MPS hits the road travelling to foreign climes in the next weeks.
Regular postings will continue from here, there and everywhere. Stay tuned........
Monday, June 30, 2008
Seymour Hersh on preparing the battlefield
Veteran reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, on what he describes as preparing a battlefield against Iran as that country ramps up its nuclear program - and what he says is the Bush Administration stepping up its secret moves against Iran:
"In June, President Bush went on a farewell tour of Europe. He had tea with Queen Elizabeth II and dinner with Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the President and First Lady of France. The serious business was conducted out of sight, and involved a series of meetings on a new diplomatic effort to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium-enrichment program. (Iran argues that its enrichment program is for civilian purposes and is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) Secretary of State Rice had been involved with developing a new package of incentives. But the Administration’s essential negotiating position seemed unchanged: talks could not take place until Iran halted the program. The Iranians have repeatedly and categorically rejected that precondition, leaving the diplomatic situation in a stalemate; they have not yet formally responded to the new incentives."
"In June, President Bush went on a farewell tour of Europe. He had tea with Queen Elizabeth II and dinner with Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the President and First Lady of France. The serious business was conducted out of sight, and involved a series of meetings on a new diplomatic effort to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium-enrichment program. (Iran argues that its enrichment program is for civilian purposes and is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) Secretary of State Rice had been involved with developing a new package of incentives. But the Administration’s essential negotiating position seemed unchanged: talks could not take place until Iran halted the program. The Iranians have repeatedly and categorically rejected that precondition, leaving the diplomatic situation in a stalemate; they have not yet formally responded to the new incentives."
Actions speak louder than words.....
The Israelis can say what they like about seeking some sort of resolution with Palestinians, but actions speak louder than words. This report from The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information not only says much about Israel's "conduct" - but can only be described as disgraceful:
"The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information “ANHRI.Net”condemns the detention of Palestinian Journalist Mohammad Omer Mughir by Israeli Occupation Forces. Muhammad was detained, assaulted and interrogated on June 27th upon his return to Gaza after receiving the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. The young journalist returned to Gaza from the London ceremony and was subsequently seized and detained by the Israeli Military for several hours. During his detention he was assaulted, stripped, beaten, and interrogated about his trip to London and about the press award, which he received.
The international prize was awarded to Muhammad Omer Mughir for a series of newspaper articles that have portrayed the suffering of Palestinians under the current Israeli economic blockade of Gaza and the ongoing military occupation. Muhammad also wrote about his past detention at “Jesser El-Nabi” and how he has been targeted daily by Israeli Occupation Forces because of his journalism. The Martha Gellhorn prize for Journalism was established in 1999 by the wife of the late writer Ernest Hemingway, and honors journalists who give “a view from the ground” of world issues and conflicts.
Executive Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information Gamal Eid said that “violations by Israeli Occupation Forces against Palestinians do not stop, and what Muhammed Mughir has been through is only a small example of the media block and the international complicity of these crimes. ”
"The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information “ANHRI.Net”condemns the detention of Palestinian Journalist Mohammad Omer Mughir by Israeli Occupation Forces. Muhammad was detained, assaulted and interrogated on June 27th upon his return to Gaza after receiving the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. The young journalist returned to Gaza from the London ceremony and was subsequently seized and detained by the Israeli Military for several hours. During his detention he was assaulted, stripped, beaten, and interrogated about his trip to London and about the press award, which he received.
The international prize was awarded to Muhammad Omer Mughir for a series of newspaper articles that have portrayed the suffering of Palestinians under the current Israeli economic blockade of Gaza and the ongoing military occupation. Muhammad also wrote about his past detention at “Jesser El-Nabi” and how he has been targeted daily by Israeli Occupation Forces because of his journalism. The Martha Gellhorn prize for Journalism was established in 1999 by the wife of the late writer Ernest Hemingway, and honors journalists who give “a view from the ground” of world issues and conflicts.
Executive Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information Gamal Eid said that “violations by Israeli Occupation Forces against Palestinians do not stop, and what Muhammed Mughir has been through is only a small example of the media block and the international complicity of these crimes. ”
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Gitmo Mark II?
Another travesty of "justice" American-style is about to rear its head. This time it's not Gitmo, but another facility, Bagram, in Afghanistan.
The Washington Post reports in this piece "In Courts, Afghanistan Air Base May Become Next Guantanamo":
"Human rights groups and activists have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. military prison at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The prison has grown steadily over the years and has about 600 detainees, military officials said. The military is planning to spend $60 million to build a new, larger facility that would house the same number of captives but could accommodate as many as 1,000.
Some of the Bagram prisoners have been there since 2002, activists said. Although the vast majority were picked up in Afghanistan, activists and lawyers say at least a few were arrested in other countries.
"It provides a convenient place to hold people who you might not want the world to know you are holding," said Tina Monshipour Foster, a lawyer who represents Bagram detainees."
The Washington Post reports in this piece "In Courts, Afghanistan Air Base May Become Next Guantanamo":
"Human rights groups and activists have become increasingly concerned about the U.S. military prison at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul. The prison has grown steadily over the years and has about 600 detainees, military officials said. The military is planning to spend $60 million to build a new, larger facility that would house the same number of captives but could accommodate as many as 1,000.
Some of the Bagram prisoners have been there since 2002, activists said. Although the vast majority were picked up in Afghanistan, activists and lawyers say at least a few were arrested in other countries.
"It provides a convenient place to hold people who you might not want the world to know you are holding," said Tina Monshipour Foster, a lawyer who represents Bagram detainees."
Blogging benchmarks
The Economist has an interesting piece on blogging, whose doing it, attempted crackdowns on bloggers by governments and the Global Voices Conference presently underway in Budapest:
"What do Barbra Streisand and the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, have in common? They both tried to block material they dislike from appearing on the internet. And they were both spectacularly unsuccessful. In 2003 Ms Streisand objected to aerial photographs of her home in Malibu appearing in a collection of publicly available coastline pictures. She sued (unsuccessfully) for $50m—and in doing so ensured that the pictures gained far wider publicity.
That self-defeating behaviour coined the phrase “Streisand effect”, illustrated by an axiom from John Gilmore, one of the pioneers of the internet, that: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” But the big test of the rule is not whether it frustrates publicity-shy celebrities. It is whether it can overcome governments’ desire for secrecy."
And:
"From Egypt to Malaysia to Saudi Arabia to Singapore, bloggers have in recent months found themselves behind bars for posting materials that those in power dislike. The most recent Worldwide Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, a lobby group, estimates their number at a minimum of 64.
International human-rights organisations have taken up their cause. But the best and quickest way of defending those in prison may be with the help of other internet activists. Sami ben Gharbia, a Tunisian digital activist who now lives in exile in the Netherlands, says that this beats traditional human-rights outfits when it comes to informing the world about the arrest of fellow bloggers. He co-ordinates the campaigning efforts of Global Voices Online, a web-based outfit that began as a collator of offbeat blog content and has now branched out into lobbying for free speech.
Such issues were expected to be in sharp focus at Global Voices’ annual summit in Budapest this week, where hundreds of bloggers, academics, do-gooders and journalists from places like China, Belarus, Venezuela and Kenya were due to swap tips on how to outwit officialdom. The aim, says Ethan Zuckerman, a Harvard academic who cofounded Global Voices, is to build networks of trust and co-operation between people who would not instinctively look to the other side of the world for solutions to their problems.
That is a worthy if ambitious goal. Doubtless, authoritarian governments are in close touch too, sharing the best ways of dealing with the pestilential gadflies and troublemakers of the internet. But they will not be posting their conclusions online, for all to see. Which way works better? History will decide."
"What do Barbra Streisand and the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, have in common? They both tried to block material they dislike from appearing on the internet. And they were both spectacularly unsuccessful. In 2003 Ms Streisand objected to aerial photographs of her home in Malibu appearing in a collection of publicly available coastline pictures. She sued (unsuccessfully) for $50m—and in doing so ensured that the pictures gained far wider publicity.
That self-defeating behaviour coined the phrase “Streisand effect”, illustrated by an axiom from John Gilmore, one of the pioneers of the internet, that: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” But the big test of the rule is not whether it frustrates publicity-shy celebrities. It is whether it can overcome governments’ desire for secrecy."
And:
"From Egypt to Malaysia to Saudi Arabia to Singapore, bloggers have in recent months found themselves behind bars for posting materials that those in power dislike. The most recent Worldwide Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, a lobby group, estimates their number at a minimum of 64.
International human-rights organisations have taken up their cause. But the best and quickest way of defending those in prison may be with the help of other internet activists. Sami ben Gharbia, a Tunisian digital activist who now lives in exile in the Netherlands, says that this beats traditional human-rights outfits when it comes to informing the world about the arrest of fellow bloggers. He co-ordinates the campaigning efforts of Global Voices Online, a web-based outfit that began as a collator of offbeat blog content and has now branched out into lobbying for free speech.
Such issues were expected to be in sharp focus at Global Voices’ annual summit in Budapest this week, where hundreds of bloggers, academics, do-gooders and journalists from places like China, Belarus, Venezuela and Kenya were due to swap tips on how to outwit officialdom. The aim, says Ethan Zuckerman, a Harvard academic who cofounded Global Voices, is to build networks of trust and co-operation between people who would not instinctively look to the other side of the world for solutions to their problems.
That is a worthy if ambitious goal. Doubtless, authoritarian governments are in close touch too, sharing the best ways of dealing with the pestilential gadflies and troublemakers of the internet. But they will not be posting their conclusions online, for all to see. Which way works better? History will decide."
Dispatches from postwar Vietnam
There are many out there who fought in the Vietnam War. Many were drafted to fight and had no alternative in the scheme of things. Perhaps coincidentally, what is happening in Iraq now is being compared to what turned out to be the debacle of the Vietnam War.
Mike Carlton, who usually writes acerbically in his weekly op-ed piece in the SMH this week writes about having been fighting in Vietnam and his return for the first time recently:
"Vietnam, mon amour. When I left Saigon in 1970 after my bit part in Richard Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, I swore I would never return. The search for lost time can only end in tears, I told myself.
My wife eventually talked me into going back. Warily, I went.
It was marvellous. We have just spent 12 days in Vietnam on one of the most delightful holidays I can recall.
The truly remarkable thing - the humbling thing - was the warmth of the Vietnamese people. Given the horrors they have endured, that was about the last thing I expected.
In the war years - I was there in 1966 and again in 1970 - even those Vietnamese nominally on the side of what everyone ludicrously referred to then as "The Free World" would often make it coolly plain they couldn't wait for Whitey to get the hell out of their country. Saigon was venal and vicious.
In the hamlets of the countryside you could see the fear in people's eyes or sense the cold hatred drilling between your shoulder blades.
Today, all gone. We were met everywhere with gentle courtesy. Almost everybody seems to be under the age of 30 and for them the American war, as they call it, is history."
Mike Carlton, who usually writes acerbically in his weekly op-ed piece in the SMH this week writes about having been fighting in Vietnam and his return for the first time recently:
"Vietnam, mon amour. When I left Saigon in 1970 after my bit part in Richard Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, I swore I would never return. The search for lost time can only end in tears, I told myself.
My wife eventually talked me into going back. Warily, I went.
It was marvellous. We have just spent 12 days in Vietnam on one of the most delightful holidays I can recall.
The truly remarkable thing - the humbling thing - was the warmth of the Vietnamese people. Given the horrors they have endured, that was about the last thing I expected.
In the war years - I was there in 1966 and again in 1970 - even those Vietnamese nominally on the side of what everyone ludicrously referred to then as "The Free World" would often make it coolly plain they couldn't wait for Whitey to get the hell out of their country. Saigon was venal and vicious.
In the hamlets of the countryside you could see the fear in people's eyes or sense the cold hatred drilling between your shoulder blades.
