A very slow awakening to a seismic shift to the new class war

Frank Rich used to write an regular op-ed column in The New York Times.   He is now at New York Magazine.  Rich is no young radical hot-head, so his latest column "The Class War has Begun" is ever so more valuable as an insight into a change of thinking in the USA about the Occupy Wall Street movement and its effect - perhaps long-lasting.

"What’s as intriguing as Occupy Wall Street itself is that once again our Establishment, left, right, and center, did not see the wave coming or understand what it meant as it broke. Maybe it’s just human nature and the power of denial, or maybe it’s a stubborn strain of all-­American optimism, but at each aftershock since the fall of Lehman Brothers, those at the top have preferred not to see what they didn’t want to see. And so for the first three weeks, the protests were alternately ignored, patronized, dismissed, and insulted by politicians and the mainstream news media as a neo-Woodstock for wannabe collegiate rebels without a cause—and not just in Fox-land. CNN’s new prime-time hopeful, Erin Burnett, ridiculed the protesters as bongo-playing know-nothings; a dispatch in The New Republic called them “an unfocused rabble of ragtag discontents.” Those who did express sympathy for Occupy Wall Street tended to pat it on the head before going on to fault it for being leaderless, disorganized, and inchoate in its agenda.

Despite such dismissals, the movement, abetted by made-for-YouTube confrontations with police, started to connect with the mass public much as the Bonus Army did with a newsreel audience. The week after a Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that “no one seems to care very much” about the “collection of ne’er-do-wells” congregating in Zuccotti Park, the paper released its own poll, in collaboration with NBC News, finding that 37 percent of Americans supported the protesters, 25 percent had no opinion, and just 18 percent opposed them. The approval numbers for Occupy Wall Street published in Time and Reuters were even higher—hitting 54 percent in Time. Apparently some of those dopey kids, staggering under student loans and bereft of job prospects, have lots of parents and friends of all ages who understand exactly what they’re talking about."

President Assad. Gadaffi Mark II?

Whilst there are increasing calls to now "do" the same thing in and to Syria to what was done to Libya over the last months - culminating in the dictator Gadaffi being killed - not all that much is known about President Assad.   He certainly isn't a barking mad, erratic individual as Gadaffi clearly was.

The Telegraph (in London) met with Assad and conveys an "interesting" portrait of the Syrian leader....

"When you go to see an Arab ruler, you expect vast, over-the-top palaces, battalions of guards, ring after ring of security checks and massive, deadening protocol. You expect to wait hours in return for a few stilted minutes in a gilded reception room, surrounded by officials, flunkies and state TV cameras. You expect a monologue, not a conversation. Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, was quite different.
We drove straight up to a single-storey building the size of a large suburban bungalow. The President was waiting in the hall to meet us.

In his small study, Assad was wearing jeans. It was Friday, the main protest day in Syria. But the man at the centre of it all, the man they wanted to destroy, looked pretty relaxed.

He thought the protests were diminishing. But the opposition appears to have been energised by Muammar Gaddafi's demise.

Yet Assad still has a number of cards that Libya's recently deceased ruler never possessed. Unlike Libya, the country is neither religiously nor ethnically homogeneous. The regime appears still to be persuading many of Syria's Christian and Alawite minority - together with some in the Sunni majority - that it is their best choice.

On Thursday night, the beginning of the Muslim weekend, Damascus's Old City was heaving with people having a good time. Men and women were mixing freely. Alcohol was widely available. A pair of Christian Orthodox priests walked through the crowded alleys and small Christian shrines were tucked away in the corners. The regime is successfully pushing the message that all this is at risk. ''I don't like Assad, but I am worried that what follows could be worse,'' one of the partygoers said.

Assad himself could not be further from a ranting Gaddafi-like Arab dictator. His English is perfect - he lived for two years in London, where he met his wife.

In conversation he was open, even at times frank. ''Many mistakes,'' he admitted, had been made by the security forces - although no one, it seems, has been brought to book for them.

A former president of the Syrian Computer Society, he sometimes explained things in computer terms. Comparing Syria's leadership with that of a Western country, he said, was like comparing a Mac with a PC.
''Both computers do the same job, but they don't understand each other,'' he said. ''You have to translate according to my operating system, or culture.''

Assad lives in a relatively small house in a normal, albeit guarded, street. He believes that his modest lifestyle is another component of his appeal.

''There is a legitimacy according to elections and there is popular legitimacy,'' he said. ''The first component of popular legitimacy is your personal life.

''It is very important how you live. I live a normal life. I drive my own car, we have neighbours, I take my kids to school. That's why I am popular. It is very important to live this way - that is the Syrian style.''

Former Gitmo Chief Prosecutor tells it as it is

When the Chief Prosecutor at Gitmo says torture was being used at the facility - now "celebrating" 10 years of its existence - and that Bush Administration officials should be pursued for encouraging torture of inmates, then you know that something definitely needs to be done.

"The former chief prosecutor for the US government at Guantánamo Bay has accused the administration he served of operating a "law-free zone" there, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the order to establish the detention camp on Cuba.

Retired air force colonel Morris Davis resigned in October 2007 in protest against interrogation methods at Guantánamo, and has made his remarks in the lead-up to 13 November, the anniversary of President George W Bush's executive order setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects.

Davis said that the methods of interrogation used on Guantánamo detainees – which he described as "torture" – were in breach of the US's own statutes on torture, and added: "If torture is a crime, it should be prosecuted."

The US military, he said, had been ordered to use unlawful methods of interrogation by "civilian politicians, and to do so against our will and judgment"."

Libya ripe for the picking

Perhaps not surprising, but it didn't take long for the tentacles of capitalism to take off for Libya.    A country ripe for the picking.....

"The guns in Libya have barely quieted, and NATO’s military assistance to the rebellion that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi will not end officially until Monday. But a new invasion force is already plotting its own landing on the shores of Tripoli.

Western security, construction and infrastructure companies that see profit-making opportunities receding in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned their sights on Libya, now free of four decades of dictatorship. Entrepreneurs are abuzz about the business potential of a country with huge needs and the oil to pay for them, plus the competitive advantage of Libyan gratitude toward the United States and its NATO partners.

A week before Colonel Qaddafi’s death on Oct. 20, a delegation from 80 French companies arrived in Tripoli to meet officials of the Transitional National Council, the interim government. Last week, the new British defense minister, Philip Hammond, urged British companies to “pack their suitcases” and head to Tripoli.

When Colonel Qaddafi’s body was still on public display, a British venture, Trango Special Projects, pitched its support services to companies looking to cash in. “Whilst speculation continues regarding Qaddafi’s killing,” Trango said on its Web site, “are you and your business ready to return to Libya?”

The company offered rooms at its Tripoli villa and transport “by our discreet mixed British and Libyan security team.” Its discretion does not come cheaply. The price for a 10-minute ride from the airport, for which the ordinary cab fare is about $5, is listed at 500 British pounds, or about $800.

“There is a gold rush of sorts taking place right now,” said David Hamod, president and chief executive officer of the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce. “And the Europeans and Asians are way ahead of us. I’m getting calls daily from members of the business community in Libya. They say, ‘Come back, we don’t want the Americans to lose out.’ ”

Waste not, want not....as we "celebrate" 7 billion of us

Read the rather startling and frightening stats in this piece and you will readily appreciate that certainly those with the means in the world not only must do something to address the waste of food, but one can actually save money by being judicious in what one does with the food we have.

