said on the 7.30 Report this week and it's hard not to get a bit excited that the obsessive secrecy fostered by John Howard's administration might be about to change.
Asked about a recent letter in which former prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser urged an inquiry into declining standards of ministerial accountability, Rudd agreed there were declining standards of Westminster government and promised a code of conduct with which ministers would be required to comply.
And then he volunteered this: "But let me just give you one core example. I'm determined to do something about freedom of information. This is notoriously seen as something that executive governments don't like because it causes information to go out which might be embarrassing. I'd like to, by contrast, encourage a culture of disclosure within government departments."
How refreshing is that? When he was working for the Queensland government years ago, Rudd was famous for undermining the state's FoI laws, and there are plenty of people who've been expecting him to do the same in Canberra."
Secondly, a new approach to the appointments of judges and the administration of agencies such as ASIO:
"Robert McClelland as the new Attorney-General and Bob Debus as Minister for Home Affairs don't exactly look like "generational change", but looks could be deceptive. Both are solid, if unflamboyant, performers but, importantly, both have adopted a gently-gently approach to the development of a legislative Charter of Rights and a more liberal legal policy regime.
McClelland, you'll recall, had to be brought back "on message" during the election campaign after he said that Labor would campaign against the death penalty in Indonesia for the Bali bombers.
Debus's new portfolio includes responsibility for ASIO and the Australian Federal Police and the anticipation is that, unlike Philip Ruddock, he'll be conscious of checking some of the excesses we've seen from these agencies in cases such as Mohammed Haneef and Izhar ul-Haque.
The rump of the old neo-cons will be incandescent with rage should a Charter of Rights show its nose above the parapet because it is claimed that such an instrument would shift power from elected politicians to unelected judges.
But now that the wrong sort of politicians have been elected, where does leave the Howardistas? Maybe in their dark moments they are secretly hoping that those black-letter judges will pull out the stops and exercise a bit more authority over social policy that, if we are to accept the then government's advertising, is now in the hands of "fanatics and extremists".
First, a more open and accessible FOI:
"Politicians rarely talk about freedom of information, and the few that do are usually in opposition. So when a politician in government raises the issue, it's worth taking notice, especially when it's the new prime minister who's under no pressure to do so.
Have a look at what Kevin Rudd said on the 7.30 Report this week and it's hard not to get a bit excited that the obsessive secrecy fostered by John Howard's administration might be about to change.
Asked about a recent letter in which former prime ministers Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser urged an inquiry into declining standards of ministerial accountability, Rudd agreed there were declining standards of Westminster government and promised a code of conduct with which ministers would be required to comply.
And then he volunteered this: "But let me just give you one core example. I'm determined to do something about freedom of information. This is notoriously seen as something that executive governments don't like because it causes information to go out which might be embarrassing. I'd like to, by contrast, encourage a culture of disclosure within government departments."
How refreshing is that? When he was working for the Queensland government years ago, Rudd was famous for undermining the state's FoI laws, and there are plenty of people who've been expecting him to do the same in Canberra."
Secondly, a new approach to the appointments of judges and the administration of agencies such as ASIO:
"Robert McClelland as the new Attorney-General and Bob Debus as Minister for Home Affairs don't exactly look like "generational change", but looks could be deceptive. Both are solid, if unflamboyant, performers but, importantly, both have adopted a gently-gently approach to the development of a legislative Charter of Rights and a more liberal legal policy regime.
McClelland, you'll recall, had to be brought back "on message" during the election campaign after he said that Labor would campaign against the death penalty in Indonesia for the Bali bombers.
Debus's new portfolio includes responsibility for ASIO and the Australian Federal Police and the anticipation is that, unlike Philip Ruddock, he'll be conscious of checking some of the excesses we've seen from these agencies in cases such as Mohammed Haneef and Izhar ul-Haque.
The rump of the old neo-cons will be incandescent with rage should a Charter of Rights show its nose above the parapet because it is claimed that such an instrument would shift power from elected politicians to unelected judges.
But now that the wrong sort of politicians have been elected, where does leave the Howardistas? Maybe in their dark moments they are secretly hoping that those black-letter judges will pull out the stops and exercise a bit more authority over social policy that, if we are to accept the then government's advertising, is now in the hands of "fanatics and extremists".
Been there, done and said that....
Much has been said and written post the Annapolis meeting but Robert Fisk, venerable and the most experienced journalist and writer on the Middle East - after all he has lived in Beirut for some 30 years - puts the whole thing into context in his latest piece in The Independent:
"Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo.
"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"?
Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an Israeli state – and in reality, of course, it is – there can be no "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948.
And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party." Come again?
We went through all these steering committees before – and they never worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?
Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this – or at least Syrian support to control Hamas – and what do we get? Bush continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else..."
Meanwhile, the LA Times reports on the unease and skepticism in the Arab world post the US Mid-East meeting:
"This week's Middle East conference in Annapolis, Md., has highlighted Arab unease over the ability and will of a weak U.S. president to deliver peace. At the same time, it has stoked fears that Israel has scored a public relations coup while refusing to concede on such core issues as Palestinian refugees and the fate of Jerusalem.
Arab nations, most notably Syria and Saudi Arabia, had been reluctant to attend the U.S.-sponsored talks, which are meant to set the framework for future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Now, with their prestige on the line, Arab officials are returning to their capitals with two tasks: convincing their populations that the summit was a crucial step toward a Palestinian state and keeping pressure on the U.S. and Israel to deliver on that goal.
It is a politically risky situation marked by skepticism and mistrust as well as occasional resolve. Arabs were encouraged that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, at least temporarily, moved to center stage. But turmoil in Lebanon, war in Iraq and a rising Iran have complicated Middle East politics beyond the nuances of what unfolds between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Such instabilities, however, are often inextricably linked to the quest for a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Arab leaders worry that if Abbas is perceived to have gained little from Annapolis, it will strengthen Iranian-backed militant groups, such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. One of the main reasons Sunni Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia agreed to participate in the summit was to counter Iran's political involvement across the region, including its alliance with Syria and influence in Iraq."
"Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo.
"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time for the cycle of blood... to end"?
Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an Israeli state – and in reality, of course, it is – there can be no "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948.
And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (sic) teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party." Come again?
We went through all these steering committees before – and they never worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?
Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this – or at least Syrian support to control Hamas – and what do we get? Bush continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else..."
Meanwhile, the LA Times reports on the unease and skepticism in the Arab world post the US Mid-East meeting:
"This week's Middle East conference in Annapolis, Md., has highlighted Arab unease over the ability and will of a weak U.S. president to deliver peace. At the same time, it has stoked fears that Israel has scored a public relations coup while refusing to concede on such core issues as Palestinian refugees and the fate of Jerusalem.
Arab nations, most notably Syria and Saudi Arabia, had been reluctant to attend the U.S.-sponsored talks, which are meant to set the framework for future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Now, with their prestige on the line, Arab officials are returning to their capitals with two tasks: convincing their populations that the summit was a crucial step toward a Palestinian state and keeping pressure on the U.S. and Israel to deliver on that goal.
It is a politically risky situation marked by skepticism and mistrust as well as occasional resolve. Arabs were encouraged that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was, at least temporarily, moved to center stage. But turmoil in Lebanon, war in Iraq and a rising Iran have complicated Middle East politics beyond the nuances of what unfolds between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Such instabilities, however, are often inextricably linked to the quest for a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Arab leaders worry that if Abbas is perceived to have gained little from Annapolis, it will strengthen Iranian-backed militant groups, such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. One of the main reasons Sunni Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia agreed to participate in the summit was to counter Iran's political involvement across the region, including its alliance with Syria and influence in Iraq."
Baghdad dangerous as ever: Journalists
For some reason Iraq has been relegated down the totem-pole in the news. TV, radio or print. Perhaps it has something to do with the pr and hype being put out, by the Americans especially, that things are looking up in the war-torn country, the strikes by insurgents are allegedly down, etc. etc.
The facts, according to this Reuters report, are far different to the positive ones out of Baghdad [or Washington]:
"Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said.
The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict.
A separate Pew poll released on Tuesday showed that 48 percent of Americans believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well, up from 34 percent in June, amid signs of declining Iraqi civilian casualties and progress against Islamist militants such as al Qaeda in Iraq.
But most journalists said they believe violence and the threat of violence have increased during their tenures."
The facts, according to this Reuters report, are far different to the positive ones out of Baghdad [or Washington]:
"Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said.
The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict.
A separate Pew poll released on Tuesday showed that 48 percent of Americans believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well, up from 34 percent in June, amid signs of declining Iraqi civilian casualties and progress against Islamist militants such as al Qaeda in Iraq.
But most journalists said they believe violence and the threat of violence have increased during their tenures."
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Organising your life via India.....American style
It's an all too familiar thing......the almost now ubiquitous call from someone in India offering something or other. Then, too, call your so-called "local" credit card company or bank and you are as likely to end up speaking with someone in Bangalore or elsewhere in India.
Now, a twist to outsourcing......Americans having their lives "organised" by someone in India - as Spiegel International reports:
"Stressed-out Americans are now having their day-to-day lives organized by assistants in Asia. From tutoring to restaurant reservations, call centers half way around the world are taking care of their every need.
When asked to describe his new life, Michael Levy goes into rhapsodies. "You become lazy," he says. "It's just wonderful."
Up until this summer, the 42-year-old led a normal middle-class life in New York, working as a lawyer for the Department of Justice. Lately, though, he's had an entire staff at his disposal, who take care of his personal life around the clock.
Take, for example, a recent situation in Las Vegas, where Levy was holding his bachelor party. Sitting at the poker table with friends, he didn't feel like discussing the room arrangements personally with the hotel reception. "Please call and tell them to put an extra bed in room 21057," he instructed his assistant by e-mail via his Blackberry. Personal secretaries also arranged bridal shop appointments for Levy's fiancée before the wedding, and organized tuxedo rental for the guests.
Levy's personal staff is deft, friendly, and helpful -- and unbeatably cheap. The entire telephone service costs a mere $29 (€20) a month -- because the service is provided by a call center located in India and operated by the New York-based company
Globalization may still be a dirty word in the United States, where it is a synonym for downsized jobs and cheap production in the Far East. But lately middle-class Americans have also been discovering the advantages of globalization for their private lives. It turns out that the outsourcing much beloved by companies can work for personal households too. And, thanks to the Internet, the possibilities are practically limitless".
Now, a twist to outsourcing......Americans having their lives "organised" by someone in India - as Spiegel International reports:
"Stressed-out Americans are now having their day-to-day lives organized by assistants in Asia. From tutoring to restaurant reservations, call centers half way around the world are taking care of their every need.
When asked to describe his new life, Michael Levy goes into rhapsodies. "You become lazy," he says. "It's just wonderful."
Up until this summer, the 42-year-old led a normal middle-class life in New York, working as a lawyer for the Department of Justice. Lately, though, he's had an entire staff at his disposal, who take care of his personal life around the clock.
Take, for example, a recent situation in Las Vegas, where Levy was holding his bachelor party. Sitting at the poker table with friends, he didn't feel like discussing the room arrangements personally with the hotel reception. "Please call and tell them to put an extra bed in room 21057," he instructed his assistant by e-mail via his Blackberry. Personal secretaries also arranged bridal shop appointments for Levy's fiancée before the wedding, and organized tuxedo rental for the guests.
Levy's personal staff is deft, friendly, and helpful -- and unbeatably cheap. The entire telephone service costs a mere $29 (€20) a month -- because the service is provided by a call center located in India and operated by the New York-based company
Globalization may still be a dirty word in the United States, where it is a synonym for downsized jobs and cheap production in the Far East. But lately middle-class Americans have also been discovering the advantages of globalization for their private lives. It turns out that the outsourcing much beloved by companies can work for personal households too. And, thanks to the Internet, the possibilities are practically limitless".
Maureen Dowd: Jump on the Peace Train
In her usual style and eye to matters, in her column in the NY Times "Jump on the Peace Train" Maureen Dowd reflects on the Annapolis conference and the role of Condi and George W:
"Condi doesn’t want to be Iraq.
She wants to be a Palestinian state. It has a far more hopeful ring to it, legacy-wise.
The Most Powerful Woman in the History of the World, as President Bush calls her, is a very orderly person.