Today, all gone. We were met everywhere with gentle courtesy. Almost everybody seems to be under the age of 30 and for them the American war, as they call it, is history."
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Torture v humanity
Bob Herbert writing his regular op-ed piece in the NY Times:
"Thursday was the 21st anniversary of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
It was also the same day that two Bush administration lawyers appeared before a House subcommittee to answer questions about their roles in providing the legal framework for harsh interrogation techniques that inevitably rose to the level of torture and shamed the U.S. before the rest of the world.
The lawyers, both former Justice Department officials, were David Addington, who is now Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There is no danger of either being enshrined as heroes in the history books of the future.
For most Americans, torture is something remote, abstract, reprehensible, but in the eyes of some, perhaps necessary — when the bomb is ticking, for example, or when interrogators are trying to get information from terrorists willing to kill Americans in huge numbers.
"Thursday was the 21st anniversary of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
It was also the same day that two Bush administration lawyers appeared before a House subcommittee to answer questions about their roles in providing the legal framework for harsh interrogation techniques that inevitably rose to the level of torture and shamed the U.S. before the rest of the world.
The lawyers, both former Justice Department officials, were David Addington, who is now Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. There is no danger of either being enshrined as heroes in the history books of the future.
For most Americans, torture is something remote, abstract, reprehensible, but in the eyes of some, perhaps necessary — when the bomb is ticking, for example, or when interrogators are trying to get information from terrorists willing to kill Americans in huge numbers.
Democracy isn't a foreign word
Amnesty International, in Australia, has for the last months specifically taken up the cause of oppression in China in the light of the upcoming Olympics. To that end, Antony Loewenstein has been writing a regular column "Uncensor" honing in on the internet in China.
With the Olympics now some 6 weeks away, the latest column by Loewenstein raises some interesting issues to reflect on:
"Is the West afraid of Chinese patriotism? Some Chinese bloggers think it is but remain aware of the ways in which such sentiments could be misunderstood around the world. One wrote:
“…I love the country, and fervently so. But regardless of how passionately patriotic I am, my goal is to see China be able to continue its economic development, social stability, and continuous political reforms so as to keep up with the times…This is what worries me every time I see patriotism rising up again, wondering if it will completely ruin international relations. Will it ruin our economic growth?”
A recent survey indicates that many Asian citizens are sceptical of China’s growing economic and social power. The conductors of the survey wrote: “Clearly, China is recognised by its neighbours as the future leader of Asia, but its rise does not mean US influence is waning.”
Despite these fears, however, the news last week that President Hu Jintao communicated with some of China’s 230 million netizens was a unique example of what few other world leaders would ever do. Can you imagine a US President or Australian Prime Minister spending time online with voters? “Political liberalization” is starting to occur in China."
With the Olympics now some 6 weeks away, the latest column by Loewenstein raises some interesting issues to reflect on:
"Is the West afraid of Chinese patriotism? Some Chinese bloggers think it is but remain aware of the ways in which such sentiments could be misunderstood around the world. One wrote:
“…I love the country, and fervently so. But regardless of how passionately patriotic I am, my goal is to see China be able to continue its economic development, social stability, and continuous political reforms so as to keep up with the times…This is what worries me every time I see patriotism rising up again, wondering if it will completely ruin international relations. Will it ruin our economic growth?”
A recent survey indicates that many Asian citizens are sceptical of China’s growing economic and social power. The conductors of the survey wrote: “Clearly, China is recognised by its neighbours as the future leader of Asia, but its rise does not mean US influence is waning.”
Despite these fears, however, the news last week that President Hu Jintao communicated with some of China’s 230 million netizens was a unique example of what few other world leaders would ever do. Can you imagine a US President or Australian Prime Minister spending time online with voters? “Political liberalization” is starting to occur in China."
Books not Bombs
Nicholas Kristof makes more than a valid point as a result of his travels in the Middle East. Remember, this is the man who wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times the other day "The Two Israels" [see an earlier posting on MPS].
In his latest piece in the NY Times, "Books not Bombs", Kristof writes:
"The dirty little secret of the Iraq war isn’t in Baghdad or Basra. Rather, it’s found in the squalid brothels of Damascus and the poorest neighborhoods of East Amman.
Some two million Iraqis have fled their homeland and are now sheltering in run-down neighborhoods in surrounding countries. These are the new Palestinians, the 21st-century Arab diaspora that threatens the region’s stability.
Many youngsters are getting no education, and some girls are pushed into prostitution, particularly in Damascus. Impoverished, angry, disenfranchised, unwanted, these Iraqis are a combustible new Middle Eastern element that no one wants to address or even think about.
American hawks prefer to address the region’s security challenges by devoting billions of dollars to permanent American military bases. A simpler way to fight extremism would be to pay school fees for refugee children to ensure that they at least get an education and don’t become forever marginalized and underemployed.
We broke Iraq, and we have a moral responsibility to those whose lives have been shattered by our actions. Helping them is also in our national interest, for we’ll regret our myopia if we allow young Iraqi refugees to grow up uneducated and unemployable, festering in their societies."
In his latest piece in the NY Times, "Books not Bombs", Kristof writes:
"The dirty little secret of the Iraq war isn’t in Baghdad or Basra. Rather, it’s found in the squalid brothels of Damascus and the poorest neighborhoods of East Amman.
Some two million Iraqis have fled their homeland and are now sheltering in run-down neighborhoods in surrounding countries. These are the new Palestinians, the 21st-century Arab diaspora that threatens the region’s stability.
Many youngsters are getting no education, and some girls are pushed into prostitution, particularly in Damascus. Impoverished, angry, disenfranchised, unwanted, these Iraqis are a combustible new Middle Eastern element that no one wants to address or even think about.
American hawks prefer to address the region’s security challenges by devoting billions of dollars to permanent American military bases. A simpler way to fight extremism would be to pay school fees for refugee children to ensure that they at least get an education and don’t become forever marginalized and underemployed.
We broke Iraq, and we have a moral responsibility to those whose lives have been shattered by our actions. Helping them is also in our national interest, for we’ll regret our myopia if we allow young Iraqi refugees to grow up uneducated and unemployable, festering in their societies."
Friday, June 27, 2008
Stark stats
The truce - note, not a ceasefire - between Israel and Hamas looks decidedly shaky after only a few days.
Meanwhile, Medicins Sans Frontiers in its publication Inter Action provides these rather stark, and bleak, stats on the Palestinian territories at a glance:
Total population: 3.9 million
Life expectancy: 72.9
Refugee population:
4.4 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and
Lebanon
1.3 million living in refugee camps
Percentage living below the poverty line [AUD $2.45 per day]
Gaza: 80 per cent
West Bank: 46 per cent
Meanwhile, Medicins Sans Frontiers in its publication Inter Action provides these rather stark, and bleak, stats on the Palestinian territories at a glance:
Total population: 3.9 million
Life expectancy: 72.9
Refugee population:
4.4 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and
Lebanon
1.3 million living in refugee camps
Percentage living below the poverty line [AUD $2.45 per day]
Gaza: 80 per cent
West Bank: 46 per cent
Inside Zimbabwe. Living on Pennies
Given that President [should that read Dictator?] Mugabe has banned all foreign journalists it is near-enough impossible to find out what is really happening in Zimbabwe.
This week, Newsweek carries an article on what life is like inside Mugabe's near-enough collapsed country:
"In response to his critics who say Zimbabwe cannot much longer withstand the failed economy, the million percent a year hyper-inflation, the food and political and diplomatic crises, Robert Mugabe has defiantly said, "Countries don't collapse." So far he's been right; reports of his regime's imminent collapse are at least six years old now. Here in Bulawayo, the nation's second-largest city, there is at first glance proof of that. It's in a region plagued by drought, following a winter harvest in the southern Matabeleland region that nearly completely failed; unemployment is 85 percent, while relief groups with few exceptions have been ordered to cease their activities. And yet there are no crowds of hungry people on the streets, which are clean and tidy, nor even many beggars. It's something of an illusion, of course; there are no traffic jams because there's only scant traffic, and the chief forms of activity are lines, bread lines before every bakery, and bank lines in front of every bank. But still, you'd expect it to be far worse than it is, and somehow it doesn't seem to be.
Because Mugabe has banned all foreign journalists, I was obliged like many of my colleagues to make my way here by a route which I'm unable to specify, linking up with an underground network that has promised to make sure I can travel wherever I need to go in Zimbabwe. There is, so far as I know, not a single Western journalist here legally; and it's explicitly against Zimbabwean law for us to come. And though Western journalists are regularly rounded up and expelled, most are able to report in the country so long as they exercise reasonable care. In large part, that's because so many of Zimbabwe's people are fed up with Mugabe; polls taken before opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of Friday's runoff election put him ahead 63 percent to 37 percent against the man who has ruled the country since its first free election in 1980. So in Bulawayo, one of the most impressive revelations is how easy it is to move around openly, even for a white foreigner, and even, so long as no police are around, to talk to people. Our contacts urge us to use cellphones only in coded text messages, or guarded voice calls, and on the Internet, resort to a secret e-mail service that disguises and encrypts messages, but it hardly seems necessary. We are fish, swimming in a friendly sea."
Read on here. It makes for devastating reading.
This week, Newsweek carries an article on what life is like inside Mugabe's near-enough collapsed country:
"In response to his critics who say Zimbabwe cannot much longer withstand the failed economy, the million percent a year hyper-inflation, the food and political and diplomatic crises, Robert Mugabe has defiantly said, "Countries don't collapse." So far he's been right; reports of his regime's imminent collapse are at least six years old now. Here in Bulawayo, the nation's second-largest city, there is at first glance proof of that. It's in a region plagued by drought, following a winter harvest in the southern Matabeleland region that nearly completely failed; unemployment is 85 percent, while relief groups with few exceptions have been ordered to cease their activities. And yet there are no crowds of hungry people on the streets, which are clean and tidy, nor even many beggars. It's something of an illusion, of course; there are no traffic jams because there's only scant traffic, and the chief forms of activity are lines, bread lines before every bakery, and bank lines in front of every bank. But still, you'd expect it to be far worse than it is, and somehow it doesn't seem to be.
Because Mugabe has banned all foreign journalists, I was obliged like many of my colleagues to make my way here by a route which I'm unable to specify, linking up with an underground network that has promised to make sure I can travel wherever I need to go in Zimbabwe. There is, so far as I know, not a single Western journalist here legally; and it's explicitly against Zimbabwean law for us to come. And though Western journalists are regularly rounded up and expelled, most are able to report in the country so long as they exercise reasonable care. In large part, that's because so many of Zimbabwe's people are fed up with Mugabe; polls taken before opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of Friday's runoff election put him ahead 63 percent to 37 percent against the man who has ruled the country since its first free election in 1980. So in Bulawayo, one of the most impressive revelations is how easy it is to move around openly, even for a white foreigner, and even, so long as no police are around, to talk to people. Our contacts urge us to use cellphones only in coded text messages, or guarded voice calls, and on the Internet, resort to a secret e-mail service that disguises and encrypts messages, but it hardly seems necessary. We are fish, swimming in a friendly sea."
Read on here. It makes for devastating reading.
No Blood for... er... um...
"More than five years after the invasion of Iraq -- just in case you were still waiting -- the oil giants finally hit the front page…
Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." (Subhead: "Rare No-bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.") And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere "service contracts" -- as in servicing Iraq's oil fields -- not the sort of "production sharing agreements" that President Bush's representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: "[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash." And here's the curious thing, exactly these four giants "lost their concessions in Iraq" back in 1972 when that country's oil was nationalized. Hmmm.