"Remember when your parents told you that you needed to finish your dinner, eat your greens or not play with your food because ''there are starving kids in Africa''?

Well, with the world's population set to hit 7 billion tomorrow, there are now twice as many starving kids in Africa and other Third World countries and we are still wasting just as much, if not more, food in the First World.

In fact, a quarter of the food the developed world wastes would be enough to feed the Third World. How's that for a sobering fact. Feel like eating your greens now, or are you still not sure how it relates to you?

Let's look at how fast the world's population is rising. Last week the United Nations released its State of World Population 2011 report, which estimates that by tomorrow there will be 7 billion people on the face of the planet. That's almost twice as many as were sharing Earth's scarce resources in 1959 and seven times the world's population in 1804. So in slightly more than 50 years we've gone from a global population of 4 billion to 7 billion.

The globe's resources haven't increased at the same rate. That suggests that at some time, possibly quite soon, we might reach breaking point if we don't work out smart ways to grow things or consume them in a sustainable way.

There is no better starting point than food. And if you still need a personal connection, let's look at the hip pocket."

There is one law for the rich....and one for the poor

Glenn Greenwald, lawyer and now well-known blogger, at Salon, and commentator, has just had a new book of his released, "With Liberty and Justice for Some".  

An excerpt:

"As a litigator who practiced for more than a decade in federal and state courts across the country, I’ve long been aware of the inequities that pervade the American justice system. The rich enjoy superior legal representation and therefore much better prospects for success in court than the poor.

The powerful are treated with far more deference by judges than the powerless. The same cultural, socioeconomic, and demographic biases that plague society generally also infect the legal process. Few people who have had any interaction with the justice system would dispute this.

Still, only when I began regularly writing about politics did I realize that the problem extends well beyond such inequities. The issue isn’t just that those with political influence and financial power have some advantages in our judicial system. It is much worse than that. Those with political and financial clout are routinely allowed to break the law with no legal repercussions whatsoever. Often they need not even exploit their access to superior lawyers because they don’t see the inside of a courtroom in the first place—not even when they get caught in the most egregious criminality. The criminal justice system is now almost exclusively reserved for ordinary Americans, who are routinely subjected to harsh punishments even for the pettiest of offenses.

The wiretapping scandal of 2005 provides a perfect illustration. In December of that year, the New York Times revealed that officials in George W. Bush’s administration were eavesdropping on Americans’ telephone calls and e-mails without warrants or judicial oversight: a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine for each offense. The lawbreaking could not have been clearer, yet virtually nobody in the political and media class was willing to call those acts “criminal,” much less to demand legal investigations or prosecutions.

This was a depressingly familiar pattern for several decades and became particularly pronounced over the last one. America’s political and business establishment presided over a series of extraordinary crimes that brought the United States political disgrace and financial ruin: the creation of a global torture regime; the systematic plundering by Wall Street, leading to the 2008 economic crisis; the serial obstruction of justice by high-ranking political officials; the fraudulent home foreclosures by the nation’s largest banks. Yet in almost every instance, the perpetrators were shielded from any legal consequences. As these events clearly demonstrate, America’s political culture not only provides strategic advantages in the legal system to political and financial elites, but now actually grants them immunity when they knowingly break the law. This license—awarded by the same political class that created the world’s largest and most merciless prison state for its poorest and most powerless citizens— represents not just a departure from the rule of law but a fundamental repudiation of it."

Health! A human right!

Interesting new report just released by the United Nations.    Conclusion?  Health is a human right.   And why not?

"A report presented to the United Nations General Assembly this morning by Anand Grover, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, which exposes the adverse effects criminalization and legal restrictions have on various health issues, is an important milestone for those working to promote sexual and reproductive health and human rights worldwide. Building on existing research and analysis, this report poses a fundamental challenge to laws and policies that limit access to abortion, dictate a woman’s conduct during pregnancy, restrict comprehensive sexuality education, and act as a barrier to contraception and family planning information and services. It examines the disproportionate impact these laws and policies have on those who already suffer human rights violations and the denial of adequate heath care (e.g., women, impoverished peoples) and emphasizes individuals’ right to dignity and autonomy in health-related decision making.

Grover calls for the immediate removal of all impeding restrictions to abortion, full access to modern contraceptive methods, and complete and accurate information on sexual and reproductive health."

Following the income surge...for the 1%

The figures speak for themselves...and go a long way in showing why there is an ever-growing Occupy Wall Street movement.    Fairness is a word which immediately comes to mind when one reads how the top 1% in the USA have reaped a veritable bonanza in the growth of their income......compared to the rest of us.

"Income for the richest Americans has grown 15 times faster than for the poor since 1979, a government study showed, as a poll out Wednesday highlighted deep anxiety over uneven wealth distribution a year ahead of US elections.

The income disparity, and concentration of more than 80 percent of US income wealth in the top 20 percent of earners, highlights the volatility in the race for the White House as President Barack Obama's Republican challengers push plans to reduce taxes for the wealthy as a way to prime the sluggish economy.

From 1979 to 2007, the wealthiest one percent of Americans more than doubled their share of the nation's income, from nearly eight percent to 17 percent, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report released Tuesday.

"Income after transfers and federal taxes for households at the higher end of the income scale rose much more rapidly than income for households in the middle and at the lower end of the income scale," it said.

Government policy over the years has become less redistributive, and "the equalizing effect of transfers and taxes on household income was smaller in 2007 than it had been in 1979," the CBO added.

For the wealthiest one percent of the population, average after-tax household income grew by 275 percent during the period, compared with just 18 percent for the poorest 20 percent."

The ever-changing standing of America in the globe

Professor Stephen Walt, writing in The National Interest, reflects on America's standing in the world over the years, but more particularly how things are shaping up in the future.    Bottom line it will be China which will dominate the world.  Not the USA.   That era has well and truly passed.

"The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of new power centers in several key regions. The most obvious example is China, whose explosive economic growth is undoubtedly the most significant geopolitical development in decades. The United States has been the world’s largest economy since roughly 1900, but China is likely to overtake America in total economic output no later than 2025. Beijing’s military budget is rising by roughly 10 percent per year, and it is likely to convert even more of its wealth into military assets in the future. If China is like all previous great powers—including the United States—its definition of “vital” interests will grow as its power increases—and it will try to use its growing muscle to protect an expanding sphere of influence. Given its dependence on raw-material imports (especially energy) and export-led growth, prudent Chinese leaders will want to make sure that no one is in a position to deny them access to the resources and markets on which their future prosperity and political stability depend.

This situation will encourage Beijing to challenge the current U.S. role in Asia. Such ambitions should not be hard for Americans to understand, given that the United States has sought to exclude outside powers from its own neighborhood ever since the Monroe Doctrine. By a similar logic, China is bound to feel uneasy if Washington maintains a network of Asian alliances and a sizable military presence in East Asia and the Indian Ocean. Over time, Beijing will try to convince other Asian states to abandon ties with America, and Washington will almost certainly resist these efforts. An intense security competition will follow.

The security arrangements that defined the American Era are also being undermined by the rise of several key regional powers, most notably India, Turkey and Brazil. Each of these states has achieved impressive economic growth over the past decade, and each has become more willing to chart its own course independent of Washington’s wishes. None of them are on the verge of becoming true global powers—Brazil’s GDP is still less than one-sixth that of the United States, and India and Turkey’s economies are even smaller—but each has become increasingly influential within its own region. This gradual diffusion of power is also seen in the recent expansion of the G-8 into the so-called G-20, a tacit recognition that the global institutions created after World War II are increasingly obsolete and in need of reform.

