Bloggers are invariably attempting to circumvent censorship and other restrictions where regimes impose them - often harshly. Witness the blogger just jailed in Iran. Bloggers often risk life and limb to continue blogging. And often their efforts do shed light on something a regime certainly doesn't want to see the light of day.
Step up to the plate Syria as another country cracking down on bloggers. The New York Times reports:
"Earlier this month, a graphic video of teachers beating their young students appeared on Facebook. Although Facebook is officially banned here, the video quickly went viral, with Syrian bloggers stoking public anger until the story was picked up by the pan-Arab media.
Related
In a Computer Worm, a Possible Biblical Clue (September 30, 2010)
Finally, the Education Ministry issued a statement saying the teachers had been reassigned to desk jobs. The episode was a rare example of the way Syrians using Facebook and blogs can win a tenuous measure of freedom within the country’s tightly controlled media scene, where any criticism of the government, however oblique, can lead to years in prison.
“We have a little bit of freedom,” said Khaled al-Ekhetyar, a 29-year-old journalist for a Web site whose business card shows a face with hands covering up the eyes and mouth. “We can say things that can’t be said in print.”
But that slim margin is threatened by an ever present fog of fear and intimidation, and some journalists fear that it could soon be snuffed out. A draft law regulating online media would clamp down on Syrian bloggers and other journalists, forcing them to register as syndicate members and submit their writing for review. Other Arab countries regularly jail journalists who express dissident views, but Syria may be the most restrictive of all.
Most of the Syrian media is still owned by the state. Privately owned media outlets became legal in 2001, as the socialist economy slowly began to liberalize following the accession of President Bashar al-Assad. But much of the sector is owned by members of the Syrian “oligarchy” — relatives of Mr. Assad and other top government officials. All of it is subject to intimidation and heavy-handed control."
Thursday, September 30, 2010
You gotta be kidding! Celebrating Kissinger?
Christopher Hitchens in his book "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" more than skillfully shredded the credibility of Henry Kissinger, one-time Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration. Hitchens proved, based on documents, that Kissinger could be held accountable for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Indo-China and Chile alone. It is no wonder that Kissinger has been loathe to travel outside the US lest he be arrested as a war criminal.
It therefore comes as a surprise that Hilary Clinton is now going to celebrate Kissinger - as truthdig reports:
"Nothing more symbolizes how the temptations of power can corrupt youthful values and idealism than Secretary Hillary Clinton's invitation to Henry Kissinger and Richard Holbrooke to keynote a major State Department conference on the history of the Indochina war. As an idealistic college student, Clinton protested Kissinger's mass murder of civilians in Indochina. She knows full well that had the international laws protecting civilians in war been applied to Kissinger's bombing of civilian targets in Indochina he would have been indicted for crimes of war."
***
"Inviting Kissinger to keynote a conference on U.S. history in Indochina insults history, the memories of tens of thousands of Americans and countless Indochinese civilians who needlessly died as a result of his policies, the young people of America who desperately need to learn the truth about what occurred in Indochina so as not to repeat it, and all those who oppose indiscriminate mass murder of civilians."
It therefore comes as a surprise that Hilary Clinton is now going to celebrate Kissinger - as truthdig reports:
"Nothing more symbolizes how the temptations of power can corrupt youthful values and idealism than Secretary Hillary Clinton's invitation to Henry Kissinger and Richard Holbrooke to keynote a major State Department conference on the history of the Indochina war. As an idealistic college student, Clinton protested Kissinger's mass murder of civilians in Indochina. She knows full well that had the international laws protecting civilians in war been applied to Kissinger's bombing of civilian targets in Indochina he would have been indicted for crimes of war."
***
"Inviting Kissinger to keynote a conference on U.S. history in Indochina insults history, the memories of tens of thousands of Americans and countless Indochinese civilians who needlessly died as a result of his policies, the young people of America who desperately need to learn the truth about what occurred in Indochina so as not to repeat it, and all those who oppose indiscriminate mass murder of civilians."
All Israelis, except its Arab population, are winners
Jonathan Cook, writing on CounterPunch, makes a more than valid point about the vested interest all Israelis, not only those now trespassing on West Bank land, have in continuing the occupation. It's clearly a win-win situation for all parts of Israeli society - except the 20% who make up the Israeli Arab population / citizens.
"Even if Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, signed away the rights of the refugees, he would have no power to do the same for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, the so-called Israeli Arabs. Peace, as many Israelis understand, would open a Pandora’s box of historic land claims from Palestinian citizens at the expense of Israel’s Jewish citizens.
But the threat to the economic privileges of Israeli Jews would not end with a reckoning over the injustices caused by the state’s creation. The occupation of the Palestinian territories after 1967 spawned many other powerful economic interests opposed to peace.
The most visible constituency are the settlers, who have benefited hugely from government subsidies and tax breaks designed to encourage Israelis to relocate to the West Bank. Peace Now estimates that such benefits alone are worth more than $550 million a year.
Far from being a fringe element, the half a million settlers constitute nearly a tenth of Israel’s Jewish population and include such prominent figures as foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Hundreds of businesses serving the settlers are booming in the 60 per cent of the West Bank, the so-called Area C, that falls under Israel’s full control. The real estate and construction industries, in particular, benefit from cut-price land -- and increased profits -- made available by theft from Palestinian owners.
Other businesses, meanwhile, have moved into Israel’s West Bank industrial zones, benefiting from cheap Palestinian labour and from discounted land, tax perks and lax enforcement of environmental protections.
Much of the tourism industry also depends on Israel’s hold over the holy sites located in occupied East Jerusalem."
"Even if Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, signed away the rights of the refugees, he would have no power to do the same for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, the so-called Israeli Arabs. Peace, as many Israelis understand, would open a Pandora’s box of historic land claims from Palestinian citizens at the expense of Israel’s Jewish citizens.
But the threat to the economic privileges of Israeli Jews would not end with a reckoning over the injustices caused by the state’s creation. The occupation of the Palestinian territories after 1967 spawned many other powerful economic interests opposed to peace.
The most visible constituency are the settlers, who have benefited hugely from government subsidies and tax breaks designed to encourage Israelis to relocate to the West Bank. Peace Now estimates that such benefits alone are worth more than $550 million a year.
Far from being a fringe element, the half a million settlers constitute nearly a tenth of Israel’s Jewish population and include such prominent figures as foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Hundreds of businesses serving the settlers are booming in the 60 per cent of the West Bank, the so-called Area C, that falls under Israel’s full control. The real estate and construction industries, in particular, benefit from cut-price land -- and increased profits -- made available by theft from Palestinian owners.
Other businesses, meanwhile, have moved into Israel’s West Bank industrial zones, benefiting from cheap Palestinian labour and from discounted land, tax perks and lax enforcement of environmental protections.
Much of the tourism industry also depends on Israel’s hold over the holy sites located in occupied East Jerusalem."
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Principles...and principled
The dangers of lurching to the right or intolerance and prejudice taking a hold are all too common.
CommonDreams highlights one man's principled stand - and a lesson for everyone as anti-Muslim paranoia runs out of control.
"California now has a day honoring Fred Korematsu, who at 23 challenged the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans all the way to the Supreme Court - though he had to wait 40 more years for a reversal of his conviction. A lifelong activist, Korematsu also fought the post-9/11 indefinite detention of "enemy combatants" in Rumsfeld v. Padilla. He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, has had several schools named after him including the Fred Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education, and is the subject of a documentary film. More on his life and importance here.
"As historical precedent, (Korematsu's conviction) it stands as a constant caution that in times of war or declared military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting constitutional guarantees. It stands as a caution that in times of distress the shield of military necessity and national security must not be used to protect governmental actions from close scrutiny and accountability. It stands as a caution that in times of international hostility and antagonisms our institutions, legislative, executive and judicial, must be prepared to exercise their authority to protect all citizens from the petty fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused." - Federal District Court Judge Marilyn Patel, ruling in 1984 that "great wrong" had been done to Korematsu and other Japanese-Americans."
CommonDreams highlights one man's principled stand - and a lesson for everyone as anti-Muslim paranoia runs out of control.
"California now has a day honoring Fred Korematsu, who at 23 challenged the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans all the way to the Supreme Court - though he had to wait 40 more years for a reversal of his conviction. A lifelong activist, Korematsu also fought the post-9/11 indefinite detention of "enemy combatants" in Rumsfeld v. Padilla. He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998, has had several schools named after him including the Fred Korematsu Institute for Civil Rights and Education, and is the subject of a documentary film. More on his life and importance here.
"As historical precedent, (Korematsu's conviction) it stands as a constant caution that in times of war or declared military necessity our institutions must be vigilant in protecting constitutional guarantees. It stands as a caution that in times of distress the shield of military necessity and national security must not be used to protect governmental actions from close scrutiny and accountability. It stands as a caution that in times of international hostility and antagonisms our institutions, legislative, executive and judicial, must be prepared to exercise their authority to protect all citizens from the petty fears and prejudices that are so easily aroused." - Federal District Court Judge Marilyn Patel, ruling in 1984 that "great wrong" had been done to Korematsu and other Japanese-Americans."
A severe strike [and travesty of justice] against a brave blogger
Many probably haven't even been aware of the plight of an Canadian-Iranian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan. A brave man who has now been convicted to a 19 year sentence - as gulfnews.com reports (including a report from AP):
"Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan was convicted on charges of cooperation with hostile countries, spreading propaganda against the ruling establishment, promotion of counterrevolutionary groups and insulting Islamic thoughts and religious figures."
AP:
"Tehran: An Iranian news website says a court has sentenced a well-known Canadian-Iranian blogger to more than 19 years in prison.
The conservative website, Mashreghnews.ir, which is close to Iran's presidential office, says Hossein Derakhshan was convicted on charges of cooperation with hostile countries, spreading propaganda against the ruling establishment, promotion of counterrevolutionary groups and insulting Islamic thoughts and religious figures.
The report says Derakhshan can appeal.
Derakhshan, who made trips to Israel and blogged in both English and Farsi, has been in prison since 2008. It's unclear if he would benefit from time served.
Iranian authorities have arrested numerous bloggers in recent years in a bid to clamp down on Internet dissent."
"Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan was convicted on charges of cooperation with hostile countries, spreading propaganda against the ruling establishment, promotion of counterrevolutionary groups and insulting Islamic thoughts and religious figures."
AP:
"Tehran: An Iranian news website says a court has sentenced a well-known Canadian-Iranian blogger to more than 19 years in prison.