You'd think the Times might have slapped some kind of "we wuz wrong" label on the piece. I mean, remember when the mainstream media, the Times included, seconded the idea that Bush's invasion, whatever it was about -- weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators or… well, no matter -- you could be sure of one thing: it wasn't about oil. "Oil" wasn't a word worth including in serious reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, not even after it turned out that American troops entering Baghdad guarded only the Oil and Interior Ministries, while the rest of the city was looted. Even then -- and ever after -- the idea that the Bush administration might have the slightest urge to control Iraqi oil (or the flow of Middle Eastern oil via a well-garrisoned Iraq) wasn't worth spending a few paragraphs of valuable newsprint on"
So starts a piece on TomDispatch.com. Read on here.
Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." (Subhead: "Rare No-bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.") And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere "service contracts" -- as in servicing Iraq's oil fields -- not the sort of "production sharing agreements" that President Bush's representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: "[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash." And here's the curious thing, exactly these four giants "lost their concessions in Iraq" back in 1972 when that country's oil was nationalized. Hmmm.
You'd think the Times might have slapped some kind of "we wuz wrong" label on the piece. I mean, remember when the mainstream media, the Times included, seconded the idea that Bush's invasion, whatever it was about -- weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or liberation or democracy or bad dictators or… well, no matter -- you could be sure of one thing: it wasn't about oil. "Oil" wasn't a word worth including in serious reporting on the invasion and its aftermath, not even after it turned out that American troops entering Baghdad guarded only the Oil and Interior Ministries, while the rest of the city was looted. Even then -- and ever after -- the idea that the Bush administration might have the slightest urge to control Iraqi oil (or the flow of Middle Eastern oil via a well-garrisoned Iraq) wasn't worth spending a few paragraphs of valuable newsprint on"
So starts a piece on TomDispatch.com. Read on here.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Gaza, Hamas, Palestinians and the future
Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
Writing on CounterPunch Baroud reflects on where things are headed with Hamas, PM Abbas , Gaza and the West Bank and where things are seemingly headed by Israel:
"Meanwhile, recent news reports spoke of assurances made by Abbas to the anxious Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his offer of dialogue with Hamas would be conditional. Why condition talks among brethren while allowing Israel endless benefit of the doubt in stretching out a meaningless "peace process" while allowing its army to kill children like Hadeel at will?
Perhaps Abbas, and the angry minister in the BBC report, are confused about the Palestinian state Israel tirelessly promises. "The future Palestinian state must be established according to Israel's security needs, including supervision of border crossings and the disarming of militants," reported Haaretz, referring to comments made by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. So much for sovereignty.
The Israeli paper went on to report: "Israel says it intends to keep major settlement blocs in the West Bank under any future peace deal with the Palestinians and that its network of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank helps to prevent attacks on Israelis."
Even if the Israeli promise of statehood ever actualises it has apartheid written all over it.
Palestinians need not pay much attention to Livni's futile visions. They should focus their energies on unifying their ranks for nothing compels more fury than their disunity, and nothing is as humiliating as their reliance on Israeli and US arms and money to keep their own brethren in Gaza starved and browbeaten."
Writing on CounterPunch Baroud reflects on where things are headed with Hamas, PM Abbas , Gaza and the West Bank and where things are seemingly headed by Israel:
"Meanwhile, recent news reports spoke of assurances made by Abbas to the anxious Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his offer of dialogue with Hamas would be conditional. Why condition talks among brethren while allowing Israel endless benefit of the doubt in stretching out a meaningless "peace process" while allowing its army to kill children like Hadeel at will?
Perhaps Abbas, and the angry minister in the BBC report, are confused about the Palestinian state Israel tirelessly promises. "The future Palestinian state must be established according to Israel's security needs, including supervision of border crossings and the disarming of militants," reported Haaretz, referring to comments made by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. So much for sovereignty.
The Israeli paper went on to report: "Israel says it intends to keep major settlement blocs in the West Bank under any future peace deal with the Palestinians and that its network of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank helps to prevent attacks on Israelis."
Even if the Israeli promise of statehood ever actualises it has apartheid written all over it.
Palestinians need not pay much attention to Livni's futile visions. They should focus their energies on unifying their ranks for nothing compels more fury than their disunity, and nothing is as humiliating as their reliance on Israeli and US arms and money to keep their own brethren in Gaza starved and browbeaten."
Another [positive] dimension to Google
A lot of things can be said about Google - both positive and negative - but one part of its "work" will probably prove to be a welcome dimension, as this Inside Google Book Search explains:
"If I handed you a book and asked whether it was in copyright or in the public domain, you'd probably turn to the copyright page first. Unfortunately, a copyright page can't answer that question definitively -- at best, it could tell you when the book in your hands was published, and who owned the rights to it at that time. Ownership can change, though: rights revert back to authors, and after enough time has passed, the book enters into the public domain, letting people copy and adapt it as they wish.
So how much time is "enough"? It varies, often depending on the country, on when the book was published, and whether the author is living. For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.
How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.
Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.
There are undoubtedly errors in these records, but we believe this is the best and most comprehensive set of renewal records available today. These records are free and in the public domain, and we hope you're able to use them to determine the copyright status of books that interest you.
At Google, we're committed to making as many books available online to users as possible while respecting copyright, and this is one example of that commitment. Watch this space for more to come."
"If I handed you a book and asked whether it was in copyright or in the public domain, you'd probably turn to the copyright page first. Unfortunately, a copyright page can't answer that question definitively -- at best, it could tell you when the book in your hands was published, and who owned the rights to it at that time. Ownership can change, though: rights revert back to authors, and after enough time has passed, the book enters into the public domain, letting people copy and adapt it as they wish.
So how much time is "enough"? It varies, often depending on the country, on when the book was published, and whether the author is living. For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.
How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.
Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.
There are undoubtedly errors in these records, but we believe this is the best and most comprehensive set of renewal records available today. These records are free and in the public domain, and we hope you're able to use them to determine the copyright status of books that interest you.
At Google, we're committed to making as many books available online to users as possible while respecting copyright, and this is one example of that commitment. Watch this space for more to come."
The World's Top 20 Public Intellectuals
"Rankings are an inherently dangerous business. Whether offering a hierarchy of countries, cities, or colleges, any such list—at least any such list worth compiling—is likely to generate a fair amount of debate. In the last issue, when we asked readers to vote for their picks of the world’s top public intellectuals, we imagined many people would want to make their opinions known. But no one expected the avalanche of voters who came forward. During nearly four weeks of voting, more than 500,000 people came to ForeignPolicy.com to cast ballots.
Such an outpouring reveals something unique about the power of the men and women we chose to rank. They were included on our initial list of 100 in large part because of the influence of their ideas. But part of being a “public intellectual” is also having a talent for communicating with a wide and diverse public. This skill is certainly an asset for some who find themselves in the list’s top ranks. For example, a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites. Others issued press releases or gave interviews to local newspapers. Press coverage profiling these intellectuals appeared around the world, with stories running in Canada, India, Indonesia, Qatar, Spain, and elsewhere.
No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day."
FP [Foreign Policy] has taken on the rather daunting task of identifying the top 20 world public intellectuals. Not everyone will agree, but the "list", here, makes for interesting reading.
Such an outpouring reveals something unique about the power of the men and women we chose to rank. They were included on our initial list of 100 in large part because of the influence of their ideas. But part of being a “public intellectual” is also having a talent for communicating with a wide and diverse public. This skill is certainly an asset for some who find themselves in the list’s top ranks. For example, a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites. Others issued press releases or gave interviews to local newspapers. Press coverage profiling these intellectuals appeared around the world, with stories running in Canada, India, Indonesia, Qatar, Spain, and elsewhere.
No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day."
FP [Foreign Policy] has taken on the rather daunting task of identifying the top 20 world public intellectuals. Not everyone will agree, but the "list", here, makes for interesting reading.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
$20 Billion Later, Iraq Security Only Operating At 10 Percent
"The Government Accountability Office delivered on Monday what was, in many ways, a sobering report on the current situation in Iraq. Noting that violence levels in the war had decreased, the authors nevertheless concluded that many of the Bush administration's "surge" priorities had so far been unrealized.
The most startling illustration of the hindered strategy seems likely to be the current status of the Iraqi Security Forces -- the policing and military presence that is supposed to allow U.S. troops to come home. According to the GAO, the percentage of Iraqi units "capable of performing operations without U.S. assistance" remains roughly 10 percent. Thus, while the number of forces has risen by more than 150,000, the actual assistance that American troops are receiving is far more negligible. Adding salt to the wound, the GAO notes: "Since 2003, the United States has provided more than $20 billion to develop Iraqi security forces."
So writes Sam Stein in The Huffington Post. Read the full piece here. Yet another confirmation of what a debacle, on so many levels and in most respects, the Iraq War has been.
The most startling illustration of the hindered strategy seems likely to be the current status of the Iraqi Security Forces -- the policing and military presence that is supposed to allow U.S. troops to come home. According to the GAO, the percentage of Iraqi units "capable of performing operations without U.S. assistance" remains roughly 10 percent. Thus, while the number of forces has risen by more than 150,000, the actual assistance that American troops are receiving is far more negligible. Adding salt to the wound, the GAO notes: "Since 2003, the United States has provided more than $20 billion to develop Iraqi security forces."
So writes Sam Stein in The Huffington Post. Read the full piece here. Yet another confirmation of what a debacle, on so many levels and in most respects, the Iraq War has been.
The Tipping Point has arrived
The Toronto Star reports on where we are at in climate control - at the tipping point:
“We have reached a point of planetary emergency,” he said.
“There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control.”
During a speech at the National Press Club, he rambled, as if his ideas were sprinting well ahead of his words, but he kept an overflow ballroom audience rapt.
Already, he said, the world’s safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been exceeded.
Yet, in the 20 years since he first testified, no major U.S. law restricting greenhouse gas emissions has been passed, 21 new coal-fired generating units have been built at power plants in this country and total U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide have climbed by about 18 per cent.
“If there is any single moment that marked the turning point where the climate issue became a serious public policy issue, June 23, 1988, had to be seen as that moment,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute.
“(Yesterday) may mark a second kind of turning point.”
“We have reached a point of planetary emergency,” he said.
“There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control.”
During a speech at the National Press Club, he rambled, as if his ideas were sprinting well ahead of his words, but he kept an overflow ballroom audience rapt.
Already, he said, the world’s safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been exceeded.
Yet, in the 20 years since he first testified, no major U.S. law restricting greenhouse gas emissions has been passed, 21 new coal-fired generating units have been built at power plants in this country and total U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide have climbed by about 18 per cent.
“If there is any single moment that marked the turning point where the climate issue became a serious public policy issue, June 23, 1988, had to be seen as that moment,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute.
“(Yesterday) may mark a second kind of turning point.”
What First Amendment?
Americans always strongly defend their First Amendment of free speech. That has led to what can only be described a bizarre results.
It is therefore troubling to read this piece from Mondoweiss:
"I've failed to post anything about the University of Michigan Press's decision to stop distributing books by Pluto Press, a leftwing British publisher whose big offense was publishing Overcoming Zionism, by Joel Kovel. What is there to say other than that it's tragic? Kovel is for a one-state solution. His book exposed U of M to the usual letterwriting campaign and god knows what other forms of blackmail. It is something like Politics and Prose shutting down the book talk by Saree Makdisi, who is also for a one-state solution (a decision since reversed).
Roger van Zwanenberg, chairman of Pluto, said that there was no doubt in his mind but that for political opposition to a book critical of Israel, his press and Michigan’s press would still be doing business. “What this tells you is that there are dark forces in America who would like to control the flow of ideas, and they are powerfully organized and they are very dangerous,” he said.
Dangerous is a good word. We're stymieing discussion. I hereby reissue my weekly call to reform Jewish culture (and every month I get around to calling for the reformation of Islam; I know, shameful media bias). Histories will some day record this period with shame, that is if we don't ban em."