Each of these new regional powers is a democracy, which means that its leaders pay close attention to public opinion. As a result, the United States can no longer rely on cozy relations with privileged elites or military juntas. When only 10–15 percent of Turkish citizens have a “favorable” view of America, it becomes easier to understand why Ankara refused to let Washington use its territory to attack Iraq in 2003 and why Turkey has curtailed its previously close ties with Israel despite repeated U.S. efforts to heal the rift. Anti-Americanism is less prevalent in Brazil and India, but their democratically elected leaders are hardly deferential to Washington either."

Now it's Rupert the Scrooge. Journos have to pay to read their own pieces

Ah, good sound capitalism - forget about the underlying Occupy Wall Street movement and the big-money makers - and here is Rupert Murdoch, already rightly on the nose, now requiring his journalists to pay to read what they have written "hidden" behind a paywall.

"It might be a new digital experience for readers but News Ltd staff are outraged that they'll have to pay to access their own work, reports Adam Brereton

News Limited staff are unhappy after being required to pay to read their own content behind The Australian’s new paywall. In an email sent to News staff last week, corporate affairs have offered the same three-month trial being marketed to ordinary punters, but with a "special staff discount of up to 50 per cent".

One News Limited employee told New Matilda he thought the payment was "a bit of a joke … why should we have to pay for something we worked to produce?"

Although staff have been aware of the switch to paywalled content for some months, having to sign up to read their own premier masthead was a development "sprung on us in the last couple of days".

The on-off "affair " with the iPad

Mondoweiss, a blog well worth reading and subscribing to, has a somewhat whimsical piece by Phil Weiss "My wife forswears the groovy Ipad forever".

"I came down to breakfast at my parents' house yesterday and my wife said, "Have you seen my Ipad?" "Have you looked in the car?" "All through it." "What about your bag?" She rolled her eyes.

I went out to the car and searched it top to bottom, under the seats, etc. I was a little frantic. Not again. Four months ago my wife fell asleep on the train and someone snatched her Ipad out of her bag. We bought her another one.

On Saturday there was a funeral in my wife's family in Philadelphia and we'd driven around from one event to another with the Ipad in the front seat. I'd locked up, at the church, and at the club for the reception, then later at the mourning family's house-- but the windows were down a little because the dogs were in the back. Then my wife had opened the doors to get the dogs out...

My Toshiba laptop had been in the car the whole time, too, but of course no one had snagged that.

I found my wife in the living room. I said, "Find out where the Apple store is, let's go out and buy you a new one right now." She shook her head solemnly. "No. I'm not doing that. I'm not getting another one. I don't want to have the groovy trendy object that everybody wants any more." "But you love it and use it." "I don't want to have to worry about it all the time. It interferes with my human relationships. It's like when I used to go to parties in New York and a woman would be running back to the bedroom every hour to make sure no one had run off with her Prada coat. That's really stupid. You don't live life the way you want to."

I searched the car again and when I came back in my wife was in the kitchen with my mother, and my mother was pressing money on her. "Get back on the horse," she said. "Here's $60 to your new Ipad." "No," my wife said. "I mean I'll take the money, but I'm not buying another one of those stupid things."

I reheated some coffee. The Ipad was sitting by the microwave. I'd either brought it into the house the night before, boozily, and forgotten about it; or my dad, who's dottier than I am, had borrowed it and then brought it back downstairs. I brought it into my wife. She pressed the money back on my mother, and she's been using her Ipad ever since."

Whack! Take that Tony!

"The prospect of a vote on statehood for Palestine in the U.N. is reinvigorating multi-lateral Middle East diplomacy. However, there remain considerable complications -- notably, Tony Blair. Barely pausing from sending Tornado F3's to release Shadow missiles over Iraq, Blair blithely glided into the position of Mid-East Peace envoy for the Quartet in 2007, without betraying a hint of irony. His stoicism and blinking affability have incongruously led to his recent label of persona non grata in the West Bank and Gaza.

    Blair doesn’t seem to notice that he has been lobbying against a vote for Palestine in the U.N. these past few weeks. Just as he hasn’t seemed to notice that, rather than tour the Middle East with credible experts and peace brokers, he has been seated across from power with the J.P. Morgan representative at his elbow. The same J.P. Morgan that has been footing a bill of £2 million in consultancy fees to Mr. Blair. To call this a conflict of interest would be an understatement. Correspondingly, a commission has been struck in the British Parliament to investigate Blair’s use of Quartet Peace envoy letterhead to cut business deals for J.P. Morgan throughout his tenure.

    But this behavior isn’t altogether novel. After all, Mr. Blair’s eternal sunshine of the spotless mind allows him to partner with a messianic American President employing crusader rhetoric against the 'Muslim world' in the second Gulf War, only to subsequently found a faith foundation aimed at fostering religious tolerance and coexistence. Nevertheless, outright denials have recently been issued by Mr. Blair, although the detailed investigations conducted by London’s pugnacious tabloid journals have yielded scant berth for an alternate narrative. In the meantime, Palestinians have not halted their attempts to broker support for their admission to the U.N. as a full member state. Recently, Mahmoud Abbas traveled to Columbia, temporary member of the U.N. Security Council, in order to lobby for a yes vote."









Continue reading, open salon, the blog of Idil Issa, here.

The Iraq War: The end of a debacle

Whilst scores of contractors [?] will remain in Iraq after the just announced withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by year's end, one thing is clear.   The invasion of Iraq has been shown to have been a debacle and those neo-cons who urged Bush on to rid Iraq of Saddam have been shown to have been utterly wrong.

"The Iraq war is over. Buried by the news from Libya, Barack Obama announced late on Friday that all US troops will leave Iraq by 31 December.

The president put a brave face on it, claiming he was fulfilling an election promise to end the war, though he had actually been supporting the Pentagon's effort to make a deal with Iraq's prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to keep US bases and several thousand troops there indefinitely.

The talks broke down because Moqtada al-Sadr's members of parliament and other Iraqi nationalists insisted that US troops be subject to Iraqi law. In every country where they are based the US insists on legal immunity and refuses to let troops be tried by foreigners. In Iraq the issue is especially sensitive after numerous US murders of civilians and the Abu Ghraib scandal in which Iraqi prisoners were sexually humiliated. In almost every case where US courts tried US troops, soldiers were acquitted or received relatively brief prison sentences.

The final troop withdrawal marks a complete defeat for Bush's Iraq project. The neocons' grand plan to use the 2003 invasion to turn the country into a secure pro-western democracy and a garrison for US bases that could put pressure on Syria and Iran lies in tatters.

Their hopes of making Iraq a democratic model for the Middle East have been tipped on their head. The instability and bloodshed which the US unleashed in Iraq were the example that Arabs sought to avoid, not emulate. This year's autonomous surge for democracy in Egypt and Tunisia has done far more to galvanize the region and undermine its dictatorships than anything the US did in Iraq. And when the Arab spring dawned, the Iraqi government found itself on the defensive as demonstrators took to the streets of Baghdad and Basra to protest against Maliki's authoritarianism and his government's US-supported clampdown on trade union activity. Maliki hosted two Syrian government delegations this summer and has refused to criticize Bashar al-Assad's shooting of protesters.