The conservative website, Mashreghnews.ir, which is close to Iran's presidential office, says Hossein Derakhshan was convicted on charges of cooperation with hostile countries, spreading propaganda against the ruling establishment, promotion of counterrevolutionary groups and insulting Islamic thoughts and religious figures.
The report says Derakhshan can appeal.
Derakhshan, who made trips to Israel and blogged in both English and Farsi, has been in prison since 2008. It's unclear if he would benefit from time served.
Iranian authorities have arrested numerous bloggers in recent years in a bid to clamp down on Internet dissent."
Cyber-virus: A new way of declaring "war" on Iran?
Viruses [aka malware] are something all computer-users are used to. They can mostly be dealt with.
But a virus, Stuxnet, doing the rounds around the world has thrown up an intriguing question. Has there been a specific target? - a state-sponsored attack directed to the Iranian nuclear facility - as The Independent reports in "Has the West declared cyber war on Iran?":
"The worm, designed to spy on and subsequently reprogramme industrial systems running a specific piece of industrial control software produced by German company Siemens, has now been detected on computers in Indonesia, India and Pakistan, but more significantly Iran; 60 per cent of current infections have taken place within the country, with some 30,000 internet-connected computers affected so far, including machines at the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, due to open in the next few weeks.
Yesterday Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's Information Technology Company, warned that nearly four months after it was identified, "new versions of the virus are spreading". And he claimed that the hackers responsible must have been the result of "huge investment" by a group of hostile nations.
Despite intense scrutiny of the code by malware experts, they have so far been unable to discover exactly what the intended target of Stuxnet may be, or has been. But Alan Bentley, international vice president at security firm Lumension, is in no doubt that it's "the most refined piece of malware ever discovered".
The motive is certainly not, as is usual with such attacks, financial gain or simple tomfoolery; Stuxnet is intelligent enough to target specific kinds of industrial computer systems configured in a certain way and then, if it finds what it's looking for, seek new orders to disrupt them.
Two potential targets of the worm may have been nuclear facilities within Iran at Bushehr and Natanz; indeed, a document on the website Wikileaks suggests that a nuclear accident may have occurred at Natanz during early July 2009, followed shortly afterwards by the unexplained resignation of the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation."
The Nation also covers the possibility of the US already being at war with Iran:
"Stuxnet, a virus affecting Iran's nuclear facilities, appears to be a case of sabotage. If the United States is behind it, then Obama is already at war with Iran."
But a virus, Stuxnet, doing the rounds around the world has thrown up an intriguing question. Has there been a specific target? - a state-sponsored attack directed to the Iranian nuclear facility - as The Independent reports in "Has the West declared cyber war on Iran?":
"The worm, designed to spy on and subsequently reprogramme industrial systems running a specific piece of industrial control software produced by German company Siemens, has now been detected on computers in Indonesia, India and Pakistan, but more significantly Iran; 60 per cent of current infections have taken place within the country, with some 30,000 internet-connected computers affected so far, including machines at the nuclear power plant in Bushehr, due to open in the next few weeks.
Yesterday Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's Information Technology Company, warned that nearly four months after it was identified, "new versions of the virus are spreading". And he claimed that the hackers responsible must have been the result of "huge investment" by a group of hostile nations.
Despite intense scrutiny of the code by malware experts, they have so far been unable to discover exactly what the intended target of Stuxnet may be, or has been. But Alan Bentley, international vice president at security firm Lumension, is in no doubt that it's "the most refined piece of malware ever discovered".
The motive is certainly not, as is usual with such attacks, financial gain or simple tomfoolery; Stuxnet is intelligent enough to target specific kinds of industrial computer systems configured in a certain way and then, if it finds what it's looking for, seek new orders to disrupt them.
Two potential targets of the worm may have been nuclear facilities within Iran at Bushehr and Natanz; indeed, a document on the website Wikileaks suggests that a nuclear accident may have occurred at Natanz during early July 2009, followed shortly afterwards by the unexplained resignation of the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation."
The Nation also covers the possibility of the US already being at war with Iran:
"Stuxnet, a virus affecting Iran's nuclear facilities, appears to be a case of sabotage. If the United States is behind it, then Obama is already at war with Iran."
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Big Brother surfing your internet connection
Photo credited to ReutersThe creep of government into everyone's daily use of the internet continues. The pretext is always said to be the threat from terrorism and crime. It's a dubious and questionable argument, all things considered. Then again, there is the ever usual tussle of freedom as against the wider issue of security for a community. One can be confident in saying that if the US adopts what is reported below that other countries will follow.
CommonDreams [republishing an Associated Press article] reports on the latest threat to snooping into our use of the internet and communication in general:
"Broad new regulations being drafted by the Obama administration would make it easier for law enforcement and national security officials to eavesdrop on Internet and e-mail communications like social networking Web sites and BlackBerries, The New York Times reported Monday.
Broad new regulations being drafted by the Obama administration would make it easier for law enforcement and national security officials to eavesdrop on Internet and e-mail communications like social networking Web sites and BlackBerries, The New York Times reported Monday. (REUTERS/Stringer)The newspaper said the White House plans to submit a bill next year that would require all online services that enable communications to be technically equipped to comply with a wiretap order. That would include providers of encrypted e-mail, such as BlackBerry, networking sites like Facebook and direct communication services like Skype.
Federal law enforcement and national security officials say new the regulations are needed because terrorists and criminals are increasingly giving up their phones to communicate online."
Still there. Guantanamo revisited
Gitmo, that blot on America, continues - seemingly, without end, notwithstanding Obama having promised closing the facility down within 12 months when he took office.
The New York Review of Books has a review of a 2 books on Guantanamo, one entitled "The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law".
"President Bush himself ultimately recognized that the image of Guantánamo was disastrous for American foreign policy, and admitted that he would have liked to close the prison there. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only Cabinet official to serve in both the Bush and Obama administrations, agrees. President Obama, on his second day in office, vowed to close the prison within one year. Yet more than a year and a half later, Guantánamo remains open, with no end in sight. One hundred seventy-six men remain imprisoned there, without trial and in most cases without criminal charges. Many if not most have been the victims of torture and cruel and degrading treatment at US hands. Some six hundred have been released, many because there was not sufficient evidence to justify their detention in the first place. Yet not a single inmate has received an apology, or an accounting, or justice for his brutal mistreatment."
The New York Review of Books has a review of a 2 books on Guantanamo, one entitled "The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law".
"President Bush himself ultimately recognized that the image of Guantánamo was disastrous for American foreign policy, and admitted that he would have liked to close the prison there. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only Cabinet official to serve in both the Bush and Obama administrations, agrees. President Obama, on his second day in office, vowed to close the prison within one year. Yet more than a year and a half later, Guantánamo remains open, with no end in sight. One hundred seventy-six men remain imprisoned there, without trial and in most cases without criminal charges. Many if not most have been the victims of torture and cruel and degrading treatment at US hands. Some six hundred have been released, many because there was not sufficient evidence to justify their detention in the first place. Yet not a single inmate has received an apology, or an accounting, or justice for his brutal mistreatment."
Hamas and Fatah reconciliation? Possible? Essential?
With Israel, fairly predictably, having lifted the so-called freeze of construction of settlements in the West Bank - which it didn't really anyway - where the so-called Peace Talks will go is any one's guess. The omens aren't good. There is certainly a lot of double-speak, particularly coming from the Israel government.
Max Strasser, writing on FP's blog raises a critical question - the possible reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah:
"Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based leader of Hamas, said today that the best response to the end of Israel's 10-month "settlement freeze" would be a reconciliation with rival Palestinian faction Hamas.
DPA reports:
Meshaal argued that internal reconciliation would make the Palestinians more powerful in negotiations, calling it a national necessity and the best way to react to the 'Zionist intransigence.'
Meshaal does have a point. A leadership that represents only half of the Palestinian people, and basically acts as though Gaza doesn't exist, is pretty limited when it comes to negotiating the "final status" issues with Israel. At the same time, the Israelis probably wouldn't be willing to enter negotiations with a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas. (U.S. envoy to the region George Mitchell has said as much.) It certainly doesn't help that Meshaal also said today that Hamas will continue to "kill illegal settlers on [Palestinian] land."
We may soon find out how a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation will affect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Good news for the Palestinians may be on the horizon. A Hamas spokesperson told a Kuwaiti newspaper today, "We will all celebrate Palestinian national reconciliation in Egypt soon."
Of course, we've heard that one before. In 2008 Hamas and Fatah signed a Yemeni-sponsored deal Sanaa saying they would begin the reconciliation talks soon. They changed their minds a few days later. In September 2009 the two groups were again close to reaching an agreement, but nothing came of that. In January of this year, Meshaal told reporters in Riyadh, "We made great strides toward achieving reconciliation," and, "We are in the final stages now."
Will this time be different? It's hard to tell and these agreements have often been called off at the last minute. But if Fatah and Hamas do reach an agreement, it will undoubtedly change the course of the negotiations that President Obama has been supporting so vocally. The Palestinian negotiators will become more legitimate and the Israelis more resistant."
Max Strasser, writing on FP's blog raises a critical question - the possible reconciliation of Hamas and Fatah:
"Khaled Meshaal, the Damascus-based leader of Hamas, said today that the best response to the end of Israel's 10-month "settlement freeze" would be a reconciliation with rival Palestinian faction Hamas.
DPA reports:
Meshaal argued that internal reconciliation would make the Palestinians more powerful in negotiations, calling it a national necessity and the best way to react to the 'Zionist intransigence.'
Meshaal does have a point. A leadership that represents only half of the Palestinian people, and basically acts as though Gaza doesn't exist, is pretty limited when it comes to negotiating the "final status" issues with Israel. At the same time, the Israelis probably wouldn't be willing to enter negotiations with a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas. (U.S. envoy to the region George Mitchell has said as much.) It certainly doesn't help that Meshaal also said today that Hamas will continue to "kill illegal settlers on [Palestinian] land."
We may soon find out how a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation will affect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Good news for the Palestinians may be on the horizon. A Hamas spokesperson told a Kuwaiti newspaper today, "We will all celebrate Palestinian national reconciliation in Egypt soon."
Of course, we've heard that one before. In 2008 Hamas and Fatah signed a Yemeni-sponsored deal Sanaa saying they would begin the reconciliation talks soon. They changed their minds a few days later. In September 2009 the two groups were again close to reaching an agreement, but nothing came of that. In January of this year, Meshaal told reporters in Riyadh, "We made great strides toward achieving reconciliation," and, "We are in the final stages now."