It is therefore troubling to read this piece from Mondoweiss:
"I've failed to post anything about the University of Michigan Press's decision to stop distributing books by Pluto Press, a leftwing British publisher whose big offense was publishing Overcoming Zionism, by Joel Kovel. What is there to say other than that it's tragic? Kovel is for a one-state solution. His book exposed U of M to the usual letterwriting campaign and god knows what other forms of blackmail. It is something like Politics and Prose shutting down the book talk by Saree Makdisi, who is also for a one-state solution (a decision since reversed).
Roger van Zwanenberg, chairman of Pluto, said that there was no doubt in his mind but that for political opposition to a book critical of Israel, his press and Michigan’s press would still be doing business. “What this tells you is that there are dark forces in America who would like to control the flow of ideas, and they are powerfully organized and they are very dangerous,” he said.
Dangerous is a good word. We're stymieing discussion. I hereby reissue my weekly call to reform Jewish culture (and every month I get around to calling for the reformation of Islam; I know, shameful media bias). Histories will some day record this period with shame, that is if we don't ban em."
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Washington = Versailles?
Chris Hedges was a Pulitzer award winner at the NY Times and its one time Bureau Chief in Jerusalem.
Writing under the headline "The Hedonists of Power" on truthdig.com he takes a stick to the way Washington "operates":
"Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.
The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.
No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview."
Writing under the headline "The Hedonists of Power" on truthdig.com he takes a stick to the way Washington "operates":
"Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.
The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.
No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview."
Israel: Different dimensions
The French President has some sound advice for the Israelis when addressing the Israeli Knesset yesterday - as The Guardian reports:
"The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy told Israel today to share sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians and to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.
In an address to the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, Sarkozy also promised France's support in helping to halt Iran's nuclear programme and he praised Israel's democracy, comments for which he won applause.
However, he also spoke strongly about what he expected of Israel as part of the peace process with the Palestinians. "There cannot be peace without an immediate and complete halt to settlement," he said. "There cannot be peace without recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of two states and the guarantee of free access to the holy places for all religions."
At the NY Times, the newspaper, somewhat unusually - given its almost one-eyed support for Israel - has an op-ed piece "The Two Israels" by Nicholas Kristof:
"It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won’t let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)
Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.
All told, the most persuasive indictments of Israeli actions come from Israelis themselves. This scrupulous honesty and fairness toward Israel’s historic enemies is a triumph of humanity.
In short, there are many Israels. When American presidential candidates compete this year to be “pro-Israeli,” let’s hope that they clarify that the one they support is not the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a paragon of justice, decency, fairness — and peace."
Whatever advise might be given to the Israelis, the country rolls on relentlessly in appropriating Palestinian land - as the International Middle East Media Centre reports in this piece "Entire Palestinian village threatened with expulsion":
"Israeli military forces have told the residents of the village of Arab ar-Ramadin that they will all be expelled from their homes in the coming weeks, as part of the Israeli project of expansion onto Palestinian land in the West Bank."
One can only shake one's head in disbelief at both the brazen actions of the Israelis and the silence of the world in allowing it to happen. Where are Israel's real friends?
"The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy told Israel today to share sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians and to stop building settlements in the occupied territories.
In an address to the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, Sarkozy also promised France's support in helping to halt Iran's nuclear programme and he praised Israel's democracy, comments for which he won applause.
However, he also spoke strongly about what he expected of Israel as part of the peace process with the Palestinians. "There cannot be peace without an immediate and complete halt to settlement," he said. "There cannot be peace without recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of two states and the guarantee of free access to the holy places for all religions."
At the NY Times, the newspaper, somewhat unusually - given its almost one-eyed support for Israel - has an op-ed piece "The Two Israels" by Nicholas Kristof:
"It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won’t let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)
Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.
All told, the most persuasive indictments of Israeli actions come from Israelis themselves. This scrupulous honesty and fairness toward Israel’s historic enemies is a triumph of humanity.
In short, there are many Israels. When American presidential candidates compete this year to be “pro-Israeli,” let’s hope that they clarify that the one they support is not the oppressor that lets settlers steal land and club women but the one that is a paragon of justice, decency, fairness — and peace."
Whatever advise might be given to the Israelis, the country rolls on relentlessly in appropriating Palestinian land - as the International Middle East Media Centre reports in this piece "Entire Palestinian village threatened with expulsion":
"Israeli military forces have told the residents of the village of Arab ar-Ramadin that they will all be expelled from their homes in the coming weeks, as part of the Israeli project of expansion onto Palestinian land in the West Bank."
One can only shake one's head in disbelief at both the brazen actions of the Israelis and the silence of the world in allowing it to happen. Where are Israel's real friends?
Off the radar....almost
There may still be a war raging in Iraq, the Americans have something like 150,000 troops in the country - and the war is costing the US untold billions of dollars - and then there is that upcoming presidential election [what do the candidates intend to "do" about Iraq?], but it seems that the TV nightly news bulletins aren't really interested in providing any news of the Iraq War.
As the NY Times reports:
"According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)
CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed."
Nothing like having one's head in the sand or ignoring the human cost of the whole misadventure known as the Iraq War. Read the full NY Times piece here.
As the NY Times reports:
"According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)
CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed."
Nothing like having one's head in the sand or ignoring the human cost of the whole misadventure known as the Iraq War. Read the full NY Times piece here.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Robert Fisk: Today's despot is tomorrow's statesman
Robert Fisk makes the point in this piece from The Independent - pointedly!
"How are the mighty fallen, we used to say. Now we turn it round. How did the fallen become mighty again? Remember the "mad dog of the Middle East" – Reagan's stupid cliché – the "terrorist" sponsor who even sent a shipload of guns to the IRA? A certain Moammar Ghazzafi – there are 17 different ways of spelling his name in Latin script – was the crazed leader of Libya who wrote a mind-numbingly boring volume of pseudo philosophy called The Green Book and who wanted to mock the White House by calling his own palace the Green House until someone tipped him off that this would mean he would look even more of a cabbage than he already was.
Then suddenly, he gave up some imaginary weapons of mass destruction and Anthony Blair, now the commercial director of World Faith, went out to fawn over him in Tripoli and he was called "statesmanlike" by the absurd Jack Straw and then he was invited to Paris by the even more absurd Nicolas Sarkozy where he right royally made the French president look like a twat by behaving in an extremely unstatesmanlike way.
And now – bingo – Sarkozy has done it again. This time it's Bashar al-Assad, another presumed "sponsor of world terror" – this twaddle comes from Washington, of course – who will (if he accepts the invitation française) be in Paris on Bastille Day to take his place in the reviewing stand at the end of the Champs Elysées. The man whom millions of Lebanese believe plotted the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut on 14 February 2005 will thus be receiving one of France's highest honours: to stand beside the French president as he reviews his military forces."
"How are the mighty fallen, we used to say. Now we turn it round. How did the fallen become mighty again? Remember the "mad dog of the Middle East" – Reagan's stupid cliché – the "terrorist" sponsor who even sent a shipload of guns to the IRA? A certain Moammar Ghazzafi – there are 17 different ways of spelling his name in Latin script – was the crazed leader of Libya who wrote a mind-numbingly boring volume of pseudo philosophy called The Green Book and who wanted to mock the White House by calling his own palace the Green House until someone tipped him off that this would mean he would look even more of a cabbage than he already was.
Then suddenly, he gave up some imaginary weapons of mass destruction and Anthony Blair, now the commercial director of World Faith, went out to fawn over him in Tripoli and he was called "statesmanlike" by the absurd Jack Straw and then he was invited to Paris by the even more absurd Nicolas Sarkozy where he right royally made the French president look like a twat by behaving in an extremely unstatesmanlike way.
And now – bingo – Sarkozy has done it again. This time it's Bashar al-Assad, another presumed "sponsor of world terror" – this twaddle comes from Washington, of course – who will (if he accepts the invitation française) be in Paris on Bastille Day to take his place in the reviewing stand at the end of the Champs Elysées. The man whom millions of Lebanese believe plotted the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut on 14 February 2005 will thus be receiving one of France's highest honours: to stand beside the French president as he reviews his military forces."
These are wars for oil, not democracy
The news the other day that the four major oil companies are in the process tying up deals in Iraq serves to confirm what many informed people have said for years - as Eric Margolis highlights in this piece "These wars are about oil, not democracy" in the Toronto Sun:
"The ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally has emerged.
Four major western oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total are about to sign U.S.-brokered no-bid contracts to begin exploiting Iraq's oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized Iraq's oil industry. The U.S.-installed Baghdad regime is welcoming them back.
Iraq is getting back the same oil companies that used to exploit it when it was a British colony.
As former fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. The invasion was about SUV's, not democracy.
Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1,680-km pipeline project expected to cost $8 billion. If completed, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export gas and later oil from the Caspian basin to Pakistan's coast where tankers will transport it to the West."
"The ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally has emerged.
Four major western oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total are about to sign U.S.-brokered no-bid contracts to begin exploiting Iraq's oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized Iraq's oil industry. The U.S.-installed Baghdad regime is welcoming them back.
Iraq is getting back the same oil companies that used to exploit it when it was a British colony.
As former fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. The invasion was about SUV's, not democracy.
Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1,680-km pipeline project expected to cost $8 billion. If completed, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export gas and later oil from the Caspian basin to Pakistan's coast where tankers will transport it to the West."
Is Google Making us Stupid?
There is no doubting that the internet, and what it has to offer, both good and bad, has revolutionised all our lives in a multitude of ways.
Nicholas Carr, writing in The Atlantic in "Is Google Making us Stupid?", ponders on whether the net has dulled our brains and ability to read books:
"Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
Nicholas Carr, writing in The Atlantic in "Is Google Making us Stupid?", ponders on whether the net has dulled our brains and ability to read books:
"Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."
Sunday, June 22, 2008
15 numbers tell 7 years of history
From Le Monde diplomatique:
"After 9/11, George W Bush and his top advisers almost instantly launched their crusade against Islam and then their wars, all under the rubric of the “global war on terror”. (As Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld pungently put the matter that September, “We have a choice – either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live; and we chose the latter.”) By then, they were already heading out to “drain the swamp” of evildoers, 60 countries worth of them, if necessary. Meanwhile, they moved quickly to fight the last battle at home, the one just over, by squandering vast sums on an American Maginot Line of security. The porous new Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the FBI, and other acronymic agencies were to lock down, surveil and listen in on America. All this to prevent “the next 9/11”.
In the process, they would treat bin Laden’s scattered al-Qaida network as if it were the Nazi or Soviet war machine (even comically dubbing his followers “Islamofascists”). In the blinking of an eye, and in the rubble of two enormous buildings in downtown Manhattan, bin Laden and his cronies had morphed from nobodies into supermen, a Legion of Doom. (There was a curious parallel to this transformation in the second world war. As historian John Dower documented in his book War Without Mercy, before Pearl Harbour American experts had considered the Japanese bucktoothed, near-sighted military incompetents whose warplanes were barely capable of flight. On 8 December 1941 they suddenly became a race of invincible supermen without, in the American imagination, ever passing through a human incarnation.)"
And:
"When the history of this era is finally written, Osama bin Laden and his scattering of followers may be credited for goading the fundamentalist leaders of the United States into using the power in their grasp so stupidly and profligately as to send the planet’s sole superpower into decline. Above all, bin Laden and his crew of fanatics will have ensured that the real security problems of our age were ignored in Washington until far too late in favour of mad dreams and dark phantoms. In this lies a bleak but epic tale of folly worthy of a great American novelist. In the meantime, consider the following list – 15 numbers that offer an indication of just what the tai chi principle meant in action these last years; just where American energies did and did not flow; and, in the end, just how much less safe we are now than we were in January 2001, when George Bush entered the Oval Office."