Like her boss, she loves schedules and routines and hates disruptions. As a child, she was elected “president” of her family, a position that allowed her to dictate the organizational details of family trips, according to “Condoleezza Rice: An American Life,” a new biography by The Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller.
As an adult, Condi was worried about taking the job of top diplomat because it would mean traveling and being away from her things and habits.
So it is telling that in Annapolis she is running such a seat-of-the-pants operation, which seems designed to rescue the images of a secretary of state and president who have spent more time working out in the gym than working on the peace process.
W. couldn’t be bothered to stay in Annapolis and try to belatedly push things along and guide Israel with a firmer hand.
After subverting diplomacy in his first term, now W. does drive-by diplomacy, taking a playboy approach to peace. He wants to look like he’s taking the problem of an Israeli-Palestinian treaty seriously when his true motivation is more cynical: pacifying the Arab coalition and holding it together so that he can blunt Iran’s sway.
When they invaded Iraq rather than working on the Palestine problem, W. and Condi helped spur the greater Iranian influence, Islamic extremism and anti-American sentiment that they are now desperately trying to quell."
An interesting postscript: Buried in all the hyped-up news about the outcome of the Annapolis meeting and that Abbas and Olmert will seek some sort of resolution by the end of next year, Olmert has already subsequently announced that it is quite possible that that twelve month objective may not be met. The same old story - one very small step forward and two giant steps back!
"Condi doesn’t want to be Iraq.
She wants to be a Palestinian state. It has a far more hopeful ring to it, legacy-wise.
The Most Powerful Woman in the History of the World, as President Bush calls her, is a very orderly person.
Like her boss, she loves schedules and routines and hates disruptions. As a child, she was elected “president” of her family, a position that allowed her to dictate the organizational details of family trips, according to “Condoleezza Rice: An American Life,” a new biography by The Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller.
As an adult, Condi was worried about taking the job of top diplomat because it would mean traveling and being away from her things and habits.
So it is telling that in Annapolis she is running such a seat-of-the-pants operation, which seems designed to rescue the images of a secretary of state and president who have spent more time working out in the gym than working on the peace process.
W. couldn’t be bothered to stay in Annapolis and try to belatedly push things along and guide Israel with a firmer hand.
After subverting diplomacy in his first term, now W. does drive-by diplomacy, taking a playboy approach to peace. He wants to look like he’s taking the problem of an Israeli-Palestinian treaty seriously when his true motivation is more cynical: pacifying the Arab coalition and holding it together so that he can blunt Iran’s sway.
When they invaded Iraq rather than working on the Palestine problem, W. and Condi helped spur the greater Iranian influence, Islamic extremism and anti-American sentiment that they are now desperately trying to quell."
An interesting postscript: Buried in all the hyped-up news about the outcome of the Annapolis meeting and that Abbas and Olmert will seek some sort of resolution by the end of next year, Olmert has already subsequently announced that it is quite possible that that twelve month objective may not be met. The same old story - one very small step forward and two giant steps back!
CIA revealed "meddling" in Venezuela
It won't come as a surprise to read in this piece in CounterPoint of the actions of the CIA in relation to Venezuela:
"On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.
The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled 'Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer' and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym 'HUMINT' (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA's polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention.
The US operatives emphasized their capacity to recruit former Chavez supporters among the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former Minister of Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the 'yes' vote by 6 per cent from its original margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives concede that they have reached their ceiling, recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via the electoral route."
"On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.
The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled 'Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer' and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym 'HUMINT' (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA's polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention.
The US operatives emphasized their capacity to recruit former Chavez supporters among the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former Minister of Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the 'yes' vote by 6 per cent from its original margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives concede that they have reached their ceiling, recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via the electoral route."
Pakistan: Warning about Taliban Crossing
Yesterday saw Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf step down as commander of the army - to pave the way to his becoming civilian President in the next days.
Perhaps not surprisingly George Bush and UK PM Gordon Brown have welcomed the move. Of course, it totally ignores the background to the dictatorial actions of Musharraf.
Arthur Keller is a former C.I.A. case officer in Pakistan and in an op-ed piece in the NY Times reflects on where Pakistan stands in relation to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
"In the early 1900s, a crusty British general, Andrew Skeen, wrote a guide to military operations in the Pashtun tribal belt, in what is now Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. His first piece of advice: “When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire.” This was written decades before the advent of suicide bombers, when the Pashtuns had little but rifles yet nevertheless managed to give their British overlords fits.
These same tribal areas are now focus of Pakistan’s struggle with the Pakistani Taliban, particularly the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas on the Afghan border and the Swat region further north. The government trumpets it has more than 80,000 troops in the tribal areas, fighting bravely to root out the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, these troops — supported with tens of millions of dollars in American aid — appear even less able to police this wild frontier than were the canny British.
Despite the government’s claims of a successful offensive over last weekend, for the most part the Pakistani Army is totally on the defensive and doing almost nothing to bring the fight to the militants. Yes, there have been heavy casualties in recent months, but this is very misleading: they are largely coming from roadside-bomb attacks against convoys and Taliban assaults against Pakistani military bases and checkpoints. There are relatively few reports of casualties during foot patrols, raids or any offensive assaults."
Perhaps not surprisingly George Bush and UK PM Gordon Brown have welcomed the move. Of course, it totally ignores the background to the dictatorial actions of Musharraf.
Arthur Keller is a former C.I.A. case officer in Pakistan and in an op-ed piece in the NY Times reflects on where Pakistan stands in relation to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
"In the early 1900s, a crusty British general, Andrew Skeen, wrote a guide to military operations in the Pashtun tribal belt, in what is now Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. His first piece of advice: “When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire.” This was written decades before the advent of suicide bombers, when the Pashtuns had little but rifles yet nevertheless managed to give their British overlords fits.
These same tribal areas are now focus of Pakistan’s struggle with the Pakistani Taliban, particularly the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas on the Afghan border and the Swat region further north. The government trumpets it has more than 80,000 troops in the tribal areas, fighting bravely to root out the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, these troops — supported with tens of millions of dollars in American aid — appear even less able to police this wild frontier than were the canny British.
Despite the government’s claims of a successful offensive over last weekend, for the most part the Pakistani Army is totally on the defensive and doing almost nothing to bring the fight to the militants. Yes, there have been heavy casualties in recent months, but this is very misleading: they are largely coming from roadside-bomb attacks against convoys and Taliban assaults against Pakistani military bases and checkpoints. There are relatively few reports of casualties during foot patrols, raids or any offensive assaults."
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The Nation magazine "reports" on the Oz election
Probably America's most pre-eminent magazine, The Nation - and certainly its oldest - interestingly publishes a perspective of the Rudd election win, written by an Australian and giving it prominence as its lead piece.
Antony Loewenstein's piece, "Kevin Rudd, Agent of Change?" evaluates the outcome of the election and where Australia is headed under its new PM, Kevin Rudd:
"..... the election of Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd to the prime ministership may not necessarily represent a repudiation of the worst excesses of the past decade. An "It's Time" factor became almost infectious as soon as Rudd assumed the Labor leadership in late 2006. Voters wanted change, a younger personality to replace the near 70-year-old Howard, and Rudd offered, in his cautious technocratic way, a sense of slight change without seriously challenging the fundamentals of relatively prosperous, conservative capitalism. No polls indicated intense dislike for Howard before the election, though he was accused, like so many global leaders before him, of not recognizing when it was time to retire. His Liberal Party is now out of power at every level of Australian government."
And:
"Rudd is a conservative Christian, Chinese-speaking former diplomat who remains relatively unknown. Canberra journalist Nicholas Stuart, author of Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorized Political Biography, says that the new prime minister is "like a glass and we're pouring our hopes and our ideas into him and, because he is empty, we see them reflected back." His optimism may be short-lived.
Although Rudd has pledged to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and remove Australia's combat troops from Iraq--clear policy differences with his predecessor--Rudd has maintained a "hard line" on antiterrorism measures, despite systematic failures over the past few years in bringing terror suspects to trial: a senior counterterrorism officer with the Australian Federal Police admitted in a recent botched trial that his team in 2004 was "directed, we were informed, to lay as many charges under the new terrorist legislation against as many suspects as possible because we wanted to use the new legislation." It is unlikely that a Rudd government will fundamentally alter the extremes of the current laws. One can hope that he will repair the breakdown in trust between the Muslim community and the federal government after years of Howard's rhetorical demonization of a minority vital to isolating terrorists."
Antony Loewenstein's piece, "Kevin Rudd, Agent of Change?" evaluates the outcome of the election and where Australia is headed under its new PM, Kevin Rudd:
"..... the election of Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd to the prime ministership may not necessarily represent a repudiation of the worst excesses of the past decade. An "It's Time" factor became almost infectious as soon as Rudd assumed the Labor leadership in late 2006. Voters wanted change, a younger personality to replace the near 70-year-old Howard, and Rudd offered, in his cautious technocratic way, a sense of slight change without seriously challenging the fundamentals of relatively prosperous, conservative capitalism. No polls indicated intense dislike for Howard before the election, though he was accused, like so many global leaders before him, of not recognizing when it was time to retire. His Liberal Party is now out of power at every level of Australian government."
And:
"Rudd is a conservative Christian, Chinese-speaking former diplomat who remains relatively unknown. Canberra journalist Nicholas Stuart, author of Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorized Political Biography, says that the new prime minister is "like a glass and we're pouring our hopes and our ideas into him and, because he is empty, we see them reflected back." His optimism may be short-lived.
Although Rudd has pledged to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and remove Australia's combat troops from Iraq--clear policy differences with his predecessor--Rudd has maintained a "hard line" on antiterrorism measures, despite systematic failures over the past few years in bringing terror suspects to trial: a senior counterterrorism officer with the Australian Federal Police admitted in a recent botched trial that his team in 2004 was "directed, we were informed, to lay as many charges under the new terrorist legislation against as many suspects as possible because we wanted to use the new legislation." It is unlikely that a Rudd government will fundamentally alter the extremes of the current laws. One can hope that he will repair the breakdown in trust between the Muslim community and the federal government after years of Howard's rhetorical demonization of a minority vital to isolating terrorists."
Meanwhile in the real world.......
All the principal players have spoken, the platitudes have been flowing, the photos taken, and some might feel some sort of warm glow from the Annapolis Middle East one-day meeting, but as everyone at the meeting heads back home, the reality on the ground in Gaza is clearly highlighted in this piece on The Independent:
"Big Israeli armoured bulldozers, guarded by a stationary escort of tanks and armoured personnel carriers half-hidden in the adjacent sandbanks, were operating all along the exposed walk south on the Palestinian side of the hi-tech Erez terminal separating Gaza from Israel yesterday.
As the great and good of the Western and Arab worlds were gathering in Annapolis, this no-man's land crossed on foot by the small privileged minority of Palestinians allowed to enter and leave since Hamas's enforced takeover in June, has been extended to almost two kilometres.
Yesterday the road seemed like a metaphor for the ever- deepening isolation of Gaza. Much of it is now rutted by the bulldozers seemingly working to destroy the cover afforded to mortar and Qassam rocket-launching crews by the eerie, bombed-out wreckage of what was once a clatteringly busy Palestinian-Israeli industrial zone. The core of women from the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, brandishing familiar Palestinian flags, demonstrating against what is universally called here the "siege" of Gaza, had to do so separated even from the forbidding border fence by almost a mile-wide sterile zone controlled by the Israeli military, their remote-controlled drones buzzing overhead."
It is worth bearing in mind that a principal player in the Middle East, Hamas - remember, the duly democratically elected authority governing Gaza - wasn't even invited to the Annapolis meeting. Not really very smart excluding them!
"Big Israeli armoured bulldozers, guarded by a stationary escort of tanks and armoured personnel carriers half-hidden in the adjacent sandbanks, were operating all along the exposed walk south on the Palestinian side of the hi-tech Erez terminal separating Gaza from Israel yesterday.
As the great and good of the Western and Arab worlds were gathering in Annapolis, this no-man's land crossed on foot by the small privileged minority of Palestinians allowed to enter and leave since Hamas's enforced takeover in June, has been extended to almost two kilometres.