Will this time be different? It's hard to tell and these agreements have often been called off at the last minute. But if Fatah and Hamas do reach an agreement, it will undoubtedly change the course of the negotiations that President Obama has been supporting so vocally. The Palestinian negotiators will become more legitimate and the Israelis more resistant."
Monday, September 27, 2010
Obama's secret assassination program
One can't help but agree with lawyer and blogger on Salon, Glenn Greenwald, that the Obama Administration has reached a nadir when it invokes "state secrets" in resisting a law suit in which ex-judicial assassination by the CIA is being challenged:
"At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. That's not surprising: both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets": in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality."
The Washington Post reports on the subject here.
"At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. That's not surprising: both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets": in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality."
The Washington Post reports on the subject here.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
UN: Food crisis upon us
As if the world hasn't enough issues to contend with, the UN has just issued a warning that the globe is facing a food-crisis. Imagine if that is the situation in so-called wealthy countries, how the people of poor nations will fare.
The Guardian reports:
"The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.
In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces back to the early noughties."
The Guardian reports:
"The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.
In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces back to the early noughties."
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Talk v reality
Obama has been a considerable disappointment as he, and his Administration, continue many of the Bush Administration worst policies, especially with regard to human rights. In some instances, Obama has even been worse. Go here to see the ACLU's assessment.
And then there is this in relation to Bagram as reported the other day by AlJazeera.
So, is this Obama double-speak when he addressed the UN? - as The Washington Post reports:
"In his own address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, Obama outlined a leading role for the United States in promoting human rights and democracy around the world, laying out a new foreign policy initiative that his advisers said will guide his diplomacy in the years ahead.
Making his second annual speech before the world body, Obama spoke more directly than he has previously about the importance of human rights and democracy in ensuring a stable world economy and global security. His words evoked those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose emphasis on promoting democracy once drew Obama's criticism."
And then there is this in relation to Bagram as reported the other day by AlJazeera.
So, is this Obama double-speak when he addressed the UN? - as The Washington Post reports:
"In his own address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, Obama outlined a leading role for the United States in promoting human rights and democracy around the world, laying out a new foreign policy initiative that his advisers said will guide his diplomacy in the years ahead.
Making his second annual speech before the world body, Obama spoke more directly than he has previously about the importance of human rights and democracy in ensuring a stable world economy and global security. His words evoked those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose emphasis on promoting democracy once drew Obama's criticism."
Volcker: Taking no prisoners
Paul Volcker is not only well-respected but almost a financial guru-legend in his own lifetime in the USA. So, to ignore his blistering attack on the entire financial system in America ought not be ignored - especially as the rest of the world is so much dependent on the financial well-being of the USA.
The Wall Street Journal Reports:
"Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker scrapped a prepared speech he had planned to deliver at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on Thursday, and instead delivered a blistering, off-the-cuff critique leveled at nearly every corner of the financial system.
Standing at a lectern with his hands in his pockets, Volcker moved unsparingly from banks to regulators to business schools to the Fed to money-market funds during his luncheon speech.
He praised the new financial overhaul law, but said the system remained at risk because it is subject to future “judgments” of individual regulators, who he said would be relentlessly lobbied by banks and politicians to soften the rules.
“This is a plea for structural changes in markets and market regulation,” he said at one point."
Read on, here, as Volcker dissects each part of the entire American financial system - business schools to banking and the markets themselves.
The Wall Street Journal Reports:
"Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker scrapped a prepared speech he had planned to deliver at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on Thursday, and instead delivered a blistering, off-the-cuff critique leveled at nearly every corner of the financial system.
Standing at a lectern with his hands in his pockets, Volcker moved unsparingly from banks to regulators to business schools to the Fed to money-market funds during his luncheon speech.
He praised the new financial overhaul law, but said the system remained at risk because it is subject to future “judgments” of individual regulators, who he said would be relentlessly lobbied by banks and politicians to soften the rules.
“This is a plea for structural changes in markets and market regulation,” he said at one point."
Read on, here, as Volcker dissects each part of the entire American financial system - business schools to banking and the markets themselves.
A global perspective of Israel’s Conscience
From FP:
"The Israeli writer David Grossman's new novel To the End of the Land, which was published in the United States this week, has generated the kind of buzz that publicists dream about. Paul Auster likened Grossman to Flaubert and Tolstoy and declared the book a work of "overwhelming power and intensity." Novelist Nicole Krauss was even more emphatic. In a long blurb, she gushed, "Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same.... To the End of the Land is a book of this magnitude."
It's easy to snicker at the breathlessness of such praise (and many did), but it testifies to the reverence with which Grossman is regarded in liberal circles in America and Europe. Though much of his recent fiction (most of which has been translated from Hebrew into English and published widely abroad) deals with quotidian topics like marriage and adultery, drugs, love, and life as a teenager, Grossman is known -- and venerated -- outside of Israel primarily for his critiques of Israeli policy. Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, writing recently in Newsweek, characteristically described Grossman (and his fellow novelist Amos Oz) as Israel's "national consciences." In June, Grossman won the prestigious German Book Trade Peace Prize for his efforts as an "active supporter of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis."
This week, Grossman is the subject of a long, laudatory essay in the New Yorker by George Packer. The article, along with the publication of To the End of the Land, the story of a woman wandering across Israel to escape the possible news of her son's death in combat, completed after Grossman's own son Uri died in Lebanon in 2006, will likely only add to the Grossman mystique in America. And as fragile peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians threaten to collapse, Americans are looking to Grossman for a distillation of the Middle Eastern moment."
"The Israeli writer David Grossman's new novel To the End of the Land, which was published in the United States this week, has generated the kind of buzz that publicists dream about. Paul Auster likened Grossman to Flaubert and Tolstoy and declared the book a work of "overwhelming power and intensity." Novelist Nicole Krauss was even more emphatic. In a long blurb, she gushed, "Very rarely, a few times in a lifetime, you open a book and when you close it again nothing can ever be the same.... To the End of the Land is a book of this magnitude."
It's easy to snicker at the breathlessness of such praise (and many did), but it testifies to the reverence with which Grossman is regarded in liberal circles in America and Europe. Though much of his recent fiction (most of which has been translated from Hebrew into English and published widely abroad) deals with quotidian topics like marriage and adultery, drugs, love, and life as a teenager, Grossman is known -- and venerated -- outside of Israel primarily for his critiques of Israeli policy. Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg, writing recently in Newsweek, characteristically described Grossman (and his fellow novelist Amos Oz) as Israel's "national consciences." In June, Grossman won the prestigious German Book Trade Peace Prize for his efforts as an "active supporter of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis."
This week, Grossman is the subject of a long, laudatory essay in the New Yorker by George Packer. The article, along with the publication of To the End of the Land, the story of a woman wandering across Israel to escape the possible news of her son's death in combat, completed after Grossman's own son Uri died in Lebanon in 2006, will likely only add to the Grossman mystique in America. And as fragile peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians threaten to collapse, Americans are looking to Grossman for a distillation of the Middle Eastern moment."
Friday, September 24, 2010
Killing off nature
Talk about Rome burning while Nero fiddles!The world is letting nature wither........and the UN has called on countries to do something to stop the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems.
BBC News reports:
"But the main message - from the UN and activists alike - is that governments must urgently increase efforts to protect biodiversity and ecosystems.
"Biological diversity underpins ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services essential for human well-being," says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a document setting out the reasons why he called for the day's discussions.
"Its continued loss, therefore, has major implications for current and future human well-being... The maintenance and restoration of natural infrastructure can provide economic gains worth trillions of dollars a year."
The argument is that nature provides "ecosystem services" that humanity uses - such as pollination of agricultural crops by insects. If this is lost, the food supply falls."
Saying it like it is....and should be
Elizabeth Gilbert's well-selling book, Eat, Pray, Love is now a movie - and destined to set off a stampede of travellers to Italy, India and Bali. With Julia Roberts the star of the movie it will guarantee the success its success at the box office notwithstanding some mediocre already in.
One eatery in Ubud, Bali has already put its stamp on what the real situation is for visitors to that establishment - Eat, Pay, Leave.
One eatery in Ubud, Bali has already put its stamp on what the real situation is for visitors to that establishment - Eat, Pay, Leave.
It all depends who says and does it
At The Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan in a piece "The NYT And Torture: The Double Standard Deepens" picks up on how The New York Times has written about Eileen Nearne in an obit - as compared to how the Times usually writes about what can only be described as torture.
"John F Burns pens a wonderful obit today on the remarkable British spy in France, Eileen Nearne, in 1944 who was tortured by the Nazis. Somehow, Bill Keller let the following paragraph slip through the copy-edit cracks:
As she related in postwar debriefings, documented in Britain’s National Archives, the Gestapo tortured her — beating her, stripping her naked, then submerging her repeatedly in a bath of ice-cold water until she began to black out from lack of oxygen.
"Tortured"? Doesn't that break the NYT rule that such techniques are only referred to as "harsh interrogation techniques"? Has the policy changed? Or are we seeing an explicit decision by its editors to use different terms for exactly the same things when used by the US, rather than by the Nazis? You think I'm exaggerating? Here is an eye-witness account of Camp Nama, under the direct command of General Stanley McChrystal, where mere suspects - people not even caught red-handed as Ms Nearne was by the Nazis - were imprisoned and tortured."
Continue reading here.
"John F Burns pens a wonderful obit today on the remarkable British spy in France, Eileen Nearne, in 1944 who was tortured by the Nazis. Somehow, Bill Keller let the following paragraph slip through the copy-edit cracks:
As she related in postwar debriefings, documented in Britain’s National Archives, the Gestapo tortured her — beating her, stripping her naked, then submerging her repeatedly in a bath of ice-cold water until she began to black out from lack of oxygen.
"Tortured"? Doesn't that break the NYT rule that such techniques are only referred to as "harsh interrogation techniques"? Has the policy changed? Or are we seeing an explicit decision by its editors to use different terms for exactly the same things when used by the US, rather than by the Nazis? You think I'm exaggerating? Here is an eye-witness account of Camp Nama, under the direct command of General Stanley McChrystal, where mere suspects - people not even caught red-handed as Ms Nearne was by the Nazis - were imprisoned and tortured."
Continue reading here.
Assassins? - or terrorists?
It's all a matter of definition - and who is attaching the label. The revelation that the CIA has had some 3000 assassins out there in the field raises the question. Legitimate action or nothing more than terrorist behaviour?
The Independent reports on what is revealed in Bob Woodward book Obama's Wars:
"The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa'ida operatives not just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan's tribal areas, according to Bob Woodward's explosive book.
Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed.
Woodward's book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there. Two US newspapers published the claims after receiving copies of the manuscript.