But the neocons' biggest defeat is that, thanks to Bush's toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iran's greatest enemy, Tehran's influence in Iraq is much stronger today than is America's. Iran does not control Iraq but Tehran no longer has anything to fear from its western neighbor now that a Shia-dominated government sits in Baghdad, made up of parties whose leaders spent long years of exile in Iran under Saddam or, like Sadr, have lived there more recently."

Libya: Watch them line up....

It takes someone like Robert Fisk to write about the death of Gadaffi - and how not that long ago the dictator was one of our friends.    Read Fisk's critical analysis, in The Independent, here.

Of course Libya is rich with oil reserves.    So, one should not be surprised that Western countries are on the move - to move into Libya!

Remember, he was our buddy not that long ago

Double-standards writ large

"Anyone who tried to argue that both sides have blood on their hands, and that there were those Palestinian prisoners who were sentenced to cruel and totally disproportionate jail terms, was pilloried. Or that their prison conditions were unbearably harsh, without furloughs or even one phone call over a period of decades and sometimes without family visits for years. That in Israel you can murder seven Palestinians and get frequent furloughs. Or set up a Jewish terror underground and get out in a flash. Or smash the skulls of bound and shackled terrorists and be granted a pardon without a trial. In this same country where the rule of law prevails, someone who transported a terrorist to his attack must sit in jail for life, while someone who kills a Palestinian is sometimes even spared a trial."

Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, in relation to the release of the soldier Gilad Shalit and 1027 Palestinians held in Israel, many for decades.

Revealed: Drone "airports" around the globe

Welcome to the world of drones and whats is now revealed to be "airports" for them around the globe.    Scary stuff - as we embark on yet another dimension to make our planet less safe by giving those in power more armaments to cause suffering and mayhem.    AlterNet and TomDispatch brings us up to date on the move to warfare by, as it were, remote.

"They increasingly dot the planet.  There’s a facility outside Las Vegas where “pilots” work in climate-controlled trailers, another at a dusty camp in Africa formerly used by the French Foreign Legion, a third at a big air base in Afghanistan where Air Force personnel sit in front of multiple computer screens, and a fourth that almost no one talks about at an air base in the United Arab Emirates.

And that leaves at least 56 more such facilities to mention in an expanding American empire of unmanned drone bases being set up worldwide.  Despite frequent news reports on the drone assassination campaign launched in support of America’s ever-widening undeclared wars and a spate of stories on drone bases in Africa and the Middle East, most of these facilities have remained unnoted, uncounted, and remarkably anonymous -- until now.

Run by the military, the Central Intelligence Agency, and their proxies, these bases -- some little more than desolate airstrips, others sophisticated command and control centers filled with computer screens and high-tech electronic equipment -- are the backbone of a new American robotic way of war.  They are also the latest development in a long-evolving saga of American power projection abroad -- in this case, remote-controlled strikes anywhere on the planet with a minimal foreign “footprint” and little accountability."

The utterly, utterly appalling cost of the Afghan war

Will the politicians stand up and be counted for what they have wrought?     This piece from Media Lens details the "cost" of 10 years of war in Afghanistan.

"Ten years later, the violent consequences of the invasion of Afghanistan are truly appalling. A Stop the War video, ‘What is the true cost of the Afghanistan war?’ details some of the appalling statistics:

9,300 Afghan civilians have been killed by International Security Assistance Forces, i.e. Nato.

380 British soldiers are dead.

£18 billion of UK taxpayer’s money has been spent.

The war is costing Britain £12 million per day. The same amount could employ 100,000 nurses (at £21,000 annually) and 150,000 care workers (£15,000).

A study by Brown University in the United States estimates an unimaginable combined sum of up to $4 trillion to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In Afghanistan, ‘cautious estimates’ of the total civilian death toll exceed 40,000 people, of which:

25.6%  killed by ISAF forces.

15.4%  killed by anti-government forces.

60%  killed by poverty, disease and starvation.

In particular, the horrendous killing of Afghan children in US air strikes and night raids gets scant coverage, if any, before the Western media swiftly looks away.

There are now three million refugees from Afghanistan: 30.7% of the world’s total, exceeding the figures of 16.9% from Iraq, 7.7% from Somalia and 4.8% from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

74% of the British public want the occupation to end either ‘immediately’ or ‘soon’.

Very little of this reality made it into the largely uncritical coverage of the ten-year anniversary of the West’s aggression against Afghanistan.

In the conclusion to a new report for Stop the War, David Swanson provides a stunning example of the media’s systematic bias:

‘On August 6, 2011, numerous US media outlets reported "the deadliest day of the war" because 38 soldiers, including 30 U.S. troops, had been killed when their helicopter was shot down.

‘But compare that with the day of May 4, 2009, discussed in this report, on which 140 people, including 93 children, were killed in U.S. airstrikes. We are denying to each other through silence and misdirection every day that the children of Afghanistan exist. But their deaths are rising.’

But the deaths of Afghan children, and the suffering of the people of Afghanistan, are seemingly of little consequence for most Western journalists who would rather focus on the ‘progress’ and ‘achievements’ of the Nato ‘campaign’."

Welcome to really, really Big Brother 2011 style!

If your thought the concept of 1984 and how it impacts of our lives was bad enough, then what Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting on what the FBI is up to, should be of grave concern.

"NextGov.comis reporting that the FBI will begin rolling out its Next Generation Identification (NGI) facial recognition service as early as this January.  Once NGI is fully deployed and once each of its approximately 100 million records also includes photographs, it will become trivially easy to find and track Americans.

 As we detailed in an earlier post, NGI expands the FBI’s IAFIS criminal and civil fingerprint database to include multimodal biometric identifiers such as iris scans, palm prints, photos, and voice data. The Bureau is planning to introduce each of these capabilities in phases (pdf, p.4) over the next two and a half years, starting with facial recognition in four states—Michigan, Washington, Florida, and North Carolina—this winter.

Why Should We Be Worried?

Despite the FBI’s claims to the contrary, NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes. IAFIS is already the largest biometric database in the world—it includes 70 million subjects in the criminal master file and more than 31 million civil fingerprints. Even if there are duplicate entries or some overlap between civil and criminal records, the combined number of records covers close to 1/3 the population of the United States. When NGI allows photographs and other biometric identifiers to be linked to each of those records, all easily searchable through sophisticated search tools, it will have an unprecedented impact on Americans' privacy interests.

Although IAFIS currently includes some photos, they have so far been limited specifically to mug shots linked to individual criminal records. However, according to a 2008 Privacy Impact Assessment for NGI’s Interstate Photo System, NGI will allow unlimited submission of photos and types of photos. Photos won’t be limited to frontal mug shots but may be taken from other angles and may include close-ups of scars, marks and tattoos. NGI will allow all levels of law enforcement, correctional facilities, and criminal justice agencies at the local, state, federal and even international level to submit and access photos, and will allow them to submit photos in bulk. Once the photos are in the database, they can be found easily using facial recognition and text-based searches for distinguishing characteristics.

The new NGI database will also allow law enforcement to submit public and private security camera photos that may or may not be linked to a specific person’s record. This means that anyone could end up in the database—even if they’re not involved in a crime— by just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or by, for example, engaging in political protest activities in areas like Lower Manhattan that are rife with security cameras."