Yesterday the road seemed like a metaphor for the ever- deepening isolation of Gaza. Much of it is now rutted by the bulldozers seemingly working to destroy the cover afforded to mortar and Qassam rocket-launching crews by the eerie, bombed-out wreckage of what was once a clatteringly busy Palestinian-Israeli industrial zone. The core of women from the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, brandishing familiar Palestinian flags, demonstrating against what is universally called here the "siege" of Gaza, had to do so separated even from the forbidding border fence by almost a mile-wide sterile zone controlled by the Israeli military, their remote-controlled drones buzzing overhead."
It is worth bearing in mind that a principal player in the Middle East, Hamas - remember, the duly democratically elected authority governing Gaza - wasn't even invited to the Annapolis meeting. Not really very smart excluding them!
It's all falling into place
Speaking at the so-called Annapolis Middle East Conference - well, meeting actually - George Bush said:
"Second, the time is right because the battle is under way for the future of the Middle East, and we must not cede victory to the extremists."
Of course!....the US wants to be in the middle of the action in the Middle East. That's why other news to emerge yesterday is "interesting" and puts things into context:
"In Sunday's New York Times U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker was quoted as saying Iraq is "going to be a long, hard slog." Sound familiar? It should, because here was then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- four years and one month ago: "It will be a long, hard slog." This thing has been going on for so long, the administration is reusing excuses. The Times also reports "the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country." Really? I'd say the "quickly" ship sailed four years ago. At this point, it's no longer about quick or not-so-quick, it's about ever or never, as in: will we ever leave Iraq?"
This from The Huffington Post, here. Meanwhile, no less importantly, the final piece in the puzzle, as it were, falls into place, as this piece on AlterNet makes clear:
"Way back in February 2006, Tom Engelhardt noted that the "debate" over permanent U.S. bases in Iraq was practically non-existent. After a search of the LexisNexis database, he explained, "American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words 'permanent,' 'bases,' and 'Iraq' should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report."
It wasn't too big a mystery -- talk of permanent bases was considered impolite for the political mainstream. It was a subject best relegated to blogs and talk radio. When congressional Dems started taking the matter seriously, congressional Republicans quickly shut down any policy proposals that might limit a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq.
With that in mind, today's news is not at all encouraging.
"Second, the time is right because the battle is under way for the future of the Middle East, and we must not cede victory to the extremists."
Of course!....the US wants to be in the middle of the action in the Middle East. That's why other news to emerge yesterday is "interesting" and puts things into context:
"In Sunday's New York Times U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker was quoted as saying Iraq is "going to be a long, hard slog." Sound familiar? It should, because here was then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- four years and one month ago: "It will be a long, hard slog." This thing has been going on for so long, the administration is reusing excuses. The Times also reports "the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country." Really? I'd say the "quickly" ship sailed four years ago. At this point, it's no longer about quick or not-so-quick, it's about ever or never, as in: will we ever leave Iraq?"
This from The Huffington Post, here. Meanwhile, no less importantly, the final piece in the puzzle, as it were, falls into place, as this piece on AlterNet makes clear:
"Way back in February 2006, Tom Engelhardt noted that the "debate" over permanent U.S. bases in Iraq was practically non-existent. After a search of the LexisNexis database, he explained, "American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words 'permanent,' 'bases,' and 'Iraq' should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report."
It wasn't too big a mystery -- talk of permanent bases was considered impolite for the political mainstream. It was a subject best relegated to blogs and talk radio. When congressional Dems started taking the matter seriously, congressional Republicans quickly shut down any policy proposals that might limit a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq.
With that in mind, today's news is not at all encouraging.
'Iraq's government, seeking protection against foreign threats and internal coups, will offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership, two Iraqi officials said Monday.
The proposal, described to The Associated Press by two senior Iraqi officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence.'"
The proposal, described to The Associated Press by two senior Iraqi officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence.'"
The Bush Touch: Turning Friends into Enemies
Scott Horton, writing in Harper's Magazine, questions the Bush touch - which appears to make enemies of those whose were previously friends:
"George W. Bush came to power on January 20, 2001. He inherited the most powerful military force ever assembled in human history, and the most significant system of military alliances that any nation had ever constructed. It would be wrong to say that this was the product of the Administration of Bill Clinton. More accurately, it was the result of a bipartisan tradition in foreign policy and defense planning that stretched back to the era of Truman. Bush, however, was intent on using foreign adventures as a partisan political tool to enhance his grip on the helm of state. And he had little patience for or interest in alliances. The theme of his seven years of foreign and defense policy has been unilateralism.
One by one the leaders on the world stage who put their faith in Bush and thoughtlessly did his bidding have fallen in disgrace, usually rejected by their own voters. The first to go were Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s José María Aznar. Then Britain’s Tony Blair was forced to surrender 10 Downing Street to his Chancellor of the Exchequer, to give Labour a fighting chance to hold a majority in the next election. In the last week, Jarosław Kaczyński, a conservative ally in Poland fell, and over the weekend, Bush’s most faithful follower in the entire pack, the veritable boot-licker John Howard of Australia. In each case, the association with George W. Bush was electoral cyanide to voters back home."
"George W. Bush came to power on January 20, 2001. He inherited the most powerful military force ever assembled in human history, and the most significant system of military alliances that any nation had ever constructed. It would be wrong to say that this was the product of the Administration of Bill Clinton. More accurately, it was the result of a bipartisan tradition in foreign policy and defense planning that stretched back to the era of Truman. Bush, however, was intent on using foreign adventures as a partisan political tool to enhance his grip on the helm of state. And he had little patience for or interest in alliances. The theme of his seven years of foreign and defense policy has been unilateralism.
One by one the leaders on the world stage who put their faith in Bush and thoughtlessly did his bidding have fallen in disgrace, usually rejected by their own voters. The first to go were Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi and Spain’s José María Aznar. Then Britain’s Tony Blair was forced to surrender 10 Downing Street to his Chancellor of the Exchequer, to give Labour a fighting chance to hold a majority in the next election. In the last week, Jarosław Kaczyński, a conservative ally in Poland fell, and over the weekend, Bush’s most faithful follower in the entire pack, the veritable boot-licker John Howard of Australia. In each case, the association with George W. Bush was electoral cyanide to voters back home."
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Putin's Soviet-style "democracy"
So much for the faith George Bush expressed about Vladimir Putin, the Russian President.
Putin is cracking down hard, Soviet-style, as he seeks to consolidate his position in the Russian political firmament. Bear in mind that Putin's background is that of KGB Chief. Lessons learned.......
Katrina Vanden Heuvel writing in The Nation, catalogues Putin's crackdown on the press and opposition:
"With Russia's parliamentary elections scheduled for December 2 and the pro-Kremlin United Russia party expected to win an overwhelming majority in the voting, President Vladimir Putin has intensified attacks on his opponents--most recently, accusing them of being in the pocket of Western governments. Most of the country's state-run media have fallen in line.
Attacks on opposition forces are not confined to verbal demonization. On Wednesday, Farid Babayev--the head of the Yabloko party ticket in Dagestan was shot at the entrance of his apartment building. Babayev, a human rights activist and fierce critic of the United Russia party and local authorities, died on Saturday. That same day, Garry Kasparov, one of the leaders of the opposition coalition Other Russia, was arrested in Moscow and sentenced to five days in jail for leading an unsanctioned street march on Russia's Central Election Commission. (City officials had given the coalition permission to hold a rally but not a march.)
The Kremlin's tightening grip on the media, especially national and local television, and authorities' harassment of opposition parties, led Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky to draw a parallel between Putin's Russia and Soviet Russia. "Russia stands on the threshold of the restoration of Soviet-style single-party rule."
Putin is cracking down hard, Soviet-style, as he seeks to consolidate his position in the Russian political firmament. Bear in mind that Putin's background is that of KGB Chief. Lessons learned.......
Katrina Vanden Heuvel writing in The Nation, catalogues Putin's crackdown on the press and opposition:
"With Russia's parliamentary elections scheduled for December 2 and the pro-Kremlin United Russia party expected to win an overwhelming majority in the voting, President Vladimir Putin has intensified attacks on his opponents--most recently, accusing them of being in the pocket of Western governments. Most of the country's state-run media have fallen in line.
Attacks on opposition forces are not confined to verbal demonization. On Wednesday, Farid Babayev--the head of the Yabloko party ticket in Dagestan was shot at the entrance of his apartment building. Babayev, a human rights activist and fierce critic of the United Russia party and local authorities, died on Saturday. That same day, Garry Kasparov, one of the leaders of the opposition coalition Other Russia, was arrested in Moscow and sentenced to five days in jail for leading an unsanctioned street march on Russia's Central Election Commission. (City officials had given the coalition permission to hold a rally but not a march.)
The Kremlin's tightening grip on the media, especially national and local television, and authorities' harassment of opposition parties, led Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky to draw a parallel between Putin's Russia and Soviet Russia. "Russia stands on the threshold of the restoration of Soviet-style single-party rule."
The World Continues to Look Away. Don’t.
Some stories, as horrific as they are, need to be read by everyone. This is one of them.
Read the "story" from the SMH [reproduced from the Irish Times and on Information Clearing House too] here.
Read the "story" from the SMH [reproduced from the Irish Times and on Information Clearing House too] here.
Unhindered grabs for Power
Anyone who has watched a White House news conference will instantly recognise veteran journalist Helen Thomas - a doyen of the Washington press corps - in the front row.
"While President Bush has been distracted with his unpopular war against Iraq, friends and foes are busy grabbing power to perpetuate themselves in office.
Among them are Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan; Russian President Vladimir Putin; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia.
There is little the United States can do about the drift toward authoritarian rule."
So begins a piece by Thomas in a column "US Friends and Foes Grabbing Power" in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer - as she assesses the actions of what look like 4 dictators or dictators in the making.
"While President Bush has been distracted with his unpopular war against Iraq, friends and foes are busy grabbing power to perpetuate themselves in office.
Among them are Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan; Russian President Vladimir Putin; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia.
There is little the United States can do about the drift toward authoritarian rule."
So begins a piece by Thomas in a column "US Friends and Foes Grabbing Power" in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer - as she assesses the actions of what look like 4 dictators or dictators in the making.
How George Bush saved Iran's Neocons
The magazine FP [Foreign Affairs] in a piece "How Bush saved Iran's Neocons" assesses how Bush policies in relation to Iran have most likely spurred, rather than curbed, a war with the country:
"When it comes to foreign policy, the Bush administration has often made the perfect the enemy of the good. It wasted years seeking the removal of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before it got serious about trying to broker an Arab-Israeli peace deal. Now, with barely a year left in office, it finds itself trying to reconcile a weakened Israel and a fractured Palestine. It ignored Iraqi history by dismantling powerful, centralized institutions and trying to re-create Iraq as a democratic, free-market state. More than four years later, U.S. officials are still struggling to salvage a stable nation from the wreckage.
The administration has followed a similar pattern—but with potentially even more disastrous consequences—in its policy toward Iran. In applying new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Bush administration hopes to intensify divisions within the Iranian government so that more “reasonable” figures will benefit. So far, however, U.S. policy has had the opposite effect, boosting Iranian hardliners who argue that the Bush administration has no interest in reconciling with Iran and that Tehran’s best course is to reach bomb capacity as soon as possible.
The recent resignation of Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, is a case in point. Caught between American neocons and Iranian hardliners, Larijani stepped down last month and was replaced by Saeed Jalili, an obscure foreign ministry official and crony of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Larijani could have achieved more with timely U.S. backing. In the winter of 2005-2006, he began making overtures to the Bush administration, going so far as to praise U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as a “logical thinker” in an interview with me in Tehran. Larijani also authorized a deputy, Mohammad Javad Jaffari, to set up back-channel talks with Hadley or a designated emissary. The White House never replied."
"When it comes to foreign policy, the Bush administration has often made the perfect the enemy of the good. It wasted years seeking the removal of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat before it got serious about trying to broker an Arab-Israeli peace deal. Now, with barely a year left in office, it finds itself trying to reconcile a weakened Israel and a fractured Palestine. It ignored Iraqi history by dismantling powerful, centralized institutions and trying to re-create Iraq as a democratic, free-market state. More than four years later, U.S. officials are still struggling to salvage a stable nation from the wreckage.