The secret army is split into "Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams", and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of many Pakistani Taliban fighters who have crossed the border into Afghanistan to fight Nato and Afghan government forces there."
The Independent reports on what is revealed in Bob Woodward book Obama's Wars:
"The US Central Intelligence Agency is running and paying for a secret 3,000-strong army of Afghan paramilitaries whose main aim is assassinating Taliban and al-Qa'ida operatives not just in Afghanistan but across the border in neighbouring Pakistan's tribal areas, according to Bob Woodward's explosive book.
Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed.
Woodward's book, Obama's Wars, describes these forces as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qa'ida and Afghan Taliban havens there. Two US newspapers published the claims after receiving copies of the manuscript.
The secret army is split into "Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams", and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of many Pakistani Taliban fighters who have crossed the border into Afghanistan to fight Nato and Afghan government forces there."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Those settlements: Seeing as it is on the ground
We always read about the Israeli settlements in the West Bank - in reality not a rag-tag of homes or caravans - but Peace Now, an Israeli peace group, decided to go up in a plane and take photographs of how those settlements actually look like on the ground.
The New York Times reports:
"Local leaders often take visitors to Jewish settlements occupying the high ground of the northern West Bank to lookout points from where, on a clear day, they can see the glass towers of Tel Aviv, the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean and the contours of Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain.
The aim is to underline the strategic dangers that the leaders say would be inherent in any Israeli withdrawal from the area to make way for a Palestinian state.
In an effort to illustrate the other side of the argument, Peace Now, the leftist Israeli group that advocates a two-state solution and monitors settlement activity, took a planeload of Israeli members of Parliament, reporters and photographers on an aerial tour of the northern West Bank on Monday.
The group’s goal was to give a bird’s-eye view of the growth of the settlements and outposts across the hilltops, and to argue that if the settlements do not stop spreading, the land between the Jordan River and the sea will soon become indivisible for all practical purposes, and the two-state option will cease to exist.
“The point,” Peace Now’s secretary general, Yariv Oppenheimer, said over the plane’s public address system, “is to see how the reality has changed and how the binational state is getting closer.”
New Woodward book reveals Obama's battles
Bob Woodward, of All the President's Men fame, the book which helped bring down Richard Nixon as part of Nixon's Watergate criminal activity, has a new book, Obama's Wars, to be released in the next days, this time dealing with Obama.
The New York Times has seen a preview copy of the upcoming book and provides this revealing statement:
"Beyond the internal battles, the book offers fresh disclosures on the nation’s continuing battle with terrorists. It reports that the C.I.A. has a 3,000-man “covert army” in Afghanistan called the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, or C.T.P.T., mostly Afghans who capture and kill Taliban fighters and seek support in tribal areas. Past news accounts have reported that the C.I.A. has a number of militias, including one trained on one of its compounds, but not the size of the covert army."
The New York Times has seen a preview copy of the upcoming book and provides this revealing statement:
"Beyond the internal battles, the book offers fresh disclosures on the nation’s continuing battle with terrorists. It reports that the C.I.A. has a 3,000-man “covert army” in Afghanistan called the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, or C.T.P.T., mostly Afghans who capture and kill Taliban fighters and seek support in tribal areas. Past news accounts have reported that the C.I.A. has a number of militias, including one trained on one of its compounds, but not the size of the covert army."
Ignorance isn't bliss - or misguided comfort or satisfaction
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history.
Writing on Information Clearing House, he follows on in an analysis of the first paragraph of his piece "The “Right Thing” in Iraq? A Depressing Statistic":
"Fox News recently reported that 58% of U.S. residents believe that the U.S. “did the right thing” in going to war in Iraq. This reflects the fact that most have been persuaded that combat is over, the troops having succeeding in toppling a dictator and establishing a democracy.
I don’t know how accurate the statistic is, but my gut feeling is that it’s probably pretty accurate. And profoundly depressing. Have people forgotten that this war was fought, not for such reasons, but to destroy Saddam Hussein’s (alleged) weapons of mass destruction and end his (supposed) cooperation with al-Qaeda?"
Writing on Information Clearing House, he follows on in an analysis of the first paragraph of his piece "The “Right Thing” in Iraq? A Depressing Statistic":
"Fox News recently reported that 58% of U.S. residents believe that the U.S. “did the right thing” in going to war in Iraq. This reflects the fact that most have been persuaded that combat is over, the troops having succeeding in toppling a dictator and establishing a democracy.
I don’t know how accurate the statistic is, but my gut feeling is that it’s probably pretty accurate. And profoundly depressing. Have people forgotten that this war was fought, not for such reasons, but to destroy Saddam Hussein’s (alleged) weapons of mass destruction and end his (supposed) cooperation with al-Qaeda?"
The US in a state of decline?
TomDispatch discusses a survey undertaken by NBC News/Wall Street Journal - including the question whether the US is in decline. Take a step back! ......a staggering 65% answered in the affirmative.
"Compare two assessments of the American future:
In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in which 61% of Americans interviewed considered “things in the nation” to be “on the wrong track,” 66% did “not feel confident that life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us.” (Seven percent were “not sure,” and only 27% “felt confident.”) But here was the polling question you’re least likely to see discussed in your local newspaper or by Washington-based pundits: “Do you think America is in a state of decline, or do you feel that this is not the case?” Sixty-five percent of respondents chose as their answer: “in a state of decline.”
Meanwhile, Afghan war commander General David Petraeus was interviewed last week by Martha Raddatz of ABC News. Asked whether the American war in Afghanistan, almost a decade old, was finally on the right counterinsurgency track and could go on for another nine or ten years, Petraeus agreed that we were just at the beginning of the process, that the “clock” was only now ticking, and that we needed “realistic expectations” about what could happen and how fast. “Progress” in Afghanistan, he commented, was often so slow that it could feel like “watching grass grow or paint dry.”
Now, I’m not a betting man, but I’d head for Vegas tomorrow and put my money down against the general and on Americans generally when it comes to assessing the future. I’d put money on the fact that the United States is indeed “in a state of decline” and I’d make a wager at odds that U.S. troops won’t be in Afghanistan in nine or ten years. And I’d venture to suggest as well that the two bets would be intimately connected, and that the American people understand at a visceral level far more than Washington cares to know about our real situation in the world. And I’d put my money on one more thing: however lousy it may feel, it’s not all bad news, not by a long shot."
"Compare two assessments of the American future:
In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in which 61% of Americans interviewed considered “things in the nation” to be “on the wrong track,” 66% did “not feel confident that life for our children’s generation will be better than it has been for us.” (Seven percent were “not sure,” and only 27% “felt confident.”) But here was the polling question you’re least likely to see discussed in your local newspaper or by Washington-based pundits: “Do you think America is in a state of decline, or do you feel that this is not the case?” Sixty-five percent of respondents chose as their answer: “in a state of decline.”
Meanwhile, Afghan war commander General David Petraeus was interviewed last week by Martha Raddatz of ABC News. Asked whether the American war in Afghanistan, almost a decade old, was finally on the right counterinsurgency track and could go on for another nine or ten years, Petraeus agreed that we were just at the beginning of the process, that the “clock” was only now ticking, and that we needed “realistic expectations” about what could happen and how fast. “Progress” in Afghanistan, he commented, was often so slow that it could feel like “watching grass grow or paint dry.”
Now, I’m not a betting man, but I’d head for Vegas tomorrow and put my money down against the general and on Americans generally when it comes to assessing the future. I’d put money on the fact that the United States is indeed “in a state of decline” and I’d make a wager at odds that U.S. troops won’t be in Afghanistan in nine or ten years. And I’d venture to suggest as well that the two bets would be intimately connected, and that the American people understand at a visceral level far more than Washington cares to know about our real situation in the world. And I’d put my money on one more thing: however lousy it may feel, it’s not all bad news, not by a long shot."
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Climate change: Spiking the sceptics
Anthony Giddens is former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge and the author of The Politics of Climate Change. Martin Rees is president of the Royal Society, London. He was this year's BBC Reith lecturer.
Writing in an op-ed piece "Torpor on emissions must end" in The Age, they say:
"It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the core scientific findings about human-induced climate change and the dangers it poses for our collective future remain intact. The most important relevant fact is based on uncontroversial measurements: the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is higher than it has been for at least the last half-million years. It has risen by 30 per cent since the start of the industrial era, mainly because of the burning of fossil fuels. If the world continues to depend on fossil fuels to the extent it does today, carbon dioxide will reach double pre-industrial levels within the next half-century. This build-up is triggering long-term warming, the physical reasons for which are well-known and demonstrable in the laboratory."
Meanwhile, this from IPS - and yet again, a challenge to climate-change sceptics:
"The carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have melted the Arctic sea ice to its lowest volume since before the rise of human civilisation, dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet, climate scientists are reporting.
"The Arctic sea ice has reached its four lowest summer extents (area covered) in the last four years," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado."
And over at The New York Times news of yet another devastation - coral reefs dying off with potential effects of depleted fish-stocks:
This year’s extreme heat is putting the world’s coral reefs under such severe stress that scientists fear widespread die-offs, endangering not only the richest ecosystems in the ocean but also associated fisheries that feed millions of people.
From Thailand to Texas, corals are reacting to the heat stress by bleaching, or shedding their color and going into survival mode. Many have already died, and more are expected to do so in coming months. Computer forecasts of water temperature suggest that corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks."
Writing in an op-ed piece "Torpor on emissions must end" in The Age, they say:
"It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the core scientific findings about human-induced climate change and the dangers it poses for our collective future remain intact. The most important relevant fact is based on uncontroversial measurements: the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is higher than it has been for at least the last half-million years. It has risen by 30 per cent since the start of the industrial era, mainly because of the burning of fossil fuels. If the world continues to depend on fossil fuels to the extent it does today, carbon dioxide will reach double pre-industrial levels within the next half-century. This build-up is triggering long-term warming, the physical reasons for which are well-known and demonstrable in the laboratory."
Meanwhile, this from IPS - and yet again, a challenge to climate-change sceptics:
"The carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have melted the Arctic sea ice to its lowest volume since before the rise of human civilisation, dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet, climate scientists are reporting.
"The Arctic sea ice has reached its four lowest summer extents (area covered) in the last four years," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado."
And over at The New York Times news of yet another devastation - coral reefs dying off with potential effects of depleted fish-stocks:
This year’s extreme heat is putting the world’s coral reefs under such severe stress that scientists fear widespread die-offs, endangering not only the richest ecosystems in the ocean but also associated fisheries that feed millions of people.