Read the rather fascinating piece, in full, here.
"After 9/11, George W Bush and his top advisers almost instantly launched their crusade against Islam and then their wars, all under the rubric of the “global war on terror”. (As Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld pungently put the matter that September, “We have a choice – either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable, or to change the way that they live; and we chose the latter.”) By then, they were already heading out to “drain the swamp” of evildoers, 60 countries worth of them, if necessary. Meanwhile, they moved quickly to fight the last battle at home, the one just over, by squandering vast sums on an American Maginot Line of security. The porous new Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the FBI, and other acronymic agencies were to lock down, surveil and listen in on America. All this to prevent “the next 9/11”.
In the process, they would treat bin Laden’s scattered al-Qaida network as if it were the Nazi or Soviet war machine (even comically dubbing his followers “Islamofascists”). In the blinking of an eye, and in the rubble of two enormous buildings in downtown Manhattan, bin Laden and his cronies had morphed from nobodies into supermen, a Legion of Doom. (There was a curious parallel to this transformation in the second world war. As historian John Dower documented in his book War Without Mercy, before Pearl Harbour American experts had considered the Japanese bucktoothed, near-sighted military incompetents whose warplanes were barely capable of flight. On 8 December 1941 they suddenly became a race of invincible supermen without, in the American imagination, ever passing through a human incarnation.)"
And:
"When the history of this era is finally written, Osama bin Laden and his scattering of followers may be credited for goading the fundamentalist leaders of the United States into using the power in their grasp so stupidly and profligately as to send the planet’s sole superpower into decline. Above all, bin Laden and his crew of fanatics will have ensured that the real security problems of our age were ignored in Washington until far too late in favour of mad dreams and dark phantoms. In this lies a bleak but epic tale of folly worthy of a great American novelist. In the meantime, consider the following list – 15 numbers that offer an indication of just what the tai chi principle meant in action these last years; just where American energies did and did not flow; and, in the end, just how much less safe we are now than we were in January 2001, when George Bush entered the Oval Office."
Read the rather fascinating piece, in full, here.
The tragic and wide-ranging fall-out from folly
The fallout of the Iraq War cannot be under-estimated. Not has the country been severely decimated but the repercussions for its people has been horrendous.
In a piece "Iraq's Refugees. America' Shame" on CommonDreams, Medea Benjamin deals with the refugees who have fled war-torn Iraq and the plight in which they now find themselves. As you read the piece reflect on the fact that the Coalition of the Willing, led by the US, unleashed this whole mess - and that this past week has been Refugee Week:
"The invasion and the ensuing spiral of violence has led to the most massive displacement in the Middle East since the creation of the state Israel in 1948. Some 1.2 million Iraqis fled to Syria before the Syrian government, its schools and hospitals overwhelmed and local people reeling from soaring rents and food prices, closed its doors in October 2007. The Jordanian government allowed some 500,000 Iraqis to enter the country but has also closed its borders.
Some refugees are wealthy Iraqis who worked with Saddam’s government and cashed out when he was overthrown. They reside in the wealthy sections of Amman, living off their savings. But the vast majority of refugees are middle class and poor Iraqis who fled the post-invasion meltdown. Most are not just fleeing the generalized violence, but experienced personal tragedies at the hands of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, sectarian militias, Al-Qaeda fanatics or criminal gangs that thrive on social disintegration."
And:
"Severely traumatized and terrified, most refugees can’t even contemplate going back to Iraq. But they can’t stay in Jordan or Syria either, for they are not allowed to work and have depleted their savings. Bassam Rahem, for example, owned a small car repair shop in Baghdad. A Christian, he was kidnapped by Shia militia and his wife was forced to pay $25,000 for his release. “We came here with our two children and what was left of our life savings-$10,000. Between rent, food, transport and school for our boys, we have nothing left. We have been applying for resettlement in another country — Australia, Canada, the United States, Sweden. But it has been two years now, and we don’t even get replies.”
Most refugees want to resettle in a third country where they will be allowed to work and have a chance to rebuild their lives. Sweden, a country that was against the occupation from the beginning, has been the most generous, taking in more Iraqis than the rest of Europe and the United States combined. The U.S., on the other hand, has been pitiful. “While the UN refugee agency has worked to identify tens of thousands of vulnerable Iraqis for resettlement, the U.S. has been slow to bring these Iraqis to refuge, and has failed to meet even its own modest goals,” said Amelia Templeton, refugee advocate at Human Rights First. The U.S. target for 2008 is 12,000 Iraqis. Even if the goal is met, which is unlikely, it represents a tiny fraction of the millions in need."
In a piece "Iraq's Refugees. America' Shame" on CommonDreams, Medea Benjamin deals with the refugees who have fled war-torn Iraq and the plight in which they now find themselves. As you read the piece reflect on the fact that the Coalition of the Willing, led by the US, unleashed this whole mess - and that this past week has been Refugee Week:
"The invasion and the ensuing spiral of violence has led to the most massive displacement in the Middle East since the creation of the state Israel in 1948. Some 1.2 million Iraqis fled to Syria before the Syrian government, its schools and hospitals overwhelmed and local people reeling from soaring rents and food prices, closed its doors in October 2007. The Jordanian government allowed some 500,000 Iraqis to enter the country but has also closed its borders.
Some refugees are wealthy Iraqis who worked with Saddam’s government and cashed out when he was overthrown. They reside in the wealthy sections of Amman, living off their savings. But the vast majority of refugees are middle class and poor Iraqis who fled the post-invasion meltdown. Most are not just fleeing the generalized violence, but experienced personal tragedies at the hands of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, sectarian militias, Al-Qaeda fanatics or criminal gangs that thrive on social disintegration."
And:
"Severely traumatized and terrified, most refugees can’t even contemplate going back to Iraq. But they can’t stay in Jordan or Syria either, for they are not allowed to work and have depleted their savings. Bassam Rahem, for example, owned a small car repair shop in Baghdad. A Christian, he was kidnapped by Shia militia and his wife was forced to pay $25,000 for his release. “We came here with our two children and what was left of our life savings-$10,000. Between rent, food, transport and school for our boys, we have nothing left. We have been applying for resettlement in another country — Australia, Canada, the United States, Sweden. But it has been two years now, and we don’t even get replies.”
Most refugees want to resettle in a third country where they will be allowed to work and have a chance to rebuild their lives. Sweden, a country that was against the occupation from the beginning, has been the most generous, taking in more Iraqis than the rest of Europe and the United States combined. The U.S., on the other hand, has been pitiful. “While the UN refugee agency has worked to identify tens of thousands of vulnerable Iraqis for resettlement, the U.S. has been slow to bring these Iraqis to refuge, and has failed to meet even its own modest goals,” said Amelia Templeton, refugee advocate at Human Rights First. The U.S. target for 2008 is 12,000 Iraqis. Even if the goal is met, which is unlikely, it represents a tiny fraction of the millions in need."
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Fault Lines. Inside Rumsfeld's Pentagon
The Boston Review has an interesting article "Fault Lines. Inside Rumsfeld's Pentagon" which looks at what went on inside the Pentagon with regard to what has become known as the Iraq War - especially the perspective of Douglas Feith, neo-con supreme:
"Setting aside combat memoirs, of which there are a growing number, the literature of the Iraq War divides neatly into two categories. The first category, dominated by journalistic observers, indicts. The second category, accounts authored by insider participants, acquits. The two books reviewed here fall into the second category: They are exercises in self-exculpation. Pretending to explain, their actual purpose is to deflect responsibility.
Douglas Feith and Ricardo Sanchez are not exactly marquee figures. Yet each for a time played an important role in America’s Mesopotamian misadventure. From 2001 to 2005 Feith served in the Pentagon as the third-ranking figure in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) under Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy. From 2003 to 2004 Lieutenant General Sanchez, now retired, served in Baghdad, commanding all coalition forces in Iraq.
Of the two accounts, Feith’s qualifies as the more sophisticated. It is also far and away the more dishonest. Feith trained as a lawyer, and War and Decision qualifies as a masterpiece of lawyerly, even Nixonian, obfuscation."
"Setting aside combat memoirs, of which there are a growing number, the literature of the Iraq War divides neatly into two categories. The first category, dominated by journalistic observers, indicts. The second category, accounts authored by insider participants, acquits. The two books reviewed here fall into the second category: They are exercises in self-exculpation. Pretending to explain, their actual purpose is to deflect responsibility.
Douglas Feith and Ricardo Sanchez are not exactly marquee figures. Yet each for a time played an important role in America’s Mesopotamian misadventure. From 2001 to 2005 Feith served in the Pentagon as the third-ranking figure in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) under Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy. From 2003 to 2004 Lieutenant General Sanchez, now retired, served in Baghdad, commanding all coalition forces in Iraq.
Of the two accounts, Feith’s qualifies as the more sophisticated. It is also far and away the more dishonest. Feith trained as a lawyer, and War and Decision qualifies as a masterpiece of lawyerly, even Nixonian, obfuscation."
Dangerous sabre rattling.....with a message?
The news that Israel engaged in some military manoeuvres earlier this month - flagging something to Iran and others? - has led to this announcement, as Reuters reports:
"The chief of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in remarks aired on Friday that he would resign if there was a military strike on Iran, warning that any such attack would turn the region into a "fireball".
"I don't believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time ... it would make me unable to continue my work," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamad ElBaradei told Al Arabiya television in an interview.
"A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball," he said, emphasising that any attack would only make the Islamic Republic more determined to obtain nuclear power.
"If you do a military strike, it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons with the blessing of all Iranians, even those in the West."
The New York Times reported on Friday that U.S. officials said Israel carried out a large military exercise this month that appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The newspaper said Israeli officials would not discuss the exercise."
Meanwhile, on the same subject, The Nation reports:
"The stunning display of air power by Israel in early June, unannounced but widely noticed by intelligence services worldwide, means that Israel has officially signed on to John McCain's presidential bid.
By sending more than a hundred F-15s and F-16s across Greece and the Mediterranean in a practice mission for a large-scale attack on Iran, the Israelis have upped the ante dramatically. The New York Times, which reported the action, quotes a Pentagon official who said that it was all about sending messages:
"They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," the Pentagon official said. "There's a lot of signaling going on at different levels."
But the most important message is to the American political system. McCain has made a point of his willigness, even eagerness, to escalate the crisis with Iran. And while Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he won't take the threat of military action off the table, he's challenged McCain over the Arizonan's refusal to talk to Iran.
So Israel is challenging Obama, too."
"The chief of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said in remarks aired on Friday that he would resign if there was a military strike on Iran, warning that any such attack would turn the region into a "fireball".
"I don't believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time ... it would make me unable to continue my work," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamad ElBaradei told Al Arabiya television in an interview.
"A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball," he said, emphasising that any attack would only make the Islamic Republic more determined to obtain nuclear power.
"If you do a military strike, it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons with the blessing of all Iranians, even those in the West."
The New York Times reported on Friday that U.S. officials said Israel carried out a large military exercise this month that appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The newspaper said Israeli officials would not discuss the exercise."
Meanwhile, on the same subject, The Nation reports:
"The stunning display of air power by Israel in early June, unannounced but widely noticed by intelligence services worldwide, means that Israel has officially signed on to John McCain's presidential bid.
By sending more than a hundred F-15s and F-16s across Greece and the Mediterranean in a practice mission for a large-scale attack on Iran, the Israelis have upped the ante dramatically. The New York Times, which reported the action, quotes a Pentagon official who said that it was all about sending messages:
"They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," the Pentagon official said. "There's a lot of signaling going on at different levels."