The administration has followed a similar pattern—but with potentially even more disastrous consequences—in its policy toward Iran. In applying new unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Bush administration hopes to intensify divisions within the Iranian government so that more “reasonable” figures will benefit. So far, however, U.S. policy has had the opposite effect, boosting Iranian hardliners who argue that the Bush administration has no interest in reconciling with Iran and that Tehran’s best course is to reach bomb capacity as soon as possible.
The recent resignation of Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, is a case in point. Caught between American neocons and Iranian hardliners, Larijani stepped down last month and was replaced by Saeed Jalili, an obscure foreign ministry official and crony of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Larijani could have achieved more with timely U.S. backing. In the winter of 2005-2006, he began making overtures to the Bush administration, going so far as to praise U.S. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as a “logical thinker” in an interview with me in Tehran. Larijani also authorized a deputy, Mohammad Javad Jaffari, to set up back-channel talks with Hadley or a designated emissary. The White House never replied."
Mid-East Meeting: Demands of a Thief
The media is full of the news relating to the upcoming Annapolis Mid-East meeting tomorrow. All informed pundits give the meeting little or no prospect of success, at least in any meaningful way.
Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz "Demands of a Thief" puts into context what he rightly sees as the basis upon which Israel fronts the meeting:
"The public discourse in Israel has momentarily awoken from its slumber. "To give or not to give," that is the Shakespearean question - "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions." It is good that initial signs of life in the Israeli public have emerged. It was worth going to Annapolis if only for this reason - but this discourse is baseless and distorted. Israel is not being asked "to give" anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore.
No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants, lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years. Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over giving or not giving.
Lawyers, philosophers, writers, lecturers, intellectuals and rabbis, who are looked upon for basic knowledge about moral precepts, participate in this distorted discourse. What will they tell their children - after the occupation finally becomes a nightmare of the past - about the period in which they wielded influence? What will they say about their role in this? Israeli students stand at checkpoints as part of their army reserve duty, brutally deciding the fate of people, and then some rush off to lectures on ethics at university, forgetting what they did the previous day and what is being done in their names every single day. Intellectuals publish petitions, "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions," diverting attention from the core issue. There are stormy debates about corruption - whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is corrupt and how the Supreme Court is being undermined. But there is no discussion of the ultimate question: Isn't the occupation the greatest and most terrible corruption to have taken root here, overshadowing everything else?"
Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz "Demands of a Thief" puts into context what he rightly sees as the basis upon which Israel fronts the meeting:
"The public discourse in Israel has momentarily awoken from its slumber. "To give or not to give," that is the Shakespearean question - "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions." It is good that initial signs of life in the Israeli public have emerged. It was worth going to Annapolis if only for this reason - but this discourse is baseless and distorted. Israel is not being asked "to give" anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore.
No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants, lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years. Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over giving or not giving.
Lawyers, philosophers, writers, lecturers, intellectuals and rabbis, who are looked upon for basic knowledge about moral precepts, participate in this distorted discourse. What will they tell their children - after the occupation finally becomes a nightmare of the past - about the period in which they wielded influence? What will they say about their role in this? Israeli students stand at checkpoints as part of their army reserve duty, brutally deciding the fate of people, and then some rush off to lectures on ethics at university, forgetting what they did the previous day and what is being done in their names every single day. Intellectuals publish petitions, "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions," diverting attention from the core issue. There are stormy debates about corruption - whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is corrupt and how the Supreme Court is being undermined. But there is no discussion of the ultimate question: Isn't the occupation the greatest and most terrible corruption to have taken root here, overshadowing everything else?"
Monday, November 26, 2007
A tragic dimension and outcome of the Iraq War
A topic seemingly brushed under the carpet - yet another piece of manipulation by the Bush Administration? - comes to light in this piece "120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week on Average" on AlterNet:
"Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone -- and remember, this is just in 45 states -- there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.
As the widow of a Vietnam vet who killed himself after coming home, and as the author of a book for which I interviewed dozens of other women who had also lost husbands (or sons or fathers) to PTSD and suicide in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful to CBS for undertaking this long overdue investigation. I am also heartbroken that the numbers are so astonishingly high and tentatively optimistic that perhaps now that there are hard numbers to attest to the magnitude of the problem, it will finally be taken seriously. I say tentatively because this is an administration that melts hard numbers on their tongues like communion wafers."
"Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone -- and remember, this is just in 45 states -- there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day.
As the widow of a Vietnam vet who killed himself after coming home, and as the author of a book for which I interviewed dozens of other women who had also lost husbands (or sons or fathers) to PTSD and suicide in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful to CBS for undertaking this long overdue investigation. I am also heartbroken that the numbers are so astonishingly high and tentatively optimistic that perhaps now that there are hard numbers to attest to the magnitude of the problem, it will finally be taken seriously. I say tentatively because this is an administration that melts hard numbers on their tongues like communion wafers."
Disasters Quadruple Over Last 20 Years: Oxfam
Not very comforting news for a Monday morning......
Reuters reports:
"Weather-related disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades, a leading British charity said in a report published on Sunday.
From an average of 120 disasters a year in the early 1980s, there are now as many as 500, with Oxfam attributing the rise to unpredictable weather conditions cause by global warming.
"This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people," said Oxfam's director Barbara Stocking.
"This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people.
The number of people affected by disasters has risen by 68 percent, from an average of 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994 to 254 million a year between 1995 to 2004.
"Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse," Stocking said.
Oxfam wants the UN conference on Climate Change in Bali in December to agree a mandate to negotiate a global deal to provide assistance to developing countries to cope with the impacts of climate change and reduce green house gas emissions."
Reuters reports:
"Weather-related disasters have quadrupled over the last two decades, a leading British charity said in a report published on Sunday.
From an average of 120 disasters a year in the early 1980s, there are now as many as 500, with Oxfam attributing the rise to unpredictable weather conditions cause by global warming.
"This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people," said Oxfam's director Barbara Stocking.
"This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people.
The number of people affected by disasters has risen by 68 percent, from an average of 174 million a year between 1985 to 1994 to 254 million a year between 1995 to 2004.
"Action is needed now to prepare for more disasters otherwise humanitarian assistance will be overwhelmed and recent advances in human development will go into reverse," Stocking said.
Oxfam wants the UN conference on Climate Change in Bali in December to agree a mandate to negotiate a global deal to provide assistance to developing countries to cope with the impacts of climate change and reduce green house gas emissions."
A road to peace? - or dead at birth?
Syria has now agreed to come aboard for the Anapolis Middle East meeting. Bear in mind it's not even being billed as a conference. And it's for one day only. It's hard to conceive that despite all the talk and photos, that anything can come of the meeting. All the signs are far from positive.
The Washington Post, viewing things from an American perspective, assesses the upcoming meeting:
"When the Middle East peace conference kicks off Tuesday in Annapolis, President Bush will deliver the opening speech and also conduct three rounds of personal diplomacy with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Such an active role is notable for a president who has never visited Israel while in office, who has made only one trip to Egypt and Jordan to promote peace efforts, and who has left the task of relaunching the peace process largely in the hands of his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
Rice logged 100,000 miles shuttling back and forth to the Middle East eight times over the past year, telling Israeli and Arab officials that despair can lead to radicalism, and that a generation of Arab youth may be lost if there is no progress on a Palestinian state. "Failure is not an option," Rice has often declared.
Her efforts thus far have yielded this one-day meeting in Annapolis. But Arab officials are skeptical that the conference will amount to much, in part because Bush has remained relatively silent on the matter since he announced the peace talks this summer, said Daniel C. Kurtzer, who served as Bush's ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005. "You don't get a sense that he's invested in it," Kurtzer said. "Nobody associates President Bush with this policy."
The Washington Post, viewing things from an American perspective, assesses the upcoming meeting:
"When the Middle East peace conference kicks off Tuesday in Annapolis, President Bush will deliver the opening speech and also conduct three rounds of personal diplomacy with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Such an active role is notable for a president who has never visited Israel while in office, who has made only one trip to Egypt and Jordan to promote peace efforts, and who has left the task of relaunching the peace process largely in the hands of his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
Rice logged 100,000 miles shuttling back and forth to the Middle East eight times over the past year, telling Israeli and Arab officials that despair can lead to radicalism, and that a generation of Arab youth may be lost if there is no progress on a Palestinian state. "Failure is not an option," Rice has often declared.
Her efforts thus far have yielded this one-day meeting in Annapolis. But Arab officials are skeptical that the conference will amount to much, in part because Bush has remained relatively silent on the matter since he announced the peace talks this summer, said Daniel C. Kurtzer, who served as Bush's ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005. "You don't get a sense that he's invested in it," Kurtzer said. "Nobody associates President Bush with this policy."
An election postscript.......
"Saturday night's victory was not just a victory for the Labor Party; it was also a victory for those Liberals like Malcolm Fraser, Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan, who stood against the pernicious erosion of decent standards in our public affairs.
The Liberal Party of John Howard, Philip Ruddock, Alexander Downer and Peter Costello is now a party of privilege and punishments. One that lacks that most basic of wellsprings: charity."
Who could have written this post the Australian election on Saturday? - and the defeat of the Howard Government. None other than one-time PM, Paul Keating, in am op-ed piece in the SMH and The Age.
Read Keating's analysis of the Howard years here.
The Liberal Party of John Howard, Philip Ruddock, Alexander Downer and Peter Costello is now a party of privilege and punishments. One that lacks that most basic of wellsprings: charity."
Who could have written this post the Australian election on Saturday? - and the defeat of the Howard Government. None other than one-time PM, Paul Keating, in am op-ed piece in the SMH and The Age.
Read Keating's analysis of the Howard years here.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
An American Perspective on Howard's Defeat
At least one perspective on John Howard's electoral defeat comes from this piece "Good riddance to John Howard" on Salon.com:
"There's a tendency in the U.S. to view the elections in other countries based on the self-centered perspective that the result is always some sort of referendum on the U.S. Hence, all sorts of unwarranted conclusions are typically drawn whenever a pro-Bush foreign leader is defeated or re-elected.
Like most foreign elections, the humiliating defeat of Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, was driven largely by their own domestic concerns, and it had little (though not nothing) to do with the U.S. Still, it is worth celebrating Howard's defeat in light of how pernicious a presence he was, as one of the very few remaining world leaders who loyally supported the worst and most war-loving aspects of the Bush/Cheney foreign policy.
Back in February of this year, Howard inserted himself into U.S. domestic politics by spouting this Bill Kristol-like smear:
'If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for [Barack] Obama, but also for the Democrats.'
That comment was not only wildly inaccurate and repugnant in its own right, but it was also unbelievably hypocritical, given that Howard's close political aide, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, tried to intervene in support of Bush's 2004 re-election effort by criticizing John Kerry's claim that unnamed foreign leaders had expressed support for Kerry's campaign, telling The Washington Times: "I think it's probably better to keep foreign leaders and the views of foreign leaders out of domestic elections, I mean, certainly we do that here in this country."
"There's a tendency in the U.S. to view the elections in other countries based on the self-centered perspective that the result is always some sort of referendum on the U.S. Hence, all sorts of unwarranted conclusions are typically drawn whenever a pro-Bush foreign leader is defeated or re-elected.
Like most foreign elections, the humiliating defeat of Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, was driven largely by their own domestic concerns, and it had little (though not nothing) to do with the U.S. Still, it is worth celebrating Howard's defeat in light of how pernicious a presence he was, as one of the very few remaining world leaders who loyally supported the worst and most war-loving aspects of the Bush/Cheney foreign policy.
Back in February of this year, Howard inserted himself into U.S. domestic politics by spouting this Bill Kristol-like smear:
'If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for [Barack] Obama, but also for the Democrats.'
That comment was not only wildly inaccurate and repugnant in its own right, but it was also unbelievably hypocritical, given that Howard's close political aide, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, tried to intervene in support of Bush's 2004 re-election effort by criticizing John Kerry's claim that unnamed foreign leaders had expressed support for Kerry's campaign, telling The Washington Times: "I think it's probably better to keep foreign leaders and the views of foreign leaders out of domestic elections, I mean, certainly we do that here in this country."
The ipod lecture circuit
The onslaught of technology continues.....with those Apple ubiquitous ipods in the forefront in doing so. Just as a sidebar, in the last quarter Apple sold a staggering 25 million ipods.