Gadaffi: The West's cosy,and chilling, relationship with the dictator

Obama has expressed satisfaction, and a degree of pride for America's involvement, in seeing the end of Col. Gadaffi's "reign" in Libya.   Bad man!   Dictator!   Done terrible things to his people over all the years of his regime in Libya.     And of course there is Tony Blair blathering on in much the same vein as Obama.

Hey... wait a minute!     You guys were in bed with Libya when Gadaffi became the "good" guy some few short years ago.   For example, there are many photos of Blair actually physicaly embracing Gadaffi.  No more telling, and chilling, is this report from RT earlier this month.

"Files discovered in a Libyan government office show that the CIA enjoyed a very close relationship with Libyan intelligence services during Muammar Gaddafi's rule. Other documents indicate that British intelligence also played a role.

A set of documents dating from 2002 to 2007 uncover the extent of co-operation between Moussa Koussa, Libya's then intelligence chief, and the CIA’s top operatives, including its ex-Deputy Director Stephen Kappes.

The files show that Libya repeatedly received detainees who the CIA suspected of having terror links. Together with the captives, Libya received instructions on how to conduct successful interrogations, including what to ask and how to ask it without breaching human rights, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In 2004, under the administration of ex-president George W. Bush, the CIA established a permanent presence in Libya. This fact is confirmed by a note addressed to "Dear Musa" and signed "Steve."

Stephen Kappes is believed to have been the key player in negotiations that led to Gaddafi’s decision to renounce Libya’s nuclear program that stunned the world in 2003.

Some of the documents also indicate the close relationship that some British intelligence officials had with Koussa. British agents reportedly agreed to trace phone calls for Libyan intelligence.

The secret files were unearthed at Libya's External Security agency headquarters in Tripoli by the Emergencies Director of Human Rights Watch, Peter Bouckaert, who photographed them and shared a copy with the Wall Street Journal."


 

Nothing going for or positive about GM crops

Despite what its proponents claim a report just in gives the thumbs down to GM crops.  Genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues.

"Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of "superweeds", according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people.

The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises.

The report claims that hunger has reached "epic proportions" since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM "traits" have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought resistance and salt tolerance have yet to materialise on any scale.

Most worrisome, say the authors of the Global Citizens' Report on the State of GMOs, is the greatly increased use of synthetic chemicals, used to control pests despite biotech companies' justification that GM-engineered crops would reduce insecticide use.

In China, where insect-resistant Bt cotton is widely planted, populations of pests that previously posed only minor problems have increased 12-fold since 1997. A 2008 study in the International Journal of Biotechnology found that any benefits of planting Bt cotton have been eroded by the increasing use of pesticides needed to combat them.

Additionally, soya growers in Argentina and Brazil have been found to use twice as much herbicide on their GM as they do on conventional crops, and a survey by Navdanya International, in India, showed that pesticide use increased 13-fold since Bt cotton was introduced."

It all depends on where you sit in the pecking order

 Credited to Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

It's not all that it seems in Syria

The West is effectively laying low in relation to Syria other than the occasional accusatory comment about President Assad.

But was really happening there.     In this piece by Jeremy Salt on Counterpunch he lists some 23 reasons why we ought to be a tad sceptical about what is being reported to us, and certain givens with regard to this Middle Eastern country.

"As insurrection in Syria lurches towards civil war, the brakes need to be put on the propaganda pouring through the Western mainstream media and accepted uncritically by many who should know better."

Three examples of what Salt writes about:

"1. Syria has been a mukhabarat (intelligence) state since the redoubtable Abdel-Hamid Al-Serraj ran the intelligence services as the deuxième bureau in the 1950s. The authoritarian state which developed from the time former Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad took power in 1970 has crushed all dissent ruthlessly. On occasion it has either been him or them. The ubiquitous presence of themukhabarat is an unpleasant fact of Syrian life, but as Syria is a central target for assassination and subversion by Israel and Western intelligence agencies, as it has repeatedly come under military attack, as it has had a large chunk of its territories occupied, and as its enemies are forever looking for opportunities to bring it down, it can hardly be said that the mukhabarat is not needed.

2. There is no doubt that the bulk of the people demonstrating in Syria want a peaceful transition to a democratic form of government. Neither is there any doubt that armed groups operating from behind the screen of the demonstrations have no interest in reform. They want to destroy the government.

3. There have been very big demonstrations of support for the government. There is anger at the violence of the armed gangs and anger at external interference and exploitation of the situation by outside governments and the media. In the eyes of many Syrians, their country is once again the target of an international conspiracy."

A photographic tour of Teheran

"Tehran is a visual feast. Part 1970s time capsule, part ideological showcase, part cultural battleground, Iran's capital city is also, regrettably, a tough place in which to take good photographs. The city draws remarkably few foreigners these days, so any visitor with a camera is quickly noticed. Because official Iran asserts a monopoly over the country's image, pro-government basijis -- a plainclothes militia -- can be relied upon to turn up unfriendly, unannounced, and obstructive if you turn your camera on a sensitive subject. Nevertheless, when visiting Tehran -- as I did most recently when reporting for FP this past June and July -- I have always enjoyed taking in its aesthetic ironies. The strong reactions I elicited whenever I pulled out my camera renewed my admiration for the Iran-based photographers who make the tense political atmosphere and cultural fault lines in this great city palpable. The following selections from the wire services serve to illustrate these phenomena."

Go, here, to view the photos on FP - revealing a city, and its people, we don't get to see all that often.

Ho hum....so what if my husband (President Assad) is killing people

Bottom line I guess it's one perspective on what is important in the world and one's moral compass.   It would seem that the wife of President Assad, of Syria, isn't at all concerned if her husband has been responsible for the death of some of her husband's protesting citizens.

"Vogue magazine famously called her a "rose in the desert", while Paris Match proclaimed she was the "element of light in a country full of shadow zones". But when Syria's glamorous First Lady invited a group of aid workers to discuss the security situation with her last month, she appeared to have lost her gloss.

During the meeting, British-born Asma al-Assad – who grew up in Acton and attended a Church of England school in west London – came face to face with aid workers who had witnessed at first hand the brutality of her husband's regime. Yet according to one volunteer who was present, the former investment banker and mother of President Bashar al-Assad's three children appeared utterly unmoved when she heard about the plight of protesters.

"We told her about the killing of protesters," said the man, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. "We told her about the security forces attacking demonstrators. About them taking wounded people from cars and preventing people from getting to hospital ... There was no reaction. She didn't react at all. It was just like I was telling a normal story, something that happens every day."

Twitter: What is happening

There can be no doubt that Twitter is a force to be reckoned with.   It goes beyond being a simple means for social networking.  

In a considered piece in Le Monde diplomatique, Mona Chollet records that Twitter has taken a different approach from the other social media. It seems to be turning into a public news agency, faster and more collective than traditional media.

"Internet use became commonplace at least 15 years ago, but some people still cannot grasp that it is a user-created medium. The web is presented as a convergence of pre-existing means of acquiring information, but French researcher Dominique Cardon objects to that view; he thinks it just applies traditional media models, including editorial control, to the net, and regards the public as passive (1).