But the most important message is to the American political system. McCain has made a point of his willigness, even eagerness, to escalate the crisis with Iran. And while Barack Obama has said repeatedly that he won't take the threat of military action off the table, he's challenged McCain over the Arizonan's refusal to talk to Iran.
So Israel is challenging Obama, too."
Israel's very own Gitmos
No doubt the naysayers will accuse the Arab press of fabrications or downright lies, but this piece in Al-Ahram Weekly on Line "Israel's very own Guantanamos" seems to confirm what has previously been reported elsewhere:
"Israeli maltreatment of Palestinian captives and political prisoners has reached unprecedented levels of brutality, according to lawyers, human rights groups and newly-released prisoners.
There are currently as many as 12,000 Palestinian detainees languishing in Israeli detention camps, many of them without charge or trial. They include hundreds of university professors, engineers, school teachers as well as religious and civic leaders, students, resistance fighters and women activists.
Two years ago, the Israeli occupation authorities abducted hundreds of democratically- elected officials, including mayors, members of local city councils, law-makers, and cabinet ministers, many associate with Hamas's political wing.
Israel employs a set of draconian laws, some dating back to the British mandate era, to torment Palestinian prisoners. The same laws are also used to lend a façade of legality to other harsh treatment of Palestinians, such as house demolitions, land confiscation and deportation."
"Israeli maltreatment of Palestinian captives and political prisoners has reached unprecedented levels of brutality, according to lawyers, human rights groups and newly-released prisoners.
There are currently as many as 12,000 Palestinian detainees languishing in Israeli detention camps, many of them without charge or trial. They include hundreds of university professors, engineers, school teachers as well as religious and civic leaders, students, resistance fighters and women activists.
Two years ago, the Israeli occupation authorities abducted hundreds of democratically- elected officials, including mayors, members of local city councils, law-makers, and cabinet ministers, many associate with Hamas's political wing.
Israel employs a set of draconian laws, some dating back to the British mandate era, to torment Palestinian prisoners. The same laws are also used to lend a façade of legality to other harsh treatment of Palestinians, such as house demolitions, land confiscation and deportation."
Friday, June 20, 2008
Oil: Anatomy of a Price Surge
Who isn't being affected by the sharp rise in petrol [gas] as a consequence of the ever-spiralling cost of oil? But why has this come about?
Writing "Anatomy of a Price Surge" in The Nation, Michael Klare says:
"As the pain induced by higher oil prices spreads to an ever growing share of the American (and world) population, pundits and politicians have been quick to blame assorted villains--greedy oil companies, heartless commodity speculators and OPEC. It's true that each of these parties has contributed to and benefited from the steep run-up. But the sharp growth in petroleum costs is due far more to a combination of soaring international demand and slackening supply--compounded by the ruinous policies of the Bush Administration--than to the behavior of those other actors.
Most, if not all, the damage was avoidable. Shortly after taking office, George W. Bush undertook a sweeping review of US energy policy aimed at expanding the nation's supply of vital fuels. The "reality is the nation has got a real problem when it comes to energy," he declared on March 14, 2001. "We need more sources of energy." At that time many of the problems evident today were already visible. Energy demand in mature industrial nations was continuing to grow as the rising economic dynamos of Asia, especially China, were beginning to make an impact. By 2002 the Energy Department was predicting that China would soon overtake Japan, becoming the world's second-largest petroleum consumer, and that developing Asia as a whole would account for about one-fourth of global consumption by 2020. Also evident was an unmistakable slowdown in the growth of world production, the telltale sign of an imminent "peaking" in global output [see Klare, "Beyond the Age of Petroleum," November 12, 2007].
With these trends in mind, many energy experts urged the White House to minimize future reliance on oil, emphasize conservation and rapidly develop climate-friendly alternatives, especially renewables like wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels. But Dick Cheney, who was overseeing the energy review, would have none of this. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue," the Vice President famously declared in April 2001, "but it is not a sufficient basis...for sound, comprehensive energy policy." After three months of huddling in secret with top executives of leading US energy companies, he released a plan on May 17 that, in effect, called for preserving the existing energy system, with its heavy reliance on oil, coal and natural gas."
Writing "Anatomy of a Price Surge" in The Nation, Michael Klare says:
"As the pain induced by higher oil prices spreads to an ever growing share of the American (and world) population, pundits and politicians have been quick to blame assorted villains--greedy oil companies, heartless commodity speculators and OPEC. It's true that each of these parties has contributed to and benefited from the steep run-up. But the sharp growth in petroleum costs is due far more to a combination of soaring international demand and slackening supply--compounded by the ruinous policies of the Bush Administration--than to the behavior of those other actors.
Most, if not all, the damage was avoidable. Shortly after taking office, George W. Bush undertook a sweeping review of US energy policy aimed at expanding the nation's supply of vital fuels. The "reality is the nation has got a real problem when it comes to energy," he declared on March 14, 2001. "We need more sources of energy." At that time many of the problems evident today were already visible. Energy demand in mature industrial nations was continuing to grow as the rising economic dynamos of Asia, especially China, were beginning to make an impact. By 2002 the Energy Department was predicting that China would soon overtake Japan, becoming the world's second-largest petroleum consumer, and that developing Asia as a whole would account for about one-fourth of global consumption by 2020. Also evident was an unmistakable slowdown in the growth of world production, the telltale sign of an imminent "peaking" in global output [see Klare, "Beyond the Age of Petroleum," November 12, 2007].
With these trends in mind, many energy experts urged the White House to minimize future reliance on oil, emphasize conservation and rapidly develop climate-friendly alternatives, especially renewables like wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels. But Dick Cheney, who was overseeing the energy review, would have none of this. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue," the Vice President famously declared in April 2001, "but it is not a sufficient basis...for sound, comprehensive energy policy." After three months of huddling in secret with top executives of leading US energy companies, he released a plan on May 17 that, in effect, called for preserving the existing energy system, with its heavy reliance on oil, coal and natural gas."
How many innocent people are going out of their minds today?
It is well worth posting this piece, in full, by George Monbiot in The Guardian - for, once again, it highlights the duplicitous behaviour of the White House et al:
"We shouldn't be surprised to hear that George Bush dined with a group of historians on Sunday night. The president has spent much of his second term pleading with history. But however hard he lobbies the gatekeepers of memory, he will surely be judged the worst president the United States has ever had.
Even if historians were somehow to forget the illegal war, the mangling of international law, the trashing of the environment and social welfare, the banking crisis, and the transfer of wealth from poor to rich, one image is stamped indelibly on this presidency: the trussed automatons in orange jumpsuits. It portrays a superpower prepared to dehumanise its prisoners, to wrap, blind and deafen them, to reduce them to mannequins, in a place as stark and industrial as a chicken-packing plant. Worse, the government was proud of what it had done. It was parading its impunity. It wanted us to know that nothing would stand in its way: its power was both sovereign and unaccountable.
Three days before Bush arrived in Britain, the US supreme court ruled that the inmates at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to contest their detention in the civilian courts. This is the third time the supreme court has ruled against the prison camp, but on this occasion Bush cannot change the law: the court has ruled that the prisoners' rights are constitutional.
Symbolically the decision could scarcely be more important. Practically it could scarcely be less. The department of defence can transfer its prisoners to an oubliette in another country, where the constitution's writ does not run. The public atrocity of Guantánamo Bay has provided a useful distraction from something even worse: the sprawling system of secret detention camps the US runs around the world.
We don't, of course, know much about this programme. Bush first acknowledged it in September 2006. "Of the thousands of terrorists captured across the world, only about 770 have ever been sent to Guantánamo." Other suspects, he said, were being "held secretly" by the CIA. "Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged." He went on to claim that all the secret prisoners had now been transferred to Guantánamo Bay.
Several lines of evidence suggest that this claim was false. The CIA appears to have overseen or controlled, and in some cases appears still to be running, black sites in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia, Kosovo, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand and, possibly, Diego Garcia. The US appears to be using ships as secret prisons. In just two years the CIA ran 283 flights - which the Council of Europe believes were used for transporting secret prisoners - out of Germany alone. It admits that it possesses 7,000 documents about its ghost detention programme. Are we to believe all this was done for the 14 men transferred to Guantánamo Bay? In Iraq, the US now admits to holding 22,000 prisoners without charge in its own facilities, some of whom are known to be kept away from the Red Cross and other visitors.
Apart from those moved to Cuba, hardly anyone, so far, has come out of this system. At the end of last year salon.com interviewed Muhammad Bashmilah, who was arrested and tortured by Jordanian police, handed to the Americans, flown to an unknown country in autumn 2003, and held secretly by the CIA until he was transferred to Yemeni custody in May 2005. He reports that he was kept in a cell about the size of a transit van throughout the 19 months of his confinement, without any human contact except during interrogation. The lights and a source of white noise were left on permanently. Driven mad by isolation and sensory deprivation, he tried to kill himself several times. Eventually, when it became obvious even to the CIA that he had nothing to do with terrorism, he was handed over to the Yemeni government, who held him for another year until he was released without charge.
Lawyers for some of the men transferred to Guantánamo Bay claim that, while in secret detention, their clients were left hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beaten with electric cables, yanked around on a dog's leash, chained naked in a freezing cell, and doused with cold water. "The CIA worked people day and night for months," one prisoner reports. "Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off."
Could it be worse than this? Yes. In 2003, a US official admitted to the Sunday Telegraph that the CIA was detaining and interrogating children. Discussing two boys aged seven and nine held in secret detention by the CIA, the official explained: "We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care." According to another prisoner, the boys had already been tortured by Pakistani guards. A former CIA official told the New Yorker that "every single plan [in the secret detention programme] is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level - meaning the director of the CIA. Any change in the plan - even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added - was signed off by the CIA director."
Never mind detention without trial; this is detention without acknowledgement. When men and women disappear into this system, neither they nor their families know where they are. The Red Cross cannot reach them; they are beyond the scope of the law. They have been disappeared in the Latin American sense of that word.
Do I need to explain that this treatment breaks just about every article in the Geneva conventions? Do I need to tell you that - without charges, trials, lawyers, scrutiny or even recognition - it is just as likely to net the innocent as the guilty? In 2006 George Bush maintained that "these aren't common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield - we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantánamo Bay belong at Guantánamo". But a new and detailed investigation by the McClatchy newspaper group has found that many of them were indeed either common criminals or bystanders, or men sold to the authorities in order to settle a feud. Who knows how many innocent people are going out of their minds in the CIA's secret prisons today?
Along with its innocent victims, the US government has locked itself into this system. As the justice department has argued, these prisoners cannot be released in case they describe the "alternative interrogation methods" (the euphemism it uses for torture) the CIA used on them, which could "reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage". Like almost everything Bush has done, this programme promises to backfire. George Bush will be remembered not only for the lives he has broken, but also for smashing everything he claimed to defend."
*** This article was amended on Wednesday June 18 2008. We originally referred to "the transfer of wealth from rich to poor", when we meant the opposite. This has been corrected.
"We shouldn't be surprised to hear that George Bush dined with a group of historians on Sunday night. The president has spent much of his second term pleading with history. But however hard he lobbies the gatekeepers of memory, he will surely be judged the worst president the United States has ever had.
Even if historians were somehow to forget the illegal war, the mangling of international law, the trashing of the environment and social welfare, the banking crisis, and the transfer of wealth from poor to rich, one image is stamped indelibly on this presidency: the trussed automatons in orange jumpsuits. It portrays a superpower prepared to dehumanise its prisoners, to wrap, blind and deafen them, to reduce them to mannequins, in a place as stark and industrial as a chicken-packing plant. Worse, the government was proud of what it had done. It was parading its impunity. It wanted us to know that nothing would stand in its way: its power was both sovereign and unaccountable.