The LA Times reports on a dimension to the "use" of ipods and the underlying technology:
"Baxter Wood is one of Hubert Dreyfus' most devoted students. During lectures on existentialism, Wood hangs on every word, savoring the moments when the 78-year-old philosophy professor pauses to consider a student's comment or relay how a meaning-of-life question had him up at 2 a.m.
But Wood is not sitting in a lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, nor has he met Dreyfus. He is in the cab of his 18-wheel big rig, hauling dog food from Ohio to the West Coast or flat-screen TVs from Los Angeles to points east.The 61-year-old trucker from El Paso eavesdrops on the lectures by downloading them for free from Apple Inc.'s iTunes store, transferring them to his Hewlett-Packard digital media player, then piping them through his cabin's speakers. He hits pause as he approaches cities so he can focus more on traffic than on what Nietzsche meant when he said God was dead, then shifts his attention back to the classroom.
"I'm really in two places at once," he said. "The sound of chalk on the chalkboard makes it so real."
By making hundreds of lectures from elite academic institutions available online for free, Apple is reinvigorating the minds of people who have been estranged from the world of ideas.
For several years universities have posted recorded lectures on their internal websites, giving students a chance to brush up on their classes or catch ones they missed.
But 28 colleges and universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and Yale, now post select courses without charge at iTunes."
The LA Times reports on a dimension to the "use" of ipods and the underlying technology:
"Baxter Wood is one of Hubert Dreyfus' most devoted students. During lectures on existentialism, Wood hangs on every word, savoring the moments when the 78-year-old philosophy professor pauses to consider a student's comment or relay how a meaning-of-life question had him up at 2 a.m.
But Wood is not sitting in a lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus, nor has he met Dreyfus. He is in the cab of his 18-wheel big rig, hauling dog food from Ohio to the West Coast or flat-screen TVs from Los Angeles to points east.The 61-year-old trucker from El Paso eavesdrops on the lectures by downloading them for free from Apple Inc.'s iTunes store, transferring them to his Hewlett-Packard digital media player, then piping them through his cabin's speakers. He hits pause as he approaches cities so he can focus more on traffic than on what Nietzsche meant when he said God was dead, then shifts his attention back to the classroom.
"I'm really in two places at once," he said. "The sound of chalk on the chalkboard makes it so real."
By making hundreds of lectures from elite academic institutions available online for free, Apple is reinvigorating the minds of people who have been estranged from the world of ideas.
For several years universities have posted recorded lectures on their internal websites, giving students a chance to brush up on their classes or catch ones they missed.
But 28 colleges and universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and Yale, now post select courses without charge at iTunes."
Bill Moyers, his father and FDR
Bill Moyers is a well known and highly regarded commentator and journalist in the US and president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
The Nation reports on Bill Moyers remarks at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute's twentieth-anniversary Four Freedoms ceremony, where he received the Freedom of Speech award:
"Thank you for this recognition and the spirit of the evening. Thanks especially for giving me the chance to sit here awhile thinking about my father. Henry Moyers was an ordinary man who dropped out of the fourth grade because his family needed him to pick cotton to help make ends meet. The Depression knocked him off the farm and flat on his back. When I was born he was making two dollars a day working on the highway to Oklahoma City. He never made over $100 a week in the whole of his working life, and he made that only when he joined the union on the last job he held. He voted for Franklin Roosevelt in four straight elections, and he would have gone on voting for him until kingdom come if both had lived that long. I once asked him why, and he said, "Because the President's my friend." Now, my father never met FDR. No politician ever paid him much note, but he was sure he had a friend in the White House during the worst years of his life. When by pure chance I wound up working there many years later, and my parents came for a visit, my father wanted to see the Roosevelt Room. I don't know quite how to explain it, except that my father knew who was on his side and who wasn't, and for twelve years he had no doubt where FDR stood. The first time I remember him with tears in his eyes was when Roosevelt died. He had lost his friend.
We can't revive the man and certainly we wouldn't want to revisit the times, but we can rekindle the spirit. There are 37 million people in this country who are poor; there are 57 million who are near poor, making $20,000 to $40,000 a year--one divorce, one pink slip, one illness away from a free fall. That's almost one-third of America still living on the edge. They need a friend in the White House. My father, with his fourth-grade education and two fingers with the missing tips from the mix-up at the cotton gin, got it when Roosevelt spoke. "I can't talk like him," he said, "but I sure do think like him." My father might not have had the words for it, but he said amen when FDR talked about economic royalism. Sitting in front of our console radio, he got it when Roosevelt said that private power no less than public power can bring America to ruin in the absence of democratic controls."
The Nation reports on Bill Moyers remarks at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute's twentieth-anniversary Four Freedoms ceremony, where he received the Freedom of Speech award:
"Thank you for this recognition and the spirit of the evening. Thanks especially for giving me the chance to sit here awhile thinking about my father. Henry Moyers was an ordinary man who dropped out of the fourth grade because his family needed him to pick cotton to help make ends meet. The Depression knocked him off the farm and flat on his back. When I was born he was making two dollars a day working on the highway to Oklahoma City. He never made over $100 a week in the whole of his working life, and he made that only when he joined the union on the last job he held. He voted for Franklin Roosevelt in four straight elections, and he would have gone on voting for him until kingdom come if both had lived that long. I once asked him why, and he said, "Because the President's my friend." Now, my father never met FDR. No politician ever paid him much note, but he was sure he had a friend in the White House during the worst years of his life. When by pure chance I wound up working there many years later, and my parents came for a visit, my father wanted to see the Roosevelt Room. I don't know quite how to explain it, except that my father knew who was on his side and who wasn't, and for twelve years he had no doubt where FDR stood. The first time I remember him with tears in his eyes was when Roosevelt died. He had lost his friend.
We can't revive the man and certainly we wouldn't want to revisit the times, but we can rekindle the spirit. There are 37 million people in this country who are poor; there are 57 million who are near poor, making $20,000 to $40,000 a year--one divorce, one pink slip, one illness away from a free fall. That's almost one-third of America still living on the edge. They need a friend in the White House. My father, with his fourth-grade education and two fingers with the missing tips from the mix-up at the cotton gin, got it when Roosevelt spoke. "I can't talk like him," he said, "but I sure do think like him." My father might not have had the words for it, but he said amen when FDR talked about economic royalism. Sitting in front of our console radio, he got it when Roosevelt said that private power no less than public power can bring America to ruin in the absence of democratic controls."
Capital Punishment, DNA.... and Freedom
The debate about capital punishment continues unabated around the world. The practice is rife in China and the US - although in America executions are on hold as the US Supreme Court is to hear a case challenging death by lethal injection.
The NY Times explores the case of a man vindicated from a murder and rape conviction after 16 years exonerated by a DNA test. Released in September 2006 the NY Times piece records in a rare insight, how this man, robbed of his freedom for 16 years, adjusts to freedom:
"As a boy, Jeffrey Mark Deskovic could swim the length of a pool underwater without coming up for air. On sultry days at the Elmira state prison, where he spent most of his 16 years behind bars for a rape and murder he did not commit, Mr. Deskovic would close his eyes under a row of outdoor showers and imagine himself swimming.
Jeffrey Deskovic swims for the first time since his release, at a hotel pool near Albany.
For months after his release in September 2006, he had been yearning for a chance to dive in, to test his endurance, to feel that familiar sensation of pushing his body through the water, to get to the other side.
On a late-winter afternoon before giving a speech on wrongful convictions, Mr. Deskovic giggled mischievously as he stood at the edge of a hotel pool in Latham, N.Y., an Albany suburb, then leapt in abruptly, hugging his knees to produce a huge splash. In shorts and T-shirt, he sucked in some air and dived under, holding his breath. And holding it. He made his way across the pool in hurried, sideways strokes, and emerged gasping but smiling.
“Yes! Yes! I did it,” Mr. Deskovic yelled, his fists clenched above his head like a victorious boxer. “I still have it in me.”
A grown man with a full bushy beard, celebrating the simple accomplishment of an innocent youth. A tiny yet transcendent moment, one among many such moments of recaptured pleasures and newfound problems since his exoneration and release from prison last autumn.
Having walked out of the Westchester County Courthouse vindicated yet petrified of the unpredictable tomorrows ahead, Mr. Deskovic found that his first year on the outside was more turbulent than triumphant. Still trying to recover what was stolen from him, he is, at 34, a free man who has yet to feel truly free."
The NY Times explores the case of a man vindicated from a murder and rape conviction after 16 years exonerated by a DNA test. Released in September 2006 the NY Times piece records in a rare insight, how this man, robbed of his freedom for 16 years, adjusts to freedom:
"As a boy, Jeffrey Mark Deskovic could swim the length of a pool underwater without coming up for air. On sultry days at the Elmira state prison, where he spent most of his 16 years behind bars for a rape and murder he did not commit, Mr. Deskovic would close his eyes under a row of outdoor showers and imagine himself swimming.
Jeffrey Deskovic swims for the first time since his release, at a hotel pool near Albany.
For months after his release in September 2006, he had been yearning for a chance to dive in, to test his endurance, to feel that familiar sensation of pushing his body through the water, to get to the other side.
On a late-winter afternoon before giving a speech on wrongful convictions, Mr. Deskovic giggled mischievously as he stood at the edge of a hotel pool in Latham, N.Y., an Albany suburb, then leapt in abruptly, hugging his knees to produce a huge splash. In shorts and T-shirt, he sucked in some air and dived under, holding his breath. And holding it. He made his way across the pool in hurried, sideways strokes, and emerged gasping but smiling.
“Yes! Yes! I did it,” Mr. Deskovic yelled, his fists clenched above his head like a victorious boxer. “I still have it in me.”
A grown man with a full bushy beard, celebrating the simple accomplishment of an innocent youth. A tiny yet transcendent moment, one among many such moments of recaptured pleasures and newfound problems since his exoneration and release from prison last autumn.
Having walked out of the Westchester County Courthouse vindicated yet petrified of the unpredictable tomorrows ahead, Mr. Deskovic found that his first year on the outside was more turbulent than triumphant. Still trying to recover what was stolen from him, he is, at 34, a free man who has yet to feel truly free."
9 years later......Victory!
Australians wake up today to a new PM, Kevin Rudd. It is a testament to the man that he only entered Federal Parliament 9 years ago and only assumed the mantle of Leader of the Opposition on 4 December last year.
The task the new PM, and his Party, faces is formidable. Rudd's acceptance speech was a good portent of things to come.
Meanwhile, it looks like goodbye, not au revoir, to John Howard. Also gone - banished into Opposition - is the arrogance and often disgraceful and insulting behaviour of Peter Costello, the mad Monk Tony Abbott, Lord Downer of Baghdad and Nick Minchin.
The newspapers are covering the outcome of the election this way - Time, here, the NY Times, here and Haaretz, here and Times on Line here.
BREAKING NEWS: Just over an hour ago [12.50 pm AEST] Peter Costello announced that not only would he not seek leadership of the Liberal Party, but would leave politics. See the SMH report here. Now that's responsible! Within 24 hours of the election Costello will resign and cause a by-election - and a needless cost to taxpayers.
The task the new PM, and his Party, faces is formidable. Rudd's acceptance speech was a good portent of things to come.
Meanwhile, it looks like goodbye, not au revoir, to John Howard. Also gone - banished into Opposition - is the arrogance and often disgraceful and insulting behaviour of Peter Costello, the mad Monk Tony Abbott, Lord Downer of Baghdad and Nick Minchin.
The newspapers are covering the outcome of the election this way - Time, here, the NY Times, here and Haaretz, here and Times on Line here.
BREAKING NEWS: Just over an hour ago [12.50 pm AEST] Peter Costello announced that not only would he not seek leadership of the Liberal Party, but would leave politics. See the SMH report here. Now that's responsible! Within 24 hours of the election Costello will resign and cause a by-election - and a needless cost to taxpayers.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Coalition: Binned?
SMH political commentator, Alan Ramsay, reckons that the result of today's Australian election can be determined from this rather revealing fact:
"The end of the line. Remember that heading in the Herald a few weeks back, after one of the opinion polls bumped up the Government's lousy standing a point or two? "Lazarus stirs", it said optimistically of John Howard. Wrong. It was just the flies moving. Yesterday, in the nation's Parliament, with hardly a politician to be seen anywhere, we got some election realism. Three rows of recycling bins, whacking big green ones with yellow lids. More than 300 of them.