From Thailand to Texas, corals are reacting to the heat stress by bleaching, or shedding their color and going into survival mode. Many have already died, and more are expected to do so in coming months. Computer forecasts of water temperature suggest that corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks."
The scourge and dangers of outsourcing
The shadowy world of government-outsourced companies is again highlighted in Australia with the suicide, yesterday, of a detainee in a Detention Centre operated by a private company Serco. Accountability by governments - or corporations for that mater - for these outsourced companies is rare. To make matters worse whilst little is known about the companies to whom a variety of work, including quasi-military, is outsourced, their activities are wide-spread.
It's a subject taken up by Jeremy Scahill in a piece in The Nation, when looking at the infamous and ubiquitous private security company, Blackwater:
"Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.
One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm."
Interestingly, the British have a not dissimilar issue - as raised here in a piece in an opinion piece The Guardian.
It's a subject taken up by Jeremy Scahill in a piece in The Nation, when looking at the infamous and ubiquitous private security company, Blackwater:
"Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation. Blackwater's work for corporations and government agencies was contracted using two companies owned by Blackwater's owner and founder, Erik Prince: Total Intelligence Solutions and the Terrorism Research Center (TRC). Prince is listed as the chairman of both companies in internal company documents, which show how the web of companies functions as a highly coordinated operation. Officials from Total Intelligence, TRC and Blackwater (which now calls itself Xe Services) did not respond to numerous requests for comment for this article.
One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the "intel arm" of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm."
Interestingly, the British have a not dissimilar issue - as raised here in a piece in an opinion piece The Guardian.
Those Middle East talks: What Israel is really after
The Israeli PM may be mouthing all sort of positive-sounding platitudes about what he is looking for in the current so-called peace talks presently underway with the Palestinians, but as AlJazeera reports, the Israeli Foreign Minister has clearly spelt out certainly where he is at:
"Israel's foreign minister has said that a future peace deal with the Palestinians should centre around redrawing his country's borders, proposing to exclude some of the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens.
Avigdor Lieberman told reporters on Sunday that Israel's future borders should incorporate Jewish settlements, while placing Arab villages in Israel on the Palestinian side.
"Our guiding principle in negotiations with the Palestinians must not be 'land for peace' but an exchange of territories and populations," he said."
"Israel's foreign minister has said that a future peace deal with the Palestinians should centre around redrawing his country's borders, proposing to exclude some of the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens.
Avigdor Lieberman told reporters on Sunday that Israel's future borders should incorporate Jewish settlements, while placing Arab villages in Israel on the Palestinian side.
"Our guiding principle in negotiations with the Palestinians must not be 'land for peace' but an exchange of territories and populations," he said."
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Time to "pull the plug"......
Who hasn't felt bedevilled by the onslaught of emails and being contactable 24/7 - or been irritated by being with others who simply can't, or won't, concentrate on the conversation at hand without constantly looking at their mobile, Blackberry or iPhone. This piece in the Sydney Morning Herald shows how things have got totally out of hand.
"At a recent business dinner, half the table checked emails or phone text messages during a lull in the event. At a meeting the next day, some attendees couldn’t go an hour without checking their phone. How pathetic to have a phone on silent, sitting on your lap, under the table.
I shouldn’t be surprised: a recent US survey found a quarter of all internet users think its okay to be online during sex. Slightly more said it’s okay to be “plugged in” during their honeymoon, and 8 per cent think it’s alright to surf the web during religious services.
Someone should set up Cyberholics Anonymous: “My name is John. I’m 45 years old, sleep with an iPhone next to my bed and check emails upon waking. I have sore thumbs from texting, and waste half the day replying to useless emails. I’ve forgotten how to listen and have a real conversation. I am now a manager of emails – not people.”
Continue reading here.
"At a recent business dinner, half the table checked emails or phone text messages during a lull in the event. At a meeting the next day, some attendees couldn’t go an hour without checking their phone. How pathetic to have a phone on silent, sitting on your lap, under the table.
I shouldn’t be surprised: a recent US survey found a quarter of all internet users think its okay to be online during sex. Slightly more said it’s okay to be “plugged in” during their honeymoon, and 8 per cent think it’s alright to surf the web during religious services.
Someone should set up Cyberholics Anonymous: “My name is John. I’m 45 years old, sleep with an iPhone next to my bed and check emails upon waking. I have sore thumbs from texting, and waste half the day replying to useless emails. I’ve forgotten how to listen and have a real conversation. I am now a manager of emails – not people.”
Continue reading here.
No.... Iran is not a nuclear threat
The Christian Science Monitor could not be accused of being other than a very conservative newspaper.
So, it's somewhat surprising to see this op-ed piece by Scott Horton [lawyer - and who also writes for Harper's Magazine] which proclaims that Iran does not pose the nuclear threat now made out so often.
"Politicians, lobbyists, and propagandists have spent nearly two decades pushing the lie that Iran poses a nuclear weapons threat to the United States and Israel. After a brief respite in the intensity of the wolf cries over the past two years, the neoconservative movement has decided to relaunch the “Must Bomb Iran” brand.
In mid-August, for example, after The New York Times quite uncharacteristically ran a piece diminishing the supposed danger of Iranian nukes, the story was misrepresented in newspapers and on TV stations across the country in the most frightening terms. As MSNBC’s news reader put it that afternoon: “Intelligence sources say Iran is only one year away from a nuclear bomb!”
On August 13, on Fox News, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton implicitly urged Israel to attack Iran’s new light-water reactor at Bushehr before it began “functioning,” the implication being that the reactor represented some sort of dire threat. But the facts are not on Mr. Bolton’s side. The Bushehr reactor is not useful for producing weapons-grade plutonium, and the Russians have a deal to keep all the waste themselves.
On September 6, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a new paper on the implementation of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement which reported that the agency has “continued to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose.”
Yet despite the IAEA report and clear assertions to the contrary, news articles that followed were dishonest to the extreme, interpreting this clean bill of health as just another wisp of smoke indicating nuclear fire in a horrifying near-future.
A Washington Post article published the very same day led the way with the aggressive and misleading headline “UN Report: Iran stockpiling nuclear materials,” “shorthanding” the facts right out of the narrative. The facts are that Iran’s terrifying nuclear “stockpile” is a small amount of uranium enriched to industrial grade levels for use in its domestic energy and medical isotope programs, all of it “safeguarded” by the IAEA.
So, it's somewhat surprising to see this op-ed piece by Scott Horton [lawyer - and who also writes for Harper's Magazine] which proclaims that Iran does not pose the nuclear threat now made out so often.
"Politicians, lobbyists, and propagandists have spent nearly two decades pushing the lie that Iran poses a nuclear weapons threat to the United States and Israel. After a brief respite in the intensity of the wolf cries over the past two years, the neoconservative movement has decided to relaunch the “Must Bomb Iran” brand.
In mid-August, for example, after The New York Times quite uncharacteristically ran a piece diminishing the supposed danger of Iranian nukes, the story was misrepresented in newspapers and on TV stations across the country in the most frightening terms. As MSNBC’s news reader put it that afternoon: “Intelligence sources say Iran is only one year away from a nuclear bomb!”
On August 13, on Fox News, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton implicitly urged Israel to attack Iran’s new light-water reactor at Bushehr before it began “functioning,” the implication being that the reactor represented some sort of dire threat. But the facts are not on Mr. Bolton’s side. The Bushehr reactor is not useful for producing weapons-grade plutonium, and the Russians have a deal to keep all the waste themselves.
On September 6, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a new paper on the implementation of Iran’s Safeguards Agreement which reported that the agency has “continued to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose.”
Yet despite the IAEA report and clear assertions to the contrary, news articles that followed were dishonest to the extreme, interpreting this clean bill of health as just another wisp of smoke indicating nuclear fire in a horrifying near-future.
A Washington Post article published the very same day led the way with the aggressive and misleading headline “UN Report: Iran stockpiling nuclear materials,” “shorthanding” the facts right out of the narrative. The facts are that Iran’s terrifying nuclear “stockpile” is a small amount of uranium enriched to industrial grade levels for use in its domestic energy and medical isotope programs, all of it “safeguarded” by the IAEA.
Eh? It's the rich who are angry?
Hard to believe, but Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner for Economics, writing his regular op-ed column for The New York Times, reveals that it's the rich who are angry because they see the tax benefits the Bush Administration put in place - and which so much favoured the wealthy - disappear.
"Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they’re out for revenge.
No, I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.
These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.
Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes."
"Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they’re out for revenge.
No, I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.
These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.
Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes."
Monday, September 20, 2010
Remember the Millenium Conference? How are those goals faring?
It seems a while ago - at the turn of this century actually - when many nations met and committed themselves to some goals on a broad range of topics. Laudable goals of tackling poverty, disease, ignorance and inequality.
So, now the UN is convening another meeting this month to evaluate how the goals are being achieved. Sadly, it's not a very encouraging score-card, as AP reports:
"But recent reports show that the world's poorest countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have made little headway in eradicating poverty. Africa, Asia and Latin America have seen a lack of progress in reducing mother and child deaths, boosting access to basic sanitation, and promoting women's equality.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Salil Shetty said some goals will likely be met, but the poorest are going to be left out, partly because so many governments are not accountable to their people."
And, no less importantly, this is the status of some of the goals:
So, now the UN is convening another meeting this month to evaluate how the goals are being achieved. Sadly, it's not a very encouraging score-card, as AP reports:
"But recent reports show that the world's poorest countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have made little headway in eradicating poverty. Africa, Asia and Latin America have seen a lack of progress in reducing mother and child deaths, boosting access to basic sanitation, and promoting women's equality.
Amnesty International Secretary-General Salil Shetty said some goals will likely be met, but the poorest are going to be left out, partly because so many governments are not accountable to their people."
And, no less importantly, this is the status of some of the goals:
- Overall the world is on track to halve the numbers of people in extreme poverty, though some critics say it's mainly because of tremendous improvements in China and India. The proportion living on less than $1 a day in developing countries fell from 46 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 2005 and should reach the target despite the economic crisis. But even so, the U.N. said, about 920 million people will still be living on less than $1.25 a day in 2015.
- Primary school enrollment rose from 83 percent in 2000 to 89 percent in 2008, which means 70 million children worldwide are not in classrooms. That pace of progress is not sufficient to ensure the goal of universal primary education by 2015.
- Reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters and child mortality by two-thirds has lagged. The World Health Organization said there has been a 34 percent decline to 358,000 deaths in 2008, less than half the goal set in 2000. Ban said this was because so much effort has gone into eradicating poverty and disease. He promised a new initiative at the summit.