Yet the nature of the internet has become clear, especially with the advent of Web 2.0 and its user-friendly tools. Thanks to blog platforms, users with no programming skills can self publish. The resulting standardisation of websites has disappointed pioneers, since it is a long way from the creative vigour of the early days. The popularity of social networks such as Myspace (popular with musicians), Facebook and Twitter has further extended the number of content producers. The social internet “allows users with less cultural capital to promote themselves in much shorter, lighter and easier ways than by writing a blog” (2). A month after Google+ was launched this June, it had 25 million subscribers. It took Facebook three months to achieve that number, and Twitter 33 months. After its August capital increase, Twitter was valued at $8bn, leading to warnings about speculative bubbles because of the site’s economic model.

Twitter has pushed the degree of appropriation allowed by the collaborative internet to its limits. It improvises constantly, redefining itself and validating users’ initiatives. When it was first set up in 2006, the question on the homepage was “What are you doing?”. Some users ignored it and devoted their 140-character tweets to producing their own reviews, commenting on current events (sometimes in real time), responding to each other’s comments, announcing gatherings, sharing photos and videos, placing small ads. So in November 2009 the company replaced the question with “What’s happening?” Then, because users had got into the habit of passing on tweets, preceded by “RT” (retweet), Twitter created a retweet button."

One loser....and lots of big winners

Is it any wonder that there is a vibrant and ever-growing Occupy Wall Street movement?   

 Exhibit 1!

Goldman Sachs has just announced a big loss for its third quarter.  A mere US$425 million.   BUT,  the employees, let alone the executives of the firm, won't bearing any loss, just to the contrary.

"Today’s Goldman Sachs earning reports provides a valuable lesson on how things really work inside Wall Street’s largest investment houses. Goldman Sachs had an awful three months, losing $428 million in the third quarter of 2011, and yet it continued to shovel billions into the bonus pool it will share with its employees at year’s end.

 Through the first nine months of 2011, Goldman set aside $10 billion in its compensation fund. If Goldman’s 30,000 employees split that bounty evenly, that would work out to $333,000 per person—plus the billions more Goldman will no doubt set aside in the last few months of the year.

Of course, the receptionist inside Goldman Sachs doesn't receive the same pay as all those analysts and other midlevel suits making salaries of $400,000 a year or more. Moreover, chieftains like Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who received $13 million in compensation last year, won’t have to share their year-end bonuses with as many people as last year. The bank laid off 1,300 employees in the third quarter of the year and plans on jettisoning another 1,000-plus jobs in the coming months." 

How about The Third Way

Preview of a documentary detailing the friendships between Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Palestinians living under occupation. A step toward normalising a unlawful occupation?

Someone (The Los Angeles Times] gets it

Whilst the US, taking a leaf out of Israel's book, has now engaged in extra-judicial killings - think, the killing of an alleged terrorist in Yemen recently - on show is the inevitable double-standard.     The Americans are outraged that Iran is alleged to have been involved in aiming to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington.    

The Los Angeles Times gets it......that there are double-standards at play here.

"Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Tuesday that federal authorities had foiled a plot backed by the Iranian government to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States on American soil. Two men, one of whom is apparently a member of a special operations unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, were charged in federal court in New York on Tuesday. Holder called the bomb plot a flagrant violation of U.S. and international law. And Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, "We will not let other countries use our soil as their battleground."

But wait a minute. Two weeks ago, the United States assassinated one of its enemies in Yemen, on Yemeni soil. If the U.S. believes it has the right to assassinate enemies like Anwar Awlaki anywhere in the world in the name of a "war on terror" that has no geographical limitation, how can it then argue that other nations don't have a similar right to track down their enemies and kill them wherever they're found?

It's true that the assassination of Awlaki was carried out with the cooperation of the government of Yemen. That makes a difference. But would the U.S. have hesitated to kill him if Yemen had not approved? Remember: There was no cooperation from the Pakistani government when Osama bin Laden was killed in May.

It's also true that there's a big difference between an Al Qaeda operative who, according to U.S. officials, had been deeply involved in planning terrorist activities, and a duly credited ambassador of a sovereign country. Still, the fact remains that all nations ought to think long and hard before gunning down their enemies in other countries.

As the United States continues down the path of state-sponsored assassination far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, all sorts of tricky moral questions are likely to arise. But this much is clear: The world is unlikely to accept that the United States has a right to behave as it wishes without accountability all around the globe and that other nations do not."

No other word for it. Barbaric!

For a Westerner it is hard to come to grips with a woman, or indeed a man for that matter, being sentenced to 90 lashes.    The crime?     Appearing in a movie which the authorities - Iran in this instance - don't like.

"An Iranian actor has been sentenced to one year in prison and 90 lashes for her starring role in Australian film My Tehran for Sale.

In an outcome that could have been lifted from the pages of the movie's script, Marzieh Vafamehr was arrested in July and received her sentence at the weekend, according to reports quoting Iranian opposition website kalameh.com.

The exact nature of the crime she was charged with is unclear and the Iranian embassy in Canberra did not respond to The Age's request for comment. Vafamehr often appears with a shaved head and no headscarf in the film, which also explores cultural oppression in Iran and taboos such as drug use."

OWS movement grows.......worldwide

This weekend has seen the Occupy Wall Street movement go global.    In Rome, alone, some 200,000 people turned out to protest.

Mike Carlton, writing his regular op-ed column in the SMH, very succinctly puts the movement into context.

"We must all hope that the Occupy Wall Street movement is the first wave of a great global uprising against the greed, stupidity and incompetence of the world financial system. It is early days, but the signs are that it might be. Increasingly, the guitar players, hipsters, and starry-eyed dreamers who kicked it off are being joined by middle-class, Main Street Americans infuriated by the havoc brought to their lives by bankers and governments.

Surely now we must recognise that the 1980s capitalist model has run itself off a cliff, as it was always bound to do. Call it Reaganomics or Thatchernomics or supply-side economics, whatever you like, but unshackling the banks to let them rip'n'tear in an explosion of debt upon debt has been an unmitigated disaster.

At the heart of it all was the lie that conservatives cling to even today, the so-called "trickle down theory" that everyone would win if the rich were allowed to get ever richer. Or as the great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith memorably put it: ''If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

The money just funnelled upwards and stayed there. Consider these interesting facts:
The richest 1 per cent of Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 90 per cent.
In Britain, half the population holds just 1 per cent of the country's cash. The gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time since World War II.

Forbes magazine, the plutocrats' bible, chortled this year that the world now has 1210 billionaires, up from 1011 last year, with a total worth of some $US4.5 trillion, more than the gross domestic product of Germany."

That alleged Iran attack.....It just doesn't stack up!

Informed commentary would have it that that the much-touted US claim to have thwarted an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington doesn't stack up.  

Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

"The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that. And in the ensuing reaction one finds virtually every dynamic typically shaping discussions of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy.

To begin with, this episode continues the FBI’s record-setting undefeated streak of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular “plot” hatched by some hapless loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a failed used car salesman in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. “For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents,” explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and “no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and no one was actually ever in any danger.’”

Steve Walt at FP:

"Unless the Obama administration (and in particular, Attorney General Eric Holder), has more smoking gun evidence than they've revealed so far, they are in danger of a diplomatic gaffe on a par with Colin Powell's famous U.N. Security Council briefing about Iraq's supposed WMD programs, a briefing now known to have been a series of fabrications and fairy tales.

The problem is that the harder one looks at the allegations about Manour Ababasiar, the fishier the whole business seems. There's no question that Iran has relied upon assassination as a foreign policy tool in the past, but it boggles the mind to imagine that they would use someone as unreliable and possibly unhinged as Ababsiar."