Where? In the basement corridor of the ministerial wing. The bins seemed a more apt commentary than all the desperate, last-minute Coalition windbaggery going on around the nation on what is about to descend on the Prime Minister after 33 years in public life and almost 12 years remaking Australia in his own miserable, disfigured image. They arrived two days ago and whoever they're for, 48 hours before a single vote is cast today, you felt somebody, somewhere, finally got it right.
The end of the line."
"The end of the line. Remember that heading in the Herald a few weeks back, after one of the opinion polls bumped up the Government's lousy standing a point or two? "Lazarus stirs", it said optimistically of John Howard. Wrong. It was just the flies moving. Yesterday, in the nation's Parliament, with hardly a politician to be seen anywhere, we got some election realism. Three rows of recycling bins, whacking big green ones with yellow lids. More than 300 of them.
Where? In the basement corridor of the ministerial wing. The bins seemed a more apt commentary than all the desperate, last-minute Coalition windbaggery going on around the nation on what is about to descend on the Prime Minister after 33 years in public life and almost 12 years remaking Australia in his own miserable, disfigured image. They arrived two days ago and whoever they're for, 48 hours before a single vote is cast today, you felt somebody, somewhere, finally got it right.
The end of the line."
Taliban making strides in Afghanistan
The sad news in Australia that an Oz soldier was killed there yesterday, again highlights the question of what the various countries stationed are doing there - and the more critical issue of whether any progress is being made in defeating the Taliban, introducing democracy to the country that George Bush has asserted, etc. etc.
It seems that things are more negative than ever in Afghanistan - with the Taliban now occupying something like 54% of the country. The Guardian reports:
"The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.
Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries", the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday.
On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".
It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.
The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when ... and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm before time runs out."
Its 110-page report coincides with an equally severe warning from Oxfam. In a report for the House of Commons International Development Committee the humanitarian and aid agency warns that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating significantly with the country's problems exacerbated by corruption in central and local government."
It seems that things are more negative than ever in Afghanistan - with the Taliban now occupying something like 54% of the country. The Guardian reports:
"The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.
Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries", the Senlis Council says in a report released yesterday.
On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a "significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change".
It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a "no go" area for western aid and development workers.
The council goes as far as to state: "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when ... and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm before time runs out."
Its 110-page report coincides with an equally severe warning from Oxfam. In a report for the House of Commons International Development Committee the humanitarian and aid agency warns that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating significantly with the country's problems exacerbated by corruption in central and local government."
That Annapolis Conference
The Saudis are reported this morning as indicating that they will attend next week's Annapolis Middle East meeting - for it is not being billed as a conference any more. The NY Times reports on the attendees post a meeting of Arab countries in Cairo.
Most informed pundits say the meeting will be no more than a photo-op for some of the main players in the region. Bear in mind that Syria won't be attending and certainly Hamas won't be there.
Writing in the New York Review of Books, "Annapolis: The Cost of Failure", Henry Siegman, the president of the US/Middle East Project, says:
"One of the first on-line responses to the publication of the letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a simple, straightforward question: "What is in it for Israel?" The "it" referred to guidelines the letter proposed for an agreement that would end Israel's occupation of the territories the IDF overran forty years ago in a conflict—as Israelis were reminded by the celebrated author David Grossman when he addressed a recent commemoration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination—that is now in its 100th year.
What is in it for Israel should be self-evident, but now that three new Israeli generations have been born having no memory of Israel without settlements, it no longer is; for too many, the occupation—and the spiral of Israeli-Palestinian violence that has come with it—is a given, the natural order of things.
An agreement that leads to the end of an occupation that with the best of intentions humiliates and brutalizes an entire nation should be more than enough of a reason to go for it. The subjugation and permanent dispossession of millions of people is surely not the vocation of Judaism, nor is it an acceptable condition for a Jewish national revival.
The argument against an Israeli agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is that they are too weak and unpopular to implement an accord that would require them to put an end to the violence of Palestinian rejectionist groups. Indeed, it is pointed out that the fact that most of the violence in the West Bank continues to come from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a faction that belongs to Abbas's Fatah, underlines the limits of Abbas and Fayyad's authority and their capacity to establish the rule of law in the territories.
That Abbas has been unable to control violence is true enough, but it is nevertheless a disingenuous argument. Abbas's weakness is the result of Israeli policies—primarily the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory that continues even as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speaks about removing settlements—that have convinced most Palestinians that Israel has no intention of returning to the pre-1967 border and allowing the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. An Israeli policy that seriously rewarded Abbas for his moderation—such as a significant release of Palestinian prisoners, instead of several hundred out of the over 10,000 prisoners being held by Israel; the removal of physical obstructions and checkpoints that have strangled Palestinian economic and social life; the dismantlement of outposts and a freeze on further construction in the settlements, as required by the Roadmap—would turn Abbas and Fayyad into strong leaders overnight. But Olmert has until now only offered token "gestures," and Palestinians have been given no reason to believe that a change in Israeli policy will occur even when the Palestinians choose leaders committed to nonviolence and moderation.
Checkpoints and roadblocks designed to prevent the movement of people and goods throughout the West Bank—well over 500 such obstacles—have devastated the Palestinian economy and turned Palestinian life, in all of its aspects, into an endless nightmare. In 2005, following Abbas's election as president of the Palestinian Authority and before Israel's dismantlement of its settlements in Gaza, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank who was designated as the envoy of the Quartet (the EU, UN, US, and Russia), worked out a detailed agreement with the Israeli government to remove many of these obstacles. The plan included the creation of a safe passage that would link the populations of the West Bank and Gaza—a connection that is vitally important to the social, cultural, and economic life of these geographically separated entities, to which Israel had already committed itself in the Oslo accords. The whole point of that agreement was to show Palestinians that Abbas's moderation and opposition to violence could obtain results that Israel had denied his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. It proved the opposite. According to Wolfensohn, Israel violated the agreement before the ink of its representatives' signatures had dried.
Most informed pundits say the meeting will be no more than a photo-op for some of the main players in the region. Bear in mind that Syria won't be attending and certainly Hamas won't be there.
Writing in the New York Review of Books, "Annapolis: The Cost of Failure", Henry Siegman, the president of the US/Middle East Project, says:
"One of the first on-line responses to the publication of the letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a simple, straightforward question: "What is in it for Israel?" The "it" referred to guidelines the letter proposed for an agreement that would end Israel's occupation of the territories the IDF overran forty years ago in a conflict—as Israelis were reminded by the celebrated author David Grossman when he addressed a recent commemoration of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination—that is now in its 100th year.
What is in it for Israel should be self-evident, but now that three new Israeli generations have been born having no memory of Israel without settlements, it no longer is; for too many, the occupation—and the spiral of Israeli-Palestinian violence that has come with it—is a given, the natural order of things.
An agreement that leads to the end of an occupation that with the best of intentions humiliates and brutalizes an entire nation should be more than enough of a reason to go for it. The subjugation and permanent dispossession of millions of people is surely not the vocation of Judaism, nor is it an acceptable condition for a Jewish national revival.
The argument against an Israeli agreement with President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is that they are too weak and unpopular to implement an accord that would require them to put an end to the violence of Palestinian rejectionist groups. Indeed, it is pointed out that the fact that most of the violence in the West Bank continues to come from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a faction that belongs to Abbas's Fatah, underlines the limits of Abbas and Fayyad's authority and their capacity to establish the rule of law in the territories.
That Abbas has been unable to control violence is true enough, but it is nevertheless a disingenuous argument. Abbas's weakness is the result of Israeli policies—primarily the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory that continues even as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speaks about removing settlements—that have convinced most Palestinians that Israel has no intention of returning to the pre-1967 border and allowing the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. An Israeli policy that seriously rewarded Abbas for his moderation—such as a significant release of Palestinian prisoners, instead of several hundred out of the over 10,000 prisoners being held by Israel; the removal of physical obstructions and checkpoints that have strangled Palestinian economic and social life; the dismantlement of outposts and a freeze on further construction in the settlements, as required by the Roadmap—would turn Abbas and Fayyad into strong leaders overnight. But Olmert has until now only offered token "gestures," and Palestinians have been given no reason to believe that a change in Israeli policy will occur even when the Palestinians choose leaders committed to nonviolence and moderation.
Checkpoints and roadblocks designed to prevent the movement of people and goods throughout the West Bank—well over 500 such obstacles—have devastated the Palestinian economy and turned Palestinian life, in all of its aspects, into an endless nightmare. In 2005, following Abbas's election as president of the Palestinian Authority and before Israel's dismantlement of its settlements in Gaza, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank who was designated as the envoy of the Quartet (the EU, UN, US, and Russia), worked out a detailed agreement with the Israeli government to remove many of these obstacles. The plan included the creation of a safe passage that would link the populations of the West Bank and Gaza—a connection that is vitally important to the social, cultural, and economic life of these geographically separated entities, to which Israel had already committed itself in the Oslo accords. The whole point of that agreement was to show Palestinians that Abbas's moderation and opposition to violence could obtain results that Israel had denied his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. It proved the opposite. According to Wolfensohn, Israel violated the agreement before the ink of its representatives' signatures had dried.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Tomorrow......the luck runs out?
Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe University, reflects on tomorrow's Australian Federal election in an op-ed piece in The Age:
"Unless scores of astonishingly consistent opinion polls have been systematically misleading, tomorrow the Howard Government will be voted out. How will historians judge it?
Not every judgement will be negative. Even though foreign and personal debt are at record levels, the nation is far wealthier than ever in its history. The Howard Government will be praised for its part in creating the conditions for non-inflationary growth, with low levels of unemployment, but without dismantling the basic pillars of the welfare state. It will also be praised for introducing the GST and using this new tax to finance the states; for introducing effective gun control; and, despite early missteps, for helping East Timor gain its independence.
Compared to the harm it has done to Australia, however, all this will seem relatively trivial. Stimulated by the Hansonite movement, from 1996 the Howard Government has waged a protracted culture war against what it called "political correctness". As part of this war, the Government turned its back on the aspiration that had been embraced by every government from Whitlam to Keating via Fraser — to build a multicultural society in Australia. It did not fight against the Hanson attempt to make "Asians" feel unwelcome in Australia. Following September 11, the rhetoric of Howard Government ministers, which challenged Muslims to prove their loyalty, succeeded in marginalising patriotic citizens. In its desperate eleventh hour, it cast a slur on the Sudanese refugees brought to this country.
The abandonment of multiculturalism was paralleled by the attempt of the Howard Government to deny the moral meaning of the indigenous dispossession. It refused to apologise to the thousands of Aborigines who had been removed, as children, from their mothers and communities. It destroyed the prospect of a symbolic act of reconciliation at the centenary of Federation. The Prime Minister personally encouraged a new denialist school of history, pioneered by Keith Windschuttle.
The abandonment of both the aspiration for multiculturalism and the quest for reconciliation had no direct electoral impact. The Government's callous treatment of asylum seekers, fleeing from the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, did."
"Unless scores of astonishingly consistent opinion polls have been systematically misleading, tomorrow the Howard Government will be voted out. How will historians judge it?
Not every judgement will be negative. Even though foreign and personal debt are at record levels, the nation is far wealthier than ever in its history. The Howard Government will be praised for its part in creating the conditions for non-inflationary growth, with low levels of unemployment, but without dismantling the basic pillars of the welfare state. It will also be praised for introducing the GST and using this new tax to finance the states; for introducing effective gun control; and, despite early missteps, for helping East Timor gain its independence.
Compared to the harm it has done to Australia, however, all this will seem relatively trivial. Stimulated by the Hansonite movement, from 1996 the Howard Government has waged a protracted culture war against what it called "political correctness". As part of this war, the Government turned its back on the aspiration that had been embraced by every government from Whitlam to Keating via Fraser — to build a multicultural society in Australia. It did not fight against the Hanson attempt to make "Asians" feel unwelcome in Australia. Following September 11, the rhetoric of Howard Government ministers, which challenged Muslims to prove their loyalty, succeeded in marginalising patriotic citizens. In its desperate eleventh hour, it cast a slur on the Sudanese refugees brought to this country.