- The goal of halting and reversing the AIDS epidemic is unlikely to be met. While the number of new infections has fallen from a peak of 3.5 million in 1996 to 2.7 million in 2008, UNAIDS said five people are becoming infected for every two who start treatment. Two million AIDS-related deaths still occur every year. Despite signs that the epidemic has stabilized in most countries, the disease is spreading fast in Russia, Ukraine and some countries in Central Asia — and UNAIDS estimates that only 40 percent of people who have HIV are aware of it."
An apology well made
"Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs."
So begins an op-ed piece by regular columnist in The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof. He makes more than valid points about totally misguided demonising of Muslims which is so rampant in the US at the moment - and elsewhere too. As Kristof writes:
"In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.
But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.
I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize."
That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs."
So begins an op-ed piece by regular columnist in The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof. He makes more than valid points about totally misguided demonising of Muslims which is so rampant in the US at the moment - and elsewhere too. As Kristof writes:
"In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.
But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.
I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize."
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Social Networking. Killing off social interaction?
There is no escaping the internet - at work and certainly in the realm of social networking. The uptake of Facebook and Twitter, amongst others, to "keep in touch" has been phenomenal, especially amongst young people.
But what is all of this doing to what might be described to true social discourse and interaction? It's a subject taken by Melinda Blau in a piece in Psychotherapy Networker [reproduced on AlterNet]:
"In 2000, a mere 46 percent of Americans were online (mostly by dial-up), compared with 80 percent today (mostly by broadband). No one connected wirelessly back then. Today 6 in 10 of us do, a 55 percent increase since 2009. Back then, only half of us had mobile phones; now 85 percent do. Social media sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, didn't exist a decade ago. No one walked around with netbooks, Kindles, Blackberrys, or iPhones; no one Skyped or Tweeted or used Foursquare to let their networks know where they were. Indeed, the convergence of social software, high-speed broadband, and science-fictionesque mobile devices has been accelerating change at such a dizzying pace that researchers already see a generation gap between kids born in the 1980s and those born 10 years later."
And:
"The Internet has become the world's largest, and arguably most important, social thoroughfare. It intersects with millions—no, billions—of streets, alleyways, and self-contained villages where you can find, meet, and work with just about anyone on the planet. It's a marketplace for exchange—of things, of services, of thoughts—a place where you can mobilize "smart mobs" or plan "meetups," where you can "crowd source" ideas or join others on the "creative commons." Every day we have tens, if not hundreds, of brief interchanges—by e-mail or Skype, by instant messages and posts. We poke and we lurk; we bear witness to many lives and mourn deaths together. In short, we're always "talking" to someone and can now recruit more people into our lives than ever before in history."
But what is all of this doing to what might be described to true social discourse and interaction? It's a subject taken by Melinda Blau in a piece in Psychotherapy Networker [reproduced on AlterNet]:
"In 2000, a mere 46 percent of Americans were online (mostly by dial-up), compared with 80 percent today (mostly by broadband). No one connected wirelessly back then. Today 6 in 10 of us do, a 55 percent increase since 2009. Back then, only half of us had mobile phones; now 85 percent do. Social media sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, didn't exist a decade ago. No one walked around with netbooks, Kindles, Blackberrys, or iPhones; no one Skyped or Tweeted or used Foursquare to let their networks know where they were. Indeed, the convergence of social software, high-speed broadband, and science-fictionesque mobile devices has been accelerating change at such a dizzying pace that researchers already see a generation gap between kids born in the 1980s and those born 10 years later."
And:
"The Internet has become the world's largest, and arguably most important, social thoroughfare. It intersects with millions—no, billions—of streets, alleyways, and self-contained villages where you can find, meet, and work with just about anyone on the planet. It's a marketplace for exchange—of things, of services, of thoughts—a place where you can mobilize "smart mobs" or plan "meetups," where you can "crowd source" ideas or join others on the "creative commons." Every day we have tens, if not hundreds, of brief interchanges—by e-mail or Skype, by instant messages and posts. We poke and we lurk; we bear witness to many lives and mourn deaths together. In short, we're always "talking" to someone and can now recruit more people into our lives than ever before in history."
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Connecting the [internet] dots
The iPad seems to have started a revolution. If the stats in this piece from Salon are even half right, then the way we all communicate is going to radically change very soon.
"The market research firm iSuppli reports that "the number of worldwide subscriptions for wireless services is expected to reach 5 billion this month." That's equal to 73.4 percent of the world's population.
Best Buy's CEO told the Wall Street Journal that "internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50 percent."
Apple finally started officially selling the iPad in China, the world's hottest and biggest market for wireless devices. Press reports indicate that the launch is a huge success. Apple may end up selling as many as 12 million iPads in 2010.
After reviewing the data, one can only conclude that by the end of the decade, every human being on the planet will own a tablet computer. OK, maybe not everyone. But even making a joke about tablets conquering all would have seemed far fetched at the beginning of 2010. I'm not sure what the most important implications of having seven billion or so people all connected wirelessly together via their mega-powerful handheld devices will be, but that future is just about here."
"The market research firm iSuppli reports that "the number of worldwide subscriptions for wireless services is expected to reach 5 billion this month." That's equal to 73.4 percent of the world's population.
Best Buy's CEO told the Wall Street Journal that "internal estimates showed that the iPad had cannibalized sales from laptop PCs by as much as 50 percent."
Apple finally started officially selling the iPad in China, the world's hottest and biggest market for wireless devices. Press reports indicate that the launch is a huge success. Apple may end up selling as many as 12 million iPads in 2010.
After reviewing the data, one can only conclude that by the end of the decade, every human being on the planet will own a tablet computer. OK, maybe not everyone. But even making a joke about tablets conquering all would have seemed far fetched at the beginning of 2010. I'm not sure what the most important implications of having seven billion or so people all connected wirelessly together via their mega-powerful handheld devices will be, but that future is just about here."
It's not all that difficult to apologise and show contrition
Perhaps something of a paradox that as the Pope visits Great Britain - with all the itself historic issues that throws up - on this Day of Atonement, for Jews, the question of how the Catholic Church has dealt with the widespread molestation of minors, male and female, is front and centre of discussion. Where is the absolute contrition? Why is the Pope so concerned about the pain he and the Church have suffered? But, what about the victims?
Roger Cohen, writing for the IHT [also published by The New York Times] and born in the United Kingdom, takes up the subject of the Pope's visit to Great Britain and atonement - or the lack of it......
"And yet, this man who found himself in the Hitler Youth in his teens, as required then of young Germans, and whose own conduct in handling an abuse case while archbishop of Munich and Freising has raised questions about his forthrightness — this churchman with such ample opportunity to see the darker sides of man’s soul has proved arid in comprehension and unbending in doctrine.
The church’s transparency and openness to justice for crimes committed remain limited. Benedict has shown scant willingness to come to terms with how and why repressed sexuality among a clergy vowed to celibacy led to molestations of minors so widespread as to make the church institutionally ill."
Update: The Guardian reports that the Pope when speaking at Westminster Abbey today said:
"I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes".
Wait a minute. Sorrow? They are victims, not to be pitied or even comforted. They are deserving of an apology - plus!. Period.
Roger Cohen, writing for the IHT [also published by The New York Times] and born in the United Kingdom, takes up the subject of the Pope's visit to Great Britain and atonement - or the lack of it......
"And yet, this man who found himself in the Hitler Youth in his teens, as required then of young Germans, and whose own conduct in handling an abuse case while archbishop of Munich and Freising has raised questions about his forthrightness — this churchman with such ample opportunity to see the darker sides of man’s soul has proved arid in comprehension and unbending in doctrine.
The church’s transparency and openness to justice for crimes committed remain limited. Benedict has shown scant willingness to come to terms with how and why repressed sexuality among a clergy vowed to celibacy led to molestations of minors so widespread as to make the church institutionally ill."
Update: The Guardian reports that the Pope when speaking at Westminster Abbey today said:
"I express my deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes".
Wait a minute. Sorrow? They are victims, not to be pitied or even comforted. They are deserving of an apology - plus!. Period.
Atonement....from a different perspective
Jews the world over today celebrate Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement. Nothing all that special about that, except that Ira Chernus,writing a piece "This Yom Kippur, We Must Atone for the Sins of Israeli Policy" on AlterNet suggests that Jews ought to incorporate atoning for the sins which the Israelis have meted out to the Palestinians.
"Until a very few years ago, though, Israel’s policies triggered virtually no guilt in synagogues across the U.S. It was all too easy to assume that communal solidarity and mutual responsibility meant supporting the Israeli government, no matter what it did, and standing firm against any Palestinian demands for self-determination. Now the climate of American Jewish opinion is rapidly changing, complicating that crucial question: “What sins? Precisely what should we, as a community, feel guilty and atone for?”"
And:
"And the holy day this year finds a surprisingly wide variety of opinions is in the air. More and more U.S. Jews every day are beginning to raise questions, criticize Israeli policies, and confess that far too many of those policies are both a strategic and a moral error. A growing number would even call it a sin.
We can expect to hear that kind of message even from some synagogue pulpits this year. Nearly 600 rabbis have joined the Rabbinic Cabinet of J Street, the nation’s most prominent Jewish pro-Israel, pro-peace group. The Cabinet is circulating a letter that acknowledges Israel’s “dangerous behavior,” cites the biblical injunction to “rebuke your kin,” and calls for the Israelis to make “difficult compromises and mutual sacrifice.” That’s a message hardly any rabbi would have dared endorse publicly just a few years ago. Now an impressively long and growing list of rabbis, including nine former presidents of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, have signed the letter."
"Until a very few years ago, though, Israel’s policies triggered virtually no guilt in synagogues across the U.S. It was all too easy to assume that communal solidarity and mutual responsibility meant supporting the Israeli government, no matter what it did, and standing firm against any Palestinian demands for self-determination. Now the climate of American Jewish opinion is rapidly changing, complicating that crucial question: “What sins? Precisely what should we, as a community, feel guilty and atone for?”"
And:
"And the holy day this year finds a surprisingly wide variety of opinions is in the air. More and more U.S. Jews every day are beginning to raise questions, criticize Israeli policies, and confess that far too many of those policies are both a strategic and a moral error. A growing number would even call it a sin.
We can expect to hear that kind of message even from some synagogue pulpits this year. Nearly 600 rabbis have joined the Rabbinic Cabinet of J Street, the nation’s most prominent Jewish pro-Israel, pro-peace group. The Cabinet is circulating a letter that acknowledges Israel’s “dangerous behavior,” cites the biblical injunction to “rebuke your kin,” and calls for the Israelis to make “difficult compromises and mutual sacrifice.” That’s a message hardly any rabbi would have dared endorse publicly just a few years ago. Now an impressively long and growing list of rabbis, including nine former presidents of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, have signed the letter."