Sri Lanka: Something rotten in the island-State

Notwithstanding an attempt by the Sri Lankan government to entice tourists and that peace has no come to the once war-torn country, there remains something very rotten in the island-State.

"In late September, the government of Sri Lanka released 1,800 former Tamil Tiger fighters.
Colombo claimed they had been rehabilitated as President Mahinda Rajapaksa told them at a ceremony in the capital:

"I hope you will work for peace and ethnic harmony in this nation of ours. We must not dwell on the bitter past, but look to a prosperous future."

Many other former fighters remain incommunicado, housed in secret camps away from international inspection or human rights protection.

This is occurring in "democratic" Sri Lanka, a nation still deeply divided along racial and political lines.

The over two years since the official end of the country's brutal civil war has seen an attempted re-branding exercise by the Rajapaksa regime, including the encouragement of a vibrant tourist sector.

Despite the fact that the government murdered at least 40,000 Tamil civilians during the last period of the war (a figure confirmed by then UN spokesman in Colombo, Gordon Weiss), the international community has been reluctant to hold officials to account.

A thorough UN-led investigation found overwhelming evidence of war crimes committed by both sides during the conflict and Ban Ki-Moon recently submitted this report to the UN Human Rights Council for investigation. The move was condemned by Colombo.

After a 10-month investigation, the UN found that "most civilian casualties in the final phases of the war were caused by government shelling". Furthermore, it made accusations that Sri Lankan troops had shelled civilians in the "no-fire zone" and targeted hospitals in its desire to crush the Tamil Tigers.

A recently released WikiLeaks cable revealed that when Ban Ki-Moon visited the country in 2009 he witnessed "complete destruction" when he flew over the former "no-fire zone". He described the conditions of Manik Farm refugee camp as worse than anything he had ever seen before."

Libya: The ravages of war

Need anything be said about the ravages of war?     This photo - more here - was taken in Sirte, Libya, "home" of Muammar Gaddafi.

And the winner is.....Occupy Wall Street!

What a change a few days can bring.    From the media effectively ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement, now we see it more than reported on, and the likes of Eliot Spitzer - one-time Attorney-General for New York - writing and declaring in Slate that the Occupy Wall Street has won!

"Occupy Wall Street has already won, perhaps not the victory most of its participants want, but a momentous victory nonetheless. It has already altered our political debate, changed the agenda, shifted the discussion in newspapers, on cable TV, and even around the water cooler. And that is wonderful.

Suddenly, the issues of equity, fairness, justice, income distribution, and accountability for the economic cataclysm–issues all but ignored for a generation—are front and center. We have moved beyond the one-dimensional conversation about how much and where to cut the deficit. Questions more central to the social fabric of our nation have returned to the heart of the political debate. By forcing this new discussion, OWS has made most of the other participants in our politics—who either didn’t want to have this conversation or weren’t able to make it happen—look pretty small."

Milton Gendel’s Society Photos

Vanity Fair has a wonderful photo montage of what is described as Society taken by Milton Gendel.

"A fixture in the postwar social world of the European elite, photographer Milton Gendel used both the refinement and the extravagance of his private life as the material for his high art. Gendel’s prolific portfolio chronicles his many friendships (with such aristocrats as Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret), marriages, and residences over the years, as he made his career out of capturing the beauty and transience of fleeting moments. To coincide with the openings of  the “Milton Gendel: A Surreal Life” exhibition at Rome’s Museo Carlo Bilotti, on October 4, and “Milton Gendel: Portraits” at the American Academy in Rome, on October 19, VF.com takes a look back at some of his most iconic subjects and scenes."

Go here to view the 16 photos, including one of Salvador Dali.

So say all of us! Less than 5% want mobile / cell phones on planes

Can there be any doubting that despite what airlines might think, only a very, very small percentage of people want mobile / cell phones on planes.

"Less than 5% of passengers want in-flight mobile and internet access according to a survey by search engine, Fly.com.

The September survey, which questioned 1300 frequent travellers, found that more than 30% of travellers would actually be put off airlines offering these services.

Objections included disturbance from people talking on phones and interruptions from emails and social networking sites while travelling.

Meanwhile, 62% of travellers are still concerned about the safety risks of having mobile phones on board despite assurances from airlines."

Who says there is American exceptionalism?

The idea that the United States is uniquely virtuous may be comforting to Americans. Too bad it's not true.

Professor Stephen Walt, of Harvard, writing in FP [as re-produced on Information Clearing House]:

"Over the last two centuries, prominent Americans have described the United States as an "empire of liberty," a "shining city on a hill," the "last best hope of Earth," the "leader of the free world," and the "indispensable nation." These enduring tropes explain why all presidential candidates feel compelled to offer ritualistic paeans to America's greatness and why President Barack Obama landed in hot water -- most recently, from Mitt Romney -- for saying that while he believed in "American exceptionalism," it was no different from "British exceptionalism," "Greek exceptionalism," or any other country's brand of patriotic chest-thumping.

Most statements of "American exceptionalism" presume that America's values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration. They also imply that the United States is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.

The only thing wrong with this self-congratulatory portrait of America's global role is that it is mostly a myth. Although the United States possesses certain unique qualities -- from high levels of religiosity to a political culture that privileges individual freedom -- the conduct of U.S. foreign policy has been determined primarily by its relative power and by the inherently competitive nature of international politics. By focusing on their supposedly exceptional qualities, Americans blind themselves to the ways that they are a lot like everyone else.

This unchallenged faith in American exceptionalism makes it harder for Americans to understand why others are less enthusiastic about U.S. dominance, often alarmed by U.S. policies, and frequently irritated by what they see as U.S. hypocrisy, whether the subject is possession of nuclear weapons, conformity with international law, or America's tendency to condemn the conduct of others while ignoring its own failings. Ironically, U.S. foreign policy would probably be more effective if Americans were less convinced of their own unique virtues and less eager to proclaim them.

What we need, in short, is a more realistic and critical assessment of America's true character and contributions."

Continue reading here.

That alleged Iranian plot in Washington?: "Fishy"

Despite all the hype that alleged plot by the Iranians - in Washington, to kill the Saudi ambassador - is looking increasingly odd.   One CIA veteran describes the whole thing as portrayed by the USA, as "fishy".

"U.S. Justice Department charges that elements of Iran's government were behind a foiled plot on the life of Saudi Arabia's U.S. ambassador have boggled the minds of many Americans knowledgeable about both Iran and terrorism.

The alleged target and modus operandi – employing a Mexican drug cartel to blow up Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir at a Washington restaurant – are unusual, to say the least, for a government that has focused on political dissidents and theatres of war closer to home.

"Fishy, fishy, fishy,'' Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran who was formerly in charge of the Near East and South Asia on the White House National Security Council, told IPS. "That Iran engages in assassinations is old news. That it would use a Mexican drug cartel would be new."

Elie Wiesel image well and truly tarnished

Elie Wiesel is always put forward as a fair-minded libertarian and champion of decency, liberty and tolerance.

Well, that might have been at one time - even though people have questioned him in some situations in which he has placed himself - but his latest support of a venture in Jerusalem borders on the graceful. 

"One of the leading land-grabbers in East Jerusalem is an Israeli settler NGO, Elad, one of whose tactics has been to have Palestinian homes declared archaeological sites. This allows them to condemn and expel the residents and then create artificial archaeology parks.  Elad celebrated one of its major projects, opening a hitherto “secret tunnel” from the City of David (one of its archaeological sites) to the Western Wall (Kotel) at such a Selichot ceremony.