Three days before Bush arrived in Britain, the US supreme court ruled that the inmates at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to contest their detention in the civilian courts. This is the third time the supreme court has ruled against the prison camp, but on this occasion Bush cannot change the law: the court has ruled that the prisoners' rights are constitutional.
Symbolically the decision could scarcely be more important. Practically it could scarcely be less. The department of defence can transfer its prisoners to an oubliette in another country, where the constitution's writ does not run. The public atrocity of Guantánamo Bay has provided a useful distraction from something even worse: the sprawling system of secret detention camps the US runs around the world.
We don't, of course, know much about this programme. Bush first acknowledged it in September 2006. "Of the thousands of terrorists captured across the world, only about 770 have ever been sent to Guantánamo." Other suspects, he said, were being "held secretly" by the CIA. "Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged." He went on to claim that all the secret prisoners had now been transferred to Guantánamo Bay.
Several lines of evidence suggest that this claim was false. The CIA appears to have overseen or controlled, and in some cases appears still to be running, black sites in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia, Kosovo, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand and, possibly, Diego Garcia. The US appears to be using ships as secret prisons. In just two years the CIA ran 283 flights - which the Council of Europe believes were used for transporting secret prisoners - out of Germany alone. It admits that it possesses 7,000 documents about its ghost detention programme. Are we to believe all this was done for the 14 men transferred to Guantánamo Bay? In Iraq, the US now admits to holding 22,000 prisoners without charge in its own facilities, some of whom are known to be kept away from the Red Cross and other visitors.
Apart from those moved to Cuba, hardly anyone, so far, has come out of this system. At the end of last year salon.com interviewed Muhammad Bashmilah, who was arrested and tortured by Jordanian police, handed to the Americans, flown to an unknown country in autumn 2003, and held secretly by the CIA until he was transferred to Yemeni custody in May 2005. He reports that he was kept in a cell about the size of a transit van throughout the 19 months of his confinement, without any human contact except during interrogation. The lights and a source of white noise were left on permanently. Driven mad by isolation and sensory deprivation, he tried to kill himself several times. Eventually, when it became obvious even to the CIA that he had nothing to do with terrorism, he was handed over to the Yemeni government, who held him for another year until he was released without charge.
Lawyers for some of the men transferred to Guantánamo Bay claim that, while in secret detention, their clients were left hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beaten with electric cables, yanked around on a dog's leash, chained naked in a freezing cell, and doused with cold water. "The CIA worked people day and night for months," one prisoner reports. "Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off."
Could it be worse than this? Yes. In 2003, a US official admitted to the Sunday Telegraph that the CIA was detaining and interrogating children. Discussing two boys aged seven and nine held in secret detention by the CIA, the official explained: "We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father's recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care." According to another prisoner, the boys had already been tortured by Pakistani guards. A former CIA official told the New Yorker that "every single plan [in the secret detention programme] is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level - meaning the director of the CIA. Any change in the plan - even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added - was signed off by the CIA director."
Never mind detention without trial; this is detention without acknowledgement. When men and women disappear into this system, neither they nor their families know where they are. The Red Cross cannot reach them; they are beyond the scope of the law. They have been disappeared in the Latin American sense of that word.
Do I need to explain that this treatment breaks just about every article in the Geneva conventions? Do I need to tell you that - without charges, trials, lawyers, scrutiny or even recognition - it is just as likely to net the innocent as the guilty? In 2006 George Bush maintained that "these aren't common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield - we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantánamo Bay belong at Guantánamo". But a new and detailed investigation by the McClatchy newspaper group has found that many of them were indeed either common criminals or bystanders, or men sold to the authorities in order to settle a feud. Who knows how many innocent people are going out of their minds in the CIA's secret prisons today?
Along with its innocent victims, the US government has locked itself into this system. As the justice department has argued, these prisoners cannot be released in case they describe the "alternative interrogation methods" (the euphemism it uses for torture) the CIA used on them, which could "reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage". Like almost everything Bush has done, this programme promises to backfire. George Bush will be remembered not only for the lives he has broken, but also for smashing everything he claimed to defend."
*** This article was amended on Wednesday June 18 2008. We originally referred to "the transfer of wealth from rich to poor", when we meant the opposite. This has been corrected.
Dissent with a Chinese Face
From the Uncensored weekly column by Antony Loewenstein on Amnesty International's web site:
"During last weekend’s Chinese Internet Research Conference in Hong Kong, Hu Yong, Associate Professor at Peking University, said that after the Sichuan earthquake, many people initially started watching TV instead of the internet, but a group of civilian reporters quickly emerged.
Zhang Dong-Sheng, Editor-in-chief of QQ.com, argued that the earthquake reaffirmed the ability of the Chinese press to act like real journalists, but there were still a lot of restrictions.
Zhai Minglei, Editor-in-chief of 1 Bao, said that fear is what holds the Great Firewall together. A poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org even found great Chinese dissatisfaction with their rulers. Furthermore, a recent study of Chinese bloggers reveals that they are more likely to criticise the status quo than the state-run press. Solidarity is no longer possible.
These developments are undoubtedly signs of progress in China. The debate may have been happening in Hong Kong, but authorities in Beijing are increasingly aware of the cultural shifts that the earthquake triggered. Local journalists are now being encouraged to avoid writing pieces about collapsed schools and grieving parents and instead focus on “heart-warming stories”. Officials are tolerating little dissent from the party line."
Read on here.
"During last weekend’s Chinese Internet Research Conference in Hong Kong, Hu Yong, Associate Professor at Peking University, said that after the Sichuan earthquake, many people initially started watching TV instead of the internet, but a group of civilian reporters quickly emerged.
Zhang Dong-Sheng, Editor-in-chief of QQ.com, argued that the earthquake reaffirmed the ability of the Chinese press to act like real journalists, but there were still a lot of restrictions.
Zhai Minglei, Editor-in-chief of 1 Bao, said that fear is what holds the Great Firewall together. A poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org even found great Chinese dissatisfaction with their rulers. Furthermore, a recent study of Chinese bloggers reveals that they are more likely to criticise the status quo than the state-run press. Solidarity is no longer possible.
These developments are undoubtedly signs of progress in China. The debate may have been happening in Hong Kong, but authorities in Beijing are increasingly aware of the cultural shifts that the earthquake triggered. Local journalists are now being encouraged to avoid writing pieces about collapsed schools and grieving parents and instead focus on “heart-warming stories”. Officials are tolerating little dissent from the party line."
Read on here.
Lesson #1 How to Get it Wrong
In this op-ed piece "Strengthening Extremists" in the NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reflects on how Israel and the US got it so wrong in the way it has approached Hamas - and the consequences of doing so!
"When Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza and then seized full power a year ago, there were no good choices for Israel and America. Hamas includes terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists and ideologues, and it has cultivated ties with Iran. It has decent governance by the region’s devalued standards — it is not particularly corrupt; it delivers social services efficiently, and the streets are safe — but it runs a police state and alarms all its neighbors.
Of all the bad choices, Israel chose perhaps the worst. Punishing everyone in Gaza radicalized the population, cast Hamas as a victim, gave its officials an excuse for economic failures and undermined the moderates who are the best hope of both Israel and the Arab world.
If the U.S. and Israel had formed a Joint Commission to Support Hamas Extremists and Bolster Iranian Influence, they could hardly have done a better job. The episode is the latest evidence that hard-liners in Israel, Palestine and America all reinforce each other. Arab terrorism led to the rise of Israeli hawks and to two invasions of Lebanon. The first Israeli invasion helped give birth to Hezbollah, and then the Israeli assaults on Palestinian police helped nurture Hamas.
So while Israelis denounce Hezbollah and Hamas, they helped create them. And while Palestinians denounce the separation barrier, their suicide bombings built it."
"When Hamas won democratic elections in Gaza and then seized full power a year ago, there were no good choices for Israel and America. Hamas includes terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists and ideologues, and it has cultivated ties with Iran. It has decent governance by the region’s devalued standards — it is not particularly corrupt; it delivers social services efficiently, and the streets are safe — but it runs a police state and alarms all its neighbors.
Of all the bad choices, Israel chose perhaps the worst. Punishing everyone in Gaza radicalized the population, cast Hamas as a victim, gave its officials an excuse for economic failures and undermined the moderates who are the best hope of both Israel and the Arab world.
If the U.S. and Israel had formed a Joint Commission to Support Hamas Extremists and Bolster Iranian Influence, they could hardly have done a better job. The episode is the latest evidence that hard-liners in Israel, Palestine and America all reinforce each other. Arab terrorism led to the rise of Israeli hawks and to two invasions of Lebanon. The first Israeli invasion helped give birth to Hezbollah, and then the Israeli assaults on Palestinian police helped nurture Hamas.
So while Israelis denounce Hezbollah and Hamas, they helped create them. And while Palestinians denounce the separation barrier, their suicide bombings built it."
Thursday, June 19, 2008
American President Pleads Guilty to Hopeless Idealism
The redoubtable Maureen Dowd, writing her column in the NY Times, gives an assessment of George W's visit to Britain and meeting with PM Brown:
"President Bush was in one of his oddly chipper moods when he arrived for dinner with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on Sunday night.
Maybe he was excited by the prospect of sharing some Gloucestershire beef, Yorkshire pudding and fruit trifle with a world leader more unpopular than he is.
centuries and Maybe he was happy to be having dinner with Rupert Murdoch and a covey of British historians who might agree with his contention to London’s Observer that “there’s no such thing as objective short-term history.” Just in case, though, the group dwelled on the 18th, 19th and 20thdidn’t talk about the 21st. And presumably, over the 1934 brandy that W. eschewed, the historian Simon Schama did not repeat his 2006 assessment that the president was an “absolute [expletive] catastrophe” or his analysis that long before Mr. Bush’s militant missionary work in the Middle East, Europe had regarded the moral rhetoric of America as a cover for self-interest.
Maybe W. was buoyant because his motorcade evaded the protestors holding up signs that said “War Criminal,” and he was too far away to hear the withering scorn of a BBC correspondent stationed on Downing Street, warning that the British public wouldn’t stand for it if the prime minister greeted the toxic president too warmly. Britain is still smarting about being cast as poodle to W.’s pit bull, and the correspondent sneeringly recalled “the Colgate moment” when Tony Blair and George Bush bonded over their use of the same toothpaste.
Or perhaps after working with Torquemada Cheney all these years, W. simply feels more at home in a monarchy. At the end of dinner he posed under a portrait of Elizabeth I in the drawing room and gayly promised: “This is going to be my White House Christmas card.”
If Mr. Brown had any thought of promoting himself as the anti-poodle with some arm’s length body language, W. swiftly disabused him. He spread his wingspan to draw in Gordon and Sarah, and then clasped Gordon so heartily around the shoulders that the Brit was forced to grab W.’s waist in a shy embrace as they entered the building.
As W. told The Observer: “It’s convenient to say, you know, ‘warmonger,’ ‘religious zealot,’ ‘poodle’ — I mean, these are just words that people love to toss around foolishly.”
Poppy Bush was often compared to Bertie Wooster, and W. seems to have found his own stiff-backed Jeeves. Mr. Brown agreed to send more troops to Afghanistan, put more sanctions on Iran and decide on Iraq troop withdrawals based on conditions on the ground.
Quentin Letts pointed out in The Daily Mail that when W. touched Gordon, the prime minister would “recoil like a novice nun at first and later smile in terror,” and when W. said he had no problem with Brownie on Iraq, “You could almost see Mr. Brown thinking: ‘Oh, Gawd! There go another few thousand votes.’ ”
Asked by The Observer reporter about W.M.D. in Iraq, W. replied: “Still looking for them,” sparking a strange moment of levity. Mr. Bush continued: “We didn’t realize, nor did anybody else, that Saddam Hussein felt like he needed to play like he had weapons of mass destruction. It may have been, however, that in his mind all this was just a bluff.”