Intolerance at its worst
Not only has France now outlawed the burqa but relentlessly literally driven out and expelled some of its Romas back to Roumania.
The EU has roundly condemned Frances' actions. Rightly so.
In FP David Rothkopf comments in "France's real threat from within":
"By a vote of 246 to 1 the French Senate voted Tuesday to excise the word's liberté, égalité, and fraternité from the country's soul. With the vote to ban the wearing of burqas in public, France took a step back into the Dark Ages. Furthermore, the country revealed a deep seated insecurity about the strength of its culture… while at the same time weakening that culture by reinforcing intolerance.
It is estimated that fewer than 2,000 Muslim women in France would be affected by this law. This only underscores the degree of fear driving French lawmakers. Do they really believe these 1,900 or so women can actually undermine thousands of years of national culture or threaten France's national identity? If so, the problem isn't burqas. It's paranoia. Or it's a sense that French culture is soufflé -- so fragile it will fall at the sound of the first whisper.
Combine this with the French government's recent treatment of Romas and you have a pattern of behavior that echoes many of the darkest motifs in European history. Forcing my father to wear a yellow star on the streets of Vienna when he was a boy is the flip side of this coin. Protecting social "purity" by identifying an ethnic minority or by denying that minority -- in this case members of France's second largest religious group -- the right of self-expression is the same appalling thing. (For this reason I would encourage every Jew or Jewish group to stand alongside Muslim leaders opposed to these actions, but I fear it would only further coalesce the supporters of the ban.)
If there is a place for intolerance in civilized society it must be limited to intolerance of intolerance itself. President Nicolas Sarkozy and the people of France should indeed be on their guard. There is a dire threat to France within their midsts, but it does not wear a burqa."
The EU has roundly condemned Frances' actions. Rightly so.
In FP David Rothkopf comments in "France's real threat from within":
"By a vote of 246 to 1 the French Senate voted Tuesday to excise the word's liberté, égalité, and fraternité from the country's soul. With the vote to ban the wearing of burqas in public, France took a step back into the Dark Ages. Furthermore, the country revealed a deep seated insecurity about the strength of its culture… while at the same time weakening that culture by reinforcing intolerance.
It is estimated that fewer than 2,000 Muslim women in France would be affected by this law. This only underscores the degree of fear driving French lawmakers. Do they really believe these 1,900 or so women can actually undermine thousands of years of national culture or threaten France's national identity? If so, the problem isn't burqas. It's paranoia. Or it's a sense that French culture is soufflé -- so fragile it will fall at the sound of the first whisper.
Combine this with the French government's recent treatment of Romas and you have a pattern of behavior that echoes many of the darkest motifs in European history. Forcing my father to wear a yellow star on the streets of Vienna when he was a boy is the flip side of this coin. Protecting social "purity" by identifying an ethnic minority or by denying that minority -- in this case members of France's second largest religious group -- the right of self-expression is the same appalling thing. (For this reason I would encourage every Jew or Jewish group to stand alongside Muslim leaders opposed to these actions, but I fear it would only further coalesce the supporters of the ban.)
If there is a place for intolerance in civilized society it must be limited to intolerance of intolerance itself. President Nicolas Sarkozy and the people of France should indeed be on their guard. There is a dire threat to France within their midsts, but it does not wear a burqa."
Census: More Americans poor than ever
Let it not be said that America isn't a land of extremes. Untold riches in the hands of a relatively few. Profligate spending by the rich. Just think of the recent wedding of Chelsea Clinton.
But, as this piece on McClatchy reveals, the number of poor in America is growing:
"The withering recession pushed the number of Americans who are living in poverty to a 51-year high in 2009 and left a record 50.7 million people without health insurance last year, the Census Bureau announced Thursday.
The 43.6 million Americans who were poor in 2009 — up from 39.8 million the year before — was the most since poverty estimates were first published in 1959. The national poverty rate of 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008, was the highest since 1994."
But, as this piece on McClatchy reveals, the number of poor in America is growing:
"The withering recession pushed the number of Americans who are living in poverty to a 51-year high in 2009 and left a record 50.7 million people without health insurance last year, the Census Bureau announced Thursday.
The 43.6 million Americans who were poor in 2009 — up from 39.8 million the year before — was the most since poverty estimates were first published in 1959. The national poverty rate of 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008, was the highest since 1994."
Friday, September 17, 2010
Bad Wars Aren't Possible Unless Good People Back Them
Gad-fly Mike Moore at Michael Moore.com takes an axe to the American liberal press for its blind and un-swerving and uncritical support for the Bush Administration mounting the Iraq War:
"We invaded Iraq because most Americans -- including good liberals like Al Franken, Nicholas Kristof & Bill Keller of the New York Times, David Remnick of the New Yorker, the editors of the Atlantic and the New Republic, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and John Kerry -- wanted to.
Of course the actual blame for the war goes to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz because they ordered the "precision" bombing, the invasion, the occupation, and the theft of our national treasury. I have no doubt that history will record that they committed the undisputed Crime of the (young) Century.
But how did they get away with it, considering they'd lost the presidential election by 543,895 votes? They also knew that the majority of the country probably wouldn't back them in such a war (a Newsweek poll in October 2002 showed 61% thought it was "very important" for Bush to get formal approval from the United Nations for war -- but that never happened). So how did they pull it off?
They did it by getting liberal voices to support their war. They did it by creating the look of bipartisanship. And they convinced other countries' leaders like Tony Blair to get on board and make it look like it wasn't just our intelligence agencies cooking the evidence.
But most importantly, they made this war (and its public support) happen because Bush & Co. had brilliantly conned the New York Times into running a bunch of phony front-page stories about how Saddam Hussein had all these "weapons of mass destruction." The administration gleefully fed this false information not to Fox News or the Washington Times. They gave it to America's leading liberal newspaper. They must have had a laugh riot each morning when they'd pick up the New York Times and read the nearly word-for-word scenarios and talking points that they had concocted in the Vice President's office.
I blame the New York Times more for this war than Bush. I expected Bush and Cheney to try and get away with what they did. But the Times -- and the rest of the press -- was supposed to STOP them by doing their job: Be a relentless watchdog of government and business -- and then inform the public so we can take action."
"We invaded Iraq because most Americans -- including good liberals like Al Franken, Nicholas Kristof & Bill Keller of the New York Times, David Remnick of the New Yorker, the editors of the Atlantic and the New Republic, Harvey Weinstein, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and John Kerry -- wanted to.
Of course the actual blame for the war goes to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz because they ordered the "precision" bombing, the invasion, the occupation, and the theft of our national treasury. I have no doubt that history will record that they committed the undisputed Crime of the (young) Century.
But how did they get away with it, considering they'd lost the presidential election by 543,895 votes? They also knew that the majority of the country probably wouldn't back them in such a war (a Newsweek poll in October 2002 showed 61% thought it was "very important" for Bush to get formal approval from the United Nations for war -- but that never happened). So how did they pull it off?
They did it by getting liberal voices to support their war. They did it by creating the look of bipartisanship. And they convinced other countries' leaders like Tony Blair to get on board and make it look like it wasn't just our intelligence agencies cooking the evidence.
But most importantly, they made this war (and its public support) happen because Bush & Co. had brilliantly conned the New York Times into running a bunch of phony front-page stories about how Saddam Hussein had all these "weapons of mass destruction." The administration gleefully fed this false information not to Fox News or the Washington Times. They gave it to America's leading liberal newspaper. They must have had a laugh riot each morning when they'd pick up the New York Times and read the nearly word-for-word scenarios and talking points that they had concocted in the Vice President's office.
I blame the New York Times more for this war than Bush. I expected Bush and Cheney to try and get away with what they did. But the Times -- and the rest of the press -- was supposed to STOP them by doing their job: Be a relentless watchdog of government and business -- and then inform the public so we can take action."
The [forgotten?] 176 men still at Gitmo
The media has passed on from "covering" Gitmo. Whatever the reason, there are still 176 men detained there - most of them for many years already and seemingly no prospect of being released anytime soon either.
Andy Worthington has for years been involved with the prisoners at Gitmo and written about the prison and the people in it: see previous posts on this blog.
Worthington is now planning on 8 detailed pieces focusing on the remaining prisoners, as he explains here on his blog:
"Over the next month, in an attempt to focus attention more closely on Guantánamo, and on the remaining prisoners who are held there, I’ll be publishing an eight-part series of articles (in conjunction with Cageprisoners, for whom I work as a Senior Researcher), telling, for the first time, the stories of the 176 men who are still held.
The series begins with the stories of 20 men described by the US authorities as part of the “Dirty Thirty,” seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001, who are mostly regarded as having been bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, even though there is copious evidence that these allegations were produced by a number of prisoners who were tortured — including Mohammed al-Qahtani, for whom Guantánamo’s version of the CIA’s torture program was devised in the fall of 2002, and approved by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The articles to follow, covering the rest of the prisoners still held, deal with those seized in particular locations: two cover prisoners seized in Afghanistan; two more tell the stories of prisoners seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001; two deal with prisoners seized in Pakistan; and the final article covers the “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006, and other prisoners, seized in a variety of countries, who were subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and imprisonment in secret CIA prisons.
In reading these articles, I hope that readers will be able to discover the stories of the men behind the statistics of Guantánamo — and the still-repeated and thoroughly unfounded claims that the prison holds “the worst of the worst.” In the accounts, readers will encounter a variety of different individuals. Many of these men traveled to Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, and suddenly found themselves to be enemies of America in a “War on Terror,” and others were not even involved in any kind of military conflict, and were, instead, students, humanitarian aid workers, missionaries, or economic migrants, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Many of the 176 men who were still in Guantánamo at the time of writing were rounded up for the substantial bounty payments (averaging $5000 a head) that were paid by the US military for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects,” and, given that 596 men have already been released, it should be profoundly troubling that the majority of the men still held were either foot soldiers in an inter-Muslim civil war that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks, or civilians still struggling to establish their innocence."
Andy Worthington has for years been involved with the prisoners at Gitmo and written about the prison and the people in it: see previous posts on this blog.
Worthington is now planning on 8 detailed pieces focusing on the remaining prisoners, as he explains here on his blog:
"Over the next month, in an attempt to focus attention more closely on Guantánamo, and on the remaining prisoners who are held there, I’ll be publishing an eight-part series of articles (in conjunction with Cageprisoners, for whom I work as a Senior Researcher), telling, for the first time, the stories of the 176 men who are still held.