The abandonment of multiculturalism was paralleled by the attempt of the Howard Government to deny the moral meaning of the indigenous dispossession. It refused to apologise to the thousands of Aborigines who had been removed, as children, from their mothers and communities. It destroyed the prospect of a symbolic act of reconciliation at the centenary of Federation. The Prime Minister personally encouraged a new denialist school of history, pioneered by Keith Windschuttle.
The abandonment of both the aspiration for multiculturalism and the quest for reconciliation had no direct electoral impact. The Government's callous treatment of asylum seekers, fleeing from the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, did."
Memories of John Dean?
Those old enough to know will recall John Dean [who ultimately spent time in jail] in the Nixon White House. He was Nixon's attorney.
Now, comes news of George Bushs' former White House Press Secretary "spilling the beans" in relation to the now infamous Valerie Plane affair - as John Nichols writes in The Nation "Scott McClellan = John Dean?":
"Scott McClellan's admission that he unintentionally made false statements denying the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Bush-Cheney administration's plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson, along with his revelation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were among those who provided him with the misinformation, sets the former White House press secretary as John Dean to George Bush's Richard Nixon.
It was Dean willingness to reveal the details of what described as "a cancer" on the Nixon presidency that served as a critical turning point in the struggle by a previous Congress to hold the 37th president to account.
Now, McClellan has offered what any honest observer must recognize as the stuff of a similarly significant breakthrough.
The only question is whether the current Congress is up to the task of holding the 43rd president to account."
Now, comes news of George Bushs' former White House Press Secretary "spilling the beans" in relation to the now infamous Valerie Plane affair - as John Nichols writes in The Nation "Scott McClellan = John Dean?":
"Scott McClellan's admission that he unintentionally made false statements denying the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Bush-Cheney administration's plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson, along with his revelation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were among those who provided him with the misinformation, sets the former White House press secretary as John Dean to George Bush's Richard Nixon.
It was Dean willingness to reveal the details of what described as "a cancer" on the Nixon presidency that served as a critical turning point in the struggle by a previous Congress to hold the 37th president to account.
Now, McClellan has offered what any honest observer must recognize as the stuff of a similarly significant breakthrough.
The only question is whether the current Congress is up to the task of holding the 43rd president to account."
Holocaust Denial, American Style
The use of the word "Holocaust" will doubtlessly offend some, who say it is confined to the World War II Holocaust of the Jews, but Mark Weisbrot in his piece in AlterNet "Holocaust Denial, American Style" says it applies to what has happened in Iraq as a result of the Iraq War - and the way in which Americans have simply ignored what has been wrought in the war-torn country.
"Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.
President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.
This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.
The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.
Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don't believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it."
Meanwhile, in New Matilda, Antony Loewenstein in his piece "Iraq: The Forgotten War" addresses how the war has simply slipped under the radar in so many respects:
"Iraq has become the forgotten war. During Australia’s current Federal election campaign, foreign affairs has barely rated a mention (though Labor Leader Kevin Rudd told the Sun Herald last weekend that one of his first tasks, if he wins office, will be to start negotiations with the USA and Iraq to remove Australian combat troops from southern Iraq. ‘I have been very blunt with President Bush,’ he said. ‘I have a no-surprises policy when it comes to these things.’"
"Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.
President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.
This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.
The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain's leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.
Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don't believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it."
Meanwhile, in New Matilda, Antony Loewenstein in his piece "Iraq: The Forgotten War" addresses how the war has simply slipped under the radar in so many respects:
"Iraq has become the forgotten war. During Australia’s current Federal election campaign, foreign affairs has barely rated a mention (though Labor Leader Kevin Rudd told the Sun Herald last weekend that one of his first tasks, if he wins office, will be to start negotiations with the USA and Iraq to remove Australian combat troops from southern Iraq. ‘I have been very blunt with President Bush,’ he said. ‘I have a no-surprises policy when it comes to these things.’"
Thursday, November 22, 2007
A PM with "form"on racism.....
PM Howard's track-record isn't a good one on the racism-front. In the 1980's he advocated restricting Asian immigrants. Then he has always refused to say sorry to Australia's indigenous population. Add to that his adoption of much of Pauline Hanson's policies and his defence of her that she should be allowed to express her views. Not a word of condemnation or rebuke for what she was articulating. Then in the 2001 election there was the clear racist-card being run in relation to the Tampa.
So, his critical words today - 2 days out from an election - about the pamphlet-affair in Sydney [check out the SMH here] must be seen as hollow and Howard in his best lying mode. Remember that Margo Kingston in her books "Not Happy John" and "Still Not Happy John" [both published by Penguin] has catalogued Howard's lying down the years.
Bottom line.......Howard is a racist. Don't overlook, either, that the outgoing member, Jackie Kelly, is a close friend and supporter of Howard. But it also seems the Liberal candidate in the seat is implicated in what has occured.
If the polls to be published tomorrow, Friday, are correct [here] Labor has pulled even further ahead of the Coalition. It may well be farewell John, Jeanette and some of the rest of the motley crew!
So, his critical words today - 2 days out from an election - about the pamphlet-affair in Sydney [check out the SMH here] must be seen as hollow and Howard in his best lying mode. Remember that Margo Kingston in her books "Not Happy John" and "Still Not Happy John" [both published by Penguin] has catalogued Howard's lying down the years.
Bottom line.......Howard is a racist. Don't overlook, either, that the outgoing member, Jackie Kelly, is a close friend and supporter of Howard. But it also seems the Liberal candidate in the seat is implicated in what has occured.
If the polls to be published tomorrow, Friday, are correct [here] Labor has pulled even further ahead of the Coalition. It may well be farewell John, Jeanette and some of the rest of the motley crew!
Paul Keating weighs into Oz election
Some would say that one can't keep a good man down! Others would say that he has become bittered and twisted since losing the 1996 election to John Howard. Who? Former PM Paul Keating!
Keating weighs into the Australian election - thankfully only 2 days to go now to election-day - in an opinion piece "Australia has lost its moral compass under Howard's rule" in the SMH [and The Age] today:
"The principal reason the public should take the opportunity to kill off the Howard Government has less to do with broken promises on interest rates — or even its draconian WorkChoices industrial laws — and everything to do with restoring a moral basis to our public life.
Without this, the nation has no standard to rely upon, no claim that can be believed, not even when the grave step of going to war is being considered. When truth is up for grabs, everything is up for grabs.
Cynicism and deceitfulness have been the defining characteristics of John Howard and his Government. They were brazen enough to oversee the corruption of a UN welfare program. And when they were found out, not one of them accepted ministerial responsibility. Not Downer, not Vaile and certainly not Howard. What they were doing was letting the cockies get their wheat sold through the AWB while turning a blind eye to the AWB's unscrupulous behaviour — illegally funding a regime Howard was arguing was so bad it had to be changed by force.
John Howard took us into the disastrous Gulf war on the back of two lies. One, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, capable of threatening the Middle East and Western Europe; the other, that Howard was judiciously weighing whether to commit Australian forces against an evolving situation. We now know he had committed our forces to the Americans all along.
If the Prime Minister cannot be believed, who in the system is to be believed?"
Keating weighs into the Australian election - thankfully only 2 days to go now to election-day - in an opinion piece "Australia has lost its moral compass under Howard's rule" in the SMH [and The Age] today:
"The principal reason the public should take the opportunity to kill off the Howard Government has less to do with broken promises on interest rates — or even its draconian WorkChoices industrial laws — and everything to do with restoring a moral basis to our public life.
Without this, the nation has no standard to rely upon, no claim that can be believed, not even when the grave step of going to war is being considered. When truth is up for grabs, everything is up for grabs.
Cynicism and deceitfulness have been the defining characteristics of John Howard and his Government. They were brazen enough to oversee the corruption of a UN welfare program. And when they were found out, not one of them accepted ministerial responsibility. Not Downer, not Vaile and certainly not Howard. What they were doing was letting the cockies get their wheat sold through the AWB while turning a blind eye to the AWB's unscrupulous behaviour — illegally funding a regime Howard was arguing was so bad it had to be changed by force.
John Howard took us into the disastrous Gulf war on the back of two lies. One, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, capable of threatening the Middle East and Western Europe; the other, that Howard was judiciously weighing whether to commit Australian forces against an evolving situation. We now know he had committed our forces to the Americans all along.
If the Prime Minister cannot be believed, who in the system is to be believed?"
According to law? - or barbaric?
It is hard for Westerners to grapple with the entire concept, but a Court in Saudi Arabia sentencing a 19 year old rape-victim to 200 lashes and a 6 month imprisonment?
The IHT reports:
"Saudi Arabia defended on Tuesday a controversial verdict sentencing a 19-year-old gang rape victim to six months jail and 200 lashes.
The Shiite Muslim woman had initially been sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicted of violating Saudi Arabia's rigid Sharia Islamic law on segregation of the sexes.
In its decision doubling her sentence last week, the Saudi General Court also roughly doubled prison sentences for the seven men convicted of raping her, Saudi media said."
And:
"Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of the Sharia.
Reports on the story triggered debate about the country's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers is present. The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence, to death.
The woman was identified in the media only as the Girl from Qatif, the eastern city where the rape took place. Human Rights Watch said she was married at the time of the assault."
The IHT reports:
"Saudi Arabia defended on Tuesday a controversial verdict sentencing a 19-year-old gang rape victim to six months jail and 200 lashes.
The Shiite Muslim woman had initially been sentenced to 90 lashes after being convicted of violating Saudi Arabia's rigid Sharia Islamic law on segregation of the sexes.
In its decision doubling her sentence last week, the Saudi General Court also roughly doubled prison sentences for the seven men convicted of raping her, Saudi media said."
And:
"Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of the Sharia.
Reports on the story triggered debate about the country's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers is present. The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence, to death.
The woman was identified in the media only as the Girl from Qatif, the eastern city where the rape took place. Human Rights Watch said she was married at the time of the assault."
Israel's attack on Syria: The story unfolds.....
The attack by Israel on Syria back in September has basically been shrouded in mystery. That the Americans were involved in some way now appears to be beyond doubt. Interestingly, the fact that one country has bombed in another sovereign State appears to have drawn little or no criticism.
Asia Times on Line now reports on the alleged reasons for the attack - to flag a signal to Iran:
"Until late October, the accepted explanation about the September 6 Israeli air strike in Syria, constructed from a series of press leaks from US officials, was that it was prompted by dramatic satellite intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear facility with help from North Korea.
But new satellite evidence has discredited that narrative, suggesting a more plausible explanation for the strike: that it was a calculated effort by Israel and the United States to convince Iran that its nuclear facilities could be attacked as well.
The narrative promoted by neo-conservatives in the George W Bush administration began to unravel in late October with the release by a private company of a series of satellite images showing that the same square, multi-storey building that was hit by Israeli planes on September 6 had been present on the site four years earlier. Although the building appears to be somewhat more developed in the August 2007 image, it showed that the only major change at the site since September 2003 was what appears to be a pumping station on the Euphrates and a smaller secondary structure."
Asia Times on Line now reports on the alleged reasons for the attack - to flag a signal to Iran:
"Until late October, the accepted explanation about the September 6 Israeli air strike in Syria, constructed from a series of press leaks from US officials, was that it was prompted by dramatic satellite intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear facility with help from North Korea.
But new satellite evidence has discredited that narrative, suggesting a more plausible explanation for the strike: that it was a calculated effort by Israel and the United States to convince Iran that its nuclear facilities could be attacked as well.
The narrative promoted by neo-conservatives in the George W Bush administration began to unravel in late October with the release by a private company of a series of satellite images showing that the same square, multi-storey building that was hit by Israeli planes on September 6 had been present on the site four years earlier. Although the building appears to be somewhat more developed in the August 2007 image, it showed that the only major change at the site since September 2003 was what appears to be a pumping station on the Euphrates and a smaller secondary structure."
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Iran: Cyber-feminist arrested
Reporters Without Borders reports:
"Reporters Without Borders today condemned the arrest of journalist Maryam Hosseinkhah, a member of the editorial team of websites Zanestan (The city of women - http://herlandmag.net/ ) and Tagir Bary Barbary (Change to equality - http://we-change.org/), which campaign against violations of Iranian women’s rights.