Elad’s goal is to rid Jerusalem, especially those parts of it with Jewish historical significance (which most often happen to be within Palestinian neighborhoods), of Arabs.  It will do so by hook or by crook.  Since Palestinians don’t generally take well to their homes being taken out from under them–it’s usually by crook.  Elad is part of the settler movement that seeks, either intentionally or unintentionally to create a religious conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.  For Elad, this is a Jewish jihad, literally a Jewish struggle for dominance of the Holy City.

Who should join these settlers in commemorating their service on behalf of the Jewish people and their expropriation of Palestinian land?  None other than Nobel Peace Prize winner and Jewish humanitarian par excellence, Elie Wiesel.  In fact, he’s the chair of this settler group’s Advisory Board.  He was joined by two former Israeli intelligence chiefs, Shabtai Shavit and Amos Yadlin, a number of prominent judges, lawyers, entertainers and government officials.   It doesn’t seem that the introspective spirit of Selichot in which we contemplate our sins and ways we and our people have fallen short, penetrated Wiesel’s brain.  None of this should surprise us since Wiesel has already taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from John Hagee and spoken to one of his CUFI, Christian Zionist pro-Israel celebrations.  The money I’m sure went to replenish some of the millions Bernie Madoff pilfered from him.  Wiesel has also joined together with Alan Dershowitz in sponsoring a Jewish anti-Iran group.   He called the Goldstone Report a “crime against the Jewish people.”   How the (once) mighty have fallen."
 

Bahh to all of you.....

Credited to Mike Luckovich

UN Report confirms widespread use of torture in Afghanistan

It will come as little surprise to anyone who has followed the war in Afghanistan, and Iraq for that matter, that a UN Report just out reveals - for many, confirms - that there is widespread use of torture by Afghan military and police - almost surely with the tacit approval of the Western allies in the country.     And the NATO forces didn't know it was going on? - and doubtlessly benefiting from "intelligence" gained from those tortured.

"The UN report on the widespread use of torture by the Afghan intelligence agency and police force is not just an indictment of Nato-backed security forces. It also represents a giant question mark over the workability of the west's strategy in Afghanistan.

That strategy involves containment of the insurgency until the end of the 2014, when the US, Britain and their allies are to withdraw combat troops. Meanwhile, the plan is to build up and improve the Afghan government and its security forces, while exploring the possibility of a political settlement.

The trouble is that each element of the plan has an impact on the others, and not necessarily in a good way. The routine use of torture by the intelligence service (NDS) and the police is part of a wider picture of excess and abuse of the Afghan population that is fuelling the insurgency. Most senior Nato officers and western officials now acknowledge that the venality of the government system is a bigger driver that any popular ideological alignment with the Taliban and its allies.

Furthermore, if this is how the security forces treat the Afghan people, then building them up – from 305,000 this year to 350,000 by 2012 to 400,000 by 2013 – could make the problem worse rather than better. The army generally has a better reputation, as does the small Afghan National Civil Order Police, Ancop, but NDS and the general police force are big and ubiquitous enough to poison the well when it comes to popular support for the government.

Compounding this threat is an ethnic dimension. Despite strenuous efforts to recruit in the south, only 3% of the recruits at the national military training academy in Kabul are southern Pashtuns. If this is not improved and no progress is made towards a political settlement in the next two years, then all the effort and resources ploughed into the Afghan security forces could end up providing the skills and equipment for a bigger, more bloody, civil war."

Uncle Snoopy Sam

Uncle Sam obviously doesn't like its closely guarded secrets, and misdeeds, seeing the light of day.     It took it upon itself to engage in snooping - obtaining a secret order in the process to do so - to try and establish where WikiLeaks sourced its information and documents.

MSNBC reports:

"The U.S. government obtained secret court orders to force Google Inc and a small Internet provider to hand over information from email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The U.S. request included email addresses of people that Jacob Appelbaum, a volunteer for the campaigning website, had corresponded with in the past two years, but not the full emails, the newspaper said, citing documents it had reviewed.

Internet provider Sonic said it fought the government order legally and lost, and was forced to turn over information, the company's chief executive, Dane Jasper, told the newspaper.
The legal action was "rather expensive, but we felt it was the right thing to do," Jasper told the Journal."

A drone coming to near you!

The West has been rather smug that it has cornered some ascendency in the use of drones.    No more, it seems.    The New York Times reports that China has drones too.   And the consequence of all of that is we can expect a new dimension to warfare.   As if we needed more in an already restless world.

"At the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese companies startled some Americans by unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier.

The presentation appeared to be more marketing hype than military threat; the event is China’s biggest aviation market, drawing both Chinese and foreign military buyers. But it was stark evidence that the United States’ near monopoly on armed drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American security, international law and the future of warfare.

Eventually, the United States will face a military adversary or terrorist group armed with drones, military analysts say. But what the short-run hazard experts foresee is not an attack on the United States, which faces no enemies with significant combat drone capabilities, but the political and legal challenges posed when another country follows the American example. The Bush administration, and even more aggressively the Obama administration, embraced an extraordinary principle: that the United States can send this robotic weapon over borders to kill perceived enemies, even American citizens, who are viewed as a threat."

Who's suffering?

This piece from Mother Jones its into context why the Occupy Wall Street movement is getting such traction in the USA.    

"After Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley announced hefty profits last fall, the Obama administration's pay czar said that he'd cap pay at Citigroup, Bank of America, and five other bailed-out companies. The move was largely symbolic: It capped salaries for only 25 executives, kept big stock bonuses in place, and did nothing to address the culture of rewarding folks who sowed our economic destruction. Below, some of the players who made out like bandits during the bubble and the bailout."

Interestingly, the normally staid New York Times - rarely in support of popular movements - has picked up on the Occupy Wall Street movement as reflecting the mood of Americans and actually supports it editorially.

Standing on your head?

This week's op-piece in The New York Times by Maureen Dowd "How Garbo Learned to Stand on Her Head" is, for once, not acerbic.    It's about yoga.    Is it good for one or not?

"Sometimes it feels as though I spend half my time working and the other half trying to ameliorate the strain of working.

Ever since one particularly clenched day of columnizing years ago, when I found myself curled up on the floor of my house davening, I’ve tried various remedies for the ravages of stress: better nutrition, caramels, gym, green tea Popsicles, kavakava, kale, kombucha, cupcakes, chocolate, chardonnay — sometimes in concurrent combinations.

The one that works best is yoga.

So I was intrigued to open my mail on Friday and find the galley of an upcoming book by the Times science writer William Broad, who made his name reporting about space weapons and biological warfare, on “The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards.”

I stopped reading about the Rick Perry supporter who denounced Mormonism as a cult, and started reading about my own cult. I was eager to know the science behind the blissful state of mind produced by savasana — corpse pose. It can’t just be the buckwheat-scented eye pillow.

Broad suggests that only an ancient tradition of centering — “an anti-civilization pill” — may be able to neutralize the “dissipating influence” of the Internet and the frantic information flow.

Once esoteric and exotic, yoga is now so prevalent that in 2010, the city of Cambridge, Mass., began printing soothing yoga poses on parking tickets.

But as I read on, I began to feel a little stressed out."