The series begins with the stories of 20 men described by the US authorities as part of the “Dirty Thirty,” seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001, who are mostly regarded as having been bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, even though there is copious evidence that these allegations were produced by a number of prisoners who were tortured — including Mohammed al-Qahtani, for whom Guantánamo’s version of the CIA’s torture program was devised in the fall of 2002, and approved by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The articles to follow, covering the rest of the prisoners still held, deal with those seized in particular locations: two cover prisoners seized in Afghanistan; two more tell the stories of prisoners seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001; two deal with prisoners seized in Pakistan; and the final article covers the “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006, and other prisoners, seized in a variety of countries, who were subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and imprisonment in secret CIA prisons.
In reading these articles, I hope that readers will be able to discover the stories of the men behind the statistics of Guantánamo — and the still-repeated and thoroughly unfounded claims that the prison holds “the worst of the worst.” In the accounts, readers will encounter a variety of different individuals. Many of these men traveled to Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, and suddenly found themselves to be enemies of America in a “War on Terror,” and others were not even involved in any kind of military conflict, and were, instead, students, humanitarian aid workers, missionaries, or economic migrants, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Many of the 176 men who were still in Guantánamo at the time of writing were rounded up for the substantial bounty payments (averaging $5000 a head) that were paid by the US military for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects,” and, given that 596 men have already been released, it should be profoundly troubling that the majority of the men still held were either foot soldiers in an inter-Muslim civil war that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks, or civilians still struggling to establish their innocence."
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Where did she come from?
Has the US spawned Palin Mark II?
The latest GOP candidate - from the Tea Party - seems even more incredible than Sarah Palin. If that is possible!
Professor of Literature at University of America in Washington DC, Charles Larson, writing on CounterPunch provides a pen-portrait of the newest candidate on the American scene, Christine O'Donnell:
"Where do Conservatives find these candidates? That is the troubling question that we wake up to the morning after the final state primaries. Christine O’Donnell—newly anointed as the GOP candidate for the senate in Delaware this fall—actually makes Sarah Palin look like a genius. True, she did have the support of the sometime Governor of Alaska, but you have to ask yourself why. Was this blessing simply because Palin realized that O’Donnell would make her look smart for a change?
O’Donnell, who may be the weirdest (read the most naive) person ever to be listed on a ballot for such high office, is, apparently, exactly what the Tea Party admires. She’s one step above poverty, living on campaign donations, with a train wreck past concerning tax questions, lies and distortions which are the centerpiece of the Tea Party Peeps. Make up your own reality. If you can’t get the United States to eliminate all taxes, well, then, bilk the system in whatever way you can.
But, these actual gaffs and distortions of O’Donnell’s life and career pale in the face of some of her beliefs. Obviously she doesn’t believe in evolution but creationism—hardly a big surprise given the percentage of people in the United States who share that belief--but, worse, she believes that the Bible is to be taken literally. Presumably, that means that she also supports slavery, though no one has yet asked her.
With such Biblical literalism, consider Christine O’Donnell’s feelings about masturbation. She’s against it. Why? As she said several years ago when she was the head of a splinter abstinence group, masturbation is the same adultery. This may be news to eleven or twelve-year-old boys who have just discovered that their penises actually have two functions. The question is: Are these boys marked for life as adulterers?
One thing is certain: O’Donnell’s anti-masturbation platform is going to add some levity to this fall’s political morass."
The latest GOP candidate - from the Tea Party - seems even more incredible than Sarah Palin. If that is possible!
Professor of Literature at University of America in Washington DC, Charles Larson, writing on CounterPunch provides a pen-portrait of the newest candidate on the American scene, Christine O'Donnell:
"Where do Conservatives find these candidates? That is the troubling question that we wake up to the morning after the final state primaries. Christine O’Donnell—newly anointed as the GOP candidate for the senate in Delaware this fall—actually makes Sarah Palin look like a genius. True, she did have the support of the sometime Governor of Alaska, but you have to ask yourself why. Was this blessing simply because Palin realized that O’Donnell would make her look smart for a change?
O’Donnell, who may be the weirdest (read the most naive) person ever to be listed on a ballot for such high office, is, apparently, exactly what the Tea Party admires. She’s one step above poverty, living on campaign donations, with a train wreck past concerning tax questions, lies and distortions which are the centerpiece of the Tea Party Peeps. Make up your own reality. If you can’t get the United States to eliminate all taxes, well, then, bilk the system in whatever way you can.
But, these actual gaffs and distortions of O’Donnell’s life and career pale in the face of some of her beliefs. Obviously she doesn’t believe in evolution but creationism—hardly a big surprise given the percentage of people in the United States who share that belief--but, worse, she believes that the Bible is to be taken literally. Presumably, that means that she also supports slavery, though no one has yet asked her.
With such Biblical literalism, consider Christine O’Donnell’s feelings about masturbation. She’s against it. Why? As she said several years ago when she was the head of a splinter abstinence group, masturbation is the same adultery. This may be news to eleven or twelve-year-old boys who have just discovered that their penises actually have two functions. The question is: Are these boys marked for life as adulterers?
One thing is certain: O’Donnell’s anti-masturbation platform is going to add some levity to this fall’s political morass."
Afghanistan: An election farce
Jason Thomas was regional manager for the Central Asia Development Group, implementing a USAID program in south-east Afghanistan.
With so-called elections coming up in Afghanistan this weekend, Thomas, writing an op-ed piece published in The Age, describes them as a farce - given the corruption of President Karzai, his cronies and the Afghan regime.
"The Afghan parliamentary elections this weekend should be a proud moment for the troubled nation. Yet democracy in Afghanistan is wasted because of President Hamid Karzai's refusal to tackle corruption. The fact is, the Taliban are out-governing the Karzai government, whose warlord and elite cronies continue to run their own corrupt fiefdoms in the provinces."
***
"United States and Australian troops are not only fighting the Taliban, but also combating rampant corruption, thuggish Afghan National Police and a population that welcomes foreigners with open arms for as long as it is of value to them."
With so-called elections coming up in Afghanistan this weekend, Thomas, writing an op-ed piece published in The Age, describes them as a farce - given the corruption of President Karzai, his cronies and the Afghan regime.
"The Afghan parliamentary elections this weekend should be a proud moment for the troubled nation. Yet democracy in Afghanistan is wasted because of President Hamid Karzai's refusal to tackle corruption. The fact is, the Taliban are out-governing the Karzai government, whose warlord and elite cronies continue to run their own corrupt fiefdoms in the provinces."
***
"United States and Australian troops are not only fighting the Taliban, but also combating rampant corruption, thuggish Afghan National Police and a population that welcomes foreigners with open arms for as long as it is of value to them."
Questioning how healthy or beneficial the food we eat is
Perhaps it won't come as a surprise to some, but most people will be appalled to learn that the food we eat may not, despite what is touted for it, be all that good or healthy for us.
CommonDreams [republishing a Reuters piece] reports on a the sway and influence the food industry in the US has over the Food & Drug Administration - and the direct effect for we, the consumers.
"The food industry is jeopardizing U.S. public health by withholding information from food safety investigators or pressuring regulators to withdraw or alter policy designed to protect consumers, said a survey of government scientists and inspectors.
A study released on Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists found one-in-four of those surveyed have seen corporate interests forcing their agency to withdraw or modify a policy or action designed to protect consumers during the past year.
Pressure to overhaul the food safety system has grown following several high-profile outbreaks involving lettuce, peppers, eggs, peanuts, spinach and most recently eggs that have sickened thousands and shaken the public's confidence in the safety of the food supply."
The 44-question survey, conducted earlier this year, also found more than 38 percent of those respondents said public health has been hurt by businesses influencing food safety policy at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Agriculture Department."
Iraq: The Legacy of those "Days of Awe"
With much fanfare the USA withdrew its combat troops from Iraq at the end of last month.
Never mind that the place is still totally dysfunctional, has had no Government for some 6 months, bombings continue in Baghdad and elsewhere and the American presence in the country remains substantial.
But there is more than that - as Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, writes in a piece "Iraq's Ignored Victims" in the New York Review of Books:
"President Obama announced on August 31 that the main force of US troops has left Iraq, leaving about 50,000 Americans to help maintain the peace and support the Iraqi army and police. This was good news for American servicemen, their families, and the nation. But this departure should not be accompanied by a withdrawal of our support for the Iraqi people, particularly the millions of Iraqis who have fled their homes and who continue to live in limbo both inside Iraq and in other countries. During a recent mission to observe the situation of these displaced Iraqis, this reality became painfully clear to me.
The humanitarian consequences of this seven-year war on Iraqi civilians are too often unreported. Since 2003, 2.5 million Iraqis have fled the country, mainly to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, while another two million have been dislocated inside Iraq, many of whom are now living in makeshift camps on the outskirts of Baghdad and other cities. Neighboring countries have by and large been willing to allow in fleeing Iraqis, though often without offering them any legal status; and this influx has created severe strains on their own populations and resources. To be fair, the international community, led by the United States, has provided basic assistance to these Iraqis and a small number have been resettled in third countries, including in the US and Europe, but a long-term solution to this mass displacement has been elusive."
Never mind that the place is still totally dysfunctional, has had no Government for some 6 months, bombings continue in Baghdad and elsewhere and the American presence in the country remains substantial.
But there is more than that - as Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, writes in a piece "Iraq's Ignored Victims" in the New York Review of Books:
"President Obama announced on August 31 that the main force of US troops has left Iraq, leaving about 50,000 Americans to help maintain the peace and support the Iraqi army and police. This was good news for American servicemen, their families, and the nation. But this departure should not be accompanied by a withdrawal of our support for the Iraqi people, particularly the millions of Iraqis who have fled their homes and who continue to live in limbo both inside Iraq and in other countries. During a recent mission to observe the situation of these displaced Iraqis, this reality became painfully clear to me.
The humanitarian consequences of this seven-year war on Iraqi civilians are too often unreported. Since 2003, 2.5 million Iraqis have fled the country, mainly to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, while another two million have been dislocated inside Iraq, many of whom are now living in makeshift camps on the outskirts of Baghdad and other cities. Neighboring countries have by and large been willing to allow in fleeing Iraqis, though often without offering them any legal status; and this influx has created severe strains on their own populations and resources. To be fair, the international community, led by the United States, has provided basic assistance to these Iraqis and a small number have been resettled in third countries, including in the US and Europe, but a long-term solution to this mass displacement has been elusive."
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