She was arrested on 10 November for “publishing false news, threatening public order and publicity against the regime” after refusing to submit to an order from a judge at the Tehran revolutionary court to name all her colleagues.
Zanestan, a women’s online bi-monthly founded in 2005, has been closed since 12 November 2007 on the orders of the Internet bureau of the ministry of culture and Islamic orientation, after publishing reports about the sentencing of four women who campaigned for signatures for the web petition “One million signatures to amend laws which discriminate against women.
“We are dismayed by this arrest. Maryam Hosseinkhah has already been arrested on the 3rd March 2007”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “These women are simply asking for the same rights as men and there is nothing dangerous about them. The crackdown against these brave women shows the importance of the Internet in the country to the feminist struggle,” the organisation added."
"Reporters Without Borders today condemned the arrest of journalist Maryam Hosseinkhah, a member of the editorial team of websites Zanestan (The city of women - http://herlandmag.net/ ) and Tagir Bary Barbary (Change to equality - http://we-change.org/), which campaign against violations of Iranian women’s rights.
She was arrested on 10 November for “publishing false news, threatening public order and publicity against the regime” after refusing to submit to an order from a judge at the Tehran revolutionary court to name all her colleagues.
Zanestan, a women’s online bi-monthly founded in 2005, has been closed since 12 November 2007 on the orders of the Internet bureau of the ministry of culture and Islamic orientation, after publishing reports about the sentencing of four women who campaigned for signatures for the web petition “One million signatures to amend laws which discriminate against women.
“We are dismayed by this arrest. Maryam Hosseinkhah has already been arrested on the 3rd March 2007”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “These women are simply asking for the same rights as men and there is nothing dangerous about them. The crackdown against these brave women shows the importance of the Internet in the country to the feminist struggle,” the organisation added."
Nuclear weapons in the Middle East
"George Bush and Gordon Brown are right: there should be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The risk of a nuclear conflagration could be greater there than anywhere else. Any nation developing them should expect a firm diplomatic response. So when will they impose sanctions on Israel?
Like them, I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb. I also believe it should be discouraged, by a combination of economic pressure and bribery, from doing so (a military response would, of course, be disastrous). I believe that Bush and Brown - who maintain their nuclear arsenals in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty - are in no position to lecture anyone else. But if, as Bush claims, the proliferation of such weapons "would be a dangerous threat to world peace", why does neither man mention the fact that Israel, according to a secret briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, possesses between 60 and 80 of them?
Officially, the Israeli government maintains a position of "nuclear ambiguity": neither confirming nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. But everyone who has studied the issue knows that this is a formula with a simple purpose: to give the United States an excuse to keep breaking its own laws, which forbid it to grant aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction. The fiction of ambiguity is fiercely guarded. In 1986, when the nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu handed photographs of Israel's bomb factory to the Sunday Times, he was lured from Britain to Rome, drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents, tried in secret, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He served 12 of them in solitary confinement and was banged up again - for six months - soon after he was released.
However, in December last year, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, accidentally let slip that Israel, like "America, France and Russia", had nuclear weapons. Opposition politicians were furious. They attacked Olmert for "a lack of caution bordering on irresponsibility". But US aid continues to flow without impediment."
So writes the well-known George Monbiot in a piece in The Guardian "The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years". It's a timely piece by a perceptive writer with the threat of some sort of attack on Iran and what appears to be an already doomed Middle East meeting in Annapolis next week.
Like them, I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb. I also believe it should be discouraged, by a combination of economic pressure and bribery, from doing so (a military response would, of course, be disastrous). I believe that Bush and Brown - who maintain their nuclear arsenals in defiance of the non-proliferation treaty - are in no position to lecture anyone else. But if, as Bush claims, the proliferation of such weapons "would be a dangerous threat to world peace", why does neither man mention the fact that Israel, according to a secret briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, possesses between 60 and 80 of them?
Officially, the Israeli government maintains a position of "nuclear ambiguity": neither confirming nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. But everyone who has studied the issue knows that this is a formula with a simple purpose: to give the United States an excuse to keep breaking its own laws, which forbid it to grant aid to a country with unauthorised weapons of mass destruction. The fiction of ambiguity is fiercely guarded. In 1986, when the nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu handed photographs of Israel's bomb factory to the Sunday Times, he was lured from Britain to Rome, drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents, tried in secret, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He served 12 of them in solitary confinement and was banged up again - for six months - soon after he was released.
However, in December last year, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, accidentally let slip that Israel, like "America, France and Russia", had nuclear weapons. Opposition politicians were furious. They attacked Olmert for "a lack of caution bordering on irresponsibility". But US aid continues to flow without impediment."
So writes the well-known George Monbiot in a piece in The Guardian "The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years". It's a timely piece by a perceptive writer with the threat of some sort of attack on Iran and what appears to be an already doomed Middle East meeting in Annapolis next week.
Former PM reflects on Oz election
Malcolm Fraser was a Liberal Party PM in Australia in the 1970's. He was often described as being akin to an Easter Island statue.
Since leaving office Fraser has often spoken out on what might be described as liberal issues - reconciliation with Australia's indigenous peoples, the detention of illegal immigrants, the attack on people's personal freedoms, etc. etc.
With the upcoming Australian Federal election Fraser weighs in with an op-ed piece, "Voting to restore the decent values Australia once held dear", in The Age.
"In deciding how to vote, Australians should make a judgement about which set of policies will do best for the future, will build a stronger nation and invest in the basic fabric that will enable Australia to compete throughout the world. Above all, we need to return to our traditional sense of fairness, justice and again guarantee the rule of law and due process for all people. We need a vision for the future based on these values.
Education is a basic priority. Too much government money has been taken out of education and the Government has sought to impose political solutions. Freedom and integrity of fundamental research should be re-established. Government should protect these attributes.
The environment is a major issue. It has been significantly debated but I do not believe either party has set out a comprehensive plan to make sure that Australian water is used effectively and in the national interest. One thing is clear, water is a national asset and its final use cannot be determined by price alone. We need to define a set of priorities."
Since leaving office Fraser has often spoken out on what might be described as liberal issues - reconciliation with Australia's indigenous peoples, the detention of illegal immigrants, the attack on people's personal freedoms, etc. etc.
With the upcoming Australian Federal election Fraser weighs in with an op-ed piece, "Voting to restore the decent values Australia once held dear", in The Age.
"In deciding how to vote, Australians should make a judgement about which set of policies will do best for the future, will build a stronger nation and invest in the basic fabric that will enable Australia to compete throughout the world. Above all, we need to return to our traditional sense of fairness, justice and again guarantee the rule of law and due process for all people. We need a vision for the future based on these values.
Education is a basic priority. Too much government money has been taken out of education and the Government has sought to impose political solutions. Freedom and integrity of fundamental research should be re-established. Government should protect these attributes.
The environment is a major issue. It has been significantly debated but I do not believe either party has set out a comprehensive plan to make sure that Australian water is used effectively and in the national interest. One thing is clear, water is a national asset and its final use cannot be determined by price alone. We need to define a set of priorities."
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Who decides who the good and the bad guys are?
Will Durst is an actor, comic, writer and radio talk-show host who thinks George Bush determining proper international conduct is scarier than a Rudy-Giuliani-in-drag compilation tape.
Writing on truth.comdig, perhaps with something of a tongue-in-cheek, he asks a pertinent question about what he dubs the nuclear two-step:
"This might be a good time to try and explain George Bush’s Mideast nuclear policy, which to the untrained eye must seem trickier than doing calculus on a solar-powered calculator in the front seat of a high-speed roller coaster while wearing gloves, at night. As leader of the free world, he’s taken a monumental task upon himself to divide the world into two distinct and separate groups: those countries sober and sensible enough to handle the whole nuclear thing in the mature manner of a good democratic nation like the United States, and all those other fourth-rate, scorpion-infested hellholes that still allow barnyard animals to board airplanes.
And what of the borderline calls? You know, countries with a couple of low-rent, knockoff fast-food franchises whose streetcars still allow live chickens in the overhead compartment? Easy. The nations we like can have nuclear weapons. And the ones we don’t like—can’t. It’s that simple. And don’t give us any lip either. Or we’ll talk to some buddies of Warren Buffett and get your Burger Imam licenses revoked.
Being the sole member of the “We Made a Big Badda Boom” club burdens us with the authority to write the admissions policy for all guild applicants. Not a pretty job, but someone has to do it. And the more like us you are, the more likely we’ll let you have what you want. As long as what you want is what we want you to want. The less like us you are, the more likely your topographical features are of becoming a vast expanse of smooth, green glass."
Writing on truth.comdig, perhaps with something of a tongue-in-cheek, he asks a pertinent question about what he dubs the nuclear two-step:
"This might be a good time to try and explain George Bush’s Mideast nuclear policy, which to the untrained eye must seem trickier than doing calculus on a solar-powered calculator in the front seat of a high-speed roller coaster while wearing gloves, at night. As leader of the free world, he’s taken a monumental task upon himself to divide the world into two distinct and separate groups: those countries sober and sensible enough to handle the whole nuclear thing in the mature manner of a good democratic nation like the United States, and all those other fourth-rate, scorpion-infested hellholes that still allow barnyard animals to board airplanes.
And what of the borderline calls? You know, countries with a couple of low-rent, knockoff fast-food franchises whose streetcars still allow live chickens in the overhead compartment? Easy. The nations we like can have nuclear weapons. And the ones we don’t like—can’t. It’s that simple. And don’t give us any lip either. Or we’ll talk to some buddies of Warren Buffett and get your Burger Imam licenses revoked.
Being the sole member of the “We Made a Big Badda Boom” club burdens us with the authority to write the admissions policy for all guild applicants. Not a pretty job, but someone has to do it. And the more like us you are, the more likely we’ll let you have what you want. As long as what you want is what we want you to want. The less like us you are, the more likely your topographical features are of becoming a vast expanse of smooth, green glass."
A Myth in the Unmaking
Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America.
His takes a stick to Fox News in a piece in The Guardian. It casts severe doubt on anything one reads or see emanating from the Fox or News Limited stable:
"Britons may be familiar with Rupert Murdoch, but I don't think the UK has a beast quite like the American Fox News Channel. Celebrating its 11th year on the air, Fox is a breathtaking institution. It is a lock, stock and barrel servant of the Republican party, devoted first and foremost to electing Republicans and defeating Democrats; it's even run by a man, Roger Ailes, who helped elect Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior to the presidency. And yet, because it minimally adheres to certain superficial conventions, it can masquerade as a "news" outfit and enjoy all the rights that accrue to that.
Journalism with a point of view is a fine thing. It's what I do. The difference is that I say I'm a liberal journalist while Fox executives and "reporters" insist they play it straight. But everyone in the US knows that my description is true. This is precisely why its fans watch it. Walk into any bar, hair salon, gym or motel lobby in the country; if the TV is tuned to Fox rather than CNN, you know that the owner or clientele or both are Republican. It's a secret - although not actually secret any more - sign of fraternity among conservatives, the way a solid red tie worn by a single urban man used to signal to other urban men that the wearer was indeed "that way".
His takes a stick to Fox News in a piece in The Guardian. It casts severe doubt on anything one reads or see emanating from the Fox or News Limited stable:
"Britons may be familiar with Rupert Murdoch, but I don't think the UK has a beast quite like the American Fox News Channel. Celebrating its 11th year on the air, Fox is a breathtaking institution. It is a lock, stock and barrel servant of the Republican party, devoted first and foremost to electing Republicans and defeating Democrats; it's even run by a man, Roger Ailes, who helped elect Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior to the presidency. And yet, because it minimally adheres to certain superficial conventions, it can masquerade as a "news" outfit and enjoy all the rights that accrue to that.
Journalism with a point of view is a fine thing. It's what I do. The difference is that I say I'm a liberal journalist while Fox executives and "reporters" insist they play it straight. But everyone in the US knows that my description is true. This is precisely why its fans watch it. Walk into any bar, hair salon, gym or motel lobby in the country; if the TV is tuned to Fox rather than CNN, you know that the owner or clientele or both are Republican. It's a secret - although not actually secret any more - sign of fraternity among conservatives, the way a solid red tie worn by a single urban man used to signal to other urban men that the wearer was indeed "that way".
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