Yeah, who could have ever guessed that a wily, deceitful and debilitated Arab dictator might huff and puff, not wanting rivals in the neighborhood to know the weapons cupboard was bare? Maybe some of those psychologists specializing in boastful, malignant narcissists and Middle East cultural experts working in our $40 billion-a-year intelligence units should have been able to figure it out?
The Daily Mail’s front page on Monday juxtaposed a picture of the Union Jack-draped coffins of five British paratroopers killed in Afghanistan, lined up on the tarmac before being flown home, and a picture of W. and Laura landing at Heathrow.
Mr. Bush, who said he’s going to put a “Freedom Institute” in his presidential library, told reporters at a press conference with Mr. Brown that “one of the things that I will leave behind is a multilateralism to deal with tyrants, so problems can be solved diplomatically.” W. confessed only to “hopeless idealism” on Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said “history will judge whether or not, you know, more troops were needed earlier, troops could have been positioned here better or not.” But going in, he said, was right despite the “doubters.” “There is some who say that perhaps freedom is not universal,” he asserted, adding that he rejected as elitist the notion that “maybe it’s only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government.”
If there’s one thing W. and Cheney have proved, beyond a sliver of a shadow of a doubt, it’s that at least two white-guy Methodists are not capable of self-government."
"President Bush was in one of his oddly chipper moods when he arrived for dinner with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on Sunday night.
Maybe he was excited by the prospect of sharing some Gloucestershire beef, Yorkshire pudding and fruit trifle with a world leader more unpopular than he is.
centuries and Maybe he was happy to be having dinner with Rupert Murdoch and a covey of British historians who might agree with his contention to London’s Observer that “there’s no such thing as objective short-term history.” Just in case, though, the group dwelled on the 18th, 19th and 20thdidn’t talk about the 21st. And presumably, over the 1934 brandy that W. eschewed, the historian Simon Schama did not repeat his 2006 assessment that the president was an “absolute [expletive] catastrophe” or his analysis that long before Mr. Bush’s militant missionary work in the Middle East, Europe had regarded the moral rhetoric of America as a cover for self-interest.
Maybe W. was buoyant because his motorcade evaded the protestors holding up signs that said “War Criminal,” and he was too far away to hear the withering scorn of a BBC correspondent stationed on Downing Street, warning that the British public wouldn’t stand for it if the prime minister greeted the toxic president too warmly. Britain is still smarting about being cast as poodle to W.’s pit bull, and the correspondent sneeringly recalled “the Colgate moment” when Tony Blair and George Bush bonded over their use of the same toothpaste.
Or perhaps after working with Torquemada Cheney all these years, W. simply feels more at home in a monarchy. At the end of dinner he posed under a portrait of Elizabeth I in the drawing room and gayly promised: “This is going to be my White House Christmas card.”
If Mr. Brown had any thought of promoting himself as the anti-poodle with some arm’s length body language, W. swiftly disabused him. He spread his wingspan to draw in Gordon and Sarah, and then clasped Gordon so heartily around the shoulders that the Brit was forced to grab W.’s waist in a shy embrace as they entered the building.
As W. told The Observer: “It’s convenient to say, you know, ‘warmonger,’ ‘religious zealot,’ ‘poodle’ — I mean, these are just words that people love to toss around foolishly.”
Poppy Bush was often compared to Bertie Wooster, and W. seems to have found his own stiff-backed Jeeves. Mr. Brown agreed to send more troops to Afghanistan, put more sanctions on Iran and decide on Iraq troop withdrawals based on conditions on the ground.
Quentin Letts pointed out in The Daily Mail that when W. touched Gordon, the prime minister would “recoil like a novice nun at first and later smile in terror,” and when W. said he had no problem with Brownie on Iraq, “You could almost see Mr. Brown thinking: ‘Oh, Gawd! There go another few thousand votes.’ ”
Asked by The Observer reporter about W.M.D. in Iraq, W. replied: “Still looking for them,” sparking a strange moment of levity. Mr. Bush continued: “We didn’t realize, nor did anybody else, that Saddam Hussein felt like he needed to play like he had weapons of mass destruction. It may have been, however, that in his mind all this was just a bluff.”
Yeah, who could have ever guessed that a wily, deceitful and debilitated Arab dictator might huff and puff, not wanting rivals in the neighborhood to know the weapons cupboard was bare? Maybe some of those psychologists specializing in boastful, malignant narcissists and Middle East cultural experts working in our $40 billion-a-year intelligence units should have been able to figure it out?
The Daily Mail’s front page on Monday juxtaposed a picture of the Union Jack-draped coffins of five British paratroopers killed in Afghanistan, lined up on the tarmac before being flown home, and a picture of W. and Laura landing at Heathrow.
Mr. Bush, who said he’s going to put a “Freedom Institute” in his presidential library, told reporters at a press conference with Mr. Brown that “one of the things that I will leave behind is a multilateralism to deal with tyrants, so problems can be solved diplomatically.” W. confessed only to “hopeless idealism” on Iraq and Afghanistan.
He said “history will judge whether or not, you know, more troops were needed earlier, troops could have been positioned here better or not.” But going in, he said, was right despite the “doubters.” “There is some who say that perhaps freedom is not universal,” he asserted, adding that he rejected as elitist the notion that “maybe it’s only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government.”
If there’s one thing W. and Cheney have proved, beyond a sliver of a shadow of a doubt, it’s that at least two white-guy Methodists are not capable of self-government."
It's torture, torture, torture!
The White House can proclaim as much as it likes, as it did earlier today, that detainees were not tortured and treated "humanely" - but the evidence points totally the opposite way.
CNN.com reports on a report by a well regarded group of medicos who examined detainees, never charged with anything, post their release by US authorities:
"Former terrorist suspects detained by the United States were tortured, according to medical examinations detailed in a report released Wednesday by a human rights group.
The Massachusetts-based group Physicians for Human Rights reached that conclusion after clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees, who had been held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan.
The detainees were never charged with crimes.
"We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse often causing lasting suffering," said Dr. Allen Keller, a medical evaluator for the study.
The doctors' group said in a 121-page report that it uncovered medical evidence of torture, including beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sodomy and scores of other abuses.
The report is prefaced by retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003.
"There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes," Taguba states. "The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account."
CNN.com reports on a report by a well regarded group of medicos who examined detainees, never charged with anything, post their release by US authorities:
"Former terrorist suspects detained by the United States were tortured, according to medical examinations detailed in a report released Wednesday by a human rights group.
The Massachusetts-based group Physicians for Human Rights reached that conclusion after clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees, who had been held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan.
The detainees were never charged with crimes.
"We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse often causing lasting suffering," said Dr. Allen Keller, a medical evaluator for the study.
The doctors' group said in a 121-page report that it uncovered medical evidence of torture, including beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sodomy and scores of other abuses.
The report is prefaced by retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003.
"There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes," Taguba states. "The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account."
Refugees. An issue to be resolved
Add climate change [think shortage of food, etc] into the mix - and just one reason for people wanting to relocate from their home-countries - and the flow of refugees is an ever-growing issue for many countries around the world. Yes, there is a cost of accommodating these essentially homeless people - but when one considers the extent of monies being spent on armaments, the massive cost of the Iraq War and simple government waste - all misdirected funding- the world needs to extend compassion and humanity to those who are genuine refugees.
The IHT reports:
"The number of refugees fleeing to other countries to escape conflict and persecution rose in 2007 for the second year as factors from climate change to overly scarce resources threatened to increase the flow, the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday.
A total of 11.4 million refugees were under the care of the agency, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2007, including about 400,000 experiencing conflict in their home countries, the agency said. The total for 2006 was 9.9 million.
The total was modest compared with the 17.8 million refugees in 1992 at the time of the Balkan wars, but after a steady drop from 2001 to 2005 it represents a worrying trend, the relief agency said.
"We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future," António Guterres, the high commissioner, said in a statement. "They range from multiple new conflict-related emergencies in world hot spots to bad governance, climate-induced environmental degradation that increases competition for scarce resources and extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places."
The number of people displaced by conflict but remaining in their countries also rose in 2007, to 26 million, the agency said, citing statistics provided by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a private organization based in Geneva.
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan accounted for more than half the refugees in 2007. More than two million Iraqis have sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, and three million Afghans in Pakistan and Iran, the agency said."
The IHT reports:
"The number of refugees fleeing to other countries to escape conflict and persecution rose in 2007 for the second year as factors from climate change to overly scarce resources threatened to increase the flow, the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday.
A total of 11.4 million refugees were under the care of the agency, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in 2007, including about 400,000 experiencing conflict in their home countries, the agency said. The total for 2006 was 9.9 million.
The total was modest compared with the 17.8 million refugees in 1992 at the time of the Balkan wars, but after a steady drop from 2001 to 2005 it represents a worrying trend, the relief agency said.
"We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future," António Guterres, the high commissioner, said in a statement. "They range from multiple new conflict-related emergencies in world hot spots to bad governance, climate-induced environmental degradation that increases competition for scarce resources and extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places."
The number of people displaced by conflict but remaining in their countries also rose in 2007, to 26 million, the agency said, citing statistics provided by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a private organization based in Geneva.
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan accounted for more than half the refugees in 2007. More than two million Iraqis have sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, and three million Afghans in Pakistan and Iran, the agency said."
Bloggers under real threat
In what must be seen as a most troubling trend, BBC News reports on the threat to bloggers around the world - and it's not only in what might be in the usual suspect countries:
"More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.
Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.
In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.
More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report."
And:
"It also noted that many nations, perhaps as many as 30, imposed technological restrictions on what people can do online. In nations such as China this made it difficult for people to use a blog as a means of protest.
The report pointed out that it is not just governments in the Middle East and East Asia that have taken steps against those publishing their opinions online. In the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.
The report predicted that the number of blogger arrests in 2008 would exceed the 36 seen in 2007 thanks to greater popularity of blogging as a medium, greater enforcement of net restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US."
"More bloggers than ever face arrest for exposing human rights abuses or criticising governments, says a report.
Since 2003, 64 people have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog, says the University of Washington annual report.
In 2007 three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues than in 2006, it revealed.
More than half of all the arrests since 2003 have been made in China, Egypt and Iran, said the report."
And:
"It also noted that many nations, perhaps as many as 30, imposed technological restrictions on what people can do online. In nations such as China this made it difficult for people to use a blog as a means of protest.
The report pointed out that it is not just governments in the Middle East and East Asia that have taken steps against those publishing their opinions online. In the last four years, British, French, Canadian and American bloggers have also been arrested.
The report predicted that the number of blogger arrests in 2008 would exceed the 36 seen in 2007 thanks to greater popularity of blogging as a medium, greater enforcement of net restrictions, and elections in China, Pakistan, Iran and the US."
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Robert Fisk on a snapshot of life in Baghdad
"The refugee statistics are so appalling that they have become almost mundane. Four million of Iraq's 23 million people have fled their homes – until recently, at the rate of 60,000 a month – allegedly more than 1.2 million to Syria (a figure now challenged by at least one prominent NGO), 500,000 to Jordan, 200,000 to the Gulf, 70,000 to Egypt, 57,000 to Iran, up to 40,000 to Lebanon, 10,000 to Turkey. Sweden has accepted 9,000, Germany fewer – where an outrageous political debate has suggested that Christian refugees should have preference over Muslim Iraqis. With its usual magnanimity – especially for a country that set off this hell-disaster by its illegal invasion – George Bush's America has, of course, accepted slightly more than 500."
Robert Fisk, in his latest piece in The Independent, provides a "picture" of life in Baghdad.
Robert Fisk, in his latest piece in The Independent, provides a "picture" of life in Baghdad.
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